While the Biden administration has been publicly voicing reservations over the mounting death toll in Gaza, a Washington Post investigation revealed the administration has quietly approved and delivered more than 100 separate weapons sales to Israel over the last five months, amounting to thousands of precision-guided munitions, small-diameter bombs, bunker busters and other lethal aid. Only two approved foreign military sales to Israel have been made public since the launch of Israel’s assault on October 7, which the Biden administration approved using emergency authority to bypass Congress. “It is actually illegal to provide military assistance to a country that is restricting U.S.-funded humanitarian assistance, and we know that this is the case with Israel,” says Josh Paul, a veteran State Department official who worked on arms deals and resigned in protest of a push to increase arms sales to Israel amid its assault on Gaza. Paul describes the “production line”-style sale of weapons to Israel and says increasing internal dissent is putting pressure on Biden to change his “dead-end” policy of unconditional support for Israel. “We have a president and a set of policies … that remain set on this course regardless of the harm it is doing to Israeli security, to American global interests and, of course, to so many Palestinians.”
Tag: hypocrisy
“Banning Books Is Never The Answer”: RuPaul’s “No Censorship” Bookstore Lasted Just Three Days
It took just three days.
After drag performer RuPaul announced the creation of a “no censorship” Allstora bookstore, censorship was back with a vengeance after many on the left learned that free speech meant that opposing views might be sold at the site. While the sentiment was appealing, it became intolerable when activists noted that a “no censorship” store would mean that they could not censor others.
In the rollout, RuPaul stood in a blue suit before a flag to defy the censors and embrace access to works of different authors and viewpoints. For many of us, it was an exciting moment. The anti-free speech movement on the left has grown exponentially. Now, this iconic figure from the left was taking a bold stand for free speech.
With ten million titles, readers could buy most any book, including writers like Riley Gaines who have challenged transgender theories.
Various sites like National Review have covered the rise and rapid fall of the free speech initiative.
The rollout was promising. Like many of us, the founders objected to book bans across the country. Such bans have been implemented by both the left and the right.
Allstora was founded on the pledge that “We’re a marketplace for all books and all stories, with a focus on elevating marginalized voices.” Co-founder Eric Cervini and drag performer Adam Powell, welcomed visitors to the website with a pop-up message that warned “you may find books you disagree with.”
The site declared “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy.” After all, “banning books is never the answer.”
The pledge was heralded in the media. Many viewed it as a jab at conservatives to show that there is nothing to fear in access to opposing views.
Then someone thought about what free speech means.
Liberal critics raised the alarm that the bookstore would be selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” and “anti-woke” works.
Drag performer “Lady Bunny” noted that the store would be selling works by figures like Mike Huckabee, Chaya Raichik, and Matt Walsh.
Lady Bunny asked “Why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”
That is all that it took.
Allstora first implemented a flagging system for offensive books and then just got rid of the no censorship pledge.
While some sites state that Allstora only moved to add disclaimers, it appears that the no censorship pledge is gone and various authors are missing.
Alvin Bragg’s Prison Reform Poster Boy (And Joe Rogan Guest) Charged With Murder
Sheldon Johnson, a “criminal justice activist,” is being held on murder charges following a gruesome discovery in a Bronx apartment: a dismembered body. The body, it is alleged, is that of a former prison rival.
Johnson, 48, worked at Queens Defenders (@QueensDefenders), a public legal defense firm.
Johnson became something of a cause célèbre in the past year. He was released early from prison, having served 25 years of a 50 year sentence. His release was the work of activist D.A. Alvin Bragg, who has sought to decriminalize and forgive scores of prisoners. We continue to see the fruit of his labors.
After he was spotted by a neighbor of the deceased, Johnson was monitored by building superintendent Orlando Medina on CCTV. Johnson left and returned to the apartment complex several times, once in a blond wig. The police were summoned. According to the NY Times, what they eventually discovered was gruesome.
Once the detectives obtained a warrant to search the apartment, they discovered the victim’s torso and feet inside the bin, the reports said. They also found his legs, arms and head in the freezer. Mr. Small had been shot at least once in the head.—NYT
Wrote To Alvin Bragg From Prison
Johnson wrote to D.A. Bragg from prison, using the website PrisonWriters.com, a nonprofit organization that seeks so open channels of dialogue between prisoners and lawmakers. His letter is full of verbal flourishes, woke jargon, and fifty-cent words. The full body of the letter can be found here.
On Hypocrisy and Genocide – How Gaza Has Exposed the West Like Never Before
The Israeli genocide in Gaza will be remembered as the moral collapse of the West.
As soon as the Israeli war began, following the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, every moral or legal frame of reference that Washington and its western allies supposedly held dear was suddenly dropped. Western leaders rushed to Israel, one after the other, offering military, political and intelligence support – along with a blank check to rightwing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and his generals to torment the Palestinians.
The likes of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, went as far as joining Israel’s first war council meeting, so that he could take part in the discussion which directly resulted in the Gaza genocide.
“I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew,” he said on October 12. The interpretation of these words is disturbing, no matter how it is spun, but it also ultimately means that Blinken has lost all credibility as an American, as a politician or even as a fair-minded human being.
His boss, President Joe Biden, as if in an infinite loop, has been, for years, repeating that “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist”. Indeed, he has lived up to his maxim, declaring, time and again, “I am a Zionist”. Indeed, he is.
Like many other US and western officials and politicians, the US President abandoned international and humanitarian laws altogether, even the law of his own country. The Leahy Law “prohibits the US Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights with impunity.” Instead, he, like Blinken, subscribed to tribal affiliation and ideological notions, which simply added fuel to the fire.
Though “protected persons” under international law, Palestinians seem dispensable, in fact, irrelevant to the point that their collective death appears critical for Israel to regain its ‘deterrence’, and to protect itself, in the words of Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, against the “human animals” of Gaza.
If there is a stronger word than hypocrisy, one would have used it. But, for now, it would have to suffice.
WORTHY VS. UNWORTHY VICTIMS: STUDY REVEALS MEDIA’S SELECTIVE COVERAGE OF NAVALNY AND LIRA
Anew MintPress News study of media coverage of the deaths of American journalist and commentator Gonzalo Lira and Russian political leader Alexey Navalny has found that the establishment U.S. press overwhelmingly ignored the former and focussed on the latter. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News and CNN collectively ran 731 segments on Navalny between February 16 and February 22, compared to just one on Lira since his death on January 12, perhaps because one was a Western-backed figure who died at the hands of an official enemy state, while the other was a pro-Russian voice who met their end at the hands of the Ukrainian government.
ROUND-THE-CLOCK COVERAGE VS RADIO SILENCE
MintPress conducted a quantitative analysis of the media coverage of two political figures who recently died in prison: Alexey Navalny and Gonzalo Lira. Both were controversial characters and critics of the governments that imprisoned them. Both died under suspicious circumstances (their families both maintain they were effectively murdered). And both died in the past six weeks, Navalny in February and Lira in January. A crucial difference in their stories, however, is that Navalny perished in an Arctic penal colony after being arrested in Russia (an enemy state), while Lira’s life ended in a Ukrainian prison, abandoned by the pro-Kiev government in Washington, D.C.
The study compared the coverage of Navalny and Lira’s death in five leading outlets: the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, and CNN. These outlets were chosen for their reach and influence and, together, could be said to reasonably represent the corporate media spectrum as a whole. The data was compiled using the Dow Jones Factiva news database and searches on the websites of the news organizations. This study takes no position on the matter of Navalny, Lira, or the Russia-Ukraine war.
“So We Get No Say?” – Wealthy Elites from Affluent Neighborhood in Sanctuary City Boston Outraged Over Local Migrant Shelter Plans
These leftist elites are all alike.
Residents from Boston’s Fort Point neighborhood gathered this week to complain about a planned migrant facility that is opening soon in their affluent community.
When these elites approved of the Boston’s sanctuary status they sure didn’t agree to this!
The local residents complained to city officials, “So we have no say?” After the plans were announced for the shelter in their area.
It’s just not right.
The Blaze reported:
Residents of a wealthy neighborhood in Boston expressed outrage at a recent community meeting after they learned that a new migrant shelter would soon open up nearby.
On Tuesday night, residents gathered to meet with General Scott Rice, the emergency assistance director for Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, to discuss their concerns about a temporary migrant shelter opening up in Fort Point, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the Seaport area of Boston.
Hunter Biden Claims Not Doing Crack Is a ‘Fight for the Future of Democracy’
Hunter Biden not doing crack is a “fight for the future of democracy,” the president’s son told Axios Monday in reference to former President Donald Trump’s bid for reelection.
Hunter’s attempt to somehow tie the fate of the nation to his legal imperative to abstain from drug use fits his long-running narrative of victimhood.
Hunter pleaded not guilty to gun charges in October and underwent random drug testing. Judge Christopher Burke released him on several conditions, including that he not use alcohol or ingest controlled substances.
“I have something much bigger than even myself at stake,” Hunter said about his legal battles. “We are in the middle of a fight for the future of democracy.”
“Most importantly, you have to believe that you’re worth the work, or you’ll never be able to get sober. But I often do think of the profound consequences of failure here,” Hunter said.
“I don’t care whether you’re ten years sober, two years sober, two months sober or two hundred years sober — your brain at some level is always telling you there’s still one answer,” he said about his history of addictions and parmesan cheese.
Hunter is set to testify before the House impeachment inquiry on Wednesday. It is unknown if he will actually appear for the interview. Hunter failed to show last time he said he would appear.
Alexei Navalny’s Death and Curious Well-Timed Coincidences
There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.
That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire. Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.
The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda “is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”
However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.
Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.
With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death. This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.
Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.
All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.
ADL pushed BMG to drop Roger Waters by threatening to weaponize company’s Nazi past
The Grayzone has obtained a private letter authored by ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt threatening to weaponize the Nazi past of the BMG music company unless executives terminated a major deal with Roger Waters. BMG has publicly denied Israel lobby influence on its decision to nix Waters’ contract.
When the Berlin-based BMG music company terminated its business relationship with Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd co-founder claimed the decision was spurred by a concerted Israel lobby-directed campaign to financially retaliate against his outspoken support for Palestine. The Grayzone has obtained a threatening private letter sent by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt to BMG executives which confirms the musician’s accusation.
“Given the fact that your parent company, Bertelsmann Group, has made laudable and necessary efforts to repair its Nazi past,” the ADL director warned in his June 16, 2023 letter, “it would be deeply unfortunate to have those efforts continue to be tarnished by such hurtful and injurious conduct.”
In an interview with The Grayzone, Waters described the ADL’s menacing missive as the culmination of a months-long intimidation campaign which began well before the October 7 attacks in Israel. The ADL’s push resulted not only in the termination of the company’s deal to release the new 50th anniversary recording of “The Dark Side of the Moon,” he said, but in the departure of BMG’s CEO as well.
“As far as attacks on me by the ADL and and all the rest of the lobby are concerned, the jury has been out for a long time, but it’s not out anymore,” Waters commented to The Grayzone. “The contention that I’m an antisemite because I’ve stood up against the attempted genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine is dead in the water. The people of the world have seen through the wall of hatred and tissue of lies.”
Prosecutor Fani Willis Touts the Value of Cash, But What About the Rest of Us?
It’s quite a turn when a prosecutor defends the use of cash for financial transactions. After years of authorities treating mere possession of physical money as sketchy and grounds for seizure, this week a law enforcement official claimed there’s nothing to see in her alleged cash reimbursements to her boyfriend for an enviable lifestyle arguably funded by the taxpayers. Either Fani Willis and company were right in the past and she should be subject to scrutiny for anonymous transactions, or she’s right today and she and her colleagues owe the rest of us a pass on our taste for financial anonymity.
If you haven’t kept up on the details, Fani Willis is the Fulton County district attorney overseeing the Georgia election interference case, which has been described as potentially the strongest and most consequential case against former (and maybe future) president Donald Trump. At least, it was described that way until defense attorneys revealed that Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in the case, is unqualified for the job, was romantically involved with Willis, and is being paid much more than any of his colleagues (around $654,000 in all)—money from which Willis seemingly benefited in the form of expensive vacations and other pleasures of life with Wade.
Hellbound and Down 
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