‘That System Is Being Used Against You’: Edward Snowden Makes the Case for Internet Privacy. Is He Right?

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I love my digital devices, but people keep telling me to worry more about my privacy.

“Encrypt your emails!” “Drop Google and use search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track us!”

I probably should. But I don’t. I’m lazy, and I like that web companies know me and show me things I’m interested in. I like that they display “restaurants near me.”

“You do not understand the way that that system is being used against you,” says whistleblower Edward Snowden in my new video. Snowden is in exile in Russia because he revealed how the NSA spied on us and lied about it. He says I should care more about what companies like Google and Facebook know. But why?

“I figure that teenage boy across the street could be picking up stuff I send,” I say. “The cork’s out of the bottle! What difference does it make (if media companies have it)?”

Snowden replies, “They’re trying to shape… what you believe.”

I don’t feel very threatened. Amazon and Facebook want my money, and to get my money in a free market, a company must give me what I want. That’s a good thing.

“When we talk about the free market,” says Snowden, “We presume… open competition… I don’t believe this.”

He may be right. Perhaps big internet companies are now monopolies, so dominant that we can’t leave them if we don’t like what they do. But the “experts” also called IBM, AOL and Myspace monopolies, “immune to competition.” Whoops.

Still, today’s social media companies are powerful enough to do real damage.

“Facebook ran their own psychological studies on the current population to see if they could make you angry,” says Snowden. They succeeded!

Snowden fears what else companies will do with that power. “It is going to be for their advantage. It is going to be to shape laws; it is going to be to shape elections.”

Companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google say they won’t do that, although there’s evidence they already have; Facebook hid the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden.

The companies also promise to protect our privacy. They say they don’t just give information to the government. But they do. Our government routinely forces them to turn it over.

“Why is it so much worse that our government has it?” I ask Snowden.

“Google can sell you a different pair of shoes on the basis of what it knows about you… but they can’t put you in jail,” he replies. “They can’t bomb you. The government can.”

It is creepy that former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Snowden points out that this suggests “that we should have to constrain our intellectual curiosity… because we could someday be judged on it…(But) who decides what is normal, what’s acceptable…?! In a free society, we are allowed to be different.”

Good point.

Snowden advises people to encrypt their phones.

“Your phone tries to reach this other person, wherever they are in the world. It has to go through the Starbucks that you’re sitting at, through an internet service provider, through a data center. At any one of these points, anybody sitting on that line can snatch a copy of the conversation.”

WhatsApp won customers by offering encryption that prevents that. “An encrypted message cannot be unlocked without a mathematical key,” explains Snowden. “That defeats mass surveillance.”

But then Facebook bought WhatsApp, and later Facebook announced it will share WhatsApp data. Customers fled.

“Fewer and fewer people use plain voice (and) plain SMS,” says Snowden. “Now they’re using encrypted messages like the Signal messenger.”

That makes it harder for government, and companies, to learn so much about us.

“Everywhere you go, everything you do, everyone you interact with and everything you are interested in is being collected and recorded and analyzed and assessed. We don’t know how that is being applied yet, but we do know once they have this information, we can’t take it back from them.”

DuckDuckGo, anyone?

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Biden’s ‘Commonsense’ Gun Controls Make Little Sense

Joe-Biden-2-14-21-Newscom

This week President Joe Biden marked the three-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, by urging Congress to “enact commonsense gun law reforms.” The implication was that the gun controls Biden favors would prevent crimes like the Parkland massacre.

There is little reason to think that’s true. The bills Biden is eager to sign would instead arbitrarily limit Second Amendment rights and threaten the viability of the industry that makes it possible to exercise them.

Biden wants to prohibit production and sale of “assault weapons” and require that current owners either surrender their firearms to the government or follow the same tax and registration requirements that apply to machine guns. Yet he concedes that the 1994 federal “assault weapon” ban, which expired in 2004, had no impact on the lethality of legal firearms.

The problem, according to Biden, was that manufacturers could comply with the law by “making minor modifications to their products—modifications that leave them just as deadly.” But there is no way around that problem, since laws like these are based on “military-style” features, such as folding stocks, threaded barrels, and bayonet mounts, that have nothing to do with a weapon’s destructive power.

Even if the government could eliminate all guns with those features, would-be mass shooters would have plenty of equally lethal alternatives. Several of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history were carried out with weapons that would not be covered by Biden’s ban.

Biden also would ban “high-capacity magazines,” which politicians generally define as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Americans own millions of those; they are standard for many of the most popular handguns and rifles.

The rationale for the 10-round limit is that the need to switch magazines can create a “critical pause” during which a mass shooter might be overpowered or his victims might escape. But as a federal judge noted when he ruled against California’s ban on “large-capacity magazines” in 2019, that restriction also can create a “lethal pause” for a crime victim “trying to defend her home and family”—a far more common situation.

Also on Biden’s agenda: repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 federal law that generally protects gun manufacturers and distributors from liability for criminal uses of their products. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) noted in 2016, exposing businesses to potentially ruinous judgments when a legally purchased firearm is used to commit a crime is a prescription for “ending gun manufacturing in America,” meaning “your position is there should not be any guns in America, period.”

Biden also supports background checks for nearly all gun transfers, which in practice would mean requiring the involvement of federally licensed dealers in private sales. That requirement would impose new burdens and costs on law-abiding gun owners without having any impact on run-of-the-mill criminals, who are no more likely to follow Biden’s rule than they are to obey all the other laws they routinely violate.

As for mass shooters, they typically do not have criminal or psychiatric records that would disqualify them from buying guns, meaning they would pass the background checks Biden wants to expand. The Parkland shooter, for example, bought his rifle legally, which makes the invocation of his crime as a justification for expanded background checks rather puzzling.

To the extent that Biden’s policy actually prevented people from buying guns, it would hurt many people who are legally barred from owning firearms even though they have never demonstrated violent tendencies. Prohibited owners include cannabis consumers, even in states where marijuana is legal; anyone with a felony record, no matter the nature of the offense or how long ago it happened; and anyone who has ever undergone involuntary psychiatric treatment, regardless of whether he was deemed a danger to others.

Biden’s “commonsense” gun control prescriptions are “common” in the sense that politicians often push them. Whether they make “sense” is another matter.

© Copyright 2021 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Biden’s ‘Commonsense’ Gun Controls Make Little Sense

Joe-Biden-2-14-21-Newscom

This week President Joe Biden marked the three-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, by urging Congress to “enact commonsense gun law reforms.” The implication was that the gun controls Biden favors would prevent crimes like the Parkland massacre.

There is little reason to think that’s true. The bills Biden is eager to sign would instead arbitrarily limit Second Amendment rights and threaten the viability of the industry that makes it possible to exercise them.

Biden wants to prohibit production and sale of “assault weapons” and require that current owners either surrender their firearms to the government or follow the same tax and registration requirements that apply to machine guns. Yet he concedes that the 1994 federal “assault weapon” ban, which expired in 2004, had no impact on the lethality of legal firearms.

The problem, according to Biden, was that manufacturers could comply with the law by “making minor modifications to their products—modifications that leave them just as deadly.” But there is no way around that problem, since laws like these are based on “military-style” features, such as folding stocks, threaded barrels, and bayonet mounts, that have nothing to do with a weapon’s destructive power.

Even if the government could eliminate all guns with those features, would-be mass shooters would have plenty of equally lethal alternatives. Several of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history were carried out with weapons that would not be covered by Biden’s ban.

Biden also would ban “high-capacity magazines,” which politicians generally define as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Americans own millions of those; they are standard for many of the most popular handguns and rifles.

The rationale for the 10-round limit is that the need to switch magazines can create a “critical pause” during which a mass shooter might be overpowered or his victims might escape. But as a federal judge noted when he ruled against California’s ban on “large-capacity magazines” in 2019, that restriction also can create a “lethal pause” for a crime victim “trying to defend her home and family”—a far more common situation.

Also on Biden’s agenda: repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 federal law that generally protects gun manufacturers and distributors from liability for criminal uses of their products. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) noted in 2016, exposing businesses to potentially ruinous judgments when a legally purchased firearm is used to commit a crime is a prescription for “ending gun manufacturing in America,” meaning “your position is there should not be any guns in America, period.”

Biden also supports background checks for nearly all gun transfers, which in practice would mean requiring the involvement of federally licensed dealers in private sales. That requirement would impose new burdens and costs on law-abiding gun owners without having any impact on run-of-the-mill criminals, who are no more likely to follow Biden’s rule than they are to obey all the other laws they routinely violate.

As for mass shooters, they typically do not have criminal or psychiatric records that would disqualify them from buying guns, meaning they would pass the background checks Biden wants to expand. The Parkland shooter, for example, bought his rifle legally, which makes the invocation of his crime as a justification for expanded background checks rather puzzling.

To the extent that Biden’s policy actually prevented people from buying guns, it would hurt many people who are legally barred from owning firearms even though they have never demonstrated violent tendencies. Prohibited owners include cannabis consumers, even in states where marijuana is legal; anyone with a felony record, no matter the nature of the offense or how long ago it happened; and anyone who has ever undergone involuntary psychiatric treatment, regardless of whether he was deemed a danger to others.

Biden’s “commonsense” gun control prescriptions are “common” in the sense that politicians often push them. Whether they make “sense” is another matter.

© Copyright 2021 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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How Conspiracy Theorizing May Soon Get You Labelled A “Domestic Terrorist”

How Conspiracy Theorizing May Soon Get You Labelled A “Domestic Terrorist”

Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

If you are starting to feel like forces controlling the governments of the west are out to get you, then it is likely that you are either a paranoid nut job, or a stubborn realist.

Either way, it means that you have some major problems on your hands.

If you don’t happen to find yourself among the tinfoil hat-wearing strata of conspiracy theorists waiting in a bunker for aliens to either strike down or save society from the shape shifting lizard people, but are rather contemplating how, in the 1960s, a shadow government took control of society over the dead bodies of many assassinated patriots, then certain conclusions tend to arise.

Three Elementary Realizations for Thinking People

The first conclusion you would likely arrive at is that the United States government was just put through the first coup in over 58 years (yes, what happened in 1963 was a coup). Although it is becoming a bit prohibitive to speak such words aloud in polite society, Nancy Pelosi’s official biographer Molly Ball, recently penned a scandalous Time Magazine article entitled ‘The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Elections’ which admitted to this conspiracy saying:

“Even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream- a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.” (Lest you think that this was a subversion of democracy, Ball informs us that “they were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”)

Another conclusion you might come to is that many of the political figures whom you believed were serving those who elected them into office, actually serve the interests of a clique of technocrats and billionaires lusting over the deconstruction of western civilization under something called “a Great Reset”. Where this was brushed off as an unfounded conspiracy theory not long ago, even Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister (and neo-Nazi supporting Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland decided to become a Trustee of the World Economic Forum just weeks ago. In this role, Freeland joins fellow Oxford technocrat Mark Carney in their mutual endeavor to be a part of the new movement to decarbonize civilization and make feudalism cool again.

Lastly, you might notice that your having arrived at these conclusions is itself increasingly becoming a form of thought-crime punishable in a variety of distasteful ways elaborated by a series of unprecedented new emergency regulations that propose extending the definition of “terrorism”. Those implicated under the new definition will be those broad swaths of citizens of western nations who don’t agree with the operating beliefs of the ruling oligarchy.

Already a 60 day review of the U.S. military is underway to purge the armed forces of all such “thought criminals” while McCarthyite legislation has been drafted to cleanse all government jobs of “conspiracy theorists”.

Another startling announcement from the National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin that domestic terrorists include: “ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority [and] perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

While not yet fully codified into law (though it will be if not nipped in the bud soon), you can be sure that things are certainly moving fast as, before our very eyes, the right to free speech is being torn to shreds by means of censorship across social media and the internet, cancelling all opinions deemed unacceptable to the ruling class.

The Conspiracy to Subvert Conspiracy Theorizing

This should not come as a surprise, as Biden’s new addition to the Department of Homeland Security is a bizarre figure named Cass Sunstein who famously described exactly what this was going to look like in his infamous 2008 report ‘Conspiracy Theories’ (co-authored with Harvard Law School’s Adrien Vermeule). In this under-appreciated study, the duo foresaw the greatest threat to the ruling elite took the form of “conspiracy theorizing” within the American population using as examples of this delusion: the idea that the government had anything to do with the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, or the planning and execution of 9-11.

Just to be clear, conspiracy literally means ‘two or more people acting together in accord with an agreed upon idea and intention’.

The fact that Vermeule has made a legal career arguing that laws should be interpreted not by the “intentions” of lawgivers, but rather according to cost-benefit analysis gives us a useful insight into the deranged mind of a technocrat and the delusional reasoning that denies the very thing which has shaped literally ALL of human history.

In their “scholarly” essay, the authors wrote “the existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be.” 

After establishing his case for the threat of conspiracies, Sunstein says that “the best response consists in cognitive infiltration of extremist groups”.

Not one to simply draw criticisms, the pro-active Sunstein laid out five possible strategies which the social engineers managing the population could deploy to defuse this growing threat saying:

“(1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.

(2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.

(3) Government might itself engage in counter speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.

(4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter speech.

(5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help”.

(I’ll let you think about which of these prescriptions were put into action over the ensuing 12 years.)

Cass Sunstein was particularly sensitive to this danger largely because: 1) he was a part of a very ugly conspiracy himself and 2) he is a world-renowned behaviorist.

The Problem of Reality for Behaviorists

As an economic behaviorist and lawyer arguing that all “human rights” should be extended to animals (blurring the line separating human dynamics from the law of the jungle as any fascist must), Sunstein has spent decades trying to model human behavior with computer simulations in an effort to “scientifically manage” such behavior.

As outlined in his book Nudge (co-authored with Nobel Prize winning behaviorist Richard Thaler), Sunstein “discovered” that people tend to organize their behavioral patterns around certain fundamental drives, such as the pursuit of pleasure, avoidance of pain, and certain Darwinian drives for sex, popularity, desire for conformity, desire for novelty, and greed.

One of the key principles of economic behaviorism which is seen repeated in such popular manuals as Freakonomics, Nudge, Predictably Irrational, The Wisdom of Crowds, and Animal Spirits, is that humans are both biologically determined due to their Darwinian impulses, but, unlike other animals, have the fatal flaw of being fundamentally irrational at their core. Since humans are fundamentally irrational, says the behaviorist, it is requisite that an enlightened elite impose “order” upon society while maintaining the illusion of freedom of choice from below. This is the underlying assumption of Karl Popper’s Open Society doctrine, which was fed to Popper’s protégé George Soros and which animates Soros’ General Theory of Reflexivity and his Oxford-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

This was at the heart of Obama’s science Czar John Holdren’s call for world government in his 1977 Ecoscience (co-written with his mentor Paul Ehrlich) where the young misanthrope envisioned a future utopic world governed by a scientifically managed master-class saying:

“Perhaps those agencies, combined with UNEP and the United Nations population agencies, might eventually be developed into a Planetary Regime- sort of an international superagency for population, resources, and environment. Such a comprehensive Planetary Regime could control the development, administration, conservation, and distribution of all natural resources, renewable or nonrenewable”.

The caveat: If Darwinian impulses mixed with irrational “animal spirits” were truly all that animated those systems which behaviorists wish to map and manipulate (aka: “nudge” with rewards, punishments), then a scientific priesthood would indeed be a viable and perhaps necessary way to organize the world.

Fortunately, reality is a bit more elegant and dignified than behaviorists wish to admit.

Why Computer Modellers Hate Metaphysics

On a closer inspection of history, we find countless instances where people shape their individual and group behavior around sets of ideas that transcend controllable material impulses. When this happens, those individuals or groups tend to resist adapting to environments created for them. This incredible phenomenon is witnessed empirically in the form of the American Revolution, Warsaw Ghetto Uprisings, Civil Rights movements, and even some bold manifestations of anti-lockdown protests now underway around the world.

Among the most troublesome of those variables which upset computer models are: “Conscience”, “Truth”, “Intentions”, “Soul”, “Honor”, “God”, “Justice”, “Patriotism”, “Dignity”, and “Freedom”.

Whenever individuals shape their identities around these very real, though immaterial (aka: “metaphysical”) principles, they cannot be “nudged” towards pre-determined decisions that defy reason and morality. Adherence to these principles also tends to afford thinking people an important additional edge of creative insight necessary to cut through false explanatory narratives that attempt to hide lies behind the appearance of truth (aka: sophistry).

As witnessed on multiple occasions throughout history, such individuals who value the health of their souls over the intimidating (and extremely malleable) force of popular opinion, will often decide to sacrifice personal comfort and even their lives in order to defend those values which their minds and consciences deem important.

These rare, but invaluable outliers will often resist policies that threaten to undo their freedoms or undermine the basis of their society’s capacity to produce food, and energy for their children and grandchildren. What is worse, is that their example is often extremely contagious causing other members of the sheep class to believe that they too are human and endowed with unalienable rights which should be defended.

The Intentions Ordering World History

Perhaps, most “destructive” of all is that these outlier people tend to look for abstract things like “causes” in historical dynamics shaping the context of their present age, as well as their current geopolitical environment.

Whenever this type of thinking is done, carefully crafted narratives fed to the masses by an enlightened elite will often fail in their powers to persuade, since seekers after truth soon come to realize that IDEAS and intentions (aka: conspiracies) shape our past, present and future. When the dominating intentions shaping society’s trajectory is in conformity with Natural Law, humanity tends to improve, freedoms increase, culture matures and evil loses its hold. Inversely, when the intentions animating history are out of conformity with Natural Law, the opposite happens as societies lose their moral and material fitness to survive and slip ever more quickly into dark ages.

While sitting in a jail in Birmingham Alabama in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. described this reality eloquently when he said:

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust… One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws”

From Plato’s organization of his Academy and efforts to shape a Philosopher King to beat the forces of the Persian Empire, to Cicero’s efforts to save the Roman Republic, to Augustine’s battles to save the soul of Christianity all the way to our present age, conspiracies for the good and counter-conspiracies for evil have shaped history. If one were to begin an investigation into history without an understanding that ideas and intentions caused the trajectory of history, as is the standard practice among history professors dominant in todays world, then one would become incapable of understanding anything essential about one’s own reality.

It is irrelevant that behaviorists and other fascists wish their victims to believe that history just happens simply because random short-sighted impulses kinetically drive events on a timeline- the truth of my claim exists for any serious truth seeker to discover it for themselves.

Back to our Present Sad State of Affairs

Now we all know that Sunstein spent the following years working as Obama’s Regulatory Czar alongside an army of fellow behaviorists who took control of all levers of policy making as outlined by Time Magazine’s April 13, 2009 article ‘How Obama is Using the Science of Change’. As the fabric of western civilization, and traditional values of family, gender, and even macro economic concepts like “development” were degraded during this period, the military industrial complex had a field day as Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power worked closely with Susan Rice in the promotion of “humanitarian bombings” of small nations under Soros’ Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

After the Great Reset Agenda was announced in June 2020, Sunstein was recruited to head the propaganda wing of the World Health Organization known as the WHO Technical Advisory Group where his skills in mass behavior modification was put to use in order to counteract the dangerous spread of conspiracy theories that persuaded large chunks of the world population that COVID-19 was part of a larger conspiracy to undermine national sovereignty and impose world government.

The head of WHO described Sunstein’s mandate in the following terms:

“In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are using a range of tools to influence behavior: Information campaigns are one tool, but so are laws, regulations, guidelines and even fines…That’s why behavioral science is so important.”

Today, hundreds of Obama-era behaviorists have streamed back into influential positions of government under the new “scientifically managed”, evidence-based governance coming back to life under Biden promising to undo the dark days of President Trump.

Ideologues who have been on record calling for world government, the elimination of the sick and elderly (see Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emmanuel’s Why I Hope to Die At 75), and population control are streaming back into positions of influence.

If you think that anything they have done to return to power is unlawful, or antithetical to the principles of the Constitution, then these technocrats want you to know that you are a delusional conspiracy theorist and as such, represent a potential threat to yourself and the society of which you are but a part.

If you question World Health Organization narratives on COVID-19, or doubt the use of vaccines produced by organizations like Astra Zeneca due to their ties to eugenics organizations then you are a delusional conspiracy theorist.

If you doubt that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide or that implementing the Paris Climate accords may cause more damage to humanity than climate change ever could, then you must be a conspiracy theorist.

If you believe that the U.S. government just went through a regime change coordinated by something called “the deep state”, then you run the risk of being labelled a delusional threat to “the general welfare” deserving of the sort of treatment dolled out to any typical terrorist.

It appears that the many comforts we have taken for granted over the past 50-year drunken stupor called “globalization” are quickly coming to an end, and thankfully not one but two opposing intentions for what the new operating system will be are actively vying for control. This clash was witnessed in stark terms during the January 2021 Davos Summit, where Xi Jinping and Putin’s call for a new system of win-win cooperation, multipolarity and long-term development offset the unipolar zero-sum ideologues of the west seeking to undo the foundations of industrial civilization.

Either way you look at it, conspiracies for good and for evil do exist now, as they have from time immemorial. The only question is which intention do you want to devote your life towards?

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:50

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Putin Reportedly “Interested” In Elon Musk’s Proposal For The Two Men To Speak

Putin Reportedly “Interested” In Elon Musk’s Proposal For The Two Men To Speak

On Sunday, we were among the first to note that Elon Musk had reached out to Vladimir Putin and asked for a “conversation” – ostensibly about bringing his companies to Russia – and hopefully not to just immediately surrender secrets related to the U.S. space program to Russia. 

Whether the offer by Musk is telegraphing that his clout in China could be running out, or it’s just another case of “Musk being Musk”, his offer didn’t appear to fall on deaf ears.

It didn’t take long for Chinese media to confirm that a “conversation” could actually happen between Musk and Putin. State-affiliated outlet People’s Daily reported on Monday that Putin was “interested” in Musk’s offer. 

It raised a lot of questions from investors – namely, what would the optics if another major company CEO with ties to the U.S. Space Program reached out and made the same offer?

But there was at least one investor on FinTwit that gave Musk the benefit of the doubt.

Recall, on Sunday, we wrote that Elon Musk tweeted the official English twitter account of the Kremlin, i.e., Vladimir Putin, saying “would you like join me for a conversation” on the popular (and so far invite-only) new audio social network Clubhouse.

He then followed up in google-translated Russian “it would be a great honor to speak with you.”

We continue to wait for more context on this story as it develops. 

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:30

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3rUkw6u Tyler Durden

Rockets Pound US Base In Northern Iraq Leading To Casualties

Rockets Pound US Base In Northern Iraq Leading To Casualties

Submitted by South Front,

The United States has already started bearing the consequences of the decision of the Biden administration to halt the troop drawdown from the Greater Middle East.

On February 15th, 14 rockets struck the area of the US military base near Erbil International Airport, 4 of them within the compound, 10 of which were near strikes. One private contractor was killed and 5 were injured. In a rare event, 1 US service member was also wounded.

The location of the attack coincides with Turkey’s operation “Claw Eagle 2” which targets the alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions. Most of northern Iraq was on edge, as a result.

Turkey and the US, as NATO allies appear to not be cooperating whatsoever, as they’re pursuing separate goals in largely the same areas of the Middle East.

Ankara’s activities contribute to the chaos of the Middle East situation, as it targets the PKK, while the US mostly targets and is targeted by Iranian-backed forces.

Another US ally, this time one that aligns its activities with it – Israel struck unknown targets around Damascus.

It launched missiles from the occupied Golan Heights, and many of them were intercepted by Syrian air defenses, however, some landed on their targets. It is unclear what was targeted and what the damage was.

There have been no strikes by Israel through Lebanese airspace after a drone was downed, and Hezbollah vowed to attempt to destroy any Israeli aircraft that encroaches on its airspace.

Movements throughout the Middle East are beginning for the US and its allies.

In Iraq, many of the targeted convoys in the last several weeks have reached their destinations.

With a lack of reports of convoy targeting, it would appear that the currently static positions are under threat.

Iran is continuing its movements, undermining US and Israeli influence, and it has had general success in recent weeks. The US is fighting back against it.

On February 11th, a truck moving supplies for an Iranian-backed unit, al-Haydariyun, was targeted near Syria’s border with Iraq.

According to the Resistance Media Network, the truck was targeted by a drone likely operated by the US military.

In Yemen, the US said it would attempt to impose a peace deal, on its own terms. It claims to stop supporting Saudi Arabia’s genocidal intervention. Washington, however, also continues providing defensive services and intelligence.

Following Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech, the time for the US to move has come. In the coming days, the “fight against ISIS” is sure to ramp up, alongside various other movements throughout the Middle East.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/16/2021 – 23:10

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Israeli Hospitals Brace For Rising Numbers Of Children Infected With COVID As Schools Re-Open

Israeli Hospitals Brace For Rising Numbers Of Children Infected With COVID As Schools Re-Open

Just as it led the world during the vaccination process (with only a few suspicious deaths), Israel is on track to lead the US and Europe in reopening schools and its broader society. And its hospitals are already bracing for a surge in deadly infections (worsened by individuals’ complications and the “post-COVID” syndrome) as the cases of five desperately ill children captivate the country.

Israel isn’t yet vaccinating children under the age of 16 at this stage even as schools are set to reopen, but public health officials are already out telling the press and the public, not to worry, because Israel will have a team of doctors at the ready.

Here’s more from Haaretz:

On Sunday, the head of the general medicine division at the Health Ministry, Dr. Sigal Liverant Taub, wrote a letter to hospital administrators urging them to adjust their infrastructure to suit children, and to prepare their daily medical teams to treat young people by February 25.

“In the upcoming two months, we expect an upward trend in infection in children of all ages in Israel,” Liverant Taub wrote. “Evidence is accumulating for higher infection rates of the British variant, whose prevalence in Israel is about 80 percent, among children.”

The doctor added that treating children in the same fashion as adults “is not a solution that we want, and therefore we must prepare infrastructure specifically for children, [staffed] by a team that is skilled in treating children alone.”

These statements are landing as five Israeli children have been hospitalized in Meir Hospital in Kfar Sava for COVID-19 and its complications, one of them in serious condition. Three of them (a 13-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 1.5-year-old) have active COVID-19 infections.

One of the doctors treating the children added that COVID complications can be unpredictable.

Dr. Dganit Adam, the director of Meir Hospital’s pediatric intensive care unit, said that “We are witness to the fact that despite everyone being certain that children are not endangered by the coronavirus, there are an increasing number of children being hospitalized for COVID-19 and the complications that follow it.”

She added, “Some come to us in a more complicated medical state. It’s important to be aware of this and to pay attention to symptoms after coronavirus infection – fever, rashes, redness in the eyes and other symptoms, even a month after falling ill.”

In other news, back in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s latest announcement about the positivity rate in the Empire State declining to a new post-November low has got markets people talking about the outlook for the economic reopening in the US.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 02/16/2021 – 22:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3apUHFu Tyler Durden