President Trump claimed yesterday that a boat with 11 passengers that he ordered blown up in international waters near Venezuela was a drug smuggling boat. No evidence was given. What drives the US war on Venezuela?
From [HERE] A new peer-reviewed study suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19 shows signs of “deliberate engineering” and that these features, including the spike protein also found in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, are responsible for widespread health harms globally.
The study, authored by 11 scientific and legal experts, was published in the fall edition of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
The authors argue that the man-made features of SARS-CoV-2 and the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are likely the outcome of controversial gain-of-function research, in violation of the United Nations’ Biological Weapons Convention.
Gain-of-function research, which increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses, is frequently used in vaccine development.
According to the paper, the spread of COVID-19 — followed by the rollout of mRNA vaccines — resulted in unprecedented health harms, ranging from “autoimmune diseases and cardiovascular catastrophes to pregnancy complications and aggressive cancers.”
“Far from benign, these vaccines have unleashed profound harm, disrupting nearly every system of the human body and contributing to unprecedented levels of morbidity and mortality,” the paper states.
Dr. Andrew Zywiec, principal physician at Zywiec & Porter, is the paper’s lead author. He said the paper reveals a “pattern of harm too consistent, too pervasive to be dismissed as chance.” He added:
“The systemic toxicity unleashed by these interventions, manifesting as autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular devastation, aggressive cancers, and catastrophic reproductive harms, represents not merely a public health failure but a profound betrayal of trust.”
Joseph Sansone, Ph.D., a psychotherapist who filed a lawsuit to prohibit mRNA vaccines in Florida, said the paper is “extremely significant” as it is “the first peer-reviewed journal article stating that both COVID and the COVID injections violate the Biological Weapons Convention and that both COVID-19 and the COVID injections are biological weapons.”
According to the paper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus “displays multiple genomic features indicative of laboratory manipulation,” including its furin cleavage site, which “enhances infectivity” and which is “absent in SARS-like viruses found in nature.”
Several other features of the SARS-CoV-2 virus “enhance immunological evasion and aerosol transmissibility,” making the virus “unusually durable … and five times more stable in air” than other respiratory viruses.
“These combined traits, along with the virus’s mutation patterns, are strong evidence that SARS-CoV-2 could not have evolved naturally,” the paper states.
The paper cites two peer-reviewed journal articles by military scientists stating that SARS-CoV-2 contained “evidence of manipulation” that makes the virus an “attractive pathogen” due to its features, which resemble those of a biological weapon.
These manipulations “represent a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention,” the paper argues.
Enacted in 1975, the convention “effectively prohibits the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological and toxin weapons.” Nearly 200 countries have signed it.
According to the paper, gain-of-function research involves “viral manipulation techniques” that can lead to the development of pathogens that are banned under the convention.
Yet, the U.S. government — particularly the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci until 2022 — has long been involved in gain-of-function research, “including a long-standing collaboration between U.S.-funded institutions and the Wuhan Institute of Virology” in China.
Proponents of the “lab-leak theory” of the origins of SARS-CoV-2 argue that gain-of-function research at the Wuhan laboratory and a subsequent leak led to the global outbreak of COVID-19, which was covered up.
In April, the Trump administration launched a new version of the government’s official COVID-19 website, presenting evidence that COVID-19 emerged due to a leak at the Wuhan lab. The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and several foreign intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.
The paper refers to Project DEFUSE, a proposal the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan scientists submitted to the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in 2018. Although the proposal was rejected, it described the creation of coronaviruses with features that enhanced their infectivity, including the furin cleavage site.
EcoHealth Alliance and its former president, Peter Daszak, Ph.D., collaborated with Wuhan researchers. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) suspended all funding for EcoHealth Alliance after finding the organization had failed to properly monitor risky coronavirus experiments.
The paper states that Fauci and the U.S. Intelligence Community never disclosed the existence of the research. Instead, “they obfuscated what is, in fact, proof of intent to produce a virus much like the one that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The paper cites a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference with Fauci and key virologists, including several of the co-authors of the now-infamous “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper. The paper, which promoted the natural origin of COVID-19, was published in Nature Medicine in March 2020.
Although several of the co-authors of “Proximal Origin” expressed doubts that SARS-CoV-2 developed naturally, Fauci “aimed to suppress” such concerns during the Feb. 1, 2020, call.
“Proximal Origin” became one of the most-cited papers of 2020 and has been accessed over 6 million times. In 2023, The Nation reported that over 2,000 media outlets cited the paper.
The U.S. government, the scientific community and the media subsequently used “Proximal Origin” to promote the “zoonotic” — or natural origin — theory of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 and to discredit proponents of the “lab-leak theory.”
“The deliberate concealment of critical genomic features delayed public awareness and pandemic mitigation efforts, potentially allowing wider spread and more deaths,” the paper states.
In May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that paused gain-of-function research in the U.S. for 120 days while a new regulatory framework is developed. It also ended U.S. funding for such research in some countries.
According to the paper’s authors, the development of SARS-CoV-2 — and the COVID-19 features that contain similar gain-of-function properties — resulted in significant harm to global public health.
The paper references statistics from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database which show a significantly increased incidence of myocarditis (151.4%), pulmonary embolism (43.6%), ovarian dysfunction (34.9%), hypertensive disease (22.9%), Guillain-Barré syndrome (14.9%), esophageal cancer (12.5%) and breast cancer (7%) in 2021, the year the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out globally.
Additional U.S. military data cited in the paper show “persistent elevations” in myocarditis, digestive organ cancer, brain cancer and other injuries between 2022 and 2025.
Reproductive harms also significantly increased following the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, the paper argues. It cites data from sources including the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), Pfizer’s 2021 post-marketing surveillance report and its Phase 2/3 clinical trial data for its COVID-19 shot, showing increased miscarriages, stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
The paper cites the spike protein in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines as one of the likely factors for the increased incidence of cancers and other health conditions in recent years.
“Prolonged protein expression, exemplified by S1 spike protein detection more than 700 days post-COVID vaccination, underscores the potential for irreversible harm,” the paper states.
The paper argues that suppression of “proven or promising treatments” such as hydroxychloroquine in favor of universal COVID-19 vaccine mandates — and the policy decision to implement mass vaccination during the pandemic — further exacerbated global public health and had “damaging effects on public trust.” [MORE]
The world’s largest association of genocide scholars has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, passing a resolution making the determination with the approval of 86% of its members.
The International Association of Genocide Scholars, which has about 500 members, said in the resolution that Israel’s “policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide in Article II of the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).”
The resolution recognized that since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has committed “systematic and widespread crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, including indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against the civilians and civilian infrastructure.”
It said that Israel’s actions against Palestinians have included “torture, arbitrary detention, and sexual and reproductive violence; deliberate attacks on medical professionals, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists; and the deliberate deprivation of food, water, medicine, and electricity essential to the survival of the population.”
The resolution recognized Israeli officials making “statements of ‘intent to destroy’, characterizing Palestinians in Gaza as a whole as enemies and ‘human animals’ and stating the intention of inflicting ‘maximum damage’ on Gaza, ‘flattening Gaza,’ and turning Gaza into ‘hell.'” [MORE]
From [HERE] A white Aurora police officer shot and killed a Black man who allegedly ignored commands and became aggressive during a traffic stop Saturday night, according to the Aurora Police Department.
At around 7:31 p.m., the situation began as a traffic stop and crash along East 6th Avenue near Sable Boulevard, according to an Aurora police news release.
Police said an Aurora police officer, while working a DUI task force, attempted to stop a vehicle before it struck a car driving eastbound on East 6th Avenue, crossed a median then struck another vehicle traveling westbound. No motorists sustained any injuries, police said.
Police said the officer, after the crash, ordered the driver to step out of his vehicle. After a few commands, the man exited the vehicle, ignored the officer's commands, then engaged in a physical altercation, according to the police.
A viral video—already sparking outrage online—shows the Black man clearly unarmed, walking towards the officer in a fighting stance. Then suddenly—POP. POP. POP.
The officer involved reportedly fired the fatal shots within seconds, and the man died on scene. [MORE]
From [HERE] and [HERE] When President Trump decided to federalize the D.C. Metro Police Department for the 32 days permitted by the 1973 home rule statute, he attempted to supplant its lawful police chief with a federal bureaucrat, which a federal court stopped. Now, he is apparently trying to find ways to take over the police departments of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. Can he legally do so? In a word: NO.
In two landmark cases from the mid-1990s, U.S. v. Lopez and Printz v. U.S., the Supreme Court reaffirmed the sovereignty of the states and their primacy in matters of public safety. The Court made it clear that the feds cannot tell the states how to keep their streets safe or commandeer their assets or supplant them in matters of public safety. This is Madison’s subsidiarity principle brought up to date.
While the District of Columbia is actually owned by Congress, which gave the president his 32-day window to commandeer D.C. police to assist federal functions, since public safety is not a federal function, Trump’s efforts to clean up the streets and arrest the folks he says are thugs and brawlers are without a constitutional basis.
Human freedom comes about by limiting government, not expanding it. And freedom prospers when established processes are followed. If the government can do as it wishes in the name of public safety, who will protect us from the government? [MORE]
The seven homicides recorded in Baltimore last month were the fewest in the month of August on record, helping the city record its lowest homicide total through the first eight months of a year in over half a century, Mayor Brandon Scott said Monday.
But that didn’t prevent President Donald Trump from escalating his attacks on what he described Monday in a social media post as “the crime-drenched city of Baltimore.”
Baltimore recorded 91 homicides and 218 nonfatal shootings in the first eight months of 2025, Scott said in the news release. That represents a 29.5% decline in homicides and a 21% decline in nonfatal shootings compared with the same period last year.
The reductions so far this year follow year-over-year declines in homicides during the past two full calendar years.
“Baltimore has achieved historic progress, driving down shootings and homicides to historic lows,” Scott said in the release.
Public crime data shared by the city on Open Baltimore shows that crime is down in other categories, as well.
Violent crime overall dropped by 19% through Aug. 24 as compared to the same period last year. Property crimes also occurred less frequently in the city, through their decreases were smaller.
Auto thefts were down by 34% and robberies dwindled 27%. The smallest reductions were in burglaries, which inched down by 1%, and larceny (property theft) by 2%. The only category in which crime rose was arson, and the increase was a minimal 1%, to 77 offenses. [MORE]
Here, the media has purposefully missed the point that Trump’s threats to send military to act as a local police force are baseless and unlawful in D.C., (for different reasons) Chicago or Baltimore. The media has apparently done so to help elites continue to expand the power of the executive and/or to propagandize and establish in sheeple’s minds that, ‘emergency rule can be established at any time or place based on anecdotal and immeasurable, subjective criteria. After all, the media had no problem calling Trump a criminal or pointing any minor or major legal violation over the past 10 years. Now, playing dummy Trumps bignorant game, massa media simply discusses whether crime is an issue in a particular city- as if such a frivolous basis could somehow provide the legal basis for such extraordinary government action. In reality Trump has no authority to take over the police departments of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, etc.
In two landmark cases from the mid-1990s, U.S. v. Lopez and Printz v. U.S., the Supreme Court reaffirmed the sovereignty of the states and their primacy in matters of public safety. The Court made it clear that the feds cannot tell the states how to keep their streets safe or commandeer their assets or supplant them in matters of public safety. While the District of Columbia is actually owned by Congress, which gave the president his 32-day window to commandeer D.C. police to assist federal functions, since public safety is not a federal function, Trump’s efforts to clean up the streets and arrest the folks he says are thugs and brawlers are without a constitutional basis. [MORE]
Also, (unlike DC) the president doesn’t command any other state’s National Guard unless he calls them into federal service (i.e., “federalizes” them). There are various laws that authorize him to federalize the Guard, but none of them enable him to use it to fight the urban crime that he whines about. In general, due to the facts that there is no insurrection in any city, the executive has no authority to enforce state criminal laws and has no authority to use another’s state’s Guard, the president has no authority to play police in urban cities - unless they ask him to. As such, dummy Trump’s threats are paper boats that should be laughed at - but for this enabling media which has constructed a different reality in sheeple’s minds.
To be clear, in Los Angeles, Trump is relying on a law (Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code) that authorizes federalization when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,” meaning federal law. Immigration law is federal law. Trump claimed that the protests rendered him “unable . . . to execute” ICE raids. Although dozens of raids happened during the protests and the administration did not cite a single raid that was thwarted, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to Trump’s assessment.
But that law simply wouldn’t apply to the type of crime Trump has cited in Chicago — essentially, violent street crime. The laws that are implicated are largely those of Illinois and Chicago, not the “laws of the United States.”
Even under the Insurrection Act — which is the main exception to the law barring deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement — the president may deploy troops to execute the law only in situations involving either federal laws or those state laws designed to protect the constitutional rights of classes of people (basically, civil rights laws).
Nor can Trump ask other states’ governors to send their Guard forces into Chicago, as he did in DC under a law known as Section 502(f), which authorizes governors to voluntarily use their Guard forces for missions requested by the president or secretary of defense. Under this law, presidents have asked governors to deploy Guard forces within their own states, in other states that consent, or (as only Trump has done) in DC without local consent. No governor has sent Guard troops into another state that did not consent, as would be the case here. That’s because Guard forces deployed under this law remain state officers as a legal matter. And under the Constitution, states are sovereign entities vis-à-vis one another. That means one state cannot invade another, even at the president’s request. [MORE]
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) signed an executive order detailing how the Windy City will attempt to respond to President Trump’s potential deployment of the National Guard.
Johnson’s executive order, which he signed on Saturday, established the “Protecting Chicago Initiative” to protect the constitutional rights of Chicago residents amid the “possibility of imminent militarized immigration or National Guard deployment” into the city.
The order is asking Trump to “stand down” from his threat to deploy the National Guard into Chicago and reaffirms the Chicago Police Department will “remain a locally controlled law enforcement agency.”
“The City of Chicago will do everything in our power to defend our democracy and protect our communities. With this executive order, we send a resounding message to the federal government: we do not need nor want an unconstitutional and illegal military occupation of our city,” Johnson said in a statement.
“We do not want military checkpoints or armored vehicles on our streets and we do not want to see families ripped apart. We will take any action necessary to protect the rights of all Chicagoans,” the mayor added. “Protecting Chicago is the next step in the work we have been doing to defend our city from federal overreach and illegal action.”
The order comes as the president said last week that the administration would focus on lowering the crime rate in Chicago next, after deploying the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Chicago has long struggled with gun violence, although fatal and nonfatal shootings are on a downward trend in the city in recent years, according to the city’s data. [MORE]
The Justices of the Supreme Court of Virginia have unanimously elected Justice Cleo E. Powell as chief justice-elect, marking the first time an African American woman will lead the court in its history.
Powell will succeed Chief Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn, who has served in the role since Jan. 1, 2022, and has announced his retirement effective Jan. 1, 2026. Powell will assume office the same day.
She was first elected by the General Assembly to the Supreme Court of Virginia in 2011 and re-elected in 2023. Powell previously served as a judge of the Court of Appeals of Virginia, the 12th Judicial Circuit Court, and the Chesterfield General District Court.
Powell earned her undergraduate degree, with distinction, from the University of Virginia and her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.
Before joining the bench, she practiced labor and employment law, served as corporate counsel and director of employee services for an energy company, and worked as a senior assistant attorney general in the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia. [MORE]
A judge ordered a new trial Thursday for three former Memphis police officers who were convicted of federal charges in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, after defense lawyers argued that another judge who presided over their trial was biased in his belief that at least one of the men was in a gang.
U.S. District Judge Sheryl H. Lipman issued the order for a new trial for Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who were found guilty in October 2024 of obstruction of justice through witness tampering.
The ruling marks the latest setback for prosecutors in a case that shocked the country when videos were released showing officers violently kicking and punching Nichols during a traffic stop. The officers who have been granted a new trial in the federal case were acquitted of state murder charges in May. And last year federal prosecutors were unable to secure convictions on the most severe counts against Bean and Smith.
Two other officers charged, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr., pleaded guilty before the federal trial.
Lipman took over the case in June after U.S. District Judge Mark S. Norris, who presided over the case and the trial, recused himself days before the sentencings for the five officers.
In a statement shared by his judicial office Thursday, Norris said, "Because of the code of judicial conduct, I cannot make a statement on this matter."
New trial based on judge's comments [sounds like elite liberal clogic and bullshit]
Liberal Prosecutors doing NOTHING but Locking Up Black People in Memphis (and many other places), while failing to protect in city named the most unsafe city for the past 2 years.
Federal case
In the federal case 3 Memphis police officers were found guilty of federal witness tampering charges in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man. But all three defendants were acquitted of the more serious charge of violating his civil rights by causing his death.
One officer, Demetrius Haley, was convicted on a lesser charge of violating Mr. Nichols’s civil rights by causing bodily injury. That is, he was acquitted of causing the Black man’s death but found guilty of the lesser charge of only causing bodily injury.
State Case
On January 26, 2023, the Grand Jury of the State of Tennessee indicted each of the five MPD officers for multiple charges: second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping (two counts), official misconduct (two counts), and official oppression.[103][104]
On November 2, 2023, it was reported that Mills had agreed to plead guilty to all of the state charges as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors.[4][108] The District Attorney's office confirmed that Mills would testify against the other officers as part of the deal.[109] Martin would ultimately plead guilty to state charges against him as well.[12]
Trial of Bean, Haley and Smith began on April 28, 2025. On May 7, 2025, after a 9 day trial and 8 1/2 hours of deliberations over a two day period, a Tennessee jury delivered not guilty verdicts on all counts for all three officers.
Civil Complaint
According to the complaint filed in the civil case (atty Ben Crump);
Nichols was two minutes away from his home when he was stopped by MPD at 8:24 p.m. on January 7, 2023. Officers Haley, Martin, and Preston Hemphill[32]conducted the initial stop of Nichols' at the intersection East Raines Road and Ross Road,[33] with police vehicles surrounding his car on three sides. The body-worn camera footage released by the City of Memphis on January 27, does not "show any activity earlier than an officer responding to a stop in progress ..."[34]
Haley and Martin were at the traffic stop when Hemphill arrived at 8:24 p.m.[35][15] By 8:25 p.m., Haley[36] pulled Nichols out of his car as Nichols said: "I didn't do anything."[35] An officer shouted: "Get on the fuckin' ground" and moments later an officer shouted "I'm gonna tase your ass."[37] Officers pushed Nichols to the ground. At about 8:25:45 p.m., Nichols was laying on his side in the road - an officer had Nichols' left hand, a second officer had Nichols' right hand, a third officer held a taser against Nichols' left leg while also using his right hand to hold Nichols to the ground.[35] From the moment that Nichols was pulled from the car, to being held on the ground, officers simultaneously yelled numerous commands, threats, expletives, and made "assaultive comments"[15] at him. While being held on the ground an officer continued to yell for Nichols to lay down. Nichols responded "I am on the ground". An officer yelled back "Lay on your stomach". Moments later, Haley, deployed pepper spray against Nichols[15], which hit several of the other officers.[37] Nichols broke free and began to run. Hemphill, against regulations,[38] deployed his taser at Nichols. At 8:26 p.m., Nichols began running south on Ross Road, as he was pursued by at least two officers. Two more police units arrived at the scene around 8:29 p.m.[39] Footage showed that one officer who remained at the area of the traffic stop said, "I hope they stomp his ass".[40]
At 8:33 p.m., Officers Bean, Mills, and Smith caught up to Nichols and had him on the ground at Castlegate Lane and Bear Creek which is approximately a half a mile (800 meters) away from the original traffic stop.[36] Footage from a pole-mounted CCTV camera showed an officer using his leg to push Nichols hard to the ground. Between 8:33 p.m. and 8:36 p.m. Nichols was punched, then pepper sprayed a second time, then kicked in the upper torso numerous times by a fourth officer, then an officer can be heard yelling "I'm going to baton the fuck out of you." before striking Nichols several times with a baton, then punched five times in the face by one officer.[41][42] The video footage showed officers had control of Nichols' arms when he was struck with the baton, kicked, and successively punched in the face 5 times.[43][44] A fifth officer arrived, as Nichols was on the ground and in the process of being handcuffed, and kicked him in the upper torso, which was followed by another kick to the upper torso by another officer. Fox News reported that in the videos, "Nichols can be heard calling out to his mother before police beat him into a daze".[34] Nichols' conduct has been initially described as non-resisting[45] and non-violent;[15] there is no indication that he struck back at the officers.[46]
By 8:37 p.m., Nichols was handcuffed and limp; officers propped him against the side of a police car.[47] After Nichols was on the ground, the involved officers convened and shared their stories about the arrest. In the body-worn camera footage, Michael Ruiz of Fox News reported, "officers can be heard discussing his alleged driving, 'swerving' and nearly hitting one of them".[48] One officer bragged: "I was hitting him with straight haymakers, dog", while another exclaimed: "I jumped in, started rocking him."[49]
Medics arrived around 8:41 p.m. but did not begin to assist Nichols until 16 minutes later. An ambulance arrived at 9:02 p.m. and took Nichols to St. Francis Hospital at 9:18 p.m. after he complained of shortness of breath.[39]
On scene, video footage showed officers issued at least 71 commands over 13 minutes; The New York Times described the orders as "often simultaneous and contradictory" and "sometimes even impossible to obey". The Times cited one such example of many, where an officer shouted "Give me your fucking hands!" while Nichols had one officer pinning his arms behind his back, a second officer holding his handcuffed wrist, and a third officer punching Nichols' face.[50][51][52][15] One former police officer described the officers' interaction with Nichols as having "started with poor communication" and going downhill from there.[51]
On January 8, the department stated that the traffic stop of Nichols was due to reckless driving.[53][54] On January 27, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn J. Davis stated that her department reviewed footage, including from body cameras regarding the traffic stop and the arrest, to "determine what that probable cause was and we have not been able to substantiate that – ... It doesn't mean that something didn't happen, but there's no proof.” [MORE]
From [HERE] and [HERE] The Trump administration has shattered the record for total US airstrikes in Somalia in a single calendar year, as the US has been bombing the country at a record pace with virtually no American media coverage.
US Africa Command told Antiwar.com in an email on Tuesday that its forces launched a total of nine airstrikes in a recent two-week campaign against the ISIS affiliate in Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region, bringing the total number of US airstrikes in Somalia this year to 68.
The previous record for US airstrikes in Somalia in a single year was set at 63 in 2019 during President Trump’s first term. The current Trump administration is set to significantly outpace the 2019 bombing campaign as it continues to provide air support for local Puntland forces fighting the ISIS affiliate in the northeast and for US-backed government forces fighting al-Shabaab in southern Somalia.
At the beginning of his term, Trump eased restrictions on airstrikes and special operations raids in areas outside of countries officially considered combat zones by the US, which applies to every country except Iraq and Syria. The result was a massive increase in US airstrikes, including in Yemen, where the Trump administration conducted a brutal bombing campaign from March 15 to May 6 that killed more than 250 civilians.
According to figures from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), Trump launched nearly as many airstrikes during his first five months in office as President Biden did during his entire four-year term. Trump also became the first US president to bomb Iran with his strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities during the 12-day US-Israeli war on the Islamic Republic.
The Trump administration has also conducted airstrikes against ISIS and al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq and Syria while also supporting the new Syrian government, which is led by a former al-Qaeda commander.
A US government-funded hunger monitor has concurred with the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that famine is taking place in the Gaza Strip.
The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS Net), which has historically been funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), issued a report on August 22, the same day as the IPC report, stating that famine is ongoing in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City.
The FEWS Net and IPC reports said that famine is also likely occurring in the North Gaza Governorate and that the situation may even be worse there, but that it couldn’t be officially confirmed due to the lack of data. The report said that famine is projected to begin in the Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah Governorates by the end of September unless immediate action is taken.
“FEWS NET’s classification of current or projected Famine (IPC Phase 5) in three governorates was reached jointly with the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) partnership and independently reviewed by the Famine Review Committee (FRC),” FEWS Net said in its report.
The FEWS Net report also made clear that Israel was responsible for the famine in northern Gaza and cited the Israeli government’s own data to say that no food was allowed into the area from March to May. “After 22 months of war, repeated mass displacements, the destruction of nearly all essential infrastructure, and extreme restrictions on the entry of food, northern Gazans have long exhausted their coping capacity,” Fews Net said.
The US-funded hunger monitor also said that Israel’s plans to take over Gaza City will only make the situation worse. “The confinement of the population, density of overcrowding amid scarce shelter, and increasing strain on extremely limited humanitarian and healthcare services are all expected to worsen in the lead-up to Israel’s plan to forcibly displace the entire population of Gaza City by October,” FEWS Net said. [MORE]
Lawyers and law enforcement experts have been warning about the potential for overreach since the federal government muscled its way into policing decisions in the nation's capital nearly(link is external) three weeks ago. See full NPR article(link is external).
Inside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., on Monday, those tensions broke into open court.
A federal judge, who spent about a dozen years as a prosecutor, dismissed a weapons case against a man held in the D.C. jail for a week — concluding he was subject to an unlawful search.
The man, Torez Riley, who is Black, was headed into a Trader Joe’s grocery store when local cops stopped him to look through his bag, backed by a group of federal law enforcement agents. They seized two unlicensed handguns from the bag.
"It is without a doubt the most illegal search I’ve ever seen in my life," the judge said from the bench. "I'm absolutely flabbergasted at what has happened. A high school student would know this was an illegal search." The judge said Torez Riley appeared to have been singled out because he is a Black man who carried a backpack that looked heavy.
The case against Riley was so weak that the government moved to dismiss its case on Monday. The court, in dismissing the case, called the whole thing “absolutely maddening.” “The Sixth Amendment doesn’t get thrown out the window because the government has decided to make a show of arresting people.”
Riley spent seven days in jail before the case was dismissed.
The president declared a crime emergency in D.C. on Aug. 11 and asserted control over the city’s Metropolitan Police Department, despite violent crime in the district recently hitting a 30-year low. Since then, agents from the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service, the FBI and other federal agencies have been teaming up with local police to make arrests and, in many cases, detain immigrants for deportation.
“Lawlessness cannot come from the government,” the court said. [MORE]
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which is suing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and has called for the end to religious exemptions, received tens of millions of dollars in federal funding in a single year, according to public records.
AAP, which represents 67,000 pediatricians in the U.S., received $34,974,759 in government grants during the 2023 fiscal year, according to the organization’s most recent tax disclosure. The grants are itemized in the AAP’s single audit report for 2023-2024.
Documents show some of the money was used to advance childhood vaccination in the U.S. and abroad, target medical “misinformation” and “disinformation” online, develop a Regional Pediatric Pandemic Network, and highlight telehealth for children.
However, not all of the money could be tracked through public records.
The federal grants are in addition to financial contributions the AAP receives from several major pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly, GSK, Merck, Moderna and Sanofi.
Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, said the joint funding that the AAP receives from taxpayers and Big Pharma “reflects a troubling alignment between its policy positions and the interests of its largest funders — both federal agencies and pharmaceutical corporations.”
He added:
“Federal grants tied to vaccination programs, pandemic preparedness and public health messaging create an inherent conflict of interest when the same organization actively lobbies against religious and personal exemptions, promotes universal uptake of COVID-19 shots in children and pregnant women, and funds or publishes research that omits clear stratification of outcomes by vaccination status.”
The AAP is also a lobbying organization. It spent between $748,000 and $1.18 million annually over the previous six years to advocate for its members, according to Open Secrets. [MORE]
BOOKS BW IS CHECKING OUT
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