Israel Responds To Iranian Claim Of Achieving Hypersonic Missiles
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has responded to reports that Iran has achieved an ‘invincible’ weapon, namely Tehran’s first hypersonic missile, called the ‘Fattah’. He stressed that Israel can stop any threat coming from Iran, and that the Israeli military will always retain the technology edge.
“I hear our enemies boasting about weapons they are developing. To any such development, we have an even better response – whether it be on land, in the air, or in the maritime arena, including both defensive and offensive means,” Gallant told journalists at a northern military base on Tuesday.
“We will know how to protect the citizens of Israel, and how to strike our enemies with a crushing blow if, God forbid, they start a war against us,” he said in a video statement.
Iran on Tuesday claimed it has joined the club of those very few nations which have hypersonic weapons in their arsenal. Currently, it’s believed only Russia, China, and the United States possess them.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi attended the unveiling ceremony, wherein he touted“Today we feel that the deterrent power has been formed.” He said: “This power is an anchor of lasting security and peace for the regional countries.”
While much of the world has been focused on the crisis of the war in Ukraine, Israel has been raising the alarm over what it says is a steadily advancing Iranian nuclear program. Israel has even been running emergency preparedness drills simulating major attack by Iran and its regional allies like Hezbollah.
On Sunday night, the high-level security cabinet convened at the military’s main operational command bunker in Tel Aviv to simulate political decision-making during a potential multifront war.
While the drill and the cabinet meeting were pre-planned, they came during escalated tensions over Iran’s nuclear program and Israeli warnings that a broad conflict could break out over the issue.
Both sides are meanwhile presenting their ‘readiness’ actions as defensive in nature.
New banner in Tehran showcasing the Fattah, which #Iran claims is a hypersonic missile, reading “400 seconds to Tel Aviv.” pic.twitter.com/WeJeWFylG5
Revolutionary Guard aerospace program commander Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh said Tuesday that the Fattah hypersonic missiles possesses a range of up to 870 miles and that “there exists no system that can rival or counter this missile” – as it can also reach speeds of up to Mach 15, according to Iran’s claims.
However, there’s yet to be independent confirmation that Iran has actually achieved a hypersonic weapon that its ready to be deployed. But there is consensus that the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missiles program has long been sophisticated and advanced.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has aided a Ukrainian intelligence effort to censor social media users and obtain their personal information, leaked emails reveal.
In March 2022, an FBI Special Agent sent Twitter a list of accounts on behalf of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intelligence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twitter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.
The Ukrainian government’s FBI-enabled targets extend to members of the media. The SBU list that the FBI provided to Twitter included my name and Twitter profile. In its response to the FBI, Twitter agreed to review the accounts for “inauthenticity” but raised concerns about the inclusion of me and other “American and Canadian journalists.”
The FBI’s attempt to ban Twitter accounts at the request of Ukrainian intelligence is among the most overt requests for censorship revealed to date in the Twitter Files, a cache of leaked communications from the social media giant.
The FBI’s censorship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Special Agent Aleksandr Kobzanets, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twitter executives. Four FBI colleagues were copied on the exchange.
“Thank you very much for your time to discuss the assistance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am including a list of accounts I received over a couple of weeks from the Security Service of Ukraine. These accounts are suspected by the SBU in spreading fear and disinformation. For your review and consideration.”
The document, drafted by Ukraine’s SBU, contained 163 accounts, including mine. (The list is numbered to 175, but some accounts have two corresponding numerical lines).
The listed Twitter profiles, the SBU alleged, have been “used to disseminate disinformation and fake news to inaccurately reflect events in Ukraine, justify war crimes of the Russian authorities on the territory of the Ukrainian state in violation of international law.”
In order “to stop Russian aggression on the information front,” the SBU continued, “we kindly ask you to take urgent measures to block these Twitter accounts and provide us with user data specified during registration.”
The SBU expressed its “gratitude for the existing level of interaction.”
If granted, the users on the list would not only have been banned from Twitter but had their phone number, date of birth, and email address disclosed to both the FBI and SBU.
In response, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-Head of Trust and Safety, informed Special Agent Kobzanets and his FBI colleagues that Twitter would “review the reported accounts under our Rules.” But he warned that the list included “a few accounts of American and Canadian journalists (e.g. Aaron Mate).” Therefore, Roth said, Twitter’s review would “focus first and foremost on identifying any potential inauthenticity.”
In response to the FBI, Twitter agreed to review the accounts but raised concerns about its inclusion of “American and Canadian journalists (e.g. Aaron Mate).” pic.twitter.com/VOzzL3Vz9W
Roth then suggested that he would be open to suspending authentic accounts if it could be proven that they have a hidden tie to a foreign government. Journalists “who cover the conflict with a pro-Russian stance are unlikely to be found in violation of our rules absent other context that might establish some kind of covert/deceptive association between them and a government,” Roth wrote. “Any additional information or context in those areas is of course welcome and appreciated.”
In his reply, Kobzanets did not directly acknowledge Roth’s concerns about Ukraine’s FBI-abetted effort to censor journalists. “Understood,” Kobzanets told Roth. “Whatever your review determines and action Twitter deem[s] is appropriate.” He also indicated that the FBI would not meet Roth’s request for any “context” that might establish ties between journalists and a foreign government: “Unlikely there will be any additional information or context.”
Inside Twitter, Roth forwarded the FBI request to two colleagues. “This is the output of our meeting with the FBI last week,” he wrote. “The list of accounts is a mixed bag – there’s some state media mixed in with a bunch of other stuff – but given the context, I think a deep dive here warranted.” (Roth left Twitter in November 2022).
In an email, I asked Special Agent Kobzanets if he had vetted Ukraine’s censorship request list before sending it to Twitter. I also asked Kobzanets if, after being informed by Twitter’s Roth that the FBI was trying to censor journalists on the SBU’s behalf, whether that had prompted any review or revision of his assistance to Ukrainian intelligence. Kobzanets did not respond.
The FBI’s National Press Office also declined to answer questions. Among several queries, I invoked Twitter’s warning that the FBI’s “assistance to Ukraine” entailed censoring journalists, and asked if that has prompted any changes to the bureau’s collaboration with Ukrainian intelligence.
“While we appreciate your inquiry, as a matter of practice we do not confirm, deny, or otherwise comment on specific interactions nor confirm the veracity of correspondence,” an FBI spokesperson wrote.
The FBI officials copied on the Kobzanets’ exchange with Twitter include Elvis Chan, an Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) of the FBI’s San Francisco field office, where he manages its Cyber Branch. Chan was active in the FBI’s contacts with Twitter when the social media giant’s censorship of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop shortly before the November 2020 election. (As I recently reported, he was also involved in FBI’s decision to forego a direct inspection of the DNC servers and instead rely on the Hillary Clinton-funded cyber firm CrowdStrike in the bureau’s probe of alleged Russian hacking in 2016).
Of the 163 accounts named by the SBU, 34 were suspended and 20 no longer exist. The rest remain active.
The FBI declined to answer my questions about its aid to Ukrainian intelligence censorship efforts.
“While we appreciate your inquiry, as a matter of practice we do not confirm, deny, or otherwise comment on specific interactions nor confirm the veracity of correspondence,” FBI…
Those marked for censorship by Ukraine but remain online include Russian politicians Gennady Zyuganov, a longtime member of Russia’s Communist Party and parliamentarian who lost to Boris Yeltsin in Russia’s 1996 president election; Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s former Deputy Prime Minister; and Sergey Mironov, a Russian politician and parliamentarian. The list also includes Russian journalists Vladimir Solovyov, a television news host; and Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled network RT. Several Russian government agencies and media outlets were also listed.
The Ukrainian nationals targeted by the SBU’s suppression request include Anatoly Shariy, a video blogger and politician who fled Ukraine in 2012 and subsequently received European Union asylum; and Andriy Portnov, a Ukrainian lawyer and politician who served as a senior official under Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych until the latter’s ouster in the February 2014 Maidan coup. (Both Shariy and Portnov’s Twitter accounts remain active).
The disclosure of a collaboration on censorship between the FBI and SBU is the latest documented instance of Ukrainian state-tied attempts to target foreign voices. A Ukrainian website known as Myrotvorets maintains a list of what it calls “enemies of Ukraine.” I was recently added to that list along with The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil, as well as the comedian and YouTube host Jimmy Dore. The Myrotvorets database was co-founded by Anton Gerashchenko, former deputy minister at the Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, where he now serves as an advisor.
Last year, the global tech/media conference Web Summit withdrew a speaking invitation to The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and I after Olena Zelenska, the wife of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, demanded our cancellation. (Another Grayzone colleague, Kit Klarenberg, was recently detained and interrogated about his journalism by British authorities).
News of the FBI’s work with Ukrainian intelligence to censor Twitter users also follows reporting from journalist Lee Fang that the FBI has pressured Facebook to remove accounts and posts deemed by the SBU to be Russian “disinformation.” According to Fang, a senior Ukrainian official in regular contact with the FBI defined “disinformation” in such broad terms that it could mean viewpoints that “simply contradict the Ukrainian government’s narrative.”
For those asking, here’s the SBU’s list of targeted accounts that the FBI sent to Twitter: https://t.co/yUBK77gEPG
Disney’s Little Mermaid Sinks As Spider Man Swings To New Heights
Turns out nobody needed a live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” which sunk in comparison to Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” when it came to the weekend box office.
According to Deadline, The Little Mermaid raked in $40.6 million between over the three-day Memorial-day weekend, a 57% decline from its May 26th opening weekend, bringing the movie to a total gross of $186.2 million in the two weeks it’s been out.
Spider Man, meanwhile, earned $120.5 million over Memorial Day weekend, the best start for a summer blockbuster year-to-date, with opening day raking in $51.7 million – the best single-day gross to date for a movie this year.
Back at Disney, The Little Mermaid’s overseas numbers may do even worse – with the film expected to gross around $300 million in the US and Canada vs. $260 million abroad.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie has already tanked in China and South Korea – grossing just $3.6 million in 10 days in China, and $4.4 million in South Korea.
The movie cost a reported $250 million to produce, and has a $140 million global marketing campaign – making it likely that The Little Mermaid will only break even, or even take a loss of close to $20 million.
Controversy has surrounded Disney’s The Little Mermaid for the last couple of years as some have criticized the live adaptation’s “woke” story changes. Those criticisms have included alterations to the lyrics from classic songs (specifically actress Awkwafina’s rap song The Scuttlebutt) to the racial recasting of what was the original fair-skinned character of Ariel from the original Danish story. Directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago, Mary Poppins Returns) this Disney interpretation stars Halle Bailey as Ariel, Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, and Jonah Hauer-King as Price Eric.
Strong reactions to the movie have even led the film/television online database IMDb (Internet Movie Database) to step in and post the following warning label: “Our rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title. To preserve the reliability of our rating system, an alternate weighting calculation has been applied.” -The Epoch Times
That said, while many expected The Little Mermaid to be extremely woke, it turns out not to be the case.
“The run-up to the film’s release suggested another Disney woke-a-thon, but the film doesn’t live down to that description,” said right-leaning critic Christian Toto in a statement to the Washington Times. “Yes, the film tweaked a song or two, but the story never stops to lecture us about the patriarchy or other modern ills. There’s a brief suggestion of environmentalism, but it’s woven gently into the story’s fabric.”
“This live-action yarn isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t stop cold to lecture us or push the kind of strained, girl-power shtick that immediately wears thin,” he continued in his review.
Controversies have plagued The Walt Disney Company and its brand for the last couple years, with many lifelong Disney fans exclaiming their dislike of the company’s burgeoning “wokeness.” As a longtime family-friendly brand, critics have accused the company of being too inclusive and including adult-themed sexualization and homosexuality in their films. This, they say, devalues the Disney brand. A specific example of a “woke” move in its movies includes the company’s decision to incorporate a same-sex kiss in Pixar’s latest Toy Story installation.
Political infractions have also swirled around Disney in recent years. In 2022, following the passage of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, Disney’s now-ousted CEO Bob Chapek stepped back from his stance to not give in to woke demands after Disney employees demanded the company condemn the legislation. That was followed by a string of box office disappointments and the re-appointment of its former CEO Bob Iger. All this has led the watchdog organization the New Tolerance Campaign to include The Walt Disney Company in its 2022 ranking as the “Worst of the Woke” for the second year in a row, according to a report by Fox News.
Meanwhile, it’s clear that big studio franchise films can still thrive in an age of streamers and on-demand releases. For its part, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse put spider mania in full gear both domestically and internationally. Besides drawing huge crowds, it earned an A from market research firm CinemaScore and an 82 percent definite recommendation from polling service Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak audiences.
Shareholder activists on both sides of the political spectrum have increasingly been using shareholder proposals to debate the most pressing and divisive social issues of our times. Issues such as abortion, gun rights, and climate change. This increased usage has been facilitated by the SEC taking the position that it has broad authority to compel public companies to include shareholder proposals on social issues in their proxy statements. While these issues need to be addressed, their resolution is to be found in the political arena. That is how our democracy works. They should not be and will not be resolved by a vote of shareholders.
Responding to these proposals cost corporations tens of millions of dollars each year, not to mention the loss in efficiency caused by distracting management from their focus on company business. Most importantly, they pressure management to take stands on divisive issues. For a public company to thrive, it must provide a big tent that covers millions of customers and employees who reside on every possible point of the political spectrum. Antagonizing a significant number of these stakeholders by forcing management to take sides on social issues is not how a public company is going to maximize profits.
[NAM] moves to intervene to raise a fundamental threshold issue addressed by neither party but affecting every publicly traded company in the United States: Whether the First Amendment and federal securities laws allow the SEC, through its Rule 14a-8, to compel a corporation to use its proxy statement to speak about abortion, climate change, diversity, gun control, immigration, or other contentious issues unrelated to its core business or the creation of shareholder value.
NAM’s petition was granted. As NAM points out in its petition, nothing in Section 14 of the Exchange Act of 1934 (“34 Act”) the statutory authority governing the SEC’s regulation of the proxy process, grants the SEC with such power:
It shall be unlawful for any person, by the use of the mails or by any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce or of any facility of a national securities exchange or otherwise, in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors, to solicit or to permit the use of his name to solicit any proxy or consent or authorization in respect.
If so, the SEC has totally misunderstood the term “in the public interest.” This term does not give it broad authority to act as it wants. As stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in NAACP v. FPC: “This Court’s cases have consistently held that the use of the words ‘public interest’ in a regulatory statute is not a broad license to promote the general public welfare. Rather, the words take meaning from the purposes of the regulatory legislation.” In essence, the term is an empty shell, with no real meaning, until it is filled up with the identifiable policy objectives and constraints that Congress writes into a statute.
The interpretation of the two statutory terms presented here does not support the argument that the SEC has broad authority to compel companies to insert shareholder proposals on social issues into their proxy statements. On the contrary, it demonstrates the unreasonableness of trying to interpret the terms as if they do. In sum, it is simply not “in the public interest” for the SEC to have such authority.
The American people have a right to know whether elements within the intelligence establishment have withheld information on crashed UFOs that were recovered by the government and may be used to develop weapons, according to Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).
Perry reacted strongly to allegations from a whistleblower, who has claimed that information about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP, formerly called UFOs) has been kept secret to “intentionally thwart legitimate congressional oversight of the UAP Program.”
“The truth, whatever it is, regardless of what the subject is, belongs with the American people, not in these halls, not in some other place in some building in downtown Washington, D.C.—out with the American people,” Perry told The Epoch Times on June 6.
“This is their government, not the people that work in D.C. They’re the custodians of the information.”
The allegation comes at a time when public trust in the federal government has eroded, adding weight to a claim that, just a few years ago, might have been met with skepticism.
Covert UAP Programs
David C. Grusch, a former intelligence official and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, claimed on June 5 to have provided Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General classified information about covert UAP programs. That information proves that the United States has collected intact and partially intact craft of nonhuman origin, according to Grusch.
Grusch claimed to have experienced retaliation for his actions, leading him to file a whistleblower complaint.
The story was first reported by The Debrief, which states that other intelligence officials have provided similar accounts and corroborating information. Grusch also stated his claims in an interview on NewsNation on June 5. Reporters for both outlets said they hadn’t seen the evidence Grusch claimed to possess.
Grusch formerly worked in the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office and was a member of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019 to 2021, according to The Debrief.
The United States and its allies have recovered partial and intact remains of aircraft of nonhuman origin for decades, according to Grusch, including the remains of aliens.
“Well, naturally when you recover something that’s either landed or crashed, sometimes you encounter dead pilots. And believe it or not, as fantastical as that sounds, it’s true,” Grusch told News Nation. “We’re definitely not alone.”
Grusch claimed to have seen evidence of “quite a number” of devices of nonhuman origin provided by unnamed intelligence officers who, he said, were part of a secret program.
Research and Development Value
The discovery of technology developed by other life forms could have a profound effect on human development, according to Garry Nolan, a professor at Stanford University.
“What might be represented here could be hundreds of technology revolutions ahead of us. It could be more transformative for humanity than what the microprocessor accomplished. Imagine what we could do with even a grain of knowledge about how they operate,” Nolan said, according to The Debrief.
That knowledge could have implications for the defense industry, too.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 directs the secretary of defense to establish a “secure mechanism for authorized reporting of—any event relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena,” including “material retrieval, material analysis, reverse engineering, research and development, detection and tracking, developmental or operational testing, and security protections and enforcement.”
The law further states that the secretary must “prevent the unauthorized public reporting or compromise of classified military and intelligence systems, programs, and related activity, including all categories and levels of special access and compartmented access programs.”
Certain members of Congress and other officials have been briefed about UAP, including exotic recovered materials, since 2019, according to The New York Times.
Hunter Biden Could Face Prison For Contempt Of Court: Judge
Hunter Biden – who’s been fighting responsibility for the child fathered with a stripper – could do time in prison if he’s held in contempt of court by an Arkansas judge.
The First Son was ordered to hand over information about his finances, and has been asked by attorneys for his baby mama, Lunden Alexis Roberts, to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t according to a May 18 motion alleging he failed to fully answer questions regarding his ability to pay child support.
On June 5, Judge Holly Lodge Meyer issued an order (pdf) requiring Hunter Biden to appear on July 10 at the Independence County Courthouse in Batesville to explain “why he should not be held in contempt.”
If he fails to do so, it’s a Class C misdemeanor punishable by fines and prison time.
In her order, Meyer said that she would consider “punishment or sanctions” against Hunter Biden, including “incarceration for civil contempt until such time as the defendant fully answers discovery for a period of up to six months” and “incarceration for criminal contempt for a period of up to six months.” -Epoch Times
Roberts sued Biden for child support in 2019. After initially denying the child was his until a DNA test proved otherwise, the two settled for an undisclosed amount in 2020. The terms of the agreement remain sealed due to the inclusion of sensitive personal data – including the amount of monthly support, as well as each party’s source of income.
Then, Biden asked the court to revisit the child support arrangement because he says he was broke, leading to the current case being considered before the court.
He appeared before Independence County Circuit Court in Batesville on May 1.
During that hearing, his attorney said that Biden had been paying $20,000 per month in child support, for a total of up to $750,000 since the support order was signed.
At that hearing, the judge ordered Biden to provide information on his income from his artwork, investments, employment, gifts from friends, and other sources.
The judge also said she couldn’t rule on the amount of child support because neither side had provided enough information in the discovery process to move forward.
Roberts’s attorneys have complained that the Biden team was dragging its feet in the discovery process and filed a motion on May 18 for Biden to be held in contempt.
Clinton Lancaster, a lawyer for Roberts, argued in the motion for contempt that Biden had been ordered to do something but didn’t and that this “is a habit and a game for Mr. Biden.”
Lancaster continued that Biden doesn’t want to disclose his income and “says that he is somewhat financially destitute” despite living in an oceanfront home in Malibu and going on foreign trips.
During the hearing in early May, the judge said she would press Biden’s legal team to fulfill their commitments in the discovery process.
In the June 5 order, she wrote that she was hereby giving Biden notice to appear in person at the Independence County Circuit Court on July 10 and “show cause, if any exists, why he should not be held in contempt.”
Meanwhile, rumors have swirled that Biden could face federal charges on allegations of tax- and gun-related violations.
Rumors of Federal Charges
The U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware has been investigating Hunter Biden’s tax affairs.
The president’s son said in 2020 that he was taking the investigation “seriously” but was confident of a favorable outcome.
“I take this matter very seriously, but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors,” Hunter Biden said in a statement issued by the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris transition team in December 2020.
Hunter Biden has acknowledged that he has made mistakes, but he has insisted that he didn’t commit any crimes.
A report by The Washington Post in October that cited anonymous sources indicated that prosecutors believed there was enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and allegations that the president’s son put false information on paperwork relating to his purchase of a handgun.
President Joe Biden was asked in an interview on MSNBC in early May how his presidency would be impacted if his son were charged.
“First of all, my son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” the president said.
Potentially thousands of Texas children seeking to change their gender identity will no longer have access to puberty blockers, sterilization, and permanently disfiguring “gender-transition” surgeries in the state under a new law signed by Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.
The Republican governor signed Senate Bill 14 on June 2, making the Lone Star State the most populous state to prohibit sex-change “treatments” for children.
The new law stands to be a major roadblock for advocates of transgender medicine.
It will stop the nation’s largest pediatric healthcare provider, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, from offering “gender-modification” procedures to minors.
And it will prohibit three more of the country’s largest pediatric hospitals from offering services to children who want to change their gender.
Both Texas Children’s Hospital, with 973 beds, and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, with 490 beds, currently offer gender-altering services to youths.
Halting Surgeries in Texas
The new law just signed by Abbott bans surgeries that sterilize children by removing parts of their reproductive systems. It outlaws mastectomies for girls hoping to live more like boys.
It disallows the prescribing of drugs that induce temporary or permanent infertility, such as cross-sex hormones. And it prohibits removing any otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part.
The Lone Star State joins 17 other states now restricting “gender transitioning” for children. The Texas law will go into effect on Sept. 1.
Almost 30,000 Texas teens—from age 13 through 17—likely have a “gender identity” different from their biological sex, according to a study by the Williams Institute, part of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law.
And nearly one in five people in the United States who identify as transgender are minors as young as 13, the study says.
Under the new law, children in Texas currently on hormones for gender dysphoria will have to be weaned off those drugs.
Doctors who perform gender modification on children stand to lose their medical licenses in Texas. The bill gives the Texas attorney general the ability to enforce the law.
The Republican-led effort to pass SB 14—a priority for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican—met stiff resistance from Democrats as it was debated in May.
GOP advocates of the bill said cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and surgery could cause irrevocable health problems or sterility in children.
Their Democrat counterparts argued that the decision to put children on hormone treatment and surgery should be left to parents, their children, and doctors.
Journalist Chris Rufo, an outspoken opponent of “woke” gender ideology and gender modification for children, posted an undated internal email from Texas Children’s Hospital CEO Mark Wallace on Twitter in May.
‘Immensely Heart-Wrenching’
In the email, Wallace announced an “immensely heart-wrenching” transition to modify “gender-affirming care” offered to children.
Action will be taken over the next few months to comply with the new law that will “prohibit procedures and prescription treatments for gender transitioning, gender reassignment, and gender dysphoria” for children, Wallace wrote.
He wrote that the hospital would “work with patients and their families to manage the discontinuation of hormone therapies or source appropriate care outside of Texas.”
When The Atlantic Council Pens An Op-Ed On Achieving ‘Peace’ In Ukraine
Not the Babylon Bee, but this is what happens when a pair of writers at the Atlantic Council get op-ed space in The Washington Post.
It also proves that Neocon tentacles still have a firm grip on beltway thinking. Yes, they actually argue that peace can be achieved – or “the key to ending the war in Ukraine” – is by “attacking Crimea”…
Translation: only nuclear war can help us avoid nuclear war.
It’s as if the absolute disasters of US interventions and wars from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya to Syria–the latter where there’s still an indefinite occupation in the war-torn country’s northeast, never happened.
But this is what still passes for “respectable” foreign policy in the among the beltway blob, apparently.
It is interesting that the think tanks, heavily funded by the arms industry, always see escalation as the only path to peace.
War is peace, diplomacy is treason! https://t.co/VlmO4hmtPMpic.twitter.com/ktDoWpCbV8
“War is the health of the state,” wrote political dissident Randolph Bourne (he was called a “radical” in his day) in the midst of the First World War. And later, Major General Smedley D. Butler agreed that “War is a racket” – according to the title of his famous book.
Death, destruction, and mayhem in Eastern Europe as Lockheed & Raytheon and friends celebrate good times…
NEW: Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet called the debt ceiling deal’s defense spending increase “as good an outcome as our industry or our company could ask for,” @EliClifton reports in @RStatecraft. https://t.co/HFQhpbGcUO
Under cover of darkness, activists from a radical left-wing group unscrewed the valve caps on tires, placed lentils or other pulses into the valve cap, and then screwed them back on. Tires of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) are covertly deflated.
In the name of combatting “climate change,” the group that encourages people to carry out sabotage activities on SUV owners claimed its operations had been expanded to 18 countries, including the United States.
“Reports [are] coming in of very angry #CarShaggers who are upset they can’t drive their massive tanks around Lisbon. Oh no!” the group said on its website on June 1. The group, calling itself the Tyre Extinguishers, announced its campaign had reached Lisbon, Portugal.
Tyre Extinguishers claimed that it now has “active groups” in 18 countries, including the United States, the UK, Canada, Austria, New Zealand, and Germany. According to the group’s Twitter account, on the night of May 31, more than 40 vehicles were “disarmed” by activists in Potsdam, Germany.
The group said it wants to make it impossible to own an SUV in urban areas.
“To do that, we need people everywhere deflating 4×4 tyres, week-in, week-out,” the group said on its website.
In its first reported tire-deflating operation in the UK in March 2022, the group said that “SUVs are unnecessary ‘luxury emissions’, flaunted by the wealthy,” condemning the vehicles as “a climate disaster.”
Its website released instructions on how to deflate tires and also pamphlets and stickers that activists could print at home and leave on targeted vehicles’ windshields.
“ATTENTION – Your gas guzzler kills. We have deflated one or more of your tires. You’ll be angry, but don’t take it personally. It’s not you, it’s your car,” read the leaflets.
“We did this because driving around urban areas in your massive vehicle has huge consequences for others,” it continued. “We’re taking actions into our own hands because our governments and politicians will not.”
The group encourages activists around the world to target SUVs in “posh/middle-class areas.”
In April, the group said its members “deflated the tires of 43 luxury SUVs around the neighborhood of Beacon Hill” in its “first action” in Boston.
— The Tyre Extinguishers (@T_Extinguishers) April 20, 2023
Tyre Extinguishers said they only targeted “large, luxury” gas-powered SUVs, noting, “no tires were deflated on electric or hybrid vehicles nor any vehicles with handicap signage.”
But local residents were frustrated by the vandalism.
“I’m all for taking action to save the environment but I just don’t know that destroying people’s personal property or damaging people’s personal property is the way to go about doing it,” a local resident named Lauren told Boston 25 News. Lauren said her parents’ vehicle was targeted.
“My parents didn’t need to go anywhere immediately this morning, but I know another person in the neighborhood who’s a firefighter and couldn’t get to the fire station,” Lauren told the news channel on April 20. “There are plenty of people who work at the hospital and couldn’t get to work on time.”
The Boston Police Department interviewed 10 victims on April 20 and made no arrests, according to local media reports.
Tyre Extinguishers activists also carried out vandalism in other cities in the United States. Last year, the campaign claimed credit for deflating tires in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New York, and Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Describing itself as a “leaderless” group, Tyre Extinguishers claimed it had deflated the tires of more than 10,000 SUVs since March 2022. Last November, they claimed they had let down the tires of 900 SUVs in one night, with vehicles in New York and 7 European nations targeted.
A comprehensive investigation by the Wall Street Journal and the Stanford Internet Observatory reveals that Meta-owned Instagram has been home to an organized and massive network of pedophiles.
But what separates this case from most is that Instagram’s own algorithms were promoting pedophile content to other pedophiles, while the pedos themselves used coded emojis, such as a picture of a map, or a slice of cheese pizza.
Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found.
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The pedophilic accounts on Instagram mix brazenness with superficial efforts to veil their activity, researchers found. Certain emojis function as a kind of code, such as an image of a map—shorthand for “minor-attracted person”—or one of “cheese pizza,” which shares its initials with “child pornography,” according to Levine of UMass. Many declare themselves “lovers of the little things in life.” -WSJ
According to the researchers, Instagram allowed pedophiles to search for content with explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex, which were then used to connect them to accounts that advertise child-sex material for sale from users going under names such as “little slut for you.”
Sellers of child porn often convey the child’s purported age, saying they are “on chapter 14,” or “age 31,” with an emoji of a reverse arrow.
BREAKING: Instagram algorithm exposed promoting pedophile networks in massive investigation, video sales, ‘preteensex’ menus, in-person meetups with underage boys and girls, using emojis such as a map and cheese pizza – WSJ
Meta claims to have taken down 27 pedophile networks over the past two years, and says it plans more removals.
“That a team of three academics with limited access could find such a huge network should set off alarms at Meta,” said Alex Stamos, the head of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Meta’s chief security officer until 2018, adding that the company has far more effective tools to ‘map’ its pedophile network than outsiders do.
“I hope the company reinvests in human investigators,” he added.
Researchers investigating the network set up test accounts within the pedophile network, which were immediately inundated with “suggested for you” recommendations of child-sex content, as well as accounts linking to off-platform trading sites.
Underage-sex-content creators and buyers are just a corner of a larger ecosystem devoted to sexualized child content. Other accounts in the pedophile community on Instagram aggregate pro-pedophilia memes, or discuss their access to children. Current and former Meta employees who have worked on Instagram child-safety initiatives estimate the number of accounts that exist primarily to follow such content is in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions. -WSJ
“Instagram is an on ramp to places on the internet where there’s more explicit child sexual abuse,” according to Brian Levine, director of the UMass Rescue Lab. Levine authored a 2022 report for the DOJ’s National Institute of Justice on child exploitation over the internet.
What’s more, Meta accounted for 85% of child pornography reports filed with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, according to the report. That said, “Meta has struggled with these efforts more than other platforms both because of weak enforcement and design features that promote content discovery of legal as well as illicit material, Stanford found.”
Today the WSJ and Stanford Internet Observatory released important research showing pedophiles use Instagram to share material.
We’re happy that Stanford and WSJ followed our steps in working on this critical issue. As an independent researcher with my team, we showed how…
— Andrea Stroppa 🐺 Claudius Nero’s Legion 🐺 (@andst7) June 7, 2023
“Instagram’s problem comes down to content-discovery features, the ways topics are recommended and how much the platform relies on search and links between accounts,” said David Thiel, chief technologist at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “You have to put guardrails in place for something that growth-intensive to still be nominally safe, and Instagram hasn’t.”
Sarah Adams, a Canadian mother of two, has built an Instagram audience discussing child exploitation and the dangers of oversharing on social media. Given her focus, Adams’ followers sometimes send her disturbing things they’ve encountered on the platform. In February, she said, one messaged her with an account branded with the term “incest toddlers.”
Adams said she accessed the account—a collection of pro-incest memes with more than 10,000 followers—for only the few seconds that it took to report to Instagram, then tried to forget about it. But over the course of the next few days, she began hearing from horrified parents. When they looked at Adams’ Instagram profile, she said they were being recommended “incest toddlers” as a result of Adams’ contact with the account.
A Meta spokesman said that “incest toddlers” violated its rules and that Instagram had erred on enforcement. The company said it plans to address such inappropriate recommendations as part of its newly formed child safety task force. -WSJ
Meta acknowledged to the Journal that they had received a flood of reports of child sexual exploitation and failed to act on them– blaming a software glitch that prevented a substantial portion of user reports from being processed.
And while Meta is allowing pedophiles to run rampant on its platforms, ZeroHedge is still banned.
