Sen. Rand Paul is planning to force a vote on a resolution he introduced to withdraw all US troops from Syria, as US bases in the country have come under frequent attack since mid-October, Responsible Statecraft reported on Wednesday.

Paul introduced the resolution on November 15, and it would order the removal of the approximately 900 US troops stationed in Syria within 30 days unless President Biden receives authorization for war from Congress.

Sources told RS that the vote could happen as early as next week. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) introduced a similar resolution in the House earlier this year, which failed in a vote of 103-321.

According to the Pentagon, there have been at least 73 attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, including over 30 in Syria. The attacks started on October 17 in response to President Biden’s support for Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.

An extraordinary email uncovered by a Dutch researcher under freedom of information laws confirms what many have long charged: Bellingcat, the “open source” collective widely cited by mainstream journalists and loved by the CIA, collaborates directly with Western intelligence agencies.

An email sent on November 12 2020 by an officer within Amsterdam’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) shows a Bellingcat investigation was intentionally shared with the agency prior to publication, so as to assist the Dutch spooks in shaping media strategies and messaging following its release. The revealing communication is irrefutable proof of the cozy relationship the self-styled “independent investigative collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists” enjoys with Western intelligence services.

In the message, marked “high importance,” the undisclosed author explained that Bellingcat would soon publish research amounting to a deeply libelous attack on independent journalists and researchers, who challenged the mainstream narrative surrounding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. As such, the Dutch intelligence officer wrote, “it is probably smart to put together interdepartmental wording for this already”:

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger died on Wednesday at the age of 100 — though if the predecessors of Israel’s ruling Likud party had their way, he may not have made it even halfway to the century mark.

Despite his reputation as a geopolitical kingmaker, Kissinger was never able to fully impose total U.S. authority upon Israel, but he did seek to leverage U.S. influence — sometimes against what the right-wing Likud party viewed as its interests.

In the 1970s, Kissinger was so hated by the Likud party, which now controls Israel’s far-right coalition government, that some of its members tried to have him assassinated, according to a news report from the time.

This winter is likely to see a long and bloody stalemate in Ukraine, with neither side backing down from offensives and counteroffensives, but may sow the seed of negotiations next year, experts tell Al Jazeera.

“The winter is just going to reinforce the misery … neither side is going to have a tactical or operational breakthrough,” retired colonel Seth Krummrich, now vice president at Global Guardian, a security consultancy, told Al Jazeera.

Last week, Maria Zeee interviewed me on the Alex Jones Show (see below), and I mentioned something that everyone seems to be missing in the current maelstrom of geopolitics: That as the dollar dies, so does any other nation depending on US currency creation. Given Israel’s heavy dependence on U.S. foreign air and the dollar funding of the U.S. Navy, when the dollar dies, Israel will face an existential threat of its own.

It is the careless creation of trillions of dollars in US currency that powers the Pentagon, after all. It also funds government propaganda ops like what we all suffered through during the COVID years when the CDC and FDA ran a coordinated psychological operation against us all, trying to convince the weak-minded that “emergency use” vaccines are safe and effective at preventing infections and halting transmission. We now know, of course, it was all an engineered lie.

But it was a lie made possible through currency creation. Without easy money, a nation can no longer sustain its campaign of lies. And as the dollar collapses, so will the Empire of Lies, which might as well be the new name for the U.S. State Dept and accompanying Military Industrial Complex that gains power and profit from engineered mass human suffering and death.

Carron J. Phillips — the Deadspin writer who accused a 9-year-old boy of wearing blackface to a Kansas City Chiefs game — on Thursday posted two entries on the X platform calling attention to a Native American tribe's reaction to the kid wearing a headdress.

Philllips didn't use words to preface his pair of posts; instead he employed "eyeball" emojis, which typically are used as a "Look at this!" signal to readers.

But Phillips' attempt to keep his story afloat appeared only to make X users furious, as they're in the process of ratioing each entry into oblivion (i.e., when comments outnumber likes) and blasting him for "still harassing children" among other things.

Here's a tiny sampling from the nearly 1,500 comments — and counting — on one post:

Over the past several days, dozens of Palestinian women and children have been released from Israeli prisons as part of the hostage exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. 

As of Thursday, 180 Palestinian women and children were freed from Israeli prisons in exchange for 99 Israeli women and children, as well as foreign nationals, mostly Thai laborers, who were freed from captivity in Gaza. 

As more footage rolls in of Palestinian children, mostly young teenage boys, crying and hugging their mothers upon their release from Israeli prison, more and more people have been left wondering: why was Israel holding on to so many Palestinian children in the first place? 

The phrase is straight out of Yes Minister. Michael Gove's evidence to the Covid Inquiry on Tuesday was cut off for straying into what a smooth-talking Government lawyer deemed 'a somewhat divisive issue'.

Gove, a Cabinet minister for most of the past 13 years, ventured to state that 'there is a significant body of judgment that believes that the virus itself was man-made'.

This goes further than any British official has previously dared. Gove is an exceptionally clever man - and I have no doubt his intervention was deliberate. He has been long aware of the overwhelming evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid, was genetically engineered to become a human pathogen in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan in China.

As Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey might put it, the Secretary of State apparently forgot what it was he wasn't supposed to know. In fact, what Gove called the 'significant body of judgment' is overwhelming.

Brits will be told to 'go in, stay in, tune in' if the UK is hit by a 'radiation emergency', according to new advice from health chiefs.

The guidance was published today by UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

It comes amid rising global tensions involving nuclear powers such as China and Russia.

Last year Russian state TV even brazenly simulated how Vladimir Putin could launch a nuclear strike on London, declaring there would be 'no survivors'.

While the document makes no mention of nukes, it does explain what Britons should do in a 'radiation emergency', which could be caused by a leak at a nuclear power plant or during the transport of radioactive material.

Ron DeSantis thinks Florida's Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler should step down while he's investigated for rape allegations from a woman he and his wife were engaged in a three-way relationship with.

In a press conference following a debate in Georgia on Thursday with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Florida leader said the mission of his state's GOP is 'too important' to get muddied with the investigation.

Ziegler's wife, Bridget, is co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing parental rights group and Sarasota County School board member.

The couple rising in the ranks of Florida politics had their ambitions rocked this week with the emergence of allegations against Christian.

The second intifada, which started in September 2000, prompted unprecedented awareness of the Palestine liberation cause, especially in the US and Europe. I was a student back then at Kent State University—a university historically known for its activism and powerful protests, particularly the anti-Vietnam war demonstration in the 1960s and 1970s. It just happened that the same year the university commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Kent State University massacre, where the US soldiers shot and killed four students and wounded nine others in an attempt to dispel a major anti-war demonstration. 

The spirit of activism was so palpable that year. I could clearly feel the shift in solidarity and support in favor of the Palestinian cause on US campuses, thanks to the many Arab-American student groups that were established across American universities, but also due to the brutality of the Israeli occupation and its genocidal tendencies. A peak watershed moment that swung the pendulum in Palestine’s favor and exposed Zionist lies and brutality was the killing of Muhamad al Durra. The short video of 12-year-old Muhamad and his father crouching behind a small barrier, pleading for help, while Israeli snipers kept shooting at them, became the icon of the second intifada. The video “went viral” at a time when social media did not exist yet. It was the dawn of the internet and hard to predict that 23 years later, social media will show thousands of Muhamad Al-Durras being killed in cold-blood by the Israeli apartheid regime.

Advocates calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were often interrupted by their own tears as they gathered outside the White House and read the names of Palestinians killed in the war.

Several speakers, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and actors Cynthia Nixon and Denee Benton, took turns reading from a long list of names on Wednesday evening. But they barely got through a fraction of the more than 15,000 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks.

The inclusion of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli citizenship (1948 Palestinians) within the prisoner-for-hostage truce deal between Israel and Hamas has sparked controversy among lawyers and human rights activists concerned about due process and their legal and civil rights.

Out of 50 new names added by Israel to the list this week of prisoners due for release as part of the swap, 20 were female prisoners with Israeli citizenship.

The vast majority of these prisoners were arrested after the current war on Gaza which began on 7 October, but not all.

Other '48 Palestinians released were Shatila Abu Ayada from Kafr Qasem, who has been imprisoned since 2016 and was sentenced to jail for 16 years over an alleged stabbing attack, and Aya Khatib, of Arara village, who began serving a four-year sentence two months ago for 'aiding Hamas', which she denied.

France’s foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday that the European Union should consider sanctioning violent Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank.

“We believe that the international community has a role to play to end these acts of violence which are extremely destabilizing for the region, but also harm the prospects for a two-state solution,” Anne-Claire Legendre said during a briefing.

The French spokesperson did not elaborate on the type of sanctions she had in mind, but the comments came less than two weeks after US President Joe Biden threatened to issue US visa bans against violent settlers.

Shortly after the Hamas offensive against Israel on 7 October, the Israeli propaganda machine went into high gear to implement its genocidal war in Gaza.

Ghoulish allegations of decapitated and burned babies, mass rape of women, and other unconfirmed crimes were widely disseminated to a white supremacist western world ready to believe any Israeli claim about the racially inferior Palestinians.

Acting as stenographers for the Israeli government, western mainstream media outlets immediately began reporting unsubstantiated claims as incontestable truth before quietly retracting many of them. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, continues to shamelessly propagate these libels as facts.

The loosening of rules within the Israeli army on attacking "non-military" targets may have contributed to the massive death toll in the Gaza Strip since 7 October, a new report has suggested.

A joint investigation by Israeli outlets 972+ Mag and Local Call, including interviews with multiple current and former intelligence officials, indicates that lower expectations on limiting civilian targets were combined with the use of AI to generate a wider range of targets, which one person branded a "mass assassination factory".

In at least one case, sources said Israeli army intelligence approved the death of hundreds of Palestinians as part of an attempt to assassinate one Hamas military commander.

When compared with previous Gaza assaults, there has been a major expansion of "non-military targets", with private residences, infrastructure and high-rise blocks - all defined as "power targets" - now fair game for attacks.

Israel does not have the right to self-defense following the 7 October owing to its status as an occupying power, according to Diana Buttu, a lawyer and former spokesperson with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Israel and its allies have insisted that the bombing campaign in Gaza is justified following the attack that saw around 1,200 people in Israel killed.

According to Article 51 of the UN Charter, until the UN Security Council takes measures to maintain international peace and security, "nothing in the charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations."

Ever since Israel embarked on its bombing campaign, officials from the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union have defended Israeli actions by pointing to Article 51.

Philadelphia City Council is poised to ban the wearing of ski masks in certain public spaces this week, a move that police say could help them solve more crimes and stop more pedestrians they suspect of being involved in criminal activity.

The measure is cosponsored by 10 members, more than the majority needed to pass the bill Thursday. Authored by Councilmember Anthony Phillips, who represents parts of Northwest and Northeast Philadelphia, the bill allows the city to fine people $250 for wearing ski masks in parks, schools, and on public transit. There are carve-outs for religious expression and “First Amendment activities” like protesting.

… the ACLU says it could violate free expression rights and be misused by officers stopping and frisking pedestrians — a controversial but legal law enforcement tactic that’s been embraced by Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker. …

“We are rapidly entering the age of no privacy, where everyone is open to surveillance at all times; where there are no secrets from government.” — William O. Douglas, dissenting in Osborn v. United States (1966)

The government wants us to believe that we have nothing to fear from its mass spying programs as long as we’ve done nothing wrong.

Don’t believe it.

It doesn’t matter whether you obey every law. The government’s definition of a “bad” guy is extraordinarily broad, and it results in the warrantless surveillance of innocent, law-abiding Americans on a staggering scale.

For instance, it was recently revealed that the White House, relying on a set of privacy loopholes, has been sidestepping the Fourth Amendment by paying AT&T to allow federal, state, and local law enforcement to access—without a warrant—the phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.

This goes way beyond the NSA’s metadata collection program.

Operated during the Obama, Trump and now the Biden presidencies, this secret dragnet surveillance program (formerly known as Hemisphere and now dubbed Data Analytical Services) uses its association with the White House to sidestep a vast array of privacy and transparency laws.

According to Senator Ron Wyden, Hemisphere has been operating without any oversight for more than a decade under the guise of cracking down on drug traffickers.

This is how the government routinely breaks the law and gets away with it: in the so-called name of national security.

Those of us who were around for the Vietnam War remember the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc– “the napalm girl”– the naked, badly burned 9 year old girl fleeing the advancing bombing.

Today, thanks to “the only democracy in the Middle East” and Israel’s Washington enabler, we watch on TV, in Pepe Escobar’s words, “the wanton killing of women and children, the carpet bombing of hospitals, schools and mosques.”

And nothing is done. Washington sends more bombs, more money. European politicians speak of wanton murder of civilians as “Israel’s right of self-defense.” We are descending into darkness and losing our souls.

Ahed Tamimi, recently released from Israeli prison, sheds light on the dire circumstances inside and emphasises the daily humiliation still faced by 30 women prisoners. The lack of essentials, including food, water, and blankets, paints a grim picture. Tamimi also reveals threats involving her father's imprisonment. Tamimi said that 10 more female prisoners arrived from Gaza leaving their children behind in the streets and that their situation is dire.

Disturbing footage shows a settler attacking a pregnant Palestinian mother on her way to dropping her kids to school in the city of Lod. The attacker stabs her multiple times and gets into a getaway car leaving her to bleed before her children’s eyes. She was reported dead shortly after.

The town I grew up in in New England farming country was even smaller than the film's fictional town of Lawson, California. Loudon, New Hampshire didn't have a movie theater open or closed, and still doesn't. However, like the fictional town of Lawson, the town I grew up in had lost many men in World War II. I was just a child in those post war years, one of the generation later called the baby boomers, but I recall the plaques, the flags, the ribbons, the special emphasis on memorial day, and the markers on the stones in the cemetery behind the church on the hill, identifying where the men had died, and where in some cases, their bodies were presumed to remain. Every family, including my own, had lost people. Parents grieved for lost sons, siblings for lost brothers, wives for lost husbands. Bedrooms were still kept pristine, filled with the artifacts of an innocent childhood, waiting for occupants who would never return. Those who had managed to return carried scars visible and invisible, and in some subtle way never really made it all the way back home.

Looking back on that time, while the US Government declared political victory in the war, and the "Captains of Industry" grew rich turning looted war material into corporations that could hardly fail in competing with nations whose industrial bases had been bombed into rubble, I recognize that the town I grew up in had been defeated in that war. It had been eviscerated. It had had its very heart cut out of it; a gaping hole that never healed, but could only in time be forgotten.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Thursday that Israel has been systematically occupying the Palestinian territories and called to recognise the Palestinian State, Anadolu news agency reported.

“We have seen Israel systematically occupy the Palestinian territories, the West Bank. And now we see what is happening in Gaza” he told Spanish broadcaster TVE.

The Spanish premier who has recently been re-elected to lead Spain, said his government has condemned the Hamas attack on 7 October but at the same time it stressed the necessity of “Israel’s compliance with human rights in its actions.”

“The scenes of killing children in Gaza raised doubts about Israel’s fulfilment of international human rights” he said, stressing that the solution to ending the crisis between Israel and Palestine “must be political,” through recognition of the Palestinian state.

Sanchez said he has heard from representatives of Muslim nations that Western solidarity rings hollow and peace conferences do not work because promises are not complied with.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the number of displaced Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip has risen to 1.8 million people or about 80 per cent of the enclave’s population.

According to OCHA data, approximately 1.1 million displaced persons have been registered in 156 UNRWA institutions throughout Gaza, and 946,000 of them, or about 86 per cent, live in the agency’s 99 shelters in the south of the Strip.

“Another 191,000 displaced Palestinians are being housed in 124 public schools, hospitals, wedding halls, offices and social centres, and the rest are living with host families.”

There are no accurate estimates about the number of displaced persons in Gaza, since many of them live with relatives, while others returned to their homes during the truce, but they continue to be officially registered in UNRWA  shelters and some other organisations.

People who are pro-Palestine are in danger and social media is responsible. I don’t make such a claim lightly.

Social media giants are already being accused of apparent bias in the conflict. Elon Musk has just announced new censorship for Palestinians. Meta and TikTok are censoring pro-Palestine content disproportionately. Posts that shed light on the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza are being suppressed with explanations such as “explicit content”, while videos debunking the lies of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are being taken down on the grounds of “glorifying terrorists”. Those who try to counter the pro-Israel narrative by using the “comments” section find themselves restricted very quickly under the pretext of “community protection”.

However, I assured myself, if I am facing censorship, then same probably goes for pro-Israel accounts as well. Maybe Instagram is being protective and vigilant in order to de-escalate the situation, only to discover later that this was not the case for the “other side”.

The Israeli propaganda machine has been working overtime in its effort to portray to the world a narrative of its own victimhood, tirelessly seeking global backing by depicting Israel’s enemies as inhumane ‘people of the dark’. Whilst portraying the 7 October surprise Palestinian resistance infiltration into Israel as a strain on the state, it has skilfully notched up propaganda victories by eagerly seizing the opportunity to conceal its authoritarianism and maintain the false claim that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.

Despite groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declaring Israel an apartheid state, Western leaders, coupled with the media, refuse to shed light on the systematic, industrialised and bureaucratic oppression of indigenous Palestinians. In fact, they do not just refuse to shed light on apartheid, they outright deny it.

In March 2023 for example, former UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverley signed an agreement to oppose the use of the word “apartheid” to describe the Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and even accused International institutions of “anti-Israeli bias” if they used the term.

Suspected drug cartel members abducted seven Mexican immigration agents in Cancun at gunpoint Wednesday, beat them and threatened to kill them before they were freed, authorities said.

The brazen mass kidnapping occurred near Cancun’s bustling airport and illustrates the degree to which Mexico’s cartels and criminal gangs have become involved in migrant smuggling and kidnapping.

Federal forces later located the house where the agents were being held in the Caribbean resort city. The forces — apparently marines and National Guard, along with local police — engaged the kidnappers in a gun battle and freed the agents. They did not say whether anyone was wounded in the confrontation.