Weekly News-March1-2024

Here are our top 5 stories of the week.

#1 – Israel’s Flour Massacre in Gaza Is a Horrific War Crime

by Seraj Assi | Jacobin

On Thursday at dawn, Israeli troops unleashed a barrage of gunfire on a crowd of starving Palestinians waiting for aid trucks in Gaza City, killing over one hundred people and wounding more than one thousand others. The death toll is expected to rise as most hospitals in Gaza have ceased operating, having run out of fuel, medicine, and blood.

Footage shows Israeli soldiers firing indiscriminately at thousands of civilians who gathered at al-Nabulsi roundabout at al-Rasheed Street to receive flour from aid trucks. Medical sources report that most victims were shot directly in the head, chest, or stomach. Jadallah al-Shafei, the nursing director at al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, told Al Jazeera: “All injuries result from gunfire and artillery shells; [Israeli] claims of a stampede are entirely fabricated.” Read full article >

#2 – Pentagon Chief: If Ukraine Is Defeated, NATO Will Be At War With Russia

by Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge

US DOD/Flickr

This is the single most important, dangerous and highly revealing statement from a top defense official in the West in a long time… It also demonstrates the precarious urgency of the moment and the huge stakes going into the November US election. The world truly stands on the precipice of a nuclear nightmare with the following fresh assertion of Biden’s Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said before Congress on Thursday:

“If Ukraine falls, I really believe that NATO will be in a fight with Russia,” Austin stated.

What’s more is that this came the very day that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned things could easily spiral toward nuclear war in the scenario that NATO sends troops to Ukraine. Read full article >

#3 – Meta Launches Real-Time Content Censorship Unit for 2024 Elections

by Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net

When Facebook (Meta) wants to safeguard its “right to censor,” the company presents itself as basically just another private company out there minding its own business.

But when election campaigns get in full swing, especially in the US, but also the EU, the way Meta reacts, announcing all sorts of yet new policies and new units to deal with information related to elections, shows that it could have a massive influence on their outcome.

And while it’s repeatedly said that (mostly arbitrarily “defined”) misinformation is the scourge of democracy, there is another, this time, no doubt about it: censorship, sometimes based on such flimsy excuses as basically somebody’s subjective opinion – for example, “potential threats.”

None of this seems to be important to Meta, who have just announced how they are “preparing” for the elections in the EU this summer. Read full article >

#4 – CIA Built “12 Secret Spy Bases” In Ukraine & Waged Shadow War For Last Decade

by Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge

On Sunday The New York Times published an explosive and very belated full admission that US intelligence has not only been instrumental in Ukraine wartime decision-making, but has established and financed high tech command-and-control spy centers, and was doing solong prior to the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of two years ago.

Among the biggest revelations is that the program was established a decade ago and spans three different American presidents. The Times says the CIA program to modernize Ukraine’s intelligence services has “transformed” the former Soviet state and its capabilities into “Washington’s most important intelligence partners against the Kremlin today.”

This has included the agency having secretly trained and equipped Ukrainian intelligence officers spanning back to just after the 2014 Maidan coup events, as well constructing a network of 12 secret bases along the Russian border—work which began eight years ago. These intelligence bases, from which Russian commanders’ communications can be swept up and Russian spy satellites monitored, are being used launch and track cross-border drone and missile attacks on Russian territory.  Read full article >

#5 – Dr. McCullough Slams Journal for Retracting Major Study Calling for End to COVID Vaccines

by Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Substack

In a stunning act of scientific censorship, a little known publication integrity staffer Tim Kersjes has retracted a manuscript authored by epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead, MSc, after the paper drew global attention to the Springer Nature Cureus platform with record views/reads/downloads.

The paper called for a halt in COVID-19 mass vaccination based on a valid evaluation of the evidence. It topped >330,000 views/reads/downloads in a month as compared to an average Cureus-promoted paper which has only ~2700 in a year. Read full article >

Here are our top 5 most underreported or most bizarre stories of the week.

#1 – Canadian Woman Offered Euthanasia After Doctor Acknowledged She Was Paralyzed by COVID Shot

by Clare Marie Merkowsky | LifeSite News

Canadian doctors offered to euthanize a women left paralyzed by the experimental COVID jab.

According to a February 16 report by The Canadian Independent, Kayla Pollock, a 37-year-old mother from Ontario, was left paralyzed from the neck down after receiving a COVID booster shot, only to be offered assisted suicide.

Before taking the experimental shot, Pollock worked in the small town of Mount Albert, Ontario, as a teacher and co-raised her son after a separation with his father. Pollock described herself as “fit, healthy, and very active” and enjoyed “hiking, being outdoors, gardening, and going places with her son.” Read full article >

#2 – Texas Wildfire Ravages America’s Cattle-Mecca

by Zero Hedge

A devastating wildfire ravages parts of the Texas Panhandle, home to more than 85% of the state’s cattle herd. This comes when the nation’s cattle herd has collapsed to a seven-decade low, pushing up retail beef prices at the supermarket to record high levels.

Texas A&M Forest Service said the wildfire, called Smokehouse Creek fire, has scorched more than 850,000 acres (344,000 hectares) of grasslands as of Wednesday.

#3 – Berlin Walks Back Plan For Daycare ‘Sex Rooms’ For Toddlers To Masturbate In Privacy

by Thomas Brooke | Remix News

The local government in the German capital of Berlin has ruled out introducing “sex rooms” for toddlers in state-run daycare facilities despite the recommendation having been included in an unpublished draft of the city’s new educational program.

The U-turn was announced by State Secretary for Youth and Family Falko Liecke in a statement to Junge Freiheit on Monday.

“In Berlin daycare centers, there will expressly be no separate rooms for educational sexual explorations for children among themselves, nor any guided or free other sexual-educational concepts,” he told the news outlet.

“We are aware that the recommendations for action given to us from the scientific field represent a different perspective. However, we expressly do not share these views and will not include these recommendations in the Berlin educational program for daycare centers and daycare,” Liecke added. Read full article >

#4 – Massive study Identifies 32 Harmful Health Conditions Directly Linked to the Consumption of Ultra-Processed Food

by Joseph MacKinnon | Conservative Review

A troubling new peer-reviewed study, the largest of its kind, has revealed that ultra-processed food is linked to 32 harmful health conditions and can significantly increase the risk of cancer, diabetes, and an early grave.

The study, a systematic meta-analysis published Wednesday in the BMJ, the British Medical Association’s esteemed journal, found evidence pointing to “direct associations between greater exposure to ultra-processed foods and higher risks of all cause mortality, cardiovascular disease related mortality, common mental disorder outcomes, overweight and obesity, and type 2 diabetes.”

The fallout of ultra-processed food exposure may be far-reaching granted the global shift in recent years from unprocessed and minimally processed foods to UPFs. According to the study, the present “share of dietary energy derived from ultra-processed foods ranges from 42% and 58% in Australia and the United States.” Read full article >

#5 – Americans Increasingly Use “Buy Now, Pay Later” For Necessities Like Groceries

by Mac Slavo | SHTFPlan.com

Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Increasing numbers of people living in the United States are now using “buy now, pay later” for necessities such as groceries.

A new research report suggests that the rising popularity of buy now, pay later could push those already struggling into a much worse situation. While many are already struggling to pay off debt, the BNPL scheme could bury them.

“Financially fragile consumers”, or those defined as having a credit score under 620, who have fallen delinquent on a loan, or were declined for a credit application in the past year, were nearly three times as likely as financially stable consumers to use buy now, pay later (BNPL) five or more times last year, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

According to a report by Yahoo Finance, financially vulnerable households were also more prone to rely on short-term installment loans at a higher frequency to afford smaller, unexpected expenses. Read full article >