President-elect Donald Trump has picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, a choice that would add to Trump’s list of provocative picks whose confirmation processes will test the loyalty of Senate Republicans.
Trump on Thursday announced the selection, confirming CNN’s earlier reporting, saying he was thrilled to share the pick.
Usama Shaheen: “At the time of dawn prayers exactly, they raided the house. They broke down the door and damaged everything in the house. Nothing was left in the house. I was beaten from the moment I left the house to when we went to Majnoune. They brought me back here. All sorts of beatings, all sorts of beatings, on my chest, on my head. It was severe. … Each one got a number on his forehead. And in the army jeep, everyone there hits you. Everyone hits you. Most of the beating is to the head, mostly to the head.”
Troops humiliate Palestinians swept up in West Bank raid by referring to them only by their numbers instead of by name
הביטו בשתי התמונות האלה. הן צולמו באותו יום, ה-21 באוקטובר 2024. מימין רואים שיירת עקורים, למעשה נשים וילדים, שצולמה במחנה ג‘בליה ההרוס. הגברים (מעל גיל 16) בנפרד, מרימים דגל לבן ואת תעודות הזהות שלהם. הם בדרך החוצה. משמאל רואים את מחנה הסוכות שהקימה תנועת „נחלה“ סמוך לקיבוץ בארי, כהכנה להתיישבות יהודית בעזה, אירוע שהתכבד ב-21 שרים וח“כים מן הימין. הם בדרך פנימה.
התמונות האלה מספרות חלק גדול מן הסיפור, בעיקר את סופו המסתמן והולך. סדרת אירועים מהירה מאד בשלושת השבועות האחרונים, שעדיין נמצאת בעיצומה ופרטיה מאיימים כבר להישכח, אם בכלל חדרו לתודעה, הובילה אל הנקודה המפחידה הזאת. את הסיפור אפשר להתחיל בכל נקודה לאורך ההיסטוריה, בנכבה, בנכסה, ב“אזור הסייג“ בנגב – הרי הן כל כך דומות. עקורים פלסטינים עם מיטלטליהם, רעבים ופצועים ותשושים, ולמולם – מתיישבים יהודים צוהלים, מתקדשים אל האדמה החדשה ששוטחה ופונתה עבורם. מתחטאים.
The “Generals’ Plan,” published in early September, has a very simple goal: to empty the northern Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population. The plan itself estimated that about 300,000 people were still living north of the Netzarim Corridor — the Israeli-occupied zone that bisects Gaza — although the UN put the number closer to 400,000.
During the first phase of the plan, the Israeli army would inform all of those people that they have a week to evacuate to the south through two “humanitarian corridors.” In the second phase, at the end of that week, the army would declare the whole area a closed military zone. Anyone who remained would be considered an enemy combatant, and be killed if they didn’t surrender. A complete siege would be imposed on the territory, intensifying the hunger and health crisis — creating, as Prof. Uzi Rabi, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University, put it, “a process of starvation or extermination.”
Much alarm has been raised over the so-called „Generals‘ Plan,“ an ethnic cleansing proposal for northern Gaza that has reportedly garnered attention in the highest reaches of the Israeli government.
But Israeli scholar Idan Landau argued in a column published in English by +972 Magazine on Friday that what the Israeli military is actually doing in northern Gaza „is even more appalling“ than the plan outlined by a group of retired generals. Landau argued that focus on the details of the Generals‘ Plan has served to obscure the „true brutality“ of Israel‘s deadly operations in northern Gaza, which has been rendered a hellscape of death and destruction by the military assault and siege.
Landau, a professor of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, opened his column—first published in Hebrew on his blog—by pointing to two photos: one showing a celebratory event at a camp built by an Israeli settler organization just outside of the Gaza Strip, and the other showing displaced Palestinians lined up at gunpoint amid the ruins of northern Gaza.
The espionage, the betrayals, the arrests, the tortures, the executions, the disappearances will never cease. It will be a world of terror as much as a world of triumph. The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism. Goldstein and his heresies will live for ever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited, ridiculed, spat upon and yet they will always survive. This drama that I have played out with you during seven years will be played out over and over again generation after generation, always in subtler forms. Always we shall have the heretic here at our mercy, screaming with pain, broken up, contemptible—and in the end utterly penitent, saved from himself, crawling to our feet of his own accord. That is the world that we are preparing, Winston. A world of victory after victory, triumph after triumph after triumph: an endless pressing, pressing, pressing upon the nerve of power. You are beginning, I can see, to realize what that world will be like. But in the end you will do more than understand it. You will accept it, welcome it, become part of it.`
(August 23, 2024)
In the past, Israel’s moral debate about its military actions may have been narrow and hypocritical, but at least it existed. Not this time.
(16.05.2021)
(28.01.2024)
The study uses a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface (BCI) implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink said previously, adding that its initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.
(20.09.2023)
It‘s only a tiny incremental step towards Musk‘s sweeping vision for his company‘s brain chip. In 2020, Musk promised Neuralink devices could solve numerous neurological conditions, including addiction or memory loss, or restore movement for people with spinal cord injuries. He‘s even promised that one day, a Neuralink brain chip could allow for human-to-human telepathy.
In short, despite Musk‘s grand ambitions, Neuralink still has a lot of work to do to catch up with its competitors — and isn‘t about to completely revolutionize the field just yet.
I first went to check on the mother, who was still buried under the rubble. I called her name and crawled beneath the concrete walls, but there was only silence.
We dug further only to find that she had passed away with her arms wrapped around the tiny bodies of her children.
Some days after returning to our neighbourhood, we noticed that a pack of stray dogs had come and taken shelter in one of the bombed-out houses next to us. Throughout the night, we heard them barking and howling loudly, as though they were fighting over something….
(04.12.2023)
We have seen what happened in northern Gaza. This cannot be the blueprint for the south. Gaza cannot afford to lose another hospital as health needs continue to soar.
As more civilians in southern Gaza receive immediate evacuation orders and are forced to move, more people are being concentrated into smaller areas, while the remaining hospitals in those areas run without sufficient fuel, medicines, food, water, or protection of health workers.
(November 22, 2023)
Israel is not attacking hospitals in Gaza because they are “Hamas command centers.” Israel is systematically and deliberately destroying Gaza’s medical infrastructure as part of a scorched earth campaign to make Gaza uninhabitable and escalate a humanitarian crisis. It intends to force 2.3 million Palestinians over the border into Egypt where they will never return.
(19.11.2023)
I expect all relevant parties to start issuing arrest warrants and writing up prosecution files.
@UNOSAPG @WairimuANderitu @IntlCrimCourt @KarimKhanQC @CIJ_ICJ
@ICJPalestine @theCCR @Gilles_Devers
(19.11.2023)
full translation by @TalulaSha
(8. Mai 2014)
You probably have two questions now. First, why should Gaza‘s residents suffer? Well, they are to blame for this situation just like Germany‘s residents were to blame for electing Hitler as their leader and paid a heavy price for that, and rightfully so. (…)
We are dealing with an enemy state, not with a terror organization which is seemingly operating from within an innocent civilian population.
Only when we put things on the level between states or between people, we will be able to create real deterrence or defeat the enemy when the next conflict erupts.
(Oct. 15, 2023)
Consider what some in the Israeli defense establishment have said.
“The State of Israel has no choice but to turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in,” a reservist major general, Giora Eiland, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli newspaper. “Creating a severe humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a necessary means to achieve the goal.” He added, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly.” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian declared that in Gaza, “there will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell; you will get hell.”
The sweet faces of children make an incongruous accompaniment to the genocidal lyrics of the so-called Friendship Song 2023.
“Autumn night falls over the beach of Gaza, planes are bombing, destruction, destruction,” the children sing in angelic voices. “Within a year we will annihilate everyone, and then we will return to plow our fields.”
The lyrics were translated for The Electronic Intifada by independent writer and filmmaker David Sheen and you can watch a subtitled video of the song above, or in the tweet below:
The independent human rights expert also criticised Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian lands and the mistreatment of Palestinians.
“We are talking of an occupying power. Israel is an occupying power vis a vis the Palestinians. There is no independent and sovereign Palestinian state,” said Ms. Albanese.
“The occupation has been the vehicle to colonise, brutalise, arbitrarily arrest and detain and to carry out summary executions against the Palestinian people.”
She criticised the international community for not doing more to end the illegal occupation.
“Has the international community ever stopped this protracted illegality? No. This is why I keep on saying the international community has a huge, huge responsibility in the catastrophe that is now unfolding.”
Oday, who has been communicating with his wife in the aftermath of the attack, said that his son never yelled out during the stabbing. His last words to his mother, according to the father, were “I’m fine.”
Speaking of when he first learned of the attack, Oday told The Daily Beast that, “The way I found out wasn’t the right way to tell a parent. I got a call from the police department, and they gave me three sentences exactly: ‘Are you Oday El-Fayoume? Are you Wadea’s father? He has been killed.’ That’s how I found out.”
The killing in Illinois alarmed Muslim leaders, who called on American politicians and journalists to more fully reflect the humanity of Palestinian people as they address the conflict overseas.
“This was directly connected to dehumanizing of Palestinians,” said Abdelnasser Rashid, a Democratic Illinois state representative who is Palestinian American.
Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin and Jude Law star in this engrossing sci-fi thriller about an all-too-human man who dares to defy a system obsessed with genetic perfection.
(19.09.2023)
Google DeepMind has developed a new tool called AlphaMissense, which uses the AlphaFold human protein structure models to predict whether a sequence variant which changes one amino acid in a protein is likely to be tolerated or to impact protein function.
The Ensembl Variant Effect Predictor now integrates Google DeepMind’s new AlphaMissense Catalogue.
Google DeepMind has developed an AI system that predicts the chances that tens of millions of genetic variants will cause disease.
First, the app lets people envision themselves as parents — potentially encouraging people to pursue, rather than delay, parenthood. As one woman said, „I can actually see myself being [pregnant] at some point.“
On the other hand, new technologies introduce a host of temptations and abuses. As reproductive technology advances, doctors could turn AI-generated images of children into reality. This raises the critical question: What is the purpose of having a child?
7.Deception
We want to understand what powerful AI systems are doing and why they are doing what they are doing. One way to accomplish this is to have the systems themselves accurately report this information. This may be non-trivial however since being deceptive is useful for accomplishing a variety of goals.
Future AI systems could conceivably be deceptive not out of malice, but because deception can help agents achieve their goals. It may be more efficient to gain human approval through deception than to earn human approval legitimately. Deception also provides optionality: systems that have the capacity to be deceptive have strategic advantages over restricted, honest models. Strong AIs that can deceive humans could undermine human control. AI systems could also have incentives to bypass monitors. Historically, individuals and organizations have had incentives to bypass monitors. For example, Volkswagen programmed their engines to reduce emissions only when being monitored. This allowed them to achieve performance gains while retaining purportedly low emissions. Future AI agents could similarly switch strategies when being monitored and take steps to obscure their deception from monitors. Once deceptive AI systems are cleared by their monitors or once such systems can overpower them, these systems could take a “treacherous turn” and irreversibly bypass human control.
8.Power-Seeking Behavior
Companies and governments have strong economic incentives to create agents that can accomplish a broad set of goals. Such agents have instrumental incentives to acquire power, potentially making them harder to control (Turner et al., 2021, Carlsmith 2021).
…
Chomsky, who has previously discussed the Epstein case in interviews and who has maintained that Epstein’s ties to intelligence agencies should be considered a “conspiracy theory,” had not previously disclosed these meetings. Chomsky, when confronted by Journal reporters, was evasive, but ultimately admitted to meeting and knowing Jeffrey Epstein.
Many, largely on the left, have expressed dismay and confusion as to why someone with the political views of Chomsky would willingly meet, not once but several times, with someone like Jeffrey Epstein, particularly well after Epstein’s notoriety as a sex trafficker and pedophile. As this report will show, Epstein appeared to view Chomsky as another intellectual who could help guide his decisions when it came to his scientific obsessions – namely, transhumanism and eugenics. What Chomsky gained in return from meeting with Epstein isn’t as clear.
(today)
Reportedly, Shabtai said the remarks in a private meeting with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, which took place after an Israeli Arab was murdered and dealt with the fight against crime in Arab society along with the establishment of a national guard.
In the recorded conversation, Ben-Gvir is heard saying after the murder: „Another murder and another murder – this crosses the line. We need a strong national guard.“ Shabtai then replied to him: „There‘s nothing we can do. They murder each other. It‘s in their nature. That‘s the mentality of the Arabs.“
(February 21, 2019)
But no one knows how the method may have affected the minds of the Chinese twins at the center of the issue. One scientist involved in the study, University of California, Los Angeles neurobiologist Alcino J. Silva, said the „mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function,“ but it‘s impossible as yet to predict the precise effects. The CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technique has previously been linked with unintended DNA damage.
(February 21, 2019)
The twins, called Lulu and Nana, reportedly had their genes modified before birth by a Chinese scientific team using the new editing tool CRISPR. The goal was to make the girls immune to infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Now, new research shows that the same alteration introduced into the girls’ DNA, deletion of a gene called CCR5, not only makes mice smarter but also improves human brain recovery after stroke, and could be linked to greater success in school.
(23 February 2022)
If the pandemic treaty were to come into effect in 2024, you can guarantee even higher global health surveillance using real-time sequencing for both diagnostics and epidemiology. This would be based on ever-more portable technologies with increasingly rapid turnaround times.
But don’t just think mRNA injections or intranasals. Or gene editing technologies based on CRISPR for diagnostics. Think CRISPR to enhance the immune response will likely see an entry. This is a facet of transhumanism, as is digital surveillance.