(January 1, 2025)
Pain is unavoidable. It’s what we do with the pain that matters. As Devine writes, “When you are broken, the correct response is to be broken.” Accepting that reality doesn’t make life more painful — it makes it more bearable — especially when it feels impossible to bear.
Israel Defense Forces officers brought Israeli civilians into detention centers and allowed them to watch and film Palestinian prisoners being tortured, according to survivor testimonies published this week by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Prisoners held at detention centers in Zikim on the northern border of the Gaza Strip and at a site in southern Israel affiliated with Naqab Prison „told Euro-Med Monitor that the Israeli soldiers had purposefully presented them before Israeli civilians, falsely claiming that they were fighters affiliated with Palestinian armed factions and that they had taken part in the October 7 attack on Israeli towns,“ the group said.
Palestinian Omar Abu Mudallala, 43, told the Euro-Med Monitor team: “I was arrested at the checkpoint set up near the Kuwait roundabout, which separates Gaza City from the central region, as part of the Israeli random arrest campaigns. I was subjected to all types of torture and abuse for approximately 52 days,” pointing out that Israeli soldiers “brought Israeli civilians to watch our nude torture.”
Abu Mudallala added: “The Israeli army brought a number of Israeli civilians into our detention centres while beating us and telling them, ‘These are Hamas terrorists who killed you and raped your women on 7 October,’ while the Israeli civilians were filming us being beaten, abused, and tortured while making fun of us.”
„This happened five times while I was being held. The first time was in Barkasat Zikim, where we were blindfolded. However, one of the detainees who speaks Hebrew told us that the soldiers were interacting with Israeli civilians claiming that we were armed fighters. The other four incidents took place in the Negev detention facility, where successive Israeli groups were taken inside tents to witness our abuse and record the torture methods we were subjected to without allowing us to speak or interact with them. Since we were not wearing blindfolds at the time, I saw them all four times with my own eyes.“
There is a larger and far more important point. Hamas can be demobilized through diplomacy, and only through diplomacy. Israel and the United States need finally to abide by international law, accept a sovereign state of Palestine alongside Israel, and welcome Palestine as the 194th member state of the UN. The US needs to stop arming the Israeli operation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and stop protecting Israel’s rampant violations of basic human rights in the West Bank. Fifty-six years after its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, and after decades of illegal settlements in the occupied territories, Israel needs finally to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands.
He is the only ultra-Orthodox journalist in the country who considers non-Jews to be human, hence he must be silenced
In the early stages of the campaign, when parties could still merge with others, Lapid begged Merav Michaeli, the leader of Labor, to join forces with Meretz. Even the James Webb telescope would fail to find ideological differences between the two parties. Michaeli, whatever her reasons may have truly been, shot down the idea. Now she could enter history books as the first Labor leader to remain beneath the threshold, and outside the Knesset.
In The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip Zimbardo theorizes that people discount situational influences when judging the actions of others. In particular, he recounts in detail the events of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE), which he designed and directed: He replicated a prison block in a Stanford building and assigned male undergraduate volunteers to act the part of guards and prisoners.
The experiment, which was originally planned for two weeks, grew so dangerously out of control that Zimbardo was forced to shut it down after less than a week.
Drawing on his experience as an expert witness for the court-martial hearings on Abu Ghraib, Zimbardo presents a body of research evidence to suggest that the military as well as the Bush administration fostered a situation that turned ordinary soldiers into torturers and abusers. Zimbardo also suggests, however, that the power of situations can be used to promote good behavior and turn ordinary people into heroes. The Lucifer Effect is at times unbalanced and disjointed but well worth reading to remind us that where we are may affect us as much as who we are.
According to the health department, the number of people using the NHS Test and Trace app to register at pubs, shops and other venues fell 10 per cent compared with the previous week — which has been seen as another sign of deletions.
(20.07.2021)
Forty per cent of respondents say they never had the app in the first place
The pair were both pinged by the Test and Trace app telling them to self-isolate after Health Secretary Sajid Javid tested positive for coronavirus.
They were to use a little-known pilot scheme which allows people out of self-isolation every day they pass a lateral flow test.
However after just two-and-a-half hours of severe backlash from across the country, the pair have now performed a hasty U-turn and announced they will be isolating.
GERMANY‘S leading newspapers were unable to resist mocking England after they lost on penalties to Italy in Sunday‘s Euro 2020 final.
Let‘s be real: some people want to live in lockdown forever because they fear and loathe ordinary people.
Thousands of people rallied across the U.S. and the world Saturday following days of violence in Gaza and Israel that‘s killed at least 145 Palestinians, including 41 children, and eight Israelis, per AP.
(…)
Belgium, Brussels: Belgian police using water cannon, horses, riot gear and drones to disperse a gathering of young people at a park in Brussels today.
Around 2,000 people showed up towards the end of a warm and sunny day to attend „La Boum“ (the party) in the Bois de la Cambre park, local police said, even though the organizers had revealed days earlier that their invitation on social media was a hoax. Local media put the number of people at about 5,000.
Hundreds of police, many in riot gear and some on horseback, broke up a knot of would-be revelers beside a lake in the park with back-up from water cannon trucks and tear gas.
“The fact that people even go out to vote is very disturbing to economists. After all, you won’t change the result of the election with your lone vote, and on the other hand it costs you time and money. If you do a cost-benefit analysis of it – clearly one shouldn’t vote. Classical economists are very disturbed by people who go out to vote and also by people who leave tips in restaurants that they don’t plan to visit again.”
A new CBS News/YouGov poll shows that most Americans (54%) now think that the biggest threat to their way of life comes from domestic enemies.
There is bipartisan agreement that the nation’s way of life is most threatened by individuals who are already in America, with 53% of Democrats, 56% of Republicans, and 57% of Independents each choosing that as the most significant risk. One in five Americans (20%) believe economic forces present a greater challenge, while slightly fewer (17%) chose natural disasters or viruses as a key concern.
About one in 12 Americans (8%) think foreign countries are the most looming threat, with Republicans being more likely than Democrats (4%) to say this.
As Palantir‘s executives were preparing over the summer to release shares publicly for the first time, they faced a challenge: how do you convince investors to buy into a 17-year-old company that has never turned a profit?
– Officers will ‚move through the gears‘ and fine people £200 if they think a person is flouting the restrictions
– It comes as footage showed three police officers surrounding a woman for leaving her house more than once
– Another four officers appear to arrest a different woman for what she claims was ‚sitting on a bench‘ by sea
– The West Mercia police force tweeted: ‚There have been two reports of snowballs being thrown last night‘
– Came as friends were surrounded, read their rights and fined £200 each after driving seven miles for a walk
– Derbyshire Police has previously been criticised for using drones to film dog walkers and dying lagoon black
– Priti Patel insisted it‘s ‚right‘ for officers to confront Britons sat on park benches after criticism of their tactics
– Officers in England and Wales have handed out more than 30,000 fines under coronavirus laws since March
It is expected to cause a scramble for return flights as around 100,000 Brits are currently away in hotspots such as Dubai and the Maldives.
Ministers agreed the strict measures last night amid growing pressure to tighten borders – but have not confirmed a start date, although it is expected to be next week.
– Scotland Yard revealed that officers will be told to stop civilians in the street and ask why they are not at home
– MailOnline witnessed patrols out in force in Hammersmith today stopping Tube travellers and drivers
– Police in Derbyshire stopped people outside National Trust property including a woman desperate for the loo
– Officers in Birmingham City Center questioned a couple with pushchair to ask what business they had in town
– Priti Patel backs police to demand answers about why public are out with a ‚stay at home‘ order in place
– This includes approaching people in parks, drivers out and about and going to homes if they are very noisy
– Police arrested 28 demonstrators for flouting restrictions and fined four men £800 for driving to McDonald‘s
She said: ‚My house. That is bullying. This is my house. Get out of my house. I did not ask you in here.‘
A young boy can be seen in the video as the woman‘s daughter said: ‚Just stop it mum‘.
Two women, aged 18 and 48, and a 43-year-old man were charged in connection with assaulting police officers and threatening and abusive behaviour, according to Police Scotland.
Simply advocating sanity over insanity gets you shoved out of sight and out of mind by the narrative managers responsible for preserving a world order that is stark raving insane from top to bottom. If you oppose the systems exploited by the ruling power establishment which murders, exploits and oppresses people at home and abroad all day every day while destroying the very ecosystem we depend on for survival, then you are branded a lunatic and your wrongthink quarantined so as not to infect the mainstream herd.
This dynamic is made possible by the fact that the powerful are constantly pouring their wealth and influence into manufacturing the collective delusion that madness is sanity and sickness is health.
Berlin Senate is appealing #covid19 #berlin
(10.10.2020)
„This is not the time to party“, insisted Berlin‘s democratic mayor, Michael Müller. „We want to prevent another more severe lockdown“, he added, with a particular message for people under 40.
Angela Merkel argued in favour of the measure on Friday, after consulting mayors from Germany‘s 11 largest cities.
(07.10.2020)
The rate of new cases in the inner-city districts that host Berlin’s nightlife were higher still: of seven hotspots listed by Germany’s disease control agency as having a seven-day incidence of more than 50 cases per 100,000 people, four are in the heart of the capital. Trendy Neukölln leads the pack, with 288 new cases recorded over the course of the last week.
Britain has also been added to the code orange list, but travellers will not have to quarantine on their return to the Netherlands. Travel advice to the UK has been tightened up as a warning, because the British have introduced quarantine requirements for people from the Netherlands, the foreign ministry said.
(25.06.2020)
This is the moment police found people hiding in a wardrobe above a pub during the coronavirus lockdown.
The Pitsmoor Hotel in Sheffield was raided by police after reports it was still serving customers.
‚I want to maintain a Jewish majority, not just in the State of Israel but in the Negev as well‘
Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich, known for incendiary anti-Arab comments, said on Thursday that the birth rates of Israeli Bedouins posed an existential threat for the Jewish State, akin to a bomb that must be diffused.
Officers went to the city’s Calle Manacor on Friday night after a call came through on 091 reporting an incident involving the young woman.
They came across her out on the street and with clear signs she’d been drinking.
Last week, Palantir got the US government contract to run a new system for tracking the spread of COVID-19.
It’s not just the US that is boosting surveillance in the pandemic. In tiny Liechtenstein, the government has launched biometric tracker bracelets that automatically collect key medical information. The statelet plans for all citizens to wear them by autumn, while Germany, Turkey and France are also among the 23 countries that have looked at high-tech surveillance measures in response to the crisis.
(21.04.2020)
It is unclear what exactly this data is, where it comes from, or how it’s being used. It’s also unclear if Palantir is the sole technology provider of the tool, or if other partners are involved.
Reports earlier this month first surfaced Palantir’s involvement with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the UK’s National Health Service regarding coronavirus tracking software and other assistance in combating the global pandemic.