Israeli war chief offers ‘apology’ to Sde Teiman rapists, orders their reinstatement into army

The Cradle

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz recently met with the soldiers responsible for raping a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman torture facility, ordering their reinstatement to the army and apologizing to them for the “injustice” they faced. 

The meeting came days after the charges against them were officially dropped. 

According to Hebrew media reports, including Channel 14, the soldiers from Force 100 attended the meeting with Katz wearing masks, in order to conceal their identities.

During the meeting, Katz told the soldiers, “I apologize for the injustice the system has done to you,” referring to the investigations opened against them and the “psychological harm” he said was caused by the military legal process.

Military sources told the Jerusalem Post they were “surprised” by Katz’s order to reinstate the soldiers, as the war chief “has the power to approve or hold up certain senior appointments, but not the power to order the army to return soldiers to service who have been caught up in legal proceedings.”

The sources added that they were “skeptical that any reinstatement would actually occur.”

The meeting came after the Israeli army’s top lawyer ordered the cancellation of the indictment against the five soldiers. 

Among the reasons for the cancellation was “complexity regarding the existing evidence.”

It also cited the five soldiers’ claim of “abuse of process.” A video of the sexual assault had been leaked by Israel’s former military advocate general, resulting in two arrests and a major scandal late last year.

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Families to receive $1.5 million after Supreme Court victory over LGBT storytelling in school

Zero Hedge

A Maryland school district that lost a recent U.S. Supreme Court case will pay $1.5 million to parents who weren't allowed to opt their children out of LGBT story time, the families' attorneys said.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs in the landmark Mahmoud v. Taylor case, announced the settlement on Feb. 20. The defendant, the Montgomery County Board of Education — which oversees Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state — was also ordered to comply with court orders mandating advance notice and opt-out provisions.

"Public schools nationwide are on notice: running roughshod over parents' rights and religious freedom isn't just illegal — it's costly," Eric Baxter, Becket senior counsel and the lead attorney in the case, said in a Feb. 20 statement.

"This settlement enforces the Supreme Court's ruling and ensures parents, not government bureaucrats, have the final say in how their children are raised."

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US operation in Venezuela a 'flagrant violation' of international law - Lavrov

RT

The US attack on Venezuela earlier this month in which President Nicolas Maduro was abducted was a blatant violation of international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference after meeting with Namibian Foreign Minister Selma Ashipala-Musavyi, Lavrov stated that Moscow's assessment of the US operation in Caracas remains unchanged. He added that the condemnation is shared by the overwhelming "global majority," including the Global South and East.

"Only Western Europeans and other allies of Washington try to shamefully avoid the principled assessments, although everybody understands that we're talking about a flagrant violation of international law," the foreign minister said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council last week, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia described Maduro's abduction as "a cynical crime that cannot be justified." Chinese envoy Sun Lei also condemned the US, saying the military intervention in Venezuela threatens peace and security in the region.

The US military launched an attack against the oil-rich country on January 3, abducting Maduro and his wife. They were taken to a US warship and later flown to New York, where they appeared in court last week on charges of drug-trafficking conspiracy. Both pleaded not guilty.

After the kidnapping, US President Donald Trump said Washington would "run" Venezuela while cooperating with officials in Caracas until a transition is achieved. He stressed that the US needs "total access... to the oil and to other things in their country."

Days later, Trump announced that Venezuela's interim authorities would "turn over" 30 to 50 million barrels of "sanctioned oil" to be sold and "used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States."

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, a close ally of Maduro, said neither the US nor any other "foreign agent" will control Venezuela. Rodriguez signaled openness to "cooperation" with the US, but vowed that her country "will never return to being the colony of another empire."

Behind The DoJ's Politicized Indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created 'Network' And Coerced Star Witness

 Max Blumenthal | The Gray Zone

The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader, Nicolas Maduro, is a political rant that relies heavily on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness. Despite DOJ edits, it could expose more Americans to the CIA’s own history of drug trafficking.

The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.

The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.

DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.

By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.

Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.

As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Monroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his resource rampage. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.

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The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker

Comment: Full blown tyranny, Orwellian style is here. It was bad before, but it's a whole new slice of totalitarianism now descending... We resist this now or the there will be no freedom left to do so. The window is closing...

-------------------

Craig Murray

I am confident that over 2 million people in the UK have shared thoughts on the Genocide in Gaza that are stronger than anything Natalie Strecker has expressed

I am quite certain that I am one of those 2 million.

Yet Natalie Strecker, an avowed pacifist, today faces up to ten years in prison under the Terrorism Act when the verdict in her case comes in.

Strecker is charged with eliciting support for Hamas and Hezbollah, based on 8 tweets, cherry-picked by police and prosecutors from an astounding 51,000 tweets she sent, mainly from the Jersey Palestine Solidarity Committee account.

The tweets were rather rattled off in court and referred to occasionally again in whole and in part. There may be minor inaccuracies not affecting sense, but this is the best reconstruction of those tweets that I can make (they were not displayed to the public):

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Google sued for using AI to snoop on users

RT

The company has been accused of secretly enabling Gemini to collect data without user knowledge or consent.

Google has been accused in a lawsuit of using its AI assistant Gemini to illegally intercept and monitor the private communications of users across its Gmail, chat, and video-conferencing services, Bloomberg has reported.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in a California federal court, said the Alphabet Inc. unit had previously made its AI optional for Gmail, Chat and Meet users, but then "secretly" enabled Gemini to access those applications in October, the outlet wrote on Wednesday. The complaint alleged this allowed data collection "without the users' knowledge or consent."

The class-action suit reportedly claims that while Google allows users to disable the AI assistant, doing so requires navigating the company's privacy settings. The complaint states that unless users take this step, Google utilizes Gemini to "access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users' private communications, including every email and attachment sent and received in their Gmail accounts."

The lawsuit alleges that Google is in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act, a 1967 law that prohibits the secret wiretapping and recording of confidential communications without the consent of all parties, the outlet said.

Google's Gemini, a family of AI models launched in 2023 by its DeepMind unit, is designed to process and generate text, code, audio, and video. The multi-modal assistant is tiered into versions including "Ultra" for complex tasks, "Pro" for broad services, and "Nano" for on-device use. The technology has, however, faced controversies. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that hackers from over 20 countries have used the chatbot to gather information for cyberattacks.

In September, Google was ordered to pay $425.7 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging it violated user privacy, according to court documents. The suit, originally filed in 2020, claimed that beginning in 2016, the company collected data from users of third-party applications even when the relevant tracking settings were disabled.

A jury agreed with the core privacy violation claims but declined to find Google guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.   

Report says IOC set to ban transgender athletes from Olympic women's events

Fox News

 

Athletes with DSD will reportedly be covered under new policy

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will enact a new policy that will prohibit transgender female athletes from competing against biological women, according to multiple reports. The policy is reportedly set to cover those with differences of sex development (DSD).

The IOC's current policy leaves it up to each individual sport's governing body to make policies governing transgender athletes. But as the IOC changed its leadership, The Times of London reported on Monday that its policies are set to change as well.

IOC President Kirsty Coventry called for "protecting" the women's category in June and there was "overwhelming support" from IOC members to do the same.

"We understand that there'll be differences depending on the sport ... but it was very clear from the members that we have to protect the female category, first and foremost to ensure fairness," Coventry said at the time.

"But we need to do that with a scientific approach and the inclusion of the international federations who have already done a lot of work in this area."

The upcoming policy switch is likely to be announced at the IOC session in February before the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy and comes after a presentation from Dr. Jane Thornton, the IOC's medical and scientific director, last week, according to The Times.

Thornton's presentation reportedly showed there were physical advantages in males, including those who took treatments to reduce testosterone levels. A source told the paper that the presentation was "very scientific" and unemotional.  

 

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Israel wants to implement the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Here's what you need to know

Comment: I guess the Zio-Nazis feel they haven't genocided enough Palestinians so they need to leverage the killing machine that bit further... What can you expect from a surfeit of psychopaths?

 

------- 

Qassam Muaddi | Mondoweiss

 

Israel is advancing a dangerous bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners. Right-wing leaders want to go even further and use the bill to give Israeli forces the authority to carry out extrajudicial killings.

Israel is one step closer to passing a law that would allow Israeli courts to sentence Palestinian prisoners to death. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed the bill in a first reading with a majority of 39 votes in favor against 16 in opposition. The bill was presented as "exceptional" law, under a special status that allows it to be passed only with the majority of votes cast, and not the majority of the Knesset members, which is why absentees and abstentions were not counted. It still needs to pass two more readings before entering into force.

The law applies to individuals who are convicted for acts that led to the death of Israelis, if the acts were motivated by "racism or hostility towards the public" and "committed with the objective of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people," making it applicable exclusively to Palestinians. It was introduced by Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the ultra-nationalist "Jewish Power" party with a strong support base by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, like Har-Melech herself.

The party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government coalition. The death penalty for Palestinian prisoners has been a main political demand of Ben-Gvir, who has been behind the worsening of detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in recent years.

Israel does have the death penalty in its law, but has only been considered applicable in rare situations of grave crimes, like genocide, and was applied once in 1962 against former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The new law introduces three new stipulations which indicate the intention is to use the death penalty on Palestinians.

First, the bill's wording allows the death penalty on individuals convicted of killing Israelis on "nationalistic or racist" grounds. This limits its application to non-Israelis and employs the euphamism of "nationalistic" crimes which is commonly used to describe Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

Second, since it applies to Palestinians in the occupied territory, it gives Israeli military courts, who are the ones who issue penal sentences against Palestinians under occupation the power to put Palestinians to death.

Third, it allows the death sentence to be given with a simple majority of judges, and not by consensus.

Even still, Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law's application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field.

 

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California’s ‘Kiddie Stroll’ is state-sponsored slavery, selling children for sex

Kira Davis | New York Post

California’s laws have made children its least protected class.

As a matter of fact, if an American state wanted to establish a formal means of separating children from parents and other loving caregivers to feed a profitable industry, it couldn’t be done with much more effectiveness than in California. 

In 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring foster parents to “affirm” the LGBTQ identities of any children in their care.  

Naturally he hailed it as a giant leap forward for gay rights — but it effectively kicked committed religious believers out of the foster-care system. 

Last month, the governor signed AB 495, aka the legal kidnapping bill, which allows an unrelated adult to claim a “mentoring relationship” and exercise parental authority over any child. 

Newsom’s cronies in the Legislature touted it as a protection for the children of undocumented immigrants who might get whisked away by ICE in the middle of the day — but it effectively put an end to parents’ rights. 

Then there’s SB 357, which bars police from profiling underage prostitutes.

This was designed to loosen the legal hassles surrounding “sex work” (as the progressives call it, because sex seems like a job to them) and supposedly spare some unfortunate young women an early criminal record. 

Perhaps you’re beginning to see a pattern here. 

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36 Minute Trials and No Jury – Starmer’s Fascist Mass Courts

Craig Murray

Those charged with terrorism for supporting Palestine Action will have no jury in trials limited to 36 minutes each, with prison sentences up to six months. These are the plans for Starmer Courts for mass trials of anti-Genocide protestors.

The plans are devised by Justice Michael Snow. He is the epitome of judicial prejudice. When Julian Assange appeared before Snow in the first hearing after being dragged from the Embassy, Snow called Assange a “narcissist” even though Assange had said nothing but to confirm his name, and no evidence had been led.

Snow has now decreed that those 2,000 people charged under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act with supporting Palestine Action, will be tried in batches of five at the rate of ten people a day – giving 36 court minutes for each defendant. This is a farce, a spectacle of mass show trial. The 36 minutes includes both prosecution and defence cases and cross-examination.

At a scheduling hearing on Wednesday, one of the accused, 72 year old Deborah Wilde, objected that these trials would be far too short to present a proper defence.

Snow snapped back “I’m satisfied that the time is sufficient. I am not going to give more time. Your only remedy is the High Court”.

As I am sure Snow realises, ordinary people cannot afford to go to the High Court. The worrying thing is that the trials will be held before judges including the appalling Snow, with no jury.

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EU could ban filtered cigarettes

Comment: what a surprise. The Euro-Fascist bloc has been wanting to restrict smoking for years. Could it be that there are health benefits to smoking?

Warning: Nicotine Seriously Improves Health

Researchers Light Up for Nicotine, the Wonder Drug 

Secret health benefits of Nicotine 

_________________________

RT/Sott.net

Outlawing vapes is also being considered as an additional measure, the German tabloid has reported.

The EU is considering a ban on filtered cigarettes and e-cigarettes as part of its push to reduce tobacco consumption within the bloc, German tabloid Bild has reported.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said that Europe had surpassed Southeast Asia as the region with the highest number of smokers in the world. Some 173 million people on the continent used tobacco in 2024, according to the UN body's data.

The EU is planning to follow the recommendations by the WHO on "banning filters to reduce the palatability and attractiveness of cigarettes," the paper said in an article on Wednesday.

A bill by the European Council, which had been reviewed by the paper, suggested that outlawing the manufacture, import and distribution of filtered cigarettes "would make an important contribution to reducing tobacco consumption."

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West weaponizing laws to silence pro-Palestine activism: Study

Al Mayadeen 

The right to protest is facing increasing restrictions across the West, The Guardian reported on Monday, citing a new study by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), which accuses governments of criminalizing pro-Palestine activism and using counter-terrorism and antisemitism laws to stifle dissent.

The report focuses on the UK, US, France, and Germany, accusing authorities in these countries of “weaponizing” national security and anti-hate legislation to silence criticism of “Israel” and suppress demonstrations supporting Palestinian rights in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

“This trend reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices,” Yosra Frawes, head of FIDH’s Maghreb and Middle East desk, told The Guardian.

Compiled from open-source data, witness accounts, and institutional reports gathered between October 2023 and September 2025, the study was released just one day after a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire that secured the release of all living Israeli captives and around 2,000 Palestinian detainees.

According to FIDH, restrictions on speech and assembly have extended beyond protests, impacting journalists, academics, and public officials who express solidarity with Palestinians.

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“October 7 was a false flag,” Testified an Israeli Soldier Under Oath

Adame Media 

An Israeli soldier testifies UNDER OATH that October 7th was a FALSE FLAG, and that he was ordered to STAND DOWN from 5:20am to 9am the day of the attack.

You could face up to five years in prison for sharing this video in Israel.

IMPORTANT: COVID Vaccine “Safe and Effective” Narrative Collapses on Camera

Vigilant Fox / Global Research

This is the Senate hearing they never wanted you to see.

This is an important article focussing on the Senate Hearings chaired by Senator Ron Johnson pertaining to “Covid Vaccine Injuries”

Introductory Comment

What should be underscored is that the Senate hearings confirm what was known to the FDA, the CDC and the NHS pertaining to the incidence of Covid-19 mrNA “vaccine” mortality and adverse events from the very outset in early 2021.

The evidence of mortality and adverse events resulting from vaccine inoculation both present (official data) and future (e.g. undetected microscopic blood clots) is overwhelming.

A confidential Pfizer report (declassified under Freedom of Information in October 2021) was revealed to official governmental entities (FDA, CDC, and NHS) in early 2021. This report which emanated from the Horse’s Mouth confirms unequivocally that Pfizer’s  mRNA jab was a “killer vaccine”. 

In a twisted irony, the data pertaining to adverse events and mortality revealed in this controversial “insider report” refuted the official vaccine narrative peddled by the governments and the WHO. It also confirmed the analysis of numerous outspoken medical doctors and scientists who from the outset revealed the devastating consequences of the mRNA “vaccine”. 

The Pfizer Confidential report was a bombshell. The vaccine was launched in mid-December 2020. By the end of February 2021, “Pfizer had already received more than 1,200 reports of deaths allegedly caused by the vaccine and tens of thousands of reported adverse events, including 23 cases of spontaneous abortions out of 270 pregnancies and more than 2,000 reports of cardiac disorders.”

The data from mid-December 2020 to the end of February 2021 unequivocally confirmed “Manslaughter”. Based on the evidence, Pfizer as well as the CDC, FDA and NHS had the responsibility to cancel and withdraw the “vaccine”.

Pfizer’s Worldwide marketing of the Covid-19 Vaccine beyond February 28th, 2021, is no longer an “Act of Manslaughter”. From a legal standpoint it is an “Act of Murder” applied Worldwide to a target population of 8 billion people. So far, more than 70 percent of the World’s population have been Covid-19 vaccinated.

Click here to read the complete Pfizer report.  

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Crypto Is Part of Free Speech, and Free Speech Is Everything

Graham Smith 
Activist Post 

 On July 23, U.S. Attorney General William Barr gave a speech demanding big players in the tech industry work with government agencies in providing backdoor entry points for encrypted devices and software. Per his reasoning, certain devices and messaging services pose a safety threat by providing a secure, third-party-inaccessible area where crime can rapidly proliferate. He didn’t note that this “warrant-proof encryption” also protects journalists, researchers, and individuals in areas of political unrest living under corrupt governments. Secure encryption also protects and verifies the financial assets and transactions of cryptocurrency holders everywhere. If strings of code — ideas, in essence — are now being made illegal, it would appear that a brand new battle for humanity’s free expression is just beginning. 

Crypto Is Free Speech

Article 19 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Of course, governments worldwide, and the UN itself, do not abide by this proclamation, but that last point is still of critical importance. The reception, transmission, and search for information via any media “regardless of frontiers” is part of free speech. Crypto is a technology. An idea. And it’s not limited by geographical constraints or “frontiers.” It’s a means by which to impart, receive, and seek information. After all, a bitcoin transaction or encrypted message is, in essence, an expression of information. 

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New York Just Decriminalized Marijuana Use

Activist Post

For years, New York State has lagged behind its progressive-minded peers in the area of marijuana prohibition. As states like California, Massachusetts, Vermont and even Maine passed bills legalizing the drug, members of the New York State legislature simply haven’t been able to overcome minor differences in ideology to pass a legalization bill of their own, leaving New York with some of the most draconian marijuana laws in the northeast.

But that’s all about to change – sort of. On Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill decriminalizing marijuana use a little over one month after the legislature failed to reach an agreement on a bill that would have legalized sales. But the decrim bill is the next best thing, supporters insist, arguing that it will help eliminate the racial disparities in arrests and sentencing, since it eliminates the hated “public view” loophole (which allows a cop to arrest a suspect who willingly takes a bag of marijuana out of his pocket, placing it in “public view”) while also making possession of anything up to one to an ounce punishable by a max fine of $50. Possession of between one and two ounces will be punishable of a fine up to $200, eliminating the possibility of jail time, regardless of an individuals criminal record.

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EU Looking To Regulate Everything Online, And To Make Sites Proactively Remove Material

Tech Dirt

One of the reasons that Techdirt and many others fought so hard against the worst ideas of the EU Copyright Directive is that it was clearly the thin end of the wedge. If things like upload filters and the imposition of intermediary liability become widely implemented as the result of legal requirements in the field of copyright, it would only be a matter of time before they were extended to other domains. Netzpolitik has obtained a seven-page European Commission paper sketching ideas for a new EU Digital Services Act (pdf) that suggests doing exactly that. The Act's reach is extremely wide:

The scope would cover all digital services, and in particular online platforms. This means the clarification would address all services across the internet stack from mere conduits such as ISPs to cloud hosting services; while a special emphasis in the assessment would be dedicated to updated rules for online platforms such as social media, search engines, or collaborative economy services, as well as for online advertising services.

A core aim is to replace the e-Commerce Directive, passed in 2000. This is presented as "outdated", but the suggestions in the paper are clearly a continuation of attacks on the fundamental principles underlying the open Internet that began with the Copyright Directive.

One of the problems for the EU when pushing through the upload filters of Article 13/17 in the Copyright Directive is that Article 15 of the e-Commerce Directive explicitly states that there is "No general obligation to monitor". Constant surveillance is the only way that upload filters can work -- if you don't monitor all the time, you can't be sure you block everything that the law requires. Furthermore, Article 14 of the e-Commerce Directive emphasizes that "the service provider is not liable for the information stored at the request of a recipient of the service". That's subject to certain conditions, such as being required to remove material that infringes on copyright, but only after being informed of its presence on their servers.

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The Revelations of WikiLeaks: No. 4—The Haunting Case of a Belgian Child Killer and How WikiLeaks Helped Crack It

Elizabeth Vos
Consortium News

Elizabeth Vos reviews the infamous legal case of Marc Dutroux and why it engendered public distrust in the institutions of government.

This is the fourth article in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks' work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange's personality. It is WikiLeaks' uncovering of governments' crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange and which ultimately led to his arrest on April 11. In this article by Consortium News contributor Elizabeth Vos, originally published by her in 2017 on Disobedient Media, Vos looked at how WikiLeaks helped uncover evidence that showed Belgian case was part of a politically-protected child sex trafficking network. The Belgian case takes on added relevance in the wake of the arrest of financier Jeffery Epstein for alleged sex trafficking of children with allegations of Epstein's connections to powerful intelligence agencies. 
 
The case of notorious homicidal pedophile Marc Dutroux, now serving a life sentence in Belgium, is infamous for the deep depravity of the crimes that were committed and witnessed. Evidence emerged twice in the case, first in legal proceedings, secondly by the publication of many of the prosecution's records by WikiLeaks in 2009. 

The case was marked by the extreme suppression of evidence in what many have called a coverup perpetrated by the Belgian establishment. The episode is a definitive example of the exposure of deep judicial and political corruption leading to widespread public distrust in the legitimacy of their institutions of government. This sentiment has been echoed most recently in the U.S., where the primary rigging in 2016 by the Democratic National Committee left many feeling that the rule of law has come to mean little in the face of an utterly corrupt establishment that has become unaccountable to the public.

The Dutroux scandal set a precedent of mass public protest in response to such abuses, evident last year (2016) in South Korea's response to the scandal surrounding President Park Geun-hye and her advisor Choi Soon-Sil. 

It took the better part of a decade for the Belgian legal system to convict Marc Dutroux in 2004 for the mid-1990s kidnapping and rape of six girls, four of whom were murdered. The case was infamous for an inexplicably high number of mysterious deaths, suppression of evidence by the police, and numerous accounts from witnesses of extreme abuse perpetrated by a well-connected, violent pedophile ring.

The case prompted roughly 300,000 Belgians to take to the streets in 1996 in solidarity with the victims in "The White March," where protesters adopted a color that in Belgium is a sign of hope.

The Dutroux Affair left such deep scars on the consciousness of the Belgian population that roughly one third of Belgians who shared the surname Dutroux with the accused had their names legally changed. Despite the case having been legally concluded, many years later it is apparent that numerous significant elements of the important case remain unresolved. 

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See also:

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux I

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux II: A Judge, a King, a Psychopath and His Lover

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux III: Satanic Signs

The Eurocrats and Marc Dutroux IV: Underworld Justice

Medical police state in action: AMA votes to allow minors to override parental objection to vaccines

Javonte Anderson
Chicago Tribune

Members of the American Medical Association voted this week to support state policies that would allow minors to override their parents' objections to vaccinations.

Moving forward, the AMA will encourage state lawmakers to institute comprehensive vaccine and minor consent policies, according to a news release. The policy recommendation came Monday during the group's annual meeting in Chicago.

This decision comes as the anti-vaccination movement gains strength nationwide and public health officials blame outbreaks in diseases including measles on fewer people getting vaccinated.

"The prevalence of unvaccinated pediatric patients is troubling to physicians," AMA board member Dr. S. Bobby Mukkamala said in the release. "Many children go unvaccinated as anti-vaccine-related messages and advertisements target parents with misinformation. Allowing mature minors to provide informed consent to vaccinations will ensure these patients can access this type of preventive care."

During Monday's session, the AMA also voted to adopt a plan to bring national attention to violence against the transgender community, especially transgender people of color. The group also encouraged doctors to play a more active role in reporting and preventing human trafficking. 

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FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted or Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None was Produced

Ray McGovern
Consortium News

CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department has admitted.

The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.

The filing was in response to a motion by Stone’s lawyers asking for “unredacted reports” from CrowdStrike in an effort to get the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. “The government … does not possess the information the defandant seeks,” the filing says.

In his motion, Stone’s lawyers said he had only been given three redacted drafts. In a startling footnote in the government’s response, the DOJ admits the drafts are all that exist. 

“Although the reports produced to the defendant are marked ‘draft,’ counsel for the DNC and DCCC informed the government that they are the last version of the report produced,” the footnote says.

In other words CrowdStrike, upon which the FBI relied to conclude that Russia hacked the DNC, never completed a final report and only turned over three redacted drafts to the government.

These drafts were “voluntarily” given to the FBI by DNC lawyers, the filing says. “No redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors,” the filing quotes DNC lawyers as saying.

In Stone’s motion his lawyers argued: “If the Russian state did not hack the DNC, DCCC, or [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta’s servers, then Roger Stone was prosecuted for obstructing a congressional investigation into an unproven Russian state hacking conspiracy … The issue of whether or not the DNC was hacked is central to the Defendant’s defense.”

The DOJ responded: “The government does not need to prove at the defendant’s trial that the Russians hacked the DNC in order to prove the defendant made false statements, tampered with a witness, and obstructed justice into a congressional investigation regarding election interference.”

Thousands of emails from the DNC server were published by WikiLeaks in July 2016 revealing that the DNC interfered in the Democratic primary process to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders for the party’s presidential nomination. The U.S. indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents in 2018 for allegedly hacking the DNC server and giving the emails to WikiLeaks.

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