#Cnn official report

[crow-caller]

I see a lot of posts where people decry all these horrible books where characters talk like they're in therapy have pronoun circles and get advertised only by listing identities and never have I seen anyone decrying them actually name real books they have read doing this.

Somehow I think it might be less a common problem and more something people vaguely heard about and complain about without ever actually reading or encountering

[soon-palestine]

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised. No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid. And yet while the western establishment media has been chock full of the most lurid allegations of savagery directed against Hamas, sometimes with little or no supporting evidence, Israeli atrocities are excused or quickly forgotten. Accusations against Hamas are endlessly reheated to paint a picture of a supremely dangerous and bestial militant group, in turn rationalising the slaughter and starvation of Gaza’s population to “eradicate” it as a terrorist organisation. But equally barbarous atrocities committed by Israel – not in the heat of battle, but in cold blood – are treated as unfortunate, isolated incidents that cannot be connected, that paint no picture, that reveal nothing of import about the military that carried them out. If Hamas’ crimes were so savage and sadistic they still need to be reported months after they took place, why does the establishment media never feel the need to express equal horror and indignation at equivalent or worse acts of cruelty and sadism being inflicted by Israel on Gaza – not five months ago, but right now? Israel's torture of doctors, its sexual assaults of Palestinian women, it's leaving premature babies to die after its forces stormed a hospital. Where is the outrage? This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the western media that leads to only one possible deduction: Israel’s five-month-long attack on Gaza is not being reported. Rather, it is being selectively narrated – and for the most obscene of purposes. Through consistent and glaring failures in their coverage, establishment media – including supposedly liberal outlets, from the BBC and CNN to the Guardian and New York Times – have smoothed the way for Israel to carry out mass slaughter in Gaza, what the World Court has assessed as plausibly a genocide. The role of the media has not been to keep us, their audiences, informed about one of the greatest crimes in living memory. It has been to buy time for US President Joe Biden to keep arming his most useful of client states in the oil-rich Middle East, and to do so without damaging his prospects for re-election in November’s US presidential vote. If Russian President Vladimir Putin was a madman and a barbarous war criminal for invading Ukraine, as every western media outlet agrees, what does that make Israeli officials, when every one of them supports far worse atrocities in Gaza, directed overwhelmingly at civilians? And more to the point, what does that make Biden and the US political class for materially backing Israel to the hilt: sending bombs, vetoing demands for a ceasefire at the United Nations, and freezing desperately needed aid? Worrying about the optics, the president expresses his discomfort, but he carries on helping Israel regardless. While western politicians and commentators worry about some imaginary existential threat those brief events of five months ago pose to the nuclear-armed state of Israel, Israel is quite literally wiping Gaza off the map day by day, quite undisturbed.

[zvaigzdelasas]

In the week since the International Court of Justice ruled that the Israeli government is plausibly committing genocide and ordered it to prevent potential further acts of genocide, Israeli forces have only continued committing atrocities against Palestinians.

Buoyed by the staying support of American officials, Israeli forces have killed at least 874 Palestinians and injured at least 1,490 in Gaza since last week’s ICJ ruling, according to Palestinian Health Ministry figures from Saturday, January 27, to Friday, February 2. That’s not to mention other acts of Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.The loss of life should not be dismissed as “collateral damage,” contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.[...]

Backgrounding the atrocities in Gaza is the broader misery the entire population faces. The BBC noted that UNICEF’s biggest concern is the “estimated 19,000 children who are orphaned or have ended up alone with no adult to look after them.” CNN reported that Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water amid famine conditions. The Guardian reported that 50-62 percent of all buildings in Gaza have likely been damaged or destroyed.

Earlier this week, a federal court affirmed the ICJ’s finding that Israel may be carrying out a genocide and warned the Biden administration to reconsider its unconditional support for Israel’s war effort. [...]

The Intercept asked Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., to comment on the court rulings that the accusations of genocide by Israel are credible. “I don’t accept that. I reject [the ruling of the International Court of Justice]. I don’t believe that is Israel’s intention: to commit genocide,” said Fetterman, who has emerged as one of Israel’s most staunch Democratic defenders, on Thursday. “I do believe that their goal is to neutralize or dislodge Hamas from that. And I believe that they certainly do not want to take the lives of any innocent Palestinians and I certainly don’t assign higher value to my children versus a Palestinian child. I mean, I wouldn’t want anybody to die throughout all this tragedy, and it’s just an awful situation.”

Within hours of the ICJ issuing its ruling last Friday, Israel alleged that 12 of 30,000 — 0.04 percent — employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East were involved in Hamas’s attack on October 7. The United States immediately suspended its funding of UNRWA, the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, spurring a cascade of other nations to follow suit.

Sky News later obtained an Israeli document that actually downgrades the allegation to 0.02 percent of UNRWA staff (six people) being involved in Hamas’s attack. Sky News reported that the documents, which allege further ties between UNRWA and Hamas “make several claims that Sky News has not seen proof of and many of the claims, even if true, do not directly implicate UNRWA.”

The contrast between the U.S. decision to pause funding based on unverified allegations and its unwillingness to reconsider its military funding of Israel, despite serious allegations of genocide, is stark.

Fetterman also said that he supports the suspension of funding to UNRWA. When asked why the standard of suspending funding while investigating serious allegations doesn’t apply to the Israeli government, Fetterman dodged the question.

Fetterman: Well, again, it — well, it’s not. We need a full investigation and find out just how much a part of it was about that and how much, you know, the old question: how much they knew and when they knew that.

The Intercept: So you’re saying that for Israel as well?

Fetterman: Yeah, OK, so good, all right, well good.[...]

Reporter Said Arikat confronted State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on the tension Wednesday. “I’ll say with respect to the charges of genocide [at the International Court of Justice], we believe that they’re unfounded,” Miller said. “We continue to support Israel’s right to take action to ensure that the terrorist attacks of October 7th cannot be repeated, but we want them to do so in a way that complies with — fully with international humanitarian law.”

Miller was then asked about Israel receiving aid even as Israeli government officials call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and maintain good standing in government.

“When the secretary traveled to Israel on his most recent visit,” Miller said, “he made clear that he thought it was important that the Israeli government speak out against those matters and those comments publicly and reiterate that it is not the policy of the Israeli government to force Palestinians from Gaza.”[...]

Two days after the ICJ ordered the Israeli government to prevent and punish incitements of genocide from public officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich were among 11 cabinet ministers and 15 coalition members of the Knesset who rallied at conference hosted by hundreds of settlers calling for the settlement of Gaza.

On Tuesday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly told members of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that afte​​r their military campaign ends, Israel will maintain military control of Gaza, so it can operate similarly to the way it does in the West Bank.

On Thursday, Smotrich said that allowing aid into Gaza contradicts the goals of Israel’s campaign, and that he spoke with Netanyahu, who supposedly assured him that things will change soon. Israeli ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot reportedly called to limit humanitarian aid as well. Meanwhile, at aid crossings, people in Israel have taken cue from their leaders, attempting to block aid trucks from entering Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people — including the hostages held by Hamas — are at risk of starvation and malnutrition, every day since the ICJ ruling.

One clip even shows a right-wing activist telling an aid truck driver, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, that “I am the owner here, you are a slave here.”

2 Feb 24

[sayruq]

THE WHITE HOUSE is worried that Iran might strike a U.S. target as part of a potential retaliation for Israel’s April 1 attack on its embassy in Damascus, Syria, according to notes from a meeting involving National Security Council officials earlier this week. Tehran has vowed that “Israel will be punished” for the Syria strike and the killing of Quds Force commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi. New concern about a potential Iranian strike comes even though the Biden administration has sought to distance itself from the Israeli airstrike, stressing that it had no advance knowledge of the operation. “I don’t have anything more to say about the strike in Damascus, except that we weren’t involved in any way whatsoever,” NSC spokesperson retired Adm. John Kirby said on Monday. On Monday night, Iran conveyed to the Biden administration that if it involved itself in defending Israel were Tehran to undertake a retaliatory strike, it would consider the United States a viable target as well. The issue was discussed at a Tuesday NSC meeting, according to notes reviewed by The Intercept. (The NSC did not respond to a request for comment.)

Since then, the U.S. has quietly conducted talks with Iranian officials to seek to avoid direct confrontation between the two countries’ armed forces, according to CNN and other media reports. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Biden and his team are working to prevent escalation with Iran in the Middle East. On Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Israel “must be punished and it shall be.” That same day, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz said his country would respond with a direct attack. “If Iran attacks from its own territory, Israel will respond and attack in Iran,” Katz posted on X. Since April 2023, the U.S. and Israel have been in close cooperation in sharing and building common Iran contingency plans.

[heritageposts]

An Israeli influence campaign is using hundreds of online avatars and fake social media accounts to attack Democratic lawmakers critical of Israel and promote news articles disapproving of the United Nations Palestine refugee agency (Unrwa), according to a report by the Israeli online watchdog, Fake Reporter. According to the report, the targeted campaign has used more than 600 avatars, sending out 58,000 tweets and social media posts to circulate articles published by The Guardian, CNN and Wall Street Journal, among other major news outlets that amplify Israel’s position on the war. The campaign relies on three major social networks, UnFold Magazine, Non-Agenda and The Moral Alliance, which were created prior to the war in Gaza. But the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel sent the accounts into round-the-clock posting. The sites, according to Fake Reporter, are geared specifically to a “progressive audience”, publishing content on climate change, AI regulation, and human rights, in addition to the war in Gaza. They have more than 43,000 followers across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The avatars promoting the content talk up their identity with lines like, “As a middle-aged African American woman” and use hashtags like #FaithJourney and #AfricanAmericanSpirituality.

Some examples from the report:

And continuing,

The avatars were all created on the same day and their profiles were written with the same formula, subbing out just a few words. The declared gender and ethnicity of the avatars don’t match the profile photos, which have been taken from websites selling headshots. The campaign works to amplify news stories published by major media outlets. First, the fake news sites share the reports. Then, the avatars share them across social media, including on the official accounts of Democratic lawmakers. Avatars also shared social media posts showing video clips of what appeared to be Pro-Palestinian protestors calling for "massacres to be normalised" and calling for the US to "go to hell", contrasting that with peaceful protests of pro-Israel protestors.   In other cases, Avatars simply reshared widely published video clips of US lawmakers questioning the heads of Ivy League schools about antisemitism on campus.  [...] According to the report, around 85 percent of all the US politicians targeted by the campaign were Democrats, and 90 percent of them were African Americans. Ritchie Torres, a black Democratic Congressman with generally pro-Israel views, garnered the most social media engagement from the avatars. Other lawmakers targeted included Cori Bush; Lucy McBath; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries; and Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Israeli news site Haaretz reported in January that the Israeli government had launched an online influence campaign to respond to pro-Palestinian content and reports about Hamas.  It’s unclear whether the campaign revealed by Fake Reporter is part of that initiative.

. . . continues at MME (20 Mar 2024)

[wilwheaton]

Vance, who previously declared, inaccurately, that “reports now show” people had their pets “eaten” by illegal immigrants, posted to X, formerly Twitter, that he was standing by his false claim because he “received many inquiries from actual residents of Springfield” asking about the rumors. “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false,” he conceded, before calling on his supporters to “Keep the cat memes flowing” regardless. Vance was confronted about that stance on CNN after the debate Wednesday night. “If someone calls your office and says they saw Bigfoot, that doesn’t mean they saw Bigfoot,” Kaitlan Collins told the senator. “You have a sense of responsibility as a running mate, and he certainly does as the candidate to not promote false information, right?” Inquiries are certainly not evidence. Local Ohio officials said they have been getting calls about the rumors for months. But unlike Vance, instead of fanning the flames, they looked into the claims and found them to be meritless. As Clark County Park District executive director Leann Castillo told The New York Times, they “have absolutely no evidence of this happening.”

The Cat-Eating Hysteria is a Flashing Red Light For November’s Election

[gayvampyr]

CNN:

Hundreds of families gathered in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina on June 15, plotting their escape from what had become a hellscape of blown-out buildings scrawled with racist graffiti and streets strewn with corpses. The state governor had just been executed and mutilated by Arab militia groups, leaving civilians with no choice but to flee.

What followed was a gruesome massacre, eyewitnesses said, believed to be one of the most violent incidents in the genocide-scarred Sudanese region’s history. The powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allied militias hunted down non-Arab people in various parts of the city and surrounding desert region, leaving hundreds dead as they ran for their lives…

…residents set off en masse from southern El Geneina, many trying to reach the nearby Sudanese military headquarters where they thought they might find safety. But they said they were quickly thwarted by RSF attacks. Some were summarily executed in the streets, survivors said. Others died in a mass drowning incident, shot at as they attempted to cross a river. Many of those who managed to make it out were ambushed near the border with Chad, forced to sit in the sand before being told to run to safety as they were sprayed with bullets.

“More than 1,000 people were killed on June 15. I was collecting bodies on that day. I collected a huge number,” one local humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told CNN. He said the dead were buried in five different mass graves in and around the city.

Conflict erupted between the RSF and the Sudanese army in April. Since then, more than one million people have fled to neighboring countries, according to estimates from the International Organization for Migration.

Now, a telecommunications blackout and the flight of international aid groups have all but cut off Darfur from the outside world. But news of the June 15 massacre began trickling out of the region from refugees who escaped to Chad. The evidence uncovered by CNN suggests that, behind a curtain of secrecy, the RSF and its allies are waging an indiscriminate campaign of widespread killings and sexual violence unlike anything the region has seen in decades.

The RSF’s official spokesperson told CNN that it “categorically” denied the allegations.

“To say you were Masalit was a death sentence,” said Jamal Khamiss, a human rights lawyer, referring to his non-Arab tribe, one of the biggest in Darfur. Khamiss was among those who said that they fled from El Geneina to Chad, surviving a series of RSF and allied militia positions by concealing his ethnicity.

The United Nations raised the alarm in June over ethnic targeting and killing of people from the Masalit community in El Geneina, after reports of summary executions and “persistent hate speech,” including calls to kill or expel them.

The vast majority of those who managed to make it out of El Geneina alive sought refuge in the Chadian border town of Adre, about 22 miles (35 kilometers) away from the city.

On June 15, the town received the highest number of migrants in a single day, along with the highest number of casualties — 261 — since the Sudan conflict broke out, according to Doctors Without Borders, widely known by its French name, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which runs the only hospital in Adre. The number of wounded people that arrived at the hospital was even higher the next day: 387.

“The last time we recorded the death toll in Geneina it was 884,” one local humanitarian worker from El Geneina, who works for a Western non-profit organization, told CNN. “That was June 9. After June 9, it was a different story. The dead became uncountable.”

Action Against Hunger is accepting donations to provide health, sanitation and nutrition services to Sudanese refugees in Chad.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

🚨 ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES ARE RAP/NG PALESTINIANS BEING HELD IN CONCENTRAT/ON CAMPS - EMAIL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIAL NOW 🚨

New testimonies reveal the r/pe of Palestinian detainees and the use of electric chairs at the Negev desert concentration camp. Following the initial report by CNN, which exposed the systematic abuse inside Sde Teiman, horrifying accounts of abuse continue to be corroborated.

These recent reports provide harrowing details of the extreme physical and psychological abuse inflicted upon Palestinian detainees. Multiple men reported being subjected to electric shocks while seated in wired chairs. One detainee, Mr Shaheen, described being shocked approximately half a dozen times during interrogations, leading to severe trauma and unconsciousness.

Testimonies of s*xual violence are also deeply distressing. One man recounted being forcibly pressed against a metal stick fixed to the ground, which penetrated his rectum, causing severe bleeding and unbearable pain. 

Similar accounts were detailed in a leaked UNRWA report, where another detainee described the experience as sitting “on something like a hot metal stick,” which “felt like fire”. He recounted how a fellow detainee “died after they put the electric stick up” his anus.

35 Palestinian men have died at the site, or after being brought to nearby civilian hospitals, according to officers at the camp. They deny any died from abuse suffered there.

👉 EMAIL YOUR ELECTED OFFICIAL NOW! USE THE FREE TEMPLATE IN @humantiproject’s bio or visit HumantiProject.org 👈

——-

Notes:

- If you are in the UK 🇬🇧, please read the 2nd Pinned comment - YOU CAN STILL EMAIL ✊

[decolonize-the-everything]

If you get your news from CNN, please know they've been compromised and do in fact aid Israel in the way they provide coverage.!!!!

Their coverage is curated specifically to garner sympathy for Israel and to provide plausibile deniability for their war crimes such as genocide. Links below the vid.

Additionally, the breach to freedom of press this implies should NOT be understated.

“‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words,” the worker said. “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.” CNN maintains that the reason for the policy is to ensure its reporting on Israel and Palestine is “as precise and accurate as possible,” as one spokesperson said, claiming that the IDF’s censor has a “minimal” impact on the coverage. But CNN seems to be unique in maintaining this policy, unlike other major outlets, The Intercept wrote.

Further, the investigation found that CNN leaders have explicitly prescribed policies that favor Israel. In an email sent October 26, CNN’s News Standards and Practices sent staff an email directing them to refer to the ministry of health in Gaza as “Hamas-controlled” every time they reference the Palestinian death count — a widespread practice among major outlets, despite numerous human rights groups and war experts maintaining that the Gaza health ministry’s death tolls have historically been accurate and that public health experts have independently found no evidence that the ministry has inflated death counts.

[dollielliot]

𐙚ྀིྀ ⠀︵　info on the Apalchee highschool shooting that happened today, 9/4/24˖ ㅤ૮𐔌ྀི ´ ཀ ྀི 𐦯ྀིა⠀

The 14-year-old suspect in the fatal mass shooting at a Winder, Georgia, high school has been identified as Colt Gray, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at an afternoon news conference. The suspect is a student at Apalachee High School who will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult as he moves through the criminal justice system, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith added.

Two teachers and two students were killed, Hosey said. Nine other victims were taken to hospitals, according to the officials. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. Wednesday’s shooting is the deadliest of the 45 school shootings so far this calendar year, according to a CNN analysis. It is one of 11 school shootings with four or more deaths since 2008 when CNN first started tracking school shootings. Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. ET. A school resource deputy assigned to Apalachee High confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

The witness sat next to the suspected shooter

Lyela Sayarath, 16, told CNN the alleged shooter sat next to her in an algebra class. She said he left class early, around 9:45 a.m., but didn’t take a bathroom pass. She thought he might be skipping. Toward the end of class, someone told her teacher over the loudspeaker to check their email, she said. Shortly after, Gray was outside the classroom door, which was shut, Lyela said. Another student who went to the door jumped backward when she saw he had a gun. "I guess he saw we weren’t gonna let him in,” Lyela said. “And I guess the classroom next to me, their door was open, so I think he just started shooting in the classroom.” At first, she told CNN she heard a burst of gunfire – maybe 10 to 15 shots – and then they were “kind of just Students dropped to the floor and crawled to the corner, Lyela said.

“It seemed like this wasn’t something he planned too well or that he wasn’t really strong with the gun because he didn’t try and shoot our door. Once he saw he couldn’t get in our room, he just went to the next one.”

Latest developments

The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation. Schools in Barrow County will be closed for the rest of the week.

Student texted mom: ‘I’m scared’

Erin Clark was at work Wednesday morning when she got a series of text messages from her son, a senior, who was attending class at Apalachee High School.

“School shooting.”

“I’m scared,” he wrote.

“pls” “I’m not joking,”

“I’m leaving work,” Clark replied. “I love you,” her son, Ethan Haney, 17, wrote back.

“Love you too baby,” his mom texted before racing to the high school.

Clark told CNN her son heard eight or nine gunshots before he closed his classroom door and, with the help of another classmate, moved chairs and tables to block the door.

Clark told CNN she was “absolutely terrified” when she read her son’s messages. “Just kept praying he’d stay safe,” she said.

Schools in the county went into lockdown

As emergency responders came from several counties, video from outside the school showed at least five ambulances and a large law enforcement presence at the campus, and at least one medical helicopter could be seen airlifting a patient from the scene. At the football field, where authorities had students gather, people lowered their heads and formed a prayer circle in the end zone, standing on the letters for “Apalachee” as their classmates milled around the field. All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there are no reports of secondary incidents or scenes. Some of the critically injured were removed by helicopter, and additional helicopters are on standby.

Atlanta Trauma Center and other hospitals take patients

Grady Health System – a Level 1 trauma center in Atlanta, about an hour's drive from Winder – received one gunshot wound victim from the incident who was transported by helicopter, a hospital spokesperson told CNN. Earlier, a source with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak to the media, told CNN Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital in North Georgia received two victims from the shooting. The source said one victim was an adult with a gunshot wound to the stomach and was in surgery, and another was a minor with unspecified injuries. Three gunshot victims were taken to nearby hospitals following the shooting, according to a hospital official, and five other patients reported to the hospital with symptoms related to a panic attack. Two gunshot victims were taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Barrow with non-life-threatening injuries, Northeast Georgia Health System spokesperson Layne Saliba said. Four other patients came with symptoms related to panic attacks.

Another gunshot victim was taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Gainesville with non-life-threatening injuries, Saliba said, and an additional patient came to Northeast Georgia Medical Center Braselton with symptoms related to a panic attack.

Georgia governor sends prayers and says he can send resources

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident, the White House said, offering federal support to state and local officials.

“His administration will continue coordinating with federal, state, and local officials as we receive more information,” the White House said in a statement. Attorney General Merrick Garland similarly said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local, and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

Winder had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School.

[crow-caller]

A fun bad fact is that I was a nostalgia critic fan as a youth, I hated his comedy and commentary but watched him all the time because he'd show clips from movies I'd otherwise never see and spoil them. This is also why I watched cinemasins. Both have definitely contributed to my review style of full spoiler analysis imao

[blueiscoool]

Rome’s Ancient Arch of Constantine Struck by Lightening

During a storm on September 3, lightning struck Rome’s Arch of Constantine, chipping the structure’s marble surface. The 1,700-year-old arch and its neighbor, the Colosseum, were two of several sites affected by the thunderstorm, which produced 2.36 inches of rain in less than an hour. Usually, the city sees a similar amount over the entire month of September.

“A lightning strike hit the arch right here and then hit the corner,” a tourist at the site told Reuters’ Alberto Lingria. “We saw this fly off,” the tourist added while pointing to a fallen block of stone.

Finished in 315 C.E., the Arch of Constantine is one of Rome’s three surviving ancient triumphal arches, each erected to honor a person or event. This arch commemorates Constantine I’s 312 victory over the emperor Maxentius. That same year, Constantine devoted himself to Christianity—the first Roman ruler to do so.

The fierce storm also felled two large trees near the Circus Maximus, flooded the Trevi Fountain and flooded the Colosseum’s subterranean tunnels, reports CNN. After lightning struck the arch, staff of the Colosseum Archaeological Park quickly gathered its dislodged pieces and placed them in a secure location, according to a statement from Italy’s Ministry of Culture.

In the days that followed, some tourists stumbled upon additional pieces on the ground.

​​“My American group found these fragments, and we’re handing them over to the workmen,” tour guide Serena Giuliani told the London Times’ Tom Kington on the morning of September 4.

Specialists are now examining the condition of the fragments. Officials say the damage was limited to the monument’s southern side, where unrelated restoration work had started just days earlier, allowing for quick repairs.

At roughly 70 feet tall and 85 feet wide, the Arch of Constantine contains three separate arches, each framed by columns. The intricately decorated structure is adorned with recycled fragments, or spolia, taken from other ancient buildings, including monuments honoring Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.

The arch is also decorated with carvings of Constantine, including a series of reliefs depicting his victorious fight against Maxentius in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

In 306, Constantine was leading Roman troops in Britain—then part of the Roman Empire—when his military declared him their emperor. His brother-in-law, Maxentius, also declared himself the emperor around the same time. After years of complex power struggles, the two rulers ultimately faced off in 312 at Rome’s Milvian Bridge, which overlooks the river Tiber. Panels on the Arch of Constantine depict the battle’s conclusion, showing Maxentius’ troops drowning in the river.

The arch’s recent encounter with lightning may have carried spiritual significance for its ancient builders, as “the bolts were believed to be the work of the gods,” per the Times. These spots were sacred for the Romans, who sometimes erected temples at such sites.

By Sonja Anderson.

[zvaigzdelasas]

[CNN is US Private Media]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lambasted his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday and accused him of adopting an “anti-Israel narrative,” revealing a deep rupture at the top of the Israeli government as the Middle East risks spiraling into a full-scale regional conflict.

Israeli media reported this week that Gallant, speaking to lawmakers in a private security briefing, had dismissed Netanyahu’s war aim of achieving “absolute victory” over Hamas as “gibberish,” branding those who say this is achievable as “heroes with war drums.”[...]

“When Gallant adopts the anti-Israel narrative, he harms the chances of reaching a hostage deal,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement. It said Gallant was obligated to pursue the twin goals of Israel’s war in Gaza: Eliminating Hamas and the release of the hostages seized by Hamas in the October 7 attacks.[...]

On Monday, the European Union’s top diplomat Josep Borrell told CNN he would put forward a proposal at the EU to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir.

Borrell had called for sanctions against Smotrich and Ben Gvir in a post on X, days after Smotrich said it would be “moral” to starve two million Gazans until Israeli hostages are freed.[...]

In his leaked comments, Gallant also claimed he had in October proposed a pre-emptive attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon, but that Netanyahu had not supported the strike and had missed the opportunity.

“The conditions today for a Lebanon war are the opposite of what they were at the beginning of the war,” Gallant reportedly told lawmakers.[...]

Gallant joins a number of senior Israeli officials to have questioned Netanyahu’s aim of destroying Hamas. In June, top military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the idea that Israel could “make Hamas vanish” is “throwing sand in the eyes of the public.”

CNN recently reported that nearly half of Hamas’ military battalions in northern and central Gaza have rebuilt some of their fighting capabilities, despite Israel’s unrelenting [genocidal war of extermination], according to a joint analysis with the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project and the Institute for the Study of War.

Crumbling failed apartheid state [13 Aug 24]

[cleolinda]

Tuesday’s debate between Trump and his opponent Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had several eyebrow-raising moments but none moreso than when Trump, echoing his latest online-born conspiracy, baselessly accused thousands of legal migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of stealing, killing, and eating pet dogs off the street.

The conspiracy was fact-checked in real time by ABC’s David Muir, who noted that city officials had looked into the claim and found it to be baseless. But the damage was already done.

Nearly a week later, Vance found himself once again answering for his running mate’s actions after days of shocking fallout in Springfield, where residents have reported fliers dropped by the Ku Klux Klan as well as several threats of bombings or mass shootings — the latest of which, at Wittenberg University, occurred Saturday night just hours before Vance would go on the air.

[…] On CNN, he seemingly admitted that his claims were lies, then continued by saying that he would keep spreading such tales, even knowing them to be untrue, if they resulted in the media talking about issues he claimed were still just as real despite the deception.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do,” said the senator.

This is DANGEROUS shit aimed at the Haitian immigrant community for political gain

that is going to get people hurt if not outright killed, and this motherfucker just admitted it’s not true. Which is maybe the most important thing you will read about the whole ordeal.

“But I saw pictures!!!”

Spoiler: the geese were roadkill.

The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

Backlash was swift, with replies ranging from, “I find it strange that a self-professed ‘hillbilly’ doesn’t know what whole chickens look like,” to, “HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT CHICKENS LOOK LIKE WITH THEIR LEGS ATTACHED YOU F****ING DIPSHIT.” Oliver Alexander, an open-source intelligence analyst, weighed in, sharing images of plucked chickens looking remarkably similar to whatever was being grilled in the video. “Clearly chicken you weirdo. Dude’s never seen chicken that wasn’t dino-nugget shaped,” he wrote.

[i-am-aprl]

According to CNN, students across the political spectrum have been rejecting offers from Columbia University due to the school’s handling of on-campus protests. Admissions consultancies across the US have also reported high school students taking Columbia off of their college lists for next year. Columbia remains at the epicenter of student demonstrations, with over 100 students arrested and a return to online classes.

The university declined to officially comment to journalists on how the protests are impacting its fall enrollment.

How do you think current events will or should impact Columbia in the future? Has recent news from Columbia impacted your college list?

[sayruq]

Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel, CNN’s Jerusalem bureau is subject to the rules of the Israel Defense Forces’s censor, which dictates subjects that are off-limits for news organizations to cover, and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, and reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of the censor. CNN’s practice of routing coverage through the Jerusalem bureau does not mean that the military censor directly reviews every story. Still, the policy stands in contrast to other major news outlets, which in the past have run sensitive stories through desks outside of Israel to avoid the pressure of the censor. On top of the official and unspoken rules for reporting from Israel, CNN recently issued directives to its staff on specific language to use and avoid when reporting on violence in the Gaza Strip. The network also hired a former soldier from the IDF’s Military Spokesperson Unit to serve as a reporter at the onset of the war.