GAZA in real time: Geopolitics versus Genocide

Prefatory Note: A modified version of this interview conducted by Daniel Falcone, with a long introduction was published online in Truthout on October 29, 2023, The situation in Gaza and its increasingly regional implications grow more humanly distressing and politically menacing with each passing day. Israel has succeeded in influencing the Global West and its corporate main media platforms to accept two interpretations of events following the Oct 7 Hamas attack that are at best highly contentious and controversial and, in my understanding, deeply misleading and distorting: (1) that Hamas is nothing other than a group of terrorists engaged in barbaric crimes, and should be addressed in the same manner as ISIS and Al-Qaeda; (2) that it is legitimate in such a conflict to override normal rules of international law, even to the extent of engaging in genocidal means of ethnic cleansing.

GAZA in real time: Geopolitics versus Genocide

Welfare Queens and Welfare Fraud

The Rise and Reign of the Welfare Queen

Researcher links government assistance program to much earlier origins of welfare stereotypes

How Bill Clinton’s Welfare Reform Changed America

But based on several studies of TANF and its beneficiaries, “it barely reaches even the poorest Americans, and has all but ceased doing the work of lifting people out of poverty,” according to the Atlantic. “‘Welfare reform’ didn’t fix welfare so much as destroy it, and if similar changes were applied to Medicaid and food stamps, they would likely do the same.”

Americans believe benefits fraud is common for SNAP

Experts say that deliberate SNAP fraud is uncommon because of the rigorous application process and multi-step eligibility review. In 2016, the Congressional Research Service determined that for every 10,000 households participating in SNAP, about 14 contained a recipient who was investigated and determined to have committed fraud.

The Truth About Food Stamps

Who Is Really Responsible for Welfare Fraud?

In other words, don’t take a single example or casual observation of welfare fraud and claim it represents the tens of millions of poor who receive welfare benefits.

While welfare fraud committed by the poor appears to be low, the federal government has long recognized businesses being the true criminals.

While these are some of the better known examples of large scale welfare fraud, they are not the only ones. The above cases alone represent over $25 Billion in welfare fraud recovery. The criminals having the greatest impact committing welfare fraud against the government are not the poor, but the privately owned businesses that take advantage of them.

Brett Favre Is The Welfare Queen Republicans Warned Us About

Updates:

Biggest Perpetrators of Welfare Fraud Are Private Companies, Not ‘Welfare Queens’

False Witnesses and Sinister Plots: Exposing the CIA Connection in the ‘Chinese Police Station’ Narrative

By Kit Klarenberg / MintPressNews

For months, mainstream media across the Western world – in particular English-language outlets based in the constituent members of the ‘Five Eyes’ global spying network – have been rabidly awash with terrifying news of secret “Chinese police stations” operating the world over.

False Witnesses and Sinister Plots: Exposing the CIA Connection in the ‘Chinese Police Station’ Narrative

Previously:

The New York ‘secret Chinese police station’ is a propaganda bogeyman

Navy probe prompted by suicides condemns conditions at shipyard: ‘We let our people down’ + The Brandon Act

Navy probe prompted by suicides condemns conditions at shipyard: ‘We let our people down’

EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a trained listener, call 988. Service members and veterans can call 988 and then press “1”. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org

Related:

Their Son Died of Suicide in the Navy. They’re Honoring His Final Wish by Saving Lives

If you or someone you know in the military needs help, contact the Veterans Crisis Hotline at 800-273-8255, on veteranscrisisline.net, or by texting 838255. Civilians can text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

Pentagon sending troops to train Peruvian coup regime’s killers

The US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the Pentagon’s overseer for Latin America and the Caribbean, will be sending hundreds of Marines and special forces troops to Peru beginning as early as this week, to train military and Peruvian National Police special forces units. These same forces have carried out massacres and extra-judicial executions to suppress the mass protests against the coup regime of Dina Boluarte.

Pentagon sending troops to train Peruvian coup regime’s killers

Canada: Senator fears ‘modern Chinese exclusion’ but some redress activists reject link

Senator Yuen Pau Woo questions whether a foreign influence registry might become “a modern form of Chinese exclusion,” and says angry reaction to his suggestion proves his point about racial profiling and stigmatization.

Senator fears ‘modern Chinese exclusion’ but some redress activists reject link

H/T: Silk and Steel Podcast: Canada’s China Freakout with Justin Podur

No color revolution for Canada?! /sarcasm

FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

FDA Cracks Down on Animal Tranquilizer That Is Sometimes Mixed With Fentanyl

This is why fentanyl is used in black-market opioids in the first place. Users did not demand a substance that is 40 times more potent than heroin for recreational use; prohibitionist policies made it more challenging to procure pain medication, leading pain patients to seek out heroin. Heroin, however, is a crop drug, which makes it expensive to produce, ship, and buy. Fentanyl is synthetic, making it cheaper to produce, ship, and buy. When the law makes it harder to get legal pain pills, everybody adapts, and you get illegal fentanyl with no quality control.

Related:

The opioid crackdown leaves chronic pain patients in limbo

They Call Me a Drug Seeker. Here’s What Their Opioid Policies Did to Me.

The new CDC guidelines aren’t much better.