[Breggin] Rhonda Miller is an independent analyst of some of the worst abuses that have afflicted children throughout the Western world. She began working with Dr. Judith Reisman, another independent analyst and dear friend of ours who took on Alfred Kinsey and his popular books aimed at destroying the moral fiber of our sexual life and who tortured children in the name of proving their sexuality.
She has succeeded in defunding the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University but is now finding resistance in getting it closed and in exposing its files confirming the criminal abuse of children by Alfred Kinsey and the people who worked with him and for him.
She has branched out into much broader studies of how global forces, toward the goal of destroying America, have been corrupting our schools and educational system and even turned the network of child and protective services into child trafficking.
Her examination discloses the efforts of Bill Gates, the Rockefellers, and the UN in corrupting our children on every possible level. This show is an eye-opener on many levels of the abuse of children around the globe.
This hour delves deeply into the pattern of the close relationship between concentrations of power in institutions and people and the inevitable accumulation of evil in these power centers, often marked by child abuse, sex trafficking, and enslavement, followed by murder.
We greatly admire her work and encourage people to support her.
[Federalist] Last Friday, Donald Trump signed an executive order making English the official language of the United States, ending 249 years of the country not having any official language, a designation the U.S. shared with only Mexico and the Pacific archipelago nation of Palau. The order also rescinded a 2000 Bill Clinton mandate requiring aid-dispensing agencies to provide language assistance to non-English speakers, while leaving the door open to agencies to do so if they choose. While the Left will undoubtedly cry "nativism" and "xenophobia" over the coming days, the order’s wording, historical perspective, and common sense show this is a necessary step to strengthen "melting pot" by uniting as "a citizenry that can freely exchange ideas in one shared language."
First, it’s necessary to understand why America never had an official language. From its colonial beginnings, America had an Anglophone supermajority but a smattering of other languages. At the nation’s founding in 1776, New York, Pennsylvania, and sections of the Appalachian backcountry harbored large minorities of German and Dutch speakers, and establishing a state language went no more with the libertarian character of the Revolutionary generation than establishing a state religion, which the First Amendment expressly forbade. But America’s political economy assured voluntary assimilation anyway, and America’s great Founding documents and debates, from the Federalist Papers to Common Sense, were in English, a shared language that brought the Union together and made its ideals legible to citizens in South Carolina just as for Massachusetts.
Commentary by Russian Military Journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics:
[ColonelCassad] Trump on negotiations:
1. Putin did not want to start a conflict in Ukraine.
I talked to Vladimir about this. I talked to him about this for a long time. But he never wanted to go there. This conflict should never have started.
2. Yes, I believe him. I believe him. I think we are doing well with Russia. But right now they are bombing Ukraine like crazy. And Ukraine… I find it increasingly difficult to deal with Ukraine, frankly. And they don’t have the cards. As you know, we are meeting in Saudi Arabia – sometime next week, early. And I think in terms of getting a final settlement, it may be easier to deal with Russia, which is surprising, because they have all the cards.
3. Without my participation, a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine "would not have had a single chance. Unlike me, European countries have no idea how to end the conflict in Ukraine.
4. I don't know if Ukraine wants a resolution to the conflict.
If Ukraine does not want to resolve the conflict, we are leaving.
Further support for Ukraine will depend on its readiness for peace talks.
In general, if the globalists do not allow the war to be stopped, then Trump will simply roll back support for Ukraine and leave (prepare for a confrontation with China).
Of course, this makes things a little easier for us, because fighting in conditions when the US and NATO stood behind Ukraine and when only NATO stands behind Ukraine are two very different things, although it will not be easy.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Victor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] In Sweden, a latent hatred for Donald Trump is growing. Ordinary Swedes are ready to see in the new-old American president and his henchmen the fiends of hell who want to “abandon Ukraine and Sweden to the mercy of the eastern aggressor.”
Local propaganda has built an alternative world in which their small country, like Hobbiton, is under serious threat of invasion by “orcs from the east,” and the United States is no longer ready to defend it.
And in protest, the Swedes began to boycott American goods. A similar picture can be seen in the Baltic countries, which are economically dependent on Sweden – they also hate Trump for allegedly being ready to abandon them “to Moscow’s profit.”
THE SMELL OF BETRAYAL
Swedish media are broadcasting panic messages into the reader's brain. "US President Donald Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a 'dictator' and accused Ukraine of a full-scale Russian invasion," Nyheterna, for example, is indignant. Trump is also accused of intending to introduce 25 percent tariffs on EU goods, including cars. For Sweden, with its powerful car industry, this will be very sensitive.
In a major development for the country, the local US embassy removed a banner declaring support for Ukraine that had adorned its façade for three years. This happened immediately after Trump's meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, which ended in scandal.
Former Swedish MEP Gunnar Hökmark describes his horror as he walked past the embassy and saw the banner no longer in its usual place. "This is a terrible message to the whole of Swedish society. It is clear that Trump prioritizes relations with Putin over relations with Zelensky and Europe," the former MEP said, calling the move by the US embassy "a disgrace."
Former Swedish Foreign Minister and well-known Russophobe Carl Bildt said that the White House is now occupied by "a savage who repeats Vladimir Putin's words." The Swedish press writes that the government is very nervous and concerned about the current situation.
Swedish citizens are asking themselves: Will Trump sell out Ukraine and can Sweden trust the US in other contexts? Will Trump take a position closer to Russia than to the EU? The anxiety, the sense of a betrayal crisis, is present not only among government officials, but literally hovers over the entire country.
Swedes, a majority of whom, according to polls, oppose stopping the fighting in Ukraine, perceive Donald Trump's peacemaking initiatives as a "betrayal."
However, the government has chosen a cautious strategy: to express as little direct criticism of the overseas hegemon as possible. Stockholm has invested too much effort in joining NATO and in strengthening relations with the United States and is afraid to make any sudden moves now.
"We should focus on what the US is actually doing, not just what they say. They still have tough sanctions against Russia, and it is important for us to continue to damage the Russian military economy," said Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergaard.
A SUDDEN AWAKENING OF HOSTILITY
The Swedish authorities have taken a rather extravagant step to demonstrate their disagreement with Trump's peacekeeping initiatives.
At the end of February, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent out an order to foreign diplomatic missions to film a video in which embassy employees demonstrate what is presumably a protest performance.
“Through a joint communications campaign, we mark the anniversary (of the start of the SVO – Ed.) and demonstrate that Sweden is united in its unwavering support for Ukraine,” says the letter sent to all Swedish embassies.
The ministry instructs that in the video, diplomatic workers should first sit down and then stand up at the same time. “Stand up straight! Keep your hands at your sides and avoid happy expressions,” the relevant instruction says.
The participants of the performance were ordered to choose one of three forms of arrangement of chairs: zigzag, U-shape or pyramid. Ukrainian flags had to be present in the frame, and the video itself was recommended to be filmed outdoors, avoiding the "official office environment".
However, public relations experts interviewed by Expressen expressed skepticism about the idea. “I don’t think that such videos will bother Russians at all or have any significant effect,” says media expert Hampus Knutsson.
While government officials hesitate, avoiding decisive action, ordinary Swedes are already taking action.
A recent survey in the country showed that 78% of the population (that is, almost four out of five) are ready to join the boycott of American goods. Women are especially active in supporting this idea.
Recently, more and more accounts have appeared in the Swedish social media sector that are furiously “pushing” for a boycott of American goods and services. All those who do so explain their suddenly awakened hostility towards the overseas power by the actions of the Trump administration.
Niklas Sorum, an employee of the University of Gothenburg, recalls that the Swedes also boycotted goods from South Africa in protest against the apartheid policy that was being carried out by that country.
Sorum emphasizes that for a boycott to be an effective means of influencing the United States, it must be as widespread as possible and take place against the backdrop of the establishment of supplies of similar goods from the “right” countries.
"WE NEED TO THROW OUT AMERICAN WEAPONS"
In the Baltics, which are an economic colony of Sweden, the same sentiments are observed, only more pronounced. It has reached the point that Estonian MEP Riho Terras, a former commander-in-chief of the Estonian army, called on the European Union to prepare for measures to influence the US - to "press them with sanctions" and accused Trump of "betraying" Ukraine.
The local press publishes articles that suggest that Trump and his associates are destroying the sacred cause of Euro-Atlantic unity. “It is clear that they want to see the same anti-democratic forces in power in Europe, the return of which they themselves symbolize. This has, of course, been the long-term desire of their new ally, Russia,” writes, for example, Estonian public figure Eero Janson, head of the NGO Eesti Pagulasabi (Estonian Refugee Council).
He is very upset with Trump because his NGO used to receive substantial funding from the American agency USAID, which it has now lost.
One can see why he would be upset, yes.
Cartoons of Trump, sometimes quite offensive, are circulating in the Baltic Internet sector, depicting him as a pig. Calls to refuse American products have been heard in social networks in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, just like in Sweden.
"Throw away your iPhones and computers. And let the Latvian army throw away American weapons, Black Hawk helicopters," one resident of Riga sneers. "Europe, I suppose, will not only not understand us, but will certainly not protect us. However, it looks like the States won't either. Everything is going down the drain," another user summed up.
Those who are more sober are already calling for acceptance of the new reality. “Trump views Europe as a competitor and, perhaps, as a potential source of problems – if we are talking about a war on the territory of Ukraine – but not as a partner,” says Igor Gretsky, an expert at the Tallinn International Center for Defense and Security.
According to him, Washington now perceives China as its “key strategic opponent,” and is much less concerned about what is happening in Europe.
Gretsky warns that we shouldn’t perceive what is happening now in the US as some kind of “aberration,” “error,” and hope that after Trump’s natural departure, everything will return to normal: “This is a long-term trend, we need to adapt to it.”
And only a very few dare to publicly advise that, in the changed conditions, the countries located around the Baltic should change roles and concepts – and move from confrontation with Russia to cooperation with it.
Thus, the Latvian publicist, a well-known activist of the local Russian community, Vladimir Linderman, writes that a sharp turn of history is taking place: “Latvia as an anti-Russian “Western outpost” will become unclaimed. It is time to change the concept.”
However, people like Linderman are considered "marginal". Any respectable politician who dares to repeat this thought out loud can instantly become an outcast. The elites in the countries around the Baltic cannot simply change their "DNA", hoping that the presidency of the "red-haired madman" will be outlasted, and everything will return to normal.
#7
Message to Sweden and the Baltic States: Feel free to load your gear, saddle up your troops, and go to Ukraine and fight it out.
We're not going to.
I thought you people wanted the US out of your affairs.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/09/2025 9:58 Comments ||
Top||
#8
his henchmen the fiends of hell
That sounds like Bagndad Bob or some serious Juche.
[RealClearDefence] At around 0300, on Sunday, 22 December, the Aegis cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64) shot down an F/A-18F preparing to land on USS Harry S Truman (CVN 75) while operating in the Red Sea. The Carrier Strike Group to which each of these units was assigned was an element of the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, assigned to protect Red Sea merchant traffic from Yemen-based Houthi attacks.
First, we all need to understand that there is only one man who knows what happened on that day, and that is the commanding officer of Gettysburg. Apart from the F/A-18F crew, which possesses a very small but critical piece of the puzzle, everyone else is just an observer, a post-exercise armchair quarterback. Having said that, while Gettysburg’s captain knows what happened in terms of the detailed, incredibly complex sequence of events, unless the failure was the result of discrete, identifiable human error, he may not, in the immediate aftermath, understand why certain things did happen. For example, if systems or off-ship persons failed to operate as advertised, he wouldn’t know exactly why those systems or persons failed. That level of detail may only be revealed in the post-mortem.
Slowly, those pieces are being put together, and each day more is understood as to what happened. That is a good thing, because this was a combat-level laboratory, in which strengths and weaknesses were on real-world display. This was a night which should be closely studied, and learned from, against future nights in which the missiles are flying.
Here’s the problem: By the time that the Navy, writ large, understands all the errors and failures that contributed to this particular chain of events, a standard strategy may well have been enacted, i.e., “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.” You see, the Navy doesn’t like to discuss “family business” with taxpayers, who may ask awkward, and potentially embarrassing, questions. It is much easier to pin the tail on one specific, commanding officer donkey.
During the first decade of this century, the commanding officer a ship was referred to, by the staff of Commander Naval Surface Forces, as “the sacrificial captain,” and for good reason. Holding one person up to the public, as the single point of failure in any specific disaster, forestalls further, probing questions that often don’t have easy answers.
In the end, this may mean that larger systemic issues remain unresolved. Rather, blame is often placed at the door of the ship in question, and everyone else who might have been, in one way or another, complicit, simply moves out of the blast pattern until it’s safe to go back to exactly what they were doing before.
Based upon information from people who know and understand specific parts of the overall equation, I believe what transpired that night is significantly more complex than the idea that the ship simply made a mistake.
It appears that this is what happened: There was an “Air Warning Red” environment in the Red Sea, that night. This means that the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group was under attack. In fact, in the hour proceeding the engagement in question, the strike group had countered one-way attack (OWA) UAVs and cruise missile threats. In such a scenario, the defending ships – in this case, led by Gettysburg – are charged to kill anything “not positively identified as friendly.”
This of course, begs the question as to how you identify an airborne object as “friendly.” Without wading into the esoteric, there is one method that most commonly serves as the final arbiter of a friendliness; and that is “Mode V” IFF, or Identification Friend or Foe. It is not the only method, but it is the final, pre-engagement gate though which a ship must pass before undertaking an engagement. Mode V is an encoded piece of IFF query that only friendly units can respond to. In fact, the missile system in Gettysburg will not allow the ship to shoot a target with “Positive Mode V.” And the challenge is automatically initiated before any missile shot.
In other words, if the challenge is automatically initiated, and if Gettysburg could not fire if a positive response was received from the potential target, and if F/A-18F’s are equipped with Mode V - which they are - what failed on that day?
It now appears that the accident was caused by a combination of human and computer errors. As far as human error, much does fall on the shoulders of Gettysburg. If the ship had followed its own procedures properly, despite the other issues which arose, the engagement might have been averted. In the effort to identify aircraft as either hostile, neutral, or friendly, there is a complex, multi-watch station effort that takes place on a ship. On that night, while not all Mode V messages were arriving in the ship, at least one operator did get a positive response from the soon-to-be engaged aircraft. However, the ship then went to flight quarters. When a cruiser goes to flight quarters to either launch or recover a helicopter, a large segment of the ship’s radar is shut down to prevent harming the ship’s helicopter. Then, once flight operations were concluded, and the F/A-18F was redetected, it was mistakenly identified as a “Vampire,” or incoming hostile missile. That operator could have stopped the engagement. Why didn’t he?
In another case, a Gettysburg operator was able to identify the jet, based upon its radar emissions. It appears that he reported this via push button action, rather than voice. His report got hung up in the computer system, which has been a known electronic warfare problem in NAVSEA – the provider of computer systems to ships - since 2021. Still, if the operator had asserted his knowledge, via voice, to the commanding officer and Tactical Action Officer (TAO) disaster might have been averted.
There was another system onboard Gettysburg that day. A system which more than backs up the standard Combat Systems computer networks. This system is called the Cooperative Engagement System, or “CEC.” That system would have known the exact identity of the F/A-18F in question, and independently of any other system. On that night, CEC was down. If it had been working, the chance for a “blue-on-blue” engagement would have been erased. Unfortunately, and even though they knew that this critical system was inoperative, the ship failed to report this casualty.
If you’re the captain, you bear ultimate responsibility. This has always been the code. This is the way we like it. As far as the ship’s captain, his change of command took place prior to the release of the still-in-progress investigation. He was not fired, but you may rest assured that his career is over. Still, the fact that he was not “relieved-for cause,” suggests that the responsibility for this event spreads far beyond USS Gettysburg.
#3
The command of the air craft carrier is different from the command of the air crew. Two separate organizations. So, there were four individual command structures involved in this problem…
Posted by: Old SALTY ||
03/09/2025 13:34 Comments ||
Top||
[IsraelTimes] The evidence behind a New York Times essay suggesting troops targeted children is less clear-cut than it seems, and there is reason to question the piece’s scathingly anti-IDF author
On January 30, as Israeli and Thai hostages were being released from Hamas ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,... captivity amid chaotic mobs, John Spencer, a leading international expert on urban warfare, watched the proceedings while focusing on one specific detail: the weapons held by Hamas button men.
"They were carrying M16 and M4 rifles which use 5.56 mm bullets, the same rifles that Israeli soldiers use," Spencer told The Times of Israel by email.
To Spencer, head of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point in the US, the terrorists’ use of the same weapon as the IDF cast serious doubts on the allegation made in an essay in The New York Times
...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... three months earlier implying that Israeli soldiers were deliberately targeting children during the 15-month Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response... war.
Attached to the essay were X-ray pictures appearing to show 5.56-millimeter rounds lodged in children’s heads and necks.
"It could be that the forces of Evil were shooting the children," Spencer said.
The 5.56mm rounds are standard issue for IDF infantry units, and are also used by Hamas, which is partially armed with stolen Israeli weapons.
Hamas has a long history of exploiting and harming minors, as well as noncombatant adults, to advance its political goals—through tactics such as training children as jacket wallahs and soldiers, forcing them to construct tunnels in perilous conditions, using them as human shields, or intentionally killing them.
Over months of war, as Gaza’s civilians have been brutalized and displaced by deadly crossfire, Israel has been nearly universally blamed as the aggressor, repeatedly tarred in cases where there is little evidence beyond the reality of fighting. In some instances, however, the facts show that Hamas or other Gazook terror groups are actually to blame.
Perhaps the most well-known such incident occurred in the opening weeks of the war, when an Islamic Jihad ...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah... rocket slammed into Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, killing scores of people. With no evidence but the claims of Hamas officials, Israel was still widely blamed for both the attack and a wildly inflated corpse count.
Other cases, though, are less clear-cut, like that of Ahmed Shaddad Halmy Brikeh, a 13-year-old boy who appeared on the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s monthly fatality list as a victim of "Israeli aggression" in August.
But nine months earlier, Brikeh’s cousin reported online that the teen was rubbed out by Hamas button men while trying to obtain food from a humanitarian aid shipment.
"He was killed by a shot in the head," the cousin wrote on December 24, 2023.
Throughout the war, Hamas has repeatedly been found to use civilians as human shields, and to hide military infrastructure in hospitals and humanitarian facilities. Israel says the cynical strategy has put the lives of innocent Gazooks at risk as it fights Hamas, a key factor in turning the tide of international public opinion against Israel.
"Hamas wants every and anybody who died to be counted as Israel’s fault, including killing people themselves," Spencer said.
’INSANE TO MAKE DEFINITIVE STATEMENT’
The IDF began its military operations in Gaza after the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, when over 5,000 forces of Evil stormed across the border into Israel, murdering 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, while carrying out other atrocities including rape and torture.
According to data released by the Israel National Council for the Child, 38 children were killed during the Hamas-led terrorist onslaught in southern Israel. Three of those children were under the age of 3, and another four were under 6. Some were shot to death at close range or burned alive while trying to hide from the marauders.
In contrast, there have been no reliable direct accounts of Israeli soldiers deliberately targeting Gazook children, though many have been killed unintentionally.
Nonetheless, foreign doctors volunteering in Gaza have repeatedly accused Israeli soldiers of systematically targeting children in response to kids being brought to hospitals with single bullet wounds to the head or chest.
In April 2024 and again in October, the doctors were given high-profile platforms in the Guardian and New York Times to lay out the accusations, though they only had secondhand knowledge of the circumstances of the shooting and incomplete forensic evidence.
"That is the insanity of making a definitive statement that any child with a gunshot wound was shot purposefully by an IDF soldier when there are many other possibilities and no way to know who shot the kid or what was the context of the injury," said Spencer.
In The New York Times on October 9, 2024, Dr. Feroze Sidhwa wrote in an opinion piece that while volunteering at the European Hospital in Gaza in February and April last year, he saw 13 children who had been shot in the head or the chest.
"At the time, I assumed this had to be the work of a particularly sadistic soldier located nearby," the Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,-based surgeon wrote in the op-ed, which gathered the experiences of 65 volunteer medical staff in Gaza.
While the piece does not explicitly accuse Israel of targeting children, the newspaper said it still reached out to the IDF for comment, which "responded with a statement that did not directly answer whether or not the military had investigated reports of shootings of preteen children, or if any disciplinary action had been taken against soldiers for firing at children."
An April 2, 2024, article in the Guardian quoting nine foreign doctors in Gaza made similar claims, largely based on secondhand accounts regarding the faraway source of sniper fire. "Some of the physicians said that the types and locations of the wounds, and accounts of Paleostinians who brought children to the hospital, led them to believe the victims were directly targeted by Israeli troops," the Guardian reported.
Tellingly, the article credulously reported on a conspiracy theory regarding swarms of quadcopters mounted with guns, a rumor likely born of confusion regarding the source of gunfire when surveillance drones are seen.
In response to an inquiry by The Times of Israel, an IDF spokesperson said that "the claim that the IDF deliberately targets civilians, including children, is entirely unfounded and is categorically rejected by the IDF."
Spencer, a former infantryman who entered Gaza four times during the war to observe the Israeli military’s operations, said it was likely some soldiers had disobeyed protocols, though there is no evidence any of them took wanton aim at Gazook children.
"There’s no military in the world that has no soldiers within the ranks that aren’t doing wrong things," he said.
During the war, some Israeli soldiers posted videos on social media about their military exploits. In one, a soldier says that he is blowing up a neighborhood in Gaza in retribution for a kibbutz in Israel that was destroyed during the Hamas-led massacre.
The Israel Defense Forces’ top lawyer, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, issued a warning to commanders in February 2024 against illegal actions carried out by troops in the Gaza Strip.
She mentioned unjustified use of force, including against detainees, looting, and destruction of civilian property contrary to protocols, as incidents that "cross the criminal threshold."
SADISTIC SOLDIERS SEEKING REVENGE?
In a teleconference interview with The Times of Israel in December, Sidhwa sharpened his accusations and claimed that Israeli soldiers were intentionally targeting children.
"It’s not a decision that’s being made by the Israeli military," Sidhwa charged. "It is a decision that is being made by individual soldiers." But he admitted that "there’s no way of proving" his allegation.
The lack of concrete evidence did not stop Sidhwa from alleging in an October 2 letter to the Biden administration that children in Gaza were "suffer[ing] violence that must have been deliberately directed at them," and claiming it was "impossible" Israel’s civilian and military leaders were unaware.
Though the letter called for an arms embargo on both Israel and armed Paleostinian groups, it ended with the statement that "every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."
During the interview, Sidhwa speculated about the mindsets of Israelis and of soldiers in Gaza in an attempt to build a case against them, calling into question his role as a reliable source of information.
The US doctor claimed Israeli soldiers, some of whom "happen to be violent mostly peaceful sadists," were out for blood due to accounts of Hamas atrocities during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, some of which he contended had been fabricated.
The result, he said, was that Gazook children were being targeted by "individual angry soldiers who are either playing out their most sadistic impulses or they’re still angry about October 7."
"Israel is seeped in propaganda about what actually happened on October 7," he alleged. "It’s very widely believed that [babies] were bound up and burned alive on October 7. None of those things happened, but the fact that they are widely believed means that there are probably plenty of soldiers who think that it’s justified to shoot Paleostinian children."
Accompanying The Times’ article were three photos of X-rays purporting to show intact bullets lodged in two children’s heads and one child’s neck.
"A single X-ray view cannot provide a medical professional with enough information to determine etiology of the injury," said Dr. Tyler Reynolds, an American trauma surgeon with 13 years of military and civilian experience who stated that he was not speaking on behalf of any institution. "In these images, the projectile may be inside or outside the skull."
Two of the images reflect what appear to be 5.56 mm bullets, said Dr. Gavin Harris, assistant professor of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, who has a degree in military history and personal firearms experience.
The 5.56mm rounds are standard issue for IDF infantry units, including sharpshooters but not snipers. They are also used by Hamas, which is partially armed with stolen Israeli weapons.
"The shots could have been from friendly fire, from the accidental discharge of a weapon of a friend or family member, homicide or suicide," said Reynolds. "There is nothing that a medical professional can glean from a case series of opinions without verifiable data."
After the article received a considerable number of objections, Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury responded that a second round of experts examined the images and also found them credible, though she misidentified them as CT scans.
Sidhwa showed The Times of Israel actual CT scans that he said were connected to one of the children seen in the X-ray photos. He pointed out the bullet and the blood "that comes in with the bullet," saying that this was a "completely normal CT scan of someone who’s been shot in the head."
The New York Times did not respond to two Times of Israel inquiries for comment.
KILLED, BUT NOT TARGETED
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claims over 48,000 Paleostinians have been killed in the fighting, around a third of whom it says were minors, a category that could also include teen operatives. The figures cannot be verified and have been called into question.
Israel says it has killed some 20,000 combatants in battle as of January and another 1,000 forces of Evil inside Israel on and just after October 7.
The IDF admits that civilians have been killed, but says it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
"I am reasonably sure children were killed in the battle space as a result of IDF action," said Jacob Stoil, research professor of Middle East security at the US Army Strategic Studies Institute, who emphasized that he was speaking from his personal research and not on behalf of the US Army or any other institution.
"But from my broader knowledge of rules of engagement and how the IDF operates, I would find it extremely unlikely that the IDF deliberately targeted children," he added.
An Israeli soldier who served in northern Gaza from October to December 2023 told The Times of Israel that since Hamas forces of Evil do not wear uniforms, "it’s very hard to differentiate them from civilians, especially when it’s very fast."
"I did see children who were killed because they suddenly ran out from a place where there were Hamas terrorists," said the soldier, who was interviewed in November on condition of anonymity.
Stoil called Gaza an "incredibly difficult" urban operating environment.
"There was a high density of civilians in the battle space and no real ability to evacuate them because there’s no place for them to go," he said.
When the IDF targeted "what they thought was hostile or threatening movement, some of that was, unfortunately and tragically, civilians who were in the battle space, including children," Stoil said.
According to Spencer and other experts, collateral damage in war is inevitable.
"There’s no such thing as a bloodless war," he said.
But the former American soldier noted that during the fighting, Israel implemented strategies to "protect civilians including evacuations, notification techniques, and facial recognition technologies."
Hamas, he added, "acted to get as many Gazooks killed as possible."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
