Israel is Crossing All Boundaries as America Tires of its Endless Wars

by Daniel McAdams Posted onApril 10, 2024

Last week the Israelis scored a bloody “hat trick” – slaughtering seven international food aid workers, demolishing the last major hospital operating in Gaza, and – perhaps most dangerous – attacking an Iranian diplomatic facility in Damascus, Syria, in which several senior Iranian military figures were killed.

There is a very good reason diplomatic facilities are off limits even in times of war. It has been mutually beneficial for thousands of years for all parties to know that they may continue to communicate and conduct diplomacy even during crises and war with messengers and diplomats able to fulfil their duties unmolested. Attacks on diplomatic facilities are so rare that when they do occur even the most apology-averse regimes find themselves obligated to break out the ashes and sackcloth. When the US bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, for example, there were moments when a US war with China was suddenly not beyond imagination. It was extremely tense – until the US government offered profuse apologies and compensation to the families of the victims.

The Israeli attack on an Iranian embassy complex in Syria – a country Israel has been habitually bombing for years with impunity including in a separate case just days before the Iran embassy attack where 53 Syrians were killed in Aleppo under Israeli bombs – is thus a serious and boldfaced threat to the existing world order. When all the rules and customs are thrown aside, doors are suddenly opened for previously unimaginable actions and consequences.

Why would Israel risk a direct confrontation with an Iran that is strong and well-armed – including reportedly with hypersonic missiles – at this point in its ongoing bloodbath in Gaza? It seems by calculation.

Many observers believe that, six months into its operation in Gaza with no discernible degrading of the strength of Hamas as a political or fighting force – and with some 33,000 Palestinian civilians killed in the process – Israel is looking to get out by going further in. In other words, Tel Aviv is looking to extricate itself from a growing crisis by escalating its war to Iran and Lebanon (and perhaps Syria) with the idea that its dedicated supporters among the US political elites of both parties will join together to pull Israel’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Already at home, tens of thousands are taking to the Israeli streets to demand new elections and negotiations to get the Israeli hostages released. While polls suggest most Israelis favor Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza, they are frustrated with the lack of any result and the continued specter of Israelis being held by Hamas.

Opposition to the Netanyahu regime’s total war against Palestinians in Gaza is not limited to Israel itself or what is called the “global south” or the “global majority” (meaning Russia, China, India, and the rest of the BRICS countries), but even inside the United States, where unquestioning support for Israel was once nearly automatic and opposition to US/Israel being joined at the hip only came from what were dismissed as “the fringes.”

According to a new poll from the Gallup organization, the “Majority in U.S. Now Disapprove of Israeli Action in Gaza.” The numbers from their recent poll are devastating not only to Tel Aviv but to our political class at home: “approval has dropped from 50% to 36% since November,” reports Gallup.

That means for the first time in recent memory, the people of the United States are fed up with backing Israel’s endless aggression in the Middle East. The numbers are worse for Biden voters – hence the desperation in his re-election camp – but even among Israel’s stalwart supporters in the US Republican Party, support for Israel has slipped from 71 percent to just 64 percent just since November.

That number is sure to sink further, as GOP dinosaurs like Mitch McConnell are being supplanted by a Republican Party that appears to be – slowly – waking up to the disaster created by US foreign policy interventionism. So when McConnell warns that even as his short-circuiting brain has caused him to step down from Republican leadership in the Senate, he is determined to finish his term with the singular goal of defeating growing “isolationism” among his GOP Senate colleagues…well, would you want to advertise “Glitch Mitch” as your poster child for foreign policy? The guy who eagerly lent his face to each of the disastrous wars of the 21st century?

His attacks on his fellow Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul, as someone who “would be the first one to say that he’s an isolationist” just seem increasingly wince-inducing and out-of-touch.

So what will Iran do to respond to Israel’s attack on its embassy in Syria? The US is reportedly on “high alert” for an Iranian response in the Middle East, but also has reportedly assured Iran it would not respond to any Iranian retaliation against Israeli aggression. Washington reportedly informed Iran that Israel did not give it a heads up before hitting its embassy in Damascus.

Is it a trap? I have suspicions, but no information beyond that.

For its part, a senior Israeli official hinted that the country may use nuclear weapons against Iran if Iran retaliates and the US does not jump in on Israel’s side: “In the event of a conflict with Iran, if we do not receive American ammunition – we will have to use everything we have…”

These are the woes an interventionist foreign policy brings to Americans. Which is why we do not support getting involved in the affairs of any country overseas. Yes, that goes for Israel too. And we are happy that finally the rest of the country is coming in our direction. Hopefully it is not too late.

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.

From Jerry Falwell Jr. to Dr. Drew: 5 Coronavirus Doubters

Misinformation about the coronavirus continues to circulate across swaths of the American media — on popular podcasts, in blog posts, in online videos and on prime-time cable news shows — as recently as this week.

© Rich Fury/Getty Images Dr. Drew Pinsky has condoned flouting the directives of public health officials.

Some of the disseminators are entertainers. Others are medical doctors. Some are conservatives who insist the virus is being hyped for political purposes. One is a comedian with no medical training who has raised doubts about vaccinating children.

Even as President Trump and the federal government’s top public health officials warn that the virus is not something to be taken lightly — and the authorities reported more coronavirus deaths in the United States on Wednesday — these commentators make misleading comments, cherry-pick facts and go so far as to claim that the virus could be a hoax or a North Korean plot.


Dr. Drew and Rob Schneider scoff at staying home.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, the celebrity addiction specialist whose HLN cable news show was canceled after he speculated in 2016 that Hillary Clinton might be seriously ill, has condoned on his current web program flouting the directives of public health officials who are urging Americans not to go about their business as usual.

Dr. Pinsky has also handed over his program to the comedian Rob Schneider, a former “Saturday Night Live” performer, who says the coronavirus crackdowns are nothing more than political stunts by elected officials seeking the spotlight.

Mr. Schneider, who has also opposed mandatory vaccines for children, appeared Monday on Dr. Pinsky’s program and talked about going out to dinner in defiance of the new guidelines.

“This is not affecting people who are healthy,” Mr. Schneider said, falsely.

Dr. Pinsky agreed, saying sick people should stay home, but “everyone else goes about their business.”

[Video: Watch on YouTube.]

Sean Hannity makes misleading claims about death rates.

Sean Hannity, the host of the most-watched program on cable news, has used his platform to play down the seriousness of the coronavirus. Mr. Hannity, who reaches close to four million people each weeknight on Fox News and about 15 million each week on his syndicated radio show, describes his approach as “facts without fear,” presenting himself to his audience as a truth-teller in a time of panic.

© Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images Sharyl Attkisson, a podcast host, has published her own analysis of coronavirus death rates.

In the opening of his Fox program on Monday, Mr. Hannity fumed at Democrats and the “media mob” for spreading “hysteria” and “fake news” before making a misleading claim about coronavirus deaths that many of Mr. Trump’s media allies have repeated since the outbreak began.


Citing tens of thousands of flu deaths each year, Mr. Hannity said, “Thankfully the toll surrounding coronavirus is lower.” Such claims ignore the fact that the virus is just beginning to be diagnosed in the United States, and that those who get it are far more likely to die. Experts, including those who have appeared on Mr. Hannity’s show, like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, say it is perhaps 10 times as deadly as the seasonal flu.

Mr. Hannity then went on to predict that in “hopefully four to six weeks, max,” the country “can get back to life as normal.”

[Video: Watch on YouTube.]

One of Mr. Hannity’s top sources selectively picks facts.

Sharyl Attkisson, a former CBS News journalist, has developed a devoted following among right-leaning television viewers.

In the past, she has promoted the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Now she has taken an intense interest in coronavirus and published her own analysis of the death rates, which Mr. Hannity cited on his radio program on Monday even though the information was several days out of date.

The facts she has chosen recently to highlight falsely leave the impression that the deaths are not all that significant in number and largely contained to one facility.

“Look at those 30-some-odd deaths — most of them were from Washington State,” Ms. Attkisson said last week on her podcast, adding that most of those were in an assisted-living facility. “The vast majority of those who passed away were from one cluster in the United States — almost none anywhere else.”

And yet visitors to Ms. Attkisson’s website this week might have come away confused about the severity of the virus, as there were several ads for high-grade protective masks.

Jerry Falwell Jr. suggests North Koreans are behind the virus.

Jerry Falwell Jr., a close ally of Mr. Trump, appeared last week on “Fox & Friends” and offered a startling explanation for the virus’s arrival in the United States.

Mr. Falwell, the president of Liberty University and son of the famous evangelist, shared a theory that he said he had heard from a local restaurant owner: Perhaps the North Koreans and the Chinese colluded to spread the coronavirus inside the United States.

“He said, ‘You remember the North Korean leader promised a Christmas present for America?’” Mr. Falwell asked the “Fox & Friends” hosts. “Could it be they got together with China and this is that present? I don’t know. But it really is something strange going on here.”

None of the hosts challenged Mr. Falwell on his baseless conspiracy theory.

[Video: Watch on YouTube.]

Ron Paul sees ‘a big hoax.’

Ron Paul, the former Texas congressman and Republican presidential candidate, has long spread conspiracy theories about the government, describing secret plots underway to undermine the rights of citizens. The government’s response to the coronavirus, he wrote this week, could be one of those plots.

Mr. Paul, who is a physician, appeared to mock the designation of the outbreak as a pandemic.

“People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated by those who seek to profit — financially or politically — from the ensuing panic,” he wrote in a baseless article on the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity website that was then posted on the website of the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Monday.

Mr. Paul pointed to the small U.S. death toll at the time — noting that it was not even 100 people. It has since quickly reached that grim milestone.

Another Fascist Bites the Dust

RON GOSTICK, R.I.P.

Actually its good riddance to this home grown Alberta fascist, who founded the Canadian Intelligence Service (sic), Canadian League of Rights, etc. etc ad naseum.

His eulogy is written by current fascist spokesman Paul Fromm and published here at the Australian League of Rights site, which is a creepy slimy fascist organization, that came about as part of the Right Wing League of Rights groups in Canada (Gostick was its founder), the US, and England. You can tell them by their motto:"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke

You have been warned. I publish this here because its important to learn the links that the right wing rump of the Reform/Alliance/Conservatives and their friends have to the fascist movement in Canada. Interestingly Gosticks death was over shadowed by that of Wolfgang Droege, leader of the Heritage Front, who died this spring.

Gostick's importance in the continuation of the post war fascist movement (packaging itself as an anti-communist movement during the long Cold War) of the right in Canada should not be underestimated. Often overshadowed by those high profile fascists in the media like Droege, James Keegstra, and Zundel whom would not have existed had it not been for Gostick and his pal Pat Walsh.

Their hatred of Trudeau and publication of scurilous attacks on him, as well as their unrepentant anti-semitism, pro-white/Celtic/Saxon, anti-bilingualism publishing lead to the creation of the anti-hate laws in Canada. They drew attention to themselves and their small publishing empire by their continued attacks on Trudeau.

Gostick and Walsh had the base of their operations in Southern Alberta, and Southern Ontario, in the farming and evangelical protestant communities. Today Southern Ontario is still a base for fascists like Paul Fromm.

In Canada itself, neo-fascist groups continue to organize. Over the past few months, in southern Ontario, the Canadian Heritage Alliance has developed as a youth organization with links both to former Heritage Front members and to long-time far-rightists, Paul Fromm and Marc Lemire. At the same time, a new group associated with White Power Skinheads, the Canadian Ethnic Cleansing Team, has emerged in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. In Calgary, there is a new presence of the National Alliance, a US-based international neo-Nazi organization; in Ontario and in BC, the white racist World Church of the Creator is showing renewed strength, while in Quebec, the Vinland Skinheads are organizing in both the Anglophone and Francophone communities. Fascism at the End of the Twentieth Century, David Lethbridge

In Southern Alberta Gostick and Walsh found a fertile base for their ideology, as it was also the home of Dutch Emirgres of the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church and the Mormons. Both of these sects viewed the choosen people as being 'white', the CRC was strongly affiliated with the aparthied State in South Africa.

They can be credited with having influenced Alberta Seperatism as the ideology that lay beneath the populist Western Canadian reformist veneer of Doug Christies Western Canada Concept (WCC), and Elmer Knutsen's Confederation of Regions Party,

A reading of any of the WCC or CRP publications from the seventies shows the same belief in creating a 'white only' ( Celtic/Saxon peoples), anti-Quebec/Anti-bilingualism/Anti-Multiculturalism Independent Alberta/Western Canada. These ideas today are still thinly vieled in the Alberta Seperatist movement.

A Separation Party of Alberta government will establish and administer its own immigration program and support an immigration policy based on acceptable applicants who will embrace our way of life and accept our standards of behavior and abide by our laws.

The reason for this calamity is that Family Class immigrants constitute
over 60% of all immigrants. Asians are displacing the founding race of
this country at an alarming pace specifically because we allow them to
bring in family members from Third World nations. Meanwhile, highly
qualified European workers have to go through the rigours of the points
system, where their eligibility is appraised according to their
proficiency in English or French and the correlation of their specific
occupational history to the list of underrepresented occupations established by
Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Family class immigrants, of course,
have no requirement to know English or French and their occupational
history is considered irrelevant. BC White Pride

Gostick and his gang were the fascist rump of the Social Credit party, which was always inherent in Major Douglas's Social Credit ideology. In Albera it was a direct result of the party moving from being a populist reformist movement in Alberta to taking state power under the direction of the Evangelicalists Bill Abreheart and then Ernest Manning. Manning's son Preston of course resurected his own right wing populist movement post WCC/CFR which became the Reform/Alliance/Conservative party.

I am surprised that Warren Kinsella, Mr. Right Wing Watch himself, missed this. But then again he is being busy with his efforts at self promoting and of course sucking up to the Tories, well I guess his anti-fascism is in the past replaced with his current neo-punk rocker career.......

Ron went to college in Calgary and took further business studies in Chicago. He joined the Canadian Army in 1941 and served as a court reporter in Ottawa and Toronto. Immediately after the war, Ron served as the General Secretary of the Social Credit Party of Canada. Party intrigues soured him on political parties. Major Douglas had warned against the formation of a Social Credit Party, believing that it would be better to spread the philosophy of economic reform, hoping that people of good will in many parties would adopt it. Ron began his publishing activities, at first distributing copies of his newspaper by motorcycle around Ontario.

A Social Creditor and journalist would seem to have made Ron fairly mainstream - at least not a subject for law enforcement scrutiny. However, his voluminous RCMP file, obtained some years ago by lawyer Barbara Kulazska reveals than his meetings were under Mountie surveillance as early as the late 1940s. Ron's Christian principles led him into many causes. He was a firm anti-communist at a time when trendy Canadians like Pierre Trudeau were open admirers of tyrants like Fidel Castro and Mao tse-Tung. When Rhodesia declared independence in 1965, he rallied to the cause of the Ian Smith experiment, grounded in Christianity and a gradual approach to Negro involvement. Ron strongly opposed the Pearson's pennant coup d'etat, the invention of a "new" Canadian flag and the abandonment of the Red Ensign, as a prelude to the changing of the country the flag symbolized, through massive Third World immigration, multiculturalism and the sacrificing of our sovereignty through internationalism. When Royal Canadian Legion Branch 333 became a hotbed of pro-Red Ensign sentiment, Dominion command in Ottawa, under political pressure, decreed that Ron Gostick must be purged as president or the branch would lose its accreditation. He was. Assisted by his longtime associate, former RCMP undercover agent Patrick Walsh, burly Irishman from Quebec City who spoke with a distinctly French accent, Ron warned repeatedly of communist infiltration and subversion in Canadian politics.

In the early 1980s, Ron warned of the dangers of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Far from granting us rights, it, in fact, restricts them. Under British Common Law, one had the right to do whatever one wanted, except what was expressly forbidden by law. Under the Charter the State grants citizens a seemingly impressive list of rights. Yet, this list can be and often is severely restricted by the courts - see, the many and growing limitations on freedom of speech. Other essentials, such as the ownership of property, aren't even listed as rights at all.

More recently, Ron formed the Third Option for National Unity Committee. He worried both about Quebec separatism and Western alienation. There was a third option, he argued, to the extremes of separation, of totalitarian interfering rule from Ottawa. That option was to return to the letter of the BNA Act which granted direct taxation, education, health and many other functions to the provincial governments. Federal usurpation of these powers was at the heart of the legitimate grievances of the Quebec nationalists and the Western separatists.
Paul Fromm

Phillip Butler of Australia
I first met Ron Gostick in London towards the end of 1966 as he was returning from Rhodesia. On behalf of the Canadian Friends of Rhodesia, he had presented the commander of the Rhodesian Armed Forces with monies raised to purchase fuel. The Candour League, headed by A.K. Chesterton had arranged the meeting. From then on Ron and the Gostick family played a big part in my life. I flew to Toronto and spent an incredible family-orientated Christmas with them. Australians can only dream of a "White Christmas", but that year in the little village of Flesherton, Grey County - approximately 100 miles north of Toronto - I was welcomed into a caring, jovial Gostick family gathering to share a truly "White Christmas". (SIC) [and he isn't talking about Snow, ep]
The office of Canadian Intelligence Publications is centred there, out of which grew the Christian Action Movement (CAM) and in turn - after much consultation with his close political and social crediter friend, Eric D. Butler of Australia - The Canadian League of Rights (CLR) was set up. In late 1969 I commenced a 20 year stint with the CLR as Ron's Deputy National Director.

The Coronavirus Pandemic Has Set Off A Massive Expansion Of Government Surveillance. Civil Libertarians Aren't Sure What To Do.

As nations around the world take on sweeping new powers to fight the disease, critics aren't sure what's necessary and what's too far.
 March 30, 2020, 

The coronavirus pandemic, which has grown to over 740,000 cases and 35,000 deaths around the world, has been so singular an event that even some staunch advocates for civil liberties say they’re willing to accept previously unthinkable surveillance measures.

“I’m very concerned” about civil liberties, writer Glenn Greenwald, cofounder of the Intercept, who built his career as a critic of government surveillance, told BuzzFeed News. “But at the same time, I'm also much more receptive to proposals that in my entire life I never expected I would be, because of the gravity of the threat.”

Greenwald won a Pulitzer Prize in 2014 for his reporting on the disclosures by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed a vast secret infrastructure of US government surveillance. But like others who have spent years raising concerns about government overreach, he now accepts the idea that surveilling people who have contracted the coronavirus could be better than harsher measures to save lives.

“The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years — even before Snowden, and then obviously, the two or three years during Snowden — advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald said he was still trying to understand how to balance his own views on privacy against the current unprecedented situation. “We have to be very careful not to get into that impulse either where we say, ‘Hey, because your actions affect the society collectively, we have the right now to restrict it in every single way.’ We're in this early stage where our survival instincts are guiding our thinking, and that can be really dangerous. And I’m trying myself to calibrate that.”

“The kind of digital surveillance that I spent a lot of years advocating against is now something I think could be warranted principally to stave off the more brute solutions that were used in China.”

And he is far from the only prominent civil libertarian and opponent of surveillance trying to calibrate their response as governments around the world are planning or have already implemented location-tracking programs to monitor coronavirus transmission, and have ordered wide-scale shutdowns closing businesses and keeping people indoors. Broad expansions of surveillance power that would have been unimaginable in February are being presented as fait accompli in March.

That has split an international community that would have otherwise been staunchly opposed to such measures. Is the coronavirus the kind of emergency that requires setting aside otherwise sacrosanct commitments to privacy and civil liberties? Or like the 9/11 attacks before it, does it mark a moment in which panicked Americans will accept new erosions on their freedoms, only to regret it when the immediate danger recedes?

“Under these circumstances? Yeah, go for it, Facebook. You know, go for it, Google,” Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and 2016 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, told BuzzFeed News. “But then, when the crisis goes away, how is that going to apply given that it's in place? I mean, these are the obvious questions, and no, that would not be a good thing.”

"My fear is that, historically, in any moment of crisis, people who always want massive surveillance powers will finally have an avenue and an excuse to get them,” Matthew Guariglia, an analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told BuzzFeed News.

Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), told BuzzFeed News that it’s possible to find a solution that protects privacy and prevents the spread of the virus.

“People like to say, 'well, we need to strike a balance between protecting public health and safeguarding privacy' — but that is genuinely the wrong way to think about it,” Rotenberg said. “You really want both. And if you're not getting both, there's a problem with the policy proposal.”


Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
An aerial view from a drone shows an empty Interstate 280 leading into San Francisco, California, March 26.


Beyond the sick and dead, the most immediate effects that the pandemic has visited upon the United States have been broad constraints that state and local governments have imposed on day-to-day movement. Those are in keeping with public health experts’ recommendations to practice social distancing to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

While the US hasn’t announced a nationwide stay-at-home order like France and Italy have, large parts of the US are under some degree of lockdown, with nonessential businesses shuttered and nonessential activities outside the home either banned or discouraged. And while President Trump and his allies have focused on the economic devastation wrought by this shutdown, some libertarians have raised concerns about the damage those decrees have done to people's freedoms.

Appearing on libertarian former Texas lawmaker and two-time Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul’s YouTube show on March 19, Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie pointed to a Kentucky man who, after testing positive for the coronavirus, refused to self-isolate, and whom sheriff's deputies forced to stay home. (Massie later came under bipartisan criticism for attempting to hold up the coronavirus stimulus bill in the House.)

“What would they do if that man walked out and got in his car? Would they shoot him? Would they suit up in hazmat uniforms and drag him off?” Massie said. “Those are the images we saw in China two months ago and everybody was appalled at those images. And now we’re literally, we could be five minutes away from that happening in the United States, here in Kentucky.”

“It’s crazy, and what concerns me the most is that once people start accepting that, in our own country, the fact that somebody could immobilize you without due process, that when this virus is over people will have a more paternalistic view of government and more tolerance for ignoring the Constitution,” Massie said.

Last Monday, Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, announced that he had tested positive for the disease, only a few days after Ron Paul wrote in his online column that the pandemic could be a “big hoax” pushed by “fearmongers” to put more power in government hands.

But the elder Paul's concerns are not shared among some of his fellow former Libertarian Party nominees for president.

Johnson said measures to encourage people to stay in their homes and temporarily shutter businesses taken by states like New York were appropriate. “I really have to believe that they're dealing with [this] in the best way that they possibly can,” he told BuzzFeed News. “And I think it's also telling that most of them are following the same route.”

Johnson added that although it was easy to raise criticisms, as a former governor, he saw few other options.

“You're just not hearing it: What are the alternatives?” Johnson said. “I don't know, not having [currently] sat at the table as governor, what the options were. And given that every state appears to be doing the same thing, I have to believe that everything is based on the best available information.”

A security guard looks at tourists through his augmented reality eyewear equipped with an infrared temperature detector in Xixi Wetland Park in Hangzhou in east China's Zhejiang province Tuesday, March 24. Feature China/Barcroft Media via Getty Images



A map application developed by The Baidu Inc. displays the locations visited by people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Feb. 21. Qilai Shen / Bloomberg via Getty Images


Gaming out the role of intense surveillance during a pandemic isn’t just a theoretical political debate on YouTube. Surveillance at previously politically unimaginable scales has reached countries around the world.

Imagine opening an app, scanning a QR code, and creating a profile that’s instantly linked with information about your health and where you've been. The app tells you if you’ve been in close contact with someone sick with the coronavirus.

This software already exists in China. Developed by the Electronics Technology Group Corporation and the Chinese government, it works by tapping into massive troves of data collected by the private sector and the Chinese government. In South Korea, the government is mapping the movements of COVID-19 patients using data from mobile carriers, credit card companies, and the Institute of Public Health and Environment. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the country's internal security agency to tap into a previously undisclosed cache of cellphone data to trace the movements of infected persons in that country and in the West Bank. And in the Indian state of Karnataka, the government is requiring people in lockdown to send it selfies every hour to prove they are staying home.

No such tools currently exist in the United States — but some in the tech community who might have been expected to oppose such capacities have found themselves favoring these previously unthinkable steps.

Maciej Cegłowski, the founder of Pinboard and a frequent critic of tech companies’ intrusions into privacy, wrote a blog post arguing for a “massive surveillance program” to fight the virus.

“My frustration is that we have this giant surveillance network deployed and working," Cegłowski told BuzzFeed News. "We have location tracking. We have people carrying tracking devices on them all the time. But we’re using it to sell skin cream — you know, advertising. And we’re using it to try to persuade investors to put more money into companies. Since that exists and we have this crisis right now, let’s put it to use to save lives.”

“We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if there’s a fire at our neighbor’s house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct.”

This position is a major departure for Ceglowski, who has warned of how tech companies have invaded our “ambient privacy” and argued that tech giants’ reach into our lives is as pernicious a force as government surveillance.

“We put up with the fire department breaking down our door if there’s a fire at our neighbor’s house or in our house because we know that in normal times our houses are sacrosanct,” Cegłowski said. “I think similarly if we can have a sense that we’ll have real privacy regulation, then in emergency situations like this we can decide, hey, we’re going to change some things.”

Those doors are already being broken down. The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network — a collaboration between Facebook, Camber Systems, Cuebiq, and health researchers from 13 universities — will use corporate location data from mobile devices to give local officials "consolidated daily situation reports" about "social distancing interventions."

Representatives from the COVID-19 Mobility Data Network did not respond to requests for comment.


Peter Byrne / AP
A person watching live data reporting about the worldwide spread of the coronavirus.

Lots of companies claim that they have the technology to save people’s lives. But critics worry that they are taking advantage of a vulnerable time in American society to sign contracts that won't easily be backed out of when the threat passes.

“Sometimes people have an almost sacrificial sense about their privacy,” Rotenberg told BuzzFeed News. “They say things like, ‘Well, if it'll help save lives for me to disclose my data, of course, I should do that.’ But that's actually not the right way to solve a problem. Particularly if asking people to sacrifice their privacy is not part of an effective plan to save lives.”

In response to the pandemic, some data analytics and facial recognition companies have offered new uses for existing services. Representatives from data analytics company have reportedly been working with the CDC on collecting and integrating data about COVID-19, while Clearview AI has reportedly been in talks with state agencies to track patients infected by the virus.

Neither Palantir nor Clearview AI responded to requests for comment, but the appearance of these controversial companies has raised alarms among those in the privacy community.

“The deployment of face recognition, as a way of preventing the spread of virus, is something that does not pass the sniff test at all,” Guariglia said. “Even the companies themselves, I don't think, can put out a logical explanation as to how face recognition, especially Clearview, would help.”

The leaders of other technology companies that design tools for law enforcement have tried to offer tools to combat COVID-19 as well. Banjo, which combines social media and satellite data with public information, like CCTV camera footage, 911 calls, and vehicle location, to detect criminal or suspicious activity, will be releasing a tool designed to respond to the outbreak.

“We are working with our partners to finalize a new tool that would provide public health agencies and hospitals with HIPAA-compliant information that helps identify potential outbreaks and more efficiently apply resources to prevention and treatment,” a spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

“We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable.”

Those efforts cause concerns for people like Evan Greer, the deputy director of digital rights activist group Fight for the Future, who told BuzzFeed News that such tools, once deployed, would inevitably be used for more purposes than to fight the pandemic.

“We have so much history that shows us that mass surveillance generally isn't very effective, and mission creep is inevitable,” she said. “It's not necessarily a question of if data that was handed over to the government because of this crisis would be repurposed. It's a matter of when.”

In addition to those companies, many camera makers have been making a bold claim: Using just an infrared sensor, they can detect fevers, helping venues filter out the sick from the healthy. These firms include Dahua Technology in Israel, Guide Infrared in China, Diycam in India, Rapid-Tech Equipment in Australia, and Athena Security in the US.

In late February, Guide Infrared announced that it had donated about $144,000 worth of equipment that could “warn users when fever is detected” to Japan. The company said its devices would be used in Japanese “hospitals and epidemic prevention stations.”

Although Guide Infrared claimed that its “temperature measurement solutions” have helped in emergencies including SARS, H1N1, and Ebola, the Chinese army and government authorities are “some of its major customers,” according to the South China Morning Post. It’s been used in railway stations and airports in major Chinese regions. It’s also partnered with Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the US over its work outfitting Chinese detention centers with surveillance cameras.

Australian company Rapid-Tech Equipment claims that its fever-detection cameras can be used in "minimizing the spread [of] coronavirus infections." Its cameras are being used in Algeria, France, Egypt, Greece, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and “many more” countries, according to its website. UK camera maker Westminster International said that it has a "supply range of Fever Detection Systems for Coronavirus, Ebola & Flu."

US company Testo Thermal Imaging sells two cameras with a “FeverDetection assistant.” A section of its website titled “Why fever detection?” argues that managers of high-traffic venues have a responsibility to filter for fevers: “Whether ebola, SARS or coronavirus: no-one wants to imagine the consequences of an epidemic or even a pandemic.”

A Testo spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the company has seen a “massive increase in demand” for its products in response to the coronavirus and that its cameras are being used “worldwide.” The spokesperson declined to provide specific examples or name specific countries.

While the appetite for fever-detecting cameras is clearly there, civil liberties advocates have concerns. Guariglia said that, regardless of their thermal imaging capabilities, surveillance cameras are surveillance cameras.

“More surveillance cameras always have dubious implications for civil liberties. Even if their contract with thermal imaging ends at the end of six months,” Guariglia said, “I bet those cameras are gonna stay up.”


Aly Song / Reuters
A man wearing a protective mask walks under surveillance cameras in Shanghai.

Julian Sanchez, an analyst with the Cato Institute and commentator on digital surveillance and privacy issues, told BuzzFeed News he was willing to accept measures he might otherwise have concerns about to limit the spread of the virus.

“I’m about as staunch a privacy guy as it gets,” Sanchez said. “In the middle of an epidemic outbreak, there are a number of things I’m willing to countenance that I would normally object to, on the premise that they are temporary and will save a lot of lives.”

But he still questioned the efficacy of some of the current proposals: There’s “a ton of snake oil being pitched by surveillance vendors,” he said.

More than that, he had concerns about what would happen to civil liberties after the pandemic passed, but the measure put in place to combat it did not.

“I think a lot of civil liberties advocates would say, ‘Well, if this is very tightly restricted, and only for this purpose, and it's temporary, then, you know, maybe that's all right. Maybe we’re able to accept that, if we’re confident it's for this purpose, and then it ends,’” Sanchez said. “The question is whether that's the case.”

Sanchez worried that the coronavirus, like the war on terror, is an open-ended threat with no clear end — inviting opportunities for those surveillance measures to be abused long after the threat has passed.

In the same week that he spoke, the US Senate voted to extend until June the FBI's expanded powers under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, originally passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks 19 years ago. ●

Rosie Gray is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Caroline Haskins is a technology reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Vivek Ramaswamy May Be Ahead of the Curve on Israel

Vivek Ramaswamy's views on Israel are shaped by two competing influences on his politics: libertarianism and national conservatism.

BY ARIF RAFIQ

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023


while Ramaswamy's proposal to phase out U.S. aid to Israel may irk Israel's establishment supporters, it may actual gain traction with supporters of Tel Aviv's far-right government. (Image Credit: Gage Skidmore)

Vivek Ramaswamy’s comments last month suggesting that he’d cut aid to Israel look like a self-exposed wound his rival Nikki Haley continues to hit. But the biotech entrepreneur’s comments — which he’s since qualified — may actually foreshadow where the Republican Party’s younger, America First-types are headed on the question of Israel.

In August, when asked by interviewer Russell Brand whether he would cut aid to Israel, Ramaswamy said, “There’s no North Star commitment to any one country other than the United States of America.” Ramaswamy went on to defend the historic U.S.-Israel partnership, but pledged that “come 2028” — or by the end of his first term — U.S. aid to Israel “won’t be necessary.”

Republicans and Israel

While progressive Democrats are increasingly vocal in calls to condition or reduce aid to Israel, the very idea of any downgrade in ties with Tel Aviv is an anathema for a Republican Party in which Christian Zionists are big players.

It wasn’t always this way. Past Republican presidential candidates Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul called for ending aid to Israel. Their influence lives on in today’s Republican Party dominated not just by the MAGA movement, but also by a libertarianism — often paranoid — that is pushing back against the post-9/11 surveillance state.

Ramaswamy’s politics synthesize these two styles. While the businessman has little to show in terms of past allegiance to the Republican Party, he’s had what can be described as libertarian tendencies since college. He’s also expressed an affinity for Ron Paul. Ramaswamy’s use of the term “neocons” to disparage his Republican opponents is a telling sign of where he stands ideologically.

Yet Ramaswamy, unlike Paul, is keen on gaining the evangelical Christian vote. His comments on Israel, like his praise for India’s Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi, could damage his prospects with evangelical Christian Zionists, who see Israel not just as an ally, but also as the realization of Biblical prophecy.

While Ramaswamy has adopted an ecumenical notion of “faith” in his campaign, there’s really no way he — a practicing Hindu — can embrace a religious justification for U.S. support for Israel.

Instead, Ramaswamy speaks of U.S.-Israel relations in secular terms. His language is positive — he told Brand he thinks “our relationship with Israel has advanced American interests.” But, at the moment, it is the religious narrative that provides the bilateral relationship with a buffer today against the volatility of Israeli politics and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Without the garb of exceptionalism, Israel may have less leeway in Washington. Already, the pro-Israel consensus is fraying.

A Gallup survey conducted earlier this year reveals not just a growing partisan gap on Israel, but also a generational one. Millennials across party lines have greater sympathy for the Palestinians than Israelis compared to older Americans.

In the near term, support for Israel among Republicans is by no means in jeopardy. But beyond this election cycle, two ideas brought to the fore by Ramaswamy — the secularization of U.S. policy toward Israel and the idea that there are limits to which Washington will support it — could shake up the status quo on the bilateral relationship.

Today, nearly half of Republican voters favor an isolationist foreign policy, according to a Morning Consult tracking poll. As the conservative movement evolves, inward-looking millennial and Gen Z Republicans, like progressive Democrats, may question the rationale for providing aid to Israel, a high-income country. (Israel’s gross domestic product per capita is higher than that of France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom.)

From Christian Zionism to National Conservatism

But Ramaswamy isn’t all bad news for Israel. In fact, he may be simpatico with Israel’s far-right. He’s spoken out against U.S. interference in Israeli politics. In other words, a Ramaswamy presidency wouldn’t force Israel to roll back the controversial so-called “judicial reforms.”

Ramaswamy has also said he admires Israeli border policy and nationalism. Some may find this odd given that as a brown son of Indian Hindu immigrants, he’d be excluded from an American variant of Israeli ultranationalism. But Ramaswamy’s comments are probably a nod to the ideas of far-right Israeli ideologue Yoram Hazony.

Hazony’s “national conservatism” rejects global liberalism (aka “globalism”) and liberal internationalism and argues instead for the defense of sovereign nation-states anchored by religious virtues, social traditionalism, and free enterprise economics.

Somewhat paradoxically, Hazony and Co. have amassed supporters from various nationalist and ultranationalist groups and movements, including CPAC in the U.S. and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary. They convene at the annual National Conservatism Conference (or NatCon) organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation.

In 2021, Ramaswamy addressed one of these gatherings, telling the audience that “wokeism” is the merger of “German Nazism” and “Soviet Marxism.”

Ramaswamy and Hazony are bound by another connection: Peter Thiel.

Billionaire investor Thiel is a signatory to the National Conservatism’s statement of principles. He’s also backed numerous Ramaswamy ventures, including his “anti-woke” Strive Asset Management fund.

When Ramaswamy speaks about a pathway toward ending U.S. aid to Israel, it isn’t clear whether it’s the libertarian or the national conservative in him speaking. He, like Thiel, straddles the boundary between libertarianism and national conservatism. One might call him a conservatarian.

Either way, while Ramaswamy’s proposal to phase out U.S. aid to Israel may irk Israel’s establishment supporters, it may actually gain traction with supporters of Tel Aviv’s far-right government.

In July, Jacob Siegel and Liel Leibovitz argued in the right-leaning Tablet for ending U.S. aid to Israel, claiming it “undermine[s] Israel’s domestic defense industry, weaken[s] its economy, and compromise[s] the country’s autonomy.” Some may find their contention laughable, but the point is that such an argument is being made by those adjacent to Israel’s right. Indeed, in practice, aid cuts could actually reduce Washington’s leverage with Tel Aviv and accelerate its far-right turn.

So, regardless of his motives, Ramaswamy may be pushing the U.S.-Israel relationship into unchartered territory.


Arif Rafiq is the editor of Globely News. Rafiq has contributed commentary and analysis on global issues for publications such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the New Republic, the New York Times, and POLITICO Magazine. He has appeared on numerous broadcast outlets, including Al Jazeera English, the BBC World Service, CNN International, and National Public Radio.

Rand Paul Blocks Bill That Would Ensure New Moms Are Allowed to Breastfeed at Work

Kylie Cheung
Thu, December 22, 2022 

Photo: Anna Moneymaker (Getty Images)

UPDATE at 4:10 pm: The Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act passed the Senate on Thursday afternoon, through an amendment vote to add it to the 2023 government funding bill. It passed by a 92-5 margin. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), and Patrick Toomey (R-Penn.) voted against it.

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act also passed the Senate on Thursday after being blocked earlier this month when Democratic senators sought to pass it through unanimous consent. Like the PUMP Act, it was added to the year-end funding package by a 73-24 vote, with 24 Republican senators blocking the bill, which guarantees bathroom breaks for pregnant workers.

EARLIER: Earlier this month, Senate Republicans—many of whom have endorsed a federal 15-week abortion ban, which would force people to stay pregnant against their will—blocked a bill to let pregnant workers take bathroom breaks without being fired. And on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked a bill to ensure new parents are allowed to breastfeed on the job.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections (PUMP) for Nursing Mothers Act and sought unanimous consent for the Senate to vote on the bipartisan bill, which would allow it to pass through the chamber swiftly. But Paul decided to block a vote on the PUMP Act because Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), the sponsor of the bill, didn’t include Paul’s amendment that would study the impact of increased regulations on businesses, a source familiar with his decision told Jezebel. Paul did not provide a comment.

On the Senate floor on Tuesday, Murray called the bill a matter of “common sense and basic human decency.”

“This is really straightforward. When new moms return to work, they should have the time and space they need to pump and breastfeed their baby,” Murray said. Speaking on the Senate floor, the Washington senator said the PUMP Act would have extended protections for breastfeeding while at work to about nine million potentially nursing working parents. The bill would close a loophole in the 2010 Break Time for Nursing Mothers Law, which mostly only covers hourly workers and excludes most salaried occupations, per the Economic Policy Institute.

Murray and Merkley’s bill would also ensure nursing workers receive reasonable break time and a private place to pump, and if they lose their jobs for pumping while working, they’ll have the rights to back pay and reinstatement.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.) had previously blocked the PUMP Act in August, claiming employers in the transportation industry wouldn’t be able to provide these accommodations and that the bill would somehow further hurt the supply chain amid an ongoing baby formula shortage. That a Republican is again blocking the PUMP Act, which senators reportedly hoped would pass before the holidays, is pretty much in line with what we’ve seen from anti-abortion lawmakers post-Roe v. Wade. Earlier this month, Paul joined Tillis in opposing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which affords pregnant workers basic protections like bathroom and water breaks, inexplicably equating the bill with “abortion on demand.” It’s almost as if Republicans want to force people to give birth and then refuse to give them one ounce of protection or support once they do.


Tillis claimed companies would somehow misuse the law to give workers paid time off for abortions (which sounds great!), citing how some companies have offered coverage of abortion-related costs—which wouldn’t have happened were it not for Republicans’ abortion bans. As the adage goes, the cruelty is the point—but it increasingly seems like the stupidity is too.

Jezebel

Liberal Republicans

From last nights Republican Presidential Candidates debate there were detectable liberal tendencies.

This gives a new meaning to neo-liberal as Republican candidates move left. Making them sound like Canadian liberal social democrats.

Brownback Is Pro-Labor Union!!!! In Iran that is...

And Mike Hucakbee embraced the social gospel....from the right

"Many of us who are pro-life, quite frankly, I think, have made the mistake of giving people the impression that pro-life means we care intensely about people as long as that child is in the womb. But beyond the gestation period, we've not demonstrated as demonstrably as we should that we respect life at all levels, not just during pregnancy. We shouldn't allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car. We shouldn't be satisfied that elderly people are being abused and neglected in nursing homes."

Ron Paul sounds like Jack Layton.....

TEXAS REP. RON PAUL called pre-emptive war the most pressing moral issue in the United States: "I do not believe that's part of the American tradition. We, in the past, have always declared war in defense of our liberties or go to aid somebody ... And now, tonight, we hear that we're not even willing to remove from the table a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat."

You can't tell the difference between the players without a program....

Obama, Brownback want Iran divestment

Congressman Duncan Hunter contested the myth that the reason to import foreign workers is because American workers don't want to do these menial jobs. He sounded like AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

“If you had your way with immigration who would fill the jobs that no one wants?” asked Tom Fahey of the New Hampshire Union Leader. Hunter referred back to the employment “sweep” in a meat packing plant in Iowa. “There were American citizens lined up the next day to get their jobs back at $18 bucks an hour” said Hunter.

And of course Rudy Gulliani cannot hide his very Canadian view on abortion.

'My view on abortion is that it's wrong,' he said, 'but that ultimately government should not be enforcing that decision on a woman.'

d blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Republicans, US Presidential race,