TV News LIES

Whatever the worst-case scenario, Janessa Goldbeck has probably imagined it. In 2023 the US marine veteran consulted on a documentary that war-gamed a presidential candidate staging a military coup. Last year she advised local leaders on the hypothetical of troops being deployed to their streets for immigration enforcement.

Then Donald Trump won and Goldbeck’s nightmare came true.

“It’s a little surreal to see something that we’ve been talking about and thinking about and stressing out about,” the chief executive of Vet Voice Foundation, a non-profit advocacy organisation, says via Zoom from her home in San Diego, California. “When we first did War Game, the film, some folks would ask during our press tour, ‘Do you think you’re scaring people? This feels a little hyperbolic?’ It doesn’t feel good to say I told you so in this moment.”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has sought to politicise the military like no other commander-in-chief before him and use it as a cudgel against Democratic-led states and cities. He has deployed thousands of national guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans and Washington DC, triggering protests from local officials and residents.

Having read the Project 2025 policy document, Goldbeck saw this coming. Last year Vet Voice Foundation, which mobilises veterans and military families to defend US democracy, ran exercises with local elected officials, activists and journalists to prepare for a second Trump administration conducting aggressive immigration enforcement. It has now become a vital resource for governors, state attorneys general and mayors trying to weather the storm.

More...

Mudslides buried cars and homes up to their windows in a California mountain town as a powerful storm system brought the wettest Christmas in decades to the southern part of the state.

As much as 12in of rain fell across the area on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, triggering flooding and washing out roads.

Local authorities issued an evacuation warning for Wrightwood, California, a town of just under 5,000 people around 80 miles (130km) north-east of Los Angeles, as images showed mud and debris engulfing homes and vehicles. The San Bernardino county fire department on Thursday night stated that one person was injured in the slide, but that weather conditions were expected to improve and there was no ongoing safety threat.

The town remained under an evacuation warning on Friday morning with some surrounding roads closed, according to the county’s emergency service system.

There was still a risk of more flash flooding and mudslides on Friday around Los Angeles, the National Weather Service warned, even as the rain began to ease up.

More...

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from deporting a British man who was recently placed on a visa ban after U.S. officials accused him and four other Europeans of online censorship.

Center for Countering Digital Hate CEOfiled a complaint Thursday against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi to prevent “the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest,” the lawsuit reads.

“The government’s actions are the latest in a string of escalating and unjustifiable assaults on the First Amendment and other rights, one that cannot stand basic legal scrutiny,” it continues. “Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation — may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”

The suit adds that Ahmed is a lawful permanent resident with a wife and son who are U.S. citizens.

The complaint cites other recent cases where foreign nationals on student visas, including Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk, were stripped of their documentation and faced with deportation as “part of a larger pattern of attempted repression of constitutionally protected speech.”

More...

Pope Leo decried conditions for Palestinians in Gaza in his Christmas sermon, in an unusually direct appeal during what is normally a solemn, spiritual service on the day Christians across the globe celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Leo, the first U.S. pope, said the story of Jesus being born in a stable showed that God had "pitched his fragile tent" among the people of the world.

Leo, celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the world's cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis, has a more quiet, diplomatic style than his predecessor and usually refrains from making political references in his sermons.

"How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?" he asked.

Leo, celebrating his first Christmas after being elected in May by the world's cardinals to succeed the late Pope Francis, has a more quiet, diplomatic style than his predecessor and usually refrains from making political references in his sermons.

More...

Israel is working to gain as much independence as possible in its weapons production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday, in a development he said was the result of the lessons learned during the past two years of war on multiple fronts.

“I approved, along with the defense minister and finance minister, a sum of NIS 350 billion [$108 billion] over the next decade to build an independent Israeli munitions industry,” Netanyahu said in an address at a graduation ceremony for Israeli Air Force pilots.

The move, he said, stemmed from a desire to “reduce our dependence on all players, including friends,” after allies including the US, UK, and Germany all imposed various restrictions on weapons sales to Israel since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

Still, he noted, many countries around the world, including Germany, “want to buy from us more and more systems.”

The premier has long been calling for Israel to develop its own self-reliant military industry, and in January 2024 announced that the government would invest in a “multi-year plan to free Israel from dependence on external purchases.”

TVNL Comment:  Why has the US given billions of dollars to Israel every single year?  It's a rhetorical question. It's also insane.

More...

At a recent military technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israeli weapons companies made some of their most explicit remarks yet connecting the value of their products to the real-world testing of that firepower on Palestinians in Gaza.

A recording of the conference remarks was obtained by Drop Site News and includes comments from the president and CEO of the Israel Aerospace Industries as well as executives at Elbit Systems, RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems, and others. The conference was called DefenseTech Week and was held in early December. Drop Site shared the audio with independent news outlets in Brazil, Ireland, Australia, and elsewhere; those outlets will be producing their own investigations.

The Israeli weapons industry has previously come in for criticism for its willingness to boast that its products are “lab tested” on human beings under occupation, most prominently by Australian journalist Anthony Lowenstein. His book, The Palestine Laboratory, was adapted into a Drop Site podcast last year.

The newly uncovered remarks suggest that, rather than having been chastened by global condemnation for the genocide in Gaza, the nation’s weapons industry is emboldened by it. “The war that we faced in the last two years enables most of our products to become valid for the rest of the world,” boasted Boaz Levy, head of Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), on day one of the conference. “Starting with Gaza and moving on to Iran and to Yemen, I would say that many, many products of IAI were there.”

More...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to withdraw troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end Russia’s war, if Moscow also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

The proposal offered another potential compromise on control of the Donbas region, which has been a major sticking point in peace negotiations.

Zelenskyy said the U.S. proposed the creation of a “free economic zone," which he said should be demilitarized. But it was unclear what that idea would mean for governance or development of the region.

A similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, Zelenskyy said. He said any peace plan would need to be put to a referendum.

Zelenskyy spoke to reporters Tuesday to describe an overarching 20-point plan that negotiators from Ukraine and the U.S. hammered out in Florida in recent days, though he said many details are still being discussed.

Russia offers no hint it will agree to withdrawal

More...

Eileen Schoch traveled to her mother's funeral in Asheville, N.C. and found the hotel room — the one she'd called about in advance — wasn't accessible as promised.

Schoch, who uses a wheelchair after two strokes, couldn't use the room's toilet without assistance from her husband or daughter. The grab bars were in the wrong place. She couldn't get into the shower because it had a door too narrow for her wheelchair. She got sponge baths for three days.

Nor could she reach the tall bed from her wheelchair. The hotel gave her an uncomfortable cot, instead.

"You feel that you're treated as a second-class citizen. And you don't count," says Schoch, a retired educator from Schenectady, N.Y.. "And it's not a nice feeling."

Schoch said she considered switching hotels, but she wanted to be close to other family members. After all, they'd picked that hotel because she'd chosen it first. The family brought business to the hotel, booking four rooms for three days.

Schoch asks: "After that experience, who would want to travel?"

More...