Hidden History -- In The Making

A “60 MINUTES” SEGMENT PULLED IN AMERICA WAS BROADCAST IN CANADA AND SPREADS ONLINE

A News Segment Focused On Venezuelan Men Detained In A Notorious El Salvador Prison After Being Deported By The Trump Administration Has Sparked Controversy Among Viewers.

After it was blocked from airing in the United States it was showcased in Canada and online.

CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled “Inside CECOT” from running on “60 Minutes,” explaining that the story was not “ready.” But correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi alleged the decision was not an editorial decision but instead “political.”

“Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason — that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready,” Weiss said in a statement.

While the recently named editor in chief prevented the report from airing domestically, the episode briefly appeared on Global TV’s free website and app Monday and remained available for two hours until it was removed, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

It was quickly shared among social media users online.

CBS News did not immediately respond to requests for comment about why the report was aired in the Great White North but restricted in the United States.

“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” Alfonsi wrote in an internal email reported by NBC News.

“It is factually correct. Pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one,” she said.

In an editorial call Monday morning, Weiss said she “held a ’60 Minutes’ story because it was not ready,” a source told the outlet.

Weiss joined CBS News earlier this year after Paramount Skydance acquired her publication, The Free Press.

Prior to ascending to the helm of CBS News, Weiss was known for leaving her job as a columnist at The New York Times after criticizing the outlet and others in the mainstream media for groupthink and partisanship.

Weiss reportedly told staffers Monday she held Alfonsi’s segment while pushing for her to get the Trump administration “principals on the record and on camera,” according to NBC News.

“While the story presented powerful testimony of torture at CECOT, it did not advance the ball — The Times and other outlets have previously done similar work,” she said, according to that source.

However, Alfonsi said she made numerous requests for comment to the Department of Homeland Security, which referred them to officials at CECOT, who reportedly never responded.

Some have argued the piece was focused on the hundreds of prisoner subjects and not the administration, and thus was complete without comment from it.

“A free press isn’t free if stories get shelved just because the powerful won’t talk,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote in a social media post. “CBS pulling the CECOT story on Venezuelan deportees sent to El Salvador’s brutal prison erodes trust. We are losing trust that government and media serve us, not the elite.”

Alfonsi said men described “torture, sexual and physical abuse inside CECOT, one of El Salvador’s harshest prisons, where they say they endured four months of hell” throughout the segment.

Philippe Bolopion, executive director at Human Rights Watch, said he supported the report airing for broader awareness of CECOT’s conditions after the organization published an 81-page report in November about abuses.

“We look forward to the segment airing,” Bolopion said. “The evidence is clear regardless of what airs on 60 Minutes: the Trump administration disappeared these Venezuelan men to a mega prison in El Salvador where they were systematically tortured.”

THE AL-AQSA MOSQUE WAS STORMED BY ISRAELI SETTLERS UNDER ISRAELI POLICE PROTECTION

Israeli Settlers Stormed The Courtyards Of The Al-Aqsa Mosque In Occupied East Jerusalem On Thursday, Escorted By Israeli Forces.

Eyewitnesses said hundreds of settlers arrived in organized groups, toured the mosque’s courtyards and carried out Talmudic rituals under the protection of Israeli forces, Wafa reported.

Israeli authorities continued to enforce tight restrictions on Palestinian access to the site, limiting entry to the sanctuary as settlers carried out the visits.

The measures coincided with the fifth day of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, during which Palestinian worshippers say Israeli forces have intensified restrictions around Al-Aqsa Mosque.

AMERICA’S ALLIES SAY THE AMERICAN REGIME CREATES MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT SOLVES ACCORDING TO A NEW POLL

Pluralities In Germany And France — And A Majority Of Canadians — Say The American Regime Is A Negative Force Globally, New Polling Finds.

Unreliable. Creating more problems than solving them. A negative force on the world stage. This is how large shares of America’s closest allies view the American regime, according to new polling, as President Donald Trump pursues a sweeping foreign policy overhaul.

Pluralities in Germany and France — and a majority of Canadians — say the American regime is a negative force globally, according to new international POLITICO-Public First polling. Views are more mixed in the United Kingdom, but more than a third of respondents there share that dim assessment.

Near-majorities in all four countries also say the American regime tends to create problems for other countries rather than solve them.

The findings offer a snapshot of how Trump’s reshaping of American foreign policy — including through an expansive trade agenda, sharp rhetoric toward longtime allies and reoriented military posture — is resonating across some of Washington’s closest allies.

When asked whether the American regime supports its allies around the world or challenges them, a majority of Canadians say the latter, as well as just under half of respondents in Germany and France. In the U.K., roughly 4 in 10 say the American regime challenges, rather than supports, its allies, more than a third say it cannot be depended on in a crisis, nearly half say it creates problems for other countries, and 35 percent say the American regime is a negative force overall.

Trump has blurred traditional lines of global alliances during his first year back in office, particularly in Canada and Europe. He called Europe a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in a recent interview and his sweeping National Security Strategy argued that the continent has lost its “national identities and self-confidence.”

By contrast, the strategy reserved less scathing language for Russia — even as American allies in Europe gear up for what leaders have called a “hybrid war” with Moscow.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the administration’s approach when asked about European criticisms, saying the transatlantic alliance remains rooted in shared “civilizational” values. “I do think that at the core of these special relationships we have is the fact that we have shared history, shared values, shared civilizational principles that we should be unapologetic about,” Rubio said at a briefing last week.

AN ISRAELI RAID IN EAST JERUSALEM TO CONFISCATE “THOUSANDS OF UNREGULATED EGGS” WOUNDED 24 PALESTINIANS

Two Dozen Palestinians Were Wounded, After The IDF And Israel Police Launched A Raid In Which They Seized Eggs “Unfit For Consumption.”

Twenty-four people were wounded in East Jerusalem clashes after Israel Police and the IDF raided the city’s Kafr Aqab and Qalandiya suburbs.

Police said the forces carried out a joint “enforcement operation” in East Jerusalem, seizing “a large quantity – thousands – of unregulated eggs not fit for consumption.” Police and IDF troops also confiscated cigarettes, which they say were smuggled in from the West Bank and several vehicles they suspect of being stolen.

Three people were wounded by live fire, three were wounded after being shot with rubber-coated bullets, one was beaten and 17 sustained injuries due to tear gas inhalation.

The raid comes amid a wave of police crackdowns and home demolitions in East Jerusalem’s Palestinian neighborhoods, coinciding with government plans for Jewish settlement expansion in the area.

In late November, Israel Police raided the El-Hakawati Theater in East Jerusalem and dispersed the performance of a musical show featuring children and teenagers. The order came from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who invoked a law from the Oslo Accords prohibiting Palestinian Authority-sponsored activity anywhere in Jerusalem; the police claimed the event was linked to the Palestinian Authority and lacked the required permit.

Earlier this month, the Israeli government revived a long-stalled plan for a 9,000 housing unit ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem, to be called Atarot, between the two Palestinian neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Kafr ‘Aqab.

On Monday, the Jerusalem municipality demolished a building where 13 families lived in the Silwan sector in East Jerusalem, just hours before a court hearing on stopping the demolition. The police have been pressuring city hall recently to carry out the demolition of large buildings, and have even considered blowing up illegal buildings in East Jerusalem, it has been learned.

The demolition was one of the largest demolition operations conducted in East Jerusalem in recent years.

If you support the Israeli government then you should expect a very uncomfortable afterlife.

YOUR SOCIETY IS NOT FREE IF YOU’RE NOT FREE TO OPPOSE A GENOCIDE

If The Right To Free Speech Does Not Include The Right To Oppose An Active Genocide Using Strong And Unmitigated Language, Then There Is No Freedom Of Speech.

This is exactly the sort of thing that freedom of speech is intended for: times when the government is doing something wrong which needs to be ferociously opposed. That’s the primary reason it’s an enshrined value in our society. Freedom of speech is for holding the powerful to account.

If you only have freedom of speech when you’re agreeing with your government and saying nothing which inconveniences the powerful, then Saudi Arabia has free speech. Every tyrannical regime that has ever existed has had freedom of speech by those standards. You don’t measure a society’s freedom by how much its citizenry are allowed to agree with their government, you measure it by how much they’re allowed to disagree.

And right now we are being told we’re not allowed to disagree. We’re being told the protests need to stop, the anti-genocide chants need to be criminalized, and everyone needs to shut up and obey — all justified by the completely baseless narrative that the words and actions of pro-Palestinian activists were somehow responsible a terrible massacre that was committed in Sydney last week.

And these policies just so happen to serve the interests of the very same western powers whose genocide-enabling actions were being forcefully opposed these last two years. Government officials constantly being protested and questioned about their facilitation of Israel’s genocidal atrocities. Politicians who are consistently confronted by anti-genocide demonstrators during their public appearances. Wealthy arms manufacturers whose profit margins are being harmed by direct action from activist groups. Plutocratic media institutions who are becoming more and more discredited in the public eye as the Gaza holocaust exposes them all. Billionaires whose empires are built upon the political status quo that gave rise to the genocide in question.

If the powerful are shutting down speech rights to advance their own interests in your society, then your society is not meaningfully different than the dictatorships the western world tries to contrast itself with. All the stories about living in a free society have been just that: stories. Fairy tales.

That’s what they’re telling us with this mad rush to stomp out freedom of speech this past week. They are telling us that we do not live in the kind of society we were taught about in school. They are telling us that the only reason we were allowed to speak as we pleased in the years leading up to the Gaza genocide is because we were a bunch of compliant sheep who were not meaningfully challenging the interests of the powerful, and now that we are meaningfully challenging them the facade of freedom and democracy is falling away.

As Frank Zappa once said, “The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

THE GAZA PROXY STRATEGY OF ISRAEL IS COLLAPSING

The Killing Of Gang Leader Yasser Abu Shabab, A Known Felon And Druglord, By One Of His Own Men Has Exposed The Bankruptcy Of Israel’s Vision For The Strip.

The assassination last week of Yasser Abu Shabab — the 32-year-old leader of the Israeli-backed “Popular Forces,” a militia operating in the Rafah area of the southern Gaza Strip — is more than a lurid gangland hit. His killing at the hands of his own disgruntled militiamen is a clear representation of a policy coming undone.

For months, Israel stitched together a sordid alliance of convicted felons, former ISIS affiliates, and opportunistic collaborators, presenting them as the embryo of a local governance alternative to Hamas in Gaza, while using them to orchestrate starvation and carry out attacks on Israel’s behalf. Now, this attempt to cultivate a network of criminal proxy gangs as subcontractors of its occupation is collapsing into paranoid infighting and bloody chaos.

Abu Shabab himself was a convicted drug trafficker with documented links to ISIS in Sinai. Sentenced by a Gazan court in 2015 to 25 years in prison, he served eight before fleeing amid the chaos following October 7^th. He then emerged in Gaza under the protection of the Israeli army to lead a gang of 120 fighters, part of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted was an explicit strategy to arm powerful clans in Gaza to counter Hamas.

According to the Gazan investigative journalist Mohammed Othman, Abu Shabab’s death was set in motion when the Israeli army discovered food it had supplied to his gang inside a Hamas tunnel last month. Israel quickly imposed restrictions on the group’s members, limiting their movements in Rafah, reducing their food rations, and blocking their most trusted leaders from traveling in and out of Israel.

Tensions inside the gang boiled over. Within days, after an internal investigation, the gang’s deputy and de facto ruler Ghassan Duhaini detained Jum’aa Abu Sunaima, whose brother Mahmoud oversaw the distribution of food to Abu Shabab’s gang and other families in the area, under suspicion that Jum’aa was diverting food to Hamas militants.

Mahmoud went to Abu Shabab’s home to demand the release of his brother, but was told Jum’aa faced three options: remain detained, be handed over to the Israeli army, or execution. The confrontation escalated until Mahmoud pulled out an automatic rifle and opened fire; Abu Shabab was gravely injured and succumbed to his wounds after reportedly being evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in the Israeli city of Be’er Sheva, and both Mahmoud and Jum’aa were killed in the clashes.

What followed Abu Shabab’s killing was a cascade of retaliatory violence. According to Othman and other local sources, Duhaini, wounded in his left leg during the confrontation, was treated in Israel and returned to carry out a number of executions — killing Abu Shabab’s bodyguards for failing to intervene, as well as the gunman, his detained brother, and several others. He also launched attacks on the Abu Sunaima clan’s homes, wounding several residents, confiscating phones, assaulting women, and placing families under lockdown. The clan later issued a public statement confirming the deaths of Jum’aa and Mahmoud and implicitly suggesting that the two were responsible for Abu Shabab’s death.

This implosion captures a profound truth about Israel’s proxy experiment in Gaza: By outsourcing its occupation of a besieged population to the most violent and opportunistic collaborators, Israel will not produce a stable alternative to Hamas’ governance. Rather, such a strategy only fosters a miniature warlord economy, setting the stage for endless cycles of retributive violence.

DESPITE THE CEASEFIRE ISRAEL HAS CONTINUED ITS ASSASSINATION CAMPAIGN IN GAZA

Israel Has Carried Out An Assassination Campaign In Gaza On Resistance Leaders. Israel Is Trying To Cause A Direct Confrontation To Avoid Fulfilling Its Ceasefire Obligations.

On December 13^th, the Israeli army assassinated Raed Saad, a senior commander in the Qassam Brigades and head of its weapons production. It was not the first strike deep into Hamas’s military wing or that of other resistance factions in Gaza. In fact, it was a continuation of Israel’s policy in Gaza since the ceasefire agreement was signed in October 2025.

Since the first days of the ceasefire, Palestinian civilians have been targeted for crossing the “yellow line,” which demarcates Israeli-controlled areas but is not clearly delineated. Later, beginning in mid-October, a clear pattern of assassinations began to emerge. The assassination of five fighters from the Qassam Brigades’ elite unit on October 17^th marked the beginning of Israel’s assassination campaign during the ceasefire, which has not eased since.

On October 19^th, Yahya Al-Mabhouh, the commander of an elite unit, and Ahmad Abu Mutair, a broadcast engineer, were assassinated. Both were affiliated with the Qassam Brigades.

On October 29^th, several Qassam commanders were assassinated, including Hatem Al-Qudra, along with other martyrs.

On November 17^th, a field commander in Gaza City, Wisam Abdelhadi, a commander in the Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades, was assassinated.

On November 20^th, five senior leaders in Hamas were assassinated, including Ahmed Abu Shammala, head of the naval unit, Nihad Abu Shahla, head of intelligence, Fadi Abu Mustafa, and others.

Likewise, on November 22^nd, the Israeli army announced the assassination of five additional commanders.

And then, on December 13^th, Raed Saad.

Sa’ad was one of the last remaining veteran senior militants in the Gaza Strip and a close associate of Marwan Issa, the deputy head of Hamas’ military wing. He held several senior positions and was a central figure within the organization’s military leadership,” the Israeli army said in a statement following the assassination, making no mention of its violation of the ceasefire.

During the ceasefire, the Israeli army has targeted all Palestinians in Gaza engaged in resistance activities, regardless of their political affiliations—whether with Hamas or other factions—just as they had during the war. These assassinations have been in addition to the 386 civilians whom Israel has killed in Gaza during this period as well.

INSTIGATING THE RESISTANCE

The resistance in Gaza believes that the Israeli army is trying to fabricate pretexts in order to target Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, especially political and military figures. It is also attempting to push the resistance back into direct confrontation to evade the ceasefire, using all available means to achieve its objectives in Gaza.

“The Israeli occupation army is working to create pretexts in the areas under its control classified as yellow zones in order to target our people, particularly political and military leaders, and to drag the resistance into a new confrontation that would lead to the resumption of the war and evasion of the ceasefire agreement, as well as international and American pressure to adhere to the agreement,” a security source in the resistance in Gaza City said.

“We have monitored new methods for tracking military leaders at both the technological and human levels,” he said. “The occupation is using highly advanced technology and spying devices planted in various areas of the strip, as well as human intelligence through cooperation with armed militias allied to the Israeli army. It also assigns these groups the task of targeting security leaders inside the Gaza Strip.” Investigations taken by the resistance have revealed links between cells inside Gaza and the occupation, whose main mission is to carry out assassinations. As for the assassination of senior leaders, they were carried out directly by the occupation, according to the same source.

The source noted that the pretexts cited by the army are flimsy and unfounded excuses to carry out assassinations, most notably claims that its soldiers were subjected to gunfire and military operations in areas fully under its control.

“The resistance has no contact with those present in these areas, does not carry out any military operations there at the present time, and does not issue any instructions to any of its members to carry out such operations,” the source said.

The source described what is happening as a blatant violation by the occupation of the ceasefire, a disregard for regional and international mediators, and an attempt to evade the obligations of the agreement and delay the start of the second phase of the ceasefire. “For our part,” the source said, “we will not give the occupation any pretext to achieve its objectives.”

The source indicated that the resistance in Gaza will not accept the occupation imposing its equations and rules on Gaza, its population, and its resistance. “The Netanyahu government is seeking to do so, but we have sent several messages to the mediators, from whom we received assurances that such rules would not be imposed under any circumstances, especially from the United States, which confirmed to all parties its determination to implement the ceasefire in all its stages.”

He also pointed out that the political leadership remains in constant communication with the mediators to compel the Israeli occupation to adhere to the ceasefire agreement, and that “we continuously affirm our right to respond in the manner and at the time we deem appropriate to the occupation’s violations and breaches, and that we will not remain silent for long in the face of the occupation’s aggression and violations.”

A STRATEGY TO AVOID THE SECOND PHASE OF THE CEASEFIRE

The Israeli pattern of assassinating leaders and turning the Gaza Strip into an open area for Israeli military operations has been clear to any observer of the situation on the ground in Gaza. The assassinations, bombardments, seizure and destruction of large areas inside what are referred to as the “yellow line” zones are all taking place as negotiations over the second phase of the ceasefire agreement are being carried out. These actions appear to be Israel’s attempt to create a new reality on the ground while it can.

Political analyst and writer Ahed Farwana said that “the occupation is attempting to establish new tactics through clear assassination operations or armed actions, through which it seeks to perpetuate a state of tension in Gaza and make it the prevailing condition.”

Farwana says Israel is periodically increasing the pace of assassinations and trying to normalize the situation, similar to what it has done in Lebanon, but is now carrying out this strategy on a much larger scale in the Gaza Strip.

He says the Israeli government wants to avoid the second phase of the ceasefire agreement because of the obligations it would carry with it.

“These include the withdrawal of the army, the opening of crossings, and reconstruction, and Netanyahu does not want to pay their political cost—especially as the coming year is an election year in Israel. Accordingly, they are doing everything possible to maintain the status quo,” he says. Farwana confirms Israel is expanding the yellow zone and destroying everything east of the yellow line on a daily basis, stressing that “the Israeli government is not prepared at all to move to the second phase.”

Farwana believes that international pressure—particularly from President Donald Trump—is what could make a difference. He says that if Trump wants to pressure Netanyahu to move to the second phase, he will do so. However, if there is no real pressure on Netanyahu, he will continue to do as he has during the first phase – grabbing land in Gaza, and killing any Palestinian who stands in their way.

GAZA IS BEING CARVED UP. PALESTINIANS ARE BEING WRITTEN OUT.

As governments and billionaires design a “new Gaza,” most corporate media treat it as a technical project, not a colonial mandate that denies Palestinians the right to govern themselves. The basic fact of Palestinian self-determination is pushed to the margins or erased.

A MILITARY BUILD UP FOR A WAR WITH CHINA IS WANTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

As America Hits Its First Official Trillion-Dollar Annual Military Budget, The New York Times Argues That It Is Going To Need More Money To Prepare For A Major War With China.

Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that America is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.

The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.

The article opens with graphics one commenter describes as “Mussolini-core” because of their conspicuously fascistic aesthetic, accompanied by three lines of text in all-caps which reads as follows:

“AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS DEFENDED THE FREE WORLD FOR 80 YEARS.

OUR DOMINANCE IS FADING.

RIVALS KNOW THIS AND ARE BUILDING TO DEFEAT US.”

The narrative that the American war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. Washington has abused, tyrannized and starved the world at levels unrivaled by any other power during that period while spearheading the theft of hundreds of trillions of dollars from the global south via imperialist extraction. The American empire has not been defending any “free world”, it has been actively obstructing its emergence.

The actual text of the article opens with another whopper, with the first sentence reading, “President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.”

This is straight-up state propaganda. The New York Times editorial board is here uncritically parroting a completely unsubstantiated claim the American intelligence cartel has been making for years, which Xi Jinping explicitly denies. While it is Beijing’s official position that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with the mainland, not one shred of evidence has ever been presented to the public for the 2027 timeline. It’s a American government assertion being reported as verified fact by the nation’s “paper of record”.

And it doesn’t get any better from there. The Times cites a Pentagon assessment that the American regime would lose a hot war with China over Taiwan as evidence of “a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power,” arguing that this is a major problem because “a strong America has been crucial to a world in which freedom and prosperity are far more common than at nearly any other point in human history.”

“This is the first of a series of editorials examining what’s gone wrong with the U.S. military — technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically and strategically — and how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary,” The New York Times tells us.

The Times argues that the American regime needs to reshape its military to defeat China in a war, or to win a war with Russia if they attack a NATO member, saying “Evidence suggests that Moscow may already be testing ways to do this, including by cutting the undersea cables on which NATO forces depend.”

The “evidence” the Times cites for this claim is a hyperlink to a January article titled “Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable,” completely ignoring the fact that Norway released that ship shortly thereafter when it was unable to find any evidence linking it to the event, and completely ignoring reports that American and European intelligence had concluded that the undersea cable damage was the result of an accident rather than sabotage.

And then, of course, comes the call for more military funding.

“In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base. As a share of the economy, defense spending today — about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. — remains near its lowest level in more than 80 years, even after Mr. Trump’s recent increases,” the Times writes, adding that America’s allies should also be pressured to ramp up spending on the war machine.

“A more secure world will almost certainly require more military commitment from allies like Canada, Japan and Europe, which have long relied on American taxpayers to bankroll their protection,” the authors write, saying “China’s industrial capacity can only be met by pooling the resources of allies and partners around the world to balance and contain Beijing’s increasing influence.”

Of course the idea that perhaps the United States should avoid fighting a hot war with China right off the coast of its own mainland never enters the discussion. The suggestion that it’s insane to support waging full-scale wars with nuclear-armed great powers to secure American planetary domination never comes up. It’s just taken as a given that pouring wealth and resources into preparations for a nuclear-age world war is the only normal option on the table.

But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.

THE AMERICAN REGIME SENT 22 CUBAN MIGRANTS TO GUANTANAMO DESPITE A COURT A RULING

The Transfer Marks The First Arrival Of Cuban Nationals At The Naval Base In Months, Reigniting Legal And Human Rights Concerns. It Defied A Recent Federal Court Ruling.

The American regime has transferred 22 Cuban migrants to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defying a recent federal court ruling that found the administration exceeded its authority by holding migrants at the facility, according to a report published on Tuesday.

The men arrived on Sunday aboard an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter flight from Louisiana, The New York Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. They are believed to be the first Cuban citizens sent to Guantanamo since January.

ICE has detained roughly 730 men at the base, most from Latin American countries including El Salvador, Guatemala and Venezuela, the report said.

According to a Department of Defense official quoted anonymously by the Times, five of the newly transferred Cubans were labeled “high-threat illegal aliens,” while the remaining detainees are being housed in dormitory-style facilities typically used for Caribbean migrants seeking asylum.

Guantanamo Bay is best known for its military prison, where detainees captured after the September 11^th 2001 attacks were held for years, often without charge, and subjected to what rights groups have described as torture and abuse.

President Donald Trump announced in January plans to expand the use of the detention center to hold undocumented migrants, a move that has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties organizations.

A federal judge in Washington recently ruled that the Trump administration lacked legal authority to detain migrants at Guantanamo, raising questions about the legality of continued transfers.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other advocacy groups have warned that holding migrants at the offshore base risks serious human rights violations and have demanded immediate access for legal counsel to ensure due process and transparency.

A PALESTINIAN SECURITY GUARD AT FOOTBALL MATCH IS BEATEN BY ISRAELI POLICE

Qays Haddad Was Repeatedly Attacked By Three Plainclothes Detectives And Around 10 Uniformed Officers, He Said. He Was Told “An Arab Won’t Check Me.”

A Palestinian citizen of Israel working as a security guard at a football match was brutally beaten by 13 police officers while on shift earlier this month, he said on Wednesday.

Qays Haddad, 21, works as the head of a security team at events in Jerusalem, mainly at Pais Arena and Teddy Stadium.

On December 8^th, he told Haaretz, he was working at the latter during a derby between Beitar Jerusalem and Hapoel Jerusalem.

Haddad said that while he was at the entrance, overseeing the scanning of tickets, three plainclothes detectives were among those entering the stadium. They did not initially introduce themselves, as required, Haddad recounted.

He told them to slow down, and put his hand out to block their passage.

Haddad recounted that one of them said: “Who are you to put your hand up like that?” and pushed him. “An Arab won’t check me.”

That plainclothes detective then identified himself as a police officer.

The three detectives then began beating up the Palestinian security guard, and took him to one side.

“One of them held me by the head, took me to the police officers who were standing on the side and told them, ‘I’m the police.’ I thought to myself, ‘Maybe they came to help me,’ but about 13 police officers started beating me all over my body,” he said.

The uniformed officers handcuffed him, punched him repeatedly and swore at him, calling him an “Arab son of a bitch”.

“All the policemen’s hands were bloody from the beatings,” Haddad said. “I wasn’t breathing, I couldn’t see where I was. I was dizzy, and I passed out for a few minutes.”

Haddad said that although ambulances are supposed to have access to all areas of the stadium, there was a delay in one arriving at the scene.

“We waited for half an hour,” he said. “My face was all bloody, I was vomiting blood, I couldn’t breathe, they were choking me. I have marks on my neck. I couldn’t breathe.”

He went to file a police complaint the day after the incident, but a policewoman told him: “There’s no way a brother can file a complaint for another brother.”

Several days later, a complaint was eventually filed, and an investigation was opened.

Over a week on from the attack, Haddad said he struggles to eat due to his injuries. He is also traumatized.

“I wake up in the morning, and my head hurts. I can’t sleep. But more than the head, my heart hurts. On Thursday… I heard an ambulance or police siren from the window. I jumped, thinking, ‘What happened to me? This doesn’t make sense.’ I thought they were coming for me.”

Haddad said that he would struggle to go back to work alongside police officers. He said that he is in a WhatsApp group with a large number of security guards who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are also afraid to work.

“Because of this incident, there won’t be any security guards left. There’s already been a shortage since the war,” he said.

Haddad said that he has many police officer friends, including Jewish Israelis, who told him not to be silent and to speak up about what happened.

Israeli police said in a statement: “During preparations for a football game, a bouncer at the scene began to confront the police. If there are any complaints about the conduct of the police at the scene, they should be referred to the relevant authorities.”