Iranians Hold Huge Anti-Government Protest After Key River Completely Dries Up

Rare mass protests have hit a large central Iranian city over persisting water shortages and continued economic woes which is fast creating a humanitarian crisis as farmers are losing their crops.

Thousands gathered in central Isfahan, outraged over government mismanagement which has allowed a key river to dry up completely. "Footage broadcast by state television and dozens of videos circulating on social media on Friday showed a sea of farmers and other people standing on a huge barren strip of dirt where the major Zayandeh Rud River used to flow, near the iconic Khaju Bridge in Isfahan province," Al Jazeera reports.

Lack of resources - which has of late also included gasoline after last month a major cyberattack disrupted a national program for state-subsidized fuel, literally taking gas stations offline for days and weeks (it was widely blamed on Israel) - has fueled sporadic protests for much of the past year, also amid rolling blackouts as the power grid has been strained to the max across major cities.

The current protest in Isfahan has been underway for much of the past week, but Friday saw the biggest gathering yet, gaining international media attention. Isfahan is the country's third-largest city.

Iranian officials have reportedly been under pressure to find a solution for the region's lack of water. "The key river has faced water shortages and droughts for years, and farmers have intermittently protested the lack of attention given to the issue. But officials have yet to find a sustainable solution to the problem," Al Jazeera notes further.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/iranians-hold-huge-anti-government-protest-after-key-river-completely-dries

How Bill Gates bankrolls the media outlet that claims it’s not backed by billionaires

It likes to tap its readers for donations by claiming it’s funded by them, not the mega-wealthy. But, in reality, billionaires have forked out millions to support the UK’s premier right-on, left-of-centre newspaper.

If you want to know what the ‘woke’ set are thinking – on issues from climate change to trans rights – The Guardian’s the newspaper to read. While its print sales have been in decline, falling over the past decade from 248,775 a day to 105,134 in July this year, The Guardian is one of the most visited news websites in the world.

The trouble is it keeps losing money. Four months ago, it was reported that the Guardian Media Group, which also owns The Observer, a closely related Sunday broadsheet, had lost over £10 million in the previous financial year, although that was still an improvement on the £17 million loss the year before. The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall in the same way as other newspapers, but does employ what computer types used to call ‘nagware’, constantly prompting users to sign up or to make donations.

However, it has made one rather spurious claim on social media in support of this strategy: “We’re not funded by billionaires. Our readers’ backing gives us the independence to hold the powerful to account – and we’re just getting started.”

Readers have certainly been generous. According to a Guardian story last year: “The Guardian now has more than one million subscribers and regular contributors, after support from online readers grew by 43% in a year. … When one-off contributions are factored in, more than 1.5 million people have supported the Guardian in the past year.” A million subscribers at £5.99 per month would bring in about £6 million. That’s handy, but doesn’t even cover the paper’s losses, never mind its overall running costs.

However, as climate commentator Ben Pile has noted, billionaires love The Guardian and are very happy to put their hand in their pocket to support its projects. For example, according to US outlet MintPress News, a thorough sift through donations from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shows The Guardian has received a cool $12,951,391 in support. In fact, Gates and his now ex-wife have sprayed hundreds of millions of dollars across the media landscape to support the kind of journalism they approve of.

But the Gateses aren’t the only billionaires supporting The Guardian. A quick look at its website’s philanthropy section shows that Aussie billionaire Judith Neilson’s institute funds The Guardian Australia’s Pacific Project. The Open Society Foundations, created by Hungarian billionaire George Soros, have backed Guardian projects on America’s environmental inequalities and on transforming care using AI. The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, set up by the late co-founder of Hewlett-Packard in the 1960s, supported its work on the state of the oceans.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/540780-guardian-funding-billionaires/

Georgian ex-president taken to military hospital in Gori

A mobile intensive care unit with Saakashvili on board left a prison hospital in Tbilisi late on Friday

TBILISI, November 20. /TASS/. Former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili was taken to a military hospital in the eastern city of Gori early on Saturday, according to a live broadcast by Pirveli TV.

A mobile intensive care unit with Saakashvili on board left a prison hospital in Tbilisi late on Friday, heading to a military hospital in the eastern Georgian city of Gori some 90km away from the capital. Saakashvili was accompanied by his personal physician Nikoloz Kipshidze, several prison hospital doctors and his mother Giuli Alasania. The mobile ICU traveled with a convoy of vehicles of the Interior Ministry and the Special Penitentiary Service of the Justice Ministry.

The situation near the hospital is calm. The building is cordoned off by the police. At present, Saakashvili’s lawyers and physician are waiting for a permission to meet with him and assess his conditions.

His lawyer Nika Gvaramia said on Friday that the ex-leader had given his consent to being transferred to the Gori military hospital and would end the hunger strike that he had declared more than a month ago once he arrives there.

During a meeting with his attorney on Thursday, Saakashvili fainted and fell over. A prison hospital doctor said later that his condition had been stabilized. However, the former president remained in an intensive care ward.

Saakashvili was detained in Georgia on October 1 after his return to the country shortly ahead of the first round of municipal elections. He was kept in prison in the city of Rustavi, where he went on a hunger strike as he claims to be a political prisoner. On November 8, Georgia’s Justice Ministry transferred the politician to a prison hospital on the outskirts of Tbilisi, but Saakashvili and his lawyers opposed it firmly and insisted that he should go to a private hospital.

https://tass.com/world/1364069

Soros Prosecutors Let Sex-Offender CVS Burglar Free

Virginia Commonwealth's attorneys frequently let criminals walk

After a registered sex offender was arrested twice in three days on felony charges in Northern Virginia, local leaders are wondering what it takes to land a criminal behind bars when lenient prosecutors backed by George Soros are administering justice.

The serial CVS bandit, Karim Clayton, 44, has a seedy criminal history ranging from menacing a CVS employee with a knife to leading police on a high-speed chase on a major regional thoroughfare.

But Fairfax County prosecutor Steve Descano and Arlington County prosecutor Parisa Dehghani-Tafti—who cruised to victory with six-figure donations from Soros—have brought charges against Clayton at least a dozen times between them, only to abandon their cases or plead him out on paltry misdemeanors with almost no jail time.

"Radical leftist prosecutors like Steve Descano and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti do not represent the public or crime victims," said Sean Kennedy, president of Virginians for Safe Communities. "Their allegiances lie with criminal defendants first, last, and always."

A two-year-long spike in violent crime is a political hazard for President Joe Biden and Democrats. Virginia governor-elect Glenn Youngkin (R.) hammered a public safety message throughout his campaign, promising to fully fund law enforcement and fire an inmate-friendly state parole board. Republican candidates in the commonwealth are homing in on a similar strategy ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Thus far, Clayton’s twin arrests in the last week of September have netted him only three months in prison. He was arrested for assault and battery on Sunday, Sept. 26, in Fairfax County and released on bail Monday morning, according to Virginia court records. That case has not yet been resolved. Authorities arrested Clayton the very next day in Arlington County for stealing from a CVS.

Court records show Clayton was sentenced to 12 months in jail after Dehghani-Tafti's office pled him down to a misdemeanor for the CVS robbery. He can serve nine of those months on probation, however, meaning he will spend just 90 days behind bars.

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/soros-prosecutors-let-sex-offender-cvs-burglar-free/

Facebook announces news feed customization tools amid backlash from internal reports

Company’s news feed has been divisive feature for years.

Social media company Facebook announced this week that it will be rolling out tests of new controls for its news feed, a measure likely meant to retain user interest as the company reels from damaging reports earlier this year.

A news feed effectively amounts to a Facebook user’s homepage, allowing users to see updates, photos, discussions and other information posted within their networks.

The feature has been controversial for its relative lack of end-user controls. In an announcement this week, Facebook said users will now be able to “increase or reduce the amount of content they see from the friends, family, Groups and Pages they’re connected to and the topics they care about in their News Feed Preferences.”

“We’ll begin testing in countries around the world to a small percentage of people, gradually expanding in the coming weeks,” the company said, calling it “part of our ongoing work to give people more control over News Feed, so they see more of what they want and less of what they don’t.”

Facebook was hit by negative press and attention earlier this year when a major Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that the company has known, “in acute detail, that its platforms are riddled with flaws that cause harm, often in ways only the company fully understands.”

https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/facebook-announces-news-feed-customization-tools-amid-backlash-internal-reports

Navy Shipbuilding Contractor Suspends Vaccine Mandate After Workers Threaten to Leave

A Navy shipbuilding company has ended its vaccine mandate after workers threatened to quit and the Navy confirmed it did not require the mandate.

Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), the parent company of Newport News Shipbuilding, is the world’s only manufacturer of the U.S. Navy’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The company also serves as just one of two manufacturers of Virginia and Columbia Class submarines, employing more than 25,000 workers in Virginia.

Newport had previously announced plans to require all 25,000 of its workers to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 8. The deadline was later moved to Jan. 4, to allow additional time.

The deadline has now been “suspended,” with the requirement ended.

“We have not wanted to lose a single employee to the virus, or to the effect of the mandate,” President and CEO Mike Petters wrote in a letter (pdf) to employees on Wednesday.

“Importantly, with respect to Ingalls Shipbuilding and Newport News Shipbuilding, our customer has confirmed that our contracts do not include a requirement to implement the mandate. Technical Solutions employees are in a different situation and face varied requirements depending on the particular contract,” he added.

The company continues to encourage employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccines, but no longer requires vaccination for employment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/navy-shipbuilding-contractor-suspends-vaccine-mandate-after-workers-threaten-to-leave_4113793.html

https://twitter.com/emeriticus/status/1461604311981600776

Vaccinated English adults under 60 are dying at twice the rate of unvaccinated people the same age

The brown line represents weekly deaths from all causes of vaccinated people aged 10-59, per 100,000 people.

The blue line represents weekly deaths from all causes of unvaccinated people per 100,000 in the same age range.

I have checked the underlying dataset myself and this graph is correct. Vaccinated people under 60 are twice as likely to die as unvaccinated people. And overall deaths in Britain are running well above normal.

I don’t know how to explain this other than vaccine-caused mortality.

The basic data is available here, download the Excel file and see table 4:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60

HUGE: Protests Against Vaccine Mandates in Italy Reach Their 18th Week As the Rest of Europe Rises Up and Joins In

As Australia goes to sleep, Italian protests against vaccine tyranny begin.

The New York Times reports:

Demonstrators prepared to gather in Milan and Rome on Saturday evening to protest Italy’s coronavirus health pass on the 18th consecutive weekend of such rallies. Organizers considered a strong showing necessaryto prove that they were a force to be reckoned with.

Videos are now being shared from protests events in Italy:

https://youtu.be/ipRHAixCQG4

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/huge-protests-vaccine-mandates-italy-reach-18th-week-rest-europe-rises-joins-video/

Child sex racket busted by CBI ‘extends from Pakistan to US, shares videos on social media’

The racket, involving ‘5,000 people across 100 nations’, was allegedly engaged in online distribution of child sexual exploitation material for monetary benefits.

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Wednesday arrested seven people as part of a crackdown on a suspected international online child sexual exploitation network. The arrests followed raids in 77 locations across 13 states and one Union territory, with two others put behind bars Thursday.

The raids, the CBI said, were conducted after the discovery of an online child sexual abuse operation that allegedly involves more than 50 syndicates and 5,000 individuals spread across 100 countries.

According to sources in the CBI, the nexus was engaged in the online distribution of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) for monetary benefits.

The illegal operation, the sources said, came to the CBI’s notice about three months ago. Following “intensive intel collection and surveillance in the remotest areas of the country over a period of three months”, the agency conducted raids at multiple locations on 14 November, a source told ThePrint.

The raids in India were conducted in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, besides Delhi.

The CBI said in a statement that it had seized numerous laptops, mobile phones, and other electronic gadgets during the raids. The agency has lodged 23 cases against 83 people. While nine people have been arrested so far, the CBI source quoted above said more arrests are likely.

https://theprint.in/india/child-sex-racket-busted-by-cbi-extends-from-pakistan-to-us-shares-videos-on-social-media/768592/

Multinational-Operation Leads to Arrests of Venezuelan, Brazilian Migrants near California Border

San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents and Mexican officials teamed up to disrupt a transnational smuggling operation. The investigation led to the arrest of smugglers and migrants on both sides of the California-Mexico border.

Between October 28 and November 9, Border Patrol agents apprehended five groups of migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico. The groups consisted mostly of migrants from Brazil and Venezuela, according to information obtained from San Diego Sector Border Patrol officials. The five groups ranged in size from 43 migrants to 93 migrants.

During the preceding week, agents interdicted three more smuggling operations leading to the apprehension of 67, 69, and 72 migrants respectively. Nearly all of the groups consisted of citizens of Venezuela and Brazil, officials stated.

Officials reported:

etween Oct. 28 and Nov. 9, agents encountered five groups, mostly from Brazil and Venezuela. The groups all entered the United States illegally and consisted of men, women, and children and were 43, 49, 73, 84 and 93 people in size.

On Oct. 27, agents observed a box truck dropping off a group of individuals on the southside of the international border fence. The group proceeded to enter the United States through a compromised drainage tube. Agents responded to the area and encountered 67 men, women, and children from both Brazil and Venezuela.

On Oct. 26, agents encountered two groups of migrants that illegally entered the United States through a compromised sewer grate. The first group consisted of 86 Brazilian nationals. A few hours later, the second group, consisting of 69 Brazilian nationals, was encountered at the same location. Both groups consisted of men, women, and children.

On Oct. 23, agents observed a group of migrants illegally enter the United States through a drainage tube three miles west of the San Ysidro Port of Entry. Agents responded to the area and encountered 72 men, women, and children. Every person in the group was determined to be from either Brazil or Venezuela.

Beginning on November 4, Border Patrol officials with the San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch worked with the government of Mexico to investigate the transnational human smuggling operation. The investigation led to the arrest of two Mexican smugglers and the rescue of 75 migrants from Brazil, Portugal, and Venezuela who were all locked inside a box truck in Mexico.

“Partnerships with the government of Mexico continue to play a vital role in combating smugglers who exploit individuals for monetary gain,” said Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke. “We thank them for their support and will continue our joint effort to bring these criminals to justice.”

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/11/20/multinational-operation-leads-to-arrests-of-venezuelan-brazilian-migrants-near-california-border/