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MARK GRUENBERG—Ben Hurley, an Australian who left Falun Gong after a dozen years as a member, reported four years ago that even then—three years after his initial blog about it—he got reports from once-scared members.

“The stories express a mix of excitement and terror,” Hurley wrote on the Religion and Ethics website after the Australian Broadcasting Corp. ran its own exposé of Falun Gong. “Excitement that they can now listen to pop music, or eat sashimi, or have a beer, or have sex, or take up a hobby, or hang out with non-believers—without feeling filthy and unworthy.

“And lingering terror as they face up to their living god, and attempt to banish him from their minds and out of their lives.”

That living god is Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi. “A number of people labored over the decision to contact me before finally plucking up the courage because they believed that Li could read their minds,” Hurley wrote.

EDITOR—Israel Genocide Tracker is an X account created in May that scans social media and gathers data on Israeli soldiers from previous posts they had published boasting about their actions in Gaza. It then creates a profile for each soldier, including personal information such as their name, age, family origin, and army unit. According to TRT, which cited Israel’s Channel 12 News, multiple soldiers have expressed concerns over the account. “I’m afraid they could Google my name and find it there,” one soldier told Channel 12.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Rubio will be a suitable addition to the list of sadistic manipulators who have served in that role before him, joining the likes of Antony Blinken, Mike Pompeo, Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger as the next soulless manipulator to lead the US State Department in pressing the imperial boot into the throat of the global south.

EDITOR—While the establishment media downplays the “collective Biden”s horrific decision to escalate even further in the West’s war against Russia, millions of people around the globe are well aware that this may indeed be the start of WW3, and that the population of the United States better communicate their concern to Trump in unrqivocal ways if the world is to avoid a nuclear cataclysm.

A Jewish-American film-maker expressed her solidarity with the suffering of the Palestinian people at the Venice Film Festival last September. “I stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their struggle for liberation.” Her brave statements were welcomed by many in the audience, probably contrary what might have happened if the venue had been in the USA.

Jewish American filmmaker Sarah Friedland expressed her solidarity with the Palestinian people as she accepted the Luigi de Laurentiis prize for best first film for Familiar Touch.

She expressed her solidarity with the Palestinian people on the 336th day of what she referred to as “Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the 76th year of occupation”. She stated that she believes it is the responsibility of film workers to use the institutional platforms they work through to redress “Israel’s impunity on the global stage”.