Another crazy day of news so I don’t think I’m going to get any writing done. These are the headline stories I’m working on digesting.
US contractors say their colleagues are firing live ammo as Palestinians seek food in Gaza
BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) — American contractors guarding aid distribution sites in Gaza are using live ammunition and stun grenades as hungry Palestinians scramble for food, according to accounts and videos obtained by The Associated Press.
Two U.S. contractors, speaking to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were revealing their employers’ internal operations, said they were coming forward because they were disturbed by what they considered dangerous and irresponsible practices. They said the security staff hired were often unqualified, unvetted, heavily armed and seemed to have an open license to do whatever they wished.
They said their colleagues regularly lobbed stun grenades and pepper spray in the direction of the Palestinians. One contractor said bullets were fired in all directions — in the air, into the ground and at times toward the Palestinians, recalling at least one instance where he thought someone had been hit.
https://apnews.com/article/palestinians-israel-gaza-contractors-aid-distribution-fe27f3ea83e06a09d66424eed7a5d56f
To catch you up. Israel blocked all aid to Gaza for two months, enacting a campaign of deliberate starvation. They’re finally now allowing aid to flow through again but only with the secretive group GHF. It is without a doubt that this GHF is not a humanitarian aid group. They are a group of private military contractors(think Blackwater) and their job is to facilitate Israel’s further campaign of genocide.
Last week Haaretz, highly credible Israeli publication came out with a devastating report where members of the IDF outright admitted to killing unarmed civilians trying to get aid from the GHF distribution points.
A video has surfaced now showing these contractors firing off-screen at fleeing Palestinians. I will upload this video today to my Instagram(@QuadzillaHikes). You can hear a distinctly American voice saying “I think he hit one.” What strikes me is that these contractors shown in the video show the same attitudes and lack of discipline and professional bearing that the supposed “ICE agents” are showing stateside.
We don’t even get cool scary dystopian sci-fi SS. We get fucking Joe Dirt cosplaying as Seal Team six. Don’t be afraid of these clowns. They will buckle when the real fight comes.
'It's a Killing Field': IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid
Israeli soldiers in Gaza told Haaretz that the army has deliberately fired at Palestinians near aid distribution sites over the past month.
Conversations with officers and soldiers reveal that commanders ordered troops to shoot at crowds to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, 549 people have been killed near aid centers and in areas where residents were waiting for UN food trucks since May 27. Over 4,000 have been wounded, but the exact number of those killed or injured by IDF fire remains unclear.
The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning. According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night – ahead of the opening – it's possible that some civilians couldn't see the boundaries of the designated area.
"It's a killing field," one soldier said. "Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force – no crowd-control measures, no tear gas – just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire."
The soldier added, "We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there's no danger to the forces." According to him, "I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons." He also said the activity in his area of service is referred to as Operation Salted Fish – the name of the Israeli version of the children's game "Red light, green light".
An officer serving in the security detail of a distribution center described the IDF's approach as deeply flawed: "Working with a civilian population when your only means of interaction is opening fire – that's highly problematic, to say the least," he told Haaretz. "It's neither ethically nor morally acceptable for people to have to reach, or fail to reach, a [humanitarian zone] under tank fire, snipers and mortar shells."
"At night, we open fire to signal to the population that this is a combat zone and they mustn't come near," the officer said. "Once," he recounted, "the mortars stopped firing, and we saw people starting to approach. So we resumed fire to make it clear they weren't allowed to. In the end, one of the shells landed on a group of people."
In other cases, he said, "We fired machine guns from tanks and threw grenades. There was one incident where a group of civilians was hit while advancing under the cover of fog. It wasn't intentional, but these things happen."
https://archive.is/pQw3k
Did you catch that part about the “salted fish?” Squid games. That’s what Israeli’s call the Netflix show Squid Games. They are literally playing Squid Games in Gaza. The aid station is only open for short windows. Those windows of time change without warning. The people seeking aid are “safe” when the aid station is open. But as soon as it’s closed, the shooting and shelling starts. Before it’s open, the shooting and shelling starts.
It’s disgusting and dystopian and the fact that the US still funds this genocide and we haven’t risen up in the streets to topple this regime makes each and everyone of us morally complicit in this genocide. Our country will fall because of moral failings like this and frankly, we deserve it.
By the way latest estimates are now well over 100,000 civilians murdered in Gaza. And again we all know this number is grossly underestimated. They are committing wholesale genocide there. And the US is arming and funding them and sending US contractors over to help in the Squid Games slaughter.
70 National Guard Troops Deployed to Guard Alligator Auschwitz
“Nearly 70 Florida National Guard are on state active duty … conducting base camp security at Alligator Alcatraz,” chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told reporters.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5382393-national-guard-troops-activated-alligator-alcatraz/
This facility costs $450 million per year. Florida footed the bill and is seeking reimbursement through FEMA. The same FEMA which has denied claims in Arkansas, California, Tennessee, Washington, and Wisconsin. They’ll deny disaster relief to Americans hit by actual natural disasters while they fund this concentration camp. As if we needed yet another sign of what their true priorities and intentions are.
This is a concentration camp. This will lead to deaths, there is zero doubt. The tents have already flooded. There is no air conditioning. Migrants will be held there in squalid conditions with inadequate food and water, no access to medical facilities. People will die of heat stroke and dehydration and illness. For now. If we allow this they will build gas chambers and ovens. Facilities will become overcrowded to the point of becoming unmanageable and they will reach the same conclusion as the Nazis.
Abrego Garcia Was Beaten and Tortured in El Salvador Prison, Lawyers Say
Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, was beaten, deprived of sleep and psychologically tortured during the nearly three months he spent in Salvadoran custody, according to court papers filed on Wednesday evening by his lawyers.
When Mr. Abrego Garcia first arrived at the prison, his lawyers maintained, he was greeted by an official who told him, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave.”
Two weeks later, the lawyers added, he had lost nearly 31 pounds.
The court papers offer a startling glimpse of the conditions under which Mr. Abrego Garcia was held. Even though his description aligns with what is known about the prison and the treatment of detainees, the more than 200 Venezuelans who were sent to CECOT on the same set of flights that day were placed in a separate cell block, leaving it unclear whether they were subject to different conditions.
The filing claimed that Salvadoran prison officials recognized that Mr. Abrego Garcia “was not affiliated with any gang” and acknowledged that his tattoos “were not gang-related,” going so far as to tell him at one point, “Your tattoos are fine.”
https://archive.is/xGuwi
He said he was kicked and hit so often after arrival that by the following day, he had visible bruises and lumps all over his body. He said he and 20 others were forced to kneel all night long and guards hit anyone who fell.
He said prison officials told him repeatedly that they would transfer him to cells with people who were gang members who would “tear” him apart. Abrego Garcia said he saw others in nearby cells violently harm each other and heard screams from people throughout the night.
It’s important to point out that there is satellite evidence of mass grave complexes at CECOT. I don’t know why we still argue about this. It is known, well reported on, that El Salvador’s government commits mass murder and torture of their prisoners and hides their bodies in mass graves. Yet we still doubt that they would murder inmates at CECOT?
I am a former mass grave complex and genocide site investigator with real-world experience. My expertise is in analyzing satellite and spy plane imagery for the identification of very specific features and landmarks to locate sites of genocide.
I have worked in multiple undisclosed areas and have experience in not only the identification & reporting, but also the boots-on-the-ground investigations.
I unequivocally stand by the analysis and statements made in this report.
Bottom line: this one specific area is of HIGH probability to be a mass grave site.
***********
UPDATED on 4.27.2025:
The probability was upgraded to
“Likely and of Utmost Gravity”
https://substack.com/home/post/p-161833178
Remember Garcia is the only person that we sent to El Salvador who has come back so far. Everyone else is still being tortured in that hellhole prison, if they’re even still alive.
Do you know the real reason for all this between the US and El Salvador? Trump is helping El Salvador’s dictator, Bukele, hide evidence that he made secret deals with gang leaders and paid them to keep violence down.
Bukele could benefit from MS-13 leaders being let out of U.S. custody.
U.S. and Salvadoran officials have said MS-13 leaders are being returned to face justice in El Salvador. But The Times found that American prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders, who agreed to drive down violence and bolster Mr. Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail. Investigators had even begun scrutinizing Mr. Bukele himself.
Some who were part of the federal investigation worry that Mr. Bukele wants the gang leaders back to prevent them from revealing damaging information about his government.
The return of top MS-13 leaders could hamper the U.S. investigation.
The investigation began in the first Trump administration, spearheaded by a cross-agency group called Joint Task Force Vulcan. But now two major cases against some of the gang’s highest-ranking leaders that emerged from that effort could be badly damaged, and other defendants could be less likely to cooperate or testify in court, according to multiple people with knowledge of the initiative.
Prosecutors are quietly seeking to drop charges against top leaders.
After working for years to get senior MS-13 leaders into custody, federal prosecutors are now quietly dropping charges against them. One top leader, César López Larios, was put on a plane to El Salvador in March with other migrants sent to a maximum-security prison. Mr. López had been in U.S. custody for less than a year and was awaiting trial on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges.
Prosecutors in Long Island are now seeking to drop charges against Vladimir Arévalo Chávez, who was accused along with 12 other gang leaders in February 2023 of narco-terrorism, murder and corruption.
The U.S. has had indications for years of a pact between Bukele and the gang.
The first Trump administration received a warning about a secret pact between Mr. Bukele’s government and MS-13 as early as August 2020, when a top Salvadoran official showed up at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador to share information, The Times found.
The following year, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on that same official and another top Bukele aide after determining they had offered MS-13 leaders money, cellphones and prostitutes in jail in exchange for their help bringing down the homicide rate and securing votes.
It’s all corruption and bullshit. This is all to keep MS13 gang leaders from testifying about their corrupt deals with Bukele in US court. It has nothing to do with keeping America safe, it has nothing to do with ridding our nation of violent gangs, this is a corrupt deal between trump and Bukele to hide Bukele’s crimes and I’m sure in the future Bukele will return the favor by allowing trump to disappear his political enemies to El Salvador.
Killing families for trying to get food is a greater sin while a president stuffs his orange face with football sized burgers!!!
Crimes against humanity!