Pat Skinner

Builder, learner, tinkerer. I love helping people reach their potential. Really, really tall. Against qualified immunity #FreePalestine 🇵 #BDS

[Andreas Kirsch 🇺🇦 @BlackHC]

I work at Google DeepMind. This won't make me popular. But it's all public reporting:

2014: DeepMind reportedly sold to Google on conditions: no military use, independent oversight

2026: a Pentagon contract for "any lawful government purpose"

Not one safeguard survived intact

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@joekent16jan19 @ifamericansknew In the Senate, its Section 1217 of NDAA 2027.

More at https://t.co/0pprJAIde2

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

The massacre of the girls elementary school pupils (ages 8 to12) in Iran, now stands at one hundred and eighty five.
Any person attempting to justify this unprovoked obscenity is a psychopath.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

The world's two rogue states, Israel and the USA, have started a war not against Iran but against the whole world. We stand with Iranians, with Humanity, against the notion that Israel and the US can bomb anyone their fancy takes them to bomb. https://t.co/Xn8bo7q5Xc

[Sam Parker 🇺🇸🧯 @BasedSamParker]

@KimDotcom Iran didn't steal nukes from us

[Peter Jansen links 🇺🇦 🇸🇩 🇪🇺 @PeJeNic]

@FranceskAlbs @vonderleyen It's defenitly not in my name.

[Ian Carroll @IanCarrollShow]

@WhiteHouse Trump is Israel’s bitch.

[Seyed Abbas Araghchi @araghchi]

Netanyahu and Trump's war on Iran is wholly unprovoked, illegal, and illegitimate.

Trump has turned 'America First' into 'Israel First'—which always means 'America Last'.

Our Powerful Armed Forces are prepared for this day and will teach the aggressors the lesson they deserve

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

TIL “Immigration judges are employees of the executive branch, not the judiciary”
Fascinating, I’m no expert but does seem sus AF.

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

Co-signed

[COMBATE |🇵🇷 @upholdreality]

Bill Burr refuses the media bait:

"You journalists need to get your balls back"

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's always great to visit and catch up with one of the 21st Century's greatest, most courageous, and most consequential American whistleblowers: Edward @Snowden.

Had a great lunch with him yesterday. Glad as always that he's doing so well.

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Why was I questioned by the Feds?

As I approached the customs line at Dulles International Airport early on the morning of February 24, a man called out to me, “Mr. Blumenthal?” He identified himself as an officer with Customs and Border Protection, and led me into a cavernous secondary screening room, where he treated me to a strange and disconcerting questioning session. I had just returned from a leisurely trip to Nicaragua with my family during which I participated in no political activities. But the agent’s line of questioning suggested federal authorities had little interest in my visit to Nicaragua, a country that happens to be controlled by a socialist-oriented government on Washington’s hit list.

As my family and I followed the agent down a long hallway, he turned to me and said, “I caught your latest appearance on Judge Napolito [sic].” He was referring to Andrew Napolitano, a former Fox News host and jurist who hosts a daily livestream featuring former military and intelligence officials as well as journalists like me who dissent from official national security narratives. Nearly all of my appearances on Napolitano’s program, Judging Freedom, have focused on Israel’s blood-soaked wars in Gaza, Lebanon and beyond throughout the past 16 months. When I asked the agent how he liked my interview with the Judge, he shrugged and declined to volunteer an opinion. Was he simply trying to warm me up for our own question and answer session, or darkly signaling to me that Big Brother was watching? “This is just a friendly exchange,” he insisted as we entered the cavernous secondary screening room. “You’re not a target or anything.”

Standing across from me at a metal desk, the agent asked me to fill out a questionnaire with my personal info and details of my trip. As soon as I completed the form, he flipped it over and displayed a hand-written list containing several names. “Do you know any of these people?” he asked.

Two of those listed were Anglo names: Nicole Smith and Susan Benjamin. The other three were extremely common Muslims names. Because the agent would not allow me to photograph the list, I was only able to commit one to memory: Muhammad Khan. I could not recall any people I knew with those names. And the only Nicole Smith I could think of was the late model who died under strange circumstances at age 39. I therefore told the agent the names were unfamiliar to me.

To be sure, I would not have assisted the officer even if I had a personal connection with one of the names on the list. I’ve learned from activists and journalists who’ve experienced similar probing that federal agents often deploy inane or disingenuous questions to get their subject talking, then attempt to manipulate or entrap them so they can implicate them in a crime. In fact, the US Supreme Court has ruled that police are allowed to lie to elicit confessions from suspects. If government agents want to subject American citizens like me to extended questioning, they must follow constitutional procedures and allow us to have a lawyer present.

After spending several minutes inside a small office, the agent returned to inform us we were free to go. As we exited the screening room and headed toward the baggage claim area, an airport worker from West Africa pulled up to me on a ride-on floor scrubber, shook my hand and asked for a selfie. Like the federal agent, he was apparently aware of my journalistic output, but viewed it in a much more favorable light.

While waiting for our luggage, my wife, Anya Parampil, had a disturbing realization. She had been googling the names on the list the officer presented to me and discovered that Susan Benjamin was the birth name of our friend, Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Code Pink and one of the most widely recognized antiwar activists on the planet.

The following day, I informed Medea about my encounter at Dulles and asked if she had experienced anything similar. She told me there was a period when she was harassed by federal authorities each time she traveled out of the country. The FBI once dispatched an officer to meet her at an airport upon her return from a foreign trip, and called her on several occasions in an unsuccessful attempt to solicit a “meeting.” She said the harassment stopped after she filed a series of complaints, but my experience has led her to believe it will begin again.

While I was allowed to return to my country after a fairly brief question-and-answer session with a polite federal officer, the interaction felt like an act of political harassment, and seemed to signal an escalation against journalists and activists who’ve expressed antiwar, anti-Zionist views. I can only speculate on what the Feds’ ultimate objective was, however, I know of several antiwar activists who have had FBI agents appear at their doors over the past several months asking questions about Iran and individuals with Muslim or Arab names. Just down the road from Dulles, the FBI raided the home of a Palestinian American family whose daughter is a Palestine solidarity activist at George Mason University.

Within the broader realm of Five Eyes, in European vassal states without the same free speech protections Americans enjoy, journalists like Ali Abunimah, Asa Winstanley, and Richard Medhurst have been subjected to police raids, imprisonment, and even criminal prosecution for the opinions they’ve expressed on Israel-Palestine. My colleague at The Grayzone, Kit Klarenberg, was detained by British counter-terror cops and grilled for hours about his journalism on London’s machinations in Ukraine and beyond. Another one of our contributors, Jeremy Loffredo, spent several days in an Israeli prison and was ordered to self-deport after authorities falsely accused him of “assisting an enemy during wartime” for his journalism inside the country’s occupied frontiers. In Canada, activist Yves Engler was just released from five days in jail after a fanatical Zionist activist, Dahlia Kurtz, accused him of “hate speech” for branding her a “fascist.” Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu travels freely from Berlin to Washington DC despite an ICC warrant for his arrest for authorizing ghastly war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip.

My experience at Dulles International Airport paled in comparison to what a growing number of journalists and activists have endured in NATO states under Zionist management. Nonetheless, it is important to document encounters like these, and to prepare for future interactions that might not be as “friendly.”

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@frankoz95967943 @beadmomsw The way government gives itself immunity is repugnant

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@agelender There’s a block button and it feels good to press

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

Finally
https://t.co/typu4BwktL

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

When is Apple going to roll out USB-C out to the peripherals? Had to charge my Magic Keyboard just now and realizing how silly that keyboards/mice were ever on Lightning ports in the first place.

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@SteelersFan3610 @Escontrias64 @iamharaldur Oh good another instant block

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@CollinRugg @elonmusk @fema Everyday stronger and stronger reasons to abolish qualified immunity

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@mwfowlie @mattfahrner @MalwareJake Disagree. Killing innocent people is wrong regardless of what you label it. For sure innocent people died that didn’t have to

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

Edward Snowden did the planet a service exposing serious and ongoing US government corruption. He should 100% be rewarded

[Edward Snowden @Snowden]

@RyanMcbeth you sound mad

[Pat Skinner @onpaws]

@johnbryanesq @jeremykauffman Wow. Do you know if that’s backed by law?