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MY LETTER TO SEN BILL CASSIDY, MD

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 31, 2025

Del has a message for Senator Bill Cassidy, who headed the second of two fiery hearings of RFK Jr. for head of HHS.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

WhatsApp accuses Israeli spyware firm of targeting journalists, civil society members

RT | January 31, 2025

Meta’s popular messaging platform WhatsApp has alerted nearly 100 journalists and civil society members to potential device breaches involving spyware from Israeli firm Paragon Solutions, a company official told Reuters on Friday.

These individuals have likely been compromised through a zero-click attack, possibly initiated via a malicious PDF sent in group chats, according to WhatsApp.

The identity of the attackers remains unknown, though Paragon’s software is typically used by government clients. After detecting and disrupting the hacking effort, WhatsApp issued a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon. The incident has been reported to law enforcement and Citizen Lab, a Canadian internet watchdog.

Paragon declined to comment on the accusations, according to Reuters.

Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton told the outlet that the incident “is a reminder that mercenary spyware continues to proliferate and as it does, so we continue to see familiar patterns of problematic use.”

Paragon’s website advertises “ethically based tools, teams, and insights to disrupt intractable threats,” and claims to only sell to governments in stable democratic countries. The company’s products include Graphite, spyware that allows total phone access.

Despite Paragon’s claims of ethical practices, WhatsApp’s findings suggest otherwise, Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at Access Now, told Reuters. She emphasized that such abuses are not isolated incidents, saying, “This is not just a question of some bad apples – these types of abuses (are) a feature of the commercial spyware industry.”

This incident follows a series of legal challenges against Israeli spyware firms. In December 2024, a US judge ruled that NSO Group, the maker of Pegasus spyware, was liable for hacking the phones of 1,400 individuals through WhatsApp in May 2019, violating US state and federal hacking laws, and WhatsApp’s terms of service. A separate trial in March will determine what damages NSO Group owes WhatsApp.

Legal documents from ongoing US litigation between NSO Group and WhatsApp have revealed that it is the Israeli cyberweapons maker NSO Group, not its government clients, that installs and extracts information using its spyware. This disclosure contradicts NSO’s prior claim that only clients operate the system without NSO’s direct involvement.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

FBI Acted Like Modern-Day Gestapo

Sputnik – 31.01.2025

US President Donald Trump’s purge of the FBI’s leadership comes as no surprise – the agency has been acting more like a political enforcer than a law enforcement body.

Here are just a few examples of its (mis)conduct:

  • August 2022 – The FBI stormed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to seize classified documents while Biden faced zero consequences for doing the same.
  • 2020 – The FBI actively suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, labeling it “Russian disinformation”, despite knowing it was real.
  • August 2024 – FBI agents raided the homes of ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and journalist Dimitri Simes without announcing charges. Their crime? Challenging the official US narrative.
  • 2024 – The House Judiciary Committee exposed the FBI for spying on Americans’ private transactions, targeting conservatives rather than criminals.
  • 2022 – Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson revealed the FBI has been investigating parents critical of their local school boards, using threat tag employed by the agency’s counterterrorism division.
  • 2016 – The FBI used the debunked Steele dossier as a pretext to spy on Trump’s election campaign, despite knowing the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion were false.

Trump’s crackdown on the agency was inevitable – the real question is how deep the rot goes.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

A Republic of Spies

By Andrew P. Napolitano | Ron Paul Institute | January 30, 2025

In 2021, to his credit, President Joe Biden warned the American public against the dangers of zero-click spyware manufactured by an Israeli corporation. Zero-click is unwanted software that can expose the entire contents of one’s mobile or desktop device to prying eyes without tricking one into clicking on to a link. Biden banned its importation and use in the United States.

Last week, as an inducement to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the Israel/Hamas ceasefire agreement, President Donald Trump secretly agreed to lift the embargo on zero-click.

Here is the backstory.

Though America has employed spies since the Revolutionary War, until the modern era, spying was largely limited to wartime. That changed when America became a surveillance state in 1947 with the public establishment of the Central Intelligence Agency and the secret creation of its counterparts.

The CIA’s stated public task at its inception was to spy on the Soviet Union and its satellite countries so that American officials could prepare for any adverse actions by them. This was the time of the Red Scare, in which both Republicans and Democrats fostered the Orwellian belief that America needed a foreign adversary.

We had just helped the Russians defeat Germany in World War II, and our Russian ally — which was bankrupt and had just lost 27 million troops and civilians — suddenly became so strong it needed to be kept in check. The opening salvo in this absurd argument was fired by President Harry Truman in August 1945 when he used nuclear bombs intentionally to target civilians of an already defeated Japan. One of his targets was a Roman Catholic cathedral.

But his real target — so to speak — was his new friend, Joe Stalin.

When Truman signed the National Security Act into law in 1947, he also had Stalin in mind. That statute, which established the CIA, expressly stated that it shall have no internal intelligence or law enforcement functions and all its collections of intelligence shall come from sources outside the United States.

These limiting clauses were vital to passage of the statute, as members of Congress who crafted it feared the U.S. was creating the type of internal surveillance monster that we had just confronted in Germany.

Of course, no senior official in presidential administrations from Truman to Trump has taken these limitations seriously. As recently as the Obama administration, the CIA boasted that it had the capability of receiving data from all computer chips in the homes of Americans — such as in your microwave or dishwasher.

As well as its presence in your kitchen, the CIA is physically present in all 50 state houses in America. What is it doing there?

The feds admit to funding and empowering 18 domestic intelligence agencies — spies next door. The most notorious of these is the National Security Agency, which, when it last reported, employs 60,000+ persons, mostly civilians, with military leadership.

What do they do? They spy on Americans. We know this thanks to the personal courage of Edward Snowden and others who chose to honor their oaths to uphold the Constitution. NSA spying has produced so much data that the NSA built the second-largest building in the U.S. — after the Pentagon — for use as a storage facility of the data it has collected, and it is running out of room.

What has it collected? Quite simply, everything it can get its hands on. These domestic spies have access to every keystroke and all data on every digital device everywhere in the United States, without a warrant. This is computer hacking, a federal crime; but the feds don’t prosecute the spies they have hired to spy on us.

It also represents an egregious violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guarantees the right to privacy of all persons. The operative language is “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

The law defines all searches and seizures conducted without a warrant as unreasonable and thus violative of not only this amendment but also the uniquely American value it was enacted to protect — the right to be left alone. Surely the computer chip in every desktop, mobile device, dishwasher and microwave is an “effect” protected by the Constitution.

The spies and, sadly, the presidents for whom they have worked don’t see it that way. They have claimed in federal courts and elsewhere that the Fourth Amendment does not pertain to them because they are not law enforcement and because they work directly for the president, who, when he is operating as the commander in chief, is free to employ government assets as he wishes, without constitutional constraints.

This argument has been used to justify the CIA’s violent killings of Americans and others in foreign lands using drones and its agents dressed as military. It has justified the brutal torture of foreign nationals, even those whom the CIA deemed were being truthful during their interrogations. And, of course, it has justified ignoring the Constitution and the rights it protects and the values that underlie it.

This argument was also used to justify foreign and federal spying on Trump. Now he wants to make it easier for America’s spies to spy on the rest of us.

Spying belies the very purpose of the Constitution — to keep the government off the people’s backs. Of course, when the late Justice William O. Douglas coined that phrase, there were no computer chips, the CIA was thought to be law-abiding and the NSA didn’t exist.

So, we can see how desirous of secrecy the Trump administration was last week when it agreed to lift the zero-click embargo.

We can try to avoid commercial spyware, but how can we avoid a totalitarian government that spies on everyone?

According to the Declaration of Independence, we can do so by altering or abolishing it.

To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian media reach soars as NATO eyes countermeasures – report

RT | January 30, 2025

A fresh NATO report highlights a sharp increase in the reach of Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, where the news outlets have gained millions of new followers.

The report, published on Tuesday by the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (StratCom COE), examines how Russian media operations have expanded their influence after the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict in early 2022. With Russian state-backed media subjected to blanket bans in the West, the outlets diverted their resources elsewhere.

According to the report, RT Arabic saw its audience grow by ten million users since the breakout of fighting between Ukraine and Russia. Sputnik Arabic also significantly increased its content output, posting 30–35% more frequently, while the news agency’s engagement on social media surged by 80%. Russian embassies in Africa also saw a 41% rise in social media followers, reflecting a broader trend of growing Russian media influence in non-Western regions, the report notes.

It also claims the outlets have been capitalizing on “anti-colonial narratives” and overall frustration with Western policies, particularly in Africa, and blames this on historical ties to the Soviet Union that still shape public perceptions there. In some cases, the narratives have resonated strongly with audiences already skeptical of Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the International Criminal Court, the report notes.

While StratCom COE projected its findings to the entirety of the Global South, the report actually examined the work of Russian media – as well as social media activities it had linked to Russia without any solid evidence – in Egypt, Mali, Kenya, South Africa and the UAE.

The authors of the report appeared to struggle with terminology, rejecting the ‘Global South’ over an “increasing pushback” against the name, and shot down the term ‘majority countries,’ claiming it has been promoted by assorted “malign actors” to push their agenda. Instead, the report uses the term ‘Multi-aligned Community,’ vaguely defining it as “states existing outside of the Western environment who have exhibited a preference for aligning or partnering with chosen states depending on specific spheres or issues.”

In response to the expanding reach of Russian media, the NATO report proposes new countermeasures aimed at reducing Moscow’s ever-growing influence. One recommendation is to establish a NATO-led initiative to engage with audiences in Africa and the Middle East, improving direct communication and addressing concerns about Western policies.

The report also suggests that NATO should work with local media outlets to “counter disinformation” and to bankroll local “independent journalism.” It also calls for stronger partnerships with civil society organizations to promote diverse viewpoints and counter what it describes as “one-sided narratives” from Russian state media.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why the Mainstream Media Is in Trouble

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 31, 2025

As most everyone knows, the mainstream media is hurting, big time. For many years, subscriptions and advertising revenue have been plummeting. Some of the big papers have been able to survive only by having some multimillionaire bail them out with his own money and be willing to absorb the ongoing financial losses.

Why is this? I submit that one big reason is that most Americans simply do not trust the media. They have come to see the media as just an unofficial mouthpiece for the federal government, especially the national-security branch of the government, the branch that rules the roost.

A good example of this phenomenon relates to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The official narrative is that the invasion was an unprovoked war of aggression, much like the U.S. government’s unprovoked invasion of and war of aggression against Iraq.

But the undisputed evidence establishes beyond any doubt whatsoever the contrary. The evidence establishes that after the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, NATO remained in existence, which was quite unusual, to say the least. That’s because the ostensible reason that NATO was brought into existence was to supposedly protect Western Europe from an attack by the Soviets.

Even worse, NATO began moving eastward, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact, and moving inexorably in the direction of Russia’s border. And this occurred in violation of promises made by U.S. officials to Russian officials that that would never happen.

Throughout the absorption process, Russian officials continually stated, “Stop it. Stop bringing your missiles, troops, weapons, tanks, and military bases closer to our border.” But U.S. officials, operating through NATO, refused to stop it. They just kept moving eastward until they finally threatened to absorb Ukraine.

As they proceeded with their absorption campaign, U.S. officials knew exactly what Russia’s reaction would be. It would be the same reaction that the U.S. had when the Soviets installed their nuclear weapons in Cuba. If the Soviets had refused to remove those nuclear weapons, the U.S. would have invaded Cuba, just as the Russians invaded Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from being absorbed into NATO.

How in the world can NATO’s absorption campaign not be considered a provocation? If that’s not a provocation, I don’t know what is. And let’s not forget: The U.S. government did much the same thing in 1979, when it provoked the Soviets into invading Afghanistan, with the aim of giving them “their own Vietnam.” National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly confessed that they did that. Thus, when tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were dying on the Afghan battlefield, U.S. officials were exultant, just as they are exultant over the “degrading” of Russia’s army in Ukraine through the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian soldiers.

Yet, in account after account in the mainstream media, one continues to find the official narrative about Russia’s supposed “unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine. Given such, why would anyone trust any newspaper that continues to repeat that official narrative rather than printing only the truth about what the U.S. government and NATO did to provoke the invasion and, at the same time, condemning the official narrative?

Consider, for example, the New York Times. On January 14, 2025, it published an op-ed by Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, and Anthony J. Blinken, secretary of state, stating: “President Vladimir Putin of Russia appalled the world with his full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost three years ago. He planned to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government, install a Kremlin puppet regime and expose the West as weak, divided and diminished…. The United States and its allies and partners must continue to stand by Ukraine and strengthen its hand for the negotiations that will someday bring Mr. Putin’s war of aggression to an end.”

Not one word about what the U.S. and NATO did to provoke the invasion with their absorption campaign.

Yesterday, January 30, the Times published this comment by longtime columnist Nicholas Kristof about Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing: “Asked who she blames for the Ukraine war, Gabbard said bluntly, ‘Putin started the war in Ukraine.’ After her past blather about Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” and in a hearing full of her evasions, that was a reassuring acknowledgment of a reality that should be obvious to all.” [Links in original.]

So, Gabbard’s pointing to Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” regarding  having U.S. nuclear weapons, troops, and tanks on its border is nothing more than “blather.” I’m willing to bet that Kristof and the Times would not call the U.S. government’s “legitimate security concerns” during the Cuban Missile Crisis “blather.”

Also yesterday, the Times posted a news story about Gabbard’s confirmation hearing, stating, “Russia experts and intelligence experts have frequently remarked on Ms. Gabbard’s history of taking positions that defend Russian interests or cast the United States as a villain. She blamed NATO and the Biden administration for provoking Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago by failing to respect ‘Russia’s legitimate security concerns.’” [Links in original.]

So, pointing out the truth about the U.S. government’s wrongful conduct equates to “defending Russian interests.” Also, notice how the Times conflates the United States and the U.S. government, as if they were one and the same thing. The fact is that the U.S. government sometimes is a villain. Example: The unprovoked U.S. invasion of and undeclared war of aggression against Iraq. Does pointing out that villainous conduct constitute “defending Russian interests.” Moreover, notice how the reporter implicitly disparages Gabbard for pointing out what NATO did to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Of course, the distrust of the mainstream media didn’t start with its repetition of the official narrative about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It goes back much further — for example, to Operation Mockingbird, when much of the mainstream press was willingly and eagerly becoming assets of the CIA in an effort to save America from the Russians and the “godless communists” who were supposedly coming to get us.

And it also stretches back to the Kennedy assassination, when the mainstream media blindly accepted the ludicrous lone-nut official narrative and refused to conduct any serious investigation that would contradict that narrative.

Consider, for example, when the Assassination Records Review Board discovered in the 1990s that there had been two brain examinations as part of the JFK autopsy, the second of which could not possibly have been JFK’s brain. Wouldn’t you think that that would be something that the mainstream press would want to investigate, even if just a little bit? Nope. Nothing here, folks. Let’s move on. A lone-nut did it. That’s all you need to know.

Or consider the enlisted men who were released from vows of secrecy during the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s. They stated that they secretly carried the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue in a cheap shipping casket more than an hour before the official entry time of the Dallas casket into which the president’s body had been placed at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.

Wouldn’t you think that some mainstream newspaper would want to investigate that? After all, why would enlisted men make up such a story? Nope. Let’s move on, folks. Nothing to see here. A lone-nut did it. That’s all you need to know.

The Internet, obviously, has been the mainstream media’s worst enemy. That’s because people were now able to discover websites, podcasts, videos, and other such things that were willing to tell them the truth about the villainy of their own government. The mainstream media has been having trouble ever since.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Leading War Criminal Benjamin Netanyahu Will Visit Donald Trump

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • January 30, 2025

President Donald Trump has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him at the White House on Tuesday February 4th. Netanyahu will be the first foreign head of state to visit America’s new president at the White House and the message being sent by virtue of that fact would seem inescapable, i.e. that Israel is in the minds of the country’s powerbrokers and media indeed America’s “best friend” and “closest ally.” Or is it? It is possible, though admittedly less likely, that Trump, he of the enormous ego, might well take the opportunity to suppress any thoughts that the Israeli leader is basically dictating the course of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Trump just might want to make it clear in the face-to-face that he is the one who is in charge.

I must admit that when the story broke my first thought was that Netanyahu might possibly discover that he has been lured to Washington. When his plane lands at Dulles International or Andrews AFB, I even hoped there would be an international police contingent waiting for him to show him the warrant for his arrest, read him his rights, shackle him, and send him off to The Hague to be tried for his numerous war crimes and his involvement in genocide. Hopefully, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken would be treated similarly and sent off on the same plane. But my dream outcome for the visit faded as reality set in and I came to accept that Bibi will be more likely feted as royalty by the neocons and other not-quite-human trash that now infests the US government.

There is however admittedly a distinct possibility that Trump will assert himself as he apparently did recently when a video was posted by him on the Trump social media site Truth Social. The video featured Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs bad mouthing Bibi, saying “Netanyahu had from 1995 onward the theory that the only way we’re gonna get rid of Hamas and Hezbollah is by toppling the governments that support them. That’s Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Iran. And the guy’s nothing if not obsessive. And he’s still trying to get us to fight Iran this day, this week. He’s a deep dark sonofabitch, sorry to tell you. ’Cause he’s gotten us into endless wars, and because of the power of all of this in the US politics, he’s gotten his way.”

Or, alternatively, Trump could easily continue the Middle East policy that prevailed in his first term as president, which was, like Genocide Joe Biden, to defer to Israel on nearly everything. Trump moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem and violated international law by declaring the city to be the true legal Israeli capital; he endorsed the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights by Israel; he chose to ignore atrocities committed by Israeli settlers and soldiers directed against the Palestinians living on the West Bank; and he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement to monitor and limit a possible Iranian nuclear program. Also regarding Iran, he ordered that country’s Quds Force commander Qassim Soleimani assassinated in January 2020 while Soleimani was on a peace mission to Baghdad.

Iran continues to be the target of both the US and Israel. Lest anyone should think that the JCPOA move was motivated to encourage Iran to develop a weapon, Trump’s argument was that the program was flawed because it did not go far enough in penetrating and investigating Iranian military sites and labs. It also created a national security pretext permitting Israel to insist that Iran was hiding a secret nuke program, an excuse for a preemptive attack on it jointly launched by Israel and the United States. Interestingly, outgoing CIA Director William Burns now claims that the Iranians have no nukes and have no capability to quickly produce one. He also maintains that there is no evidence that they even have any desire to acquire a nuclear weapon, a reality that clearly contradicts the Israeli propaganda regarding an “Iranian nuclear threat.”

Nevertheless, it is regularly reported by Israel and the neocon dominated media in the US that Team Trump and the Israeli security council have been discussing a preemptive strike on the Iranians. But perhaps contrary to that assessment Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy and the man who pressured Netanyahu into agreeing to a ceasefire with Hamas, has since the inauguration been given the portfolio for dealing with the Middle East including responsibility for Iran negotiations. The previous Trump appointee who had that responsibility was Brian Hook, who was a hardliner who believed in applying “maximum pressure” on the Iranians and has now been replaced.

Witkoff is also reported to be continuing to meet with and pressure Netanyahu to complete all three phases of the Gaza agreement, something which is contradicted by Israeli media reporting which suggests that Netanyahu believes that he can resume his military offensive with US support after the six weeks of phase one. In addition to Witkoff, another more recent appointment might give one hope for a gradual reversal of policy in line with Trump’s apparent belief that American involvement in the Middle East has been expensive, destructive, and contrary to the American national interest. Michael DiMino, a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense veteran, is the Trump pick to be deputy assistant secretary of defense with responsibility for the Middle East operations. DiMino is facing fierce Israel Lobby opposition to his appointment, but he continues to maintain very clearly that, in his opinion, Iranian conventional forces do not pose a threat to the US, meaning that war with Tehran should not be viewed as an option.

Some observers think that Trump’s intentions might be most clearly reflected in his choices as US Ambassadors to Israel. His first term produced David Friedman, Trump’s personal lawyer and a passionate Zionist. Friedman functioned more as a cheerleader for Israel and all its works than a promoter or defender of any actual US interest. The new ambassador Evangelical Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee might prove to be even worse than Friedman, which is saying a lot. When making the appointment, Trump said in a statement regarding Huckabee that “Mike has been a great public servant, Governor, and Leader in Faith for many years. He loves Israel, and the people of Israel, and likewise, the people of Israel love him. Mike will work tirelessly to bring about Peace in the Middle East!”

Huckabee’s vision of “peace” will likely be based on a mountain of dead and dispossessed Palestinians. He believes God gave historic Palestine to the modern state of Israel, and is an outspoken advocate of Israel’s planned expansion in the occupied West Bank. While visiting an Israeli West Bank settlement in in 2017, Huckabee claimed the land was not Israeli occupied. “I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria. There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement… There’s no such thing as an occupation.” In 2008, during his own presidential campaign, Huckabee said there was “really no such thing as a Palestinian.”

Those concerned that Trump might be moving to favor Israel above all nations note that the administration’s directive to halt all spending on foreign assistance programs, which included Ukraine, exempted Israel and also Egypt, where Trump is hoping to dump upwards of a million Palestinians in the Sinai Desert to “clean up” the mess in Gaza. Trump has also approved the sale to Israel of 1800 M-84 2000 pound bombs which are used primarily to destroy large buildings and kill large numbers of people. The transfer of the weapons to Israel had been suspended by the Biden Administration but Trump announced that “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!” He did not mention that US weapons “sold” to Israel are often paid for by the US taxpayer as part of military aid. The sale of a large number of dual-use armored Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel, useful for knocking down whatever habitable spaces remain in Gaza, has also received the green light from the administration. Trump has also blocked the Biden-imposed sanctions on extremist settler groups that have been harassing, beating, and killing the Palestinians who are trying to survive on the West Bank. Finally, Trump has issued an executive order that will require American universities to monitor the political activities of foreign students in a bid to reduce antisemitism. Those who have gotten involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus could have their visas canceled and they will be subject to deportation.

That is quite a bit of pro-Israel movement for Donald Trump’s first week in office, don’t you think? Those who believe that Trump might be preparing to lay down the law with Netanyahu must understand that he will also have to contend with the hopelessly Zionist Congress, which gave the monstrous Netanyahu 56 standing ovations when last he appeared in Washington. We will know soon enough what the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump in the White House was all about and we shall also find out whether the bilateral relationship will continue to consist of Israel cracking the whip and the United States government performing. If Trump dares to challenge the status quo it could set the stage for a major conflict between the new president and the immensely powerful Israel Lobby. As Trump is a very stubborn man with a huge ego, that interplay could be very interesting to watch, particularly as it could lead to the United States finally freeing itself from the country that has been pulling its foreign and national security policy strings for so many years.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Rebuffing US resettlement bid, Russia affirms Palestinians’ right to Gaza

MEMO | January 31, 2025

The Palestinian people, including those in Gaza, have an indisputable right to live on their land, the Kremlin said on Friday in response to US President Donald Trump suggesting the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan, Anadolu Agency reports.

“The Gaza Strip is an integral part of the territory of the future Palestinian State, along with East Jerusalem and the West Bank of the Jordan River. The right of the people of Palestine includes the right of the people of Gaza to live on their land, it is indisputable, it should not be questioned,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, told a press briefing in Saransk, Russia, taking a question from Anadolu.

She reaffirmed that Russia’s position on Gaza and its inhabitants remains firm and unchanged.

“We support a comprehensive political resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict based on internationally recognised legal frameworks, including UN General Assembly decisions, UN Security Council resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative. The outcome should be the establishment of an independent Palestinian State within the “1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, coexisting peacefully and securely alongside Israel,” she said.

This approach, rooted in international law and historical justice, is supported by the vast majority of countries, including Arab nations, she said.

“We firmly believe that only implementation of a two-state solution can ensure lasting peace in the Middle East,” she added.

Trump had earlier suggested that Jordan and Egypt, both of which border Gaza, should house displaced Palestinians. “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he said.

The suggestion drew widespread condemnation.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Prisoner thanks Gazans after release, says Israel tortures Palestinians

Press TV – January 31, 2025

One of the high-profile Palestinians released as part of the third batch of an agreement between Hamas and Israel on the exchange of Palestinian prisoners with Israeli captives under a Gaza ceasefire agreement was Zakaria Zubeidi.

Zubeidi, a senior leader of the Fatah movement and commander of its armed wing the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades in the West Bank, was freed on Thursday alongside 109 other Palestinian prisoners in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Their release came after Hamas and its ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad released three Israeli captives along with the five Thai nationals. They were handed over to the Red Cross.

“Today I say thank you to Gaza, which liberated me and brought me back to my family. I was isolated, tortured and beaten, and repeatedly humiliated, and the situation of all prisoners is the same,” Zubeidi said in his first remarks after the release.

He went on to describe Israeli prisons as centers of killing and daily torture.

“Gaza now needs reconstruction, and all levels of the Palestinian people must come together to accomplish this, and return our people to their homes safely,” the former Palestinian prisoner pointed out.

Zubeidi was born in 1976 at Jenin refugee camp in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. He became a military commander for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the Second Intifada (2000–2005), leading armed resistance.

He lost his mother Samira and his brother Taha in 2002, as Israeli occupation forces stormed the camp.

Zubeidi was constantly pursued by the occupying Tel Aviv regime.

On July 15, 2007, Israel granted amnesty to several al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade members, including him, in exchange for their surrender to the Palestinian Authority.

Following the amnesty, Zubeidi got married and had two children – a son and a daughter. He shifted his focus to theater arts, and became a prominent advocate for Palestinian arts with the Freedom Theater in Jenin.

He met with many international activists and supporters of Palestinian rights.

But four years later, on December 29, 2011, Israel revoked his amnesty, despite Zubeidi’s insistence that he had not violated its terms.

He was detained without charge by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for six months, and then later held in a PA jail in “protective custody.”

In 2018, he pursued a master’s degree at Birzeit University.

He and his lawyer, Tariq Barghout, were arrested in January 2019 and charged with engaging in “new incitement activities” and armed resistance against the Israeli regime.

Zubeidi finally obtained his master’s degree behind prison bars.

On September 6, 2021, he escaped from the Gilboa maximum security prison in the northern sector of the Israeli-occupied territories alongside 5 other Palestinian inmates by digging a tunnel from their cell.

Israeli forces recaptured all six Palestinian inmates days later, but the daring escape, known as Operation Freedom Tunnel, was widely praised as legendary among Palestinians and Muslim nations.

Last May, Zubeidi’s son Dawoud succumbed to injuries sustained in an armed confrontation with Israeli forces in Jenin.

Last September, his other son Mohammad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the West Bank city of Tubas along with several other Palestinians.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli fighter jets strike eastern, northern Lebanon

The Cradle | January 31, 2025

Israeli airstrikes targeted eastern and northern Lebanon early on 31 January, in continued violation of the ceasefire agreement that was recently extended and has seen Tel Aviv’s forces prolong their presence in the country.

Large explosions rocket the Lebanese-Syrian border area south of Lebanon’s eastern city of Baalbek during the early morning hours.

“Enemy warplanes raided the eastern chain (Al-Silsila al-Sharqiya) in the Bekaa,” Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported on Friday morning.

NNA also reported Israeli airstrikes on the Wadi Khaled area of northern Lebanon’s Akkar district. One raid hit a truck loaded with batteries and scrap metals in the Al-Wawiyat area, while another hit Jab al-Ward crossing on the outskirts of the town of Hanaider.

The Israeli army claimed in a statement that “fighter jets attacked during the night, under intelligence guidance from the Military Intelligence Directorate, several targets of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in the Bekaa region in Lebanon that posed a threat to the Israeli home front and [military] forces.”

“Among the targets attacked: a military site with underground infrastructure for the development and production of weapons and transit infrastructure on the Syrian-Lebanon border through which the Hezbollah terrorist organization is trying to transfer weapons,” the statement added.

Israeli drones had struck three vehicles in the southern Lebanese town of Taybeh on 30 January.

The Israeli army said earlier on Thursday that it intercepted a Hezbollah reconnaissance drone launched towards its territory.

Tel Aviv has stepped up its violations of the ceasefire while claiming to be acting in accordance with the agreement. Earlier this week, it launched violent airstrikes on the southern city of Nabatieh, injuring at least 30 people.

It also continues to attack displaced southern residents who began returning to their villages on 26 January, upon the expiration of the ceasefire implementation period, which has been extended until 18 February. Over two dozen Lebanese citizens in the south have been killed by Israeli troops.

Israel refused to withdraw from south Lebanon as was required during the 60-day period, which was also meant to see the Lebanese army dismantle Hezbollah’s presence and infrastructure south of the Litani River. The implementation period was extended due to Israeli pressure on Washington.

Israel accuses the returning Lebanese residents of being “Hezbollah activists” and “rioters.” It also claims that the LAF did not fulfill its commitments in the agreement, claiming that Hezbollah is still present south of the Litani River.

An Israeli military official told the Ynet news site on 29 January that Israel will not withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon until it deems that the Lebanese army has fulfilled its commitments in the ceasefire agreement.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The US Is Reeking the Smell of Fear

By Hua Bin | January 31, 2025

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has sent a shockwave through the US tech industry and Wall Street in the last week.

Its LLM R1, trained under $6 million and 2 months, has outperformed the latest offerings from OpenAI, Meta, Google and Microsoft, who have spent tens of billions and years on their models.

The DeepSeek AI app has topped download charts in the US and China, replacing ChatGPT as the No. 1 AI productivity tool.

Due to its breakthrough technology that shows powerful AI can be developed with very limited investment in compute, DeepSeek’s emergency has sent Nvidia stock reeling, losing as much as 17% on Monday and wiping out $600 billion in market cap.

Interestingly, as we speak, barely a few days after the shockwave on Wall Street, DeepSeek is experiencing a massive denial of service (DoS) attacks from the US on its servers, affecting new registrations.

The US government, including the US Navy, has banned the use of DeepSeek for its personnel. And the congress is already discussing ways to slow down and disrupt DeepSeek.

This episode is eerily reminiscent of the Huawei ban, the TikTok ban, the chip ban, and the EV tariffs. The US regime has fully adopted the Tonya Harding school of how to win by breaking the leg of her competitor. Ask Nancy Kerrigan about it.

As thoughtful people put all these panic-ridden actions in context, the most obvious conclusion emerges – the US regime is not acting from any position of strength. It is behaving like a chicken little who cannot compete, win honestly, and is running scared.

The list of anti-China activities out of successive US regimes is long and varied –

– Trump started to impose 60% tariff on Chinese imports since 2017, a policy the Biden regime continued.

– The Biden regime imposed 100% tax on Chinese EVs, which have not yet even entered the US market. But the competitiveness of Chinese EVs is enough to get Biden to enact pre-emptive tariffs.

– Biden regime imposed dozens of export controls on China, often using coercion against its own “allies” to follow suit such as Holland’s ASML and South Korea’s Hynix and Samsung.

– Biden regime put thousands of Chinese companies on the US entity list with all sorts of made-up justifications in hope of disrupting these companies’ operations.

– Trump is again making noises to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. He is going further to threaten invading Panama and Greenland to contain China.

– The FBI launched the infamous China Initiative to prosecute Chinese scientists working in the US, yielding zero prosecutable case after ruining the lives of numerous scholars and scientists.

McCarthyism is alive and well in the “land of the free”. J Edgar Hoover, the cross dresser, would be proud of the viciousness of the criminal organization he founded.

– The US regime has also harassed the hundreds of thousands Chinese students in the US, who are contributing $150 billion a year to the US economy. It is attempting to prevent Chinese students from studying in advanced technical fields. Anyone studying the defunct neoliberal economics or neoconservative politics and faux democracy is welcome.

– The congress passed a $1.6 billion smear fund in a so-called “anti-CCP propaganda” campaign. The best to counter other’s so-called propaganda is of course to launch a bigger one of your own.

– Every political appointee, as well as elected official, must espouse a fervent anti-China rhetoric in confirmation hearings, TV interviews, and corporate media op-eds. If you are not a China hawk, you have no place in the US power elite.

– Every Pentagon official and military industrial complex funded “think tanker” is expected to sound tough about the coming China US war. They come up with frightening concepts like the “unmanned Hellscape” strategy in the Taiwan Strait, seemingly unaware that China is years ahead in drone tech and production.

– The US has tried to mobilize its vassals from Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and India into anti-China military alliances. It has formed fearsome-sounding acronyms like AUKUS and QUAD, which are looked upon in awe only by itself.

The “most powerful country in the history of the world” (as self-claimed by multiple US regimes) seems unconfident to take on China on its own.

On the other hand, China is playing its own game. There is no political figure or “expert” jumping up and down on national or local TV to shout against the US. There is little attention paid to the theatrics in Washington and its client states.

China is focused on overcoming the difficulties posed by the aggressive US actions, reducing dependencies, and developing its indigenous capabilities.

– China has diversified its trades. Trading with emerging markets now account for more than 50% of China’s total trade. Trade with the US is less than 3% of its GDP as of 2024.

– Huawei has revived its mobile business and dethroned Apple to return to market leadership in China. Its leadership is more entrenched in the core telecom technology area. It is more vertically integrated with its own chip design and manufacturing supply chain.

Huawei has expanded its product offerings to include mobile operating systems (Harmony OS NEXT), electric vehicles, streaming services, and autonomous driving.

– In AI, Chinese companies are making rapid progress. In addition to DeepSeek, ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, 01.ai have all developed sophisticated LLM models.

– China leads in industrial AI applications from robotics, drones to autonomous driving. Companies such as Unitree, DJI, BYD, Xiaomi are integrating AI technologies into multiple areas of practical applications beyond generative AI.

China is also translating its industrial, technological and economic power into military power.

It has recently launched the world’s first 6th generation fighter prototypes (not one but two at the same time), the world’s first drone-carrier, the first hypersonic stealth unmanned airplanes for strike and reconnaissance, the first stealth unmanned warship, and the most powerful long-range air defence systems.

It is progressing rapidly in directed energy weapons, military 5G, atomic timing, and space warfare systems.

All these military technological breakthroughs were unveiled in the last 3 months.

While US politicians and military figures seem to conflate theatrics with reality, China is quietly amassing the capability to overwhelm its opponent in raw military might, industrial might and economic might.

As we watch with amusement the clownish performance of the US elite, the stinking odor of fear reeks so much you can smell it from across the Pacific.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Sinophobia | , | Leave a comment