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February 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

‘Operation Outbreak’: CDC Grooming Teens, Kids to Fear Pandemics, Critics Say

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 6, 2025

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) educational resources for K-12 students on disease outbreaks, the transmission of pathogens and how to trace their spread, on the surface, appear well-intended.

However, critics said the materials — which include lesson plans and classroom activities titled “Operation Outbreak” and a graphic novel targeting teens — also could be interpreted as propaganda designed to encourage compliance with public health policies and initiatives.

The materials present hypothetical scenarios necessitating a public health response to the outbreak and spread of a disease with a zoonotic — or animal — origin. Students are asked to employ a “One Health” approach and methods such as contact tracing to respond to these hypothetical outbreaks.

According to the materials, “One Health recognizes that human health, animal health, and the environment are connected.”

The One Health approach “requires human, animal, and environmental health professionals to work together at the local, state, federal, and global levels to improve the health of people, animals, and their shared environment.”

Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, said the CDC’s educational initiatives “appear to be a well-intentioned educational effort under the One Health framework.” But instead, “a closer examination suggests it may also serve to acclimate students to compliance during future public health crises.”

Perro said:

“By emphasizing the inevitability of ‘the next pandemic’ and reinforcing a specific perspective on zoonotic transmission, these materials can condition naive minds to accept certain public health policies without room for opposing discussions. … This initiative prioritizes messaging over genuine scientific inquiry.”

Dr. Margaret Christensen, a clinical educator called the materials “propaganda,” that “groom the younger generation early to believe our biggest threat is from some disease jumping out of an animal, whether birds or cows or pigs, and attacking us without defense, unless we’ve been vaccinated.”

According to attorney Sheri Snow Powers, the educational resources are intended to foster an uncritical attitude toward public health authorities.

“These materials are inappropriate for teenagers and children because they promote and idolize public health authorities as heroes and saviors,” Powers said. “This is detrimental to young developing minds and conditions children to be future compliant citizens.”

CDC educational resources use ‘a fear-based narrative’

The CDC’s educational resources include material meant to teach students “about the roots of American public health,” including the history and role of the CDC in domestic and global disease outbreaks.

The materials include modules on “lessons learned” during the 1976 swine flu outbreak, the CDC’s role in food and water safety, and in responding to the “21st century public health challenge” of chronic diseases.

However, the main focus of the materials for high school students is the “Operation Outbreak” series of classroom activities, centered around a graphic novel targeting teenagers.

Featuring a cover page reminiscent of the popular series “Stranger Things,” “The Junior Disease Detectives: Operation Outbreak a novel produced in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, presents a fictional disease outbreak scenario involving teenagers and animals. It’s connected to three in-class activities focusing on “zoonotic disease prevention and response.”

The first activity, “The Outbreak Team,” focuses on the “various roles and responsibilities of the professionals involved in an outbreak response. The next two activities, “Eddie’s Story” and “Hamlet’s Story,” focus on investigating a disease outbreak and its subsequent spread from a pig (Hamlet) to a teenager (Eddie).

According to the CDC, upon completion of the activities, students should be able to “identify steps in an influenza outbreak investigation,” “identify roles and responsibilities of public health, animal health, environmental health, and other relevant professionals” and “describe why using a One Health approach … is best when investigating or preventing zoonotic diseases.”

Students are also expected to learn how to define a series of terms, including “zoonotic influenza virus,” “novel influenza virus,” and “case” — including the differences between “suspected,” “probable” and “confirmed” cases.

“Most human infections with novel influenza A viruses have occurred after close contact with infected animals,” the materials state, noting that “global surveillance” is necessary “to detect the emergence of novel influenza A viruses that could trigger a pandemic.”

The materials also state, “There are associations between zoonotic influenza viruses and pandemics.”

But according to Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, the graphic novel and activities use a “fear-based” narrative. She said the materials lack “a balanced and factual approach that pathogens, viruses and bacteria are a natural part of life that can be mostly handled by each person’s immune system.”

Vaccination also is prominently featured in the educational materials. According to the graphic novel:

“As we learned during Disease Detective Camp, our bodies’ immune system produces antibodies to fight against infection, and the safest way to get antibodies is through vaccination.

“Although the flu vaccine isn’t designed to protect against variant flu, it is still important to get, because it can help protect us from getting the flu and spreading it to others.”

One Health approach ‘subtly promotes compliance over critical thinking’

Perro questioned the CDC’s focus on the One Health approach, “due to its biased, one-sided narrative.”

“By focusing solely on zoonotic transmission, it ignores key factors like environmental toxicants, industrial farming and genetic engineering risks,” Perro said. This promotes “compliance over critical thinking” and serves as “institutional propaganda,” she said.

The materials ultimately “shape narratives about the origins of pandemics — particularly regarding COVID-19 having emerged ‘naturally’ rather than from a lab-related incident,” Perro said.

Powers said the materials “condition” children to fear specific pathogens and “to be ignorant of their own bodies’ amazing immune system, by not mentioning it.”

“Teaching children how to take care of themselves with healthy food, exercise, and sunshine is a much more valuable lesson,” Powers said.

The CDC’s focus on the flu and children is not new. Documents Children’s Health Defense obtained in 2023 through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed that the agency hired an advertising firm to write “news” articles promoting flu shots for kids and the elderly.

The CDC’s “Operation Outbreak” materials appear to be unrelated to an online simulation activity by the same name, developed by the Broad Institute, UMass Chan Medical School and The Inspire Project — funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.

This simulation, introduced in 2017 and described as an “infectious way to learn,” operates through a mobile app and “unleashes a virtual pathogen through Bluetooth across participant devices, prompting a contagious outbreak that participants strive to contain.”

Related articles in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s USAID purge has revealed US scheming in Kiev, but won’t stop it

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | February 8, 2025

The catastrophe of the Ukraine War will leave a long trail of painful questions. Because this hubristic proxy confict has become such a pie-in-the-face fiasco for the West, there will be plenty of resistance to honest answers for a very long time.

But facts undermining self-serving Western narratives have started emerging already during the war. Most recently, revelations about the activities of USAID have delivered another hard blow to Western – and official Ukrainian – deception and self-deception.

But before we get to USAID, let’s note that those are not the first embarrassing disclosures with regard to the West’s harebrained and bloody attempt to use Ukraine to demolish Russia. Those with eyes to see have long known, for instance, that large-scale war would have been avoided if the West and Kiev had not deliberately sabotaged the 2015 Minsk-2 agreement, a short but viable blueprint to end a still comparatively small conflict, which was endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Or if the West had not brushed Moscow off when it sent what was, in effect, a clear last warning in late 2021.

Then there was a very early opportunity to stop the war, namely the almost-peace of the Belarus and Istanbul talks in spring 2022. Kiev, shocked by the reality of escalation, was ready to take this exit ramp. The conditions offered by Russia and the concessions it made during the negotiations – above all ending its advance on Kiev – amounted to a good deal for Ukraine, as one of Ukraine’s key negotiators has since admitted. And yet the West chose more war, and an obedient Vladimir Zelensky followed its lead. That failure, too, has long been denied but has to be acknowledged now under the weight of the evidence.

Last but not least, the ongoing, absurd Western lying about the Nord Stream pipeline attacks – the largest ecoterrorist assault in European history and an act of barely-covert war among NATO allies – is not even amusing anymore. All that’s left of that big lie is a reverse IQ test, sorting the indoctrinated dim from the normally intelligent.

And now, USAID and Ukraine. There, the gist of the matter is that the Trumpists are now purging and (probably) recasting that agency in what is a mean fight among US establishment insiders. Don’t be too optimistic: Despite American leader Donald Trump’s and henchman-in-chief Elon Musk’s loud noises about USAID being a “criminal organization” that is “run by a bunch of radical lunatics,” the Washington “swamp” is not being drained; it’s just changing management.

However, as a side effect, details of some of USAID’s very seedy activities are coming to light. Not that we have not known before that this “humanitarian aid” and “development agency” – founded in 1961 at the height of John F. Kennedy’s “liberal” drive to escalate the US struggle against genuine decolonization in the Global South – has always served as a front for intelligence and in particular for the type of massive subversion that precedes and produces coups, regime change, and “color revolutions.”

Indeed, the more honest defenders of USAID have always admitted – really, boasted of – the fact that it has been a tool of strategy in the geopolitical sense of the term. Even the presidential executive order that initiated the Trump administration’s drive against foreign aid in general has now admitted that the latter serves “to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.”

Indeed, USAID’s last, Biden-administration head Samantha Power – a comically disingenuous regime change careerist and “genocide expert” who can recognize that crime anywhere as long as she’s paid or promoted, just not in US allies such as Israel – is a perfect embodiment of USAID’s rotten top and core.

Don’t get me wrong: It would be silly not to recognize that USAID has also provided some real assistance, even if never – yes, really never – without political strings attached. Hence, if you think of “aid” as something given exclusively or even mainly out of compassion, then it’s a misnomer here, as USAID critic Mike Benz has rightly pointed out.

In any case, before being gutted, USAID had an annual budget somewhere between 30 and 40 billion dollars and around 10,000 employees, including 6,000 outside the US. In fiscal year 2023, the agency was active in 130 countries (there are about 200 total). And its activities did include things such as food assistance, health services, and disaster relief in countries such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sudan, and Yemen.

Let’s also be fair to those USAID staff and grant recipients – American or not – who have genuinely helped in valuable ways and out of sincere good will, often under harsh as well as dangerous conditions. In the world as it really is, many must make deals with the devil: it is not their fault that their organization has always worked as a front for political influence and subversion as well. Indeed, it is a bitter irony that those who really needed what was actually useful about USAID assistance and those distributing it are now being punished together with those who befouled all of it with their vile as well as rather ham-fisted subversion games. Samantha Power, for one, will, obviously, have the softest of landings, in a bespoke think-tank, Ivy League university, “consulting” job (i.e., influence peddling), or media sinecure.

One simple indicator of just how corrupt USAID has been is that, recently, the very top recipient of its aid has been, as it happens, Ukraine: in 2023, for instance, its hand-out of more than $16 billion left runner-up Ethiopia in the dust with less than $1.7 billion, that is about a tenth of Kiev’s allotment. So much for helping the neediest the most.

But serving as just one more funnel to pump endless gazillions into the always wide-open maw of the insatiable and highly demanding Zelensky regime was only one, if you wish, ordinary aspect of USAID’s special role in Ukraine.

This is where we return to those pesky revelations about the war: It turns out that USAID has also proactively and systematically helped to suffocate any hope for peace. And not in just one but two ways.

First, we now learn that almost the entire Ukrainian media sphere – 90 percent of news organizations – depended on USAID funding. Indeed, Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of the Kyiv Independent (the irony…), a staunchly info-warring publication, fears that losing access to the USAID trough “has caused harm to independent Ukrainian journalism on par with the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of Russia’s full-scale war.” Hear, hear.

More generally, a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review is worrying that losing USAID money will threaten “independent” journalism worldwide. No wonder, as USAID itself has proudly claimed that the US government “is now the largest public donor to independent media development globally.”

But any talk of “independence” here is, just like Rudenko’s complaint, obvious Orwellian-grade propaganda: Journalism that literally depends for its very existence on funding from an organization serving as a front for the foreign interests of the single most powerful and aggressive country in the world may be anything, but it cannot be – by definition – independent. You may, if that’s your thing, politically sympathize with such journalism or argue that you feel it is still, on balance, useful, if you wish, but please cut out the absurdity.

In practice, Ukraine is a perfect illustration of how such media dependency-across-borders can easily end in catastrophe: Anyone who knows Ukrainian well enough – as I do – can have a look for themselves. What they will find is a Potemkin village of pseudo-diversity, at best, with very few and embattled exceptions. In reality, the Ukrainian public sphere has been massively manipulated by a monotonous diet of pseudo-”patriotic” messaging. The single most urgent question concerning Ukraine’s own national interests, however, has been systematically maligned and made taboo: namely, if serving as proxy war cannon fodder for the West has been worth it.

The second manner in which USAID has promoted this devastating war was, if anything, even worse, in the sense of more drastic and hands-on: It’s now almost forgotten, but when Ukraine’s current past-best-by-date leader Vladimir Zelensky actually did face and win an election in 2019, his single concrete – and sensible – promise was to seek peace through negotiations.

Clearly, at the time, that promise was a major factor in his unprecedented landslide victory. Once in office, for a very short moment, it seemed as if Zelensky was trying to keep that promise. But then – years before the 2022 escalation – he made a 180-degree turn and emerged as an uncompromising and shortsighted nationalist and a tool of the US – if a very expensive and occasionally capricious one. It is likely that he will soon be discarded, as tools can be. But the damage he has already done to his country is enormous.

Many observers have long been puzzled by early Zelensky’s terrible turn. Was it fear of the powerful and aggressive Ukrainian far-right? Was it a misconceived play for even more popularity? Was it money? Was it Western pressure? We still don’t know the whole story, but we do know one important new thing: a wave of “popular” resistance “from below” and by “civil society” against Zelensky’s initial attempts to look for peace was not genuine. Instead, it had massive Western backing, including from USAID.

In particular, the organization was one of the key sponsors of a “joint statement” which presented a concerted threat to Zelensky in 2019, that is, almost immediately after he assumed office. On the surface the product of 70 Ukrainian NGOs, this was, in reality, a massive affront to democracy and the rule of law: Its sole purpose was to unconstitutionally constrain the newly elected president with so-called “red lines” and, in particular, nullify what so many of his voters wanted, namely an honest search for peace. None of this means that Zelensky is innocent. On the contrary, it was his duty and, literally, his job to resist such shameless pressure tactics and their foreign backers and stand up for his voters and the country as a whole. His failure to do so is his and will remain so forever.

Those NGOs were supported not only by USAID, but also by the National Endowment for Democracy, another US subversion front, the US embassy, and NATO, to name only a few. Whatever else the so-called Ukrainian “diaspora” (that is organized Ukrainian exile nationalist organizations rooted in World War Two fascist nationalism) was up to, it also took part in that big arm-twisting: the Temerty Foundation,  a key “diaspora” power broker, also figured among those NGO supporters.

Here is the sad irony: Ukraine has never been “free” and it has never had a “civil society” of its own. Instead, it has been used and manipulated by false “friends” from the West and a comprador “elite” that has put Western interests above those of their own compatriots. Together, they have openly and covertly colonized Ukraine’s public sphere and fed its people into a meatgrinder proxy war that is being lost as we speak. Soon, the West will sell out what is left of Ukraine entirely. None of this is unprecedented: It is a classic pattern of imperialist abuse. All those smart Westerners who have tried to apply “post-colonial” categories to the case of Ukraine: Go ahead – but look at yourself. You are the baddies.

In any case, don’t mistake the purge of USAID for some kind of principal improvement. It is true that some – rest assured: very selective – light is now thrown on its seedy, subversive activities. That’s a plus, for now. And yes, it’s fun to see Centrists and liberals exposed. Schadenfreude can be legitimate.

Of course, none of the above means that Washington intends to generally abandon foul play. On the contrary, under new Trumpist management, the US will remain as mean as ever. There will always be money for subversion, sabotage, disinformation campaigns, regime change, and coups. It will just flow through different channels, and the LGBTQ+ and DEI angles will be dropped. News flash: The US did not need those to coup Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s and have Chile regime-changed and its president Salvador Allende murdered in 1973, for instance.

Even the good old USAID is down but not dead: Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s extraordinarily obedient secretary of state, has already announced that its work just has to be aligned with American foreign policy. How funny: As if it had not.

Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

WikiLeaks Exposes Internews: USAID-Funded Media Machine Behind Global Influence

Sputnik – 08.02.2025

The infamous US agency USAID funneled nearly half a billion dollars to Internews Network, a non-profit deeply involved in media operations all over the world, WikiLeaks has revealed.

In 2023 alone, Internews Network collaborated with 4,291 media outlets, produced 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching 778 million people, and trained over 9,000 journalists. Operating in 30+ countries, it has key offices in the US, London, Paris, and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok, and Nairobi. But there’s more to the story:

  • Founded in 1982, Internews claims to help media outlets achieve financial sustainability and promote “trustworthy information” – a mission it pursues with hefty US government funding.
  • By 2023, the organization had partnered with nearly 4,300 media outlets, trained thousands of journalists, and simultaneously supported social media censorship initiatives.
  • USAID alone poured $472.6 million into Internews, though the organization also received funding from AOL-Time Warner Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and other private donors.
  • Grants include $10.7 million from USAID to support “high-quality responsible journalism” in Liberia and $11 million for “media enabling democracy” in Moldova, per datarepublican.com.
  • The US State Department chipped in $1.48 million to establish “safe, accessible, and life-saving information services” in South Sudan.
  • Another $19.5 million USAID grant was issued to Internews to “position Jordanian society to effectively advocate for citizen-driven interests”.
  • Adding to the intrigue, Internews CEO Jeanne Bourgault and other key figures recently had their bios scrubbed from the organization’s website — but WikiLeaks, noticing the move, helpfully provided archived copies.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Why did Republicans fund ‘transgender dance’ in Bangladesh?

An IRI-sponsored ‘transgender dance performance’ on December 9, 2020 in Dhaka’s National Theater
By Wyatt Reed – The Grayzone – February 7, 2025

As Trump attacks foreign spending on “woke” initiatives, a GOP-aligned outfit has largely escaped scrutiny, despite using taxpayer funds to sponsor “transgender dance performances” and what it called the “largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh.”

According to documents obtained by The Grayzone, the US-funded International Republican Institute sees gay and transgender people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate political realities overseas, stating, “LGBTI people tend to participate in social change activities to eventually bring changes to politics.”

Read part one of The Grayzone’s investigation into International Republican Institute’s activities in Bangladesh here.

For years, the Republican Party-aligned International Republican Institute’s (IRI) agenda in Bangladesh has been dominated by ethnic minority and transgender issues, with leaked documents revealing the Institute sponsored “the largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” and that a full 24% of the 1,868 Bangladeshis who participated in IRI programs in 2019 and 2020 were transgender.

The IRI’s cultural activities were conducted with explicitly subversive objectives, aiming to recruit socially excluded groups as regime change activists. They mirrored the US government’s machinations in Cuba, where, as The Grayzone reported, USAID funded rappers, artists, and “desocialized and marginalized youth” to undermine the country’s socialist government.

Since its founding in 1983, the congressionally-funded IRI has been run by Republican politicians and operatives dedicated to the cause of “democracy promotion” abroad. IRI’s Chairman, Sen. Dan Sullivan, is a vehement opponent of same sex marriage who signed on to a GOP letter calling to restrict the participation of transgender youth in sports. While many of the institute’s board members are Never Trump Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney, the board also includes Sen. Tom Cotton, a top Trump ally who strongly opposes transgender medical interventions for youth.

The IRI’s eyebrow-raising statistics on trans participation in regime change activities were included in an internal report on its PAIRS (“Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support”) Program, which was obtained by The Grayzone in 2024. The report boasts that “IRI issued 11 advocacy grants to artists, musicians, performers or organizations that created 225 art products addressing political and social issues that were viewed nearly 400,000 times [and] supported three civil society organizations from LGBTI, Bihari and ethnic communities to train 77 activists and engage 326 citizens to develop 43 specific policy demands, which were proposed before 65 government officials.”

All told, between March 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020, the Republican group sponsored 160 photographs, 30 paintings, 21 theatrical shows, five short films, three “transgender dance performances,” three documentaries, two rap songs and accompanying music videos, and one book. Meanwhile, IRI staff had “identified over 170 democratic activists who would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics,” they wrote.

The activities were frequently attended by American diplomats, with the US ambassador to Bangladesh at the time, Earl Miller, even providing the welcome speech for a seven-day art exhibit titled “The Power of Art.” When the IRI held an “invitation-only book launch event… for a book that documents the lives of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” featuring “a panel discussion with LGBTI activists,” a political officer and a consular officer from the US embassy were on hand as well. At the IRI’s third transgender dance performance in December of 2020, “guests from the US embassy were the deputy consul general and deputy director of the Office for Democracy, Rights, and Governance.”

Discussions that would guide the Institute’s actions were similarly dominated by transgender voices, with 136 of the 308 community members the IRI interviewed when generating policy proposals listed as “transgender/nonbinary.” According to the documents, these meetings generated 60 policy proposals, of which 17 related specifically to “LGBTI” issues.

So why did transgender people make up a quarter of the IRI program’s participants, in a country of 173 million where a 2022 census found they comprise just 0.007% of the population? The IRI documents suggest it’s because the Institute views gay and transgender people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate political realities overseas: “Facing discrimination and prejudice, LGBTI people tend to participate in social change activities to eventually bring changes to politics.” [Editor’s note: the IRI has claimed that this phrase did not appear in their original report.]

Apparently, the IRI were slowly but surely achieving their desired changes, with the report’s authors bragging that they’d successfully “capacitated new and under-utilized activists from marginalized communities to advocate for change with policymakers,” but concluding that “although IRI’s beneficiaries made important strides in raising public awareness and advocating for change, more time, resources and skills are needed to capitalize on this preliminary success to formalize changes in public attitudes and policy.” The campaign appeared to take root in 2019, when IRI conducted a “baseline assessment” which concluded that “modern forms of cultural activism are underutilized” and “advocacy campaigns should target national-level officials to maximize impact.”

While the emphasis on transgender issues may fly in the face of the GOP’s publicly-professed values, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that Republican leaders have secretly shifted their attitude towards the immutability of gender. As Mike Benz, the former State Department official who helped spearhead the ongoing push to defund USAID, recently noted, “I don’t think that the Republicans at IRI are woke — I think you have tactical wokeness in service of statecraft.”

Describing The Grayzone’s previous investigation into the IRI’s efforts to fund aggrieved Bangladeshis to destabilize their country, Benz explained: “these DEl wokeness programs are part of the ethnic balkanization and human rights predicates that are laid by the state in order to topple and control governments.”

That’s exactly what happened in 2024 when Bangladesh’s elected prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was deposed in a Western-backed coup which legacy media hailed as a revolutionary uprising over an autocratic dictator. Within weeks, Hasina had been replaced as head of state by Muhammad Yunus, a Clinton Global Initiative fellow awarded a Nobel Prize for popularizing the concept of micro-lending, a recent financial innovation which finally gave hundreds of millions of impoverished people across the planet the opportunity to access crippling debt.

It’s not clear exactly how much taxpayer money has been expended on capacity-building transgender and ethnic minority Bangladeshis, but for the time being, the funding mechanisms are still in place. While the Trump administration has ordered a 90-day freeze on non-Israeli foreign spending and slashed USAID’s employees from over 14,000 to just 294, the IRI’s parent organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), remains untouched.

The NED was founded in 1983 by President Reagan as the CIA sought to offload its funding responsibilities after the Church Committee exposed dozens of its highly illegal operations, including the MKULTRA mind control program, various efforts to assassinate international leaders, and Operation Mockingbird, which saw Langley come to exercise so much control over American newsrooms that the agency’s covert operations chief, Frank Wisner, famously compared the press to a “mighty Wurlitzer” which would play any song he liked. For dedicated Cold Warriors, the disappearance of that propaganda network in light of its exposure in the ‘70s was inarguably a major loss.

With the advent of the NED, the Cold Warriors gained a new channel through which they could subsidize regime change activists and amplify their message. In 1991, NED cofounder Allen Weinstein admitted in an interview with the Washington Post that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Much like USAID, the NED, which recently welcomed veteran neocon coup plotter Victoria Nuland to its board of directors, also oversees the annual disbursement of hundreds of millions for various activities likely to foment coups d’etat across the globe. That money continues to be split down the middle and funneled through one of two partisan organizations: the National Democratic Institute and the IRI.

Unfortunately for Bangladesh’s community of US-funded culture warriors, that may not be the case for much longer. Elon Musk, the head of the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency, recently put NED on notice, linking to a list of indicators of corruption at the agency and writing on X: “NED is a SCAM.”

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Despite US “Red Lines”, Lebanon Forms New Gov’t with Hezbollah Participation

Al-Manar | February 8, 2025

Lebanon announced on Saturday the formation of the awaited new government, a day after US Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East visited Beirut to impose dictations and set “red lines” on the participation of Hezbollah.

Secretary General of the Council of Ministers Mahmoud Makkieh announced the 24-member cabinet, including Prime Minister Nawaf Salam.

Hezbollah and ally Amal Movement, known as the national Shiite duo are represented by 4 ministers. The fifth Shiite minister was agreed upon by PM Salam and Speaker Nabih Berri, the leader of Amal Movement.

Before the announcement of the government formation, President Joseph Aoun held discussions with Salam in Baabda Presidential Palace.

The two presidents were then joined by Speaker Berri, who said as he left the palace: “It’s about the blessings of St. Maroun,” in an optimistic message carried by local media that the government will be announced today.

Shortly after, President Aoun signed a decree accepting the resignation of caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government and the decree appointing Nawaf Salam to form a new government.

Aoun and Salam then signed a decree to form a new government of 24 ministers.

Hezbollah is represented by two ministers: Minister of Public Health Rakan Nassereddine and Minister of Labor Mohammad Haidar.

Meanwhile, Amal movement is represented by Minister of Finance Yassin Jaber and Minister of Environment Tamara Al-Zein.

The fifth minister who was agreed upon by Speaker Berri and PM Salam is Minister of Administrative Development Fadi Makki.

Al-Manar correspondent said Free Patriotic Movement is not represented in the cabinet.

Salam Remarks

Following the announcement PM Salam said the new cabinet would prioritize financial reforms, reconstruction and the implementation of UN Resolution 1701.

“Reform is the only way to save the country,” Salam told reporters at the presidential palace.

“Reconstruction in south Lebanon is not a promise, but rather a commitment,” the new Lebanese premier added.

The formation of the new cabinet was expected on Thursday. But it was delayed due to Salam’s insistence to name the fifth Shiite minister.

Names of Ministers

The names of Ministers in the Lebanese Government are as follows:

Prime Minister: Nawaf Salam

Deputy Prime Minister: Tarek Mitri

Minister of Defense: Michel Mnassa

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates: Youssef Raji

Minister of Telecommunications: Charles El-Hajj

Minister of Energy and Water: Joseph Sadi

Minister of Interior: Ahmad Al-Hajjar

Minister of Justice: Adel Nassar

Minister of Finance: Yassin Jaber

Minister of Public Health: Rakan Nassereddine

Minister of Culture: Ghassan Salameh

Minister of Industry: Joe Issa El-Khoury

Minister of Economy and Trade: Amer Al-Bssat

Minister of Agriculture: Nizar Hani

Minister of Information: Paul Morcos

Minister of Social Affairs: Haneen Al-Sayyed

Minister of Public Works and Transport: Fayez Ressamni

Minister of the Displaced: Kamal Shehadeh

Minister of Labor: Mohammad Haidar

Minister of Youth and Sports: Noura Perqadarian

Minister of Tourism: Laura Al-Khazen Lahoud

Minister of Administrative Development: Fadi Makki

Minister of Education: Rima Karami

Minister of Environment: Tamara Al-Zein

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Moscow comments on Baltic states’ switch from ex-Soviet grid

RT | February 8, 2025

The decision of Baltic nations to disconnect themselves from the unified energy system with Russia and Belarus will only worsen the economic prospects for the EU, the Russian Mission to the bloc has said, stressing that the move is politically motivated.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which are all members of NATO and the EU, began the two-day process of unplugging from the BRELL Energy Ring on Saturday. They will then join the alternative European power grid, known as ENTSO-E. The step is part of EU nations’ effort to cut long-standing energy links with Russia.

“Disconnecting from the BRELL is a politically motivated move that will drive up regional electricity prices, make power grids less reliable, and further erode the EU’s economic competitiveness,” the mission said on Telegram on Saturday, emphasizing that European households and businesses, primarily in the Baltic countries, will bear the costs.

The mission stressed that the EU economy demonstrated “meager” growth of only 0.8% last year, and highlighted that the continued drive to break energy ties with Moscow would only worsen its prospects.

The three ex-Soviet republics decided to disconnect from BRELL and join ENTSO-E back in 2018. This month they plan to test their power grids in isolation before connecting to the EU energy system via Poland.

Built on the existing interconnected Soviet-era power systems, the BRELL energy ring was established on 7 February 2001. It synchronized the power systems of Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania under Moscow’s central dispatch. Initially, the Baltics depended on Russia for grid stability, while Russia relied on them to power its exclave of Kaliningrad. Russia has since upgraded energy infrastructure in Kaliningrad, reducing its reliance on the Baltic grid.

Authorities in the three states have repeatedly claimed that reliance on the network controlled by Russia jeopardizes their energy security, believing that Moscow could weaponize the electricity supply and sever them from the network on a unilateral basis. Such fears have never materialized.

Controlled by the state, Russian electricity prices are currently among the lowest in the world, averaging around $0.055 per kWh for consumers in 2024. Power prices in the EU vary from nation to nation, with Germany having the highest price per kWh last year at €0.3951 ($0.40).

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Top Breakthroughs Proving China’s Tech Edge Over US

Sputnik – 01.02.2025

China’s newly unveiled DeepSeek AI model rivals US-made ChatGPT in efficiency but at a much lower cost.

This is just one example of China’s more cost-effective technological solutions compared to US analogs.

  • Space: China’s Chang’e 6 successfully retrieved the first-ever samples from the Moon’s far side while the US struggles to bring two astronauts back from the ISS.
  • Quantum computers: In 2020, China’s Jiuzhang became the first photonic quantum computer to achieve quantum supremacy. With Jiuzhang 2.0 and Zuchongzhi 2.1, China remains a top player in the field.
  • Quantum communications: China launched the world’s first quantum communication satellite, Micius, in 2016. In 2024, Chinese and Russian scientists tested quantum communication over 3,800 km.
  • Robots: China’s Unitree Go2 quadruped and G1 humanoid robots push global robotics leadership, offering cheaper alternatives to Boston Dynamics.
  • Telecommunications: ZTE and Huawei made China a 5G leader. As the US imposes sanctions instead of competing on quality, China eyes 6G by 2030.
  • High-speed trains: With over 40,000 km of high-speed rail, China has the world’s longest network, while the US rail system remains in disrepair.
  • Drones: Chinese firms like DJI dominate the UAV market with affordable drones spreading worldwide, unlike pricier US alternatives.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Moscow accuses EU state’s leaders of ‘whipping up war psychosis’

RT | February 7, 2025

The Finnish authorities have been churning up an atmosphere of “war psychosis” and urging people to prepare for a possible war with Russia, according to Moscow’s ambassador to the EU country, Pavel Kuznetsov.

In an interview with RIA Novosti published on Thursday, Kuznetsov said that Finland’s leadership is instilling fear in the population using claims of “Russia’s aggressive plans.”

Helsinki is promoting various initiatives to strengthen military preparedness among civilians, the envoy said.

“There is increased media coverage of bomb shelter renovations, the expansion of shooting club networks, and the extension of the maximum age for reservists,” Kuznetsov observed, adding that such measures are being “widely promoted.”

According to the ambassador, such actions are part of the Finnish government’s attempt to justify the country’s “hasty” NATO accession and increased defense spending.

Finland, which shares an almost 1,300-kilometer-long border with Russia, officially joined the US-led military bloc in April 2023 following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict. The Finnish government has since strengthened its defense policies, including expanding military training and civil preparedness programs.

Multiple outlets have reported a sharp rise in interest among Finns in weapons training. Shooting ranges have seen membership soar, and the government has announced plans to open more than 300 new shooting facilities to encourage the trend.

In November 2024, Finland issued guidance on how to prepare for an armed conflict, emphasizing the importance of readiness in the face of potential threats.

Several other Nordic countries have also published information advising their populations on how to prepare for a possible war or other unexpected crises.

Sweden has sent out millions of updated booklets entitled “In case of crisis or war,” while Norway has issued pamphlets urging people to be prepared to survive on their own for a week in the event of extreme weather, war, or other threats.

Denmark’s emergency management agency has informed the public how much water, food, and medicine individuals need to get through a crisis lasting three days. In December, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a local broadcaster that she has been stocking canned food and other essentials in case of a Russian attack.

NATO has long declared Russia to be a direct threat, and Western officials have repeatedly claimed that if Moscow wins the Ukraine conflict, it could attack other European countries.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed any possibility of a military advance against NATO as “nonsense.”

Putin told US journalist Tucker Carlson last February that the bloc’s leaders are trying to scare their people with an imaginary threat from Moscow, but that “smart people understand perfectly well that this is a fake.”

At the same time, Russia has repeatedly warned against what it describes as NATO’s unprecedented military activity near its western borders in recent years.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Are U.S. Taxpayers Funding ‘Corrupt Dark-money Network’ That Censored CHD, RFK Jr. and Others?

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |February 7, 2025

A new analysis of government spending revealed that several major U.S. taxpayer-funded organizations are linked to the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), according to a Substack report by Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo.

CCDH, an influential nonprofit anti-disinformation organization, authored “The Disinformation Dozen” list. The group allegedly collaborated with U.S. and foreign governments and Big Tech to censor Ji, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD founder and former chairman, and others for spreading “disinformation.”

A new analysis of government spending published by DataRepublican.com showed that at least 17 heavily taxpayer-funded U.S. organizations also may have funneled money into CCDH’s operations, Ji reported.

“The revelation that so many U.S.-based organizations are funding CCDH confirms what many of us have been warning about: that censorship efforts are not merely private initiatives but part of a broader, coordinated strategy involving government-linked entities and foreign influence networks,” Ji told The Defender.

Ji said this provides more evidence that censorship is being outsourced, “creating a system of plausible deniability for those seeking to silence dissenting voices under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’”

CCDH famously drafted a list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” — which included Ji, founder of the natural health website GreenMedInfo ; Kennedy; Dr. Joseph Mercola; and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.

CCDH alleged in its report that just 12 accounts produced the majority of “anti-vaccine … disinformation” on social media.

Meta investigated and dismissed the report, and released a statement that there “isn’t any evidence” to support the report’s claims and that the small sample used in CCDH’s analysis was “in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines” on Facebook.

“There is no justification for [CCDH’s] claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps,” Meta stated.

Yet, the report was used by the White House and Twitter, now X, to censor the people and organizations on CCDH’s list, and by legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others to discredit the people on the list.

“Twitter Files” documents published in 2023 by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker detailed how Twitter and the White House used CCHD’s “Disinformation Dozen” report to justify censoring the people on the list.

Last year, reporting by Thacker and Matt Taibbi, based on internal documents leaked by CCDH insiders, revealed that CCDH planned to “kill” X, shut down popular social media accounts on other platforms, censor non-establishment voices and “bring back” attacks on “antivaxx” voices, among other things.

According to the documents, CCDH planned to organize “black ops” against Kennedy, who was a U.S. presidential candidate at the time. The group also planned to pressure Substack to remove COVID-19 vaccine critics Mercola and Alex Berenson from its platform.

The documents reveal that CCDH has pushed for a U.S. social media censorship law akin to the European Union’s “Digital Services Act” and the U.K.’s “Online Safety Act.”

Ji said:

“Despite their baseless claims and accusations, CCDH and similar organizations have had a powerful impact. They have provided the justification for widespread deplatforming, demonetization, and reputational attacks against independent journalists, scientists, and advocates.

“Their reports — often methodologically flawed and politically motivated — are treated as authoritative sources by mainstream media and tech platforms, leading to real-world suppression of speech. The fact that they are now directly linked to potential violations of U.S. election laws raises serious questions about accountability and transparency.”

Who is behind CCDH?

CCDH does not disclose its funders — even though journalists, including Thacker, and a U.S. congressional committee have requested that information.

CCDH also did not respond to The Defender’s request for information on its funding sources.

Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s CEO and founder, previously worked for Merrill Lynch. He was a British Labour Party political operative and is the co-author of “The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them.”

Ahmed emerged during the pandemic as a “vaccine and disinformation expert,” although he lacked any experience that would qualify him as such, Thacker reported.

The organization’s website states only that it is funded by “philanthropic trusts and members of the public.” It has denied receiving any grants, contracts or funding from the U.S. government.

DataRepublican.com used a financial tracing tool to follow donations made by taxpayer-funded organizations to other nonprofits.

CCDH has a relatively small budget of under $2.5 million. Publicly available information shows where some of those donations come from, including the Tides Foundation, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund and Schwab Charitable Fund.

However, some of the funding for the organizations making direct donations to CCDH can be traced back to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations that receive major funding from the U.S. government and redistribute that money to other organizations, DataRepublican.com showed.

Some of the 17 organizations that fund CCDH’s direct funders include the National Endowment for Democracy, the sister nonprofit of USAID; Freedom House; the National Democratic Institute; Global Communities; World Vision; Save the Children Federation; Columbia University; Princeton University and others.

Other investigations have also shown that CCDH has connections to key political and Hollywood figures.

For example, a 2023 investigation by Thacker revealed the CCDH received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm. A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.

Thacker also discovered that CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP). He also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.

A subsequent investigation by Ji traced some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.

“These hidden contributions reveal a coordinated pipeline of financial influence involving U.S. intelligence-adjacent entities, UK Crown interests, and Soros-backed organizations like the Tides Foundation,” Ji wrote.

Questions about the organization’s activities and funding sources led Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH as part of a 2023 congressional investigation into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.

The subpoena requested all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”

It also requested details about any grants, contracts or funds from the U.S. government, CCDH replied that such information doesn’t exist. However, Ji’s report this week throws that response into question.

Ahmed continues to appear in mainstream media as a critic of X and the Trump administration calling for “transparency and accountability.”

“CCDH’s role as a foreign influence operation masquerading as a ‘nonprofit’ watchdog must be fully investigated,” Ji wrote. “Congress, media and civil rights organizations must demand answers.”

He added:

“This corrupt dark-money network must be exposed and dismantled. CCDH is not a ‘hate speech watchdog’ but a weaponized political hit squad, funded by taxpayer dollars and foreign actors, used to silence voices that challenge establishment power.”

Related stories in The Defender

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Facebook “Fact Checks” Prof. Will Happer

Dubious doubters challenge eminent scientist

By Angela Wheeler | CO2 Coalition | January 13, 2025

The only way to combat censorship is to shine a light on it whenever we see it.

In censoring material that contradicts the popular – though increasingly feeble – fiction of a climate crisis, Facebook is quick to discount the credentials of one of the world’s leading scientists while honoring sources of dubious credibility.

Our latest encounter with Facebook came in a message from the platform’s corporate entity, Meta, on December 4, which read: “Your Page, CO2 Coalition, didn’t follow the rules, so it isn’t being suggested to other people right now.”

Sorting through CO2 Coalition’s vast content to find what post could have been so egregious to prompt this reprimand, we found it to be a quote from the renowned Dr. William Happer, professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University and Chairman of the CO2 Coalition Board of Directors. Dr. Happer’s provocative quote?

“Nothing but good can come from more atmospheric CO2. The Earth has experimented with much higher CO2 concentrations than today many times over the Phanerozoic eon, the last 540 million years or so, where the fossil record of life is especially good. Life flourished at four times more CO2 than today. There is no geological evidence that more CO2 will be anything but good for life on Earth.”

Facebook’s “fact check” of Dr. Happer’s quote referenced a group called Climate Feedback that, based on an appearance on CNN, said Dr. Happer “misleads about the impact of rising carbon dioxide on plant life.”

We did a little fact-checking of our own. Having seen the group’s website and a list of financial backers, we believe there is ample reason to be doubtful of Climate Feedback’s adherence to science and veracity.

According to InfluenceWatch.org, Climate Feedback has the same parent company as “the left-leaning fact-checker Politifact.” Both appear to be part of a loose amalgamation of postmodern censors, whose hallmark is to spread misinformation in the form of half-truths and outright falsehoods by accusing others of doing the same.

Perhaps in this case, Facebook’s greatest sin is its willingness to discount – or utterly ignore – Dr. Happer’s record of accomplishment.

In addition to a distinguished career at a prestigious university, Dr. Happer has received numerous awards for service in government and private enterprise. He invented a laser-based technology that made possible President Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense initiative and has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers.

In a recent paper, “The Role of Greenhouse Gases in Energy Transfer in the Earth’s Atmosphere,” Dr. Happer and his coauthor say that whatever greenhouse warmth may be in store for the planet that “basic physics and the geological record indicate that the warming will be small and probably good for life on Earth.”

This and other statements by Dr. Happer are supported by evidence accumulated over many decades – even centuries – by myriad researchers drawing on various disciplines that include physics, geology, biology and history.

Putting up Climate Feedback’s lame challenge against such a legacy of scientific exploration would be laughable if it weren’t for its furtherance of a “green” movement that has cost the world trillions of dollars in wealth that could have been used for something useful. Billions of people suffer for lack of energy resources made more expensive and less available by a fearmongering climate agenda of the ignorant and ignominious.

Facebook also noted on the CO2 Coalition account that they “covered” the offending post “so people can choose whether they want to see it.”

We believe it behooves seekers of truth to examine posts that Facebook chooses to obscure.

February 8, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment