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That Fluoride Added to Your Town Water to ‘Prevent Cavities?’ The EPA Says It’s Hazardous Waste

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 24, 2025

After Utah last month became the first state to ban water fluoridation, local water managers now face a dilemma: How should they dispose of the remaining fluoride?

Mainstream media, dental associations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other proponents of water fluoridation repeatedly state that the “miracle mineral” fluoride is a “naturally occurring” mineral.

But the fluoride added to town water supplies is far from natural.

Naturally occurring fluoride is calcium fluoride. The fluoride added to water is the byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production, sold off by chemical companies to local water departments across the country.

The byproduct comes in the form of hydrofluorosilicic acid, which is used by most large cities to fluoridate their water.

Hydrofluorosilicic acid is considered a hazardous substance and must be disposed of following strict environmental regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Scott Paxman, general manager of the Weber Basin Conservancy District, which provides water to over 700,000 Utah residents, told The Defender that he reached out to the state Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to inquire about fluoride disposal.

DEQ told Paxman that once the May 7 deadline to end fluoridation in Utah kicks in, any water districts that still have fluoride in their facilities will be subject to regulation as generators of hazardous waste — requiring them to follow an expensive and time-consuming set of regulatory requirements to get rid of their hydrofluorosilicic acid.

Paxman said he was outraged that his water conservancy district would be classified as a hazardous waste generator. “We aren’t hazardous waste generators,” he said. “We are just middlemen.”

He said that for years, water operators in Utah had been raising concerns about the hazards of the acid that they saw firsthand in their facilities and the health risks they and the public faced from fluoride exposure.

Water operators like Paxman were active in the campaign to end fluoridation in Utah, he said. Now they were not getting the guidance they needed to dispose of the chemicals.

‘They have no idea how toxic this stuff is’

Paxman said DEQ’s first suggestion was that the water districts run out the fluoride by stepping up the feed rates of fluoride into the water. The agency pointed out that they could go as high as 4 milligrams per liter (mg/L) — which is the current maximum contaminant level (MCL) enforceable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The 4 mg/L maximum contaminant level was challenged in the recent landmark lawsuit against the EPA for failing to appropriately regulate the chemical. The EPA lost, and the judge in the case directed the agency to enact new regulations. The EPA is appealing the ruling.

Four mg/L is the level at which fluoride causes skeletal fluorosis, a debilitating condition that causes skeletal deformities. The judge in the federal lawsuit ruled that at 0.7 mg/L, water fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk to children’s health, because evidence shows it leads to reduced IQ.

Paxman said when he saw that suggestion, he realized, “Oh my God, they have no idea what they are talking about. They have no idea how toxic this stuff is.”

Other ideas floated by DEQ included selling the leftover hazardous waste to other states still fluoridating, or returning it to Thatcher Chemical, the industrial chemical distributor that sold them the so-called miracle mineral.

Better guidelines needed for handling, disposing fluoride as hazardous chemical

Paxman has worked with input from fluoride toxicity expert Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., and DEQ to develop better guidelines that have since been shared with water operators.

“Since this is a hazardous chemical, with elevated levels of arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium, it must be handled and disposed of as a hazardous chemical, as state and federal regulations require,” Paxman wrote in an email to colleagues.

Operators must legally continue fluoridation until May 7, when they will “mothball” all systems — disconnecting them, shutting down power and winterizing them.

Then they will hire a hazardous waste cleanup company like Clean Harbors to clean up the rest — pumping out their tanks and disposing of the hydrofluorosilicic acid at a hazardous waste facility. He anticipates it will cost his facility alone about $125,000.

Paxman said that at Weber Basin, they have lowered the levels from the recommended 0.7 mg/L to the minimum requirement of 0.5 mg/L out of concern for public safety.

Paxman’s concerns about the hazardous chemical reflect concerns long raised by scientists, even within the regulatory agencies.

In 2000, Dr. William Hirzy, the senior vice president of the EPA’s Headquarters Union of Scientists and Professionals, said:

“If this stuff gets out into the air, it’s a pollutant; if it gets into the river, it’s a pollutant; if it gets into the lake it’s a pollutant; but if it goes right into your drinking water system, it’s not a pollutant … There’s got to be a better way to manage this stuff.”

Other cities, including Branson, Missouri, that voted to end water fluoridation have raised similar concerns that disposing of fluoride will be expensive, because it is hazardous waste.

So-called ‘miracle mineral’ also contains other heavy metals

Unlike the fluoride in toothpaste, fluoridation chemicals are not of pharmaceutical-grade quality. They are unpurified industrial byproducts collected in the air pollution control systems of fertilizer production systems.

The industry formerly allowed these byproducts to vent into the air until it was compelled to mitigate them.

The phosphate industry collects the fluoride gas in a “wet scrubber,” and the resulting hydrofluorosilicic acid liquid is put into storage tanks and shipped to water departments.

In declarations made as part of the fluoride lawsuit, all three major producers of fluorosilicic acid, Mosaic, Solvay and Simplot confirmed that they have never done safety or effectiveness studies on the FDA chemicals they sell for water fluoridation.

Mosaic also noted that the market for their chemicals is “in large part based on the endorsement of fluoridation of public drinking water sources by the American Dental Association and other human health, professional or scientific groups.”

The chemicals are known to contain elevated levels of certain contaminants, including arsenic.

Recently, Mullenix said, producers of water fluoridation compounds have moved their operations to China, where there is even less regulation — which means more dangerous conditions for workers and more contaminated material.

According to the EPA, by 2019, well over half of the water fluoridation chemicals were imported from China.

Mullenix said she has been frustrated for years by the fact that public health policy makers and public health departments “have totally turned a blind eye to the chemical.”

“They gave no attention to what’s going to happen if you have an overfeed, how do you dispose of the chemical if it’s spilled or leaked? They paid no attention to that or to what the chemical really was,” she said.

This posed a serious problem for water operators. She has worked for years advising workers injured at work handling hydrofluorosilicic acid or sodium fluoride, which smaller communities sometimes use to fluoridate their water.

Mullenix said regulations control only the contaminant level for fluoride itself — which extensive research, including her own, has shown to be a neurotoxicant. The regulations don’t account for other heavy metals present in the acid. “What about the arsenic MCL?” she asked, “What about the lead?”

Unseen risks in the technical process of fluoridating water

Paxman said fluoridating water isn’t as simple as turning a switch on or off, and it’s not cheap, despite what the regulatory agencies told water operators in Utah when they began fluoridating the water in the early 2000s.

Davis County spent tens of millions of dollars to build ten water fluoridation stations, he said. “And we found out very quickly that you don’t fool around with the fluorosilicic acid that we feed into the tanks. It’s super, super corrosive and it off-gases, even from the sealed polyethylene tanks.”

He said the gases etch the glass, corrode the door frames and all of the electronics. It also impacts the health of the operators, he said, who complain of migraines and other health issues when they have to enter the fluoride facilities on a regular basis.

After one of their operators in 2012 was hospitalized when he inhaled fumes during the delivery of hydrofluorosilicic acid from Thatcher, Weber Basin began periodically contracting a state-certified external lab to analyze the chemicals provided, so they could check the contaminant levels themselves and compare them to the company’s claims.

The certificates of analysis show that the shipments of fluoride that then go into the water system regularly have extremely high levels of arsenic and sometimes lead or other metals.

A comparison of the certificates of analysis provided by Thatcher and those done by an independent lab also showed discrepancies between what the company certified and what was in the fluoride that Weber received, which had higher levels of antimony, arsenic, cadmium and other metals.

He also said that the systems have a complex technology in place to measure the amount of fluoride going into the water, but that the dose of fluoride in water inevitably varies. “We have maintained the 0.7 level, but that’s an average,” he said. The actual levels are always “bouncing all over the place,” depending on water flow rates.

He said this is a challenge for fluoridation systems all across the country, and it means that sometimes fluoride levels in drinking water are over the 0.7 mg/L recommended dosage — which is the level that already poses a risk to children’s health.

Accidents, cover-ups, corruption and lack of accountability ‘happening everywhere’

Fluoride accidents and overfeeds happen regularly, according to the Fluoride Action Network, which tracks publicly recorded accidents on a webpage. Accidents range from a small, 10-gallon spill in 2012 in Connecticut to an incident in New Orleans in 2008, where the fluorosilicic acid ate through its storage tanks and then through a concrete containment tank.

To avoid a “catastrophic mix of toxic chemicals,” the environment department discharged nearly half a million gallons of the toxic acid into the Mississippi River.

In the city of Sandy, Utah, in 2019, a malfunctioning pump in the water fluoridation system released undiluted hydrofluorosilicic acid into the water in 2019, affecting 1,500 households, institutions and businesses and sickening over 200 people.

An investigation revealed that officials failed to notify the public for 10 days and that fluoride was detected in the drinking water at 40 times the recommended levels.

Fifth-grader Max Widmaier drank that over-fluoridated water in school and soon after spiked a high fever, developed tics, had severe emotional swings, and had developmental regression so severe that at one point he lost the ability to put together sentences, his mother, Jenny Widmaier, told The Defender.

Medical records shared with The Defender showed that after Max was exposed to the over-fluoridated water, he had high levels of several heavy metals in his blood. Several months of intense therapies and strict dietary changes eventually helped Max to recover.

However, Jenny said, Max has essentially no memory of the entire year and to this day cannot be exposed to any fluoride — even food cooked in fluoridated water — without a severe reaction.

The family received no compensation from the city.

Lorna Rosenstein, executive director of Waterwatch of Utah, told The Defender that Sandy was just one of the accidents in Utah in recent years.

In 2007, an estimated 1,500 gallons of hydrofluorosilicic acid was released in a tank rupture at a treatment plant in Salt Lake County, Deseret News reported.

In North Salt Lake in 2014, a feeder pump malfunctioned, and 140 gallons of hydrofluorosilicic acid spilled from the drinking water well house out to the curb and gutter and into the storm drain, according to documents Rosenstein obtained via public records requests.

She has been holding water officials, politicians, and health agency officials accountable for their actions regarding fluoride for years through her public records requests and public advocacy.

Rosenstein said the rules, violations, accidents, cover-ups, corruption and general lack of accountability that kept fluoridation going in Utah are happening everywhere.

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.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Environmentalism | , | 1 Comment

FDA Says ‘Meat Glue’ Used in Many Processed Foods Is ‘Safe.’ Scientists Have Another Theory.

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 25, 2025

Gluten and genetics may not be the only culprits behind skyrocketing cases of celiac disease and related inflammatory digestive autoimmune conditions. Scientists now believe the “meat glue” widely used in processed foods from chicken nuggets to veggie burgers may also play a role.

Recent research shows that an enzyme called microbial transglutaminase induces celiac disease and related inflammatory digestive diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis, writer Linda Bonvie reported on her Substack, Badditives.

Also known as “food glue,” transglutaminase is an enzyme widely used as a food additive to help foods stick together and look more appealing.

Meat glue is “beneficial for the food industry,” researchers Dr. Aaron Lerner and Torsten Matthias, Ph.D., said in one of several research papers they’ve published on the topic. But apparently, it’s not so good for public health.

Meat glue, Bonvie wrote:

“is the darling of Big Food for lots of reasons: it can glue together scraps of fish, chicken and meat into whole-looking cuts (often called ‘Frankenmeats’); extend the shelf life of processed foods (even pasta); improve ‘texture,’ especially in low-salt, low-fat products; make bread and pastries (particularly gluten-free ones) rise better, and, as one manufacturer puts it, allow for use of things that would ordinarily be tossed out — unappetizing leftovers and scraps of food that would ‘otherwise be considered waste ingredients, creating an added-value product.’”

According to Lerner and Matthias, meat glue can change the nature of gluten and make the immune system more reactive to them, which can cause conditions like “intestinal junction leakage” and set the stage for a variety of health issues.

Japanese ‘meat glue’ maker uses propaganda strategies developed for MSG

Japanese global food company Ajinomoto is one of the major producers of transglutaminase, Bonvie reported. The company also makes MSG and uses the same methods from “its long-running propaganda campaign claiming that MSG is a safe ingredient” to promote its meat glue.

The company advertises both ingredients as “found in food naturally” and promotes them as considered safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Transglutaminase is found naturally in the body, but the natural form has a completely different structure from the microbial transglutaminase additive the company makes and adds to food.

Despite years of research showing the link between transglutaminase and celiac and other digestive disorders, the FDA considers all uses of the enzyme to be Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), Bonvie reported.

The GRAS classification has been widely condemned by food industry watchdog organizations, who say it allows Big Food to add new ingredients to the food supply with almost no federal oversight, according to Consumer Reports.

Companies seeking to have their product granted GRAS status simply submit paperwork, and the status is granted, Bonvie wrote. Ajinomoto has been doing that for over 20 years with its transglutaminase.

Ajinmoto first got the FDA to recognize the product as GRAS in 1998 for use in seafood. The following year, the company expanded the use to hard and soft cheeses, yogurt, and vegetable proteins and meat substitutes.

In 2000, the company notified the FDA it would expand the use to “pasta, bread, pastries, ready-to-eat cereal, pizza dough, and ‘grain mixtures.’” By 2002, it told the FDA it would be using it for “food in general.”

The FDA didn’t object to any of these uses.

The FDA didn’t object — even though Ajinomoto submitted the results of a 30-day toxicity study of the food glue in beagles. Dogs in the study experienced serious side effects — a pituitary gland cyst, lung discoloration and more — but the company said all the effects were unrelated to its transglutaminase.

Bonvie wrote:

“Why they bothered to include a study that shows that their product causes harm to the animals studied can only be understood if you know how Ajinomoto operates. Having done a study, they can later refer to the study that they did as though it proved that their product was ‘safe,’ knowing that no one will challenge them.

“Such claims have great propaganda value.”

Animal rights organization PETA has condemned Ajinomoto’s practice of conducting “horrific tests on dogs.”

Researchers warned that transglutaminase often goes unlabeled in processed foods. Anjinmoto says that it is a “processing aid” rather than an ingredient in most foods that use the product and is therefore exempted from labeling requirements in Europe and the U.S.

The product is also listed as an allowed enzyme in organic food and farming on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.”

Worse, it is often used in gluten-free bakery products to improve their appearance, even though it causes a reaction in people suffering from celiac disease.

Bonvie said the only way to completely avoid the enzyme is to avoid processed foods altogether.

Given how challenging that can be for most people, she provides a list of foods to avoid, including: low-fat and low-salt dairy products and dairy substitutes, formed meat products like chicken nuggets, expensive cuts of meat sold cheaply, sushi from unreliable sources and farmed fish products, veggie burgers, and cheaply produced pasta.

Leading microbial transglutaminase researcher Lerner told Bonvie he thought the FDA should reconsider its classification of the enzyme as GRAS.

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.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Former Biden “Disinfo” Board Chief Urges EU to Resist Criticism on Censorship Laws

In Strasbourg, Jankowicz rewrites the script, casting Washington as the villain in Europe’s censorship push.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 24, 2025

Former head of former President Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, has found a new audience for her political and ideological narratives – and it’s EU institutions.

Jankowicz – known by her critics as “Biden’s disinformation czar” (or at least, would have been one, had the Disinformation Governance Board not been so short lived) – this week spoke at a meeting of a European Parliament committee dedicated to EU Commission’s latest censorship initiative, “the European Democracy Shield.”

The meeting was called to discuss risks to democracy, in this case, what the bloc considers to be Russian disinformation campaigns, but Jankowicz focused on the US administration, referring to her country as “another autocracy” that she wants the EU to “stand firm against.”

Jankowicz took the opportunity to warn that the US administration is “undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign” to make the EU abandon (censorship) rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA). In the same breath, she also claimed that Washington will pressure Brussels to “end support for Ukraine, to stop holding Russia to account.”

Jankowicz had trouble keeping to the theme of the meeting, namely, “Russian hybrid threats,” and kept returning to her anti-Trump agenda, stating that just as Russia, China, Iran, and others are busy with their “interference campaigns” – in the US, “homegrown anti-democratic forces have launched a coordinated campaign to undermine researchers, journalists, advocates and civil servants who work to expose their lies.”

She was also critical of US tech giants accusing them of being complicit in creating “global instability” and again went back to Trump, his administration’s supposed “capture” of major social networks, only to conclude that neither are interested “in preserving democracy.”

Jankowicz singled out US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his decision to shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub, which was a rebrand of the also disbanded Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department entity involved in flagging social media posts for censorship.

But to Jankowicz, the steps the current administration has been taking to dismantle the intricate and documented system of online censorship is done merely “under the guise of protecting free speech.”

Jankowicz also told the EP commission that she supported 51 former intelligence officials who penned a letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop story was “disinformation” – a claim that has since been debunked, but at the time, just before the 2020 election, led to widespread censorship of the New York Post article on the subject.

“A valid expression of free speech,” is how Jankowicz views the letter.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The case of Raffi Berg and BBC: Zionist infiltration of the mainstream media

By David Miller | Press TV | April 26, 2025

British journalist Owen Jones recently wrote at length about the background, commitments, and active role that Raffi Berg plays in enforcing the pro-Zionist line at the BBC.

Berg is the Middle East (West Asia) editor at BBC Online, but he appears to have a much greater gatekeeping role in practice.

Jones’ research amply bears out the view that anti-Zionists have been encouraging for some time now, which is that Zionist infiltration of the media and other public institutions is a significant problem and amounts to colonization of public space on behalf of a genocidal foreign entity.

But this is not how Jones sees things, with the result that he markedly pulls his punches.

It is clear from what Jones writes that Berg is a fanatical, genocidal Jewish supremacist. Jones also makes it clear that Berg plays a pivotal enforcement role inside the corporation, such that all stories about the ‘Middle East’ have to be checked with him. Jones writes:

In addition to what they see as a collective management failure, journalists expressed concerns over bias in the shaping of the Middle East index of the BBC News website. Several allege that Berg “micromanages” this section, ensuring that it fails to uphold impartiality. “Many of us have raised concerns that Raffi has the power to reframe every story, and we are ignored,” one told me… “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one said. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but they just ignore it.”… Berg’s influence has a ripple effect, the journalists say. While BBC broadcasters write and produce their own reports, editors and reporters across the organization frequently draw on web articles such as those edited by Berg to flesh out their stories.

Jones also notes the fact that Berg had written a book on the notorious Israeli spy agency Mossad, which is simply a propaganda tract for the agency.

In 2013, Berg became Middle East editor for BBC News Online. It was in this role that he encountered material that would form the basis for his book, “Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort,” an account of the Israeli spy services’ efforts to evacuate Jews from Ethiopia between 1979 and 1983. In the book, Berg describes Mossad in glowing terms, calling the agency “much vaunted.” Berg received extensive cooperation from Mossad for the book, including “over 100 hours of interviews” of “past and present agents and Navy and Air Force personnel.” It was published in 2020. In an interview to promote the book, Berg said he collaborated on the project with “Dani,” a former senior Mossad commander he described as a “legend” who later became “a very close friend.”

Berg, gushingly, tweeted in 2020 about the book being sighted on the bookshelf of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

Jones was unsurprisingly attacked by the genocidal Zionist enforcer Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust for writing about how a ‘Jewish editor’ is ‘secretly manipulating’ the BBC’s output.

In response, Jones wrote that ‘The fact he’s Jewish isn’t mentioned.’ This is correct. But we might ask, why not?

Nor does Jones state that Berg is a Zionist. In fact, the ‘Z word’ is only used twice in the whole piece: once (‘Zionist’) to describe the ‘right wing’ Zionism of Likud-Herut (an organization with whom Berg’s lawyer Mark Lewis is strongly affiliated); and once (‘Zionism’) in a quotation from Mark Lewis emphasizing the importance of “unapologetic Zionism.”

But surely Berg’s Zionism and the fact that he is Jewish — a Jewish supremacist no less — are in fact relevant to this discussion? And surely pretending they are not only undermines the punches that Jones appears to be trying to throw?

How is it that Berg occupies this pivotal location within the BBC? Can we imagine a Catholic, a Hindu, or a Sikh (let’s not even mention a Muslim) being in such a pivotal role on coverage of Palestine? Of course not.

Berg has not been granted or put in that position by the BBC because he is a Zionist. It’s, subconsciously at least, because he is a Jew that he is deferred to. Of course, if he were an anti-Zionist Jew, he would never get into such a position.

Identity politics runs deep in British public institutions — the idea that a Jewish person (or at least the correct type of Jewish person) is the appropriate arbiter of how to cover the occupation of Palestine is seen as common sense.

It is worth extending this analysis to other conflicts. Would a Hindu be asked to adjudicate in BBC HQ on the reporting of Hindutva crimes or a Protestant on Loyalist death squads in the north of Ireland?

We need not even ask about the prospects of the BBC appointing a Palestinian (Muslim, or Christian) to adjudicate coverage of the genocide in Gaza. Extending the analysis says something about the selective implementation of identity politics in the forcefield created by Western official sources and Zionist movement intimidation and bullying of the media.

Recognition that Berg is a genocidal Zionist is crucial to naming the problem and beginning to push back against this kind of Zionist infiltration and subversion of our public institutions.

Of course, Owen Jones appears to want no part of that struggle.

Zionist infiltration at the BBC

There are, of course, many other Zionists (whether Jewish or not) in the BBC, especially in news and current affairs. John Mitchell listed a few very senior employees some years ago:

● James Harding – Director of News & Current Affairs, BBC News (2013–2018) and past editor of the Times, was a hardline Zionist. At a Jewish Chronicle event in 2011, he declared:

“I am pro-Israel. I believe in the state of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”

● Danny Cohen – Controller of BBC 1, 3, and Director of BBC Television (2007-2015) wrote a letter while still a BBC executive condemning the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement, which campaigns to end the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza.

● James Purnell – BBC Director of Radio and BBC’s Director of Strategy (2013-2020) was the chairman of Labour Friends of Israel during his parliamentary career.

We can add to that list some further issues with the most senior management at the BBC.

● Richard Sharp, the former Chairman of the BBC, is a hardline Zionist, former Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan banker, director of the International Rescue Committee, an organization set up with the aid of the CIA, and donor to the British intelligence-created and Zionist-funded Quilliam Foundation.

● Robbie Gibb is reportedly not Jewish, but his brother, the minister, reportedly spent time on a Kibbutz in the Zionist entity when he was young. Both brothers were also part of a Western intelligence operation in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Gibb went on to lead the consortium to buy out the failing Jewish Chronicle and became the sole director of the company that runs it. He did take a step back from that after concerted pressure was applied over his continuing role at the BBC on the editorial standards committee.

Also on that committee is the CEO of BBC News, the Director General, and the Chair of the BBC (which was Richard Sharp from February 2021 to June 2023 — it is now Samir Shah) and an ‘independent’ member who is currently Nicholas Serota.

Serota has had a long career in the art world and is also a Zionist and opponent of BDS. The ‘CEO’ of the BBC news division, Deborah Turness, is also cited by the BBC as “standing in the way of change” on the question of coverage of Palestine.

Of the five members, either 2 (or 3 when Sharp was in position) are Zionists, and one has blocked complaints on Zionist bias. Given that Director General, Tim Davie, is a former Conservative candidate who has worked for a CIA-supported front group, it is little surprise that the BBC is completely unwilling to cover the genocide properly.

Structural discrimination against Muslims in the BBC

The context of the dominance of Zionism is not just that there are Jewish Zionists in key positions exercising a gatekeeping function, as well as non-Jewish Zionists who provide cover and support for them (such as Robbie Gibb or James Purnell), but that overall there is in the BBC a notable over-representation of Jews and a notable under-representation of Muslims (in relation to their proportion in the population).

Research conducted by the BBC in 2022 shows the corporation at that time employed some 1% of staff who are Jewish, which is twice their proportion in the population, and 3.1% of staff who are Muslim, which is 48% of their proportion in the population.

The differences are more marked when we turn to the News and Current Affairs division of the BBC where Jews make up 2.2% of all staff and 2.5% of leadership staff (proportionally 4.4 times and five times more than their proportion in the population).

By contrast, Muslims are 3% of all News and Current Affairs staff (which is 46% of their proportion in the population) and at the leadership level, there are simply no Muslims at all.

This is itself a problem of structural discrimination, quite apart from what impact it might have on coverage of the genocide. And that impact is not inconsequential. It’s perfectly clear that the Zionists among the BBC News and Current Affairs staff are an aid, as opposed to a hindrance, to the enforcement of Zionist rationality across the BBC.

The gatekeeper

The scandal at the BBC on which Jones reported, is a scandal of Zionist infiltration and gatekeeping. And it’s a scandal that appears to exist in varying ways throughout the media landscape. As the journalist Rivkah Brown has put it:

“I have seen this trend in almost every mainstream media outlet I’ve worked at or reported on: One hardline Zionist who either has decision-making power or aggressively lobbies decision-makers, often with threats of antisemitism. Fearful of scandal, editors cave.”

Brown was reacting to the case of Sky News, which was one of the few media outlets to properly report the violence of Israeli fans in Amsterdam in 2024. Sky then promptly reversed itself. The role of Sandy Rashty as News Editor at Sky was then noted. Rashty is a committed Zionist and writes for the Jewish Chronicle.

It may, as Brown says, take only one advantageously placed Zionist to act as a gatekeeper, but in many news organizations, there are many such placeholders at all levels of the organization, as we have seen with the BBC.

But are these gatekeepers an incidental feature of accidentally employing genocidal Zionists in the newsroom, or is there a wider strategy of infiltration by the Zionist movement?

The strategy of infiltration — The Jerusalem Program

The reality is that the Zionist movement has been involved in a massive push to infiltrate public life in the UK at least since the 1950s, when the movement determined, having reached its objectives in creating a state in 1948, that it would not dissolve itself.

Instead, it adopted the so-called Jerusalem Program, which remains its aim to this day and was most recently revised in 2004. The “foundations” of Zionism, it states, include: the “bond” of the Jewish people to “Eretz Yisrael” which should be settled “as an expression of practical Zionism.”

Every Zionist organization that signs up to the WZO thus supports settler colonialism in “Eretz Israel” (a term usually meaning land far beyond the current occupation, spreading into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt); to support a “Jewish” state and “defend” the “right of Jews… as a nation” — meaning structural privileges for Jews — a clearly racist proposition.

Individuals are no longer able (since 1960) to join the WZO directly and must join one of its member organisations. But membership in any Zionist organisation also requires certain “Duties of the individual Zionist”, adopted in 1978. These enjoin Zionists:

“To implement Aliyah [the Zionist term for settler colonialism] to Israel”; and “bring [children] up towards Aliyah”; to “be an active member of the [Zionist Federation]”; “contribute to … Zionist Funds”; and “strengthen Zionist influence within the community.”

In other words, individual Zionists are required to affirm the racist settler colonial ideology and to practically support it. What’s more, they are required to help popularise it in the community.

How this works today can be seen in the approach of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), the largest Zionist “charity” group in the UK. UJIA is an anodyne-sounding “charity” which is actually the UK branch of one of the Zionist regime’s four “national institutions,” all based in the same building in King George Street in occupied Jerusalem/Al-Quds.

A 1997 Institute for Jewish Policy Research report, “The Attachment of British Jews to ‘Israel’”, raised an alarm:

“If current trends prevail, attachment to Zionism and the Jewish state could become the concern of only a minority with a mostly Traditional or Orthodox religious outlook.”

As a result, the UJIA refers to their approach as building a ‘lifelong connection’ to “Israel.”

Ruth Wisse: the Army of words

This strategy was memorably enunciated by Harvard professor Ruth Wisse, an open supporter of genocide. The clip on YouTube is just over two minutes long and it’s worth watching in full. For our purposes, the following excerpt is germane:

“American Jews, what do you have to worry about? Your job is to make us [Israel] look good and here’s how you do it: Every one of us has to serve three years in the Army … and then for the rest of our lives you have got to serve two or three years in the army of words you’ve got to learn to fight the political battle which is even more important at this point than the military battle… We’ll fight the military battle we’re not asking you necessarily to come and be lone soldiers although some of you can you’ve got to learn how to fight back on the campuses how to make the arguments now … Don’t let the war of words ever be fought about Israel’s nature, let it be fought about why you can’t accept Israel? Why you have to single out this tiny people? … Push them, teach them how to defend by attacking… You’ve got to make demands on them. They’ve got to serve for three years in the army of words.”

Enrolling all Jews in the ‘army of words’ is the aim of the Zionist movement. They don’t get everyone. But it seems plain they get more than enough to be effective in very many circumstances.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Are You Tired of Hearing About Antisemitism?

Simply stop killing Gazans and the anger directed at Jews might end

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 26, 2025

One might well ask how a group composed of little more than 3% of the US population has managed to gain control of the nation’s foreign policy, its legislature and executive branches, its media, its entertainment industry, its financial institutions, and its elite universities while also making the United States subservient to the wishes of a monstrous small state located seven thousand miles away and composed of its coreligionists? Well, it helps to have a great deal of money liberally applied to corrupt the existing political and economic systems, but that is not necessarily a good place to start as one might reflexively be accused of wielding a trope much favored by antisemites when discussing Zionist Jews, the group of which we are speaking. Alternatively perhaps, one might take an oblique approach by observing how the highly privileged and protected Zionists in question get rich living in America while having true loyalty to apartheid Israel, something that normally might be considered untenable if not borderline treasonous.

Recent reports suggest that there are upwards of 23,000 Americans serving in the Israeli Army (IDF), most of whom are presumably dual nationals with Israeli citizenship. Under existing law, they should all lose their US citizenship but that will not happen as Congress and the White House have both been bought. Indeed, they are being given a golden handshake by the US Congress with a new bill currently in Congress which would extend some US military benefits to the notional American citizens who are currently carrying out the Gaza genocide as members of the IDF. One such clown Congressman Brian Mast, who served in the IDF, even parades around Congress in his Israeli military uniform and no one says squat.

Beyond the Americans in the IDF, there have been several odd appointments at high levels in the US civilian bureaucracy, including the latest naming of a former Israeli Defense Department and UN Israeli Embassy employee whose husband still works at the embassy to a top position on the National Security Council. Merav Ceren will be the Director for the development of the relationship between Israel, Iran and the US. It is a highly sensitive position and one can only speculate on how she got a clearance, though it is presumed that she is a dual national, which in and of itself should have been a warning sign. Her appointment gives Israel an unusual advantage in internal policy discussions just as the Israeli government has launched a new campaign to pressure the American government to start a war with Iran rather than continue with negotiations toward a nuclear deal. Ceren previously worked at Senator Ted Cruz’s office in Washington, which may have been her stepping stone to the job as Cruz’s loyalty to Israel and all that pertains to it should be unquestioned and he is the recipient of millions of dollars in pro-Israel political “donations.” She also worked for the neocon Iran-hating Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. How she was named to the position she now holds should be considered in itself a huge security breach, one of many already experienced in Trump’s first hundred days, where loyalty to Israel trumps all other factors, as the expression might go.

The trajectory of Meyav Ceren reminds one of another Israeli woman dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. Sigal Pearl Mandelker might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) under the first Trump administration. She handed out the punishment and cranked up the economic pain up for countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia during her time in office from June 2017 until October 2019 when she finally resigned after being under pressure from people like me.

OFTI’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

To be sure most of the Jews with whom I am in touch are appalled by that activism of the Mandelkers and the Cerens and even more so by what is happening in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist enablers, but what we are talking about here is institutional and tribal Jewry which together have the distinction of being referred to as the Israel Lobby, which an increasing number of observers have to come to believe to be something like all powerful and the unofficial government of the United States in many relevant areas.

Ron Unz’s recent article recent article Trump vs. Harvard in a Political Wrestling Match examines the issue of Jewish supremacism and, among other factors, identifies the various mechanisms used by Jews to enhance their enrollment at top universities. He mentions in passing how Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner got into Harvard without having the level of academic achievement that normally would have been a prerequisite. It was possibly accomplished through an institutionalized “Harvard Price,” an under the table donation of several million dollars from the wealthy Kushner family. I personally recall attending an elite university in the 1960s and hearing Jewish classmates boast of how “they” comprised 40% of the first-year students. A friend of mine at Yale told me of similar boasting among the “Sons of Eli.” Forty per cent participation for 3 per cent of the population is certainly an astonishing rate of success.

Unz uses available educational data bases to demonstrate that the disparity was not due to greater intelligence or academic performance among the Jewish applicants. He concludes that “Based on these figures, Jewish students were roughly 1,000% more likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League than white Gentiles of similar ability. This was an absolutely astonishing result given that under-representation in the range of 20% or 30% is often treated by courts as powerful prima facie evidence of racial discrimination.”

Based on my own contact with Jews in the academic world and in government, I would prefer to describe the Jewish success with universities as a product of gaming the system, i.e. producing incentives outside academia itself to make the candidates more attractive. Whether such maneuvering might be described as corruption of the process depends pretty much on where someone stands outside the system, but the fact is that it is far easier for a Jewish high school graduate to get into an elite university than it is for a comparably educated and intelligent white Christian. And if you throw into the hopper all the “minority” other applicant groups that get preferential treatment, white males who are not Jews are definitely at the bottom of list when acceptance time comes around.

Beyond cash incentives, one might also conclude that Jews are exceptionally good at self-promoting and on translating their largely fictional collective victimhood into a sympathy vote that gives them a considerable edge as they move through education and high-profile careers. The problem is that that aggressive self-promotion does not stop at the level of personal aggrandizement and opens the door to large scale group interference in both foreign and domestic government policies that run strongly contrary to the interests of most Americans. I am of course referring to groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which serve as lobbies and support structures for the apartheid Jewish state Israel, which is currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza, without any accountability or consequences as required by current US law under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). President John F. Kennedy was trying to get such groups to register when he was assassinated in 1963.

Other Jewish national organizations are also on board in supporting Israel as are the numerous Christian Zionists, which means that killing tens of thousands of people in the Middle East is a matter of no consequence, except that once more the Israeli Jews must be and are widely portrayed as the victims. The US is complicit in the arming of Israel and the killing and actually condones it even though a majority of American voters do not support the Jewish state. Likewise, the Jewish dominated press and other media looks the other way as the slaughter goes on, as it no doubt will, and one expects that upwards of 2 million Palestinians will eventually be deported to whatever shithole is willing to accept them under pressure from the US. Otherwise, the “Justice” recommended by Israel’s Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now in the United States on a “visit,” will likely be pursued, i.e. a bullet to the back of the head of every Palestinian.

And then there is the issue of the “crime” of antisemitism, which is the only thing that the Justice Department seems to think is worth addressing, to the point where people who have done nothing beyond expressing their concern over what is going on in the Middle East are being arrested without any charges being filed and detained while being processed for deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly announced that he has authorized the arrest and deportation of 300 students for their criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives has obligingly passed a measure equating criticism of the racist, Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism with what they describe as a hate crime “antisemitism.” Meanwhile the Israel Lobby and its politician choral society are constantly using the Jew-controlled media to sing about how Hebrew students fear going to school due to the presence of all the “antisemites.”

This is, of course, largely a convenient fiction largely created by the media, and it is rather Jews who have been beating up peaceful demonstrators. And it is extremist Jewish-funded groups that have been stirring the pot, going after anyone who is perceived as anti-Israeli. One of the groups, Canary Mission, has run a massive disinformation operation for years, publishing the names and photos of thousands of alleged pro-Palestine activists, while another group, Betar, openly encourages targeting of student activists and brags that it has “provided names of hundreds of terror supporters” to the Trump administration. Ross Glick, the head of Betar’s US branch, believes that “Foreign students on visas in the US shouldn’t have the right to free speech.” Jews, however, should be allowed to behave with complete freedom to include carrying out murder, war crimes, and human rights violations targeting those it sees as opponents.

To be sure, protesting against any of the horrors that Israel is engaged in is regarded to be one symptom of “antisemitism” which is ipso facto considered to be something like a capital offense, even though it is pretty much generated in America by the impunity and savagery with which Israel behaves towards the rest of the world. And the parameters of what might constitute a legitimate search for “antisemites” is expanding. The US State Department will now demand from foreigners wishing to travel to the United States information on their social networking sites. Those sites will be screened for anti-Israel content and the visas will be refused. This is an extension of the anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies now in place in 38 states in the US where a job or services will be denied to citizens if they will not sign a pledge or promise not to support the movement to boycott or punish Israel. The situation is even worse for those foreigners who are currently going through screening to become US permanent residents as it is the issue of one’s views of Israel alone that could easily determine who is allowed to become a future citizen and who is rejected.

Indeed, protecting Jews is a full-time job of the Trump Administration, even more so that under Genocide Joe Biden. Antisemitism comes up in speech after speech and fully ninety per cent of the discretionary Homeland Security Agency grants already go to Jewish groups or buildings, to the tune of more than $400 million. Interestingly, the government also appears to be constructing a data base of Jews to protect them further. The personal cellphones of dozens of current and former Barnard College employees rang last Monday evening with a text message that said it was from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, part of a review of the employment practices of Barnard. A link led to a survey that asked respondents if they were Jewish or Israeli, and if they had been subjected to harassment.

Another attack on free speech in America that is Israel related, apart from what is going on at the universities which are being destroyed from within by the government demands to protect Jews, is the role of how research institutes have traditionally been able to engage in fraternal discussions to seek action and share information with any country or government entity in the world. But researchers and university employees who engage in certain nonviolent protests or political expression over human rights conditions in Israel and Gaza may now risk loss of employment and other civil and criminal penalties, according to a new policy unveiled by the National Institutes of Health on April 21st. The agency, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, touches virtually every corner of the scientific community but it will now be silent over what is happening in Gaza, where every hospital has now been destroyed by Israeli-American bombs.

So there you have it. Let’s stop making excuses for Israeli behavior that depicts Jews as the perpetual victims while seeking to falsely label Israel’s enemies as the war criminals and racists. We will leave those attributes to Israel itself. Better still, arch-Zionist Donald Trump should pick up the phone in the Oval Office and call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him that America has become tired and the game is over. America will no longer be sacrificing its own interests to support a genocide and no longer will be footing the bill and providing the weapons to carry out the slaughter. “Goodbye Bibi! And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”

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.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Spain granted 46 contracts to Israeli military firms since Gaza war began: Report

Press TV – April 26, 2025

Despite promising to halt weapons trade with Israel, Spain has reportedly signed 46 contracts worth over €1 billion with Israeli military firms since the Gaza war began.

The revelation came after Spain scrapped a controversial ammunition contract with an Israeli supplier for its Civil Guard, sparking internal divisions in Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s fragile Socialist coalition in recent days.

While Sanchez – one of Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel’s war on Gaza – halted arms transactions with Israel after the regime launched the October 2023 war against Gaza, the Barcelona-based Centre Delàs found that Spain, nevertheless, approved 46 military deals worth €1.045 billion ($1.2B) with Israeli firms.

According to a statement released by the think tank on Friday, which previewed an upcoming report, out of the 46 contracts involving rocket launchers and missiles, 10 have yet to be formalized.

According to the statement, while some contracts involved maintenance or upgrades of existing equipment, others represented new agreements that “could increase the dependence… on an industry essential to perpetrate a genocide.”

“If the government had agreed a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel that included, among other measures, imports and bans on hiring Israeli [military] companies or their subsidiaries, none of these contracts would have been signed,” the statement added.

The report’s co-author, Eduardo Melero, told AFP, “It is clearly demonstrated that the government lied, there was no pledge, that was pure propaganda.”

Melero explained that under Spanish law, protective gear like bulletproof materials qualify as defense equipment, meaning their purchase directly violates the government’s commitment to halt arms trade with the Israeli regime.

On Thursday, a Spanish government source said it had decided to stick to its October 2023 commitment not to provide Israeli companies with arms or revenue flows “and nor will it do so in future.”

Israel criticized Spain’s decision to scrap the bullet supply contract for the Civil Guard, arguing the government was “putting political motives above security needs.”

Last year, Spain urged other EU nations to halt the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel in response to its continued aggression in the Gaza Strip.

The diplomatic push coincides with escalating Palestinian casualties in Gaza and a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the blockaded territory.

Since the beginning of Israel’s aggression on Gaza, the number of Palestinian fatalities has surpassed 51,350.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Occupation Forces Assassinate Journalist, His Wife and Daughter in Deir al-Balah

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – April 24, 2025

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the assassination crime committed by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) that killed a Palestinian journalist, his wife and daughter while they were walking near their house in Deir al-Balah.

PCHR believes that the ongoing targeting and surging killing of journalists undoubtedly reveal that the killing is deliberate and intentional aimed to intimidate and terrorize journalists preventing them from unveiling the truth to the world.

Such targeted attacks are part of the crime of genocide Israel is committing in the Gaza Strip. PCHR emphasizes that IOF’s unabated impunity encourages them to commit more violations and crimes against journalists and their families without any deterrence for their actions.

According to PCHR’s documentation, on Wednesday, 23 April 2025, an Israeli warplane fired a missile at journalist Sa’id Amin Abu Hasanein (42), targeting and killing him, his wife, Asmaa’ Jihad Abu Hasanein and their 15-year-old daughter, Sarah, while they were walking on al-Bee’ah Street, central Deir al-Balah. Hasanein worked in sound engineering and audio mixing at Al-Aqsa Voice Radio in Gaza.

With this crime, the number of journalists killed by IOF since 07 October 2023 has risen to 212, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office. This war has taken a record toll since the recording of journalist fatalities started in 1992.

Among those killed were 13 female journalists. Meanwhile, the majority of journalists were killed in Israeli warplane and drone airstrikes, and the remaining were shot dead by Israeli snipers. Most journalists were killed alongside their families in targeted attacks on their homes, while others were killed in indiscriminate bombings throughout the ongoing genocide.

Some journalists were directly targeted and killed while others were killed on duty. Additionally, 194 journalists have been injured under various circumstances during the aggression.

Moreover, a large number of social media activists have been targeted by the IOF, who systematically incite against them and threaten to kill them if they do not remain silent.

PCHR asserts that the targeting of journalists intends to isolate the victim and prevent the documentation of Israel’s genocidal acts against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Thus, PCHR calls on the international community to openly condemn the targeting of journalists, to exert pressure on Israel, the occupying power, to immediately stop these attacks, and to urgently provide international protection for civilians, including journalists, in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR emphasizes that the deliberate killing of journalists is a war crime under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to Article 8 of the ICC’s Rome Statute. It also constitutes arbitrary deprivation of life under Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the perpetrators must be held accountable.

Moreover, targeting journalists constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of the press and freedom of expression, which are guaranteed under international human rights law, especially Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

PCHR calls on the international community to pressure the occupying power to immediately stop targeting journalists and to take immediate action to provide international protection for civilians, including journalists, in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR also urges the international community to exert pressure on Israel to stop its crimes, comply with the rules of international law, and provide protection for civilians.

PCHR also calls upon the international journalists’ organizations, including the International Federation of Journalists, to act urgently to push towards holding Israel accountable for the killing and targeting of journalists in Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

PCHR also calls on the ICC Prosecutor to expedite the issuance of tangible measures to accomplish the investigation into the situation of the State of Palestine, including killings of journalists who pay their lives as a cost for exposing the truth especially that the victims in Palestine have long awaited justice and accountability.

PCHR also urges the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression to scale up efforts to protect the right to freedom of opinion and expression and investigate crimes committed by IOF against journalists and media outlets in the occupied Palestinian territory.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran, US conclude third round of indirect talks in Oman

Press TV – April 26, 2025

The third round of indirect talks between Iran and the United States has concluded in Muscat, the capital of Oman, with both parties agreeing to continue consultations.

The discussions began on Saturday and were facilitated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad al-Busaidi.

As in the previous two rounds, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff led the negotiations.

Earlier in the day, technical-level talks between Iranian and American experts also took place in Muscat. The primary goal was to establish a framework for a potential agreement on Tehran’s civilian nuclear program.

Michael Anton, the State Department’s head of policy planning, led Washington’s expert-level delegation, while Iranian Deputy Foreign Ministers Kazem Gharibabadi and Majid Takht-e-Ravanchi led Tehran’s team. The expert-level discussions focused on details of expectations and demands.

Both delegations are set to return to their respective capitals for further consultations as part of the negotiation process.

Next round of talks to be held next Saturday: Oman FM

In a post on his X account, the Omani foreign minister said today’s talks between Iran and the US identified a shared aspiration to reach an agreement based on mutual respect and enduring commitments.

“Core principles, objectives, and technical concerns were all addressed,” Busaidi wrote.

He noted that the sides agreed to continue the negotiations “with a further high-level meeting” provisionally scheduled for May 3.

Iran insists on its peaceful nuclear right: Foreign Ministry spokesman

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei reiterated Tehran’s insistence on its legitimate right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes during the indirect talks with the United States.

In a post on his X account on Saturday, Baghaei said the Iran-US talks were proceeding in a “serious” atmosphere.

He noted that the parties exchanged views on terminating sanctions effectively, building confidence in the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, and safeguarding Tehran’s right to civilian nuclear energy, facilitated by Oman.

Baghaei also dismissed claims from certain Western media outlets, emphasizing that Iran’s defense and missile capabilities were not raised in the talks and will never be a topic of negotiation.

The previous rounds of indirect talks between Iran and the United States were held in Muscat and Rome on April 12 and 19, respectively, and were similarly aimed at finding common ground on Tehran’s nuclear program.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Al Mayadeen receives Hamas’ vision for Gaza ceasefire

Al Mayadeen | April 26, 2025

Hamas is presenting a comprehensive approach aimed at achieving a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and securing a prisoner exchange deal, a senior Palestinian Resistance official told Al Mayadeen on Saturday.

The official explained that the proposal calls for an all-in-one agreement between the two parties, ensuring a full prisoner exchange.

The Resistance is open to a long-term ceasefire lasting up to five years, under regional and international guarantees, according to the official, who maintained that once the framework is agreed upon, the situation on the ground would revert to the status prior to March 2.

Immediately following the agreement, military operations would cease, Israeli occupation forces would withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian aid would be allowed to enter the Palestinian enclave in accordance with an established humanitarian protocol, the official emphasized.

As part of the proposal, Hamas suggests the formation of a local committee composed of independent technocrats to administer Gaza, granting it full jurisdiction and responsibilities, the official noted.

The governance committee would be established based on the Egyptian proposal for the community support committee.

The senior official also said that Hamas’ proposal aims to pave the way for achieving a broader national consensus within the framework of previous agreements reached between Palestinian factions, the latest of which is the Beijing Agreement.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Military and Civilian Losses Surge, Questions Linger over Casualty Count

Discrepancies in casualty figures and internal military disagreements underscore the escalating human cost of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza

Palestine Chronicle | April 25, 2025

More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the last 12 months alone, according to new figures released on Friday by the Israeli Defense Ministry—part of a rising toll that coincides with growing domestic discontent and calls to end the war on Gaza.

Quoting the Ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that 316 soldiers and other members of the security and military establishment have been killed since April 2024. An additional 79 Israeli civilians were also killed in the same period.

However, a significant discrepancy emerged in the same report: the Ministry of Defense now counts nearly 6,000 new bereaved families since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

The term “bereaved families” typically refers to the immediate relatives of individuals killed in military service or in attacks classified as “hostile acts”.

The gap between the number of confirmed military deaths and the number of bereaved families has raised questions about how the figures are calculated—and whether they reflect additional, unreported losses or cumulative deaths from multiple timeframes.

In total, the ministry now records a total of 58,617 bereaved families in Israel, including 5,944 added since the war began.

These revelations come as tensions escalate within Israel’s military establishment.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, sharp disagreements have surfaced between the Israeli Air Force and the Southern Command over the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza.

A senior security official reportedly told the paper that Air Force pilots are dissatisfied with the human cost of strikes on targets chosen by the Southern Command, also stating that civilian death tolls often exceed initial estimates.

Meanwhile, public sentiment continues to shift. In a recent editorial, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv argued that Israel is “drowning in the Gaza quagmire” and urged the government to reach a deal—even at a steep price.

Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, echoed this call, warning that the country is “still paying a heavy price in blood” and cannot afford an indefinite war. He advocated for a regional political and security agreement to bring the war to an end and return the remaining hostages.

According to Haaretz, 139 prisoners have been returned alive from Gaza, while 38 bodies have been recovered. Another 40 Israelis remain in captivity, not including soldiers or police officers.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Collateral Damage or Calculated Strategy? EU Feels the Heat from America’s Yemen Military Operation

By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – April 26, 2025

One must stop and ask that if the US was aware that its operations in Yemen would have such limited results, why would it undertake such a risky and expensive operation in the first place?

It is more involved than just opening up the straits of the Red Sea for international shipping, especially for the benefit of Israel or the United States.

In the fog of war and diplomacy, clarity often lies not in what’s said—but in who suffers. Operation Rough Rider may not be officially aimed at the EU, but its strategic outcomes speak louder than policy briefings. Ironically, the name, according to the Atlantic, is very name is meant to evoke Theodore Roosevelt’s vainglorious 1898 cavalry charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.

As European trade chokes and Washington insiders mock their so-called allies, it’s fair to ask whether the Houthis were ever the real target—or merely a convenient excuse. Either way, the operation isn’t working as officially claimed. In the broader Great Game of global power, Yemen may be the battleground, but Europe looks increasingly like the economic casualty. The layers run deep, and we’re only beginning to peel them back.

Is the EU the Real Target of US Military Operations against Yemen?

Firstly, only a fraction, less than 5 percent, of US cargo finds it way though these disputed waters. This begs the question, why then would the US start an operation that has resulted in shutting down transit for all flags, not only those coming and going from Israel?

But motivations are different, and there is no having a small country doing the right thing, and at the right time. Yemen may go down in history as one of the few countries that were morally responsible enough to stand up for human rights, and for having taken a principled stance against genocide in Palestine when the real history is written.

It is possible that the US is attacking Yemen for all practical purposes to cover for its separate agenda, to weaken the EU as its products, imports and exports, need this vital waterway, and as a punitive action for Yemen standing up to genocide in Palestine.

A recent Mondoweiss article titled “Yemen is acting responsibly to stop genocide and the U.S. is bombing them for it” presents a perspective that Yemen’s actions in the Red Sea are legally justified responses to international law violations, especially in terms of the crisis situation in Gaza.

The piece presents a convincing position that Yemen’s blockade of ships destined for Israel through the Red Sea port of Eilat is a lawful measure aimed at preventing further human rights violations and genocide against the Palestinian people, which may soon expand to the West Bank.

Genocide, Geopolitics, and the Price Europe Pays

The Houthis have clearly stated that they will continue retaliating against shipping of any flag that supports Israel and turns a blind eye to blatant genocide. But who is really suffering, other than the US taxpayer?

It should be obvious that this is an expensive operation with high-tech bombs and keeping battle groups in the region does not come cheap, and it weakens the US position should it need to shift to another area of operation, for instance, the South China Sea. Likely, the operation has already exceeded 1 billion dollars for the US, and with little to show for it.

The Houthis are still able to launch attacks; the costs of the mission are mounting, which would require the Pentagon to ask for more funds from Congress. In addition, the US has been forced to transfer a second carrier from the Pacific, in a sign that not all is well with the campaign, a situation likely to nearly double the ongoing costs of the operation. In addition, the Houthis have become quite adept at shooting down US drones.

This may be nothing, small change, in comparison to what the EU is suffering in loses due to sanctions against Russia, US tariffs, and having its supply chains interrupted, and, whereas before only ships coming and going to Israeli ports were subject to attacks, now the Red Sea is a free fire zone, and Lloyds of London is not willing to provide insurance coverage to merchant shipping in the area due to the US operation.

America’s Bombs, Europe’s Losses: The Hidden War Behind Operation Rough Rider

One could even fathom that the US was well aware of this fact, and knew that there would be externalities, and this would hurt another one of its purported friends, and “real rival” who has gotten rich as a result of US trade policies over the years and the American taxpayer’s subsidy to the defense of old Europe.

One has to listen to the news, with a smile and tongue in cheek, how National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who inadvertently added a journalist to a group chat that discussed Yemen strike plans, speaks as he sits with U.S. President Donald Trump during an Ambassadorial Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 25, 2025 in Washington.

This comes as close to Machiavellian as possible, due to the potential fallout, economic impact, and the fear it spreads to allies, and especially those most economically affected—as in the case of the EU.

While the operation is not explicitly targeted at the European Union (EU), at least openly, it has far-reaching implications for European interests. The Red Sea is a critical maritime route for global trade, including that of EU member states. Houthi attacks on shipping lanes have disrupted international commerce, affecting European economies which are too reliant on these trade routes. ​

Some U.S. officials have expressed concerns about the operation’s focus, suggesting that the benefits may accrue more to European allies than to the United States itself. For instance, a U.S. senator reportedly remarked, “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” highlighting a sentiment that the U.S. is bearing the operational costs while Europe reaps the benefits of secured trade routes.​

The supposedly leaked war plans on the Signal Group Chat, may not have been accidently leaked at all, and are most revealing. To put it simply, it not only exposed U.S. officials discussing airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthis but how they not only distrust Europe but OPENLY despise it.

We can glean how VP JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio weren’t just discussing military strategy, but were ranting about the freeloading of the Europeans, how they would be benefiting more from the planned US strikes, and how it was the Americans who were bailing out the Europeans.

Even Trump shared similar views a month ago, and in a nutshell, he claimed the EU was “formed to screw the United States.” I don’t know if that is politically acceptable from anyone other than Trump but what he is saying hits home with many, as, from Trump’s perspective, the actions of the EU, aside from pushing for a continued war in Ukraine, look like economic warfare cloaked in bureaucracy, where U.S. wealth is siphoned off through unfair trade practices.

Who is Screwing Who?

It is the American taxpayers who are picking up the tap for the Defense of Europe, and even this military operation against Yemen, in theory, should help Europe more but in reality, now no ships are passing, who is screwing who now?

Operation “Rough Rider” may be framed in the guise of protecting international shipping lanes and addressing regional instability, but its true impact—and likely intent—appears far more strategic.

Though publicly justified as a response to Houthi aggression, the disruption of Red Sea trade routes has hit the European Union hardest—not Israel or the United States. Israel had already suffered from earlier Houthi blockades. Whether by design or fortunate consequence, the operation has undermined a key economic rival under the guise of humanitarian aid and security enforcement.

As U.S. political elites openly mock European allies and leak plans with startling candor, the lines between defense, deception, and economic warfare blur further. If the goal was to punish the Houthis, it has failed. But if the deeper aim was to pressure Europe—economically, politically, and symbolically—then Operation Rough Rider may be succeeding more than it appears.

The real question is not why the U.S. is bombing Yemen, but who they really wanted to hit. Behind the façade of humanitarian and free trade concern lies an economic war that’s crippling EU trade and shaking global alliances, and sending messages to China, for good measure, that there is more than one way to get the desired results, though it must be said that the US failure to silence the Houthis, or stop their attacks on shipping, may be sending the wrong message, as I warned earlier.

While the U.S. chips away at a European rival, its struggle against the Houthis exposes the limits of American military power against a determined adversary. In the process, Washington may be weakening its own position. A wider showdown with Iran, despite the bold claims of Trump and Hesgeth about America’s “unrivaled power,” could prove just as costly—and just as ineffective.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

COVID VACCINE INJURIES CONFIRMED BY NEW DATA

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | April 24, 2025

Del and Jefferey reveal newly uncovered CDC data tying COVID-19 vaccines to neurological, cardiac, and autoimmune injuries, including brain inflammation and heart complications. As evidence mounts, the failure of health officials to warn the public threatens to shatter what little trust remains.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment