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BLOOD CLOTS IN 5 MINUTES? CELL PHONE RADIATION UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | May 15, 2025

Jefferey Jaxen breaks down a stunning ultrasound study showing real-time blood changes after just 5 minutes of smartphone exposure. With links to fertility issues, cancer, and hormonal disruption, the data raises urgent questions about the health impacts of EMF and why government agencies are choosing not to act.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | 1 Comment

Hep B Vaccines Come With High Risk, Little Benefit — Why Does CDC Recommend Them for Every Newborn?

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 13, 2025

As public concern grows over the large and growing number of shots on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) childhood immunization schedule, several critics are sounding the alarm about one shot in particular — the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine.

Among the 76 vaccine doses on the schedule, the CDC recommends that every infant born in the U.S. get their first dose of the Hep B vaccine on the day they are born. Studies show that more than 90% of infants typically do so.

By age 24 months, most of those infants have received the recommended three doses of the vaccine.

Hepatitis B is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis B virus (HBV), which can range from a mild, short-term, acute illness lasting a few weeks to a serious, long-term, chronic infection.

The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids, most often via intimate contact such as sex or sharing intravenous (IV) drug equipment. Being an IV drug user is the most common risk factor for the disease.

Infected pregnant mothers can also pass the disease to their infants, but relatively few do — about 25,000 pregnant women per year, or 0.69%, have Hep B, and about 1,000 of them pass it to their babies, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The CDC says, “almost all children and older adults infected with acute HBV recover completely with no lasting liver damage.”

Women can be tested for the disease to see if their babies would benefit from vaccination, but that’s not what the CDC recommends.

Instead, today the Hep B vaccine is required for children to attend either childcare, school, or both, in every state except Alabama.

School-age children don’t fit the profile of those at risk for contracting Hepatitis B. Also, the CDC has no evidence that Hepatitis B has ever been transmitted in a school setting, according to a records search posted on Substack by attorney Aaron Siri, who made the request.

Siri argues the Hep B mandate is about profit, not about protecting children from a contagious disease.

“The Hepatitis B vaccine is a case study in agency capture,” Siri wrote. All children would not be required to take the shot, he said “if pharma didn’t stand to earn billions through a wider mandate of this product.”

The Hep B vaccine market, valued at more than $8 billion in 2023, is projected to grow to over $13 billion by 2032, with the U.S. making up the largest market for the vaccine, Fortune Business Insights reported.

Why did the Hep B vaccine get added to the childhood schedule?

In a Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law and Ethics article, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland questioned the constitutionality of mandating the Hep B vaccine for children to access education, especially given that CDC data show that transmission is unlikely through routine contact among children.

She said the CDC’s position on mass vaccination for children changed after the pharmaceutical companies got legal protection from liability.

When the CDC vaccine advisory committee made its first Hep B vaccine recommendation in 1982, the agency observed that the U.S. was a place of “low HBV prevalence.” CDC officials recommended the shot only for people at higher risk, including healthcare workers, people likely to be in sexual or “needle stick” contact with an infected person and infants born to mothers infected with the virus.

In 1988, the committee called for all pregnant mothers to be screened to determine if vaccination would be necessary. At that time, it was estimated that 16,500 mothers per year were infected and that without vaccination, an estimated 3,500 infants would become chronic carriers.

Later that year, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), created by the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, was established. The law protects vaccine makers from liability for injuries related to vaccines on the CDC’s childhood schedule, and the VICP is meant to provide an alternative means of compensating people who suffer “accidental injury or death” from taking those vaccines.

By 1991, the CDC had begun describing HBV risks differently, stating that the consequences of infection were “major health problems” in the U.S. — even though rates had not changed and the number of children infected with HBV was just a few hundred.

The CDC’s advisory committee concluded that because it was challenging to vaccinate those at risk for HBV, mass immunization against the virus was “the most effective means of preventing HBV infection and its consequences.”

The committee recommended all infants be vaccinated, regardless of their mothers’ hepatitis B status, and the Hep B vaccine was added to the childhood immunization schedule.

Dangers of the Hep B vaccine

Then and now, there are two Hep B vaccines licensed for infants at birth: Merck’s Recombivax HB and GSK’s Engerix-B. Both are made using a genetic engineering technology that was new when the vaccines were developed.

The clinical trials for both brands included only a small number of children, and researchers followed up on safety monitoring with infants for only four or five days in the different trials.

No medium or long-term studies were done, no comparisons were made between vaccinated and unvaccinated subjects, and the vaccines were administered only to healthy babies.

According to the Recombivax HB label, during clinical trials, 434 doses of the drug were administered to 147 healthy infants and children up to age 10, who were each monitored for five days after each dose. During those five days, 10% of infants experienced systemic reactions, including “irritability, fever (≥101°F oral equivalent), diarrhea, fatigue/weakness, diminished appetite, and rhinitis.”

Among the much larger group of 1,252 healthy adults, reactions were wide-ranging and sometimes serious. They included injection site issues and fevers, upper respiratory infections, influenza, body pain, insomnia and hypotension.

The Engerix-B package insert doesn’t specify how many babies were included in its clinical trials. However, it does indicate the trial subjects were monitored for only four days. The insert lists similar adverse events to those of Recombivax HB.

Post-marketing studies, which collect voluntary reports of adverse effects registered in places like the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), the Vaccine Safety Datalink, or with the vaccine makers, showed many more serious side effects reported for both versions of the Hep B vaccine.

Examples include immune system disorders like systemic lupus erythematosus, thrombocytopenia, Guillain-barré syndrome, multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, febrile seizure, Bell’s Palsy, herpes zoster, encephalitis, and many more.

Premature infants who take either Hep B vaccine have also experienced sleep apnea, which the labels warn about.

The inserts indicate it is impossible to determine whether the vaccine caused any of the reported events. Heritage Foundation Policy Analyst Catherine Pakaluk, Ph.D., criticized this approach to identifying adverse effects.

She wrote:

“To the extent that clinical trial data are insufficient to draw robust safety conclusions, patients are effectively used as test subjects post-licensure, but without knowledge that they are part of the test and without hope that their own adverse experiences will be scientifically useful as they would be in the case of a controlled trial. Voluntary adverse event data are suitable for identifying safety signals, but not for drawing conclusions about real risks.

The available data comes mostly from clinical trials that had small sample sizes, no control groups, and only a few days of follow-up, she added. The only other data source is post-licensure data, “which suffer from a lack of statistical usefulness.”

Peer-reviewed research also links the Engerix B vaccine to CNS inflammatory demyelination — a group of diseases in which the immune system attacks and damages the myelin sheath that protects the brain and spinal cord — namely multiple sclerosis in children.

Studies of children in the U.S. also linked the Hep B vaccine to arthritis, acute ear infections and sore throats. And a 2008 study associated Hep B vaccination of male newborns with autism diagnoses at three times the normal rate.

In a recent presentation about the Hep B vaccine, CHD science team member Heather Ray highlighted other safety concerns. For example, Ray noted that vaccine dosage is the same for newborn infants as it is for adults. Vaccine dosage doesn’t vary for a 7-pound infant or a 210-pound linebacker, she said.

The dose exposes babies to both the genetically engineered antigen and the aluminum adjuvant.

“Aluminum is a heavy metal that’s a proven neurotoxin and can cross the blood-brain barrier,” Ray said. “It has scientifically been shown to cause autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases and other horrendous neurological diseases and chronic illnesses.”

Infants’ organ membrane barriers are more permeable than those of adults, making them more susceptible to aluminum.

Until 2001, the Hep B vaccines also contained 25 micrograms of the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal.

Since the VAERS was established in 1990, there have been 18,950 adverse events reported in children under age 2 following Hep B vaccination, and 31,082 reports in children under age 17.

VAERS has been estimated to contain approximately 1% of adverse events, according to David Kessler, former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Critics say Hep B vaccine poses many risks and no benefits for most babies

In terms of efficacy, the Hep B vaccine package inserts say the vaccine has been shown to produce antibodies to hepatitis B, and “appears to have protected infants whose mothers tested positive for hepatitis B antigens.”

Pakaluk wrote, “Therefore, we can conclude that the vaccine provides a robust antibody response to a disease to which they are not regularly exposed, and how long that antibody response lasts is unknown. In other words, for children not exposed to hepatitis B, there is no known benefit.”

Substack writer J.B. Handley, who has called for the elimination of the vaccine from the childhood schedule, wrote, “It’s a nearly useless vaccine, unless you are in the tiny minority of babies who have a mother with Hepatitis B.”

The Informed Consent Action Network, in 2020, filed a petition with the FDA demanding that the licensure of the Hep B vaccines be revoked or suspended until their safety was determined in a properly designed clinical trial.

CHD Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said,

“The CDC immunization schedule was simply not written for most people. The childhood Hep B recommendation is a prominent example. It is a pathogen that is primarily transmitted between humans through dirty needles and unprotected sex.

“In rare circumstances, it may be transmitted between people who live together — if one of them has an active infection — by things like shaving razors. Most children have zero risk factors and zero exposure. Most children should not be vaccinated against hepatitis B.”

Watch Heather Ray’s Hep B presentation here.

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.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel’s Gaza genocide

MEMO | May 16, 2025

In the latest example of escalating repression against Palestine solidarity activism on US campuses, New York University (NYU) has withheld the diploma of student speaker Logan Rozos after he used his commencement address to denounce Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the US’s complicity.

Rozos, graduating from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualised Study, told his fellow students on Wednesday: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

In his speech, Rozos condemned the genocide “supported politically and militarily by the United States, paid for by our tax dollars and livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months.” He further stated: “I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, and all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity.”

Razos’s remarks were met with widespread applause from students. NYU swiftly responded by issuing a statement denouncing Rozos, accusing him of violating university rules and announcing it would withhold his diploma pending disciplinary action.

The university also removed Rozos’s student profile from its website, adding to concerns about institutional retaliation.

This incident comes amid a wider crackdown on free speech and pro-Palestinian activism at US universities. NYU, like many elite institutions, has adopted the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates political opposition to Zionism and Israel’s colonial violence with anti-Jewish hatred. Critics, including human rights scholars and Jewish groups, warn that such measures are being weaponised to suppress Palestinian advocacy and silence dissenting voices.

Rozos’s speech, and NYU’s reaction, follows a pattern of repression at the university. Over the past year, NYU administrators have called police to disperse peaceful encampments and arrested dozens of students and faculty protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The university has also updated its conduct guidelines to classify phrases such as “Zionist” as discriminatory, explicitly erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

In December 2024, NYU declared two tenured professors, Andrew Ross and Sonya Posmentier, “persona non grata” after they joined a sit-in demanding the university divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Months later, NYU cancelled a talk by Doctors Without Borders’ former president Dr Joanne Liu, deeming her slides on Gaza civilian casualties potentially “anti-Semitic.”

Human rights advocates and academic freedom organisations have condemned these actions, warning that universities like NYU are sacrificing core principles of free speech and academic independence under pressure from pro-Israel donors, political figures, and lobby groups.

Rozos’s speech, which framed Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide livestreamed in real time, resonates with warnings from genocide scholars, legal experts and international bodies that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide. Despite this, Rozos now faces institutional reprisals for expressing what many human rights defenders see as an urgent moral truth.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel kills over 100 Palestinians in northern Gaza attacks

Bodies of Palestinians, who lost their lives after Israeli attacks, are brought to Indonesia Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on May 16, 2025. [Abdalhkem Abu Riash – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | May 16, 2025

More than 100 Palestinians were killed in several attacks carried out by the Israeli occupation army in northern Gaza at daybreak today.

Medical sources told Anadolu that the Israeli occupation army carried out “horrific massacres” targeting civilians.

They reported several casualties when the Israeli army targeted an ambulance in the town of Jabalia in northern Gaza, the latest in a series of attacks on medics and healthcare facilities.

“Since early Friday, rescue teams have recovered 50 bodies from under the rubble following Israeli air strikes on 11 residential homes in northern Gaza,” Gaza Civil Defence spokesman Mahmoud Basal said.

He added that “over 50 others are still trapped beneath the debris.”

He warned that the actual death toll is likely much higher, as emergency crews have been unable to reach several areas due to the ongoing bombardment across the enclave.

Basal added that Israeli occupation forces not only struck densely populated homes but also targeted paramedics attempting to rescue victims and retrieve bodies in the aftermath of the attacks.

“There are bodies still lying in the streets of Beit Lahia, Jabalia, Jabalia refugee camp, and Beit Hanoun,” he said. “Rescue teams cannot access them because of the intensity of the strikes.”

The Israeli army has pursued a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since October 2023, killing more than 53,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Declassified files expose secret Western support for Israeli assassinations

MEMO | May 16, 2025

Newly declassified documents have revealed that Western intelligence services secretly collaborated with Israel’s Mossad in the 1970s, providing critical intelligence that enabled the assassination of Palestinian activists across Europe, without any parliamentary oversight or democratic scrutiny. The revelation has fuelled concerns that similar clandestine intelligence-sharing arrangements are likely facilitating Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza today.

According to a detailed exposé by the Guardian, a covert network known as “Kilowatt”—comprising at least 18 Western intelligence agencies including those of the UK, US, France, and West Germany, was established in 1971 to share sensitive intelligence on Palestinian groups. The information shared included personal details, safe house locations, and vehicle registrations of Palestinian individuals who were subsequently targeted by Mossad hit squads.

Dr Aviva Guttmann, the historian who uncovered the encrypted cables in Swiss archives, confirmed that the intelligence shared was granular and critical to Israel’s covert killings, many of which took place in Paris, Rome, Athens, and Nicosia. “At the very beginning, perhaps officials were unaware of the extrajudicial assassinations, but later, they certainly knew and continued sharing intelligence,” Guttmann told the Guardian.

This covert support, the paper reported, operated entirely beyond the purview of elected officials, and would likely have triggered public outrage had it been exposed at the time. Indeed, some of those assassinated were publicly disputed as innocent, such as Wael Zwaiter, a Palestinian intellectual gunned down in Rome in 1972, whom Israel accused of being linked to the Black September Organisation. Evidence supporting such claims was largely based on intelligence fed through the Kilowatt system.

The revelations, while historical, have sparked urgent comparisons to the present day, where Israel is prosecuting what rights experts and genocide scholars widely describe as an ongoing genocide in Gaza, once again behind a wall of secrecy and political impunity.

Dr Guttmann herself underlined the relevance of these disclosures, warning that the shadowy practices of intelligence-sharing without political oversight remain largely unchanged: “International relations of the secret state are completely off the radar of politicians, parliaments, or the public. Even today, there will be a lot of information being shared about which we know absolutely nothing,” she stressed to the Guardian.

Critics argue that such secrecy underpins the UK’s and other Western states’ complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide, which since October 2023 has killed over 53,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Despite the International Court of Justice opening a genocide case against Israel, British intelligence cooperation with Israeli agencies continues in the dark, with no democratic accountability or transparency. The UK government has also refused to clarify the purpose of more than 500 Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza, raising fears these may be contributing to targeted killing.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Israeli Syria Dilemma

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 15, 2025

Although it could appear that the Israelis are having their way with Syria, their aggression is short sighted and could at any moment backfire. The only reason they still enjoy the freedom to continue carrying on in the manner they are, is because of the leadership in Damascus.

Syria’s new President Ahmad al-Sharaa and his administration, staffed primarily by members of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have so far failed to take advantage of opportunity after opportunity that have fallen in their laps. Instead of uniting the country behind a common cause, working on building a strong functional nation, and finding some leverage to use in future negotiations, they chose the path of least resistance.

We have now reached a phase in Syria where President al-Sharaa, according to several sources who spoke to both Reuters and The Times, is considering a normalisation deal with the Zionist entity. To begin with, even the fact that this is being spoken of and he hasn’t denied it is an admission of guilt and represents a betrayal of the Palestinian people.

Yet, putting aside the fact that normalisation with the Zionist entity would make al-Sharaa and his administration directly complicit in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and a collaborator with the Israeli regime, it is a ridiculous move, politically speaking.

What we have to understand here is that the Israelis are not the ones begging Syria for a normalisation agreement, it is the other way around. However, the Syrian government has no leverage whatsoever. As al-Sharaa remains trapped between multiple regional and Western interests, he evidently has little wiggle room with which he can work in order to make his regime work.

For example, one of his primary backers is Turkiye, which has at least publicly expressed its interest in strengthening the Syrian State and also uniting it, whereas the Israelis put their foot down and are openly seeking balkanisation of the country. This all came to a head when the Syrian security forces were ordered to seize Druze majority areas south of Damascus and to head towards Sweida.

Unfortunately, al-Sharaa decided to completely dismantle the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and pull apart the security forces, meaning that the de facto military and security forces of the country are a collection of largely ill-trained and undisciplined militiamen. So, when they are sent into any area, we see sectarian bloodshed and lawlessness. This is then exploited by the Israelis, who back their own militia forces, falsely claiming to be on the side of Syria’s Druze community.

To give some context to this situation, the Israelis were giving military, financial, and medical aid to Jabhat al-Nusra – now rebranded as HTS – at a time when it was committing massacres against Druze civilians, yet are now pretending to be the saviours of those same communities.

Because of the fact that al-Sharaa doesn’t have a real army or security forces yet, militarily, he is weak. Then, when he attempts to disarm Syrian villages, this only ends up dividing the country further. Meanwhile, the US, EU, UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and other players all have their own opinions on what Damascus should be doing.

What al-Sharaa has chosen to do is suck up to the United States and the rest of the collective West, yet he lacks the intellectual prowess necessary to negotiate with them properly. Instead, he is floating ridiculous proposals like the construction of a Trump Tower in Damascus and a Ukraine-style resource deal with the US. He also believes that making friends with the West is as easy as joining a normalisation deal with the Zionist regime.

Yet, when the Israelis look at Syria, they see a leadership that is willing to crack down on the Palestinian Resistance, allow the occupation of their lands and abandons its own people who are coming under attack. Therefore, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu looks at the predicament of Syria and laughs at the prospect of normalisation for now, not because he doesn’t eventually seek this outcome, but because there is no need to entertain it yet.

Instead, the Israelis are looking to exploit the weakness of the Syrian leadership and push for finishing their agenda in at least the south of the country. The Zionists have long sought to annex a large portion of strategic territory in southern Syria, which they are doing without so much as a single bullet fired at them from the forces belonging to Damascus, while working alongside Syrian minority militias to extend their de facto control all the way to the Euphrates River.

The major challenge now, for the Zionist entity, has nothing to do with the government in Damascus, but rather how far it can get away with pushing. We have already seen signs from local forces in Daraa, that there are groups willing to defend their villages and cities. This local resistance, rather than the government, is the primary factor holding the Zionist advance back.

If you trace back to the reaction to the ambushes carried out against the convoys of Israeli soldiers in southern Syria, the immediate response was to withdraw and use airpower to inflict deaths and injuries in Daraa. It has now been over a month since the clashes occurred, and the Israelis have not admitted to their casualties, nor have they bothered returning on the ground.

The Israeli agenda does not actually encompass any areas that extend beyond Damascus, they have been very open with their intentions being contained to everywhere south of the Syrian Capital. Yet, they have painted themselves into a corner that could result in a brief incursion into Damascus at some point or another.

The Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, has pledged to come to the aid of the Druze communities in Syria, which has ended up causing tensions within the Israeli Druze population in occupied Palestine. The Israeli Druze serve crucial roles in the Israeli military and contribute greatly to the Zionist regime’s economy, therefore, when Netanyahu pledges to help the Druze of Syria, this is not a pledge he can simply go back on.

When Ahmed al-Sharaa sent his security forces towards Sweida, this caused protests amongst Israeli Druze and calls for a ground incursion to fight against the Syrian government forces. That night, Israeli airstrikes were launched within 500 meters of the Presidential palace as a warning to the Syrian president. This was followed by one of the largest bombing campaigns in past decades against the country.

In response, al-Sharaa capitulated and decided to arrest the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), Talal Naji, likely in a good will gesture to help the Zionist regime locate the body of an Israeli soldier considered missing since 1982.

It is clear that the Israeli project in Syria is not over and that Tel Aviv seeks to use what it sees as a historic opportunity to divide the country and achieve “Greater Israel”. But this will come at a potentially huge cost, due to the fact that more action inside southern Syria will eventually lead to an organic resistance movement emerging. On the other hand, if the Zionists decide to engage with Syrian security forces on the ground, there is no telling how things could spiral out of control.

The Israelis simply do not have the ground capability to open up another broad front inside of Syria, because if they do so, they are going to leave themselves vulnerable on other fronts. If the current Syrian administration was politically intelligent, it would weaponise the situation to its benefit. Instead, it appears to be appealing for normalization without any need for Israeli concessions, meanwhile, Netanyahu doesn’t appear to be entertaining a deal at this time and wants to steal more from Syria first.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Being Russia’s enemy could cost European allies $1trn – study

RT | May 16, 2025

European NATO members would face a $1 trillion bill over 25 years to replace US military contributions if Washington exited the bloc, according to a study published on Thursday by a British think tank. The EU is planning a militarization drive, which it claims is necessitated by an alleged Russian threat.

Western European leaders have said member states must reduce their dependence on US weapons while implementing a massive increase in military spending. The proposed hike comes amid claims that Russia could attack a NATO member in the coming years. Moscow has denied the allegations and has accused the West of “irresponsibly stoking fears” of a fabricated threat.

The report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) outlines the challenges nations would encounter in the event the US withdraws from NATO to focus on confronting China.

According to the IISS, European nations – including the UK – would need to replace some 128,000 American troops, along with a wide array of weapon systems and command infrastructure currently provided by the Pentagon, particularly for air and naval forces.

”European states would need to invest significant resources on top of already existing plans to boost military capacity,” the report stated. The estimated price tag for replacing American weaponry alone ranges from $226 billion to $344 billion.

Domestic arms manufacturers would face difficulties securing contracts, financing, and skilled labor, while also grappling with regulatory and supply chain hurdles, the report warned. In certain sectors – such as stealth aircraft and rocket artillery – European NATO members currently lack viable alternatives, prompting the IISS to suggest outsourcing production to countries outside the bloc.

Beyond hardware, the study highlighted intangible but critical costs associated with command-and-control functions, space intelligence, and filling high-level leadership roles traditionally held by US officers.

The think tank questioned whether European governments possess the political will to ensure the vast spending required. The administration of US President Donald Trump has accused European NATO nations of taking advantage of American military protection without contributing enough in return.

On Thursday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul stirred controversy by vowing to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, well above Germany’s existing level of 2.1%. The statement, made following a NATO meeting, drew backlash, including from members of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius later stated that the exact percentage was “not so important” and that Berlin considered 3% to be a more realistic level.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Romanian presidential front-runner accuses Macron of interference

 Al Mayadeen | May 16, 2025

Romanian nationalist candidate George Simion has accused French President Emmanuel Macron of exhibiting “dictatorial tendencies” and interfering in Romania’s democratic process, just days before the country’s do-over presidential election.

“I love France and the French people, but I don’t like Emmanuel Macron’s dictatorial tendencies,” Simion said during an interview with French television channel CNews, adding, “I don’t respect Emmanuel Macron’s intervention in our democracy.”

Simion further said that France’s ambassador to Romania had discussed the election with the president of the Constitutional Court, which annulled the 2024 presidential vote in December due to concerns over Russian interference.

“The French ambassador has gone… through all regions of the country to convince businessmen to support my opponent, the mayor of Bucharest,” Simion added, referring to Nicușor Dan, his opponent in Sunday’s final vote.

Simion, 38, is the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and is campaigning on a nationalist platform that opposes military aid to Ukraine and supports unification with Moldova.

He faces Nicușor Dan, 55, an independent centrist and current mayor of Bucharest, who is running on a pro-European, pro-Western platform and advocates a tougher stance against Russia.

In the first round of the presidential election, Simion secured 41% of the vote, compared to Dan’s 21%. However, recent polling shows the race tightening. Politico’s Poll of Polls currently places Simion at 49% and Dan at 46%.

“We are basically winning,” Simion told Politico during a visit to Brussels. “The only thing we need is fair and free elections. … I think it will be a landslide.”

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

France leading West’s ‘party of war’ – Russia

RT | May 16, 2025

France has emerged as one of the leaders of the “hybrid war” against Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. She made her remarks after the EU agreed to its 17th package of sanctions.

France, together with the United Kingdom, proposed the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to take a more proactive role supporting Ukraine in its fight with Russia in February 2025 after the new administration of US President Donald Trump moved to adopt a more conciliatory stance towards resolving the conflict.

“It is common knowledge that since 2022, Paris has been one of the most uncompromising participants in the West’s hybrid war against our country,” Zakharova said during a press call on Thursday.

“Over the past few months, the French have effectively become the leaders of the West’s ‘party of war,’” she added, citing France’s military aid to Ukraine and its push for additional sanctions on Russia.

“France has played a major role in devising illegitimate sanctions packages in the past. Now, it is attempting to blackmail us with new, supposedly broader sanctions,” Zakharova said.

She argued that the restrictions are part of a “trade war” aimed at “hindering Russia’s economic, technological, and humanitarian development, and at undermining its industrial potential.” Russia, she added, will have a “measured response” to any new restrictions.

French President Emmanuel Macron has said the EU would impose new sanctions “in the coming days” if Moscow does not accept Ukraine’s demand for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire. Earlier this year, Paris delivered a first batch of Mirage 2000 fighter jets to Kiev.

Russia has warned that military aid to Ukraine would only lead to further escalation. President Vladimir Putin has insisted that, for a lasting ceasefire, Ukraine must halt its mobilization campaign, stop receiving weapons from abroad, and withdraw its troops from all territory claimed by Russia.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia-Ukraine talks conclude – media

RT | May 16, 2025

Direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul have ended, with the two delegations departing from the venue and press statements being prepared, a TASS source has said.

The head of the Ukrainian delegation, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, stated that Friday’s talks at Dolmabahce Palace had focused on a prisoner exchange and versions of a potential ceasefire, according to RBK-Ukraine.

A potential meeting between Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin was also reportedly raised, and Umerov added that an update on possible new negotiations would be shared soon.

He also stated that both delegations had agreed to an exchange involving 1,000 prisoners from each side. Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, also confirmed that an exchange is being prepared.

Medinsky added that Kiev had requested a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, and that Moscow has taken note of the proposal. He stated that overall, the Russian delegation was satisfied with the outcome of the talks and is ready to continue contacts.

According to Medinsky, Russia and Ukraine will each present their detailed vision of a possible ceasefire, after which the negotiations will continue.

The talks had been expected to begin on Thursday, after Putin suggested resuming the negotiations which had been broken off in Istanbul three years ago.

The Russian team waited for the Ukrainian delegation to arrive for an entire day, although Zelensky only named his delegation on Thursday evening.

Moscow and Ukraine last held direct talks in April 2022. Following initial reports that an agreement had been reached, Kiev unilaterally withdrew from the talks. Putin later blamed Western interference and, in particular, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had reportedly urged Kiev to “just continue fighting,” for derailing the peace process.

Russia, which had withdrawn its forces from the outskirts of Kiev as a goodwill gesture, later accused Ukraine of backtracking, saying it had lost trust in kiev’s negotiators.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Among Dozens Who Signed Oath to Conceal COVID Info That Could ‘Embarrass’ Trudeau Government

yourNEWS | May 9, 2025

Newly released records show Canada’s top doctor and federal managers signed confidentiality pledges during the COVID crisis to avoid disclosures that could damage government credibility.

Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, and nearly 30 senior federal health officials signed a confidential oath during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, pledging not to release information that could “embarrass” the Trudeau cabinet, according to internal records obtained through Access to Information requests.

The oath, revealed by Blacklock’s Reporter, was part of a broader secrecy policy within the Public Health Agency and other government departments including Health, Industry, Foreign Affairs, and National Defence. Internal communications from 2020 show that vaccine supply manager Alan Thom voiced concern about the widespread requirement for federal managers to sign non-disclosure agreements, noting, “at a certain point the Department of Public Works determined individual non-disclosure agreements were no longer needed… as we are all covered through our responsibilities as public servants.”

The confidentiality agreement emphasized that any “unauthorized disclosure of confidential information… may result in embarrassment, criticism or claims against Canada and may jeopardize Canada’s supplier relations and procurement processes.” Managers acknowledged their ongoing obligations under the Values And Ethics Code For The Public Sector, according to the documents.

The oaths were signed shortly after the Trudeau administration secured billions in COVID-19 vaccine contracts with companies including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, Medicago, and Sanofi. Dr. Tam, a longtime proponent of mass vaccination, oversaw public messaging during the rollout.

The first mRNA vaccine to be approved in Canada was Pfizer’s BioNTech shot, authorized on December 9, 2020, followed closely by Moderna’s vaccine. The approvals came after the Trudeau government granted vaccine manufacturers legal immunity from liability for adverse effects. Parliamentarians requesting to review those contracts were denied access.

In response to growing reports of vaccine-related injuries, Canada launched its Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) in late 2020. As reported by LifeSiteNews, the program was created after legal protections were granted to pharmaceutical companies. A memo from Canada’s Department of Health now warns that VISP payouts are set to exceed the program’s original $75 million budget, prompting the federal government to allocate an additional $36 million.

Despite dwindling public demand, the government continues to purchase new doses, even as its own statistics show widespread rejection of booster injections by Canadians. Compounding concerns, an inhalable mRNA vaccine—developed using fetal cell lines and funded by Ottawa—has now entered Phase 2 clinical trials.

Data from Statistics Canada also indicates that post-vaccine rollout, deaths attributed to COVID-19 and “unspecified causes” significantly increased, raising further questions about the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccine campaign.

LifeSiteNews has compiled an extensive archive of research linking COVID mRNA injections to adverse events such as myocarditis, blood clots, and fertility issues. Additional findings highlight risks in children, while all currently available COVID shots have ties to abortion-derived fetal cell lines.

With growing scrutiny over vaccine safety and government transparency, the revelation that Canada’s top public health officials signed agreements to avoid reputational harm to federal leadership adds another layer of controversy to the country’s pandemic response.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Deception | , | 1 Comment

EU queen Ursula preached transparency – then did backdoor deals with Big Pharma

By Rachel Marsden | RT | May 16, 2025

Well, this is awkward. How many times has Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president and unelected de facto ruler of the EU, delivered sermons about transparency like she’s the high priestess of some kind of parallel Brussels Vatican? And now the EU’s own top court has called her out in a ruling for neglecting to practice what she preaches.

Back in 2023, during her State of the European Union address, doing her finest impression of someone elected by the actual public, von der Leyen declared the need to douse any and all sketchiness in sunlight in order to “not allow any autocracy’s Trojan horses to attack our democracies from within.”

“Transparency should characterize the work of all the members of the Commission and of their cabinets,” she said as far back as 2019. “I have asked commissioners…to engage more and be more transparent,” she proclaimed in a speech to EU parliamentarians last year. Transparency and accountability also figured prominently in her bid for reappointment by the EU’s ruling elites last year.

Great news! She can now finally embark on this noble mission, and begin her journey with little more than a simple glance in the mirror. Because the European Court of Justice – the body that rules on whether EU institutions have actually crossed into illegality, not just occupying their usual territory of elite-grade idiocy – has just decided that Queen Ursula’s Commission can’t just wave away a pile of her own Covid-era text messages by going, “Whoops! They disappeared. Oh well, what do you do?” Which is basically what the Commission’s response was to the New York Times when it asked to see those messages.

And how did the Times know that these texts even existed? Because Ursula literally told them, bragging in an interview about how she scored so many vaxxes because she’s super tight with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. All this was for a piece spotlighting her Covid efforts, published in April 2021: “How Europe sealed a Pfizer vaccine deal with texts and calls.”

The article featured the same kind of glamour photography reminiscent of the good ol’ days when Ursula was Germany’s defense minister from 2013 to 2019, under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, and doing photo shoots in front of military hardware while accusations swirled that she had bungled the budget with shady defense contracts, even as the Bundeswehr was stuck using brooms for guns during a NATO exercise, as the Atlantic Council reported in 2015.

“For a month, Ms von der Leyen had been exchanging texts and calls with Bourla, the chief executive of Pfizer… Pfizer might have more doses it could offer the bloc – many more,” the NYT piece reads, referring to the “personal diplomacy” that “played a big role in a deal” for 1.8 billion Pfizer anti-Covid doses.

So the Times hears about these text messages and was like, “Oh, cool. Let’s see!”

Suddenly Queen Ursula became a lot less chatty. So the Times took the matter to the EU’s own top court to get the disclosure. And now this court has said, in legal terms, that Ursula can’t just ghost the Times – and the public by extension – without giving a real reason. That there has to be a “plausible explanation to justify the non possession” of the texts. And also, the court says that “the Commission has failed to explain in a plausible manner” why it thought that these messages were so trivial that they could be vaporized like they were just her Eurovision contest text voting and not a matter of public record which, by definition, should be maintained.

Out of these little chats came €71 billion in Covid jab contracts with Big Pharma’s Pfizer and AstraZeneca – 11 of them to be precise, totaling 4.6 billion doses, paid for with cash taken straight from EU taxpayers. Enough for ten doses for every EU citizen.

Turns out that freewheeling it may have resulted in some consequences that could have been avoided had a diverse group of minds been engaged on the issue, as protocol normally dictates, and not just Ursula’s. It’s not like there hasn’t been a costly fallout from all this. A big chunk of the EU, including Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, is shouting about surplus doses for which they’re on the hook, urging Brussels to renegotiate the contractual terms with Big Pharma. Germany alone has reportedly trashed 200 million of them. Tricky to negotiate, though, when no one’s even sure what the terms were, as the second-highest European court pointed out last year. “The Commission did not give the public sufficiently wide access to the purchase agreements for COVID-19 vaccines… The Commission did not demonstrate that wider access to those clauses would actually undermine the commercial interests of those undertakings,” it ruled.

The details of these contracts – how they were made, what they say, and how anyone’s supposed to back out of them if citizens politely decline to max out their ten-jab punch card – remain a mystery.

Back in 2024, Brussels more or less shrugged and suggested that it could really only be as transparent as the courts forced it to be. So hey, what can you do? “In general, the Commission grants the widest possible public access to documents, in line with the principles of openness and transparency,” the EU said, underscoring that the lower court ruling “confirmed that the Commission was entitled to provide only partial access.”

Well, good news, guys! Your very own top court just ruled that you can now be a lot more transparent! So go crazy. Be the change that you keep saying you want to be in the world. Nothing is holding you back now. If transparency were a vaccine, this court just gave Ursula a booster. So we’ll see if it takes. I won’t hold my breath.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment