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How Israel Killed Its Own Soldiers, Blamed Hamas and Violated the Ceasefire again

By Robert Inlakesh – The Palestine Chronicle – October 21, 2025

After routinely violating the Gaza ceasefire on a daily basis since its implementation, killing dozens of civilians in the process, this Sunday, Israel decided to temporarily abandon the agreement altogether, before later deciding to re-implement it. Despite the entire incident being Israel’s design, the Western corporate media labeled the Israeli violations as a “test”.

This Sunday, reports suddenly emerged that a group of Israeli soldiers had been ambushed by Palestinian fighters in Rafah, located behind what is being called the “Yellow Line,” where the Israeli army is refusing to withdraw from. The incident almost immediately triggered Israel to begin launching a new wave of intense air raids across the besieged coastal enclave.

In total, it was declared that at least 100 airstrikes were committed against Gaza. Israel’s Walla News and others had reported on the “collapse” of the ceasefire at the time, claiming that the occupying military decided to attack tunnel infrastructure previously untouched throughout the two-year-long genocide.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went on to boast about dropping “153 tons of bombs” on sites throughout Gaza, which had killed at least 44 civilians. He also announced the closure of all entry points to the besieged territory and total blocking of humanitarian aid, before suddenly reversing these measures. All of this supposedly in response to the deaths of two Israeli soldiers.

Yet, reports from on the ground suggesting a very different picture from what Israel has presented had emerged throughout the day on Sunday. Initially, Hamas had released a statement denying any involvement in the killing of the Israeli soldiers.

Then, a range of Israeli, Palestinian, and American journalists, all citing their own sources, began reporting that what had actually occurred was that the two Israeli soldiers who were killed had accidentally run over an unexploded ordnance. It was admitted that at least three other Israelis were injured in the incident, one whose condition was considered serious.

As of now, it is unclear whether the unexploded ordnance had been repurposed as an IED and previously left behind by Palestinian fighters, or if it was one of tens of thousands of such bombs that had failed to explode upon impact when it was initially dropped. On Israel’s part, its “military censor” has placed a gag order on reporting about the incident internally, only releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the incident.

According to Palestinian reporter Younis Tirawi, the reason for such tight censorship over the incident was due to the remaining injured Israelis being non-military and, instead, civilian contractors stationed in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza in order to help carry out demolition work. The Israeli authorities, therefore, want to cover this up.

Tirawi’s assessment, based upon his own anonymous sources, would indeed align with the facts on the ground.

Although the issue has gone largely under-reported, the Israeli Defense Ministry has enlisted private contractors to aid in their demolition efforts in what was previously referred to as Israel’s Gaza buffer zone. Ads posted on Facebook had even advertised jobs to Israelis that pay up to $882 per day to drive bulldozers and aid in the demolition efforts. The Israeli military is also working alongside Israeli companies to hire their heavy excavation equipment.

Haaretz News previously reported that this new demolition industry costs at least 30 million dollars per month. In other words, and considering that some 60,000 businesses have closed, Israel’s tourism industry – especially in the north and south – has taken significant hits, the demolition industry is actually serving as a lucrative business for many Israelis.

Combine this with the evidence posted to social media by Israeli soldiers continuing to demolish remaining civilian infrastructure on their side of the Yellow Line, and it would make sense that civilian contractors are still being used to carry out demolition work. Evidently, this represents not only a violation of the ceasefire, of which the Gaza government’s media office has reported 80 so far, but also a clear issue in terms of the Israeli military actively paying its own people danger money to carry out such operations, putting their lives in danger.

Nevertheless, the Israeli narrative remains that Hamas was responsible for the incident and that they “responded”, despite Israeli media outlets admitting that Israel was the first to violate the ceasefire agreement. As for the claims of the Israeli military that it struck tunnel infrastructure that it had not previously targeted over the past two years, there is no evidence for this, and it appears unlikely, to say the least.

In addition to this, Israel’s Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, spoke to Channel 14 News in order to advocate for “opening the gates of hell” on Gaza after receiving the rest of their captives. This aligns with the rhetoric coming from various other officials who see the return of their prisoners from Gaza as a green light to strike the besieged coastal territory with more force than ever.

Meanwhile, the mainstream Western corporate media demonstrated again that it is nothing more than a contingent of stenographers for their wealthy Zionist funders and Israel’s foreign ministry. The Associated Press even published a story entitled “Israel strikes Gaza in first major test of ceasefire”.

While this may be simply dismissed after two years of similarly atrocious reports on the Gaza genocide, from outlets across the corporate media spectrum, it is important to continue highlighting the racist double standards employed. The Associated Press must be forced to answer for its dreadfully biased reporting.

Israeli soldiers should not have been demolishing Palestinian civilian infrastructure during a ceasefire. If they were not continuing to order their soldiers to carry out such missions and truly adhered to the ceasefire, two of their men would not have died. Then, knowing full well that Hamas had not ordered an attack, it proceeded to violate the ceasefire in a major way, which Israeli media interpreted as a return to war itself. This is not a “test”.

Such violations of the Gaza ceasefire should not come as any surprise. After all, Israel has committed over 5,000 violations of its Lebanon ceasefire agreement and began violating it from the first day it was adopted by the Lebanese side.

Now, nearly a year later, Israel is refusing to leave southern Lebanon, instead deciding to expand the zone it illegally occupies. In neighboring Syria, it also abandoned its previous ceasefire agreement and is currently continuing to occupy more territory there, too.

While both Palestinian and Israeli media have their evident biases – inherent in all media, as objectivity is not a possible standard – the Western corporate media is in a class of its own in terms of public deception.

These corporate media outlets do not represent a Palestinian or an Israeli perspective. They curate a fictional depiction of what is going on that is slanted to deliberately deceive Western audiences by publishing content tailor-made to convince them that Israel is correct.

These media outlets present Israel as both the eternal victim, while also being the hero. In this work of collective fiction, representing a parallel universe, this hero sometimes does wrong, but is always the authority, always deserves the benefit of the doubt and is never capable of being the instigator of war.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UN rapporteur releases latest report on Israeli genocide, recounting intl. complicity in stark detail

Press TV – October 22, 2025

The United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories has issued her latest damning report on the Israeli regime’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, offering a strikingly detailed account of international complicity in Tel Aviv’s atrocities.

The advance version of the report, titled Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime, by Francesca Albanese, was released on Wednesday,

She argued that continued destruction of Palestinian life in the coastal sliver had been enabled through military, economic, diplomatic, and even so-called humanitarian channels provided by states that had consistently prioritized political and strategic interests over human rights.

Diplomatically, Western powers, led by the United States and the European Union, have consistently shielded the Israeli regime from accountability, she noted.

The UN Security Council’s resolutions demanding ceasefires have been vetoed or diluted, while the regime’s military barbarity has been framed as “legitimate self-defense,” the official said.

Military aid, Albanese added, has also been decisive in sustaining the genocide.

The US provides the regime with $3.3 billion annually, along with intelligence, weapons, and logistical support, she wrote. However, following the onset of the genocide in October 2023, the “aid” was boosted by hundreds of consignments of munitions, weapons, and military assets.

According to Albanese, Germany, the UK, India, Italy, France, Spain, and more have additionally contributed arms and dual-use technologies that have directly fueled military strikes in Gaza.

These transfers violate the Arms Trade Treaty given the regime’s ongoing occupation and assaults on civilians, she lamented.

Economic and trade networks had equally enabled the regime, the expert outlined, saying at least 45 active trade and cooperation agreements, including with the US, the EU, and the UAE, allow Tel Aviv to access dual-use and military equipment.

European research programs have also poured billions into Israeli institutions, often funding technology with direct military applications, the report outlined.

Despite the ongoing genocide, trade with the regime increased in 2024, with Germany (+$836 million), Poland (+$237 million), Greece (+$186 million), and even Arab states like the UAE (+$237 million) and Egypt (+$199 million) fueling the regime’s aggression.

Humanitarian aid, too, has been weaponized, Albanese decried.

Gaza’s blockade, intensified after October 2023, left 80 percent of the territory’s two-billion-plus population dependent on aid, yet access was restricted to just over 100 trucks daily by early 2025.

She also reminded that the regime and the US created the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a militarized aid mechanism that led to the deaths of more than 2,000 civilians at distribution points between March and July 2025.

Symbolic gestures from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Jordan, and the UK barely alleviated famine, effectively implicating them in the worsening humanitarian crisis, Albanese remarked.

“Legal obligations are clear,” she writes. “States must prevent further harm, suspend enabling support, prosecute perpetrators, and ensure reparations and reconstruction. Without this, international law is hollow, and Palestinians are left to suffer.”

The genocide has claimed the lives of more than 68,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

An agreement was reached between Gaza’s Hamas resistance movement and the regime earlier this month as part of a proposal by Donald Trump that the US president claims is aimed at ending the genocide.

Ever since, however, Israeli forces have recurrently violated the deal, bringing about continued losses of life, while only 15 percent of the aid trucks agreed to enter the territory have reached starving Palestinians.

Albanese said the proposal “conspicuously omits any requirement for ending the occupation or establishing accountability.”

“Instead, it imposes a temporary external governance structure over Gaza, an arrangement amounting to neo-colonial administration that further undermines Palestinian self-determination.”

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

France must be ready for war with Russia within four years – top general

RT | October 23, 2025

French forces could be at war with Russia by 2028, the country’s newly appointed chief of staff, General Fabien Mandon, has claimed.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected claims that it plans to attack EU countries, saying any such allegations are being used by European politicians to scare the population and justify growing military spending. Russia has also said it is defending itself in the Ukraine conflict, accusing NATO of provoking the hostilities.

Mandon, who became France’s top general in early September, told lawmakers on the National Assembly’s Defense Committee on Wednesday that “Russia is a country that may be tempted to continue the war on our continent.”

“The first objective I had given the armed forces is to be ready in three or four years for a shock that would be a kind of a test [by Moscow],” he claimed. “The test already exists in hybrid forms, but it may become more violent.”

According to the chief of staff, France and other Western European nations must boost defense spending because Russia has a “perception of a collectively weak [Western] Europe.”

NATO countries on the continent “have everything to be sure of ourselves” in terms of economy, demographics, and industry, Mandon claimed. “Russia cannot scare us if we are willing to defend ourselves,” he said.

French Armed Forces Minister Catherine Vautrin previously said that, according to the draft defense budget, military spending in the country will increase to €57.1 billion ($66.3 billion) next year, going up by 13% compared to 2025 and reaching 2.2% of GDP.

President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that those in the West who keep promoting “nonsense” about alleged aggressive intentions by Moscow are either “incompetent or dishonest.”

“Frankly speaking, one just wants to tell them: calm down, sleep well, finally address your own problems. Look at what is happening on the streets of European cities; what is happening with the economy, industry, European culture, identity; with the huge debts and the growing crisis of the social security system, out-of-control migration, the rise in violence, including political violence,” Putin stressed.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Refinery Fires Help EU Topple Pro-Peace Governments to Wage War on Russia

Sputnik – 23.10.2025

While it is too early to tell who exactly is responsible for the recent fires at the refineries in Hungary and Romania as investigations are still ongoing, figuring out who benefits from them is easier, Endre Simó, the president of the Hungarian Community for Peace, tells Sputnik.

According to Simo, it is “those who want to gain a market with their own products by displacing cheaper Russian products.”

“Given the history, namely the explosion of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and the series of Ukrainian attacks against the Druzhba oil pipeline, intentionality cannot be ruled out either in Hungary or Romania,” he points out.

He further notes that the main victim of these incidents is Serbia which, due to its only significant refinery being targeted by US sanctions, is forced to rely heavily on the now-damaged MOL’s refinery in Százhalombatta.

Thus, the refinery fires are also a boon to those seeking to overthrow the pro-peace government of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Alexandar Vucic in Serbia, and using “impermissible means” to meddle in Hungary and Serbia’s internal affairs “in order to bring opposition forces that serve the Brussels policy to power.”

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Refinery Fires in Europe Are Part of EU Crusade Against Russian Oil and Gas

Sputnik – 23.10.2025

The timing of the recent incidents at the oil refineries in Hungary and Romania is very suspicious in light of the threats from Poland, Dr. George Szamuely, senior research fellow at The Global Policy Institute, tells Sputnik.

When Polish Foreign Minister Sikorsky openly justifies the Nord Stream bombing and then tries intimidating Hungary into giving up Russian oil, and then suddenly the refineries are ablaze – that’s one hell of a coincidence.

The refinery fires were definitely a part of a broader campaign to cut off the flow of Russian energy to Europe, Szamulely notes – a campaign that ends up hurting the EU members but fails to affect Russia.

“These measures that the EU is adopting are measures directed towards hurting EU member states, forcing them into line,” he explains.

Only the Russophobic EU bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas benefit from this disruption of energy supply chains, and they are eager to “punish anybody at all who is not on board with their program.”

The incidents in Hungary and Romania convey a simple message: “if you are going to keep importing your fossil fuels from Russia, look at the sort of things that can happen, all sorts of explosions, fires, sabotage.”

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Volkswagen faces chip crisis after Chinese factory seized by EU state – Bild

RT | October 23, 2025

Germany’s largest carmaker, Volkswagen, could stop production at a key plant due to a shortage of semiconductors caused by the seizure of a Chinese-owned chipmaker by the Netherlands, Bild has reported, citing anonymous sources.

The Dutch government took control of the Nexperia factory in Nijmegen late last month, citing intellectual property and security concerns. The New York Times reported last week after reviewing documents from an Amsterdam court that the move had been made following pressure from US officials. Nexperia’s parent company, Wingtech, was blacklisted by Washington in 2024 as part of an ongoing trade war with China.

Beijing responded in early October by banning Nexperia from exporting finished chips from China, which are widely used in the electronic control units of VW vehicles.

Bild reported on Wednesday that Volkswagen – which also owns the Skoda, Seat, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bentley brands – does not currently appear to have an alternative to Nexperia chips.

Sources in the company told the paper that due to the lack of semiconductors it plans to stop production at its plant in Wolfsburg from next Wednesday. Volkswagen Golf models will be affected first, followed by other vehicles, they said.

If the situation does not improve, work could also be halted at Volkswagen’s facilities in Emden, Hanover, Zwickau, and elsewhere, a person familiar with the matter said.

According to the report, the carmaker has started talks with the German authorities about a state-backed reduced working hours scheme for tens of thousands of its employees.

Bild warned that the chip crisis could also impact other carmakers in the country. Representatives for BMW and Mercedes told the paper that they were analyzing the situation. The German automobile industry has already been suffering due to high energy costs as a result of EU sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict and increased US tariffs.

A spokesman for Volkswagen’s Zwickau plant told AFP that the report by Bild was “incorrect.” However, according to an internal letter seen by the media, the company acknowledged that “impact on production cannot be ruled out in the short term” due to a semiconductor shortage.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Sinophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia-US summit postponed – Putin

RT | October 23, 2025

Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed that the planned Budapest summit with US counterpart Donald Trump is being postponed. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, he noted that the proposal was initially made by the American side.

The Russian leader admitted that it would have been a mistake to approach the summit without the necessary preparations, suggesting that a meeting might still take place at a later date. Putin emphasized that dialogue is always better than confrontation, arguments, and the continuation of war.

A Russia-US summit, which was planned to be held in the Hungarian capital, was announced last week by both the Kremlin and the White House after a phone call between Trump and Putin. On Wednesday, however, Trump announced that the meeting would be postponed. On the same day, Washington imposed sanctions on two major Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

Commenting on the sanctions, Putin described them as an “unfriendly move” that does not boost Russia-US relations.

At the same time, he noted that the new restrictions would not have a significant impact on the Russian economy.

Putin also stated that the US sanctions are yet another attempt by Washington to exert pressure on Moscow and stressed that “no self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure.”

He further suggested that there are certain people in the US administration that have been encouraging Trump to restrict Russian oil exports and called for considering who these individuals actually work for.

Putin insisted that Russia and the US actually have many areas in which they could cooperate if they would move away from pressure tactics and toward serious conversations about the long term.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

George Beebe: US-Russia Agreement to End NATO Expansionism or Accept an Ugly Russian Victory

Glenn Diesen | October 23, 2025

George Beebe is Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute, and the former CIA Director for Russia Analysis. Beebe argues that the window of opportunity for an agreement that ends NATO expansionism is closing, and the alternative will be an ugly Russian victory.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | 1 Comment

Pursuing Net Zero Makes the UK Vulnerable to Bad Weather, BBC, Not Climate Change

By Linnea Lueken | ClimateRealism | October 21, 2025

A recent article at the BBC, “Government told to prepare for 2C warming by 2050,” claims that the United Kingdom needs to prepare for increasing extreme weather as the planet approaches 2°C warming. This is false in its framing. Although it’s always a good idea to harden infrastructure against weather, the UK is not suffering more extreme weather due to human emissions of carbon dioxide, and the recommendation of attempting to prevent temperature rise is not going to help anyone.

The BBC’s post discusses a letter written by the UK government’s “Climate Change Committee” (CCC), which the BBC reports said, “[t]he country was ‘not yet adapted’ to worsening weather extremes already occurring at current levels of warming, ‘let alone’ what was expected to come.”

The CCC asked the government to “set out a framework of clear long-term objectives” to prevent further temperature rise, with new targets every five years and departments “clearly accountable” for delivering those goals. It warned that “a global warming level of 2C would have significant impact on the UK’s weather, with extreme events becoming more frequent and widespread.”

These include increases in heatwaves, droughts, floods, and longer wildfire seasons.

These claims are fearmongering, and no amount of deindustrialization – which is what’s implied by the “objectives to prevent further temperature rise”—will stop bad weather from happening, nor will it have any measurable impact on global average temperature.

The simple fact is that the UK contributes a very small amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which would in theory contribute an even smaller amount to warming. According to emissions data, the global share of all UK carbon dioxide emissions is 0.88 percent. Not even 1 percent. Eliminating UK emissions would do absolutely nothing to slow or stop any amount of warming that could be connected to human emissions, if they are, in fact, driving temperature changes.

On top of that, data do not show that weather is becoming more extreme in the UK.

The BBC claims that global warming will increase the wildfire season in the UK, and presumably they believe it must have already done so during the past 150 years of planetary warming. A longer wildfire season should result in more fires. Available data, however, does not show that wildfires are getting more frequent or more intense in the UK. Satellite data from Copernicus show no trend at all.

Chart of United Kingdom yearly burned area and number of fires from Copernicus

For another example, looking at Central England as this Climate Realism post did, the number of days per year breaching 25°C (77°F) show no rising trend, nor does the measured highest daily maximum.

Long term historical data for Europe show that drought is likewise not worse today than it was during the Renaissance, long before industrialization.

What is really notable is that Europe alone has actually already warmed 2°C since about 1820, according to historic European temperature averages, but no catastrophic change in weather has occurred. (See figure below)

Berkeley Earth average European temperature showing a 2.0°C rise since about 1820. Source: http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/europe

Weather isn’t getting worse, but bad weather does still happen. The UK’s largest industrial solar facility, for example, blighting the landscape of Anglesey, North Wales, was recently destroyed by a bad storm. That should be enough to give government agencies pause when it comes to at least some net-zero policies, but the real point is that hardening infrastructure against weather should be a priority regardless of climate change. Bad weather will occur, and it will wreck fragile facilities, including solar complexes.

Hardening against weather extremes, which always have and always will exist, is just common sense. As technology develops and new ways of protecting against bad weather are discovered (like the invention of air conditioning) they should be implemented where they can be, as they can be. Achieving net zero – especially for a country that emits negligible amounts of greenhouse gases anyway—will not save the UK from bad weather events.

As a news organization, the BBC should not carry water for its government or government advisory boards that want to continue wasting money on futile “objectives to prevent further temperature rise” when direct efforts to improve infrastructure and harden it against weather extremes, which have happened throughout history, would be far more effective in saving lives and reducing harm.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

City Health Officials Tied to Soros Urge Public to ‘Get Vaccinated,’ Blame Policy Shifts for ‘Deadly Outbreaks’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 22, 2025

A coalition of city public health officials with ties to pharma investor George Soros is urging the public to “get vaccinated.”

In an open letter, the Big Cities Health Coalition accused federal officials of driving down vaccination rates and fueling an increase in dangerous infectious disease outbreaks by making “repeated false claims” about vaccines.

They wrote:

“Vaccines have eradicated devastating diseases and saved millions of lives. They keep classrooms safe and schools open. They allow children to spend time with friends and enjoy their favorite activities. They help parents and caregivers work to support their families.

The letter also addresses recent changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule for children and adults, though it does not mention U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or President Donald Trump by name.

The coalition, which represents 35 U.S. cities and about a fifth of the U.S. population, “has been working together to exchange ideas and address public health threats for more than two decades,” according to CNN, which first reported on the letter Monday.

Participating cities include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Seattle.

The group’s financial documents reveal support from billionaire financier Soros. Soros has also invested heavily in the pharmaceutical industry, including COVID-19 vaccine makers Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and Gilead Sciences, which produces remdesivir, a controversial antiviral treatment frequently given to COVID-19 patients.

Coalition attempted to scrub funding from Soros- and Gates-linked groups

The Big Cities Health Coalition was founded in 2002, according to a now-deleted webpage. The current version of its website contains little more than the group’s recent letter.

Links to the organization’s 2023 and 2024 annual reports are no longer active, but can be found on the Internet Archive and elsewhere. The reports show that Soros and other major healthcare-related organizations, including groups connected to Bill Gates, finance the coalition.

According to its 2023 annual report, the Open Society Foundations, founded by Soros, funded the coalition. Other funders include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente and the CDC Foundation.

In 2022, the Soros Economic Development Fund, an extension of the Open Society Foundations, partnered with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and MedAccess, a pharma-industry broker connected to the U.K. government, to invest $200 million in developing COVID-19 vaccines.

The Gates Foundation is a major funder of Gavi.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has financially supported FactCheck.org, which previously flagged COVID-19-related “misinformation” for Facebook.

The CDC Foundation’s donor list includes the World Health Organization, the Gates Foundation and vaccine manufacturers including Pfizer, Merck and Johnson & Johnson.

According to internal medicine physician Dr. Clayton J. Baker, the coalition’s annual reports reveal clear conflicts of interest.

“It’s informative to look into the funding of organizations like the Big Cities Health Coalition,” Baker said. He noted that Kaiser Permanente paid patients $50 to get COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic and fired employees who refused the shots, then tried to rehire them later when short-staffed.

According to the coalition’s Form 990 for fiscal year 2023, the organization spent $875,540 on “communications,” including engaging with “media, and federal policymakers about the importance of supporting local public health and health equity.”

The group also spent $433,703 on its “urban health agenda” and $147,397 on “equity/racial justice.”

The coalition’s members “meet periodically with Congressional staff” and “other federal government officials,” the filing states.

The organization’s schedule of contributors is listed as “restricted” in the filing.

Coalition blames unvaccinated for ‘deadly’ and ‘more frequent’ outbreaks

In its letter, the coalition blamed “declining” vaccination rates for “deadly outbreaks of diseases like measles and polio” and claimed that the outbreaks are “becoming more frequent.”

CNN reported that measles exposure at a South Carolina school led authorities to quarantine over 100 unvaccinated students, illustrating “one of the many reasons why Big Cities Health Coalition emphasizes the importance of vaccination.”

Research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said that invoking measles and polio is a “manipulative framing device.” He said:

“Outbreaks of these diseases occur almost exclusively in highly vaccinated populations where immunity has waned, or where sanitation and migration variables are misattributed as ‘vaccine refusal.’

“By portraying every outbreak as proof of anti-vaccine rhetoric, the coalition seeks to recapture moral high ground based on presumptions of safety, without addressing the underlying immunologic and ecological data.”

The coalition’s letter also warned of a potential uptick of COVID-19 and flu infections in the “rapidly approaching” cold and flu season.

However, Baker said the coalition’s letter “contains absolutely zero genuine evidence” to support its claims. He said:

“The coalition’s statement is embarrassingly inane. They say, ‘We are united behind a simple message: get vaccinated.’ Vaccinated with what? They make no distinction between necessary or unnecessary, safe or unsafe, effective or ineffective shots. Just ‘get vaccinated.’ That’s like saying ‘get medicated.’ This is the asinine level of rhetoric to which vaccine fanatics are currently reduced.”

Emily Hilliard, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), dismissed the coalition’s concerns.

“HHS is restoring the doctor-patient relationship so people can make informed decisions about their health with their providers,” Hilliard told The Defender.

Letter rooted in data, not ‘political ideology,’ coalition members say

Coalition members told CNN their letter is an attempt to restore public trust in science, not an effort to politicize public health recommendations.

“We have to make our public health decisions based on data and not on political ideology,” Dr. Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department, told CNN. “We have to be the voices for that science and reason.”

Huang said the current CDC administration “seems more driven by political ideology than actual data and science, so it undermines the trust.”

Lyons-Weiler disputed the coalition’s claims, calling the letter “the opening salvo in an attempt to rebuild centralized narrative control over immunization policy.”

“Language such as ‘talk with your doctor’ and ‘tune out political noise’ is designed to sound apolitical while reinstating top-down message discipline,” he said.

CDC changes to vaccine policy spark pushback across U.S.

The coalition “is the latest group to take a strong public stand in support of vaccination as a direct response to concerns that the federal government is limiting access and raising doubts,” CNN reported.

Earlier this month, the CDC updated the childhood immunization schedule to recommend individual-based decision-making regarding COVID-19 vaccination for children 6 months and older, following the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) unanimous vote to adopt the recommendation.

Last month, ACIP also voted to recommend limiting the MMRV (measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, or chickenpox) vaccine to children ages 4 and older. And in June, the committee voted to stop recommending flu shots containing thimerosal — a preservative linked to neurodevelopmental disorders.

In response, 15 Democratic governors launched the Governors Public Health Alliance last week to coordinate their public health efforts independently of national public health agencies.

Previously, four Western states announced the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance, which aims to issue its own immunization guidelines.

In August, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued “evidence-based” recommendations calling for COVID-19 shots for infants, young children and children in “high-risk” groups. In July, the AAP and five other medical organizations sued Kennedy over new COVID-19 vaccine guidance.

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.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU Split Over How Ukraine Should Spend €140 Billion From Frozen Russian Assets

Sputnik – 23.10.2025

A number of EU countries advocate that Ukraine use the potential 140 billion euros ($162 billion) loan from frozen Russian assets exclusively to purchase European weapons, while other member states support giving Kiev full freedom in spending the funds, including on arms from the United States, an American newspaper reported.

France, along with Germany and Italy, is pushing to channel the funds into the EU’s own defense industry rather than toward US arms suppliers, the report said. At the same time, countries such as the Netherlands and the Nordic and Baltic states argue that Ukraine should be free to decide how to spend the loan, even on US-made weapons.

Despite this, pressure from France and Germany has led summit drafts to emphasize strengthening Europe’s defense industry, while critics argue that this stance is hypocritical, the newspaper reported.

“If the aim is to keep Ukraine in the fight, you need to keep the criteria open,” an unnamed senior EU diplomat was quoted as saying.

On Thursday, EU leaders are expected to instruct the European Commission at their meeting in Brussels to present a legal proposal outlining the loan.

On September 25, the Financial Times newspaper reported that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had proposed that the EU provide Ukraine with an interest-free loan of around 140 billion euros drawn from frozen Russian assets. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever criticized Merz’s proposal on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, saying that an attempt to seize state assets would set a dangerous precedent not only for Belgium but for the EU as a whole.

After the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine in 2022, the European Union and the G7 froze almost half of Russian foreign currency reserves, totaling some 300 billion euros. About 200 billion euros are held in European accounts, mainly by Belgium’s Euroclear, one of the world’s largest clearing houses.

The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned the freezing of Russia’s central bank money in Europe as theft. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow could respond by withholding assets held in Russia by Western countries.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine conflict now belongs to Trump – ex-Russian president

RT | October 23, 2025

The Ukraine conflict has effectively become US President Donald Trump’s war now that he has positioned himself as an adversary of Moscow, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said.

Medvedev, who currently serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, made the comment after Trump scrapped plans for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin and imposed new sanctions on Russian oil companies – measures the US leader described as a means to pressure Moscow into concessions.

Writing on social media on Thursday, Medvedev suggested that Trump’s next move would likely involve approving the delivery of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kiev, claiming the US president is “now firmly on the warpath against Russia” and “completely aligned with mad Europe” in that regard.

He argued that Trump had likely been pressured by both domestic and international hawks into taking a hardline stance, rather than acting out of ideological conviction as was the case with his predecessor, Joe Biden. “But now it’s his conflict,” Medvedev concluded, adding that Russia must focus on achieving its objectives militarily rather than through negotiations.

Trump has repeatedly blamed Biden for the escalation of hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, insisting that the conflict “would never have happened” had he been in office in 2022.

The US president has a record of abrupt foreign policy reversals, including in his handling of the Ukraine crisis. Hungary, where Trump and Putin had agreed to meet for a new summit, has said that preparations for the meeting remain on track despite the recent tensions.

October 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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