The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) has overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) to suspend Israel from international competitions.
The resolution, proposed by Dublin club Bohemians, says that the Israel Football Association (IFA) failed to enforce an effective anti-racism policy and continues to organize clubs in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank without the consent of the Palestinian Football Association.
The motion passed Saturday with 74 votes in favor, seven against, and two abstentions, according to the FAI. The association confirmed that it plans to submit a formal motion to UEFA’s executive committee requesting Israel’s immediate suspension from its competitions.
The Irish resolution follows similar calls from the Turkish and Norwegian football associations, which urged Israel’s suspension from international competitions.
These requests came after United Nations experts appealed to FIFA and UEFA to act, citing a UN Commission of Inquiry report that concluded Israel was actively committing genocide against Palestinians.
In a letter to UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, the experts described banning Israel as “imperative” and urged the football governing body and its members to “fulfil their legal and moral obligations to uphold international law and move forward with an immediate and complete ban of Israeli football.”
The letter highlighted the devastating impact of Israel’s actions on football in Gaza as at least 421 Palestinian footballers have been killed since the regime launched its war on the Palestinian territory in October 2023.
Revolutions are funny things. They start out almost imperceptible. The final straw itself may be as inconsequential as a single voice in the crowd whose words unleash a tidal wave that sweeps aside the seemingly intractable old order forever.
Even as the cracks in the Eastern Bloc began to materialize in 1989, starting in June in Hungary, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu’s Romania seemed impervious to the winds of change. They maintained a cult-like grip on power aided by the notorious and ubiquitous Securitate, the secret police.
On 21 December 1989 Ceausescu decided that the best way to quell a bubbling cauldron of unrest in Transylvania over the past several weeks was to appear, himself, with his wife Elena, above Bucharest’s Palace Square. Workers were bussed in and given red banners to wave in support of the regime. It was to be a show of force that would solidify the existing order.
After all, no one would dare challenge Ceausescu to his face.
As he confidently approached the microphone from the balcony and began mechanically repeating the tired old slogans of communism, suddenly a voice broke through with a high pitched scream, followed by an increasing din. The discordant sounds of protest rendered Ceausescu speechless and confused.
That second, when the false edifice of his rule was punctured and the impossibility of his position exposed, communist rule died in Romania.
America’s foreign policy has been a lot like the rule of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Since President Reagan opened the door to the gang of “former” Trotskyites from New York who were hell bent on worldwide revolution while being ideologically driven by their absolute devotion to the state of Israel, US foreign policy has been dominated by an equivalent of Ceausescu’s Partidul Comunist Român.
Anyone who attempted to challenge the neocon dominance over US foreign policy was drummed out of society by the equivalent of Ceausescu’s Securitate. One by one, Pat Buchanan, Joseph Sobran, Sam Francis, the John Birch Society, Ron Paul, and any voice raised in opposition to neocon dominance over foreign policy was brutally attacked by the likes of William F. Buckley, Jr. and his minions of enforcers in the media and the think tanks, and the corridors of power and influence.
Trotsky is reputed – perhaps apocryphally – to have said that, “to oppose the state is to die a slow starvation,” and that is certainly true for any foreign policy analyst over the past 40-plus years who has spoken out against neocon dominance. No jobs, no publications, no way to be heard or even exist.
But suddenly that Berlin Wall has fallen.
Future history may record America’s “Ceausescu Moment” as November 6th, 2025.
The same mainstream/”alt” media and conservatism-industrial-complex that has refused to acknowledge Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s sharp turn against neocon, pro-Israel foreign policy have done their best to harness and re-direct the Charlie-less TPUSA back onto the foreign policy reservation. With a doubting Charlie conveniently gone, they assumed they could ascend the “Palace Square Bucharest” balcony, grab the microphone, and return America’s conservative youth to the “wisdom” of Bill Kristol, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, John Bolton, Dick Cheney, Mark Levin, and the rest of the blood-soaked dinosaurs.
However our own “high-pitched scream” that deflated Ceausescu came on November 6th not from a Mamdani “communist,” or from an “America-hating” Muslim, nor Hamas-devoted foreign student, nor tortured trans-genderist…or even a generic leftist.
No, it came from a corn-fed, conservative, earnest, American student at Auburn University in Alabama with the slow drawl of our great country’s 250 year history. In other words, the epitome of the Red, White, and Blue that burns in the soul of every American patriot.
The young man approached the open microphone and addressed President Trump’s son Eric and his wife Laura – ambassadors of the President’s claim to be the most pro-Israel Administration in US history – with a respectful set of questions.
I’d like to ask about your father’s relationship with Israel. He’s taken over $230 million from pro-Israel groups. In the summer even though the US advised against it, Israel attacked Iran and the US still bombed on behalf of Israel…Israel has not been a good ally to the US since the 1960s when they bombed the USS Liberty.
The crowd of CONSERVATIVE young Americans erupted into wild applause.
Israel is a nation where Christians are constantly under attack… We talk about America first and defending Christians, but how can we do this if we align ourselves with a nation that does not do that itself?
At this point the applause among TPUSA’s conservative youth was deafening.
Deer-in-the-headlights Eric Trump does a Ceaucescu, repeating the slogans of the old order and hoping their magic will still quell the restive population.
You have a nation chanting ‘death to America’ every single day on the streets of Tehran. You have a nation that will develop a nuclear weapon and that will use that nuclear weapon.
These are standard Benjamin Netanyahu talking points from 30 years ago. Laura looked like Elena. Arranging her perfect hair as the crowd remained silent at Eric Trump’s well-rehearsed applause lines. Silence. They’ve heard it all before and they have done their own research and know that these are neocon lies.
Guys: Iran wanted to destroy our way of live they wanted to hurt us they wanted to inflict real pain.
Silence. They’ve done their own research.
Eric then repeats the absurd claim that his father solved eight wars (involving countries whose names he cannot pronounce) and the silence continued. The bumper sticker slogans no longer worked with Charlie Kirk’s kids just as Ceaucescu’s slogans no longer worked with a Romania sick to death with it’s subservience to a dying Communist bloc.
This is a genie that can no longer be put back into the bottle. Toothpaste out of the tube. The same social media harnessed early on by the US “regime change” operatives seeking to fulfil the neocon project has been captured by young American conservatives who are revolting against the destructive “Israel-first” party line of their boomer forebears and no underhanded sale of TikTok to pro-Israel fanatics will change the fact.
From this point on, like Ceaucescu, Trump’s people dare not address openly the number one youth movement of their ideological base. They dare not risk stop after stop being questioned by earnest young conservatives about America’s toxic and self-destructive supplication to the state of Israel. They will go back into Nicolae Ceaucescu’s bunker. Terrified of the very “America First” movement they have launched.
Daniel McAdams
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
This Thursday, US President Donald Trump announced that Kazakhstan will be joining his so-called Abraham Accords project, which seeks to bring together Arab and Muslim-majority nations in a quest to normalize ties and form a regional alliance. Yet, this move reflects desperation rather than a significant advancement.
On the Kazakhstan move, Trump took to Truth Social to explain that “We will soon announce a Signing Ceremony to make it official, and there are many more Countries trying to join this club of STRENGTH”.
The countries that Kazakhstan will join are the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco.
While the Trump administration has been engaged in talks with the new Syrian leadership to bring them into the fold of the agreement, with its primary goal being the facilitation of a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the US government is now settling with a non-Arab country that will have little bearing on the overall project.
Kazakhstan’s joining the so-called Abraham Accords makes no sense, not only due to its irrelevance when it comes to regional affairs, but the Central Asian country had normalized ties with Israel back in 1992.
A far cry from Riyadh or Damascus, Astana appears like a rather desperate attempt to keep the ball rolling and demonstrate that the normalization process is ongoing.
Although Saudi Arabia appeared poised to normalize ties with Israel, as its leader, Mohammed bin Salman, even hinted at, prior to October 7 of 2023, it remains clear that achieving such a deal now will prove very difficult.
This also seems to have been a factor in Riyadh’s recent military pact with Islamabad, which could serve as protection in the event of another regional escalation between the US-Israeli-led alliance and Iran.
Contrary to Donald Trump’s framing of the “Abraham Accords” as a peace alliance, the very opposite is the truth. It was, in fact, an initiative that was born out of the desire to kill Saudi Arabia’s ‘Arab Peace Initiative’, a project which entailed the Arab and Muslim-majority nations agreeing to sign onto normalization deals in exchange for a viable Palestinian State.
Ultimately, due to the weakness of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Arab Peace Initiative served as the only remaining bargaining chip for achieving a Palestinian State inside the territories occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war.
Taking this chip off the table means the collapse of the PA’s leverage, hence putting them in the position where they must choose between two options: to disband and relaunch the liberation struggle, or to submit and accept the end of their role in the Palestinian cause.
Out of the three nations that committed themselves to the Trump normalization agenda, the only one that has seen any benefit has been the United Arab Emirates. However, even in the UAE’s case, the deal only works in favour of its rulers.
Bahrain is irrelevant and was likely only included due to Saudi Arabia’s testing of the waters, while Morocco was forced into the agreement through ultimatums.
There was not only immense pressure placed upon Rabat by the US, but also the UAE, which used all kinds of pressure points, such as port projects and the issue of Western Sahara, to force Morocco’s hand.
Similarly, following the ousting of former Sudanese President Omar Bashir, the new military leadership was blackmailed and pressured into committing itself to the accords. Sudan was stripped of its state sponsor of terrorism designation, had its sanctions removed, and offered financial relief, yet descended into a horrifying war that Israel played a role in helping to start.
Saudi Arabia knows the potential consequences of joining this alliance and that it would pit them against their neighbour Iran, in a way that sets them on the war path. The UAE is also rapidly becoming a Pariah for its role in Sudan, but also its overt collaboration with the Israelis in their genocide against the people of Gaza.
When it comes to Syria, its new leadership has attempted to reach a so-called “security agreement” with the Israelis, which, despite the best efforts of Damascus to frame it as falling short of normalization, is in essence a recognition agreement.
Yet, due to Syria’s leadership being so incredibly weak and proving incapable of running the country, the Israelis themselves have expressed doubts about the viability of such an agreement. If a deal with Tel Aviv is going to be struck, it will be on Israel’s terms and could cause enormous issues for Damascus.
Trump resorting to dragging along Kazakhstan comes off as desperate; it indicates that the Abraham Accords are far from attractive to regional countries at this time and adds no value to the strategy. More than anything, it serves as a public humiliation ritual that implicates Kazakhstan in the Gaza genocide.
On Monday, November 3, a group of Israeli soldiers stood outside the Supreme Court in West Jerusalem wearing black masks. They weren’t there to apologize; they were there to defend themselves.
The soldiers, accused of torturing and raping a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman prison, demanded “gratitude” for their actions.
“Instead of appreciation, we received accusations,” one said defiantly. Israeli media covered the scene while Western outlets mostly ignored it.
The same soldiers are part of a criminal case that Israeli prosecutors reluctantly opened in 2024 after video evidence surfaced showing Palestinian detainees stripped, beaten, and sexually assaulted at Sde Teiman.
One Palestinian man was hospitalized with seven broken ribs and a rectal tear, injuries consistent with violent sexual abuse.
The Times of Israelreported the indictment of five reservists for “severe abuse,” while other sources cited evidence of sodomy inside the facility.
Yet, in Western coverage, the word rape almost never appeared. Headlines spoke of “abuse” or “mistreatment,” as though sexual torture were a matter of workplace misconduct.
Contrast this silence with the wall-to-wall coverage of October 7, when Israel accused Hamas fighters of “mass rape.” Those claims, still unproven, became the moral foundation of Israel’s campaign of annihilation in Gaza.
In his latest interview with American journalist Candace Owens, political scientist Norman Finkelstein called the Israeli allegations “genocidal atrocity propaganda.”
After examining more than 5,000 photographs and fifty hours of footage from that day, Finkelstein said he found “not a single shred of evidence of even one rape.” Yet those unverified stories, repeated endlessly by Western outlets, were enough to cast an entire population as subhuman and to legitimize the killing of more than 68,000 Palestinians.
In December 2023, the New York Times published a sprawling investigation titled “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”
The article claimed Hamas fighters had systematically raped Israeli women during the attack. Its pages were filled with graphic descriptions and lurid imagery. The story relied on anonymous witnesses, unverified videos, and second-hand testimony, yet it was presented as conclusive evidence of mass rape.
Within days, it shaped international discourse. Then US President Joe Biden, European leaders, and prominent feminists invoked the Times’ story to condemn Hamas and morally justify Israel’s “retaliation”.
But when journalists and scholars began checking the evidence, the story fell apart. Forensic experts found no physical proof of rape. Several of the supposed witnesses cited by the Times contradicted one another or were later discredited.
In April 2024, more than 50 journalism professors sent a public letter demanding an independent review of the article’s sourcing and editorial process. The Washington Postreported internal dissent within the Times newsroom itself, where reporters said the piece had been “rushed” to meet political expectations.
Meanwhile, the Sde Teiman scandal, an Israeli atrocity supported by video evidence, medical reports, and judicial proceedings, has never received a fraction of the attention that the Times story did. This imbalance is not merely linguistic. It is structural, reflecting the hierarchy of human worth built into Western coverage of the war.
This is how “atrocity propaganda” works. It does not require lies to function, only selective truth. By repeating unverified claims of Hamas rape while downplaying verified Israeli sexual crimes, Western media transformed journalism into a weapon of war.
Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals. She holds a Master’s Degree in Foreign Languages and Literature and specializes in audio-visual and journalism translation.
An unidentified drone has dropped a bag of red paint within the premises of the Russian trade mission in Stockholm, Moscow’s embassy in Sweden has said.
It published an image showing red paint splattered on the pavement inside the mission’s compound. Another such incident happened early on Saturday, the embassy said in a statement on Telegram.
Since May 2024, there have been more than 20 acts of vandalism using UAVs targeting the embassy and the trade mission in the Swedish capital, the statement read.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in September that Moscow had repeatedly asked the Swedish authorities to properly protect the Russian missions. But, despite assurances that necessary measures would be taken, the drone incursions continue, she noted.
“Such provocations pose a threat not only to the diplomatic mission, but also to the city’s residents. Apparently, after Sweden joined NATO [in March 2024], it lost control over its internal and external security,” Zakharova said.
Russian diplomatic buildings have been subject to frequent acts of vandalism and harassment since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.
Last month, a woman was detained after threatening a police officer guarding the Russian Embassy in Berlin with a knife.
In February, two pro-Ukraine activists in France were sentenced to eight months of house arrest after they threw three improvised bombs filled with liquid nitrogen at the Russian Consulate in Marseilles. Moscow condemned the punishment as far too lenient for an “attempt to commit a terrorist act.”
For more than a month, U.S. President Donald Trump has been conjuring with the idea of supplying nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. This week, however, he told reporters that he had backed away from the prospect.
Several weeks ago, shortly after Trump announced he was considering arming Ukraine with Tomahawks, our weekly editorial on October 3 warned that “all bets are off for a peace deal”. We contended that the American president, by considering such a move, was not genuine in his diplomatic efforts to end the nearly four-year conflict. “Trump is acting as a big-mouth poker player who has very few cards to play… betting that his boorish tough talk and the hype about sending Tomahawks to Ukraine… will somehow intimidate Russia to sit at the negotiating table and accept a half-baked peace deal.”
Moscow has not been intimidated to rush a peace deal on Trump’s or NATO’s terms of an immediate ceasefire, insisting instead that a resolution to the conflict must involve a substantive international security treaty and the eradication of root causes, including the Nazi nature of the Kiev regime and NATO’s historic expansionism.
When Trump was asked this week if he was still considering supplying the iconic missile to Ukraine, he said: “No, not really.”
That was after weeks of demurring; he might, he might not, we’ll see, and so on. What changed his mind?
In the last phone call between Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, on October 16, it was reported that Putin sternly warned that supplying Ukraine with Tomahawks was an escalation too far. He indicated that the weapon would not change the battlefield situation in Ukraine’s favor but that it would bring the U.S. and Russia directly into confrontation.
Sixty-three years after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, with John F Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, this was an uncanny echo of that critical moment when the world faced nuclear war.
Trump subsequently claimed that he asked Putin, “Would you mind if I send Tomahawks to Ukraine?” We can only imagine Putin’s terse response.
The lame question from Trump suggests that the American president was not actually serious about the proposal and that the whole prior and subsequent reporting of his musings was a bluff aimed at unnerving Moscow.
The Tomahawk has a range of about 2,000-2,500 km and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. It would also require U.S. participation to launch it from Ukrainian territory. If the missile were fired at St Petersburg or Moscow, Russia would have no choice but to consider it a possible preemptive nuclear attack.
Thus, it is averred, Trump was told that if he went ahead with his insane idea to supply Ukraine, then he had better be prepared to accept responsibility for starting World War III.
The day after the phone call with Putin, on October 17, Trump hosted the Ukrainian puppet president at the White House, whereupon Trump started backpedaling on the Tomahawks. He said that the U.S. needs to retain stockpiles for its own security interests and may not be able to supply Ukraine. “We need Tomahawks for the United States, too. We can’t deplete our country,” said Trump.
Though pointedly, last week, the Pentagon announced that there were no inventory limitations and that the White House was clear to send Tomahawks to Ukraine if President Trump made that determination.
Well, it looks like Trump has chosen caution to be the better part of valor, or should we say, bluffing. At least for now, anyway.
Still, the insanity of NATO’s war psychosis is always looming. Trump’s erratic and egotistical whims make him an unreliable interlocutor.
Following his “disappointing” meeting with the Ukrainian puppet, Vladimir Zelensky, last month, the European NATO warmongers have stepped up lobbying for the Tomahawks. NATO chief Mark Rutte met with Trump in the White House on October 22 to discuss the matter, no doubt reflecting the anxiety of the European elite that Trump was going soft on the idea.
This week, the former NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, came up with the scheme of Germany supplying its Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine as a way to pressure Trump to follow up with Tomahawks.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Washington, Olha Stefanishyna, also reportedly claimed that “discussions” with the Trump administration for the cruise missile are “still ongoing”.
In this context, there are reports of British intelligence working on a false-flag provocation to blow up the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant, the biggest civilian plant in Europe, causing mass casualties and blaming it on Russia, even though Russia is in control of the ZNPP. Such an extreme provocation could be used to sway the White House.
For now, it seems, Trump has encountered the uncomfortable reality of his and NATO’s psychological games by desisting from supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine.
Similar reality checks are going on elsewhere. The imminent defeat of NATO’s Ukrainian proxy army in Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) and Kupyansk is one such rude awakening from NATO’s illusions that Western media have been spinning for the past four years. Only last month, Trump was talking about green-lighting a counter-offensive by Ukraine against Russia and taking back territory.
Pertinent, too, was the unveiling last week of Russia’s breakthrough nuclear-capable weapons, the Burevestnik cruise missile that can fly unlimited distances, and the Poseidon torpedo, both of which are invulnerable to U.S. defenses. That would also seem to be a moment of realization for the NATO warmongers that their fantasies of defeating Russia are futile.
Another dousing with cold water is the potential deployment of Russian hypersonic missiles in Venezuela to upgrade the Latin American country’s air defenses amid U.S. aggression. It is reported this week that Trump is now having second thoughts about his (illegal) threats to attack Venezuela, fearing the military operation could end in abject failure with deaths of U.S. servicemen, at a time when voters are souring big time on the 47th president.
Bullies usually only operate with impunity and delusions about their strength until reality punches them in the face.
Trump’s throwing around the idea of Tomahawks to Ukraine seems to have hit him like a boomerang. One might hope that he can retain some common sense and restrain the transatlantic War Party.
NATO intends to place greater emphasis on its nuclear capabilities in the future in order to deter adversaries more effectively, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in an interview.
“It is important that we communicate more with our societies about nuclear deterrence to ensure they understand how it contributes to our collective security,” Rutte said.
Russia allegedly uses “dangerous and reckless nuclear rhetoric,” Rutte also said, adding that in this regard, the West “should know that there is no reason to panic, because NATO has a powerful nuclear deterrent that serves to preserve peace.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is not brandishing its nuclear weapons, but is pursuing a policy of nuclear deterrence. Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov has said that the West’s destructive actions have undermined the foundations for constructive dialogue between nuclear-armed countries.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said that a number of persistent challenges have accumulated in the strategic sphere, primarily related to destabilizing doctrinal approaches and military-technical programs of Western countries.
Molecular biologist Becky McClain began raising safety concerns in 2000, soon after she started working in Pfizer’s Biosafety Level 2 lab in Connecticut.
Three years later, after management failed to address the issues, McClain was exposed to a genetically modified lentivirus, engineered using gain-of-function technologies that made the virus more infectious and more pathogenic.
The exposure left her disabled, with symptoms including numbness, periodic paralysis, pain and other neurological problems. Doctors couldn’t diagnose or effectively treat her condition because Pfizer refused to disclose what she had been exposed to, citing “trade secrets.”
The incident launched McClain into a decade-long fight to understand her illness and obtain her exposure records so she could seek proper treatment. During her battle, she became a whistleblower, standing up to Pfizer’s threats against her and her family.
In her new book from Skyhorse Publishing, “Exposed: A Pfizer Scientist Battles Corruption, Lies, and Betrayal, and Becomes a Biohazard Whistleblower,” McClain recounts how she raised workplace safety concerns, suffered exposure to a dangerous virus, fought Pfizer for years in court, and resisted the company’s repeated attempts to silence her — ultimately winning a legal victory.
McClain refused to sign a gag order — even after Pfizer fired her, harassed her and threatened her — making her one of the few people who can share her story publicly.
In her book, McClain exposes corruption she says runs not just through Pfizer, but across the pharmaceutical industry and the agencies meant to hold it accountable — from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the federal courts.
Consumer safety advocate Ralph Nader wrote in his foreword to the book:
“No general description of this book can convey the horror and details of what Becky McClain and her husband, Mark, endured at the hands of Pfizer, enabled over the years by collusion with government officials. Pre-verdict and post-verdict, this company employed thuggish retaliatory tactics, blacklisting, threats, harassments, wrongful discharges, coverups, and demands for total gag orders.
“Those tactics were designed to keep her case from flaring into a national demand for Congressional regulation in the form of rigorous biolab inspections and mandatory safety/health standards with teeth. Against this objective, Pfizer and the bioengineering industry are succeeding.”
‘If you document biosafety issues and or speak out about them, you’re out’
In an interview with The Defender, McClain said she noticed safety issues as soon as she started working in the lab.
“We had no break room, no safe break room. We had unsafe offices. We had improper biocontainment protocols using infectious agents,” she said. “And although the lab was unsafe, management made it worse by instilling a culture of fear for anyone who dared to raise safety issues.”
McClain said most scientists at the lab shared her concerns, but managers made it clear: “If you document biosafety issues and or speak out about them, you’re out.”
Scientists at the lab worked on genomic-altering biotechnologies, creating viruses capable of entering cells and changing their genomes, she said.
After multiple safety incidents — including one that left several scientists sick — McClain walked in one morning to find “a mess” on her personal workbench. A supervisor and an untrained scientist had left a dangerous experiment there overnight, without McClain’s knowledge.
A month later, the untrained scientist asked McClain if she knew anything about lentiviruses, a family of viruses that includes HIV and FIV (feline immunodeficiency virus).
By then, McClain was experiencing numbness on one side of her face, which a neurologist suggested might be the start of multiple sclerosis.
McClain realized she had likely been exposed to a modified lentivirus and asked the scientist to find out more about its safety. He returned “a little bit nervous” and told her the virus he had used on her bench was safe, indicating it wasn’t infectious to humans.
That conversation marked the beginning of McClain’s fight to obtain her exposure records. Pfizer refused to provide them, telling her that “trade secrets supersede your right to that information.”
As her condition worsened, McClain went on medical leave — and the company terminated her.
McClain was shocked because she had assumed worker rights would protect her. She said:
“I couldn’t get directed medical care for my illness, which was a mystery illness because these genetically engineered virus technologies were designed to cause new emerging diseases for use in laboratory research studies.
“So when I visited doctors, no one knew what was happening. They were all fearful and unable to explain my illness.
“My husband and I feared I was going to die. It eventually became very, very, very, very severe. It began with numbness on the left side of my face, then extreme left jaw pain, inflammation of my trigeminal nerve, headaches, spinal pain, then periodic paralysis.”
‘There’s no free speech for scientists’
McClain turned to OSHA for help, submitting documentation she had gathered that exposed egregious safety violations in the lab. OSHA refused to help her access her exposure records and didn’t even conduct a safety inspection of the lab.
“OSHA is a captured agency now,” McClain said. “They oversee approximately 24 different whistleblower laws under one roof, making it easy for the industry to control OSHA. It’s easy to capture. Place a corporate head to oversee OSHA, and you gain control of all the whistleblower laws and investigations.”
After OSHA declined to provide substantive help, McClain’s next step was clear. “The only legal remedy to get my exposure records was to file a civil whistleblower claim,” she said.
During the process, McClain met countless other scientists in similar situations.
“There’s no free speech for scientists,” she said. She cited examples of scientists being censored and smeared as “anti-vaxxers” during the COVID-19 pandemic, when “they were merely raising legitimate safety concerns.”
A recent investigation by The Defender found that OSHA told healthcare employers not to report employees adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines — but to continue reporting injuries caused by all other vaccines.
Pfizer launched ‘backdoor retaliation’ by targeting McClain’s husband
Throughout her long legal battle, Pfizer tried relentlessly to compel her to sign a gag order. She refused, knowing that signing would cost her the leverage she needed to access information about her exposure.
The company launched what McClain called “backdoor retaliation” by targeting her husband, who worked at the FDA in Connecticut.
“Two months before the trial, my husband was called into his office and told that if he didn’t make me settle with Pfizer, he’d be out of a job,” McClain said.
The threat terrified the couple, as McClain was extremely sick and they relied entirely on his income. “I thought Pfizer couldn’t have that kind of reach … my husband works for the government. But they did,” she said.
Her husband refused to force her to sign a gag order. After facing false accusations despite a spotless 18-year record as a commissioned officer, he left the FDA.
McClain eventually won her free speech whistleblower lawsuit in a 2010 jury trial, even though later revelations showed that the judge had financial conflicts of interest. She received 10 years of back pay — but no compensation for her exposure, illness or suffering.
Pfizer faced no obligation to remediate its safety program.
Although McClain never gained full access to her exposure records, she did obtain additional details about the virus, which she explains in her book.
Today, she publicly advocates for industry reform. She told The Defender there are several key issues she thinks need to be addressed. She said:
“First, is that all gag orders related to lab injuries and public health and safety concerns should be illegal. The public has a right to know about the dangers in these laboratories, especially in our post-pandemic environment.
“Then, OSHA needs to be revamped. It’s a captured agency.”
McClain added that OSHA can’t effectively oversee biotechnology because the agency doesn’t fully understand the serious and unique safety risks. She said the safety problems run through biotechnology research in academia, government and the private sector — each with its own set of regulations — and that the private sector faces the fewest rules.
“The bottom line is that we need better free speech and whistleblower protections for scientists, physicians, and injured workers,” McClain said. “No one should go through 10 years of hell just to have a safe workplace or to protect the public by standing up for professional standards.”
The Prism Between Middle Eastern Reality and Americans
Emmy award-winning film-maker Tom Hayes describes the censorship, or information blockade, that he faced in every step of the creation and distribution of his award-winning film ‘People and Land.’ … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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