35,000 ‘Partially or Completely’ Deaf in Gaza Due to Israeli Bombings – Report
The Palestine Chronicle | January 9, 2026
An estimated 35,000 children and adults “have partially or completely” lost their hearing due to bombings during Israel’s two-year genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, according to a Le Monde report, citing a survey by a local non-profit organization.
“Hearing loss can result from injuries to the head or neck, brain trauma causing ruptured eardrums and damage to the auditory system. But it can also be caused by exposure to sound waves, even if a person was not physically injured,” Dr. Ramadan Hussein, an audiologist working with the Atfaluna Society for the Deaf, reportedly said.
“These hearing disorders are, most often, irreversible,” he stressed.
‘Power of Explosion’
One such child whose hearing was affected by the bombings is a 12-year-old girl by the name of Dana. She was resting in her room in Gaza City when an Israeli missile hit the building just across from hers, the report said.
Dana’s father stressed that the explosion “was extremely violent”, with the door to her room torn off and the windows blown out. Although she survived the blast, Dana lost her hearing.
Specialists at the Atfaluna organization confirmed that Dana is suffering from “a very severe hearing loss”.
They said that “Because of the power of the explosion, the auditory nerve was severely damaged, perhaps even completely destroyed.”
Five-Day-Old Baby
In another case, a baby who was just five days old was thrown and buried under the sand when an Israeli missile struck one meter from his family’s tent in the al-Mawassai area of Khan Yunis, the report said.
His mother, Safa al-Qara, said, “We found him thanks to his feet sticking out. He was in a terrible state; we thought he was going to die.” Four months after his birth, his mother noticed that “something was wrong.”
She said that only movement “got his attention, not sounds.” He was subsequently diagnosed with a zero level of hearing.
The report stated that he urgently requires a hearing aid or cochlear implant to avoid sever developmental delays – an impossible task in the besieged enclave with Israel having blocked the entry of some medical equipment and medicines.
“For nearly a year, not a single hearing aid has entered the Gaza Strip,” Dr. Hussein warned, adding that “even those who already have them will soon be unable to use them, because batteries are also banned.”
Infrastructure Destroyed
In addition to the shortages, laboratories to make custom ear molds and much of the infrastructure needed to treat hearing disorders has been destroyed by Israel’s ground offensive, the report stated. Many specialists in this field have also already left the enclave due to the genocidal war.
Dr. Hussein warned that “Forced displacements, continuous bombings, famine and the lack of medicine affect pregnant women and fetuses and can lead to the birth of children with disabilities, including hearing loss.”
At the same time, with the worsening conditions in displacement camps, malnutrition and the lack of primary care, there is the risk of infections.
Fady Abed, the director of Atfaluna, warned that even minor infections, “like ear infections, can cause permanent hearing loss if not treated in time,” the report stated.
Staggering Death Toll
Starting on October 7, 2023, the Israeli military, with American support, launched a genocidal war against the people of Gaza. This campaign has so far resulted in the deaths of over 71,300 Palestinians, with more than 171,000 wounded. The vast majority of the population has been displaced, and the destruction of infrastructure is unprecedented since World War II. Thousands of people are still missing.
In addition to the military assault, the Israeli blockade has caused a man-made famine, leading to the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians—mostly children—with hundreds of thousands more at risk.
Despite widespread international condemnation, little has been done to hold Israel accountable. The nation is currently under investigation for genocide by the International Court of Justice, while accused war criminals, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are officially wanted by the International Criminal Court.
Wary US Oil Giants Dodge Venezuela Investment Pitch
Sputnik – 10.01.2026
American oil majors left a White House meeting without signing up for a fast money push into Venezuela’s oil sector following the capture of the country’s legitimate President Nicolas Maduro, reports Axios.
The Trump administration has floated a $100 billion investment figure, promising “security” and “direct deals” with the US. But executives kept their distance.
- Exxon CEO Darren Woods bluntly called Venezuela “uninvestable” under current legal and commercial conditions
- ConocoPhillips’s Ryan Lance stressed the need to talk with banks — likely including the US Export-Import Bank – on how to restructure debt “to deliver the billions of dollars that are required to restore their energy infrastructure”
- Chevron — the only US major still operating in Venezuela — stuck to cautious language, focusing on employee safety and “compliance with all laws and regulations applicable to its business, as well as the sanctions frameworks provided for by the US government”
A handful of independents reportedly signaled interest, but with Venezuela’s output at around 800,000 barrels per day – still far below its past peaks – and legal risks front of mind, Wall Street’s oil titans aren’t exactly racing back in.
Getting back to the 3.5 million barrels per day level of the late 1990s could require much more than $100 billion worth of investment over a significant number of years, according to analysts cited by the outlet.
Oil prices are currently low, with WTI crude hovering around $59 per barrel, which also plays a significant factor in the reluctance — major investments in Venezuela’s heavy crude projects would require much higher sustained prices to justify the risks and capital investments.
Starmer’s Looking for an Excuse to Ban X
“All options” on the table now includes silencing a global network; an idea once unthinkable in a “democracy”
By Cam Wakefield | Reclaim The Net | January 10, 2026
Keir Starmer has signaled he is prepared to back regulatory action that could ultimately result in X being blocked in the UK.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has suggested, more or less, that because Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has been generating images of women and minors in bikinis, he’ll support going as far as hitting the kill switch and blocking access to the entire platform.
“The situation is disgraceful and disgusting,” Starmer said on Greatest Hits Radio; the station best known for playing ABBA and now, apparently, for frontline authoritarian tech policy announcements.
“X has got to get a grip of this, and Ofcom has our full support to take action… I’ve asked for all options to be on the table.”
“All options,” for those who don’t speak fluent Whitehall euphemism, now apparently includes turning Britain’s digital infrastructure into a sort of beige North Korea, where a bunch of government bureaucrats, armed with nothing but Online Safety Act censorship law and the panic of a 90s tabloid, get to decide which speech the public is allowed to see.
Now, you might be wondering: Surely he’s bluffing? Oh no. According to Downing Street sources, they’re quite serious.
And they’ve even named the mechanism: the Online Safety Act; that cheery little piece of legislation that sounds like it’s going to help grandmothers avoid email scams, but actually gives Ofcom the power to block platforms, fine them into oblivion, or ban them entirely if they don’t comply with government censorship orders.
Ofcom, the country’s media regulator, is now in “urgent contact” with both X and xAI, Grok’s parent company, after reports that users were using the chatbot to generate images of real people in bikinis.
UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall told Ofcom it should consider blocking X in the UK, that she expects action in “days not weeks,” and that Ofcom would have the “full backing of the government” if it used blocking powers.
But here’s the problem. In the government’s fury over Grok and its users, they’re now open to ban an entire global communications platform. The equivalent of bulldozing the post office because someone sent a rude postcard.
People have been using Photoshop to create fake, explicit, deeply creepy images for decades. If you had a PC, half a clue, and a little too much time in the early 2000s, you could slap a celebrity’s face onto anything you wanted; with results that ranged from ridiculous to criminal.
And nobody suggested shutting down Adobe, or banning Microsoft Paint, or arresting the paperclip from Word for aiding and abetting. Because, and this used to be common sense: the tool is not the crime.
But now, with AI, all that reason goes out the window. Grok, Midjourney, DALL·E; you name it. These systems don’t wake up in the morning and decide to be pervy. They generate what they’re told to generate. That’s it.
They don’t have taste, they don’t have shame, and they certainly don’t have a moral compass. They have some restraints, but they can easily be overcome if people know how to prompt. This will always be true.
They’re glorified suggestion boxes that vomit out whatever the user types in. If someone prompts an AI to produce a woman in a bikini and you think that’s a problem, that someone is the problem; not the platform, not the algorithm, and not the wires it’s running on.
You can do the exact same thing with a pencil and paper. In fact, some of the most disturbing imagery ever created didn’t come out of a neural net. It came from human hands, in basements, bedrooms, and badly lit studios. But we’re not banning Bic pens. We’re not raiding Staples because someone bought a sketchpad and had dark thoughts.
Predictably, Elon Musk is not thrilled. He has accused the UK government of attempting to “suppress the people.”
“Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” Musk added, putting the blame on the users, not the tool.
It’s not just Elon either. Sarah B Rogers, the US Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, warned: “Erecting a ‘Great Wall’ to ban X, or lobotomizing AI, is neither tailored nor thoughtful.”
President Trump has previously referred to the UK’s online censorship law as “not a good thing,” and while Keir Starmer is playing Internet Emperor, Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican congresswoman who sits on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, is calling out the UK’s absurd overreach and threatening to bring legislation to sanction both Starmer and the country if he goes ahead with his tantrum.
Some of the images in question are inappropriate. Some are satire. But they’re not being created by X itself. They’re being created by users. People. And even with guardrails on Grok, there are always ways to prompt your way around them.
So even though there are likely millions of tools that can put a woman in a bikini, why is Starmer threatening to support the blocking of the entirety of X?
When BBC News host Huw Edwards was convicted of having actual images of child abuse and only received a suspended sentence, Starmer famously said: “As far as the sentence is concerned, I mean, that is for the court to decide.”
Without even getting into the hypocrisy of Starmer, his duplicity means what we’re looking at here is less about child protection and more about a government flailing in the age of AI, social media, and digital speech it no longer understands or controls.
The government is looking for any excuse to suppress one of the biggest thorns in its side.
It’s political theater; the kind that looks strong on morning television but crumbles under scrutiny.
What makes that clear is that plenty of other AI systems can do the exact same thing Grok’s being dragged over the coals for.
OpenAI’s image models have slipped up. Some AI image generators have whole fanbases built around photorealistic deepfakes of celebrities.
There are dodgy Discord bots out there generating worse in seconds, with less scrutiny and zero accountability. But none of those platforms are being threatened with a national ban.
And let’s not kid ourselves here: X is one of the last places online where you can still talk about [some] things Keir Starmer would really, really rather you didn’t.
Ever since Elon Musk got his hands on Twitter, the platform has become a giant headache for the political establishment, and not just because people keep replying to their speeches with clown emojis. The real reason they hate it is that it’s torched their grip on the flow of information.
X moves faster than the official narrative. Way faster. Before a newsroom has even had time to spin up a headline, the footage is already out there; raw, unedited, and usually filmed by someone on the ground with a phone and zero interest in protecting anyone’s PR strategy.
Leaks, whistleblowers, inconvenient facts: they don’t wait for permission to speak anymore, they just hit “post.”
It’s also true that the major platform Keir Starmer’s government is gearing up to punish, with the full force of Ofcom and the legal system revving like a bulldozer, is also the only major platform where he gets roasted in real time.
X is where Starmer gets community-noted, quote-tweeted, and ratio’d into orbit every time he opens his mouth. So now the platform isn’t only a tech problem. It’s a PR problem. And in modern politics, that’s the only kind anyone actually takes seriously.
European Politics in Crisis as Right-Wingers Fear for Safety – Ex-Austrian Minister
Sputnik – 10.01.2026
European politics are in a deep crisis as many people, particularly in right-wing parties, are afraid to enter the spotlight due to concerns for their personal safety, former Austrian Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl told Sputnik.
“Most right-wing parties, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban being a special case, such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France or the Freedom Party of Austria, are running short on qualified personnel. All parties struggle to recruit skilled people, but today many are unwilling to risk their personal safety. If you engage in politics, you are under constant threat,” she said.
In Europe, having ties to those considered to be on the right of the political spectrum comes with a price such as a threat of physical violence, Kneissl said.
“There are many who have already paid a high price. As soon as you have even the most minimal contact with the right, you get serious problems. Members of the AfD [Alternative for Germany] have been attacked. There are also party officials whose bank accounts have been closed and whose children have been harassed at school,” she said.
The lack of capable personnel is also linked to a decline in the quality of Europe’s elites, Kneissl said. The education system that is meant to cultivate those elites no longer serves as a competitive environment for the skilled and talented.
Trump, Greenland, and the colonialism Europe pretends not to see
Neither Washington nor Copenhagen: Greenland belongs to the Inuit people
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 10, 2026
The recent resurgence of controversy surrounding Donald Trump’s interest in annexing Greenland has reignited debates over imperialism, sovereignty, and self-determination in the Arctic. The European response – particularly from Denmark and the European Union – has been marked by a moralizing discourse against “American expansionism.” This discourse, however, deliberately ignores Denmark’s own colonial history in the region – a history that has been profoundly violent toward the Inuit people of Kalaallit Nunaat, the territory’s true name.
Recently, Russia-based Irish journalist Chay Bowes wrote an excellent piece on the history of European colonialism in Greenland. As he said, Denmark’s presence in Greenland was never the result of Indigenous consent. Beginning in 1721 under the religious pretext of “rescuing” supposed Norse descendants, colonization quickly became a systematic project of cultural domination and economic exploitation. When no Europeans were found, Danish missionaries turned their efforts against the Inuit, criminalizing their spiritual and cultural practices, dismantling traditional social structures, and imposing Lutheranism as a tool of control.
With the establishment of a trade monopoly in 1776, Denmark began treating the island as a profitable hub for natural resources, deliberately keeping the Indigenous population isolated and dependent. This colonial logic intensified throughout the twentieth century. In 1953, seeking to evade new UN decolonization guidelines, Copenhagen annexed Greenland as a “county.” Lacking adequate international scrutiny, the lives of Inuit natives increasingly became a nightmare.
Among these policies were the abduction of Inuit children to be “reeducated” in Denmark – the infamous “Little Danes” experiment – and the forced removal of entire communities from their ancestral lands into urban housing complexes, aimed at creating cheap labor for Danish-controlled industries. Even more severe was the secret imposition of contraceptive devices on thousands of Inuit women and girls between the 1960s and 1970s, without consent, in an explicit attempt at population control.
Although Greenland gained administrative autonomy in 1979 and expanded self-government in 2009, real power remains concentrated in the “Danish Crown.” Key areas such as foreign policy, defense, and much of the economy remain outside Inuit control. International bodies continue to pressure Denmark to acknowledge and repair colonial crimes, but progress has been minimal.
In this context, European indignation over potential U.S. expansionist moves sounds hypocrite. This does not mean absolving Washington of its own imperialist history – the United States has an equally disastrous record in its treatment of Indigenous peoples. However, for many Inuit, life under American rule would hardly be worse than centuries of European subjugation have already been. The difference is that the U.S., at least, does not pretend to be a “progressive benefactor” while maintaining intact colonial structures.
The true alternative, however, lies neither in Washington nor in Copenhagen. The most coherent and reasonable solution would be the construction of an independent Inuit state, grounded in self-determination, cultural restoration, and sovereign control over the territory. An Inuit ethnic state – understood as a project of Indigenous national liberation, not of ethnic or racial exclusion – would represent a historic rupture with centuries of external domination.
Obviously, in a world marked by violent disputes and the rule of force, it is naïve to think that the political will of Greenland’s native population alone would be sufficient to secure any real sovereignty. It will be necessary to engage in alliances and strategic diplomacy with countries that also oppose U.S. and European imperialism and expansionism – especially those with shared ethnic and cultural ties. Russia would be an excellent example of a potential partner for an independent Greenland, given the large presence of Arctic peoples in Russian territory – including Inuit – and Russia’s historical experience with respect for plurinationality.
Greenland is not a strategic asset to be bargained over by rival Western powers. It is the homeland of a people who have survived colonization, social engineering, and population control. Before denouncing “American imperialism,” Denmark and the European Union should confront their own colonial past—and recognize that Inuit self-determination remains the only truly right path forward for Kalaallit Nunaat.
FLU FEAR VS. FLU FACTS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 8, 2026
Alarmist media coverage and public health messaging have branded this season’s flu a so-called “super flu,” but surveillance data from both the U.K. and the U.S. tell a more measured story. While reports of influenza-like illness (ILI) have risen—as they typically do during winter—rates of laboratory-confirmed influenza remain within normal seasonal levels. The distinction is often blurred in headlines, with ILI frequently conflated with confirmed flu infections. Even public health officials acknowledge these limitations, along with the well-documented constraints of flu vaccine effectiveness, raising questions about whether the current narrative reflects the data.
Here’s who really weaponizes children in the Russia-Ukraine conflict
By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 9, 2026
For the last three years, Ukraine and concerted legacy media campaigns have been screaming that Russia has abducted, or forcibly displaced, thousands of Ukrainian children – even up to 1.5 million!
The accusations resurged in December, with a UN General Assembly vote on a draft resolution on the return of Ukrainian children.
During the meeting, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa once again pushed claims that “at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia,” in spite of the fact that months prior, during the June Istanbul talks, the Ukrainian side finally provided a list of the children it accuses Russia of abducting: 339 children, surprisingly far fewer than the number alleged for years.
The absence of over 19,500 on the list indeed leads to many questions, mainly: is Ukraine lying again? Recall that in 2022, the accusations by the (now former) Ukrainian ombudswoman, Lyudmila Denisova, about “sexual atrocities” allegedly committed by Russian soldiers, were revealed to be lies and propaganda. So much so that Denisova was sacked. But before her dismissal, legacy media and the UN all backed the lies.
Some recent accusations are that children were being sent to labor camps in Russia – “165 re-education camps where Ukrainian children are militarized and Russified” – or even of being sent to North Korea, as Katerina Rashevskaya of the Ukrainian Regional Center for Human Rights told the US Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on December 3.
The footnotes of the claims made by Rashevskaya, instead of a source for the information, say “The Regional Human Rights Center can provide information upon request.” In other words, her sources are “trust me, bro.”
Regarding the North Korean camp in question, if two Russian teens were sent there, they’d potentially be made to enjoy water slides, basketball and volleyball courts, an arcade room, a rock climbing wall, art and performance halls, an archery range, a private beach, and hikes in the mountains.
Regarding the list of 339 children Ukraine says were abducted by Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked, “30 percent of the names on the list could not be verified, as most of those children were never in Russia, are now adults, or have already returned to their families. As for the Ukrainian children who are actually in our country, they are under state care in appropriate institutions. They are safe now; in many cases, their evacuation from combat zones saved their lives. Local children’s rights commissioners are now working to reunite them with their relatives.”
Just as legacy media has whitewashed the eight years of Ukraine’s war against Donbass civilians prior to Russia commencing its military operation in 2022, including the Ukrainian shelling which killed 250 children starting in 2014, media likewise ignore the children Russia says are missing.
During the talks in Istanbul, Zakharova noted, “the Russian side presented Ukraine with a list of 20 Russian children who are either currently in Ukraine or relocated from Ukraine to Western Europe, including to countries that endorsed this very statement. Now, the burden falls on these states to provide Russia with a substantive response regarding our ‘list of 20.’”
Over 500 Ukrainian orphans abused in Türkiye
Recently, Donbass-based journalist Christelle Néant wrote about a report published on a pro-Ukrainian website which broke the story of 510 Ukrainian children who had been evacuated by a Ukrainian oligarch in 2022 from Dnepropetrovsk to Türkiye, where the benevolent foundation which brought them there allegedly allowed its staff to beat the children, sexually assault them, and deny them food if they refused to perform on camera to raise funds for their lodging. These are just some of the reported violations of the orphans’ rights.
The details of the report show that the children suffered physically and psychologically. Additionally, two underage teens were impregnated by staff at the hotel they stayed in, with educators allegedly aware of the interactions.
According to Néant, the orphanage director’s response to the fact of one of the teens in her care becoming pregnant was to blame the girl: “This young girl comes from an asocial family. Well, this way of life is already inscribed in every cell, in the blood of these children.”
“In almost 10 years of work in Donbass,” Néant wrote, “I have conducted or filmed many humanitarian missions to orphanages in the region. And never ever have I heard a director make such vile remarks about one of the children in her care. Even the most difficult and recalcitrant were cared for with pedagogy, love, and patience.”
Ukraine hunting down children
In April 2023, Christelle Néant and I interviewed Artyomovsk civilians who had recently been rescued by Russian soldiers. In addition to being deliberately shelled by Ukrainian forces who knew they were sheltering in the basement of a residential building, the civilians we spoke to told us about Ukrainian military police hunting for children.
The evacuees told us some of these police went by the name ‘White Angels’, and were taking children away without their consent or that of their parents.
Around that time, more reports came out about these abductions or attempted abductions, including an 11-year-old girl who spoke of how White Angels, who introduced themselves as military police, came to the basement she was sheltering in with a photo of her, looking for her, and saying they needed to take her away, because “Russia killed her mother.” According to the girl, her mother was alive and with her.
Reports of these abductions also emerged in Avdeyevka, Kupyansk, Slavyansk, Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka, as well as in Ukrainsk and Zhelannoye.
Néant wrote of a July 2023 conference on Ukraine’s crimes against the Donbass children, in which Liliya and her daughter Kira from Schastye, in the Lugansk People’s Republic, spoke.
They gave evidence of how, “at the start of the special military operation (when Ukraine controlled Schastye), around ten children were taken from a school in Schastye to western Ukraine by the headmistress of the school, on orders from Kiev, without informing their parents.”
The children were even forbidden to call their parents, Néant wrote, “But Kira knew her mother’s telephone number by heart and managed to call her to let her know that they were in Lviv and then Khoust. Thanks to Liliya’s determination to find her daughter, we discovered how Kiev ‘exports’ the children it abducts.” Ukraine had forged a new “original” birth certificate for Kira. The girl said she and the other children were to be sent to Poland.
Former SBU officer Vasily Prozorov spoke at the same conference, where he explained, according to Néant, “that one of his investigations had revealed that some of the children abducted by Ukraine are sent to pedophile networks in Great Britain, via a whole network of Ukrainian and British officials or former officials who work together. On the British side, members of MI6 and the Foreign Office are involved.”
Prozorov, she wrote, spoke of “another of his investigations on organizations registered in EU countries involved in ‘exporting’ children from Ukraine under the pretext of providing them with shelter. These organizations take unaccompanied Ukrainian children out of Ukraine. What happens to them afterwards is unknown.”
Evacuees from Kherson reject ‘abduction’ claims
In November 2022, in the southern Russian seaside city Anapa, I met numerous people displaced from Kherson who were being lodged in hotels and apartments in the city.
The first site I visited was a few minutes by taxi outside of the city, one of many hotels along the coast. The hotel director showing me around said they don’t call them refugees, “we call them guests of the building,” and spoke affectionately of them, how grateful they were to be there, far from any shelling. Just under 500 refugees had been living there since October, she told me.
No guards monitored the entrance/exit; the refugees walked around tidy grounds. But in any case, I asked about their freedom of movement, or lack thereof.
“They move freely, of course. We don’t prohibit them from going out. Many aren’t here now because they’re in town, looking for jobs, getting documents. Children are at school.”
With my hired translator, I spoke with two Kherson women, a young mother and her own mother, to hear their stories.
“We were living with explosions at night, it was very scary, not only for myself, but for my children and for my grandchildren,” the older woman said. “When you go to bed, you don’t know if you will get out of bed in the morning. We were forced to leave.”
I asked who was shelling them. “Word of mouth transmits very clearly, and people around us spoke about it. We were bombed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russian soldiers protected us.”
The younger woman said she used to speak with the Russian soldiers there. “They are friendly. We wanted to hug them, because we felt protected. They helped us, gave us humanitarian aid, brought it to the house.”
Some minutes’ taxi ride away, I visited an apartment complex that could have served tourists in summer. There, fifty buildings housed around 1,500 refugees who had also arrived in October, mostly from Kherson Region.
My translator and I walked around, passing playgrounds, a pharmacy, a library, a swimming pool, a gym, a small petting zoo with peacocks, and a kindergarten. Near a playground, I spoke with a mother sitting on a bench with two of her four children.
“In the early days, there was bombing. We spent two and a half weeks in the basement. It was unbearable, the children were very afraid.” One of her daughters became ill. “She had acute inflammation of the lower jaw, we think due to hypothermia. We took her to Simferopol and she had surgery.”
In Anapa, she said, her children had full medical examinations. “We were helped by the mayor of the city of Anapa. We are grateful for everything.”
I mentioned that according to Western media, she and her family were kidnapped by Russia. She replied that her husband’s parents had demanded to see the children, having been told that children were being separated from their parents in Russia.
“His mother called three days in a row, saying, ‘Where are the children?’ We answered, ‘They went to the cinema. They’re playing, etc.’ She said, ‘Show me the children, they say that they took your children from you.’”
Details matter
Whereas legacy media continue to push the “Evil Russia child kidnapper” narrative, there is ample evidence that Ukraine is guilty of doing precisely what it accuses Russia of. There is also a significant absence of evidence regarding the ‘20,000 kidnapped children’ claims still being pushed.
Will media investigate the reports of abuse of Ukrainian children in Türkiye? Surely not. It wouldn’t suit their scripted anti-Russia bias.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Russia carries out three evacuation flights from Israel in under 24 hours
MEMO | January 9, 2026
Russian authorities have reportedly carried out three evacuation flights from Israel in less than 24 hours, transporting officials and their families to Russia, according to Hebrew and regional media.
Israel’s Channel 14 reported on Thursday that the flights were conducted without any official explanation from Moscow. Separate reports in Russian and Iranian media said the evacuations were carried out under what appeared to be an urgent mandate, involving officials and their families.
The reports suggested that the pace of the evacuations was faster than usual, fuelling speculation that Moscow may have received sensitive or significant information prompting the move. However, no details were provided regarding the nature of the alleged information or the identities of those evacuated.
The Kremlin has not issued any official statement clarifying the reasons behind the evacuation flights, and Russian authorities have so far declined to comment on the reports.
2016: The Year American Democracy Became “Post-Truth”
By James Bovard | January 9, 2026
Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover?
In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before. However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. Never before had American voters been obliged to choose between two such widely despised candidates. A few months before the election, an Associated Press poll “found that 86 percent of Americans were angry or dissatisfied with the state of politics in the nation.” Routine deceit by both candidates helped make “post-truth” the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016.
Many Americans were riled early on because one party preempted voters from selecting their preferred candidate. The Democratic Party leadership decided in 2015 or earlier to award its presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; a large block of “super delegates” chosen by party elites instead of voters helped ensure that result. In , WikiLeaks released the hacked emails of the Democratic National Committee, exposing how the Democratic Party “fixed” its primaries and procedures to ensure that Clinton would be the nominee — even though she was under FBI criminal investigation at the time. After the emails were released, DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz resigned and was promptly appointed honorary chair of the Clinton campaign.
Republican nominee Donald Trump also produced plenty of scandals and outrages, including a leaked audio tape from 2005 boasting of pussy grabbing, inflammatory comments on illegal Mexican immigrants and a Mexican-American judge, and unsavory squabbling with a Venezuelan beauty queen who gained 60 pounds. Trump was also tarnished by allegations of improprieties or crimes by Trump University, the Trump Foundation, and some branches of his corporate empire.
Trump’s rise provoked denunciations from poohbahs who considered themselves the public policy equivalent of Mt. Olympus. James Traub, an heir to the Bloomingdale fortune and a member of the Council for Foreign Relations, lashed out in an oped entitled, “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses.” Traub declared that “the political schism of our time” is “not about the left vs. the right; it’s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.” His solution: “It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them.” Traub asked: “Is that ‘elitist?’ Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history.” And anyone who disagreed with Traub was automatically unfit to judge history.
Clinton’s email scandal
The most politically damaging scandal of the 2016 race involved Clinton’s emails as secretary of state. Federal law requires the government to preserve the emails of top officials, but Clinton evaded that mandate by setting up a private server in her own house. She violated federal law and regulations by handling top-secret information on an unsecure communications system. When a congressional committee subpoenaed her emails as part of an official investigation, she and her staffers deleted more than 30,000 messages. When she was asked if she had wiped clean her email server before turning information over to the FBI, she laughed, “What? Like with a cloth or something? I don’t know how it works digitally at all.” In reality, Clinton operatives used powerful software to shred the hard drives beyond recognition while other aides used hammers to smash her cell phones to block investigators from reviving her records.
Clinton was the first major-party female presidential candidate in American history and her supporters were encouraged to view any criticism as an attack on all women. Robin Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, raged in Time magazine: “Emailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It’s us. It’s not about emails; it’s about public communication by a woman in general. Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female).” Washington Post media critic columnist Margaret Sullivan bewailed the media’s “ridiculous emphasis put on every development about Hillary Clinton’s email practices.”
Media bias and hypocrisy
Some pro-Clinton journalists went to the ramparts to glorify government secrecy. Vox.com’s Matt Yglesias attacked the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), declaring that it is “fundamentally not in the public interest to routinely know” the content of emails of high-ranking government officials. He proposed amending FOIA to exempt email almost across the board because “effective government beats transparent government.” Mother Jones editor Kevin Drum followed up with a piece calling for “less transparency” and stressing that “Hillary Clinton is a real object lesson in how FOIA can go wrong when it’s weaponized.” Actually, if the Obama administration had obeyed FOIA and disclosed Clinton’s emails as secretary of state, the Democratic Party might have nominated a different candidate and won the 2016 election.
Other journalists asserted that truth itself can be a liability for democracy. After she resigned as secretary of state, Clinton gave dozens of speeches to Wall Street banks and other interest groups, for which she received $21 million. Clinton refused to disclose the speech texts, but Wikileaks leaked them in early October. In one speech for which she was paid $240,000, Clinton defended political weaseling: “You need both a public and private position on certain issues.” In a New York Times oped, author Jonathan Rauch praised Hillary for her “disarming candor — including candor about lack of candor…. Hypocrisy and two-facedness … are a public good and a political necessity…. In our hearts, we know she’s right.”
Clinton defended political weaseling.
A month before the election, WikiLeaks began daily releases of more than 50,000 hacked emails from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. Highlights included a 10-page analysis of the conflicts of interest behind “Bill Clinton Inc.” by a top Clinton aide, an unsavory $1 million gift to Bill Clinton from the government of Qatar (who Hillary Clinton derided for financing ISIS in another email), ample “pay to play” kickbacks from aspiring political appointees, machinations on evading government investigations of Hillary’s emails, and advance disclosures of questions for Hillary in upcoming debates from a CNN bigwig.
The media had no qualms about heavily publicizing the tax returns of Donald Trump, which had been illegally provided to the New York Times. (Trump had reneged on promises to disclose the returns.) But as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watchdog, noted, “nothing to see here” was the verdict issued by many pundits on WikiLeaks. Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina professor and a New York Times contributing opinion writer, denounced WikiLeaks and claimed its “true target is the health of our democracy.” Tufekci asserted that “obsessively reporting” about the Podesta disclosures was “not responsible journalism.” CNN host Chris Cuomo even implied that citizens risked prison time if they downloaded the leaked emails. He told viewers that “it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s different for the media, so everything you’re learning about this, you’re learning from us.” Some Republicans joined the suppression campaign. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) declared, “I will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks…. I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks: it is the Democrats. it could be us.” WikiLeaks endangered the bipartisan right to govern in secret. Instead, anyone who revealed internal political documents was presumably engaging in a conspiracy against American democracy. (In 2019, the Trump’s Justice Department charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act — though his actual offense was Lese Majeste.)
Journalists were told they had a sacred duty to slant the news. A Washington Post editorial warned that “Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy… The Republican Party has moved the lunatic fringe onto center stage.” Vox editor Emmett Rensin urged readers to take to the streets: “If Trump comes to your town, start a riot. Let’s be clear: It’s never a shame to storm the barricades set up around a fascist.” In October, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank denounced the “lapdogs of the media.” But the lapdogs were not those journalists and pundits who cheered the Clinton campaign. Instead, the “lap dogs” were any journalist who failed to attack Trump as vehemently as Milbank thought he deserved. Milbank declared that “it is absolutely appropriate to ‘take sides’ in a contest between democracy and its alternative.” Wikileaks revealed that Milbank had earlier contacted the Democratic National Committee for assistance on a Passover-themed piece on the “Ten Plagues of Trump.” Most of the quotes Milbank used to attack Trump were provided by the DNC. Wikileaks disclosed many other messages from journalists kowtowing to the Clinton campaign.
Disdain of voters
Voters were sometimes openly disdained. At a reception, Clinton declared that “half of Trump’s supporters” were part of “the basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic,” and mostly “irredeemable.” Clinton assured attendees at the $1,200-a-person fundraiser that they were part of the “other basket” in America. Clinton did not suffer a fatal media backlash, because many pundits shared her opinion. A few days before the election, David Brooks, one of the nation’s most respected commentators, declared on the PBS Newshour, “Basically, less educated or high school-educated whites are going to Trump. It doesn’t matter what the guy does… People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is. And that is one of the more depressing aspects of this race for me.” CBS News’s Will Rahn observed that the media diagnosed Trump supporters “as racists in the way Dark Age clerics confused medical problems with demonic possession.”
After the election, public-radio icon Garrison Keillor vented in the Washington Post that “raw ego and proud illiteracy have won out… Resentment is no excuse for baldfaced stupidity.” New York Times columnist Roxane Gay wailed, “I thought there were more Americans who believe in progress and equality than there were Americans who were racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic.” Georgetown University professor Jason Brennan scoffed: “Donald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people… we saw something historic: the dance of the dunces. Never before have the lesser-educated so uniformly supported a candidate.” Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan absolved her profession for any bias or mistakes: “We wanted to believe in a country where decency and civility still mattered, and where someone so crude, spiteful and intemperate could never be elected — because America was better than that.”
Actually, a New Republic analysis shortly after the election pointed out that Clinton lost because she failed to garner a majority of white college-educated voters. Many commentators could not concede that citizens had ample reasons to despise and vote against both major-party candidates.
Post-election laments
After the 2016 election, protestors demanded that Trump be denied the presidency because he failed the newly discovered “progressive rhetoric legitimacy test” that annulled 60 million ballots. In Richmond, Virginia, one protestor painted “Your vote was a hate crime” on a prominent statue. In Portland, Oregon, protestors rioted, looting and smashing storefronts and cars. Activists disclosed the home addresses of Electoral College electors, who were bombarded with death threats warning them to vote for Clinton instead of Trump. More than four million people signed an online petition demanding that the Electoral College effectively overturn the election because Trump was “unfit to serve.”
Almost all the antics that occurred after the 2016 election vanished into a memory hole after the , 2021, Capitol building ruckus after the 2020 election.
Ironically, while the media and many politicians were busy sneering at voters, the FBI and the Clinton campaign carried out one of the most brazen illegal schemes in American political history. In 2023, Special Counsel John Durham released a 316-page report detailing how Clinton and the FBI connived to rig the 2016 election. But that topic will need to wait for a later issue.
James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty, published by FFF, his new book, Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.
US hijacks fifth oil tanker in Caribbean waters as Washington tightens blockade on Venezuela
The Cradle | January 9, 2026
The Wall Street Journal reported on 9 January that US naval forces boarded and seized control of the oil tanker Olina, expanding Washington’s campaign against vessels linked to Venezuelan crude shipments.
The theft was carried out after a “prolonged pursuit” by the US Coast Guard, according to the report, citing unnamed US officials and data from the maritime tracking firm Vanguard.
The Olina was intercepted in the Caribbean Sea near Trinidad, after previously traveling from Venezuela and returning to the region.
US authorities describe the Olina as part of a so-called “shadow fleet,” a label used by Western governments to criminalize oil tankers that move crude outside US and EU control mechanisms.
The vessel was previously named Minerva M and has been embargoed by the US, EU, UK, and others for carrying Russian oil in breach of earlier restrictions.
The takeover of the Olina marks the fifth tanker stolen by the US in recent weeks, including the Marinera, formerly known as Bella 1, which was sailing under a Russian flag when it was taken.
Washington frames the move as part of a broader effort to control Venezuelan oil flows.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the US is enforcing “the blockade against all dark fleet vessels illegally transporting Venezuelan oil,” accusing them of “stealing from the Venezuelan people.”
The reported action comes amid rising tensions between Washington and Moscow, and as US President Donald Trump pushes for tighter enforcement of the Venezuelan oil trade.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro faces trial after being abducted by US forces in Caracas on 3 January.
According to a recent report by AFP, three tankers chartered by Chevron were transporting Venezuelan oil to the US, as Washington’s blockade caused crude stocks inside Venezuela to swell.
The transfers followed comments by US President Donald Trump claiming Caracas would hand over tens of millions of barrels of embargoed crude, while analysts warned that rising onshore and offshore storage levels point to a growing export bottleneck driven by the blockade.
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Elite Western universities are a corrupt, parasitic empire
Instead of high-quality education, these institutions are fostering a global neo-feudal system reminiscent of the British Raj
By Dr. Mathew Maavak | RT | May 30, 2025
In a move that has ignited a global uproar, US President Donald Trump banned international students from Harvard University, citing “national security” and ideological infiltration. The decision, which has been widely condemned by academics and foreign governments alike, apparently threatens to undermine America’s “intellectual leadership and soft power.” At stake is not just Harvard’s global appeal, but the very premise of open academic exchange that has long defined elite higher education in the US.
But exactly how ‘open’ is Harvard’s admissions process? Every year, highly qualified students – many with top-tier SAT or GMAT test scores – are rejected, often with little explanation. Critics argue that behind the prestigious Ivy League brand lies an opaque system shaped by legacy preferences, DEI imperatives, geopolitical interests, and outright bribes. George Soros, for instance, once pledged $1 billion to open up elite university admissions to drones who would read from his Open Society script.
China’s swift condemnation of Trump’s policy added a layer of geopolitical irony to the debate. Why would Beijing feign concern for “America’s international standing” amid a bitter trade war? The international standing of US universities has long been tarnished by a woke psychosis which spread like cancer to all branches of the government.
So, what was behind China’s latest gripe? ... continue
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