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Complicit: How the West is Helping Israel Seize the West Bank

Al Jazeera Investigates | July 16, 2026

An undercover investigation by Al Jazeera reveals how western donors evade charity law to provide aid to illegal Israeli settlements.

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank. More than 230 of them are children. Attacks by settlers on rural Palestinian communities have increased, destroying property and capturing livestock, driving families from their homes. At the same time, the Israeli military has launched a large-scale assault on the densely populated Jenin refugee camp.

This film provides a comprehensive picture of the tactics the Israeli government uses to support the settlers and then, through infrastructure and building programmes, annex Palestinian land.
Western governments claim to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and uphold international law. However, undercover reporters from Al Jazeera expose how donors based in some Western countries fund the expansion of illegal settlements.

Al Jazeera journalists secretly film meetings with pro-settler organisations in Israel, claiming to be donors based in the UK looking to make large contributions to their projects. They’re told how funds can be paid as tax-deductible donations to charities in the UK and Canada who then pay the money on to their organisations. It is unlawful for charities in the UK and Canada to use donations to support the illegal settlement of the West Bank.

The Israeli organisations tell our undercover reporters how donations can be used to campaign for the demolition of Palestinian homes and provide military-grade security equipment such as drones and night vision cameras to settlers. We are also told that funds can be used to buy guns for settlers in occupied East Jerusalem and equipment for soldiers serving in the Israeli army.

The Israeli organisations are aware that their activities are considered unlawful in Canada and the UK and suggest ways to disguise the intended purpose of the donations, routing the funds through affiliated third parties and, in some cases, misreporting the true nature of their spending.

Charities in the UK and Canada are required to do extensive due diligence on how funds paid overseas are spent and to ensure they comply with the law. Al Jazeera’s evidence points to serious failings in this process.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Complicit: How the West is Helping Israel Seize the West Bank

No, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Causing Modern Heat Waves

By Anthony Watts | ClimateRealism | July 9, 2026

The New York Times (NYT) claims in “Without Climate Change, U.S. Heat Wave Called ‘Virtually Impossible’” that the recent Northeastern U.S. heat wave could not have occurred without human-caused climate change. This is false. The NYT bases its entire story on a model-driven analysis from a group whose sole purpose is to connect weather events to climate change, while ignoring the long observational record showing that severe heat waves have repeatedly struck the United States, including New York, for centuries.

“Heat and humidity as severe, prolonged and far-reaching as this week’s would have been ‘virtually impossible’ in the Northeast and eastern Canada before humans began warming the planet, a team of scientists said on Friday,” writes Raymond Zhong, a reporter for the NYT. “Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal have trapped more of the sun’s heat at Earth’s surface, raising temperatures worldwide for more than a century.

“Summer hot spells are nothing new, but because of the excess heat around the planet caused by global warming, they can produce higher temperatures today than they once did,” Zhong continued.

Unlike a good journalist, Zhong never questioned the premise, never examined the historical record, never interviewed anyone outside the climate attribution community, and never asked whether the group they cite, World Weather Attribution (WWA), has conclusions that might be influenced by the organization’s very reason for existing. Instead, Zhong presented readers with exactly one narrative: climate change is causing the present heat wave.

WWA exists for one purpose, to determine how much climate change has influenced weather events. That is its mission. Asking WWA whether climate change caused a heat wave is like asking the National Football League whether football is important or Greenpeace whether they think oil spills are harmful. What exactly did the NYT expect them to conclude? That climate change had nothing to do with it?

Of course not. This is not journalism, rather it’s a reporter using a narrative autopen.

The article reports that WWA concluded the heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” before industrialization and cites a probability analysis based on wet bulb globe temperature calculations combined with weather observations, forecasts, and climate model simulations. Yet there is one enormous problem with this approach: climate models are not observations.

WWA begins with climate models, creates a hypothetical version of Earth without modern greenhouse gas emissions, and then compares that imaginary world to today’s modeled climate. The result is not a measurement. It is an estimate built upon assumptions about carbon dioxide driving climate changes, already embedded within the models themselves. The NYT never explains this distinction. Instead, it presents speculative model output as though it were an observed fact. Even more troubling is the fact that the NYT story ignored heat wave history entirely.

America’s climate did not begin in 1970. Long before anyone blamed carbon dioxide for extreme weather, the United States experienced devastating heat waves that rivaled or exceeded many recent temperatures. Climate at a Glance documents that the most severe period for U.S. heat waves remains the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, when NOAA observations show far more frequent extreme heat than today.

The historical record extends even farther back. The catastrophic Eastern U.S. heat wave of 1901 killed an estimated 9,500 people. The historic 1911 heat wave brought temperatures above 100°F across much of New England and still holds Boston’s all-time record of 104°F. The Dust Bowl heat waves of 1934 and 1936 produced temperatures that remain unmatched across large portions of the central United States. The devastating heat wave of 1980 in the United States killed thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage. None of these events receives a single mention in the NYT article.

Instead, readers are asked to believe that today’s weather is fundamentally different from any weather experienced in the past, just because one attribution group says so.

The article also ignores the basic reality that reliable nationwide temperature observations span roughly 150 years, while humans have lived in North America for more than 15,000 years. Claiming that a weather event is “virtually impossible” based on such a tiny slice of climate history requires extraordinary confidence, or hubris. A commonly cited scientific saying “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is often attributed to astronomer Carl Sagan. Yet the NYT provides no extraordinary evidence for the claim that the ongoing heat wave is exceptional or would be “virtually impossible” sans climate change. Indeed, it presents no hard evidence at all, just WWA’s computer model spin. The NYT applies none of the skepticism that journalists normally reserve for extraordinary claims.

The NYT also overlooks another important factor. Much of the observed warming in cities occurs at night, when asphalt, concrete, and buildings slowly release the heat absorbed during the day. This Urban Heat Island effect raises overnight minimum temperatures, precisely when heat-related mortality is greatest. Urbanization can substantially influence long-term temperature records, a known factor ignored by the NYT.

Finally, Zhong quotes a WWA scientist declaring that “the climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.” That line makes for dramatic copy, but it is historically false. The Founding Fathers experienced brutal heat waves. The most famous heat wave during the American Revolution occurred during the Battle of Monmouth in central New Jersey on June 28, 1778. Temperatures soared to nearly 100°F (37.8°C) with high humidity, pushing the heat index well over 110°F. Fighting in heavy woolen uniforms under the blazing summer sun, soldiers on both sides suffered severe dehydration and heatstroke. Almost as many American soldiers died of heat exhaustion as died from battle wounds.

Extreme heat in the United States is not a new phenomenon.

Despite this, modern media treat every string of hot days as evidence of a looming “climate catastrophe” while ignoring centuries of evidence that debunks this claim.

The most disappointing aspect of this story is not WWA’s predictable conclusion. Organizations are free to pursue the missions for which they were created. The failure belongs squarely with the NYT simply parroting, without critical examination, a climate advocacy organization’s unverified claims.

Readers deserve good journalism. What they got was sloppy climate advocacy masquerading as news. In this case, The New York Times erred because WWA’s claims are not news and certainly not “fit to print.”

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Comments Off on No, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Causing Modern Heat Waves

Rolling Blackouts Hit New York

By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | July 18, 2026

At least since New York passed its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) back in 2019, it has been clear that trouble has been coming for New York’s electrical grid. The CLCPA effectively prohibits construction of new fossil fuel power plants, even natural gas plants; and the old ones are aging and are forbidden to be replaced or upgraded. Supposedly, lots of wind and solar generators were going to be added to the system. But those have been slow to come and, more importantly, can’t be counted on to generate anything when you need them. In addition, new construction of such things has now been stalled by the end of federal subsidies. At some point the lines of diminishing reliable generation and increasing demand would have to cross.

However, here at this website I have held off predicting imminent grid failure. The reason is that I don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. Our grid operators are competent people, and they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to hold things together even in difficult circumstances. In a pinch, they can start up every ancient “peaker” plant, and then import some power from PJM, or New England, or even from Canada. Despite New York’s hostile energy environment, they could get lucky and avoid blackouts for at least several more years.

So I think it is important to report that on this past July 2 and 3, Con Edison ran out of options and imposed rolling blackouts in parts of the North Bronx and Southern Westchester County.

You haven’t heard about this? It’s another example of the legacy media burying an inconvenient story. Checking to see what the New York Times has to say about these blackouts, I find just one sentence in the sixth paragraph of a July 3 article that is otherwise reporting on the heat wave that hit that weekend. The sentence in question reads, “The heat also put stress on power grids, contributing to scattered outages in New Jersey, New York and Ohio for tens of thousands of utility customers on Thursday, according to the tracking website PowerOutage.us.” The heat put “stress” on the grid, leading to “scattered outages.” That’s it. No mention in the Times that the blackouts on that day in New York were intentionally imposed, or that the ongoing degradation of grid reliability had anything to do with it.

I have been waiting to report on this until I could find a credible source attributing the blackouts to an intentional act by Con Edison versus, for example, a heat-related accident of some sort. On July 16, the Institute for Energy Research had a piece with the headline “New York City Cuts Power During July 4th Heat Wave.” Excerpt:

Con Edison shut off electricity to over 5,000 customers in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, leaving residents there without air conditioning. Affected residents were directed to city cooling centers for relief. Con Edison had decided the N.Y. grid could not handle the load, saying the shutoffs were necessary to reduce strain on the grid, protect equipment, and speed up restoration. The company also cut voltage by 8% in areas of the city as a precaution to protect equipment and keep service running while crews worked.

So it was not just blackouts for 5,000 customers, but also 8% voltage cuts in various “areas of the city.” IER does not specify the extent of the areas covered by the voltage cuts.

Nor were the blackouts limited to just the Bronx. My colleague Richard Ellenbogen lives in Southern Westchester County, in a town called Pelham. Pelham is just north of the Bronx, and also within Con Edison service territory. In a July 12 email that he sent to his distribution list, Ellenbogen described what happened in his area:

[Over the weekend of July 3-5], [t]here were numerous power surges associated with the rolling blackouts where the lights went on and off several times before going out. . . .  Those surges destroyed a bunch of equipment in my home despite having surge suppressors on the equipment. . . . I missed the Friday evening [July 3] rolling blackout and I returned to a mess.  There is thousands of dollars in damages related to the surges. Based upon the Facebook Page MOPS (Mothers of Pelham), my home was not the only one impacted as many people are complaining about electronic equipment not working after the blackouts, notably air conditioners. . . . My home is going to need about $3000 worth of new battery backups. . .

I don’t find any reporting in the press about these blackouts in Westchester.

New York definitely experienced a severe heat wave in early July. The temperature at the Central Park weather station in New York City reached 100° F on July 2, and 98° F on July 3. These are unusually high temperatures that are not reached in most years. Indeed, the last time it reached 100° F at Central Park was in 2012. On the other hand, these temperatures were by no means records. The highest temperature ever recorded at the Central Park station (with data going back into the late 1800s) was 106° F in 1936. Here from recordtemps.in is a list of the highest temperatures ever recorded at the Central Park weather station:

In other words, we have had temperatures over 100° F many times in the past, and undoubtedly we will have them again. But with temperatures on July 2 and 3 that were well short of the records, the grid operators had to resort to imposing rolling blackouts and/or voltage reductions in various areas of the City and Westchester County. One can only imagine how much more extensive the outages would have been if the temperature had gone up another 6° F to match the 1936 record.

Without any ability to add reliable generation to it grid, New York faces more of same every time the heat gets into this range. There is nothing inevitable about this. It is entirely a consequence of intentional decisions made by politicians.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Comments Off on Rolling Blackouts Hit New York

Iran air defense downs multiple enemy drones, cruise missile

Press TV – July 19, 2026

Iran’s integrated air defense network has successfully intercepted and destroyed several enemy aircraft and a missile across multiple regions of the country, including an MQ-9 Reaper drone in the west, a cruise missile, a “Lucas” drone, and another MQ-9 over Ahvaz, as Iranian forces continue to demonstrate their aerial dominance against US aggression.

The Army’s Air Defense Force, operating under the unified national air defense network, shot down an MQ-9 Reaper drone in the western region of the country on Sunday, the Army announced.

This was followed by the interception of a cruise missile belonging to the American aggressor enemy in the same western region, which was successfully tracked and destroyed by Army air defense systems.

Earlier in the day, the Army’s Naval Forces intercepted and shot down a “Lucas” drone over southern Iran, using naval air defense systems operating under the integrated command network.

In a separate operation, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force announced it had shot down another MQ-9 Reaper drone over the skies of Ahvaz in southwestern Iran using an advanced new air defense system.

Additionally, fighters from the 48th Fath Brigade of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province successfully brought down an enemy spy drone in the southern operational zones.

The drone was captured intact after being forced to land, having been conducting reconnaissance and espionage missions over the country’s southern operational areas.

Iran’s air defense record

Iran’s air defense forces have compiled a remarkable record of aerial victories during the ongoing war and previous conflicts with the US.

During the 40-day US-Israeli war of aggression, Iranian air defense units destroyed hundreds of advanced enemy drones, including MQ-9 Reapers, Hermes, and LUCAS models.

The IRGC has also successfully targeted multiple US fighter jets, including F-35 stealth fighters, F-15s, and F-16s, along with refueling planes.

In a single 24-hour period on April 3, 2026, Iranian forces downed an F-15E Strike Eagle, an A-10 Thunderbolt II, multiple MQ-9 Reaper drones, Hermes reconnaissance platforms, and a salvo of cruise missiles.

The downing of three MQ-9 drones and a cruise missile in less than 24 hours comes as Iran’s armed forces continue their sustained retaliation against US military bases across the region, following repeated American violations of a fragile ceasefire and the collapse of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on Iran air defense downs multiple enemy drones, cruise missile

They Are Coming to Take Us Away

The White House discovers more “commies” and terrorists

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 19, 2026

In Donald Trump’s America it is always possible to wake up in the morning and peruse online the overnight headlines to discover something new and exciting. Over the past week it has been a medley of going to war (again) with Iran coupled with a complicated performance on other issues as President Trump apparently takes aim at his enemies in the US and elsewhere. America’s Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is fully on board with a surge in worldwide mayhem. He is looking forward to an increase in US initiated violence, ordering that male soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines be tested for their testosterone levels. “Hegseth argues the effort, to become part of the military’s periodic health assessment for troops over 30, will ensure the optimal performance and long-term health of warfighters… the move plays into Hegseth’s focus on appearances and masculinity, which one Democrat said this week borders on ‘homoeroticism’.” Those who fail to have sufficient of the “male characteristics” hormone in their systems will be determined to be not fit for combat, where lethal instincts as encouraged under Hegseth require a satisfactory level of anger. Some soldiers might be offered therapy to increase their hormone levels.

And perhaps not so strangely, it often seems that much of the daily news relates to America’s “best friend and closest ally” Israel. One of the great ironies of the Israel against the rest of the world competition is how the “Torah” Old Testament is regularly being cited by Washington and the national media to justify anything the Jewish state does. That occurs in spite of the fact that Biblical Judea has little in common with the real Israel of today apart from providing an enduring mythology interwoven with the “holocaust” fantasy to sustain the myth of “chosen-ness.” In reality, Judea ceased to exist as an actual nation in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed to include the Second Temple in Jerusalem, of which absolutely nothing physical remains, and forced the Jews to depart. After that, what is now described as Palestine was ruled in various fashions by Rome, Byzantium, Muslim Arabs, Christian Europeans, Mamelukes, Turks, and the British until the politically driven re-creation of a Jewish state in 1948. That means for nearly 1900 straight years there was no such thing as an “Israel” or a Jewish nation and any Jewish presence was marginal in the region where the religion was born. Clearly there was no historical mandate to move a group of foreigners, whose only tie was to a religion that many of them did not actually practice, into a land that those foreigners then began to depopulate of its indigenous inhabitants who had lived in that place under both Christian and Muslim foreign rule for two millennia.

Recent American presidents have certainly tried to make the brutal Israeli suppression and occupation of what was supposed to be a neighbor state called Palestine somehow seem to be something quite acceptable. This is particularly due to the nonsense regurgitated by a group of American fundamentalists that many refer to as Christian Zionists (CZ), best exemplified by the delusional US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. These are folks that revere the Jewish Bible, as one might describe it, as “explained” by the nineteenth century Scofield Bible. Huckabee insanely even claims that “Without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there would not be America.”

Unfortunately for the rest of us, the CZ exist in large numbers in southern and some midwestern so-called Bible Belt states and they vote reliably for congressmen and even presidents who are Israel Firsters. So we get monsters like Texan Ted Cruz, Arkansan Tom Cotton and the recently deceased South Carolinian Lindsey Graham calling the shots on foreign policy. And we get presidents like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, both of whose exceptional loyalty to Israel should have been challenged when they ran for office!

The latest bid by Congress to allow Israel to be even more intolerant of the Christians and Muslims that it is supposed to share the former Palestine with is a recently passed amendment calling for equal Jewish prayer rights on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The Mount currently houses the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of three most holy religious sites for Muslim believers, reputedly the location where Mohammed himself was spirited up to heaven by Allah. When Israel was created in 1948 Jerusalem was categorized by the UN as an international city inclusive of all faiths. The Mount was regarded as special for Muslims and believers in other faiths had only limited access to it. More recently, there has been constant agitation from extremist Jewish politicians in Israel to open up the site and there have even been calls to build a Jewish Third Temple on it as well even more radical demands to demolish al-Aqsa completely as part of the process. This has been accompanied by increased persecution and even closure of churches and mosques located elsewhere in the city with the clear intention of making Jerusalem more exclusively Jewish. Trump and company have, of course, not raised any objections to the Jewish activism even when Christians are being actively persecuted and denied access to their churches and holy sites.

Israel aside, the views of Americans who value the First Amendment Freedom of Speech right should be particularly concerned by the authoritarian direction the federal government is moving in. One must pay attention to last week’s denunciations by Trump and National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio of “communists” and “terrorists” among the predominantly progressives who apparently are in the forefront of those who are opposing the enlightened policies being promoted by the White House. It is apparently the belief that labeling opponents in that fashion will guarantee victory in the upcoming November midterm elections where Democrats will inter alia be labeled as anti-Israel and it will also make it easier to root some such folks out for deportation or imprisonment to silence them as has already been happening with foreign students at American universities.

Regarding what is developing, Trump’s activation of the little known “alien terrorist” deportation court presumably will conveniently provide the president and his fanatics with a new tool to cleanse the country of anyone who might object to killing people without any constitutional or legal process as has been taking place in the Caribbean, Iran and Sudan. Not that Trump needed a new court since he is no friend of “rule of law” and has been repeatedly acting in one of his rages whenever he sees fit to punish both American citizens and foreigners. One might cite the recent arrest of an American citizen who was traveling in Spain. As reported by The Guardian, “Spanish authorities, operating on a US extradition request, arrested the 41-year-old James Chambers, a US citizen and wealthy donor to leftwing and humanitarian projects worldwide, last Friday in Ibiza. He has been transferred to a prison in Madrid. The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is seeking his extradition for alleged financial support of Hamas, according to a spokesperson for the Spanish high court. This is the first known case of the US seeking extradition of a citizen over alleged support for Hamas… It is unfolding as Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, convened 66 countries this week – including Spain – as part of a broader effort to discredit leftwing activity as terrorism…”

In reality, of course, Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement and the ones who should be arrested on terrorism charges are Israelis, starting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he dares to visit the UN in New York in August, but that fine point is not about to bother Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. One can only assume that the Trump Administration will be moving sharply to the right over the next three months, labeling all critics as threats to the security of the United States of America. The initial focus will be on foreigners living in the United States, but the mechanism will easily be expanded to include all critics or supporters of resistance groups, like is happening to American citizen James Chambers in Spain. It is easy to go to Congress or have the White House declare some entity “terrorist” and people who support them in their resistance to US policy will begin to be on the receiving end of punishment. That is what is coming unless we the people unite to put an end to it right now!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Comments Off on They Are Coming to Take Us Away

Israeli settlers attack homes, mosque in occupied West Bank

Al Mayadeen| July 19, 2026

Israeli settlers carried out a series of attacks overnight on Saturday and into Sunday morning in the occupied West Bank, setting fire to a mosque and multiple homes, stealing livestock, and assaulting residents, according to Palestinian sources. The incidents occurred in the al-Khalil and Nablus governorates, with Israeli forces reportedly protecting the assailants.

In the al-Khalil governorate, settlers attacked two homes belonging to Palestinian residents in the Wadi al-Rakhim area south of the town of Yatta. The assailants stole three heads of livestock from a pen on the property.

During the incident, Israeli forces fired live ammunition in the area, though no injuries were reported.

In the town of As-Samu, also south of Al-Khalil, armed settlers attempted to steal sheep in the Wadi Ajhish area while under the protection of Israeli troops; however, residents confronted the group and forced them to withdraw.

In the village of At-Tuwani, located in the Masafer Yatta region, settlers from the “Havat Ma’on” outpost set fire to two homes belonging to residents Kamal Musa Rab’i and Mahmoud Salman Rab’i, as well as the village mosque.

The attackers used flammable materials, causing large sections of the properties to catch fire. The settlers also smashed and vandalized additional property, including a vehicle, with Israeli forces providing security coverage during the assault.

In the Nablus governorate, settlers attacked the Dhahra area on the outskirts of the town of Beita, south of the city, assaulted residents and damaged homes and property, resulting in injuries to four people.

Separately, on Saturday, settlers attacked a young man while he was on the Jenin–Nablus road near the entrance to the town of Barqa, causing wounds to his hand.

In a related incident, settlers set fire to a resident’s home on Saturday evening. The house, which had been previously targeted in an attack, was destroyed by the fire. The home was occupied at the time of the incident.

Israeli settlers set fire to olive trees in Ramallah

Earlier, Israeli forces burned dozens of olive trees in the village of Deir Qaddis, west of Ramallah, on July 18, according to official Palestinian news reports.

The official news agency Wafa reported that forces pursued a group of Palestinian farmers while they were working on their land in the areas of Jabal al-Ras and Bir al-Asafir, south of the village, and fired bullets and toxic tear gas canisters toward them. According to the report, this caused fires to break out across wide expanses of land planted with olive trees.

Reports also stated that Israeli forces prevented civil defense crews from reaching the site of the fire to bring it under control and extinguish it, which led to the fire expanding and spreading to large areas of citizens’ land on the southern side of the village.

Deir Qaddis and the surrounding towns and villages west of Ramallah have experienced ongoing incursions by Israeli forces, alongside continued attacks by settlers targeting citizens and their property, according to Wafa.

Israeli forces are continuing to carry out incursions, violations, and simultaneous arrests in various areas of the West Bank, amid a wide military deployment and house-to-house raids, the agency reported.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli settlers attack homes, mosque in occupied West Bank

The strange death of James V. Forrestal, the first US Secretary of Defense

Did Israel start its serial assassination campaigns of its American opponents much earlier than we assume?

By Hua Bin | July 19, 2026

I have always enjoyed reading a wide variety of books on somewhat arcane subjects. Many are triggered by references from other books, and they form a sort of chain reaction.

Around 10 years ago, I read Webster Griffin Tarpley’s book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, my first exposure to alternative 9/11 theories of what truly happened in 2001.

Tarpley’s book led me to David Ray Griffin’s The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11.

I subsequently read perhaps 30 books on the subject such as Kevin Ryan’s Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects, Chris Bollyn’s Solving 9/11: The Deception That Changed the World, Jim Fetzer’s The 9/11 Conspiracy – the Scamming of America, and more.

Griffin’s New Pearl Harbor further led me to Peter Dale Scott’s The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War as well as his books on the drug trade, particularly his 2010 book American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan and the 2003 book Drugs, Oil, and Wars: the US in Afghanistan, Columbia, and Indochina.

Peter Dale Scott’s books motivated me to explore the subjects of JFK assassination and drug trade, which included many books such as James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroine: CIA Complicity in Global Drug Trade, and Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance: the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

Two books were particularly intriguing among the many on the subjects: Michael Collins Piper’s 1994 book Final Judgement: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy and Salvador Astucia’s Opium Lords – Israel, Golden Triangle, and the Kennedy Assassination.

Piper was among the first to connect the JFK assassination to Mossad as Kennedy was adamantly opposed to the Israeli nuclear weapons project and therefore became a threat to Israel to be eliminated.

This theory has been further supported by French historian Laurent Guyenot in his books JFK to 9/11: 50 Years of Deep State and The Unspoken Kennedy Truth.

Salvador Astucia, in turn, developed the thesis that Israel used drug-related interest to carry out the assassination, fingering the hitmen as French-Corsican heroin traffickers and associates of Meyer Lansky, the head of Jewish mafia in the US.

One obscure reference by Astucia in his book led me to a book written by David Martin in 2019 The Assassination of James Forrestal, subject of this article.

(By the way, I am planning to write on the US state-sponsored narco trade at some point with the information learned from the reading list. It is the height of iron that the US is the original and ultimuate Narco State while it labels Venezuela under Maduro as such.)

Who was James Forrestal and how he died

James Vincent Forrestal (1892–1949) was a highly influential American politician who served as the last cabinet-level US Secretary of the Navy and the very first United States Secretary of Defense.

He played a pivotal role in shaping America’s military structure and foreign policy during World War II and the early stages of the Cold War.

According to his official biography, Forrestal died on May 22, 1949, after falling from a 16th-floor kitchen window at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he allegedly was being treated for severe depression and exhaustion.

His death was widely accepted as a suicide, but the official Navy investigation never actually used the word “suicide” in its final ruling.

The official Willcutts Report, the official US Navy board of inquiry report into his death, concluded only that Forrestal died from the fall, that his behavior indicated severe mental depression, and that no naval personnel were negligent or to blame.

Investigators found a leather-bound book, An Anthology of World Poetry, open on a radiator next to his bed. The book was bookmarked to a dark, mournful passage from the ancient Greek tragedy Ajax by Sophocles.

On a sheet of hospital memorandum paper, Forrestal had been hand-copying the text. His transcription of the poem stopped abruptly in the middle of a word.

He had written “Woe, woe! will be the cry…” and stopped after writing the letters “Night—” while attempting to copy the word “nightingale”.

In the play, the Greek hero Ajax descends into madness out of grief and political betrayal, ultimately committing suicide.

The press and historians heavily focused on this, noting that Forrestal likely identified with Ajax’s tragic downfall.

David Martin concludes assassination after studying declassified details of Forrestal’s alleged suicide

The Navy kept the official investigation secret for 55 years and finally released it via Freedom of Information Act in 2004.

Researchers immediately found several inconsistencies that have fuelled decades of assassination theories:

  • Bathrobe cord: When Forrestal’s body was found on the 3rd-floor roof, the sash/cord of his dressing gown was tightly knotted and wrapped around his neck. This led to speculation that he may have tried to hang himself from the radiator before falling, or that he was strangled.
  • Handwriting discrepancies: Independent researchers who analyzed the handwritten poem alongside Forrestal’s known personal letters argued that the handwriting in the poem did not match his.
  • Guard’s testimony: Early press reports claimed a guard saw Forrestal writing the poem right before the jump, but the official Willcutts Report showed the guard on duty testified that Forrestal appeared to be asleep with the lights off when he checked in.

David Martin’s book further highlighted major anomalies omitted from initial public reports. These include unexplained broken glass in Forrestal’s room and dynamic scratch marks on the outside windowsill.

Evidence suggested a struggle in the room, with broken glass photographed on his bed.

Contrary to reports of a mental breakdown, several doctors had previously indicated that 4 out of 5 doctors felt Forrestal was not suffering from severe mental illness, with some suggesting he was misdiagnosed.

Martin believes this is evidence that stories of Forrestal’s “sudden breakdown” prompting hospitalization were likely false.

David Martin concluded the strange death of James Forrestal was in fact an assassination that was covered up as a suicide. His view is widely shared by other researchers.

Martin frames the assassination as one of the earliest operations of the post-WWII American “Deep State” and foreign intelligence, namely Mossad.

He outlines the primary geopolitical motives for Forrestal’s removal as his opposition to the creation of Israel.

Forrestal was the most prominent cabinet official arguing against US support for the partition of Palestine. He believed it would permanently destabilize the Middle East and jeopardize Western access to oil.

Forrestal argued that the American military machine and civilian industrial expansion relied heavily on Middle Eastern petroleum.

He strongly believed that backing a Zionist state would deeply alienate Arab nations. This alienation, he warned, would jeopardize US access to oil pipelines and vital Persian Gulf supplies.

As a fierce anti-communist, Forrestal feared that Middle Eastern instability would open the door for the Soviet Union to expand its influence in the region.

He believed a war between Arabs and Jews would destabilize the area and leave it vulnerable to Soviet intervention.

Forrestal famously told White House advisors to “look at the numbers,” pointing out that there were roughly 30 million Arabs compared to 600,000 Jews.

He believed the Arab forces would eventually overwhelm a Jewish state, potentially forcing the U.S. to deploy its own military forces to defend it.

This was a commitment he felt the post-WWII, heavily demobilized US military could not afford.

According to his published diaries, Forrestal was deeply critical of how both the Democratic and Republican parties handled the issue.

He complained that President Harry Truman’s administration was basing crucial national security decisions on capturing the domestic “Jewish vote” and securing campaign contributions in key states like New York.

He unsuccessfully attempted to build a bipartisan agreement to completely remove the Palestine issue from American domestic politics.

Martin concluded that Forrestal’s resistance to the establishment of Israel earned him the ire of the Zionists and the Jewish community within the US and Israel, who decided to remove him once and for all.

Parallels can be found with other suspicious deaths of prominent anti-Zionist figures in this period, including T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia”. They may have been assassinations by the same perpetrators.

The Zionists themselves have documented Forrestal’s opposition to the establishment of Israel in their own records.

An article titled “The Wise Men” Oppose U.S. Recognition of Israel, published on Temple Beth Sholom, described Forrestal and George Marshall’s opposition to Israel. https://tbshamden.com/odds-a-ends/list-of-restricted-funds/

Marshall was the US Army Chief of Staff in WW2, the Secretary of State when Israel was established, and the architect of the Marshall Plan. He shared Forrestal’s negative view on the formation of the Jewish state.

Why is it important and relevant today?

The strange death of James Forrestal is a reminder how far Israel has been willing to go to eliminate its perceived threats.

It vindicates researchers like Michael Collins Piper who concludes that Israel murdered President Kennedy to protect its nuclear program.

Many senior US officials opposed Israel’s establishment as they believed it would create regional chaos, which proved prescient.

Israel, from its inception, has been an outlaw and a terrorist state capable of doing anything with the help of US Zionists. This includes the 9/11 false flag attack that triggered US “forever wars” in the Middle East for the benefit of Israel.

Similarly, the strange assassination of Charlie Kirk seems to have Israel’s hand all over it. Is Trump also under Israeli threats to launch the insane war on Iran despite his campaign promises?

As we move into another phase of US’s war on Iran for Israel, it is worth bearing in mind what kind of rogue actor the world is dealing with.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on The strange death of James V. Forrestal, the first US Secretary of Defense

Russia Continues to Pound Ukraine

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | July 19, 2026

While the Western media continues to hype Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia as incredible military achievements that are sapping Russia’s will to fight, the reality is that Russia continues an unrelenting bombing and missile campaign that is destroying critical Ukrainian assets and infrastructure from Kyiv to Odessa.

On July 18–19, 2026 (primarily overnight into July 19), Russia conducted a major combined missile and drone attack, with Kyiv as the primary target. This was described as one of the largest ballistic missile assaults on the capital since the start of the war in February 2022. Reports indicate more than 40 ballistic missiles (including Iskander-M, S-400, and possibly Zircon hypersonic types), plus guided air-launched missiles (Kh-59/69) and others, destroyed targets across Kyiv. Multiple waves targeted Kyiv over roughly 30–60 minutes. In addition, Russia launched over 90–125 Shahed-type, Gerbera, Italmas, and decoy drones launched from various directions.

The previous day, July 17-18, Russia launched seven missiles and 90 drones on the Odesa Oblast. The missile mix was two Iskander-M ballistic missiles, two Onyx anti-ship missiles, and three Kh-59/69 air-to-surface missiles, alongside the 90 drones of various types. This attack has effectively closed the ports at Odessa and Nykolaiv and marks Russia’s a complete break with the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which was brokered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Turkish President Erdoğan in the summer of 2022.

After the February 2022 invasion, Russia’s navy blockaded Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, and Ukraine mined its own coastal approaches to deter an amphibious assault. Between them, roughly 20+ million tonnes of grain were trapped in silos, unable to move — Ukraine being one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn, barley, and sunflower oil. Global wheat prices spiked, and the countries most exposed were food-import-dependent states in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Somalia, Yemen among them). The UN framed it explicitly as a hunger-crisis intervention, not a favor to Ukraine’s economy.

Alongside the BSGI, the UN signed a separate three-year Memorandum of Understanding with Russia, committing to help facilitate Russian food and fertilizer exports to world markets. This is the piece often forgotten… Russian food and fertilizer were never formally under Western sanctions, but Moscow argued that secondary effects — sanctions on banks (including SWIFT cutoffs), shipping insurance, and port access — were choking its own agricultural exports. This MoU was Russia’s price for allowing Ukrainian grain out and, despite Moscow’s persistent complaint that the UN failed to deliver on it, Russia did not enforce a blockade until now.

Although Russia finally withdrew from the BGSI on 17 July 2023, declaring the initiative dead and its Black Sea guarantees void, Russia did not move to impose a full blockade on Odessa nor did it routinely attack grain ships entering and leaving Odessa. The ports in Odessa and Nykolaiv were able to conduct normal trade activities, notwithstanding occasional Russian attack on the Odessa port and grain infrastructure.

Now the situation is completely different. Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, announced two weeks ago that Russia was at war with Ukraine and its NATO allies. This was a clear shift from describing the fight with Ukraine as a Special Military Operation. The intense and varied attacks by Russia since July 6 on Kyiv and other key cities still held by Ukraine, marks a decisive shift by Russia in how it will manage the war with Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Russia Continues to Pound Ukraine