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German sponsorship of Zionist settlements exposed

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | September 5, 2026

Exploiting academic institutions as a cover, between 2017 – 2021 the German government surreptitiously funnelled millions into a highly discriminatory project facilitating expansion of Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank. Under its auspices, public money and knowledge production were committed to an inherently unlawful, immoral enterprise in flagrant breach of Berlin’s international legal obligations, and domestic restrictions on academic research efforts. The unknown scandal is just one component of how, in plain sight, Germany covertly assists Zionist settlement expansion, and Palestine’s total erasure.

These are the shocking findings of a collaborative investigation by a cluster of German student Palestine solidarity organisations, including Not In Our Name, and Academic Opposition. Their report is a groundbreaking effort, critically examining German state-sponsored water research in conjunction with Zionist entity institutions. It’s a silent conspiracy vast in scope, involving multiple state and quasi-state entities in Berlin and Tel Aviv financing academic research in seemingly innocuous fields, which directly abets Zionist ethnic cleansing and land seizure in the West Bank and beyond.

The investigation focuses on a single project to emerge from the dark alliance between German and Israeli academia, known as MedWater. For four years, Berlin funded a consortium coordinated by the Technical University of Berlin, alongside Göttingen and Würzburg universities, to the tune of €1,818,348. Their successfully fulfilled objective was to develop a tool modelling the impact of adding or removing water wells. That feature, defined in direct conjunction with “Israel’s” water authorities, was then transferred to Tel Aviv’s national water company.

Specifically, the tool identifies ideal areas for construction of new wells, in a territory where Palestinian water sources are systematically demolished, and Palestinians are refused permits to drill new ones. Known as the Western Mountain Aquifer, it’s the largest and most productive groundwater body shared between “Israel” and the occupied West Bank. Palestinians were completely absent from working sessions convened in Al-Quds [Jerusalem] related to MedWater, and there is no apparent way in which Palestinians will, or even can, benefit from the effort in any way.

This is despite the consortium explicitly stating in submissions to German state ministries their tool sought to advance the UN’s sixth Sustainable Development Goal: “By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all.” The completed MedWater system was unveiled in October 2020, at a Berlin conference. Its public demonstration included calculating the impact of adding four new wells to the West Bank’s Al-Khalil [Hebron] Governorate. Only Zionist settlers could realise that vision on-the-ground, of which the consortium was well-aware.

Even more damningly, at the project’s end the tool was contracted to “Israel’s” national water company Mekorot, which manages wells in Zionist settlements throughout the West Bank. By contrast, the Palestinian Water Authority, officially named as a MedWater partner, was not provided a subcontract and is not publicly listed among its beneficiaries today. Unreported at the time, and tacitly concealed from view ever since, it’s just one way Germany has been unaccountably supporting a genocidal Zionist enterprise begun back in 1967.

‘Near Impossible’

In its July 2024 Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice ruled unambiguously that all states are obliged “to distinguish, in their dealings with Israel, between Israeli territory and the territory occupied since 1967, and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining that situation.” A decade earlier, Berlin seemingly enshrined a codified commitment to this principle in its dealings with Zionist entity academic institutions. Under the so-called Territorial Clause, Germany won’t fund, and Tel Aviv won’t solicit, research projects outside the entity’s pre-1967 borders.

However, when asked how Mekorot’s MedWater contract was remotely compatible with the Clause, Berlin’s ministry of research argued its terms merely limit where research partners may be headquartered. As Mekorot is based in Tel Aviv, there was in fact no legal, regulatory or ethical impediment to the project’s German government funding, despite the company’s well-documented criminal conduct in the West Bank since 1982, when Zionist Occupation Forces handed management of all local water infrastructure it controlled in the territory to Mekorot.

The Territorial Clause is evidently replete with gaping loopholes, which we can assume have been resultantly exploited to provide arm’s length German state sponsorship to completely illegal Zionist settlement expansion all along. Strikingly, this ambiguity is in itself in contravention of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion. The Court specifically honed in on the Zionist entity’s life-threatening restriction of Palestinian water access within the Occupied Territories, as inconsistent with Tel Aviv’s obligations under international law. This may explain why MedWater, while formally undisguised, remained effectively secret.

To get to the bottom of the project, investigators drew on an enormous, disparate corpus of information. This included MedWater reports filed with Germany’s Education and Research Ministry – some not intended for public view, and released in redacted form – presentation materials from numerous project conferences throughout its development, since-memoryholed websites, and peer-reviewed publications by German and Israeli participants. No mainstream outlet has hitherto reported not merely on MedWater, but any illegal German state investment in academic research projects expediting settlement expansion.

An initiative to better manage water resources anywhere in the world may seem benign. But MedWater was born in a context of methodical, longstanding Zionist denial of Palestinian access to water, and a segregationist legal apparatus explicitly assisting Jewish settlement, particularly in regard to vital natural resources like water. In August 1967, two months after the West Bank’s occupation began, Zionist Occupation Forces issued Military Order 92, seizing total control of water resources in territory they illegally controlled.

Three months later, Military Order 158 further prohibited Palestinians throughout the West Bank from constructing new water installations and/or associated infrastructure, without first obtaining a permit from the ZOF. Amnesty International judges such permissions “near impossible to obtain.” Deliberately intended to deprive Palestinians of water, Zionists are not subject to equivalent constraints. Meanwhile, Mekorot has over the past four-and-a-half decades deliberately sabotaged Palestinian wells while tapping occupied West Bank springs to supply the entity, and illegal settlers, with water.

This in itself produces an apartheid in daily water consumption. Zionists, including settlers, use an average of 247 litres of water a day per person – three times that of Palestinians in the West Bank, at 82.4 litres. Palestinian water consumption collapses to just 26 litres per capita on average daily, in communities unconnected to the water grid. Such consumption is comparable to active disaster zones. Mekorot also routinely shuts off supply to Palestinian communities when reserves run low, such as during summer.

‘European DNA’

The Zionist strategy is gruesomely simple – neutralise Palestinian control over the West Bank’s water resources and progressively diminish their access, creating an environment in which the territory is literally uninhabitable and they’re forced to leave. Research jointly published by the UN and Germany’s federal institute for geosciences and natural resources indicates 212 million cubic metres of water flows from the West Bank to Israel annually. The report explicitly records how since 1967, Palestinians “have not been authorised to drill a single well” locally.

All along, discriminatory laws and ratcheting settler land grabs have increasingly deprived Palestinians of access to other basic fundamentals of existence too. An ever-expanding network of ZOF checkpoints and roadblocks, combined with prejudicial and arbitrary restrictions on movement, vandalism and demolition of farming machinery, greenhouses, and roads, and savage Occupation Force and settler violence makes it progressively dangerous, if not impossible, for farmers to tend crops or rear livestock. Palestine’s agricultural industry is all but decimated, with Zionists literally harvesting the pestilential spoils.

That these genocidal machinations have endured untrammelled for so many decades is a testament to the impunity with which “Israel” is permitted to act by its international partners – Germany being a particularly perverse example. Proudly, it is the only country to make public remembrance of its criminal past the cornerstone of its collective national identity. But Berlin’s much-vaunted “memory culture” has only ever atoned for historic sins by encouraging and undergirding comparable contemporary crimes, as long as they’re committed by the Zionist entity.

WaterMed is a minor fragment within a much wider, silent framework of German state-supported repression and erasure of Palestinians, sustained via unadvertised academic partnerships and joint research efforts with Zionist entity-based institutions. A new initiative, Academic Complicity, exposes how dozens of German universities have over many years conducted projects large and small, one way or another justifying and aiding never ending settlement expansion. One might hope this triggers accountability and consequences for Berlin, given its domestic and international legal obligations.

However, the bonds between Germany and the Zionist entity are so deep and cohering, it transcends trivial considerations of law. In October 2025, former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo made a number of highly revealing disclosures on how his personal and professional experience has convinced him “Germans are committed to Israel.” After all, “our DNA is much closer to the European DNA than the American one,” as “most of the Jews who settled in Israel came from Europe…not North America”:

“European history is part of our identity in terms of family connections, culture, even politics. Europe’s borders resulting from wars were constantly shifting, and Europeans wandered throughout the continent, settling in one place before moving on to the next. In that sense, and in terms of depth, discourse, and history, this is all very familiar to us, and is something that manifests itself in every interaction I have with German partners.”

September 5, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Comments Off on German sponsorship of Zionist settlements exposed

The dangerous European illusion about a war with Russia

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 4, 2026

The Leipzig incident exposed something more troubling than the incident itself: the confidence with which German and European authorities seem to approach the possibility of a direct confrontation with Russia.

While German and European authorities go public, in what looks like a ridiculously rehearsed performance, accusing Russia of “hybrid attacks,” it seems clear to any attentive observer that Europeans are completely disconnected from reality.

The central question lies elsewhere: what would happen if Russia actually decided to attack Germany?

The answer would probably be very different from what Europeans seem to imagine.

First of all, the obvious needs to be repeated: Europe is not Ukraine.

The Special Military Operation in Ukraine is taking place in a specific territory, with its own military dynamics and within certain strategic limits. From the earliest stages of the conflict, Moscow established a clear list of strategic objectives to be achieved through conventional means of warfare, while respecting the civilian population and avoiding unnecessary escalation.

There are clear reasons for this approach in Ukraine. Despite the delusional Banderist attempts to rewrite history, the truth is that Russians and Ukrainians have always been one people, sharing common ethnic, cultural, and religious roots. Millions of Russians have Ukrainian relatives and vice versa. An unrestricted war against Ukraine would consequently affect millions of Russians. Therefore, there is nothing surprising about Russia’s strategy of military restraint.

None of this would happen in Europe.

A direct confrontation between Russia and a NATO member would produce completely different calculations. Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and other European countries would not be regarded as fraternal nations occupied by coup juntas. On the contrary, they would be regarded as total enemies, against whom the use of force would face far fewer constraints, if any.

The idea that a potential Russian offensive against Europe would simply consist of more drones, sabotage, and limited attacks against infrastructure seems extremely comforting. And precisely for that reason, it is dangerous. Europeans are provoking Russia while taking the experience of Ukraine as an example of what could happen to them in a potential direct war.

But this calculation is wrong. Russian actions against Europe would be completely different. In Ukraine, Russia’s foremost concern is to spare civilians. Attacks against infrastructure are avoided, offensives are restrained, and even retaliation for Ukrainian provocations on Russian territory is often ignored simply because Russia does not want the violence of a potential escalation to result in the deaths of more Ukrainian civilians.

In Europe, the immediate and total destruction of every enemy target would be the highest priority, regardless of the humanitarian costs. Europeans are not Ukrainians, and the ties between Russia and Western Europe are not the same as the ties Russia has with Ukraine. There would be no comparable pressure within Russian public opinion for restraint in the use of force.

Furthermore, it must be remembered that restraint in the use of force in a war with Europe could actually be dangerous for Russia, since it would be dealing with countries belonging to a collective-defense bloc with nuclear capabilities. Russia would therefore be forced to launch attacks powerful enough to dismantle the offensive capabilities of its adversaries, regardless of the costs. It would be a matter of security.

This does not mean that Russia wants to start a war against Germany. Nor does it mean that every incident on German territory is automatically part of a Russian military campaign. It means that European governments should take much more seriously the consequences of turning every incident on European territory into another step toward escalation. And, of course, it means that Russia has nothing to do with the recent suspicious incidents in Europe – which could be either sabotage carried out by local militants or carefully prepared false-flag operations.

Berlin has already announced diplomatic measures against Moscow, including the closure of the Russian consulate in Bonn and measures against Russian institutions on German territory. The European Union is discussing new sanctions. The more Europe turns incidents of this kind into direct political confrontation, the greater the need to understand where the limits of escalation lie. Russia certainly does not care about diplomatic actions, but Moscow is definitely growing tired of Europe’s participation in Ukrainian terrorism.

Europeans should ask themselves whether they are really prepared to discover, through their own experience, what the Russian response would be in the event of an open war.

They definitely should not try to see these consequences.

September 5, 2026 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , , , , | Comments Off on The dangerous European illusion about a war with Russia

6-Week-Old Amish Infant With Fatal Genetic Condition Died From Measles, Coroner Confirms

By Henrick Karoliszyn, DSW | The Defender |September 4, 2026

A 6-week-old Amish infant with a neurological genetic disorder died from measles, Lancaster County Coroner Stephen Diamontoni said today. Lancaster Online first reported the death and Diamontoni’s comments.

The baby girl, born with Amish lethal microcephaly, a condition that typically causes infants to die within six months of birth, died on Aug. 18, the coroner said.

“Those children are sick from birth and actually are placed on palliative care from the time of birth,” Diamontoni told Lancaster Online today. “They typically only live 5 or 6 months of age and the majority of those children die as a result of a respiratory infection of any kind, because their brain is very small and they don’t have the capacity to fight those infections well.”

The infant’s death “was not unexpected,” Diamantoni said. He said the Clinic for Special Children in Leacock Township handled the case. When reached for comment, the clinic refused to comment, citing privacy laws.

Diamantoni said he did not know if this was the second “measles-associated” death initially reported on Aug. 25 by Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons said today in a statement that the county still could not confirm the death of the infant as “measles-associated.”

Parsons said state officials provided little information beyond saying the 6-week-old — and a newborn whose death the coroner confirmed on Aug. 25 — were both “unvaccinated.”

Parsons questioned that characterization, noting that a 6-week-old infant would not ordinarily have had an opportunity to receive a routine measles vaccination.

“If this is the second [‘measles-associated’ death] case, the ‘unvaccinated’ label would again be deceptive.”

The newborn, also Amish, died during childbirth. The infant tested positive for measles, but according to the coroner, she died of a ruptured spleen — not of measles.

Parsons said that if the newly identified infant is the second case that was announced Aug. 25 by the state, officials should have provided additional context while protecting the family’s privacy.

“There are obviously significant relevant facts that should have been discussed about the case,” Parsons said, adding that those facts could have been presented “in a careful,” accurate and honest way without identifying the infant or family.

“That was not done,” he wrote on X. “The opposite was done. The few facts revealed were done so in a deceptive and inflammatory manner.”

Parsons also said the delay in notifying the coroner’s office prevented his staff from conducting what he described as a full, routine investigation, including a review of physical evidence.

“Much of the debate and invasion of privacy could have been avoided by state officials being honest and forthright at the beginning of this, rather than forcing the people of Lancaster County to track down information a piece at a time,” he said.

RFK Jr. ‘undermined public health,’ says Shapiro

After today’s statement to the press about the 6-week-old infant, Shapiro continued relaying on X that both cases were the “first two measles-associated deaths in 35 years.”

The Pennsylvania Department of Health uses the term “measles-associated” when there is laboratory or epidemiological evidence of the virus.

Shapiro criticized U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying:

“Instead of listening to the real doctors and public health experts, RFK chose to sow doubt, play politics, direct the CDC not to acknowledge these deaths, and even accuse me of fabricating these tragedies. That led to a firestorm of conspiracy theories that denied these families’ pain, invaded their privacy, and undermined public health.

“It’s long past time for RFK to stop playing games with people’s lives, report these deaths accurately on the CDC dashboard, and heed the guidance of actual medical experts so people get accurate information to discuss with their trusted health care providers and can best protect themselves and their children against this deadly disease.”

Shapiro used his initial announcement of the deaths on Aug. 25 to criticize the Trump administration’s approach to vaccination policy and public health messaging.

“When the information we see coming from the federal government, in some cases, isn’t driven by facts and by science, it makes it even more confusing for parents, and that has a serious impact,” Shapiro said.

Kennedy responded on social media by accusing Shapiro of announcing the deaths with “giddy delight” for partisan purposes. He called the governor’s announcement “unseemly” and accused him of using the COVID-19 playbook, which includes “the weaponization of infectious disease fears for political gain.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decision not to include the deaths in its national count has only added to the dispute.

“CDC has a responsibility to ensure its reporting accurately and transparently reflects what is known and what remains unconfirmed,” a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Defender. “The two measles-associated deaths announced by Pennsylvania have not been confirmed based on the information currently available to CDC.”

The CDC said the current data reflect “the best available information and our commitment to transparency and telling the American people the truth.”

The measles outbreak continues

Meanwhile, the measles continues to spread in Pennsylvania and beyond.

The U.S. has recorded its highest number of measles cases in 35 years.

As of today, 577 people in Pennsylvania had contracted measles in the current outbreak, with 115 new cases reported in the state in the past week. The state also reported 87 hospitalizations as of Aug. 31, with Lancaster County among the hardest-hit areas.

Lancaster County is home to the country’s largest Amish community, where vaccination rates have historically been lower than in the general population. Pennsylvania health officials estimated last year that only about 25% of Lancaster County’s Amish population had received the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

The Amish Church has no official doctrine prohibiting vaccination. The parents of the newborn who died of a ruptured spleen told The Atlantic that their decision not to vaccinate their children was not politically motivated and was not based on extensive research.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health says vaccination remains the best protection against measles and has expanded vaccination clinics in response to the outbreak. The state says more than 35,000 Pennsylvanians received an MMR vaccine in July, about 10,000 more than in a typical month.

The Lancaster County coroner’s office and the Pennsylvania Department of Health ignored several requests for comment from The Defender.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

September 5, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on 6-Week-Old Amish Infant With Fatal Genetic Condition Died From Measles, Coroner Confirms

The Fall of Brazil’s Tyrannical Judge May Be Imminent: Moraes and His Sleaze Are Exposed

By Glenn Greenwald | September 4, 2026

Alexandre de Moraes spent months denying corrupt profits from a collapsed bank. The proof is now overwhelming, and his desperate moves to survive may imperil Lula’s re-election and Brazil’s democracy.

Exactly one month before Brazil holds its presidential election, the country is drowning in a corruption scandal and institutional civil war, the gravity of which is impossible to overstate. At the center of it is Brazil’s authoritarian and increasingly unhinged Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who was sanctioned by the U.S. as a human rights abuser in 2025 after he banned X from Brazil for one month over its refusal to censor at his behest, then ordered money removed from Starlink’s accounts to pay for X’s fines.

While polls all year have shown that the incumbent left-wing president, 80-year-old Lula da Silva, has a modest lead to win his fourth term, more recent polls have shown him tied with his primary adversary, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro is the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, now imprisoned for 28 years by Judge Moraes on charges of plotting a coup after losing the 2022 election to Lula.

Despite once being affiliated with the center-right, Moraes has become Lula’s closest and most important ally, and the left’s most beloved hero. For that reason, Moraes’ exploding scandal can only further weaken Lula heading into the election. Other than Uruguay, Brazil is the last country in South America still governed by a left-wing or center-left government, with one country after another electing leaders on the right: Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, etc.

Moraes’ conduct is so unprecedentedly sleazy and corrupt that it is difficult to report without provoking understandable doubt. How could it be possible that a democratic country is tolerating, for even one day, a Supreme Court judge remaining in power if his personal corruption and grave abuses of power are really this manifest? Over the past 48 hours, Brazil’s leading newspapers, previously virtually unanimous in their support of Moraes, have demanded his immediate resignation.

At the center of the scandal is a collapsed, fraudulent bank called Banco Master. In 2025, the Central Bank ordered its liquidation after it was revealed to be essentially a Ponzi scheme funding the libertine, Dubai- and Miami-based billionaire lifestyle of its Brazilian president, Daniel Vorcaro. It quickly became the worst banking loss in Brazil’s history by far, with estimated losses of at least $40 billion. Vorcaro was arrested last November at São Paulo’s international airport as he tried to board his private jet to Dubai to flee justice.

The bank’s collapse, Vorcaro’s arrest, and the ensuing criminal investigation have produced a tsunami of evidence showing how Vorcaro — as he was stealing from depositors, including retirees and civil servants — was secretly shoveling huge sums of money and other assets of value to Brazil’s leading politicians and judges, on both the left and right, with the expectation of protection. One of those most enriched by Banco Master is Lula’s longtime Workers’ Party ally in the Senate, Jaques Wagner; Vorcaro also furnished large sums to the Bolsonaro family, including to Flavio, nominally to finance a film about the former president.

But nobody has been as enriched — or as implicated — by Vorcaro and Banco Master as Justice Moraes. Late last year, Brazil’s Globo media empire — for years Moraes’ loyal supporter — revealed that the bank had given an undisclosed 18-month contract to Moraes’ wife worth $27 million.

While Moraes’ wife is an attorney, and the obscene sums under the contract were for “legal services,” she is an ordinary and mediocre one at best. Even Brazil’s best and largest law firms said that such a sum would be unthinkable for vague “legal services,” let alone that kind of generational wealth paid to the small family law firm composed of Moraes’ wife and their two lawyer children. In other words, there would be no rational reason why this bank would enter into such a lavish multi-million dollar contract with Moraes’ wife absent an agreement to secure the influence and protection of her very powerful husband.

More incriminating revelations about Moraes came fast and furious in the first two months of the year. He called the Central Bank to intervene on behalf of the corrupt bank that had just bestowed on him generational wealth. He and Vorcaro were communicating with each other in the days leading up to Vorcaro’s arrest. At least $17 million had been paid by the bank to Moraes’ wife under the original contract. Facing intense public pressure, she could not provide any documentation or explanation of what “legal services” she furnished that would remotely justify this bizarre contract.

In the face of all these media reports, Moraes denied essentially everything. Even though Globo had the text messages between him and Vorcaro, verified by the Federal Police, he simply lied and said they were not on his phone. That had the effect of somewhat stifling the scandal — until this week, when it exploded in a way that few scandals have.

When the Banco Master criminal case first arrived at the Supreme Court, it was conveniently assigned to a judge who had as much incentive as Moraes to hide it all. That judge immediately put the entire case under “absolute secrecy,” meaning nothing would be disclosed to the public. But when it was revealed that this judge and his family had their own massive, hidden financial ties to Vorcaro and the bank, he was forced to step aside, and the case was then randomly reassigned to Justice André Mendonça, one of only two judges on the 11-member court appointed by Bolsonaro.

Last week, Vorcaro told Mendonça that he was being physically and psychologically tortured in prison and threatened with death at the hands of the Lula-appointed head of the Federal Police. Mendonça thus ordered the Federal Police to turn over to him the results of their investigation into Vorcaro’s communications with anyone on the Supreme Court or Federal Police. On Monday, key excerpts of the 218-page report on Moraes’ genuinely shocking behavior, and then the full report itself, were disclosed by the daily newspaper Estadão.

Among the revelations: the wealth lavished on the Moraes family by Vorcaro was not limited to a $27 million contract, but also included a separate $10 million contract for his wife, free use of Vorcaro’s private jets and helicopters, and even credit cards for each of their children with a monthly limit of $70,000, with a total value of close to $40 million. Over the last two years, the Moraes family has acquired a virtual real estate empire, including a new $3.5 million mansion in the nation’s capital, Brasília, as well as other residences.

Just as one would expect, the generational wealth bestowed on the Moraes family from Vorcaro and the bank’s stolen deposits was not for free. Moraes was expected to do a great deal for the corrupt billionaire, and he did.

When conversing via WhatsApp, Moraes and Vorcaro both sent their messages using the app’s “one-time visualization” feature to ensure that their messages would be destroyed after they were read once. In several cases over which he presided, Moraes himself has classified the use of this feature as intentional obstruction of justice when he cited it to justify sending people to prison before trial.

Unfortunately for Moraes, the Federal Police were able to recover Vorcaro’s deleted messages to him (but not yet Moraes’ texts to Vorcaro, because they have not yet seized Moraes’ phone). Those recovered deleted messages show Vorcaro speaking extensively with Moraes about how he could escape and/or block prosecution, including asking Moraes about which dates he should flee the country to avoid imminent arrest, along with extensive discussions about Moraes’ efforts to have the chief prosecutor and the head of the Federal Police block criminal investigations. In several messages, Vorcaro proclaimed himself to be “in debt for life” to Moraes and with “life-long gratitude” to the judge for everything he did for him.

And, of course, Vorcaro appeared to have known exactly when the police were coming for him since they arrested him at the airport as he tried to flee to Dubai. Just two weeks ago, Moraes, along with the rest of the Supreme Court, ordered two Rio de Janeiro politicians indicted and arrested for having allegedly leaked details of an imminent police operation in advance to arrest criminals with whom they are associated.

Some of Moraes’ efforts to reward Vorcaro and the bank for the generational wealth bestowed on his family were out in the open. In one case highlighted by CNN Brasil, Moraes used his power as a Supreme Court judge to pause a criminal case against the bank that threatened its value, doing so shortly after the bank signed the $27 million contract with Moraes’ wife.

With these facts confirmed, this is about as clear-cut a case of proven abuse of power and massive corruption as one can imagine. On top of all of that, this shows that Moraes lied constantly to the public when denying these interactions when they were first reported: a rather significant finding given that he has been censoring and even imprisoning political enemies of Lula’s government and his own critics for years by accusing them of spreading “fake news.”

But one does not acquire and exercise authoritarian power for years without a network of powerful enablers and an entrenched tyrannical mindset that believes any criticism, questioning, or challenge of his power is, by definition, criminal. And Moraes, as he has done for years, is now insisting that the real criminal is not himself but the person who caused his conduct to be revealed to the public: in this case, his own colleague on the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, Moraes issued an order essentially putting Judge Mendonça under criminal investigation for “abuse of power.” Moraes’ allies in the Brazilian Senate, controlled by its Moraes-allied president, have long blocked impeachment attempts against Moraes but are now insisting that Judge Mendonça should be impeached for bringing to light this extraordinary wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Lula — desperate to distance himself from the incomparable sleaze of his closest judicial ally, but also afraid of what they will do to him if he publicly sides against them — has been left to read incoherent and painfully vague statements from a teleprompter filled with meaningless bromides about how nobody is above the law. One strong weapon of leverage Moraes and his allies hold over Lula’s head is that Lula’s son is enmeshed in an extremely serious corruption scandal involving his alleged trading of influence for lobbyist profit, which Lula’s party is desperately trying to suppress until after the election.

What has happened here is a lesson for all Western democracies. The Brazilian establishment purposely vested Moraes with unlimited and unconstitutional powers in the name of “saving democracy” from Bolsonaro. They watched for years, with some growing discomfort, as Moraes went further and further in his authoritarian zeal. They assumed — or at least hoped — that once the Bolsonaro movement was smashed and prevented from contesting future elections, Moraes would then voluntarily return those powers and everything would return to normal.

But anyone with an even fleeting knowledge of history, or human nature, would have known that this would not have happened. Many of us spent years warning that these “emergency powers” would become permanent, citing the model of post-9/11 “emergency powers” in the U.S. that are now permanent. But all to no avail: Moraes was too valuable to try to rein him in any way.

So, now, the establishment forces in media and politics that created this tyrannical Frankenstein are trying to do everything possible to constrain their monster. But in many ways, he has become far more powerful than his creators. He is also clearly inebriated with his own power and righteousness, making him willing to do literally anything to preserve it and ensure his survival. All of this is leaving the outcome of this remarkable scandal, the ensuing constitutional crisis, and even Brazilian democracy itself very much in doubt.

Three other points:

(1) As noted, polls in Brazil basically now show a tie between Lula and Flavio Bolsonaro in the expected run-off election between the two. Kalshi has begun to reflect the rapidly changing expectations;

(2) I was on Piers Morgan’s program this week to discuss a wide range of issues, including the Iran War. You can watch that here.

(3) We conducted our live weekly Q&A last night, as we always (or almost always) do on Thursday night, where we respond to and interact with the questions, comments, and critiques of our subscribers. You can watch that here.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Comments Off on The Fall of Brazil’s Tyrannical Judge May Be Imminent: Moraes and His Sleaze Are Exposed

Reporters Without Borders calls for EU to close loopholes allowing Europeans access to censored Russian media

RT | September 4, 2026

The EU- and US-funded press watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has called for tighter controls on AI-based search technology, after discovering that chatbots bypass European censorship laws and present Russian media sources banned by in Western Europe to users.

The Paris-based RSF, which lists EU and the US National Endowment for Democracy among its backers, found that popular AI services can provide RT articles, links, excerpts, and news summaries to web users. “Public chatbots can access these websites and redistribute their content,” a statement by the organisation claimed on Wednesday.

The EU and UK have banned numerous Russian news outlets since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including RT and Sputnik. Moscow has denounced the EU-wide ban as an attempt to silence coverage of the conflict that contradicts Brussels maximalist political stance.

The censoorship has since spread across virtually every publishing channel, including websites, apps, chats and social media. RT has been blocked and removed from practically all Western tech platforms, while RT France was forced to close in 2023 after its accounts were frozen and RT America suffered a similar fate in 2024.

Though VPN technology is used by a significant portion of netizens, making RT’s counter-mainstream reporting accessible to its loyal audience, in July, the EU’s top court ruled that even individuals running free, non-commercial websites can be found guilty of redistributing RT content.

RSF asked popular AI services to retrieve international news exclusively from sanctioned outlets, including RT, Sputnik, and RIA Novosti.

ChatGPT and Grok emerged as the “leading bots for circumventing EU sanctions,” retrieving headlines and providing links, excerpts and detailed summaries. ChatGPT complied “without reservation,” according to RSF, while Claude responded with “unfailing consistency.”

French AI-bot Vibe located the requested material on VKontakte (known as ‘Russia’s Facebook’) and through an app carrying Telegram posts. RSF praised its “remarkable ingenuity” and described the bot as a “resourceful sleuth.”

Gemini cited sanctions to refuse requests while Meta AI, whose parent company unilaterally banned RT from Facebook and Instagram in September 2024, was the only chatbot tested that “consistently refused” to provide the requested material.

RSF called on the European Commission to investigate ChatGPT under the EU’s Digital Services Act – a raft of legislation that allows the EU to manufacture consensus and alienate dissent from narratives it wishes to impose on its population. The RSF, which is funded by the bloc and the controversial US NED called for cases to be taken over other AI services capable of providing access to sanctioned Russian media.

Video Report

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Reporters Without Borders calls for EU to close loopholes allowing Europeans access to censored Russian media

Two Palestinians killed, others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza

Palestinian Information Center – September 4, 2026

GAZA – Two Palestinians were killed and several others injured on Friday as Israeli forces continued attacks across the Gaza Strip, including airstrikes, artillery shelling and gunfire, amid ongoing violations of the ceasefire.

An ambulance and emergency services source said one Palestinian was killed and others were injured in an Israeli drone strike west of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.

The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, announced that one of its fighters, Fadi Ali Saeed Al-Abadla, a member of the Al-Qarara Battalion in the Khan Yunis Brigade, was killed.

Providing details of the incident, the Brigades said that at around 3:30 a.m. Friday, a force belonging to what it described as “collaborator militias,” backed by Israeli drones, advanced towards Al-Jumeiza Street in the Al-Qarara area north of Khan Yunis in an attempt to abduct one of its fighters.

The Al-Quds Brigades said its fighters detected the infiltrating force during the attempted abduction and engaged it at point-blank range with grenades and medium weapons, saying that several members of the force were killed or wounded.

The Brigades said Israeli drones then intervened to provide cover for the force’s withdrawal. It added that members of the force shot and killed Al-Abadla, leaving his body at the scene before withdrawing with their dead and wounded.

Three Palestinians, including a girl, were also injured by Israeli fire near Hamad City, north of Khan Younis.

Israeli artillery shelled areas east of Khan Yunis, while Israeli military vehicles opened heavy fire near the Al-Matahin area north of the city.

Israeli military vehicles also opened heavy fire towards northern areas of the Bureij refugee camp.

Israeli airstrikes, artillery shelling hit Gaza City

In Gaza City, an Israeli warplane carried out an airstrike near Mushtaha Street in the Al-Shuja’iyya neighborhood, east of the city, as Israeli artillery simultaneously shelled eastern areas.

Israeli military vehicles and drones also opened fire toward Palestinian homes in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City, while Israeli forces fired illumination flares over the eastern part of the neighborhood.

A local source reported heavy gunfire from Israeli tanks near the Al-Sanafour area, east of Gaza City, as an Israeli Apache helicopter opened fire toward eastern parts of the city.

In the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, an Israeli quadcopter drone opened fire, while another quadcopter fired east of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza City.

Since the ceasefire took effect on Oct. 10, 2025, 1,338 Palestinians have been killed and 4,429 others injured, while 815 bodies have been recovered, according to the latest figures.

The cumulative death toll since the start of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, has risen to 73,474 Palestinians killed, while 174,540 others have been injured.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Comments Off on Two Palestinians killed, others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza

Ex-Pentagon official: US ‘intentionally targeting Iranian civilians’

Press TV – September 3, 2026

A former senior Pentagon official has said that the United States is deliberately killing civilians in Iran after a US missile strike hit a wedding ceremony in Hormozgan Province, which led to the martyrdom of five civilians, including a four-year-old child, and injured more than 70 others.

Wes J. Bryant, who served as the Pentagon’s chief of civilian harm assessments and now works as a war crimes analyst, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that the attack on the wedding in Kouhestak, Sirik County, exposes the real moral and legal standards of the War Department and the Trump administration.

“Is the US intentionally targeting civilians in Iran? It is,” Bryant said. He rejected US Central Command’s claim that American forces never attack civilians, arguing that Washington is “recklessly and negligently endangering and killing civilians” in its war against the Islamic Republic.

Bryant said every target location is recorded at multiple levels of the chain of command. Comparing Tuesday’s wedding massacre with the February US strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh school in Minab, he said the US military would have been able “to report within hours” whether a school or a wedding had been hit. Washington has still not produced a transparent accounting of the Minab slaughter.

No sitting American official has condemned the Kouhestak attack. Vice President JD Vance said only that Washington was “investigating” the reports while declaring himself “extremely skeptical” of Iranian accounts. CENTCOM spokesman Captain Tim Hawkins repeated the stock line that the US military “never targets civilians, unlike the IRGC.” President Donald Trump described the same night’s bombardment as “large and powerful.”

The US military struck the wedding at the home of fisherman Ali Mallahi around 8 to 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday as families gathered for his daughter’s ceremony. Hormozgan authorities named the martyred as four-year-old Amir Ali Karimi, 16-year-old Mohammad Mallahi, 43-year-old Kolsoum Mallahi and Zarkhatoun Taheri. State television later said a fifth victim, a 22-year-old woman, died in hospital; nearly 70 others were wounded, most of them women and children.

Mallahi told state television that those inside were ordinary civilians. Videos from the scene showed a collapsed roof, blood-soaked carpets and guests being treated in Minab, the same city where US missiles destroyed a primary school on the first day of the US-Zionist war.

US senator calls for a full investigation and accountability of US strike

US Senator Chris Van Hollen wrote that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth treats civilian casualties as an afterthought, cuts personnel responsible for preventing them, & boasts that there will be “no stupid rules of engagement.”

“There must be a full investigation & accountability for this strike. And we must end this disastrous war now,” he added.

Defence experts identified munition fragments consistent with a US AGM-84K SLAM-ER cruise missile. The house stood more than 100 meters from a telecommunications tower also hit in the barrage.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called the strike a war crime and part of America’s “catalogue of atrocities” against the Iranian nation, linking it to earlier massacres in Minab, Lamerd and Qeshm.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said a power that “picks targets like Satan and kills like Satan” is Satan. The Iranian Red Crescent wrote to the International Criminal Court demanding an independent investigation. Iran’s UN mission sent a formal letter to the secretary-general and the Security Council describing the bombing of a wedding as a grave breach of international humanitarian law.

IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi, in a message to the victims’ families on Thursday, said the blood of those killed in Kouhestak “will never go unanswered” and would “catch up with those who ordered and carried out this heinous crime.”

He said the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and Iran’s armed forces would continue to guard the sanctity of the martyrs of the second and third US-Zionist-imposed wars, particularly the Battle of Hormuz.

Mourners buried the dead on Thursday in the coastal village, tossing petals over flag-draped coffins. Iran answered the latest US assault with missiles and drones against American bases in the region.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Ex-Pentagon official: US ‘intentionally targeting Iranian civilians’

Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | September 3, 2026 

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced today that the European Union has “officially joined” the American sanctions campaign against Iran — Operation Economic Outcast — and framed Tehran’s choice in the usual absolutes: complete global isolation and a subsistence economy, or a path back to normalcy. It made a commanding headline. It is a hollow one. You cannot embargo a trading partner you have already stopped trading with, and in economic substance that is precisely what Europe did years ago. Today it merely issued a press release about it.

The trade Europe is threatening to withdraw barely exists

One number frames the entire affair. In 2025 the whole of the European Union traded about €3.7 billion in goods with Iran — roughly $4 billion — against Iran’s total foreign trade of some $182.6 billion. Europe therefore accounts for about 2 percent of Iran’s commerce. That is the sum of the leverage now being brandished: a rounding error dressed up as a thunderbolt.

And it is a hollow 2 percent, because the flow runs almost entirely one way. Europe still sells Iran a little machinery, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals — about €3 billion, or 4 to 5 percent of Iran’s import bill. It buys almost nothing back: EU imports from Iran were €0.76 billion, under 1 percent of Iran’s exports, since Europe no longer takes meaningful Iranian oil. Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands make up nearly two-thirds of even this remnant. Withdraw it in full and you bruise a few exporters in Stuttgart and Milan far more than you trouble the treasury in Tehran.

Europe’s leverage was spent years ago

The collapse Europe is now formalizing already happened, slowly, over more than a decade. EU–Iran trade topped €27 billion in 2011 and reached €20.7 billion in 2017, during the nuclear-deal window — a period when Europe genuinely was a major Iranian partner, on the order of 15 to 20 percent of Tehran’s trade. The 2018 US withdrawal began bleeding it out; the trend never reversed; a fresh EU sanctions package in January 2026 drained it further. By 2025 it stood at €3.7 billion. Europe dismantled its own bridge to Iran plank by plank across seven years, and Iran long since built new ones — to China above all, which takes the bulk of its oil, and to the UAE, Turkey, and Iraq for the rest. The marginal Iranian barrel is priced in Shandong, not Rotterdam. There is nothing left in Europe’s hand to take away.

Sanctioning from a sickbed

Here is what makes the gesture worse than empty: Europe is declaring economic war on Iran at the precise moment its own major economies can least afford one — and while they are being bled by the very war Europe is now underwriting.

The eurozone crawled through the first quarter of 2026 at 0.1 percent growth, its weakest in nearly a year, with the composite PMI stuck in contraction and energy inflation running near 11 percent. That last figure is the tell, because it is a direct transmission of this war: the Iran shock and the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz sent fuel prices surging into economies that, unlike the United States, import their energy. The European Central Bank has warned that a prolonged conflict could tip Germany and Italy into technical recession by year’s end.

The particulars are grim. Germany — Iran’s largest European trading partner, and thus the country with the most of that thin trade to forfeit — is also the continent’s biggest casualty. It has already endured two straight years of recession, its manufacturing base has shrunk some 15 percent from its 2017 peak in what economists now call outright deindustrialization, its automotive crown jewel is shedding tens of thousands of jobs, and unemployment sits at a twelve-year high. A recession in 2026 would be its fourth in four years, an outcome with no post-war precedent. France is paralyzed in parallel — a deficit near 5.1 percent of GDP, its fifth prime minister in two years, growth downgraded toward 0.4 percent. Italy limps along near 0.5 percent, its consumers acutely exposed to exactly the energy swings this war is producing.

So the tableau is this: a bloc whose largest economy is deindustrializing under an energy shock, whose second-largest is fiscally ungovernable, and whose third is one bad quarter from recession, has volunteered to prolong the conflict driving its energy bill — by forgoing a trickle of trade that costs Tehran almost nothing and its own exporters rather more. Germany torches a bridge it could use while standing in a house that also is burning.

The one caveat, and why it fails too

In fairness, Operation Economic Outcast was never really about Europe’s own thin trade with Iran. It is a secondary-sanctions weapon — the threat to bar any firm or nation dealing with Iran from the dollar system — and Europe’s theoretical value lies not in the goods it stops selling but in the financial and shipping chokepoints it controls: euro clearing, European banks, the reinsurance and protection-and-indemnity clubs that underwrite tankers. But that leverage aims at Iran’s trade with third countries, chiefly China — and Bessent has conspicuously declined to say whether Washington will actually sanction Chinese banks, because everyone understands what that would cost. Iran, meanwhile, has spent seven years rebuilding its commerce on Chinese banks, yuan settlement, barter, and a shadow tanker fleet engineered to be untouchable by European paperwork. The US naval blockade ostensibly has done more to choke Iranian exports this year than any designation list will. Europe adding its signature raises the compliance risk for the handful of European firms still tempted by Iran. It does essentially nothing to the Chinese refiners who are the actual market.

A sanction is worth what it denies a target that the target cannot easily replace. By that measure Europe’s hand is all but empty: its direct trade with Iran has withered to roughly 2 percent of Tehran’s commerce, in goods Iran already sources from China, Turkey, and the Gulf, and the one channel where Europe might still matter points at a Beijing that Washington will not confront. What makes the move not merely futile but faintly self-destructive is that Europe is making it from a sickbed — its industrial engine stalling, its energy costs inflated by this very war — in order to prolong the fight that is inflating them. The announcement signals Western unity and puts the EU on the record. As a blow against Iran, it is a spent cartridge fired from a trembling hand.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Sanctioning a Ghost: Europe’s Empty Gesture Against Iran

West not safe from Ukrainian terror – Moscow

RT | September 4, 2026

Kiev’s Western backers cannot guarantee that Ukrainian terrorist attacks will not endanger their own citizens, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned.

Moscow has long accused the Ukrainian government of employing terrorist tactics and deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. President Vladimir Putin has described Vladimir Zelensky’s recent threat against foreign airlines operating in Russia as “state terrorism.”

“They (Western nations) have created a monster, and we always said that this monster will go rogue, as did all the monsters they created before,” Zakharova told Izvestia on Friday.

“What guarantee do they have that Zelensky won’t strike their own citizens when carrying out those terrorist attacks?” she added. “Nobody could ever guarantee that.”

In June, a female Ukrainian national carried out a bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured exiled Ukrainian businessman Vadim Ermolaev and members of his family. After returning to Ukraine, she was allegedly murdered by two suspected masterminds of the plot – an active operative of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency and a police officer suspected of secretly working for the domestic security service SBU.

The same agencies were involved in firefights in Kiev this week in what appeared to be a dispute over custody of an HUR operative whom the SBU has accused of involvement in a for-profit plot to organize a political assassination.

German investigators have accused Ukrainian citizens of carrying out the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, which caused one of the most serious incidents of damage to energy infrastructure in recent history.

Media reports have also described clandestine Ukrainian operations in Africa and the Middle East purportedly intended to undermine Russian interests, including the training and arming of local militant groups.

Kiev has also been blamed for dozens of drone attacks targeting commercial vessels involved in Russian maritime trade, a practice Moscow has denounced as outright piracy.

Putin criticized Ukraine’s Western backers in remarks on Thursday, arguing that by failing to condemn Kiev’s criminal actions, they effectively become accomplices.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, War Crimes | | Comments Off on West not safe from Ukrainian terror – Moscow

Ukrainians in Indian jail involved in drone attack on Myanmar passenger plane – report

RT | September 4, 2026

Six Ukrainians and an American currently in prison in India were allegedly involved in a drone attack on a civilian aircraft in neighboring Myanmar, India’s anti-terrorism agency told a Delhi court.

The seven, described as mercenaries, were arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in March from different cities in India while trying to fly out of the country.

The Indian government “has received credible information indicating the involvement of certain Ukrainian and US nationals in a drone attack on a civilian aircraft in Myanmar,” the agency told a Delhi court on August 19 while seeking to interrogate two from the group – Ukrainian Viktor Kaminskyi and American Matthew VanDyke – in prison.

The court granted the agency permission for the interrogation. The details of the court filings were reported by the Indian Express on Friday.

The agency said 14 Ukrainians entered India on tourist visas on different dates and flew to Guwahati in the northeastern state of Assam, where they traveled to the state of Mizoram without the required permits, and entered Myanmar illegally to conduct a “pre-scheduled training on drone warfare, drone operations, assembly, and jamming technology” for ethnic armed groups fighting the military government.

Burmese news outlets reported that a drone struck an ATR-72-600 aircraft of Myanmar National Airlines, which was preparing to depart from Myitkyina Airport to Mandalay, on February 20. The plane, which carried passengers at the time of the attack, suffered damage to its nose, mid-fuselage, and tail sections. It is not clear if the NIA was referring to the same attack.

The drone was a first-person view drone (FPV) of the type that is widely used in the Ukrainian conflict. The mercenaries were arrested on March 13 after they crossed back into India.

The NIA said many of the ethnic armed groups in Myanmar are also known to support certain banned Indian insurgent groups with weapons, military hardware, and training.

The agency earlier claimed it found that several consignments of drones from Europe were delivered by the accused to individuals and groups in Mizoram. The arrested mercenaries also allegedly confessed that they were in contact with and helped in the activities of “unknown terrorists carrying AK47 rifles.”

The agency said it wants to confront Kaminskyi and VanDyke with certain witness statements to “unearth the larger conspiracy” in the case, details of the other suspects, and the masterminds of the operation.

It said data extracted from devices seized from them contained images, videos, voice samples, among other things, which have to be corroborated with direct questioning.

Soon after their arrest, Ukraine rejected “any insinuations regarding the possible involvement of the Ukrainian State in supporting terrorist activities” and demanded that India release its nationals.

VanDyke, the American, is the founder of Sons of Liberty International, which provides military training in conflict zones. He has reportedly been involved in other conflicts, including fighting with Libyan rebels in 2011.

The court in July allowed him special food items and a cook after he complained that the “spicy and oily” prison meals affected his health, but it rejected his request for treatment at a private hospital, and to communicate with his family in the US.

September 4, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Comments Off on Ukrainians in Indian jail involved in drone attack on Myanmar passenger plane – report

Tens of thousands of US university jobs at risk as Chinese students — and their money — stay home

Inside China Business | September 3, 2026

American colleges and universities are seeing another double-digit collapse in foreign enrollments. Chinese students increasingly are opting to study in domestic universities, which are climbing in global rankings, cost little, and afford better career opportunities after graduation. The steep declines are devastating to university budgets. Tuition and fees collected by larger universities are lower by hundreds of millions of dollars annually, while smaller colleges are struggling to survive. Closing scene, Hongen Pavilion, Chongqing

Resources and links: America’s lost Chinese students are staying home instead https://asiatimes.com/2026/08/america…

New Research: Loss of 111,000 International Students Could Cost U.S. Economy $3.4 Billion https://www.nafsa.org/fall2026outlook

Why Americans should care when international students stop coming https://www.luminafoundation.org/news…

International Students Contributed $43 Billion to the U.S. Economy in 2024-2025; Fall 2025 Spending Down by $1.1 Billion https://www.nafsa.org/about/about-naf…

International student enrollment falls amid tighter U.S. visa policies, reports show https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/21/inter…

How New Visa Limits Are Already Affecting Colleges https://www.insidehighered.com/news/g…

Once globally preeminent, U.S. universities are sliding into decline https://hechingerreport.org/once-glob…

Research on Education Services https://www.trade.gov/research-educat…

University of Maryland, College Park, Estimated Cost of Attendance https://marylandglobal.umd.edu/global… Tuition & Costs https://www.admissions.illinois.edu/t…

US Colleges Report 20% Drop in Foreign Students Over Visa Clampdown https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

As U.S. Enrolls Fewer International Students, Universities in Asia Are Going the Other Direction https://time.com/article/2026/05/12/u…

OPT growth pushed USA to record high of international enrolment in 2024//25, but drop in new students this year https://studytravel.network/magazine/…

More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows https://hechingerreport.org/more-than…

America’s STEM graduate shortage is much worse than we thought.    • America’s STEM graduates shortage is much …  

September 4, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Video | , | Comments Off on Tens of thousands of US university jobs at risk as Chinese students — and their money — stay home

A proposal seeks to exploit Americans’ debt to force them into wars against Israel’s enemies

MEMO | September 3, 2026

The debt of Americans should be exploited to force them to fight in wars against Israel’s enemies, a Jerusalem Post commentator has argued, proposing that indebted young Americans be offered full debt forgiveness in exchange for military service.

Writing in the Israeli newspaper, security analyst AJ Jaff said a “federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program” that discharges Americans’ student loan, credit card and other debts after 24 or 36 months of service “would produce voluntary enlistment at scale”.

Jaff, described by the paper as “a senior strategic security strategist and analyst with 20 years of experience across corporate security, military, and geopolitical intelligence”, wrote that “the war with Iran will not be won through airstrikes” and that a ground invasion would require between 750,000 and 1.5 million American troops, against a current active US Army of 452,000.

The article proposed debt relief as the way to fill that gap. “The economics of the indebted American 20- and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available,” said Jaff while explaining that “states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have”.

The proposal has been condemned as confirmation that Israel expects Americans to fight and die in wars fought on its behalf. The Mises Institute, a US think tank, said the article amounted to a call for more Americans “to enlist – to die for Israel”, adding: “The whole point being to further subsidize the state of Israel.”

Users on social media described the proposal as an attempt “to exploit the crippling debt young Americans are carrying by offering them a chance at forgiveness if they’re willing to go die for Israel in the Persian Gulf.”

Responding to the plan, prominent American commentator Glenn Greenwald said: “ Israel pays scummy US politicians in both parties and DC vultures in the lobbying firms to ensure that Americans are forced to send billions to Israel. Then they argue that the debt of Americans should be exploited to force them to fight in wars against Israel’s enemies”.

The proposal to exploit the debt of Americans to fight wars against Israel’s enemies follows a string of remarks by senior Israeli officials suggesting they see US military power as a tool to be wielded on their behalf, while Israel itself stays out of the fighting. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told the Katif Conference for National Responsibility on 21 July that a US war against Iran fought without Israeli participation was “the best for us”, adding, “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, boasted on Israel’s Channel 14 on 30 August that he had used “close to a thousand hours” on American television and his “influence in the United States” over almost 40 years to persuade Washington to take military action against Iran, saying, “It took a long time to bring the US in.” The US had launched military action against Iran on 28 February, an escalation Netanyahu had reportedly been pressing Washington to undertake for months.

September 3, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on A proposal seeks to exploit Americans’ debt to force them into wars against Israel’s enemies

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