US envoy renews threats against Lebanon as Israeli warplanes strike south
The Cradle | October 20, 2025
US envoy Tom Barrack renewed threats against Lebanon on 20 October in an opinion piece published on his social media account, warning that Beirut must “act” or face an “inevitable” Israeli assault.
The US “must assist Lebanon in decisively distancing itself from Hezbollah before the country is overtaken by a growing global shift toward zero tolerance for terrorist organizations.”
“If Beirut fails to act, Hezbollah’s military wing will inevitably face a major confrontation with Israel, at a moment when Israel is at peak strength and Iranian support for Hezbollah is at its weakest,” the US envoy added.
Barrack went on to say that disarming Hezbollah “is not only a security necessity for Israel, but also Lebanon’s opportunity for renewal, the restoration of sovereignty, and a chance for economic recovery.”
This was not the US envoy’s first threat to Lebanon.
In late September, Barrack confirmed Washington’s intention of placing the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) in a direct confrontation with the resistance.
“Who are they going to fight? We’re gonna arm them so they can fight Israel? I don’t think so. So, you’re arming them so they can fight their own people. Hezbollah,” he said. He also warned Lebanon to commit to disarming Hezbollah or face a new Israeli war, while confirming that Israeli forces will not withdraw from south Lebanon until the resistance gives up its arms.
Barrack’s newest comments on 20 October came the same day Israeli warplanes carried out violent strikes on the Al-Mahmoudiya–Jarmaq area in south Lebanon. Israeli drones also buzzed over the capital at low altitude.
A few days earlier, Israel launched its heaviest strikes on Lebanon since the ceasefire, destroying millions of dollars’ worth of reconstruction equipment.
Over 300 people, including scores of civilians, have been killed by Israeli attacks on the country since the ceasefire was reached in November last year. Israel has also expanded the occupation it established during the ceasefire in violation of the deal, and Tel Aviv has said that it will not consider withdrawal until Hezbollah is disarmed first. Washington has publicly backed Israel’s position more than once.
The Lebanese government adopted a decision to disarm Hezbollah in August under heavy pressure from the US.
Hezbollah has rejected the decision. It says it is open to discussing a national defense strategy, which would see its weapons incorporated into the Lebanese army and be available for use in defending the country if needed.
Yet the resistance group has emphasized that these talks cannot take place while Israel continues to attack Lebanon and occupy its territory in the south.
In early September, Lebanese army chief Rudolphe Haikal presented his disarmament plan to the government after being tasked to draft a strategy following the 5 August cabinet decision to disarm the resistance, which Hezbollah continues to reject. Deliberations have been kept confidential, and the army has been ordered to present monthly updates about the implementation.
Given the confidentiality, the timelines of the plan remain unclear. Some Lebanese media reports have said that the government “backtracked” from its decision.
Last month, Barrack said, “the Lebanese … all they do is talk.”
Sweden calls on citizens for ‘war mode’
Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson, Warsaw, Poland, April 3, 2025. © Foto Olimpik / NurPhoto via Getty Images
RT | October 20, 2025
People living in European NATO member states must brace themselves for a possible war with Russia, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND) in an interview published on Sunday.
Jonson’s remarks come as the EU accelerates a broad militarization drive. Brussels has cast Russia as an imminent threat, a narrative Moscow has dismissed as a political distraction from Europe’s domestic crises.
“To preserve peace, we must prepare ourselves both mentally and militarily for the possibility of war,” the official said. “A change in mentality is necessary: We must switch to war mode to resolutely deter, defend, and preserve the peace.”
The push for greater defense spending aligns with calls from US President Donald Trump, who has demanded that European members buy more American weapons – including for Ukrainian use. Jonson justified such purchases, saying that Europe “simply doesn’t have or cannot yet produce” the necessary systems. “Ukraine needs these assets fast,” he said. “If Europe lacks them, it’s logical to procure them from the US.”
The European Commission last week unveiled a roadmap outlining its plans to expand joint arms procurement to at least 40% by 2027. The document emphasized the need to “invest more, invest together, and invest European,” citing global strategic shifts to other regions among “traditional allies.”
Moscow views the Ukraine conflict as a NATO proxy war aimed at undermining Russia’s security following decades of expansion. Sweden is the bloc’s newest member, while Ukraine was promised accession sometime in the future.
Lufthansa announces 100+ route cuts
RT | October 20, 2025
Rising German aviation taxes and fees will force national flag carrier Lufthansa to cut about 100 domestic flights from its forthcoming summer schedule, the company’s chief executive, Carsten Spohr has said.
Government-imposed costs for airlines in Germany have roughly doubled over the past six years, he explained.
“Without a reduction in location costs, further cuts will be unavoidable,” Spohr said. “This involves around 100 domestic flights per week, which could be eliminated again next summer.”
Higher taxes and fees on economy ticket costs are accelerating a shift in the airline’s passenger mix towards first, business, and premium economy cabins.
The complaints from Lufthansa echo long-standing grievances from airline executives about Germany’s aviation cost base, which they argue hinders competitiveness.
Last month Lufthansa also announced plans to cut 4,000 administrative jobs by 2030, with the majority of the cuts taking place in Germany.
In the face of strikes, delayed aircraft deliveries, and underperformance at its mainline business, Lufthansa has been forced to slash its financial guidance twice in the last year and has missed medium-term margin targets set in 2021.
The German aviation industry association (BDL) has warned that the country’s viability as a global hub is in crisis, citing state-imposed costs since 2019. Airlines are now avoiding Germany, BDL Chairman Jens Bischof stated in August, with the number of aircraft stationed in the country by European point-to-point carriers falling from 190 to 130.
BDL estimates that the financial burden on the industry will rise by €1.1 billion ($1.2 billion) in 2025 to €4.4 billion, which will result in the loss of 10,000 jobs and €4 billion ($4.3 billion) in annual economic value.
Does conventional climate science threaten civilization?
By Vijay Jayaraj | American Thinker | October 14, 2025
Practitioners of rigorous scientific methodology — from the 17th century’s Galileo to 1965’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, Richard Feynman — would consider today’s climate research an embarrassment, shaped by uncritical orthodoxy and zealotry rather than genuine testing of hypotheses.
Classical science welcomes skepticism. It thrives in an environment where debate and revision are encouraged. Today’s climate conformists declare the debate “settled” and label those with questions as deniers, effectively outlawing the skepticism that drives scientific progress.
Plenty of 21st-century scientists have objected to this travesty. Dr. Matthew Wielicki, formerly of the University of Alabama, put it bluntly: “Science should be self-correcting. Climate science isn’t. It’s self-preserving.”
Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes that climate dogma has little to do with evidence: “The narrative is a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd scientific narrative.”
In essence, modern climate science has been transformed into a political apparatus dominated by campaign-style advocacy, subverting the foundational principles of evidence-based inquiry.
Climate cultists treat every warming or cooling event as anthropogenic by default, ignoring millennia of natural variation. “While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th- and 21st-century climate changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today,” say scientists writing to the American Physics Society.
Gregory Wrightstone, geologist and best-selling author of A Very Convenient Warming, says that the longer geological record reveals numerous epochs with much higher temperatures and levels of atmospheric CO₂, all predating the influence of modern human activity.
Wrightstone rejects descriptions of current conditions as dangerous, saying that “Earth is growing greener, and temperature-related deaths are declining.” The evidence indicates the planet is not imperiled but flourishing.
Deaths from natural disasters are at historic lows, life expectancy continues to climb, and global crop yields in both advanced and developing economies are at record highs. Rising atmospheric CO2 is associated with improved plant growth, not planetary degradation.
The much-hyped “disappearing islands” of the Pacific continue to exist. Many atolls have grown in size due to coral and sediment accumulation. Arctic sea ice, too, has refused to vanish; the 2025 minimum extent is nearly half a million square kilometers larger than 2007.
Yet none of these realities make it into school textbooks or U.N. briefings. The crisis narrative is perpetuated to sustain a trillion-dollar “green” industry dependent on fear, political support and publicly financed subsidies.
Error-riddled computer models that back doomsday predictions violate core tenets of scientific methodology. When tested against known outcomes, they routinely fail.
In 2014, Dr. Roy Spencer compared real-world satellite data with over 90 climate models. Nearly all the models exaggerated warming. Spencer summarized the absurdity: “If 95% of your models disagree with observations, the models are wrong — not reality.”
Dr. William Happer, a physicist at Princeton University and former scientific advisor to the U.S. government, notes: “Observations anchor our understanding and weed out the theories that do not work. This has been the scientific method for more than 300 years… computer models are not meant to replace theory and observation and to serve as an authority of their own.”
Yet these models drive the global policy agenda. The insistence on short time frames and cherry-picked data appear to support catastrophic scenarios; long-term geological records contradict them. Steve Milloy, author of JunkScience.com, described the phenomenon perfectly: “Climate science has become a political enterprise. The conclusion comes first; the data are adjusted later.”
Science belongs to critical thinkers, not to committees. The climate establishment will collapse as its funding dries up or the public stops believing its prophets. Reality will win — as it always does — but the longer the struggle, the higher the human cost of irrational policies.
Reason, empirical investigation and intellectual freedom have been undermined by a politically charged climate movement, which is a threat to science and civilization itself.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.
US knew Israeli bulldozer, not Hamas, caused deadly Rafah blast: Reports
Press TV – October 20, 2025
Reports have revealed that the US was aware that the deadly Rafah explosion, which killed two Israeli soldiers, was caused by an Israeli bulldozer hitting unexploded ordnance (UXO), not by a Hamas operation.
Journalist Ryan Grim reported on Monday that, according to a source familiar with the matter, both the White House and the Pentagon knew the Rafah incident was the result of an Israeli settler bulldozer running over a UXO, contradicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Hamas had attacked an Israeli tank.
Sources cited by Grim said that after the US administration confronted Israel with its findings, Netanyahu abruptly reversed his position and announced that crossings would reopen within hours. The Pentagon reportedly reached the same conclusion as the White House.
Journalist Curt Mills of The American Conservative also quoted a senior US administration official confirming that “Hamas did nothing. An Israeli tank hit an unexploded improvised explosive device (IED) that had probably been there for months.”
Following Sunday’s explosion, in yet another blatant breach of the ceasefire, Israeli forces launched a new wave of airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, killing at least 15 civilians, including a journalist, in what observers described as an effort to justify renewed aggression.
Refugees sheltering south of the nearby European Hospital said the latest attacks were accompanied by artillery shelling, with explosions shaking parts of Rafah.
They also reported at least 12 airstrikes in eastern Khan Yunis, part of what residents described as a “fire belt.”
The assaults sent thick plumes of smoke rising over the city and caused widespread panic among displaced families.
The revelation further exposes the Israeli regime’s attempts to mislead the public and inflame tensions in Gaza, where its ongoing violations of the ceasefire have deepened an already dire humanitarian crisis.
Analysts say Israel appears determined to provoke further conflict despite the ceasefire signed in Sharm el-Sheikh earlier this month.
Recent strikes on civilian areas have raised fears that Israel intends to derail the agreement and sustain military pressure on Gaza.
Since the ceasefire took effect, Israel’s military has repeatedly breached it, killing at least 97 people and wounding another 230, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
The first phase of the US-brokered ceasefire, which began on October 10, was aimed at bringing an end to Israel’s assault, a partial withdrawal of its troops to a so-called yellow line along Gaza’s borders, and a modest increase in humanitarian aid.
Last Monday, Hamas released all living captives, as well as the remains of 12 of the 28 dead Israeli captives.
In return, Israel freed 2,000 Palestinian detainees and returned 15 Palestinian bodies for every one dead Israeli captive returned.
Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, launched on October 7, 2023, has killed at least 68,000 Palestinians and wounded 170,000, most of them women and children
Experts warn that the true death toll could reach hundreds of thousands once the missing and those buried beneath the ruins are fully counted.
Charlie Kirk Google Searches Prove They PLANNED Assassination!
The Jimmy Dore Show | October 16, 2025
Journalist James Li and others including Baron Coleman have recently been highlighting claims regarding unusual Google search data connected to the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Google searches allegedly made from IP addresses in Washington D.C. and Israel before and after the shooting were ostensibly targeting the hospital, medical examiner, and surgeons associated with the case.
Journal Faces Lawsuit Over Discredited Study Used by GSK to Market Dangerous Antidepressant to Teens
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 14, 2025
The publisher of a decades-old peer-reviewed article claiming that the antidepressant paroxetine, marketed as Paxil, is safe and effective for teens, said it is reviewing the article.
Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed last month against the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) and Elsevier, which publishes the organization’s journal, JAACAP, demands that the journal retract the article.
Attorney George W. Murgatroyd III, acting on behalf of the public, filed the suit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Civil Division.
Published in 2001, the article ignited decades of controversy. Critics say it overstated Paxil’s benefits and downplayed its risks, including increased suicide risk among teens.
Known as the “Keller article,” after lead author Dr. Martin Keller, then chair of psychiatry at Brown University, the paper reported partial results from Study 329, an investigation into whether paroxetine was safe and effective for treating depression in adolescents.
GlaxoSmithKline, now GSK, which manufactures Paxil, funded the study.
The article reported that “paroxetine is generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents” — a claim now widely known to have been based on distorted results.
The study actually found the drug was neither safe nor effective. Internal documents later showed that GSK hired a PR firm to ghostwrite the article, cherry-picking data and recruiting 20 co-authors to lend credibility. The company then used the paper to market Paxil to doctors.
Peer reviewers raised concerns about the study’s data. As soon as the article went live, practitioners wrote multiple letters to the editor asking why statistically significant indications that the drug caused serious adverse events, including “suicidal gestures,” were dismissed in the clinical trials and not addressed in the paper.
According to the complaint, the Keller article became one of the most cited articles supporting the use of antidepressants in child and adolescent depression — even though evidence from two other GSK trials confirmed the drug was ineffective and risky.
Even though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which never approved the drug for use in children and adolescents, raised concerns about the study.
Calls for JAACAP to retract the article began in 2010, bolstered by:
- A 2015 BMJ reanalysis confirming the drug’s dangers and data manipulation.
- Evidence from GSK’s internal files and depositions in other Paxil lawsuits.
- A 2012 U.S. Department of Justice case in which GSK paid $3 billion to settle criminal fraud charges related to Paxil and two other drugs.
Still, the JAACAP and Elsevier have so far refused to retract the article.
Murgatroyd has represented a dozen families whose children died by suicide or were severely injured in a suicide attempt, allegedly as a result of taking Paxil. His litigation team has deposed all the article’s authors and has combed through GSK’s internal documents.
Both JAACAP and Elsevier continue to profit from the article, according to court documents. It costs $41.50 to download from the JAACAP website, and $33.39 to download from Elsevier’s ScienceDirect website.
The complaint asks the court to “redress the knowing publication, distribution, and continued sale of a false and deceptive medical article that has misled physicians, consumers and institutions for over two decades and continues to endanger adolescent mental health and safety as well as public trust in scientific integrity.”
JAACAP last week published an “expression of concern” indicating that the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will manage recommendations and guidance.
COPE is an international, nonprofit organization that provides guidance to journal editors on publication integrity. COPE does not investigate whether there is research or publication misconduct — it only examines whether the journals involved followed its code of conduct.
AACAP did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment. Elsevier responded only that it would need more time to respond to such a request.
Study 329 revealed serious safety risks, including suicidal behavior
Before publishing the Keller article, GSK funded three studies to test the safety and efficacy of paroxetine to treat depression in children and adolescents. The drug failed to demonstrate efficacy in all three trials.
The first study — Study 329, completed in 1998 — also revealed serious safety risks, including suicidal behavior. Later studies confirmed those risks. According to court documents, GSK knew the “disappointing” results of Study 329 would be a commercial disaster for the drug.
However, the study had some minimal positive results, which could indicate the possibility of efficacy. It met 15% of the outcomes the researchers had been hoping for to show that Paxil worked. GSK officials privately conceded these results were not sufficient to show efficacy.
Yet GSK planned to publish selective data from the study in a prestigious medical journal to claim the drug worked.
GSK hires PR firm to write first draft of JAACAP article
The drugmaker hired a private public relations company, Scientific Therapeutics Information Inc. (STI), to write the article. An employee drafted it and sent it to Keller, who was selected to be the lead author and finish the publication process. STI’s role was not listed in the final draft submitted to JAACAP.
Later in 1998, GSK’s second study, number 377, also failed to show efficacy. The study also showed four times the number of serious adverse events related to suicidality as the placebo study, according to court documents.
That same year, although GSK by then knew of two studies showing the drug was ineffective, the drugmaker decided not to publish any data from Study 377 and instead paid “directly or indirectly” three prominent psychiatrists — Karen Wagner, M.D., Ph.D., Dr. Neal Ryan, and Keller, who had worked on Study 329 — to promote Paxil as a safe and effective treatment for adolescent depression at conventions, forums and at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.
The third study, 701, concluded in 2001, also failed to demonstrate efficacy six months before the Keller article was published — yet GSK and JAACAP went ahead with publication.
Twenty authors who were psychiatrists were added as authors of the Keller article. Two GSK employees, James P. McCafferty and Rosemary Oakes — the only authors without medical or doctoral degrees — were also added, although their affiliation with GSK wasn’t disclosed.
Testimonies from depositions in other trials indicated that 10 of the authors didn’t even comment on the paper, and none of them had access to raw clinical trial data — although they all said they did.
None of them disclosed conflicts of interest, and all of them signed off on the article as their work.
GSK used Keller paper to sell $1 billion worth of Paxil to teens
Once JAACAP published the article, GSK’s sales team began promoting Paxil as “safe and effective” for teens.
GSK sent the article to all of its 2,000 Paxil sales reps. In the three years that followed the article’s publication, it is estimated that the company made over $1 billion from sales of the drug to adolescents, the court documents state.
In the following few years, regulators in the U.K. and the European Union issued alerts about the dangers of paroxetine based on its link to suicide ideation in teens.
In 2003, the FDA issued a similar warning, saying there was “no evidence” the drug was effective.
In the following years, some of the authors began to discuss their concerns about suicidality internally, although they made no changes to the article, according to court documents.
Have JAACAP and Elsevier refused retraction to protect authors?
The complaint filed last month alleges that JAACAP editors and Elsevier refused to retract the Keller article “in an apparent attempt to shield at least five of the Keller article authors who are prominent members of the AACAP from possible ramifications of retraction.”
Conflicts of interest among the article’s authors are glaring. Keller, Wagner and Ryan all received money to promote Paxil as safe and effective in the years before publication, according to the complaint.
Two authors, McCafferty and Oakes worked for GSK, the complaint said, and did not disclose that in the article.
Several authors of the Keller article went on to hold influential positions within the AACAP. Wagner was president from 2017-2019.
Dr. Gabrielle A. Carlson also served as president of the organization from 2019-2021. Before that, she was chair of AACAP’s Program Committee from 2011-2014, and won AACAP’s Virginia Q. Anthony Outstanding Woman Leader Award.
Dr. Graham Emslie has served on the JAACAP Editorial Board. Dr. Boris Birmaher has chaired committees in the AACAP and published numerous articles, editorials and organizational practice parameters.
The current editor-in-chief of the journal, Dr. Douglas Novins, who was not an author on the article but holds final decision-making power over retraction, has worked closely with some of the authors — co-authoring editorials with both past presidents.
Dr. David Healy, co-author of the BMJ article that reanalyzed the data from Study 329, told The Defender that for years, he and others who had been investigating this issue assumed the journal had been duped by GSK, but later realized the journal “was not duped — it was complicit.”
Keller and then-editor Dr. Mina Dulcan were close friends, Healy said — a relationship revealed in transcripts of interviews Dulcan did for a set of BBC programs.
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.
Epstein survivor says she was beaten, raped by ‘well-known PM’, referring to Israel’s Ehud Barak
Press TV – October 19, 2025
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a victim of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, has disclosed in her posthumous memoir that she endured brutal beatings and rape at the hands of a prominent political figure in a series of encounters.
In her book titled Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, Giuffre recounted how she pleaded with Epstein to intervene after the “well-known prime minister” subjected her to terrifying experiences and forced her to beg for her life, but Epstein coldly told her it was simply part of her job.
“After the attack, I couldn’t stay a fool. Having been treated so brutally and then seeing Epstein’s callous reaction to how terrorized I felt, I had to accept that Epstein meted out praise merely as a manipulation to keep me subservient,” she wrote. “Epstein cared only about Epstein.”
Giuffre referred to the man as the ‘Prime Minister,’ fearing retribution if she revealed his identity, although she had previously pointed to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in court filings as one of the many elites who had raped her, a claim he has repeatedly denied.
According to Giuffre, she first encountered the ‘Prime Minister’ on Epstein’s private island when she was 18 years old in 2002, where he subjected her to violent and terrifying acts.
She described how he repeatedly choked her to the point of losing consciousness, inflicting extreme fear and violence upon her, which she detailed in her memoir.
The politician “raped me more savagely than anyone had before,” Giuffre said, adding that she immediately went to Epstein to beg him not to send her back to the prime minister.
But Epstein showed indifference, stating, “You’ll get that sometimes,” when confronted with the politician’s brutality.
Epstein later allegedly arranged for Giuffre to have a second encounter with the prime minister in a cabin aboard his private plane, the Lolita Express, during which she spent the time in constant fear of further violence.
Giuffre admitted that prior to the traumatic experiences, she had given Epstein the benefit of the doubt, believing he cared for the girls, but she was forced to confront the truth after his indifference to her suffering at the hands of the prime minister.
“I didn’t know it then, but my second interaction with the Prime Minister was the beginning of the end for me,” Giuffre said, adding she stopped recruiting other young girls for Epstein as he had forced her to do in the past.
Giuffre’s memoir, written before her death in April, is scheduled for release next week, offering a detailed account of her harrowing experiences at the hands of powerful individuals. Giuffre was 41 when she died.
Holocoughs, Emotional Rapes & Bad Signals
By Kevin Barrett | October 19, 2025
The Zionists are obviously waging war on Palestine. It’s a war of extermination—a genocide—and always has been, since there obviously could never be a “Jewish state” in Palestine without the forced disappearance of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately for the Zionists, the Palestinians stubbornly refuse to disappear.
The Zionist war on Palestine is also, of necessity, a war on the entire MENA region. That, too, is inevitable, since the region’s people support their Palestinian brothers and sisters—and recognize that the endlessly-expansionist Greater Israel project is coming for them next.
Given the difficulties of subduing Palestine and MENA, the Zionists also have no choice but to wage another war: an all-out but covert and deniable war on the West. They need to control the commanding heights of the US and Europe, hijack the West’s military and economic power, and use it against the Palestinians and MENA.
The Zionist war to control the West’s commanding heights is not entirely bloodless. It has featured a long list of assassinations and terrorist attacks, including the Kennedy assassinations and 9/11.
But it’s mainly a propaganda war. Its enemy is truth—one might even say reality. Its weapons are lies, big and small, sometimes plausible and sometimes laughable.
9/11, of course, was a very big lie, like the ones Hitler discussed in Mein Kampf:
… in the primitive simplicity of their minds (the masses) more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
Sometimes people tell small lies by invoking alleged health issues. A few days ago Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided testifying in his corruption trial by citing a persistent cough:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained of a cough and a cold during his testimony under cross-examination in the Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday morning, leading the judges to agree to his request to truncate the hearing. (Times of Israel)
Social media wags suggested he should have gone all the way and invoked “The Holocough”—the ultimate excuse for Jews.
When I heard about Netanyahu’s holocough, I remembered Larry Silverstein’s dermatology appointment. Silverstein, who confessed on national television to being party to a decision to “pull” World Trade Center Building 7 on 9/11, was known to eat breakfast every morning in the Windows to the World restaurant at the top of the North Tower. But on September 11, 2001, as Silverstein was leaving the house, his wife reminded him that he had a dermatology appointment. (Were the reptilian scales starting to show through? David Icke wants to know!) Miraculously, a random, barely-remembered dermatology appointment saved Silverstein from being blown to kingdom come… and provided an implausible excuse for behavior betraying foreknowledge of the worst crime ever committed on American soil.
But since all of us have told little lies about health issues—for example, I once skipped school in third grade by claiming not to have recovered from a cold—it’s easy to understand that Netanyahu and his close friend Silverstein might very well have done things like that. But lying outrageously about murderous events like September 11 and October 7, and using those lies to convince the world that the heroes are really the villains and vice versa, is so extreme that most people just can’t wrap their minds around the audacity of such “large-scale falsehoods.”
And speaking of large-scale falsehoods: The Ziomedia lie that Hamas is a bunch of sadistic rapists, while Israelis are nice well-behaved hyper-civilized eternal victims, took another hit this week as the words and physical and mental condition of released captives on both sides told precisely the opposite story. Palestinians showed signs, and told stories, of the unspeakable tortures they routinely experience in Israeli captivity, while most Israelis held by Hamas described kind and courteous treatment:
Omri Miran, 48, a father of two and shiatsu massage therapist, was held in 23 different places in Gaza, above ground and in tunnels, according to his brother Nadav. “Sometimes he would cook food for his captors, and they loved his cooking,” Nadav told the Ynet news site. “He knew exactly what the date was and roughly what day it was. He knew exactly how many days he was in captivity. They spent most of their days playing cards with their captors.” (The Guardian)
This time there were no female prisoners to disabuse Israelis of their “Hamas rape” fantasies, because Hamas had released all female captives during previous prisoner swaps. (Video link.)
One female Israeli captive, it turned out, once did accuse Hamas of “eyeball rape”:
“There is a terrorist looking at you 24/7, looking, raping you with his eyes,” she said.
Back home in Israel, she quickly got raped, and not with eyes, by her gym instructor. It turned out she had been “safer when she was with Hamas.”
That’s hardly surprising, given that Israel is the only nation that holds gigantic “right to rape” protests, makes national heroes out of people who rape captives to death with sticks, and has a male population 60% of whom believe it’s fine to rape women as long as you are acquainted with them. Yet because Zionist-loyal Jews dominate the media, the gullible Western public has been force-fed the big lie that the Rapist Nation is the victim.
But controlling the narrative isn’t the same as controlling reality itself. To do that, you need someone like Uri Geller, the famous Israeli Mossad-linked spoon-bender who uses psychokinesis (PK) to directly affect the material world.
Unfortunately for the Zionists, Geller’s powers, however well they work with cutlery, aren’t up to reshaping large-scale reality. Geller and his team of Israeli PK specialists apparently couldn’t create an actual al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, so more conventional techniques had to be employed to create that illusion. They couldn’t conjure up evil golems dressed in Hamas outfits, so the IDF had to murder hundreds of its own civilians with tanks and helicopter gunships on October 7, while the real Hamas heroes scored the military raid of the century. And they couldn’t cause Trump to drop dead of an apparent (Hamas-attributed) insider attack during the US president’s recent peace conference at Sharm El Sheikh, as Geller had floated shortly before that event.
Ultimately, Zionism epitomizes cosmic chutzpah. Like other millenarian-messianic movements, it imagines itself capable of completely rebuilding or repairing the world (tikkun olam) from the ground up. The world as we know it—an evil, terrible world, dominated by goyim who for no discernible reason insist on persecuting Jews—can be miraculously transformed into a paradise in which every Jew has 2800 goyim slaves. All we have to do is blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque, build a blood sacrifice temple, invite the Messiah to move in, and—hey presto—the spoon will be bent!
Trump’s so-called peace plan offers no justice, no peace
By Fareed Taamallah | MEMO | October 19, 2025
I skipped the olive harvest in my village near Nablus to listen to Donald Trump’s much-anticipated speech before the Israeli Knesset and the subsequent summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. I had hoped—perhaps naively—that the US president, now once again playing a central role in Middle East diplomacy, might finally acknowledge Palestinian suffering or offer a genuine vision for peace. Instead, what I heard left me deeply disappointed, even angry.
Trump spoke for nearly an hour, full of self-congratulation and exaggerated praise for Israel’s “resilience” after 7 October. He called it one of Israel’s darkest days, repeating stories of Israeli pain, fear, and heroism. But not once did he mention the ongoing genocide in Gaza—the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians killed, the families buried under rubble, the starving children trapped in what has become the world’s largest open-air graveyard.
He seemed proud—boastful even—of his role in arming Israel. He bragged about how his administration “stood by Israel like no other” and reminded the audience that it was he who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognized the illegal Israeli settlements as “legitimate.” He said all this as though gifting our land away was an act of peace.
As a Palestinian living under occupation, I felt that his words were not just ignorant but cruel. They erased our humanity. They erased 77 years of Palestinian displacement and oppression. They erased the checkpoints that divide our lives, the walls that suffocate our villages, and the soldiers who humiliate our elders and children daily.
While Trump was speaking in Jerusalem, my close friend in Gaza was searching for food and shelter for his family after their home was destroyed by Israeli bombing. He lives with his wife and children in a small tent, far from their shattered neighbourhood. In a short voice note he sent me — with the sound of drones buzzing above — he said they had eaten only a little food in two days. As Trump boasted about “supporting Israel’s defence,” my friend was struggling to defend his family from hunger, cold, and despair — not from an army, but from a war machine that has turned his life into rubble.
Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” unveiled once again with great fanfare, offers nothing resembling peace. It is not even a plan—it is a continuation of the same colonial logic that has defined every failed American initiative since 1948: to secure Israel’s dominance while pacifying Palestinians into submission.
From what we have seen, the “plan” does not even address the root cause of the conflict—the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. It speaks vaguely about “economic opportunities” and “regional cooperation,” as if what we need are more jobs instead of freedom. It promises “security for Israel” but nothing about security for Palestinians living under constant military siege. It celebrates normalisation between Israel and Arab regimes, while ignoring the normalization of apartheid and dispossession on the ground.
This is not peace. It is a political mirage designed to buy time for Israel to continue its colonization project.
I remember the last time Trump presented a “deal of the century,” back in 2020. Back then, too, he stood beside Israeli leaders while excluding Palestinians entirely from the process. That plan, like this one, sought to legalize the illegal: annexation of settlements, denial of refugee rights, and the permanent fragmentation of Palestinian territory. The difference now is that the destruction in Gaza and the tightening of Israel’s control over the West Bank have made such plans even more grotesque.
When Trump stood before the Knesset and described Israel as “a beacon of democracy and civilization,” I thought of the olive trees uprooted near my village by settlers under army protection. I thought of the hundreds of checkpoints that prevent us from reaching our land. I thought of my friends in Gaza who haven’t had a single night of safety in two years. Is this the “civilization” he was praising?
For us Palestinians, peace has never meant simply the absence of war. Peace means justice. It means accountability for war crimes. It means the right to live freely on our land without occupation, without siege, without fear.
At the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, Trump was joined by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and several Arab officials. They all spoke in the same language of “stability,” “security,” and “ending the cycle of violence.” But what they did not say was more telling: none demanded an end to occupation; none called for lifting the siege on Gaza; none spoke of justice for Palestinian victims.
Many Arab regimes seem eager to move on from the Palestinian issue, to normalize with Israel and focus on their own interests. But ignoring injustice will not bring stability to the region. The Palestinian struggle for freedom cannot simply be erased because it is inconvenient to powerful governments. Injustice breeds resistance. And no amount of political summits or empty declarations will change that fact.
Trump’s “peace plan” is not only about politics—it is also about profit. He treats diplomacy as a business deal, where justice and human rights are bargaining chips. His approach is transactional: sell weapons, secure contracts, reward allies. By promoting this plan, Trump is trying to whitewash Israel’s crimes, to make genocide and apartheid look like stability and partnership. He aims to polish Israel’s image internationally while creating lucrative opportunities for arms deals and regional investments. It is the commercialization of oppression.
But if Israel is not held accountable for what the entire world has seen—massacres livestreamed to our screens, starvation used as a weapon, entire families erased—then the international system itself has collapsed. The institutions that were built after World War II to uphold justice and prevent genocide will have proven meaningless. If such atrocities can occur in broad daylight, with impunity, while world leaders speak of “peace,” then the moral foundation of the international order has crumbled.
When Trump left the podium to applause from Israeli lawmakers, I realized that this was not a peace process—it was a performance. It was meant to reassure Israel and its allies that nothing would fundamentally change, that Palestinian suffering would remain background noise to the “new Middle East” they dream of.
But for us, the reality is very different. Every day, we wake up to news of more killings in Gaza, more arrests in the West Bank, more land confiscations, more despair. We do not have the privilege of pretending that peace can exist without justice.
I returned to my olive trees after Trump’s speech, with the noise of his words still echoing in my head. As I picked the olives from branches planted by my grandfather, I felt the deep connection between our land and our struggle. These trees have survived droughts, wars, and occupations. They are witnesses to our history and symbols of our steadfastness.
Trump may talk about “peace” in grand halls and luxury resorts, but real peace begins here—in the soil of Palestine, in the dignity of our people, and in the pursuit of justice that no speech can silence.
Until the occupation ends, until the siege on Gaza is lifted, until those responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing are held accountable, there will be no peace—no matter how many plans or summits are announced.
The world must understand that Palestinians do not reject peace; we reject oppression disguised as peace. We are not asking for privileges or favours. We are demanding our basic human rights: freedom, equality, and justice.
Trump’s visit has only reinforced one truth—that peace built on denial and injustice will never last. The path to real peace begins not in the Knesset or in Sharm el-Sheikh, but in the recognition of Palestinian rights and the end of Israeli occupation. Only then can we speak of peace with meaning.
Iran announces legal campaign to hold Israeli officials accountable for ‘crimes against humanity’
The Cradle | October 18, 2025
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei announced on 18 October that Tehran is launching a comprehensive legal campaign to hold Israeli officials accountable for crimes against humanity.
Speaking at a specialized meeting titled Legal Response to the 12-Day Aggression: From Criminal Justice to Restorative Justice, Baghaei said the legal challenge aims to end what he described as Israel’s “entrenched impunity.”
“Iran will pursue justice through international legal channels,” he said, warning that the absence of accountability has emboldened Israel’s continued violations across West Asia.
He emphasized that the Foreign Ministry has been documenting legal evidence since the beginning of the 12-day aggression, which has been compiled into a book detailing human rights violations committed by Israel.
Baghaei noted that, although Iran is not a state party to the International Criminal Court (ICC), it engages with the court and supports global efforts to confront Israeli crimes.
The Iranian diplomat also rejected Israeli claims of “preventive attacks,” calling them legally baseless, and asserted that Iran’s response represents an act of legitimate defense.
He accused western governments of shielding Israel from accountability despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes.
Baghaei added that 120 countries have expressed strong support for Iran’s opposition to Europe’s attempt to reimpose sanctions through the snapback mechanism unlawfully, highlighting this consensus during the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) ministerial meeting in Uganda.
He argued that European maneuvers undermine the integrity of the UN Security Council and lack legal standing, and that they face opposition from permanent members China and Russia.
Separately, Baghaei condemned the thousands of Israeli ceasefire violations in southern Lebanon, and blamed France and the US—both ceasefire guarantors—for enabling these actions through their continued appeasement of Tel Aviv.
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Secret document reveals plans for civil war in Lebanon, Israeli false flags, and invasion
By Randi Nord | Geopolitics Alert | April 5, 2019
Beirut – During his visit with US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Lebanese President Michael Aoun reportedly received a US-Israeli document detailing plans for creating a civil war in Lebanon with covert false flag operations and possible Israeli invasion.
Although the source of the document is Israeli and created in partnership with Washington, no one knows who presented it to Aoun. The Lebanese TV station, Al-Jadeed, initially reported the document on Lebanese TV and a video on its website. Geopolitics Alert translated the report for this article. … continue
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