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Vaccines are not a panacea

The shingles vaccine has not cured dementia

By Dr Clare Craig | Health Ethics Advocacy and Resarch Team | June 25, 2026

Over the past month, four studies have been read as showing that the shingles vaccine prevents, or even reverses, dementia. A national newspaper has turned that reading into advice. The advice is to go and get the vaccine now. The evidence tells a different story.

Vinay Prasad has already gone through the four papers and laid the timings side by side, and I will not improve on that account.

●       The Annals paper has a 5% absolute reduction in dementia by three years, with benefit appearing within a year of a nursing-home admission.

●       The JAMA paper has it working by a hundred days.

●       The Welsh study in Nature is a natural experiment, not a simple cohort, and reports a fifth fewer dementia diagnoses over seven years. It declines to publish a time-to-event plot at all.

●       The American paper, in Nature Medicine, includes a hazard function whose curves separate almost immediately.

●       And a meta-analysis concludes that it is not the shingles vaccine alone but every adult vaccine that appears to protect against dementia.

What a dementia diagnosis actually is

A dementia code in a health record is the end of a chain of soft decisions:

●       someone has to notice a change,

●       the patient has to present to the system,

●       a threshold has to be applied,

●       and a clinician has to enter the code.

For each of these steps there is wide variation in the timing between patients. The noticing depends on who is being watched closely and who is not. The same forgetful elderly person can be coded, or not coded, according to how hard anyone happens to be looking. Look harder and you might diagnose more.

Now ask who receives an elective shingles vaccine. It is, overwhelmingly, the people well enough to go and get one. The housebound, the frail, and above all those whose memory is already failing, the people nearest to a diagnosis, are the least likely to present for a non-urgent injection. So the unvaccinated group is enriched, at the very outset and before anyone is followed up, with exactly the people who will later be coded with dementia. This is the “healthy vaccinee effect”, and in this setting it is large enough to produce the whole of the apparent benefit on its own.

Why four studies agreeing is not reassurance

The natural objection is that four datasets agree, and agreement is supposed to be reassuring. But when the cohort studies make the same methodological error it is not reassuring. Every one of them carries the same confounding structure: in each, vaccination marks underlying health, healthcare contact and the simple capacity to turn up, and in each that marker is correlated with the outcome being measured. The errors are not independent results that happen to coincide. They are the same error made several times, because the same bias is built into each design. A biased estimate does not become unbiased by being repeated. These confounded studies in agreement tell you that the confounder is stable, not that the result is real.

Prasad puts this as the earth looking flat whichever way you turn, which is exactly right as an image of the confounded cohorts. The formal version is that replication adds evidence only when the replications are capable of failing in different ways. When they share their confounders, consistency is not corroboration, it is the same confounder doing the same job in each dataset in turn. To break the symmetry you do not add a fifth observational cohort, another flat horizon. You change the design to one whose errors are structured differently. That test already exists.

A regression-discontinuity study exploits the age cut-off for eligibility: people just below and just above the threshold are, for practical purposes, exchangeable, so the baseline-health gap that drives the observational studies is largely removed. The Welsh study is exactly this design, which is why it is the strongest evidence on the table; they claimed dementia was prevented in Wales and in Australia and Ontario. But would an independent team running a study with an identical design find the same thing? George Davey Smith and colleagues have now carried out such a study in England, across some 6.3 million people, roughly twenty times the Welsh sample; the work was presented in June 2026 at a conference and is not yet published. The design worked, in that eligibility produced the expected fall in shingles (although it is not clear what happened in the ‘grace period’ immediately after vaccination) but on dementia it found nothing. The fact that the finding was null in the far larger study should mean the smaller one has been overruled.

The speed matters

Speed is being sold as a measure of how powerful the vaccine is. It is better understood as evidence that the vaccine is doing nothing at all. Dementia is slow. The neuropathology accumulates over years, usually decades, and by the time anyone is coded with the disease the process is long established. Nothing done to a brain can produce a measurable difference in dementia incidence within a hundred days, because the disease does not move on that timescale. So when the curves separate almost immediately, the separation cannot be the vaccine acting. It can only be that the two groups already differed at the moment the vaccine was given.

It is a signature of selection. The rapidity that is being offered as the headline result is the clearest single indicator that what is on the page is the “healthy vaccinee” artefact and not a treatment effect.

From the literature to the newsstand

On 10 June the Daily Telegraph published an interview with John Todd, professor of precision medicine at Oxford, in which he told readers over fifty to get the shingles vaccine now. Jonathan Engler has lodged a complaint with the MHRA about that article.

Professor Todd is, on his own declaration, a paid consultant for GSK, which manufactures Shingrix, and the study he relies on is one he co-authored. When the paper was published, given the issues described above about selection bias the authors wrote that the dementia results “provide a rationale for conducting a randomized control trial aiming to confirm the findings”. Shingrix is not licensed for the prevention of dementia. The advice to buy it for that purpose rests on a paper whose findings, in its authors’ own words, have not been confirmed.

In the United Kingdom, the advertising of prescription-only medicines is governed by Part 14 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012. Regulation 284 provides that a person may not publish an advertisement likely to lead to the use of a prescription-only medicine. There is proper latitude for journalism, and the MHRA’s guidance for journalists asks only that coverage be balanced, that it not exaggerate benefit, and that it not steer readers towards a named product. It does not require proof of a commercial arrangement before a breach is made out. Engler’s point, which is the right one, is that a piece does not stop being promotional by declining to call itself promotional, and that the absence of the label is itself the difficulty. Where a consultant to the manufacturer urges the purchase of that manufacturer’s unlicensed product, on the strength of his own unconfirmed research, with the consultancy unmentioned, the ordinary description of the result is advertising, whatever else it is also called.

Telegraph readers thinking of taking his advice to rush off and buy a private Shingrix vaccine, might want to take note that (a) Professor Todd has no medical qualification (his FRCP is honorary and his primary qualification is in biochemistry) and (b) the department he heads in Oxford was funded by GSK to the tune of £30 million.

What honest curiosity would do next

The editors of the observational papers could be asked to publish the all-cause mortality curves alongside the dementia curves: if the vaccinated are simply healthier people, their mortality will diverge in the same direction, and the confounding will be visible on the page. This is a control test. Every child at school is taught the importance of using a control group in scientific research but all too often they are left out by actual scientists. The randomised trial that the NIH is said to be considering might need to be run simply to put to bed the excitement around this issue that has been fuelled by media speculation.

The truth is that the studies that kept producing the same answer did so because they shared the same bias, while the largest independent test found nothing and a national newspaper has printed a paid consultant’s promotion of a drug when he will benefit from the sales. Perhaps neither of those stories will sell as many newspapers as the ones that do get printed or clicked on.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Comments Off on Vaccines are not a panacea

Google’s New reCAPTCHA Wants Your Camera Access and 21 Points of Your Hand

The same company that monetizes everything you do online would like to switch on your camera

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 27, 2026

Google wants a look at your hands before it lets you through. The company’s newest reCAPTCHA check, rolling out now as a test, asks you to switch on your camera and wave at it so an algorithm can decide whether you’re a human or a bot.

That wave is less casual than it looks. The system records a short video of your hand and pulls 21 hand-landmark coordinates from it, mapping your finger joints, your palm geometry, and the way you move in real time.

Google describes the purpose as liveness detection, a way for websites to fend off automated account creation, credential-stuffing, and other fraud. But this is still a biometric scan, collected so you can prove you’re a person and still involves turning on your cameras for Google.

Google has lined up the promises you would expect. The company says the footage is deleted once verification finishes, no audio is recorded, and the video is never tied to your identity. Its documentation adds that nothing goes to third parties and the data serves security alone, then points to the Google Privacy Policy for how everything is used and stored, a policy elastic enough to cover almost anything.

For now the feature seems optional. People who cannot perform the gestures still get the older puzzles, with Google saying reCAPTCHA “continues to provide visual and audio challenges” while it develops alternatives.

However, we all know that optional today is rarely optional forever and the older challenges survive partly because the gesture check is still being tested.

The reassurances rest on trust and Google has spent years giving people reasons to hold it back. This is a company whose business runs on gathering and monetizing personal data, now asking to switch on your camera and read your hand.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Comments Off on Google’s New reCAPTCHA Wants Your Camera Access and 21 Points of Your Hand

Wired for War: Pax Silica is AI slavery disguised as strength

RT | June 27, 2026

The EU has signed on to ‘Pax Silica’, a US initiative seemingly designed to shut China and others out of the global AI supply chain and extract resources from Europe for the benefit of Washington’s military-industrial complex.

“America and Europe belong together; our histories are braided, our destiny intertwined,” US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg declared at a summit in Washington on Tuesday. “But we share more than a past. We share a purpose – to build a future that answers to our values and is worthy of our inheritance.”

What is Pax Silica?

Representatives from the EU, Germany, and Greece signed the pact at Tuesday’s summit, bringing the total number of ‘Pax Silica’ signatories to 19. They are:

  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Chile
  • European Union
  • Finland
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • India
  • Israel
  • Japan
  • The Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Qatar
  • Republic of Korea
  • Singapore
  • Sweden
  • The Philippines
  • United Arab Emirates
  • United Kingdom

‘Pax Silica’ evokes imperial Rome in both name and practice. Its signatories agree to “partner on strategic stacks of the global technology supply chain,” including raw materials, energy, logistics, semiconductor manufacturing, computing, software, and models. They pledge to reduce “excessive dependencies” on nations that “undermine innovation and fair competition,” – an implicit reference to China – and “protect sensitive technologies and critical infrastructure from undue access, influence, or control,” – again, a reference to China – in exchange for access to this “full stack of technological advancements that are shaping the AI economy.”

The pact is largely the creation of Helberg, a China hawk and former adviser to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, whose growing power RT has already covered in our ‘Wired for War’ series.

Jacob Helberg and Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp attend the Hill & Valley Forum 2025 in Washington DC, April 30, 2025 ©  Getty Images;  Jemal Countess

Who is in Pax Silica and who is against it?

Notably absent from the list of signatories is France, where President Emmanuel Macron has spent years pushing for “digital sovereignty.” France, and Europe more broadly, he argues, need to end their reliance on American technology and develop homegrown alternatives. To that end, the French government has ditched US-made videoconferencing software, swapped Microsoft Windows for Linux, traded Palantir’s data analytics software for the French-developed ChapsVision, and invested public funds in Mistral AI – one of the continent’s few promising AI companies.

Does Pax Silica undermine national digital sovereignty?

Pax Silica is explicitly opposed to the notion of digital sovereignty. In a blog post published immediately after Tuesday’s summit, Helberg declared the concept “backward and counterproductive.” A world of sovereign nations building their own AI ecosystems, he wrote, would be “a planet of subscale clones, each heroically reconstructing last year’s breakthrough while the breakthrough itself moves on without them.”

Instead, Pax Silica members can pool their resources, with each nation playing to its own strengths. “One partner’s compute meets another’s minerals, a third’s talent, a fourth’s capital, and the result is not a sum but a multiplication,” he wrote.

On the surface, Helberg’s sales pitch makes sense. The Netherlands is the home of ASML, which manufactures 100% of the world’s most advanced EUV semiconductor lithography machines; Israel is a chip design and military tech superpower; Australia has the world’s fourth largest rare earth mineral reserves. By bringing these countries into a formal pact, the US denies China access to these spoils and shares them among its allies instead.

Who does Pax Silica empower most?

In reality, Pax Silica is less of a partnership and more of an imperialist resource grab. Washington’s partners provide raw materials, logistics, knowledge, and labor, but the US currently controls 75% of the world’s compute – the processing power necessary to build, train, and run large-scale AI workloads. Ultimately, the American companies that control this raw power will decide how it is used.

While this compute will be theoretically made available to Pax Silica signatories, the treaty is carefully worded to remind them that full access is not guaranteed. The US, it states “will endeavor to provide access to trusted partners to the full stack of technological advancements that are shaping the AI economy.” Washington is obligated only to try, not to do.

Chained by the pact to Washington’s new Cold War against China, the Europeans cannot look to Beijing if they end up shut out of US computing infrastructure. Likewise, the EU’s self-inflicted energy crisis – a result of Brussels trading cheap Russian gas for pricier American liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports – means that Europe will never be able to build and run this infrastructure for itself.

How does Palantir stand to benefit from Pax Silica?

Pax Silica undoubtedly serves the US geopolitical aim of isolating China – and possibly Russia – and strangling its technological growth, but it also serves the interests of Palantir and its fellow defense-tech behemoths, some of whom have admitted that their growth model depends on military confrontation with Beijing and a potential world war in the Indo- Pacific.

Palantir needs all the computational horsepower and raw materials it can get to power its autonomous weapons and AI operating systems, and if relations between the West and China deteriorate to the point of military conflict, the company stands ready to supply the weapons that will be used by the US military.

Karp has recently called on the US to prepare for a three-front war against China, Russia, and Iran; Palantir’s marketing material includes images of its ‘Gotham’ operating system tracking the movements of Chinese warships in the South China Sea. A representative of America’s Frontier Fund – which invests in Palantir – told a panel in 2023 that in the event of a “kinetic event in the Pacific…some of our investments will 10x, like overnight.”

“Great power competition with China remains top of mind as we continue to invest in moving more of Palantir’s mass west of the international date line,” the company’s operations chief, Shyam Sanka, said during a 2024 earnings call.

Although Helberg left Palantir last year to take his position at the US State Department, he spent the previous year working for Palantir and the American government at the same time. While still advising Karp, Helberg served on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, from 2022 to 2024. In this role, he lobbied for increased tariffs on Beijing, a ban on TikTok, and the exclusion of China from the global AI supply chain.

How have China and Russia responded to Pax Silica?

Beijing has not directly addressed Pax Silica, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry instead calling on the US and its partners to “adhere to the principles of a market economy and fair competition and work together to maintain the stability of the global supply chain.” The ministry has directly condemned previous efforts by the US to lock China out of the tech supply chain, including the US-Japan-South Korea-Taiwan ‘Chip 4 Alliance’. Beijing has referred to this coalition of chipmaking nations as a brazen attempt by Washington to “dominate the global semiconductor production and supply chain.”

The Russian government has not commented on Pax Silica, but Moscow likely views any moves that increase the West’s power vis-a-vis its main trading partner with concern. Russia’s own access to rare earths and energy is not imperiled by the pact, with Russian mining CEO Andrey Trenin writing last year that Russia’s “path to a sovereign integrated AI industry must begin with [its] unique Arctic rare-earth metal deposits” and the creation of investment zones in the country’s frozen north.

Pax Silica: Membership is a security risk

By signing the pact, the Pax Silica states are signing up for great power competition and all of the risks it carries. In some cases, signatories are risking more than economic sovereignty. In the Philippines, which signed the pact in April, work has already begun on a 4,000-acre ‘Economic Security Zone’ on the island of Luzon where a number of key AI-related industries will be based.

The US initially wanted sovereignty over the zone and diplomatic immunity, but Manila rejected Washington’s demands. Negotiations over the zone’s status are still ongoing, but even if the Philippines retains full sovereignty over the area, Filipino nationalists fear that its role as a node in the US military’s AI supply chain could open the Philippines up to retaliation from China.

Helberg has written off these worries as “disinformation,” claiming that concerns over sovereignty risk delaying the Pax Silica project. However, they must be widespread if Helberg felt compelled to pen a 1,200-word blog post writing the concept of digital sovereignty off as a “trap.”

A warning from Middle Earth

Palantir derives its name from the obsidian seeing stones in JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’, through which the dark lord Sauron communicates with his vassals and spies on his enemies. In their dealings with the company, and with Washington, European proponents of Pax Silica would do well to remember how, in the film adaptation of the novel, the wizard Gandalf responds to Saruman’s use of a Palantir: “there is only one Lord of the Ring… And he does not share power!”

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Sinophobia | , , | Comments Off on Wired for War: Pax Silica is AI slavery disguised as strength

US-backed deal with Israel has ‘no legitimacy’, top Lebanese cleric warns

Press TV – June 27, 2026

Lebanon’s Grand Ja’afari Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Qabalan has taken a swipe at the US-sponsored framework agreement between the Beirut government and the Tel Aviv regime, saying that the deal is not legitimate.

“There is no legitimacy for the agreement between the incumbent Lebanese government and the occupying regime,” Sheikh Qabalan said.

He added, “The dangerous point is that the framework (agreement) gives the Zionist army practical guardianship over the activities of the Lebanese army and the occupied Lebanese territories.”

The prominent Lebanese Shia cleric noted that the agreement means tacit recognition of the Israeli military’s dominance over the occupied territories of Lebanon.

“What was agreed upon between the current Lebanese government and the terrorist Israeli regime under the supervision of the evil America is the worst national disaster that Lebanon has ever witnessed,” he noted.

Sheikh Qabalan further argued that “with such an approach, the current Lebanese government only represents itself and not the Lebanese people.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Friday that a framework agreement had been established between Lebanon and Israel, characterizing the deal as an initial step in what he referred to as a “challenging journey.”

Rubio said that the agreement would create a legal basis for negotiations between the two parties, adding that “this is merely the beginning of the beginning,” and that “there remains a lengthy path ahead for Lebanon and Israel.”

Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli envoy to the United States, said the framework signifies that “the pathway to peace between Israel and Lebanon is open.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the agreement as a significant accomplishment for the occupying regime.

Netanyahu stated that Israel would prevent Lebanese citizens or Hezbollah resistance fighters from returning to the security belt area under Israeli control, insisting that Israel would continue to occupy regions of southern Lebanon until “Hezbollah is disarmed.”

Israeli Hebrew-language Channel 12 reported that a senior Israeli official referred to the agreement with the Lebanese government as a “remarkable achievement for Israel.”

The Lebanese Embassy in the United States also asserted that the execution of the framework agreement with Israel will commence with the withdrawal of Israeli troops from two designated pilot areas in southern Lebanon, followed by the deployment of the Lebanese army in those regions.

In a statement released after the signing ceremony held in Washington, which marked the conclusion of the fifth round of discussions between Beirut and Tel Aviv, the embassy clarified that the agreement “stipulates the implementation of arrangements in two pilot areas, which include an Israeli withdrawal, the deployment of the Lebanese army, and the disarmament of non-state armed groups.”

It added that these preliminary actions represent “the initial step towards a gradual and comprehensive withdrawal from all Lebanese territory, ensuring complete respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

The embassy also said that the agreement was reached “under the leadership of President Joseph Aoun, in collaboration with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and through the coordinated efforts of Lebanon’s constitutional institutions.”

Thus, Lebanon has embarked on “a sovereign path founded on dialogue rather than conflict,” the statement concluded.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Comments Off on US-backed deal with Israel has ‘no legitimacy’, top Lebanese cleric warns

Israeli occupation forces advance in southern Lebanese towns after truce deal with Beirut

Press TV – June 27, 2026 

Israeli forces have carried out new attacks on several towns in southern Lebanon, in a new escalation immediately after a US-brokered peace agreement was reached between Beirut and Tel Aviv.

Israeli occupation forces advanced toward the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Shuba under the cover of heavy machine-gun fire on Saturday, according to local reports.

Earlier, Israeli forces detonated a stun grenade near the town of Kfar Tebnit, causing alarm among residents.

The occupying regime’s warplanes also struck a location in the border town of Markaba overnight, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA).

The attacks follow an announcement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying a 14-point agreement had been reached between Lebanon and Israel.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, welcomed the agreement, claiming that under its terms, “Hezbollah is out.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also praised the deal, describing it as a major achievement and a significant step toward advancing Israel’s objectives in Lebanon.

Netanyahu further stated that Israel would not allow Lebanese residents to return to areas within the so-called security belt under Israeli control and insisted that Israeli forces would remain in the occupied parts of southern Lebanon.

Lebanese lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah strongly criticized the framework, warning that Lebanese authorities would not be able to implement it without dragging the country toward “civil war.”

Since 2 March, when Israel launched its latest round of aggression against Lebanon, at least 3,600 people have been killed and more than 11,000 wounded, according to Lebanese authorities.

In response, the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has continued military operations against Israeli forces, saying resistance remains necessary as long as attacks and occupation persist.

The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), signed by Iran and the United States in June, includes provisions calling for an end to Israeli attacks on Lebanon and respect for the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli occupation forces advance in southern Lebanese towns after truce deal with Beirut

Abelardo De la Espriella’s Victory Renews Pressure on Venezuela

José Niño Unfiltered | June 26, 2026

Colombia elected Abelardo de la Espriella as its next president on June 21, 2026, delivering the country’s leadership to a man who spent nearly a decade publicly calling for the violent overthrow of Venezuela’s socialist government. His victory over leftist Senator Iván Cepeda by fewer than 250,000 votes marks a dramatic rightward shift for a nation that shares a porous 1,400-mile border with Venezuela and hosts millions of Venezuelan refugees.

De la Espriella takes office on August 7, 2026. If Brazil’s November presidential election delivers Flávio Bolsonaro to the Planalto Palace, the two largest nations bordering Venezuela will be governed by leaders who have explicitly endorsed forceful regime change in Caracas. Combined with the apparent willingness of acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez to cooperate with Washington, the conditions may finally exist for completing what the Trump administration attempted and failed to accomplish in 2019.

De la Espriella’s hostility toward Caracas is neither recent nor cautious. He first articulated his position on Venezuela during a 2018 appearance on Peruvian TV personality Jaime Bayly’s Miami television program. According to to his own subsequent writings, he urged Venezuelans to commit tyrannicide against Nicolás Maduro. Days later he published a column titled “Death to the Tyrant” in Barranquilla’s El Heraldo, writing that “the death of Nicolás Maduro becomes necessary to guarantee the survival of the Republic.”

When U.S. forces captured Maduro in January 2026, de la Espriella publicly celebrated, claiming he had predicted it years earlier. He sold the American operation not as an “invasion” but as “the arrest of an international criminal and head of the Cartel de los Soles,” arguing that Washington acted according to the law due to Venezuela’s alleged lack of institutional legitimacy.

His campaign platform explicitly called for a renewed military alliance with Washington. In February, De la Espriella announced that he would immediately begin “bombing the camps of the narco-terrorists and spraying drug crops,” adding that “this cannot be done without a strategic alliance with the United States and the State of Israel.” He marketed this as a 90-day security plan modeled on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s approach, promising to retake national territory through joint task forces, aerial bombardment of criminal camps, fumigation of 330,000 hectares of coca, and the construction of 10 mega-prisons in remote jungle locations. He has also promised to establish American military bases on Colombian territory as part of a comprehensive security restructuring.

Colombia may soon find a partner in this posture across its longest border. Five months after de la Espriella’s inauguration, Brazilians will decide their own presidential election. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, has made Venezuela the centerpiece of his campaign against incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

When Maduro was kidnapped in January, Flávio immediately seized on the moment. He posted that “Venezuela has become one of the most extreme examples of how an authoritarian regime can destroy a nation,” calling Maduro a “narcoterrorist.” At the time, his brother Eduardo texted him saying “you are elected president, because we know that a lot of things will come out of Maduro,” predicting that Maduro’s capture would expose Lula’s ties to the Venezuelan regime.

At CPAC in March 2026, Flávio displayed a photograph of Lula embracing Maduro to a crowd that booed loudly. He accused Lula of maintaining ties with leftist dictatorships through the São Paulo Forum, which he described as a network linking Lula, Cuban communism, and drug cartels. Brazil’s Supreme Court opened an investigation into Flávio for defamation, which he denounced as political censorship.

Flávio took Lula to task for “publicly criticizing President Trump’s actions on Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, and the fight against drug trafficking.” He pledged that under his presidency, Brazil would serve as a reliable U.S. partner rather than an opponent on these issues. Reuters polling in late October shows Flávio and Lula locked in a statistical tie heading into the October first round.

What these leaders propose is not new. Washington reached for it in 2019. The Trump administration’s first attempt to topple Maduro collapsed in spectacular fashion. National Security Adviser John Bolton appeared at a January 28, 2019 press conference at the White House with a notepad reading “5,000 troops to Colombia,” held visibly in front of cameras while announcing new oil sanctions against Venezuela’s state company PDVSA—signaling Washington’s interest in using Colombian territory as a staging ground for military pressure on Caracas. Colombia’s Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo Garcia said his government had no knowledge of what the note meant.

On February 23, 2019, a U.S.-backed humanitarian aid plot from Cúcuta ended in violence when Venezuelan security forces blocked the convoy with tear gas and rubber bullets. According to a USAID Office of Inspector General report, only 8 of 368 metric tons of aid actually reached Venezuela—the rest was distributed inside Colombia or shipped to Somalia.

The failure at Cúcuta had a quieter companion in Brazil. The Brazilian military establishment proved decisive in blocking regional intervention. Vice President Hamilton Mourão, a retired general, stated flatly that “under no circumstances” would Brazil allow the U.S. to use its territory for military action against Venezuela. He emphasized that “nobody is betting on a military solution.”

Brazil’s Vice President Hamilton Mourão stated firmly that the United States could not use Brazilian territory to invade Venezuela. Senior Brazilian military figures similarly warned against being drawn into a conflict that could make their forces a buffer between American and Venezuelan troops. The military’s resistance held even as President Jair Bolsonaro gave ambiguous public signals, while gesturing toward all options, he acknowledged that the possibility of intervention was “near-zero.”

That said, what failed in 2019 may succeed in 2027 because Venezuela’s current leadership appears willing to cooperate with Washington in ways Maduro never would. A CIA authored classified assessment, reported by the Wall Street Journal, identified Delcy Rodríguez as the best suited candidate to lead a transitional government. Days after Maduro’s capture, Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president on January 5, 2026. On January 15, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Caracas for a two-hour meeting with Rodríguez—the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Venezuela since Maduro’s removal—to deliver the message that “the United States looks forward to an improved working relationship.” The meeting came at the personal urging of President Donald Trump, who had spoken with Rodríguez by phone the previous day and called her “a terrific person,” writing on Truth Social that “we are making tremendous progress, as we help Venezuela stabilize and recover.”

The optics devastated hardline Chavistas. Mario Silva, host of the flagship pro-government propaganda program La Hojilla on state television VTV, accused Rodríguez of treason. In a May 2026 broadcast, he accused her inner circle of negotiating Venezuela’s future with Washington “behind the movement’s back.” He reportedly went further in a YouTube video, suggesting that Rodríguez was the only figure in the Venezuela government in touch with the CIA prior to January 3.

If such allegations prove to be true, smart money suggests Rodríguez would fold under sustained pressure from a multinational coalition. Trump has already removed her from DEA and OFAC sanctions lists despite the DEA having classified her as a “priority target” for drug trafficking as recently as 2022. She oversaw the deportation of diplomat Alex Saab directly to the United States after the Maduro government had fought for years to free him.

The Latin American Right has been ascendant for half a decade. Javier Milei in Argentina. Daniel Noboa in Ecuardo. José Antonio Kast in Chile. Now Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia. If Flávio Bolsonaro wins Brazil’s November election, the two largest economies bordering Venezuela will both be governed by leaders who have explicitly endorsed American pressure campaigns against Caracas.

De la Espriella’s campaign pledged to restore the cooperative relationship with Washington that existed before Gustavo Petro. Flávio Bolsonaro has promised to align Brazil with U.S. pressure campaigns. With Rodríguez already meeting CIA directors in Caracas and following Washington’s orders on matters like Saab’s deportation, the path toward a final resolution of Venezuela’s political crisis may be shorter than anyone anticipated.

What Brazil’s generals blocked in 2019 may prove irrelevant in 2027 if Flávio Bolsonaro controls the presidency and appoints loyalists to military commands. What Colombia’s Ivan Duque hesitated to support may become explicit policy under de la Espriella. And what Maduro would never accept, Rodríguez appears willing to negotiate.

The question is no longer whether a multinational coalition will pressure Venezuela toward elections. The question is whether Rodríguez will call those elections voluntarily or wait until Colombian and Brazilian forces mass on her borders with American backing.

One thing is clear: the political crisis in Venezuela is far from over.

June 27, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Abelardo De la Espriella’s Victory Renews Pressure on Venezuela

Israel furious at Trump over Turkey, Syria to invade Lebanon – w/ Col. Macgregor

Mario Nawfal | June 26, 2026

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Israel furious at Trump over Turkey, Syria to invade Lebanon – w/ Col. Macgregor

IRGC says it struck US military positions, warns of broader response

Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2026

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy said it targeted US military sites across the region in response to American aggression against Iran’s coastline, warning that any further attacks would prompt a significantly broader retaliation.

In a statement, the IRGC said the strikes came after the United States allegedly carried out air assuaults against Iran’s coastal areas under the pretext of responding to incidents involving navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

IRGC cites Strait of Hormuz and ceasefire commitments

The IRGC stressed that Washington violated its commitments under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, arguing that Article 5 requires coordination with Iran on maritime monitoring and navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The statement also linked the latest developments to continued Israeli violations of the ceasefire in southern Lebanon.

Warning of wider retaliation

The IRGC said navy had delivered an “appropriate response” by targeting US military sites and warned that any repeat of American attacks would be met with a much broader military response.

The force stressed that it remains prepared to respond to future actions targeting Iranian territory or interests.

Earlier, US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported that it launched attacks on Iranian military targets after accusing Tehran of attacking a commercial vessel transiting the Strait of Hormuz, while Iranian media reported explosions near the southern port city of Sirik following warning fire directed at vessels in the strategic waterway.

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on IRGC says it struck US military positions, warns of broader response

Russia stops record number of Ukrainian drones overnight – MOD

RT | June 26, 2026

Russian air defenses stopped 660 Ukrainian kamikaze drones overnight, the military said on Friday. The figure was the largest ever reported for the metric, reflecting an escalation of Western-funded strikes inside Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry normally reports the total number of drone interceptions conducted between 10 PM and 7 AM Moscow time every day. The previous record was 556 in mid-May, while earlier this month the Russian military downed 555 Ukrainian aircraft overnight. Other standout figures since 2025 were in the 300s.

Kiev is ramping up long-range strikes against energy infrastructure as Ukrainian frontline troops suffer setbacks caused by manpower shortages and Russian weapons superiority. Ukrainian officials claim the economic damage will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire along the current front line, and have threatened to withdraw the offer unless it is accepted soon.

Both sides are developing more affordable ways to intercept long-range drones, such as cheap interceptor aircraft, and are trying to protect their weapons from countermeasures. Ukrainian operations are supported by Western funding, intelligence gathering, and an industrial base that supplies drone components.

Russia maintains that the pressure campaign will not make it abandon its key security goals in the conflict. However, officials have suggested that Ukrainian military logistics in NATO states could be targeted in some way in response to the escalation of the drone war.

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on Russia stops record number of Ukrainian drones overnight – MOD

Denmark admits ‘no evidence’ for Russian drone hysteria

RT | June 26, 2026

Danish police say they have found no evidence that flying objects which shut down Copenhagen Airport last year were drones, concluding a nine-month investigation into an incident initially treated as an alleged Russian attack.

Danish airports repeatedly suspended flights in September 2025 after reports of suspected drones near the airfields. Copenhagen Airport was forced to halt operations for several hours after objects were reported flying near the runway, disrupting commercial air traffic and triggering a major police investigation.

At the time, Danish authorities claimed Russia may have been behind the incidents, despite presenting no evidence. In May, Russian Ambassador to Denmark Vladimir Barbin said Copenhagen had failed to produce any proof that drones had entered Danish airspace during the alleged incursions.

Police said on Thursday they could neither prove nor disprove that drones had been operating in the vicinity of Copenhagen Airport. “We cannot demonstrate that there was drone activity in and around the airport,” Chief Police Soren Thomassen told reporters. No suspects were identified and the investigation has been closed, he said.

According to Thomassen, there was unexplained activity in the airspace that evening, but none of the evidence gathered over nine months conclusively showed the objects were drones.

Police said they had reviewed witness statements, photographs, videos, CCTV footage, radar data, and extensive records of air and maritime traffic. Despite the exhaustive inquiry, investigators were unable to establish what the objects were.

One radar detected an object traveling at around 100 kph over the Oresund Strait. However, Dutch manufacturer Robin Radar later told investigators that the bird radar installed at Copenhagen Airport was not designed to detect drones.

Danish officials claimed the alleged drone flights were carried out by a “skilled operator.” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen later escalated the rhetoric, calling the incident a “hybrid attack on critical Danish infrastructure.”

The case had begun to unravel long before Thursday’s announcement. Within hours of the airport shutdown, open-source investigators concluded that a widely circulated video appeared to show a training aircraft rather than a drone, according to Dronewatch portal. An internal memo later reportedly revealed that air traffic controllers had not observed any drones during the incident, while police acknowledged in March that the credibility of a key witness had come under scrutiny.

Earlier this week, investigators also said the first completed police probes into other alleged drone sightings reported across Denmark in the autumn of 2025 had likewise found no evidence of hostile or unauthorized drone activity.

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Russophobia | | Comments Off on Denmark admits ‘no evidence’ for Russian drone hysteria

Washington agreement ‘will not pass’: MP Fadlallah

Al Mayadeen | June 26, 2026

The current Lebanese government lacks both constitutional and consensual legitimacy and is in no position to impose its will on the country, a senior Hezbollah parliamentarian said on Thursday, rejecting the framework agreement signed in Washington and dismissed its enforceability on the ground.

In a phone interview with Al Mayadeen following the signing of a framework agreement between Lebanese authorities and “Israel”, Fadlallah called on the Lebanese authorities to “withdraw from the direct negotiation path” and to rescind “all decisions taken against the Lebanese people” in that context.

He dismissed as “baseless” reports suggesting that Lebanon’s position had been formulated in meetings between himself, Major General Hassan Choucair, and Brigadier General André Rahal. He added that what had been circulated “contradicted what was communicated to relevant officials in the Lebanese state” regarding Hezbollah’s rejection of direct talks.

‘Do not rush to deliver good news to your people’: Fadlallah to Netanyahu

Fadlallah addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly, telling him: “Do not rush to deliver good news to your people.”

He stated that Netanyahu was effectively “negotiating with himself,” describing the current Lebanese government as “constitutionally and consensually illegitimate” and “incapable of imposing dictates.”

“This administration will not be able to enforce the agreement signed in Washington unless it resorts, with US support, to a civil war,” Fadlallah said.

He characterized the Washington deal as “an attempt to derail the Islamabad track” and insisted that “without the resistance, nothing will pass,” vowing that Hezbollah “will not allow the authorities to destroy Lebanon” nor “surrender the country’s fate” to them.

“The important factor is the battlefield, and we own the battlefield; we are the people of the land,” he said.

Iran will not sign any agreement before full Israeli withdrawal

On Iran, Fadlallah stated that Tehran’s position “is clear” and that it “will not sign any agreement before an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon,” asserting the Lebanese government has given a “gift” to “Israel” that “will have no effect on the ground.”

The lawmaker warned that Hezbollah would “confront any government measure” and would “cling more” to its resistance and its weapons. He affirmed that the group’s opposition is “serious” and would not allow the authorities to “implement their commitments on the ground.”

Addressing Hezbollah’s continued participation in the cabinet, Fadlallah said: “The presence of our ministers in the government has its own calculations, and our presence in it does not mean we approve of its decisions.”

He argued that direct talks with “Israel” violate Article 52 of the constitution, adding: “No individual has the right to cancel the state of hostility toward Israel.”

Fadlallah also stressed that Hezbollah seeks no confrontation with the national army, saying: “We do not want any clash with our national army, which is carrying out its duties to the fullest, and the army will remain, the resistance will remain, and the people will remain.”

He concluded with a direct message to Netanyahu: “You have reached an agreement with one who possesses nothing. The state of hostility toward Israel will remain, and whoever shakes hands with the enemy is complicit in its crimes.”

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , | Comments Off on Washington agreement ‘will not pass’: MP Fadlallah

Iran mocks US for ‘solving’ domestic hunger problem, lecturing others on issue

Press TV – June 26, 2026

Iran has mocked the United States for “solving” its domestic hunger problem by simply stopping reports while lecturing other countries on the issue.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei made the remarks in an X post on Friday after US President Donald Trump claimed that Iran has “a hunger problem” and his deputy JD Vance alleged that the country’s unfrozen assets could help “feed” its people.

Baghaei cited a report by the World Hunger Education Service that found more than 47 million people in the United States, including 1 in 5 children, cannot consistently access or afford enough nutritious food to live healthy lives.

He further referred to another report by the NGO Feeding America that said 47 million Americans struggle daily with hunger.

“The ‘solution’ from US authorities? In September 2024, the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) quietly terminated its 30-year-old annual report on household food insecurity — effectively ending the official tracking and acknowledgment of hunger in America,” the spokesman said.

“So, after ‘solving’ domestic hunger by simply stopping the reports, Washington now feels qualified to lecture the world about hunger elsewhere.”

Baghaei added, “Charity begins at home — and it is desperately needed there.”

The latest Household Food Security report released by the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service for 2024 revealed that 47.9 million people lived in food-insecure households last year.

One in seven households (13.7 percent) in America experienced food insecurity, or lack of access to an affordable, nutritious diet, in 2024, according to the report. About 14.1 million American children lived in households that experienced food insecurity in 2024, a slight increase from the 13.8 million children reported in 2023.

The findings highlighted a deepening crisis in the US amid cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which enables low-income households to afford more healthy foods and boosts families’ food purchases.

Because the USDA’s 2025 survey data which would have been released in 2026 was canceled, no official government data on hunger for 2026 is available.

However, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has stepped in to fill the gap. In a report released in May 2026, the New York Fed presented new findings on food insecurity based on its Survey of Consumer Expectations.

The New York Fed survey found a “remarkable increase in food insecurity,” particularly among lower-income, lower-educated households, and households with young children.

The survey noted that between late 2025 and early 2026, the share of households reporting they had to skip meals or had insufficient food rose.

For households earning under $50,000 a year, the rate of those reporting not having enough food or kids missing meals reached 19.7% in early 2026, up from 16% in late 2025.

Nationwide, the share of households with limited or uncertain access to adequate food more than doubled from 4% in June 2020 to 10% in early 2026.

June 26, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Comments Off on Iran mocks US for ‘solving’ domestic hunger problem, lecturing others on issue

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