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New Book: Covid Through Our Eyes

Review by Maryanne Demasi, PhD | September 28, 2025

When Covid hit, governments, health agencies and the media marched in lockstep. Their united front was sold as “consensus.”

In reality, it was compliance by coercion. Dissenters were punished, questions suppressed, and the public was fed slogans instead of science.

Covid Through Our Eyes tears away that façade.

This collection of essays—written by doctors, scientists, lawyers, journalists, economists and ordinary Australians whose lives were upended—restores the voices silenced during the pandemic.

Each chapter forms part of a collective testimony. And in a final act of principle, not a cent of the book’s sales goes to the authors; all proceeds support Australia’s vaccine injury class action.

A chorus of voices

Editors Robert Clancy, an immunologist, and Melissa McCann, a physician, have gathered an extraordinary range of perspectives.

Among them, British oncologist Angus Dalgleish describes patients relapsing into aggressive cancers after years in remission. He argues that repeated boosters and chronic spike protein exposure created a “pro-cancer milieu.”

Vaccinologist Nikolai Petrovsky recounts how his homegrown vaccine, built on decades of expertise, was cast aside in favour of untested mRNA technology.

Statistician Andrew Madry lays out devastating evidence of excess mortality and the government’s refusal to investigate the causes.

Other contributors highlight phenomena dismissed at the time: immune system imprinting, shifts in antibody subclasses, and persistence of mRNA in the body.

Regulatory expert Philip Altman details how the Therapeutic Goods Administration ignored clear safety signals, choosing convenience over caution.

Lawyers and doctors tell of their battles in the courts and on the streets against vaccine mandates—small victories, bitter defeats, and governments that seemed more determined to silence critics than to defend their policies with evidence.

Clancy himself turns a sharp eye on Australia. Once a nation of independent scientists—from Burnet to Fenner, with pandemic plans crafted at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories—by 2020 it had surrendered to bureaucracy.

He argues that recovery depends on restoring the doctor–patient relationship and returning vaccine development to proven antigen platforms, not experimental technologies rushed to market.

The media that failed

My own chapter in the book examines how mainstream media collapsed.

Newsrooms abandoned their adversarial role and parroted government lines. Contradictory evidence was buried. Scientists who asked questions were branded fringe. Patients who reported harm were cast as public health risks.

The press did not simply fail; it became an enforcer. That betrayal corroded trust, and the damage persists today.

Stories of loss

The most haunting chapters are personal.

Antonio DeRose, left in a wheelchair after transverse myelitis, describes doctors who refused to acknowledge the cause.

Queenslander Caitlin Gotze died six weeks after her second Pfizer dose, with her myocarditis misdiagnosed as asthma.

Actor and writer Katie Lees collapsed from clotting linked to AstraZeneca; her death was reduced to a single line on a regulator’s website.

These are stories of grief, stark reminders of what happens when agencies, designed to protect, instead deny responsibility.

This book matters

Covid may have slipped from the headlines, but its consequences have not.

Excess deaths remain unexplained. Injured families still fight for recognition. Trust has been squandered. And this nation has yet to hold a Royal Commission into Covid.

Covid Through Our Eyes is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what really happened to Australians—a nation of people once known for their laid-back spirit, now grappling with a legacy of coercion and injury.

Buy it, read it, and judge for yourself.

September 29, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Who Killed Charlie Kirk?

By Ron Paul | September 16, 2025

I had the pleasure of appearing on Charlie Kirk’s program a few times over the years and I always found him to be polite, respectful, and genuinely interested in ideas. Even in areas where we might not have agreed, he listened carefully. He was a strong advocate of free speech and he made a career of trying to convince the youth of the value of free speech and dialogue regardless of political differences.

At the young age of 31 years old, he had already founded and ran the largest conservative youth organization in the country and as such he had enormous influence over the future of the conservative movement and even the Republican party. As I discovered during my Republican presidential runs, the youth of this country are truly inspired by the ideas of liberty, peace, and prosperity.

I do not believe we have anything near the real story about the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk last week. The narrative presented by the FBI and other government agencies is wildly contradictory, with an ever-changing plotline that makes little sense.

Some individuals close to Kirk have reported that his foreign policy position was shifting away from the standard neoconservative militarism in favor of a more non-interventionist approach. Tucker Carlson recently recounted that Kirk had even gone personally to the White House to urge President Trump to refuse to take military action against Iran. He was rebuffed by President Trump, Carlson informed us.

Likewise, conservative podcaster Candace Owens, who was a close friend of Charlie Kirk, has stated on her program that Kirk was undergoing a “spiritual crisis” and was turning away from his past embrace of militarism and in favor of America-first non-interventionism, particularly regarding the current unrest in the Middle East.

Was Charlie Kirk murdered – directly or indirectly – by powerful forces who could not tolerate such a shift in views in such an influential leader? We don’t know.

If anything, those seeking to prevent the ideas of peace from breaking out would wish to cover it up, as they have done in so many past political killings. As I recounted in my most recent book, The Surreptitious Coup: Who Stole Western Civilization?, the turbulent 1960s saw several killings of major US figures, including JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, who were challenging the status quo and pushing for a shift away from the Cold War confrontationist mentality.

The real assassins of these peace leaders from last century were nihilists who did not believe in truth. They only believed in power – the power that comes from the barrel of a gun. Rather than compete in the marketplace of ideas they preferred to snuff out any challenges and therefore decapitate any possibility that our country could take a different course.

More than sixty years after the murder of President Kennedy, the vast majority of the American people do not believe the official story of how he was killed and why. Truth will eventually break through even when the wall of lies seems impenetrable.

If it is true that Charlie Kirk was preparing to shift his organization toward a foreign policy embraced by our Founders, the killing was even more tragic. But no army – or assassin – can stop an idea whose time has come. That may be his most important legacy. Rest in peace.

September 17, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Download for Free: ‘Forbidden Facts,’ Gavin de Becker’s New Book About Childhood Vaccines

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 12, 2025

The link between vaccines and autism has been “debunked, debunked, debunked,” said New York Times bestselling author Gavin de Becker, in an interview with Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland on “Good Morning CHD.”

However, that “debunking” relied on a private organization and a behind-the-scenes meeting where the conclusion was set before the discussion began. De Becker told viewers:

“Out of that closed-door meeting and closed-mind meeting comes one of the most significant damages done to the American public, which is the cessation of … any full-hearted and authentic government-funded research into vaccines and brain damage.”

The transcripts of those Simpsonwood meetings were leaked, giving outsiders an inside look into how scientific concerns and evidence were suppressed, de Becker said.

In his new book, “Forbidden Facts: Government Deceit & Suppression about Brain Damage from Childhood Vaccines,” de Becker details how private organizations and public health agencies have buried negative information and touted false claims to propagate the lie that vaccines are unquestionably “safe and effective.”

CHD is offering the book as a free download.

“Forbidden Facts,” aimed at a broad audience that may be reluctant to question vaccine orthodoxy, addresses a heartbreaking topic, but also manages to weave in some humor.

“What’s such an amazing facet of this book about something very tragic, about brain injury to children, is that you’ve actually made it funny,” Holland said. “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

De Becker detailed his key findings in the interview with Holland.

The link between vaccines and autism was “debunked” by the Institute of Medicine — now known as the National Academy of Medicine, he said.

The private organization also “debunked” the dangers of Agent Orange, the link between baby powder and cancer, the cause of Gulf War Syndrome, the dangers of silicone breast implants and the dangers of the anthrax vaccines.

But all of those claims were later revealed to be wrong.

“If you can accept that they do it once, then hopefully you can accept that they do it in other areas, and be … skeptical,” de Becker said.

Public health agencies altered definitions of key terms

The book also explains how agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confuse public health issues by changing the definitions of key terms.

For example, a vaccine used to be defined as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease,” de Becker said.

Today, it is defined as “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune system against diseases.” That means vaccines no longer have to protect people from a disease, he said.

A similar change was made to the word “pandemic.” It used to mean an outbreak that killed large numbers of people, but now it just means the appearance of a new virus to which people don’t have prior immunity.

“That terminology of what we used to think a vaccine meant, and what we used to think a pandemic meant, both of those died of COVID in 2020 and 2021,” de Becker said.

A similar move had been made with autism, as the definition has expanded to include people who don’t suffer from severe disability, according to de Becker. This benefits the pharmaceutical companies, he said. They can claim there is a disorder, with no clear definition, that is definitely not linked to vaccines — which also are not, which also have no clear definition.

“I encourage people to use the term ‘brain damage,’ because that, we know, is caused by vaccines,” he said.

No evidence childhood vaccines saved more than 150 million lives

Over the last year, scientific papers, studies and reports have confirmed that vaccines saved over 150 million lives, de Becker said.

However, all of the reports rely on the same flawed data — published in The Lancet — from a modeling study conducted by Imperial College London, which has produced many incorrect modeling studies, according to de Becker.

The modeling study doesn’t account for any vaccine injuries, de Becker said:

“Words that never appear inside that 7,000-word report …: adverse event, side effect, injury, harm, reaction, autism, myocarditis, brain damage, seizure, blood clot, neurological, simian virus 40, autoimmune, heart, heart failure, cardiac arrest, sudden death, stroke, fatality, convulsions. You get the idea.”

That manipulation is pervasive among vaccine manufacturers, vaccine supporters and much of the medical community, Holland said:

“This is why we talk about gaslighting. [Vaccines are] lifesaving, but if you’re injured or if you die — which they acknowledge can happen, but it’s ‘so rare’ — it’s completely ignored in the numbers, in the narrative. It’s not something that’s acceptable in polite conversation.”

The studies touting vaccine successes also fail to address questions such as why people vaccinated against tetanus have the same, very low tetanus death rate as those who aren’t vaccinated against it, de Becker said.

And the numbers are similar for other diseases among healthy people, he added.

When you look at the claim that vaccines saved more than 150 million lives, you have to believe one of two things, de Becker said:

“One is that 154 million lives saved is a headline-grabbing claim bought and paid for and amplified by biased stakeholders in order to affirm and encourage and expand mass vaccination. In other words, the claim is propaganda and promotion, not science.

“Or the other alternative is that the number is perfectly accurate and verifiable, discovered by an unbiased, unconflicted group of geniuses.”

Drug industry uses ‘threats, intimidation’ against people who question them

De Becker, a criminologist, said he believes the pharmaceutical industry is violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, or RICO.

Industry insiders “use bribery, all variety of deceit, threats, intimidation to do damage to the reputation of people who question the orthodoxy that they’ve created,” he said.

It isn’t surprising, as most product launches involve some element of conspiracy, de Becker said:

“They’re going to discredit or harm their competitive products. They’re often going to overvalue and exaggerate the value and benefit of the product they’re rolling out, and they’re not doing it alone. That is a conspiracy. And conspiracies happen every day, all day. There is nothing dark or special about it.”

So the question that remains is: Who can you trust?

“And I say, ‘trust yourself,’” de Becker said, adding that people should look into the recommended vaccines, become informed and make their own decisions.

Just by reading his book, people will know more about how vaccine harms were “debunked” than most doctors, he said.

Watch the interview here.

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

September 13, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

THE “661 TRIALS” LIE: WHAT AARON SIRI REVEALED IN CONGRESS

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 11, 2025

Del sits down with ICAN’s lead attorney, Aaron Siri, Esq., for a hard-hitting conversation following his explosive Senate testimony. Siri takes aim at the false narrative of “661 placebo-controlled vaccine trials,” dismantling it point by point. He also exposes the buried Henry Ford study featured in the upcoming documentary “An Inconvenient Study,” and opens up about his powerful new book, “Vaccines. Amen.” Together, they make the case for why true transparency in vaccine science can no longer be delayed.

 

September 12, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The Oklahoma City Bombing: A Lesson in Government Lawlessness

By William L. Anderson • Ludwig von Mises Institute • August 14, 2025

[Blowback: The Untold Story of the FBI and the Oklahoma City Bombing by Margaret Roberts. (Bombardier Books, 2025; 399 pp.)]

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children at a day care center in the building, and injuring hundreds more. As the FBI website tells readers, a single ex-soldier named Timothy McVeigh acted alone, being motivated by anti-government sentiment that came in the aftermath of the Waco massacre two years earlier.

The FBI version, of course, is the official version and the one repeated in history books and in the New York Times. McVeigh was aided by Terry Nichols, who helped him build a large fertilizer bomb that they placed in a rented Ryder truck that was destroyed in the explosion. Michael Fortier gave McVeigh some logistic help, but no one else was involved, just the “lone wolf” McVeigh and a couple of friends.

Using the organization’s vast investigative resources, the FBI quickly solved the case in the style of a Dick Wolf production. McVeigh had already been arrested when an alert policeman 90 miles away from Oklahoma City saw his getaway car had no license plate, so the FBI was able to get their man in custody. The original investigation also had McVeigh accompanied by a man called John Doe #2 when he rented the Ryder truck in Kansas, but soon afterward, the FBI insisted there had been no JD2, that he was a figment of the imaginations of everyone who said they saw him with McVeigh.

We know the rest of the story. McVeigh was convicted in federal court and executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2001. Nichols was convicted both in federal court and Oklahoma state court, but juries deadlocked on the death penalty, so he is serving a life sentence at the fed’s so-called supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Fortier, who provided valuable information to the FBI, pleaded to lesser charges and served a short prison sentence before he and his wife were whisked away in the government’s witness protection program. Case closed.

The FBI’s narrative was useful on two fronts. First, the organization was able to regain prestige after the disaster at Waco by supposedly solving this horrendous crime quickly. Second, by being able to frame the bombing as the result of anti-government rhetoric that had spread following Waco and the 1992 FBI killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, the Bill Clinton administration, the Democratic Party, and their allies in the legacy media were able to use the bombing to claim that Republicans and other critics of the administration were responsible for the mayhem.

But what if the FBI’s narrative is untrue and that several people were involved in the bombing, some of whom being either government informers or FBI agents who infiltrated right-wing paramilitary groups? Furthermore, what if federal agents lied about the existence of the so-called John Doe #2, and what if they lied about many other things tied to the bombing and subsequent investigation?

Margaret Roberts—the former news director of “America’s Most Wanted” and a celebrated journalist—has published a new book, Blowback, which successfully challenges the FBI and establishment media narratives about the case. Through interviews with people involved in the case and working with citizen journalists that didn’t buy the official line, Roberts has successfully presented alternative storylines that, frankly, are much more believable than what the FBI has given us, and presents her case in a book that is logical and easy to follow—no mean feat, given just how complicated the story really is.

Blowback involves two related events. The first, of course, is the Oklahoma City bombing. The second is the murder of Kenneth Trentadue in his cell at the Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center August 21, 1995—a death the FBI to this day insists was a suicide. Thanks to a dogged investigation by Kenneth’s brother, Jesse—a former collegiate track star and respected attorney living in Salt Lake City—the FBI’s narratives on Kenneth’s death and the Oklahoma City bombing were exposed as lies, although that investigation came at great cost to Jesse.

(I have corresponded with Jesse Trentadue for many years and was familiar with his investigation, but until I read Blowback, I had not realized just how extensive that investigation has been.)

In the FBI’s account of the bombing, the agency claims:

The bombing was quickly solved, but the investigation turned out to be one of the most exhaustive in FBI history.

No stone was left unturned to make sure every clue was found and all the culprits identified.

The first statement is partially untrue and the second is an outright falsehood. Not only did the FBI refuse to follow leads provided by eyewitness testimony, but the agency threatened law-abiding citizens with prison when their own investigations began to prove that the FBI was lying. Unfortunately, because federal prosecutors, federal judges, and FBI agents have worked together to rig the outcomes, most of the principals in the Oklahoma City bombing will never have to worry about being brought to justice.

As pointed out earlier, the book deals both with the bombing and the Trentadue murder and then ties them together. We begin with the Trentadue case.

Kenneth Trentadue—a military veteran who in earlier years robbed banks to help pay for a drug habit—was picked up near the Mexican border in August 1995, on a parole violation and sent to Oklahoma City. In calls to his wife and family, Trentadue seemed hopeful and told them he would be released soon. However, on August 21, officials called the family to tell them that Kenneth had hanged himself in his cell, and that the prison officials wanted to cremate his body.

Kenneth’s mother and brother, Jesse, insisted on the feds shipping the body to them so they could have a proper burial. When the body was examined at the funeral home in Southern California, however, they were shocked. Roberts writes:

…Kenneth’s wife, mother, and sister had the staff remove heavy makeup applied by the prison to Kenneth’s body. Underneath, they discovered bruises, his cracked skull, possible stun gun burns, and an incision indicating that someone had cut Kenneth’s throat. (p. 12)

None of this made sense at first to the Trentadues. Kenneth was scheduled to be released soon and his calls to family members had been upbeat. Furthermore, the sheer logistics of how he could have hung himself with the bedsheet defied laws of physics. Furthermore, why did he have injuries and an incision in his neck, and why (as they found out later) was his jail cell splattered in blood?

Only later—thanks to a tip from journalist J.D. Cash of the McCurtain Daily Gazette in Idabel, Oklahoma—were they led to a possible explanation. Kenneth was seen as a near-dead ringer for the elusive JD2 right down to a tattoo that matched what the other alleged bomber had on his forearm. Had FBI investigators believed he was the second bomber, they certainly would have tried to get that information out of him through an “enhanced” interrogation at Oklahoma City. Instead, they allegedly killed him and then staged a fake suicide.

Whatever happened, Jesse Trentadue found that the FBI stonewalled him, and then FBI agents even met with federal prosecutors and other US Department of Justice officials to see if they could bring criminal charges of “obstruction of justice” against him, with one of those officials being then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, who was in charge of the cover up of Kenneth Trentadue’s murder that was called the “Trentadue Mission” by the Department of Justice, and later would serve as President Barack Obama’s US Attorney General. The DOJ under Janet Reno would not only ignore (and then harass) Trentadue; it also gave similar treatment to Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who had seen the photos of Kenneth’s body and was demanding answers.

At least Hatch and Trentadue were able to create enough noise to have the DOJ go through the motions of an investigation of Kenneth’s death, but ultimately Holder made sure that there would be no indictment—and no US Senate investigation of the affair. Despite the physical impossibility that Kenneth managed to hang himself in a “suicide proof” cell after inflicting extensive physical trauma on himself, including slashing his own throat, the Holder directed grand jury conclusion was suicide.

(The Trentadue family later won a civil lawsuit in 2001 against the DOJ regarding Kenneth’s death, but the DOJ already has declared it never will pay a judgment to the family no matter what the courts have ruled.)

As Jesse investigated his brother’s death, he joined with others such as Cash to look closely into the FBI’s account of the Oklahoma City bombing and found that the government’s narrative was untrue. While the government and the legacy media insisted that their Timothy McVeigh “lone wolf” account was correct, Jesse and others found that the Clinton White House had been running a shadowy operation named PATCON (for “Patriot Conspiracy) to infiltrate the groups tied to the Christian Identity movement. Their investigation into PATCON would ultimately lead them to the Oklahoma City bombing itself.

Begun by the George H.W. Bush administration in 1991, PATCON supposedly was created to protect Americans from right-wing violence. However, PATCON soon would take on the characteristics of the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program of the 1960s and 70s to deal with threats from violent left-wing groups like the Weathermen, as well as the domestic spying programs against alleged Muslim extremists after the 9/11 attacks. As writers like James Bovard have noted, these infiltration programs have taken on a life of their own as those tied to the FBI would seek to enhance their importance by plotting many violent events that the programs allegedly were supposed to prevent.

Far from the Oklahoma City bombing being the work of the amateurish McVeigh and Nichols, Roberts describes in Blowback how she and others were able to trace McVeigh and his associates to the FBI-infiltrated groups that would provide support to him while he drifted into places like Elohim City in Oklahoma—a gathering place for disaffected people who had come to believe the US Government was corrupt and needed to be overthrown. In fact, as Roberts and others have documented, several FBI and ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) informants warned their handlers of the bombing plot or something similar, yet the feds did not act.

Not surprisingly, it seems that the FBI almost welcomed such attacks, as they legitimized the original purpose of PATCON and other programs. Writing about FBI informant John Matthews—who himself had contact with people who allegedly knew about the plans for the bombing—Roberts says:

As he [Matthews] and Jesse talked, Matthews revealed his disillusionment about PATCON. “It seems like the FBI was more interested in inciting violence than preventing it,” Matthews said. He had signed on believing his mission was to monitor the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups on the far-right fringe. However, Matthews came to believe that inciting violence was the fundamental mission of PATCON. (p. 322)

Roberts—following the lead of Trentadue and others—has raised an important question: If the Oklahoma City bombing was not a “lone wolf” operation but rather was tied to shadowy figures, including embedded FBI agents and confidential informers, was it simply a case of a plot that got out of hand? Were people on the inside supposed to put the brakes on the whole operation, but something went wrong?

These questions are not easily answered, and Roberts does not take the conspiratorial plunge to claim that Oklahoma City was somehow a neatly-packaged FBI inside operation. Indeed, there is no way to prove such an allegation and Roberts, Trentadue, and others who have investigated the bombing have not taken that step into the abyss.

However, one can truthfully say that no person benefitted more from the Oklahoma City bombing than President Clinton. Just five months before, he and the Democratic Party had suffered huge setbacks as the Republicans had captured the US House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years and took the Senate, as voters were driven in part by anger at well-publicized abuses by the federal government and especially the Clinton White House.

By tying the bombing to any criticism of the federal government and of Clinton himself, the president was able to channel public anger about the blast toward conservative government critics in general and elected Republicans in particular, and Clinton and the Democrats were able to reverse some of their political losses the next year, as voters returned Clinton to the White House. As the San Francisco Examiner reported:

…under the heading “How to use extremism as issue against Republicans,” [Clinton adviser Dick] Morris told Clinton that “direct accusations” of extremism wouldn’t work because the Republicans were not, in fact, extremists. Rather, Morris recommended what he called the “ricochet theory.” Clinton would “stimulate national concern over extremism and terror,” and then, “when issue is at top of national agenda, suspicion naturally gravitates to Republicans.”

James Bovard also wrote that, following the bombing, his books on government spending and abuses of citizens were interpreted as welcoming things like Oklahoma City, including a hostile review of Freedom in Chains by the Los Angeles Times, with the reviewer declaring:

In Bovard’s defensive and disingenuous discussion of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, he reveals that he is aware of the possible consequences of his words.

Blowback will not be reviewed in publications like The New York Times Book Review or the New York Review of (Each Other’s) Books (or if they are reviewed in those publications, the reviews will be hostile), but it is a book that one should read if only to rediscover the hard truth that government agents at all levels will lie and probably get away with it. While one imagines that the usual suspects will dismiss this book as a collection of falsehoods and wild conspiracies, the truth is that Roberts has managed to chronicle not only a sorry chapter in the modern history of US governance, but also has highlighted the fact that there are still heroic citizens among us doing their duty even when those charged with protecting citizens and enforcing the rule of law refuse to do so.

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

DR. PAUL THOMAS VS. THE CDC

CDC Hit With Lawsuit Over Failure to Test Cumulative Effect of 72-Dose Childhood Vaccine Schedule

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 18, 2025

Two doctors who lost their medical licenses because they questioned the CDC’s vaccine recommendations for children are suing the agency for failing to test the cumulative effect of the 72-dose schedule on children’s health.

Drs. Paul Thomas and Kenneth P. Stoller and Stand for Health Freedom filed the lawsuit last week in federal court, alleging the lack of safety testing violates federal law and children’s constitutional rights.

The lawsuit names Susan Monarez, Ph.D., in her official capacity as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Attorney Rick Jaffe, who represents the plaintiffs, said the lawsuit “goes to the heart of the CDC’s childhood immunization program — a 72-plus dose medical intervention schedule that has never been tested.”

According to the complaint, the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule “is only based on an evaluation of short-term individual vaccine risks,” as the CDC “has never studied the combined effects and the accumulating dangers of administering all of the vaccines.”

The lawsuit states:

“The facts establish a continuing public health outrage hiding in plain sight: America administers more vaccines than any nation on earth while producing the sickest children in the developed world. Yet CDC demands proof of harm while refusing to conduct the studies that could provide it.”

Full article


The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025

Dr. Paul Thomas, author of Vax Facts, opens up about his controversial “vaxxed vs. unvaxxed” study, which showed healthier outcomes in unvaccinated children. After publishing the data, his license was suspended — but he continues to speak out, now suing the CDC over its untested vaccine schedule. He warns that pediatricians have become blind enforcers of pharma policy, while parents are waking up to the harms.

August 24, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

‘Between a Shot and a Hard Place’: Autism, Vaccines and the Illusion of Certainty

By Dr. Joel ‘Gator’ Warsh | The Defender | June 25, 2025

For years, the public has been told the vaccine-autism question is closed — case dismissed, myth debunked, science settled.

But when you peel back the headlines and actually examine the evidence, a startling truth emerges: We haven’t really studied the question at all. Not thoroughly. Not independently. Not with the urgency or integrity the issue demands.

The most commonly cited research? A handful of studies on the MMR vaccine and thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was largely removed from childhood vaccines over two decades ago. That’s it.

No comprehensive analysis of the full vaccine schedule. No robust long-term comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children. No meaningful investigation into the timing, combinations, or cumulative biological impact of dozens of shots now given in infancy and early childhood.

In other words, we haven’t looked. And yet we claim to know.

As a pediatrician with formal training in epidemiology, I approached the research with trust in the system and confidence in the data. But what I encountered while investigating for my book, “Between a Shot and a Hard Place,” left me stunned.

I expected to uncover a vast body of high-quality science — long-term trials, robust safety evaluations, rigorous comparisons between vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Instead, I found a shallow pool of studies — many small, some outdated, most narrowly focused on just one vaccine. There was no comprehensive scrutiny of the full schedule, no real curiosity about timing, interactions, or vulnerable populations.

It wasn’t that the science had disproven a link — it’s that the science had barely asked the question. And that silence speaks volumes.

We cannot claim certainty where inquiry has been suppressed. We cannot dismiss parent experiences as coincidences when they follow the same patterns again and again.

And we cannot afford to confuse lack of evidence with evidence of safety. The stakes are too high — and our children deserve better.

The rise in autism, and the refusal to ask why

Autism now affects 1 in 31 children in the U.S., with rates as high as 1 in 12.5 boys in California. The increase in diagnoses isn’t just about better awareness — more children today are deeply affected, with significant developmental and intellectual disabilities.

This is a public health crisis. Yet somehow, asking whether vaccines might play a role is taboo.

Parents see the change firsthand. A baby babbles, smiles, and makes eye contact — then suddenly, after a routine doctor visit, that progress stops. Words disappear. Eye contact fades. Regression sets in.

These stories follow a pattern, and while correlation is not causation, patterns are where science begins. But instead of investigation, we dismiss these parents. Instead of listening, we silence them.

The research we’re missing

I combed through decades of vaccine safety literature. The results were sobering.

  • There are no long-term, large-scale studies comparing fully vaccinated children to unvaccinated ones using standardized developmental assessments.
  • No comprehensive evaluation exists of the full CDC vaccine schedule as administered in real life.
  • Most studies focus narrowly on the MMR vaccine or thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative largely removed from pediatric vaccines two decades ago.

Even the Institute of Medicine acknowledged in a 2013 report that the safety of the full childhood vaccine schedule — especially its timing, spacing, and cumulative exposure— had not been rigorously studied.

If vaccines were a pharmaceutical drug administered in 70 doses before kindergarten, with a suspected link to any chronic disease, we’d demand independent oversight, transparent trials, and long-term tracking.

But because these are vaccines, we declare the science “settled” without proving that it is.

Buried data, ignored whistleblowers

In my research, I came across the 2010 study by Gallagher and Goodman that found a higher autism risk in boys who received the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. It wasn’t widely publicized or followed up.

More disturbing was the 2014 revelation by William Thompson, Ph.D., a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who admitted that his team omitted key data in a pivotal MMR-autism study — data that showed increased risk in African American boys. The study was never corrected.

How can we claim the science is settled if major findings are buried and whistleblowers ignored?

A path forward

The vaccine-autism debate won’t be resolved by censorship or soundbites. It will be resolved by doing the science we’ve avoided for too long.

If we truly care about children’s health — and public trust — then we must stop circling the same studies and start asking better questions. That means:

  • Funding large, independent, open-label prospective studies comparing fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, and unvaccinated children — evaluating real-world vaccine schedules, not just single shots in isolation.
  • Studying combinations, timing, and aluminum adjuvants using updated toxicology, neurodevelopmental, and immunological tools.
  • Taking parental reports seriously as part of observational data—treating them not as “anecdotes to dismiss” but as signals to investigate.
  • Removing all financial conflicts of interest from vaccine safety research and creating full transparency for both data and funding sources.

This isn’t about choosing sides. It’s about restoring balance. We can demand rigorous, independent science without being “anti-vax.” We can protect children and respect parental intuition.

But we can’t do either if we keep denying the blind spots in our current system.

To move forward, we must be honest about what we know — and courageous enough to admit what we don’t. Because when it comes to our children’s long-term neurological health, vague reassurances are not enough.

No, the science is not settled. And it’s time we stopped saying it is.

Dr. Joel “Gator” Warsh is a board-certified pediatrician, specializing in integrative and holistic medicine, and the author of “Between a Shot and a Hard Place.”

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.

June 26, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

A history of the Zionist lobby in England and the USA

By Bruna Frascolla | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 10, 2025

The voluminous book Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic, by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, was published in late 2024. He wrote a history of the lobby and traced its beginnings to 19th-century England; more specifically, to Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1801 – 1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. The other side of the Atlantic alluded to in the title is, of course, the USA, and the history continues to the present.

Over the centuries, both the British crown and the US government have had tendencies both in favor of and against the lobby. The latter sought to place an Arab monarch as a preferred ally and to keep the Middle East at peace, without the immense disturbances caused by Zionists. During the Cold War, these internal tensions were quite dramatic, since making the “Free World” an unconditional supporter of Israel meant to push the Arabs, with all their oil, to the side of the Soviets.

Since the book is comprehensive, I have chosen a few points to highlight that are specifically from the history of the lobby.

The origins

Since the idea that the Jews should return to the Holy Land is easily found among Puritans (Pappé shows that even President John Adams believed in this), the choice of the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury is due to the fact that he had worked, within the British Empire, for the creation of “a British and Jewish state in the middle of the Ottoman Empire, Palestine” (p. 4). In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was strong and steady. In a way, then, the Zionist lobby began as a British lobby against the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1838, under the pressure of Shaftesbury and already with such a purpose, the first British consulate was opened in Ottoman Palestine. For Shafstesbury, “the days of the Ottoman Empire were numbered, and the scramble for its spoils had already begun” (p. 6). Both the earl and the first consul had previously been involved in religious projects, which aimed to interpret the Bible and convert the Jews.

In addition to the religious and geopolitical issues, there was the issue of migration. In the 19th century, Western Europe did not know what to do with the multitude of Eastern Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire. Therefore, in addition to the eschatological and geopolitical purposes, the creation of a Jewish state would serve as a dumping ground to solve Europe’s migration problem. Furthermore, the 19th century was witnessing the rise of scientific racism, so this concern was motivated by anti-Semitism.

The United States also had an early lobby in the 19th century promoted by Puritans. The most notable result is that these Puritans formed Cyrus Scofield, the author of the Scofield Bible. The faithful who study his edition of the Bible will find many explanatory notes in the Old Testament, and will learn that the Bible is a kind of real estate deed, in which the area of ​​the ancient Kingdom of Israel is owned by the Jews per omnia saecula saeculorum, and that it is the duty of Christians to support the chosen people when they blow up the houses of the Gentiles who live there.

The poor Jews and the leftist phase

Normally, the history of Zionism begins with Herzl and the publication of Der Judenstaat in 1896. By then, much water had already flowed under the bridge among the Puritans. And when Herzl entered the scene, he failed to win over the Anglo-Jewish elites. They considered that the creation of a Jewish state would call into question their loyalty to England, and they saw this as a bad deal.

On the other hand, the poor Jews crowded into the outskirts of London saw Zionism as a chance to change their lives. At that time, socialism and communism were spreading among the urban poor in Europe. Zionism then abandoned the colonialist and capitalist vocabulary of Herzl (who wrote Der Judenstaat to convince a Jewish banker to invest in the new movement) and began to present itself as the socialism of the Jews. Thus, the Poale Zion movement, a labor movement, became a craze among poor Jews in England, and would grow greatly within the Labour Party in the 20th century. Since the English Left is of Puritan formation, combining Jewish socialism with Puritan Christian laborism was like combining fire with gasoline. Only in the second half of the 20th century did the greater visibility of Israel’s crimes bring Labour closer to the Palestinian cause. One of the most prominent figures in this movement was George Galloway, a Scotsman of Irish descent and, for that reason, a Catholic.

Furthermore, in both Europe and the Americas, the idea that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy was widespread, so that every Jew was suspected of communism. It was a burden for a Jew to call himself a communist, so Zionism was the politically correct leftism.

The Israeli Lobby’s Takeover of the United States

One of the questions that most intrigues observers of the issue is: Is Israel an extension of American power in the Middle East, or is it a vampire state that uses American resources to maintain its own project? Pappé’s book points to the second answer, although it makes clear that the neocons (who consider Israel an outpost of their civilization) have their own agenda.

The lobby’s takeover of the United States should make political theorists reflect on the flaws of democracy. In the 1950s, there were the “three I”s of identity politics: Italians, Irish and Israel. The three communities originating from minority religions (Catholicism and Judaism) elected their representatives based on their Italian, Irish or Jewish identity. An exemplary case was that of parliamentarian Fiorello La Guardia, the son of an Italian father and a Hungarian Jew (which makes him Jewish according to halacha), fluent in Italian and Yiddish. Thus, by claiming two identities, he achieved electoral success by garnering the votes of the Italian and Jewish communities. American Jews were great enthusiasts of Israel; and, even if they had no intention of moving there, they demanded that their parliamentarians take measures favorable to the foreign state. Furthermore, the puritanical formation of the United States meant that there was widespread sympathy for the idea of ​​sending the Jews “back” to the Holy Land.

Since the majority of Jews were left-wing, it was common sense that the Democrats had to be pro-Israel, since they depended on the Jewish vote. (Although Kennedy frustrated these expectations.) The party most capable of confronting the lobby would, in principle, be the Republicans.

Nevertheless, opposition to the lobby had been concentrated, since the partition of Palestine, among State Department bureaucrats. They were the ones who wanted to make alliances with Arab monarchies, keep the region stable and prevent the Arab world from getting closer to the Soviet Union. However, stopping the pampering of Israel was difficult in American democracy for two reasons: the aforementioned puritanical affection for Israel and the lobby’s role in campaign financing.

The game began to change within the bureaucracy when Nixon hired the diabolical Henry Kissinger as an advisor. Under his influence, the Arabists in the State Department were replaced by pro-Israel people. Furthermore, also during the Nixon administration, Hans Morgenthau’s political philosophy, according to which states should not care about morality in international relations, became the institutional stance of the United States.

Henry Kissinger and Hans Morgenthau were two German Zionist Jews who went to the United States as refugees. Morgenthau was also an advisor to Ben Gurion during the ethnic cleansing of 1948. The realist Morgenthau made a school of thought and was succeeded by the neo-realist Kenneth Waltz. Regarding the latter, Pappé comments: “His work still constitutes the ideological infrastructure of most studies in international relations research centres in America. From these centres graduated the American diplomats who were selected to conduct the peace process in the Middle East, guided to overlook issues such as justice or morality in the process and to take as few risks as possible. This suited Israel very well and disadvantaged the Palestinians considerably.” (p. 325).

By combining the major pro-Israel actors in the United States, Pappé speaks of an unholy trinity: “Christian Zionism, neoconservatism and the American Jewish lobby” (p. 362). The neocons are a school of thought that is notoriously composed of many ex-Trotskyist Jews, but it is worth noting that this is not exclusive (neither Fukuyama nor Huntington are Jewish).

As for the lobby, AIPAC which takes up many, many pages in the book. This is the most famous lobbying organization in the US and its most notorious activity is financing campaigns for politicians at the beginning of their careers. AIPAC was founded in the 1950s from pre-existing organizations and intended to be bipartisan. It takes money from US donors, sends it to Israel, and Israel decides how to spend it. (I will not go into the details of AIPAC here, but I recommend the documentary The Lobby produced by Al-Jazeera, which is a source for Pappé in the book.) Of the unholy trinity, the only thing left to look at is the Christian Zionists.

Radicalization and televangelists

In the 1980s, after a long hegemony of the socialist and labor left, a right-wing, religious and nationalist coalition came to power in Israel. American Jews, who were mostly leftists, began to distance themselves from the Israeli government. Since AIPAC works in the interests of the Israeli government, and not of the American Jewish electorate, AIPAC ceased to be bipartisan and became right-wing. Thus, instead of focusing on the Jewish population to mobilize American public opinion in favor of Israel, the lobby preferred to focus increasingly on fundamentalist Zionist Christians. This strategy was launched by Menachem Begin and his Likud party in 1977, and the idea was conceived by the young Benjamin Netanyahu, who had just returned from the United States.

During the Reagan era, televangelists emerged, and at the same time foreign policy was thought of in Manichaean religious terms (the Christian West was fighting the great Satan in Moscow, etc.). In this context, televangelists took the lead in Zionist propaganda, saying that being against Israel was being against God. Between 1981 and 1989, writes Pappé, “Netanyahu integrated the Christian fundamentalists into Israeli Hasbara (propaganda)” (p. 311). Perhaps the greatest proof of this integration is the fact that, in occupied Lebanon (1982 – 2000), Israel authorized the opening of a Zionist Christian TV channel that broadcasted televangelists. They were probably targeting the Maronites…

Lobby doomed

In addition to telling the story of the lobby, Pappé points out a puzzle: why, decades after the international recognition of the state of Israel, does the Zionist lobby tirelessly repeat that the State of Israel is legitimate? Both in the preface and in the conclusion, he raises his conjectures. He assumes that propaganda is, in principle, a problem of conscience: Zionist Jews know that Israel is illegitimate, and that is why they lie non-stop. But there is a more serious problem: Israel does what it wants, and no longer cares about public opinion. What is the point of spending so much money to suppress student speech on American campuses, if the opinion of those students is irrelevant? For Pappé, the lobby has taken on a life of its own, and power is intoxicating. Why would a lobbyist give up the influence he has over politicians of left-wing and right-wing parties on both sides of the Atlantic?

Nevertheless, the lobby is doomed to failure because Israel has already decided that it does not care about Western opinion. Thus, in its death throes, the lobby will become increasingly ferocious, seeking to hide reality and maintain power.

June 12, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Canada’s New Border Law Hides a Surveillance Time Bomb

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 6, 2025

Canada’s new Strong Border Act tabled as Bill C-2, is being framed by the federal government as a step toward strengthening border security. But hidden within its lengthy legislative text is a familiar and troubling push for expanded surveillance powers, this time without the need for court authorization.

Nestled deep in the bill are provisions that grant law enforcement sweeping new authority to demand subscriber data from service providers, bypassing the oversight mechanisms long seen as essential to protecting Canadians’ privacy.

The bill revives the “lawful access” agenda, one that law enforcement agencies have been pursuing since the late 1990s. These digital access provisions are not new, but their inclusion in a border-focused bill appears to be a calculated effort to quietly reintroduce them under a different guise. Despite being repeatedly rebuffed by public opposition, parliamentary committees, and Canada’s highest court, the drive to erode digital privacy protections continues.

This legislative maneuver follows years of setbacks for warrantless access advocates. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled decisively in R. v. Spencer that Canadians have a legitimate expectation of privacy when it comes to subscriber information. The Court stressed that identifying individuals based on their Internet activity could easily expose sensitive personal behavior and that police demands for such information constituted a search requiring proper legal authorization.

According to Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, law enforcement has continued to seek ways around those constraints. Past efforts to legislate access without judicial oversight have either failed to pass or been dropped due to public backlash.

A 2010 bill mandating the disclosure of customer details, including IP addresses and device identifiers, without a warrant was abandoned.

In 2014, a new bill was introduced, ostensibly to tackle “cyberbullying.” In practice, it reintroduced many of the same provisions that had been defeated under earlier proposals. While dressed in the language of protecting youth online, its underlying purpose was once again to broaden law enforcement access to digital subscriber data with limited oversight.

The Supreme Court’s Spencer ruling remained a major obstacle, reaffirming the privacy rights of Canadians. Then, in 2023, the Bykovets decision extended those protections further, affirming that IP addresses also warrant constitutional safeguards. The Court noted that if digital privacy is to mean anything in the modern age, then these basic digital identifiers must be protected under Section 8 of the Charter.

Despite this legal precedent, Bill C-2 is attempting to carve out a new space for surveillance. Among its more concerning features is a clause that would allow authorities to issue “information demands” to service providers without needing judicial approval. These demands would compel companies to confirm whether they provide services to specific users, whether they hold transmission data related to those accounts, and where the services are or were provided, both inside and outside Canada.

The threshold for triggering such a demand is alarmingly low. Law enforcement must merely suspect that a crime has occurred or may occur and that the requested information could aid an investigation. The demand doesn’t require disclosing the actual data, but it functions as a roadmap to it, alerting police to which providers hold what kind of information and where it might be found. Such indirect searches effectively sidestep the very privacy protections the courts have upheld.

Notably, none of these measures relate directly to border enforcement. Their presence in a border bill serves a strategic purpose: to avoid the scrutiny that such provisions would attract if introduced through standalone legislation. This tactic, often seen in omnibus bills or unrelated amendments, allows controversial policies to advance quietly under the cover of more palatable reforms.

Professor Geist has a full in-depth look at the history of such laws here.

June 7, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Kerry’s MH17 Misinformation

By Eric van de Beek – Propaganda In Focus – March 14, 2025 

The downing of flight MH17 in Eastern Ukraine, on July 17, 2014, led to a tectonic shift in relations between the EU and Russia. The American Secretary of State, John Kerry, paved the way by spreading misinformation and agitprop.

On July 17, 2014, a Malaysian passenger plane that had departed from Amsterdam and was en route to Kuala Lumpur crashed in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, where at that time a battle was raging between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian insurgents. All 298 occupants of flight MH17, most of them Dutch, were killed. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) investigated the technical cause of the crash. In 2015 it concluded that the plane was downed by a Buk missile. The criminal investigation was led by a team of Dutch, Belgian, Australian, Ukrainian and Malaysian police officers and prosecutors – the Joint Investigation Team (JIT). In 2019, it announced that the Dutch Public Prosecution Service would prosecute one Ukrainian, Leonid Kharchenko, and three Russians, Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov. They were tried in The Netherlands, by the Hague District Court. In 2022, Pulatov was acquitted. The court sentenced the other defendees to life imprisonment for complicity in murder and the downing of an aircraft. The concrete involvement of the three convicts is alleged to have included: expressing the need for and requesting an air defense system with crew; indicating a suitable firing location for that system; transporting, escorting, guarding and concealing it. Those who were directly involved in the downing of the plane are still at large. The JIT assumes they are hiding in circles of the 53rd anti-aircraft brigade in Kursk, Russia. A Buk Telar air defense system from that brigade allegedly crossed the border into Ukraine with crew and all on July 17, 2014, where it fired the fatal missile the same day. However, the JIT has no idea who pushed the button, who gave the order to shoot, and for what reason. In 2023, the JIT anounced that it had halted the investigation.

The impact of the MH17 crash on relations between Russia and Europe cannot be overestimated. Although American and European sanctions were already in force against Russia before July 17, 2014, due to the seizure of Crimea, relations between Russia and most countries of the European Union were still friendly. The European economy benefitted from trade relations with Russia and the import of cheap natural gas. The Obama Administration tried to change this. It urged Brussels to impose additional, tougher sanctions on Russia, The Washington Post reported on June 25. At that time, there were divisions within the E.U. Some countries feared sanctions would hurt their relations with Russia. This changed overnight on July 17. “We hope it is a wake-up call for some countries in Europe that have been reluctant to move,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a televised interview three days after the MH17 crash. “We think frankly that the sanctions may need to be tougher. It may well be that the Dutch and others help lead that effort.” Kerry referred to the sanctions package that the US had already imposed on July 16. It was an example for Europe to follow. That package included sanctions against numerous Russian companies in the energy sector, banking and arms industries. Americans were prohibited by law from doing business with individuals who had interests in these companies.

On July 21, the day after Kerry’s TV address, American UN Ambassador Samantha Power and Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans gave emotional speeches at the UN Security Council in New York. They accused the separatists of denying investigators access to the crash site, suppressing evidence, engaging in looting, disrespecting the victims’ bodies and hindering their recovery. “To my dying day I will not understand that it took so much time for the rescue workers to be allowed to do their difficult job, and that human remains should be used in a political game,” Timmermans stated, before flying to Brussels to give a reprise of his speech. Several EU ministers reportedly had tears in their eyes when Timmermans said he had known personally some of the 194 Dutch passengers among the 298 people who died on the plane. Reuters characterized the meeting in Brussels as “a turning point in Europe’s approach towards Russia”. Countries that were previously on the brakes, such as Germany and Italy, now suddenly agreed to the measures desired by the US. “Within days of Timmermans’ address, senior EU diplomats had agreed the broad outlines of potential sanctions on Russian access to EU capital markets, defence and energy technology,” Reuters wrote. “Timmermans’ impassioned speech, several diplomats said, made it difficult for others to hold a firm line against sanctions at Tuesday’s meeting. […] But like a supportive family, EU partners rallied around the bereaved Dutch, putting national economic interests aside and for the first time going beyond asset freezes and visa bans on individuals to envisage curbs on entire sectors of the Russian economy that could turn the screw on President Vladimir Putin.” On July 31, the significantly stricter EU sanctions against Russia became a reality.

The MH17 disaster not only led to economic damage for Russia. The country’s reputation also suffered a serious blow. Various Western media and politicians immediately pointed the finger at the Kremlin. President Vladimir Putin had a 298-fold murder on his conscience. While Russia could previously count on some understanding among many in the West for sending “green men” to Crimea, it was now a rogue state in the eyes of the masses. The separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk also experienced nothing but misery from the disaster.

The repercussions for Russia and the separatists stand in stark contrast to the outcome for the anti-Russian coup government in Kiev. It has benefited greatly from the MH17 crash. Until July 17, fear of a large-scale Russian invasion prevailed and there was concern about the poorly run ‘anti-terrorist operation’ along the border with Russia in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. The MH17 disaster changed this overnight. On July 21, 2014, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appeared on CNN. He qualified the MH17 as a terrorist attack. “I don’t see any difference between the tragedy of 9/11 and the tragedy in Grabovo in Ukraine,” he said. “So now we have to demonstrate the same reaction. This is a danger to the whole world, to global security.” It sounded like a call for the West to take military action, as had happened in response to the alleged terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001. The Americans then successively invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

Poroshenko almost got his way. An advanced plan by The Netherlands and Australia to take the crash area by force of arms from the insurgents was called off at the last minute. Nevertheless, the MH17 disaster brought the Kiev government much of what it wanted from the US and Europe: political and military support for Ukraine and tough punitive measures against Russia. On December 18, 2014, US President Barack Obama signed the so-called Ukraine Freedom Support Act, which paved the way for $350 million in military aid to Kiev. According to statements from the US Department of Defense, Washington donated one and a half billion dollars worth of military goods and training to Kiev from 2014 to 2019. NATO ‘intensified’ – in its own words – its cooperation with Ukraine. The tougher attitude of Brussels towards Moscow, so fervently desired by Kiev, also took shape.

Was MH17 really downed by a Russian Buk-crew? According to the The Hague District Court, the Dutch Prosecution Service, the JIT and the western legacy media the answer is in the affirmative. According to the author of this article, who attended all 69 court sessions of the criminal trial, no convincing — let alone conclusive evidence — was presented for the Russian Buk scenario. There are reasons to believe that something completely different may have happened. (I will discuss this in extenso in a book that I will publish this year.)

The fact is that in the public mind, Russia was convicted even before the official criminal investigation had started. Secretary of State John Kerry played a major role in this campaign by spreading misinformation and agitation propaganda that was subsequently echoed by others among whom were President Barack Obama, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, and Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Frans Timmermans. Let’s take a look at the five tv interviews Kerry gave on Sunday, July 20, 2014. On this day he appeared on CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC and CBS.

Claim 1: “We know for certain that in the last month there’s been a major flow of arms and weapons. There was a convoy about several weeks ago, about 150 vehicles with armed personnel carrier, multiple rocket launchers, tanks, artillery, all of which crossed over from Russia into the eastern part of Ukraine and was turned over to the separatists.”

This may be true. I did not study this subject. I concentrated on the Buk allegations. I’ve seen imagery of a military transport in rebel territory, filmed on July 15, 2014. The vehicles in the transport were either provided by Russia or captured by the separatists from the Ukrainian army. In any case, U.S. intelligence has not detected a Buk Telar crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border. No western intelligence agency has identified any Russian Buk system in Ukraine; only Ukrainian Buk systems. This has been acknowledged by the Dutch Public Prosecution Service during the MH17 criminal trial in the Netherlands. In court it showed a map of all known positions of Ukrainian Buk systems in eastern Ukraine in June and July 2014, based on a memo of the Dutch Military Intelligence Service MIVD.

Claim 2: “We know for certain that the separatists have a proficiency that they’ve gained by training from Russians as to how to use these sophisticated SA-11 systems.” (SA-11 is the American designation for the Buk system.)

The Americans have never substantiated this claim. It cannot be true either. A Ukrainian Buk expert who was consulted by the JIT has said that a Buk system is more complex to operate than the most advanced fighter jet. At the time MH17 was shot down, the conflict in eastern Ukraine had been going on for only three months. In such a short period it is impossible to learn how to operate a Buk system. According to Ukrainian ex-Buk commander Tarankov, who was interviewed by the JIT, this takes years. The commander of a Buk Telar has undergone five years of training; his subordinates spend a year or more before they are allowed to deploy, Pulatov’s lawyers revealed in court. According to the ex-commander of a Finnish Buk battalion, Esa Kelloniemi, who was consulted by the author of this article, it is out of the question for an untrained crew to receive permission from higher-ups to go out with a Buk. Moreover, without specialist knowledge, it would be impossible to fire a Buk missile. That would require much more than turning the ignition key and pressing the launch button. “The firing mechanism blocks the launch of a missile if a target has not first been detected, locked-on to and tracked, and if this target is still outside the calculated firing range,” Kelloniemi says.

Kerry’s suggestion that MH17 was brought down by separatists runs counter to the view of the JIT and the Dutch Public Prosecution Service. They propagated the hasty suggestion that MH17 was downed by a Russian crew.

Claim 3. “We know that they had this system to a certainty on Monday the 14th beforehand because the social media was reporting it and tracking it.”

According to the JIT and the prosecution the Buk that downed MH17 entered Ukrainian territory on July 17. This therefore cannot be the Buk that Kerry talked about.

On July 14 a Ukrainian military transport plane, an An-26, was downed. According to Kiev, this had happened at a high altitude and with a system more powerful than anything the insurgents had fired with up to that time. It probably came from Russia, they said. On social media there was talk that it was downed by a Buk missile, but this wasn’t substantiated in any way.

It seems the seperatists were in posession of Buk Telars. In Donetsk and Luhansk they captured air bases where Buk systems were deployed. The Ukrainians had already withdrawn from there, taking their equipment with them, but they may have left some behind. According to the prosecution the separatists found at least one Buk-Telar in an air base near Donetsk. It showed photos of this Telar in court. It looked non-functional. The electronics section was clearly damaged. In Luhansk the Ukrainians also seem to have left at least one Telar behind. On 20 July 2014 a video appeared of Valery Bolotov, the political leader of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR). In it Bolotov expressed his condolences to the relatives and reported in the same breath that he had a non-functional Telar. He did not say how he got it. He invited the JIT to come and inspect the Telar and called on technical experts to repair it so that it could be used for the air defense of the LPR. The investigators of JIT never accepted Bolotov’s invitation. They never set a foot in Luhansk.

Claim 4. “On Thursday of the event, we know that within hours of this event, this particular system passed through two towns right in the vicinity of the shoot down. We know because we observed it by imagery.”

“We know they had an SA-11 right in the vicinity, hours before this shoot. The social media has documented this.”

“We know that they had an SA-11 system in the vicinity literally hours before the shootdown took place. There are social media records of that. The social media showed them with this system moving through the very area where we believe the shoot down took place hours before it took place.”

There are six videos and three photos of the transport of a Buk Telar across territory that was controlled by the separatists. Eight of them were posted on social media after the crash. Only one video, filmed in the city of Torez, and one photo, made in Donetsk, came into the hands of JIT before they were presented to the public. The identity of most photographers and filmmakers is unknown. Only two were identified. Of these two, only one was interviewed by the JIT. With his dash cam, he had filmed the transport of a Buk Telar in Makeevka. The metadata of his video indicated that it was shot in 2012. He said he didn’t remember the day of his encounter with the transport. One video was made by “a secret surveillance unit” of the Ukrainians in Luhansk. It was put on a YouTube channel of Ukraine’s secret service SBU the day after the crash. (See claim 9).

According to the Americans, the JIT and the prosecution the fatal missile was launched south of the city of Snizhne, from an agricultural field near the village of Pervomaiskyi. There’s one photo of a Buk driving under its own power in Snizhne and one video of a Buk leaving Snizhne, driving south. It is unknown who produced this imagery and the JIT wasn’t able to obtain the original files. The photo and video are of deplorable quality. Not a single detail can be seen on them. Zooming in creates a pixel salade.

Claim 5: “At the moment of the shoot down, we detected a launch from that area and our trajectory shows that it went to the aircraft.”

“We know to a certainty that we saw the launch from this area of what we deem to be an SA-11 because of the altitude, 33,000 feet, and because of the trajectory. We have the trajectory recorded. We know that it occurred at the very moment that this aircraft disappeared from the radar screen.”

“We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar.”

The Hague District Court has not received any satellite data from the Americans, despite repeated requests by the prosecution service and the Dutch next of kin. Some, among whom former CIA officer Ray McGovern, say this indicates that no missile had been launched from rebels’ held territory at all.

A memorandum the prosecution received from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) states: “At the time that flight MH17 dropped out of contact, the U.S. intelligence community detected an SA-11 surface-to-air missile launch from approximately six kilometers south of the town of Snizhne in eastern Ukraine.” The DNI did not comment on the exact time of the launch, but Pulatov’s lawyers concluded from the memorandum that the observed launch could not possibly have been from the missile that brought down MH17. After all, a missile cannot be launched and simultaneously knock a target off the radar. A missile takes some time to reach a specified target. According to the investigators of the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory NLR the Buk missile that hit MH17 must have travelled for about 32 seconds, if the missile was launched from the agricultural field south of Snizhne. So the launch the Americans allegedly observed must have been from a different missile than the one that hit MH17. (More about this in my upcoming book The MH17 trial.)

Both the Russians and the Ukrainians provided the JIT with primary radar data. On these, no missile or any other object can be seen near MH17. According to experts who were consulted by the JIT this can be explained by technical factors like the high speed of the missile (mach 3).

Claim 6: “We also know to a certainty that the social media immediately afterwards saw reports of separatists bragging about knocking down a plane. And then the so-called defense minister, self-appointed of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, Igor Strelkov, posted a social media report bragging about the shoot down of a transport plane, at which point when it became clear it was civilian, they pulled down that particular report.”

“We know that the so-called defense minister of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, Mr. Igor Strelkov, actually posted a bragging social media posting of having shot down a military transport. And then when it became apparent that it was civilian, they pulled it down from the social media.”

“The defense minister, so-called self-appointed of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, Mr. Igor Strelkov, actually posted a bragging statement on the social media about having shot down a transport. And then when it became apparent it was civilian, they quickly removed that particular posting.”

Kerry suggested that MH17 was shot down by mistake by referring in particular to two messages that appeared on July 17 at 16:37 and 16:50 on the news account “strelkov_info” of the social media site VKontakte. According to these reports, an Antonov transport plane of the Ukrainian Air Force, an Antonov An-26, had been downed. Kerry attributed it to Girkin, whose battle name was “Strelkov”, and who at the time was commander-in-chief of the Donetsk People’s Army. In posting the message, he allegedly “bragged” about shooting it down and then deleted it when he noticed that a passenger plane had crashed. But none of that was true. The account strelkov_info was a fan account, by and for admirers of Girkin. Statements by Girkin were sometimes published on strelkov_info, but they were always accompanied by a banner saying, “Girkin reports”. That banner was not with the first and also not with the second message about the downed An-26. The prosecution acknowledged that the two social media posts did not come from Girkin or subordinates of his. It therefore did not put forward the posts as evidence in its closing speech.

The person who first reported that an An-26 had been downed was, nota bene, the pro-Kiev Twitter account @ua_ridna_vilna. The unknown person behind the account sent out a tweet with this announcement at 4:30 p.m., only to delete the tweet and replace it at 4:32 p.m. with a tweet saying it was “probably” an An-26. The prosecution completely ignored the utterances on this account.

A plane came down. It makes sense that those who had heard about it or watched it from a distance assumed that a military aircraft had been hit. After all, that had happened sixteen times before. In four cases, it involved a military transport aircraft, including an An-26 on July 14. It was to be expected. Social media went wild. Thus the rumor got out that the crashed plane was an An-26.

Claim 7: “We know from intercepts, voices, which have been correlated to intercepts that we have, that those are, in fact, the voices of separatists talking about the shoot down of the plane.”

“We have voices that we have overheard of separatists in Russia bragging about the shoot down.”

“We have intercepted voices that have been documented by our people through intelligence as being separatists who are talking to each other about the shoot down.”

“Social media, which is an extraordinary tool, obviously, in all of this, has posted recordings of separatists bragging about the shoot down of a plane at the time right after it took place.”

Within a few hours after the crash the SBU posted on its YouTube channel an intercept of a phone conversation of a commander of the separatists, Igor Bezler. In it, he reports that a plane had been downed. A week after the crash the SBU posted another intercept, this time with someone reporting to Bezler that a ‘birdie” was coming his way. The JIT interviewed Bezler. At the start of the trial the prosecution stated that none of Bezler’s phone conversations were related to the downing of MH17. According to Bezler the conversations were about the downing of a Ukrainian Sukhoi jet a day before the MH17 crash. Indeed, on July 16, two Sukhois had been downed. It later turned out that the SBU had omitted part of Bezler’s conversation about shooting down a plane. In the omitted part, Bezler says it was a ‘Sushka’, meaning a Sukhoi jet. This was revealed by a Ukrainian blogger, Anatoly Shariy, who got his hands on the original wiretap.

Claim 8: “They have shot down some twelve planes, aircraft in the last months or so, two of which were major transport planes.”

In fact sixteen Ukrainian military aircraft were downed before the MH17 crash, among which four were military transport planes.

Claim 9: “And now we have a video showing a launcher moving back through a particular area there, out into Russia with at least one missing missile on it. So we have enormous sort of input about this, which points fingers.”

“We know that we have a video now of a transporter removing an SA-11 system back into Russia and it shows a missing missile or so.”

On the day after the crash, the Ukrainian secret service SBU posted a video on their YouTube channel of the transport of Buk Telar carrying three missiles in stead of four, which it normally carries if a Buk is being deployed. According to the Ukrainians, the transport was filmed in the early morning of July 18. The prosecution confirmed this and concluded that the video was shot on the outskirts of the city of Luhansk where at that time a battle was going on between the separatists and the Ukrainian army. So, the video was not shot in the border region as Kerry said. According to the prosecution, investigators of the JIT studied the original video file. The metadata indicated the video was shot in the early morning of July 18. The lawyers, however, revealed that the Luhansk video was missing from the SD card on which “a secret surveillance unit” allegedly recorded the event. A Dutch police officer who received the camera and the card from the hands of the SBU determined that the video file had been erased. The lawyers, therefore, said they didn’t understand how the investigators had managed to examine the original file.

It is possible that the Luhansk video is from before July 18. Indeed, at a press conference that was held in the afternoon of July 17, a spokesman for the Ukrainian government, Andrey Lysenko, reported that a video had been shot of a Buk Telar in Luhansk. Lysenko did not present this video, nor was it ever presented thereafter. Why not? Was this perhaps to conceal that the Ukrainians used the video to falsely claim it was made on July 18? Could it be that the Buk on the Luhansk video, that had one missile missing, had been involved with the downing of the Antonov An-26, on July 14?

Claim 10: “We know with confidence that the Ukrainians did not have such a system anywhere near the vicinity at that point in time. So it obviously points a very clear finger at the separatists.”

Dutch military intelligence service MIVD reported that there were several Ukrainian Buk systems present in Eastern Ukraine at the time of the crash. Western intelligence had not detected a single Russian Buk system in Ukraine. According to the prosecution the Buk that shot down MH17 was brought in on July 17 and hastily removed on the night of July 17-18. This would therefore be the reason Western intelligence services overlooked the Buk. The services would only have spotted Buks that had been in the same place for an extended period of time.

There is no evidence of an Ukrainian Buk that was within firing range of MH17. But, as MH17 police investigation chief Wilbert Paulissen correctly noted during the September 2016 press conference of the JIT: “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Just because there is no evidence of such a Buk does not mean it was not there and did not fire. A Ukrainian Buk Telar may have been put in position without anyone noticing.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry provided the JIT with a list of all the locations in the east of the country where it had Buk systems. Missing from that was a Buk system on a military base in Dovhenke in the Kharkiv Oblast, just on the border of the rebel-held Donetsk Oblast. The MIVD determined that a Buk system had been located there. Why had Kiev concealed its presence?

Claim 11: “Pro-Russian separatists have reportedly removed almost 200 bodies from the crash site and are continuing to refuse to allow investigators full access to the site.”

“We want the facts and the fact that the separatists are controlling this in a way that is preventing people from getting there, even as the site is tampered with, makes its own statement about culpability and responsibility.”

“There are reports of drunken separatist soldiers unceremoniously piling bodies into trucks.”

“They are interfering with the evidence in the location. They have removed, we understand, some airplane parts.”

The authorities of the Donbass Peoples Republic (DPR) have not refused any investigators access to the crash site. A team of Dutch air-crash investigators was kept in Kiev by the Ukrainian and Dutch authorities, as has been extensively documented in the book MH17: Onderzoek, feiten en verhalen, commissioned by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and in a report by the University of Twente, Evaluatie nationale crisisbeheersingsorganisatie vlucht MH17. In a July 20 press conference, DPR Prime Minister Alexander Borodai complained that the investigators were nowhere to be seen. “It will soon be the 4th day after the event. Where are the experts? We are not in the middle of nowhere, the North Pole or Antartica, in a place where you can cannot travel easily. If you look at the map, you see we are in the middle of Europe. The road from Kiev to here takes four of five hours.” The DSB air crash investigators never went to Donetsk. In August they went back home.

However, three Dutch forensic investigators of the LTFO, specialized in victim identification, managed to reach the site. They were welcomed by Borodai, on July 21, the day after Kerry had accused the DPR authorities of refusing investigators access. To their surprise, they found themselves surrounded by journalists from all over the world. “There was press from Australia to the US, there must have been fifty camera teams,” one of them, Peter van Vliet, recalled. “I don’t know how they got there. But it took us three days, without sleeping and with all the dangers that entailed.” On July 21, also a Malaysian delegation arrived. To them Bordodai handed over the black boxes of the plane just after midnight. According to the Malaysians, they had secretly left Kiev. The Ukrainian government had tried to keep them there.

Contrary to what Kerry claimed, no separatist soldiers were involved in the recovery of the victims. The recovery was performed by a specialized team. The local Ukrainian State Emergency Service (SES) recovered human remains between 17 July and 21 July 2014. The SES is a federal organisation which has local teams that, among other things, are responsible for the protection of the population in case of disasters. When a disaster occurs, the SES is given authority over other services. In the case of flight MH17, the SES was assisted in the recovery by local fire brigades, police, farmers and miners.

On July 21, the Dutch forensic investigators of LTFO, observed that there were no more human remains visible at the locations accessible to them. In a statement to the international press, Van Vliet praised the SES: “They did a hell of a job in a hell of a place.” On July 22, a train, carrying the human remains that were recovered by the SES, left Donetsk heading for territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev. In a letter sent in August 2014 the Dutch embassy in Kiev conveyed its gratitude to the SES. “The experts in The Netherlands, who currently work on the identification of the human remains, have been deeply impressed by the professional handling of the bodies by the emergency services in Donetsk.”

Kerry and other American officials never substantiated their claim that the separatists covered up evidence by removing airplane parts. It later turned out that an Australian-Ukrainian journalist, who was covertly working for the Ukrainian government, had collected pieces of evidence from the crash site for “safekeeping and out of reach of the forces of the Russian Federation” and had handed them over to the Ukrainian authorities.

Also, Dutch air crash investigators didn’t seem to be in a hurry to recover the wreckage. The Dutch started a recovery mission only four months after the crash. The lawyers revealed that only 30 percent of the wreckage was transported to The Netherlands. The plane was partly reconstructed. The lawyers found that parts that were not used for the reconstruction had ended up in eighteen containers. The prosecution did not grant them access to these containers. The court did not overrule this decision.

Eric van de Beek is an investigative journalist. He studied journalism at Windesheim University and philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. For years he worked as a journalist for Dutch leading weekly Elsevier. In recent years he contributed to Diplomat Magazine, Novini, Sputnik, and Uitpers. He currently writes for Dutch weekly De Andere Krant. In 2024 a book of Van de Beek’s was published about the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine. On Substack you can read his English language blog about the subject. In 2024 he was awarded the Dutch Julian Assange Prize ‘for public service’.

June 1, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

‘There Is Overwhelming Evidence to Call for a Moratorium on mRNA COVID Jabs’: New MAHA Chief Medical Advisor

By Jon Fleetwood | May 15, 2025

British cardiologist and author Dr. Aseem Malhotra, the newly appointed Chief Medical Advisor to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative, says there is “overwhelming evidence” to ban the COVID-19 mRNA shots.

Dr. Malhotra is a former U.K. government and long-time ally of MAHA leaders like HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) and NIH head Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

He’s campaigned for taxes on sugary drinks, worked to lower the amount of Brits taking statins unnecessarily, and worked with government leaders to remove ultraprocessed foods from hospitals and schools, per The Daily Mail.

Though Malhotra is not formally employed by the federal government, he will serve as a leading voice of the movement and work closely with grassroots groups to advance its policy agenda.

In a Wednesday Twitter/X post, the British best-selling author (@DrAseemMalhotra) left no question where he stands on the COVID jab.

“It’s what you’ve been waiting for,” he wrote. “There is OVERWHELMING evidence to call for a moratorium on the mRNA covid jabs & help the vaccine injured. Let it rip.”

On the same day, MAHA Action, an organization founded by former Team Kennedy leadership, announced Malhotra’s appointment:

We are honored to announce that Dr. Aseem Malhotra has joined MAHA as our Chief Medical Advisor.

Dr. Malhotra is an NHS-trained Consultant Cardiologist and an internationally renowned authority in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart disease.

He has served as Honorary Council Member at Stanford’s Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic and Visiting Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the Bahiana School of Medicine. As Founding President of the Public Health Collaboration and a founding member of Action on Sugar, Dr. Malhotra has led national efforts to curb sugar intake and champion low-carb diets for type 2 diabetes.

He is the bestselling author of The Pioppi Diet, The 21 Day Immunity Plan, and A Statin-Free Life, and played a key advisory role for the UK government on the link between obesity and COVID-19. His publications have garnered an Altmetric score exceeding 10,000, one of the highest worldwide for a clinical doctor.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Malhotra to the MAHA team and look forward to the invaluable expertise and passion he brings to our mission of Making America Healthy Again.

Malhotra told Daily Mail, “It’s very clear to me that perhaps this is the most important issue that has galvanized MAHA and helped elect President Trump,” he said, referring to criticism of mRNA COVID injections.

“There is a pandemic of the vaccine injured. We can’t make America healthy again if we don’t address this.”

The doctor believes there are “hundreds of thousands” of vaccine injuries and wants states to pass legislation halting use of the drugs because they have shown “more harm than good and never should have been rolled out in the first place.”

CDC data show 38,541 deaths have been linked to the COVID jab since 2020, but if fewer than 1% of adverse events are reported—as a 2010 HHS-funded Harvard analysis suggests—the real number could exceed 3.8 million, compared to just 7,109 deaths that got propoxyphene pulled after nearly 30 years on the market.

Malhotra recently told Fox News that he began to doubt the safety of the COVID shot after his father died after suffering cardiac arrest.

Now leading America’s most unapologetic health freedom initiative, Malhotra is making one thing crystal clear: the COVID shot crisis isn’t over—it’s just finally being confronted.

May 17, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The High Human Cost of Syria Sanctions

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | May 17, 2025

On May 13, U.S. President Trump announced he is ordering the removal of sanctions on Syria.

Some of the U.S. sanctions can be quickly terminated because they were issued by Executive Order. Other sanctions, including the extremely damaging 2019 “Caesar” sanctions, were imposed by Congressional legislation and may require Congressional action to terminate.

The Syrian people are joyous at the prospect of the end of their country’s economic nightmare. In 2010, before the conflict began, Syria was a middle-income country with free education, free healthcare, and no national debt. It was largely self-sufficient in energy and food. After fourteen years of war, occupation, and strangulating Western sanctions, the U.N. reports that “nine out of ten Syrians live in poverty and face food insecurity”.

Why Syria Was Targeted

In 2007, the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, General Wesley Clark, publicly revealed that Washington neo-cons had a hit list of seven countries to be overthrown in the wake of 9-11. The list included Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iran.

The list is essentially the same as that identified by Benjamin Netanyahu in his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat the International Terrorist Network. The premise of this book is that Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements are “terrorist,” and any nation that supports them should be overthrown. He targets Iran, Libya, Syria, and Sudan for supporting Palestinian rights and says. “Take away all this state support, and the entire scaffolding of international terrorism will collapse into dust.”

In 2007, Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi visited Syria and tried to persuade Assad to end Syria’s support of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements. When Assad would not comply with US and Israeli wishes, Syria was marked for regime change. The Netanyahu and neo-conservative hit list had somehow been adopted by the Western foreign policy establishment. This was confirmed by the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas. In a 2013 interview he says, “I went to England almost two years before the start of hostilities (2011). I met British officials, some of whom are friends of mine. They confessed, while trying to persuade me, that preparations for something were underway in Syria. This was in England, not the US. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria… This operation goes way back. It was prepared, conceived, and planned for the purpose of overthrowing the Syrian government because … this regime has an anti-Israeli stance.”

Hybrid Warfare against Syria

The overthrow of the Syrian government was not easy. It involved massive funding from seven countries (USA, UK, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE). In the early years, the CIA budget alone was $1 billion per year. The campaign included military, diplomatic, media/information and economic warfare.

The regime change operation began in March 2011. While part of the population was hostile to the Assad dynasty, the majority supported the government and a secular Syria. The opposition came largely from sectarian jihadist elements, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Hundreds of factions and cells were supplied and funded by a host of countries, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the U.S., and the UK. Thousands of foreigners were recruited and provided access to Syria.

The political and media war on the Assad government was intense. Historian Stephen Kinzer wrote, “Coverage of the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press.”

Accusations that the Assad government used chemical weapons against civilians were widely broadcast in the West. They were used to justify Western bombing attacks on Syria. Acclaimed U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered evidence that the chemical weapons attacks were by the opposition, aided by Turkey, NOT by the Assad government. He had to go abroad to have the explosive article published.

The dubious chemical weapons accusations and US driven political corruption of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) are now exposed in a February 2025 book by one of the technical professionals from the OPCW. The book is titled The Syria Scam: An insider look into Chemical Weapons, Geopolitics and the Fog of War.

By the end of 2018, the Syrian army had largely defeated the diverse jihadists. However, instead of conquering or expelling the opposition, Syria allowed them to have a safe haven in Idlib province on the border with Turkey. With Turkey, Iran and Russia seeking to find a solution through the Astana Accords, the conflict was frozen, and the jihadists were allowed to regain strength. Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) became the de facto leader of the opposition factions and the government of Idlib.

The Frozen Conflict

In 2019, the U.S. turned the screws on Syria and escalated attacks on Lebanon. The extreme Caesar sanctions did what they were intended to do. They crushed the Syrian currency and economy, made it impossible to rebuild, and impoverished the vast majority of Syrians. The spreading poverty and inability to counteract it led to widespread demoralization and dissatisfaction. With consummate cynicism, the “Caesar” sanctions were named the “Caesar Civilian Protection Act”.

Meanwhile, in the HTS safe haven of Idlib province on the Turkish border to the north, conditions were very different. Although HTS was designated a terrorist organization in the U.S. and the West, they were helped economically. The HTS fighters were trained and supplied with modern military weaponry, including drones, sophisticated communications equipment, etc.. Very recently, when people from Damascus traveled to Idlib, they were shocked to find new highways, Wi-Fi widely available, and electricity 24 hours a day. Teacher salaries are ten times higher in Idlib than in Damascus.

The Fall of Damascus

With a demoralized population and Syrian army, the Assad government fell in a few weeks, and HTS, led by Ahmad Al Sharaa, took power on 8 December 2024. The new leader of Syria has been greeted and endorsed by the Gulf monarchies and Western countries that paid for and promoted the overthrow in Syria: the UK, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and of course, Turkey.

Since the change, there have been numerous sectarian massacres of Alawites and Christians along the coast.

There have been attacks on Druze in Damascus. To date, there have been no punishments for the massacres of civilians. A nun reports, “there is no security” in Damascus or elsewhere in Syria.

Meanwhile, Israel has invaded and occupied all of the Golan and parts of southern Syria. They have built military bases in Quneitra and other strategic locations. Israel has carried out a bombing blitzkrieg, destroying all known Syrian ammunition depots. Israel can now fly over any part of Syria at will.

Instead of condemning the Israeli violation of Syrian land and airspace, Ahmad al Sharaa has criticized Iran and Hezbollah. In recent weeks, the new Syrian regime has arrested Palestinian leaders and closed their offices in Damascus. The normalization of relations with the Zionist state has begun.

Lifting Sanctions on Syria

Of course, the sanctions on Syria should be lifted. They never should have been imposed.

U.S. sanctions, known officially as “unilateral coercive measures”, are condemned by the vast majority of world nations. Over 70% of the world’ nations say that US sanctions are “contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the Charter of the UN and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States.”

Without exaggeration, the West and their allies sponsored terrorism in Syria through Al Qaeda and other fanatical violent terrorist groups. They destroyed a once prosperous and independent nation. With a diverse Syrian population ruled by a sectarian leadership prone to violence, there may be more dark days ahead. While Israel, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies are pleased with the removal of the Assad government, a very heavy price has been paid by the majority of Syrians. And the cost is ongoing.

May 17, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment