Why is the Selective Service war gaming a ‘special skills’ draft?
A military mobilization exercise offers clues about who might be drafted for what sort of conflict
By Edward Hasbrouck | Responsible Statecraft | July 8, 2026
Documents obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request show that the Selective Service recently gamed out what a military draft would look like in a future war. It would not resemble the one the nation lived through 55 years ago for the Vietnam War or the contingency plans in current standby Selective Service regulations. Instead, those with “special skills” would be conscripted first.
This is the opposite of what the Selective Service says in its promotional materials, that “if a draft is authorized, individuals are selected through a random lottery” from among all young men regardless of their occupation or current skills.
According to the January 2026 military mobilization exercise, the first wave of draftees could include “computer network technicians, electronics technicians, aerospace engineers, divers, welders, gas turbine engine mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, longshoremen, steel workers / pipefitters, radar / communications technicians, fiber optic technicians, mariners, aviation structural mechanics, cyber security specialists, robotics operators and technicians, air traffic controllers, logistics specialists, [and] linguists.”
A retired Army officer who spoke with RS suggested these kinds of skills indicate “the skill set required to expand (the) Navy, both manning ships and shore support, plus airfield operations.”
Officially, the Selective Service claims that a draft would be activated only in the event of a “national emergency.” This euphemistic language suggests a natural disaster or defense against invasion of the United States — what the chair of the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service (NCMNPS) posed as the “Red Dawn scenario”.
But the January exercise followed a much different course — an escalation to war, presumably with China over Taiwan, leading to full mobilization and then the draft.
In this scenario Washington intervenes militarily after Country A (China) blockades Country B (Taiwan) and the U.S. tries to break the blockade. The war escalates to “U.S. air attacks” on “Country A homeland.” A national emergency is declared and a draft is activated after full mobilization and retaliatory “kinetic strikes” by Country A on U.S. bases in Alaska and Hawaii. The first wave draft is declared shortly after. This scenario is very similar to the one envisioned recently in RS by Doug Bandow for how a U.S. attempt to break a Chinese blockade of Taiwan might escalate.
A provision in the NDAA for FY2022 required the Department of Defense conduct an exercise that would “include the processes of the Selective Service System in preparation for induction of personnel into the armed forces” by the end of FY2023. That exercise still hasn’t been conducted, but the SSS engaged in the above exercise in preparation for it. Multiple scenarios were considered in the SSS exercise, but only one was released in response to my FOIA request.
The lottery has long been considered central to the fairness of a draft. Many Americans would likely draw a line between a draft to mobilize against an unprovoked invasion of the United States and one to backfill military ranks in war started with China on behalf of another country 8,000 miles away.
All of this comes as the SSS is preparing to replace the failed system of self-registration with an automated system (also likely to fail) under which the SSS will try to identify and locate potential draftees by using existing databases from other Federal agencies.
Proposed regulations for “automatic” draft registration have been held up in review by the White House for more than three months, running down the clock for the SSS to complete the notice-and-comment administrative proceedings required before the change in the registration law takes effect on December 18, 2026.
I suspect the White House has realized that visible moves toward an unpopular draft in the middle of an unpopular war with Iran will fan the flames of opposition to its war policies. Meanwhile, the SSS has maintained radio silence since the “automatic” registration law was enacted, not issuing any statements or responding to any inquiries from journalists for more than six months.
Meanwhile, the idea for a “special skills” draft has been a controversial one ever since it was conceived of by the SSS in the early 1990s.
Aside from the SSS mandate to maintain readiness for the general draft, U.S. law mandates a parallel plan for a draft of “persons qualified for practice or employment in a health care occupation.” Proposed regulations for the Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS), to include men and women up to their 45th birthday in 57 occupational categories from dietitians and physical therapists to dental assistants and medical equipment repair specialists, were published in 1989. The SSS has maintained contingency plans ever since for activation of the HCPDS.
Congress has never seriously debated a special-skills draft other than for health care workers. But despite the lack of any Congressional authorization for planning and preparation for a broader special-skills draft, it has been under discussion by the Pentagon and the SSS for many years.
In 2004, a spokesperson for the SSS said that, “Talking to the manpower folks at the Department of Defense and others, what came up was that nobody foresees a need for a large conventional draft such as we had in Vietnam. But they thought that if we have any kind of a draft, it will probably be a special skills draft.”
Negative public reaction quickly prompted the Acting Director of the SSS to walk back the significance of this planning: “Today’s discussions about a broader special-skills draft are a practical outgrowth of normal contingency planning and are conceptual only.”
When the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) was established in 2016, part of its mandate from Congress was to consider “the feasibility and advisability of modifying the military selective service process in order to obtain… individuals with skills (such as medical, dental, and nursing skills, language skills, cyber skills, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills) for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex.”
The option of a special-skills draft modeled on the HCPDS was discussed but voted down by the NCMNPS. In closed-door meetings, one NCMNPS member noted that “it would be less politically feasible to set up a separate skills draft” than a draft that impacted all young men equally, and another opined that a special-skills draft would not be “fair and equitable.”
The continued prominence of a special-skills draft in SSS war games, despite the absence of a legal basis for it and its rejection by the NCMNPS, is indicative of the disconnect between what the SSS says and what it is doing, as well as between SSS fantasies and the real obstacles to a draft.
We all should be concerned about what sort of draft and what sort of war the SSS is preparing for. The time to consider whether we want a draft, and whether current contingency plans could feasibly be activated, is before the nation is committed to a war that would require a draft.
Yet there were no hearings or debate before Congress rubber-stamped the SSS proposal for “automatic” registration. Congress has never considered whether a special-skills draft would be feasible or fair. There’s been no audit of the accuracy or completeness of the SSS registration database since 1982.
Even supporters of a draft should be concerned about reliance on unworkable plans. It’s time for Congressional oversight hearings on whether the SSS is making realistic plans for national defense, or just trying to justify its continued existence in the face of proposals to abolish the agency.
Edward Hasbrouck is the editor and publisher of Resisters.info, the most comprehensive independent source of information about the draft and draft registration in the U.S. since 1980.
Laura Loomer wants Max Blumenthal stripped of citizenship and raided by the FBI for reporting in Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | July 7, 2026
Laura Loomer, the unhinged Zionist commentator with the Trump White House’s ear, continues her attempt to use lawfare to silence reporters and commentators opposed to the American/Zionist war on Iran.
Anti-War journalist Max Blumenthal, the editor of The Grayzone, is currently on the ground reporting on the funeral for slain Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
For daring to report on this important historical moment, the unhinged Zionist commentator, Laura Loomer called for Blumenthal- an American citizen- to lose his citizenship and be raided by the FBI for the crime of doing journalism.
On X, Loomer disturbingly wrote :
Max Blumenthal You’re a shill for Islam and communism and I hope you’re raided in a heavily armed raid by the FBI at 5 am and that SecRubio strips you of your passport for aiding the Iranian regime as they chant Death to America.
I hope SecScottBessent investigates how you paid for your trip to Iran, or if it was given to you by Iran and IRGC supporters so you are charged and prosecuted for possible sanctions violations.
Loomer tagged the FBI, Marco Rubio, and Scott Bessent in the post, in an obvious attempt to get a bogus lawfare investigation launched against Max Blumenthal because he gave a voice to the millions of Iranians who came out in defiance of the U.S/Israeli war of aggression.
This is far from the first time Loomer has attempted to get the Trump White House to crack down on critics of the war in Iran.
Previously, Loomer spearheaded a campaign to get the co-founder of the anti-war, realist think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Trita Parsi, deported from the country for his opposition to the war in Iran.
Loomer, on X, made similar threats against Parsi, saying he “should be deported next” and directly telling him that “your days in our country are numbered”.
On X, Loomer wrote :
Secretary Rubio
Just so you know, Trita Parsi is also a Green Card holder.
He holds citizenship in Iran and Sweden.
Trita Parsi is a mouthpiece for the Iranian Regime and has used NIAC and the Quincy Institute to push out pro-Iranian regime talking points.
He should be deported next.
He is truly a threat to US National Security.
After the Israel lobby successfully primaried the anti-war Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, Loomer posted a picture with him next to Trita Parsi and wrote:
Hey Trita Parsi ,
Your boy Thomas Massie is about to be removed from Congress, and then…you’re probably going to be deported back to Iran.
Tick tock.
Your days in our country are numbered.
Loomer’s disturbing threats were following by an article from the Zionist propaganda blog, The Free Press, which falsely claimed that “In the eyes of some inside the Trump administration, Parsi isn’t just another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view. The State Department has launched an investigation of Parsi and could try to deport him, according to U.S. officials and documents reviewed by The Free Press.”
The State Department later clarified that “The State Department has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time”, but Trita Parsi said he believed that “some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure could help move things forward” following the threats from Loomer.
Before her attempt to deport Trita Parsi, Laura Loomer successfully got two Iranian women opposed to the U.S/Israeli war on Iran detained by ICE over false claims that they were related to the late Iranian general Qasem Soleimani.
Loomer boasted on social media , “Following my report and follow up with the US State Department in which I exposed the fact that Qasem Soleimani’s Niece Hamideh Soleimani Afshar has been living in the United States (Los Angeles, California) where she posts pro-Iranian regime and pro-IRGC content on her social media while she lives a life of luxury, the US State Department and SecRubio have just revoked her green card and she has been picked up by ICE. She has been arrested and will be deported back to Iran.”
ICE also detained her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny.
But as journalists Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain revealed , the two women had no connection to Qasem Soleimani.
They documented:
A review of personal documentation undercuts the allegation of a personal connection to Soleimani. Birth certificates from Iran, collected by the family, lay out a documented family tree spanning multiple generations with no connection to Qassem Soleimani, or even to relatives of the late general. Drop Site also reviewed other personal identification documents, including passports, family photographs, and work documentation from both Iran and the U.S. that strongly contradict the allegations that the two women were connected to the late Iranian military commander, or living lavishly from any connection to the Iranian government.
In order for Qasem Soleimani to be Hamideh’s uncle, based on her last name, he would need to be the brother of Hamideh’s father, Ali Soleimani-Afshar, who was born in Tehran in 1947. Yet according to the documents, Soleimani-Afshar had no brothers at all and his father died in the early 50s. Gen. Soleimani was born years later—in 1957—in a small village in the southern province of Kerman. Ali Soleimani-Afshar’s parents died in his childhood. Historical passport documents also show that Soleimani-Afshar’s family origins go back generations to the city of Yazd in central Iran, a province away from the roots of Gen. Soleimani.
The late general is also known to have two brothers, Sohrab and Hossein, who have previously given interviews about their upbringing in rural Kerman that identify themselves as his only brothers and make no mention of a connection to Ali Soleimani-Afshar.
Qassem Soleimani’s own family in Iran issued numerous strident denials that they had any relation to the late general. Soleimani’s youngest daughter, Zeinab Soleimani, a well-known political figure inside Iran, said in Iranian media that the State Department’s allegations were ‘false’ and that ‘the individuals arrested in the United States have no connection whatsoever to our family.’ Another daughter, Narjes Soleimani, went further in a separate statement, adding that, ‘To this day, no member of the Soleimani family, nor any relative of General Soleimani, has resided in the United States
Emboldened after having the state department use her false claims to detain and deport critics of the Iran war, Loomer is now trying to use her connections to the U.S. state department to have critics of the Iran war- even U.S. citizens like Max Blumenthal- stripped of their citizenship.
Netanyahu Says He Will “Fix” Social Media
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | July 7, 2026
If there is anything positive about the war criminal Bibi Netanyahu, it is that his propaganda is remarkably transparent and easily debunked. For instance:
I’m sure Bibi is aware of Team Jorge, even if many Americans are not. Netanyahu hopes you’re unaware of the Team Jorge units of Israeli contractors engaged in malicious cyber activities, such as hacking, sabotage, and bot farm-run social media disinformation campaigns, with the intent of manipulating election outcomes.
It was outed in 2023 following an operation by journalists from France and Israel coordinated by Forbidden Stories. “The Israeli disinformation company ‘Team Jorge’ claims to control 39 000 ‘avatars’ online, without the platforms being able to detect them,” Le Monde reported.
“A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation,” The Guardian reported in 2023.
The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.
Hanan, who was covertly recorded, told journalists his black op service was available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns, and private companies “that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion.” A software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims,
controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.
Hasbara, Israel’s “public diplomacy,” is well known. The term was created in the early days of Zionism and translates as “explanation” in Hebrew. It is described as a multifaceted effort to explain actions, “whether or not they are justified,” by the Zionist state. “Hasbara links information warfare to the strategic efforts of the state to bolster the unity of the home front,” according to Middle East Policy.
[and] ensure the support of allies; disrupt efforts to organize hostile coalitions; determine the way issues are defined by the media, the intelligentsia, and social networks; establish the parameters of politically correct discourse; delegitimize both critics and their arguments; and shape the common understanding and interpretation of the results of international negotiations.
Bibi is worried about the public relations fallout from his genocide campaign in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, and psychotic behavior ordering the murder of religious leaders, negotiators, and children from explosives hidden in pagers, to name but a few. In response to Israel’s manifest crimes against humanity, countries are denouncing and beginning to sanction the Zionist state and its ministers.
Team Jorge and the wider Hasbara network is doing all it can, short of murdering critics of Israel, to undermine and cancel the outrage and activism growing against Zionism and the settler state. Social media is rife with Zionist “avatars” and fake accounts, many no doubt generated by AI, to counter arguments that Israel is a genocidal monster that needs to be tamed.
Canada Considered Suing Citizens Over “False and Misleading” Social Media Posts
A 35-page memo, most of it blacked out, and the part they left visible is the part that should worry you.
By Cindy Harper – Reclaim The Net – July 7, 2026
The Canadian government drew up a plan to take individual citizens to court over what they post online. That plan sat inside a 35-page internal memo from the Department of Industry, most of it blacked out before the public could see it.
Blacklock’s Reporter pried the document loose through an Access to Information request. Dated March 31 and titled “Misinformation And Disinformation Strategy,” it belongs to the department run by Minister Mélanie Joly, known as ISED. The memo weighs “legal action” against people who post what the government calls “false and misleading information” on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
What kind of legal action? The redactions hide that. What survives the black ink is the logic. “This strategy seeks to uphold the integrity of and public trust in government information,” the memo says. The department is appointing itself guardian of its own reputation, with lawsuits as one available tool.
Here is who would decide. ISED itself would judge whether a post is “factually incorrect, misleading or out of context.” The same department that dislikes a post gets to rule on whether the post is true. No court makes that call first and no independent reviewer checks the work. The government writes the definition of misinformation and then enforces it against the people it defines.
The memo describes any punishment as “proportionate and subject to senior level approval.” That language reassures no one. Proportion gets measured by the same officials pushing the complaint, and senior approval means a manager signs off, not a judge.
Officials already watch. Managers “already monitor the department’s official social media channels and media outlets on a daily basis for comments and recurring inaccuracies,” the memo says. The strategy would push that surveillance from reaction toward “prevention and early detection,” catching disfavored speech earlier in its life.
The chilling effect writes itself. A citizen who knows a federal department is reading posts, grading them for accuracy, and holding a lawsuit in reserve thinks twice before typing. The threat does the work a courtroom never has to.
The government’s own files admit the problem. Its research found Canadians feel capable of spotting fake news and do not want Ottawa “declaring what is true or not.” The memo concedes that answering misinformation can amplify it, and that going after individuals risks “further backlash.” The department understood the public would object and mapped the plan anyway.
Compare the tune from four years back. This same Liberal government declared that “the rights and freedoms that individuals have offline must also be protected online.” That promise reads differently next to a memo about suing people for their posts.
Ottawa has not explained how the monitoring runs, how often lawsuits were floated, or what a post must do to land on the department’s radar. The memo sets no threshold. It names no outside check. It leaves a federal department free to decide which citizens spoke falsely and what the price should be.
A government sure of its facts answers speech with more speech. This one drafted a plan to answer speech with lawyers.
French MEP Rima Hassan says terrorism trial aims to silence her pro-Palestine advocacy
Press TV – July 7, 2026
Ahead of her trial on charges of “apology for terrorism,” French Member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan says French authorities have subjected her to sweeping surveillance measures and political pressure in an effort to silence her criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Hassan, a vocal pro-Palestinian lawmaker, appeared in court on Tuesday over the French offense of “apology for terrorism,” a legal provision that criminalises certain forms of expression deemed to support or glorify acts of terrorism.
“This is a political case,” Hassan said in an interview ahead of her court date. “It’s a way of putting the Palestinian cause on trial.”
Hassan added that the prosecution is part of a broader campaign targeting her for speaking out in support of Palestine.
The European Parliament member said she has faced intense judicial and political pressure in recent months.
She described disproportionate investigative measures, including the lifting of her parliamentary immunity, retroactive surveillance, and the dissemination of false information following her detention in April.
On April 2, Hassan was taken into police custody after posting on X a quote by Kozo Okamoto, a former member of the now-defunct Japanese Red Army.
The quote read: “As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”
Hassan said that while in police custody in April, she was subjected to particularly intrusive questioning about her identity, origins and religion, despite those issues having “no connection whatsoever to the alleged facts.”
“This way of proceeding is part of a political climate in which Palestinians, or people perceived as such, are too often regarded as suspects before they are regarded as citizens,” she said.
“This reflex, fuelled by Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, constructs the dangerous figure of the ‘enemy within’,” she added.
In a press release issued ahead of the trial, Hassan’s team said the quote she shared on X was “referring to a principle that lies at the heart of international law: the right of peoples to resist colonization and the occupation of their territory by a foreign army.”
According to the statement, Hassan later deleted the post to avoid any possible misunderstanding.
The post was reported to the prosecutor’s office by far-right National Rally MP Matthias Renault, the French interior minister, the European Jewish Organisation (OJE), and the League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra).
The prosecution was initiated by the public prosecutor’s office, which operates under the authority of the executive branch.
Hassan said the “judicial harassment” she has faced demonstrates “how far some are willing to go to silence voices that denounce the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
The trial marks the latest legal challenge brought against Hassan over her criticism of Israel’s occupation and its genocide in Gaza. Over the past two years, 16 legal proceedings have been initiated against her, 13 of which have already been dismissed without further action.
Le Pen avoids 2027 race ban but faces house arrest hurdle
Al Mayadeen | July 7, 2026
A Paris appeals court upheld Marine Le Pen’s conviction over the misuse of European Parliament funds, while reducing her electoral ban enough to keep open a possible path to France’s 2027 presidential election.
The ruling confirmed Le Pen’s guilt in a case centered on the diversion of European Parliament money intended for parliamentary assistants. Prosecutors said the funds were instead used to pay staff working for her National Rally party in France between 2004 and 2016. Le Pen has denied wrongdoing.
Although the court maintained the conviction, it shortened her ban from holding elected office. The sentence was reduced to 45 months, with 30 months suspended, leaving an active ban of 15 months. Since the restriction began with the lower court’s March 2025 ruling, it is set to expire before the first round of France’s presidential election, scheduled for April 18, 2027.
That decision means Le Pen is not automatically excluded from the race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, who cannot seek a third consecutive term. But the same ruling imposed a separate sentence of house arrest, leaving her possible campaign clouded by practical and political obstacles.
House arrest complicates campaign
Le Pen was sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended, with the remaining year to be served under house arrest with electronic monitoring. She was also fined €100,000.
The house arrest sentence now stands as the main obstacle to her candidacy. Before the verdict, Le Pen had said she would not run for the presidency if she had to campaign while wearing an ankle monitor, arguing that such restrictions would make it impossible to travel freely, attend rallies, and conduct a proper national campaign.
The appeals ruling therefore leaves Le Pen in a politically complicated position. Legally, her path to the 2027 election remains open. Practically, however, her ability to campaign could be limited by the conditions attached to her sentence.
Party faces strategic decision
Le Pen left the court without speaking to reporters after the verdict. She is expected to clarify her position later on Tuesday.
The decision also places the National Rally before a major strategic choice. If Le Pen decides not to run, party president Jordan Bardella, her 30-year-old protégé, is widely seen as the most likely figure to replace her as the far-right bloc’s presidential candidate.
For now, the ruling has not ended Le Pen’s presidential ambitions. Instead, it has shifted the central question from whether she is legally allowed to run to whether she is willing to campaign for the presidency while under house arrest.
Cancel Culture has taken over European politics
Do we really want to outlaw the views of a third of the electorate?
Ashes of Pompeii | July 6, 2026
A few days ago, I wrote about the “banal nonentities” that form the political elite in Europe. Across Europe, these leaders of traditional establishment parties are deeply unpopular, most with approval ratings below 20%. Their policy platforms have demonstrably failed, leaving them destined to lose upcoming elections to supposedly “far right” parties. The great irony of this moment is that the policy platforms of these newly minted extremists would have been considered standard center right orthodoxy merely twenty years ago. Today, however, the media and the cultural elite have redrawn the boundaries of acceptable discourse, declaring these once mainstream views completely beyond the pale. Unable to defeat these parties at the ballot box through popular appeal, the establishment has turned to lawfare.
For the past decade or two, Anglo academic and intellectual spheres have been suffocated by the relentless machinery of cancel culture. What began as a tool for social enforcement in universities and media has now metastasized, erupting into the mainstream political arena of continental Europe. This phenomenon represents a profound shift in how political power is maintained. Where elections were once won through the clash of policies and the appeal of personalities, the modern political landscape is defined by institutional exclusion. Context, truth, logic, and tradition have been rendered entirely irrelevant, replaced by a singular and overriding imperative that one must belong to the approved in club.
And please, the point is not if the ideas of Farage or AfD are wrong. I might not agree with much of their platform. The problem is the courts should not be where electoral politics are decided. But the European political mainstream, irrelevant whether (supposedly) left or right, has failed miserably and are desperate.
This weaponization of the legal system is now the primary mechanism of political cancel culture in Europe. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party which is poised to potentially win upcoming elections, is under intense investigation. He is accused of failing to declare financial support from his longtime assistant George Cottrell, including staff, security, and housing, before becoming a Member of Parliament. Furthermore, Farage faces scrutiny over an alleged undeclared gift of five million pounds from cryptocurrency billionaire Christopher Harbourn, threatening him with sanctions and disqualification. Reform UK maintains that no rules were violated, but the investigation itself serves the purpose of clouding their campaign.
Similar tactics are being deployed across the continent with alarming coordination. In France, the leading opposition candidates Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are under relentless legal attack. Le Pen has already been disqualified from the elections due to a criminal case, while Bardella faces his own fraud investigation. Even mainstream rivals are not safe, as Dominique de Villepin and Édouard Philippe have become targets of the financial prosecutor for alleged historical offenses. This prosecutor reports to the Ministry of Justice, headed by Gérald Darmanin of President Emmanuel Macron’s party. What a coincidence, as this legal machinery conveniently protects Gabriel Attal, the virtual successor to Macron, by eliminating his prominent rivals.
In Germany, the state is actively trying to prevent the Alternative for Germany party from participating in elections. They are attempting to deprive the party of funding, and the domestic intelligence service has prepared a report labelling them anticonstitutional. At the European level, investigators are conducting coordinated searches and raids across multiple countries against right wing groups in the European Parliament, accusing them of large scale financial fraud and the theft of EU subsidies.
Does anyone doubt whether all of the parties use similar financial schemes? Of course not. And this without even going into the case of VdL and Pfizer…
The net is cast even wider in the Baltic states, where legal cases are routinely launched against opposition figures who attempt to gain votes from the large Russian diaspora. Lithuanian politician Antanas Kandrotas, along with Latvian Stability party leader Alexei Roslikov and his colleague Igor Yudin, have all been targeted by authorities. In every instance, the legal mechanism is utilized not to uphold justice, but to neutralize political threats.
This erosion of democratic norms is further evidenced by the outright cancelling of presidential elections in Romania and the glaring irregularities witnessed in Moldova. When the ballot box cannot be controlled, the information space is heavily policed. There is increasing and aggressive censorship on social media platforms, which are now acting as willing deputies for state control. Just this week, the European Union has criminalized the sharing of RT content. This draconian measure applies regardless of whether the shared content is true or false, and it completely ignores the intent of the user. Even if a citizen shares a link simply to cite it as an example of propaganda, they are still committing a criminal offense. The state is no longer just controlling the narrative through positive reinforcement of its own views, but through the active criminalization of alternative information.
When we bring the story of academic cancel culture together with these political prosecutions and media blackouts, a clear and disturbing picture emerges. The underlying philosophy is identical. In the intellectual world, cancel culture dictates that context, objective truth, logical argument, and historical tradition do not matter if the speaker holds the wrong ideological views. The only thing that matters is moral and ideological conformity to the prevailing orthodoxy. This exact same logic has now captured the European state. The establishment knows it can no longer win the argument on the merits of policy. Instead, they rely on the administrative and legal apparatus to silence the opposition. The allegations of financial impropriety or anticonstitutionalism are merely the new vocabulary of cancellation. The goal is to delegitimize the opposition and bar them from the democratic process entirely.
Ultimately, this trajectory should be deeply troubling, even for those who do not agree with some or even all of the policies of these right wing parties. By utilizing lawfare, election cancellations, and information blackouts, the establishment is effectively outlawing the views of up to forty percent of the population. Outlawing ideas does not make them disappear. These people and their underlying grievances will not simply go away because a court has ruled against them or a media conglomerate has banned their preferred platforms. When a significant portion of the electorate is told that their voices are invalid and their political representatives are criminals, the social contract begins to fracture. Some will inevitably start to look for where to go outside the current political system entirely, seeking alternative structures that the current elites can no longer control.
I think we have been down that road before and none of us should want a return visit.
Uh oh. Canada’s in trouble!
corbettreport | July 3, 2026
To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention, Canada has passed a slew of dystopian legislation and handed down tyrannical Supreme Court rulings that further enslave the Canadian people. But even if you have been paying attention, you might not know the true extent of these new developments. Today James talks to independent Canadian journalist Dan Dicks about these latest moves and what they mean for Canadians and for people around the world.
SHOW NOTES AND COMMENTS: https://corbettreport.com/dan-dicks-o…
How Germany blew the EU’s chance for information freedom
By Rachel Marsden | RT | July 5, 2026
It’s not every day that an EU member state has the opportunity to push back in favor of freedom. At least not without elections. But a German court did have that chance – and promptly blew it on behalf of European citizens everywhere.
Back in 2022 when the Ukraine war was ramping up, the European Commission made an executive order banning Russian media broadcasting in the EU. Meaning that you couldn’t – and still can’t – access RT from within the EU, either on TV or on the web, without a VPN.
So some folks running a website in Saarbrucken, Germany, near the French border, started including some RT videos in their live feed. They reportedly did this exactly four times, back in 2023. Whoop-dee-do, right?
Wrong. This is the EUSSR we’re talking about, remember?
For this, the accused ended up facing criminal prosecution in Germany for promoting some EU-sanctioned RT Germany content. But it turns out that even the German court in Saarbrucken considering this case had doubts as to whether these guys and their website actually fit the definition of an “operator” under the EU sanction’s language that “prohibits any operator from broadcasting, enabling, facilitating or otherwise contributing to broadcast, any” Russian media content. So the German court referred the question to the European Court of Justice tasked with interpreting and clarifying EU regulations and laws.
Wrong question, guys. Why didn’t you start with asking the ECJ whether the regulation itself, made unilaterally by the EU’s unelected and unaccountable executive branch, is even valid at all under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and its Article 11 protecting freedom of expression? The fact that the question wasn’t put to the European court by the German one has spawned a judgment that’s stunning in its failure to interpret the application of any free speech restrictions narrowly enough to avoid the disproportionate limiting of free expression.
The German court missed the forest for the trees and got down into the weeds and all hung up on the comparatively minor issue of whether the website could be considered an “operator” without being a commercial entity. Which the European court then used as a prelude to launch a sweeping McCarthyist “reds under the bed”-style tirade.
“The term ‘disinformation’ is a translation of the Russian word ‘дезинформация’ (dezinformatsiya), coined in the early 1920s by the Soviet intelligence services. Joseph Stalin is credited as being the originator of that term, deliberately making it sound French in order to make it seem Western in origin and thereby enhance its credibility,” wrote the EU court, self-identifying as a history professor. How about if I take that as an open invitation to self-identify as a judge in my capacity as a final-year law student?
The ECJ ultimately ruled that commercialism is irrelevant when the website solicits donations, and had raised over €60,000 within a period of a year. It basically said, look, any commercial nature of the platform risks being a false dichotomy, because who’s to say that the sanctioned entities themselves wouldn’t be paying these independent outlets through donations to promote their banned content: ”Even though, for the purposes of classification as an ‘operator’, no economic activity or income generation is necessary, the context of an appeal for donations enabling such sums to be collected warrants some comment. The fact that some websites are financed by donations rather than by a registered commercial activity justifies increased vigilance as to their possible use as a tool for propaganda purposes, in particular in the case of State-sponsored disinformation campaigns,” the European court ruled. “That lack of clarity makes it more difficult to identify financial flows and, therefore, the actors likely to influence editorial policy or content. It thus creates an environment conducive to interference by external interests, including by third countries, which may intervene directly or indirectly in the production or broadcasting of content.”
Isn’t it the prosecution’s job to present actual evidence and proof of influence through the powerful state-backed legal instruments at its disposal? Shouldn’t the ECJ’s definition of “operator,” if it leans so heavily on the risk of foreign corruption, therefore hinge on whether actual collusion has first been established beyond any reasonable doubt? The ECJ sounds shockingly blasé here about the basic burden of proof for criminal conviction.
This court case had been stayed, or suspended, in Germany pending the ruling by this European Court of Justice. But now it’s free to convict these guys of promoting banned Russian content, under the pretext that just maybe they’re not-so-independent media that schemed on the down-low to distribute Russian media content – something that a lot of people have been doing all over social media of their own volition.
Ultimately, what the buzz around this case effectively does is put a chilling effect on that sharing, and it also risks making people self-censor out of fear of being dragged into court for a judicial proctology exam and having their lives potentially ruined in the press over accusations of Russian collusion. What if these guys (and others) just happen to agree with some of the views expressed on banned Russian media? Who’s going to protect their honestly-held views from establishment authoritarianism?
Hang on, here’s a volunteer for the task.
“Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of democracy. And the EU protects what matters, including the right to receive independent, reliable information. The European Media Freedom Act helps keep journalists and sources safe, strengthens editorial independence and protects media organizations from undue interference or legal intimidation. Today, on World Press Freedom Day, we reaffirm our duty to support and protect journalists so they can do their work free from pressure, intimidation, or harm,” says unelected European Commission President and de facto Queen Ursula von der Leyen.
Oh, great. So the same people who censor speech are also its self-appointed defenders. Like an arsonist who goes running around setting fires but also works as a firefighter as their day job.
What’s clear from all this is that EU regulation may look precise on paper, but enforcement isn’t so straightforward. When even member state courts require an official interpretation, then how is the average person supposed to avoid running afoul of the law? The result ends up being less about what’s actually banned and more about what merely feels safe to touch. Not exactly the kind of vibe that one tends to aim for in a democracy.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.
UK and Israel criticized for persecuting anti-genocide advocates
Protesters rally in London in support of Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Press TV – July 4, 2026
Protesters gathered outside the General Medical Council’s headquarters in London to slam the council’s attempt to silence those speaking out about the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Protesters describe the surgeon as one of the world’s leading war doctors and argue that the regulator’s actions amount to an attempt to silence those who speak publicly about the realities of war,
So we are demonstrating in front of the GMC, because the GMC has decided to appeal against the rulings of two of its own tribunals, so that the High Court would allow it to try me for a third time, in order to get the right political result that it wants.
The GMC is conducting a political campaign against, not just myself, but every doctor who’s spoken up against the genocide, in order to silence us, in the service of the genocidal project. – Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah, British-Palestinian Surgeon
Doctors, campaigners, and members of the public traveled to attend the demonstration, asserting that the proceedings are about more than one individual, warning that they could have a chilling effect on healthcare professionals speaking about humanitarian crises.
Actually, there probably were a group of lawyers set up by the Israelis again to pursue highly charged politicized campaigns against professionals and workers in this country who stand against genocide.
So, really, it’s the action of how the British government and the Israelis who are trying to persecute and outlaw speech in support of Palestine in the heartland of Britain.
Actually, from, we know where our government, you know, the British government, the Labour government, and the Tory government before it have been complicit in genocide from bases like RAF Akrotiri, where Keir Starmer went and complimented the troops.
They run the genocide, they send the planes over Gaza, they stream that information live to the Israelis as they’re committing that genocide.
So our government is complicit, and what they’re doing with their complaints is they’re making it illegal for us to oppose it. – Ranjeet Brar, NHS Surgeon
Speakers at the rally urged the GMC to withdraw the appeal; assisting medical professionals should not face professional consequences for raising concerns over civilian suffering in conflict zones.
There’s a clear example here with Dr. Ghassan, where UK law is for Israel, that it is essentially standing up for the rights of a foreign entity, have been pressuring patients, pressuring people to make complaints against Dr. Abu-Sittah, and this is just one example of many other institutions, medical institutions like the Royal Colleges, and even the journals, the medical journals that we publish in, where they’ve been pressured from UK pro-Israel lobby groups to censor and to shut down any form of pro-Palestine activism.
So, I think we’re seeing this now very clearly with Dr. Ghassan, but the reality is it’s much more widespread than any of us think. – Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, British-Egyptian Pediatric Neurologist
Organizers say they will continue campaigning until the proceedings against Dr. Abu-Sittah come to an end, maintaining that doctors must be free to speak about humanitarian consequences of war without fear or professional repercussions.
Supporters gathered outside the General Medical Council in London to stand behind British Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, accusing the regulators of attempting to silence one of the world’s most prominent war doctors.
Demonstrators say the case is not simply about one medic, but the right of healthcare professionals to speak out on the atrocities of Gaza without professional retaliation.
Israeli spyware used against ex-Greek MEP during probe of illegal surveillance: Report
MEMO | July 3, 2026
Israeli spyware was used to hack the phone of a former Greek member of the European Parliament while he was serving on a committee investigating spyware abuses in Europe, according to a report by Citizen Lab published on Friday, Anadolu reports.
The University of Toronto-based research group said that forensic analysis found Stelios Kouloglou’s iPhone was successfully infected with Pegasus spyware, developed by Israeli company NSO Group, in October 2022 and again the next March.
Kouloglou, a journalist and former MEP, was at the time a substitute member of the European Parliament’s PEGA committee, which was established to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware in EU member states.
Citizen Lab said the infections took place during key periods of PEGA committee activity and could have exposed non-public information, confidential documents, and internal committee deliberations.
“The spyware would have likely captured non-public information about committee activities, possibly breaching EU parliamentary confidentiality and privilege frameworks,” the report said.
The first infection occurred as the committee was preparing hearings on spyware, working on its draft report, and planning fact-finding visits to Greece and the Greek Cypriot Administration. Citizen Lab said Kouloglou’s phone was hacked 10 days before those visits began.
The second infection took place while the committee was engaged in intense discussions over the final drafting process of its report. Kouloglou was in Brussels on March 6-7, 2023, during the period of the infection.
Kouloglou said he was shocked by the findings, describing it as “inconceivable” that a member of the parliamentary committee investigating spyware abuses had himself become a surveillance target, according to Greek news outlet Dnews.
He said he plans to pursue legal action against NSO Group and those responsible for infecting his device, while also raising the issue again through contacts in the European Parliament.
Citizen Lab said the attacks used a “zero-click” exploit, meaning the phone could be compromised without the user opening a link or taking any action.
The group said it was not attributing the attacks to any specific government and found no indication that the Greek government was responsible.
However, it said the first infection overlapped with a previously identified Pegasus campaign targeting Russian and Belarusian-speaking exiled journalists and activists in Europe, suggesting that a Pegasus customer authorized to operate in multiple European countries may have been behind the attack.
Citizen Lab warned that the case posed a serious threat to democratic institutions, saying the hacking could have exposed confidential exchanges among lawmakers and staff, including to parties under investigation by the committee itself.
Mother of Twins Who Died 8 Days After Vaccinations Charged With Murder
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 1, 2026
A 23-year-old mother charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her twin toddlers was set to be arraigned later today, after an Idaho grand jury indicted her late Monday, the Payette Police Department said in a press release.
Police arrested Andrea Shaw on Tuesday afternoon, more than a year after her two children — fraternal twins Dallas and Tyson Shaw — were found dead at their home in Payette on May 1, 2025, eight days after receiving their 18-month vaccines.
The Payette Police Department said the arrest follows “a lengthy and thorough investigation” and said it would have no further comment regarding evidence in the case. “Future information will be presented through the judicial process,” officials said.
Shaw alleges that her twins’ deaths were caused by the vaccines they received at a routine doctor’s appointment. She is one of five plaintiffs — along with two other mothers, two physicians and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — in a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
The lawsuit accuses the AAP of running a decades-long racketeering scheme to defraud American families about the safety of the childhood vaccine schedule.
Attorney Rick Jaffe, counsel of record for Shaw on two civil matters related to the deaths of her children, including the AAP lawsuit, said he believes “the criminal investigation and now the indictment is the natural consequence of the institutional vaccine program that refuses to admit vaccination carries any risk to infants.”
Jaffe, who is not involved in the criminal investigation, added, “Andrea’s indictment makes all the more urgent that the public health authorities acknowledge and address the harm that vaccination is causing to some infants, rather than just shifting the blame to the parent.”
Nurse Angela Wulbrecht, an advocate for people injured by vaccines and who has been supporting the Shaws, told The Defender she was “ shocked and heartbroken” to learn of Shaw’s arrest.
“Over the past year, I have had the privilege of walking alongside Andrea and her family after the unimaginable loss of her twin babies,” Wulbrecht said. “I have witnessed a mother’s profound grief, unwavering love for her children, and determination to seek answers.”
Andrea gave birth to a new baby, born three weeks prematurely, on June 25, Shaw’s attorney Joseph Filicetti told the local KTVB7 news station. Her husband is caring for the newborn while she is incarcerated.
Shaw told physician of family history of adverse vaccine reaction
The details of the Shaw twins’ story are laid out in court documents that are part of the lawsuit against the AAP. Andrea and her husband Nathaniel also shared their story in May 2025 with CHD.TV.
According to Andrea, she and her mother-in-law say they warned the twins’ pediatrician that there was a family history of adverse reactions to the flu shot.
However, the pediatrician dismissed these concerns. Nurses administered the flu vaccine along with hepatitis A and DTaP shots on April 23, 2025. The twins had previously received most routine childhood vaccinations, including their 1-year shots.
Within hours, Andrea said the toddlers became lethargic and ill. The next morning, their lips were blue, and they struggled to move. Andrea took the twins to the emergency room and told the doctor they had received three vaccines the day before.
The treating physician in the emergency room diagnosed them as suffering from “post-immunization reaction, initial encounter.”
The babies remained symptomatic over the days that followed. A week later, on the morning of May 1, Andrea found both children unresponsive. Police and paramedics were called, and investigators immediately focused on the parents. Andrea and Nathaniel told CHD.TV that the police immediately treated them as suspects.
“They said that it wasn’t medical and that they figured asphyxiation, and that I had supposedly had a postpartum overwhelming blackout and done it to my children,” Andrea said. The family filed a report with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS.
Rather than investigating Andrea’s vaccine concerns, the Payette Police Department opened an investigation into her.
Medical industry ignores vaccines as possible cause of SIDS
When infants under age 1 die suddenly, and a cause can’t be determined, the deaths are typically classified as sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). SIDS is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.
But even as the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause of SIDS, numerous studies have reported a plausible association between vaccines and SIDS in peer-reviewed literature for decades.
Researchers theorize, for example, that some children with underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may not be able to process excipients — inactive ingredients used as preservatives or to enhance a vaccine’s efficacy — which can lead to illness or death.
The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program has also recognized links between vaccines and infant deaths. Last year the program compensated two families whose babies died. The program determined the deaths were vaccine-induced.
Due to concerns over the link between vaccines and SIDS, some states recently introduced legislation to require that medical examiners document recent immunizations on the death certificates of children who died from unknown causes.
How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?
In recent years, some parents have been criminally charged when their infants die after sleeping on their stomachs.
Last year, two different sets of Pennsylvania parents were charged with felonies for placing their babies in unsafe sleeping positions. Attorney Daniel Nevins told Spotlight PA that such charges are rare and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.
But some parents have been convicted. In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police did not think that she intended for the baby to die.
She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid a five-year prison term.
Some charges have also been brought against parents in the deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.
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.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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