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Zelensky threatens ‘new deep strikes’ into Russia

RT | August 31, 2025

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has threatened new strikes into Russia, days after claiming that Kiev possessed a brand-new long-range missile capable of reaching Moscow.

Zelensky wrote on Telegram that he had been briefed by Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Aleksandr Syrsky, on the current battlefield situation.

“We will continue our active actions exactly as needed to protect Ukraine. Forces and means are prepared. New deep strikes have also been planned,” he said on Sunday, without providing further details.

Earlier this month, Zelensky claimed Ukraine had developed the long-range Flamingo missile with a reported range of 3,000 kilometers – which would be enough to reach not only Moscow but also Russian cities beyond the Ural mountains. The Ukrainian leader, however, said that mass production is not expected for the next several months.

British media outlets cast doubts on whether the Flamingo was developed in Ukraine, noting similarities with the FP-5 cruise missile produced by the UK-based Milanion Group and unveiled at an arms expo in Abu Dhabi this year. The UK has also been supportive of Kiev’s long-range strikes, having provided it with Storm Shadow missiles in the past.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted that there is “nothing surprising” in the similarities, adding that “Ukraine has long turned into a testing ground for Western weapons. There are more than enough examples.”

On Friday, the Kyiv Independent also reported that Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau has launched an investigation into Fire Point, the defense firm linked to the development of the Flamingo missile, after reports it misled the government on pricing and deliveries.

Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal reported that the US had blocked Ukraine from carrying out strikes deep inside Russian territory. Throughout the conflict, some of Kiev’s Western backers have been wary of authorizing unrestricted strikes into Russia using Western-supplied weapons, citing concerns over escalation with Moscow.

Ukraine has regularly carried out long-range attacks inside Russia, which Moscow says frequently hit civilian areas and critical infrastructure. Russia has retaliated with strikes on Ukrainian military-related facilities and defense enterprises but maintains that it never targets civilians.

August 31, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

How the American Academy of Pediatrics Betrayed Children Everywhere

By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | August 25, 2025

The prime directive of Western medicine, its golden rule, is expressed by the Latin maxim primum non nocere – first, do no harm. Unfortunately, the Covid era taught us that from the patient’s point of view, a better motto for our times might be caveat emptor – let the buyer beware.

Every medical student is taught that, first and foremost, they should not cause harm to their patients, and every doctor is familiar with this maxim. It is echoed in the Hippocratic Oath, and it forms the basis for the four pillars of medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice.

This rule, and the core tenets of medical ethics that it underpins, were all abandoned during the Covid era. They were replaced with a brutal, inhumane, and unethical martial-law-as-public-health approach to medicine. The results were unconstitutional lockdowns, prolonged school closures, suppression of early treatment, mandated vaccinations, and silencing of dissenting views. These abuses were justified by constant propaganda and lies from public health authorities, the medical establishment, the mainstream media, and medical professional associations.

Enter the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is the largest professional association for pediatricians in the United States. Nearly one hundred years old, the AAP’s motto is “Dedicated to the Health of All Children.” But as with so much of the medical establishment, the Covid era revealed that the AAP has abandoned its stated mission, and in the process, it has betrayed children everywhere.

During the Covid era, no group was harmed more – or more unnecessarily – than children, who lost multiple years of education, socialization, and normal growth and development. Many millions of kids also received the fraudulently tested, toxic, experimental mRNA-based injections that were coercively imposed upon the population at large. Countless children have been harmed or killed by these products, with myocarditis being only the most universally acknowledged of the many toxicities associated with the shots.

Adding insult to injury, it was known from the beginning of the pandemic that the gain-of-function-produced SARS-CoV-2 virus affected children very mildly, rarely causing severe illness, and almost never killing them. Even at the height of the pandemic, an article in the preeminent journal Nature described pediatric Covid deaths as “incredibly rare.” A very large population-based Korean study from 2023 found the case-fatality rate in children from Covid to be well under 1 death in every 100,000 cases.

If no segment of the population was harmed more egregiously than children during the Covid era, few medical organizations betrayed their patient population more thoroughly than the American Academy of Pediatrics.

While the AAP has for many years taken questionable stances on a variety of issues, including the ever-enlarging pediatric vaccine schedule, “gender reassignment,” and others, at one early point during Covid, the AAP did attempt to advocate appropriately in the interest of children. It didn’t last long, however, and a review of this incident shows how the AAP, like so many other medical professional organizations, effectively sold its soul during Covid.

Summer 2020: The AAP Changes Its Tune on In-School Learning

From mid-March 2020, when the Covid lockdowns began, until the end of that school year in June, most American schoolchildren had been kept completely out of school. On July 9, 2020, the AAP released a statement arguing forcefully for the return of American schoolchildren back:

The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020.

The July AAP statement went on to say that school closure “places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality.” It went even further to state that:

… the preponderance of evidence indicates that children and adolescents are less likely to be symptomatic and less likely to have severe disease resulting from SARS-CoV-2 infection. In addition, children may be less likely to become infected and to spread infection.

All of these claims the AAP made in July 2020 were known to be true to those who did the proper research (as the AAP apparently had done), and they have been repeatedly and definitively confirmed in the following years.

I was acutely aware of that July 9, 2020, AAP statement. I used it as an important resource in my own advocacy during the summer of 2020 to try to get schools reopened for full-time learning in New York State by the fall. The July AAP document was a well-researched, well-constructed, and well-argued advocacy tool that supported all children’s best interests.

So far, so good. Very soon thereafter, however, the AAP shamefully succumbed to pressure from public health officials, teachers’ unions, and others pushing for continued school closures. By August 19, 2020, with school reopening imminent, the AAP suddenly “revised” their recommendations. The AAP dramatically changed its tune, stating that they would go along with whatever measures public health officials decreed:

… many schools where the virus is widespread will need to adopt virtual lessons and [AAP] is calling for more federal funding to support both models.

“This is on us – the adults – to be doing all the things public health experts are recommending to reduce the spread of the virus,” said AAP President Sara “Sally” H. Goza, M.D., FAAP.

In an act of cowardice and dereliction of duty, the AAP surrendered. It abandoned the strong and sound advocacy for normalizing children’s education contained in its July document. As a physician actively following the issues of the day surrounding Covid and publicly fighting for school reopening, I can testify that nothing changed regarding our knowledge of the virus that justified the AAP’s abdication of its responsibility to children. In fact, multiple foreign countries had already returned children to school without ill effect. The AAP’s capitulation significantly undermined school reopening efforts, especially in Blue states.

The AAP’s sudden and craven volte-face regarding in-school learning was just one of many disgraceful acts committed by medical associations during the Covid era, and it acted to the severe harm of schoolchildren across the nation. Millions of American schoolchildren continued to languish in “remote” or “hybrid” learning for the entire 2020-2021 school year. Many thousands simply dropped out of school, never to return.

In retrospect, the AAP cannot claim that they “didn’t know” enough to push for school reopening. Their July 2020 document proves they knew the correct course of action – before caving in to the establishment’s false narrative, and then subsequently devolving into just one more shameless shill organization, pushing for the mass inoculation of children with the toxic Covid mRNA injections.

Why would the AAP have done such a thing?

Money, for one thing. And plenty of it.

The AAP’s Federal Funding Windfall During Covid

As the Covid vaccine push intensified, the AAP became one of the trusted legacy medical associations that was handsomely rewarded to “push vaccines and combat ‘Misinformation’.” By 2023, the year for which data is most available, the AAP was absolutely raking it in.

As journalist Michael Nevradakis explains:

AAP… received $34,974,759 in government grants during the 2023 fiscal year, according to the organization’s most recent tax disclosure. The grants are itemized in the AAP’s single audit report for 2023-2024. Documents show some of the money was used to advance childhood vaccination in the U.S. and abroad, target medical “misinformation” and “disinformation” online, [and] develop a Regional Pediatric Pandemic Network.

In summary: in July 2020, the AAP ever-so-briefly and correctly sided with the lockdown dissenters, in service of its self-proclaimed motto to serve “the health of all children.” But by mid-August, the AAP switched sides and subsequently got a massive payout to do so. In fiscal 2023 alone, the AAP was receiving $35 million of tax money, much of it directly tied to pushing the Covid mRNA shots in children and to silence dissenters, whom it knew were telling the truth.

Unfortunately, this is unsurprising. Years before Covid, the AAP had already morphed into a highly compromised organization, straying far from its stated goal of being “dedicated to the health of all children.”

The Dinosaurs Sell Themselves to Survive

The business model for the old establishment medical professional organizations, like the AAP, is a dinosaur. The value of paid membership to these organizations has disappeared over the years, causing income from membership fees to fall. Individual paid subscriptions to their flagship journals have nosedived as well. Their financial survival increasingly relies upon Big Pharma largesse and, as we saw above for the AAP during Covid, government payouts.

In return for Big Pharma and government money, these professional organizations function less and less as champions for their professional members and their patients. They become mouthpieces for government initiatives and advertisers for Pharma. If you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor, they have become a strange species of dinosaur-prostitutes.

The AAP in particular is deeply tied to and heavily subsidized by Big Pharma, especially in the area of vaccine promotion.

Starting with the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA), which effectively eliminated tort liability for vaccine manufacturers, the CDC pediatric vaccine schedule has ballooned from 7 vaccines in 1985 to 23 vaccines (and over 70 total doses!) in 2024. Since then, the AAP has largely been in the vaccine promotion business.

In accordance with the CDC vaccine schedules, the Federal government purchases huge quantities of the recommended vaccines from pharmaceutical companies. The shots are promoted to the public and to physicians through well-paid organizations like the AAP, and administered by pediatricians, many of whom receive payment – essentially kickbacks – to do so. Every step of the way, palms are greased.

As a result, American children have become what Dr. Meryl Nass calls “a delivery system to transfer taxpayer funds to big pharmaceutical companies, via your child or grandchild’s arm.”

As HHS Secretary Kennedy recently noted, the AAP posts on its own website its financial indebtedness to its corporate “donors.” Lo and behold, the four top vaccine manufacturers for the products on the pediatric vaccine schedule – Merck, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sanofi – stand at the top of the AAP’s corporate “donor” list. (The total amounts of the payouts the AAP receives are not disclosed.)

The AAP, originally created a century ago to advocate for pediatricians and their patients, has devolved into an advertiser and lobbyist for the corporate interests that fund their operations. So much for “dedicated to the health of all children.”

The AAP Goes All-In Against Reform

Fast forward to the present. The second Trump Administration and its reconstituted Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., are attempting to implement much-needed reforms to the corrupt and thoroughly captured Federal regulatory systems for healthcare.

HHS has begun to review and revise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccine schedules, including the pediatric schedule. As mentioned above, since the passage of the NCVIA, which provided broad legal immunity to vaccine manufacturers, the pediatric schedule has exploded, from 7 recommended shots in 1986 to an incredible 23 in 2024. For over 3 decades, the AAP has agreed with the recommendations of the CDC with regard to the recommended pediatric vaccines, without argument.

Absolutely no cumulative safety testing for this bloated schedule has ever been performed, and products based on the highly controversial mRNA platform, including annual recommended shots for Covid, have recently been added to the schedule. The CDC pediatric schedule is much larger than those of most other developed countries, many of which boast significantly better pediatric (and general population) health than the United States.

Kennedy’s HHS replaced the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that reviews vaccines for the schedules, due to documented conflicts of interest that many prior members were found to have.

In May 2025, Kennedy’s HHS announced changes to the Covid-19 vaccination recommendations for children. The changes are in fact modest. Regarding the Covid shots, CDC currently recommends “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and providers for healthy children ages 6 months to 17 years.

How has the American Academy of Pediatrics responded? With actions so blatantly pro-Pharma, and so spitefully anti-parent, anti-patient, and anti-child, that their August 2020 betrayal of schoolchildren seems like, well, child’s play in comparison.

On July 28, 2025, in its flagship journal Pediatrics, the AAP released a policy statement calling for a nationwide end to all religious and other nonmedical exemptions for all mandated vaccinations for children, announcing “The AAP advocates for the elimination of nonmedical exemptions from immunizations as contrary to optimal individual and public health.”

Note that the AAP calls for a blanket ban. It makes no distinction between different vaccines, different educational settings, or different reasons for seeking exemptions. According to the AAP, all mandated vaccines are equally essential to both “individual and public health.” All nonmedical exemptions are totally invalid.

The lead author of the policy statement, one Dr. Jesse Hackell, told MedpageToday that

“We recognize that excluding a child from public education does have problems, and yet, we reach the conclusion that, on balance, assuring the safety of the school and daycare environment outweighs that risk because there are other educational opportunities available.”

What an appalling shift in the AAP’s attitude toward in-school learning. What happened to their July 2020 stance, when barring kids from school “places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality?”

The AAP’s message to parents and children is crystal clear. They don’t give a damn about your beliefs, your personal autonomy, your Constitutional rights, or even your well-being. You want to go to school? Shut up, line up, and take the shots we tell you to take. Every last one of them. On August 19, 2025, the AAP released its own pediatric vaccination schedule, which is at variance with the Kennedy HHS’s current schedule. The AAP’s website states:

“The biggest difference between the AAP and CDC schedules is around COVID-19 vaccination. The CDC no longer recommends routine vaccination for healthy children, although children can get vaccinated after a conversation with their doctor. In contrast, the AAP recommends all young children ages 6-23 months get vaccinated.”

It is telling that after decades of placid agreement with the CDC as the pediatric vaccine schedule continually expanded, the AAP has decided to take the drastic step of releasing its own childhood vaccination schedule, at variance with the CDC’s, over the issue of “shared decision-making.” Apparently, only slavish adherence to mandatory vaccination suffices for the AAP.

This is the AAP’s stance, despite rapidly declining uptake of the Covid shots in the population, the miniscule risk of Covid to children, and the mountains of evidence building that demonstrate the toxicity of these shots. In addition to myocarditis, peer-reviewed studies are demonstrating numerous autoimmune and immune system toxicities in children receiving these shots. Michael Nevradakis lists some of these:

According to a peer-reviewed study published in Pediatric Rheumatology in May, children and adolescents who received at least one Covid-19 vaccine had a 23% higher risk of developing autoimmune disease compared to unvaccinated children.

A study published in the journal Immunity, Inflammation and Disease in April found that young adults who received a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine showed elevated spike protein production a year or more after vaccination — significantly longer than the spike protein was expected to remain in the body.Children ages 5-11 who received two doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine had heightened levels of a type of antibody suggestive of an altered immune system response one year after vaccination, according to a peer-reviewed study published last year in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.

Regarding the Covid injections and the CDC vaccine schedule in general, the AAP holds a weak hand, and yet their leadership is going all-in anyway. The AAP’s insistence on annual Covid shots for children is absurd at best, and murderous at worst. As public relations, it appears arrogant, mercenary, and utterly tone deaf. Morally and ethically, it is indefensible.

The Betrayal Is Complete

The leadership at the American Academy of Pediatrics has apparently decided that they would rather torch any residual credibility on the altar of vaccinology than acknowledge any past or present mistakes, or suffer the pain of needed reform. In so doing, with their arrogant and grossly irresponsible attitude to the safety of children, they demonstrate that primum non nocere is not in their vocabulary, and that their motto “dedicated to the health of children” is, quite frankly, a lie.

Such destructive (and self-destructive) actions reveal the AAP’s near-total dependency on the vaccine industry, and its desperation to perpetuate that gravy train at any cost. The American Academy of Pediatrics has sold its soul. Sooner or later, the devil will come to collect.

The AAP’s deep betrayal of its stated core purpose is hardly unique. The AAP is just the poster child for the corruption and corporate capture that have consumed other legacy medical professional associations (the American Medical Association and the American College of Gynecology come to mind).

The Federal Government must stop all funding to medical professional organizations like the AAP. This was always bound to corrupt them, and hard experience has demonstrated that it has. Furthermore, these organizations should be prohibited from accepting Pharma largesse, or at the very least be required to publicly disclose all income from such sources.

Perhaps some of these organizations will choose to reform. Public admission of past wrongdoing, complete divestiture of all Pharma support, and eliminating government subsidy would be the essential, bare-minimum steps to re-establishing independence and credibility.

More likely, the dinosaurs will be replaced by a species of smaller, independent, and uncompromised organizations that incorporate safeguards against the corruption that destroyed their predecessors.

Any legacy medical professional organizations that do not thoroughly and sincerely reform do not deserve the support of physicians, credibility in the eyes of the public, or trust of patients. May they go the way of the dinosaur.

C.J. Baker, M.D., 2025 Brownstone Fellow, is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.

August 30, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Top Kremlin official says NATO seeks to ‘re-establish military presence’ in Afghanistan

The Cradle | August 29, 2025

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu on 29 August accused western intelligence of plotting to destabilize Afghanistan and rebuild NATO’s military infrastructure there.

Writing in state-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta magazine, Shoigu said that Russia is seeking to expand cooperation with Afghanistan as it seeks to recover from two decades of US occupation that ended with the chaotic withdrawal of US troops in 2021.

Washington spent $2 trillion to invade and occupy Afghanistan starting in 2001, Shoigu noted, while facilitating the production of opium, much of which was used to make heroin for export to Russia.

Shoigu explained that opium production in the country skyrocketed during the 1980s when CIA-backed extremist groups, known as the mujahideen, sought to destabilize the Soviet-backed Afghan government and later to expel occupying Soviet troops.

When the Taliban first took power in 1996, they immediately cracked down on the opium trade, only for US-backed warlords to revive it after the 2001 US invasion in the wake of 9/11.

When the Taliban took power for a second time in 2021, they all but eliminated the heroin trade once again.

Shoyghu stated that some 20 international extremist groups continue to operate in Afghanistan, undermining stability within the country and posing a serious regional and global threat.

Of greatest concern is the Afghan wing of ISIS, which has training camps and support bases, mainly in the east, north, and northeast of the country.

Shoigu said militants are being moved from other countries by western intelligence to destabilize regions near Russia, China, and Iran.

“There is reason to believe that behind these actions are the special services of a number of western countries, which continue to hatch plans to destabilize the region, to create chronic centers of instability near Russia, China, and Iran by means of extremist groups hostile to the Taliban,” he wrote.

“It is also clear that the western powers, having lost their positions in the Afghan direction, are hatching plans to return NATO military infrastructure facilities to the region,” he added.

Shoigu stated that as a result, Moscow is ready to assist the Taliban in stabilizing the country, including by developing anti-terrorist and anti-drug cooperation with Kabul through law enforcement agencies.

August 30, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment

EU using blackmail and slander to pressure Georgian politicians

By Lucas Leiroz | August 28, 2025

Apparently, the EU’s tactic of blackmailing its opponents is reaching even Euroskeptic leaders in countries outside the bloc. Recently, the mayor of Tbilisi publicly denounced the campaign of persecution waged by European authorities against his country’s officials, attempting to force them to comply with Brussels’ policies.

Kakha Kaladze, a former professional soccer player who now serves as mayor of Tbilisi, claimed that the EU launched a campaign of “lies, slander, and misinformation” against the legitimate government of Georgia, attempting to shift local policy toward an anti-Russian direction. Kaladze said that EU representatives used tactics such as blackmail and personal insults directed at members of the Georgian Prime Minister’s cabinet to try to coopt them into an anti-Russian initiative.

The mayor, a member of the ruling Georgian Dream party, explained that the EU creates narratives against its opponents both within and outside the bloc, producing biased assessments based on lies and false information. These narratives are then used to undermine political opponents—both through blackmail and by spreading lies.

“Direct threats, blackmail and insults were directed to the prime minister’s office to launch a second front (…) Promises were made: ‘we will help, you will be provided with everything, with appropriate equipment,’ etc. (…) As soon as a political narrative is introduced by some European bureaucrats, an unfair assessment immediately occurs. In general, their assessments are based on lies, slander, and misinformation,” he said.

In the case of Georgia, the European bureaucrats’ intention was to prevent the country from following a sovereign path and respecting the interests of its own people. For years, Georgia has been harassed by Western powers to maintain a policy of automatic alignment with the EU. Furthermore, Kaladze says that the EU openly advocates for a reopening of military hostilities between Georgia and Russia.

Georgia, like several other countries in the post-Soviet space, has experienced violent battles in recent decades, including an armed conflict with the Russian Federation in 2008. At the time, Moscow intervened militarily to prevent Georgian forces from forcibly assimilating the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia—areas where the people had sovereignly decided to follow a different political path from that of Tbilisi. The war ended quickly after Russian forces neutralized the Georgian army and secured the breakaway republics’ right to self-determination.

Since the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the EU has been trying to use its candidate countries to wage war with Russia, thus seeking to open a new front against Moscow. Just as Georgia is being harassed to resume hostilities against Russia, Moldova, another country seeking accession to the European bloc, is being induced to attack the separatist region of Transnistria, which also has a substantial pro-Russian population. Kaladze revealed that, in private conversations with Georgian politicians, European bureaucrats implied support for a possible reviving of the war against Russia.

Furthermore, the mayor explains that the EU accuses Georgia of renouncing so-called “democratic reforms.” Indeed, the country is no longer concerned with following European demands, but this doesn’t mean that some kind of authoritarianism is growing in Georgia, but rather that EU standards no longer matter to the local authorities and people. Since the approval of the Foreign Agents Law, which requires foreign NGOs to register in a special way and report to the Georgian government, the EU has simply lost control over its puppet institutions in the country, which is causing fury among Brussels bureaucrats.

Indeed, it’s not surprising that the EU is using these tactics against its adversaries in Georgian politics. Coopting Tbilisi into the Western anti-Russian coalition has become an obsession of European leaders. Fortunately, however, most of the Georgian parliament appears committed to defending national interests, resisting both international pressure and domestic sabotage agents.

As the EU fails to protect its interests abroad, the truth about European practices is beginning to emerge. Despite the EU’s propaganda as an organization defending democracy, human rights, and liberal values, the bloc has in fact become an alliance of authoritarian regimes, marked by irrational and bellicose policies, whose only common foundation is hatred of Russia and its allies.

Georgia has for many years followed this directive of automatic opposition to Russia and sought integration into the EU, but now the country has finally decided to take a different path, asserting the values ​​and interests of the local people.

Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Associations, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert.

You can follow Lucas on X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram.

August 28, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

HHS REINSTATES VACCINE TASK FORCE

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025

Aaron Siri reveals how ICAN has fought HHS since 2017, relentlessly exposing and litigating the agency’s decades-long neglect of its legal duty under the 1986 Act to ensure vaccine safety. After disbanding its safety task force in 1998—following just one report—and failing to submit even a single required biannual report to Congress, HHS is finally being forced back to the table. Now, with RFK Jr. at the helm of HHS, the task force is being revived—and ICAN is ready with decades of overdue recommendations.

 

August 25, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Tulsi Gabbard Shuts Down Foreign Malign Influence Center, Citing Political Censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2025

The Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC), a government office created during the Biden administration under the pretense of countering foreign disinformation, has been officially shut down as part of a broad overhaul of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) led by Director Tulsi Gabbard.

The move is being described by the administration as an effort to dismantle wasteful, politicized, and unconstitutional programs that have operated well beyond the intended scope of US intelligence work.

A fact sheet released by ODNI reveals that FMIC, along with its earlier incarnations, served as a tool for suppressing domestic political speech, particularly viewpoints at odds with the previous administration.

“FMIC and its predecessor entities were used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition,” the document states.

Furthermore, it details the existence of a sustained partnership between the center and major technology companies, including X, Facebook, and Google, which ODNI says lacked any objective or scientific grounding and may have been weaponized against Americans.

This coordination, according to ODNI, took place under the guise of countering foreign influence but functioned in practice as a mechanism to police and control public discourse online.

The fact sheet highlights a specific incident from October 2020, when FMIC, then operating as the Election Threats Executive, was involved in shaping how social media platforms responded to the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

That reporting was rapidly suppressed across major platforms, an act that later drew widespread condemnation from free speech advocates. The ODNI document directly connects FMIC to that censorship effort, noting its coordination with platforms on their response to the story.

Gabbard, speaking with Fox News host Jesse Watters, condemned the center’s activities in clear terms. “It was essentially used as a means to censor Americans’ free speech, calling it, ‘Hey, you’re spreading disinformation,’” she explained.

Gabbard further stated that FMIC worked directly with social media companies to silence dissent, particularly criticism of the Biden administration, which she described as “a direct contradiction and undermining of our fundamental constitutional rights.”

Although the ODNI fact sheet stops short of using the term “abolished,” it does confirm that FMIC’s functions are being dismantled and its personnel absorbed elsewhere.

The agency’s language states it is “refocusing functions within the Foreign Malign Influence Center” and integrating any necessary components into other divisions like Mission Integration and the National Intelligence Council. Nevertheless, in her interview, Gabbard was clear that the center’s days of operating as an independent entity are over.

Beyond FMIC, the Gabbard-led reforms are targeting a range of other ODNI entities accused of serving partisan purposes rather than advancing national security.

Among those being eliminated are the External Research Council and the Strategic Futures Group, both criticized for pushing politically motivated intelligence. According to the fact sheet, the overall restructuring, referred to as “ODNI 2.0,” will slash agency staffing by nearly half and save taxpayers over $700 million per year.

August 24, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Why is America’s paediatric academy still pushing Covid vaccines for children?

The American Academy of Pediatrics has broken ranks with the CDC, issuing its own “evidence-based” immunisation schedule—but whose interests is the AAP really serving?

By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | August 19, 2025

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has just urged that all children aged 6 – 23 months receive a Covid-19 vaccine, regardless of prior infection, and extended that recommendation to older children deemed high risk.

Their guidance directly conflicts with the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recently withdrew broad recommendations to vaccinate healthy children and pregnant women in favour of “shared clinical decision-making.”

Now, for the first time, the AAP has broken ranks — issuing its own “evidence-based immunization schedule” that places it squarely alongside its biggest corporate donors, the very companies whose products it promotes.

The boycott

The rupture began in June 2025, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr dismissed the CDC’s old Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced it with a leaner panel.

The AAP, which had held a privileged liaison seat at ACIP for decades, responded by boycotting the meeting.

AAP president Dr Susan Kressly declared, “We won’t lend our name or our expertise to a system that is being politicised at the expense of children’s health,” branding the restructured ACIP “no longer a credible process.”

But credibility cuts both ways. At the June meeting, ACIP member Cody Meissner — himself an establishment veteran — rebuked the boycott.

“I think it’s somewhat childish for them not to appear,” he said. “It is dialogue that leads to the best recommendations for the use of vaccines.”

The AAP’s absence wasn’t about protecting children from politics. It was about rejecting a forum it could no longer control.

Following the money

The AAP insists its funding has no bearing on policy. But the Academy advertises its dependence on the very companies whose products it recommends for children.

On its own website, the Academy thanks its top corporate sponsors: Moderna, Merck, Sanofi and GSK. These companies produce nearly every vaccine on the childhood schedule — and now the AAP is demanding more of their products be given to babies.

Financial filings show corporate contributions make up a substantial slice of the Academy’s revenue. Even its flagship journal, Pediatrics, carries the fingerprints of industry support.

This isn’t independence, it’s entanglement. When an organisation funded by vaccine makers issues recommendations that boost those same companies’ sales, it is impossible to pretend this is solely about children’s health.

Parents have already rejected the shots

The problem for the AAP is that parents have already walked away. CDC data show that among toddlers, the rate is a mere 4.5%.

The public’s verdict could not be clearer: most families do not want these vaccines for their children.

The AAP knows this — yet it presses ahead regardless. Its recommendations are now performative, directed less at parents than at its corporate benefactors.

Kennedy strikes back

Kennedy seized on the contradiction.

Posting a screenshot of the AAP’s donor list, he wrote: “These four companies make virtually every vaccine on the CDC’s recommended childhood vaccine schedule,” after the Academy released its own list of “corporate-friendly vaccine recommendations.”

Kennedy accused the Academy of running a “pay-to-play scheme” on behalf of “Big Pharma benefactors” and demanded full disclosure of conflicts in its leadership and journal.

He warned that recommendations diverging from the CDC’s official list are not protected under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act. For now, Covid-19 products remain under a separate regime — the PREP Act and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), which HHS has extended through to 2029.

Kennedy cast this as a red line for the future: if the AAP keeps inventing its own vaccine schedule, it risks dragging doctors and hospitals into legal jeopardy.

This is no longer about one product but about who dictates the rules of childhood vaccination — government regulators or an industry-backed lobby group.

The deeper problem

This dispute isn’t really about Covid vaccines because parents, even healthcare workers, have already rejected them in overwhelming numbers. It is about who controls the institutions that speak in the name of children’s health.

The AAP claimed it boycotted ACIP in June to resist politicisation. In reality, it walked away from a process no longer stacked with the industry-aligned figures it had long relied on. That was the real affront.

The deeper problem is that the AAP is not a neutral guardian of child health. It is a lobbying arm entangled with corporate sponsors, issuing pronouncements that align with donor interests while ignoring the families it claims to represent.

AAP says it represents 67,000 paediatricians, and by extension America’s children. But its actions tell a different story. It represents the companies that fund it.

Children’s health is jeopardised when those entrusted with protecting it are compromised. The AAP’s latest recommendations are not science-based safeguards. They are corporate advocacy in disguise.

It is not just disappointing — it is harmful.

AAP’s full vaccine schedule [LINK]

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The CIA, Mossad, and Epstein: Unraveling the Intelligence Ties of the Maxwell Family

By Alan Macleod | MintPress News | August 22, 2025

With speculation mounting that Trump could pardon her, MintPress profiles the family of convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. From her media baron father, who acted as a high-level spy for Israel, her sister, working to push Tel Aviv’s interests in Silicon Valley, her brothers, who founded a dubious but highly influential anti-Islamic extremism think tank, and nephews in influential roles at the State Department and White House, the Maxwell clan have wide-ranging ties to U.S. and Israeli state power. This is their story.

Releasing Ghislaine, Burying the Epstein Files

Speculation is growing that Ghislaine Maxwell could soon be freed. Despite campaigning on the promise to release the Epstein Files, there are increasing signs that the Trump administration is considering pardoning the world’s most notorious convicted sex trafficker.

Last month, Trump (who contemplated the idea in his first term in office) repeatedly refused to rule out a pardon, stating to journalists that “I’m allowed to do it.” Just days later, Maxwell was transferred across states to a minimum-security facility in Bryan, Texas—a highly unusual practice. Neither women convicted of sex crimes nor those with more than 10 years remaining on their sentences are generally permitted to be transferred to such facilities. The move sparked equal measures of speculation and outrage.

The decision to relocate Maxwell came after somebody—potentially a source within her team itself—began leaking incriminating and embarrassing evidence linking Trump to Epstein. This included a birthday card Trump sent Epstein, featuring a hand-drawn nude woman, accompanied by the text: “Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”

For years, Maxwell aided her partner Jeffrey Epstein in trafficking and raping girls and young women, creating a giant sex crime ring in the process. Epstein’s associates included billionaires, scientists, celebrities, and politicians, including President Trump, whom he considered his “closest friend.”

In 2021, two years after Epstein’s mysterious death in a Manhattan prison, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking offenses and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The news that Trump may soon free such an infamous criminal sent shockwaves through his base and drew charges of blatant corruption from the media. “Is there any reason to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell except to buy her silence?” ran the headline of one article in The Hill. Meanwhile, Tim Hogan, senior Democratic National Committee adviser, denounced what he claimed was a “government cover-up in real time.” “Donald Trump’s FBI, run by loyalist Kash Patel, redacted Trump’s name from the Epstein files—which have still not been released,” he said.

Robert Maxwell: Media Tycoon and Israeli Operative

While many of Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes have come to light, less well-known are her family’s myriad connections to both the U.S. and Israeli national security states. Chief among these are those of her father, disgraced media baron and early tech entrepreneur, Robert Maxwell.

A Jewish refugee fleeing Hitler’s occupation of his native Czechoslovakia, Maxwell fought for Britain against Germany. After World War II, he used his Czech connections to help funnel arms to the nascent State of Israel, weapons that helped them win the 1948 war and carry out the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.

Maxwell’s biographers, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, write that he was first recruited by Israeli intelligence in the 1960s and began buying up Israeli tech corporations. Israel used these companies and their software to carry out spying and other clandestine operations around the globe.

Maxwell amassed a vast business empire of 350 companies, employing 16,000 people. He owned an array of newspapers, including The New York Daily News, Britain’s Daily Mirror, and Maariv of Israel, in addition to some of the world’s most influential book and scientific publishing houses.

With business power came political power. He was elected to the U.K. parliament in 1964 and counted U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev among his closest friends.

He used this influence to advance Israeli interests, selling Israeli intelligence-gathering software to Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and many other countries. This software included a secret Israeli backdoor that allowed the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to tap into classified information gathered by governments and intelligence agencies around the world.

At the same time, it was expanding its espionage capabilities, Israel was developing a secret nuclear weapons program. This project was exposed by Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu, who, in 1986, leaked evidence to the British press. Maxwell—one of Britain’s most powerful press barons—spied on Vanunu, passing photographs and other information to the Israeli Embassy—intelligence that led to Vanunu’s international abduction by Mossad, and his subsequent imprisonment.

His death was also surrounded by controversy, similar to Epstein’s. In 1991, his lifeless body was found in the ocean, in what authorities ruled a bizarre accident whereby the tycoon had fallen from his luxury yacht. To this day, his children are split on whether they think he was murdered.

The rumors that Maxwell had, for decades, been acting as an Israeli “superspy” were all but confirmed by the lavish state funeral he received in Jerusalem. His body was interred at the Mount of Olives, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, the spot from which Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven.

Virtually the entirety of elite Israeli society–both government and opposition–attended the event, including no fewer than six living heads of Israeli intelligence organizations. President Chaim Herzog himself performed the eulogy. Also speaking at the event was Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who stated that “Robert Maxwell has done more for Israel than can today be said.”

In the United Kingdom, however, he is remembered less fondly. A man with a fearsome reputation, Maxwell ruled his media business with an iron fist, in a similar vein to Rupert Murdoch (another individual with extremely close links to Israel). After his death, it transpired that he had stolen more than $500 million from his employees’ pension fund to bail out other failing companies in his empire, leaving many of his workforce’s retirement plans in tatters. As the newspaper, The Scotsman, remarked ten years later in 2001:

If [Maxwell] was despised in life, he was hated in death when it emerged he had stolen 440 million [pounds] from the pension fund of Mirror Group Newspapers. He was, officially, the biggest thief in British criminal history.”

Isabel Maxwell: Israel’s Woman in Silicon Valley

Even before it had been published, Isabel Maxwell– Robert’s daughter and Ghislaine’s older sister– managed to obtain a copy of Thomas and Dillon’s biography. She immediately flew to Israel, The Times of London reported, where she showed it to a “family friend” and deputy director of Mossad, David Kimche. These actions did little to beat the book’s central allegation that her father was indeed a high-level Israeli “superspy.”

Isabel has enjoyed a long and successful career in the tech industry. In 1992, along with her twin sister, Christine, she founded a company that developed one of the internet’s first search engines.

After the pension scandal, however, she and her siblings shifted their focus to rebuilding every facet of their father’s collapsed business empire. The sisters sold the search engine, netting enormous profits.

As Israeli outlet Haaretz noted, in 2001, Isabel decided to dedicate her life to advancing the Jewish State’s interests, vowing to “work only on things involving Israel” as she “believes in Israel.” Described by former MintPress journalist and investigative reporter Whitney Webb as “Israel’s back door into Silicon Valley,” she has transformed herself into a key ambassador for the country in the tech world.

“Maxwell created a unique niche for herself in [tech] as a liaison between Israeli companies in the initial development stages and private angel investors in the U.S. At the same time, she helps U.S. companies interested in opening development centers in Israel,” wrote local business newspaper, Globes. “She lives intensively, including innumerable flights back and forth between Tel Aviv and San Francisco,” it added.

Israel is known to be the source of much of the world’s most controversial spyware and hacking tools, used by repressive governments the world over to surveil, harass, and even kill political opponents. This includes the notorious Pegasus software, used by the government of Saudi Arabia to track Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, before assassinating him in Türkiye.

Isabel built on her father’s political connections. “My father was most influential in my life. He was a very accomplished man and achieved many of his goals during his life. I learned very much from him and have made many of his ways my own,” she said. This included developing intimate ties to a myriad of Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest associates.

During the 2000s, she was a regular participant at the Herzliya Conference, an annual, closed-door gathering of the West’s most senior political, security and intelligence officials, in addition to being a “technology pioneer” at the World Economic Forum.

She was also placed on the board of the Israeli government-funded Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation and the American Friends of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies, two organizations closely associated with those former Israeli prime ministers.

In 2001, she became the CEO of iCognito, taking the job, in her words, “because it [the company] is in Israel, and because of its technology.” The technology in question was aimed at keeping children safe online—highly ironic, given that her sister was actively trafficking and abusing minors throughout that period.

Isabel was a much more serious and accomplished individual than Ghislaine. As Haaretz noted:

While her younger sister, Ghislaine, makes the gossip columns after breakfasting with Bill Clinton or because of her ties with another close friend, Britain’s Prince Andrew, Isabel wants to show photos taken of herself with the grand mufti of Egypt, or with Bedouin in a tent, or of visits to a Gaza refugee camp.”

In 1997, Isabel was appointed president of the Israeli tech security firm, Commtouch. Thanks to her connections, Commtouch was able to secure investment from many of the most prominent players in Silicon Valley, including Bill Gates, a close associate of both the Maxwell family and Jeffrey Epstein himself.

Christine Maxwell: Funded by Israel?

Isabel’s twin sister, Christine, is no less accomplished. A veteran of the publishing and tech industries, she co-founded data analytics firm Chiliad. As CEO, she helped oversee the production of a massive “counterterrorism” database that the company sold to the FBI during the height of the War on Terror. The software helped the Bush administration crack down on Muslim Americans and tear down domestic civil liberties in the wake of 9/11 and the PATRIOT Act. Today, she is the leader and co-founder of another big data corporation, Techtonic Insight.

Like her sister and father, Christine has a close relationship with the State of Israel. She is currently a fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), where, her biography states,

She works to promote innovative academic research that leverages enabling technologies to empower proactive understanding and combatting the great dangers of contemporary antisemitism, and enhancing the ongoing relevance of the Holocaust for the 21st century and beyond.”

ISGAP’s board is a who’s who of Israeli national security state officials. This includes Natan Sharansky, former Minister of Internal Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel, and Brigadier General Sima Vaknin-Gil, the former Chief Censor for the IDF and Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy. Also on the board is Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz.

The think tank was a key player in the U.S. government’s decision to repress the 2024 Gaza protests on university campuses nationwide. The group produced reports linking student leaders with foreign terrorist organizations and promoted dubious claims about a wave of anti-Semitism washing over American colleges. It met frequently with both Democratic and Republican leaders, and urged them to “investigate” (i.e., repress) the leaders of the demonstrations.

ISGAP has continually warned of foreign influence on American campuses, producing reports and holding seminars detailing Qatar’s supposed stranglehold over the U.S. higher education system, and linking that with growing anti-Israel sentiment among America’s youth.

Yet if ISGAP wished to investigate other foreign government influence operations, it would not have to look far, as its own funds overwhelmingly come from a single source: the Israeli state. In 2018, an investigation found that Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs (then headed by Brigadier General Vaknin-Gil herself) channeled $445,000 to ISGAP, a sum representing nearly 80% of its entire revenues for that year. ISGAP failed to disclose that information to either the public or the federal government.

At the height of the concern over foreign interference in American politics, the news barely registered. Since then, the Israeli government has continued to bankroll the group to the tune of millions. In 2019, for example, it approved a grant of over $1.3 million to ISGAP. Thus, in her role as a fellow at the organization, Christine Maxwell is the direct beneficiary of Israeli government cash.

Third Generation Maxwells: Working In the US Government

While Robert Maxwell’s daughters were close to state power, some of the family’s third generation have taken up positions within the U.S. government itself. Shortly after graduating from college, Alex Djerassi (Isabel Maxwell’s only son) was employed by Hillary Clinton on her 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Djerassi drafted memos, briefings, and policy papers for the Clinton team and helped prepare her for more than 20 debates.

The Clinton and Maxwell families are closely intertwined. Ghislaine vacationed with Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, and appeared prominently at her wedding. Both she and Jeffrey Epstein were invited multiple times to the Clinton White House. Long after Epstein was jailed, President Bill Clinton invited Ghislaine to an intimate dinner with him at an exclusive Los Angeles restaurant.

Although she failed in her bid for the White House, President Obama named Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, and one of her first actions was to appoint Djerassi to her team. He quickly rose in the ranks, becoming Chief of Staff at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. In this role, he specialized in developing the United States’ policy towards Israel and Iran, although he also worked on the U.S. occupation of Iraq, and accompanied Clinton on visits to Israel and the Arab world.

While at the State Department, he served as the U.S. government representative to the Friends of Libya and the Friends of the Syrian People Conferences. These were two organizations of hardline, hawkish groups working towards the overthrow of those two governments, and their replacement with U.S.-friendly regimes. Washington got what it wanted. In 2011, Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi was overthrown, killed and replaced by Islamist warlords. And last December, longtime Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, fled to Russia and was replaced by the founder of al-Qaeda in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

Djerassi was later appointed an associate at the U.S.-government-funded think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. While there, he again specialized in Middle East policy, his bio noting that he “worked on matters relating to democratization and civil society in the Arab world, the Arab uprisings, and Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Today, he works in Silicon Valley.

While Djerassi’s fortunes were tied to the Clinton faction of the Democratic Party, his cousin Xavier Malina (Christine Maxwell’s eldest son) backed the right horse, working on the Obama-Biden 2008 presidential run.

He was rewarded for his good work with a position in the White House itself, where he became a Staff Assistant at the Executive Office of the President. Like his cousin, once his time in office was over, Malina also secured a position at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace before pursuing a career in the tech world, working for many years at Google in the Bay Area. He currently works for Disney.

While the actions of parents and grandparents should not determine the careers of later generations, the fact that two individuals who come from a multi-generational family of unrepentant spies and operatives of a foreign power secured positions at the center of the U.S. State is at least worthy of note.

The Maxwell Brothers: From Bankruptcy to Counterterrorism

Much of the Maxwell clan is most influential in American and Israeli politics. However, brothers Ian and Kevin also hold considerable sway over affairs in their native Great Britain. Although being acquitted of charges over widespread allegations that they helped their father, Robert, plunder over $160 million from his employees’ pension fund, the brothers kept a low profile for many years. Kevin, in particular, was known for little more than being Britain’s largest-ever bankrupt, with debts exceeding half a billion dollars.

However, in 2018, they launched Combating Jihadist Terrorism and Extremism (CoJiT), a controversial think tank pushing for a far more invasive and heavy-handed government approach to the question of radical Islam.

In his organization’s book, “Jihadist Terror: New Threats, New Responses,” Ian writes that CoJiT was set up to play a “catalyzing role in the national conversation,” and to answer “difficult questions” arising from the issue. Judging by the content of the rest of the book, this means pushing for even more extensive surveillance of Muslim communities.

Within Britain, CoJiT was a highly influential organization. Its editorial board and contributors are a who’s who of high state officials. Individuals participating in its inaugural conference in London in 2018 included Sara Khan, the government’s Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism, and Jonathan Evans, the former Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency.

Like so many Maxwell projects, CoJiT appears to have wrapped up its affairs. The organization has not updated its website or posted anything on its social media channels since 2022.

In fairness, in the past few years, the brothers have had other priorities, leading the campaign to free their sister Ghislaine from prison, insisting that she is entirely innocent. In a manner reminiscent of Robert Maxwell, however, it appears that Kevin may have failed to pay the defense team; in 2022, Maxwell’s lawyers sued him, seeking unpaid fees of nearly $900,000.

The Infamous Mr. Epstein

For years, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein ran a sex trafficking ring that exploited hundreds of girls and young women. They were also connected to vast networks of the global elite, including billionaire business owners, royalty, star academics, and foreign leaders, among their closest acquaintances, leading to intense speculation about the extent of their involvement in their many crimes.

It is still unclear when Epstein first met with the Maxwells, with some alleging that he was recruited into Israeli intelligence by Robert Maxwell. Others state the relationship only began after Robert’s death, when he saved the family from penury following its financial problems.

Only one month after his 2019 arrest, Epstein was found dead in his New York City prison cell. His death was officially ruled a suicide, although his family has rejected this interpretation.

Perhaps the two most powerful individuals in Epstein’s circle of confidants were Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Clinton, already infamous for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, is known to have flown at least 17 times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” and was accused by Epstein victim, Virginia Giuffre, of visiting Little St. James Island, the multimillionaire’s private Caribbean residence, where many of his worst crimes took place.

Trump, arguably, was even closer to the disgraced financier. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” he said in 2002, “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it.” Like Clinton, Trump flew on the Lolita Express. Epstein attended his wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and claimed to have introduced him to his third wife, Melania.

Unfortunately, while Epstein’s ties incriminate the entire political spectrum, coverage has often been framed as a partisan issue. A MintPress study of over one year of Epstein coverage on MSNBC and Fox News found that each network downplayed his connections to their preferred president, while emphasizing and highlighting the links to the leader of the other major party. As a result, many in the United States see the affair as an indictment of their political rivals, rather than of the political system as a whole.

There also remains the question of Epstein’s links to intelligence, something that has been openly speculated about in the media for decades, even years before any allegations against him were made public. Throughout the 1990s, Epstein’s biographer Julie K. Brown noted, he openly boasted about working for both the CIA and Mossad, although the veracity of his claims remains in doubt. As Britain’s Sunday Times wrote in 2000, “He’s Mr. Enigmatic. Nobody knows whether he’s a concert pianist, property developer, a CIA agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad.” It is possible that there is at least a grain of truth to all of these identities.

Epstein met with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns three times in 2014. Burns would later be named director of the CIA. Burns’ proximity to Epstein, however, pales in comparison to that of former Israeli Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Between 2013 and 2017 alone, Barak is known to have traveled to New York City and met with the convicted criminal at least 30 times, sometimes arriving at his Manhattan mansion incognito or wearing a mask to hide his identity.

Numerous sources have commented on Epstein’s connections to Israeli intelligence. A previous girlfriend and victim of his, referred in court documents as Jane Doe 200 to hide her identity, testified that Epstein boasted about being a Mossad operative and that, after he raped her, she could not go to the police because his position as a spy made her fear for her life.

“Doe genuinely believed that any reporting of the rape by what she believed to be a Mossad agent with some of the most unique connections in the world would result in significant bodily harm or death to her,” reads the court filing.

Ari Ben-Menashe, a former senior official in Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, claimed that Epstein was a spy and that he and Ghislaine Maxwell were running a honeytrap operation on behalf of Israel. Four (anonymous) sources told Rolling Stone that Epstein had directly worked with the Israeli government.

Unlike much of the Maxwell family, however, his Israel and intelligence connections are based largely on testimony and unverified accounts. His only known trip to the country was in April 2008, just before his sentencing, a move that sparked fears he would seek refuge there.

Nevertheless, there has been intense public speculation that he could have been working for Tel Aviv. At the Turning Points USA Student Action Summit 2025, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson stated that there is nothing wrong, hateful or anti-Semitic about asking questions about Epstein’s foreign connections. “No one’s allowed to say that the foreign government is Israel, because we’ve been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he said, before expressing his exasperation about the media’s silence on the issue.

What the hell is this? You have the former Israeli prime minister living in your house, you have had all this contact with a foreign government, were you working on behalf of the Mossad? Were you running a blackmail operation on behalf of a foreign government?”

Carlson’s comments drew harsh condemnation from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false. Epstein’s conduct, both the criminal and the merely despicable, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Mossad or the State of Israel,” he wrote.

“This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities such as Tucker Carlson pretending they know things they don’t,” he added, concluding that Israel was under attack from a “vicious wave of slander and lies.”

Whatever the truth about Epstein, it is indisputable that the powerful Maxwell family holds wide-ranging connections to U.S., British and Israeli state power. It is also beyond doubt that if the full story of their activities were ever to reach the public, it would incriminate a significant number of the world’s most powerful people and organizations. Perhaps that is why Trump has, in short order, gone from promising to release the Epstein Files to potentially releasing his accomplice.

August 23, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine stripped of USAID billions

RT | August 20, 2025

Ukraine has lost billions of dollars in aid from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington’s primary funding channel for political projects abroad. Most USAID programs have been shut down in the country, with only a handful set to continue beyond 2025, according to data reviewed by RT.

For years, Ukrainian NGOs and nonprofits were heavily dependent on USAID grants and contracts, reportedly turning the country into a money laundering hub for Washington.

Vladimir Vasilyev, chief research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for US and Canadian Studies, told RT that the financial flows, including from Ukraine, eventually returned to the US.

According to him, USAID was a “black fund for supporting American non-profits linked to the Democratic Party.”

“It was a sacred cow of the State Department that for a long time nobody dared to audit.”

Upon taking office, US President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of most foreign aid to review whether the programs fit his ‘America First’ agenda. Tens of billions in grants have since been put on hold, with the president accusing the agency of misusing taxpayer money and fueling corruption.

In Ukraine alone, where more than $400 billion had once been earmarked for reconstruction, over a hundred projects have already been scrapped. Only 30 USAID initiatives have been preserved, but most are set to expire in 2025, the data shows.

A scandal erupted earlier this year over billions of USAID dollars lost in Ukraine. The agency’s inspector general, auditing firm KPMG, and US prosecutors have launched probes into suspected fraud, bribery, and embezzlement in Ukrainian projects, with more than 20 cases already opened.

Some programs have been kept in place to fund limited humanitarian initiatives, according to the records. Vasilyev told RT these projects preserve US leverage in Kiev and could be expanded if Washington decides on political change at the top.

August 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump-Zelensky Talks: Europe’s Backdoor Play for Arms Industry’s Interests?

Sputnik – 17.08.2025

The German government announced on Sunday that Chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Washington, joining Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders for talks with US President Donald Trump.

Volodymyr Zelensky is flying to Washington to meet Donald Trump mainly to negotiate the possibility of retaining power, Polish political analyst Mateusz Piskorski told Sputnik.

During his upcoming talks with Trump, Zelensky wants to obtain potential personal security guarantees and to preserve his ability to continue ruling Ukraine for some time, Piskorski pointed out.

“If a full-fledged peace agreement on Ukraine is clinched, Zelensky will most likely be forced to organize elections, in which he has no real chance of winning,” the analyst emphasized.

He suggested that Zelensky will behave more cautiously than he did during his last meeting with Trump at the White House in late February.

European leaders who will reportedly accompany Zelensky, including Macron and Scholz, as well as NATO chief Rutte, will call for continuation of the Ukraine conflict as their interests are linked to the defense-industrial complex of France, Germany, and the UK, according to Piskorski.

In Germany, right after the announcement of the Putin-Trump summit in Alaska, the stock market and value of major German companies like Rheinmetall dropped by several percent — reportedly as much as 10%, the analyst concluded.

August 17, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

United Nations Secretary-General offices shield Israel and blacklist Hamas: EX-UN official

Press TV – August 16, 2025

A former senior UN human rights official has criticized offices controlled by the United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) for their actions in shielding Israel and blacklisting Palestinian resistance movement Hamas during the ongoing genocidal war in the Gaza Strip.

Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said in a post on his X account on Saturday that the UNSG offices only report politically convenient issues rather than the reality of abuses committed in Gaza, which he said has led to a lack of accountability.

Mokhiber said there is a need for a more comprehensive and impartial approach to address human rights violations in the besieged Palestinian territory.

He further mentioned his longstanding criticism of the “politicized thematic offices under the UNSG”, while highlighting their reporting practices, which differ from the UN’s independent human rights rapporteurs.

The human rights lawyer went on to say that the failure to effectively address the Israeli regime’s actions in Palestine has highlighted the political corruption that exists within those offices, adding that they are often under pressure from powerful states, particularly in areas such as genocide, sexual violence, and children in conflict.

The former UN official further denounced as “shameful” a recent report issued by a UNSG-controlled office monitoring sexual violence in conflict for creating a new category called “on notice” to avoid blacklisting Israel, despite substantial evidence that exists to condemn the regime.

Conversely, the report has blacklisted Hamas, even though there is an acknowledged lack of evidence against the group, he said.

Mokhiber further slammed the double standard of the report for saying that a lack of access to Israel and areas in the Occupied Palestinian Territory had prevented the listing of Israel, while the same reason did not apply to Hamas.

He said these offices “do more harm than good” to the protection of human rights, adding that their dismantling has long been overdue.

Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to its intensified campaign of death and devastation against Palestine.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed over 61,776 Palestinians, many of them women and children, while displacing the territory’s entire population of nearly two million people.

August 16, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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