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EU court overturns Commission’s denial of access to von der Leyen-Pfizer text messages

(Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | May 14, 2025

The General Court of the European Union on Wednesday annulled the European Commission’s refusal to grant a New York Times journalist access to text messages exchanged between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.

According to a communication published on Wednesday, the judgment concluded that the Commission failed to provide a credible explanation for its claim that it no longer holds the requested messages, which were allegedly sent during Covid-19 vaccine procurement negotiations.

The ruling comes in response to a 2022 request by Matina Stevi, a Brussels-based journalist with The New York Times, who sought access to all text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Bourla between Jan. 1, 2021, and May 11, 2022. The Commission denied the request, stating that it possessed no such documents. Stevi and The New York Times challenged that decision before the EU’s General Court.

The full transcript of the Court’s ruling was published on its website.

On May 11, 2022, Stevi submitted a formal request to the European Commission seeking access to the text messages. The request was registered by the Commission the following day, on May 12. When the Commission failed to respond within the time frame set by EU transparency rules, Stevi’s legal representative filed an initial confirmatory application on June 28, 2022, reiterating the request for access.

On July 20, 2022, the Commission responded to the initial application, stating that it did not possess any documents corresponding to the request. In response, Stevi’s representative submitted a second confirmatory application on Aug. 9, 2022, which was formally registered the same day. Later that month, on Aug. 31, the Commission notified Stevi that the deadline for its response would be extended by 15 working days, setting a new target date of Sept. 21.

On Sept. 21, the Commission informed Stevi that the assessment of her application had been completed but that the draft decision still required approval from its Legal Service. Nearly two months later, on Nov. 16, 2022, the Commission issued its final decision, reiterating that it did not hold any of the requested text messages and therefore could not grant access.

The Court found that the Commission’s justification was insufficient and that Stevi and The New York Times had provided “relevant and consistent evidence” showing that such messages had existed. The Commission, it said, failed to meet its obligations under the Access to Documents Regulation and the principle of good administration as enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The judgment scrutinized the Commission’s procedural conduct, noting that it relied on assumptions and imprecise information throughout the request process. It also emphasized that public institutions must document and retain information related to their activities in a “non-arbitrary and predictable manner.”

In its decision, the Court stated that “despite those imprecisions, [the Commission] maintains that it does not possess the requested documents, with the result that it is for the applicants to produce relevant and consistent evidence capable of rebutting the presumption of non-possession of those documents.”

That presumption was indeed rebutted, the Court held, by a New York Times article and transcripts of interviews conducted by Stevi with both von der Leyen and Bourla in April 2021. The article reported that for a month during vaccine talks, von der Leyen and Bourla “had been exchanging texts and telephone calls.” In the interview transcript, Bourla said that “[the Commission President and I] exchanged text messages, if there was something that we needed to discuss,” and that von der Leyen had “sent me her phone [number].” These statements provided sufficient grounds for the Court to determine that the text messages likely existed at some point.

The Commission, by contrast, was found to have offered no credible detail about the searches it had conducted for the messages or about their fate. “It remains impossible to know with certainty,” the Court wrote, “whether the requested text messages still exist or whether they have been deleted and, if so, whether such a deletion took place deliberately or automatically.” The Commission also failed to clarify whether von der Leyen’s mobile phone had been replaced, and if so, what happened to the previous device and its data.

“The Commission did not provide in the contested decision any plausible explanation as to why it had not been able to find the requested documents,” the Court held.

Furthermore, the Court rejected the Commission’s argument that the messages did not constitute official documents because they were allegedly short-lived or lacked policy significance. Even if the messages were not registered in its document system, the Commission was still obligated to retain and account for them under EU transparency rules. “Institutions cannot deprive of all substance the right of access to documents which they hold by failing to register the documentation relating to their activities,” the Court held.

The Commission’s handling of the request, the Court concluded, “breached the principle of good administration laid down in Article 41 of the Charter.”

As a result, it annulled the Commission’s decision and ordered the institution to pay the applicants’ legal costs.

The judgment has led to calls for greater transparency within EU institutions and among the bloc’s leaders.

Rob Roos, a former Dutch MEP who was vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the European Parliament during the now-dubbed “Pfizergate scandal,” wrote how his legal challenge against the Commission was dismissed at the time.

“My case as an MEP was ruled inadmissible, while a foreign newspaper was accepted. Transparency isn’t optional. Democracy demands it. Back to court,” he wrote on X.

Hungarian MEP András László slammed the corruption scandals at the highest level in Brussels, which he claimed keep piling up. “Europeans want change in Brussels. We deserve better leadership! Qatargate, Pfizergate, Hololei, Reynders and money laundering, Green Deal and Timmermans, fake NGOs… The interests of Europeans are being sold out. Enough is enough!”

Several other European lawmakers demanded that the text messages now finally be released to see what agreements were reached over Covid-19 vaccines between von der Leyen and Bourla.

“She should have made her text messages in the Pfizergate affair public,” said Dutch MEP Marieke Ehlers. “This proves the need for the parliamentary commission of inquiry into transparency proposed by the Patriots for Europe [parliamentary group].”

Anna Bryłka, Polish MEP for the right-wing Confederation, and Spanish MEP Hermann Tertsch of Vox, went further, calling on von der Leyen to resign following the judgment.

The European Commission is yet to formally respond to the judgment.

May 14, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Hungary’s new sovereignty law: A firm stand against foreign influence

By Zoltán Kovács – About Hungary – May 14, 2025

On May 13, 2025, a new bill titled “On the Transparency of Public Life” was submitted to the Hungarian parliament. The proposal comes at a critical time when national sovereignty and democratic self-determination face mounting pressures from global influence networks. This legislation marks a significant step in Hungary’s commitment to shielding its public life from covert foreign interference.

The bill was introduced in response to escalating concerns about foreign-funded organizations and their involvement in shaping Hungary’s political discourse. Investigations and public disclosures in recent years have revealed that millions of dollars, primarily from American and Brussels-based entities, were funneled into Hungarian civil society groups and media outlets with clear ideological agendas. The government argues that these funds have been used not to strengthen democracy, but to distort it, aiming to manipulate voter sentiment and policy outcomes to suit external interests.

At the core of the proposed law is a simple but powerful principle: Democratic decision-making must reflect the will of the Hungarian people, not that of foreign powers or their proxies. The bill asserts that public life, including political activity and discourse, must be free from the influence of foreign financial resources. It expands the definition of foreign-funded influence to cover all legal entities and civil organizations whose activities, backed by external support, target national decision-making processes including elections, legislative debates, and public opinion shaping.

Just as the United States began cleaning house, freezing USAID funding, and initiating a major restructuring after widespread scandals, Hungary is also taking decisive steps to defend its democracy from covert political influence.

The legislation introduces a registry system for entities that engage in such activities. If passed, the Sovereignty Protection Office will identify organizations whose foreign-funded efforts jeopardize Hungary’s constitutional values. These organizations will be listed, required to obtain state approval before receiving any foreign support, and their leaders have to file public asset declarations. Violations, such as accepting funds without approval, can lead to fines of up to 25 times the value of unauthorized support, or even a ban on further public engagement.

Crucially, the bill builds upon overwhelming public support. A recent national consultation revealed that over 98 percent of respondents back stronger measures to defend Hungary’s sovereignty and oppose foreign political influence. These figures highlight a deep societal consensus: that Hungary’s future must be determined by Hungarians alone.

Far from restricting legitimate civic activity, the bill aims to restore transparency and accountability in the political process. Just as political parties are banned from receiving foreign funds under EU rules, non-party actors should be subject to scrutiny when their operations affect public decision-making.

In today’s geopolitical climate, defending sovereignty is no longer a theoretical concern, it is a practical necessity. Hungary’s new legislation sets a precedent in protecting democratic institutions from external manipulation and reaffirms the nation’s right to self-governance.

If passed, this bill will be more than just a legal reform—it will be a declaration that in Hungary, democracy belongs to the people, not to foreign financiers.

May 14, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Cover-ups, lies, smears and fake news from Ursula could be EU’s own suicide pill

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 12, 2025

Previous disparaging comments about the past of European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and her grandparents’ role in the second world war might have seemed truculent by Russian commentators. And yet, as each month passes, we seem to be witnessing VDL’s political identity – and her vision of the role of the EU – more and more in line with Nazi Germany. The total annihilation of the free press in Brussels was not her doing, as she inherited the draconian system when she took office. But her efforts to broaden the silencing of journalists right across Europe is telling as it becomes even more an act of desperation to stamp out any free and feral reporting while her own team are pumping out these entirely fake narratives every day. The Russians are planning on invading Baltic states. Russia is the new threat to a democratic Europe. And the latest blag, EU is a bastion of peace and democracy “which doesn’t invade other countries”.

The lies and hypocrisy are at an all-time high and so it seems fitting that the draconian measures of arresting or detaining journalists, like Chay Bowes attempting to cover the Romanian elections, is understandable.

And yet there is no evidence at all to back up the preposterous claim that Moscow has eyes set on invading Baltic countries; there is also no evidence to back up the claim that Russia is the real threat to European democracy, which, in fact is being destroyed each day by the EU and its elites themselves. And as for the EU being this example of a peaceful trading bloc which doesn’t have any intention of attacking its own members… that might have been true. Until now.

These days the EU elite in Brussels are panicking about losing their relevance. It is looking at though the anti-EU candidate in Romania might well win the presidential elections there. If that happens, this means an alliance of three rebels in the pack – Hungary, Romania and Slovakia – are going to give the EU, let alone NATO a real headache. It might be overzealous to say it could be the end of the EU, but it may well certainly be the end of the EU as we know it. The extraordinary elitist dictatorship which has no accountability to its own mercurial ambitions and acts, might have to learnt a thing or two about democracy and start respecting a few of its principles. NATO, arguably, might be hit even harder as three members holding back the EU’s dream of organizing an EU army in Ukraine will have longer-term ramifications to the prestige and relevance of both those Brussels based institutions.

Have the cracks already started? Are these elitists like VDL losing their grip with reality? The threat by Estonia to “shoot down” any planes flying from Slovakia to Moscow is a good sign of the lunatics running the asylum as this WTF moment naturally is not reported by mainstream media and so the Slovakian PM himself had to stream a piece to camera for X just to confirm the madness.

Yet Ursula is really losing her mind. She’s out of control and this obsession with fighting Russia at any cost may well provide the defining moment where she and the EU project falls on its own sword. The election meddling, arrests of journalists and sheer scale of the fake news coming from the EU is starting to get noticed and seen for what it is – not only in these three recalcitrant EU member states but right across Europe. This is evident in the rise of far-right movements in France, Britain and Germany. It’s plain to see. More and more people are simply no longer buying the BS that comes to their TV screens by these leaders in Brussels on immigration, COVID, LGBT and of course boosting EU defence budgets to new giddy heights. In the UK for example, the government is looking at how to cut disability benefits to its own citizens as the national coffers are empty due to 7.5 illegal migrants receiving state benefits, free housing and health care.

The hypocrisy is staggering. Just recently we read that the EU accuses Hungarian populist leader of pouring cash into a number of media outlets to boost his popularity. And yet HUNDREDS of journalists in Brussels each day working for all of Europe’s main broadcasters, even the BBC when the UK was a member, receive free productions services saving them possibly hundreds of millions of euros each year. We don’t know the figure because it’s all shrouded in secrecy, naturally, but the laughable accusation made by the EU must be noted for the pot calling the kettle black.

Hungary, Slovakia and soon Romania will all be targets for smear campaigns by Brussels-based so-called journalists as part of the new objective of VDL and her cronies. This is coming on a grand scale and the more this is intensified, you can literally watch the popularity of the far-right parties in ‘Old Europe’ rise each day. The model has an autodestruct facility built into it which fools like VDL can’t even see as they are too fixated with power grabbing and the dirty tricks which are needed therein. But the whole machinery is fed on lies which still too many gullible Europeans believe whether it be about Russia’s “threat” or electric cars, alternative energy and of course vaccines. All these areas represent hundreds of billions of euros being transferred from the public coffers to the private ones and there are still, sadly, a good number of ignorant Europeans who can’t join up the dots.

May 12, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Who’s the ‘Real’ Peter Marks?

New Website Exposes Failure of Former FDA Vaccine Czar to Protect Americans From COVID Vaccine Dangers

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 6, 2025

A former top U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine official ignored evidence that COVID-19 vaccines caused serious injuries, and dismissed the pleas of people injured by the vaccines, all while reassuring the public the shots were safe, documents published today on TheRealPeterMarks.com website reveal.

The website hosts public statements by Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., recordings of his calls with vaccine-injured individuals, transcripts and previously unreleased FDA records.

Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), React19 and Follow the Silenced — organizations that advocate for the vaccine-injured — obtained the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests and other legal work.

Dr. Danice Hertz, a retired gastroenterologist injured by the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, said she hopes the website reveals the side of Marks that the media ignores. Hertz said:

“We want to set the record straight about Marks. The media is misinformed about him and has falsely represented him as a hero. In my opinion, he is far from a hero. He is a dishonest, corrupt man whose allegiance has been to the vaccine manufacturers and not to the safety of the people.”

Website contradicts claims Marks makes in latest media blitz

On March 28, Marks resigned as director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) under pressure from his new boss, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

He has since made several appearances on mainstream media, defending his record and attacking Kennedy.

React19 co-chair Dr. Joel Wallskog, a Wisconsin orthopedic surgeon injured by the COVID-19 vaccines, accused Marks of lying during media interviews.

“He is a liar and fearful of the truth getting out,” Wallskog said. “The best defense is a good offense.”

Wallskog and Brianne Dressen, a vaccine-injury victim and co-chair of React19, said the media failed to ask the former FDA executive key questions.

Wallskog said he wants to know why Marks “refused” to give Kennedy the vaccine injury data he requested. Dressen said she wants to ask Marks “about the countless lives negatively impacted by the COVID vaccines.”

“We brought the truth front and center to Marks, and he refused to see it,” Dressen said. “His decisions not to disclose highly reported injuries had devastating impacts on the medical community’s ability to recognize and treat injuries.” As a result, she said, “countless lives” were lost and people were “permanently harmed.”

Dressen said Marks’ “real tagline is ‘profits over people.’”

In an April 13 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Marks told host Margaret Brennan, “You’re talking to the person who came up with Operation Warp Speed.”

Operation Warp Speed was the government’s public-private partnership responsible for facilitating and accelerating the development, manufacture and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

As the person responsible for that operation, Marks would have been privy to warning signs on the possible dangers of the new COVID-19 vaccine.

Documents on TheRealPeterMarks.com site reveal that Marks knew about adverse events following vaccinations as early as October 2020 — less than two months before the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines received emergency use authorization (EUA).

Dressen said she was “astonished” that Marks ignored those warning signs and instead promoted the government’s “safe and effective” narrative.

“He knew very well that there were serious problems with the COVID vaccines,” Dressen said. “What astonished me was how he can say it with such resolve.”

Marks approved COVID vaccines, boosters for kids despite knowledge of risks

The documents posted on TheRealPeterMarks.com show that Marks ignored reports and studies on COVID-19 vaccine injuries sustained by children, and that he claimed such reports were “sensationalized.”

For example:

Dressen called out Marks for his handling of a prominent case of childhood vaccine injury involving Maddie de Garay, a 16-year-old who was seriously injured by the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in January 2021.

In June 2021, Marks accepted Pfizer’s finding that de Garay’s injuries were unrelated to the vaccine.

Marks received further updates about de Garay’s condition over the next few months, including statements by de Garay’s mother at an October 2021 meeting of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.

But in March 2022, Marks said de Garay’s injuries were not vaccine-related and he denied her parents’ request for a meeting. “They took Pfizer’s word for it, then internally gaslit her,” Dressen said.

‘Marks was continually moving the goalpost’ on vaccine risks

Transcripts of Marks’ meetings with vaccine-injury victims showed that he repeatedly rejected safety concerns, or safety signals, related to the COVID-19 shots.

“Marks was continually moving the goalpost — it didn’t matter how we communicated the data, didn’t matter how many hoops we jumped through,” Dressen said.

For example, Marks was repeatedly informed about the prevalence of neurological injuries post-vaccination, including in emails and reports he received in February, March, April and August of 2021.

Marks claimed in a September 2021 email to Dressen that there were no safety signals for neurological injuries. He did not take action in response to several reports in late 2021 and early 2022 on the prevalence of such injuries.

“We spoon-fed their own data to them, showing exactly where the problem is, and still, Marks insisted they couldn’t see it,” Dressen said.

“We know through our work at React19 that neurological adverse events are the most common,” Wallskog said.

Other examples highlighted in the documents include:

  • During a call in late 2022, Dr. Narayan Nair, then-director of CBER’s Division of Pharmacovigilance, acknowledged a safety signal for neuropathy in young women. But in the same call, Marks said this signal has “not been possible to tease out.”
  • In April 2021, a peer-reviewed paper described the case of a vaccinated person who experienced small fiber neuropathy following COVID-19 vaccination. It identified a successful treatment.
  • An August 2021 analysis of VAERS data showed that compared to the annual average of other vaccinations, there were 17 times more reports of serious injuries and 42 times more deaths reported after COVID-19 vaccines.

Marks also repeatedly denied the existence of safety signals for multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS). In an email from September 2022, Dressen told Marks that MIS occurs at a higher rate than thrombotic thrombocytopenia syndrome, which was associated with the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19 vaccine and led to a pause in its administration.

However, in a call three days later, Marks said there was not enough data to “make a clear association” between MIS and the COVID-19 vaccines.

‘Stone-cold’ demeanor: Marks appeared indifferent to people injured by vaccines

In several instances, Marks expressed confusion as to why the vaccine-injured were having difficulty receiving medical care for their conditions. Yet he also reportedly appeared indifferent to the victims’ plights.

Dressen and Wallskog pointed to several instances when Marks appeared to act disrespectfully toward vaccine injury victims, notably blowing off an August 2021 meeting with vaccine-injured people and doctors.

Dressen said the meeting, scheduled three weeks in advance, was held the same day the Pfizer Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine received full FDA approval. “He was busy approving Comirnaty,” Dressen said.

Marks said in an email at the time he missed the meeting due to “urgent matters related to the ongoing pandemic.”

Marks later skipped a Nov. 2, 2021, COVID-19 vaccine injury roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), even though Johnson invited the FDA to attend. Marks did not respond to other emails from vaccine injury victims and attorneys in 2021.

According to Dressen and Wallskog, during other meetings and calls, Marks appeared unmoved by the stories recounted by the vaccine-injured. Wallskog said he acted “cold and calculated.” Dressen claimed Marks had a “stone-cold” demeanor and he was visibly performing other work while the injured shared their stories.

Related articles in The Defender

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.

May 7, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

War in Washington

By Karen Kwiatkowski | Lew Rockwell | May 3, 2025

The President values loyalty above all, and the war on leakers and whistleblowers is weapons hot, torpedo tubes flooded. The targets seem to be the “less loyal” among the current tribe of administration appointees and selected leftovers and hangers-on from the Biden regime. The shuffling of leaker-by accident NatSec Advisor Waltz over to the UN and the firing of his deputy Mr. Wong is what Trump voters wanted. Israel, maybe not so much.

This compelling Tucker Carlson interview with Dan Caldwell – one of three accused leakers in the administration let go a few weeks ago – reveals some things we ought to think about.  Caldwell, and others in the administration and the vast majority of Americans, don’t want stupid wars for even stupider reasons. Certain of Trump’s appointees, and a significant proportion of his loyal supporters, are realists on foreign policy, and this doesn’t sit well with the pro-war crowd infesting DC and inside the administration.

The recent jury trial of the federally prosecuted Uhuru activists sets the stage for understanding the long executive war against freedom of speech and association. Over 20 years ago under Bush 43  – advertised as non-interventionist at home and abroad – we saw “free speech zones” popularized and made par for the course. The charges against the Uhuru group were made up by the Biden administration and testify to not only elite requirements for our obedience in all things, but a direct contempt for an earlier Democratic Party that actually fought for freedom of speech and dissented against war.

The state demands loyalty. The loyalty construct is modeled by both major parties, all the way down to local Republican and Democratic committees, who operate in generally polite Bolshevik-mode. It is this very construct that we saw used under the Biden administration – where swearing that mostly peaceful cities burning is a national good, and under Trump – where criticizing a genocide conducted by an “ally” fueled and funded by the American taxpayer is verboten hate speech, illegal.

A Texas town is considering a non-binding resolution stating, among other things, that it no longer wishes for its State of Texas tax haul of $4.4 million being sent to Israel.  Read it for yourself, nothing in the resolution is false, and it represents – we may know for sure after the May 6th Town Council meeting – the wishes of the people of San Marcos.  Governor Abbott is beside himself.

DoJ’s charges against the Uhuru group had dwindled before the trial to only two: Failure to register as an agent of a foreign country, and conspiracy to fail to register as an agent of a foreign country.  AIPAC did not file an amicus brief, but they sure should have. There is a long history of AIPAC being accused of advocating for a foreign government in Washington, and in all 50 states.

The sheer reactivity of the pro-Israel lobby – and their paid for, bribed up, and reputation-blackmailed politicians – to the slightest whiff of disfavor about a small, corrupt, thoroughly militarized state of 9 million people is breathtaking.  This is becoming far more obvious, to far more people, far sooner than ever before. It’s starting to look frantic, desperate even. More than that, if “Princess and the Pea” is a strategy, it’s a bad one, very different than years of the behind the scenes maneuvering, cultivating and quietly placing key people in key positions in order to promote Zionist interests in Washington and to shape and leverage a sector of American Christian evangelicalism. Has the Israel lobby miscalculated what is happening in the US? Has Israel itself miscalculated what it needs to do to survive as a country?

Trump’s personality, a lingering Western recession, the common-man’s dawning recognition that DOGE has barely scratched the surface of tax-funded waste and idiocy, and emergent anti-war patriotism – none of this helps Netanyahu, or his successor.

Israel’s apologists in Washington and elsewhere are acting like addicts being nudged towards a rehab facility.  The Zionist lobby here and in Israel is not just exhibiting narcissism and denial, but a growing tone-deafness.

Matt Walsh has some useful observations on America today.  He told Tucker:

I don’t understand why, how do we get to a point where the dominant conversation in this country is about what’s happening in other countries…. My sense is… When I go on Twitter, go on X, and no matter what the topic is, it seems, it’s like, you know, it used to be six degrees of Kevin Bacon or whatever. Yeah. Uh, now it’s two degrees of Israel. I was like, no matter the topic, it always comes back for a lot of people to Israel one way or another. And, um, that’s not how I see it. I don’t see Israel as the centerpiece of any of these debates.

I think Matt is articulating what many Americans wonder about.  And the reaction to this national “wondering” is revealing the depth of the dependency, and the real fear Zionists in Israel and in America have that the Zionist project is going to be returned to them alone, no longer an experiment of interest to the United States, no longer a maximal or even existent line item on the foreign affairs and Pentagon budget. Matt suggests that if a country cannot organically survive, without significant aid and assistance from another country, maybe it isn’t a legitimate country. Maybe it doesn’t deserve the help – maybe it should demonstrate how it would manage its affairs on its own earnings, its own identity and value system. He observed,

… when I say that a country that can’t survive without us shouldn’t exist or doesn’t exist. That’s not any kind of like moral judgment. It’s just, this the way of human civilization. You have to be able to you have to be able to stand on your own two feet to be, to even qualify as a country. Right. And I think the American taxpayers have been saddled for many years now with propping up country after country after country.

Rational people, and rational Americans can’t argue with that. In fact, this kind of thinking is fundamental to the so-called “American dream.” It is how we think, and incidentally, it is also antithetical to both socialism and progressivism.

It’s time to cut the apron strings of foreign and military aid. We can’t afford it and it doesn’t work as advertised. Trump is looking to cut overseas enterprises that are obviously corrupt, deceitful, immoral and have no cards left to play. He has stated this publicly, about Ukraine.

Trump’s thinking on this topic may evolve to give Israel the same liberation. Trump’s over-the-top support for Israel allows him to safely chide Netanyahu, surprise him with direct talks with Iran, slow roll tariff relief, and tell him that he needs to allow food and water into Gaza. Without a doubt, Trump has staffed the most pro-Israel government since Lyndon Baines Johnson. I am ready for a new and inverted Nixon to China meme, where only uber pro-Zionist Trump can set Israel free.

The people advising Trump are important to him, but they are even more important to Israel. Moving Waltz out to the hinterland of UN talking points is a skirmish in a larger battle being waged in DC over personnel and policies. The last time we had this intensity of Zionists battling for power over a US President and his foreign policy, we got a violent regime change.

May 7, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

Tesla picked up $595,000,000 in regulatory credits for Q1 2025

By Jennifer Mahorasy | April 25, 2025

Tesla had a 71% drop in first quarter profits compared to last year, but those losses were minimised because they picked up $595,000,000 US in regulatory credits for the quarter.

Indeed, according to Tesla’s Q1 2025 earnings, net income fell 71% to $409 million from $1.39 billion the previous year, driven by a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries (336,681 vehicles) and a 20% decline in automotive revenue to $14 billion.

Regulatory credits, however, did bring in $595 million, up from $442 million the prior year, which was critical—without those credits, Tesla would’ve posted a loss for the quarter.

So, the credits acted like a financial lifeboat, keeping Tesla in the black despite weak sales and operational challenges, like updating factory lines for the refreshed Model Y and lower average selling prices due to discounts.

What Are Regulatory Credits, and Are They “Free Cash Ripped Off” from Petrol Car Makers?

Regulatory credits aren’t exactly “free cash” handed to Tesla like a government cheque, but they’re not pure market magic either. Here’s how they work:

The System: In places like the U.S., EU, and China, governments set emissions standards for automakers. Companies that sell zero-emission vehicles (like Tesla’s EVs) earn credits. Automakers who miss emissions targets—often those heavily reliant on gas-powered cars—must buy credits to avoid fines or bans. Tesla, producing only EVs, generates surplus credits and sells them to legacy automakers (e.g., Stellantis, GM, or Volkswagen). In Q1 2025, Tesla earned $595 million this way.

All prefaced on the need for an energy transition because apparently we have a climate catastrophe.

May 4, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Leave a comment

The Great Spillover Hoax

By Jeffrey A Tucker | Brownstone Institute | April 27, 2025

Why precisely were Anthony Fauci and his cohorts so anxious to blame SARS-CoV-2 on bats and later pangolins in wet markets? It was not just to deflect attention from the possibility that the novel virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan doing gain-of-function research. There was a larger point: to reinforce a very important narrative concerning zoonotic spillovers.

It’s a fancy phrase that speaks to a kind of granular focus that discourages nonspecialists from having an opinion. Leave it to the experts! They know!

Let’s take a closer look.

For many years, there has been an emerging orthodoxy in epidemiological circles that viruses are jumping from animals to humans at a growing rate. That’s the key assertion, the core claim, the one that is rarely challenged. It is made repeatedly and often in the literature on this subject, much like climate claims in that different literature.

The model goes as follows.

Step one: assert that spillover is increasing, due to urbanization, deforestation, globalization, industrialization, carbon-producing internal combustion, pet ownership, colonialism, icky diets, shorter skirt lengths, whatever other thing you are against, or some amorphous combination of all the above. Regardless, it is new and it is happening at a growing rate.

Step two: observe that only scientists fully understand what a grave threat this is to human life, so they have a social obligation to get out in front of this trend. That requires gain-of-function research to mix and merge pathogens in a lab to see which ones pose the most immediate threats to our existence.

Step three: in order to protect ourselves fully, we need to deploy all the newest technologies including and especially those which allow for fast production of vaccines that can be distributed in the event of the pandemics that are inevitably coming, probably just around the corner. Above all, that requires testing and perfecting mRNA shots that deliver spike protein through lipid nanoparticles so they can be printed and distributed to the population widely and quickly.

Step four: as society breathlessly awaits the great antidote to the deadly virus that comes to us via these vicious spillovers, there is no choice but to enact common-sense public-health measures like extreme restrictions on your liberty to travel, operate a business, and gather with others. The top goal is disease monitoring and containment. The top target: those who behave in ways that presume the existence of anachronisms like freedom and human rights.

Step five: these protocols must be accepted by all governments because of course we live in a globalist setting in which otherwise no pathogen can possibly be contained. No one nation can be permitted to go its own way because doing so endangers the whole. We are all in this together.

If that way of thinking strikes you as surprising, ridiculous, and scary, you have clearly not attended an academic conference on epidemiology, a trade show for pharmaceutical companies, or a planning group feeding information to the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

This is conventional wisdom in all these circles, not even slightly unusual or strange. It is the new orthodoxy, widely accepted by all experts in this realm.

The first I had heard of this entire theory was the August 2020 article in Cell written by David Morens and Anthony Fauci. Written during lockdowns that the authors helped shepherd, the article reflected the apocalyptic tone of the times. They said humanity took a bad turn 12,000 years ago, causing idyllic lives to face myriad infections. We cannot go back to a Rouseauian paradise but we can work to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence.”

I was obviously stunned, reread the piece carefully, and wondered where the evidence for the great spillover – the crucial empirical assertion of the piece – could be found. They cite many papers in the literature but looking at them further, we find only models, assertions, claims rooted in testing bias, and many other sketchy claims.

What I found was a fog machine.

You see, everything turns on this question. If spillovers are not increasing, or if spillovers are just a normal part of the complicated relationship between humans and the microbial kingdom they inhabit alongside all living things, the entire agenda falls apart.

If spillovers are not a pressing problem, the rationale for gain-of-function evaporates, as does the need for funding, the push for the shots, and the wild schemes to lock down until the antidote arrives. It’s the crucial step, one that has mostly evaded serious public attention but which is nearly universally accepted within the domain of what is called Public Health today.

Who is challenging this? A tremendously important article just appeared in the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health. It is: “Natural Spillover Risk and Disease Outbreaks: Is Over-Simplification Putting Public Health at Risk?” by the Brownstone-backed team at REPPARE. It’s something of a miracle that this piece got through peer review but here it is.

They present the core assumption: “Arguments supporting pandemic policy are heavily based on the premise that pandemic risk is rapidly increasing, driven in particular by passage of pathogens from animal reservoirs to establish transmission in the human population; ‘zoonotic spillover.’ Proposed drivers for increasing spillover are mostly based on environmental change attributed to anthropogenic origin, including deforestation, agricultural expansion and intensification, and changes in climate.”

And the observation: “If a genuine misattribution bias regarding spillover risk and consequent pandemic risk is arising, this can distort public health policy with potentially far-reaching consequences on health outcomes.”

Then they take it on with a careful examination of the literature generally footnoted as proof. What they find is a typical game of citation roulette: this guy cites this guy who cites this guy who cites that guy, and so on in spinning circles of authoritative-seeming apparatus but fully lacking in any real substance. They write: “We see a pattern of assertive statements of rapidly rising disease risk with anthropogenic impacts on ecology driving it. These are cited heavily, resting largely on opinion, which is a poor substitute for evidence. More concerningly, there is a consistent trend of misrepresenting cited papers.”

We’ve seen this movie many times before. What’s more, there does exist a largely ignored literature that closely examines many of the supposed causal factors that drive spillovers that reveals grave doubts about any causal connection at all. The authors then place the skeptical papers against the opinion papers usually cited and conclude that what has emerged is an evidence-free orthodoxy designed to back an industrial project.

“There are several potential reasons for this tendency to reference opinion as if it is fact. The field has been relatively small, with authorship shared across many papers. This risks the development of a mechanism for circular referencing, reviewing and reinforcement of opinion, shielding claims from sceptical inquiry or external review. The increased interest of private-sector funders in public health institutions including WHO, and its emphasis on commodities in health responses, may deepen this echo chamber, inadvertently downgrading or ignoring contrary findings while emphasizing those studies that support further funding.”

See the pattern here? Anyone who has followed sociology of “the science” over these last five years can. It’s groupthink, the acceptance of doctrine believed because all their peers believe it. In any case, the gig pays well.

Now we can better explain why it is that Fauci and the rest were so emphatic that the coronavirus of 2019 did not originate in a lab for which they had arranged the funding but instead leapt from a bat or something else from a wet market.

The wet market narrative was not only designed to cover up their scheme and avoid blame for a global pandemic of any level of severity. It was also to deploy the potentially catastrophic consequences and resulting public panic as a rationale for continuing their own biological experimentation and funding grift.

“Sadly, it appears we have a leak from a lab.”

“No worries. We’ll find some scientists and steer some grant money to prove the pathogen in question originated from zoonotic spillover, thus proving the point that we need more funding.”

“Brilliant Dr. Fauci! Do we have contacts in the media?”

“We do. We’ll get on that.”

May 4, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Ukraine hit by another military corruption scandal

RT | May 1, 2025

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has arrested several military officials for their alleged involvement in a corruption scheme that resulted in tens of thousands of defective mortar shells being sent to the front, thus compromising operations. Ukraine has long been notorious for its rampant corruption, a problem exacerbated when large military procurement orders began being placed.

Complaints from frontline soldiers about subpar 120mm mortar shells began to pour in late last year. Service members claimed that only one in ten shells exploded due to a smorgasbord of problems, including wet powder and faulty fuses. Local media later reported that as many as 100,000 shells had been recalled, and that authorities had launched an investigation.

In a statement on Tuesday, the SBU said that a defense plant in Dnepropetrovsk Region supplied the military with 120,000 mortar rounds unsuitable for combat use. Without identifying the facility, the agency said that it had detained four suspects, including the plant’s director general, his deputy, as well as two military officials who were responsible for receiving the rounds and overseeing production.

According to the SBU, the plant signed a contract with Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency to produce 120,000 mortar shells. However, in some cases, the plant used “low-quality materials and performed defective work” to produce the shells.

This way, the agency continued, “the organizers of the scheme tried to reduce the cost of production in order to get a greater profit from the state order.” Moreover, the military officials overseeing the process were involved in the scheme and deliberately “turned a blind eye” to the defective batch of ammunition, the statement read.

The defendants are now charged with aggravated obstruction of the military leading to severe consequences, and face 15 years in prison.

Last year, several media reports indicated that the mortar shell crisis was only one facet of the difficulties in the Ukrainian defense industry, which was struggling to begin mass domestic production due to logistics and personnel issues.

Corruption has also been a long-standing issue in Ukraine’s defense sector, especially after the escalation of the conflict with Russia in 2022. Kiev’s Western backers have acknowledged the problem, citing graft as a major obstacle to the country’s EU integration.

Earlier this week, US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz called for proper oversight of American aid to Kiev, calling Ukraine “one of the most corrupt countries in the world.”

May 1, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | | Leave a comment

Are You Tired of Hearing About Antisemitism?

Simply stop killing Gazans and the anger directed at Jews might end

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 26, 2025

One might well ask how a group composed of little more than 3% of the US population has managed to gain control of the nation’s foreign policy, its legislature and executive branches, its media, its entertainment industry, its financial institutions, and its elite universities while also making the United States subservient to the wishes of a monstrous small state located seven thousand miles away and composed of its coreligionists? Well, it helps to have a great deal of money liberally applied to corrupt the existing political and economic systems, but that is not necessarily a good place to start as one might reflexively be accused of wielding a trope much favored by antisemites when discussing Zionist Jews, the group of which we are speaking. Alternatively perhaps, one might take an oblique approach by observing how the highly privileged and protected Zionists in question get rich living in America while having true loyalty to apartheid Israel, something that normally might be considered untenable if not borderline treasonous.

Recent reports suggest that there are upwards of 23,000 Americans serving in the Israeli Army (IDF), most of whom are presumably dual nationals with Israeli citizenship. Under existing law, they should all lose their US citizenship but that will not happen as Congress and the White House have both been bought. Indeed, they are being given a golden handshake by the US Congress with a new bill currently in Congress which would extend some US military benefits to the notional American citizens who are currently carrying out the Gaza genocide as members of the IDF. One such clown Congressman Brian Mast, who served in the IDF, even parades around Congress in his Israeli military uniform and no one says squat.

Beyond the Americans in the IDF, there have been several odd appointments at high levels in the US civilian bureaucracy, including the latest naming of a former Israeli Defense Department and UN Israeli Embassy employee whose husband still works at the embassy to a top position on the National Security Council. Merav Ceren will be the Director for the development of the relationship between Israel, Iran and the US. It is a highly sensitive position and one can only speculate on how she got a clearance, though it is presumed that she is a dual national, which in and of itself should have been a warning sign. Her appointment gives Israel an unusual advantage in internal policy discussions just as the Israeli government has launched a new campaign to pressure the American government to start a war with Iran rather than continue with negotiations toward a nuclear deal. Ceren previously worked at Senator Ted Cruz’s office in Washington, which may have been her stepping stone to the job as Cruz’s loyalty to Israel and all that pertains to it should be unquestioned and he is the recipient of millions of dollars in pro-Israel political “donations.” She also worked for the neocon Iran-hating Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. How she was named to the position she now holds should be considered in itself a huge security breach, one of many already experienced in Trump’s first hundred days, where loyalty to Israel trumps all other factors, as the expression might go.

The trajectory of Meyav Ceren reminds one of another Israeli woman dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. Sigal Pearl Mandelker might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) under the first Trump administration. She handed out the punishment and cranked up the economic pain up for countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia during her time in office from June 2017 until October 2019 when she finally resigned after being under pressure from people like me.

OFTI’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

To be sure most of the Jews with whom I am in touch are appalled by that activism of the Mandelkers and the Cerens and even more so by what is happening in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist enablers, but what we are talking about here is institutional and tribal Jewry which together have the distinction of being referred to as the Israel Lobby, which an increasing number of observers have to come to believe to be something like all powerful and the unofficial government of the United States in many relevant areas.

Ron Unz’s recent article recent article Trump vs. Harvard in a Political Wrestling Match examines the issue of Jewish supremacism and, among other factors, identifies the various mechanisms used by Jews to enhance their enrollment at top universities. He mentions in passing how Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner got into Harvard without having the level of academic achievement that normally would have been a prerequisite. It was possibly accomplished through an institutionalized “Harvard Price,” an under the table donation of several million dollars from the wealthy Kushner family. I personally recall attending an elite university in the 1960s and hearing Jewish classmates boast of how “they” comprised 40% of the first-year students. A friend of mine at Yale told me of similar boasting among the “Sons of Eli.” Forty per cent participation for 3 per cent of the population is certainly an astonishing rate of success.

Unz uses available educational data bases to demonstrate that the disparity was not due to greater intelligence or academic performance among the Jewish applicants. He concludes that “Based on these figures, Jewish students were roughly 1,000% more likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League than white Gentiles of similar ability. This was an absolutely astonishing result given that under-representation in the range of 20% or 30% is often treated by courts as powerful prima facie evidence of racial discrimination.”

Based on my own contact with Jews in the academic world and in government, I would prefer to describe the Jewish success with universities as a product of gaming the system, i.e. producing incentives outside academia itself to make the candidates more attractive. Whether such maneuvering might be described as corruption of the process depends pretty much on where someone stands outside the system, but the fact is that it is far easier for a Jewish high school graduate to get into an elite university than it is for a comparably educated and intelligent white Christian. And if you throw into the hopper all the “minority” other applicant groups that get preferential treatment, white males who are not Jews are definitely at the bottom of list when acceptance time comes around.

Beyond cash incentives, one might also conclude that Jews are exceptionally good at self-promoting and on translating their largely fictional collective victimhood into a sympathy vote that gives them a considerable edge as they move through education and high-profile careers. The problem is that that aggressive self-promotion does not stop at the level of personal aggrandizement and opens the door to large scale group interference in both foreign and domestic government policies that run strongly contrary to the interests of most Americans. I am of course referring to groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which serve as lobbies and support structures for the apartheid Jewish state Israel, which is currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza, without any accountability or consequences as required by current US law under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). President John F. Kennedy was trying to get such groups to register when he was assassinated in 1963.

Other Jewish national organizations are also on board in supporting Israel as are the numerous Christian Zionists, which means that killing tens of thousands of people in the Middle East is a matter of no consequence, except that once more the Israeli Jews must be and are widely portrayed as the victims. The US is complicit in the arming of Israel and the killing and actually condones it even though a majority of American voters do not support the Jewish state. Likewise, the Jewish dominated press and other media looks the other way as the slaughter goes on, as it no doubt will, and one expects that upwards of 2 million Palestinians will eventually be deported to whatever shithole is willing to accept them under pressure from the US. Otherwise, the “Justice” recommended by Israel’s Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now in the United States on a “visit,” will likely be pursued, i.e. a bullet to the back of the head of every Palestinian.

And then there is the issue of the “crime” of antisemitism, which is the only thing that the Justice Department seems to think is worth addressing, to the point where people who have done nothing beyond expressing their concern over what is going on in the Middle East are being arrested without any charges being filed and detained while being processed for deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly announced that he has authorized the arrest and deportation of 300 students for their criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives has obligingly passed a measure equating criticism of the racist, Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism with what they describe as a hate crime “antisemitism.” Meanwhile the Israel Lobby and its politician choral society are constantly using the Jew-controlled media to sing about how Hebrew students fear going to school due to the presence of all the “antisemites.”

This is, of course, largely a convenient fiction largely created by the media, and it is rather Jews who have been beating up peaceful demonstrators. And it is extremist Jewish-funded groups that have been stirring the pot, going after anyone who is perceived as anti-Israeli. One of the groups, Canary Mission, has run a massive disinformation operation for years, publishing the names and photos of thousands of alleged pro-Palestine activists, while another group, Betar, openly encourages targeting of student activists and brags that it has “provided names of hundreds of terror supporters” to the Trump administration. Ross Glick, the head of Betar’s US branch, believes that “Foreign students on visas in the US shouldn’t have the right to free speech.” Jews, however, should be allowed to behave with complete freedom to include carrying out murder, war crimes, and human rights violations targeting those it sees as opponents.

To be sure, protesting against any of the horrors that Israel is engaged in is regarded to be one symptom of “antisemitism” which is ipso facto considered to be something like a capital offense, even though it is pretty much generated in America by the impunity and savagery with which Israel behaves towards the rest of the world. And the parameters of what might constitute a legitimate search for “antisemites” is expanding. The US State Department will now demand from foreigners wishing to travel to the United States information on their social networking sites. Those sites will be screened for anti-Israel content and the visas will be refused. This is an extension of the anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies now in place in 38 states in the US where a job or services will be denied to citizens if they will not sign a pledge or promise not to support the movement to boycott or punish Israel. The situation is even worse for those foreigners who are currently going through screening to become US permanent residents as it is the issue of one’s views of Israel alone that could easily determine who is allowed to become a future citizen and who is rejected.

Indeed, protecting Jews is a full-time job of the Trump Administration, even more so that under Genocide Joe Biden. Antisemitism comes up in speech after speech and fully ninety per cent of the discretionary Homeland Security Agency grants already go to Jewish groups or buildings, to the tune of more than $400 million. Interestingly, the government also appears to be constructing a data base of Jews to protect them further. The personal cellphones of dozens of current and former Barnard College employees rang last Monday evening with a text message that said it was from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, part of a review of the employment practices of Barnard. A link led to a survey that asked respondents if they were Jewish or Israeli, and if they had been subjected to harassment.

Another attack on free speech in America that is Israel related, apart from what is going on at the universities which are being destroyed from within by the government demands to protect Jews, is the role of how research institutes have traditionally been able to engage in fraternal discussions to seek action and share information with any country or government entity in the world. But researchers and university employees who engage in certain nonviolent protests or political expression over human rights conditions in Israel and Gaza may now risk loss of employment and other civil and criminal penalties, according to a new policy unveiled by the National Institutes of Health on April 21st. The agency, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, touches virtually every corner of the scientific community but it will now be silent over what is happening in Gaza, where every hospital has now been destroyed by Israeli-American bombs.

So there you have it. Let’s stop making excuses for Israeli behavior that depicts Jews as the perpetual victims while seeking to falsely label Israel’s enemies as the war criminals and racists. We will leave those attributes to Israel itself. Better still, arch-Zionist Donald Trump should pick up the phone in the Oval Office and call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him that America has become tired and the game is over. America will no longer be sacrificing its own interests to support a genocide and no longer will be footing the bill and providing the weapons to carry out the slaughter. “Goodbye Bibi! And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky demands ‘at least’ Israel-style support from US

RT | April 26, 2025

Kiev expects Washington to provide long-term security assistance modeled on the US relationship with Israel, Vladimir Zelensky has claimed, after Ukraine’s European backers reportedly rejected several significant points of President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan.

Washington presented its draft deal to end hostilities between Kiev and Moscow during talks in Paris last week. At a follow-up meeting in London on Wednesday – which was downgraded at the last minute after Zelensky publicly rejected key US suggestions – Ukrainian officials and their NATO European counterparts reportedly tabled a counterproposal.

Speaking to journalists on Friday, Zelensky insisted that any future peace arrangement with Moscow must be backed by sustained US military, financial and political support.

“Discussions in London have focused on security guarantees from the United States. We hope them to be at least as robust as those provided to Israel. Additionally, we anticipate support from our European partners and are actively developing the infrastructure necessary for these guarantees,” Zelensky said.

Deliberations about an “Israeli model” of support for Ukraine first emerged during the presidency of Joe Biden, when Western officials began to acknowledge that Kiev was unlikely to be granted NATO membership. In lieu of collective security guarantees, they sought ways to at least ensure a long-term, uninterrupted flow of Western arms.

Zelensky’s comments come amid increasing friction with Washington, as Trump pushes Kiev to accept what media outlets have described as his “final offer” to end the conflict. Reports indicate that Washington’s framework includes freezing the conflict along current front lines and recognizing Crimea as Russian territory – a condition Zelensky has firmly rejected.

Trump stated that “Crimea will stay with Russia” in an interview with Time Magazine on Friday. He argued that Kiev would never have enough weapons or manpower to retake the peninsula, which “was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired.” Crimea officially joined the Russian Federation in 2014 after a referendum held following a Western-backed coup in Kiev.

“Our position is unchanged,” Zelensky reiterated on Friday, despite acknowledging Kiev’s dependence on continued American support.

Trump and other senior US officials have warned that if progress is not made soon, Washington may reconsider its role as a mediator and shift its focus to other global priorities. According to reports, Ukrainian officials are already bracing for the possibility of reduced American support should negotiations collapse.

Moscow has consistently expressed willingness to engage in negotiations, conveying its gratitude for Trump’s peace initiatives. However, the Russian leadership has repeatedly stressed that it seeks a lasting solution to the crisis, saying a temporary halt in the hostilities would simply allow Ukraine’s Western backers to rearm its military. Any peace deal must acknowledge the territorial reality and address the root causes of the conflict, including Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, Russia has insisted.

April 25, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , | 4 Comments

NSF terminates hundreds of “misinformation”-related grants, impacting research tied to online speech flagging

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 23, 2025

A large wave of funding cancellations from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has abruptly derailed hundreds of research projects, many of which were focused on so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Late Friday, researchers across the country received emails notifying them that their grants, fellowships, or awards had been rescinded; an action that stunned many in the academic community and ignited conversations about the role of the government in regulating research into online speech.

Among those impacted was Kate Starbird, a prominent figure in the “disinformation” research sphere and former Director of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

The Center, which collaborated with initiatives like the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, both known for coordinating content reporting to social media platforms, had ties to federal agencies and private moderation efforts.

Starbird expressed dismay over the NSF’s move, calling it “disruptive and disheartening,” and pointed to a wider rollback in efforts to police digital content, citing reduced platform transparency and the shrinking of “fact-checking” operations.

Grants that were cut included studies like one probing how to correct “false beliefs” and another testing intervention strategies for online misinformation. These projects, once backed by taxpayer dollars, were part of a growing field that often overlaps with content moderation and speech policing; a fact acknowledged by even Nieman Lab, which admitted such research helps journalists “flag false information.”

The timing of the cancellations raised eyebrows. The NSF’s action followed a report highlighting how the Trump administration was reevaluating $1.4 billion in federal funding tied to misinformation research. That investigation noted NSF’s involvement in these programs but did not indicate the impending revocations.

The NSF stated on its website that the grants were being terminated because they “are not aligned with NSF’s priorities,” naming projects centered on diversity, equity, inclusion, and misinformation among those affected.

A published FAQ further clarified the agency’s new direction, referencing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. It emphasized that NSF would no longer support efforts aimed at combating “misinformation” or similar topics if such work could be weaponized to suppress constitutionally protected speech or promote preferred narratives.

Some researchers, like Boston University’s Gianluca Stringhini, found multiple projects abruptly defunded. Stringhini, who had been exploring AI tools to offer users additional context about social media content; a method akin to the soft content warnings platforms deployed during the pandemic—was left unsure about the full scope of consequences for his lab.

Foundational to many early studies in this space, the NSF had long played a key role in launching initiatives that shaped how digital discourse was studied and potentially influenced. According to Starbird, about 90% of her early research was NSF-funded. She cited the agency’s vital support in forging cross-institutional collaborations and developing infrastructure for examining information integrity and technological design.

The mass termination of these grants signals a pivotal shift in the federal government’s stance on funding initiatives that blur the lines between research and regulation of public speech. What some see as necessary oversight to prevent narrative enforcement, others view as a dismantling of essential tools used to navigate complex digital environments. Either way, the message from Washington is clear: using federal dollars to police speech, even under the guise of scientific inquiry, is no longer a priority.

April 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Exposed: Real Agenda Behind Scrapped $2 Million US Media Grant in Moldova

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.04.2025

US taxpayers will no longer have to foot a $2 million bill for ‘Newsroom Sustainability’ in a post-Soviet republic 5,000 miles away after DOGE sniffed out another $215 million in State Department foreign aid waste.

Layers Within Bureaucratic Layers

The scrapped ‘Expanded Newsroom Sustainability and Engagement’ project was run by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), a USAID-linked State Dept sub-agency promoting ‘democracy, human and labor rights’ abroad through cash injections to the right actors.

Officially, the $2 million grant was meant to ‘support independent newsrooms and increase civic engagement through professional journalism’.

In reality, it was part of a vast web of US and EU-financed media in Moldova and other post-Soviet countries pushing the pro-Western, pro-EU and anti-Russian narrative.

Green Light for Attack Dog Journalism

The DRL, USAID, the European External Action Service and the Council of Europe have spent tens of millions of dollars annually funding Moldovan media like Recorder, ZDG and NewsMaker.

These outlets drag opposition parties (like Sor, now banned) and figures (like former president Igor Dodon) through the mud in corruption investigations and exposés, but ignore the alleged corruption and wrongdoing of ruling PAS Party elites.

While pro-EU media has flourished, independent and opposition outlets have faced shutdowns, sanctions and harassment, from fake tax inspections to legal threats.

This was made possible by draconian “anti-fake news” and “disinformation” laws, overseen by the country’s powerful Audiovisual Council and supported by the EU.

Could State Department’s Move Level the Playing Field?

$2 million in lost funding may not seem like much, but every little bit helps. USAID alone has already nixed $32 million in media support to Moldova and $22 million in elections-related aid this year ahead of September’s crucial parliamentary vote.

Cuts won’t bring back banned outlets, but they could deamplify the pro-West media narrative, and accordingly the political and media power of the Sandu government.

April 18, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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