USAID and the Venezuelan opposition: Corruption and intervention in the name of ‘humanitarian aid’
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 5, 2025
In recent years, Venezuela has been the stage for an intense political battle, marked by polarization and foreign intervention. In this context, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has played a controversial role, repeatedly accused of diverting funds intended for humanitarian aid and being involved in corruption schemes that include prominent figures from the Venezuelan opposition. Recently, following controversies surrounding the American agency, these accusations have taken on new dimensions, with allegations that opposition leaders misappropriated 116 million dollars provided by USAID, exposing a scandal that calls into question not only the integrity of the opposition but also the true intentions behind international “aid.”
During the period of the self-proclaimed “interim government” of Juan Guaidó, large sums of money were directed into Venezuela under the guise of humanitarian assistance. However, investigations revealed that these resources were diverted through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) linked to opposition politicians and their relatives, many of whom live abroad without any real connection to the country. Leaked documents from the U.S. embassy in Venezuela indicate that Carlos Vecchio, an opposition figure wanted by Venezuelan authorities, allegedly received 116 million dollars from USAID. Additionally, the FBI is investigating Juan Guaidó himself for corruption and embezzlement, further raising suspicions about the legitimacy of the Venezuelan opposition.
This diversion of resources is not only a betrayal of the trust of Venezuelans who genuinely need help but also raises serious questions about the transparency and accountability of the opposition. While millions of Venezuelans face social hardships (largely due to American economic coercion), opposition leaders appear more interested in enriching themselves at the expense of the population and foreign funds.
The situation becomes even more complex when considering the revelations made by Jordan Goudreau, a mercenary who orchestrated a failed armed incursion into Venezuela in May 2020. Goudreau claimed that U.S. intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and FBI, protected figures like Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, even while aware of their involvement in fraud schemes against USAID. These allegations suggest a deep complicity between the Venezuelan opposition and U.S. agencies, revealing that the Venezuelan crisis is not merely an internal conflict but rather a geopolitical game in which U.S. interests play a central role.
In light of these allegations, the Venezuelan government has launched investigations against opposition figures involved in corruption schemes. These actions are seen as an attempt to dismantle the networks that undermine the opposition’s credibility and expose the hypocrisy behind the “humanitarian aid” promoted by the U.S. However, USAID, which in theory should be an instrument of development and assistance, sees its reputation seriously compromised. The accusations of corruption and embezzlement not only tarnish its image but also make clear how the institution has become a tool of imperialist aggression in Latin America and other continents.
The truth is that USAID was never truly a development agency but rather a weapon of political intervention — which is why Donald Trump’s recent decision to dismantle it should be celebrated among Global South countries. Under the guise of “promoting democracy” and “helping the needy,” the agency has been used to destabilize governments considered adversaries of U.S. interests. In Venezuela, as in other Latin American countries, USAID acted as a soft power tool, conducting resources to groups and individuals aligned with U.S. geopolitical objectives.
This strategy, however, comes at a high cost. By financing and supporting opposition groups that are often corrupt and disconnected from the real needs of the population, USAID has contributed to political and social instability, exacerbating the problems it supposedly seeks to solve. In the case of Venezuela, the result has been the perpetuation of a crisis that benefits only a reactionary elite minority and their foreign allies, attempting to create dissent in the local political situation.
In an increasingly multipolar world, it is essential to question the role of agencies like USAID and their influence in the internal affairs of sovereign nations. Venezuela is just one example of how “humanitarian aid” can be used as a geopolitical weapon, serving the interests of foreign powers at the expense of the local population. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan opposition, far from representing popular interests, increasingly reveals itself as a corrupt group dependent on external support, incapable of offering real solutions to the country’s challenges.
The so-called “Venezuelan crisis” is, ultimately, a reflection of the complex power dynamics that define international politics, particularly concerning American interventionism in Latin America. And in this game, USAID and its local allies demonstrate that, for them, “the ends justify the means” — even if it means sacrificing the sovereignty and well-being of an entire nation.
Eight Ways That Trump May Force Zelensky to Resign
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 03.03.2025
Following the Oval Office showdown, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has suggested that Volodymyr Zelensky might have to step down to enable a US-Ukraine deal. But as Zelensky refuses, what leverage does President Donald Trump hold over him?
Direct Pressure Tactics
- Cutting all aid. Without US support, Zelensky may have no choice but to resign and be replaced by someone willing to negotiate peace, says ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi.
- Sweeping audit of US aid. A deep probe into Ukraine’s use of US funds could expose corruption and “neutralize” Zelensky, according to ex-Ukrainian MP Oleg Tsarev.
- Freezing Zelensky’s cash. Blocking foreign accounts of Zelensky and his team could undermine the Kiev regime, Tsarev suggests.
Shutting down Starlink. Three sources told Reuters that Team Trump may cut Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s satellites, a move the White House has already reportedly threatened. - Zelensky’s expired legitimacy. His presidential term ended in May 2024, making all actions since then legally questionable. Trump could challenge his right to govern.
Trump’s Indirect Leverage via Europe
- Pressuring European allies. Europe remains dependent on the US, writes economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. With no weapons left to send and money-printing its only option, Trump could force its hand.
- NATO withdrawal threat. Trump may pull US security guarantees from warmongering European states throwing sand in his gears or even threaten a NATO exit, warned ex-Pentagon officer David Pyne. That could motivate Europe to rein Zelensky in.
- Tariffs on Europe. A 25% tariff on EU imports could cost 1.5% of EU GDP, per Bloomberg. Trump already threatened this, claiming the EU was created to “screw the US”.
USDA’s $1 Billion Plan to Combat Bird Flu Calls for Vaccines and Killing More Birds — Will It Work?
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 28, 2025
The government has a new, $1 billion plan to combat the spread of bird flu among U.S. chickens and rising egg prices.
But some critics said the plan will just perpetuate the ineffective and harmful practice of culling birds and promote the potentially risky vaccination of chickens.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins on Wednesday announced the five-pronged “$1 billion comprehensive strategy,” including funding for biosecurity measures, financial relief for farmers, actions to reduce “regulatory burdens” and increase egg imports — and “$100 million for vaccine research.”
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published the same day, Rollins said the USDA is “working with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut hundreds of millions of dollars of wasteful spending” — that will pay for the strategy’s $1 billion price tag.
According to the op-ed, the average price of a dozen eggs increased 237% in the last four years. Rollins said the increase “is due in part to continuing outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza, which has devastated American poultry farmers and slashed the egg supply.”
The USDA did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Chicken culls have had ‘disastrous consequences’
Some farmers and medical experts questioned the USDA’s plan, under which chicken culls will continue.
Vermont attorney and farmer John Klar said, “Economic relief for poultry farmers is appropriate, as is monitoring flocks and supporting improved biosecurity measures.” However, Klar said he is “dismayed by the fearmongering about bird flu” and fears that a “silver bullet” to tackle the crisis may not be available.
According to Rollins, about 166 million laying hens have been culled since 2022. Culling “can be an effective way to stop an outbreak,” CNN reported.
But, according to epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher of the McCullough Foundation, bird culls are ineffective.
“The single most effective action to reduce egg prices in the long-term is to stop the practice of mass depopulation, which has led to a costly and ineffective cycle that not only wastes taxpayer dollars but also worsens the spread of H5N1.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said the USDA plan potentially incentivizes measures that have not been effective.
“By taking government money to cull healthy birds and then bring eggs to market at higher prices, big egg producers have perverse incentives to keep the poorly conceived biosecurity measures going,” McCullough said.
According to CNN, culling has contributed to higher egg prices, due to a reduced egg supply and because taxpayers are “footing the bill for the dead birds.”
Over the past three years, the U.S. government has issued $1.25 billion in compensation to farmers who have had their chickens culled. Approximately 20% of those payouts “have gone to farms that have become infected multiple times,” CNN reported.
Hulscher said these payments have had “disastrous” consequences. “Mass culling has failed to stop the spread of bird flu, caused egg prices to reach a 45-year high, and resulted in the only source of chicken-to-human transmission.”
McCullough said culling mostly healthy birds “doesn’t stop bird-to-animal transmission of the next index case coming into farms by migratory birds, mainly mallard ducks. Instead, he said, “Culling causes the spread of H5N1 from birds to mankind” and “puts the workers at unnecessary risk.”
Iowa farmer Howard Vlieger said that during a 2016 bird flu outbreak in his area, USDA officials stacked culled chickens in compost piles. Within days, infected flies made their way to nearby farms, leading to the death of a laying hen.
“They notified USDA and USDA subsequently euthanized every bird on their farm, even though the broilers were not exhibiting any sign of sickness,” Vlieger said.
Vlieger also questioned the accuracy of tests used to determine whether birds are infected. He cited the example of a neighboring farm where a chicken initially tested positive to a USDA test, but a second test was negative.
“We know the tests they use have very low reliability,” Vlieger said.
Natural immunity more effective than vaccination in birds
Klar suggested that “better policy would be to let the birds develop ‘flock immunity,’ which would be better for humans as well.”
McCullough agreed. “A healthy bird flock allowed to acquire natural immunity to the mild current H5N1 strain will essentially end the current outbreak,” he said.
Several studies have found that bird culls are ineffective in stopping the spread of viruses among birds and that allowing natural immunity to develop may be a more effective means of containing outbreaks.
A December 2024 New England Journal of Medicine study found that between March and October 2024, “All the case patients who were exposed to infected poultry were involved in depopulation activities.”
According to a March 2024 report by the European Food Safety Authority, the number of bird flu detections in birds from December 2023 to March 2024 “was significantly lower, among other reasons, possibly due to some level of flock immunity in previously affected wild bird species, resulting in reduced contamination of the environment.”
“The new plan should stop culling,” McCullough said. “Biosecurity measures should focus on protecting the workers and allowing natural immunity to settle in on American farms.”
Experts question the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for birds
The USDA plan also calls for a “hyper-focused” and “targeted and thoughtful strategy for potential new generation vaccines, therapeutics, and other innovative solutions to minimize depopulation of egg laying chickens.”
The USDA recently granted a conditional license to Zoetis for a bird flu vaccine. CNN reported that other bird flu vaccines for poultry already are licensed in the U.S.
Other vaccines, including one by Moderna, are under development. However, Bloomberg reported this week that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is “reevaluating” the $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna.
The World Organization for Animal Health recently stated that vaccination may be necessary to stem the spread of bird flu.
According to CNN, “Poultry producers have resisted the use of bird flu vaccines, which are costly and labor intensive to administer to millions of birds,” adding that “many countries won’t accept” exports of vaccinated poultry.
Klar questioned the practice of administering bird flu vaccines to poultry, saying he “strongly objects” to the use of mRNA vaccines in birds or other wildlife.
“I am far more concerned about adverse health effects from experimental pharmaceuticals than I am about natural microbes,” Klar said.
In a December 2024 interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Dr. Leana Wen, the former commissioner of the Baltimore City Health Department and a professor of public health at George Washington University, called for the immediate approval of bird flu vaccines for humans and ramped-up testing throughout the U.S.
Over the past year, former public health officials and mainstream news outlets have also stoked fears of a bird flu outbreak among humans.
Is current bird flu strain a product of gain-of-function research?
While the USDA plan suggests that bird flu has a zoonotic — or animal — origin, McCullough cited research suggesting the current clade of H5N1 avian influenza may have originated from gain-of-function research in mallard ducks performed at the USDA Poultry Research Center in Athens, Georgia.
According to the study, the strain of the virus circulating globally was first found in mallard ducks and other wildlife in Georgia and other locations near the USDA’s laboratory in 2021 and 2022.
Gain-of-function research involves the genetic alteration of an organism to enhance its biological functions — potentially including its transmissibility.
The McCullough Foundation’s research, published last year in the journal Poultry, Fisheries & Wildlife Sciences, calls for investigations to identify laboratory leaks that may have resulted in the release of bird flu strains, and a global moratorium on gain-of-function research.
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.
Trump takes on the ‘collective west’
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | March 1, 2025
The dramatic scene in the Oval Office on Friday evening signals that President Donald Trump is decoupling the US from the ‘forever war’ in Ukraine that his predecessor Joe Biden left behind. The war is poised to end with a whimper, but its ‘butterfly effect’ on our incredibly complex, deeply interconnected world will define European and international security for decades to come.
The western media which is hostile toward Trump, have seized the opportunity to caricature him as an impulsive figure in a role reversal with Zelenskyy. In reality, though, Trump has been literally driven to this point by the Biden administration.
The highly charged emotional reaction by the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen commiserating with President Zelensky speaks for itself: “Your dignity honours the bravery of the Ukrainian people. Be strong, be brave, be fearless. You are never alone, dear President.” Trump’s refusal to give Von der Leyen an appointment may partly explain her fury as a woman scorned. Truly, the ‘Collective West’ find themselves at a crossroads and do not know which road to take. Without US air cover and satellite inputs, western troop deployment in Ukraine will be impossible. Even French Emmanuel Macron would agree that his troops will be put through a meat grinder.
Both Von der Leyen and Macron had a whale of a time as cheerleaders of Biden’s war but any further adventures in Ukraine will be suicidal, to put it mildly. Ukraine’s military will collapse if Trump freezes support. None of the European powers will risk a collision with Russia.
Trump knows by now that the western narrative of Biden’s war is a load of bullshit peppered with falsehoods and outright lies, and that the war erupted only out of the diabolic western plot to poke the bear, which got provoked finally and hit out.
The CIA’s coup in Kiev in February 2014 was a watershed event paving the way for a NATO presence on Ukrainian soil. Indeed, terrible things happened, which have been shoved under the carpet — for instance, then German foreign minister (current president) Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s dubious links with the neo-Nazi Ukrainian groups who acted as storm troopers in the 2014 coup. Just think of the grotesqueness of it — a German social democrat patronising neo-Nazi groups!
Most certainly, Trump knows that the US deep state had set in motion an agenda to destabilise the Russian Federation and dismember it as the unfinished business no sooner than the Soviet Union was dissolved. The Chechen War has no other explanation. In fact, Putin has accused US agents of directly aiding the insurgents.
Again, the Bill Clinton administration floated the idea of NATO expansion as early as in 1994. It came out of the blue but was obviously a work in progress since the disbandment of the Soviet Union. By the mid-nineties, even Boris Yeltsin understood that he was played nicely. The return of Evgeny Primakov to the Kremlin and Yeltsin’s overture to Beijing were the surest signs of a course correction.
Those familiar with Soviet history had known all along that Ukraine would be the theatre where the US would try to seal the fate of Russia. If further confirmation was needed, it came with the CIA’s colour revolution in Ukraine in 2003 where the election was rigged (as is happening in Romania today) and carried to a third round till the proxy emerged victorious and surely, Viktor Yushchenko brought the NATO membership issue to the table. At the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush insisted that the alliance formally offered membership to Ukraine!
Today, Britain’s MI6 calls the shots in Kiev. Zelenskyy admitted recently that much of the money given by Biden simply ‘disappeared’. Sordid tales of massive kickbacks and corruption are galore. Biden ignored them. The Biden family’s involvement in Ukraine’s cesspools is widely known. Contrary to his pledge earlier not to do so, Biden felt constrained finally to grant a presidential pardon to son Hunter Biden so that he wouldn’t end up in jail.
Suffice to say, Zelensky’s ‘strategic defiance’ stems out of his quiet confidence that western leaders — starting with Boris Johnson and Biden — who have been fellow travellers in the gravy train during the past three years of the war are beholden to him till eternity.
The axis between Zelensky and his European Union supporters is cajoling Trump, pressuring him and flattering him in turn to get him on board the bandwagon so that the war rolls on for another four years. Last week alone, the presidents of France and Poland and the British prime minister descended on the White House one after another seeking assurance that the war in Ukraine will continue. But Trump has refused to oblige.
Zelensky and his European backers want a ‘forever war’ in the western border lands of Eurasia, the traditional invasion route to Russia. And last week Trump again ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine. He also pointed to the ongoing talks on “major economic development transactions which will take place between the United States and Russia.”
Trump repeated last week that the war could be ended “within weeks” and warned of the risk of escalation into a “third world war.” Basically, he realises that this is an unwinnable war, and is apprehensive that a prolonged war may transform into a quagmire sinking his presidency and derailing the grand bargain he hopes to strike with the two other superpowers, Russia and China, to create synergy for his ambitious MAGA project.
Trump has chalked up 2026, the Quarter Millennial of the United States Declaration of Independence, for hosting the leaders of Russia and China on American soil to celebrate the high noon of his quest for world peace. The European political elites weaned on the liberal-globalist ‘rules-based order’ cannot understand Trump’s deep-rooted convictions and his abhorrence of war.
The big question now is wether the unprecedented fracas in the White House yesterday could backfire on Zelensky, since Washington has significant leverage vis-a-vis Kiev and given the latter’s heavy dependence on the US for some of the critical elements of its defence.
Following the Oval Office argument, Zelenskyy has issued a lengthy statement admitting that it is “crucial” for Ukraine to have Trump’s support. A patch-up cannot be ruled out but the transatlantic system has received a big jolt, as the overwhelming majority of European countries have voiced support for Zelensky. In fact, there hasn’t been a solitary voice censuring Zelensky. Britain kept mum. Keir Starmer, UK prime minister is hosting a meeting of European leaders on Sunday which Zelensky is due to attend. It is unlikely that Europeans will push the envelope further
In this dismal scenario, the best hope is that Zelensky’s ouster, which seems probable, will not be a violent bloody event, considering the power rivalries within the regime in Kiev. At any rate, his replacement may not be a terrible thing to happen since it would necessitate holding the long overdue election and lead to the emergence of a legitimate leadership in Kiev, which has now become a dire necessity for what Trump would call ‘common sense’ to prevail.
Interview with Romanian Investigative Journalist, Iosefina Pascal
“People’s trust in public institutions has been destroyed”
Hungarian Conservative | February 15, 2025
Romania has been in a political crisis since the presidential elections were suspended at the end of last year. So far, the Constitutional Court of Romania has not presented any evidence to justify the act. Why do you think the elections were actually suspended?
Romania is in a deep political, social, and economic crisis. The causes are manifold, but the chaos was installed when the presidential elections were cancelled while the people were voting. Without a shred of evidence.
The people’s trust in public institutions has been destroyed. People lost faith in the justice system, which should have sanctioned this undemocratic decision. All of this destabilizes the country and serves hostile interests. In other words, both the so-called ‘judges’ of the Constitutional Court of Romania and the director of this coup, Klaus Iohannis, have served foreign interests rather than the national interest.
They cancelled the elections because none of the candidates from the governing coalition made it to the second round, as was indicated by most polls. They cancelled the elections because they realized that Romanians voted against this coalition, against the political establishment blindly subservient to the EU. They cancelled the elections because they wanted to set an example with Romania for the other EU states so they would not choose the ‘wrong candidate’.
Q: Do you think they will let Georgescu run again? If so, it wouldn’t make sense since who would let a candidate run again who supposedly, according to the Constitutional Court of your country, has had foreign interference?
Given the latest actions, described by some lawyers and analysts as political persecution launched against the collaborators and supporters of Călin Georgescu, it is clear that now they are trying to ‘produce’ evidence to justify the cancellation of the elections and the prohibition of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy.
Considering that I have proven in my investigations that several so-called judges of the Constitutional Court of Romania have worked for NGOs funded by Soros, anything is possible.
Given the people’s absolutely low trust level in the judicial system and public institutions, any scenario in which Georgescu is banned, arrested, or harassed with criminal investigations would only paint him as a martyr.
A scenario in which Călin Georgescu would not be allowed to run in the presidential elections would be an explosive one, again giving other countries the platform to ban candidates and parties simply because they pose a threat to the positions and businesses of the globalist political establishment.
Q: Iohannis resigned this week. Why do you think he did it now and not when it was his turn, or why didn’t he wait until the May elections?
Given the sudden disappearance of intelligence agency reports of alleged ‘foreign interference’ and ‘cyber attacks’ after the abrupt resignation of illegitimate President Klaus Iohannis, I am considering two options.
First, he resigned now because he needed time to actually hide those reports on which the illegal annulment of the elections was based. This was to prevent them from falling into the hands of the future President elected by the people and exposing his strategy of cancelling 9 million votes in December.
Second, he resigned now because he was about to be removed through a parliamentary procedure that was due to be approved on the day of his resignation, which would have meant he would lose all the financial benefits that a former president has, according to Romanian law.
In fact, both scenarios could be valid simultaneously.
Q: Do you think the Constitutional Court will reverse its decision and return to the second round that should have happened in the country?
Regardless of who else resigns, be it the Prime Minister or even the judges of the Constitutional Court, people need answers, and, more importantly, they want the second round of the elections to resume.
Technically and legally speaking, the Constitutional Court can reverse its own decision; it did so when it decided to annul the presidential elections, reversing its previous decision, which validated the first round of the elections. Will they do it? I don’t know. These judges have skeletons in their closets, as I said, and have total contempt for the people; Klaus Iohannis decorated them, interestingly enough, the day before he resigned. The conclusion is that they have been ‘rewarded’ for the chaos into which they have plunged Romania.
Q: In the last weeks you have been investigating the USAID scandal, which has affected Central and Eastern Europe and Romania. What did you find regarding Romania?
I’ve uncovered an extensive and well-coordinated network of so-called ‘independent’ NGOs and publications. This network had the same funding and the same goal. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of euros directly and illegally allocated by the European Commission and hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from USAID.
As for the European funding, this took the form of grants from the EU directly from taxpayers’ money to NGOs, mainstream publications and ‘independent’ publications. The goal was to promote left-wing globalist politics and to manipulate public opinion through the so-called fight against disinformation, especially during election campaigns, promoting gender ideology, combating any national and conservative values, and labelling conservative parties, journalists, publications, and activists as ‘Russia’s people’. The EU had developed a complex funding mechanism for these entities, which completely lacked transparency and operated under the cover of excessive bureaucracy. Therefore, my work to expose these matters in detail was titanic.
As for the entities funded by USAID, here we’re talking about a network consisting of several large NGOs that funded smaller NGOs with the same goals, including campaigning against sovereignist leaders like Trump, Orban, Georgescu, etc.
Q: In the course of these investigations, you have also looked at what the European Union does with its funds and found many subsidies to NGOs, journalists, international news agencies… What is the biggest scandal you have discovered?
The most serious case so far is that of the secret contract signed by Ursula von der Leyen, similar to the secret Pfizer contract, through which the European Commission awarded 130 million euros to a French advertising agency (involved in a corruption criminal case along with Emmanuel Macron) before the 2024 European Parliament elections. This French advertising agency was also involved in the 2019 campaign.
The 130 million euros it received were distributed to major media outlets and NGOs to promote the work of European bureaucrats in a favourable light and, more importantly, to stop any criticism and negative information about the EU.
In short, we have the first proof that we can no longer talk about independent media in the EU but about media mercenaries who run pieces for the highest bidder. And we are the ones who have been unknowingly funding these media mercenaries.
Iosefina Pascal is a 32-year-old, conservative Romanian investigative journalist. She works tirelessly and independently to get information in her country that the institutional media are keeping quiet. She started working as an independent online journalist in 2018 when the Soros-backed protests shook her country. Since 2020 she has been collaborating with various Romanian TV and radio stations.
Covid Response at Five Years: Introduction
Brownstone Institute | February 27, 2025
This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot wrote in 1925. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Ninety-five years later, the pre-Covid world ended with a nationwide sigh of submission. Democrats remained silent as government mandates transferred trillions of dollars from the working class to tech oligarchs. Republicans dithered as states criminalized church attendance. Libertarians stood by as the nation shuttered the doors of small businesses. College students obediently forfeited their freedoms and moved into their parents’ basements, liberals accepted widespread surveillance campaigns, and conservatives greenlit the printing of 300 years’ worth of money in sixty days.
With rare exception, March 2020 was a bipartisan, intergenerational capitulation to fear and hysteria. Those who dared to object to the freshly-mandated orthodoxy were subject to widespread contempt, derision, and censorship as the US Security State and a subservient media corps muzzled their protests. The most dominant forces in society used the opportunity to their advantage, pillaging the nation’s treasury and overthrowing law and tradition. Their campaign was devoid of the triumph of Yorktown, the bloodshed of Antietam, or the sacrifices of Omaha Beach. Without a single bullet, they overtook the republic, overturning the Bill of Rights in a quiet coup d’état.
Perhaps no episode better exemplified this phenomenon than the House of Representatives on March 27, 2020. That day, the House planned to pass the largest spending bill in American history, the CARES Act, without a recorded vote. The $2 trillion price tag was more money than Congress spent on the entire Iraq War, twice as much as the cost of the Vietnam War, and thirteen times more than Congress’s annual allocation for Medicaid – all adjusted for inflation. No House Democrats objected, nor did 195 out of 196 House Republicans. For 434 members of the House, there were no concerns of fiscal responsibility or electoral accountability. There wouldn’t be a whimper, let alone a bang; there wouldn’t even be a recorded vote.
But there was one voice of dissent. When Representative Thomas Massie learned of his colleagues’ plan, he drove overnight from Garrison, Kentucky to the Capitol. “I came here to make sure our republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent and empty chamber,” he announced on the floor.
Democrats, the self-professed guardians of democracy, did not heed his call to fulfill their obligation to represent their constituents. Republicans, supposed defenders of originalism and the rule of law, ignored Massie’s invocation of the constitutional requirement for a quorum to be present to conduct business in the House. The supreme law of the land gave way to the hysteria of coronavirus, and the Kentucky Congressman became the target of a bipartisan character assassination.
President Trump called Massie a “third rate Grandstander” and urged Republicans to expel him from the party. John Kerry wrote that Massie had “tested positive for being an asshole” and should be “quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.” President Trump responded, “Never knew John Kerry had such a good sense of humor! Very impressed!”
Republican Senator Dan Sullivan quipped to Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Mahoney, “What a dumbass.” Mahoney was so proud of the conversation that he took to Twitter. “I can confirm that @RepThomasMassie is indeed a dumbass,” he posted.
Two days later, President Trump signed the CARES Act. He bragged that it was the “single-biggest economic relief package in American history.” He continued, “It’s $2.2 billion, but it actually goes up to 6.2 — potentially — billion dollars — trillion dollars. So you’re talking about 6.2 trillion-dollar bill. Nothing like that.”
The bipartisan Covid regime stood behind the President smiling. Senator McConnell called it a “proud moment for our country.” Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Vice President Pence offered similar praise. Trump thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who remarked, “I feel really, really good about what’s happening today.” Deborah Birx added her support for the bill, as did Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin. The President then handed Dr. Fauci and others the pens that he used to sign the law. Before leaving, he took time to chastise Rep. Massie again, calling him “totally out of line.”
By the end of March 2020, the pre-Covid world was over. Corona was the supreme law of the land.
The Press Conference That Changed the World
On March 16, 2020, Donald Trump, Deborah Birx, and Anthony Fauci held a White House press conference on the coronavirus. After nearly an hour of unremarkable questions and answers, a reporter asked whether the government was suggesting that “bars and restaurants should shut down over the next fifteen days.”
President Trump ceded the microphone to Birx. As she stumbled through her answer, Fauci flashed a hand signal to indicate that he wished to step in. He walked to the podium and opened a small document. There was no indication that President Trump knew what was coming next or that he had read the paper.
Is the government calling for a shutdown for 15 days? Fauci took the microphone. “The small print here. It’s really small print,” he began. President Trump was distracted. He pointed at someone in the audience and appeared unconcerned with Fauci’s answer. “America’s doctor” continued at the microphone as his boss engaged in a side conversation with someone in the audience.
“In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.” Birx grinned in the background as she listened to the plan to shut down the country. Fauci walked away from the podium, nodded at Birx, and smiled as the press prepared a new question.
The plan that gave them unbridled joy was unprecedented in “public health.” Despite firsthand knowledge of smallpox and Yellow Fever, the Framers had not written epidemic contingencies into the Bill of Rights. The nation had not suspended the Constitution for pandemics in 1957 (Hong Kong flu), 1921 (Diphtheria), 1918 (Spanish flu), or 1849 (Cholera). This time, however, it would be different.
The press conference that day was never meant to be a temporary means to flatten the curve; it was the beginning, “a first step,” toward their vision to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence,” they later admitted. “We worked simultaneously to develop the flattening-the-curve guidance,” Birx reflected in her memoir. “Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions.” After demanding that buy-in on March 16, the pre-Covid world was over. Longer and more aggressive interventions became reality.
The following day, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a guide on who was permitted to work and who was subjected to lockdowns. The order divided Americans into two classes: essential and nonessential. Media, Big Tech, and commercial facilities like Costco and Walmart were exempt from the lockdown orders while small businesses, churches, gyms, restaurants, and public schools were shut down. With just one administrative order, America suddenly became an explicitly class-based society in which liberty depended on political favoritism.
On March 21, an image of the Statue of Liberty locked in her apartment appeared on the front page of the New York Post. “CITY UNDER LOCKDOWN,” the paper announced. States chained playgrounds and criminalized recreation. The schools closed, businesses failed, and hysteria ran rampant.
War Fever
When Massie arrived at the Capitol, a war-like fervor had taken over the country. Publications including Politico, ABC, and The Hill compared the respiratory virus to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. On March 23, the New York Times published “What 9/11 Taught Us About Leadership in a Crisis,” offering “lessons for today’s leaders” in response to a “similar challenge.”
The column did not warn against the dangers of impulsive responses leading to unintended consequences, unaccountable government agencies, unscrupulous ideologues, and untold federal expenditures. There were no analyses of how temporary national fear could lead to trillions of dollars wasted on disastrous initiatives. Instead, the “similar challenge” led to familiar smear campaigns.
Thomas Massie and Barbara Lee have very little in common; Massie, an MIT alumnus, styles himself a “high-tech redneck.” His Christmas card featured his family of seven holding guns with the caption “Santa, please bring ammo.” Lee, a California Democrat, volunteered for Oakland’s Black Panther Party and marched alongside Nancy Pelosi at the “Women’s March.” Both, however, stood as lone voices of dissent in the two most defining crises of this century. They served as Cassandras, issuing prophetic warnings that drew the ire of disastrous bipartisan consensus.
In September 2001, Lee was the only member of Congress to oppose the authorization to use military force. With the rubble still smoldering at the World Trade Center, she warned Americans that the AUMF provided “a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit.” A jingoistic press attacked Lee as “un-American,” and she received bipartisan condemnation from her peers in Congress.
When Massie took the House floor nineteen years later, American troops were still in Afghanistan, and the “blank check” had been used to support bombings in at least ten other countries. Like Lee, Massie’s dissent was prescient. He warned that the Covid payments benefited “banks and corporations” over “working class Americans,” that the spending programs were riddled with waste, that the bill transferred dangerous power to an unaccountable Federal Reserve, and that the increased debt would be costly for the American people.
In retrospect, Massie’s points were obvious. The Covid response became the most disruptive and destructive public policy in Western history. The lockdowns destroyed the middle class while the pandemic minted a new billionaire every day. Childhood suicides skyrocketed, and school closures created an educational crisis. People lost jobs, friends, and basic rights for challenging Covid orthodoxy. The Federal Reserve printed three hundred years’ worth of spending in two months. The PPP Program cost nearly $300,000 per job “saved,” and fraudsters stole $200 billion from Covid relief programs. The federal deficit more than tripled, adding over $3 trillion to the national debt. Studies found the pandemic response will cost Americans $16 trillion over the next decade.
What We Knew Then
Time vindicated Massie, but the pro-lockdown advocates have not demonstrated remorse. To evade responsibility for their catastrophic policies, many cower behind the excuse that we didn’t know then what we know now. “I think we would’ve done everything differently,” Gavin Newsom reflected in September 2023. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know.” “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty,” The Atlantic published in October 2022. The precautions may have been “totally misguided,” wrote Brown Professor Emily Oster, an advocate for school closures, lockdowns, universal masking, and vaccine mandates. “But the thing is: We didn’t know.”
But the evidence from March 2020 refutes the Rumsfeldian invocation of unknown unknowns.
On February 3, 2020, the Diamond Princess cruise ship was set to return to harbor in Japan. When reports emerged that there had been an outbreak of the novel coronavirus aboard the ship, authorities kept it in the water to quarantine. Suddenly, the ship’s 3,700 passengers and crew members became the first contained study of Covid. The New York Times described it as a “floating, mini-version of Wuhan.” The Guardian called it a “coronavirus breeding ground.” It remained in quarantine for almost a month, and passengers lived under strict lockdown orders as their community went through the largest outbreak of Covid outside China.
The ship administered over 3,000 PCR tests. By the time the last passengers left the boat on March 1, at least two things were clear: the virus spread rapidly in close quarters, and it posed no significant threat to non-senior citizens.
There were 2,469 passengers on the ship under the age of 70. Zero of them died despite being held on a cruise ship without access to proper medical care. There were over 1,000 people on the ship between 70 and 79. Six died after testing positive for Covid. Out of the 216 people on the ship between 80 and 89, just one died with Covid.
Those points became even more clear in the ensuing weeks.
On March 2, over 800 public health scientists warned against lockdowns, quarantines, and restrictions in an open letter. ABC reported that Covid likely only posed a threat to the elderly. So did Slate, Haaretz, and the Wall Street Journal. On March 8, Dr. Peter C Gøtzsche wrote that we were “the victims of mass panic,” noting that “the average age of those who died after coronavirus infection was 81… [and] they also often had comorbidity.”
On March 11, Stanford Professor John Ioannidis published a peer-reviewed paper that warned of “an epidemic of false claims and potentially harmful actions.” He predicted the hysteria surrounding the coronavirus would lead to drastically exaggerated case fatality ratios and society-wide collateral damage from unscientific mitigation efforts like lockdowns. “We’re falling into a trap of sensationalism,” Dr. Ioannidis told interviewers two weeks later. “We have gone into a complete panic state.”
On March 13, Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager famously portrayed by Christian Bale in The Big Short, tweeted: “With COVID-19, the hysteria appears to me worse than the reality, but after the stampede, it won’t matter whether what started it justified it.” Ten days later, he wrote: “If COVID-19 testing were universal, the fatality rate would be less than 0.2%,” adding that there was no justification “for sweeping government policies, lacking any and all nuance, that destroy the lives, jobs, and businesses of the other 99.8%.”
By March 15, there were widespread studies on the mental health ramifications of lockdowns, the health impact of shuttering the economy, and the harms of overreacting to the virus.
Even the Covid regime’s wildly inaccurate models, which overestimated the fatality rate of Covid by multitudes, could not justify the response. One of the main bases for lockdown policies was Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College London report from March 16. Ferguson’s model overestimated the impact of Covid on various age groups by degrees of hundreds but conceded that the young faced no substantial risk from the virus. It predicted a 0.002% fatality rate for ages 0-9 and a 0.006% fatality rate for ages 10-19. For comparison, the fatality rate for the flu “is estimated to be around 0.1%,” according to NPR.
On March 20, Yale Professor David Katz wrote in the New York Times: “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?” He explained:
“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”
He cited data from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and South Korea which suggested that 99% of active cases in the general population were “mild” and did not require medical treatment. He referenced the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which housed “a contained, older population,” as further proof that the virus appeared harmless to non-senior citizens.
Later that month, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called for “immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns” in the Wall Street Journal. The same week, Ann Coulter published “How do we Flatten the Curve on Panic?” She wrote: “If, as the evidence suggests, the Chinese virus is enormously dangerous to people with certain medical conditions and those over 70 years old, but a much smaller danger to those under 70, then shutting down the entire country indefinitely is probably a bad idea.”
Harvard Medical School Professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff wrote in April, “COVID-19 Counter Measures Should be Age Specific.” He explained:
“Among COVID-19 exposed individuals, people in their 70s have roughly twice the mortality of those in their 60s, 10 times the mortality of those in their 50s, 40 times that of those in their 40s, 100 times that of those in their 30s, 300 times that of those in their 20s, and a mortality that is more than 3000 times higher than for children. Since COVID-19 operates in a highly age specific manner, mandated counter measures must also be age specific. If not, lives will be unnecessarily lost.”
On April 7, Burry called on states to lift their lockdown orders, which he decried as “ruining innumerable lives in a criminally unjust manner.” On April 9, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who later became the Surgeon General of Florida, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Lockdowns Won’t Stop the Spread.” Ten days later, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reopened his state. “Our next measured step is driven by data and guided by state public health officials,” Kemp explained. Shortly thereafter, Governor Ron DeSantis lifted Covid restrictions in Florida.
Brian Kemp, Thomas Massie, and Ron DeSantis didn’t flip a coin on the Covid issue. They knew they’d be accused of endangering fellow citizens, killing grandmas, and overrunning the healthcare system. If they nodded along to the consensus like their peers, then they could have increased their power and perhaps won an Emmy like Andrew Cuomo. Joining the herd was socially and politically fashionable, but their rationality stood athwart the prevailing madness.
Wisdom was in short supply in American government and media. Anthony Fauci and President Trump attacked Kemp for reopening Georgia. The New York Times stoked racial animus to criticize opponents of the Covid regime, telling its readers that “black residents” would have to “bear the brunt” of Kemp’s decision to “reopen many businesses over objections from President Trump and others.” The New York Daily News referred to “Florida Morons” daring to go to the beach that summer, and the Washington Post, Newsweek, and MSNBC chastised “DeathSantis.” While the slanders and hysteria were temporary, a radical and insidious movement sought to permanently transform the country.
The Quiet Coup
Amid the name-calling and memorable headlines of school closures, arrests for paddle boarding, and urban anarchy, the nation underwent a coup d’état in 2020. The First Amendment and freedom of speech were replaced by a censorship operation designed to silence citizens. The Fourth Amendment was supplanted by a system of mass surveillance. Jury trials and the Seventh Amendment disappeared in favor of government-provided legal immunity for the nation’s most powerful political force. Americans found they suddenly lived under a police state without the freedom to travel. Due process disappeared as the government issued edicts to determine who could and could not work. Equal application of the law was a relic of the past as a self-appointed caste of Brahmins exempted themselves and their political allies from the authoritarian orders that applied to the masses.
The groups that implemented this system also benefited from it. State and federal government agencies gained tremendous power. Unshackled from the restraints of the Bill of Rights, they used the pretext of “public health” to reshape society and abolish personal liberties. Social media giants assisted these efforts, using their power to silence critics of the new Leviathan. Big Pharma enjoyed record profits and government-provided legal immunity. In just one year, the Covid response transferred over $3.7 trillion from the working class to billionaires. To replace our liberties, Big Government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma offer a new ruling order of suppression of dissent, surveillance of the masses, and indemnity of the powerful.
The hegemonic triumvirate framed their agenda with favorable marketing strategies. Eviscerating the First Amendment became monitoring misinformation. Warrantless surveillance fell under the public health umbrella of contact tracing. The fusion of corporate and state power advertised itself as public-private partnerships. House arrest received a social media rebranding of #stayathomesavelives. Within months, business owners replaced their “We stand with first responders” signs with “Going out of business” announcements.
Once the rule of law had been overturned, the culture was soon to follow.
Ten weeks after the press conference that changed the world, a Minnesota police officer put his knee on the neck of a Covid-infected, fentanyl-laced career criminal. This led to cardiopulmonary arrest, the death of the man, and a cultural revolution. The BLM and Antifa violent protests in reaction to the death of George Floyd sparked 120 days of rioting and looting in the summer of 2020. Over 35 people died, 1,500 police officers were injured, and rioters caused $2 billion in property damage. CNN covered the resulting arson in Wisconsin with the chyron “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS.”
With the notable exception of Senator Tom Cotton, politicians were largely complicit in the mass looting and violence. President Trump was absent; while the cities burned on the weekend of May 30, the Commander-in-Chief was uncharacteristically silent. His only communication was that the Secret Service had kept him and his family safe.
Others seemed to encourage the destruction. Kamala Harris raised money to pay bail for looters and rioters arrested in Minneapolis. Tim Walz’s wife, then Minnesota’s First Lady, told the press that she “kept the windows open as long as [she] could” in order to smell “the burning tires” from the riots. Nikki Haley tweeted, “the death of George Floyd was personal and painful for many. In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone.”
And painful it was. Just hours before Haley’s demand for communal suffering, rioters set fire to Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police building. Thousands celebrated around the building as it burned. They looted the evidence rooms as the police inside fled under the mayor’s orders. Two days later, the mobs in St. Louis killed 77-year-old former policeman David Dorn. His death was broadcast on Facebook Live.
Every major institution cowered to the demands of the rising Jacobins. Once proud institutions released statements of self-flagellation, statues of American heroes came toppling down, and crime skyrocketed. In Minnesota alone, aggravated assault increased 25%, robberies increased 26%, arson increased 54%, and murder increased 58%. Vandals toppled Minneapolis’s statue of George Washington and covered it in paint. Minnesota State University removed its statue of Abraham Lincoln from its campus display after 100 years after students complained that it perpetuated systemic racism.
None of this concerned the truth behind Floyd’s death. Typically, deaths in individuals with fentanyl concentrations over 3 ng/ml are considered overdoses. Floyd’s toxicology report revealed 11 ng/ml of fentanyl, 5.6 ng/ml of norfentanyl, and 19 ng/ml of methamphetamine. Floyd’s autopsy concluded that there were “no life-threatening injuries identified,” and the county medical examiner told the local prosecutor that there “were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.” He asked, “What happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?”
Evidently, the answer was a nationwide cultural upheaval. The wreckage spread through the country and beyond June 2020. The racial reckoning left no American institution untouched. “New homicide records were set in 2021 in Philadelphia, Columbus, Indianapolis, Rochester, Louisville, Toledo, Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Portland, and elsewhere,” Heather MacDonald writes in When Race Trumps Merit. “The violence continued into 2022. January 2022 was Baltimore’s deadliest month in nearly 50 years.” New York City removed statues of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt; California vagrants toppled tributes to Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key, and Francis Drake; San Francisco vandals dragged statues and prepared to toss them into a fountain until they learned the fountain was a memorial to AIDS victims. Oregon criminals desecrated statues of T.R., Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
At Rockefeller University, they removed the portraits of scientists who won the Nobel Prize because they were white men. The University of Pennsylvania took down a portrait of William Shakespeare because it failed to “affirm their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English Department.” The soon-to-be 46th President and his allies announced that there would be racial prerequisites for the selection of its highest-ranking officials – including the Vice President, a Supreme Court Justice, and the Senator from California. The private sector was even worse: in the year after the George Floyd riots, just 6% of new S&P jobs went to white applicants, a result that required mass discrimination.
By Independence Day 2020, the coup d’état had succeeded. The rule of law had been overturned. Former bedrock principles of the Republic – freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom from surveillance – were sacrificed upon the altar of public health. A culture that had once championed meritocracy became obsessed with berating the identity of the majority of its population. Hypocrisy in the ruling class grew to the point that there was no longer equal application of the law. The most powerful groups augmented their wealth while the working class suffered under despotism.
This series is meant to outline the freedoms that we sacrificed, and, just as importantly, the people and institutions that benefited from the erosion of our liberties. There are no allegations of the pandemic’s causes. Those speculations, intriguing as they may be, are unnecessary to demonstrate the coordinated upheaval that took place. The bedrocks of liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights disappeared while the nation panicked. The most powerful people profited while the weakest suffered. Under the pretense of “public health,” the Republic was overturned.
Ukraine: A Deep State Tool to Destroy Trump?
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.02.2025
The Ukrainian political class is not just badmouthing US President Donald Trump – it has actively worked to undermine his presidency on behalf of the Democrats since his first term, Hans Mahncke, a US investigative journalist and lawyer, tells Sputnik.
Ukraine as a Deep State Tool
- In 2016, top Ukrainian officials publicly insulted then presidential candidate Trump as a “dangerous misfit.”
- Ukrainian operatives dug up dirt on Trump concerning his alleged ties to Russia and leaked a fabricated ledger to undermine his campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
- Former security chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko admitted Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election.
- In 2019, Democrats weaponized Ukraine again to impeach Trump, with US officials of Ukrainian origin Eugene and Alexander Vindman playing a prominent role.
The Trump-Russia collusion hoax, “deflected attention from Ukraine’s 2016 election meddling…, Biden’s role in pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating Burisma, Biden’s role in the 2014 Maidan coup, and from broader US involvement in post-2014 Ukrainian politics,” Mahncke says.
“Russiagate also sabotaged Trump’s ability to reset relations with Russia… maintaining the rigid narrative of Ukraine as the virtuous ally and Russia as the ultimate villain,” the journalist underscores.
Two Birds With One Stone: Why Patel’s Ukraine Probe Could Bust the Deep State
“A real investigation into Ukraine wouldn’t just expose corruption there — it would strike at the heart of the Washington, DC, establishment,” Mahncke says, commenting on new FBI Director Kash Patel’s bid to scrutinize the Kiev regime.
Mahncke explains that Ukraine has long been a hub for money laundering, foreign influence, and off-the-books deals.
While many potential crimes linked to Ukraine may now fall outside the statute of limitations, fraudulent USAID payments and bribery schemes remain well within the window for prosecution, according to the lawyer.
“USAID funds, NGO cash flows, and military aid kickbacks have enriched the same elites who pushed the Maidan coup and later worked to destroy Trump. If Patel follows the money, it will lead straight back to Washington,” the journalist highlights.
What’s Behind Trump’s Dizzying Speed in Exposing Deep State Fraud?
“The deep state will strike back — no question. Right now, it seems to be in disarray, but there will be some kind of lashing out; we just don’t know what yet. What’s certain is that it’s coming. That’s why Trump must move fast — and he knows it,” Mahncke notes.
Team Trump’s remarkable speed in exposing the USAID scandal and other instances of internal fraud “comes from knowing exactly what they’re up against” and “where the bodies are buried” after years of deep state attacks against him, the journalist points out.
“A key ally in this fight is Elon Musk — a no-nonsense, brilliant businessman who cuts to the chase. From the Twitter Files to fighting censorship, he’s made it harder for the deep state to control the narrative,” Mahncke concludes.
Zelensky now with only the dictatorship in London to support him
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 26, 2025
What is the definition of a ‘dictator’? In the days that followed Trump’s social media post calling President Zelensky one, British media seized upon the subject and ran with it for days. Various public figures were asked whether Trump was right to use the word and whether they believed Zelensky was actually one. Two figures from the right, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss both said they thought Trump was both wrong to call him one and that in fact he wasn’t one.
This remarkable endearment for Zelensky is really the core of the problem in the west in particular the UK, where its leader Sir Keir Starmer declared that he would be ready to send British troops to Ukraine – a suggestion which was quickly shot down by the elites of Germany and France as preposterous.
It’s rare that the giants of the EU put the British government in its place on world affairs but we are living in unprecedented times of sensational stupidity and perhaps ignorance from politicians which we have never seen before.
Farage’s views on the Middle East tell us he is both ignorant of what is happening there and doesn’t have any advisors covering the region. But his views on Ukraine are even more shockingly deranged. Zelensky is a leader who has shut down anything which resembles an ‘opposition’ both politically and media, he has conglomerated all TV stations into one state-owned entity so as to shut down even the slightest criticism or accountability of his own actions, he has had the few dissident voices arrested and thrown into prison, with some predicting that there are thousands of journalists and media workers. Add to that it is rapidly emerging that the level of corruption and embezzlement linked directly to Zelensky is on a scale that even hard line critics in the West could not have even imagined.
In my own investigation in October 2023, where a very angry Ben Wallace insulted me in a WhatsApp interview before blocking me, I outline how the original, more sensational claim that only about a third of all military equipment sent to Ukraine was actually making it to the battlefield was in fact realistic. This analogy was bandied about for some time and was dismissed by Wallace and others like Alecia Kearns MP as nonsense and yet turned out to be more than just realistic but likely. That is to say that 66 percent of what was being sent to Ukraine was being sold on the black market in Libya making Zelensky and his close circle billionaires.
In recent weeks now mainstream journalists and politicians are talking about the arms scandal and it is only a matter of time before we shall see the realities of this. The British government have always turned a blind eye to it, both in Ukraine and further afield. It would cost them nothing to do a study in the Sahel to evaluate how much of the equipment there funding terrorism is coming from the arms bazaars of Tripoli where all of this kit is ending up. I suggested to Wallace that his own government at the time should send some investigators there (Libya) to look at what’s available. I was more or less told to go there myself and do the job for them.
But Zelenksy support structure for so long has been that of a dictator, in particular media. The hundreds of media outlets in Ukraine which were receiving USAID funding is extensive, not to mention the hundreds of civil servants which support him being on the same payroll. If that doesn’t shock Farage and Truss, then consider the same slush fund which paid out around a 100 million dollars to movie stars to go and visit him and fake their adulation, all for the purposes of cheating the humble U.S. taxpayer by raising his profile.
Who could forget Sean Penn giving him his own Oscar, or Ben Stiller chilling with the Ukrainian leader and making small talk? Angelina Jolie is even reported to have been paid 20 million dollars to meet with him but didn’t even manage that and simply mooched about a bit in the country before jetting back to the U.S. Of course, the celebrities all dismiss these claims, through the same left-wing woke press which is part of their extended political family. But the question we should be asking ourselves is simply this: if they were not paid, then why won’t they show up now and show support at the precise moment when Zelensky needs it the most? Given that these celebrities supported Biden and are Democrats, this would be the most logical thing for them to do. In reality, the wall of silence is what we see.
Dictators don’t stand over their hired killers and watch their victims in their final moments like Idi Amin did. In reality, they only indicate and hint to the thugs on their payroll what she should do to fix problems. Do Farage and Truss actually believe that dissidents are not rounded up and thrown into jail where they are tortured and in some cases murdered? Now that the vultures are circling over Zelensky and many are wondering how many days in office he has left, more reports are emerging with details of such cases. The story of Gonzalo Lira, the American Chilean blogger whose vlogs were often well-informed and threw a very poor spotlight on Zelensky is a very sad one as he was brutally tortured while in prison and finally died. If the Zelensky cabal can do this to an American citizen, perhaps Farage and Truss will not be too surprised when in the coming weeks we will have the same Damascus prison media moment where it transpires that there are certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of journalists, commentators and political rivals in Ukraine’s prisons.
The debate, if we can call it that in the UK, over whether Zelensky is a dictator or not is a remedial one at best as it misses the point. In Britain, during the same period a man was imprisoned for posting a social media comment about a Labour official while a granny was visited by two plain clothes cops about her mere criticism of a Labour councilor’s conduct. Plain clothed detectives!
Britain has descended rapidly into a police state with Starmer as its dictator. The high ground we once had where we scolded China for arresting protestors has now been kicked away from under our feet. We have become China. Britain’s police now cannot deal with crime but prefer being the ‘Thought Police’ and threatening old biddies.
And so the talk about what is a dictator is rather fatuous if not incongruent given that those doing it are part of an elite which only claim to cherish free speech but in fact loath it. Farage cannot be taken seriously on Ukraine but his comments do steer the bumble hack towards darker questions. Who is funding him? And is his own dream of being a PM in the UK going to merely continue the present dictatorship which silences anyone who questions him? His reputation of being thin-skinned and kicking out of his party anyone who questions his ideas is already established. His own repugnance of British media also is well known. Previously in Brussels, his decision led to the closure of the only free speech, anti corruption magazine going, which he was always fearful of exposing his own infidelity while an MEP. And as for Truss, the most inept prime minister Britain has ever had in its long history, whose dictator-like style while in office crashed the economy? How should we interpret her support for Zelenksy? Do both Farage and Truss admire this dictator? The problem is not with the word ‘dictator’, it is more about the people who use it for their own purposes. It is not important whether Zelensky is one or not, rather than he is not a dictator who is servile to Trump and his cabal. Unlike Farage, Zelensky is not our kind of dictator.
Gardasil on Trial: Did Merck Mislead the Public on Cervical Cancer Prevention?
Top expert delivers a damning report accusing Merck of misleading the public about Gardasil’s ability to prevent cervical cancer
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | February 24, 2025
With the landmark trial against Merck adjourned until September 2025, new evidence suggests the vaccine manufacturer may have deliberately misrepresented the necessity of mass HPV vaccination.
This revelation comes from an expert report by Dr Sin Hang Lee, a pathologist renowned for his expertise in molecular diagnostics. His findings raise serious concerns about Gardasil’s efficacy and the motives behind its aggressive marketing.
Dr Sin Hang Lee, director of Milford Molecular Diagnostics, Connecticut
Does Gardasil Prevent Cervical Cancer?
Since its introduction in 2006, Gardasil has been marketed as a breakthrough in the fight against cervical cancer.
Yet, as Dr Lee bluntly states in his report, “There is no conclusive evidence that Gardasil has prevented a single case of cervical cancer in the past 18 years.”
No randomised controlled trial (RCT)—the gold standard for assessing efficacy—has ever demonstrated that Gardasil prevents cervical cancer.
Instead, Merck relied on surrogate markers of pre-cancers, such as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN2/3) to claim effectiveness. This is a significantly lower evidentiary bar that was used to fast-track FDA approval.
The problem with this approach is well-documented. Many CIN2/3 lesions resolve naturally.
A Dutch study, for instance, tracked 114 women with CIN2/3 found that nearly two-thirds of cases regressed without intervention. Only one developed adenocarcinoma in situ (pre-cancer) and none progressed to cervical cancer.
Moreover, those lesions that don’t resolve naturally typically take years to progress, and they are usually detected through routine screening.
If CIN2/3 is an unreliable proxy for cancer, how can it serve as valid proof of Gardasil’s claimed efficacy at preventing cancer?
Are HPV Strains Merely Being Replaced?
Another major concern is “type replacement”—the possibility that suppressing certain HPV strains through vaccination leads to the rise of others.
For instance, a Finnish study found that while HPV strains 16 and 18 (targeted by the vaccine) decreased following vaccination, non-vaccine strains such as HPV 52 and 66 became more prevalent.
This raises an important question: While Gardasil may alter the landscape of HPV infections, does it actually reduce the overall risk of developing cervical cancer?
When Merck developed Gardasil 9 to target five additional HPV strains, a study involving 14,215 women found that those who received Gardasil 9 developed high-grade lesions at the same rate as those who received the original Gardasil (which only targeted four strains).
Despite the expanded coverage, the additional strains had no measurable impact on pre-cancers overall, adding to the uncertainty about whether these vaccines truly reduce cervical cancer incidence.
The Questionable Swedish and Scottish Studies
Two widely cited studies—from Sweden and Scotland—are often heralded as proof that Gardasil significantly reduces cervical cancer rates. However, Dr Lee highlights critical methodological flaws in his report.
- Swedish study
The Swedish study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, compared cervical cancer rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated women.
However, Dr Lee points out that many participants (born between 1995 and 2007) were too young to develop cervical cancer during the study period (2006–2017).
Since cervical cancer takes decades to emerge, including these young women (ages 10–22)—who had zero cases—introduced a statistical bias that exaggerated the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Moreover, the study failed to account for the “healthy user effect,” where vaccinated individuals are more likely to engage in preventive health measures like regular screening, which independently reduces cancer risk.
As a result, attributing the decline in cancer cases solely to the vaccine is misleading.
- Scottish study
A 2024 Scottish observational study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, had similar methodological issues, and was met with sensationalist media headlines: “No cervical cancer cases in HPV-vaccinated women.”
However, Dr Lee argues this claim is deeply flawed. First, the women studied were simply too young for conclusions about long-term vaccine efficacy to be drawn.
Second, Scotland’s screening programme, which detects and treats precancerous lesions before they develop into cancer, changed its entry age in 2016 during the study period.
The age at which women were first invited for screening was raised from 20 to 25, meaning there was a 5-year gap in screening for younger women. As most cancers in women under 30 are diagnosed through screening, this change could explain any decline in cancer rates, rather than the vaccine itself.
And third, just like the Swedish study, the “healthy user effect” further confounds the results.
Despite being frequently cited as definitive proof of Gardasil’s effectiveness, these studies contain serious limitations that undermine their conclusions.
Cervical cancer screening saves lives
In developed nations, around 93% of initial HPV infections resolve without medical intervention. Cervical cancer is slow to develop, with an average onset age of 54, making long-term data essential for assessing Gardasil’s true impact.
What remains incontrovertible is the lifesaving role of cervical cancer screening.
Since the widespread adoption of Pap smears in the 1950s, cervical cancer incidence in the U.S. has plummeted—from 44 per 100,000 women in 1947 to just 8.8 per 100,000 by 1970.
This dramatic decline predates the introduction of HPV vaccination in 2006.
In Australia, deaths from cervical cancer fell significantly along with incidence following the introduction of the National Cervical Screening Programme, and remained steady despite mass HPV vaccination.
Source: https://www.hpvworld.com/articles/prevention-of-cervical-precancer-and-cancer/
Dr Nancy C. Lee, former Associate Director for Science at the CDC, testified before the U.S. Congress in 1999:
- “Cervical cancer is nearly 100 percent preventable.”
- “The most important risk factor for developing cervical cancer… is the failure to receive regular screening with a Pap smear.”
- “For a woman with CIN, her likelihood of survival is almost 100 percent with timely and appropriate treatment.”
Dr Nancy C. Lee, former Associate Director for Science at the CDC
Unlike cervical cancer, which is preventable through screening and treatable with early intervention, Dr Lee asserts the harms linked to Gardasil – such as autoimmune disorders and neurological complications – are unpredictable, difficult to treat, and often irreversible.
Did Merck Misrepresent Its Vaccine?
At the core of this legal battle is a critical question: Did Merck mislead the public about Gardasil’s true value?
Despite its widespread use, Gardasil’s long-term efficacy remains unproven, while growing evidence links the vaccine to serious harms, including autoimmune disorders and neurological complications.
For decades, cervical cancer rates have declined due to improved screening—not mass vaccination. Yet Merck has aggressively marketed Gardasil as essential for cancer prevention, even in countries where cervical cancer is already rare.
Dr Lee’s report suggests Merck selectively presented data to manufacture a false sense of necessity—one that collapses under scrutiny.
As the trial resumes in September, one question remains: Did Merck knowingly misrepresent Gardasil’s safety and efficacy, prioritising profit over public health?
Orbán warns about large migration of Soros NGOs to Brussels
By Ahmed Adel | February 24, 2025
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that George Soros’s NGOs are fleeing to Brussels after US President Donald Trump “dealt a huge blow to their activities in the US,” which in turn can see the liberal networks of the billionaire philanthropist descend the continent further into debauchery.
“WARNING! Our fears have come true: the globalist-liberal-Soros NGO network is fleeing to Brussels, after President Trump dealt a huge blow to their activities in the US. Now 63 of them are asking Brussels for money, under the guise of various human rights projects. Not going to happen! We will not let them find safe haven in Europe! The USAID-files exposed the dark practices of the globalist network. We will not take the bait again!” Orbán wrote on X.
Călin Georgescu, an independent candidate who won the first round of Romania’s presidential election last year, the result of which was illegally annulled due to alleged influence from Moscow, has said that if he wins a new vote, he will expel the entire Soros network from Romania.
“From my point of view, on the first official day, the entire Soros network will be banned personally by me. They know each other, we already know them. Things are very clear and it is important. […] The moment you destroy the education of a people, you have the country in your hands,” he said.
Elon Musk shared Georgescu’s announcement to crack down on external influences on X and wrote, “Romania deserves its own sovereignty.”
At the same time, it seems that a bloc has formed within the US that does not give up on American exceptionalism in the world – unipolarity, but has given up on the culture and ideological package promoted by the Soros-aligned elite. Although the competing ideologies will agree and disagree about the US’ global role, the outcomes, if they come from traditional cultural relations and traditional perceptions of power, as has not been the case for years, will be significantly different than the previous liberal and Soros-aligned Biden administration.
J.D. Vance has, in a short time as vice president, crusaded against transgender, homosexual, and hermaphrodite promotion as he recognizes it is weakening the US. This ideology is weakening the US militarily because it is impossible to win a war with transgender people. Also, this culture pushed by Soros weakens the US in terms of self-confidence as it is deeply depraved and rejected by the majority of humanity.
The ideological war waged between Soros and the Trump administration is over the liberal culture of selfishness, narcissism, and permanent debauchery, and this is Trump’s latest attempt to culturally elevate the US under the slogan “Make America Great Again.”
When it comes to Brussels, the EU cannot finance all these activities, especially now that USAID can no longer contribute, while at the same time having the idea of war with Russia despite the demotion of militarist ideas. The European elite speaks about continuing the war in Ukraine in one way or another, but most EU countries cannot even form special units.
Therefore, Europe finds itself in a position where it has the ambition for war but blocks the ideology of militarism by promoting Soros’s idea of universal human decadence. That is why Orbán’s warning about Soros NGOs escaping the US to Brussels is also highlighting the agenda to try and prevent the new geopolitical reality emerging following Trump’s withdrawal from Ukraine.
Unlike the US, Brussels will not stop Soros’s NGOs; rather, it will be up to European states to ban these organizations separately. Such processes are unlikely to occur widely, but it is observed that Orbán is resisting Soros’s influence, and if Georgescu comes to power in Romania, Soros NGOs can be expected to be purged.
Nonetheless, Europe will first have to come to terms with Russia. This is almost certain because the EU cannot survive if the current energy situation continues. Reconciliation with Moscow on the energy front and reduced US aid to Ukraine is accelerating Russia’s already certain victory compared to the pace in previous months and years.
This will already pose a profound enigma for the EU because the question of how Europe will arm itself with excessively expensive energy sources has not been answered. And if a peace agreement is reached with Russia, then this type of armament will be illogical for Europe, particularly, as said, the continent is economically struggling without cheap Russian energy.
Some EU states will be militant abroad, others more moderate, and others neutral, and that alone will weaken Soros’s agenda, which is already being rejected by Trump’s America.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
The Think Tank Racket
Prof. Glenn Diesen on the Groong Podcast
Glenn Diesen | February 18, 2025
I discussed THE THINK TANK RACKET with the Groong podcast.
The negative aspect of think tanks is their immense power, from controlling information to functioning as a waiting room for politicians out of office.
Information is power, and the business model of think tanks entails selling political influence in Washington and manufacturing consent among the public.
The military-industrial complex is the dominant donor to think tanks, which results in a bias toward military solutions and perpetuating conflict.
THE THINK TANK RACKET: Managing the Information War with Russia – CLARITY PRESS, Inc.
THE THINK TANK RACKET: Managing the Information War with Russia
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From the Archives
Fourteen Incredible Facts About 9/11
By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | August 8, 2015
… What is known about 9/11 is that there are many incredible facts that continue to be ignored by the government and the mainstream media. Here are fourteen.
- An outline of what was to become the 9/11 Commission Report was produced before the investigation began. The outline was kept secret from the Commission’s staff and appears to have determined the outcome of the investigation.
- The 9/11 Commission claimed sixty-three (63) times in its Report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes.
- One person, Shayna Steiger, issued 12 visas to the alleged hijackers in Saudi Arabia. Steiger issued some of the visas without interviewing the applicants and fought with another employee at the embassy who tried to prevent her lax approach.
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