Here’s who really weaponizes children in the Russia-Ukraine conflict
By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 9, 2026
For the last three years, Ukraine and concerted legacy media campaigns have been screaming that Russia has abducted, or forcibly displaced, thousands of Ukrainian children – even up to 1.5 million!
The accusations resurged in December, with a UN General Assembly vote on a draft resolution on the return of Ukrainian children.
During the meeting, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mariana Betsa once again pushed claims that “at least 20,000 Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia,” in spite of the fact that months prior, during the June Istanbul talks, the Ukrainian side finally provided a list of the children it accuses Russia of abducting: 339 children, surprisingly far fewer than the number alleged for years.
The absence of over 19,500 on the list indeed leads to many questions, mainly: is Ukraine lying again? Recall that in 2022, the accusations by the (now former) Ukrainian ombudswoman, Lyudmila Denisova, about “sexual atrocities” allegedly committed by Russian soldiers, were revealed to be lies and propaganda. So much so that Denisova was sacked. But before her dismissal, legacy media and the UN all backed the lies.
Some recent accusations are that children were being sent to labor camps in Russia – “165 re-education camps where Ukrainian children are militarized and Russified” – or even of being sent to North Korea, as Katerina Rashevskaya of the Ukrainian Regional Center for Human Rights told the US Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on December 3.
The footnotes of the claims made by Rashevskaya, instead of a source for the information, say “The Regional Human Rights Center can provide information upon request.” In other words, her sources are “trust me, bro.”
Regarding the North Korean camp in question, if two Russian teens were sent there, they’d potentially be made to enjoy water slides, basketball and volleyball courts, an arcade room, a rock climbing wall, art and performance halls, an archery range, a private beach, and hikes in the mountains.
Regarding the list of 339 children Ukraine says were abducted by Russia, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked, “30 percent of the names on the list could not be verified, as most of those children were never in Russia, are now adults, or have already returned to their families. As for the Ukrainian children who are actually in our country, they are under state care in appropriate institutions. They are safe now; in many cases, their evacuation from combat zones saved their lives. Local children’s rights commissioners are now working to reunite them with their relatives.”
Just as legacy media has whitewashed the eight years of Ukraine’s war against Donbass civilians prior to Russia commencing its military operation in 2022, including the Ukrainian shelling which killed 250 children starting in 2014, media likewise ignore the children Russia says are missing.
During the talks in Istanbul, Zakharova noted, “the Russian side presented Ukraine with a list of 20 Russian children who are either currently in Ukraine or relocated from Ukraine to Western Europe, including to countries that endorsed this very statement. Now, the burden falls on these states to provide Russia with a substantive response regarding our ‘list of 20.’”
Over 500 Ukrainian orphans abused in Türkiye
Recently, Donbass-based journalist Christelle Néant wrote about a report published on a pro-Ukrainian website which broke the story of 510 Ukrainian children who had been evacuated by a Ukrainian oligarch in 2022 from Dnepropetrovsk to Türkiye, where the benevolent foundation which brought them there allegedly allowed its staff to beat the children, sexually assault them, and deny them food if they refused to perform on camera to raise funds for their lodging. These are just some of the reported violations of the orphans’ rights.
The details of the report show that the children suffered physically and psychologically. Additionally, two underage teens were impregnated by staff at the hotel they stayed in, with educators allegedly aware of the interactions.
According to Néant, the orphanage director’s response to the fact of one of the teens in her care becoming pregnant was to blame the girl: “This young girl comes from an asocial family. Well, this way of life is already inscribed in every cell, in the blood of these children.”
“In almost 10 years of work in Donbass,” Néant wrote, “I have conducted or filmed many humanitarian missions to orphanages in the region. And never ever have I heard a director make such vile remarks about one of the children in her care. Even the most difficult and recalcitrant were cared for with pedagogy, love, and patience.”
Ukraine hunting down children
In April 2023, Christelle Néant and I interviewed Artyomovsk civilians who had recently been rescued by Russian soldiers. In addition to being deliberately shelled by Ukrainian forces who knew they were sheltering in the basement of a residential building, the civilians we spoke to told us about Ukrainian military police hunting for children.
The evacuees told us some of these police went by the name ‘White Angels’, and were taking children away without their consent or that of their parents.
Around that time, more reports came out about these abductions or attempted abductions, including an 11-year-old girl who spoke of how White Angels, who introduced themselves as military police, came to the basement she was sheltering in with a photo of her, looking for her, and saying they needed to take her away, because “Russia killed her mother.” According to the girl, her mother was alive and with her.
Reports of these abductions also emerged in Avdeyevka, Kupyansk, Slavyansk, Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka, as well as in Ukrainsk and Zhelannoye.
Néant wrote of a July 2023 conference on Ukraine’s crimes against the Donbass children, in which Liliya and her daughter Kira from Schastye, in the Lugansk People’s Republic, spoke.
They gave evidence of how, “at the start of the special military operation (when Ukraine controlled Schastye), around ten children were taken from a school in Schastye to western Ukraine by the headmistress of the school, on orders from Kiev, without informing their parents.”
The children were even forbidden to call their parents, Néant wrote, “But Kira knew her mother’s telephone number by heart and managed to call her to let her know that they were in Lviv and then Khoust. Thanks to Liliya’s determination to find her daughter, we discovered how Kiev ‘exports’ the children it abducts.” Ukraine had forged a new “original” birth certificate for Kira. The girl said she and the other children were to be sent to Poland.
Former SBU officer Vasily Prozorov spoke at the same conference, where he explained, according to Néant, “that one of his investigations had revealed that some of the children abducted by Ukraine are sent to pedophile networks in Great Britain, via a whole network of Ukrainian and British officials or former officials who work together. On the British side, members of MI6 and the Foreign Office are involved.”
Prozorov, she wrote, spoke of “another of his investigations on organizations registered in EU countries involved in ‘exporting’ children from Ukraine under the pretext of providing them with shelter. These organizations take unaccompanied Ukrainian children out of Ukraine. What happens to them afterwards is unknown.”
Evacuees from Kherson reject ‘abduction’ claims
In November 2022, in the southern Russian seaside city Anapa, I met numerous people displaced from Kherson who were being lodged in hotels and apartments in the city.
The first site I visited was a few minutes by taxi outside of the city, one of many hotels along the coast. The hotel director showing me around said they don’t call them refugees, “we call them guests of the building,” and spoke affectionately of them, how grateful they were to be there, far from any shelling. Just under 500 refugees had been living there since October, she told me.
No guards monitored the entrance/exit; the refugees walked around tidy grounds. But in any case, I asked about their freedom of movement, or lack thereof.
“They move freely, of course. We don’t prohibit them from going out. Many aren’t here now because they’re in town, looking for jobs, getting documents. Children are at school.”
With my hired translator, I spoke with two Kherson women, a young mother and her own mother, to hear their stories.
“We were living with explosions at night, it was very scary, not only for myself, but for my children and for my grandchildren,” the older woman said. “When you go to bed, you don’t know if you will get out of bed in the morning. We were forced to leave.”
I asked who was shelling them. “Word of mouth transmits very clearly, and people around us spoke about it. We were bombed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Russian soldiers protected us.”
The younger woman said she used to speak with the Russian soldiers there. “They are friendly. We wanted to hug them, because we felt protected. They helped us, gave us humanitarian aid, brought it to the house.”
Some minutes’ taxi ride away, I visited an apartment complex that could have served tourists in summer. There, fifty buildings housed around 1,500 refugees who had also arrived in October, mostly from Kherson Region.
My translator and I walked around, passing playgrounds, a pharmacy, a library, a swimming pool, a gym, a small petting zoo with peacocks, and a kindergarten. Near a playground, I spoke with a mother sitting on a bench with two of her four children.
“In the early days, there was bombing. We spent two and a half weeks in the basement. It was unbearable, the children were very afraid.” One of her daughters became ill. “She had acute inflammation of the lower jaw, we think due to hypothermia. We took her to Simferopol and she had surgery.”
In Anapa, she said, her children had full medical examinations. “We were helped by the mayor of the city of Anapa. We are grateful for everything.”
I mentioned that according to Western media, she and her family were kidnapped by Russia. She replied that her husband’s parents had demanded to see the children, having been told that children were being separated from their parents in Russia.
“His mother called three days in a row, saying, ‘Where are the children?’ We answered, ‘They went to the cinema. They’re playing, etc.’ She said, ‘Show me the children, they say that they took your children from you.’”
Details matter
Whereas legacy media continue to push the “Evil Russia child kidnapper” narrative, there is ample evidence that Ukraine is guilty of doing precisely what it accuses Russia of. There is also a significant absence of evidence regarding the ‘20,000 kidnapped children’ claims still being pushed.
Will media investigate the reports of abuse of Ukrainian children in Türkiye? Surely not. It wouldn’t suit their scripted anti-Russia bias.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Britain’s Secret Role In Yugoslavia’s Destruction
By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | January 6, 2026
December 23rd marked the 35th anniversary of an independence referendum in Slovenia, then a Yugoslav republic. In all, 88.5% of registered voters – 95.7% of participants – said “da” to secession. The plebiscite prompted Ljubljana’s formal declaration of independence, and ensuing Ten Day War between Slovene territorial defence forces and the Yugoslav federal army. This was the spark that triggered bitter, bloody interethnic conflicts throughout Yugoslavia over the subsequent decade, and the multiethnic socialist federation’s ultimate destruction.
In May 2000, Britain’s Observer exposed how in the Ten Day War’s leadup, London secretly supplied Slovenia with tactical military communications equipment worth millions, to assist Ljubljana’s impending battle against the Yugoslav military. The disclosure elicited outcry, as London was officially at the time committed to preserving Yugoslavia, leading international efforts to prevent the country descending into fractious civil wars. The clandestine provision was at direct odds with this public-stated policy, which included unbending support for an arms embargo on the region.
Responding to the news, former British Foreign Secretary David Owen, who served as the EU’s lead peace negotiator during the Bosnian war, said he was “surprised” London covertly undermined her formal commitment to keeping Yugoslavia “together”. He nonetheless downplayed the assistance, noting what Britain supplied “was not aggressive” – “radios not guns”. Owen therefore argued the shipment “sails close to the border but does not cross it.” By contrast, the Observer reported the communications equipment “played a vital role” in Slovenia’s victory over Yugoslav forces.
This was because Ljubljana won the Ten Day War not via conventional military means, but a wide-ranging, devastatingly effective international propaganda campaign. In physical terms, the brief conflict consisted exclusively of minor skirmishes, and was largely bloodless, with just 44 Yugoslav soldiers and 18 Slovene territorials killed. One would not have known this from contemporary Western media reporting though, which relentlessly portrayed Slovenia as fighting countless grand military engagements against Belgrade’s barbarous invaders, and pluckily prevailing.
British military communications equipment greatly facilitated this informational onslaught. The psychological battlefield’s centrality to Ljubljana’s successful independence struggle had a resounding impact on Slovenia’s fellow breakaway Yugoslav republics. Engendering maximum international sympathy while demonising Belgrade became a core component of Albanian Kosovar, Bosniak and Croat war strategies. In Sarajevo, secessionist authorities deliberately immiserated the local population to create emotionally impactful images for global broadcast. Meanwhile, its military routinely carried out false flags, including targeting civilians with sniper fire. As Canadian UN peacekeepers on-the-ground directly observed:
“The [Bosniaks] are not above firing on their own people or UN areas and then claiming the Serbs are the guilty party in order to gain further Western sympathy. The [Bosniaks] often site their artillery extremely close to UN buildings and sensitive areas such as hospitals in the hope that Serb counter-bombardment fire will hit these sites under the gaze of the international media.”
Ljubljana’s triumph left an enduring impression upon the British too. In multiple proxy conflicts since, London has taken the lead on psychological warfare, in particular atrocity propaganda, vilifying official enemies and justifying intervention and regime change. Since February 2022, a secret Ministry of Defence-created military and intelligence cell, Project Alchemy, has endeavoured to “keep Ukraine fighting at all costs.” Fundamental to this effort are “information operations” designed to convince Western citizens, and Ukrainians themselves, Kiev can somehow defeat Russia, by grossly distorting reality on-the-ground.
‘Quite Incredible’
A memory-holed July 1991 report from now-defunct British newspaper The European – “Lies Win Balkan War Of Words” – lays out in forensic detail how Slovenia’s propaganda war was fought and won. The operation’s “nerve-centre” was “an underground conference complex deep below the streets of Ljubljana.” Here, dozens of Slovene Information Ministry apparatchiks “worked tirelessly” to provide over 1,000 foreign journalists with a relentless barrage of information about the conflict – particularly Yugoslav war crimes, and Slovene military victories – supposedly taking place above ground.
Wild figures on reported “tanks hit, shots fired, prisoners taken” by Ljubljana were supplied hourly. Meanwhile, the Slovenes struck up a chummy rapport with their overseas guests, portraying themselves “as clean-limbed, tanned church-goers who only wanted to live peacefully and democratically in their Alpine idyll of mountains, lakes and meadows.” They claimed to be under attack by “ruthless Communists… dirty, unshaven brutes who dropped cluster bombs on innocent civilians… [and] sought to inflict [their] intolerant religious fanaticism and alphabet of squiggly lines on Europe.”
Ljubljana “needed a bloody, dramatic conflict to ensure the world did not lose interest” in their independence crusade. Thus, “they showered the media with details of battles that had often never taken place,” frequently “enlivening the day” with lurid, often unfalsifiable assertions, such as Belgrade landing “squads of special troops in plain clothes” across the country “to terrorise the population,” or plotting to target a local nuclear power plant and create a Chernobyl-style disaster. Journalists dutifully amplified these dubious claims as fact internationally.
Such was the deluge, “it was possible to report the war without ever venturing above ground” – “but, for those who did venture into the sunlight, the bunker war often seemed a fantasy.” For example, Western news outlets widely covered a purportedly “major battle” at Jezersko, a municipality near Austria. When The European visited the area subsequently, “greatly surprised” local Slovene militiamen instead described a brief tussle with a few Yugoslav soldiers over a borderpost in which “no one had been hurt.”
Throughout the Ten Day War, the Western-backed separatist government of neighbouring Croatia was “carefully analysing” Ljubljana’s informational offensive. They concluded the conflict’s “decisive engagements, which virtually guaranteed Slovenia’s independence, took place in the pages of the foreign media and, even more important, in the news bulletins of the major television networks.” Zagreb duly launched its own “propaganda blitz”. Croat officials were instructed “to hold twice-daily press conferences, which should be as colourful and dramatic as possible,” while Western journalists were given tours by soldiers:
“Everywhere, in town halls, hotel foyers and crouching nervously behind roadblocks, Croat mayors, police chiefs and militia officers… hold press conferences or hand out neatly-typed news bulletins to tell the world of the latest atrocities by Serbian extremists and of unprovoked attacks by the [Yugoslav] army… The Croats’ strategy today is clear. They are bombarding the world with information, which is usually so petty it seems it must be true.”
For example, Croatia’s state media agency Hina pumped out “extraordinarily detailed accounts of the fighting allegedly taking place in the countryside,” with an emphasis on “trivial” incidents. Typically, it was “impossible to check most of these reports precisely because the clashes were so minor that, even if they happened, they left no mark.” This inconsequential, unverifiable cavalcade was occasionally interspersed with “quite incredible allegations”, such as Belgrade having flooded the republic with “hired assassins” drawn from the ranks of Romania’s notorious Communist-era Securitate.
‘Managed Understanding’
The “grotesque caricatures” of Yugoslav forces, and Serbs more generally, as uniquely bloodthirsty monsters peddled by “brilliant” propagandists in Ljubljana and Zagreb took “hold of the public imagination in the West”, transforming “complex” interethnic struggles “into a straightforward battle between the forces of light (Slovenes and Croats) and darkness (Serbs).” This fraudulent dichotomy was exploited even more perniciously during the Bosnian civil war, and subsequent Kosovo ‘crisis’, during which atrocity propaganda served to justify and sustain NATO’s criminal 78-day-long bombing of Belgrade in 1999.
An impactful staged photo, Croatia, Christmas 1992
The European concluded by noting reliance on psychological manipulation to win wars created a “major problem”. Namely, while “a daily publicity blitz of exaggerations and lies may win international support… it will do nothing to heal the divisions which are ripping the country apart.” Locking-in overseas sympathy made Western-backed leaders in the former Yugoslavia less willing to accept negotiated settlements, and keep brutal internecine battles grinding on, safe in the knowledge further carnage only strengthened their position, in information warfare terms.
Notably, a key propaganda strategy for Croats and Slovenes, per The European, was to portray Yugoslav forces “as incompetent and thuggish.” An identical disinformation dynamic played out during the first 18 months of the Ukraine proxy war. As a November 2023 NATO paper on “Humour In Online Information Warfare” revealed, the military alliance and its Kiev puppets specifically sought to weaponise “humour and mockery”, emphasising “Russian failures” and “Ukrainian determination” in media reporting and online, from the conflict’s inception.
These efforts augmented “the responsiveness and impact” of Ukraine’s “information campaigns,” proving “instrumental” in Kiev securing “US-made F-16 combat aircraft” in August 2023, among other Western arms shipments. The NATO paper makes clear weaponisation of mockery is a long-running objective for the alliance, citing a 2017 study, “Stratcom Laughs”, which outlines methods of exploiting “humour” as a military “communications tool”. Four years later, an official Ukrainian government website entry boasted of how such methods can “influence your opinion”:
“How does propagandistic humor work? Relieves tension, makes perception less critical. Uses common contexts to convey messages with which the audience agrees. Simplifies everything to the ‘obvious’. Creates clear groups: strong and intelligent ‘we’ and clumsy and stupid ‘they’. Of course, the audience associates itself with the former and begins to despise the latter. Simplified managed understanding is easily disseminated by the audience and creates the necessary social context for propagandists.”
Atrocity propaganda has also played a crucial role in prolonging the unwinnable quagmire at unsustainable economic, human, and material cost. In April 2022, British intelligence exploited the ever-mysterious Bucha incident to sabotage fruitful peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, framing the apparent killing of innocent civilians in the town as somehow genocidal. At the time, a US Defense Intelligence Agency apparatchik lamented how the “Bucha Effect” had “led to frozen negotiations and a skewed view of the war” – apparently unaware this was London’s precise objective.
Behind the DOJ’s politicized indictment of Maduro: a CIA-created ‘network’ and coerced star witness
The US Department of Justice indictment of Venezuela’s kidnapped leader is a political rant that relies on coerced testimony from an unreliable witness
By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | January 5, 2026
The January 3 US military raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores was followed by the Department of Justice’s release of its superseding indictment of the two abductees as well as their son, Nicolasito Maduro, and two close political allies: former Minister of Justice Ramon Chacin and ex-Minister of Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello. The DOJ has also thrown Tren De Aragua (TDA) cartel leader Hector “Niño” Guerrero into the mix of defendants, situating him at the heart of its narrative.
The indictment amounts to a 25 page rant accusing Maduro and Flores of a conspiracy to traffic “thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” relying heavily on testimony from coerced witnesses about alleged shipments that largely took place outside US jurisdiction. It accuses Maduro of “having partnered with narco-terrorists” like TDA, ignoring a recent US intelligence assessment that concluded he had no control over the Venezuelan gang. Finally, the prosecutors stacked the indictment by charging Maduro with “possession of machine guns,” a laughable offense which could easily be applied to hundreds of thousands of gun-loving Americans under an antiquated 1934 law.
DOJ prosecutors carefully avoid precise data on Venezuelan cocaine exports to the US. At one point, they describe “tons” of cocaine; at another, they refer to the shipment of “thousands of tons,” an astronomical figure that could hypothetically generate hundreds of billions in revenue. At no point did they mention fentanyl, the drug responsible for the overdose deaths of close to 50,000 Americans in 2024. In fact, the DEA National Drug Threat Assessment issued under Trump’s watch this year scarcely mentioned Venezuela.
By resorting to vague, deliberately expansive language larded with subjective terms like “corrupt” and “terrorism,” the DOJ has constructed a political narrative against Maduro in place of a concrete legal case. While repeatedly referring to Maduro as the “de facto… illegitimate ruler of the country,” the DOJ fails to demonstrate that he is not de jure illegitimate under Venezuelan law, and will therefore be unable to bypass established international legal precedent granting immunity to heads of state.
Further, the indictment relies on transparently unreliable, coerced witnesses like Hugo “Pollo” Carvajal, a former Venezuelan general who has cut a secret plea deal to reduce his sentence for drug trafficking by supplying dirt on Maduro. Carvajal was said to be a key figure in the so-called “Cartel of the Suns” drug network which the DOJ claims was run by Maduro. If and when he appears to testify against the abducted Venezuelan leader, the American public could learn that the “cartel” was founded not by the deposed Venezuelan president or one of his allies, but by the CIA to traffic drugs into US cities.
As sloppy and politicized as the DOJ’s indictment might be, it has enabled Trump to frame his lawless “Donroe Doctrine” as an aggressive policy of legal enforcement, emboldening the US president to levy further threats to abduct or bump off heads of state who stand in the way of his rapacious agenda. This appears to be the real purpose of the imperial courtroom spectacle to come.
Weaponizing the “narco-terror” hoax
The bulk of the case against Maduro rests on the accusation that the defendants “engaged in… drug trafficking, including in partnership with narco-terrorist groups.” According to the DOJ, Maduro conspired with TDA, as well as the Mexican Sinaloa and Los Zetas cartels to traffic drugs between 2003 and 2011. However, these cartels were not designated by the Trump administration as Foreign Terrorist Organizations until February 2025, a move obviously designed to justify Maduro’s kidnapping and juice up his indictment.
In its bid to convict Maduro, the DOJ will undoubtedly struggle to overcome the conclusion reached in an April 7, 2025 memo by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) that the Venezuelan leader did not control TDA, which he effectively dismantled through a massive 2023 military-police raid on the Tocorón prison that served as the gang’s base of operations. A report in the State Department-funded outlet InSight Crime also complicates the DOJ’s case, finding that “the few crimes attributed to alleged Tren de Aragua members in the United States appear to have no connection with the larger group or its leadership in Venezuela.”
In fact, many of the supposed crimes for which Maduro is charged took place outside the borders and jurisdiction of the United States. The DOJ alleges, for instance, that in September 2013, “Venezuelan officials dispatched approximately 1.3 tons of cocaine on a commercial flight from the Maiquetia Airport to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport.”
In 2018, five British citizens were convicted in a French court for orchestrating the drug shipment with help from gang members from Colombia and Italy – but not Venezuela. At the time of the incident, Maduro’s government acknowledged corrupt lower level Venezuelan officials had allowed the drugs to pass through airport security. Caracas ultimately arrested 25 people, including members of the military and an Air France manager – a salient fact omitted from the DOJ indictment.
The evidence of Maduro’s involvement in the scandal, according to the DOJ, was that the drug shipment took place “mere months after [Maduro] succeeded to the Venezuelan presidency.” No other proof is offered to demonstrate his culpability.
The indictment goes on to allege Maduro “facilitated the movement of private planes under diplomatic cover” to avoid law enforcement scrutiny as they landed in Mexico. Citing coerced testimony from a Venezuelan government defector, it accuses Diosdado Cabello of coordinating a shipment of 5.5 tons of cocaine on a DC-9 jet to Mexico. None of these claims should hold water in a US court.
As public defender and legal analyst Eliza Orlins explained, “Flights that occur wholly within Venezuela do not cross U.S. airspace, do not implicate U.S. customs territory, and do not, standing alone, violate U.S. law. The indictment attempts to bootstrap these domestic movements into U.S. criminal jurisdiction by asserting that the cocaine involved was ultimately destined for the United States. Intent does almost all the work here.”
Because most of the specific incidents cited in the indictment occurred within Mexico under Presidents Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón and Enrique Pena Nieto, the DOJ inadvertently implicates these three pro-US administrations, who shaped their drug policies in coordination with Washington. In fact, the top cop during the first two of these governments, former Federal Intelligence Agency chief Genaro García Luna, was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 for presiding over a multi-million dollar conspiracy with the Sinaloa cartel. Former US ambassador to Mexico Robert Jacobson acknowledged that the US knew all about Garcia Luna’s cartel ties, but insisted, “we had to work with him.”
The Honduran double standard
The DOJ also implicates the pro-US government of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, referring to Honduras as a “transshipment” point “in which cocaine traffickers operating in those countries paid a portion of their own profits to politicians who protected and aided them.” Hernandez was convicted in a US federal court in 2023 of trafficking over 400 tons of drugs to the US, but received a pardon this December from President Donald Trump following a lobbying campaign by top Trump donors seeking business in the deregulated crypto haven of Próspera off the coast of Honduras.
During his January 3 press conference announcing the abduction of Maduro and his wife, Trump aggressively defended his decision to pardon Hernandez, claiming the Honduran ex-president been “persecuted very unfairly.” However, the same DOJ prosecutor who authored the original 2020 indictment of Maduro, Trump loyalist Emil Bove, was responsible for the indictment of Hernandez. In contrast to the case against Maduro, the Hernandez indictment contained concrete evidence of his collaboration with major transnational cartels, including video and photographic exhibits, as Anya Parampil and Alexander Rubinstein detailed for The Grayzone.
Hernandez pleaded his case to Trump in a 2025 letter claiming he’d been subjected to a “rigged trial” and convicted “based on the uncorroborated statements of convicted drug traffickers.”
His questionable claim could also apply to the DOJ’s prosecution of Maduro, as many of the most dramatic allegations contained in his indictment are sourced to a convicted drug trafficker who struck a secret deal with US prosecutors to reduce his own sentence in exchange for testimony against Maduro.
He is former Venezuelan Gen. Hugo “El Pollo” Carvajal.
Coerced “star witness” strikes secret deal with US prosecutors
The head of military intelligence under the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez from 2004 to 2011, Carvajal is cited seven times in the January 3 DOJ indictment as a witness to alleged criminal acts by Maduro and his inner circle. Carvajal was first arrested in 2014 in Aruba on drug running charges, but was returned to Venezuela to the chagrin of US authorities. In 2017, as he faced a pair of indictments in the US, the general suddenly turned on Maduro, denouncing him as a dictator. He had openly endorsed the regime change project of US-controlled “interim president” Juan Guaido in 2019, fashioning himself as a courageous defector while proffering his supposed knowledge of the Venezuelan deep state to Washington.
That same year, as Carvajal sought asylum in Spain, the US formally demanded that Madrid him over. Now facing the prospect of extradition, he delivered a series of tell-all interviews to legacy outlets like the New York Times, doing his best to legitimize virtually every charge the Trump administration sought to weaponize against Maduro.
Then-Senator Marco Rubio could not contain his excitement about the prospect of squeezing the Chavista insider for testimony in a future case against Maduro. Carvajal “will soon be coming to the US to provide important information about the #MaduroRegime,” Rubio tweeted on April 12, 2019. “Bad day for the #MaduroCrimeFamily.”
It was not until 2023 that Carvajal was finally extradited and placed on trial in the Southern District court of New York. After he pleaded guilty to “narco-terrorism” this June, the Miami Herald reported that he had struck a plea deal which would grant him “a considerable sentence reduction if he provides ‘substantial assistance’ to US investigations.”
Carvajal’s still-secret plea deal gives away the game he’d played since he first emerged as a defector. His allegations against Maduro had been delivered under duress, all designed to satisfy his would-be jailers in the US. He has since indulged one of Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories by alleging in a June 2025 letter to the US president that Maduro manipulated Venezuela’s Smartmatic voting systems to rig the 2020 US presidential election in favor of Biden.
Carvajal’s shameless pandering to Trump and secret plea deal should obliterate his credibility as a witness against Maduro.
In its January 3 indictment of Maduro, the DOJ claimed Carvajal and Diosdado Cabello “worked with other members of the Venezuelan regime” to “coordinate the shipment” of 5.5 tons of cocaine from Simon Bolivar International Airport to Campeche, Mexico in a private jet in 2006. This incident remains the source of intense intrigue, as the ownership of the DC-9 jet by two shadowy American companies points in the direction of US intelligence.
While details of potential covert US government involvement in the 2006 drug shipment remain murky, it is an established fact that the CIA founded and operated the “Cartel of the Suns” which the DOJ now accuses Maduro, Cabello and other top Venezuelan officials of controlling.
Cartel of the Suns: created by the CIA, weaponized by the DOJ
In the original indictment of Maduro, the DOJ explicitly accused Maduro of leading a narco-trafficking cartel called “Cartel of the Suns,” referencing it over 30 times.
The revised DOJ indictment of Maduro unsealed on January 3 states, “Starting in or about 1999, Venezuela became a safe haven for drug traffickers willing to pay for protection and support corrupt Venezuelan civilian and military officials, who operated outside the reach of Colombian law enforcement and armed forces bolstered by United States anti-narcotics assistance.”
It continues: “The profits of that illegal activity flow to corrupt rank-and-file civilian, military, and intelligence officials, who operate in a patronage system run by those at the top-referred to as the Cartel de Los Soles or Cartel of the Suns.”
The informal network of corrupt military officials was in fact established by the CIA under pro-US Venezuelan governments during the 1980’s and ‘90’s. Americans were introduced to this inconvenient truth not by some dissident muckraker, but by the New York Times, and by Mike Wallace in a 60 Minutes exposé broadcast in 1993.
Three years earlier, US Customs officials in Miami had intercepted a shipment of 1000 pounds of pure cocaine from Venezuela. But they were soon told by higher-ups in the US government the shipments had been approved by Langley. According to the Times, the CIA sought to allow the cocaine to “enter the United States without being seized, so as to allay all suspicion. The idea was to gather as much intelligence as possible on members of the drug gangs.”
“I really take great exception to the fact that 1000 kilos came in, funded by US taxpayer money,” then-DEA attache to Venezuela Annabelle Grimm remarked to 60 Minutes. “I found that particularly appalling.”
To organize the shipments from Venezuela, the CIA recruited generals from the Venezuelan National Guard who were trained by the US. Because officers in the National Guard wore patches on their uniforms bearing the symbol of a sun, the informal drug network was branded as “The Cartel of the Suns.”
In the years after the CIA-run cartel was exposed in US media, it disappeared, only to be revived when the US government began hounding Gen. Carvajal, who may soon appear as its key witness against Maduro. While corruption is still present in the Venezuelan military, there is little evidence of anything resembling a Cartel of the Suns in its ranks.
As Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, told CNN, “Cartel de los Soles, per se, doesn’t exist. It’s a journalistic expression created to refer to the involvement of Venezuelan authorities in drug trafficking.”
A former senior US official echoed Gunson, describing Cartel of the Suns as “a made-up name used to describe an ad hoc group of Venezuelan officials involved in the trafficking of drugs through Venezuela. It doesn’t have the hierarchy or command-and-control structure of a traditional cartel.”
The official told CNN that the DEA or Defense Intelligence Agency had supplied Trump with a “purely political” assessment of the cartel to support his assault on Venezuela.
Discovery granted to the defense in the trial of Maduro and Flores risks severely embarrassing the US government by extracting further evidence of CIA drug running. This may be why the DOJ softened its language about the Cartel of the Suns, referring to it in the January 3 indictment as a mere “patronage network” rather than as a cohesive criminal syndicate, and mentioning it only twice.
During his first appearance in court earlier that day, the kidnapped Venezuelan leader was only able to speak for a brief moment. “I am innocent. I am a decent man. I am President…” Maduro pleaded before being cut off by his lawyer.
Israeli Intrigue in Venezuela?
By W.M. Peterson | Truth Blitzkrieg |January 5, 2026
“The question is: who’s really in charge? I know President Trump appears to be. I’m not convinced that’s the case because remember… you had this giant Israeli flag suddenly appear in the middle of the Republican convention. And certainly in my lifetime… I don’t know of a single instance where either the Democratic or Republican parties held a convention and hoisted a giant foreign flag… I’ve never heard of that before.” — Col. Douglas Macgregor on the Judging Freedom podcast with Judge Andrew Napolitano (Jan. 3, 2026)
Just four days after Benjamin Netanyahu appeared as a guest on Newsmax’s The Record with Greta van Sustern and informed the insufferable newscaster that Iran is “exporting terrorism… to Venezuela. They’re in cahoots with the Maduro regime… this has got to change,” it was announced that U.S. military forces had carried out a large scale operation against Venezuela, capturing President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, who will both “face the full wrath of American justice” after being indicted on drugs and weapons charges in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The capture of Maduro occurred exactly 36 years to the day after US Delta Forces captured Panamanian President/CIA informant Manuel Noriega, and it’s unlikely that Netanyahu’s recent visit to the U.S.– the fifth in 2025 by the international fugitive — and the American operation are unrelated. While talk of ‘stolen oil’ and ‘narco-terrorism’ currently dominates the mainstream discourse, the fact that Israel has been seeking regime change in Venezuela since the days of Hugo Chavez has gone virtually unreported.
Prior to Maduro’s predecessor Chavez winning Venezuela’s 1998 presidential election, relations between the naturally wealthy South American country and Israel had been relatively good. Venezuela voted in favor of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in 1947 — which allocated 55% of historic Palestine to the as-yet-unfounded Jewish state — and two years later voted in favor of Israeli membership to the UN. By the mid 1960s, Venezuela boasted a robust Jewish population equipped with an impressive communal structure of schools, synagogues and cultural centers organized by middle-to-upper-class members of the community. In 1967, Jewish ethnic solidarity inspired a large number of Venezuelan Jews to travel to Israel to fight alongside their co-religionists in the Six-Day War. Following the conflict, a large influx of Sephardic Jews from Morocco arrived and settled in Caracas contributing to the largest Jewish population in Venezuela’s history, numbering 30,000 at its peak, evenly split between Sephardim and Askenazim.
By the mid-2000s, however, relations between Venezuela and the Synagogue began to fray.
The first notable rift occurred in late 2004 following the assassination of Venezuelan state prosecutor Danilo Anderson, who was killed by a car bomb at age 38. 1
At the time of his death Anderson had been investigating more than 400 people suspected of involvement in the Llaguno Overpass shootout and the failed 2002 coup d’état, during which Chavez was ousted from office for two days before being restored to power by popular support and a number of loyal military men. (Accusations of Jewish involvement in the coup were made at the time by pro-government newspaper Diario VEA, and later by Venezuela’s ambassador to Russia, Alexis Navarro.)
Suspicions of a possible Mossad dimension to the assassination plot were already high when Venezuelan authorities received a tip suggesting that weapons and explosives connected to the murder may have been transferred from the Club Magnum shooting range to the Colegio Hebraica Jewish school in Caracas, prompting Chavez to authorize his investigative police force DISIP to conduct an armed raid on the school on the morning of November 29, 2004. Chavez’s investigators intercepted busloads of kids and evacuated 1,500 students from the building while searching for any materials related to Anderson’s assassination. Ultimately nothing of value was found and the incident was loudly condemned by local and international Jewish organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who referred to it in typically melodramatic fashion as a “pogrom.”
Throughout the next two years Chavez’s rhetoric concerning Jewish power and influence became considerably more pointed, especially following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006. It was during this time that Chavez recalled his country’s ambassador to Israel and threatened to sever diplomatic ties with the Jewish state in protest of its military operation, describing it as a “new Holocaust” and “similar or, perhaps worse… than what the Nazis did.” Chavez further inflamed the sensibilities of Jews at home and abroad by traveling to Tehran and affirming that Venezuela would “stand by Iran at any time and under any condition.” 2
In January 2009, Chavez finally made good on his threat when Venezuela severed all diplomatic ties with the Jewish state due to its conduct in the 2009 Gaza War which left 1,400 Palestinians dead and over 5,000 wounded. Once again referring to the violence as a “Holocaust” and a “flagrant violation of International Law,” Chavez expelled Israel’s ambassador to Venezuela and called for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to be tried for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. Shortly thereafter, foreign minister Nicolas Maduro met in Caracas with representatives from the Palestinian National Authority and Venezuela officially recognized the existence of a Palestinian State on April 27, 2009.
By this time Chavez was facing tremendous pressure from the international Jewish cabal and it was clear he had a target on his back. During a nationally broadcast speech in June 2010, Chavez condemned Israel as a “terrorist and murderous state,” and affirmed that “Israel is financing the Venezuelan opposition. There are even groups of Israeli terrorists, of the Mossad, who are after me trying to kill me.” Hugo Chavez died on March 5, 2013 at the age of 58 after a two year battle with cancer. He was succeeded as President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela by Nicolas Maduro who blamed his predecessor’s death on “a US plot.” 3
“Narco-Terrorism”
For months the Trump administration has been trying to claim that Maduro is responsible for trafficking boatloads of drugs into the United States; using the unfounded claim to justify deadly strikes on more than 30 small vessels in the Caribbean and what Trump referred to as “the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs.” Initially ‘The Donald’ tried claiming the boats were carrying fentanyl and that each extra-judicial U.S. strike would save 25,000 American lives. However, this outlandish conspiracy theory was hampered by the fact that no evidence exists showing that any significant level of fentanyl is produced in South America, as confirmed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
With the fentanyl narrative sinking faster than Maduro’s purported drug boats, the Trump administration pivoted seamlessly to talk of purloined oil and cocaine trafficking. While it’s true Venezuela plays a role in the international cocaine trade, the US doesn’t appear to be a significant destination as no direct trade route via sea is known to exist between the countries. In reality, far more cocaine and fentanyl enters America through Mexico and yet, curiously, socialist president Claudia Sheinbaum’s “narco-government” has thus far failed to register a blip anywhere near as noteworthy as Venezuela’s on Uncle Sam’s regime change radar.
Another overt contradiction in Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ narrative is the federal pardon he granted ex-president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had just recently begun serving a 45-year sentence after being convicted in a New York federal court for drug trafficking and firearms offenses and for receiving millions of dollars in bribes from drug cartels, including a $1 million bribe from Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. Despite having trafficked an estimated 400 tons of cocaine into the United States over a period of 18 years, Hernandez walked out of prison a free man on December 1, 2025, just days before the Honduran general election in which Trump endorsed Nasry Asfura, the candidate from Hernandez’s Honduran National Party, who himself was indicted by authorities in 2020 on charges of money laundering, embezzling public funds, fraud, and abuse of authority.
Trump’s support for Juan Orlando Hernandez and Nasry Asfura shouldn’t raise any eyebrows coming as it does from the man who pardoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard’s handler and is currently engaged in running interference for an international child sex trafficking ring. Indeed, Trump’s entire life has been spent swimming in the same swamp he promised to drain and now he’s being used as a tool for regime change in Venezuela and soon Iran. Disgraced attorney Alan Dershowitz, who staunchly defended Pollard in his 1991 book Chutzpah, recently told the media that “If President Trump wants to be known as the peace president, he has to be in support of regime change.”
I’m familiar with the arguments put forth by starry-eyed MAGA optimists suggesting there’s some America First motivation informing Trump’s decision-making. However, it seems more likely there’s a deeper play involving Israel that’s the driving force behind the conflict. This was hinted at when Fox News published an article claiming Maduro’s Venezuela has become “Hezbollah’s most important base of operations in the Western Hemisphere, strengthened by Iran’s growing footprint and the Maduro regime’s protection” and again when ultra-Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee informed the world that the US overthrow of Maduro was good news for Israel because of his country’s partnership with Iran and Hezbollah. Perhaps this explains why Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez believes the operation was imbued with a ‘Zionist tint’? When viewed in its entirety it’s hard to disagree. Capturing Venezuela’s vast oil reserves might even portend an immediate escalation in the Middle East by diminishing Iran’s primary geopolitical leverage, e.g., blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and I expect to see an escalation on that front in the coming weeks and months.
Whatever the case may be, you can rest assured knowing that the Trump administration is not waging a war on “narco-terrorism,” a completely meaningless propaganda term designed chiefly to promote regime change in Latin America. The illegal narcotics destroying the bodies and minds of Americans young and old are undoubtedly entering the country under CIA and Mossad auspices, just as they were in the 1980s during Iran-Contra when Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton — a “terrific guy” according to Trump — permitted the use of his Mena airstrip for the transport of an extraordinary amount of cocaine into the United States. A highly-placed conspirator within the Iran-Contra nexus was Jewish neoconservative Elliott Abrams (Trump’s US Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 – 2021), who recently advocated for regime change in Venezuela for the purpose of — among other things — reducing drug trafficking! Abrams, who crafted the 1998 PNAC letter demanding the removal of Saddam Hussein, was convicted in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts for his role in the Iran-Contra affair after entering into a plea agreement to avoid felony charges of perjury.
Evidentially, international gun/drug running isn’t much of a concern for Trump, so long as the perpetrators play for the right team. But hey, MAGA, be of good cheer, your white knight’s attack on Venezuela isn’t without its supporters…
NOTES:
- The Jewish Telegraph Agency reported on December 7, 2004 that Anderson “was assassinated in his car by a remote bomb planted in his cell phone… Comparisons of the style of Anderson’s assassination to Israeli targeted killings carried out by Israeli commandos abounded. In the best-known example, Israelis assassinated Hamas bomb-maker Yehiya Ayyash in 1996 using a booby-trapped cell phone.” ↩︎
- According to the World Conference Against Anti-Semitism, Chavez’s pro-government media published “an average of 45 [anti-Semitic] pieces per month” in 2008 and “more than five per day” during the January 2009 Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. In early 2013 dozens of documents were leaked to the press showing that SEBIN, Venezuela’s premier intelligence agency, had been collecting “private information on prominent Venezuelan Jews, local Jewish organizations and Israeli diplomats in Latin America.” ↩︎
- The current leader of Venezuela’s opposition party, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado, has said that she is ready to take power. In a recent interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom, Machado was quoted as saying: “Venezuela will be Israel’s closest ally in Latin America. We rely on Israel’s support in dismantling Maduro’s crime regime and in the transition to democracy. Together we’ll lead a global struggle against crime and terror.” ↩︎
Why Didn’t Venezuela Shoot Maduro’s Kidnappers Out of the Sky? Expert Outlines Three Possibilities
Sputnik – 05.01.2026
Glowing MSM reports on the operation to capture Maduro attribute success to the US military’s super-duper high-tech weapons, advanced tactics and painstaking planning. But there are other, potentially far more plausible explanations, says Egor Lidovskoy, director of St. Petersburg’s Hugo Chavez Latin American Cultural Center.
Option #1
“The first option is incompetence on the part of government agencies” and those responsible for Maduro’s protection, specifically in the Defense Ministry Lidovskoy told Sputnik.
Option #2
Maduro’s betrayal is another possibility, perhaps if some officials agreed to collude with the US to give up the president in exchange for promises to profits from oil extraction if and when the Americans arrive in Venezuela.
“We don’t have any evidence that this or that member of Maduro’s government or team betrayed him. We don’t have such facts. Therefore, I think it’s wrong to make unfounded accusations in advance,” Lidovskoy said. Instead, for now, “we must closely monitor what is happening, and based on this, draw conclusions about whether such a conspiracy exists or not,” he suggested.
Option #3
The most provocative possibility is that the kidnapping “was a Trojan Horse operation,” which would remove questions about betrayal and incompetence and explain “many inconsistencies,” Lidovskoy says.
“The gist of this theory is that a US delegation accompanied by armed guards arrived at Maduro’s residence to discuss the parameters of a peace deal at a dinner, to conduct peace talks, to find common ground.”
This would explain the lack of incoming fire by Venezuelan air defenses on US helicopters.
“Once inside, the delegation’s armed guard (revealed to be special forces) shot all of Maduro’s guards – who were unprepared for this – and captured the president. And only when the signal came in that something had gone wrong and the president had been captured did the bombing of Venezuelan bases and key air defense points begin, providing a smokescreen for the US withdrawal,” Lidovskoy proposed.
US Coup Plot Lacks Key Ingredient
The 2026 plot against Maduro echoes the September 11, 1973 overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende in the sense that it’s “a continuation… of US imperialism using unilateral, deadly force against governments that challenge its hegemony in the hemisphere,” but lacks a critical component: betrayal by the military, Venezuelanalysis editor Ricardo Vaz told Sputnik.
“Allende and the Popular Unity were socialists, they prioritized sovereignty over natural resources (copper), and that was a direct challenge to US interests and influence. The same applies to Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution,” Vaz explained.
But unlike the Chilean case, where General Pinochet committed the crime of betraying Allende and the constitutional order, and murdering the president, the only “sin” in Venezuela’s case was its “desire to remove the shackles of US neocolonialism, using resources in a sovereign fashion to improve the lives of the majority, driving regional integration away from the US sphere of influence, and ultimately constructing socialism.”
“External pressure might lead to cracks and treason, but that is the primary issue: US imperialism,” Vaz stressed.
Leaders Believe in Bolivarian Revolution, Can’t Be Bought
Unlike past US-backed coups across the region, plotters in Venezuela have not found a base of support in the military to draw from to successfully overthrow the government and install a US puppet regime, renowned international law specialist and UN expert Alfred de Zayas told Sputnik.
“When the US tried to overthrow Hugo Chavez in 2002 and the coup d’etat failed after 48 hours (Chavez had been taken prisoner – but his popularity with the Army was such that the Army succeeded in liberating him), the Venezuelan people remained loyal to Chavez,” Zayas recalled. “I am convinced that the Venezuelan authorities would have remained loyal to Maduro if they had had the opportunity. That is why Maduro was immediately flown out of the country,” he added.
Speaking to Venezuelan government officials repeatedly, including in his capacity as a UN independent expert, and in the years since, Zayas said what stuck out to him about these conversations was their ideological commitment and loyalty “to the tenets of the Bolivarian Revolution,” and the US’s clear inability to easily “buy” them.
“I personally know of several high officials who were approached by CIA operatives with very attractive offers, and they refused to sell out,” Zayas said. What’s more, in his conversations with ordinary Venezuelans, the expert came away with the impression that “the masses hate the United States – the Yankees – and will not accept a US puppet,” seeing US sanctions pressure, not the Venezuelan government, as the source of their troubles.
Barnes Against the Blackout
By Spencer J. Quinn | The Occidental Observer | January 2, 2026
In short, there is no unique or special case against Nazi barbarism and horrors unless one assumes that it is far more wicked to exterminate Jews than to massacre Gentiles. While this latter value judgment appears to have become rather generally accepted in the Western world since 1945, I am personally still quaint enough to hold it to be reprehensible to exterminate either Jews or Gentiles.”
—Harry Elmer Barnes
INTRODUCTION
Anyone still questioning the relevance of World War II revisionism to politics today should realize how often our liberal, globalist elites not only invoke World War II, but also ignore, suppress, or besmirch revisionism. Whenever a mainstream personality invites a revisionist on his program, he gets swiftly rebuked and called a Nazi not only by the Left but also by people presumably on the Right. Recently, Jewish commentator Mark Levin invoked the massacre of German civilians during World War II to justify the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Clearly, whenever someone questions the authority of our liberal elites, they fire back with World War II. Since Adolf Hitler and the Nazis represent the most extreme form of evil and since globalist liberalism is the ideological opposite of Nazism, any form of oppression and aggression by globalist liberals is justifiable—as long as it is aimed against so-called “Nazis.” And if you happen to be against liberalism or globalism these days, it’s only a matter of time before you get dubbed a “Nazi.”
Historian Harry Elmer Barnes understood this perfectly over seventy years ago and promoted revisionism in the face of eerily similar oppression and backlash. Nine of his most incisive essays on the topic—written between 1951 and 1962—are collected in Barnes Against the Blackout, which was published by the Institute for Historical Review in 1991. Several important themes run through these essays. First, Barnes wishes to proselytize revisionism, and does so by constantly referencing and summarizing the great American works of revisionism of his day. These include:
- American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940 (1946) and President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941 (1948) by Charles Beard
- America’s Second Crusade (1950) by William Chamberlin
- The Roosevelt Myth (1948) by John T. Flynn
- Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (1947) by George Morgenstern
- The Tragedy of Europe (1940-1945) and Makers of War (1950) by Francis Neilson
- Design for War (1951) by Frederic Sanborn
- Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941 (1952) by Charles Tansill
Given the suffocating interventionist hysteria of the time, major publishers declined to publish these volumes despite how many of them had been written by prominent, well-respected historians. Either the publishers were ardent interventionists themselves, or they feared backlash from anti-revisionists who wielded great power in America, just as they do today. Except for the Neilson volumes, which were self-published, these works found only two small publishing houses brave enough to publish them: Regnery and Devin-Adair.
Two later volumes which Barnes discusses often are The Origins of the Second World War (1961) by AJP Taylor and The Forced War (1961) by David Hoggan. (See part one of my three-part review of Hoggan here.) These prove to be slight exceptions to Barnes’ America-centric approach since Taylor was British, and, although Hoggan was American, his work was only available in German at the time.
Another crucial theme running through Barnes Against the Blackout is the presentation of the evidence for revisionism. How do we know the official war narratives are less correct than what the revisionists offer? Barnes is never shy about sharing this information—and there is a lot of it. As with many essay collections from a single author about a single topic, there’s much overlap. And that’s okay. It’s never too much of a good thing revealing how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “lied the United States into war.”
Describing exactly how the establishment suppressed revisionism in Barnes’ day emerges as another important theme. Barnes focuses on it most in his first two essays, both published in 1953: “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” (which also serves as the first chapter in his collection Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace from the same year) and “The Court Historians Versus Revisionism.”
Barnes’ final theme is also his most speculative: extending revisionism into the Cold War and postulating how it might avert a nuclear Armageddon. Here is where we find Barnes at his most stunningly prescient but also were he winds up, in spots, to be somewhat dated. Through it all, he utilizes George Orwell’s 1984, which never fails to produce a parallel for whatever point Barnes wishes to make. He explores this novel’s uncanny mirroring of reality in the book’s final essay, 1952’s “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity.”
Barnes Against the Blackout is also interesting for its seemingly negligible treatment of the Jews. Barnes says very little about them directly. However, this amounts to what I call an anti-theme because any reader familiar with Jewish power and supremacy can fill in the blanks where Barnes could have opined about the Jews, but didn’t—or at least didn’t seem to. This adds an extra layer of meaning to Barnes Against the Blackout.
THE EVIDENCE
The evidence for World War II revisionism which Barnes compiles appears in two distinct yet related branches of history: Pearl Harbor revisionism and Western European revisionism. For the former, he relies greatly on Tansill, Sanborn, and Morgenstern, and demonstrates how the U.S. not only goaded the Japanese into attacking as a “back door to war” against Japan’s ally Nazi Germany, but also knew where the attack would occur and approximately when, thereby outraging the American public into supporting military intervention. Barnes believes this “constituted one of the major public crimes of human history.”
The major facts line up as so:
- Roosevelt floated war with the Japanese as early as 1933 during one of his first cabinet meetings.
- The U.S. aided and encouraged Chiang Kai Shek to fight against the Japanese in China during the 1930s.
- Days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Roosevelt ignored Japanese Prince Fumimaro Konoye’s peace overtures which proposed humiliating concessions for Japan in return for “a little time and a face-saving formula.”
- In early 1941 Ambassador Joseph Grew had clearly warned that Pearl Harbor would be the likeliest point of attack. Despite agreements from Washington, US forces at Pearl Harbor remained unprepared for it.
- Secretary of War Henry Stimson stated on November 25, 1941 that, “the question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves.”
- The US had intercepted the “East Wind Rain” message three days before the attack, which clearly signaled Japanese intentions. Yet Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short, who were responsible for Pearl Harbor, were kept in the dark about it.
Barnes presents most of this information while piercing holes in the specious logic of pro-interventionist works written by what he calls “court historians.” The two most relevant to Pearl Harbor are Herbert Feis, who wrote The Road to Pearl Harbor (1950), and Basil Rouch, who wrote Roosevelt from Munich to Pearl Harbor (1950). Barnes demonstrates how these historians either ignored, distorted, or misconstrued the above evidence. His point is clear: if the notions of Pearl Harbor being a surprise attack and Roosevelt’s naïve innocence about it were lies, there’s no telling what other lies had been told. It turns out there were many.
As for Western Europe, the facts are equally damning, if perhaps more voluminous. All of them cannot be included a single review, but the points Barnes most often bangs home include:
- The diplomatic history of the 1930s, as collected by Taylor and Hoggan, shows that Adolf Hitler did not want war and did what he could to avoid it.
- The diplomatic history also reveals that Hitler had made reasonable requests to Poland regarding the “international” (yet very German) city of Danzig; yet Polish leaders refused to negotiate at the urging of Lord Halifax in England who had given Poland a “blank check” assurance of English military support against Germany.
- In his last report as Chief of Staff in 1945, General George Marshall had claimed that Hitler “far from having any plan of world domination, did not even have any well-worked-out plan for collaborating with his Axis allies in limited wars, to say nothing of the gigantic task of conquering Russia.”
- Hitler had allowed tens of thousands of British troops to escape at Dunkirk “to promote peace sentiments in Britain.”
- Hitler had excellent reasons to invade the Soviet Union since the Soviets had “practiced sabotage, terrorism, and espionage against Germany, had resisted German attempts to establish a stable order in Europe, had conspired with Great Britain in the Balkans, and had menaced the Third Reich with troop concentrations.”
- Documentary evidence, such as “The German White Paper” found by the Germans after their conquest of Poland, demonstrates the extent to which American ambassador William Bullitt had assured Poland of American military support in the event of war with Germany. This was corroborated by Czechoslovak president Eduard Benés who claimed in his autobiography that on May 29th, 1939 Roosevelt himself had assured him that if war broke out in Europe, America would join the fight against Germany.
- The Lend-Lease program, the “Destroyer Deal” between Britain and the United States, the secret Tyler Kent documents, and Roosevelt’s 1941 meeting with Winston Churchill in Newfoundland offer circumstantial evidence that Roosevelt had clear belligerent intentions well before war was declared.
As with Pearl Harbor, Barnes often presents this evidence while reviewing books written by court historians. The most prominent of these is The Struggle Against Isolation, 1937–1940 (1952) by William Langer and SE Gleason. Despite never proclaiming Hitler’s innocence, Barnes repeatedly stresses that the man’s sole responsibility for starting the war is a complete falsehood—a falsehood which is the foundation of all post-1945 politics. In his 1962 essay “Revisionism and Brainwashing,” he states with characteristic flourish:
It is unlikely that there has been any vested interest in dogma, opinion, and politics since the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ equal in intensity to that built up around the allegation that Hitler was solely responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.
One interesting side note: Barnes implies more than once that it was Hitler’s actions in East Asia rather than Europe which truly antagonized Roosevelt. This contradicts some of Barnes’ other claims about Roosevelt’s opposition to Hitler vis-à-vis Europe. Take, for example, this paragraph from the essay “Rauch on Roosevelt”:
Indeed, it was only in 1938, when Hitler recalled his military mission from China, where Nazi officers had been directing the forces of Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese, that Roosevelt became actually hostile to Hitler in his policies, whatever the previous rhetoric. Right down through the Spanish Civil War, Mr. Roosevelt condoned when he did not favor, most of Hitler’s policies. Even as late as August, 1939, it appears from the Nazi Soviet Relations that Roosevelt was inclined to put nothing in the way of Hitler if he abandoned support of Japan, sent his military back to help Chiang, and delivered arms to the Chinese.
This is an interesting conundrum considering that Barnes brings up Benés’ recollection from May 1939 in the same essay.
THE BLACKOUT
Barnes spills a lot of ink outlining the ways in which revisionism was suppressed and marginalized after 1945. This often resulted from mainstream historians either having vested professional interests in perpetuating the “good war” myth of World War II—since they themselves promoted it while it was happening—or they sought the wealth, fame, and opportunity afforded to academics who adhered to the official narrative of the war.
In “Revisionism and the Historical Blackout” Barnes enumerates the following methods of suppression:
- Excluding revisionists from official documents, while allowing state-approved court historians free access to them
Barnes describes how revisionist historians had been barred from viewing many sensitive documents and in some cases had had their own notes confiscated after viewing the ones they were allowed to see. Barnes concedes that Charles Tansill did ultimately view more documents than other revisionists, but Tansill did not enjoy the free reign of information afforded to court historians like Langer and Feis.
- Intimidating publishers into not publishing revisionism
Barnes describes how political pressure groups not only ensured that revisionist volumes would not sell, but made it clear that publishers releasing such material would face business-crippling backlash. Barnes recalls how a major publisher explained this to him despite his personal sympathies towards revisionism. Libraries, book clubs, and nationwide periodicals also contributed to this blackout. Barnes mordantly notes that the post-1945 “Blackout Boys” outdid the Nazis in suppressing honest intellectual inquiry.
- Ignoring revisionist works that do get published
Barnes demonstrates how the majority of revisionist works simply did not get reviewed in important mainstream publications—or when they did, as with the case of Charles Beard, they received either cursory attention or were maliciously panned. It almost goes without saying that this silent treatment was not afforded to court historians, whose works received ample praise everywhere. Barnes relays the following recollection from journalist Oswald Garrison Villard to illustrate his point:
I myself rang up a magazine which some months previously had asked me to review a book for them and asked if they would accept another review from me. The answer was, “Yes, of course. What book had you in mind?” I replied, “Morgenstern’s Pearl Harbor.”
“Oh, that’s that new book attacking F.D.R. and the war, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how do you stand on it?”
“I believe, since his book is based on the records of the Pearl Harbor inquiry, he is right.”
“Oh, we don’t handle books of that type. It is against our policy.”
- Smearing revisionists personally
Barnes offers several examples of ad hominem attacks upon revisionist historians by the “Smearbund,” as he calls them. Often “isolationism” itself became a slur, as if labeling a person thusly were reason enough to dismiss him. More often, however, reviewers would attempt to ruin a revisionist’s reputation by imputing some evil or underhanded motive rather than argue the facts. Barnes notes how reviewers used phrases such as “bitterly partisan” or “blind anger” when describing Morgenstern while ignoring their own partisan anger. He also notes how one reviewer attempted to discredit Beard because he was hard of hearing and lived on a farm. One reviewer freely admitted to lambasting The Forced War without having read a word of it.
THE COLD WAR AND BEYOND
In his 1954 essay “The Chickens of the Interventionist Liberals Have Come Home to Roost,” Harry Elmer Barnes introduces the idea of the “totalitarian liberal.” Such men (as exemplified by Arthur Schlessinger Jr.) distinguished themselves from pre-World-War-II liberals in their lust for power and abandonment of principled anti-interventionism. Such men make up James Burnham’s managerial elite as described in his 1941 work The Managerial Revolution, which Barnes discusses. Such people reject “the coexistence of conflicting political and economic systems,” and in so doing promote a “we or they psychosis” which enables elites to wage war in the name of “collective security,” a notion which Barnes finds utterly spurious. This is how it was during World War II and it was no different during the Cold War, according to Barnes, except that both sides were mutually deterred by nuclear weapons.
Barnes further extends revisionism into the Cold War in his 1958 essay “Revisionism and the Promotion of Peace.” He remembers how despite standing against World-War-II intervention, patriotic political organizations like America First later fell in line with Cold War intervention “because of the business advantages in industry, trade and finance which an extravagant armament program provided.” President Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex,” in other words. In light of this, Barnes’ passionate belief in the critical importance of revisionism becomes crystal clear. If standing against intervention in 1939 could have spared tens of millions of lives, standing against it during the Cold War could spare humanity a nuclear Armageddon. Indeed, the specter of World War III haunts much of Barnes Against the Blackout.
The final essay in the collection, “How ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ Trends Threaten American Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity” takes the Cold War comparison even further. The “we or they psychosis” becomes the “war psychology,” which led to the absurdity of “perpetual war through perpetual peace.” This is straight out of Orwell’s 1984, which Barnes calls “the keenest and most penetrating work produced in this generation on the current trends in national policy and world affairs.” In the novel, Big Brother (whom Barnes considers a totalitarian liberal) manufactures phony outrages to prolong phony wars designed ultimately to consolidate very real power for himself and the elite classes. And the masses are either hypnotized enough by propaganda, intimidated enough by government, or distracted enough by entertainment to go along with it. Meanwhile, all reliable historical material is destroyed to disconnect the people from their past—just like what the Blackout Boys tried to do with revisionist accounts of World War II. Barnes sees 1984 as a direct mirror to reality.
And there is much truth to this, as shown by how Barnes uses his “Orwell Formula” to predict the Vietnam War as early as 1952:
The declining public interest in the Korean War has made President Truman and his associates the more willing to accept Churchill’s proposal to shift the main psychological impact of the cold war to Indochina, where it may both revive flagging American fear and excitement and also more directly protect adjacent British interests. The Orwell formula has been faithfully worked out in first directing fear and hatred against Nazi Germany, then against Soviet Russia, next shifting antagonism more toward Communist China, and then moving the chief center of interest in the struggle against the latter from Korea to Indochina.
Despite the clarity and prescience of this essay, Barnes makes a few questionable calls. In keeping with his aversion to the Orwellian doublethink of Cold War psychology and hysteria, he impugns the Truman Doctrine as a sham meant to “rehabilitate Mr. Truman’s fast-fading political prospects.” He also paints the USSR in a more benign light than it deserves—as if the United States were the aggressor during the Cold War and had no legitimate reason to employ deterrence or containment strategies against Communism. And in 1952, perhaps the Soviets did seem to some as unlikely to pose a real threat to American interests. But this was before they detonated their first hydrogen bomb in 1953. This was before their invasion of Hungary, and the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a host of other threatening actions. While Barnes makes excellent points about the injustice of blacking out revisionism, this was nothing compared to the psychological warfare the Soviets waged for decades against its own people which culminated in the terror famines, the Great Terror, and the gulags.
It seems that the Soviet Union during the Cold War made for a much more appropriate nemesis than did Nazi Germany. That Barnes seems to disagree, however, is not my bone of contention here. For all I know, Barnes is correct. However, the time he should have spent dispensing with counterarguments from seasoned cold warriors like George Kennan (who barely gets a mention in Barnes Against the Blackout) was instead spent admiring the life-imitating-art impact of 1984. Interesting and enlightening for sure, but hardly the final word on the subject.
THE JEWS
Direct treatment of the Jews in Barnes Against the Blackout rarely rises above incidental. Many of the “court historians” and “Blackout Boys” Barnes mentions do happen to be Jewish—Herbert Feis, Max Lerner, and Selig Adler are some obvious examples. However, just as many if not more are gentiles, such as William Langer, Samuel Eliot Morison, and Samuel Flagg Bemis. In his essays, Barnes never singles a person out as being Jewish. This certainly protects him from the charge of Jew-baiting, but it also prevents him from drawing conclusions from the fact that while a substantial proportion of anti-revisionists were Jews, none of the nine major revisionists mentioned in Part 1 were—clearly a meaningful data point.
When he does mention American Jews directly, it’s only to let them off the hook for pushing Roosevelt into war. In 1962’s “Blasting the Historical Blackout,” he states flatly that:
Roosevelt did not need any pressure from the Jews to create his interventionism and war policy. There is little evidence that he was deeply disturbed by Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy; he was much more annoyed by the fact that Hitler’s “New Deal” had succeeded in spectacular fashion while his own had failed to bring prosperity to the United States.
Maybe this is true, but it does not mean that influential Jews in media, finance, academia, and politics were not enthusiastic if not crucial facilitators of Roosevelt’s war policy. In his 2013 work How the Jews Defeated Hitler Benjamin Ginsburg describes how American Jews professed fierce loyalty to Roosevelt and did what they could to embroil the United States in a war with Germany. As I stated in my review:
Ginsburg describes how Jews in the private sector also war mongered during this time. The heavily Jewish Century Group called for a declaration of war against Germany following the surrender of France in 1940. The press also aided Jewish belligerence through its pro-Jewish bias. For example, when Lindbergh and the Century Group’s General John Pershing were giving speeches around the same time, the Jewish-owned New York Times gave Pershing front-page coverage and relegated Lindbergh to the back pages.
The Fight For Freedom Committee was more “all out” in its pro-war activities than the Century Group.
The FFF organized a nationwide effort –with the tacit support of the White House and the behind-the-scenes support of the British Embassy—to discredit isolationists and to mobilize public opinion against Germany and in support of American participation in the war.
And by “discredit,” of course, Ginsburg means ruthlessly slander and smear. The FFF thought nothing of labeling leading isolationists and America-Firsters like Lindbergh as Nazis, fascists, or dupes of the Axis. Ironically, they would often question the patriotism of such people as a form of intimidation which preceded the McCarthy era by over a decade. For example, because Senator Burton Wheeler wished to prevent the slaughter of American lives in an unnecessary war, the FFF declared that he was a “twentieth century Benedict Arnold.” The FFF also spied upon and collected compromising information on isolationists in Congress, such as Hamilton Fish. As it turned out, the FFF discovered that Fish’s people were distributing pro-German literature and were in contact with German agents. One of Fish’s secretaries went to prison for that. At the same time, however, Ginsburg informs us that the FFF was in constant contact with British agents. Just as insidiously, the FFF and other groups planted moles at isolationist rallies in order to disrupt them.
So perhaps President Roosevelt didn’t need Jews to change his mind, but he certainly needed them to change the minds of the millions of Americans he tried to deceive. Unfortunately, Barnes entirely avoids this point. His minimal treatment of the Jewish Holocaust in Barnes Versus the Black also deserves comment. He exerts almost no effort in placing it within his blackout vs. revisionists framework. Instead, he brushes it aside by saying that the Germans ultimately suffered more than the Jews did. He’s also skeptical that the Jewish Holocaust was the enormous atrocity it was purported to be:
There is little in the history of mankind more horrible than the sufferings of the Germans expelled from their eastern provinces, the Sudeten area, and other regions, some four to six millions perishing from butchery, starvation, exposure, and disease in the process. Their sufferings were obviously far more hideous and prolonged than those of the Jews said to have been exterminated in great numbers by the Nazis. The tragedy of Lidice was re-enacted by the Czechs hundreds of times at the expense of the Sudeten Germans during the expulsion. The Morgenthau Plan, which was inspired by Stalin and his associates and passed on to Henry Morgenthau by Harry Dexter White and other Soviet sympathizers, envisaged the starvation of between twenty and thirty million Germans in the process of turning Germany into a purely agricultural and pastoral nation.
Barnes never voices any support or approval of Adolf Hitler. He admits the man was at times cruel and erratic; then again so were Churchill and Roosevelt. As far as honest statesmanship goes, however, Hitler was actually on a higher plane than any of the Allied leaders. This is a demonstrable fact, one that is borne out by the diplomatic history of the 1930s as revealed by Hoggan. One does not have to love or even like Hitler to see that of all the major world leaders of the time, he was the least responsible for war. Barnes also refuses to demonize Hitler, and actually gives space for arguments claiming that Hitler had been too soft while conducting the war. To Hitler haters, this may sound like apologism, but it really isn’t. In “Blasting the Historical Blackout” Barnes dismisses Hitler’s Jewish policy as “folly” and correctly notes that it was this, rather than any foreign policy, which engendered anti-German hatred in Allied countries. He also recalls proudly how Rabbi Stephen Wise—the rabid, Hitler-hating Jew who led the worldwide Jewish boycott against Nazi Germany—once reprinted articles by him decrying Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Barnes even states that for a decade after 1945—which is smack dab in the middle of the Barnes Against the Blackout timeline—he had wished that Hitler had been assassinated in 1938 or early 1939, which would have avoided the catastrophe of a second world war.
In light of this, it cannot be said that within the pages of Barnes Against the Blackout Harry Elmer Barnes is anti-Semitic. He’s not philo-Semitic either. Instead, like any true historian, he’s anti-Falsehood and pro-Truth. Of course, he may be right or wrong, but never does he relinquish the discipline and objectivity required of great historians to keep civilization tethered to its past so it cannot go astray in its future.
CONCLUSION
There are many minor themes running through Barnes Against the Blackout which contribute to its value. Most notable is the topic of World War I revisionism, for which Barnes was an outright champion. His 1926 work Genesis of World War made him famous in this regard. Barnes often compares and contrasts revisionism from both World Wars and demonstrates how suppression and groupthink after the latter was much more insidious and comprehensive. He also offers examples of revisionism going back to antiquity.
Like Orwell, Barnes likes to invent neologisms and slogans. My favorites are “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” “globaloney,” the “Blackout Boys,” and the “Smearbund.” His 1962 essay “Revisionism and Brainwashing” is especially poignant in its descriptions of how modern Germans had been brainwashed into accepting their own culpability and shame. Some of the most ardent anti-revisionists of Barnes’ day were post-war Germans themselves, whom, Barnes suspects, feared the equivalent of a third Punic War. Barnes also drops historical Easter eggs everywhere. Did you know that the Roman theologian Paulus Orosius smeared the ancient pagans just as outrageously as court historian Herbert Feis smeared the Japanese? Or how about how Renaissance Scholar Lorenzo Valla proved that the 4th-century Donation of Constantine decree, which solidified the secular power of the Pope, was in fact an 8th-century forgery? It took Europe 350 years to come around to this fact. Barnes hopes it won’t take Europeans nearly as long to come around to the forged history of World War II.
If Harry Elmer Barnes has any personal bias in Barnes Against the Blackout it’s one that favors peace and an honest accounting of history. Because the so-called leaders of the free world gave us neither in the 1930s and 1940s, tens of millions needlessly perished. And with globalist liberalism still supreme today, being the root cause for mass third-world immigration into America and Europe, we continue to suffer from the effects of the catastrophe of World War II. Barnes himself said it best: “Revisionism is not only the major issue in the field of historical writing today but also the supreme moral and intellectual concern of our era.”
Why Are Mike Pompeo And The Mossad Publicly Announcing Mossad Involvement In Iranian Protests?
The public announcement of Mossad involvement in Iranian protests seems to have a cynical motive
The Dissident | January 2, 2026
Recently, a Twitter account widely seen to be backed by the Israeli Mossad along with the former CIA director and Secretary of State for Trump’s first term, Mike Pompeo, have publicly claimed that Israel’s Mossad is involved in the current protests in Iran.
At first glance, the claims seem to be a sloppy admission of a covert Israeli intelligence operation, but a closer look suggests something far more cynical is at play.
For context, on December 29th, an X account called “Mossad Farsi”- which the Israeli newspaper Ynet notes “is widely regarded as an official messaging channel of the Mossad targeting Iranian audiences, though Israel has not officially confirmed its ownership”-wrote, “Let’s come out to the streets together. The time has come.
We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally. We are with you in the field as well.”
The tweet has been taken in Israeli media as confirmation of Mossad involvement in the Iranian protests, for example, the Jerusalem Post wrote an article titled , “Mossad spurs Iran protests, says agents with demonstrators in Farsi message”.
Following the tweet, Mike Pompeo, the former director of the CIA and Trump’s former Secretary of State, also wrote a tweet appearing to confirm Mossad involvement in the protests, tweeting today:
The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope.
Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchistan.
47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence?
Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.
A closer look at these seeming public admissions shows something more cynical at play.
Some analysts have speculated that both Pompeo and the Mossad are either publicly admitting to Mossad involvement in the protests or making false claims of Mossad involvement in the protests in order to encourage a harsher crackdown on them as a pretext for war.
Responding to the “Mossad Farsi” tweet, Analyst Esfandyar Batmanghelidj argued, “It’s a message intended to provoke the most paranoid figures in Iran’s security forces to see the legitimate protests as a major threat. Mossad wants violence.”
Responding to the Mike Pompeo tweet , journalist Dave Decamp wrote, “I wonder if the point of Pompeo saying Mossad agents are among the Iranian protesters and the Mossad account on here saying something similar is an effort to get Iran to crack down harder so Trump intervenes”.
This theory is bolstered by the fact that Trump- fresh from his visit with Benjamin Netanyahu, where he pushed him towards a new war with Iran – wrote on Truth Social, “If Iran shots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue. We are locked and loaded and ready to go. Thank you for your attention to this matter”, suggesting that the U.S. will again bomb Iran if they crack down on protestors.
Mossad involvement in the protests in Iran would come as no surprise.
Israeli intelligence have previously been caught by Haaretz and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab creating social media bots that were attempting to foment a violent regime change in Iran and prop up the Israeli puppet, Reza Pahlavi.
Israel’s I24 News, has also admitted that the current protests “likely received guidance” and seem like “a hand is at work here”, from “intelligence work”.
Whether the Mossad operations behind the Iran protests are real or not, it is becoming increasingly clear that the public admissions of it are intended to foment an Iranian government crackdown, so that Trump will make good on his threat and launch a new war.
How a 2019 NEJM Study Misled the World on Vitamin D: A Forensic Analysis
By James Lyons-Weiler, PhD | Popular Rationalism | December 29, 2025
In January 2019, The New England Journal of Medicine published a study that was immediately hailed as the final verdict on vitamin D: it doesn’t work. The study, known as the VITAL trial, was large, well-funded, and led by respected researchers from Harvard. Its conclusion—that vitamin D supplementation did not reduce the risk of invasive cancer or major cardiovascular events—rapidly diffused across headlines, textbooks, and clinical guidelines.
But the VITAL study didn’t fail because vitamin D failed. It failed because it was never designed to test the right question. This article walks through the anatomy of that failure, why it matters, and what we must fix if we are to take prevention seriously in modern medicine.
The Trial That Didn’t
On the surface, VITAL looked impeccable: over 25,000 participants, randomized and placebo-controlled, testing 2000 IU of vitamin D3 daily for a median of 5.3 years. The primary endpoints were the incidence of any invasive cancer and a composite of major cardiovascular events (heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes).
But there is a foundational problem: most participants weren’t vitamin D deficient to begin with. Only 12.7% had levels below 20 ng/mL, the threshold generally associated with increased risk. The mean baseline level was 30.8 ng/mL—already at or near sufficiency. It’s the equivalent of testing whether insulin helps people who don’t have diabetes.
Further eroding the study’s contrast, participants in the placebo arm were allowed to take up to 800 IU/day of vitamin D on their own. By year 5, more than 10% of the placebo group was exceeding that limit. The intervention, in effect, became a test of high-dose vitamin D versus medium-dose vitamin D, not against a true control.
Add to that the decision to use broad, bundled endpoints like “any invasive cancer” or “major cardiovascular events” without regard to mechanisms, latency, or stage-specific progression, and the trial becomes a precision instrument for finding nothing.
The Important Real Signal They Missed
The one glimmer of benefit appeared in cancer mortality. While incidence rates were similar between groups, the vitamin D arm showed a lower rate of cancer deaths. This effect emerged only after two years of follow-up and became statistically significant once early deaths were excluded. Even more telling, among participants whose cause of death could be adjudicated with medical records (rather than death certificate codes), the benefit was stronger.
This suggests a biologically plausible mechanism: vitamin D may not prevent cancer from starting, but it may slow its progression or reduce metastasis. That theory aligns with preclinical models showing vitamin D’s role in cellular differentiation, immune modulation, and suppression of angiogenesis.
And yet, VITAL buried this signal. The paper acknowledged a significant violation of the proportional hazards assumption in cancer mortality, a red flag that time-to-event models were inappropriate. Instead of adjusting with valid statistical models for non-proportional hazards, the authors sliced the data post hoc to generate a story and dismissed the result as exploratory. Meanwhile, they mentioned in passing that fewer advanced or metastatic cancers occurred in the vitamin D group—but offered no data.
How Design Choices Shape Public Understanding
The public interpretation of VITAL has been simple and sweeping: vitamin D doesn’t help. That perception has reshaped policy, funding, and clinical guidance. Combined with errant policy based on acknowledged errors, It is dangerous and a risk to public health.
But what the trial actually tested was much narrower: Does high-dose vitamin D provide additional benefit in a mostly vitamin D–sufficient, highly compliant, aging American cohort already permitted to take moderate doses on their own? And does it do so within 5 years?
Given those conditions, the null result was foreordained.
That’s not a failure of science. That’s a failure of trial design.
What Should Have Been Done
A rationally designed prevention trial would start with a population at risk. That means recruiting participants with confirmed vitamin D deficiency, ideally below 20 ng/mL. It would require tighter control of off-protocol supplement use. It would measure achieved serum levels in all participants, not just a 6% subsample. And it would follow participants for a decade or more to match the biological latency of cancer.
Equally critical, the endpoints would reflect mechanistic expectations. Rather than bundling all cancers or all cardiovascular events, researchers should examine site-specific incidence, grade at diagnosis, metastatic progression, and mortality—particularly among subgroups most likely to benefit, such as Black participants and those with low BMI.
Reform Is Not Optional
It is not enough to run large trials. They must be designed to answer the right questions. The failure of VITAL has less to do with vitamin D and more to do with how preventive science is conducted: Over-generalized endpoints, underpowered subgroups, and insufficient attention to biological realism.
We need new standards:
- Targeted enrollment of at-risk populations
- Serum level tracking
- Clear contrasts between intervention and control
- Biomarker tracking throughout
- Outcomes matched to mechanistic hypotheses
- Transparent reporting of all stage-specific and cause-specific outcomes
None of ts is controversial. It is merely rigorous.
This Isn’t Over
Several high-quality meta-analyses and smaller trials contradict the conclusions drawn from VITAL.
Several high-quality meta-analyses and randomized trials contradict the broad null interpretation drawn from the VITAL study. A 2014 Cochrane Review found that vitamin D supplementation, particularly with cholecalciferol (D3), was associated with a statistically significant 13% reduction in cancer mortality. The authors concluded that vitamin D likely reduces the risk of cancer death over a 5–7 year period, even though effects on incidence were not evident.
A randomized controlled trial in Nebraska by Lappe et al., involving postmenopausal women who received 2000 IU/day of vitamin D3 and 1500 mg/day of calcium, showed a non-significant 30% reduction in cancer incidence, with stronger effects emerging in secondary and stratified analyses. An earlier 2007 trial by the same group found a statistically significant reduction in cancer incidence with combined vitamin D and calcium supplementation.
Pooled data from 17 cohorts, as reported by McCullough et al., show a strong inverse association between circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels and colorectal cancer risk. Individuals in the highest quintile of serum 25(OH)D had a substantially lower risk of colorectal cancer compared to those in the lowest quintile, across diverse populations.
These findings converge on the possibility that vitamin D is more likely to influence cancer progression and lethality than initial incidence, particularly in populations with low baseline serum levels or in cancers like colorectal cancer that exhibit strong biological responsiveness.
Null trials can be useful. But when designed poorly, they become weapons of inference. The VITAL trial should be reinterpreted, not repeated.
If science is to regain public trust, it must show not just what it found, but what it never really asked.
References
- Bjelakovic G, Gluud LL, Nikolova D, et al. Vitamin D supplementation for prevention of mortality in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2014;1:CD007470. https://www.cochrane.org/evidence/CD007470_vitamin-d-supplementation-prevention-mortality-adults
- Lappe JM, Watson P, Travers-Gustafson D, et al. Effect of vitamin D and calcium supplementation on cancer incidence in older women: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2017;317(12):1234-1243. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2613159
- Lappe JM, Travers-Gustafson D, Davies KM, Recker RR, Heaney RP. Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;85(6):1586-1591. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17556697/
- McCullough ML, Zoltick ES, Weinstein SJ, et al. Circulating vitamin D and colorectal cancer risk: an international pooling project of 17 cohorts. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2019;111(2):158-169. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6821324/
An Israeli role in the Trump-Epstein files controversy?
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | January 2, 2026
Given the gravity of the newly emerging evidence about US President Donald Trump’s connections to the infamous Jeffrey Epstein, many questions are now being posed about the implications of this case on the American leader’s conduct. Of specific concern is whether the Israelis have any hand in influencing Washington in this matter.
Although the recent groundbreaking revelations, proving Jeffrey Epstein’s dealings with the Israeli regime, have been completely ignored by the Western corporate media, the facts are the facts. Long branded nothing more than “conspiracy theories”, leaked documents, first obtained by the Handala hacker group, prove that amongst other affiliations, the infamous child sex trafficker and financer had made efforts to help former Israeli Premier, Ehud Barak, to overthrow the then Syrian government.
These documents, reported upon only in the independent media, should raise alarm bells about just how far the Israeli rabbit hole goes. It is clear by now that Epstein himself was a staunch supporter of the Israeli regime, maintained close ties to it and its officials, even going as far as helping to draft op-eds for a former Israeli Prime Minister.
On the other hand, as more information emerges about Donald Trump’s relationship with the infamous pedophile financier, the potential implications for his role grow increasingly serious. Trump, for his part, has throughout this year decided to shrug off the Epstein Files issue, arguing that it is a “hoax” and snapping at reporters when the issue is brought up. The American President has also claimed that it is mainly Democrats who were guilty in this case, an allegation he makes when he isn’t labelling it a “Democrat hoax”.
Trump’s usual antics of pivoting to blame “the Democrats” aren’t paying off for him in this instance however, as his base quarrel with the facts that continue to emerge. For example, back in 2024, Trump had claimed that “I was never on Epstein’s plane”, only for this to be disproven later. More recently, it was revealed that he had been on board the child sex trafficker’s plane far more times than previously believed.
Evidently, there is not enough evidence to deem the US President actually guilty and lock him in jail, but the documents do indeed beg further questions to say the least. For example, a letter was recently released, handwritten by Epstein and addressed to convicted child molester Larry Nassar, in which he wrote of Trump that he ‘shares our love for young, nubile girls’.
There was even a document alleging that Trump and Epstein had raped a girl. Although the Department Of Justice (DOJ) has downplayed the claim, said to date back decades, the allegation is made more disturbing by reports that the alleged victim was later found dead. While there is no way to substantiate this accusation, it doesn’t exactly look good for the President.
There are currently countless theories being spread about the Trump-Epstein case, one of the most popular is that the US President was caught up in a blackmail scheme. For this specific allegation, there is no documented evidence. Yet, it is certainly a natural conclusion to come to.
At the very least, it would certainly suit Israeli interests to leverage the negative press surrounding the Epstein Files to push the President into conceding to further demands, or even use the issue as media coverage for their own aggressive actions.
Although this theory is currently unproven, if the Israeli intelligence or even US intelligence, had any knowledge of the Epstein Files, or had managed to collect incriminating material from the pro-Israeli child sex trafficker, they could certainly be willing to use that information to their benefit. The worst-case scenario here would be that the theories regarding Epstein being a Mossad agent, used to secure blackmail on power people, is true, then that would certainly mean that the US is in for a world of trouble.
Unproven theories aside, the evidence is certainly shocking and it is clear that Epstein did indeed have ties to Israelis, while Trump’s campaign was bankrolled by a who’s who of Zionist Billionaire’s, including the infamous Miriam Adelson. In less than a year, Trump had already bombed Iran, fought a small war against Yemen, cracked down on his own people’s First Amendment rights, while implementing a vision for Gaza that makes him the de facto dictator there and uses US forces to do the dirty work of the Israelis.
If anything, Donald Trump has shown himself to be an extremely weak President, one that is easily bullied into submission, so even without the Epstein Files, he has been willing to toss the American Constitution and International Law in the bin. All of this does beg the question as to whether the Israelis will be able to effectively weaponize the Epstein debacle to their favor and extract their demands.
How Intelligence, Politics, and Foreign Interests Shaped America’s Religious Movements
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | December 30, 2025
Christianity is back at the centre of American life, but not necessarily in the way most believers imagine. Churches are fuller, Christian language saturates politics, and faith-based identity has become a mobilising force once again. Yet beneath this revival lies a more unsettling reality: for decades, U.S. government agencies have treated religion not as sacred ground, but as strategic terrain.
This is not theory. During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department and intelligence agencies, most notably the CIA, recognised theology, doctrine, and religious institutions as instruments of influence. Faith was studied, guided, and at times quietly reshaped to serve geopolitical aims. The goal was rarely to destroy belief outright; rather, it was to domesticate it, align it, and render it strategically useful.
DOCUMENT: CIA’s use of journalists and clergy in intelligence operations – Select Committee On Intelligence Of The United States Senate One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, July 17, 1996 (Source to download full pdf: US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence)
Initiatives like the Doctrinal Warfare Program illustrate the scale of this engagement. Churches with mass followings, moral authority, and transnational reach were not simply tolerated; they were targeted for influence. Orthodox congregations in the U.S. and abroad were monitored to ensure alignment with Western interests. Catholic seminaries became conduits for doctrinal shaping, funding networks, and leadership development favourable to U.S. objectives. Even Protestant and Evangelical movements, decentralised and spontaneous, were quietly steered through cultural engagement, philanthropic networks, and selective amplification of certain voices.
Sincere people seeking truth, purpose, and transcendence found themselves caught in influence systems they neither designed nor understood. Their worship, community, and faith became tools in a broader psychological and cultural battle they never consented to.
Doctrinal Warfare: When Theology Became a Battlefield
The CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Program, particularly its work with Roman Catholic institutions, offers a rare glimpse into how intelligence agencies approach faith. Unlike cinematic portrayals of spies manipulating events, this program operated through subtler, more effective channels.
Influence was exerted via:
- Funding pipelines and philanthropic foundations, directing resources to seminaries, clergy travel, and publications
- Theological conferences and academic exchanges, creating opportunities to propagate ideas aligned with U.S. interests
- Publishing houses, journals, and media networks, shaping what doctrines and interpretations were elevated
- Selected intermediaries, often clergy or theologians, who could subtly shift discourse without appearing coerced
The program’s goal was not to dictate belief directly but to frame the boundaries of acceptable belief. Anti-communism, Western liberal ideals, and American exceptionalism were integrated into theological narratives. Over time, certain interpretations were elevated while others, particularly liberationist, socialist, or anti-Western emphases, were sidelined.
This structural influence was not limited to Catholics. Orthodox churches in the diaspora, particularly in Eastern Europe and North America, were monitored for political alignment. Protestant and Evangelical networks, decentralised and emotionally charged, presented different challenges. Leaders resisted hierarchical oversight, yet strategic use of media, donor support, and conferences quietly aligned these movements with larger political and global objectives.
The CIA and allied agencies like the Israeli MOSSAD also monitored global religious developments, from Latin America to Africa, mapping networks of clergy, seminaries, and youth movements. Influence became a form of psychological warfare: it did not coerce, but conditioned; it did not command, but subtly steered. And it thrived where people least expected manipulation, within trusted communities, sacred spaces, and moral authority.
VIDEO: David Wemhoff discusses his book John Courtney Murray, Time/Life, and the American Proposition: How the CIA’s Doctrinal Warfare Changed the Catholic Church. (Source: thkelly67 | Youtube)
Calvary Chapel, Charismatic Leaders, and the Power of Movements
Few movements illustrate both the promise and vulnerability of modern American Christianity like Calvary Chapel.
Founded in the mid‑1960s by Chuck Smith in Costa Mesa, California, Calvary Chapel emerged amidst the counterculture and the Jesus Movement. Smith welcomed surfers, hippies, and spiritual seekers alienated by both secular culture and institutional religion. Informal, emotionally open, culturally adaptive—and extraordinarily successful—it grew from a small congregation into a network of more than 1,800 churches worldwide.
Despite the ongoing debate about whether Calvary Chapel was created by individuals controlled by intelligence agencies or by charismatic individuals, the movement demonstrates a lesson intelligence agencies recognised decades ago: youth-driven religious networks are powerful instruments of social, political and cultural influence.
Figures like Lonnie Frisbee, a magnetic and unconventional evangelist, helped ignite the Jesus Movement and played a decisive role in Calvary Chapel’s early expansion. Frisbee’s countercultural persona, preaching on beaches, leading communal outreaches, and drawing thousands of young converts, was a force institutions could admire, attempt to understand, but never fully control.
Similarly, Paul Cain, a prophetic figure in charismatic networks, influenced theological subcultures with a focus on vision, revelation, and spiritual authority. According to reports, Cain was also a consultant to the Paranormal Division of the Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI. Like Frisbee, Cain became controversial, not because he was a confirmed intelligence operative, but because charismatic authority challenges hierarchical control, making it both influential and unsettling.
Calvary Chapel and these figures illustrate a key pattern: movements can grow organically, capture attention, and mobilise communities, making them valuable, and sometimes threatening, to political and intelligence structures. While the direct manipulation claims and the CIA militant connection remain debatable, historical examples like the Doctrinal Warfare Program prove that states do seek to shape religious institutions at scale, often through indirect methods rather than overt control, hence the lack of evidence thereof.
From Pews to Power: Evangelical Politics, Israel, TPUSA, and the Cost of Capture
By the late 20th century, Evangelical Christianity had evolved into a political powerhouse. Networks that began as spiritual awakenings now functioned as engines of political mobilisation, with youth-oriented, media-savvy outreach bridging the gap between churches and the political arena.
TPUSA and Charlie Kirk
Organisations like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) drew from these ecosystems, churches, conferences, campus ministries, and donor networks that had been shaped by decades of cultural, doctrinal, and ideological influence. Faith-language blended seamlessly with nationalism, free-market rhetoric, and civilizational anxiety, mobilising millions of voters.
The 2024 U.S. presidential election highlighted the real-world impact: Evangelical networks were decisive in returning Donald Trump to the White House. For believers, this was framed as a moral imperative or spiritual duty. For observers, it revealed how religious movements could be strategically leveraged within political frameworks.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, co-founder of TPUSA, shocked the nation and intensified national reflection. While there is no direct evidence ( at least not yet), linking churches or religious movements to the attack, the public reaction underscores a critical truth: powerful social networks rooted in faith become conduits of influence, whether intended or incidental.
As unsettling as it may be for the US government, it is worth noting that an intense social-media rift has emerged between TPUSA and podcaster Candace Owens, with competing narratives and accusations fueling distrust of official accounts surrounding the Charlie Kirk killing at UVU. Interestingly, some critics, Candace Owens among them, contend that the assassination of Charlie Kirk carries the hallmarks of a sophisticated intelligence-style operation, raising uncomfortable questions about whether certain figures within TPUSA may have been more deeply entangled in the events than the public has been led to believe. A decentralised, global network of self-styled citizen journalists is currently crowdsourcing footage, timelines, and open-source data, arguing that gaps and inconsistencies warrant deeper scrutiny beyond mainstream reporting. This phenomenon has amplified public pressure on agencies such as the FBI and on TPUSA to clarify unanswered questions and reconcile discrepancies in their account of the events of September 10, 2022.
Much like the unresolved shadows that followed the JFK assassination, Charlie Kirk’s killing has placed intelligence agencies, the military, the FBI, and even foreign actors like Israel at the center of a fraught public controversy, not through proven culpability (at least not yet), but through the swirl of suspicion and unanswered questions that inevitably surround the death of a defining religious and political figure in the American conservative sphere, leaving many to ask whether this is coincidence or something more troubling left unexplained.
Christian Zionism and Israeli Influence
No discussion of modern Evangelical power is complete without considering the strategic relationship between U.S. Evangelicals and the State of Israel.
This alliance is public and well-documented. Evangelical Christians, especially in the United States, became one of the most reliable pro-Israel voting blocs, influenced not just by policy arguments but by theological frameworks, Christian Zionism, which frames Israel as divinely central to biblical prophecy.
Israeli political leaders and advocacy organisations have cultivated this alignment via:
- Pastors’ conferences in Israel
- Evangelical media networks and tours
- Donor networks and lobbying partnerships
Organisations such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI) mobilise millions of voters, influence Congressional votes, and amplify foreign policy priorities. During the Trump administration, these networks helped drive decisions like the Jerusalem embassy relocation, Iran policy shifts, and strengthened U.S.-Israel alignment.
Yet this partnership is not uncontested. Younger conservatives and Evangelicals, particularly those aligned with independent thinkers like Charlie Kirk, increasingly question whether faith-based loyalty to foreign policy interests undermines America-first priorities. This generational tension highlights a growing divergence within conservative Christianity: between inherited religious-political alliances and emerging calls for national sovereignty, prudence, and domestic priority.
Moreover, the case of Turning Point USA illustrates how foreign influence can intersect with faith-based movements to shape political power. TPUSA’s open alignment with pro-Israel advocacy networks, from educational trips and conferences to donor engagement, demonstrates how theological and ideological commitments can be leveraged to advance strategic interests. This organisational alignment and associated messaging reveal a clear pattern of external actors using popular religious and political networks to sway domestic policy and voter priorities in the United States. This dynamic mirrors broader trends seen in movements like Calvary Chapel, where charismatic leaders and faith communities, intentionally or not, become conduits for shaping societal and political behaviour, highlighting how belief can be instrumentalised as a tool of influence. Believers are constantly reminded by pastors such as Garid Beeler, of VISION Calvary Chapel in Irvine, CA, that they need to unconditionally embrace the so-called God’s plan for Israel, which in their eyes legitimises Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and the subsequent genocide, on the basis that the Lord specifically gave the Hebrews the land thousands of years ago.
Believers as Collateral in the Machinery of Influence
The story of institutional capture is not about disloyal Christians or malign churches. It is about power exploiting vulnerability.
The State Department, CIA, and allied actors like Israel did not invent faith crises, but they mastered the art of steering movements. They understood that belief motivates action, doctrine shapes identity, and institutions built on trust are uniquely vulnerable to manipulation.
Jay Dyer’s analysis, which we are featuring today, frames this landscape without demonising believers: faith itself is not the enemy, but it has been treated as a resource, managed, redirected, and at times hollowed out by forces whose goals are strategic, political and financial, rather than spiritual.
If Christianity is to withstand this era with integrity intact, it will require discernment, humility, vigilance, and, of course, the ability to separate the Gospel from the machinery of power. The war was never against believers, but belief, as an institution, has been under attack all the same.
Jay Dyer writes about the historical and geopolitical factors of state and private interference in ecclesial and religious affairs…
Institutional Capture Explained: The State Dept, CIA & Orthodox, Roman Catholic & Protestant Churches
The notion of state interference in the life of the Church is well known to students of Church history: Arian Emperors, Imperial support for iconoclasm, the Frankish and Germanic control of the papacy, as well as the investiture controversy should all come to mind. These famous scandals demonstrate the persistent cunning on the part of the state to install, influence and control religiosity in the realm, and to students of geopolitics this should also come as no surprise. What is odd, however, is that when this concept arises in modern discussions, it is relegated immediately to the domain of “conspiracy theory,” unless of course you are talking about the KGB and NKVD relationship to Russian clerics in the 20th century.
It only turns out to be a “conspiracy theory” when one points to the US State Department, the CIA, various foundations, NGOS and academic institutions (often closely linked to the intelligence apparatus) – all of whom openly seek to alter and change Orthodox theology, as well as the theological positions of the Roman Catholic and Protestant communions. First, it is worth noting that missionary work is a classic espionage cover: Obviously, I don’t mean all missionaries are spies, but that it has famously been a useful cover for espionage work, which is precisely why Russia has recently banned groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Scientology. These entities can be used as a form of soft power or even more covert intelligence operations. Similarly, classic cover for foreign operations of this sort has used aid organisation cover, such as the Red Cross or USAID.
In fact, even mainline publications regularly report this fact, though it seems to be lost on so many, especially among the intelligentsia who pride themselves on grasping the practicality of realpolitik. Christianity Today writes:
“Many of America’s first spies were missionaries or came from missionary backgrounds. Often enough, they were the only Americans who had lived abroad—not just among locals but as locals. While other American spies learned about the world through books and couldn’t really grasp its full range of quirks and complexities—“like tourists who put ketchup on their tacos,” as Sutton puts it—missionaries spoke several languages and knew the subtle differences between local dialects. They understood local cultures and faiths from the ground up and knew intuitively how to navigate between them. They knew, in short, “how to totally immerse themselves in alien societies.” But they always identified first and foremost as Christians and as Americans, and when they were called to serve the nation, they did not hesitate to do so.”
This was not unique or new; Orthodox monastic spies were also used by British intelligence in the infamous case of “Father Dimitrios”:
“The story of Father Dimitrios, or David Balfour, who turned out to be a British spy in pre-World War II Greece, is a fascinating yet relatively little-known chapter in modern Greek history.”
Father Dimitrios, the monk with the voice of an angel, turned out to be a spy for the British Intelligence Service. That’s a shame because the mission and wartime actions of the British priest could make a nail-biting spy novel or film.
From 1937 to 1939, the English spy, wearing his priest’s robes and his long, bifurcated beard, performed his ecclesiastical duties close to Greece’s royal family. His relations with King George II, the successor to King Paul and Princess Frederica, were especially close. His access to the royal palace undoubtedly gave him access to valuable information.
British Intelligence must have learned a great deal about the Greek royal family during these crucial prewar years. King George II was a paternal first cousin of Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Members of the royal family often confessed to their beloved priest. At the same time, Balfour, under the cover of Father Demetrios, forged important acquaintances with high-ranking military officers and politicians with the blessings of the palace.
During World War 2, for example, dozens of missionaries were using their clerical cloaks as their espionage cloak, spying for the Allies. Time Magazine explains:
“His [Protestant Missionary Alfred Eddy] most audacious undertaking included a plot to “kill,” as he described it, “all members of the German and Italian Armistice Commission in Morocco and in Algeria the moment the landing takes place.” In a straightforward and matter-of-fact memo, he told OSS head William Donovan that he was targeting dozens of people. He additionally ordered the executions of “all known agents of German and Italian nationality.” Never one to mince words, he called the proposal an “assassination program.”
To orchestrate his bloodthirsty plot, Eddy hired a team of Frenchmen. He planned to frame the executions as a “French revolt against Axis domination.” “In other words,” he explained to Donovan, “it should appear that the dead Germans and Italians were ‘the victims’ of a French ‘reprisal against the shooting of hostages by the Germans and other acts of German terror,” and not an OSS operation.
At about the same time that he was recruiting French hitmen, he wrote to his family about the sacrifices he was making for Lent. He described the Easter season as “abnormal” this year. “I am certainly abstaining from wickedness of the flesh,” he confessed. With his wife thousands of miles away, that was not too difficult. “I haven’t even been to a movie since Lisbon, I don’t overeat anymore, and I allow myself a cocktail at night, but never before work is all done.”
And,
“American intelligence leaders had stumbled upon the fact that missionaries make great spies. They have excellent language skills, they know how to disappear into foreign cultures, and they are masters at effecting change abroad. But while missionary spooks believed that their wartime work was necessary, they also wrestled with the moral ambiguities inherent in their actions.”
This is just one example among countless, but it serves to illustrate the point – in this case, the supposed man of the cloth is engaged in assassination missions. A fortiori, the US Government would also see the power in utilising religion for the promotion of Americanism. During the Cold War this was ramped up to extreme degrees as CIA operatives and strategists like C.D. Jackson allied with media magnate and Skull & Bonesman Henry Luce – of Time Magazine, to recruit various prominent academics and Jesuits like John Courtenay Murray to help ensure the Vatican and in particular the Second Vatican Council, would include in its dogmatic degrees new doctrinal statements that were amenable to Americanism. This unique style of interference was even highlighted by a congressional investigation in 1996 into the CIA’s use of ministers and journalists here (including Peace Corps Volunteers).
This was combined with separate operations from Helliwell, Angleton, Donovan & Colby to utilise Opus Dei, the Vatican Bank and drug running for black operations funding in the now infamous Operation Gladio, which also saw the See of Rome aligning itself with organised crime to supposedly “save the world from communism.” However, as Catholic lawyer David Wemhoff has demonstrated in his masterful and unparalleled 800-page, vastly sourced tome, John Courtney Murray, Time/Life Magazine and the American Proposition, Jackson’s now declassified “Doctrinal Warfare Program” led the Roman Church into the hands of new masters at the US State Department and the CIA.
Indeed, this is precisely why Pre and Post-Vatican 2 popes, from Pius XII to Paul VI to John Paul 2 were meeting with Colby, Kissinger and William Casey on a consistent basis during the Cold War. And, if you are a perceptive reader, you can already piece together the blackmail and compromise operations that the world has seen through the Epstein saga were simply a window into how these institutions were similarly blackmailed and compromised, which is why there have been so many scandals in the Roman Church concerning pedo crimes, and likely relates to why Benedict resigned.
In regard to the Protestant Churches, the Rockefeller family is quite proud of, and openly brags about their influence and dominance of the Protestant religious world, through their donations and tax-free foundation offerings. These offerings, of course, come with strings attached, such as the decision to push the newly formed “social gospel” concept of the early 20th century. Eventually, the Rockefellers were creating entire seminaries and universities dedicated to the promotion of David’s influences from Keynesian/Fabian and Austrian economic theory, as well as Malthusianism and eventually technocracy, through the recruitment of Zbigniew Brzezinski after the publication of his seminal 1970 text, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era.
Few know David Rockefeller himself spent time in intelligence work and transferred this knowledge of networking and banking operations into his business ventures, as he discusses in his Memoirs. In fact, Brzezinski’s book also includes chapters discussing the role of the Post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholic Church in the promotion of Americanism and technocratic hegemony. It should also be noted that the Rockefellers didn’t merely have an interest in steering the Protestant and evangelical churches into liberalism and modernism, but also set their sights on Rome and Orthodoxy, as Wemhoff notes.
For the Orthodox World, the price of siding between two thieves came at a high cost, as the Orthodox England blog notes, concerning the place of the Russian Orthodox Church between the KGB and the CIA. Similarly, it has recently been declassified that the OSS placed pressure on the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the CIA said:
“In an OSS interoffice memo dated March 26, 1942, an intelligence agent named Ulius L. Amoss wrote this to a fellow OSS agent named David Burns:
The Archbishop was extremely pleased at having met and lunched with you. He has told me that the entire facilities of his organisation are at our disposal. He put it in these words: “I have three Bishops, three hundred priests and a large and far-flung organisation. Everyone under my order is under yours. You may command them for any service you require. There will be no questions asked, and your directions will be executed faithfully. Please tell Mr Burns for me that this is so.”
A month later, on April 25, the 56-year-old Greek Archbishop attempted to enlist in the U.S. Army. He was turned down.
A few weeks after that, on May 14, Ulias Amoss, the same intelligence agent who wrote the March 26 memorandum, wrote a letter to Athenagoras, thanking him for the Greek Archdiocese’s ongoing cooperation, saying, in part, “The care with which your Bishops and Priests have cooperated has impressed everyone and the report that, perhaps, as many as a hundred thousand names will be returned to us is astounding.” On the same day, William J. Donovan himself — the head of the OSS — also wrote to Athenagoras, “The reports and descriptions of Greek-American youth of military age so kindly undertaken by you are coming in in splendid volume. The care with which Your Grace has managed this important service is of great interest to our armed services, and I wish to express my deep appreciation for your loyal and patriotic assistance.”
This special relationship with US intelligence never ended and continues to this day as the backdrop to the actions of the Phanar and GOARCH in the US:
“Archbishop Elpidophoros, the head of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, was the honoured guest at the National Intelligence University in Maryland earlier this week, where he delivered an address to the U.S. intelligence community.
The university brings together faculty and students from all 18 of the nation’s intelligence communities.
As the Greek Archdiocese notes, the Archbishop’s talk on “Russia’s Weaponisation of Religion in the Ukraine Conflict” was the first-ever address from a GOARCH leader to the U.S. intelligence community. At the same time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has a long history of cooperation with the U.S. intelligence community, as detailed in documents released by the CIA.”
While it may seem like a far-off footnote in a dusty history book on Byzantium or the Borgia Papacy, the reality of state and private interference (and control!) in religion is a stark reality. The goal of the state is the maintenance and projection of power, simply put. Religion is a tremendous force for control and power in the world, both good and evil, but for the state, religion is simply another domain of human culture for the projection of power, and in today’s world, that is most often projected as soft power.
If you have not read Joseph Nye’s famous essay on Soft Power, I recommend it here. Understanding soft power gives a window into the attitude of the power elite and their perspective on religions and sects as tools – pawns on the grand chessboard, to use Brzezinski’s terminology. One need only think of Brzezinski’s own recruitment and usage of what would become Al Qaeda in the Soviet War in Afghanistan in Operation Cyclone – the usage of a radical religious sect for US objectives – as a classic example.
The DOJ is flaunting the law on the Epstein Files. Why isn’t Pam Bondi in handcuffs?
By Alan Mosley |The Libertarian Institute | December 30, 2025
Congress’s newly minted Epstein Files Transparency Act—a bipartisan law co‑authored by Representatives Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna—was supposed to leave no room for discretion. It required Attorney General Pam Bondi, who serves President Donald Trump, to release all unclassified Justice Department records related to Jeffrey Epstein within thirty days. Trump signed the bill, but his Justice Department blew the deadline and produced only a small fraction of the documents, many of which were blacked out. The co‑authors have responded by drafting impeachment articles and exploring inherent contempt. Their outrage raises a broader question: why can the executive branch ignore the law with impunity, and why does this seem to happen over and over again?
The impetus for the transparency law lies in the horrific pattern of abuse that Epstein orchestrated for decades and the government’s failure to stop it. Even after survivor Maria Farmer told the FBI in September 1996 that Epstein was involved in child sex abuse, officials did nothing. The latest document release confirms that the bureau was tipped off a decade before his first arrest. Many of the new documents show that Epstein’s scheme went far beyond one man; the files include photographs of former presidents, rock stars, and royalty, and testimony from victims as young as fourteen. Campaigners say the heavy redactions and missing files—at least sixteen documents disappeared from the Justice Department website, including a photo of Donald Trump—betray the law’s intent. The omissions have fueled suspicions that the department is selectively protecting powerful clients rather than victims.
A law that leaves little wiggle room
In addition to the redactions, entire files vanished after the department’s release. Al Jazeera reported that at least sixteen documents disappeared from the Justice Department website soon after they were posted, including a photograph of Trump. Survivors expressed frustration: Maria Farmer said she feels redeemed by the disclosure yet weeps for victims the FBI failed to protect, and critics argue the department is still shielding influential individuals. The missing files underscore that Bondi’s partial compliance is not just tardy but potentially dishonest; the law obligates her to release names of government officials and corporate entities tied to Epstein, and removing those names is itself a violation.
The statute instructs the attorney general to release all unclassified Justice Department records about Epstein within thirty days. This covers everything from flight logs, travel records, names of individuals and corporate entities linked to his trafficking network, to internal communications about prosecutorial decisions and any destruction of evidence. It prohibits withholding information to avoid embarrassment, and allows redactions only to protect victims’ privacy, to exclude child sexual abuse imagery, or to safeguard truly classified national security information. Even then, the attorney general must declassify as much as possible and justify each redaction to Congress. These provisions make the statute stricter than a typical subpoena and leave little room for discretion.
Pam Bondi’s dodgy compliance
By December 19 the department had released tens of thousands of pages but withheld the bulk of the material. Observers noted that many records were heavily blacked out and that the department offered no written justifications for redactions. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged that more documents would be released later, effectively moving the deadline. Massie and Khanna argued that this flouts the statute and have drafted impeachment articles and are weighing inherent contempt. Bondi’s department claims it can withhold materials under common‑law privileges, such as deliberative-process and attorney‑client privilege, even though the statute expressly demands release of “internal DOJ communications” and other decision‑making records. Critics argue that by invoking judge‑made privileges to avoid a law that overrides them, Bondi—who reports directly to Donald Trump—puts the president’s political interests ahead of statutory obligations.
Congress’ options, and why they seldom work
Congress has three enforcement tools: criminal contempt referrals, civil lawsuits, and inherent contempt arrests. The first two depend on the Justice Department, which is unlikely to prosecute its own leaders. Inherent contempt—a forgotten power to arrest defiant officials—has not been used since 1935, but Khanna says it is on the table. Past episodes illustrate why penalties are rare. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied to Congress about mass surveillance and faced no charges. CIA officials destroyed videotapes documenting torture, yet prosecutors declined to prosecute. FBI agents misused warrantless surveillance authorities, but no one has been held accountable. The pattern is clear: when officials break the rules, investigations are slow, referrals go nowhere, and political leaders quietly move on. As whistleblower attorney Jesselyn Radack noted, there is a double standard: government officials can lie to Congress with impunity while those who tell the truth are indicted. This inversion of accountability encourages lawlessness within the executive branch and chills those who might expose wrongdoing.
Legal experts note that Congress could also sue to compel disclosure or hold Bondi in criminal contempt, but because the Justice Department prosecutes contempt and is headed by the same officials refusing to comply, those routes are circular. The only truly independent remedy—directing the House sergeant at arms to arrest Bondi and hold her until she obeys—has not been used in nearly a century and would provoke a constitutional crisis. This institutional timidity emboldens agencies to treat congressional mandates as advisory and ensures that accountability remains elusive.
What accountability looks like
Khanna and Massie have urged Congress to impeach Bondi or her deputy, use inherent contempt to detain them, and refer the matter for prosecution. Those remedies would test whether Congress is willing to use dormant constitutional powers. Citizens who value liberty should demand action. The same government that lied about weapons of mass destruction, destroyed evidence of torture, and spied on millions now tells us that blacked‑out pages constitute transparency. Without accountability, the executive branch will continue to flout the law. Bondi may work for Trump, but the buck stops with the president who appointed her. If Congress and voters do nothing, future transparency laws will be meaningless, and the war state will remain healthy at our expense.
Accountability requires more than rhetoric. Congress must be willing to reclaim its constitutional prerogatives—by using inherent contempt, cutting funding, or refusing to confirm officials who flout the law. Voters should demand that elected representatives of both parties stop hiding behind national security and confront a Justice Department that acts as if it is above the law. The stakes extend beyond Epstein; they touch on foreign policy, civil liberties, and the very idea of self‑government. When a cabinet official appointed by the president can ignore a clear statutory mandate and the president remains silent, it signals that the executive branch believes itself sovereign. If we shrug, we will continue down the path where laws are for the governed, not the governors.
Citizens who value liberty and limited government should pay attention. When laws are ignored without consequence, the effect is to normalize lawlessness. The Massie–Khanna legislation was not meant to be a suggestion; it was a mandate that passed the House 427-1 and the Senate unanimously. If Congress does not enforce it, future transparency laws will be toothless, and the bureaucracy will continue to protect its own at the expense of truth. In the long run, a free society cannot survive if the government decides which laws apply to its friends and which apply to everyone else. Accountability is not partisan, it is a principle. Without it, injustice will remain healthy and unchallenged, and the rest of us will continue to pay the price.
The Epstein Saga: Chapter 4, Good Old Robert
By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 30, 2025
Epstein’s connections with British and Israeli intelligence were facilitated by a key figure known as Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine, Jeffrey’s wife.
Robert Maxwell was one of the most controversial media moguls of the 20th century: a Holocaust survivor who enlisted in the British army, he became a publishing tycoon, a Labour MP, and a figure at the center of financial scandals and alleged links to various secret services, including MI6 and Mossad. His biography intertwines his very poor origins, his meteoric rise, his relationships with heads of state, and, after his death at sea in 1991, the discovery of enormous fraud involving his companies’ pension funds.
Born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch in 1923 in Slatinské Doly (now Solotvyno, Ukraine), then Czechoslovakia, into an Orthodox Yiddish-speaking Jewish family, he emigrated to Great Britain during World War II and fought in the British army.
After the war, he entered scientific publishing and founded Pergamon Press, transforming it into a major publisher of technical and academic texts, the basis of his future media empire.
By the 1980s, he controlled a vast empire: Maxwell Communication Corp, Pergamon, Macmillan, the Daily Mirror tabloid, and other publications in the UK and abroad, in direct competition with Rupert Murdoch.
He died on November 5, 1991, after falling from his yacht Lady Ghislaine off the coast of the Canary Islands. After his death, it emerged that he had diverted hundreds of millions of pounds from the Mirror Group’s pension funds to cover financial shortfalls.
So… He sold textbooks to American schools. He rubbed shoulders with kings, queens, presidents, and popes. And, away from the spotlight, he may have contributed to the activities of one of the world’s most secretive intelligence agencies, engaged in surveilling half the planet. To some, he was a brilliant innovator; to others, an unscrupulous impostor.
For his daughter Ghislaine—whose later life would become intertwined with that of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein—he was the man who opened the doors to high society and perhaps, unwittingly, to future ruin. Maxwell rose to the top to become a powerful media entrepreneur in the UK, building an empire comparable to that of Rupert Murdoch.
When he founded Pergamon Press, an academic publishing house specializing in history and science textbooks distributed in US schools, often criticized for a pro-Israel stance consistent with Maxwell’s strong Zionism, his competitors would not have expected such success.
In 1984, he bought the Daily Mirror, transforming it into a giant of popular journalism. At the height of his expansion, he controlled Maxwell Communication Corporation, Macmillan, Pergamon, and numerous international newspapers. Ghislaine, his favorite daughter, was educated at Oxford, prepared for the salons of the elite, and often at his side at social events in London and New York. Maxwell was photographed in the company of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Margaret Thatcher, and even Mother Teresa. Other images show him alongside US Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Several sources indicate that the British Foreign Office suspected Maxwell of being a double or triple agent, with links to MI6, the Soviet KGB, and the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad… My source, whom I consulted while writing this text, confirms his membership in the British services, with a key role in relations with companies and other agencies, particularly with regard to activities involving politicians (American but not only).
Maxwell moved with ease between the White House, the Kremlin, Downing Street, and the political leaders of France, Germany, and Israel, something that is not at all easy, nor “comfortable” to maintain.
In the 1960s, he served two terms as a Labour MP for Buckingham, while leading an extremely luxurious lifestyle. At his residence in Headington Hill, near Oxford, he organized lavish parties which, according to persistent rumors, were used as seductive traps to gather compromising information on influential figures.
The most serious allegations link him to the PROMIS software scandal, which we discussed in Chapter 3 of our Saga.
Originally a program of the U.S. Department of Justice, PROMIS was allegedly stolen, modified with an Israeli “back door,” and then distributed to numerous intelligence agencies, armed forces, and companies around the world, allowing Israel to monitor virtually every country that used it. According to various whistleblowers, including former Israeli agent Ari Ben-Menashe, Robert Maxwell allegedly served as the main global promoter of this digital Trojan horse. These allegations are partly corroborated by circumstantial evidence: strong support for Israel, business in sensitive sectors, close ties to Israeli leadership, and a state funeral in Israel in 1991, attended by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Chaim Herzog, and senior intelligence officials, with public praise that Maxwell “did more for Israel than can be said.”
The last years of his life were marked by financial collapse. After his death, investigators discovered a £460 million hole in the Mirror Group’s pension fund. Maxwell had stolen his own employees’ pension savings to support an empire now submerged in debt. His sons Ian and Kevin Maxwell were arrested and charged with fraud (and later acquitted), while the British public exploded with anger at the betrayal of thousands of pensioners.
Overnight, Maxwell went from being a respected tycoon to a hated figure. Protesters renamed him “Robber Bob.”
On November 5, 1991, he disappeared from his 180-foot yacht off the Canary Islands. He was found dead a few hours later, face up in the ocean. The official version spoke of a heart attack followed by accidental drowning. His daughter, however, believed he had been murdered.
The autopsy revealed that Maxwell already suffered from serious heart and lung conditions.
He was given a state funeral in Israel, attended by then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and numerous intelligence officials.
Epstein met Ghislaine Maxwell in the 1990s, and their relationship began as a brief romantic affair before turning into a very intense professional and personal alliance. Ghislaine became Epstein’s chief assistant, managing his properties, organizing his staff, and playing a central role in recruiting victims for sexual abuse.
The ties with his father, Robert, were important from the outset, although perhaps even more so after his death: Epstein was introduced to Mr. Maxwell’s circle thanks to the family’s contacts and networks. A reconstruction reported by the Telegraph in 2022 claims that Epstein may have helped Robert Maxwell hide some of the money stolen from the Mirror Group’s pension funds using offshore channels.
Robert was instrumental in introducing Epstein to the world of Israeli intelligence, where he was also able to make his own way.
The source consulted, who comes from the world of intelligence, revealed to me that Ghislaine is also central to this story: following in her father’s footsteps, she made her way into British and Israeli intelligence, weaving relationships, cover stories, and favors for her beloved Jeffrey.
After all, what could be better than marrying the daughter of a “spy” with the guarantee of inheriting his “legacy”? Without Ghislaine, Epstein would not have had access to many of the VIPs with whom he established regular relationships, and above all, he would not have had the cover necessary to operate undisturbed for many years.
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
- Fear Of Debate: Alarmist German Climate Scientist Calls On Mainstream Media To Discredit Skeptic Voices
- End-Of-August Arctic Sea Ice Extent Hasn’t Fallen In 20 Years, Official Data Show!
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