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‘A lot of people know’ who blew up Nord Stream – Trump

RT | May 6, 2025

US President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russia was behind the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines and suggested that the true culprit is widely known – without naming names.

Speaking at a White House press event, Trump said there was no need for a formal investigation to uncover who carried out the attack, which crippled a key energy route between Russia and Western Europe.

Three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Western Europe, were damaged by blasts at the bottom of the Baltic Sea in September 2022.

On Tuesday, a correspondent for libertarian financial blog ZeroHedge, which has been admitted to White House press events under the new administration, noted that Trump had previously rejected the Western narrative that Russia blew up its own pipelines, and asked the president if he was planning to initiate a probe to find out who was actually behind the attack.

“If you can believe it, they said Russia blew it up,” Trump responded. “Well, probably if I asked certain people, they would be able to tell you without having to waste a lot of money on an investigation. But I think a lot of people know who blew it up,” he added, without elaborating.

ZeroHedge suggested that Trump’s comment meant that “based on classified intelligence he knows exactly who was behind” the destruction of Nord Stream. It also “should put the ‘Russia destroyed its own vital and economically lucrative pipeline’ storyline to rest,” the outlet insisted.

In early February 2023, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report claiming that then US President Joe Biden had given the order to destroy Nord Stream. According to an informed source who talked to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, the explosives that were detonated on September 26, 2022 had been planted at the pipelines by US Navy divers a few months earlier under the cover of a NATO exercise called ‘Baltops 22’. The White House denied the report, calling it “utterly false and complete fiction.”

Senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at the US as the possible culprit behind the Nord Stream explosions. They have argued that Washington had the technical means to carry out the operation and stood to gain the most, considering that the attack disrupted Russian energy supplies to the EU and forced a shift to more expensive US-supplied liquefied natural gas.

May 6, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Economics, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Great Spillover Hoax

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

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

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

Let’s take a closer look.

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

The model goes as follows.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I found was a fog machine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We do. We’ll get on that.”

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

Fauci’s Replacement at NIAID a Cheerleader for Gain-of-Function Research

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 29, 2025

A virologist who supports gain-of-function research and believes COVID-19 evolved naturally is the new acting director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the agency Dr. Anthony Fauci led for 38 years.

Jeffery Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., a 19-year veteran of NIAID and chief of the institute’s Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section, replaced Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, who was placed on leave last month by the Trump administration.

Citing an email from Dr. Matthew Memoli, deputy director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Science reported that Taubenberger’s first day as acting director was April 25. Taubenberger will head an institute with a $6.56 billion budget, making it the second-largest NIH branch, overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Several researchers told Science that Taubenberger has a commendable track record, highlighting his work sequencing the Spanish flu virus of 1918.

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, Ph.D., a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said Taubenberger “has made many critical contributions to the field of influenza, both in pathogenesis, animal models, human data, and vaccines.”

But critics point to Taubenberger’s public support of gain-of-function research and the zoonotic theory of COVID-19’s origins, which holds that the virus crossed over naturally from animals to humans.

They also criticized his past ties to Fauci and other controversial virologists, and his prior work on COVID-19 vaccines.

Gain-of-function research, which increases the transmissibility or virulence of viruses, is often used in vaccine development. Such research was conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, prompting fears that the virus was developed at the lab and subsequently leaked.

Concerns over the safety of gain-of-function research previously led the U.S. government to implement a moratorium on such projects between 2014 and 2017.

“Gain-of-function research, if made safe, is a tremendous tool for forecasting the evolution of pathogens,” said Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist for Children’s Health Defense. “The problem is that there is no such thing as a leak-proof laboratory, just as there is no such thing as an unsinkable ship. A lab leak is not inevitable, but it is a risk — one that we witness surprisingly often.”

Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, Ph.D., a critic of gain-of-function research, said, “Taubenberger is part of the problem at NIAID, not part of the solution.”

Ebright said Taubenberger’s track record is at odds with HHS’ “Make America Healthy Again” agenda:

“Taubenberger’s views on the need for transparency and accountability at NIAID management, on the need for re-prioritization of NIAID funding to match disease burden, on the cause and cover-up of COVID, on reckless gain-of-function research and pathogen-resurrection research, and on biosafety, biosecurity, and biorisk management all appear to be diametrically opposed to those of HHS Secretary Kennedy.

“As such, Taubenberger’s appointment as acting director of NIAID is baffling.”

In a 2014 interview with the journal EMBO Reports, Taubenberger downplayed the risks of gain-of-function research, claiming it’s what “virologists have done for a hundred years.”

In a 2013 letter to the journal mBio, Taubenberger suggested that gain-of-function research replicates natural processes. He argued that Influenza A viruses “continually undergo ‘dual use experiments’ as a matter of evolution and selection.”

According to the American Society for Microbiology, dual-use research is a type of gain-of-function research that raises “important biosafety and/or biosecurity concerns.” It requires “a higher level of review” and is “subject to strict protocols.”

Jablonowski said Taubenberger’s dismissal of concerns over the safety of gain-of-function research overlooks its inherent risks.

“The problem with the argument is actually a problem with the policy it argues — it assumes an ill-willed actor intent on ‘deliberate misuse’ as the risk. Recent history has taught us that lab leaks pose a real and serious risk, no ill-willed actor needed. … Advocates of gain-of-function research do not include a realistic assessment of pathogen escape as part of a risk-benefit balance,” Jablonowski said.

While Taubenberger has been lauded for his role in sequencing the 1918 Spanish flu virus, some scientists were critical of this work, with Ebright calling the reconstruction of the 1918 virus “reckless.”

“Taubenberger … exhumed victims of the 1918 Spanish flu from the Alaskan permafrost to sequence and reconstruct the virus,” Jablonowski said. “It is a virus that killed 50 million people in two short years, and with its resurrection, could have reinitiated a pandemic.”

Taubenberger downplayed connections between COVID, lab leak

Taubenberger has sought to downplay any connection between gain-of-function research and the origins of COVID-19, instead claiming the virus emerged naturally.

In July 2020, Taubenberger and Fauci associate Dr. David Morens co-authored an op-ed in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, suggesting that COVID-19 is “a virus that emerged naturally.”

In a later email to a Science reporter, on which Taubenberger was copied, Morens described the article as a publication that “defends Peter and his Chinese colleagues” — referring to zoologist Peter Daszak, Ph.D., former president of the EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with Wuhan scientists on gain-of-function research.

Jablonowski said the authors of the 2020 op-ed “are unfit for office at a scientific institution — not because they got the origins of COVID-19 wrong, but because they played the game of deceiving the world. One of the villains of COVID-19 was EcoHealth Alliance, and Taubenberger’s narrative casts it as the hero.”

In their op-ed, Fauci and Morens called for the development of “broadly protective vaccines” and suggested that the role of organizations like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) “should be extended and strengthened.”

In 2021, CEPI launched its “100 Days Mission” to develop infrastructure capable of delivering a vaccine for a future pandemic within 100 days. CEPI’s supporters include the Gates Foundation, World Economic Forum and Wellcome Trust.

According to his NIAID biography, Taubenberger has overseen research aimed at developing “broadly-protective coronavirus vaccines in pre-clinical animal studies.”

“Taubenberger is wrong about the dangers of gain-of-function research and also about the ‘zoonotic theory,’” said immunologist and biochemist Jessica Rose, Ph.D. “He needs to read EcoHealth Alliance’s DEFUSE proposal.”

Project DEFUSE, a 2018 grant developed by Daszak and co-authored by U.S. and Wuhan scientists, proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS-CoV-2.

Although the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency rejected the proposal, some scientists have likened DEFUSE to a blueprint for generating SARS-CoV-2 in the lab, noting the similarities between the proposed work and key characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 that are not found elsewhere in nature.

Last year, HHS suspended all funding for EcoHealth Alliance after finding the organization failed to properly monitor risky coronavirus experiments.

The suspension came two weeks after a U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the COVID-19 pandemic called for a criminal investigation of Daszak and a month after the U.S. Senate launched an investigation into 15 federal agencies that were briefed about Project DEFUSE in 2018 but said nothing.

Taubenberger collaborated closely with Fauci

According to U.S. Right to Know, “Most of the NIAID employees who helped Daszak maintain funding amid the pandemic still retain positions of influence at NIAID” — including Taubenberger and Morens, formerly a key aide to Fauci who is under investigation for allegedly using his personal email address to evade Freedom of Information Act requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19.

Ebright said that Taubenberger has maintained longstanding collaborations with such figures, noting that he co-authored 14 papers with Fauci and 66 papers with Morens.

According to U.S. Right to Know, Taubenberger also collaborated with researchers who played a key role in promoting the zoonotic theory of COVID-19’s origins — including Daszak and several co-authors of “The proximal origin of SARS-Cov-2,” a March 2020 editorial published in Nature Medicine promoting the natural origin of COVID-19 that was later used to discredit proponents of the lab-leak theory.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration launched a revamped version of the government’s official COVID-19 website, presenting evidence that COVID-19 emerged following a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The CIA, FBI, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Congress and other intelligence agencies have endorsed this theory.

In a 1998 interview on PBS’ “American Experience,” Taubenberger suggested that a flu pandemic was inevitable. “The odds are very great, practically a hundred percent, that another pandemic will occur,” he said.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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

Agent Waltz?

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | May 3, 2025

The Washington Post is reporting today that recently-ousted National Security Advisor Mike Waltz may have been involved in activities even more nefarious than inviting journalists onto highly sensitive Signal group chats. It appears that what really angered President Trump is less Waltz’s incompetence (or worse) in keeping sensitive military communications secure, but rather his taking an active role in doing the bidding of a foreign government.

As the Post reported, in advance of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s February visit to the United States the US National Security Advisor to President Trump…

… appeared to have engaged in intense coordination with Netanyahu about military options against Iran ahead of an Oval Office meeting between the Israeli leader and Trump, the two people said.

That means that Mike Waltz was working with a foreign government to maneuver President Trump into a situation where war seemed the only option left to deal with Iran. That kind of manipulation is a classic neocon move and one that Waltz’s ideological allies managed with great success against President George W. Bush regarding Iraq.

According to one insider quoted in the article, Waltz, “wanted to take U.S. policy in a direction Trump wasn’t comfortable with because the US hadn’t attempted a diplomatic solution.”

That means the former NSA was working with a foreign leader to limit the diplomatic and military options his boss could choose from, i.e. he was working to hobble the United States so as to achieve an objective of a foreign regime.

The WaPo piece continues…

‘If Jim Baker was doing a side deal with the Saudis to subvert George H.W. Bush, you’d be fired,’ a Trump adviser said, referring to Bush’s secretary of state. ‘You can’t do that. You work for the president of your country, not a president of another country.’

To his credit, President Trump recognized that Waltz was blowing Bibi’s smoke at him and rather than bite at the trap sprung for him the President saw through the game and became annoyed possibly at both of them. The fiasco one month later, where Waltz claimed that neocon scribbler Jeffrey Goldberg’s contact information had somehow been “sucked up” into his phone and then presumably spit out again when it came time to invite top Administration officials onto a call to discuss military strikes on Yemen, may have been the straw that broke Trump’s waning patience in the man.

Last month, the Grayzone published leaked audio of Israel lobby AIPAC’s CEO, Elliott Brandt, “describing how his organization has cultivated influence with three top national security officials in the Trump administration – Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Director Mike Waltz, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe – and how it believes it can gain ‘access’ to their internal discussions.”

Was the Waltz/Netanyahu trap for Trump the result of this “cultivated influence” that Brandt is bragging about? And if so, how much deeper does it go?

Whatever the case, it’s lucky for Waltz that he was “only” acting as an agent for our Greatest Ally ™ and Only Democracy in the Middle East ™. Otherwise he’d be soon enjoying the hospitality of Bukele’s All Male B&B rather than the rather more luxurious digs at 50 United Nations Plaza.

May 4, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

The False Claims of WHO’s Pandemic Agreement

By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | April 28, 2025

One way to determine whether a suggestion is worth following is to look at the evidence presented to support it. If the evidence makes sense and smells real, then perhaps the program you are asked to sign up for is worthy of consideration.

However, if the whole scheme is sold on fallacies that a child could poke a stick through, and its chief proponents cannot possibly believe their own rhetoric, then only a fool would go much further. This is obvious – you don’t buy a used car on a salesman’s insistence that there is no other way to get from your kitchen to your bathroom.

Delegates at the coming World Health Assembly in Geneva are faced with such a choice. In this case, the car salesman is the World Health Organization (WHO), an organization still commanding considerable global respect based on a legacy of sane and solid work some decades ago.

It also benefits from a persistent misunderstanding that large international organizations would not intentionally lie (they increasingly do, as noted below). The delegates will be voting on the recently completed text of the Pandemic Agreement, part of a broad effort to extract large profits and salaries from an intrinsic human fear of rare causes of death. Fear and confusion distract human minds from rational behavior.

WHO Likes a Good Story?

The Pandemic Agreement, and the international pandemic agenda it is intended to support, are based on a series of demonstrably false claims:

  • There is evidence of a rising risk of severe naturally occurring pandemics due to a rapid (exponential) increase in infectious disease outbreaks
  • A massive return on financial investment is expected from diverting large resources to prepare for, prevent, or combat these
  • The Covid-19 outbreak was probably of natural origin, and serves as an example of unavoidable health and financial costs we will incur again if we don’t act now.

If any of these were false, then the basis on which the WHO and its backers have argued for the Pandemic Agreement is fundamentally flawed. And all of them can be shown to be false. However, influential people and organizations want pandemics to be the main focus of public health. The WHO supports this because it is paid to.

The private sector invested heavily in vaccines, and a few countries with large vaccine and biotech industries now direct most of the WHO’s work through specified funding. The WHO is obligated to deliver what these interests direct it to.

The WHO was once independent and able to concentrate on health priorities – back when they prioritized the main drivers of sickness and premature mortality and gained the reputation they now trade from. In today’s corporatized public health, population-based approaches have lost value, and the aspirations of the World Economic Forum hold more sway than those dying before sixty.

Success in the health commodities business is about enlarging markets, not reducing the need for intervention. The WHO and its reputation are useful tools to sanitize this. Colonialism, as ever, needs to appear altruistic.

Truth Is Less Compelling Than Fiction

So, to address these fallacies. Infectious disease mortality has steadily declined over the past century despite a minor Covid blip that took us back just a decade. This blip includes the virus, but also the avoidable imposition of poverty, unemployment, reduced healthcare access, and other factors that the WHO had previously warned against, but recently actively promoted.

To get around this reality of decreasing mortality, the WHO uses a hypothetical disease (Disease X), a placeholder for something that has not happened since the Spanish flu in the pre-antibiotic era. The huge Medieval pandemics such as the Black Death were mostly bacterial in origin, as were probably most Spanish flu deaths. With antibiotics, sewers, and better food, we now live longer and don’t expect such mortality events, but the WHO uses this threat regardless.

Thus, the WHO has been reduced to misrepresenting fragile evidence (e.g. ignoring technology developments that can explain rising reports of outbreaks) and opinion pieces by sponsored panels in order to support the narrative of rapidly rising pandemic risk. Even Covid-19 is getting harder to use. If, as appears most likely, it was an inevitable result of laboratory manipulation, then it no longer even serves as an outlier. The WHO’s pandemic agenda is squarely targeted at natural outbreaks; hence the need for “Disease X”.

The WHO (and the World Bank) follow a similar approach in inflating financial Return on Investment (ROI). If you received an email promoting over 300 to 700 times return on a proposed investment, some may be impressed but sensible people would suspect something amiss. But this is what the Group of Twenty (G20) secretariat told its members in 2022 for return on investment on the WHO’s pandemic preparedness proposals.

The WHO and the World Bank provided the graphic below to the same G20 meeting to support such astronomical predictions. It is essentially subterfuge; a fantasy to mislead readers such as politicians who are too busy, and trusting, to dig deeper. As these agencies are intended to serve countries rather than fool them, this sort of behavior, which is recurrent, should call into question their very existence.

Figure 1 from Analysis of Pandemic Preparedness and Response (PPR) architecture, financing needs, gaps and mechanisms, prepared by WHO and the World Bank for the G20, March 2022. Lower chart modified by REPPARE, University of Leeds.

A virus like SARS-CoV-2 (causing Covid-19) that mostly targets the sick elderly with an overall infectious mortality rate of about 0.15% will not cost $9 trillion unless panicked or greedy people choose to close down the world’s supply lines, implement mass unemployment, and then print money for multi-trillion-dollar stimulus packages. In contrast, diseases that regularly kill more and much younger people, like tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, cost far more than $22 billion a year in contrast.

A 2021 Lancet article put tuberculosis losses alone at $580 billion/year in 2018. Malaria kills over 600,000 children annually, and HIV/AIDS results in similar numbers of deaths. These deaths of current and future productive workers, leaving orphaned children, cost countries. Once, they were the WHO’s main priority.

Trading on a Fading Reputation

In selling the package, the WHO seems to have abandoned any attempt at meaningful dialogue. They still justify the surveillance-lockdown-mass vaccinate model by the logic-free claim that over 14 million lives were saved by Covid vaccines in 2021 (so we all have to do that again). The WHO recorded a little over 3 million Covid-related deaths in the first (vaccine-free) year of the pandemic. For the 14 million ‘saved’ to be correct, another 17 million would somehow have been due to die in year two, despite most people having gained immunity and many of the most susceptible having already succumbed.

Such childish claims are meant to shock and confuse rather than educate. People are paid to model such numbers to create narratives, and others are paid to spin them on the WHO websites and elsewhere. An industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars depends on such messaging. Scientific integrity cannot survive in an organization paid to be a mouthpiece.

As an alternative, the WHO could advocate for investment in areas that promoted longevity in wealthy countries – sanitation, better diet and living conditions, and access to basic, good medical care.

This was once the WHO’s priority because it not only greatly reduces mortality from rare pandemic events (most Covid deaths were in people already very unwell), but it also reduces mortality from the big endemic killers such as malaria, tuberculosis, common childhood infections, and many chronic non-communicable diseases. It is, unequivocally, the main reason why mortality from major childhood infectious diseases like measles and Whooping cough plummeted long before mass vaccinations were introduced.

If we concentrated on strategies that improve general health and resilience, rather than the financial health of the pandemic industrial complex, we could then confidently decide not to wreck the lives of our children and elderly if a pandemic did arise.

Very few people would be at high risk. We could all expect to live longer and healthier lives. The WHO has elected to leave this path, instill mass and unfounded fear, and support a very different paradigm. While the Pandemic Agreement is not essential to it, it is an important part of diverting further funds to this agenda and cementing this corporatist approach into place.

The United States has done well by stepping out of this mess, but continues to push many of the same fallacies and was instrumental in sowing the mess we now reap. While a few other governments are questioning, it is hard for any politicians to stand with truth when a sponsored media stands squarely elsewhere.

Society is once more enslaving itself, at the behest of an entitled few, facilitated by international agencies that were set up specifically to guard against this. At the coming World Health Assembly, the pandemic fairytale will almost certainly prevail.

The hope is that a well-deserved erosion of trust will eventually catch up with the global health industry and too few countries will ratify this treaty for it ever to come into force. To fix the underlying problem though and derail the pandemic industry train, we will need to rethink the whole approach to cooperation in international health.

David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. David is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.

May 1, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

White House calls out ‘media cover-up’ on Biden’s health

RT | April 30, 2025

The “cover up” of former US President Joe Biden’s poor mental and physical health has led to a decline of public trust in “legacy media”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has claimed.

Throughout Biden’s time in office, Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly argued that he was unfit for the job – claims the Biden administration and US media vociferously denied. Biden only withdrew from the presidential race when he faced pressure from within the Democratic Party and major campaign donors after a disastrous debate performance against Trump last June, in which he appeared confused and struggled to finish his sentences.

“Millions of Americans watched our mentally incompetent president [Biden] struggle with his day-to-day duties of this office. We watched our country be run into the ground as a result. And nobody in the media wanted to write about that,” Leavitt said during a White House briefing on Monday.

The spokeswoman recalled how during Trump’s campaign her warnings about Biden’s “clear mental incompetence” led to her being “accused by people in this room [journalists] of manufacturing deepfake videos trying to persuade the public into not believing what they saw with their own eyes for many years.”

“I think it is about time the legacy media finally admits that was one of the greatest cover-ups and scandals that ever took place in American history,” she insisted.

Leavitt said that the reluctance to report on Biden’s actual physical and mental condition “certainly did contribute to the decline in the trust that Americans have for the legacy media.”

A poll by Gallup earlier this year suggested that confidence in fair reporting of the news by US media has dropped to its lowest point in five decades. Only 31% of those surveyed said they trust the mainstream media “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” while 36% said they do not trust it “at all.”

April 30, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

Yet more legacy media deception on a vital issue

By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | April 29, 2025

I can’t believe I have to call out my old editors at the New York Times for running blatantly dishonest journalism for the second day in a row.1

But I do, so here goes.

Yesterday, just past noon local time, the electric systems in Spain and Portugal failed without warning.

Power remained out across both countries for much of the day and wasn’t fully restored until today. The disruption was profound. Subway riders evacuated stalled trains in darkened tunnels. Cellular service (which, unlike landlines, does not have backup batteries) went down. Elevators were stuck. ATMs and traffic lights went out.

Not across a city, or a state, but two nations that together have almost 60 million people. (Small parts of southern France were also affected.)

The outage attracted worldwide attention — and legacy media headscratching.

The usual explanations for blackouts were nowhere in sight. No earthquakes hit, no hurricanes or forest fires were raging. Even climate change, the usual media bugaboo for all disasters natural and manmade, couldn’t be blamed. It’s April, not July, and the weather was mild across the Iberian peninsula, in the 70s from Lisbon to Barcelona, 700 miles northeast. Nor was demand for power particularly high yesterday.

Just after the outage, Portugal’s electric network operator supposedly blamed “extreme temperature variations” in Spain for “induced atmospheric vibration.” Those led to “oscillations” on high voltage lines, according to several newspapers, including England’s Guardian.

“Millions without power in Spain, Portugal after ‘induced atmospheric vibration’,” a USA Today headline incoherently but confidently explained.

Of course. Induced atmospheric vibration. If that sounds like gobbledygook, it’s because it is. By Tuesday morning, the Guardian had disappeared those words, claiming the Portuguese company “said the statement was falsely attributed to it.”

Oh. Other unlikely explanations included cyber attacks and solar flares, eruptions of radiation from the sun that can disrupt powerlines. But solar flares are hard to miss, and none were a problem on Monday.

But even as the legacy media offered bizarre theories, power industry analysts and energy experts on X proposed a far simpler, more plausible explanation: Spain’s near-total reliance on green energy had left it very vulnerable to cascading blackouts.

For all its magic, electricity is actually relatively easy to understand at the theoretical level; it is the flow of electrons — negatively charged particles — that carry energy. Scientists began to understand this fact in the 1700s. A century later they had realized that swinging magnets along coils of wire would produce usable current. The energy to swing the magnets comes from steam heated in coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear plants, or directly from the flow of water in hydropower dams. (I remember the basics from AP Physics, and Google confirms them.)

After the electricity is produced, grids of wires carry it to homes and businesses, where it makes lights, computers, and motors run.2 Here, the engineering gets complicated. Electric plants produce “alternating” current, because of the way the magnets spin, and most household devices run on it.3 Demand for electricity fluctuates by the second, and supply must exactly match demand to keep the grid functioning properly. Traditional power plants have several different ways to manage this task. Their success in doing so is a key reason that modern, wealthy countries almost never have widespread blackouts.

But solar plants produce direct current, which must be “inverted” into alternating current before it is added to the grid. Wind turbines have their own hurdles adding power. As a result, wind and solar plants cannot manage unexpected changes in frequency nearly as well as older sources.

This risk is not a secret to power companies — or renewable energy suppliers. In 2022, the consortium of companies that runs Europe’s electricity network released a 63-page report on the issue.

It is highly technical and obscure (perhaps deliberately so), but it notes that older plants “have traditionally provided various ‘inherent’ capabilities to the system critical to ensure the stable operation of the power systems…” and that wind and solar power have a “lack of these system capabilities.”

But in the rush last decade to pacify climate change activists and decarbonize the world (except, of course, for India and China), niceties like the realities of physics seem to have been overlooked. European countries have moved quickly away from boring, reliable sources of power generation and towards solar and wind.

No country has moved faster than Spain, which has sol to spare. In mid-April, Spain ran its electricity grid fully on renewable energy on a weekday for the first time.

Oh well. Renewable energy was fun while it lasted. Heck, I’ve got panels on my roof (the tax credit didn’t hurt).

But well-defined theoretical risks that are ignored for political reasons have a strange way of coming true. The strong consensus on X is that the lack of simple, reliable, fossil fuel or nuclear-powered baseload generation with high “inertia,” as the engineers say, is a big reason that Spain’s grid failed so fast and took nearly a day to reboot fully.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media keeps scratching its head and staring into the sun for solar flares. “The cause of the outage remained unclear,” the Times’s current headline explains helpfully.

If this were 2021, the Biden Administration would no doubt call blaming renewables “misinformation” and Twitter and Facebook would be censoring articles like this one as Russian propaganda or whatever. At least now the skeptics can call the media out without fear of being banned.

Progress, I suppose.

Though it doesn’t fix the underlying problem. After two decades of putting up solar and wind farms at massive taxpayer expense, Europe has turned electricity from cheap and reliable to the reverse. If the sun shines too brightly, the lights go out.

Congrats, Greta Thunberg!

1

I know, you can. As cynical as I’ve become, I guess I’m still not cynical enough.

2

Along the way the voltage – a measure of the “pressure” causing the electrons to move — is raised in order to reduce the energy wasted as the current flows, then lowered so it is safer for household use.

3

In Europe, alternating current is produced at 50 hertz, or cycles per second. In the United States, it’s produced at 60.

April 29, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

Moderna in Trouble in UK for Offering Kids Money and Teddy Bears to Participate in COVID Vaccine Trials

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 28, 2025

Pharma giant Moderna faces suspension or expulsion from a U.K. trade group for breaking several industry rules, including offering children teddy bears and large payments to participate in COVID-19 trials, The Telegraph reported.

The vaccine maker is facing an audit by the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA), an independent, self-regulatory body established by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, which it joined in 2023.

In a ruling expected to be made public in the coming days, the company was found to have committed several violations of industry rules, including misleading the regulator about when it became aware that financial incentives were being offered to children.

If sanctioned, Moderna will be only the tenth company in 40 years to be suspended from the PMCPA, according to The Telegraph.

The PMCPA said the company’s practices were “unacceptable” and damaged the industry’s reputation.

In October 2024, the regulator fined Moderna 14,000 pounds ($18,788) after the Children’s Covid Vaccine Advisory Council submitted a complaint about “inappropriate financial inducement” offered to children and their parents to participate in the vaccine maker’s clinical trial for COVID-19 vaccines.

The complaint criticized Moderna for initially offering children’s families 1,505 pounds ($2,020) to participate in its NextCOVE clinical trial, testing Moderna’s mRNA vaccine in children ages 12 and up.

The council cited concerns raised by the research ethics committee that approved the clinical study, which said the payment offered, “placed the children at risk of coercion.” The organization required that Moderna reduce the offer before recruitment could begin.

Moderna reduced the amount to 185 pounds ($248), yet at least one clinical trial site continued to offer the high payments.

Moderna claimed it took action as soon as it was notified about the continued high cash offer in January 2024. However, new evidence shows that the U.K. children’s health advocacy group UsForThem informed senior executives of the issue in August 2023, but Moderna took no action.

In February of this year, the company was ordered to pay nearly 44,000 pounds ($59,049) after 12-year-olds were offered a teddy bear to join the same trials. Advertisements aimed at children told them, “All our junior volunteers get a lovely certificate and a ‘be part of the research’ teddy bear.” At least two online articles also directly target children.

The U.K.’s Medicines for Human Use Regulations prohibit offering financial or other incentives to children and families to participate in clinical trials.

In a separate charge against the company, a senior employee co-authored three articles promoting Moderna’s COVID-19 shot and posted tweets promoting the shot without disclosing that he worked for the company.

The employee co-authored one of the articles with Nadhim Zahawi, who was serving as the U.K.’s “vaccines minister.”

PMCPA said the article and tweets were advertising the vaccine and said the failure to inform readers that he worked for Moderna was “unacceptable,” according to The Telegraph.

The vaccine incentives and vaccine advertising amounted to 10 new breaches of industry code, requiring an audit to examine Moderna’s culture, governance and framework, PMCPA said.

When the audit concludes, the Appeal Board will consider whether the actions merit further sanctions.

Molly Kingsley, UsForThem founder, told The Telegraph :

“Many of the previous judgments against Moderna have revealed how readily it put profit ahead of the health and safety of children. Now it has also laid bare just how little regard it has had for the regulatory system that was supposed to keep it honest.

“Never before has a company so new to the pharmaceutical industry been rebuked in this way.”

Critics argue that the small fines aren’t enough to change the company’s behavior.

Esther McVey, a former member of the all-party parliamentary group on COVID-19 vaccine damage, told The Telegraph :

“The news that the PMCPA is taking the highly unusual step of ordering an audit of Moderna’s culture, governance and compliance framework is reputationally damaging, but it is incredible that the regulator has no real power to impose appropriate fines or other meaningful penalties which might make pharmaceutical companies think twice before breaking the rules.

“They know they can get away with it, and so they do; time and time again. It’s hardly surprising that public trust in the pharmaceutical industry and its regulators is through the floor.”

Moderna did not respond by deadline to The Defender’s request for comment.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

April 28, 2025 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

FDA Says ‘Meat Glue’ Used in Many Processed Foods Is ‘Safe.’ Scientists Have Another Theory.

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 25, 2025

Gluten and genetics may not be the only culprits behind skyrocketing cases of celiac disease and related inflammatory digestive autoimmune conditions. Scientists now believe the “meat glue” widely used in processed foods from chicken nuggets to veggie burgers may also play a role.

Recent research shows that an enzyme called microbial transglutaminase induces celiac disease and related inflammatory digestive diseases such as diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis, writer Linda Bonvie reported on her Substack, Badditives.

Also known as “food glue,” transglutaminase is an enzyme widely used as a food additive to help foods stick together and look more appealing.

Meat glue is “beneficial for the food industry,” researchers Dr. Aaron Lerner and Torsten Matthias, Ph.D., said in one of several research papers they’ve published on the topic. But apparently, it’s not so good for public health.

Meat glue, Bonvie wrote:

“is the darling of Big Food for lots of reasons: it can glue together scraps of fish, chicken and meat into whole-looking cuts (often called ‘Frankenmeats’); extend the shelf life of processed foods (even pasta); improve ‘texture,’ especially in low-salt, low-fat products; make bread and pastries (particularly gluten-free ones) rise better, and, as one manufacturer puts it, allow for use of things that would ordinarily be tossed out — unappetizing leftovers and scraps of food that would ‘otherwise be considered waste ingredients, creating an added-value product.’”

According to Lerner and Matthias, meat glue can change the nature of gluten and make the immune system more reactive to them, which can cause conditions like “intestinal junction leakage” and set the stage for a variety of health issues.

Japanese ‘meat glue’ maker uses propaganda strategies developed for MSG

Japanese global food company Ajinomoto is one of the major producers of transglutaminase, Bonvie reported. The company also makes MSG and uses the same methods from “its long-running propaganda campaign claiming that MSG is a safe ingredient” to promote its meat glue.

The company advertises both ingredients as “found in food naturally” and promotes them as considered safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Transglutaminase is found naturally in the body, but the natural form has a completely different structure from the microbial transglutaminase additive the company makes and adds to food.

Despite years of research showing the link between transglutaminase and celiac and other digestive disorders, the FDA considers all uses of the enzyme to be Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), Bonvie reported.

The GRAS classification has been widely condemned by food industry watchdog organizations, who say it allows Big Food to add new ingredients to the food supply with almost no federal oversight, according to Consumer Reports.

Companies seeking to have their product granted GRAS status simply submit paperwork, and the status is granted, Bonvie wrote. Ajinomoto has been doing that for over 20 years with its transglutaminase.

Ajinmoto first got the FDA to recognize the product as GRAS in 1998 for use in seafood. The following year, the company expanded the use to hard and soft cheeses, yogurt, and vegetable proteins and meat substitutes.

In 2000, the company notified the FDA it would expand the use to “pasta, bread, pastries, ready-to-eat cereal, pizza dough, and ‘grain mixtures.’” By 2002, it told the FDA it would be using it for “food in general.”

The FDA didn’t object to any of these uses.

The FDA didn’t object — even though Ajinomoto submitted the results of a 30-day toxicity study of the food glue in beagles. Dogs in the study experienced serious side effects — a pituitary gland cyst, lung discoloration and more — but the company said all the effects were unrelated to its transglutaminase.

Bonvie wrote:

“Why they bothered to include a study that shows that their product causes harm to the animals studied can only be understood if you know how Ajinomoto operates. Having done a study, they can later refer to the study that they did as though it proved that their product was ‘safe,’ knowing that no one will challenge them.

“Such claims have great propaganda value.”

Animal rights organization PETA has condemned Ajinomoto’s practice of conducting “horrific tests on dogs.”

Researchers warned that transglutaminase often goes unlabeled in processed foods. Anjinmoto says that it is a “processing aid” rather than an ingredient in most foods that use the product and is therefore exempted from labeling requirements in Europe and the U.S.

The product is also listed as an allowed enzyme in organic food and farming on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances.”

Worse, it is often used in gluten-free bakery products to improve their appearance, even though it causes a reaction in people suffering from celiac disease.

Bonvie said the only way to completely avoid the enzyme is to avoid processed foods altogether.

Given how challenging that can be for most people, she provides a list of foods to avoid, including: low-fat and low-salt dairy products and dairy substitutes, formed meat products like chicken nuggets, expensive cuts of meat sold cheaply, sushi from unreliable sources and farmed fish products, veggie burgers, and cheaply produced pasta.

Leading microbial transglutaminase researcher Lerner told Bonvie he thought the FDA should reconsider its classification of the enzyme as GRAS.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Spain granted 46 contracts to Israeli military firms since Gaza war began: Report

Press TV – April 26, 2025

Despite promising to halt weapons trade with Israel, Spain has reportedly signed 46 contracts worth over €1 billion with Israeli military firms since the Gaza war began.

The revelation came after Spain scrapped a controversial ammunition contract with an Israeli supplier for its Civil Guard, sparking internal divisions in Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s fragile Socialist coalition in recent days.

While Sanchez – one of Europe’s most vocal critics of Israel’s war on Gaza – halted arms transactions with Israel after the regime launched the October 2023 war against Gaza, the Barcelona-based Centre Delàs found that Spain, nevertheless, approved 46 military deals worth €1.045 billion ($1.2B) with Israeli firms.

According to a statement released by the think tank on Friday, which previewed an upcoming report, out of the 46 contracts involving rocket launchers and missiles, 10 have yet to be formalized.

According to the statement, while some contracts involved maintenance or upgrades of existing equipment, others represented new agreements that “could increase the dependence… on an industry essential to perpetrate a genocide.”

“If the government had agreed a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel that included, among other measures, imports and bans on hiring Israeli [military] companies or their subsidiaries, none of these contracts would have been signed,” the statement added.

The report’s co-author, Eduardo Melero, told AFP, “It is clearly demonstrated that the government lied, there was no pledge, that was pure propaganda.”

Melero explained that under Spanish law, protective gear like bulletproof materials qualify as defense equipment, meaning their purchase directly violates the government’s commitment to halt arms trade with the Israeli regime.

On Thursday, a Spanish government source said it had decided to stick to its October 2023 commitment not to provide Israeli companies with arms or revenue flows “and nor will it do so in future.”

Israel criticized Spain’s decision to scrap the bullet supply contract for the Civil Guard, arguing the government was “putting political motives above security needs.”

Last year, Spain urged other EU nations to halt the bloc’s free trade agreement with Israel in response to its continued aggression in the Gaza Strip.

The diplomatic push coincides with escalating Palestinian casualties in Gaza and a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the blockaded territory.

Since the beginning of Israel’s aggression on Gaza, the number of Palestinian fatalities has surpassed 51,350.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Military and Civilian Losses Surge, Questions Linger over Casualty Count

Discrepancies in casualty figures and internal military disagreements underscore the escalating human cost of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza

Palestine Chronicle | April 25, 2025

More than 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed during the last 12 months alone, according to new figures released on Friday by the Israeli Defense Ministry—part of a rising toll that coincides with growing domestic discontent and calls to end the war on Gaza.

Quoting the Ministry, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that 316 soldiers and other members of the security and military establishment have been killed since April 2024. An additional 79 Israeli civilians were also killed in the same period.

However, a significant discrepancy emerged in the same report: the Ministry of Defense now counts nearly 6,000 new bereaved families since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

The term “bereaved families” typically refers to the immediate relatives of individuals killed in military service or in attacks classified as “hostile acts”.

The gap between the number of confirmed military deaths and the number of bereaved families has raised questions about how the figures are calculated—and whether they reflect additional, unreported losses or cumulative deaths from multiple timeframes.

In total, the ministry now records a total of 58,617 bereaved families in Israel, including 5,944 added since the war began.

These revelations come as tensions escalate within Israel’s military establishment.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, sharp disagreements have surfaced between the Israeli Air Force and the Southern Command over the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza.

A senior security official reportedly told the paper that Air Force pilots are dissatisfied with the human cost of strikes on targets chosen by the Southern Command, also stating that civilian death tolls often exceed initial estimates.

Meanwhile, public sentiment continues to shift. In a recent editorial, the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv argued that Israel is “drowning in the Gaza quagmire” and urged the government to reach a deal—even at a steep price.

Yair Golan, leader of Israel’s Labor Party, echoed this call, warning that the country is “still paying a heavy price in blood” and cannot afford an indefinite war. He advocated for a regional political and security agreement to bring the war to an end and return the remaining hostages.

According to Haaretz, 139 prisoners have been returned alive from Gaza, while 38 bodies have been recovered. Another 40 Israelis remain in captivity, not including soldiers or police officers.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Collateral Damage or Calculated Strategy? EU Feels the Heat from America’s Yemen Military Operation

By Henry Kamens – New Eastern Outlook – April 26, 2025

One must stop and ask that if the US was aware that its operations in Yemen would have such limited results, why would it undertake such a risky and expensive operation in the first place?

It is more involved than just opening up the straits of the Red Sea for international shipping, especially for the benefit of Israel or the United States.

In the fog of war and diplomacy, clarity often lies not in what’s said—but in who suffers. Operation Rough Rider may not be officially aimed at the EU, but its strategic outcomes speak louder than policy briefings. Ironically, the name, according to the Atlantic, is very name is meant to evoke Theodore Roosevelt’s vainglorious 1898 cavalry charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.

As European trade chokes and Washington insiders mock their so-called allies, it’s fair to ask whether the Houthis were ever the real target—or merely a convenient excuse. Either way, the operation isn’t working as officially claimed. In the broader Great Game of global power, Yemen may be the battleground, but Europe looks increasingly like the economic casualty. The layers run deep, and we’re only beginning to peel them back.

Is the EU the Real Target of US Military Operations against Yemen?

Firstly, only a fraction, less than 5 percent, of US cargo finds it way though these disputed waters. This begs the question, why then would the US start an operation that has resulted in shutting down transit for all flags, not only those coming and going from Israel?

But motivations are different, and there is no having a small country doing the right thing, and at the right time. Yemen may go down in history as one of the few countries that were morally responsible enough to stand up for human rights, and for having taken a principled stance against genocide in Palestine when the real history is written.

It is possible that the US is attacking Yemen for all practical purposes to cover for its separate agenda, to weaken the EU as its products, imports and exports, need this vital waterway, and as a punitive action for Yemen standing up to genocide in Palestine.

A recent Mondoweiss article titled “Yemen is acting responsibly to stop genocide and the U.S. is bombing them for it” presents a perspective that Yemen’s actions in the Red Sea are legally justified responses to international law violations, especially in terms of the crisis situation in Gaza.

The piece presents a convincing position that Yemen’s blockade of ships destined for Israel through the Red Sea port of Eilat is a lawful measure aimed at preventing further human rights violations and genocide against the Palestinian people, which may soon expand to the West Bank.

Genocide, Geopolitics, and the Price Europe Pays

The Houthis have clearly stated that they will continue retaliating against shipping of any flag that supports Israel and turns a blind eye to blatant genocide. But who is really suffering, other than the US taxpayer?

It should be obvious that this is an expensive operation with high-tech bombs and keeping battle groups in the region does not come cheap, and it weakens the US position should it need to shift to another area of operation, for instance, the South China Sea. Likely, the operation has already exceeded 1 billion dollars for the US, and with little to show for it.

The Houthis are still able to launch attacks; the costs of the mission are mounting, which would require the Pentagon to ask for more funds from Congress. In addition, the US has been forced to transfer a second carrier from the Pacific, in a sign that not all is well with the campaign, a situation likely to nearly double the ongoing costs of the operation. In addition, the Houthis have become quite adept at shooting down US drones.

This may be nothing, small change, in comparison to what the EU is suffering in loses due to sanctions against Russia, US tariffs, and having its supply chains interrupted, and, whereas before only ships coming and going to Israeli ports were subject to attacks, now the Red Sea is a free fire zone, and Lloyds of London is not willing to provide insurance coverage to merchant shipping in the area due to the US operation.

America’s Bombs, Europe’s Losses: The Hidden War Behind Operation Rough Rider

One could even fathom that the US was well aware of this fact, and knew that there would be externalities, and this would hurt another one of its purported friends, and “real rival” who has gotten rich as a result of US trade policies over the years and the American taxpayer’s subsidy to the defense of old Europe.

One has to listen to the news, with a smile and tongue in cheek, how National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who inadvertently added a journalist to a group chat that discussed Yemen strike plans, speaks as he sits with U.S. President Donald Trump during an Ambassadorial Meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House on March 25, 2025 in Washington.

This comes as close to Machiavellian as possible, due to the potential fallout, economic impact, and the fear it spreads to allies, and especially those most economically affected—as in the case of the EU.

While the operation is not explicitly targeted at the European Union (EU), at least openly, it has far-reaching implications for European interests. The Red Sea is a critical maritime route for global trade, including that of EU member states. Houthi attacks on shipping lanes have disrupted international commerce, affecting European economies which are too reliant on these trade routes. ​

Some U.S. officials have expressed concerns about the operation’s focus, suggesting that the benefits may accrue more to European allies than to the United States itself. For instance, a U.S. senator reportedly remarked, “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” highlighting a sentiment that the U.S. is bearing the operational costs while Europe reaps the benefits of secured trade routes.​

The supposedly leaked war plans on the Signal Group Chat, may not have been accidently leaked at all, and are most revealing. To put it simply, it not only exposed U.S. officials discussing airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthis but how they not only distrust Europe but OPENLY despise it.

We can glean how VP JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio weren’t just discussing military strategy, but were ranting about the freeloading of the Europeans, how they would be benefiting more from the planned US strikes, and how it was the Americans who were bailing out the Europeans.

Even Trump shared similar views a month ago, and in a nutshell, he claimed the EU was “formed to screw the United States.” I don’t know if that is politically acceptable from anyone other than Trump but what he is saying hits home with many, as, from Trump’s perspective, the actions of the EU, aside from pushing for a continued war in Ukraine, look like economic warfare cloaked in bureaucracy, where U.S. wealth is siphoned off through unfair trade practices.

Who is Screwing Who?

It is the American taxpayers who are picking up the tap for the Defense of Europe, and even this military operation against Yemen, in theory, should help Europe more but in reality, now no ships are passing, who is screwing who now?

Operation “Rough Rider” may be framed in the guise of protecting international shipping lanes and addressing regional instability, but its true impact—and likely intent—appears far more strategic.

Though publicly justified as a response to Houthi aggression, the disruption of Red Sea trade routes has hit the European Union hardest—not Israel or the United States. Israel had already suffered from earlier Houthi blockades. Whether by design or fortunate consequence, the operation has undermined a key economic rival under the guise of humanitarian aid and security enforcement.

As U.S. political elites openly mock European allies and leak plans with startling candor, the lines between defense, deception, and economic warfare blur further. If the goal was to punish the Houthis, it has failed. But if the deeper aim was to pressure Europe—economically, politically, and symbolically—then Operation Rough Rider may be succeeding more than it appears.

The real question is not why the U.S. is bombing Yemen, but who they really wanted to hit. Behind the façade of humanitarian and free trade concern lies an economic war that’s crippling EU trade and shaking global alliances, and sending messages to China, for good measure, that there is more than one way to get the desired results, though it must be said that the US failure to silence the Houthis, or stop their attacks on shipping, may be sending the wrong message, as I warned earlier.

While the U.S. chips away at a European rival, its struggle against the Houthis exposes the limits of American military power against a determined adversary. In the process, Washington may be weakening its own position. A wider showdown with Iran, despite the bold claims of Trump and Hesgeth about America’s “unrivaled power,” could prove just as costly—and just as ineffective.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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