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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 | , | Leave a 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

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

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

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

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researchers across the country received emails notifying them that their grants, fellowships, or awards had been rescinded; an action that stunned many in the academic community and ignited conversations about the role of the government in regulating research into online speech.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Over 1,300 Easter truce violations by Ukraine – MOD

RT | April 20, 2025

The Russian military has been targeted more than 1,300 times by Ukrainian forces in the less than 24 hours since the declaration of an Easter truce by both sides, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that the pause in hostilities would be in effect from 6:00pm Moscow time on Saturday, and last until midnight on Monday. He instructed the country’s military to stay on high alert and be ready “to respond to any violations or provocations.” Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky answered a few hours later that Kiev’s forces “will act in a reciprocal way.”

The Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that “despite the announcement of the Easter truce,” Ukrainian forces attempted to assault the positions of the Russian military in the areas of the settlements of Sukhaya Balka and Bogatyr in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic overnight. The attacks were repelled, it added.

Kiev’s troops also used 48 plane-type UAVs against the Russian military, including one in Crimea, the statement read.

“The Ukrainian units fired 444 times from cannons and mortars at the positions of our troops, [and] carried out 900 strikes with quadcopter drones,” the ministry said.

There were 12 artillery attacks, 33 UAV strikes, and seven munition drops in the border areas of Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod regions in western Russia, which resulted in “civilian casualties and injuries, as well as damage to civilian facilities,” according to the statement.

“In accordance with the order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces [President Vladimir Putin], all [Russian military] groupings in the area of the special military operation strictly observed the ceasefire regime… and remained at previously occupied lines and positions,” the ministry said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large overseeing investigations of war crimes by Kiev, Rodion Miroshnik, said earlier in the day that Ukraine used artillery and drones to attack residential areas in several cities and towns in Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic as well as in Kherson Region. More reports of violations of the Easter ceasefire by Ukraine have been coming in, he added.

During their phone call on March 18, Putin accepted his US counterpart Donald Trump’s proposal to introduce a 30-day pause on targeting energy facilities. Zelensky also said at the time that his country would abide by the truce. However, the Russian Defense Ministry reported daily violations by Ukraine of the partial ceasefire, which expired last week.

The breaches of the Easter truce suggest that Kiev is unable to stick to any pause in the fighting, Miroshnik said during appearances on Soloviev LIVE TV on Sunday.

“I do not remember a single ceasefire that would be successful and long-term, so I do not yet see any serious grounds to say that Ukraine is capable of doing this [abide by a truce],” the diplomat stressed.

April 20, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Trump Administration Targets $1.4B in Federal “Misinformation” Grants

NIH and State Dept. Order Crackdown on Speech-Policing Programs Funded Under Biden

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2025

It started, as so many federal science fair projects do, with a grant and a vague idea. The University of California, Irvine secured a $683,000 pot of taxpayer gold to study how social media “misinformation” affects vaccine acceptance among black and latino communities. Their plan was to track the followers of so-called “vaccine-hesitant influencers” and feed the data into a visualization tool.

That grant is now dead. Not because it failed, but because the broader disinformation-industrial complex is starting to crack under the weight of its own contradictions.

The UC Irvine project was just one tile in a mosaic of more than 800 federally funded efforts, totaling over $1.4 billion since 2017. All of it was earmarked to combat misinformation, disinformation, and whatever the marketing department decided to call lies [and unapproved views] this week. More than 600 of these contracts were approved during the Biden administration, and it turns out people started noticing that the government was quietly inserting itself into the content moderation business.

Enter Donald J. Trump, stage right, with his first-day executive order accusing the federal government of turning buzzwords like “malinformation” into permission slips for clamping down on speech. The Department of Justice was assigned to dig through the records and figure out just how far the thought policing went.

The public got a good look after The Free Press decided to play matchmaker between obscure federal records and actual journalism. That triggered a glorious round of internal audits, panicked reviews, and in some cases, the rapid self-destruction of programs that suddenly couldn’t remember what they were for.

NIH: From Health Science to Thought Control

The National Institutes of Health got caught mid-sprint. In response to press inquiries, the NIH not only canceled the UC Irvine grant but also torched a $22.4 million payout to UnidosUS, a group whose mission had somehow morphed from Latino advocacy into online speech policing. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya hit the panic button, sending out an “URGENT” internal email ordering a review of all research touching the sacred trinity of mis-dis-mal information.

An NIH spokesperson said the agency is now “taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned” with updated policy priorities. In plain English, they finally read the Constitution and realized they might be setting it on fire.

The State Department’s Digital Hall Monitor Gets Benched

Meanwhile, the State Department has been busy putting its own houseplants on leave. Secretary Marco Rubio, now running Foggy Bottom like it’s a Senate hearing, has suspended dozens of staffers from the Global Engagement Center. He says the agency crossed the line into censorship, which is a bold claim until you look at the receipts. The Center has spent years telling Americans what is or isn’t true, always with the urgency of a substitute teacher discovering TikTok.

The department has begun attaching “no-cost amendments” to existing grants. That’s bureaucrat-speak for telling award recipients to sign a bunch of legal paperwork and swear they aren’t doing anything unconstitutional. A little late for that, but sure.

The Pentagon: Same Game, New Label

At the Pentagon, they’ve decided that the problem is just a branding issue. So the term “disinformation” has been retired in favor of the more patriotic-sounding “countering adversary propaganda and information operations.” A senior Defense Department official explained that the shift brings the program into alignment with the new White House directive. Which is the kind of sentence that usually ends with somebody testifying in front of Congress about data collection gone wrong.

None of this seems to affect Peraton, a defense contractor that holds a $979 million contract to identify threats in coordination with US Central Command. Peraton did not respond to The Free Press’ requests for comment, possibly because they were too busy deciding whether your aunt’s Facebook post counts as hostile influence activity.

April 19, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Microsoft Broadens Always-Watching AI-Powered Recall Tool That Logs and Indexes User Activity

A built-in memory machine disguised as convenience, Recall quietly turns every moment at your keyboard into searchable history.

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2025

Microsoft’s renewed push to roll out Recall, an AI-powered feature in Windows 11 that automatically logs user activity every few seconds, is reigniting deep concerns among those focused on digital privacy and personal security.

Initially paused following a storm of backlash last year, Recall has quietly returned in a preview version of Windows 11 (Build 26100.3902), now available to select testers. The tool takes snapshots of a user’s screen at regular intervals and creates a searchable timeline of everything from app usage to websites visited and documents accessed. While Microsoft pitches this as a convenience tool, privacy advocates see a surveillance mechanism in disguise.

The company claims the tool is safe. It requires users to opt in and enroll in Windows Hello to access stored snapshots. Microsoft describes the feature as a way to “quickly find and get back to any app, website, image, or document just by describing its content.” Users, the company says, can pause recording and choose what is saved.

But these assurances fall flat for those warning about the broader consequences. The fact that Recall is opt-in does not prevent the exposure of data from people who never enabled it. If someone with Recall turned on receives a private photo, message, or sensitive document, it will be silently captured, analyzed, and indexed by the tool, regardless of the sender’s intent or privacy tools used.

The feature’s ability to store and catalog data so comprehensively opens up a host of legal, security, and ethical issues. Lawyers, governments, and spyware operators would gain an unprecedented level of access to a user’s digital life; not through brute force or phishing, but through a built-in tool that essentially creates a time-lapse of computer activity.

For those wary of the increasing creep of AI into daily computing, Recall has become a textbook case. Critics have framed it as part of a larger trend where companies inject AI features into existing platforms not to serve users, but to drive engagement, data collection, or lock-in.

April 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.04.2025

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

Layers Within Bureaucratic Layers

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

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

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

Green Light for Attack Dog Journalism

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

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

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

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

Could State Department’s Move Level the Playing Field?

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

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

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

Fact-Checking Peter Marks’ ‘Face the Nation’ Interview on Autism, Vaccines and Measles

By Arthur Weinstein | The Defender | April 17, 2025

Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., hasn’t changed the opinions that put him at odds with U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and led to his recent resignation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Marks appeared April 13 on CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” in a wide-ranging interview covering vaccine safety, autism, the Texas measles cases and Kennedy.

When Marks resigned under pressure on March 28 from his role as director of the FDA department responsible for authorizing vaccines, he called out Kennedy in his resignation letter. “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies,” Marks wrote.

While Marks avoided using such inflammatory language on “Face the Nation,” the former FDA vaccines regulator did criticize Kennedy, suggesting he had hired a research executive with insufficient credentials, made personnel cuts that would hurt public health and that the results of a landmark autism study announced by Kennedy had in effect already been predetermined.

“What I think we can expect is the expected: that there will be an association determined between vaccines and autism, because it’s already been determined,” Marks said.

During the interview, Marks made several misleading and/or factually inaccurate statements, which we outline here.

Marks and Brennan falsely attributed children’s deaths to measles

Brennan referred to the death of 8-year-old Daisy Hildebrand on April 3 as “the death of a second unvaccinated child in Texas due to measles,” implying the disease caused both deaths.

Dr. Pierre Kory, who analyzed Daisy’s medical records for CHD.TV, disputed Texas health authorities’ statement that she died from “measles pulmonary failure.” He said records indicate she died from acute respiratory distress “secondary to hospital-acquired pneumonia,” which she likely developed during a previous hospital stay.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., Children’s Health Defense (CHD) chief scientific officer, also reviewed the records and spoke with both of Daisy’s parents. He noted Daisy’s illness and treatment history were complicated during the weeks before her death.

Daisy’s father, Peter Hildebrand, told CHD.TV this week that measles is “absolutely not” what caused his daughter’s death.

“That last doctor we had, he just kept going on and on about measles this and measles that. He was trying to blame everything on the measles … They were so focused on the measles that they didn’t think about testing for anything else, and that is why my daughter is dead today.”

In March, a 6-year-old child in West Texas died after developing pneumonia while recovering from measles. The two deaths have fueled media coverage of a “deadly measles outbreak” in Texas and New Mexico, even though both deaths were attributable to other causes.

Marks cited questionable measles death rate

Marks talked at length about vaccine safety and efficacy, especially the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine.

“You want to get your child vaccinated against measles so that they don’t have a one-in-a-thousand chance of dying from measles if they contract it,” Marks said.

That oft-cited 1-in-1,000 statistic for measles deaths comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A CDC webpage updated in May 2024 claims “1 to 3 of every 1,000 children infected with measles will die from respiratory and neurologic complications.”

However, other research and media reports — and even the CDC itself — contradict that figure. On its website, the CDC reports that before the first measles vaccine was developed in 1963, “It is estimated 3 to 4 million people in the United States were infected each year,” resulting in 400 to 500 deaths.

Depending on which figures one uses, that results in a death rate of somewhere between 1 in 6,000 and 1 in 10,000 cases.

A 1994 study by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) that reviewed pre-vaccine era data in industrialized countries also found the death rate for measles to be just over 1 per 10,000 cases.

Marks understated MMR vaccine risks

Marks said that unvaccinated children are at serious risk from measles, and he endorsed vaccine safety. He said:

“There’s no reason to put your child at that risk, because the vaccine does not cause death, it does not cause encephalitis and it does not cause autism. So a vaccine that is safe, yes, occasionally kids get fevers. If you don’t keep the fevers down, about 15 in 100,000 will get a convulsion that happens once it goes away. … So, very safe vaccine that is going to potentially protect your child and save its life.”

That statement ignores evidence of the risks associated with the measles vaccine. Between 2000 and 2024, nine measles-related deaths were reported to the CDC. During the same period, 141 deaths following MMR or MMRV vaccination in the U.S. were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). That suggests the MMR vaccine can be deadlier than measles.

The MMR vaccine is also associated with serious health risks. The package insert for Merck’s MMRII states, “M-M-R II vaccine has not been evaluated for carcinogenic or mutagenic potential or impairment of fertility.”

Marks mischaracterized status and credentials of experienced vaccine researcher

Brennan mentioned a recent report by The Washington Post that researcher David Geier has been hired to lead Kennedy’s autism study. Geier’s appointment has not been confirmed. Yet the media questioned his credentials.

Marks repeated the Post’s mischaracterization of Geier’s credentials.

“He’s to the best of my knowledge, he’s not had any training after college in any of the sciences that we value here,” Marks said.

Geier is an expert on thimerosal — a mercury-based preservative used as an adjuvant in vaccines — and on the connections between toxic exposures and autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

The researcher is also the lead or second author of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles on vaccine safety.

Marks muddled research on environment versus genetics autism debate

As Brennan asked Marks about Kennedy’s autism study, she touched on the HHS secretary’s belief that environmental factors, not genetics, have sparked the rise of the condition.

Kennedy again voiced that opinion on Wednesday during a news conference, saying, “Genes do not cause epidemics.”

“Is there scientific evidence ruling out genetics as a cause of ASD?” Brennan asked Marks, referring to autism spectrum disorder.

”There’s no scientific evidence ruling out genetics. In fact, there’s data that have been published that say that genetics may contribute to autism. There are obviously data … that suggest that perhaps environmental factors may, but one has to be incredibly careful … about making associations between environmental factors and autism.”

The converse of Marks’ statement is also true; there’s no scientific evidence ruling out environmental factors. Kennedy said Wednesday that while some people may be genetically more susceptible to autism, it takes an environmental exposure to trigger the condition.

“This epidemic denial has become a feature in the mainstream media, and it’s based on an industry canard,” Kennedy said. “Obviously, there are people who don’t want us to look at environmental exposures.”

Brennan also pointed out to Marks that Kennedy appeared on Fox News Wednesday, “and dismissed 14 studies that have shown no link between autism and vaccines.”

A scientific review published Jan. 10 on Preprints.org found the CDC’s “vaccines do not cause autism” stance is based on limited evidence that insufficiently supports that broad claim.

Hooker, one of the co-authors of the review, told The Defender about the limited research on the topic.

“The truth is that CDC has never studied the connection between vaccines and autism except for one vaccine, MMR, and one vaccine component, thimerosal,” Hooker said.

Kennedy’s stance on the environment versus genetics debate has been clear, and he reiterated it Wednesday: He questioned why the National Institutes of Health spends 10 to 20 times more researching genetic causes instead of possible environmental triggers.

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 17, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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