Skripal poisoning victim disputed UK narrative, official inquiry reveals
By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · January 13, 2025
An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.
On March 8, 2018, just four days after being hospitalized for having allegedly been contaminated with novichok, which is said to be the world’s deadliest military grade nerve agent, Yulia Skripal was roused from her coma. Upon waking up, she communicated to an intensive care consultant that she and her father, the turncoat former Russian spy, Sergei, had been “sprayed” with an uncertain substance while dining at a restaurant, before their collapse — and not at their home, as claimed by the UK.
The revelation, which runs completely contrary to widespread reports that Yulia spent almost a month in critical condition before regaining consciousness, stems from recently-disclosed transcripts of an official British inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who supposedly died after having inhaled novichok from a sealed perfume bottle.
For several years, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated, and connived to prevent an inquest into the Sturgess case, and perhaps now it is clear why.
According to the British government, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by two GRU assassins who snuck into Britain using false identities with Russian-produced Novichok, which was supposedly smeared on the doorknob of Sergei’s MI6-furnished home in Salisbury. The Skripals ultimately survived, but in the intervening years, this story has been repeatedly retold by legacy media outlets to hype up the threat Russia poses to the British public.
That narrative is substantially undermined by the recent revelation that Yulia briefly awoke from her coma and countered the official story through a form of visual communication.
The Sturgess inquiry also revealed that after Yulia awoke from her coma and interacted with a doctor, high-ranking officials at Salisbury hospital forbade the healthcare professional from divulging details of his interchange with Yulia with anyone or having any further contact with the Skripals, and warned him not to discuss the poisoning case with anyone.
The Russian government’s supposed involvement in the Salisbury poisoning has proven pivotal in igniting a new Cold War. Moscow was universally depicted as a dastardly pariah in the media, precipitating a British-instigated expulsion of Russian diplomats, dramatically escalating a conflict that eventually erupted in the Ukraine proxy war.
Even if Yulia’s hospital bed claims were inaccurate, they still undermine the British government’s official narrative, while raising serious questions about which substance was used to poison the Skripals, and who was actually responsible. The public is also left to ponder whether the silencing of the healthcare professional who received Yulia’s testimony resulted from state pressure on Salisbury hospital.
Meanwhile, the Dawn Sturgess investigation has closely emulated past British government coverup inquiries, such as the questionable 2016 probe into FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko’s strange death a decade before. In an effort to validate the preordained conclusion that Sturgess was poisoned with the same Novichok that purportedly nearly killed the Skripals almost ten miles away, the inquiry’s chair and counsels have routinely relied on stultifying illogic, highly gymnastic legalistic arguments, speculative claims, and anonymous security and intelligence personnel testimony, while ignoring or outright dismissing inconvenient evidence.
Skripals ‘sprayed’ with poison at restaurant?
Over six weeks from late October 2024, a formal inquiry probed the July 2018 death of Dawn Sturgess resulting from alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning. The investigation had been rigged to prevent the truth about that tragic incident from reaching the public, and to to suppress inconvenient details about the poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia three months earlier. However, the inquiry nonetheless yielded a number of important findings.
That there has been any official investigation into the death of Dawn Sturgess — even a flagrant whitewash — is miraculous. Under English law, a coroner’s inquest is typically completed within six to nine months of an individual’s passing. But as independent journalist John Helmer has exhaustively documented, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated and connived to prevent an inquest. This was after an inquest was opened, then immediately adjourned pending further police investigations, on the very same day in July 2018.
After heavy legal tussling between British authorities and Sturgess’ grieving family, British authorities finally authorized a public inquiry in November 2021, with no date for commencement given. This was a highly suspect maneuver. Inquests are legally-mandated to establish how, when and why someone died, and the wider circumstances surrounding it. They have sweeping powers to subpoena documents and witnesses, evidence is given under oath, and absolutely any member of the public, the British government, and its national security apparatus can be called to testify.
Previous high-profile inquests have shed important light on potential MI6 assassinations, and exposed major scandals involving British police.
By contrast, as one law firm explained, inquiries are little more than “highly emotive” public relations exercises, intended to “attract large scale media coverage”. Their terms — who can be interviewed and what evidence will be considered — are sharply limited by direct government decree, and they have no power to compel anyone or anything to turn over evidence.
That authorities exerted so much energy to avoid holding an inquest before opting for a toothless PR stunt should be an obvious source of concern. While some testimony was publicly broadcast and transcribed, the BBC reports that many inquiry sessions were held in secret, with some witnesses’ “names, faces and even voices hidden.” Meanwhile, “only three accredited journalists” were allowed to report directly on proceedings, prohibited from using any electronic devices throughout, and reduced to making notes on whatever was said using “old fashioned pen and paper.”
Still, despite the veil of obfuscation, important public testimony emerged during the inquiry’s six-week-long span. It was Dr Stephen Cockroft, an intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals upon their admission to hospital, who revealed Yulia had awoken after just four days. Cockroft told the inquiry he “never thought [Yulia] would be capable of having a conversation” again, having “suffered a catastrophic brain damage.”
However, he noted that she seemed mentally competent, nodding and crying in response to questions he asked, while looking “absolutely terrified.”
He quizzed her about what happened prior to her collapse, to which she responded with a series of blinks — .
Among Dr Cockroft’s queries was whether she and her father were “sprayed” with a substance at a restaurant called Zizzi. This was where Yulia dined with Sergei on the afternoon of March 4 2018. She responded in the affirmative to the doctor’s question.
When asked if she knew who was responsible for spraying her, Yulia burst into hysterical tears. At that point, Cockroft stopped pushing his subject for answers.
Despite Yulia’s stunning responses, a senior British counter-terror police forensics expert who participated in the probe of the Skripals’ poisoning, Keith Asman, apparently decided not to interview her at all, and attached no credibility to her post-coma declarations.
During his inquiry testimony, Asman acknowledged he was informed that Yulia had indicated Zizzi was the site of her poisoning. But the revelation ultimately had zero bearing on his team’s probe. This, they said, was due to forensic investigators finding relatively “low-level” traces of Novichok at the restaurant compared to other sites, and suspicions Yulia may have “wittingly or unwittingly been involved” in the incident that landed her and her father in hospital.
Asman claimed his misgivings about Yulia were due to her crying “when asked who did it” by Dr Cockroft. “I did wonder… if she was crying because she felt maybe she had been identified,” he claimed. This doubt, combined with the Skripals having allegedly “eaten and drank different things” at Zizzi, led British police forensic masterminds to conclude it was “unlikely one particular item of food or drink was the source of the contamination,” and they therefore formally ruled out the restaurant as the site of their poisoning.
Shockingly, when inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Salisbury on March 21 2018 to investigate the incident, the Skripals were physically prevented from speaking to them. The inquiry has revealed that on the very same day the OPCW inspectors arrived, Skripals’ doctors unilaterally decided to simultaneously tracheotomize both him and his daughter. Yulia’s tracheostomy tube was removed March 27, two days after OPCW representatives left. Sergei had to wait until April 5 for his tube to be dislodged.
Hospital whistleblower silenced
Another deeply strange detail divulged by Dr. Cockroft was that his interaction with Yulia apparently caused significant consternation at the highest levels of Salisbury hospital. Following this incident, Dr. Christine Blanchard, the institution’s then-medical director, not only removed him from the intensive care rota, but “warned” him he “should not discuss any aspect of the poisoning with colleagues… or other individuals.” Cockroft was outright “forbidden to discuss any aspect of the presentation, recognition or initial treatment of Yulia or Sergei Skripal,” even at regular ICU hospital meetings.
Asked by inquiry counsel if Blanchard believed it hadn’t “been wise” for him to speak to Yulia “about these matters,” Cockroft concurred, though he said that based on his 24-year-long career in healthcare, he didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong. “I always talk to my patients… even when I think they can’t hear me,” he explained, opining, “the worst intensive care doctors… ignore the patients.” Describing the attitude of Dr Blanchard, who had no experience of working in intensive care, as “a little difficult,” he stated:
“I genuinely was concerned that if [Yulia] had some knowledge that somebody had assaulted them… that might be something she would be concerned about. I do feel this was a lost opportunity to discuss with my colleagues what I observed in those first few hours and how I recognized that the Skripals had been poisoned.”
“If [my colleagues] were having a conversation [about the Skripals] they would stop talking about it in front of me,” Cockroft revealed, adding: “it was odd. It was very odd.”
The inquiry made very little of Cockroft’s testimony on this point. Still, his declarations suggest a code of omertà was imposed by the British state around the facts of the Salisbury incident. Whether pressure of some kind was brought to bear on Salisbury hospital to prevent Cockroft’s interactions with Yulia emerging publicly may never be known.
However, it is clear the British government has been committed to preventing inconvenient facts about Salisbury from ever entering the public domain. The narrative of Russian culpability for the Skripals’ poisoning had to be sustained, even before a clear motive was established, perpetrators were identified, or other elementary facts were ascertained.
In the days immediately after the poisoning, a substantial slice of the British public expressed serious doubts about Moscow’s responsibility for the purported poisoning among Britons, and even entertained the possibility that the MI6 had carried out the operation. Battering down that skepticism has apparently necessitated some extreme measures at every level.
Hungarian think tank calls into question Transparency International report on corruption under Orbán
Remix News | January 16, 2025
The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), published each year by Transparency International, which is partly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, has come under fire by a local think tank in Budapest, the Nézőpont Institute, reports Mandiner.
The ranking, used as a basis for imposing sanctions on and reports condemning countries around the world, is completely contrary to the EU’s official survey, according to Nézőpont Institute’s analysis, which can be viewed in full on its website.
Aside from the Eurobarometer research being based on a representative survey, while the Transparency index is not, the center claims that the CPI is biased, based solely on the opinions of actors critical of the Hungarian government. The 2023 CPI ranked Hungary 76th overall and last in the EU in terms of its level of corruption. The Eurobarometer survey ranks Hungary seventh in the EU in terms of the perception of the government’s fight against corruption in the country.
The group claims that Transparency does not actually measure the level of corruption, but rather evaluates the subjective opinions of certain experts. It also bases its surveys on research by other organizations, which Nézőpont says, often refer back to the Transparency index.
Going even further, Nézőpont claims that the least corrupt countries on Transparency’s list fund its activities, with Sámuel Ágoston Mráz, head of the Nézőpont Institute, asking if the funding provided is a form of “protection money.”
One example cited is Germany, the ninth least corrupt country in the world, home to the Cum-Ex tax fraud scandal where a dividend payment of listed companies was illegally claimed back by the parties involved, a scandal that also reportedly involves the then mayor of Hamburg and current chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz. According to the allegations, this scheme could have damaged taxpayers across Europe by up to $66 billion. Scholz, claims Nézőpont, did not prevent the suspicious Warburg Bank from issuing a tax refund of €47 million, which the bank had to repay after the scandal broke out. “The legislative body’s investigative committee questioned Olaf Scholz on several occasions regarding the matter,” the analysis reads.
The Nézőpont Institute calls on all public figures, Hungarian and foreign, to refrain from referring to Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in the future, Mráz said at a press conference on Jan. 15.
New Book – LONG LIVE NOVICHOK!
By John Helmer • Unz Review • January 14, 2025
Novichok is the notorious warfighting poison which has killed no one but fooled everyone.
At least that’s how British Government officials, their scientists, chemical warfighters, policemen, media reporters, and trailing after them all, their judges, intend the story to be told.
Theirs is the story of the assassination, ordered by President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and attempted on March 4, 2018, by two military officers tracked and filmed to every location but not the murder scene; with a weapon not detected at the scene nor in the blood streams and bodily tissues of their murder targets.
The victims, Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal, have been made to disappear and are either incommunicado in prison or dead. The only direct testimony which has been recorded voluntarily in front of witnesses was given by Yulia Skripal, in hospital four days after the attack, when she identified the assassination attempt as having been carried out with poison spray by an attacker who was not Russian, just minutes before she and her father collapsed. She meant the poison was British; the assassin British.
The motive for the Novichok crime turns out to be hearsay by British government against the Russian government.
In political and military terms, the Novichok poison story is propaganda between enemies at war. Judgement of what happened to the Skripals is a weapon of this war. And so it has turned out that there has been no court trial or test of the Novichok narrative, according to British law. Instead, there has been a proceeding which looked like a court trial but wasn’t; in which the Skripals were represented by police interrogators and by lawyers who said nothing; presided over by a judge who wasn’t.
In other words, a show trial in a time of war.
The truth of what happened has no military or political value, certainly not to the prosecuting British side; not much to the defending Russian side. But as the evidence has surfaced piecemeal over the past five years since the first investigation was published in February 2020 as Skripal in Prison, the truth reveals that Novichok was ineffective as a poison, but very successful as a deception operation by the British. They reversed the hands of the assassin, planted a British-made chemical weapon to look like a Russian one; invented the death of bystander Dawn Sturgess to substitute for Sergei and Yulia Skripal who didn’t die; and suppressed the evidence of what had happened – witnesses, videotapes, toxicology, autopsy records.
Not quite all the evidence, however. This book has been written to reveal new evidence to conclude that Sergei Skripal was a triple agent attempting to return to Russia. His rescue, the exfiltration operation by the Russian military intelligence organisation (GRU), used decoys to mislead the British surveillance and conceal the escape plan. But the British anticipated and decided to act preemptively, attacking both Skripals, reversing culpability, and convicting the Russians for the British crime.
Not one of the legal, medical, police, or government officials engaged in the Novichok story — neither the Skripal nor the Sturgess parts of the narrative — answered the many questions put to them during the seven-year course of the case and of this book. The three lawyers purportedly engaged to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal were the most silentious of all; their names don’t warrant repeating. Not much better were the lawyers representing Dawn Sturgess’s family’s money claim, especially their lead counsel Michael Mansfield.
This blanket of misrepresentation, evasion, and silence which they have thrown over themselves and over the evidence in the case is proof of the intention to deceive. So determined is this intention, the deceivers don’t realize how preposterous are the results. The colour of Novichok, for example, reported as a state secret in Chapter 74.
A direct request to researchers publishing on A-234 around the world has revealed that the Iranians who reported synthesizing the chemical agent in 2016, reply that it is colourless. The British, Americans, Czechs, and Koreans who have done the same laboratory work, refuse to answer. And yet, despite all the preliminary vetting by British intelligence agents, years of double-checking by British officials, and months of closed-door sessions and redactions ordered by Lord Hughes, chairman of the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, the truth managed to slip out. A man named Josep Vivas, a Spaniard living in Barcelona, was the unintended, unguarded source.
Vivas was a vice president of Puig, the company which manufactures and sells the bottled perfume which in the British Novichok story has been turned into the Russian murder weapon. “I am making this statement,” Vivas signed for the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry on February 12, 2024, “in addition to a letter I provided on 27 July 2018. Prior to me writing and signing that letter, I was shown a number of images of a small perfume bottle branded ‘Nina Ricci Premier Jour Perfume’. The images I viewed were under police exhibit reference [redaction tagged VN551/10]. I was shown further images of a perfume box labelled as ‘Premier Jour Nina Ricci’. This was under police exhibit reference [redaction tagged VN521/3]. On Friday 2nd February 2024, I was again shown the images of [redaction tagged VN551/10] and [redaction tagged VN521/3] before signing this statement and I set out my observations on them below.”
The photographs of the poison bottle shown in the public hearing on November 28, 2024, were censored — a large black mark was pasted across the bottle contents. But British agents had shown Vivas the photographs just days after July 11, 2018, when the bottle was purportedly discovered at the Sturgess crime scene. Vivas was shown the photographs again more than five years later, just before he testified before Hughes. He saw the bottle without the black mark.
Censored police photograph of Novichok poison weapon, a perfume atomizer bottle, allegedly found on a kitchen bench at Rowley-Sturgess home eleven days after Sturgess and Rowley were hospitalized. The black mark conceals the British Government’s lie.
The key observation Vivas confirmed he had seen on both occasions was this: “The liquid inside the bottle. Premier Jour perfume is pale pink, and from the photos I observe that the liquid contained in the bottle is yellow.”
If the perfume is pink; if Novichok is colourless; if the liquid in the murder weapon was yellow, then the liquid in the murder weapon cannot have been Novichok. QED — Quod erat demonstrandum, as the ancient lawyers and logicians used to conclude their proofs. The colour yellow was a British fabrication; the black mark was British camouflage. The secret slipped out into the open by British mistake.
From whom are the British keeping their secret? Can it be the Russians who, according to the official Novichok narrative, have made, stored, and used it against the Skripals, but have yet to learn what colour it is?
The Russian handling of the Skripal affair is a different story. It has been defensive on the evidence claimed by the British government; ineffective in breaking the silence imposed on the Skripals.
These outcomes were inevitable once it is concluded, in retrospect, that Sergei Skripal was attacked to prevent his return to Moscow as a triple agent; and that the Russian military operation to rescue him had been thwarted by the British.
These two truths, if published officially, leaked to the press, or reported in independent investigations, stood little chance of being believed outside Russia. More certainly, official Russian admission of the two truths, if it had been made, would have condemned the Skripals to the death that was attempted by the British against them on March 4, 2018.
Less explicable is the outcome that for seven years now, Russian press reporting of the case has ignored the investigative reporting published in English in the UK and US, and then the evidence revealed during the Hughes hearings in London between October and December 2024. This is an understandable result of the line dictated by the Kremlin’s and Foreign Ministry’s media departments for protecting the lives of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, and for salvaging what remained of Anglo-Russian relations on the road to war in the Ukraine.
In the chapters to follow, President Putin’s and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s statements can be examined in the political context and news sequence in which they were made.
From the beginning, the Russian Embassy in London issued formal requests for consular access to the Skripals and protest notes when this was denied by the Foreign Office. In reply to British stonewalling on access and propagandizing the allegations against the Russian government, the Embassy issued a detailed summary of every action Russian officials had taken and the statements they made.
The one option the Embassy in London did not take was to engage British lawyers to obtain a hearing and an order of habeas corpus in the High Court to compel the appearance of the Skripals to testify for themselves. This option was obvious to the Embassy and lawyers in London between March 21, 2018, when the Home Office went to the court for legal authority to allow blood testing of the Skripals, and April 9, when Salisbury District Hospital announced that Yulia Skripal had been released; and then on May 18 when Sergei Skripal was also discharged from hospital.
During this period it was reported that Yulia was able to telephone her cousin Viktoria in Russia. Years later, as Chapters 67, 71, and 73 reveal, it became clear in retrospect that Yulia had recovered consciousness in hospital much earlier than the hospital allowed to be known, and that doctors had then forcibly sedated her. At the time the Russian Embassy was announcing it “questioned the authenticity” of the statements issued by the London police and media on Yulia’s behalf. The Embassy was right; it was not believed.
It is possible the Embassy did attempt to engage barristers to go to court for a habeas corpus hearing for the Skripals, but learned that no one would take the case. At the time I made an independent request for this engagement to the well-known human rights barristers in London; the outcome was that none agreed to represent the Skripals. The refusals were point-blank – no one would give a reason.
British officials anticipated that an effort might succeed in forcing a High Court hearing, however. So, on May 24, 2018, a one minute fifty-five second speech by Yulia Skripal was presented on video in which she spoke from a script and appeared to sign a statement. Referring to “offers of assistance from the Russian Embassy,” she claimed “at the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services.” Skripal’s Russian text spoke of “help” from the Russian Embassy: “now I don’t want and [I am] not ready to use it.”
“Obviously, Yulia was reading a pre-written text,” the Russian Embassy responded publicly. “[This] was a translation from English and had been initially written by a native English-speaker… With all respect for Yulia’s privacy and security, this video does not discharge the UK authorities from their obligations under Consular Conventions.”
Excerpted frames from Yulia Skripal’s brief videotaped appearance at a US nuclear bomber base in England on May 2018; watch the tape in full here.
By subtle signals, Skripal indicated she was being made to speak and to sign under duress. Two script pages were visible on a side table during the filming; the one on top Skripal was filmed signing. The two papers were in a different handwriting from Skripal’s signature and in a different pen from the pen she is seen to use. On the top page, apparently the Russian language text, Skripal added words after her signature; these are her first and family names in Russian, but without her patronymic, as Russians usually record their names in official documents. The handwriting of that name and the handwriting of the Russian statement are not the same. Nor the pen and ink used. Ten weeks earlier, on March 8, 2018, Yulia had woken from a coma in hospital and signaled to the doctor at her bedside that she had been attacked by the British, not by the Russians. Read this evidence for the first time in the new book.
At first, Putin he seemed unprepared on the facts of the case – the Russian facts – and unprepared for the British government’s propaganda blitz.
The president cannot have been unprepared. On March 15, 2018, the Kremlin revealed that at a Security Council meeting on that day Putin was briefed by the Foreign and Defense Ministers and the intelligence chiefs. “While talking about international affairs,” the official communiqué said, “the Council members held an in-depth discussion on Russia-UK relations against the backdrop of Sergei Skripal’s case. They expressed grave concern over the destructive and provocative position of the British side.”
The line which Putin and his advisers decided at that meeting they planned to follow in public was revealed by Putin three days later at a press conference. He tried to feign ignorance himself, and then dissimulated on the weapon, the motive, and the opportunity. “Regarding the tragedy you have mentioned,” Putin told reporters, “I learned about it from the media. The first thing that comes to mind is that, had it been a warfare agent, the victims would have died immediately. It is an obvious fact which must be taken into account. This is first.”
“The second is that Russia does not have such chemical agents. We destroyed all our chemical weapons, and international observers monitored the destruction process. Moreover, we were the first to do this, unlike some of our partners who promised to destroy their chemical weapons but have not done so to this day, regrettably. Therefore, we are ready for cooperation, as we said immediately. We are ready to take part in any investigations necessary, provided the other side wants this too. We do not see their interest so far, but we have not removed the possibility of cooperation on this matter from the agenda.”
“As for the overall situation, I believe that any reasonable person can see that this is total nonsense. It is unthinkable that anyone on Russia would do such a thing ahead of the presidential election and the FIFA World Cup. Absolutely unthinkable. However, we are ready for cooperation despite the above things. We are ready to discuss any issues and to deal with any problems.”
On April 4, 2018, he said: “We do not expect anything other than for common sense to ultimately prevail and for international relations not to be damaged the way we have seen recently. This goes not only for this case, the attempt on Skripal’s life. This has to do with other aspects of international relations as well. We should stay within the framework of healthy political processes based on fundamental norms of international law, and then the situation in the world will become more stable and predictable.”
On May 18, at a news conference following a meeting with then-Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, Putin said: “Now regarding Mr Skripal. Yes, I also heard from the media today that he has been released from hospital. We wish him the best of health, we are really very happy. I have several considerations in this respect. First. I think if a combat-grade nerve agent had been used, as claimed by our British colleagues, the man would have died on the spot. A nerve agent is so powerful that a person dies instantly or within several seconds or minutes. Fortunately, he is alive, he got well, was released from hospital and I hope he will live a healthy and safe life.”
“As to the investigation, on our part we offered every assistance in the investigation to our British partners on a number of occasions, and asked for access to this investigation. There has been no response so far. Our proposals remain in place.”
Putin was accusing the British government of a cover-up, but softly, by innuendo. “The most objective explanation to what happened”, he said on May 25, “can be only provided as a result of a thorough, unbiased and joint – the latter is very important – investigation. We proposed working on it together from the very beginning, but as you know, the British side rejected our offer and investigated the incident alone. It is also a fact, as this was announced at the very beginning, that the victims were poisoned – if it was a poisoning – with a chemical warfare agent. I have spoken about this before, but I will say again that although I am not an expert on chemical warfare agents, I can imagine that the use of such agents should result in the almost instantaneous death of the victims. Thank God, nothing like this happened in the case of the Skripals, and that Skripal himself and his daughter are alive, have been discharged from hospital and, as we have seen on television, his daughter looks quite well. Thank God, they are alive and healthy.”
“Therefore, I believe it would be wrong to say that it was a chemical warfare agent. If so, everything the British side has said can be called into question. How can we settle this? We should either conduct a comprehensive and objective joint investigation, or stop talking about it because it will only worsen our relations.”
If Putin was trying to ameliorate these relations with London, he tried, six months later, to appear to be condemning Sergei Skripal, burying both him and the reciprocal espionage the two governments were conducting against each other. Was Putin calculating that if the British had tried but failed to kill both Skripals, he might yet save their lives? Understandably, no Russian could acknowledge this — certainly not then and not now.
In a Moscow forum in October 2018, six months after the Salisbury incidents, Putin responded to questions from a US journalist. “As regards the Skripals and all that, this latest spy scandal is being artificially inflated. I have seen some media outlets and your colleagues push the idea that Skripal is almost a human rights activist. But he is just a spy, a traitor to the motherland. There is such a term, a ‘traitor to the motherland,’ and that’s what he is. Imagine you are a citizen of a country, and suddenly somebody comes along who betrays your country. How would you, or anybody present here, a representative of any country, feel about such a person? He is scum, that’s all. But a whole information campaign has been deployed around it.”
“I think it will come to an end, I hope it will, and the sooner the better. We have repeatedly told our colleagues to show us the documents. We will see what can be done and conduct an investigation. We probably have an agreement with the UK on assistance in criminal cases that outlines the procedure. Well, submit the documents to the Prosecutor General’s Office as required. We will see what actually happened there. The fuss between security services did not start yesterday. As you know, espionage, just like prostitution, is one of the most ‘important’ jobs in the world. So what? Nobody shut it down and nobody can shut it down yet.”
“[Question] Ryan Chilcote: Espionage aside, I think there are two other issues. One is the use of chemical weapons, and let’s not forget that in addition to the Skripal family being affected in that attack, there was also a homeless person [Dawn Sturgess] who was killed when they came in contact with the nerve agent Novichok.”
“[Answer] Vladimir Putin: Listen, since we are talking about poisoning Skripal, are you saying that we also poisoned a homeless person there? Sometimes I look at what is happening around this case and it amazes me. Some guys came to England and started poisoning homeless people. Such nonsense. What is this all about? Are they working for cleaning services? Nobody wanted to poison… This Skripal is a traitor, as I said. He was caught and punished. He spent a total of five years in prison. We released him. That’s it. He left. He continued to cooperate with and consult some security services. So what? What are we talking about right now? Oil, gas or espionage? What is your question? Let’s move on to the other oldest profession and discuss the latest developments in that business. (Laughter.)”
The British Prime Minister Theresa May and her ambitious rival, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, ignored Putin’s request to put the Skripal affair aside. Instead, they escalated, publishing photographs of police and intelligence agency surveillance of the Russian military officers who were then charged with the attempted Novichok murder. Putin was put on the defensive again.
The British inventors of Novichok – left to right — Alexander Younger, head of MI6, and Mark Sedwill, National Security Advisor and Cabinet Secretary, created the Novichok plot to prevent Sergei Skripal returning to Moscow and to persuade Prime Minister Theresa May, then her successor Boris Johnson, to escalate their war against Russia.
On September 12, 2018 – seven days after the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service announced their charges against Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – Putin was asked who were they were. “Either they deliberately poked their faces towards the camera in order to be photographed, or they are completely unprofessional to have their images captured by all the cameras. Perhaps you have a third theory?”
“Vladimir Putin: Actually, we have, of course, taken a look at these people. We already know who they are, and we have located them. I hope they will show up and tell everyone about themselves. This would be better for everyone. I assure you that there is nothing special or criminal here. We will see shortly.”
“Sergei Brilyov: Are they civilians?”
“Vladimir Putin: Of course, they are civilians.”
“Sergei Brilyov: All right, we will wait.”
“Vladimir Putin: I would like to address them, so they can hear us today. Let them come to a media outlet and tell everything.”
The results followed swiftly – an interview by Russia Today (RT), the state media agency, with the two accused Russians pretending to have been innocent tourists; then British and US intelligence data leaked through the Bellingcat organization. These propaganda episodes can be followed in Part I of the book. Putin decided not to add fuel to this fire; he ignored questions about the Skripal case for seven months, until June of 2019.
“Do you think that there is a possibility of some improvement in Anglo-Russian relations,” he was asked by the editor of the Financial Times of London on June 27, 2019, “– and that we can move on from some of these issues that are obviously of great sensitivity, like the Skripal affair?”
“As a matter of fact,” Putin answered, “treason is the gravest crime possible and traitors must be punished. I am not saying that the Salisbury incident is the way to do it. Not at all. But traitors must be punished. This gentleman, Skripal, had already been punished. He was arrested, sentenced and then served time in prison. He received his punishment. For that matter, he was off the radar. Why would anybody be interested in him? He got punished. He was detained, arrested, sentenced and then spent five years in prison. Then he was released and that was it. As concerns treason, of course, it must be punishable. It is the most despicable crime that one can imagine.”
The president had promoted Skripal from “scum” who deserved his fate to “gentleman” who had been punished enough. Putin’s purpose was to propose again to the British that they set aside the Novichok narrative and opt instead for improving the bilateral relationship at the government level, and sticking to business as usual; by that Putin meant oligarch business.
“Listen, all this fuss about spies and counter-spies, it is not worth serious interstate relations. This spy story, as we say, it is not worth five kopecks. Or even five pounds, for that matter. And the issues concerning interstate relations, they are measured in billions and the fate of millions of people. How can we compare one with the other? The list of accusations and allegations against one another could go on and on. They say, ‘You poisoned the Skripals.’ Firstly, this must be proved.”
“Secondly, the average person listens and says, ‘Who are these Skripals?’ And it turns out that Skripal was engaged in espionage against us [Russia]. So this person asks the next question, ‘Why did you spy on us using Skripal? Maybe you should not have done that?’ You know, these questions are infinite. We need to just leave it alone and let security agencies deal with it. But we know that businesses in the United Kingdom (by the way, I had a meeting with our British colleagues in this same room), they want to work with us, they are working with us and intend to continue doing so. And we support this intent.”
“I think that Mrs May, despite her resignation, could not help but be concerned that these spy scandals made our relations reach a deadlock so we could not develop our ties normally and support business people, who are doing what? They do not only earn money, this is what is on the outside. They create jobs and added value, plus they provide revenue at all levels of the tax system of their countries. This is a serious and multifaceted job, with the same risks you mentioned, including risks related to business operations. And if we add an unpredictable political situation, they will not be able to work at all. I think that both Russia and the United Kingdom are interested in fully restoring our relations. At least I hope that a few preliminary steps will be made. I think it would be easier for Mrs May, maybe, because she is leaving and is free to do what she thinks is right, important and necessary and not to bother about some domestic political consequences.”
Putin believed that through the Financial Times he was appealing to the business lobbies in London to push back against the war faction in Whitehall. The appeal was in vain.
In parallel, in an elaborately staged dialogue with the US filmmaker Oliver Stone, Putin allowed some of the truth to slip out. “What has happened to Skripal? Where is he?” Stone asked.
President Putin with Oliver Stone at the Kremlin. The interview was recorded on June 19, 2019; it was delayed in release for a month until July 19, 2019.
“Vladimir Putin: I have no idea. He is a spy, after all. He is always in hiding.”
“Oliver Stone: They say he was going to come back to Russia. He had some information.”
“Vladimir Putin: Yes, I have been told that he wants to make a written request to come back.”
“Oliver Stone: He knew still and he wanted to come back. He had information that he could give to the world press here in Russia.”
“Vladimir Putin: I doubt it. He has broken the ranks already. What kind of information can he possess?”
“Oliver Stone: Who poisoned him? They say English secret services did not want Sergei Skripal to come back to Russia?”
“Vladimir Putin: To be honest, I do not quite believe this. I do not believe this is the case.”
“Oliver Stone: Makes sense. You do not agree with me?”
“Vladimir Putin: If they had wanted to poison him, they would have done so.”
“Oliver Stone: Ok, that makes sense. I don’t know. Who did then?”
“Vladimir Putin: After all, this is not a hard thing to do in today’s world. In fact, a fraction of a milligram would have been enough to do the job. And if they had him in their hands, there was nothing complicated about it. No, this does not make sense. Maybe they just wanted to provoke a scandal.”
“Oliver Stone: I think it is more complicated. You know, you think I am much too much of a conspiracy guy.”
“Vladimir Putin: I do not believe this.”
In the Kremlin record of Putin’s references to the Skripal affair, these remarks of mid-2019 were the final word from the president. Putin and Stone were telling the truth of what had happened, and why.
Click here to buy the book in paperback or Kindle edition.
Candace Owens Responds To Mr. And Mr. Macron
Candace Show | January 13, 2025
I respond to the Macrons legal letter, Ian Carroll ratios Elon Musk on X, Mark Zuckerberg appears on Joe Rogan to discuss Biden censorship, and an update on what people are saying about the LA fires.
PreBorn!
To donate, dial pound 250 & say the keyword “BABY” that’s pound 250 “BABY” or donate securely at https://preborn.com/candace
PureTalk
Get 50% off your first month at http://www.PureTalk.com/Owens
American Financing
Act today! Call 800-795-1210 or visit http://www.AmericanFinancing.net/Owens
NMLS 182334, http://www.nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.458% for well qualified borrowers. Call 800-795-1210 for details about credit costs and terms.
Candace on Apple Podcasts: https://t.co/Pp5VZiLXbq
Candace on Spotify: https://t.co/16pMuADXuT
Candace on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/RealCandaceO
Subscribe to Club Candace: https://www.clubcandace.com
Join The Candace Community on Locals: https://candace.locals.com
THE POLIO PARADOX WITH DR. SUZANNE HUMPHRIES
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 9, 2025
Nephrologist and co-author of ‘Dissolving Illusions’, Suzanne Humphries, MD, joins Del to discuss her significant role in the first installment of ‘Jefferey Jaxen Investigates’ on the polio virus. Hear how the dangers of vaccines came to light for her and why the future of humanity depends on people understanding the true history behind the polio vaccine.
The Trump Administration Must Bring Moderna to Heel
Brownstone Institute | January 7, 2025
Last week, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported that a preschool-aged child died of “cardio-respiratory arrest” after taking a dose of Moderna’s Covid mRNA vaccine during its clinical trials. Despite federal requirements to report all trial information, the company withheld the truth for years as it raked in billions from its Covid shots.
The extent of the cover-up remains unknown, but Moderna, headed by CEO Stéphane Bancel, disregarded federal law requiring companies to report “summary results information, including adverse event information, for specified clinical trials of drug products” to clinicaltrials.gov. The company, not the government, is responsible for posting all results, and failure to report the death of a child constitutes a clear breach of US law, which threatens civil action against any party that “falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact.”
To this point, pharmaceutical companies have remained largely immune for their role in perpetrating globally-scaled deception resulting in thousands of vaccine injuries and billions in profits. They have enjoyed a liability shield courtesy of the PREP Act, which offers protections for injuries resulting from vaccines; that indemnity, however, does not extend to non-compliance with federal regulations, material misstatements or omissions of fact, or other offenses.
The death of the child only became known because of an obscure European report released last year, which revealed that Moderna has known about the death for over two years while it continues to advertise Covid shots to children as young as six months old.
Moderna’s European filing also revealed that the company withheld trial results demonstrating that children under 12 who received the vaccine were ten times more likely than those who received the placebo to suffer “serious side effects.” Without any evidence, Moderna claimed that the side effects, including the death of a child, were unrelated to the shots.
The incoming Trump administration offers a rare opportunity to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable and to investigate the depth of the cover-up.
The FDA is responsible for enforcing the reporting of vaccine trial results, but recent heads of the agency such as Scott Gottlieb and Robert Califf have been fanatical supporters of Big Pharma. Trump’s choice for FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, presents a stark contrast to his predecessors. Makary has criticized the US Government’s reluctance to acknowledge the role of natural immunity in preventing Covid infection, and he opposed the widespread vaccination of children. He testified to Congress, “In the U.S. we gave thousands of healthy kids myocarditis for no good reason, they were already immune. This was avoidable.”
President-elect Trump has tapped Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., perhaps the most well-known critic of the Covid vaccines, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. He has named Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, as his choice to head the National Institutes of Health. Further, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Berenson that he plans to subpoena the FDA once Republicans become the majority party in the Senate this month.
President Trump’s first term was ultimately defined by his failure to fulfill his pledge to “drain the swamp.” A corrupt bureaucracy, personified in many ways by Dr. Anthony Fauci, aided and abetted by advisors like his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, hijacked the president’s agenda. Now, the Trump administration has an unlikely yet monumental opportunity for health reform, which can start on January 20 with an investigation into Moderna’s cover-up.
The Covid response doomed Trump 1.0. Whether one regards this as a monumental error, the betrayal of a president by his advisors, an event beyond the president’s control, or a deeper and more complex plot involving everything and everyone associated with the government, both in the US and around the world, there is no question of the scale of the calamity for the public. The shots are part of that, the capstone failure of a long line of foreshadowing with lockdowns and all that was associated with pre-pharmaceutical interventions. The antidote came not as a cure but, for many, the disease itself.
There must be truth if not justice.
Israel blocks UN probe into alleged sexual violence during 7 October attack
MEMO | January 8, 2025
Israel has denied the United Nations permission to investigate sexual violence allegedly committed by Hamas during the 7 October cross-border infiltration, due to concerns that it could also involve investigating sexual violence against Palestinians in Israeli detention facilities.
Pramila Patten, the UN’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, sought authorisation to investigate the allegations against Hamas. However, she insisted that access to Israeli detention centres to probe allegations against Israeli soldiers was a necessary condition.
According to Haaertz, Israel rejected this request. Patten has called on Israel to sign a framework agreement with the UN, committing to measures to combat sexual violence in conflicts.
Patten’s office has confirmed plans to explore a future mission to the region, following invitations from both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. “The Office is exploring a future mission to the region after receiving an invitation from the Palestinian Authority regarding reports of conflict-related sexual violence against Palestinians as well as outreach by the Government of Israel for a follow-up visit on the 7 October attacks and their aftermath.”
However, Patten’s office has warned that Israel’s refusal to allow UN investigations into alleged crimes attributed to it could have negative repercussions. Representatives from Israel’s Women’s Network, who met with Patten’s team in New York last month, reported being warned that this stance could lead to Israel being added to the UN’s blacklist of entities responsible for sexual violence in conflicts, while Hamas might remain off the list.
This comes after Israeli authorities admitted that no allegations of rape or sexual assault have been filed from the 7 October cross-border infiltration by Palestinian resistance factions, despite extensive investigations.
Moran Gaz, a former lead prosecutor in Israel’s Southern District Prosecutor’s Office and member of Team 7.10, disclosed the findings in an interview with Ynet.
In March 2023, United Nations experts had already debunked similar allegations, concluding they were either unverified or proven false. Similarly, other gruesome claims, such as babies being beheaded or burned in ovens, were widely discredited but continued to circulate in political rhetoric.
FBI Is Still Hiding Details of Russiagate, Newly Released Document Shows
By Aaron Maté | RealClearInvestigations | January 6, 2025
As Donald Trump re-enters the White House on a pledge to end national security state overreach, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still hiding critical details on the Russia conspiracy investigation that engulfed his first term.
In response to a Freedom of Information request filed by RealClearInvestigations in August 2022, the FBI on Dec. 31, more than two years later, released a heavily redacted copy of the document that opened an explosive and unprecedented counterintelligence probe of the sitting president as an agent of the Russian government.
The Electronic Communication, dated May 16, 2017, claimed to have an “articulable factual basis” to suspect that Trump “wittingly or unwittingly” was illegally acting on behalf of Russia, and accordingly posing “threats to the national security of the United States.” The FBI’s “goal,” it added, was “to determine if President Trump is or was directed by, controlled by, and/or coordinated activities with, the Russian Federation.” It additionally sought to uncover whether Trump and unnamed “others” obstructed “any associated FBI investigation” – a reference to Crossfire Hurricane, the initial FBI inquiry into the Trump campaign’s suspected cooperation with an alleged Russian interference plot in the 2016 election.
While Crossfire Hurricane, which was formally opened on July 31, 2016, had by that point focused on members of Trump’s orbit, the May 2017 probe was specifically targeted at the president himself during his fourth month in office. The investigation of Trump was undertaken at the behest of then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, one week after Trump had fired his former boss and mentor, James B. Comey.
According to the declassified document, McCabe’s decision was approved by FBI Assistant Director Bill Priestap, who had also signed off on the opening of Crossfire Hurricane; and Jim Baker, the FBI general counsel. Baker was a longtime friend of Michael Sussmann, a lawyer for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and a key figure in the dissemination of Clinton-funded disinformation to the FBI that falsely tied Trump to Russia. In his FBI role, Baker personally circulated the conspiracy theory, manufactured by “researchers” working with the Clinton campaign, that the Trump campaign and Russia were communicating via a secret server. After leaving the FBI, Baker served as deputy general counsel at Twitter, where he backed the company’s censorship of reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, based on yet another conspiracy theory that the laptop files were Russian disinformation.
FBI via RealClearInestigations
While the declassified document records the FBI’s theory that then-President Trump might be involved in illegal – and potentially treasonous – behavior, the “articulable factual basis” for this suspicion is redacted. Only a few paragraphs of the six-page document have not been withheld.
Along with Crossfire Hurricane, the May 2017 counterintelligence probe was folded into the Special Counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller, who was appointed just one day after the FBI began portraying Trump internally as a possible Russian agent or conspirator. Mueller’s final report “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Asked about his reasoning for opening the probe and related matters, McCabe, who now works as an on-air commentator at CNN, did not respond to RCI’s emailed questions by the time of publication.
Details about the FBI’s motivation can be gleaned, however, from other public disclosures.
According to a January 2019 account in the New York Times, which first revealed the FBI’s decision to investigate Trump, the Steele dossier – a collection of conspiracy theories funded by Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton – was among the “factors” that “fueled the F.B.I.’s concerns.”
Just two days before McCabe opened the May 2017 probe, the FBI, via Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, renewed contact with dossier author Christopher Steele despite having terminated him as a source back in November 2016. As RCI’s Paul Sperry has previously reported, this sudden outreach to Steele right before the opening of a new Trump-Russia conspiracy investigation indicated that the FBI was seeking to re-engage the Clinton-funded British operative to help it build a case against the president for espionage and obstruction of justice. At the time, the FBI was still relying on Steele’s fabrications for its surveillance warrants against Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page. The following month, the FBI filed the last of its four FISA court warrants based on Steele’s material. The Justice Department has since invalidated two of those warrants on the grounds that they were based on “material misstatements.”
The FBI re-enlisted Steele despite possessing information that thoroughly discredited him. Five months before it newly sought Steele’s help to investigate the sitting president, the FBI interviewed Igor Danchenko, whom Steele had used as his dossier’s key “sub-source.” In that January 2017 meeting, Danchenko told FBI agents that corroboration for the dossier’s claims was “zero”; that he had “no idea” where claims sourced to him came from; and that the Russia-Trump rumors he passed along to Steele came from alcohol-fueled “word of mouth and hearsay.” The FBI had also been unable to corroborate any of Steele’s incendiary claims.
A previously disclosed document also shows that former CIA Director John Brennan – who insistently advanced the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory – informed then-president Barack Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was planning to tie Trump to Russia in order to distract attention from the controversy over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state. By that point, the Clinton campaign was already paying for the fabricated reports produced by Steele, who made contact with the FBI as early as July 5.
Although the newly declassified document attempts to suggest that the FBI had actionable intelligence to suspect Trump of being a Russian agent, McCabe’s subsequent comments indicate that there was no such evidence on offer. Instead, McCabe has said his counterintelligence probe of Trump was primarily motivated by the president’s firing of Comey. In a February 2019 interview with CBS News, McCabe explained his thinking as follows: “[T]he idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia’s malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counter intelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, ‘Why would a president of the United States do that?’ So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.”
McCabe therefore had no evidence that Trump had a “connection” to Russia, and in fact could only “wonder” if there was one. Yet because Trump had fired Comey, whose FBI was already investigating Trump’s campaign for Russia ties and relying on the Clinton-funded Steele dossier in the process, McCabe decided that he had grounds to order an espionage investigation of the commander in chief.
With the official predicate for that May 2017 investigation still redacted by the FBI, McCabe’s public statements offer the only insider window into why it was opened. In all of the investigations related to alleged Russian interference to date, the Justice Department has pointedly avoided the question.
Despite inheriting McCabe’s probe – and debunking claims of a Trump-Russia conspiracy related to the 2016 election – Special Counsel Mueller made no mention of the Trump as Russian agent theory in his final report of March 2019. Without informing the public, the FBI closed down the Trump counterintelligence investigation the following month. The case’s closing Electronic Communication, which has previously been declassified in redacted form, states that the McCabe probe “was transferred to FBI personnel assisting” the Mueller team, and entailed the use of “a variety of investigative techniques.”
An inquiry led by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz of the FBI’s conduct during Crossfire Hurricane also ignored McCabe’s decision to investigate Trump as an agent of Russia. And in a footnote in his final report of May 2023, John Durham – the Special Counsel appointed to launch a sweeping review of the Russia investigation – claimed that McCabe’s May 2017 probe was outside of his purview.
By contrast, when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane, Durham’s report concluded that the FBI did not have a legitimate basis to launch that investigation, repeatedly ignored exculpatory evidence, and buried warnings that Clinton’s campaign was trying to frame Trump as a Russian conspirator.
While the original Trump-Russia investigation has been discredited, the public remains in the dark about why the FBI launched a follow-up counterintelligence probe that targeted Trump while he was newly in the White House – and what ends it took to pursue it.
With Trump set to be inaugurated this month after vowing to clean up the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, the FBI will have a fresh opportunity to break its longstanding secrecy on the decision to investigate the sitting, and newly returning, president as an agent of Russia.
Georgia’s PM slams Macron claims of Russia election meddling as ‘lies’
Al Mayadeen | January 7, 2025
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has dismissed French President Emmanuel Macron’s allegations that Russia meddled in Georgia’s recent election as “lies”.
Macron accused Russia on Monday of increasing its aggression and shifting its hostility “toward Europe and other regions,” by “destabilizing electoral processes and manipulating ballot boxes” during the October election in Georgia.
The French president presented no evidence to support his claim.
Reporters questioned Kobakhidze about Macron’s assertion on Tuesday, and his response was he could not “comment on lies,” adding, “I am commenting on the problem that everyone faces today, which is a devastated Ukraine.”
“The French president should better follow the events in Ukraine, which has been sacrificed with the aim of destroying it,” the prime minister told reporters.
In November, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova firmly rejected allegations of meddling in Georgia’s internal affairs, which were made by the Georgian opposition, stating at a briefing that such actions are characteristic of the West.
On October 26, the ruling Georgian Dream party won 53.93% of the vote and 89 of the 150 seats in the assembly. Last week, Mikheil Kavelashvili officially assumed the role of president of Georgia during an inauguration ceremony held in parliament. The event, accompanied by protests outside, highlighted ongoing political divisions in the country.
Protests in Tbilisi have persisted for over a month, fueled by dissatisfaction with the government’s decision to delay EU accession negotiations and reject EU financial aid until 2028.
Like many other post-Soviet states, Georgia remains highly susceptible to instability due to a combination of Western influence and narratives opposing Russian policies. These factors have historically fueled mass protests and calls for a more pro-Western policy, aiming to distance Georgia from Russia and align its political and economic trajectory with Europe.
Kavelashvili won the presidency after a parliamentary vote on December 14 in which he secured 224 out of 300 votes as the candidate of the ruling Georgian Dream party.
Zourabishvili, who vacated the presidential palace following Kavelashvili’s inauguration, has continued to challenge the election’s legitimacy, though without providing proof. She described the parliament as “illegal” and announced on inauguration day that while leaving the residence, she would persist in advocating for new parliamentary elections.
Featured Video
The Empire Enters the Cocaine Trade
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Summary
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
Lies Are Unbekoming | January 20, 2026
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
Blog Roll
Recent Comments
seversonebcfb985d9 on French court jails pro-Palesti… eddieb on Fourteen Incredible Facts Abou… Bill Francis on European leaders’ shift in the… seversonebcfb985d9 on Villains of Judea: Philip Esfo… loongtip on Report warns that ‘Jewish terr… Craig Nelms on New study shows that toxic gas… loongtip on A Funny Thing Happened on the… loongtip on EU free trade pact on hold as… John Edward Kendrick on Regime Change In Iran Is The F… Bill Francis on Australia Passes New Hate Spee… seversonebcfb985d9 on Australia Passes New Hate Spee… Bill Francis on Britain’s AI Policing Plan Tur…
Aletho News- Germany to build 10GW of baseload gas plants (disguised as “future” hydrogen plants)
- French court jails pro-Palestine activist and mother over Gaza genocide speech
- Shot, amputated, and imprisoned: Palestinian man seeks to rebuild life after being maimed and tortured by Israeli forces
- Building Disney Land on the Moon More Likely than Kushner’s Gaza Plan
- U.S. Funds Continue to Flow to Ecuadorian Groups Despite Trump-Era Suspension
- A pro-EU regime is moving to suppress this proud nation. Will they be able to withstand it?
- US-Russia Arms Control May Face ‘Very Dark Period’ – Scott Ritter
- Israel moves to restrict Palestinian re-entry to Gaza, ‘encourage outflow’: Report
- Trump aims to create new UN and own it, Brazil’s Lula warns
- UN rapporteur says Israeli demolition of UNRWA compound reflects broader attack on UN system
- If Americans Knew
- Israeli drone strike kills two children collecting firewood in Gaza – Not a ceasefire Day 107
- Another Gaza baby freezes to death on Netanyahu’s watch – Not a ceasefire Day 106
- Oppose Israel’s Abuses While You Still Can
- UNRWA Heads Tell Ha’aretz: ‘We Don’t Radicalize Palestinians – Their Lived Existence Does’
- Plans Call for “New Rafah” Built in Israel’s Image — Without Palestinians
- Posing as priest, reporter is spat at many times, highlighting anti-Christian sentiment in Israel
- Leaked Documents: “Planned Community” in Rafah Would Force Palestinians Into Israeli Panopticon
- ‘Permits of Humiliation’: How Israel Strangles Christian Education in Jerusalem
- “The world sees death, destruction and injustice – and they see dollar signs” – Not a ceasefire Day 105
- War criminal Netanyahu kills 11 in Gaza, joins Board of Peace – Not a ceasefire Day 104
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Natural Gas Crisis Escalates … One Storage Site Near Empty …Government Silent
- Polar Colding…Antarctica Saw Its Coldest October In 44 Years!
- New Study: Sea Levels Rose 20 Times The Modern Rate During The Roman Warm Period
- As German Gas Storage Dips Dangerously Low…Shortage Hardly Avoidable
- New Study: Brazil’s Relative Sea Level Was 2+ Meters Higher And SSTs 3-4°C Warmer 6000 Years Ago
- Philosopher Schopenhauer: Climate Science Certainty Stems From Stupidity, Ignorance
- New Study: Species Extinction Rates Declining Since 1980 – ‘Climate Change Is Not An Important Threat’
- Denmark Places Climate Protection Above Animal Welfare, Poisoning And Culling Cows
- New Study: Greenland Was 3-7°C Warmer And Far Less Glaciated Than Today 6000-8000 Years Ago
- German Media Report That Current Frigid Weather Can Be Explained By Arctic Warming!
Aletho News 