Israel targets US public with massive propaganda campaign: Report
The Cradle | June 24, 2024
Israel is covertly funding a massive propaganda campaign to target the US public, including through the passage of legislation to restrict US citizens’ right to free speech when criticizing Israel and its ongoing war on Gaza, The Guardian reported on 24 June.
The UK newspaper reported that there are 80 programs already underway as part of the massive propaganda campaign known as the “Voices of Israel.”
The program is funded and run by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, led by MK Amichai Chikli.
The program was designed to carry out what Israel calls “mass consciousness activities” targeting the US and European public.
Voices of Israel is part of the “latest incarnation” of a “sometimes covert operation” by the Israeli ministry to censor students, human rights organizations, and other critics of Israel.
Known previously as “Concert” and before that, “Kela Shlomo,” the campaign previously spearheaded efforts to pass so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that penalize Americans for engaging in boycotts or other non-violent protests of Israel.
Voices of Israel works through non-profits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, the campaign spent about $8.6 million to target US citizens with pro-Israel propaganda.
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) is one such organization receiving funding through the Israeli program.
The ISGP cited its success during congressional hearings in which Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, was grilled for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik confronted Gay during the hearing, accusing her of fostering antisemitism at Harvard. The confrontation was widely viewed on social media.
Gay, the prestigious university’s first African-American president, soon resigned amid the resulting negative media coverage. She was replaced as interim president by Jewish-American professor and Harvard provost Alan Garber.
The Guardian reported further that the ISGAP touted its “congressional public relations coup” at a 7 April Palm Beach Country Club event.
“All these hearings were the result of our report that all these universities, beginning from Harvard, are taking a lot of money from Qatar,” bragged Natan Sharansky, the ISGAP chair. Sharansky, a former minister of Diaspora Affairs, told the assembled supporters that 1 billion people had viewed Congresswoman Stefanik’s aggressive questioning of Harvard president Gay.
The ISGAP has also been deeply involved in the campaign to limit US citizens’ Second Amendment right to free speech by passing laws at the state and local levels that redefine antisemitism to include certain criticisms of Israel, The Guardian added.
The ISGAP lobbies governments to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel as a ‘racist endeavor’ and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
“We shifted the focus to work at the local level,” said Brig Gen Sima Vaknin-Gill, a former intelligence officer now managing director of the ISGAP.
“We’ve found that mayors and states – it’s much easier to work with them and actually make the definition into something real.”
Another US group tied to Voices of Israel and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs campaign is CyberWell, a pro-Israel “anti-disinformation” group led by former Israeli military intelligence and Voices officials. CyberWell established itself as an official “trusted partner” to TikTok and Meta, allowing it to help screen and edit content.
A recent CyberWell report called for Meta to suppress the popular slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
The Guardian notes, “One struggles to find a parallel in terms of a foreign country’s influence over American political debate.”
US-based organizations producing propaganda or lobbying to influence US citizens are required by law to register as foreign agents.
However, none of the groups identified in The Guardian’s report have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
“There’s a built-in assumption that there’s nothing at all weird about viewing the US as sort of an open field for Israel to operate in, that there are no limitations,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Key Talking Points on Current Bird Flu Situation
Knowledge is Powerful Amidst Government False Narrative
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | June 24, 2024
The McCullough Foundation, informative update on the current H5N1 global situation has received considerable attention and garnered valuable feedback. Here are the key takeaways:
- Practice of culling (mass destruction of entire healthy flocks) when a PCR test is found positive to “eradicate” the virus is futile and may work to constrain the food supply. The current strain H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4.b is not thus far causing necropsy or radiographic confirmed fatal pneumonia in birds or mammals.
- H5N1 host range expansion into migratory birds and mammals likely occurred as a result of gain-of-function serial passage research and a lab leak [or release].
- Increased transmissibility of H5N1 has a tradeoff of decreased virulence. Using legacy human mortality rates from cases in Southeast Asia is not appropriate. The US has never had a fatal human case of bird flu.
- Fear-mongering promulgated by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is designed to promote mass vaccination of animals and humans with lucrative pre-purchased contracts to the vaccine manufacturers and their NGO backers. Mass vaccination into a highly prevalent pandemic promotes resistant strains of the virus in the vaccinated.
- If human-to-human spread occurs in the future as expected by many, it will be the product of gain-of-function research that has gone on for years with the goal of creating harm to human populations.
- Be prepared with early prevention and treatment strategies on hand. Courageous Discourse has covered dilute iodine nasal sprays and gargles, oseltamivir, hydroxychloroquine, and other antivirals. The Wellness Company has extended its Contagion Kit to cover the case of serious human avian influenza in the event it occurs.
Max Blumenthal: ‘TARGETED FOR EXPOSING ISRAEL’S LIES’- The Washington Post Attacks The Grayzone
Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground | June 21, 2024
Hey, Jim Jordan: Ask Fauci Who His Bosses Were!
To get to the bottom of Covid censorship, we must understand who was in charge of the global pandemic response.
llustration by Anthony Freda
By Debbie Lerman | June 13, 2024
As recently reported by Reclaim the Net, Anthony Fauci is being called to testify by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan for his “alleged role in the Biden White House’s censorship initiatives.”
Right away a glaring issue emerges: The censorship of dissenting COVID narratives started all the way back in late January-early February 2020, with Fauci implicated in the censorship as early as February 2, 2020. The Committee tacitly acknowledges this by requesting documents dating back to 2019, even as it frames the inquiry politically as a “Biden Administration censorship” problem.
In fact, the entire disastrous, unscientific lockdown-until-vaccine pandemic response was initiated and insidiously perpetrated by the Task Force, which was housed in the Trump White House, in the Office of the Vice President (OVP).
The group responsible for pandemic policy within the Task Force was not HHS or NIAID, where Fauci worked, or any other public health agency. It was the National Security Council (NSC).
All communications about Covid had to go through OVP/NSC.
We know from the Twitter files and subsequent investigations that the Intelligence Community (FBI, CIA, DHS, CISA) was heavily involved in censoring Americans on many issues, starting at least as far back as 2016. Foreign military/intelligence agencies of allied countries collaborated on censoring the U.S. population.
So if anyone is truly interested in who initiated and enforced censorship of dissenting Covid voices, they should ask the following questions of Fauci under oath:
We know from official government documents that Covid pandemic policy was set by the National Security Council (NSC), NOT the public health agencies. But who exactly on the NSC was in charge? Who wrote the policy?
- Dr. Fauci: Did you participate in crafting the pandemic response policy with the National Security Council, including censorship of dissenting views?

Why were Covid meetings classified?
On March 11, 2020 Reuters reported that “The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified.” Reuters sources said “the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification.”
Furthermore, government officials said “dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January.”
- Dr. Fauci: Why were the Covid response meetings classified? Were you present in those meetings? Were censorship plans discussed in those meetings?
According to the US Government’s COVID-19 Response Plan, starting on February 28, 2020 “all federal communication and messaging” about the pandemic had to go through the Office of the Vice President, which housed the Task Force, which was led by the National Security Council.

- Dr. Fauci: In your role on the Task force, were you in charge of crafting the communications about the pandemic? If not, who on the Task Force was in charge of messaging?
- Were you in charge of efforts to censor messaging that questioned or contradicted Task Force/NSC policy?
- If not, who was in charge of designing and enforcing the censorship efforts on behalf of the Task Force/NSC?
Why was the CDC forbidden from communicating about the pandemic?
Although it was supposed to play a leadership role in pandemic communications, starting on February 28, 2020 the CDC was actually “not permitted to conduct public briefings,” according to a Senate report.

It sounds like the agency that was supposed to be in charge of communicating with the public about the pandemic was itself being CENSORED by the Task Force/NSC.
- Dr. Fauci, who forbade the CDC from conducting public briefings about the pandemic?
- Why were CDC communications with the public completely shut down?
- Was this part of the overall efforts by the Task Force/NSC to censor any messaging that contradicted their policy?
Why was the intelligence community so heavily involved in Covid censorship?
Many deeply and carefully investigated reports show extensive involvement of military/intelligence agencies and personnel in Covid censorship efforts.
Here are just a few examples:
How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate, by David Zweig
Pentagon Was Involved in Domestic Censorship Scheme, by Alex Gutentag
The Virality Project Was a Government Front to Coordinate Censorship, by Andrew Lowenthal and Alex Gutentag
- Dr. Fauci, were you coordinating with the FBI, CIA, DHS, CISA or any other intelligence entity to censor messaging that questioned or contradicted Task Force/NSC policy?
- Why were intelligence agencies involved in censoring Covid messaging?
Were international NGOs and the WHO involved in censorship of American citizens?
Here’s one of the earliest known instances of Covid censorship from all the way back in February 2020, in which the following international cast participated:
- Anthony Fauci of the U.S. NIAID and Francis Collins of the U.S. NIH
- Jeremy Farrar, then head of the British Wellcome Trust (the wealthiest nonprofit in the UK that prospered during Covid and gave money to EcoHealth Alliance, among other Covid-related orgs) now Chief Scientist at the WHO
- Tedros Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bernhard Schwartlander, the WHO representative in China (about whom little info is available online – and who requires more investigation).
As reported by US Right To Know :
on Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 11:28am
Farrar flagged a ZeroHedge article [now archived] in an email to Fauci and Collins, raising the possibility of virus=bioweapon. In the email, he mentioned that the WHO leaders were in the process of making an important decision. He said they might “prevaricate” which means “avoid telling the truth.”

Regardless of whether they prevaricated or not, just two and a half hours later, at approximately 1:57pm ZeroHedge was suspended on Twitter.
- Dr. Fauci, was your correspondence with Farrar, involving the leaders of the World Health Organization, in any way related to the suspension of ZeroHedge on Twitter?
- If so, which of you was responsible for conveying the message to Twitter about the suspension?
- Were international organizations like the WHO, and NGOs including the Wellcome Trust, involved in Covid censorship activities in coordination with U.S. officials/agencies?
- Were you involved in any international Covid censorship activities?
BIRD FLU PANIC RISES
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | June 20, 2024
The bird flu vaccine is now in full development for not just humans but for cattle as well. Watch as we break down the COVID-like pre-positioning and how a critically-thinking public may not fall in line this time around.
Hunter Biden’s Charge of Lying Under Oath
The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.
By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | June 19, 2024
This is the fifth in Consortium News’ series on the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden’s allegedly corrupt involvement in the business affairs of his son Hunter. We publish these reports whenever new developments warrant them. Our earlier reports can be read here, here, here and here .
One reads regularly in the mainstream media, when events force them to report on the question, that the U.S. House Oversight Committee has hit a wall as it investigates Hunter Biden’s schemes to leverage his father’s power and Joe Biden’s potentially impeachable role in his son’s unseemly doings.
The House hearings have stalled, or fizzled, or reached a dead end: This has been the standard theme in corporate media for months now.
“Wouldn’t you know it,” Michael Goodwin asked in The New York Post as far back as March, “CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico and others on the left all reached exactly the same conclusion at the same time.”
Let us put aside the notion that the above-named media are “left” and consider the implications of what Goodwin, a conservative columnist and relentless critic of the Biden regime, means to imply with this remark. There are three points to consider.
One, U.S. media’s brazen rush to slam shut the door on the House proceedings puts their bias in favor of the president and his family well beyond dispute.
Two, liberal newspapers and broadcasters — repeatedly claiming that the House hearings have produced no proof or indication of wrongdoing on the president’s part — can do so only by ignoring very substantial evidence of criminal and impeachable offenses.
Finally and not least, whatever the final outcome of the House proceedings, the nation’s most powerful media have already sustained considerable self-inflicted damage by way of the negligence that is perfectly legible in their coverage of the investigations and its interim findings.
To be noted in this connection: More than two-thirds of Americans, according to a poll conducted earlier this year, think the House hearings should continue; half of these respondents — 34 percent of those surveyed — “think Joe Biden is guilty of corruption and should be impeached.”
These figures cannot land as a surprise to anyone who has paid careful attention to the House hearings. Among much else, they have already produced substantive evidence establishing in considerable outline the operations of what is called, with justification, the Biden crime family:
— Payments of $5 million each to Joe and Hunter Biden by Mykola Zlochevsky, the founding chairman of Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. Zlochevsky sought (and enjoyed) Vice–President Biden’s protection from Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was investigating Burisma on charges on suspicion of extensive corruption.
— Gross payments to the Biden family, chiefly Hunter and Joe’s brother James, of more than $20 million during the years (2009–2017) when Joe was vice-president.
— A dense network of 20–odd shell companies the Biden family set up to disguise payments received from influence-peddling schemes Hunter conducted in Ukraine, Russia, China and elsewhere.
— The detailed testimony, so far not credibly refuted, of government investigators — from the F.B.I. and the IRS — providing granular evidence of the Biden family’s illegal financial operations.
— The covert, corrupt efforts of David Weiss, during his tenure as federal attorney for the Delaware District, to protect Hunter Biden from the above-noted investigators and, in addition, to negotiate a plea bargain on gun and tax charges that would immunize Hunter Biden from all subsequent criminal liabilities. This plea deal collapsed a year ago next month.
— Voluminous evidence of Joe Biden’s often intimate involvement in Hunter’s business dealings, many of these illicit, as lodged in the infamous laptop computer Hunter left at a repair shop in Wilmington, the contents of which were obtained by The New York Post.
— A check for $240,000 James Biden wrote his brother shortly after he and Hunter consummated a transaction with a Chinese associate worth many times this figure. James Biden continues to contend that this was repayment of a loan from Joe Biden, but he and the Biden White House refuse to provide documentation substantiating the nature of the transaction.
Consortium News reported on these and other matters earlier in this series. Now there is evidence that Hunter Biden compounded his legal liabilities when he testified at length and under oath to Congress on Feb. 28 — an appearance Biden refused until he was threatened with contempt of Congress.
The House Ways and Means Committee, which also has an investigative function in the Biden case, voted on May 22 to release 100 pages of new evidence showing that Hunter Biden lied three times during that testimony. The evidence of this was provided, once again, by Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, the IRS investigators who had previously presented the Oversight Committee with evidence of the Biden family’s corruption.
The Ways and Means Committee is chaired by Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican. Here is part of Smith’s official statement as he released the new evidence:
“Hunter Biden has shown once again he believes there are two systems of justice in this country — one for his family, and one for everyone else. Not only did Hunter Biden refuse to comply with his initial subpoena until threatened with criminal contempt, but he then came before Congress and lied….
The documents released today are not part of a personal vendetta against Hunter Biden, but are meant to ensure the equal application of the law.
Lying during sworn testimony is a felony offense that the Department of Justice has prosecuted numerous individuals for in recent years…. Hunter Biden’s lies under oath, and obstruction of a congressional investigation into his family’s potential corruption, calls into question other pieces of his testimony.
The newly released evidence affirms, once again, the only witnesses who can be trusted to tell the truth in this investigation are the IRS whistleblowers.”
Ways and Means presents the three instances when Shapley and Zeigler caught Biden lying in a succinct format, the rigorous tone of which suggests the committee’s strong determination to hold the president’s son to the letter of the law.
Each entry is headed, “Lie #1,” #2, or #3, followed by a section headed “Hunter Biden’s Sworn Testimony” and another called simply “The Truth.”
In the first case, Biden is shown to have lied about who he was texting, in a now- famous incident, when he warned a Mr. Zhao that his father was with him as he demanded an immediate wire transfer of $5 million.
Biden, hiding behind his drug and alcohol addictions, claimed in testimony, “I sent the text to the wrong Zhao.” The committee produced What’sApp telephone records showing there was only one “Zhao” in Hunter Biden’s universe, and it was Raymond Zhao, the chairman of CEFC, a Chinese energy company that, shortly after the exchange of texts, wired $5 million to accounts Hunter Biden controlled.
In the second case, Biden claimed to have no beneficial association with or control of the bank accounts of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, a financial entity Biden operated with a business partner named Devon Archer.
The committee revealed evidence that Biden in fact used Rosemont Seneca to receive his monthly stipend from Burisma, where he sat on the board during his father’s vice-presidency, as well as funds from other foreign enterprises and people to whom he was selling influence.
Lie #3 concerned Biden’s intervention to secure a U.S. visa in behalf of Mykola Zlochevsky, the Burisma founder (who is misidentified in the Ways and Means statement as “Nicolay.”) Asked about this during his Feb. 28 testimony, Biden asserted, “I’d never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The committee produced email traffic demonstrating that Biden “was actively using his name and father’s influence to aid foreign nationals in obtaining visas from the U.S. government.”

Zlochevsky in 2010. (Svetlana Pashko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Scant Coverage
It is shocking — or perhaps not in view of the media’s record — to consider how little coverage these revelations received at the time. On June 5, Jason Smith, Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and James Comer, who chairs Oversight, sent criminal referrals to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, recommending the Justice Department charge Biden, and James Biden as well, with making false statements under oath.
David Weiss, who now serves as a special prosecutor, also received the three chairs’ letter. Neither Garland nor Weiss has so far responded publicly. It is difficult to see how either the DoJ, the White House, or the media can ignore, spin, or distort these charges — open-and-shut matters documented on paper and in digital records.
Tangentially related but closely so, after a trial of of seven days, June 4 to June 10, the jury on June 11 found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges related to his purchase and possession of a gun in 2018, during a time he was drug addicted and lied about this condition on his application to purchase a .38 Colt revolver.
Biden now awaits sentencing by Maryellen Noreika, the district court judge in Delaware who rejected the objectionably lenient plea bargain to which Weiss agreed in July 2023.
Much has been made of the Biden family’s displays of unity and compassion before and during Hunter Biden’s trial. President Biden flew to Wilmington for a late-night visit with Hallie Biden a few days before the trial began.
Even The New York Times suggested this risked leaving the president open to charges of witness tampering, given Hallie Biden was scheduled to testify for the prosecution. Hallie Biden is the widow of Beau Biden, Joe’s oldest son, and, during Hunter Biden’s years as an addict was for a time after Beau’s death Hunter’s paramour.
During testimony, Hunter’s chronic indulgences in cocaine and alcohol were almost ostentatiously played out for the jury and, it seemed, the public. The First Lady, Jill Biden, attended the trial daily but for the days she was at the Normandy beaches to join the president in marking the 80th anniversary of the D–Day landings.
The Biden clan was notably stoic when the verdict was announced. Evidently for the cameras, Hunter Biden took his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, by the shoulders, leaned to kiss her, and audibly whispered with a faint smile, “Hey.”
It is not possible to interpret these evidently rehearsed-for-the-public family displays with anything like certainty. But questions inevitably arise. They turn, almost inevitably on David Weiss’ role as the prosecutor in the gun case.
Weiss is a highly problematic figure. As earlier noted, he was deeply compromised when, during federal investigations into Hunter Biden’s tax records and the broader matter of his foreign business dealings, he, Weiss, acted covertly on numerous occasions to shield Hunter Biden from the lawful scrutiny of federal investigators.
Many were astonished — and many Republican political figures objected — when, the plea deal of July 2023 having collapsed, Attorney–General Garland promoted Weiss to the rank of special prosecutor.
This was ostensibly to give Weiss broader powers to direct investigations into the corruption allegations Hunter Biden faced — an array that threatened to lead to the White House door.
As many critics immediately charged, the Weiss appointment seemed intended not to extend his powers but to keep in place a federal attorney who had just demonstrated his willingness to protect the president’s son — and by extension the president, let us not miss — as a matter of partisan loyalty.
Hunter Biden’s trial on various charges related to his handling of his federal taxes is to begin on Sept. 5, two months to the day before the presidential elections.
Weiss will again be the prosecutor. This leaves us now with two questions.
One, were Hunter Biden’s attorneys in the gun trial in essence shadow-boxing? Their defense strategies — it could not be proven Hunter was using when he purchased the gun, a guilty verdict would infringe on his Second Amendment rights — were flimsy and unpromising.
Was the guilty verdict, in other words, what is called in intelligence circles a limited hangout?
Has a decision been made at top levels of the Democratic- controlled federal judiciary to find Hunter Biden guilty on the lesser crime of illegal gun possession — on the argument he had to be convicted of something — so as to prepare a skeptical public for an innocent verdict in the much more consequential trial on charges of financial corruption — a trial that could directly threaten the Biden presidency?
Two, where are the House hearings likely to go from here, and what will be the next step? The June 5 criminal referrals are indication enough that the Oversight and Judiciary committees are far from done, spent, or at a dead end.
As previously noted in this series, it seems clear they have enough sound evidence to support a vote to impeach President Biden.
But it remains to be seen whether the House committees will have the political will to press the case they appear to have, just as the outcome in California, where Weiss will prosecute the tax and corruption cases, is for now not at all certain.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
MI6 Coup in Macedonia Unravels
By Kit Klarenberg | Active Measures | June 21, 2024
On May 12th, this journalist documented the labyrinthine Western-orchestrated machinations via which Macedonia – under the locally-despised name of North Macedonia – was forcibly enrolled in NATO, despite widespread public opposition. Absent from that investigation was reference to the central role played in these connivances by British intelligence. Namely, London’s ambassador to Skopje and lifetime MI6 operative, Charles Garrett. Now troublesome VMRO-DPMNE is returned to office, it is vital his activities in the country are re-examined.

Charles Garrett receives an award from King Charles
As The Grayzone has previously documented, London operates a dedicated program known as “Global Britain” in the West Balkans. Leaked documents related to the effort reveal it is concerned with insidiously influencing the composition of local governments and legal and regulatory environments to advance British interests, while filling regional security, intelligence, and military forces with handpicked assets. As one leaked file makes clear, MI6 does not tolerate regional opposition to its agenda, readily deploying active measures to neutralize any and all local resistance:
“In contexts where elite incentives are not aligned with [Britain’s] objectives/values… an approach that seeks to hold elite politicians to account might be needed… We can build relationships and alliances with those who share our objectives and values for reform… It is critical that the media have the capacity and freedom to hold political actors to account.”
Events in Macedonia over the past decade provide a brutal demonstration of what can befall governments and officials in the Balkans who do not share Britain’s “objectives” and “values”, and how they are “held to account.” So too does a 2020 coup in Kyrgyzstan, where Garrett set up shop after leaving Skopje. With Central Asia now in the crosshairs of London’s endless quest for “reform” overseas, it’s never been more vital to beware Brits bearing gifts.
‘Colorful Revolution’
Following Russia’s March 2014 reunification with Crimea, NATO’s efforts to expand in the Former Yugoslavia became turbocharged. The Grayzone has previously reported how alliance membership was imposed upon Montenegro, despite near-universal public opposition, in 2016. Achieving this feat required sustaining a corrupt, savage pro-Western dictator in power for almost two decades, and an elaborate connivance whereby anti-NATO opposition actors were jailed on bogus charges of colluding with Russian intelligence to overthrow the government, based on bogus CIA and MI6-supplied evidence.
Similar subterfuge played out in Skopje, which signed a “Membership Action Plan” with NATO in 1999. While slightly more supportive of NATO membership than Montenegrins, the local population near-unanimously opposed changing the country’s name, which Greece, the EU and US made a prerequisite for joining. The VMRO government, led by Nikola Gruevski, pledged Macedonia would always be called Macedonia. So a Western-orchestrated coup was put into motion.
In February 2015, opposition party SDSM’s leader Zoran Zaev began regularly dropping what he and the media branded “bombs” – deeply damaging wiretaps of private conversations between prominent Macedonian officials, businesspeople, journalists, and judges. The tapes seemingly implicated Gruevski and his ministers in serious crimes, including murder. Zaev claimed the illegally-captured recordings were passed to him by whistleblowers. The premier countered that the releases were supplied by foreign intelligence services, with the objective of forcing an early election.
Subsequent investigations exposed how SDSM deceptively edited and spliced these leaked recordings to grossly distort their contents, and falsely incriminate government officials. For example, one “bomb” was extensively doctored to make it sound like VMRO leaders conspired to cover up the 2011 murder of a young Macedonian in Skopje by a senior police officer, while shielding them from justice. The unexpurgated tape indicated they were in fact shocked by the killing, and wanted the culprit to be severely punished.
It was not until four years later that the truth was revealed, however. Upon release, Zaev’s “bombs” sparked widespread outcry in Macedonia, prompting hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets, voicing righteous rage at VMRO. Openly called the “colorful revolution” by participating citizens and NGOs, and English language media, the EU and US duly stepped in and brokered the Przino Agreement, under which Gruevski resigned, and new elections were held.
SDSM scraped into office via a fragile coalition, then set about laying the foundations of Macedonia’s name change in explicit service of NATO membership, with tens of millions of dollars in assistance from intelligence cutout USAID. Parliamentarians were blackmailed – frequently using the illegal wiretap intercepts – and bribed into passing unconstitutional and highly controversial reforms, allowing Skopje to be rebranded North Macedonia without public support, or even the President’s signoff. A sham referendum, boycotted by most citizens, was also cynically staged.
At last, North Macedonia was formally inducted into NATO in March 2020. Alliance officials have since repeatedly made clear they consider Bosnia and Herzegovina joining to be inevitable. This is despite 98% of Bosnian Serbs opposing membership, due to NATO’s central role in the criminal destruction of Yugoslavia during the 1990s. There are covert British efforts to promote NATO in Serbia too, despite over 80% of the population opposing joining.

‘Charlie’s Angels’
In August 2013, Charles Garrett was appointed London’s ambassador to Macedonia. His express brief was to help the country “achieve its goals of joining NATO and the EU.” Multiple local sources have informed this journalist that Garrett was instrumental in the “colorful revolution,” distributing cash to NGOs and activists involved in the unrest from his diplomatic pouch, while attempting to get government supporters on board.
Public records strongly suggest Garrett is a lifetime MI6 officer. His lengthy career in London’s diplomatic service includes spells in Cyprus, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Taiwan, all key nuclei of intelligence gathering and cloak-and-dagger action for Britain’s foreign spying agency. He was also posted to the Balkans in the latter half of the 1990s, when the region became a veritable MI6 playground.
Under the Przino Agreement, a Special Prosecutor’s Office (SPO) was created to investigate officials over serious crimes supposedly revealed by the illegal intercepts. A previously unknown prosecutor from a small Macedonian border town, Katica Janeva, was selected to run the Office. While the SPO was supposed to prosecute SDSM activists – including Zaev, for releasing the intercepts – this never materialized. Meanwhile, any and all Western officials visiting Macedonia made sure to visit SPO headquarters and get snapped with Janeva. Garrett was, of course, among them.

Charles Garrett and Katica Janeva
Initially, Western journalists treated Janeva to multiple fawning profiles. The British press was particularly smitten. The Financial Times referred to her as Macedonia’s “Beyonce”. The BBC dubbed the Special Prosecutor and her two primary assistants “Charlie’s Angels”, claiming the trio were “the scourge of Macedonia’s political elite and heroines of the street protests now rocking the tiny Balkan nation.” A lengthy USAID-funded “documentary” featured her staff mocking their targets via phone, between discussing who to jail next over pizza and cigarettes.

That broadcast has been removed from the web, and virtually no trace of its existence can be found online today. This may be because in June 2020, Janeva was jailed for seven years for corruption. Her crime-fighting crusade was from inception an obscene, partisan fraud. Along the way, the Special Prosecutor secretly enriched herself through a variety of unscrupulous, criminal means. The SPO’s true objective was destabilizing the VMRO government, and discrediting its supporters by association.
Janeva’s targets were often indicted on farcical charges. For example, at one stage Prime Minister Gruevski was accused of “abuse of office” for commissioning the construction of two “Chinese highways”. Prosecutors charged he had improperly benefitted from the deal – not financially, but because he would “receive a popularity boost” if the highways were completed on schedule. Elsewhere, a pro-VMRO female journalist was accused of tax fraud for writing off laundry as a business expense, and resultantly subjected to much misogynistic mockery in SDSM-affiliated media.
More gravely, the owner of an independent news site committed suicide after being pressured to turn state witness by the SPO, following early morning police raids targeting him and his family. Cases brought against the owners of government-supporting TV stations Sitel and Nova shifted their editorial line in favor of SDSM, leading to the latter being closed outright. In its place, the rabidly pro-SDSM 1TV was launched by eccentric Macedonian media personality Bojan Jovanovski, also known as Boki 13.
Publicly, Boki 13 used his station to relentlessly promote the SDSM-led government and the SPO’s work, with Janeva a frequent guest on its assorted “factual” and entertainment programs. In private, he extorted wealthy businesspeople indicted by Janeva, or somehow caught up in the illegal intercepts, promising to make their legal troubles go away in return for lavish advertising buys on 1TV, or sizable donations to his “charity”, International Association. None other than Charles Garrett sat on its board.
‘Fifth Column’
By the time these facts became public knowledge, and Janeva and Boki 13 were in prison, Garrett was safely extracted from Skopje, having been appointed British ambassador to Kyrgyzstan. Almost immediately, a revolution erupted in Bishkek. Mass demonstrations, ignited by reports of vote rigging in the October 2020 parliamentary election, culminated with the military storming President Sooronbay Jeenbekov’s compound and removing him – physically – from office.
In February 2022, a Kyrgyzstan government-affiliated newspaper openly accused Garrett of operating a “fifth column” in Bishkek. It alleged that in the leadup to the 2020 vote, he along with US State Department representatives met with local journalists and bloggers, offering them enormous sums to identify electoral violations – such as vote rigging – and document official pressure on media outlets and civil society groups. Garrett purportedly promised them top-of-the-range broadcasting equipment, to increase their audience reach. Not long after publication, he returned to London.
Garrett has kept a low profile ever since and now occupies a cushy role overseeing the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Nonetheless, in September 2023, he submitted written evidence to a British parliamentary committee investigating London’s “engagement in Central Asia”. He advocated a number of means to exploit “disruption caused by Moscow’s renewed invasion of Ukraine” to undermine the region’s historic, economic and political ties with Russia and China, and “shape the future of these countries” according to Britain’s interests.
When British Foreign Secretary David Cameron conducted a much-publicized tour of Central Asia in May 2024, he followed Garrett’s proposals to the letter. The ambassador’s legacy visibly endures in Macedonia today too. In March 2016, colorful revolution protesters attempted to burn down the President’s office, after 56 individuals indicted by the SPO were pardoned. The premises were transformed into the headquarters of UK Aid, a now-defunct British government agency intimately implicated in the neoliberal rape and pillage of Ukraine.

The Skopje headquarters of UK Aid
This included running covert communications campaigns on Kiev’s behalf, promoting the destruction of workers’ rights locally. It is likely the organization was engaged in similar skullduggery in Skopje, after Garrett rode into town. VMRO’s return to government at last offers Macedonians an opportunity to halt the operations of all US and British intelligence fronts and cutouts operating on their soil, and reclaim foreign-conquered territory.
Kansas Sues Pfizer Over Misleading COVID Vaccine Safety and Efficacy Claims
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 20, 2024
The State of Kansas on Monday sued Pfizer, alleging the pharmaceutical giant misled the public by marketing its COVID-19 vaccine as “safe and effective” while concealing known risks and critical data on limited effectiveness.
The lawsuit, filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach in the District Court of Thomas County alleges that beginning in 2021, shortly after the vaccine rollout, Pfizer covered up the fact that the vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies and deaths.
The complaint also alleges the company falsely claimed that its original vaccine retained high efficacy while knowing that efficacy waned over time and didn’t protect against new variants.
Pfizer also misled the public by claiming the COVID-19 vaccine would prevent transmission, even though the company never studied the vaccine’s capability to prevent transmission.
By marketing the vaccine as safe and effective despite its known risks, Pfizer violated the Kansas Consumer Protection Act because millions of Kansans heard those misrepresentations, the complaint alleges.
More than 3.3 million Kansans received the Pfizer shot, accounting for more than 60% of all vaccine doses given in the state.
Pfizer denied the allegations, telling The Hill, that the case has “no merit” and that the company plans to respond to the suit in “due course.”
“We are proud to have developed the COVID-19 vaccine in record time in the midst of a global pandemic and saved countless lives. The representations made by Pfizer about its COVID-19 vaccine have been accurate and science-based,” the company said.
Covering up data on vaccine’s safety for pregnant women
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) monitor adverse events in several ways, including through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a passive reporting system that healthcare providers and patients can use to report vaccine injuries.
A total of 1,898,829 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines have been submitted to VAERS between Dec. 14, 2020, and May 31, 2024. Of those, 983,178 are associated with the Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines.
The complaint said that in addition to VAERS, Pfizer maintained its own database that “contained more adverse event data than VAERS.” The data were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit after Pfizer refused to release it publicly.
That database, the case alleged, contained 1,223 reported fatalities as early as Feb. 28, 2021.
Pfizer concealed or omitted data related to the vaccine’s safety for pregnant women, its association with heart conditions, its effectiveness against variants and its ability to stop transmission, the lawsuit alleges.
“Pfizer marketed its vaccine as safe for pregnant women,” Kobach said in a press statement posted on X. “However, in February of 2021 Pfizer possessed reports for 458 pregnant women who received Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy. More than half of the pregnant women reported an adverse event, and more than 10% reported a miscarriage.”
Early reporting in 2021 by the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming the shots were safe for pregnant women based on the CDC’s own VAERS and vaccine safety monitoring system (V-safe) data has been shown to be statistically flawed.
Kobach also referred to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla’s comment in January 2023 about myocarditis. Bourla said, “We have not seen a single signal, although we have distributed billions of doses.”
That was after internal documents showed the company had detected a safety signal and the FDA in June 2021 added a warning regarding myocarditis and pericarditis, both rare heart inflammation conditions, to Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines.
The CDC has acknowledged that those conditions have most frequently been seen in adolescent and young adult males.
Kobach said that while Pfizer was claiming the vaccine was effective against variants, the company had data showing that effectiveness was less than 50%.
“Pfizer urged Americans to get vaccinated in order to protect their loved ones, clearly indicating a claim that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccination stopped transmission,” Kobach said. “Pfizer later admitted that it never even studied transmission after the recipients received the vaccine.”
Pfizer engaged in ‘civil conspiracy’ with government agencies
The lawsuit also alleges Pfizer engaged in censorship attempts with social media companies to silence people criticizing its safety and efficacy claims.
The lawsuit charges “civil conspiracy” between Pfizer, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Virality Project and others “to willfully conceal, suppress, or omit material facts relating to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.”
During a press conference, Kobach pointed to comments Bourla made on “Face the Nation,” explaining why Pfizer declined to accept government funding for developing the vaccines under Operation Warp Speed.
Bourla said he didn’t want to have to submit to the government oversight that would be required.
“When you get money from someone that always comes with strings,” Bourla said. “They want to see how we are going to progress, what type of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that.”
Similar case filed in Texas last year, more coming
Kansas isn’t the first state to sue Pfizer over alleged false marketing claims. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2023 sued the drugmaker alleging it made “false, misleading and deceptive claims” about its COVID-19 vaccine and tried to intimidate and censor critics who questioned those claims or cited facts that countered them.
According to that lawsuit, Pfizer’s marketing claims about the efficacy, duration of protection and ability of its COVID-19 vaccine to prevent transmission violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Pfizer moved to dismiss the case, claiming it is protected under the federal Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act), which grants protections to drugmakers who make “medical countermeasures” authorized for emergency use.
However, in his opposition to Pfizer’s motion, Paxton said the immunity protection provided under PREP and invoked by Pfizer in this case extends only to possible personal injury claims, not to deceptive marketing claims brought by a state.
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel to Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender the major difference in the Kansas case is that Kansas alleges a conspiracy with officials at the HHS and others to conceal or suppress information about the shot.
He also said the monetary damages Kansas seeks could be hundreds of times more than what is sought in the Texas suit.
Flores said Kansas has a strong case, based on the evidence of previous payments the company was ordered to make to multiple states for marketing violations related to other drugs.
He said:
“The exhibits alone should give pause to us all: the chronology of Pfizer’s false statements, a payout $137.9M to resolve previous violations, three separate stipulations that Pfizer not engage in deceptive promotions of its products, censorship and Pfizer’s denial of any wrongdoing.
“It is astonishing that the U.S. Government does business with Pfizer and grants special protections when Pfizer has a proclivity to flout the law.
“The allegations in the complaint are referenced-citation gems that every lawyer around the country should incorporate in this war for our health freedoms.”
Kobach told the press that five other states will be filing similar lawsuits, the Kansas Reflector reported.
“More suits may follow, depending on Pfizer’s reaction,” Kobach said.
As of April of last year, over 400,000,000 Pfizer COVID-19 shots had been administered in the U.S. according to Statista.
Watch John Campbell, Ph.D., discuss the latest lawsuit against Pfizer:
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.
Humanitarian aid and Israel’s ‘voluntary migration’ scheme
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 20, 2024
Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said earlier this week that, “We have offered ourselves to host injured people from Palestine but also children from Palestine to come to Europe and stay here until the war is over.” Israel would be thrilled at such an idea, for sure. “Voluntary migration” in the guise of humanitarian aid could not get any better for Israel’s colonial expansion plans.
In October last year, Gerapetritis declared his government’s pro-Israel stance: “Greece, from the very first moment, supported the right of Israel to defend itself in line with international law.” No such right exists for an occupation state against the people living under its brutal military occupation.
In the same month, Greece also abstained from the UN General Assembly vote calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. A month earlier, the Greek government purchased 300 precision-guided munitions from Israel, known as spice bombs, for $130 million. And in a move aimed at curbing activism on university campuses, nine EU and UK individuals are facing deportation for participating in protests against the Gaza genocide, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stating that the authorities would forbid “universities from becoming sites for protest”.
As the genocide continues, the ways that politicians and diplomats try to make amends are becoming even weaker. The suggestion by Gerapetritis plays directly into the humanitarian paradigm which the EU hides behind, even as it continues to invest in Israel’s military and surveillance systems, all field tested on Palestinians in Gaza, of course.
There is not a single European country that can speak with honesty about Gaza and Israel, because investment in the latter has generated high stakes in terms of profit and complicity.
Humanitarian gestures, meanwhile, are becoming meaningless for Palestinians and strategically valuable for Israel, because there is no deterrent, no measure that forces Israel to stop the genocide.
Keeping in mind that Israel wants Gaza empty of Palestinians, why would the EU, which is complicit in arming the apartheid state, offer a humanitarian gesture that would help the settler-colonial entity in its ethnic cleansing? This begs a bigger question: why do diplomats insist on depoliticising humanitarian aid for the recipients, when the donors are involved in human rights abuses, war crimes and crimes against humanity?
Offering temporary safe haven for Palestinian children maimed by the war might be an acceptable humanitarian gesture if European countries weren’t complicit in the genocide conducted by the settler-colonial state which maimed them in the first place. “We have to remind ourselves of one thing: It is not enough to build only settlements,” said far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir recently, in the context of emphasising the “voluntary migration” of Palestinians, otherwise known as normalised ethnic cleansing.
A look at the recent statement by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy shows how the Gaza genocide is not called to attention, but rather focuses on specific Israel violations while still recognising “Israel’s right to defend itself”. Josep Borrell also called for “the unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas,” which essentially tells Palestinians that, as the colonised population, they should remain voiceless and not articulate any demands. Palestinians are facing genocide, and the EU’s statement is careful to protect Israel’s ability to act with impunity.
Any plan for EU states to host Palestinian children from Gaza cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. Such a safe haven in Europe is part of the colonial framework that aids Israel, as does Europe’s complicity in Israel’s bombing and destruction of hospitals in Gaza, and murder of medical personnel. Apart from the fact that the number of Palestinian children taken in by Greece would be symbolic more than anything else, politicising medical treatment to aid Israel’s “voluntary migration” scheme is depraved and self-serving. Gerapetritis should have been more honest and said that his country will not stop the genocide, but will host and treat an insignificant percentage of its victims that will not jeopardise its relationship with Israel.
No political gesture will disguise the fact that Europe has much bigger obligations than playing humanitarian saviour to a relatively few wounded and severely traumatised Palestinian children.
House Committee Subpoenas State Department on Proxy Censorship Claims
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 19, 2024
The Chairman of the US House Committee on Small Business Roger Williams last week subpoenaed the State Department and Global Engagement Center (GEC) after they refused to turn over requested documents related to accusations of “censorship-by-proxy.”
We obtained a copy of the subpoena for you here.
GEC was used to flag posts that would then get censored by social media platforms and was also involved in giving grants to fund online blacklisters.
The documents and communications the committee requested but failed to obtain concern the latter activity, specifically an investigation into government bankrolling companies that hindered US small businesses from competing simply because they engaged in lawful online speech.
The material the committee wants for its probe goes back to grants awarded since 2018. The request names almost two dozen entities – the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and NewsGuard among them.
In a statement, Chairman Williams explained that the investigation has been ongoing for a year, with the focus on how the US government may be using taxpayer money to put roadblocks in the way of the country’s small business development – namely, by hampering them online.
“All Americans deserve a fair shot to compete in the marketplace, and the government should not be tipping the scales against any business for their legal speech on the internet,” Williams is quoted as saying while explaining the need to hit the GEC and the State Department with a subpoena after they repeatedly refused to cooperate.
Williams described this attitude by the government as unacceptable, given that (with the importance of unhindered presence on the internet), “the livelihoods of many small businesses are on the line.”
The Committee’s investigation focuses on how what is described as “censorship-by-proxy” (i.e., the government circumventing constitutional prohibitions to censor online speech by looking for “friendly” non-governmental entities to put pressure on social platforms) – affects US small businesses’ bottom line.
And logically, impeding them from gaining exposure and reach online, especially, but not only, during the pandemic, would have caused serious consequences.
The House Committee said that over the year of the investigation, GEC “slow-rolled document production and ignored legitimate oversight document requests.”
And so, 12 months into it, and after repeated accommodations – such as giving GEC extra time and even narrowing the scope of the requests – the Committee now feels it’s time to “escalate the issue at hand, and issue the subpoena.”
As they say – “nice just doesn’t work with some people.”
On Israel, White House Lives in ‘Parallel Reality’
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 19.06.2024
On Tuesday, US special envoy Amos Hochstein met with Lebanese officials, including Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a day after visiting with Israeli officials. The trips were made in an attempt to prevent a full-on war between the two countries after exchanges escalated in the region.
Hezbollah and Israel have been exchanging fire since Israel launched its siege on Gaza following Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7. Hezbollah said it launched its campaign in response to Israel’s actions in Gaza and that it will stop once a ceasefire is implemented in the area.
Hochstein stated that Hamas needs to “just say yes and accept” the ceasefire deal outlined by US President Joe Biden nearly three weeks ago. Those comments are part of a trend among high-ranking US officials that Israel has accepted the ceasefire deal and only Hamas is preventing a pause in fighting.
“[With] the statements from the White House officials, they seem to live in a parallel reality from everyone, including Israeli officials,” Esteban Carrillo, a Beirut-based journalist and the editor of The Cradle, told Sputnik’s Fault Lines.
While Hamas has reportedly made some amendments to the deal, it has responded positively while Israel has refused to say if it will accept it and promised to keep fighting until Hamas is defeated. Israeli officials have also refused to confirm if the ceasefire deal presented by Biden was their creation, as US officials claim.
“Just today, a top Israeli negotiator told the Israeli media that there would be absolutely no room to negotiate any of the amendments that Hamas asked for in response to the ceasefire proposal,” Carrillo explained, adding that the negotiator said the war will continue after the Israeli assault on the southern city of Rafah is completed. “These are their words. This is not anybody putting words in their mouth.”
While the US continues to provide political cover for the Israelis by insisting that Israel has accepted a deal, its officials have been clear that they expect their actions in Gaza to continue for the foreseeable future. The day after Biden gave his speech outlining the ceasefire deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that their conditions for ending the war “have not changed.” Days earlier, Israeli national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi said Israel expects at least “another seven months of fighting,” extending the killing until 2025.
An estimate by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) said that they expect the war to continue until 2026 and that a full-scale war with Lebanon will begin in September.
“[US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and [US Defense Department spokesperson Matthew] Miller [are] saying that Hamas is the one being intransigent. No, it’s Israel that is being completely intransigent and they have been so for the past several decades,” Carrillo argued.
In 2006, Israel and Hezbollah fought to what is generally described as a tie, with more than 1,200 IDF soldiers wounded and another 120 dead, including the two soldiers who were captured at the Zar’it-Shtula incident, Israel failed to meet its objectives in that conflict and in the meantime Hezbollah has become increasingly sophisticated and powerful.
“This is what the US has also been warning them,” Carrillo said. “It’s time to de-escalate the North because you’re going to get your asses kicked.”
On Tuesday, Hezbollah released drone footage of Haifa and other parts of northern Israel, highlighting critical Israeli military and civilian infrastructure, including weapon depots, military bases and sea and airports.
Netanyahu said earlier this month that his country is “prepared for a very intense operation” against Lebanon.
Haifa, about 17 miles (27km) from the closest Lebanese border, is Israel’s most active port. Its importance has increased since the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement in Yemen successfully shut down the Port of Eilat through its blockade of Israel in the Red Sea.
More than 60,000 Israelis have been ordered to evacuate from communities near the border with Lebanon, and many of the towns have been virtually abandoned since October.

