Historic blow to South Korea’s military intelligence agency
“Military Intervention in Politics Will No Longer Be Possible”
By Erkin Oncan | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 15, 2026
The aftermath of the December 2024 coup attempt in South Korea, led by former President Yoon Suk-yeol, continues to reverberate.
It was revealed that Yoon had ordered drone deployments to North Korea in an effort to escalate tensions and create conditions conducive to a coup. The ongoing trials related to these events have now concluded with prison sentences handed down to Yoon and other senior officials of the era.
The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon guilty of “acts benefiting the enemy” and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. Among those convicted was then–Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun, who also received a 30-year sentence.
Yeo In-hyung, head of the Armed Forces Counterintelligence Command – one of the most powerful units within the South Korean military – was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The lightest sentence was given to Kim Yong-dae, then commander of Drone Operations, who was closest to the “obedience within the chain of command” principle. He received a three-year prison sentence, suspended for five years.
These prison sentences represent far more than the punishment of a criminal act. Since the suppression of the coup attempt, Seoul has been undergoing a profound transformation in both military and civilian bureaucracy.
One of the most significant steps in this transformation was taken two days ago.
The South Korean government announced the dissolution of a military intelligence unit under the Ministry of National Defense.
The disbanded institution was the Defense Counterintelligence Command, known by the abbreviation DCC.
The primary justification for the decision was the command’s “role during the martial law process.” However, details of the restructuring also provide important clues about the broader transformation underway within the military.
What was the DCC?
The DCC has a history spanning more than 70 years. Since its establishment in 1950, it has also been known as the “Special Service Unit,” “Security Command,” and “Military Security Command.”
It acquired its current structure in October 1977, when the Army Security Command, Naval Security Unit, and Air Force Special Investigation Office were merged.
Not only the DCC but all of Korea’s intelligence services have played central roles in nearly every dark chapter of the country’s modern history.
One of the most notable examples is the assassination of former President Park Chung-hee in 1979, known as the “October 26 Incident.”
Park, one of Korea’s longest-ruling dictators, was assassinated by Kim Jae-gyu, the then-head of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA).
This assassination – rooted largely in inter-agency rivalry – demonstrates how state institutions, particularly intelligence bodies, have historically been capable of reshaping political power dynamics in pursuit of institutional dominance.
At the time, the DCC (then known as the Military Security Command) was a powerful centralized military intelligence organization.
The figure who significantly strengthened the DCC and made it capable of intervening in politics was Chun Doo-hwan, who was appointed head of the organization six months before the assassination.
Chun used investigations under his control to purge rivals and seized power through a military coup in 1979. The subsequent wave of martial law culminated in the bloody suppression of the Gwangju Uprising in 1980.
The Gwangju uprising
The Gwangju Uprising (May 18–20, 1980) began with student protests and rapidly expanded into a broader civilian resistance against military dictatorship.
It was brutally suppressed by military forces, resulting in the deaths of thousands of civilians at the hands of their own army.
Today, it is commemorated every May 18 as one of the most tragic events in Korean history.
During this period, the DCC played a central, if not decisive, role. It is known that its members infiltrated civilian crowds in plain clothes, spread misinformation and rumors, and engaged in various provocations to escalate violence.
Scandals and reorganizations
By the 1990s, the DCC once again came under scrutiny, this time due to illegal surveillance scandals.
Investigations revealed that the organization had built a nationwide illegal monitoring network targeting civilians and politicians alike. These revelations led to another name change in 1991.
In more recent history, the agency was implicated in political interference in 2018. According to reports by Yonhap News Agency at the time, the DCC played a role in disseminating online content supporting the ruling party and targeting opposition figures.
During the latest coup attempt, it was also revealed that the DCC had planned operations to surround key institutions such as parliament, formed arrest teams targeting political opponents, and prepared detention lists.
In short, for a significant portion of the public in South Korea, this quasi–counterintelligence structure – often described as a politicized “dirty security apparatus” – had long been seen as an institution that should have been dismantled years ago.
The dissolution process
This historic development in South Korean politics was announced by Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back during a press briefing at the ministry.
According to the minister, the new restructuring ensures that “military intervention in politics will no longer be possible.”
Emphasizing that the decision is “not merely an administrative reorganization,” he stated:
“This step is a fundamental restructuring of the structure and mission of military intelligence agencies to ensure they can never again interfere in politics. It marks a historic turning point toward building a military that belongs to the people.”
What is changing?
Under the new arrangement, the DCC will be dismantled and divided.
Its functions – including counterintelligence, defense industry intelligence, security investigations, and security inspections – will be transferred to different institutions.
A newly established Defense Counterintelligence Center will take over counterintelligence operations, defense industry intelligence, defense industrial security, and cybersecurity.
Authorities related to security investigations and joint investigations conducted during martial law periods will be transferred to the Ministry of National Defense’s existing Investigation Headquarters.
Security inspections at corps-level and above units, along with investigations into security violations, will be assigned to a newly created Defense Security Support Group.
At the same time, several key powers that previously enabled the command’s influence within the military are being completely abolished.
From now on, South Korea’s military intelligence agency will no longer be able to monitor military personnel’s activities, collect intelligence on service members, prepare reputation assessments of officers and soldiers, or gather information on corruption and other misconduct outside the scope of counterintelligence.
Strengthening civilian oversight
As the DCC is dismantled, civilian oversight over the newly established Counterintelligence Center is being guaranteed.
The inspector general of the new structure will be a senior civilian auditor. A newly created intelligence and counterintelligence oversight committee within the Ministry of National Defense will operate directly under the defense minister and be composed entirely of civilians.
The government is also working on new legislation that clearly defines the operational limits of military counterintelligence personnel and establishes penalties for illegal activities.
A turning point
The dissolution of the DCC represents more than a simple institutional reorganization. It can also be interpreted as South Korea’s long-delayed confrontation with its history of military coups and military political influence.
Ultimately, however, the extent to which these plans and decisions are successfully implemented will depend once again on the balance of power within both the military and the political establishment.
Radio Free Europe, the Cold War ‘Weapon’ Congress Still Funds
By Patrick Pillow | The Libertarian Institute | June 16, 2026
“Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were critically important weapons in the free world’s competition with Soviet totalitarianism—and without them the Soviet bloc might even have not disintegrated.”
This was the assessment of Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter and one of the most influential foreign policy strategists of the Cold War era.
Brzezinski’s description is notable not only because of who said it, but because of how he described the organization. He did not characterize Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as merely a U.S.-funded news organization but instead, referred to it as a “weapon” in a geopolitical struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union.
More than three decades after the Cold War ended, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty remains in operation—and Congress is now considering a major increase in its funding.
As Americans continue to grapple with rising prices and persistent inflation, Washington DC’s attention has increasingly shifted toward foreign policy priorities rather than domestic economic concerns. When foreign spending does enter the public conversation, it is often through provisions buried deep within legislative text and only briefly summarized in committee reports, with limited public attention.
One recent example is the Ukraine Support Act, sponsored by Representative Gregory Meeks (D-NY). The bill continues ongoing U.S. funding for Ukraine as the war with Russia enters its fourth year, and like most large foreign aid packages, it contains a wide range of provisions.
Among them is Section 108, which authorizes $250 million in funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for 2026 alone. The language describes this funding as necessary to bring the organization to its “full capacity” in combating “conspiracy theories” and “Russian disinformation.” To understand this framing, it helps to look at the organization’s origins.
When it was originally founded in the 1950s, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was created to broadcast alternative reporting into countries behind the Iron Curtain. It received its first significant funding from both the U.S. Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and has since been described as one of the CIA’s largest successful covert action projects.
Among the organization’s initial goals was a focus on “destroying the Soviet government’s monopoly of information,” during the Cold War. This included early attempts to create a “crisis of confidence” in Soviet leadership.
Over time, that structure evolved, but the organization remained. Today, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty operates in more than twenty countries, with a reported weekly audience of 47.6 million, more than 1,700 staff members, and over 9 billion video views in 2023. Its operations now include Radio Farda in Iran, Radio Azadi in Afghanistan, and services in the Balkans—regions of significant U.S. foreign policy interest.
What was once a Cold War-era broadcasting organization has become a global, publicly funded media operation with a clear geopolitical focus. According to congressional funding records and budget summaries, RFE/RL has received roughly $140–$150 million annually since 2023. The 2026 authorization increases prior funding levels by over 60%, with the stated goal of combating what Washington describes as “disinformation.”
The organization itself is almost entirely publicly funded. In a March 2025 court declaration, RFE/RL president Stephen Capus stated that roughly 99% of the organization’s funding comes from congressional appropriations through the U.S. Agency for Global Media, while around 1% comes from private donations or other sources.
When funding was briefly disrupted in 2025, Capus called the interruption a “massive gift to America’s enemies,” pointing specifically to governments like Russia, China, Iran, and Belarus as among those who would “celebrate the demise” of the organization.
Supporters of RFE/RL note that the relatively small cost—especially compared to overall defense and foreign aid spending—is justified by its strategic value. With independent media remaining a key tool for challenging state-controlled narratives abroad, think tanks such as the Hudson Institute have described RFE/RL funding as a “pittance in terms of U.S. government spending,” with a particular focus on countries like Russia, China, and Iran.
As a whole, RFE/RL sees itself as more than just an independent news organization. In an FAQ section on its website the group notes that the organization is also working to serve U.S. foreign policy objectives and U.S. national security interests.
Still, this leaves unresolved the question about whether communication organizations abroad should be treated as a permanent feature on the domestic spending ledger.
At a time when the U.S. economy continues to face inflationary pressure and the stock market experiences significant volatility, the question remains what tangible benefit U.S. citizens receive from this use of tax dollars.
Whether Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is viewed as a valuable instrument of American influence or an outdated relic of the Cold War, Congress is now preparing to increase its funding substantially.
‘Jewish lobby’ deceived Putin – Lukashenko
RT | June 15, 2026
Russian President Vladimir Putin was deceived into withdrawing troops from near Kiev in 2022 by forces claiming to represent Vladimir Zelensky’s willingness to seek peace, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said.
Speaking in an interview with Al Arabiya, Lukashenko said the conflict could have ended quickly in its early stages, when Moscow’s forces were near the Ukrainian capital.
“At the time, not only I, but everyone in the world understood that the war would end quickly with a Russian victory. This was primarily because the Russians were in Kiev,” the Belarusian leader said, according to BelTA.
However, Lukashenko claimed that “certain politicians and forces” then asked Putin to stop, pull troops back from Kiev, and conclude a peace agreement. “Before that withdrawal, everyone understood that Ukraine’s days were numbered.”
The Belarusian president argued that Moscow had been acting on what appeared to be a genuine opportunity to reach a settlement, adding: “Judge for yourselves who was right and who was wrong in this matter.”
“Once again, probably, these forces deceived him. It was the Vatican. And, surprisingly, the Jewish lobby, the Israelis,” Lukashenko said. “They said on behalf of Zelensky: that’s it, we are moving toward peace, we agree. And others as well.”
It was not immediately clear what exactly Lukashenko meant by the “Jewish lobby.” In the early days of the conflict, then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett acted as a mediator between Moscow and Kiev, meeting Putin in Moscow and holding multiple phone calls with Zelensky. Media reports at the time claimed that Bennett had urged Zelensky to accept Moscow’s terms.
Lukashenko also did not elaborate on the Vatican’s alleged role. In March 2022, however, Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill held a video call in which they stressed the “exceptional importance” of the negotiation process.
Moscow and Kiev held several rounds of peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022. Putin said in June 2023 that Ukrainian negotiators had initialed a draft treaty on permanent neutrality and security guarantees, but that Kiev later abandoned the deal after Russian troops pulled back from areas near the Ukrainian capital.
Moscow has argued that Ukraine walked away from the agreement under Western pressure, including from then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who reportedly urged Kiev not to sign any deal with Moscow and to “continue fighting.”
Kiev has disputed Moscow’s account of the failed talks, even though its former chief negotiator, David Arakhamia, has acknowledged Johnson’s role. Ukraine has since formally applied to join NATO and abandoned discussions of neutrality.
What Is SIDS?
An Essay on the Diagnostic Category Built to Receive What Cannot Be Officially Named
Lies are Unbekoming | June 9, 2026
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is officially defined as “the sudden death of an infant under one year of age, which remains unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy, examination of the death scene, and review of the clinical history.”¹
By its own definition, it is a non-explanation. A baby cannot be diagnosed with SIDS while alive. SIDS cannot kill a baby. The category exists to receive deaths whose cause cannot be officially acknowledged.
Before 1969, this category did not exist. Before organized vaccination programs expanded in the 1960s, what was then called crib death was so rare that it was not mentioned in infant mortality statistics.² The term Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was created in 1969 in response to a rise in unexplained infant deaths that coincided with expanded vaccination campaigns. By 1972, SIDS had become the leading cause of post-neonatal mortality in the United States, the leading cause of death between 28 days and one year of age.³ A category that had not existed three years earlier had become the dominant verdict on dead infants.
There are 130 official ways for an infant to die, as categorized in the International Classification of Diseases. There is no official way to die from a vaccine. That classification was removed in 1979.⁴ Medical examiners working since then have been given a manual that contains every imaginable cause of infant death except the one that the public record, the manufacturer’s own clinical trial data, and a half-century of clustering evidence all point to.
Before SIDS Existed
The 1967 Pediatrics review by Maria Valdes-Dapena examined the world literature on sudden unexpected infant deaths from 1954 to 1966. The review documented a rising phenomenon in industrialized nations, with the author professing herself “woefully ignorant” of the cause.⁵ The deaths were already occurring. They had not yet been categorized.
A causal connection to vaccination was made early. Within fifteen years of the Valdes-Dapena review, William Torch presented findings at the 1982 American Academy of Neurology Conference identifying DPT vaccination as a potential cause of the deaths the new category had been created to receive.⁶ The category was new. The deaths were not. What was new was the schedule that produced them and the institutional naming that made them legible only as a syndrome of unknown origin.
In 1969, when the term Sudden Infant Death Syndrome was created, the United States was four years past the introduction of the measles vaccine and five years past the licensing of the oral polio vaccine. DPT was being administered at expanded coverage. Mumps and rubella vaccines had been licensed. The childhood schedule was growing rapidly. Pre-1969, organized vaccination of infants was limited; crib death was rare and unstratified.² The temporal alignment between the expansion of the schedule and the creation of the category to absorb the resulting deaths went unnoticed because nobody was looking. There was no institutional reason to look.
In 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics, operated by the CDC, created a new cause-of-death category specifically for SIDS.² Certifiers were required to use it. By the late 1970s, the institutional infrastructure was nearly complete. What remained was the elimination of the alternative.
The 1979 revision of the International Classification of Diseases eliminated all cause-of-death classifications associated with vaccination.⁴ Previous versions of the ICD had listed “prophylactic inoculation and vaccination” as a separate cause-of-death category, with subcategories for deaths caused by specific vaccines. The 1979 revision and every subsequent update removed these. Since 1979, medical certifiers have had no code to assign vaccine-related deaths to. They are required, by the structure of the manual they use, to assign the death to a different category.
The asymmetry this produces is striking. The same federal government that maintains the ICD code structure also operates the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, established by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. As of May 2021, the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program had awarded more than $4.5 billion in compensation for vaccine injuries and deaths.⁷ The federal government, in one capacity, compensates families for deaths caused by vaccines. The same federal government, in another capacity, removes the cause-of-death code that would allow those deaths to be officially documented in mortality statistics. The compensation requires the cause; the mortality statistics deny it. Both are operated by the same institution.
This structure has been in place for forty-six years. Every infant death that has occurred in temporal proximity to vaccination since 1979 has been recorded under a different code than the one that would name what happened. SIDS, “accidental suffocation,” “unknown cause,” “unspecified viral disease,” “diseases of the blood,” “cardiac arrest,” and “shaken baby syndrome” are among the 130 categories that have absorbed these deaths.² The codes operate as containers. The volume of what they contain has grown as the schedule has grown.
The Pattern That Should Not Exist
The strongest single piece of evidence for what SIDS contains is the temporal distribution of infant deaths relative to vaccination. Neil Miller’s 2021 analysis of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database, published in Toxicology Reports, examined 2,605 infant deaths reported between 1990 and 2019.⁸ The findings were specific and statistically definitive.
Of all reported infant deaths, 58% occurred within three days of vaccination, and 78.3% occurred within seven days. For the subset of deaths labeled SIDS specifically, 51% occurred within three days and 75.5% within seven days. The highest single-day count was day two after vaccination, with 760 reported infant deaths. The expected count for any single day if the deaths were randomly distributed across the sixty-day post-vaccination window analyzed would be approximately 43. Day two showed a 69-fold elevation over chance.⁸
The statistical significance was p < 0.00001. The probability that the observed clustering occurred by chance is less than one in 100,000.
In concrete terms: each day represents 0.27% of the year, and a seven-day window represents 1.9% of the year. If infant deaths bore no temporal relationship to vaccination, the proportion of deaths falling within seven days of a vaccination event would approximate the proportion of days the window represents. The observed figure is 78.3%. That is forty-one times the baseline expectation. The biological mechanism describes how the deaths occur. The temporal density demonstrates that they occur because of the intervention they cluster around.
The pattern was identified before Miller’s analysis. In 1982, William Torch presented data on seventy SIDS cases reported in Nevada. 6.5% of infants died within twelve hours of DPT vaccination, 13% within twenty-four hours, 26% within three days, and 37%, 61%, and 70% within one, two, and three weeks respectively.⁶ The clustering was visible in 1982. It has been visible for forty-three years.
In 1987, Alexander Walker of the Boston University Medical Center and the Harvard School of Public Health published findings in the American Journal of Public Health on US children born between 1972 and 1983 who received the diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis vaccine. Infants weighing more than 2,500 grams at birth experienced 7.3 times more SIDS within three days of DTP vaccination than during a period starting thirty days after vaccination. The 95% confidence interval ranged from 1.7 to 31.⁹ The lead author was affiliated with Harvard and the finding was published in a major public health journal. The institutional reaction was silence.
The manufacturer’s own data confirms what the epidemiological data shows. A confidential GlaxoSmithKline clinical study report on the hexavalent vaccine, made publicly available by an Italian court, documented that 65 of 67 sudden infant deaths occurring during the trial (97%) occurred within the first ten days after vaccination. Just two deaths occurred in the next ten days.¹⁰ Across the manufacturer’s own data, 62.7% of sudden infant deaths occurred within three days of vaccination and 89.6% within seven days. Six of the eight sudden deaths in children during their second year of life occurred within three days of vaccination.¹⁰ The manufacturer concluded that the vaccine did not increase the risk of sudden death. European regulators accepted the conclusion.
Independent autopsy findings confirm the relationship at the level of individual cases. Zinka and colleagues, publishing in Vaccine in 2006, documented six cases of sudden infant death occurring within forty-eight hours of hexavalent vaccination. Autopsies showed unusual neuropathology in the brains of these infants. The authors calculated a 13-fold increase in the risk of sudden death after hexavalent vaccination compared with an earlier period before the multi-dose vaccine was available.¹¹ D’Errico and colleagues, in 2008, examined a three-month-old infant who died within twenty-four hours of hexavalent vaccination. They concluded that acute respiratory failure due to post-vaccination shock was the cause of death.¹² Ottaviani and colleagues, in Virchows Archiv in 2006, documented a separate case of sudden infant death shortly after hexavalent vaccination, identifying the vaccine as the likely trigger of the lethal outcome.¹³
In 1978 and 1979, eleven infants in Tennessee died within eight days of DPT vaccination. Five died within twenty-four hours. Nine of the eleven had received their vaccine from the same lot, Wyeth Lot #64201.² A subsequent investigation confirmed a greater-than-expected relationship between the lot and the deaths. The FDA initially stated that a causal relationship could not be totally excluded. Later statements walked this back to “experts did not find evidence of a cause-effect relationship.” The CDC ultimately classified the deaths as coincidence.² Internal memos from the manufacturer, surfaced afterward, revealed a new shipping policy: no geographical location would receive all of its DPT vaccine from a single lot, ensuring that any future clustering would be statistically diluted across regions. The structural ability to detect hot lots was deliberately broken.
In a 2017 case before the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the Special Master awarded compensation to the parents of a four-month-old infant who died the day after receiving seven vaccines. The ruling concluded that vaccines “likely did play a critical role in this child’s death” by stimulating inflammatory cytokines that suppressed the respiratory system and prevented normal response to carbon dioxide accumulation.¹⁴ The vaccine court awarded the compensation. The death certificate listed something else.
The Brainstem and the Empty Autopsy
The clustering data demonstrates that the deaths occur. The mechanism explains how, and the convergence of two independent mechanistic accounts on the same anatomical target, the brainstem respiratory control region, also explains why the autopsy finds nothing.
The first account begins with what aluminum does in tissue. Aluminum adjuvants are present in multiple vaccines administered during the first eighteen months of life, including hepatitis B, DTaP, Hib (some formulations), pneumococcal conjugate, and hepatitis A.¹⁵ The total dose of injected aluminum received by a fully vaccinated child has approximately quadrupled since the 1980s, from around 1,000 micrograms by age eighteen months under the schedule in place before the 1986 NCVIA to over 4,000 micrograms today.¹⁵ Aluminum is biopersistent. Gherardi and colleagues, publishing in Frontiers in Neurology in 2015, documented that aluminum hydroxide particles persist at injection sites and undergo slow CCL2-dependent translocation from muscle to brain via macrophage transport.¹⁶ Christopher Exley’s work in 2018 documented elevated aluminum levels in the brain tissue of individuals diagnosed with autism, demonstrating that injected aluminum reaches and persists in the brain.¹⁷ Khan and colleagues in 2013 documented the mechanical pathway of this translocation: biopersistent particles taken up by phagocytes, transported through lymphatic and circulatory routes, deposited in distant tissues including the central nervous system.¹⁸ Yao and colleagues, in 2015, showed that hepatitis B vaccination of postnatal rats modulates hippocampal synaptic plasticity and produces a four-fold elevation in the inflammatory cytokine IL-6, demonstrating that the vaccines themselves, not just isolated aluminum, produce these effects in the developing brain.¹⁹
When an infant receives multiple aluminum-containing vaccines simultaneously, the inflammatory cascade is rapid and substantial. Microglia in the brainstem become activated. Activated microglia release glutamate and other excitotoxic compounds, along with pro-inflammatory cytokines, into the surrounding tissue.²⁰ The brainstem contains the respiratory control center. When microglial activation in this region releases excitotoxins, the infant’s breathing is suppressed. If the suppression is severe enough and sustained enough, the infant stops breathing. The neuropathologist Dr. Douglas Miller, in expert testimony cited in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruling and Neil Miller’s 2021 analysis, described how vaccine-induced inflammatory cytokines act as neuromodulators in the infant medulla, producing an abnormal response to accumulating carbon dioxide and disorganizing respiratory control.⁸
This explains the first part of the autopsy’s silence. The pathologist who examines a baby that has died of inflammatory respiratory failure is looking for visible tissue damage: discrete lesions, hemorrhage, structural anomaly. The mechanism described does not produce visible damage in the timeframe required for death. Microglial activation triggers the excitotoxin release, the respiratory center fails, and the infant dies before any histological signature of the cytokine surge would form.²⁰ The pathologist sees a baby that has stopped breathing for no apparent reason. The cause is dispersed at a biochemical timescale the autopsy cannot resolve.
The second account begins from a different starting point and arrives at the same anatomical region. Andrew Moulden, a Canadian neurologist with PhD-level training in clinical-experimental neuropsychology, developed what he called the Moulden Anoxia Spectrum Syndromes framework.²¹ Moulden’s central observation was that injected substances disrupt the electrostatic stability of blood flow. Aluminum, which carries a positive trivalent charge, has approximately eighty-four times the agglomeration-inducing capacity of sodium. It is, in industrial terms, a flocculant, the same agent used in water treatment plants to cause suspended particles to clump and settle. Injected into human tissue and bloodstream, aluminum produces the same effect: red blood cells, white blood cells, and other formed elements clump together. The blood sludges.
The microcirculation in the brainstem (the network of capillaries supplying the respiratory control region) operates at a scale where red blood cells must pass through capillaries in single file. When the blood sludges, this single-file passage is obstructed. The result is microscopic ischemia: regions of tissue receiving insufficient oxygen because the blood cannot flow through the capillaries that supply them.²¹
The human body has blood pressure receptors. It does not have blood flow receptors.²¹ This anatomical fact is critical. When microcirculation fails at the capillary level but the larger arteries continue to maintain pressure, no warning signal is generated. The brainstem can be suffering ischemic damage in its watershed end-vascular territories (the most poorly supplied regions, including those controlling automatic respiration) while the body’s monitoring systems detect no problem. The damage is, in Moulden’s analysis, sub-clinical to the body itself.
This explains the second part of the autopsy’s silence. The damage Moulden described occurs at the level of the microcirculation, well below the resolution of conventional neuroimaging. There is no infarct visible on MRI. There is no hemorrhage to find. And in death, the body has no blood flow at all. The difference between sludged microcirculation in life and the post-mortem absence of circulation is not detectable by examination of the dead tissue. The lesion is invisible by structural design.
The two accounts converge on a single anatomical target, the brainstem respiratory control region, by different routes. The inflammatory pathway explains why activated microglia in this region kill the infant. The microcirculation pathway explains why ischemia in this region kills the infant. Both are caused by injected aluminum, both produce respiratory arrest, and neither leaves damage detectable at the resolution the autopsy uses to look.
When the official definition of SIDS requires that death “remain unexplained after a thorough case investigation, including performance of a complete autopsy,” the definition is describing a death that occurred via mechanisms structurally invisible to the investigation it requires. The autopsy comes up empty because the investigation tools cannot see what killed the baby. The verdict of “unexplained” is the predictable output of looking for the wrong kind of damage at a scale the instruments were never designed to resolve.
What Happens When You Remove the Cause
The convergent mechanism predicts a specific real-world outcome: if vaccinations are reduced, delayed, or interrupted, the deaths the SIDS category absorbs should decline. The historical and contemporary record contains multiple natural experiments testing this prediction. Each confirms it.
Japan, 1975. Between 1970 and 1974, Japanese authorities documented thirty-seven sudden infant deaths following pertussis vaccinations. In response, the Japanese government raised the age of DPT vaccination from three months to two years.²² The result, documented across the following decade, was dramatic.
Sudden vaccine-related deaths dropped from 1.47 per million doses to 0.15 per million doses, a 90% decline.²² The category of “sudden death” following vaccination, in the analysis of Cherry and colleagues published in Pediatrics, “disappeared following both whole-cell and acellular vaccines when immunization was delayed until a child was 24 months of age.”²² Japan’s overall infant mortality rate across all causes declined from 12.4 to 5.0 per 1,000 live births over the decade following the schedule change, a 60% improvement.²² The Task Force on Pertussis and Pertussis Immunization that produced the report concluded: “It is clear that delaying the initial vaccination until a child is 24 months, regardless of the type of vaccine, reduces most of the temporally associated severe adverse reactions.”²²
The Japanese experiment did not require a placebo group, randomization, or a controlled trial. It was a real-world intervention with a clear before-state and a clear after-state, with vaccination timing as the single variable change between them. The infant mortality decline cannot plausibly be attributed to anything else. The Japanese government delayed vaccination. Fewer babies died.
COVID lockdowns, 2020. During the early lockdown period of 2020, routine well-child visits were canceled or postponed across many jurisdictions, and childhood vaccination rates declined. An analysis comparing infant deaths in Oregon over the first six months of 2020 against the ten-year average documented a 42% drop in infant deaths during the period when lockdowns were in place and well-baby visits were canceled.²³ Similar patterns were documented elsewhere, alongside an unprecedented decline in premature births, which are themselves linked to vaccination during pregnancy.²⁴ The vaccine safety community had predicted, before the data became available, that the lockdowns would produce a once-in-a-generation natural experiment in reduced SIDS, because if vaccines are the cause, reduced vaccination should produce reduced deaths. The data confirmed the prediction.
Florida, 2021. In the year following the lockdown-driven decline in vaccination compliance, Florida’s childhood vaccination rate dropped from 93.4% to 79.3%. All-cause infant mortality under one year of age decreased by 8.93% during the same period, a reversal of the previous year’s trend.²⁵ The single largest variable that changed in Florida between 2020 and 2021 was vaccination compliance. The infant mortality figure moved in the direction the mechanism predicts.
International comparison. A 2011 study comparing infant mortality rates across the thirty-four nations with the lowest rates found a clear correlation between the number of required childhood vaccines and infant mortality.²⁶ The United States, with the largest childhood schedule among industrialized nations, also has among the highest infant mortality rates among industrialized nations.²⁷ A separate analysis comparing vaccine doses across developed nations found a strong association between dose counts and mortality rates.²⁸ Countries that vaccinate more, more often, earlier, lose more babies.
None of these experiments meets the design specifications of a randomized controlled trial. None of them needs to. Japan’s schedule change was real. The lockdowns were real. Florida’s compliance shift was real. The infant mortality figures are public record. Four independent natural experiments, three of them documented within the past five years, all moving in the direction the convergent mechanism predicts.
How the Category Has Mutated
The institutional response to the visible clustering pattern has been to mutate the category rather than investigate the relationship. The SIDS code was never the only container available. As the visibility of vaccine-induced infant death increased, the institutional pressure to disperse those deaths across multiple cause-of-death codes increased correspondingly.
In 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics formally recommended that infants be placed supine rather than prone during sleep. The Back to Sleep campaign launched two years later, in 1994.²⁹ The campaign came eight years after the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which had itself been passed in response to congressional hearings in which parents, including Donna Gary, linked DTP vaccination to infant deaths. The Back to Sleep campaign provided an alternative narrative: SIDS was caused by sleep position, not by what was injected into the infant before the sleep occurred.
The SIDS rate appeared to decline. Between 1992 and 2001, the post-neonatal SIDS rate dropped by an average annual rate of 8.6%.² This was presented as a vindication of the sleep-position hypothesis. The numbers told a different story when examined carefully. During the same period, the post-neonatal mortality rate from “suffocation in bed” (ICD-9 code E913.0) increased at an average annual rate of 11.2%.² Sudden, unexplained infant deaths that had been classified as SIDS before the campaign were now being classified as suffocation in bed. The deaths had not declined; the label on the certificate had changed.
The reclassification accelerated. From 1999 through 2015, the US SIDS rate declined 35.8% while infant deaths due to accidental suffocation increased 183.8%.² Approximately 90% of the apparent SIDS decline can be attributed to reclassification rather than reduction.² The category became more porous as institutional pressure to disperse the deaths intensified.
In 2012, the CDC introduced a new umbrella category: Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID), which encompasses SIDS along with deaths attributed to suffocation and unknown causes.²⁹ The same year, the Back to Sleep campaign was rebranded as Safe to Sleep. The two institutional moves arrived together: a broader receiving category for the deaths, and a broader messaging framework for displacing their cause. Deaths that the SIDS code might have captured in isolation could now be distributed across three subcategories under the SUID umbrella, each of which can be reclassified independently as institutional preference dictates.
Safe to Sleep expanded the messaging beyond sleep position to a long list of parental responsibilities: avoidance of soft bedding, prohibitions on bed-sharing, recommendations on breastfeeding, pacifier use, smoke exposure, room temperature, swaddling. The messaging was directed disproportionately at African American communities, where SIDS rates are higher. A 2018 analysis of safe sleep public campaign messaging found that 60% of campaign messages used guilt-based framing, placing responsibility for the death on the parent’s behavior in the hours preceding it.²⁹ The campaign installed a moral framework. Parents who lost infants to sudden death were positioned within that framework as having failed it. The cause they had not been told about, the schedule they had complied with, did not appear in the framework anywhere.
In May 2025, the National Institutes of Health terminated the Safe to Sleep campaign.²⁹ The termination came after the 2020-2022 period documented a 12% rise in sudden infant deaths.²⁹ The campaign had operated in its two forms, Back to Sleep and Safe to Sleep, for over three decades without reducing SIDS deaths in any sustained way; the numbers showed reclassification rather than prevention. Its useful institutional life had ended.
The framework Safe to Sleep installed remained operational after the campaign itself was terminated. In June 2025, parents in Allentown, Pennsylvania were charged with felonies for placing their infants in unsafe sleep positions.³⁰ The Defender, reporting on similar cases, documented police charging parents with felonies after their babies died suddenly in their sleep, based on the parents’ alleged failure to follow supine sleeping guidance.³⁰ The guilt-based moral structure Safe to Sleep had installed in 2012 was now providing the legal basis for criminal prosecution in 2025. The criminalization of parents who have lost infants to deaths the system cannot explain has institutional precedent. Sally Clark, a British lawyer, was convicted in 1999 of murdering both of her infant sons, who had died unexpectedly weeks after receiving routine vaccinations. The conviction was overturned in 2003 after the statistical evidence underpinning the prosecution was discredited. She died of acute alcohol poisoning in 2007, in the aftermath.³¹ Her case is one documented historical instance. The June 2025 prosecutions are the contemporary instance of the same dynamic operating in real time.
The trajectory is consistent. Pre-1969, the deaths exist without a category to receive them. In 1969, the SIDS category is created. In 1979, the alternative cause-of-death code, vaccination, is removed from the ICD. In 1994, the Back to Sleep campaign provides a sleep-position narrative. From 1992 through 2025, deaths are reclassified into suffocation and unknown-cause codes as institutional preference shifts. In 2012, SUID broadens the receiving framework and Safe to Sleep broadens the messaging framework. In 2025, the campaign is terminated as its useful institutional life ends, and parents begin to be prosecuted under the framework the campaign installed.
At every stage, the institutional response has been to adjust the receiving infrastructure rather than investigate what is being received. The category mutates because the underlying deaths cannot stop. The schedule cannot be paused without admitting what it does, and the deaths cannot be officially named without admitting the cause. The mutation of the category is the visible trace of the institutional refusal to do either.
What SIDS Is
The official definition of SIDS describes a death that remains unexplained after thorough investigation. The definition is precise. What it describes is a death whose cause is structurally invisible to the investigation required to confirm the absence of explanation. The category exists to receive what the system cannot officially name.
The category did not exist before 1969. It was created in the same period that the childhood vaccination schedule expanded into the population of infants under one year of age. The 1979 ICD revision then eliminated the alternative cause-of-death code; the 1994 Back to Sleep campaign installed the sleep-position narrative; the 2012 SUID expansion broadened the receiving framework and the Safe to Sleep rebrand broadened the messaging framework alongside it. The 2025 campaign termination ended one phase of the construct, and the June 2025 felony prosecutions began another.
The mechanism is understood. Aluminum adjuvants reach the infant brainstem by macrophage transport and slow translocation. Microglia in the respiratory control region activate; excitotoxins release into the breathing center. The same aluminum, through electrostatic agglomeration, sludges the microcirculation supplying the same anatomical region, producing ischemia. Both pathways suppress the infant’s respiration and produce respiratory arrest. Neither leaves damage visible at the resolution the autopsy uses to look.
The infant who dies of SIDS dies of what was injected and what its body could not clear. The autopsy finds nothing because nothing visible was left to find; the death certificate names something else because the manual contains no code for what happened.
SIDS is the name the system gives to the deaths it has built itself not to see.
How to Explain It to a Six-Year-Old
Imagine grown-ups gave babies a medicine. Some of the babies got really sick after the medicine. A few of them died.
When the grown-ups looked at the babies, they couldn’t find anything wrong with them. The hurt inside was too tiny to see, like a scratch so small you’d need a special magnifying glass for ants to see it.
So the grown-ups said, “We don’t know what happened. It’s a mystery!” And they made up a special name for the mystery. The name was SIDS.
But here’s the thing. The grown-ups do know what happened. They’ve known for a long time. The medicine has something called aluminum in it. Aluminum is the same shiny stuff your sandwich wrap is made of. It’s okay on a sandwich. It’s not okay inside a baby.
The aluminum gets into the part of the brain that tells the baby to breathe. The brain stops working right. The baby stops breathing.
But the grown-ups don’t want to tell anyone, because lots of grown-ups get money from the medicine. So they keep calling it SIDS, the mystery.
When parents started to figure it out, the grown-ups changed the name. They called it “crib death.” Then “SIDS.” Then “SUID.” Now they say the babies suffocated, and sometimes the police take the mommies and daddies to jail, even though they didn’t do anything wrong.
Every time someone gets close to the truth, the grown-ups change the name.
The babies didn’t die from a mystery. They died from the medicine.
SIDS is the name grown-ups use when they don’t want to tell the truth about why a baby died.
References
- Standard definition of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as adopted by the Institute of Medicine and used by the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; cited in de Becker, G. (2022). Forbidden Facts.
- Miller, N. Z. (2021). “Vaccines and Sudden Infant Death: An Analysis of the VAERS Database 1990–2019 and Review of the Medical Literature.” Toxicology Reports 8: 1324–1335. Historical context including the pre-1969 absence of the category and the post-1979 reclassification patterns.
- National Center for Health Statistics, CDC; cited in Miller (2021).
- International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision (1979); subsequent revisions ICD-10 and ICD-11; analysis in Miller (2021).
- Valdes-Dapena, M. A. (1967). “Sudden and unexpected death in infancy: a review of the world literature 1954–1966.” Pediatrics 39(1): 123–138.
- Torch, W. C. (1982). “Diphtheria-Pertussis-Tetanus (DPT) Immunization: A Potential Cause of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.” Neurology 32(4). Conference abstract, American Academy of Neurology.
- Health Resources and Services Administration, National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program statistical data, as of May 2021.
- Miller, N. Z. (2021). Toxicology Reports 8: 1324–1335. Full statistical analysis including the day-by-day clustering, the 69-fold elevation on day two, and the p < 0.00001 significance.
- Walker, A. M., et al. (1987). “Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis Immunization and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.” American Journal of Public Health 77(8): 945–951.
- GlaxoSmithKline (2012). “Confidential Clinical Study Final Report: Study 113808 (ROTA-075).” Made publicly available by Italian court order.
- Zinka, B., Rauch, E., et al. (2006). “Unexplained cases of sudden infant death shortly after hexavalent vaccination.” Vaccine 24(31–32): 5779–5780.
- D’Errico, S., Neri, M., et al. (2008). “Beta-tryptase and quantitative mast-cell increase in a sudden infant death following hexavalent immunization.” Forensic Science International 179(2–3): e25–29.
- Ottaviani, G., Lavezze, A. M., Matturri, L. (2006). “Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) shortly after hexavalent vaccination: another pathology in suspected SIDS?” Virchows Archiv 448: 100–104.
- National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program ruling, 2017; cited in Miller (2021) and Thomas, P. (2022). Vax Facts.
- Thomas, P. (2022). Vax Facts. Handley, J. B. How to End the Autism Epidemic. Aluminum content data drawn from CDC Vaccine Information Statements and Mitkus, R. J., et al. (2011). “Updated aluminum pharmacokinetics following infant exposures through diet and vaccination.” Vaccine 29(51): 9538–9543.
- Gherardi, R., et al. (2015). “Biopersistence and Brain Translocation of Aluminum Adjuvants of Vaccines.” Frontiers in Neurology 6: Article 4.
- Mold, M., Umar, D., King, A., Exley, C. (2018). “Aluminium in brain tissue in autism.” Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology 46: 76–82.
- Khan, Z., et al. (2013). “Slow CCL2-dependent translocation of biopersistent particles from muscle to brain.” BMC Medicine 11: 99.
- Yao, Z., et al. (2015). Hepatitis B vaccination of postnatal rats modulating hippocampal synaptic plasticity and IL-6 elevation; cited in Handley, J. B. How to End the Autism Epidemic.
- Hedley, K., et al. (2022). “Alterations in Brainstem Respiratory Centers following Peripheral Inflammation.” Journal of Neuroimmunology 369. Hoogland, I. C. M., et al. (2015). “Systemic inflammation and microglial activation: systematic review of animal experiments.” Journal of Neuroinflammation 12: 114.
- Moulden, A. (2009). “What You Were Never Told About Vaccines.” Interview, VacTruth.com. BrainGuardMD.com archive. Analysis of the MASS framework, zeta potential, and microcirculation pathology.
- Cherry, J. D., et al., Task Force on Pertussis and Pertussis Immunization. Pediatrics. Cited in Miller (2021) and Fraser, H. (2010). The Peanut Allergy Epidemic.
- Snee, B., comment on A Midwestern Doctor (2022); Oregon infant death analysis comparing first six months of 2020 to the ten-year average.
- A Midwestern Doctor. “The Century of Evidence That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Deaths.” MidwesternDoctor.com.
- Florida Department of Health vaccination compliance data 2020–2021; CDC infant mortality data; analysis cited in A Midwestern Doctor (2022).
- Miller, N. Z., Goldman, G. S. (2011). “Infant mortality rates regressed against number of vaccine doses routinely given: is there a biochemical or synergistic toxicity?” Human and Experimental Toxicology 30(9): 1420–1428.
- CDC Childhood Immunization Schedule, comparative data 1983 and present; Thomas, P. (2022). Vax Facts; OECD infant mortality comparative data.
- “Neonatal, Infant, and Under Age Five Vaccine Doses Routinely Given in Developed Nations and Their Association With Mortality Rates.” Cureus.
- Children’s Health Defense (2025). “Media Slam NIH for Axing ‘Safe to Sleep’ Campaign — But Evidence Shows the Program Never Reduced SIDS Deaths.” American Academy of Pediatrics (1992). “Positioning and SIDS.” Pediatrics 89(6): 1120–1126. Salm Ward, T. C., Balfour, G. M. (2018). “Qualitative analysis of infant safe sleep public campaign messaging.” Pediatrics 43(2): 83–91.
- The Defender (June 6, 2025). “Their Babies Died Suddenly in Their Sleep. Police Are Charging the Parents With Felonies for Not Placing Infants on Their Backs.” WFMZ Allentown, PA (June 6, 2025). “Parents accused of putting their infants in unsafe sleep positions charged with felonies.”
- Sally Clark case (R v Clark, 2003 EWCA Crim 1020). Both sons died unexpectedly in infancy weeks after receiving routine UK childhood vaccinations; the conviction was overturned in 2003 after the statistical evidence presented by Sir Roy Meadow was discredited and previously withheld pathology evidence was disclosed.
Ex-South Korean President sentenced for trying to provoke conflict with Pyongyang
RT | June 12, 2026
A South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to 30 years in prison, Yonhap news agency has reported. Judges reportedly found that he ordered drones to be sent into North Korea in order to inflame tensions and create a pretext for his declaration of martial law.
Yoon declared martial law in December of 2024, citing legislative gridlock and what he described as a plot by pro-Pyongyang forces within the South Korean political establishment. The nation’s parliament formally overturned the decree within hours despite attempts by police and soldiers to stop lawmakers from accessing the National Assembly building.
Yoon was impeached just over a week later, suspended from office, and formally removed from power by the Constitutional Court months later.
On Friday, a Seoul court ruled that Yoon had abused his power and “benefited the enemy” with his drone plot, among other charges, and sentenced him to 30 years in prison. According to the Associated Press, the court also accused him of harming South Korea’s military interests by exposing its capabilities and prompting Pyongyang to take a stronger defensive posture.
Yoon’s former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun was also sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the plot, while former Defense Counterintelligence Command chief Yeo In-hyung received a 15-year sentence.
Friday’s sentence adds to Yoon’s growing list of convictions.
In February, he was sentenced to life after being convicted of attempting to orchestrate an insurrection and seize power. In April, an appeals court increased his sentence for abuse of authority and obstruction of duty.
Yoon’s downfall follows a long pattern of legal persecution of former South Korean leaders.
Four of his predecessors had received prison sentences after leaving office. Among them were Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, although several were later pardoned.
US publishes docs on ‘dangerous’ Ukrainian biolabs
RT | June 12, 2026
US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard has released new evidence that US-funded biological laboratories in Ukraine were researching dangerous pathogens. Washington previously denied any role in running these labs.
Published on Friday, the declassified documents reveal that the US “built and supported” 40 biolabs in Ukraine, which worked with “especially dangerous pathogens” including anthrax, avian flu, Ebola, plague, and tuberculosis. At least 12 of these laboratories were carrying out human research.
Some of the laboratories were engaged in so-called ‘gain of function’ research, a controversial practice whereby animal viruses are modified to increase their virulence and transmissibility to study their effects on humans.
The partially-redacted documents state that the US paid for the construction and equipping of at least four laboratories, at a total cost of more than $9 million. They also reveal that these laboratories carried out research on behalf of and in collaboration with the US Department of Food and Agriculture, the US Army, the World Health Organization, the UN, and multiple US universities. Metabiota, a biotech company part-owned by Hunter Biden’s investment firm, is also listed as a partner.
What did Russia say about the biolabs?
As Russian troops entered Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that Vladimir Zelensky’s government in Kiev ordered the “emergency destruction” of pathogens at multiple US-funded laboratories in Ukraine. The ministry accused Kiev of ordering the destruction in an attempt to hide its role in an American biological weapons program.
Documents released by the ministry included an order from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health to destroy the pathogens, which included “plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.”
After reviewing thousands of pages of documents seized from labs in Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces concluded in 2023 that “the US, under the guise of ensuring global biosecurity, conducted dual-use research, including the creation of biological weapons components, in close proximity to Russian borders.” Kirillov led Russia’s investigation into the labs until he was assassinated in 2024, allegedly by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Among the facilities mentioned by the ministry was the Institute of Veterinary Medicine in Kharkov. The Russian military accused Ukraine of researching potential biological weapons in the institute’s basement. According to Gabbard’s documents, the facility did have a basement level, where anthrax and brucella bacteria were stored. Both are considered bioweapons due to their extreme infectivity and capacity to cause debilitating illness.
Did the US deny that the biolabs existed?
Back in March 2022, then-US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted under oath that “Ukraine has biological research facilities.” However, Nuland denied that these facilities worked on biological weapons, and insisted that “the United States does not own or operate any chemical or biological laboratories in Ukraine.”
The US State Department claimed that “the Kremlin is intentionally spreading outright lies that the United States and Ukraine are conducting chemical and biological weapons activities in Ukraine,” while the then-US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, stated that “there are no Ukrainian biological weapons laboratories supported by the United States.”
What is Tulsi Gabbard doing about the biolabs?
“Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr. Fauci, and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of US-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth,” Gabbard said in a statement on Friday.
Gabbard said that she has issued new guidance to US intelligence agencies on collection of data from the laboratories in Ukraine, and from the broader network of US-linked biolabs around the world. At present, her office is collecting “new details on clinical trials that are underway at these facilities, raising significant ethical, financial, and security concerns,” her statement read.
However, Gabbard will not be in a position to act on this intelligence for much longer. Following her husband’s diagnosis with a rare form of bone cancer last month, Gabbard announced that she would retire at the end of June. President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he would nominate US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, to replace Gabbard as DNI. Clayton has never commented publicly on the biolabs issue.
Trump’s ERAM cruise missiles for Ukraine blow up his peace overtures to Russia
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 12, 2026
At the Anchorage summit last summer between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, there was some optimism that the conflict in Ukraine might be resolved through diplomacy.
There appeared to be an atmosphere of bonhomie between the two leaders, and in particular, an openness on the American side to listen to Russia’s historic grievances about NATO’s enlargement, presenting a national security threat.
Only days later, however, Trump’s administration quietly approved the supply of new cruise missiles to Ukraine. After months of delay, those new types of weapons are now on their way to Ukraine. This firepower will give a deeper reach into Russia, which is already being assailed by long-range NATO drones.
The summit in the Alaskan capital in August 2025 was dubbed the “spirit of Anchorage.” The meeting was supposed to signal Trump’s commitment to finding a diplomatic settlement of the conflict, taking into account Russia’s historic territorial claims. There appeared to be a recognition on the American side of addressing Moscow’s concerns about the “root causes of conflict” from decades of NATO encroachment on its borders.
But nearly a year on, the diplomatic track has failed to gain any traction, as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged this week.
Trump has, of course, become embroiled in a disastrous war against Iran, one that is endangering the whole Middle East and the global economy.
So much for the “peace presidency” that he had promised. Still, one might expect him to at least pay some token attention to pushing diplomacy in Ukraine. No. Like a kid bored with a new toy, Trump has backed away, which makes all his past angst to stop the slaughter in Ukraine something of a superficial theater.
What is still going ahead, though, is the supply of over 3,300 U.S.-made cruise weapons, manufactured under a program called the Extended Range Attack Missiles (ERAM). The ERAM program began production in April 2025 of two new cruise missile designs.
One weapon is called the Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile (RAACM), manufactured by CoAspire. It has a range of 450 kilometers.
The other design, known as Rusty Dagger, has a much longer range of over 900 km, and is produced by Zone Five Technologies. Both companies are based in the U.S.
The ERAMs are much smaller than Tomahawk cruise missiles in terms of overall size, weight, and explosive warhead. But they were engineered to give Ukraine a cheaper option for deep strikes in Russian territory. They also do not have the iconic image of the Tomahawk and, therefore, can be supplied without arousing the same provocation.
They are designed to be deployed as air-launched weapons using F-16 fighter jets or MiG-29s, both of which are flown by the Ukrainian armed forces.
European NATO states – Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway – are picking up most of the tab for the $825 million cost of supplying the ERAMs to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon.
It is being reported, although not officially confirmed, that the Rusty Dagger ERAM, the longer-range version, has already begun operations in striking Russia. The claims are based on the alleged recovery of missile debris, showing navigation equipment belonging to Five Zone Technologies.
Since the Anchorage summit last year, President Trump has sought to cast the Kiev regime and the European NATO leaders as unhelpful to his efforts to make a peace deal with Russia. There has also been a belief on that Russian side that Trump is genuine in his expressions of wanting to find a diplomatic resolution to the more than four-year war in Ukraine – the biggest in Europe since World War II.
Moscow has tended to rebuke the Zelensky regime and its European patrons for being intransigent and acting to undermine Trump’s peace diplomacy. There is no doubt that this criticism of European Russophobia blocking diplomatic engagement has some merit.
Nevertheless, a reality check is due on what Washington’s abiding agenda is.
Washington has led the long-term strategic policy of confrontation with Russia using the NATO alliance and Ukraine as a proxy. This has been Washington’s systematic policy under successive U.S. administrations, from Clinton in the 1990s to Bush, Obama, Biden, and Trump.
It was under Trump during his first administration in 2018 that the U.S. broke the taboo of supplying lethal weapons to Ukraine. Those munitions included $47 million worth of Javelin anti-tank missiles. Russia warned at the time that such arming of Ukraine would lead to open conflict. That prediction duly culminated in February 2022 during the Biden administration when Russia invaded Ukraine to defend Russian-speaking people who were being attacked and killed by the NATO-backed NeoNazi Kiev regime.
Indeed, Trump has boasted at various times about how he was the first president to send lethal weapons to Ukraine, while at the same time trying to blame the Biden administration for starting the war.
In his second administration, from January 2025, Trump has balked at supplying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine so as not to provoke Russia after Moscow gave stern warnings against such a move. And he has talked up his supposed desire to end the slaughter, at one point claiming he could achieve that in 24 hours.
Trump has also scaled back sending U.S. tax dollars as military aid to Ukraine, which might suggest that he is serious about winding down the conflict.
A more nuanced view is that what transactional Trump seems more concerned about is not so much reducing the supply of U.S. weapons to Ukraine but rather getting the Europeans to pay for it.
This is evident from the expected supply of over 3,300 ERAM cruise missiles to Ukraine, which Europe is financing. Trump has approved that delivery.
Unmistakably, this represents a grave escalation in the war against Russia, whereby the U.S. and its European NATO partners are making a concerted effort to weaponize the Kiev regime to strike deeper. The new cruise missile arsenal dovetails with the ramping up of European-supplied and financed long-range drone capability.
Thus, the inescapable conclusion is that Washington’s agenda of hostility towards Russia has not changed fundamentally. It has merely become nuanced with duplicity about seeking diplomacy, a charade in which Washington is supposedly thwarted by a recalcitrant Kiev regime and European Russophobes.
This same duplicitous charade is played with regard to Iran. Trump makes out that he wants to find a peace deal with Tehran, but that his efforts are continually sabotaged by Israel and its “crazy” prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he gets on the phone to shout at, we are told. This, from a U.S. president who started a war of aggression against Iran 100 days ago on February 28 by murdering Iran’s supreme leader while he was saying prayers in his Tehran home, and on the same day killing 168 schoolgirls in a multiple air strike on a college in Minab.
The reality is that the United States could bring the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to a rapid end by stopping the supply of weapons.
Trump’s so-called peace diplomacy is a con to cover up for the fact that U.S. warmongering is the root cause of conflicts, and this warmongering is not going to stop until it is defeated.
EU state lifts arms embargo on Israel after spy scandal
RT | June 12, 2026
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa has lifted an embargo on arms sales to Israel after allegedly enlisting the help of an Israeli private intelligence firm to oust his left-wing, pro-Palestine predecessor.
Jansa’s government announced the decision on Thursday, adding that it would also overturn an entry ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyah, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“This will restore the conditions for a normal political dialog with Israel,” the Slovenian Defense Ministry said in a statement, adding that the move would help “strengthen the role of the Republic of Slovenia in the efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Former Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob barred the export of military goods to Israel and banned the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank in August. One year earlier, he had recognized the State of Palestine and declared Israel’s war on Gaza to be “genocide.”
Last December, Jansa met with executives from Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm founded by Israel Defense Forces intelligence veterans, whose advisory board includes two former Mossad directors. Three months later, and with parliamentary elections drawing near, covertly-recorded video footage emerged on social media, showing associates of Golob’s Svoboda party discussing corruption within the Slovenian government.
The videos, which Black Cube admitted to filming, weakened Golob’s standing ahead of the election, but Svoboda managed to beat Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party by a margin of 0.67%. However, Golob’s coalition lost its majority and was unable to form a government. Jansa, who served three previous stints as Slovenia’s prime minister, built a right-wing coalition and took office last week.
Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) has since determined that Black Cube deliberately attempted to “influence democratic elections” by releasing the videos. “This interference was most likely commissioned from within Slovenia,” the agency concluded, without directly accusing Jansa of hiring the Israeli spies.
While it is unclear whether the Israeli government knew about or officially sanctioned Black Cube’s work in Slovenia, Israeli officials welcomed Jansa’s return to office and reversal of Golob’s policies.
“I commend Slovenian PM Janez Jansa for his swift and just decision to lift the distorted anti-Israeli measures taken by Slovenia’s previous government,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote on X on Thursday, hailing Jansa as “a bold leader and a true friend of Israel.”
French watchdog reveals Israeli propaganda firm meddled in New York, Scottish, African elections
The Cradle | June 12, 2026
On 11 June, French disinformation and digital interference watchdog Viginum linked Israeli firm BlackCore to digital influence and propaganda campaigns across Europe, Africa, and the US.
Viginum Chief Marc-Antoine Brillant and French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu identified global operations in France, Scotland, Angola, Togo, and New York City.
“Our investigations did not make it possible to identify the sponsor or sponsors, if indeed they exist, behind this foreign digital interference,” Brillant told Reuters.
The report identified BlackCore-linked accounts targeting Scottish First Minister John Swinney, who has described Gaza as a “man-made humanitarian catastrophe.”
Earlier investigations by Viginum revealed that BlackCore had targeted hard-left France Unbowed party candidates in Marseille, Toulouse, and Roubaix using automated accounts and data leaks, as well as fabricated sexual violence allegations against some candidates.
The latest investigations suggest that in the US, the firm allegedly meddled in New York City municipal elections, which were won by Zohran Mamdani, with Brillant confirming the same “modus operandi” from the French campaigns was utilized, though it remains unclear who the specific targets were or who sponsored the operation.
While Mamdani’s victory was received positively by younger progressive members of the Jewish community in New York, traditional pro-Israel backers were unsettled by his outspoken support for Palestine.
Lecornu sought a formal diplomatic explanation from Israel, stating, “I do not doubt for a single instant that if a French private group, from French soil moreover, had engaged in foreign digital interference in Israel, they would have done the same to its ambassador on site.”
Reuters reported that BlackCore removed its entire online presence following inquiries from the news agency. The Israeli firm describes itself as “an elite influence, cyber, and technology company built for the modern era of information warfare.”
In early May, Israel had authorized an unprecedented $730 million propaganda budget for 2026, marking a fourfold increase with the aim of reversing the global decline in public perception following its genocide in Gaza, and the many aggressions towards its surrounding countries that followed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had designated this narrative offensive as the “Eighth Front” of the Israel’s various wars.
The operation functions as what analysts call a “Digital Iron Dome” designed to suppress dissenting online content through AI-driven surveillance and mass reporting while simultaneously flooding social media platforms with state-sponsored narratives.
Researchers have identified expanding state-backed efforts to shape global discourse through AI, paid influence, and covert campaigns.
In the US, millions of dollars were channeled through entities linked to US President Donald Trump to automate state-engineered narratives on social media and AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude.
EU court adviser delivers another ‘Pfizergate’ blow to von der Leyen
RT | June 11, 2026
The European Commission should have revealed the details of its Covid-19 vaccine contracts with drugmakers to the public, an adviser to the EU’s highest court has declared. Among the contracts was a deal with Pfizer that commission President Ursula von der Leyen negotiated via text message.
In an opinion published on Thursday, Advocate General Athanasios Rantos argued that the commission’s insistence on secrecy made it impossible to know whether its vaccine negotiators had any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical companies that they procured the shots from.
The commission signed six advance purchase agreements with pharmaceutical companies – including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna – between 2020 and 2021. The contracts were worth a combined €71 billion ($82 billion).
When Green MEPs and more than 3,000 members of the public demanded information about the negotiation process, the commission redacted the names of all of its negotiators and many of the contract clauses. The commission’s lawyers have argued that these redactions were made to protect the negotiators from “conspiracy theorists.”
The commission lost a legal battle to keep these details secret in 2024, but appealed the decision up to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Rantos’ opinion is not legally binding, but will inform the court’s final ruling.
Last year, the court ruled against von der Leyen in the ‘Pfizergate’ case, which centered around her negotiations with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. In 2021, von der Leyen told the New York Times that she had been negotiating a €35 billion deal for 900 million Covid vaccine doses with Bourla via sms messages.
The newspaper sued for access to the messages, arguing that von der Leyen could have used sms messaging to bypass EU transparency laws. The commission claimed that the messages had been lost, but the court ruled last May that the EU’s executive body failed to provide “credible explanations enabling the public and the Court to understand why those documents cannot be found.”
Von der Leyen survived a no-confidence vote initiated by right-wing parties in the European Parliament over the scandal last July.
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A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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