UAE launches Muslim Shia crackdown under cover of ‘Iran-linked terror’ claims
By Robert INLAKESH | MintPress News | April 22, 2026
The United Arab Emirates says it has dismantled an Iran-linked “terrorist organisation” targeting the Muslim Shia community of the UAE. But the evidence made public so far tells a different story — one that raises serious questions about whether these arrests are part of a widening crackdown on dissent against the US-Israeli backed war against Iran which the UAE is involved in, masked as counterterrorism.
Despite presenting itself on the international stage as a victim, the UAE is quietly participating and aiding the US and Israel in its war against Iran. Yet, Abu Dhabi has enforced draconian censorship laws that carry lengthy prison sentences for those posting or even privately forwarding videos of Iranians munitions impacting targets in the UAE.
This week, the UAE’s State Security Department announced the arrest of 27 individuals, described by state-run WAM media as members of a “Shia terrorist group” allegedly linked to Tehran. Yet despite the severity of those accusations, none of the detainees appear to be facing formal terrorism charges.
Instead, those arrested are accused of spreading “misleading ideas,” maintaining “foreign allegiances,” and forming a secret organization — vague allegations that critics say are often used to justify political repression. Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, rejected the arrests outright, calling them “baseless and unfounded.”
Even Emirati state media reporting reveals inconsistencies. While headlines such as “UAE dismantles terrorist cell and arrests members” suggest a major security operation, the details within those same reports make no mention of terrorism-related charges, focusing instead on loosely defined political and ideological offenses.
However, within the article itself, there is no mention of any terror related charges, only that they were detained for spreading “misleading ideas”, have “foreign allegiances”, in addition to being accused of establishing a secret organisation and managing its activities.
The case has also raised concerns of a sectarian dimension. Among the 27 detained are prominent members of the UAE’s Muslim Shia community, including cleric Ghadeer Mirza Al-Rustam of the Jaafari Endowments in Dubai and as well as Seyed Sadiq Lari who had served as the Imam of the Grand Mosque in the Zayed area of Abu Dhabi, fueling suspicions that the crackdown may be targeting religious identity.
Furthermore, those arrested were all Emiratis, Saudis or Bahraini, none were Iranians. The alleged link made to the Islamic Republic of Iran is through Velayat-e Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist), a concept within Shia Islam of adherence to a qualified Islamic leader. Emirati Shia publicly follow Ayatollah Sistani as their religious authority, for whom the concept of Velayat-e Faqih does not apply.
There is yet to be evidence presented to prove the detainees are agents of Iran, opposed to them simply expressing popular political views amongst Shia Muslims including opposing the war against Iran.
The UAE is the only Arab State that has directly participated in the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran. This was exposed after two Emirati Wing Loong II UAVs were downed over Iranian airspace. Following the US President’s announcement of a two-week temporary ceasefire, Abu Dhabi allegedly lobbied Washington to continue its assault, even going as far as bombing Iran’s Lavan Oil Refinery.
In the past, Abu Dhabi has launched politicised arrests while engaging in war.
For example, in 2016, two US citizens of Libyan origin were acquitted after spending two years in prison, on charges of funding two groups fighting in Libya. They were originally arrested in Dubai as part of wider crackdown on Libyan nationals, as the UAE began launching airstrikes in the North African country in 2024. According to the UN and their family members, the two wrongfully detained American citizens were severely tortured.
Between March and April, the UAE was struck by more Iranian missiles and drones than any other nation, during which it arrested at least 375 for violating its strict “cybercrime laws”. The mass arrests, assumed to be much more than officially announced, were launched as reprisals against those sharing and even forwarding videos they had filmed of Iranian munitions striking locations in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It got so bad, that even British media had picked up on how many UK citizens were being rounded up.
According to Radha Stirling, the CEO of Detained in Dubai, “Under national security frameworks, individuals may face: 5 to 15 years imprisonment, or potentially life sentences. Fines reaching approximately USD 500,000. Prolonged or indefinite pre-trial detention. Restricted access to lawyers, embassies, and evidence. Human rights violations and torture.”
“People are increasingly afraid to communicate, send messages, document events or share information or a news article, even privately. Many are choosing to remain silent, unsure whether even routine communication could expose them to criminal liability and unsure to what extent authorities are surveilling the population”, Stirling added.
The mass arrest campaigns came as a part of an ongoing information war waged between the UAE and Iran. An investigation into Emirati censorship, by Bellingcat, “identified several high-profile incidents where authorities in the United Arab Emirates have downplayed damage, mischaracterised interceptions and in some instances not acknowledged successful Iranian drone strikes on the country.”
Meanwhile, the UAE has not been the only Gulf country to have launched mass detention campaigns over alleged “cyber crimes” and charges related to publishing “misleading ideas” or having “foreign allegiances”. Kuwait even arrested well known US-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin on March 2, on cyber crime offenses related to posts shared during the war with Iran.
Arrest campaigns carried out against Shia Muslims across the region are also not a new feature to the US-Israel led war on Iran. The UAE’s media itself claimed without evidence that the Emirati authorities had dismantled another “terrorist network” last month, accusing both Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah of being behind it. In mid-March, Kuwait also claimed to have arrested members of a “Hezbollah network”, also failing to provide any evidence. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia had even executed two Shia detainees, accusing them of “terrorism”, one of whom was charged for protesting and arrested while he was only 17 years old.
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.”
Executive producer challenges BBC on camera
Executive Producer Ben De Pear, speaking during the acceptance speech, dedicated the award to journalists in Gaza who continue to work under extreme danger. He then directly addressed the BBC on camera, questioning whether the broadcaster would also cut their acceptance speech from the delayed broadcast of the ceremony.
De Pear’s challenge to the BBC adds renewed pressure on the network over its long-standing Zionist bias and controversial editorial decisions regarding coverage of Palestine.
The incident follows a report by a Freedom of Information NGO on April 16, 2026, revealing that BBC executives have met nine times with Zionist groups since the start of the genocide, compared to just once with pro-Palestinian organizations.
Furthermore, over 100 BBC staff signed an open letter on July 2, 2025, addressed to Director-General Tim Davie, accusing the broadcaster of acting as “a mouthpiece” for “Israel” and failing its own editorial standards.
The documentary team’s defiance at the BAFTA awards underscores a growing crisis of credibility for the BBC, as even its own journalists and the filmmakers it commissioned accuse the network of actively suppressing evidence of war crimes and genocide.
UK mainstream media has been constantly criticized for its coverage of “Israel’s” genocide on Gaza, sparking controversy for its journalistic biases that promote double standards through misinformation.
“The coverage of Gaza has several noticeable features. There have been instances of misleading and factually incorrect information being published throughout the last 10 months,” media analyst at the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) Faisal Hanif told Anadolu in September.
“Israel” killed two four-day-old newborn twins at their parents’ apartment in central Gaza in an airstrike as their father went to collect their birth certificates.
Western mainstream news outlets, including the BBC and Sky News, did not mention “Israeli strikes” in their headlines on their social media posts, prompting online users to ask “Killed by who?”
Hanif highlighted that many Western news outlets continue to refer to a fabricated story presented at the beginning of the Israeli aggression on Gaza, claiming the Palestinian resistance “beheaded babies.”
The media analyst emphasized that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the debunked narrative in his address to the US Congress in July 2024, which the BBC reported verbatim without providing context for readers that investigative journalists determined the story to be a fabrication.
When Mandates and Shaming Are Ethical
At least if you’re an NYU bioethicist…
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | May 6, 2026
Through an ICAN FOIA request, my firm recently acquired a 2019 presentation given to HHS’s National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) from an NYU “bioethicist” named Dr. Arthur Caplan.
Caplan indicates that parents who decline vaccines for their kids have “bogus values” and suggests methods such as guilting “hesitators and resistors” and calling them “selfish, bad neighbors, indifferent to the vulnerable.” He also recommends that all states follow the sterling example of California and remove all non-medical vaccine exemptions.
His presentation is an excellent example of how vaccine zealotry has infiltrated every level of academia. You can feel the outrage in his presentation as you read it. Caplan seemingly can’t imagine why any reasonable person would decline this manna from pharmaceutical heaven—so much so that he feels it is ethical to enforce vaccine mandates and shame people into taking a medical product they don’t want! All in the name of “bioethics.”
At one point, Caplan even implies that parents should be held liable for any harms that come to their children as a result of not vaccinating. And who is liable if they do choose to vaccinate and the vaccine harms their children? Of course, in that case, the answer is basically no one—not the manufacturer, not the government, certainly not the pediatrician who shamed the parent into vaccinating, nor the school that mandated the product for attendance.
This kind of autocratic illiberal thinking—where evidence-free, righteous, indignant “greater good” arguments are pushed to crush individual and civil rights—is one reason I felt compelled to write Vaccines, Amen. What makes this example so egregious is that these ideas and tactics are being pushed under the guise of “bioethics.” Sadly, Caplan himself and his kin, as reflected by his presentation, lack the objectivity, emotional stability, or ethics to opine on this topic.
I offered Caplan the opportunity to come on my podcast to defend his views. He declined. That offer remains open and if he had the courage of his convictions, and truly believed in them, I would imagine he would welcome the opportunity to defend them in an open forum. But alas…
The FCC Wants Your ID Before You Get a Phone Number
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | May 6, 2026
The era of the anonymous phone number could be ending. On April 30, the Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved a proposal requiring telecom providers to verify customers’ identities before activating service.
Government-issued ID, physical address, legal name, and existing phone numbers would all be included. The stated goal is stopping robocalls. The result would be an identity-verification regime covering one of the last semi-anonymous communication tools available to ordinary Americans.
The proposal applies to nearly every voice provider in the country, from traditional carriers and mobile operators to VoIP services. The FCC is seeking public comment on specifics, but the direction is clear.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr framed it around negligent carriers. “As we have continued to investigate the problem of illegal robocalls over the last year, it has become clear that some originating providers are not doing enough to vet their customers, allowing bad actors to infiltrate our U.S. phone networks,” he said. Some providers, he added, “do the bare minimum (or worse) and have become complicit in illegal robocalling schemes.”
That language targets telecom companies and the surveillance targets everyone else.
The framework borrows from banking’s anti-money-laundering rules. The FCC is also asking whether carriers should retain identity documentation for at least four years after a customer leaves and whether they should check customers against law enforcement watchlists. Penalties would shift to a per-call basis, meaning fines of $1,000 to $15,000 for every illegal call a poorly verified customer places.
The real privacy stakes sit in the proposal’s section on prepaid service. Right now, you can pay cash for a prepaid phone and SIM card without showing identification. Journalists use prepaid phones to protect sources, domestic violence survivors use them to avoid being traced, and whistleblowers, activists, or anyone with a reason to separate phone activity from legal identity relies on this.
British journalist faces ‘anti-terror probe’ after Iran visit, reporting on US-Israeli crimes
Press TV – May 6, 2026
In a politically motivated move, a UK-based independent journalist and activist faces an “anti-terror probe” after her recent visit to Iran, where she reported on post-war developments, including massive rallies against the US-Israeli war coalition.
Observers say the move punishes legitimate political expression as the UK government seeks to silence dissenting voices critical of the unprovoked war against the Islamic Republic.
Bushra Shaikh, a British media personality who has been vocal about the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza, has been referred to the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command over a speech she delivered at a rally in Iran during her recent visit.
The referral, which comes just days after her return from the Islamic Republic, has raised serious concerns about the UK government weaponizing “anti-terror” laws to target individuals whose political views diverge from its stance on West Asia developments.
In a video shared online, Shaikh was seen addressing a rally in Iran, in which she expressed her solidarity with the people of Iran and condemned the aggression against them.
During the rally, flags of regional resistance movements, including Hezbollah, were seen.
Within hours of the post going live, a formal complaint was lodged with Scotland Yard, as reported by British media, alleging that Shaikh may have breached the Terrorism Act, which criminalizes “inviting support” for a banned group.
The report further claimed a potential violation of the National Security Act’s new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which requires individuals acting under the direction of a foreign power to register their political activities.
“Any allegations relating to possible terrorism or national security-related offences will be passed to officers within Counter Terrorism Policing, who will assess the details and take any further action as appropriate,” the Met Police was quoted as saying.
During her visit to Iran, as part of a foreign media delegation invited by the Sobh Media Center, Shaikh visited many cities and interacted with victims of the recent war.
She also interviewed government officials, including foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei and chairman of the parliament’s foreign policy and internal security commission Ebrahim Azizi, which she also shared on her social media platforms.
In the recent past, many British journalists, activists and academics have faced draconian charges in their country after visiting Iran to attend conferences or media festivals, including the Sobh International Media Festival, organized by the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) World Service.
Israel threatens Gaza flotilla activists with death after abduction
Press TV – May 5, 2026
Israeli forces have threatened two Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla activists, seized in international waters last week, with death or long prison terms, according to a rights group representing them.
The two pro-Palestinian activists, Saif Abu Keshek and Thiago Avila, were among dozens detained during an Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters off Greece on April 30.
On Tuesday, an Israeli court extended their detention until Sunday, May 10.
The legal rights centre Adalah, which represents the pair, said they have been subjected to psychological abuse and held in solitary confinement. According to the group, Israeli officers threatened to kill them or imprison them “for 100 years.”
Both men remain in “total isolation,” subjected to 24/7 high-intensity lighting in their cells and kept blindfolded whenever they are moved, including during medical examinations. They are also being held in very low temperatures, the group added.
Adalah said the court’s decision to prolong the detention “amounts to judicial validation of the regime’s lawlessness.” No charges have been filed, but the two face accusations including affiliation with a “terrorist organisation” and contact with “foreign agents,” which the legal centre described as “baseless.”
According to the group, the activists are continuing their hunger strike, consuming only water since their abduction.
Meanwhile, the flotilla’s organisers demanded their release in a post on X, urging the international community to intervene.
They said the activists were “forcefully brought against their will to occupied Palestine, where they have been subjected to interrogations, death threats, sleep deprivation and medical neglect.”
The governments of Spain and Brazil issued a joint statement on Friday describing the detention of Avila and Abu Keshek as illegal.
During the raid on the Global Sumud Flotilla, Israeli forces attacked 22 of the 58 aid boats heading toward the besieged Gaza Strip and detained 175 activists.
Testimonies indicate that the activists were tortured while in Israeli custody following their abduction.
UAE deports tens of thousands of Pakistanis, seizes their savings amid war on Iran: Report
Press TV – May 5, 2026
Authorities in the UAE are conducting a sweeping deportation campaign targeting tens of thousands of Pakistani workers, freezing their bank accounts and stripping them of their life savings amid growing regional fallout from the US-Israeli aggression on Iran.
While initial reports from New Lines Magazine placed the number of expelled individuals at 15,000, Pakistani sources recently confirmed to Press TV that the deportations are continuing at a rapid pace and now affect tens of thousands of workers.
The expulsions target Shia Muslims or individuals who have publicly expressed solidarity with Tehran following the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran.
Those targeted are being expelled without formal charges or legal recourse. The systematic removals involve sudden arrests, phone confiscations, and transfers between various detention facilities before the workers are forced onto flights back to Pakistan.
Crucially, deportees are being sent back “without being given the opportunity to withdraw their funds” from Emirati banks, according to a Shia cleric cited by New Lines Magazine.
This sudden seizure of assets has left many families in financial ruin, stripping workers—some of whom spent decades contributing to the Emirati economy—of their entire life savings.
Mohammad Amin Shaheedi, chief of Ummat-e-Wahida Pakistan, told the magazine that following the outbreak of the war, the UAE government launched “what appears to be an organized campaign to deport Shia individuals from the country.”
The US-Israeli aggression began on February 28 with airstrikes that assassinated senior Iranian officials and commanders, including Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. In response, Iranian armed forces launched daily missile and drone operations targeting locations in the Israeli-occupied territories and US military bases and assets, including those in the UAE.
The ensuing war sparked immense public solidarity with Iran across the region, particularly in Pakistan.
Sources indicate the UAE’s mass expulsions are deeply tied to Islamabad’s clear stance against the Israeli regime’s aggression on Iran and Lebanon, as well as Pakistan’s prominent role as a mediator.
On April 8, forty days into the war, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US finally took effect. However, subsequent peace negotiations in Islamabad ultimately stalled amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.
Palantir touts record expansion and ‘battlefield’ AI value
RT | May 4, 2026
Palantir Technologies reported a blowout first quarter, saying revenue rose 85% year on year to $1.63 billion as its US business more than doubled, driven by rapid growth across both commercial and government customers.
The company said in its Q1 report, published Monday, that US revenue jumped 104% to $1.28 billion, with commercial revenue up 133% to $595 million and government revenue up 84% to $687 million. The results beat Wall Street estimates, and the company also raised its full-year guidance, saying it now expects 2026 revenue of up to $7.66 billion, implying annual growth of about 71%.
CEO Alex Karp, who has increasingly framed Palantir’s AI tools as central to Western military and industrial power, said the “twin pistons of our US business are now firing in sync.”
“We believe it is not hyperbolic to say that nearly all AI workflows that actually create value – especially on the battlefield – are built on Palantir,” Karp wrote in an accompanying letter to shareholders, stating that the company “was founded to strengthen US national security, to protect Americans and their freedom.”
Palantir – named after the obsidian seeing-stones from Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, through which the dark lord Sauron keeps watch on his underlings – is a software firm primarily serving the defense and intelligence sectors.
Palantir’s flagship product is a system called Gotham, which pulls together and analyzes satellite footage, human intelligence from the CIA, signals intelligence from the NSA, and other data that might otherwise take days to sift through. Gotham and MOSAIC – another Palantir target-identification program that pulls digital data, including surveillance footage and IP addresses, from a target area – use AI to label the most effective targets for military strikes.
The US has acknowledged using these programs to select targets during its ongoing war on Iran, but insists that humans make the final decision to fire. Abroad, Palantir’s technology is used by the British Ministry of Defence, the Israel Defense Forces, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The company’s earnings update came weeks after Palantir drew criticism for a 22-point manifesto summarizing themes from Karp’s book The Technological Republic. The manifesto argued that Silicon Valley has an “obligation” to participate in national defense, that “hard power” will be built on software, and that AI weapons are inevitable. Critics labeled it a blueprint for “technofascism.”
Israeli telecom networks used for mass surveillance across countries
Al Mayadeen | May 4, 2026
A probe by the digital research group Citizen Lab has uncovered that telecommunications infrastructure owned by Israeli companies has been weaponized to track citizens in more than 10 countries over the past three years, exploiting decades-old network protocols and modern 5G systems to transform them into sophisticated tracking devices.
According to a report published by the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, the investigation revealed that infrastructure ranging from legacy networks built in the 1970s to the latest 5G systems has been repurposed into surveillance tools using advanced spyware programs. Since November 2022, over 15,700 attempts to pinpoint phone locations have been detected across numerous countries, including Thailand, South Africa, Norway, Bangladesh and Malaysia, all routed through the networks of “Israel”-based telecommunications firms.
The findings raise serious questions about “Israel’s” role in the global surveillance industry, as the very infrastructure designed to connect people has been turned into a mechanism for tracking them without their knowledge or consent.
Internal documents cited by Haaretz revealed that Verint, the parent company of Cognyte, sold an SS7-based location tracking system called SkyLock to a government client in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The SS7 protocol, originally developed to route calls and texts, support international roaming, and enable interoperability between mobile operators, has been systematically exploited for surveillance purposes.
The investigation also found that Fink, a Swiss telecommunications company, enabled Israeli surveillance firms such as Rayzone to impersonate legitimate cellular carriers and connect to older mobile networks. This allowed the firms to track users worldwide by abusing the SS7 signaling protocol.
The exploitation was not limited to legacy systems. Next-generation Diameter protocols, which manage 4G and 5G networks, were also compromised, according to the findings. One particularly notable method identified was SIMjacking, where a hidden text message sent to a target device forces the SIM card to reveal its location without the user ever seeing the message.
The phone-tracking operations were carried out through the networks of Israeli telecom companies 019Mobile and Partner Communications. 019Mobile responded by stating that it is a virtual operator and that its identity may have been impersonated, denying any involvement in tracking activities.
No immediate responses were received from Fink, Partner Communications, Exelera Telecom, Cognyte, or Verint.
The investigation exposes a disturbing reality: Israeli telecommunications technology, sold and deployed around the world, is not merely passive infrastructure but has been deliberately weaponized for mass surveillance.
The involvement of major Israeli firms in selling tracking systems to authoritarian governments, and the exploitation of global telecom networks by Israeli surveillance companies, points to a systematic pattern rather than isolated incidents.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to dominate headlines, the international community has once again turned a blind eye to “Israel’s” role as a global leader in surveillance and cyber-weapons. From Pegasus spyware to SS7 exploits, Israeli technology has been used to track journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens across multiple continents.
House Resolution Calls for Tech Companies to Censor Speech
Legislation introduced by two AIPAC funded representatives
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | May 2, 2026
This one slipped under the wire. Tucker Carlson talked about it the other day, but beyond that, it is flying sans transponder. On February 29, New Jersey Democrat Josh Gottheimer and New York Republican Mike Lawler introduced “a bipartisan resolution condemning the rise of antisemitic, hate-filled rhetoric disseminated by prominent online personalities, including Hasan Piker and Candace Owens, and calling on social media platforms and public leaders to take stronger action against hate,” according to Gottheimer’s taxpayer funded website.
Watch at Rumble
“The resolution highlights the growing influence of online personalities and the alarming surge in antisemitism driven, in part, by disinformation and extremist rhetoric… When influential voices spread conspiracy theories, promote terrorism, or dehumanize Jewish people, it fuels real-world violence and intimidation. We must stand up and speak out.”
Owens, Gottheimer’s post continues, “has trafficked in vile conspiracy theories, promoted blood libels, and platformed Holocaust deniers,” and Piker has “dehumanized Orthodox Jews” The post continues with debunked lies concerning the Hamas al-Aqsa Flood open-air prison breakout on October 7, 2023.
Lawler received $1,069,875 and Gottheimer $2,062,601 from the Israel lobby. Both are essentially paid operatives for the Likud government of Israel. Furthermore, both “representatives” are traitors to the the Bill of Rights and have violated their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The Democrat Gottheimer, sounding like a staunch MAGA Republican, declared the “relationship with Israel is key to our national security. Terrorists hate the United States more than they hate Israel.” Lawler voted for a budget “that cut Medicaid and raised the cost of healthcare for millions of Americans, while saying US taxpayer funding for Israel should be ‘unconditional’ and voted for over $18 billion in weapons to Israel in 2024,” thus revealing his priorities (and making sure AIPAC sweetens his pot for the next election).
Last August, Israeli PM Netanyahu directly inserted himself in domestic American politics by demanding “the algorithms and the social networks” be censored to eliminate criticism of Israel.
In April, Zionist podcaster and self-proclaimed constitutionalist Mark Levin denounced critics of Israeli apartheid and genocide as “Nazis” and “jihadis” and said they are “inciting” violence with their speech. He argued the freedom of speech, once considered god-given and natural in America, is “overprotected.” Carlson said “Mark Levin, the right wing MAGA guy, is saying those people [critics of Israel] should be silenced by the tech companies.”
Another podcaster, Ben Shapiro, told the Palm Beach Gardens Chabad synagogue that X is an “unusable” and “vile stream of trash.” He admitted reaching out “to Elon’s people about” the criticism of Zionism he considers contemptible. “The algorithms are destroying America,” he said.
“We will monitor social media, and check your bank accounts,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the leader of the ADL, threatened in January. He said the ADL “shares the information with the FBI” gathered on anti-Zionist “extremists.” In June, he demanded companies “knock the anti-Zionists off the platform once and for all.” Research from the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society posted to X “shows that five major platforms are still failing to enforce” the removal of content critical of Israel and Zionists.
Israel-born Chabadnik Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s czar of antisemitism, announced in December the State Department will establish a “whole division” to combat criticism of Israel and is working to develop social media algorithms that exclude “misinformation.”
“From YouTube to X, Wikipedia, and TikTok, Zionists are capturing all means of communication to erase the evidence of its genocide, reshape the historical record, and censor those critical of it,” writes Robert Inlakesh for the Palestine Chronicle. “Those who are critical of Israel are being censored or arrested.”
Tucker Carlson warns full-blown censorship will soon arrive in America through legislation forcing technology corporations to remove content deemed antisemitic by Israel and Zionists in America. “Criticizing the behavior of a foreign government is a hate crime and can get you censored in your own country,” he said.
So what’s the takeaway from all this? Well, the first takeaway is censorship is coming, and it will work unless people exercise their God-given and First Amendment-guaranteed right to push back against it with words and do so at high volume without any shame at all. It’s going to need a refusal to be intimidated by false claims of, quote, hate.
COVID Conniving Receives First Federal Indictment
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | May 1, 2026
David Morens, a former top advisor to COVID Czar Tony Fauci was indicted this week and “charged with conspiracy against the United States; destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations; concealment, removal, or mutilation of records; and aiding and abetting,” according to the Justice Department press release.
Morens allegedly helped top federal health officials cover up the potential role of federal grants in spurring the COVID pandemic. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires federal agencies to preserve and disclose federal records with some narrow exceptions. In early 2021, Morens emailed a colleague, “I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe.”
Morens added, “Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail.” In a previous email, he assured his collaborators, “I have spoken to our FOIA folks” and “I should be safe from future FOIAs. Don’t ask how…”
Fauci doesn’t need to worry about getting indicted since President Joe Biden, on his last morning in office, pardoned any crimes that Fauci might have committed in the previous decade. Fauci justified COVID mandates because average citizens “don’t have the ability” to determine what is best for them. Congressional investigations revealed that Fauci was at the center of string-pulling to shirk responsibility on COVID.
Top federal officials scrambled to erase the federal role in bankrolling reckless gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, the most likely source of the COVID virus that killed more than seven million people around the world. That type of research seeks to genetically alter organisms to enable the spread of viruses into new species. As MIT professor Kevin Esvelt asked in 2021, “Why is anyone trying to teach the world how to make viruses that could kill millions of people?” The risks were compounded because the Wuhan Institute had a very poor safety rating. Two years earlier, the State Department confidentially “warned other federal agencies about safety issues at Wuhan labs studying bat COVID,” but the public disclosure of that alert was delayed until 2022—long after President Biden illegally mandated COVID vaccines for a hundred million American adults.
If COVID-19 had been initially recognized as the result of one of the biggest government boondoggles in history, it would have been far more difficult for American politicians and government scientists to pirouette as saviors as they seized sway over daily life. Instead, politicians, bureaucrats, and the media stampeded most of the American public with the notion that total submission to boneheaded decrees was their only hope to survive.
Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a statement on the indictment of Morens:
“These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most—during the height of a global pandemic.”
Luckily, there haven’t been any “profound abuses of trust” since Trump took office again—at least according to his Justice Department. Blanche added, “Government officials have a solemn duty to provide honest, well-grounded facts and advice in service of the public interest — not to advance their own personal or ideological agendas.”
Be still my beating heart. Is this a subtle signal that the Trump team will disclose the other three million documents on the Epstein scandal?
FBI chief Kash Patel announced at the indictment press conference, “Circumventing records protocols with the intention of avoiding transparency is something that will not be tolerated by this FBI.”
Has the FBI turned over a new leaf or what? The FBI is one of the most notorious FOIA violators in Washington. When FOIA was first passed in 1966, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover ordered his agency to totally refuse compliance with the law. A federal judge slammed the FBI in 2017 for claiming it needed seventeen years to fulfill a FOIA request on surveillance of antiwar activists in the 1960s. The FBI deleted the names of Clark Kent and Lois Lane from a letter that made reference to the famous Superman characters—because disclosing them in a FOIA response would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Louis Freeh, director of the FBI from 1993-2001, repeatedly denounced my articles on Ruby Ridge; but when I filed a FOIA, the FBI claimed to have no records of those published letters to the editor. They sent their response to “Mr. Brovard” so maybe that helped them not find anything.
FBI FOIA trampling is par for the Bureau covering up its destruction of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. As federal judge Terry Doughty declared in a 2023 decision, “The FBI [acted] as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government—from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
Morens may be the first federal official to ever be charged with a crime for actions to evade FOIA requests. Certainly, in more than fifty years, no federal FOIA official has ever been jailed for violating the law by refusing to disclose information. I’ve received so many BS responses from FOIA officers over the decades that I have lost count. When I filed a FOIA with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to see what information they had on me in their files, they replied in 2010, “We have no records on Kevin Bovard.” But I wasn’t asking about my cousin.
In 2015, I heard scuttlebutt that the Justice Department pressured USA Today to cease publishing my articles bashing Attorney General Eric Holder. I filed a FOIA to get the department’s official emails to my editors, but DOJ FOIA claimed it had nothing. I only got the damning emails after I filed a follow-up FOIA request and made a lucky guess on the exact day, hour and minute the emails were sent.
For too long, deceiving the American people has been treated like a victimless crime in Washington. If the Morens indictment can set a precedent leading to more such criminal investigations of bureaucratic cover-ups, that will be a booster shot for American democracy.
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From the Archives
On ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ and ‘genocide’: Time for new language on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2021
On 25 May, famous US actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologise for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding: “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of “hyperbole”? … continue
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