The recent events involving India and Pakistan, in a short-lived, conventional and timely conflict, prompt us to reflect carefully on the use and management of media coverage of the conflict.
It is important to remember that the domination of information has to do with the domination of the mind; therefore, the way in which an event is narrated largely defines the perception that the masses will have of it. Controlling the narrative means controlling the majority element of the cognitive-perceptual dimension.
So, let’s look at the facts. A few hours after the massacre of 26 civilians in Pahalgam on 22 April, the main Indian media had already passed judgement. No investigation had yet been launched, no credible claim had been made, nor had any attempt been made to identify specific responsibilities, yet in a very short time the dominant narrative had been established: Pakistan was to blame.
What happened next represents a new critical point in the information war that now accompanies every moment of tension between India and Pakistan. In the days that followed, the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi suffered expulsions of staff, Pakistani citizens were ordered to leave India by 30 April, and a decisive digital offensive was launched. Significantly, the Indian authorities blocked Pakistani YouTube channels, froze social media profiles and targeted narratives coming from across the border.
From Islamabad’s point of view, this was not simply a response to terrorism through the media, but rather a form of information terrorism, an occupation of the narrative. This is a key turning point.
The conflict between the two countries has always been marked by propaganda, disinformation and narratives inflamed by the media on both sides and also abroad, where there is a constant attempt to identify with one faction or the other (as is to be expected); but in 2025, the information landscape is not only a subject of contention, it has become colonised territory.
Pakistan, increasingly marginalised in the large international digital spaces, finds itself fighting a narrative war at a disadvantage. The way in which the Indian media reported the Pahalgam attack follows a well-established script: vague intelligence sources, information presented as established facts, inflammatory talk shows launched well before any concrete evidence emerged. Even after Pakistan’s firm denial and request for a joint investigation, the Indian press continued its campaign. Outlets such as Times Now and Republic TV immediately ran alarmist headlines: ‘Pakistan-sponsored terrorism is back’, ‘It’s time for a military response’. Terms such as ‘atrocious’, ‘state-sponsored’ and ‘surgical strike’ dominated the broadcasts, while scientific investigations were still in their early stages.
No independent verification – note this detail – has been made public. The few Pakistani voices invited onto television programmes were promptly attacked. There was no editorial caution, no balance.
It is fair to acknowledge that Pakistan also has a complicated past with press freedom and control of narratives by the authorities, but what emerges today is not a symmetrical conflict, but rather an unbalanced silence.
On 25 April, the Indian Ministry of Information banned 16 YouTube channels, 94 social media accounts and six news sites linked to Pakistan. The official reason? ‘Protection of national security and sovereignty’. The concrete result: the blocking of almost any alternative or critical viewpoint, especially on issues such as Kashmir, the attack on Pahalgam or bilateral relations. Among the platforms affected were independent media outlets such as Naya Daur, channels run by Pakistani scholars abroad and cultural content with no political affiliation. At the same time, official fact-checking units launched a campaign to expose what they called ‘Pakistani disinformation,’ but the content removed also included material based on authoritative international sources, archive articles that were still valid, and statements taken out of context. The result was a sharp restriction of freedom of expression and access to certain local sources. Even diplomatic communications were not spared. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry saw many of its official posts on X (formerly Twitter) blocked, including statements calling for calm. On 29 April, the hashtag #FalseFlagPahalgam, widely shared in Pakistan, was virtually invisible on platforms accessible from Indian territory.
Tensions reached a new peak on 7 May 2025, when India struck civilian and military targets in Punjab and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, sparking fears of a serious escalation. Islamabad called the operation ‘a blatant act of war’ and announced that it had shot down five Indian military jets, three of which were also confirmed by international media. India has not yet officially responded to this claim, but anonymous government sources have said that three fighter jets crashed in Indian-controlled Kashmir, without confirming whether they actually belonged to India or Pakistan.
Geopolitical asymmetries
It is precisely in this disproportion that the real asymmetry can be perceived. India, thanks to its technological resources, its links with major global platforms and its ability to influence algorithms, controls the digital narrative. Pakistan, on the other hand, is often its victim. The result is a one-sided war of narratives, in which Delhi sets the terms of the debate and Islamabad is relegated to the role of designated culprit.
The internal consequences are no less serious: increased Islamophobia, similarities between Kashmiri identity and jihadism, and some localised tensions. Hashtags such as #PunishPakistan and #MuslimTerror have spread widely without control, while Pakistani responses denouncing violence or discrimination have been labelled as disinformation and deleted.
This double standard only fuels radicalism on both sides. It pushes young Pakistanis towards closed and polarised environments and makes it increasingly difficult to build peaceful bridges between the two peoples. What was once a space for cultural diplomacy is now a digital minefield. The silence of big tech and Western media in the face of India’s censorship is significant: when an authoritarian regime represses dissent, it is called tyranny; when India does so in the name of ‘national security’, it is praised as moderate. Pakistan has asked for the opportunity to defend itself in the information arena and has been effectively denied, leaving it at an international disadvantage.
The absence of real journalistic scrutiny signals a deeper evil: narrative has replaced facts. The struggle for dominance is now being fought with tweets, headlines and talk shows.
At this level of conflict, the gap between what is true and what is plausible becomes very difficult to discern. Do you understand how powerful this tool is? The frame within which the narrative is placed is what determines how the ‘truth’ of that event will be constructed.
The example of India and Pakistan teaches us that there is no need to fire guns, even in a historical conflict such as theirs. Words work much better. Because even when the guns have fired, there will still be ‘good guns’ and ‘bad guns’, and that value judgement will be made by the way people perceive what happened, not by an objective or rationally agreeable truth.
In all this, the great media victory is that a narrative front has been opened up that can easily be used by other global powers and could be employed by some of them to drag other adversarial countries into an information conflict. Russia, China, the UK and the US have interests at stake and could become part of this expanded infowar front. Because in the world of information, war does not have the space and time limitations of conventional warfare: everything is fast, fluid, constantly expanding and contracting, and knows no night or day.
Information warfare may save more lives, but it claims more victims. Lives are saved because direct killing can be avoided; victims are claimed because everyone involved will inevitably be hit by the weapon of information.
May 27, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | India, Kashmir, Pakistan |
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We recently learned that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth shared details of impending drone strikes on Yemen in a group chat with his wife, brother and personal attorney. If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it comes just weeks after national security leaders—including Hegseth—accidentally added Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat.
The outrage is understandable. Why were military plans shared on an unsecured channel? Were U.S. personnel put at risk? Why did the president not respond strongly to this apparent breach? And of course, the attempted cover-up is making headlines, too.
Something else strikes me. Few seem angry that the government conducts offensive military operations in a country with which we are not formally at war. Headline after headline emphasizes the leaking of war plans—not the “war” itself.
I’ve studied conflict for over a decade. From terrorism and counterterrorism to the development of drone technology and how foreign intervention alters domestic institutions, I know what war does. It kills. It destroys property and devastates economies. It enables people to do the unthinkable—to rape, torture, maim children, and use them as soldiers. War destroys.
Yet, our secretary of defense tells his brother about coming strikes with the same gravity as he’d relay his grocery list.
What’s equally jarring is the public reaction. People aren’t aghast that U.S. drones are killing people in Yemen. People aren’t batting an eye over officials bypassing Congress’s war powers.
We are more concerned about the data leak than about what the data contains.
This indifference isn’t new. In my research, I’ve documented how Americans have become desensitized to war. We’ve been in some state of conflict for more than 93 percent of the calendar years between 1775 and 2018.
I’ve studied how the typical American is constantly exposed to pro-military, pro-U.S. foreign policy messaging. For example, television shows and movies are often subject to editorial review by the Department of Defense in exchange for using military hardware and personnel. We see that messaging in sports, too. In football, we have “bombs,” “blitzes” and “trenches” around the line of scrimmage. We “blow away” the opposing team. We have military homecomings on the pitcher’s mound or centerfield and celebrate without ever asking why our military personnel are deployed in the first place.
Meanwhile, modern technology allows us to easily wash our hands of misgivings.
Drone technology lets officials sell us on the supposed—and false—“surgical precision” of drone strikes, effectively sanitizing the violence. We “eliminate” or “neutralize” “high-value targets” and “combatants.” Never mind that intelligence failures are common and that many of those “combatants” were labeled as such because they happened to be “military-aged males,” or MAM. In other words, they were males aged 14-65 in a strike zone. And what of the civilians, the women and the children? Unfortunate “collateral damage.”
As a result, most of us don’t recognize America’s massive military boot print. How many Americans know the United States operates 750 military bases in more than 70 countries? How many know about the U.S. drone strikes conducted in the last five years in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and across Africa? Hundreds of civilians were killed.
For too long, we’ve failed to ask policymakers and ourselves the hard questions. We don’t need to ask about the leaks; we need to ask about the normalization of perpetual war. We need to ask about the moral costs of our government’s actions and about whether our proactive, military-forward policy is truly in our best interests.
May 25, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | United States |
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As the old saying goes, “it’s good to talk.” Good, that is, for most reasonable people who understand that dialogue is a process that opens positive possibilities, especially when the dialogue is conducted respectfully and sincerely.
This week, US President Donald Trump held his third phone conversation with Russian leader Vladimir Putin since he was inaugurated in the White House in January. The latest one on Monday was even more substantive than the previous calls, lasting about two hours, and, according to both sides, it was conducted in a friendly and productive manner.
Of course, the main topic of conversation was finding a peaceful end to the more than three-year war in Ukraine. Trump deserves credit for at least trying to bring peace to the table, instead of more and more weapons, as his predecessor, the mentally decrepit Joe Biden, did, and assorted European leaders would like to continue doing.
There was also discussion between Trump and Putin, using first names in their verbal exchanges, about repairing US-Russia relations for trade and strategic cooperation.
That portends a transformation in Washington’s erstwhile agenda of hostility towards Russia.
Tellingly, however, the talking was deemed “not good” by others, as could be gleaned from the vexed reactions to Trump’s call with Putin from European leaders and American advocates of the Euro-Atlantic alliance.
European politicians were reportedly “stunned” and “shocked” by Trump’s diplomatic outreach to Putin.
Following his conversation with the Russian president, Trump briefed five European leaders jointly. They included Germany’s Merz, France’s Macron, Italy’s Meloni, Finland’s Stubb, and the European Commission’s chief Von der Leyen. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky was also part of the conference call. The non-entity British prime minister was not included. Sometimes, talking with toxic people is not good!
The Europeans tried to put a positive spin on the briefing from Trump, with Von der Leyen describing it as “good”. But that was the Europeans trying to save face from what is a stunning blow to the Euro-Atlantic alliance.
In a press conference at the White House on Monday, after his calls with Putin and the Europeans, Trump made it clear from his statements that the vaunted alliance is shattered. He is no longer listening to them, and his agenda towards Russia is transformational, if it is permitted to develop.
Trump rejected the European demands for an immediate 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine and more economic sanctions on Russia. He said that imposing more sanctions did not help resolve the conflict. Trump also indicated that he concurred with Russia’s logical position that negotiations must be focused on establishing a lasting peace, one that deals with addressing the root causes of conflict.
The European and Ukrainian demands for a 30-day truce as a precondition are not workable or logical. Indeed, such insistence impedes negotiations. From a cynical point of view, that is why the European backers of the Kiev regime are making such a song and dance about sanctions and the 30-day truce, because those demands are aimed at preventing diplomacy succeeding with Russia.
Britain’s Financial Times headlined its report on the Trump-Putin call: “Why Europe fears the worst after Trump’s ‘excellent’ chat with Putin”.
The BBC inadvertently shed light with its headline: “Trump’s call with Putin exposes shifting ground on Ukraine peace talks”. The BBC-speak about “shifting ground on peace talks” is an Orwellian translation. What the BBC should have said in plain language was that Trump is shafting the European warmongers.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the supporters of the NATO proxy war against Russia tried their best to undermine Trump’s diplomacy.
The New York Times – the CIA’s main choice for gaslighting the American population – called the phone call a “diplomatic win for Russia” and snidely said, “Trump backs off ceasefire call”. The latter implied that Trump is against peace when, in fact, he is the only Western adult in the room calling for peace.
The Washington Post also did its best to smear Trump, reporting: “After call, Trump gives Russia more time for Ukraine war”. An op-ed piece also mockingly claimed: “Trump wasted two hours with Vladimir Putin”.
CNN, another outlet that has loyally and absurdly pushed the NATO proxy war as a noble endeavor, accused Trump for “siding with his friend in the Kremlin” and claimed that “peace in Ukraine looks further away after Trump’s call with Putin”, adding that “Putin got exactly what he wanted… stringing Trump along.”
The riot of negative and vitriolic reactions on both sides of the Atlantic shows that the US-European alliance under Trump has shattered. That alliance embodied by the NATO military bloc has been the linchpin of the “Collective West” for eight decades. It has now cracked wide open.
Unlike his predecessors in the White House, Donald Trump does not want to pursue a destructive and futile policy of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. That policy is what engendered the war in Ukraine, from the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, to the provocative weaponization of Ukrainian NeoNazis, until Russia’s intervention in February 2022 to defend its rights.
Trump appears to genuinely want to end the proxy war and to normalize relations with Russia for the sake of world peace, and, why not, good business.
For the Euro-Atlanticists, with their incurable, imperialist, and Russophobic mindsets, such a policy is anathema.
However, the good news is that the gaping cracks in the so-called Collective West now provide a path to peace.
Trump and Putin can end the war in Ukraine and negotiate an important peace deal that addresses Russia’s historic security grievances that stem from the decades of NATO aggression, which past American presidents and their European surrogates have facilitated.
For Trump to do that, he needs to listen carefully to the Russian leadership and reciprocate. If a new detente can be achieved, then the world will be a better, more secure, and peaceful place.
The other thing that Trump needs to do is to dismiss European lackeys with their warmongering servility to the status quo ante. They are has-beens and have nothing constructive to offer.
Trump’s phone call with Putin this week has had a major impact, and one that has significant potential for peace. The cracks in the Cold War mental bloc, so to speak, are a way forward.
May 24, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | European Union, New York Times, Russia, United States, Washington Post |
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The European Union has pledged €5.5 million in emergency funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to prop up the Cold War-era broadcaster, which is widely regarded as a Western propaganda outlet.
Originally created in the 1950s and covertly financed by the CIA to disseminate pro-Western narratives into the Soviet bloc, RFE/RL has more recently operated under the oversight of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order eliminating most of the agency’s funding as part of a sweeping cost-cutting agenda.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the bloc’s financial lifeline on Tuesday, describing it as “short-term emergency funding” to support what she called a “vital” mission. The €5.5 million package will act as a “safety net” to help RFE/RL maintain operations in countries within Brussels’s sphere of interest, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, and several Central Asian states.
“In a time of growing unfiltered content, independent journalism is more important than ever,” Kallas said following a meeting of EU foreign ministers. She acknowledged that Brusssels could not fully replace the lost American funding but emphasized the symbolic value of the move, urging individual member states to offer further support.
Since Trump’s defunding order, RFE/RL has furloughed staff, suspended programming, and launched legal challenges. Although a Washington judge temporarily halted the administration’s decision in April, a federal appeals court later blocked the release of funds pending further litigation. The broadcaster has warned that it faces permanent shutdown in multiple regions if its financial crisis is not resolved.
The Trump administration framed the defunding as part of a broader campaign to dismantle bureaucratic institutions that no longer align with US strategic interests. RFE/RL’s leadership has disputed that rationale, with its president, Stephen Capus, calling the funding cuts a “massive gift to America’s enemies.”
Administration officials and critics have argued that RFE/RL and its sister outlet, Voice of America (VOA), have lost their relevance and veered toward partisan editorializing. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has publicly called for both outlets to be “shut down,” writing on X: “Nobody listens to them anymore.”
May 22, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | European Union, United States |
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The Office of the Russian Prosecutor General has banned Amnesty International, the London-based non-governmental organization (NGO), accusing it of Russophobia and support for the Ukrainian military.
An official statement on Monday said that while the “organization positions itself as an active champion of human rights throughout the world,” its headquarters in the British capital have turned into a “center for preparing global Russophobic projects, paid for by accomplices of the Kiev regime.”
“Members of the organization support extremist organizations and finance foreign agents’ activities,” the Prosecutor General’s Office claimed.
Amnesty has been actively working toward “increasing military confrontation” since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Russian prosecutors have accused the NGO of whitewashing Ukrainian war crimes, calling for more financial support for Kiev and the economic isolation of Moscow.
Last month, Moscow banned US-based NGO Hope Harbor Society for providing financial support for the Ukrainian military as well as the coordination of anti-Russian protests in the US and other countries.
In early April, the Elton John AIDS Foundation was designated as ‘undesirable’ in Russia after being accused of promoting pro-LGBTQ agenda in the country.
Organizations with such a designation are banned from operating in Russia, and residents or companies may face legal penalties for providing financial or other forms of support to them.
The Russian Justice Ministry currently lists more than 200 such entities, including major Western influence groups such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the US-based German Marshall Fund, and the pro-NATO Atlantic Council.
May 19, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | Russia, UK |
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“For posterity’s sake.” Those words from President Joe Biden sum up the crushing impact of the leaked audiotapes from the interview between then-President Joe Biden and Special Counsel Robert Hur. Not only did they remove any serious doubt over Biden committing the federal crimes charged against President Donald Trump, but they also constituted what is akin to a political racketeering indictment against much of the Washington establishment.
The interview from Oct. 8-9, 2023, has long been sought by Congress, but was kept under wraps by the government even as Biden campaigned for a second term.
Many of us balked at Hur’s conclusion that no charges were appropriate despite the fact that the President removed classified material for decades, stored it in grossly negligent ways, and moved it around to unsecure locations, including his garage in Delaware.
Given President Donald Trump’s indictment for the same offenses, it was hard to imagine how the Special Counsel could not recommend the same criminal charges (presumably after he left office).
Instead, Hur declared it would have been hard to get a jury to convict Biden because he was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
It appears that Trump, on the other hand, was presumptively not sympathetic or well-meaning and possessed a good memory for prosecution.
The contrast was glaring and only reinforced the view of many citizens that there are two tracks for justice in Washington.
Soon after the report’s release, President Biden gave an irate press conference in which he lied about the findings of his culpability and lashed out at any suggestion that he had gapped or stumbled in the interview.
For example, when reporters raised how Biden forgot when his son Beau died, Biden angrily responded, “How in the hell dare he raise that?” Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.
However, it was not Hur but Biden himself who raised the death of his son, and he forgot a wide array of dates, including when he served in office.
The interview shows that in 2023 it was clear that Biden was mentally diminished despite claims from many allies and former aides that there was a sudden loss of capacity just before the disastrous debate in 2024. It is now undeniable that the White House staff actively hid the president’s incompetence from the American public. That includes the White House press secretary Jen Psaki (who left her post in May 2022) and Karine Jean-Pierre who insisted that Biden was sharp and “running circles” around the staff.
Of course, the media is now covering the story after the public saw the truth in the debate. Figures like CNN’s Jake Tapper have even written books that belatedly pursue the question despite previously insisting that there was no evidence of a diminishment in Biden’s mental state.
Tapper repeatedly dismissed the claim and even mocked Lara Trump for raising it. In one interview, he pushed a White House talking point that such suggestions were mocking Biden for a childhood stutter:
“It’s so amazing to me- a ‘cognitive decline.’ I think you were mocking his stutter. Yeah. I think you were mocking his stutter and I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline. I would think somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar.”
When Lara Trump insisted that this was clearly evidence of a “very concerning” cognitive decline, Tapper dismissed her statement by saying “Thank you, Lara. I’m sure it’s from a place of concern. We all believe that.”
Keep in mind that others beyond Lara Trump were raising this issue and there were tapes showing physical and mental diminishment. The media simply refused to seriously pursue the story until the cover-up no longer mattered after the debate.
Over on MSNBC, Joe Scarborough was equally apoplectic at those raising the issue and stated
start your tape right now because I’m about to tell you the truth. And F— you if you can’t handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years… If it weren’t the truth I wouldn’t say it
This media effort continued all the way up to the debate itself. On CNN, Oliver Darcy wrote, “Right-wing media figures are desperately pushing conspiracy theories about Biden ahead of the debate.”
Once the public found out, the media was ready to tell the story when there was no longer any advance or ability to deny it. Articles began to appear with the same realization of “Oh you meant THAT mental decline. Well sure.”
It was the same belated acknowledgment that came, after the election, with Hunter Biden’s laptop. The media just moved on with a shrug and a collective “our bad” concession.
As for the President himself, the one moment of clarity in the interview may have been his most incriminating line. When asked why he removed classified material on Afghanistan, Biden admitted “I guess I wanted to hang on to it for posterity’s sake.”
That is precisely what critics on CNN and MSNBC accused Trump of doing: removing material as types of keepsakes or trophies.
One president was indicted for that and one was sent along his way to a second term in office.
The real indictment that comes out of these tapes is a type of political racketeering enterprise by the Washington establishment. It took a total team effort from Democratic politicians to the White House staff to the media to hide the fact that the President of the United States was mentally diminished. If there were a political RICO crime, half of Washington would be frog-marched to the nearest federal courthouse.
Of course, none of this complicity in the cover-up is an actual crime. It is part of the Washington racket.
After all, this is Washington, where such duplicity results not in plea deals but book deals.
May 18, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
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There was yet more shameful reporting by BBC News at Ten last night, with international editor Jeremy Bowen the chief culprit this time.
He prefaced an interview with Philippe Lazzarini, head of United Nations refugee agency UNRWA, with an utterly unwarranted disclaimer – as though he was talking to a terrorist, not a leading human rights advocate who has been desperately trying to keep the last aid life-lines open to the people of Gaza as they are being actively starved to death by Israel.
The only time I can remember Bowen prefacing an interview in such apologetic terms was when he interviewed Hamas’ deputy political chief, Khalil al-Hayya, last October.
That was shameful too. But at least on that occasion, Bowen had an excuse: under Britain’s draconian Terrorism Act, saying or doing anything that might be viewed as favouring Hamas can land you with a 14-year prison sentence for supporting terrorism.
But why on earth would Bowen imply that Lazzarini’s remarks – on the intense suffering of Gaza’s population in the third month of a complete Israeli aid blockade – need to be treated with caution, in the same manner as those of a Hamas leader?
For one reason only. Because Israel, quite preposterously and for completely self-serving reasons, claims UNRWA is a front for Hamas. Since January, Israel has outlawed the organisation from operating in the Palestinian territories it continues to illegally occupy. As ever, the BBC is terrified of upsetting the Israelis.
Israel has long wanted UNRWA out of the picture because it is the last significant organisation to uphold the rights of Palestinian refugees enshrined in international law. It is, therefore, a major obstacle to Israel ethnically cleansing Palestinians from what is left of their homeland.
Before airing the interview with Lazzarini, Bowen cautioned: “Israel says he is a liar, and that his organisation has been infiltrated by Hamas. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.
“First off, the British government deals with him, and funds his organisation. Which is the largest dealing with Palestinian refugees. They know a lot of what is going on, so therefore I think it is important to speak to people like him.”
Bowen would never consider prefacing an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu in a similar manner, even though the following would actually be truthful and far more deserved:
“The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, accusing him of crimes against humanity. But I felt it was important to talk to him for a number of reasons.
“First off, the British government deals with him, and sends weapons to his military to carry out the crimes he is accused of. As its leader, he obviously knows a lot about what Israel is up to, so therefore I think it is important to speak to someone like him.”
Can you imagine the BBC ever introducing Netanyahu in that way? Of course, you can’t – even though, in journalistic, ethical and legal terms, it would be fully warranted.
But in the case the Lazzarini, there are absolutely no grounds for such a prologue – except to promote an Israeli pro-genocide agenda. Bowen’s remarks suggest he needs to explain why, in the midst of an Israeli-engineered famine in Gaza, the BBC would choose to speak to one of the most knowledgeable public figures about that starvation.
Bowen’s resort to an explanation instantly paints Lazzarini as problematic and controversial. It aligns with, and reinforces, Israel’s entirely bogus conflation of UNRWA and Hamas.
Even were Israel’s claims about UNRWA true of local staff in Gaza – and Israel has supplied precisely no evidence they are, as Lazzarini makes clear in a longer edit of the interview that aired on the BBC’s Six O’Clock News – that would in no way implicate Lazzarini. His remarks in the interview, on the catastrophic suffering of Gaza, are echoed by all aid agencies.
Bowen’s apologetic tone not only served to undercut the power of what Lazzarini was saying, but bolstered Israel’s ridiculous smears of UNRWA. That will have delighted Israel, and given it a little bit more leeway to carry on the starvation of Gaza, even as the first establishment voices tentatively start calling time on the genocide – 19 months too late.
Notice this from Bowen too. He asks Lazzarini: ‘When people look back on what’s been happening in the future, will they see, actually, a big international failure?”
Lazzarini responds: “I think in the coming years we will realise how wrong we have been, how on the wrong side of history we have been. We have, under our watch, let a massive atrocity unfold.”
Bowen jumps in: “Would you include the 7th of October in that?”
Lazzarini answers: “I would definitely include the 7th of October.”
But the set-up from Bowen is entirely unfair. He asks Lazzarini a question about “international failure” in relation to Gaza, and Lazzarini responds about the failure by the West to do anything to stop an atrocity – more properly a genocide – unfold over the past 19 months.
The events of 7 October 2023 are irrelevant to that discussion. There has been no “international failure” to support Israel. The West has armed it to the hilt and prioritised the suffering caused to Israelis by Hamas’ one-day attack over the incomparably greater suffering caused to Palestinians by 19 months of Israel’s slaughter and starvation.
Bowen’s interjected question about 7 October is a nonsense. It is levered in simply to cast further doubt on Lazzarini’s good faith in the hope of placating Israel, or at least providing the BBC with a defence when Israel goes on the offensive against Bowen for speaking to UNRWA.
The atrocities carried out on October 7 occurred in the context of decades of brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories, of settlement expansion and apartheid rule, and of a 16-year siege of Gaza.
The international community was certainly on the “wrong side of history”, but not in the sense Bowen intends or Lazzarini infers from Bowen’s question. The West failed because it did precisely nothing to stop Israel’s brutalisation of the Palestinian people over those many decades – in fact, the West assisted Israel – and thereby guaranteed that Palestinians in Gaza would seek to break out of their concentration camp sooner or later.
Lazzarini’s remarks on the catastrophe in Gaza should be seen as self-evident. But Bowen and the BBC undermined his message by framing him and his organisation as suspect – and all because Israel, a criminal state starving the people of Gaza, has made an entirely unfounded allegation against the organisation trying to stop its crimes against humanity.
This is the same pattern of smears from Israel that has claimed all 36 hospitals in Gaza are Hamas “command and control centres” – again without a shred of evidence – to justify it bombing them all, leaving Gaza’s population without any meaningful health care system as malnutrition and starvation take hold.
Israel struck another hospital yesterday, the European Hospital in Khan Younis, as medics there were waiting to evacuate sick and injured children. The attack killed at least 28 people and injured many more, including a BBC freelance journalist who was conducting an interview there as the missiles hit.
Notably, BBC News at Ten blanked out its journalist’s face, adding: “For his safety, we are not revealing his name.” The BBC did not explain who the journalist needed protecting from, or why.
That is because the BBC rarely mentions that Israel has assassinated more than 200 Palestinian journalists in Gaza, as well as banning all foreign correspondents from entering the enclave, in its attempts to limit news coverage and smear what does come out as Hamas propaganda. Israel understands it is easier to commit genocide in the dark.
You might assume a major news organisation like the BBC would wish to be seen showing at least some solidarity with those being murdered for doing journalism – some of them while working to provide the BBC with news. You would be wrong.
We shouldn’t pretend that it was Bowen’s choice to attach such a disgraceful disclaimer to his interview. We all understand that he is under enormous pressure, both from within the BBC and outside.
BBC executives have appointed and protected Raffi Berg, a man who publicly counts a former senior figure in Israel’s spy agency Mossad as a friend, to oversee the corporation’s Middle East coverage.
And as the late Greg Philo reported in his 2011 book More Bad News from Israel, a BBC News editor told him at that time: “We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis”. Things are far, far worse 14 years on.
Excuses won’t wash any longer. We are 19 months into a genocide. Helping Israel to launder its crimes is to become complicit in them. No journalist should be allowing themselves to be pressured into this kind of moral and professional failure.
May 14, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Russia has rejected the UN civilian aviation agency’s claims that it was responsible for the 2014 downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine. Moscow insisted that the Dutch-led investigation into the incident was politically motivated and relied on “questionable” evidence submitted by Kiev.
“Moscow’s principal position remains that Russia was not involved in the crash of MH17, and that all statements to the contrary by Australia and the Netherlands are false,” the Foreign Ministry said on its website on Tuesday.
The statement came after the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) voted that Russia failed to uphold its obligation to “refrain from resorting to the use of weapons against civil aircraft in flight.”
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, most of whom were Dutch, Malaysian, and Australian nationals. The incident occurred as Ukrainian troops were attempting to retake the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, which voted to secede following the Western-backed coup in Kiev. The two entities later voted to become part of Russia in September 2022.
In 2015, the investigation – conducted by the Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, and Ukraine – concluded that the plane was shot down by a Soviet-era Buk surface-to-air missile system delivered by Russia to the Donbass militias. Moscow denied providing heavy weapons to local forces and argued that the aircraft was hit by a version of the missile used by Ukrainian, not Russian, troops. It also criticized its exclusion from the investigation.
The Foreign Ministry condemned the ICAO Council’s decision as politically motivated, alleging “multiple procedural violations.” It said the ICAO ignored “ample and convincing factual and legal evidence” submitted by Russia to demonstrate its non-involvement in the shootdown.
“The conclusions of the Dutch investigation were based on the testimonies of anonymous witnesses – whose identities were classified – as well as on questionable information and materials submitted by a biased party: the Security Service of Ukraine,” the statement read.
The Foreign Ministry added that Ukraine should ultimately be blamed for the tragedy because Kiev “launched a military operation in Donbass under the false pretense of combating terrorism.”
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that, because Russia was not part of the investigation, it “does not accept biased conclusions.”
May 14, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Russia, Ukraine |
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A National Institutes of Health (NIH) program that health officials claimed reduced the number of infants who died suddenly in their sleep fell victim late last month to budget cuts, triggering an outcry from some experts and mainstream media.
The 30-year-old “Safe to Sleep” campaign was overseen by the NIH communications office at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The program cut was part of the ongoing reorganization and streamlining of the NIH.
The program, which includes TV advertisements, was created to provide guidance to parents about safe sleeping practices for infants. It advises parents to place babies on their back to sleep, use a flat firm sleeping surface, keep the sleeping area clear, use a pacifier, and breastfeed, among other lifestyle interventions. That information will remain available on the website.
North Country Public Radio, Mother Jones and other mainstream media decried the program’s cancellation.
In an article published May 5, Mother Jones claimed “Safe to Sleep” was responsible for “years of progress in reducing the number of babies that succumb to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).”
The article smeared Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and others who suggest that the sudden and unexplained death of thousands of infants each year, often within a few days of vaccination, may in some cases be linked to vaccines rather than to sleep hygiene.
However, the plausible association between vaccines and SIDS has been reported in peer-reviewed literature for decades.
And research published in top journals has long shown that claims about the success of the “Safe to Sleep” campaign are mistaken. SIDS deaths didn’t go down after the campaign was launched in the 1990s. The deaths were simply categorized differently because of a change to the codes used by medical examiners.
A short history of SIDS in the U.S.
A SIDS diagnosis is given when an infant under age 1 dies suddenly, typically during sleep, and an investigation into the death fails to yield a cause. However, 95% of SIDS deaths occur in the first six months of life, peaking at ages 2-4 months.
Each year, the U.S. records more than five infant deaths per 1,000 live births, far exceeding the rates in other high-income countries.
After birth defects and prematurity, SIDS is the third leading cause of death among infants. Yet the medical industry claims to remain puzzled about the cause — similar to how health officials say they don’t know what causes autism.
The SIDS diagnosis didn’t exist until the late 1960s, when the category was created in response to a rise in sudden unexplained infant deaths. In 1971, the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) assigned a code to SIDS.
The ICD is the list of about 130 categories that coroners globally use to assign the cause of death when a baby dies.
In a 2021 article in the peer-reviewed journal Toxicology Reports, vaccine researcher Neil Z. Miller provides a history of the SIDS diagnosis, noting that the rise of SIDS coincided with the first mass immunization campaigns.
In the early 1960s, the number of vaccines administered to most U.S. infants took off. The federal government began appropriating money so the CDC could work with local health departments to vaccinate all children. The agency established the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes the recommendations for vaccines to be listed on the childhood immunization schedule.
By the end of the decade, most U.S. infants were receiving the diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus (DPT), polio and measles vaccines, and mumps and rubella vaccines also became available.
As SIDS rates rose, so did parental concern that SIDS was connected to vaccination, but authorities assured parents that unexplained death following vaccination was “merely coincidental,” Miller wrote.
He also said that before 1979, the ICD included cause-of-death classifications associated with “prophylactic vaccination” as an official cause of death. As a result, “medical examiners are compelled to misclassify and conceal vaccine-related fatalities under alternate cause-of-death classifications.”
Instead of examining the link between vaccines and SIDS, public health researchers developed a “triple-risk model” for explaining SIDS. That model says SIDS occurs when a baby has an unknown medical condition, it is going through an important period of development where the body changes quickly, and it encounters an outside stressor, such as sleeping on its stomach.
Enter the ‘back to sleep’ campaign
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 1992 launched a national “Back to Sleep” campaign to inform parents to have children sleep on their backs rather than on their stomachs.
In 1994, the NIH’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development institutionalized the campaign within the agency, in partnership with organizations like the AAP, and later, companies including Johnson & Johnson and Gerber — both of which have been sued for poisoning children with their products.
NIH renamed the campaign “Safe to Sleep” in 2012.
Between 1992, when the program was started, and 2001, SIDS deaths reportedly declined a whopping 55% — a number touted in every article celebrating the program, making it appear that babies sleeping on their stomachs was the cause of SIDS, not vaccines.
However, at the same time deaths from SIDS decreased, the rate of mortality from “suffocation in bed,” “suffocation other,” “unknown and unspecified causes,” and “intent unknown” all increased significantly.
What had happened was that the classification system had changed. SIDS deaths were being reclassified by medical certifiers, usually coroners, as one of the other similar categories, Miller reported.
Research published in the journal Pediatrics — the flagship journal of the AAP — concluded that deaths previously certified as SIDs were simply being certified as other non-SIDS causes, such as suffocation, that were still essentially SIDS deaths.
That change in classification accounted for more than 90% of the drop in SIDS rates.
The Pediatrics paper showed there was no decline in overall postneonatal mortality, despite the program’s — and the AAP’s — claims to the contrary.
Others verified the Pediatrics paper’s findings, and the trend continued, as reported by multiple studies in top journals. Miller reported that, for example, “From 1999 through 2015, the U.S. SIDS rate declined 35.8 % while infant deaths due to accidental suffocation increased 183.8%.”
In 2020, infant deaths from Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) — an umbrella category that accounts for both SIDS and other unknown causes began to rise even higher, according to a study published in JAMA Pediatrics.
No codes for vaccine-related sudden deaths
Dr. Paul Thomas, pediatrician and author of “Vax Facts: What to Consider Before Vaccinating at All Ages & Stages of Life,” told The Defender in an interview last year that extensive evidence links SIDS to vaccination.
Thomas said that because there are no ICD codes for vaccination, the deaths are typically recorded as something else.
“When an infant dies, no matter how soon after vaccination, coroners and pathologists do not have any codes for vaccine-related death available as options, so these deaths are generally coded as SIDS, unknown, or suffocation.”
80% of infant deaths reported VAERS between 1990-2019 happened within 7 days of vaccination
Thomas said pediatricians are not educated about the link, so even when it clearly occurs, they don’t recognize it.
“I was taught that SIDS was due to parents smoking in the room, the room being too hot, babies co-sleeping or sleeping on surfaces that were too soft, or moms smothering their babies while nursing,” he wrote, sharing insights from his new book. “While all these factors may plausibly contribute, the primary cause has been right under our noses for decades. The vaccines!”
Miller’s analysis of sudden infant deaths in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) showed that nearly 80% of those deaths reported to the system between 1990 and 2019 happened within seven days of vaccination.
A recent peer-reviewed study found a positive statistical correlation between infant mortality rates and the number of vaccine doses received by babies — confirming findings made by the same researchers a decade ago.
The 2018 Health Affairs study reported that the bifurcation of the U.S. mortality rates from those of other wealthy countries began in the 1980s — the same time the country saw a major uptick in childhood vaccination.
A 2023 study published in the Cureus Journal of Medical Science found that the developed nations requiring the most neonatal vaccine doses tend to have the worst childhood mortality rates.
The CDC currently recommends 76 doses of 18 different vaccines for children ages 0-18.
Child mortality researchers have also noted that sudden unexplained childhood deaths in children over 1 year old are often underestimated, and many such child deaths remain unexplained due to failure to understand or investigate causes.
A recent study in JAMA Pediatrics found that hospitalized preterm infants had a 170% higher incidence of apnea within 48 hours of receiving their routine 2-month vaccinations compared to unvaccinated babies, according to the data in a new study.
Higher infant mortality has also been linked to poor maternal health or other perinatal issues, including premature birth.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
May 10, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | SIDS |
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The “cover up” of former US President Joe Biden’s poor mental and physical health has led to a decline of public trust in “legacy media”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has claimed.
Throughout Biden’s time in office, Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly argued that he was unfit for the job – claims the Biden administration and US media vociferously denied. Biden only withdrew from the presidential race when he faced pressure from within the Democratic Party and major campaign donors after a disastrous debate performance against Trump last June, in which he appeared confused and struggled to finish his sentences.
“Millions of Americans watched our mentally incompetent president [Biden] struggle with his day-to-day duties of this office. We watched our country be run into the ground as a result. And nobody in the media wanted to write about that,” Leavitt said during a White House briefing on Monday.
The spokeswoman recalled how during Trump’s campaign her warnings about Biden’s “clear mental incompetence” led to her being “accused by people in this room [journalists] of manufacturing deepfake videos trying to persuade the public into not believing what they saw with their own eyes for many years.”
“I think it is about time the legacy media finally admits that was one of the greatest cover-ups and scandals that ever took place in American history,” she insisted.
Leavitt said that the reluctance to report on Biden’s actual physical and mental condition “certainly did contribute to the decline in the trust that Americans have for the legacy media.”
A poll by Gallup earlier this year suggested that confidence in fair reporting of the news by US media has dropped to its lowest point in five decades. Only 31% of those surveyed said they trust the mainstream media “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” while 36% said they do not trust it “at all.”
April 30, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | United States |
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I can’t believe I have to call out my old editors at the New York Times for running blatantly dishonest journalism for the second day in a row.
But I do, so here goes.
Yesterday, just past noon local time, the electric systems in Spain and Portugal failed without warning.
Power remained out across both countries for much of the day and wasn’t fully restored until today. The disruption was profound. Subway riders evacuated stalled trains in darkened tunnels. Cellular service (which, unlike landlines, does not have backup batteries) went down. Elevators were stuck. ATMs and traffic lights went out.
Not across a city, or a state, but two nations that together have almost 60 million people. (Small parts of southern France were also affected.)
The outage attracted worldwide attention — and legacy media headscratching.
The usual explanations for blackouts were nowhere in sight. No earthquakes hit, no hurricanes or forest fires were raging. Even climate change, the usual media bugaboo for all disasters natural and manmade, couldn’t be blamed. It’s April, not July, and the weather was mild across the Iberian peninsula, in the 70s from Lisbon to Barcelona, 700 miles northeast. Nor was demand for power particularly high yesterday.
Just after the outage, Portugal’s electric network operator supposedly blamed “extreme temperature variations” in Spain for “induced atmospheric vibration.” Those led to “oscillations” on high voltage lines, according to several newspapers, including England’s Guardian.
“Millions without power in Spain, Portugal after ‘induced atmospheric vibration’,” a USA Today headline incoherently but confidently explained.
Of course. Induced atmospheric vibration. If that sounds like gobbledygook, it’s because it is. By Tuesday morning, the Guardian had disappeared those words, claiming the Portuguese company “said the statement was falsely attributed to it.”
Oh. Other unlikely explanations included cyber attacks and solar flares, eruptions of radiation from the sun that can disrupt powerlines. But solar flares are hard to miss, and none were a problem on Monday.
But even as the legacy media offered bizarre theories, power industry analysts and energy experts on X proposed a far simpler, more plausible explanation: Spain’s near-total reliance on green energy had left it very vulnerable to cascading blackouts.
For all its magic, electricity is actually relatively easy to understand at the theoretical level; it is the flow of electrons — negatively charged particles — that carry energy. Scientists began to understand this fact in the 1700s. A century later they had realized that swinging magnets along coils of wire would produce usable current. The energy to swing the magnets comes from steam heated in coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear plants, or directly from the flow of water in hydropower dams. (I remember the basics from AP Physics, and Google confirms them.)
After the electricity is produced, grids of wires carry it to homes and businesses, where it makes lights, computers, and motors run. Here, the engineering gets complicated. Electric plants produce “alternating” current, because of the way the magnets spin, and most household devices run on it. Demand for electricity fluctuates by the second, and supply must exactly match demand to keep the grid functioning properly. Traditional power plants have several different ways to manage this task. Their success in doing so is a key reason that modern, wealthy countries almost never have widespread blackouts.
But solar plants produce direct current, which must be “inverted” into alternating current before it is added to the grid. Wind turbines have their own hurdles adding power. As a result, wind and solar plants cannot manage unexpected changes in frequency nearly as well as older sources.
This risk is not a secret to power companies — or renewable energy suppliers. In 2022, the consortium of companies that runs Europe’s electricity network released a 63-page report on the issue.
It is highly technical and obscure (perhaps deliberately so), but it notes that older plants “have traditionally provided various ‘inherent’ capabilities to the system critical to ensure the stable operation of the power systems…” and that wind and solar power have a “lack of these system capabilities.”
But in the rush last decade to pacify climate change activists and decarbonize the world (except, of course, for India and China), niceties like the realities of physics seem to have been overlooked. European countries have moved quickly away from boring, reliable sources of power generation and towards solar and wind.
No country has moved faster than Spain, which has sol to spare. In mid-April, Spain ran its electricity grid fully on renewable energy on a weekday for the first time.
Oh well. Renewable energy was fun while it lasted. Heck, I’ve got panels on my roof (the tax credit didn’t hurt).
But well-defined theoretical risks that are ignored for political reasons have a strange way of coming true. The strong consensus on X is that the lack of simple, reliable, fossil fuel or nuclear-powered baseload generation with high “inertia,” as the engineers say, is a big reason that Spain’s grid failed so fast and took nearly a day to reboot fully.
Meanwhile, the mainstream media keeps scratching its head and staring into the sun for solar flares. “The cause of the outage remained unclear,” the Times’s current headline explains helpfully.
If this were 2021, the Biden Administration would no doubt call blaming renewables “misinformation” and Twitter and Facebook would be censoring articles like this one as Russian propaganda or whatever. At least now the skeptics can call the media out without fear of being banned.
Progress, I suppose.
Though it doesn’t fix the underlying problem. After two decades of putting up solar and wind farms at massive taxpayer expense, Europe has turned electricity from cheap and reliable to the reverse. If the sun shines too brightly, the lights go out.
Congrats, Greta Thunberg!
April 29, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | European Union, New York Times |
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The US has made no offer to Russia regarding the future of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told CBS. The diplomat’s remarks followed media reports about Washington’s alleged plans vis-a-vis the installation.
The energy facility, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, has been under Russian control since March 2022. Later that year, Zaporozhye Region’s residents voted to join Russia in a referendum, which Ukraine dismissed as a sham.
When asked during an interview with CBS on Sunday whether US President Donald Trump had approached Moscow over the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, Lavrov said that “we never received such an offer.” He added that “if we do, we would explain that the power station… is run by the Russian Federation state corporation called Rosatom.”
“It is in very good hands,” the diplomat added, noting that the facility is “being monitored by IAEA personnel permanently stationed at the site.”
“If not for the Ukrainian regular attempts to attack the power plant, and to create a nuclear disaster for Europe and for Ukraine as well, the safety requirements are fully implemented,” Lavrov asserted.
Moscow ready to seek ‘balance of interests’ with Ukraine and US — LavrovREAD MORE: Moscow ready to seek ‘balance of interests’ with Ukraine and US — Lavrov
When further pressed on the issue, the minister reiterated that “I don’t think any change [to the facility’s status] is conceivable.”
“We cannot speculate on something which is really not being mentioned during the negotiations,” he concluded.
On Tuesday, Axios, citing unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the discussions, reported that American officials had presented Kiev’s representatives with President Trump’s “final offer” to end the Ukraine conflict during talks in Paris last week.
According to the outlet, the proposal includes designating the area around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant as neutral territory under US administration.
Last Sunday, the Wall Street Journal carried a similar report, citing anonymous sources.
In March, Trump claimed that Vladimir Zelensky had proposed that the US assume ownership of his country’s nuclear power plants. The Ukrainian leader, however, refuted this assertion, stating that he and Trump had only discussed potential US investments in the Zaporozhye NPP.
April 27, 2025
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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