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South Carolina Measles Outbreak Spurs Renewed Debate About MMR Vaccine

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 11, 2025

South Carolina health officials warned this week that a measles outbreak, primarily affecting children, is “accelerating.” They blamed rising vaccine hesitancy for the increase in cases.

Some news outlets pointed the finger at federal health policy, and specifically U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a link some experts rejected.

Emily G. Hilliard, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told The Defender that 120 cases have been reported in South Carolina, “primarily in an under-vaccinated community, of which 43 were reported since Dec. 5.”

The Washington Post cited Dr. Linda Bell, an epidemiologist with the South Carolina Department of Public Health (DPH), who said that of the 111 measles cases reported as of Wednesday, 105 people were unvaccinated and three were partially vaccinated.

DPH reported that 254 people are in quarantine and 16 are in isolation.

During a Wednesday press conference, Bell said that “accelerating is an accurate term” to refer to the trajectory of the current outbreak. She said the state has “lower than hoped for” MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccination coverage.

Hilliard said the increase in recent cases in South Carolina “was due to exposures occurring at large church gatherings among under vaccinated communities and at schools, including an international school in Greenville, South Carolina.” She said more cases are expected in the coming week.

According to DPH, 16 cases resulted from exposure at the Way of Truth Church in Inman, while 43 students at Inman Intermediate School are in quarantine.

DPH data show that most cases were identified in children, including 75 cases in kids ages 5-17, and 20 cases in children under 5.

Bell said the spike in cases across the state was the result of travel during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend and a lack of vaccinations.

MMR vaccine responsible for ‘catastrophic’ injuries

DPH data show that MMR vaccination coverage among school children in South Carolina decreased from approximately 96% in 2020 to 93.5% this year.

According to NBC News, MMR vaccine uptake in Spartanburg County, one of the hardest-hit areas during the latest outbreak, was 90% for the 2024-25 school year.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Bell credited “high vaccination coverage” for eliminating ongoing transmission in this country. She urged the public to “consider the effectiveness of the vaccine and having this disease essentially go away.” She said the outbreak may end if more people get vaccinated.

The Post reported that even a “small decline in vaccination can significantly increase the likelihood of an outbreak,” citing Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) figures indicating that one dose of the MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles and the two-dose series is 97% effective.

Hilliard said, “The best way to protect against measles is vaccination with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. CDC encourages individuals to consult with a healthcare provider on what is best for them.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), agreed that the MMR vaccine is the best way to prevent measles — but questioned whether measles needs to be prevented in the first place.

“Case mortality for measles before the vaccine was introduced was 2 in 10,000,” Hooker said. “I just don’t think you need to avoid getting the measles, as opposed to the risk of the vaccine.”

Polly Tommey, host of CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD,” has interviewed parents whose children were injured or killed as a result of an adverse reaction to the MMR vaccine. “The devastation this particular vaccine causes is catastrophic,” she said.

“We’ve seen so many children and adults who have had multiple MMRs and still had measles,” Tommey said. “Not only does the vaccine hardly work, it can and has killed children. I know because I’ve interviewed the parents … So much brain injury, life-altering gut issues, to mention a few.”

Tommey added that while measles “is not much fun,” its symptoms don’t last long, and that “with proper care and rest, children bounce back very quickly.”

Dr. Michelle Perro, a pediatrician, said measles infection can provide lifelong natural immunity.

“It is well established that natural measles infection produces long-lasting, lifelong immunity — a feature recognized in classical infectious-disease epidemiology. While no one recommends seeking out infection, it is inaccurate to imply that immunity from infection is weak or transient,” Perro said.

Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., CHD senior research scientist, said the MMR vaccine contains live measles virus — specifically, genotype A, which is raised in chicken cells and considered poorly equipped to proliferate within humans.

“In theory, this gives our immune system time to learn how to fight it, along with the other wild-type measles strains,” he said. But theory “doesn’t always translate into practice, and vaccine-originating measles viruses can persist and infect others.”

Experts question ‘scary’ mainstream media narrative on measles

The Post reported that South Carolina’s worsening measles crisis is proof that the U.S. is “reeling from the resurgence of a preventable, highly contagious disease.” The news organization cited this year’s measles outbreaks in West Texas and other regions that reportedly cost the lives of three unvaccinated people as proof of vaccine hesitancy’s toll.

But Hooker said, “the ‘scary’ narrative in the mainstream media is stoked by the evident surge in 2025 and the false reporting about the three deaths wrongly attributed to measles.”

“We know that the two girls who died in West Texas died due to improperly treated bacterial pneumonia. And in the third case of an adult in New Mexico, the individual denied all medical treatment and was diagnosed with measles only via RT-PCR during their autopsy,” Hooker said.

Jablonowski said the two Texas girls “did not die from measles — they died from hospitals, hospital-acquired infections and fatally biased healthcare professionals.”

According to CNN, no new measles cases have been reported in Texas since August. The CDC has recorded 1,912 measles cases in the U.S. this year.

‘No vaccine provides 100% immunity’

Perro said that while the current outbreak is being blamed on the unvaccinated, such outbreaks “have historically included both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.”

“No vaccine provides 100% immunity, and secondary vaccine failure — waning immunity years after vaccination — has been documented in the literature. Breakthrough cases are generally milder, but they do occur, and understanding those patterns is essential to a complete epidemiologic picture,” Perro said.

Hooker cited safety concerns with the MMR vaccine, noting that in 1999, Merck “started secretly increasing the virus content within the MMR to levels that could eclipse that which has been appropriately safety tested.”

This coincided with a “dramatic increase in the reports of deaths and anaphylaxis from the vaccine” submitted to the U.S. government-run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 provides a liability shield for manufacturers of vaccines included in the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule. As a result, manufacturers have less incentive to produce safe vaccines, Perro said.

“Manufacturers could have pursued cleaner formulations over the past four decades, such as aluminum-free products, improved stabilizers or alternative delivery systems, but without liability and regulatory oversight, the incentive simply was not there,” Perro said.

‘Absurd’ to blame RFK Jr. for measles outbreaks

Media narratives also suggested that Kennedy’s policies as HHS secretary have contributed to “vaccine hesitancy” and the increased spread of measles.

According to the Post, “an uptick of vaccine misinformation that, at times, has propagated on social media and among some public officials, including President Donald Trump and his pick for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” has contributed to the outbreaks.

But Perro said that CDC data show that measles cases in the U.S. “have been rising for several years, from 59 cases in 2023 to 285 in 2024, and now over 1,900 cases reported in 2025 across 43 jurisdictions.” She said these trends “predate the current HHS leadership.”

“The representation that one political figure alone ‘caused’ this is not supported by the longer-term data,” Perro said.

According to Hilliard, the 1,912 measles cases reported so far this year in the U.S. are significantly fewer than the number of cases reported in Canada (5,298) and Mexico (5,089). Both countries have substantially smaller populations than the U.S.

Tommey said it is “absurd” to blame Kennedy for this year’s outbreaks. “Parents are not vaccinating because they see the utter carnage from those of us that have vaccinated. They have lived it or seen it first-hand … Once you know, you know — this is why the vaccination rates are down,” she said.

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.

December 21, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

The Empire of Lies: How the BBC Strangles Free Speech Under the Mask of Objectivity and Why Trump is Right to Sue

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – December 21, 2025

Against the backdrop of hysteria over “repressions in Russia,” Great Britain itself has long since transformed into a police state, where dissent is stigmatized and truth is replaced by propaganda. Putin’s response has exposed the double standards of Western media.

The Smokescreen of the “Free Press”

On December 19, 2025, Vladimir Putin gave comprehensive and calm answers in a live broadcast to provocative questions from BBC journalist Stephen Rosenberg. Instead of honestly analyzing his arguments about foreign agents, security, and sovereignty, Western media, and the BBC itself first and foremost, prepared another portion of distortions under headlines like “Putin Denies the Obvious.” This moment is the perfect prism through which to discern the essence of the phenomenon. While the missionaries from Northgold Street teach the whole world about “democracy” and “free journalism,” the British Isles themselves are rapidly sinking into the quagmire of ideological conformity and censorship. The BBC Corporation, once a symbol of respectability, has become the epitome of systemic bias and an industry for manufacturing narratives. It is no coincidence that Donald Trump, whom this media machine has vilified for years, has filed a lawsuit against it—this is a logical act of self-defense against organized lies.

Hypocrisy as Editorial Policy. “Repressions” There and Censorship Here

Putin’s answer on the issue of “foreign agents” was crystal clear: the law is a copy of the American FARA, requiring only transparency of foreign funding, not criminal prosecution for opinion. This thesis reveals a monstrous contrast with the realities of Great Britain itself, where freedom of speech has become a fiction, covered by bureaucratic and ideological terror.

Thought Police in Action: From Tweets to Kitchen Conversations. In Russia, it’s registration for NGOs; in Britain, it’s a criminal charge for an ordinary citizen. The Online Safety Bill is nothing other than an architecture of preemptive censorship. UK police regularly detain people for “offensive” or “alarming” posts on social media. There are known cases of a man being interrogated for a sarcastic tweet about transgender people, and a pensioner for a “racist” comment about migration on Facebook. These are not isolated excesses; this is the system. Where is the freedom of speech that the BBC so fiercely defends in its reports about Russia?

De Facto “Foreign Agents”: Stigmatization Instead of Discussion. The BBC has appropriated for itself the right to define the boundaries of permissible discourse. Any criticism that goes beyond these boundaries, be it doubts about the radical environmental agenda, questions about transhumanism, or analysis of the problems of mass migration, is instantly branded by the corporation as “marginal,” “extremist,” or “propagandistic.” Independent analysts, scientists, and journalists who disagree with the general line are systematically pushed out of the airwaves and public sphere under the convenient pretext of “fighting disinformation.” That is, the BBC itself creates “disinformation,” defines it, and fights it, eliminating competitors. This is a classic monopoly on truth.

Trump’s Lawsuit is an Anatomy of the BBC’s Lies. From the “Steele Dossier” to the Myths of “Russiagate”

Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the BBC is not the gesture of an offended politician, but a legal exposure of the festering wound of systemic malfeasance. Trump accuses the corporation of “deliberate and malicious defamation,” and history provides him with ample evidence.

The “Steele Dossier” — A Fake as a Journalistic Standard. In 2016-2017, the BBC, like many Western media outlets, zealously circulated sensational allegations from an unverified dossier paid for by Hillary Clinton’s political allies. Citing “high-ranking sources,” the BBC built a narrative for months about “Trump’s ties to Moscow,” presenting unconfirmed gossip as facts. Subsequent FBI and US Department of Justice investigations proved the dossier was fabricated, its key “evidence” unsubstantiated. No apologies or serious editorial conclusions ever came from the BBC. The corporation simply moved on to the next topic, leaving a poisoned residue of lies in the minds of millions of viewers.

Salisbury — Verdict Instead of Investigation. The story of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal became a textbook example of how the BBC replaces journalistic investigation with state propaganda. From the first minutes, the corporation abandoned the basic principle—presumption of innocence. The airwaves carried not questions of “who and why?” but assertions: “Russia committed an act of war on British soil.” Alternative versions, inconsistencies in the official story (for example, the complete absence of traces of the “Novichok” poison in the places the Skripals allegedly were), expert opinions questioning the British version—all of this was either hushed up or ridiculed in specially designated “disinformation” segments. The BBC brazenly turned an unverified accusation into an indisputable dogma, denying viewers the right to information.

The Myth of Trump’s “Russian Links,” Which Lasted for Years. Throughout Trump’s presidency, the BBC peremptorily supported the obsessive narrative of his “secret collusion” with the Kremlin. This “link” was the central theme of thousands of reports, analytical programs, and articles. The final report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller (2019) found no evidence of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. For an objective media outlet, this would have been a reason for a deep review of its own editorial policy. For the BBC—merely a reason to change rhetoric: if not “collusion,” then “interference” that Trump “didn’t condemn enough.” The goal was not to inform but to shape the desired, pre-set perception of Trump as illegitimate and hostile.

Censorship in the Name of Security: British Total Control vs. Russian Defense

Putin directly explained internet restrictions in frontline zones: it’s a matter of life and death, a way to prevent the targeting of high-precision weapons through open foreign services. This is a military necessity in conditions of real conflict.

Double Standard as a Principle. And what does peaceful, democratic Great Britain do? Under the same pretext of “national security,” one of the world’s most total surveillance mechanisms over its own citizens has been created here. The Investigatory Powers Act (or “Snoopers’ Charter”) allows intelligence agencies to mass-collect the browsing history, calls, and message metadata of every resident without any court warrant. In partnership with the government, major IT companies and social networks engage in preemptive content censorship, removing viewpoints inconvenient to the authorities under vague labels like “hate propaganda” or “disinformation.” The difference is fundamental: Russia is protecting its physical borders from real military threats in the context of the Special Military Operation. The British state, with the tacit approval and participation of the BBC, actively and undemocratically protects the ideological boundaries of the ruling establishment from dissent, passing it off as “concern for security” and “protection of democracy.”

The Collapse of the Monopoly on Truth and the Birth of a New Information Order

Putin’s answers to that very BBC correspondent became the very funhouse mirror in which this moldy media empire finally saw its true face: not of a noble arbiter, but of a pathetic sycophant and agitator for the globalist establishment, projecting onto others its own rotten core—total censorship, the stifling of dissent, and the fabrication of convenient agendas. Trump’s lawsuit is not the beginning, but a logical final act. It is a shameful verdict for an organization that, with hypocritical, sanctimonious zeal, searched for “tyranny” in far-off lands, blinded by its own arrogance, until it itself turned into the main strangler of free thought at home, on those very blessed islands ruled by arrogant mandarins from Whitehall, detached from reality, and their lackeys at the BBC.

Readers and viewers around the world have long been sick of this hypocritical sham. They are fleeing these dreary, pompous preachers of the “only correct” truth to vibrant alternatives, live streams, and independent voices, bypassing these filtered sewer channels of the old, thoroughly rotten guard.

The world no longer believes in the sacred cow of the “public broadcaster” BBC, whose editorial policy has long been groveling low and basely before the powers that be. All the world’s vileness is committed not by the powers that be, but by the most cowardly dregs, in this case, “the dregs of journalism.” They cannot win in an open fight, and therefore always act with rat-like methods, basely and brazenly distorting obvious facts. Cowards from journalism always rely on baseness and prefer to strike from behind, like rats. This word is the best characterization of the BBC’s current state.

The era when a bunch of pompous dandies from the Thames could arrogantly tell the world what to think has irrevocably sunk into oblivion. And in this lies the best slap in the face to their ossified arrogance and a real breath of freedom for the word in the 21st century.

Victor Mikhin, Writer, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Expert on Middle Eastern Countries

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December 21, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Reuters spreads lies and propaganda to prolong Ukraine conflict – Tulsi Gabbard

©  Alex Wong / Getty Images
RT | December 21, 2025

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has accused European NATO states of trying to pull Washington into a direct confrontation with Russia and slammed Reuters for “fomenting hysteria” in order to sell war.

Russia has consistently rejected claims that it plans to attack EU countries, describing them as warmongering tactics used by Western politicians to justify inflated military budgets. This week, President Vladimir Putin once again dismissed such claims as “lies and nonsense.”

Yet in a report published on Friday, Reuters claimed that “Putin intends to capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire,” citing anonymous sources allegedly “familiar with US intelligence.”

“No, this is a lie and propaganda Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides,” Gabbard retorted in a post on X.

Dangerously, you are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace efforts and foment hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

According to Gabbard, US intelligence assessments instead indicate that Russia “seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO” and lacks the capacity to wage one even if it wanted to.

Moscow insists it is defending its citizens in the Ukraine conflict and has accused NATO of provoking hostilities and derailing US-backed peace initiatives. Putin, who has repeatedly dismissed any intention to restore the Soviet Union, has accused NATO countries of “preparing for a major war” by building up and modernizing offensive forces while “brainwashing” their populations with claims that a clash with Russia is inevitable.

Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who is currently engaged in Ukraine peace talks with US interlocutors in Miami, praised Gabbard as a rare voice of reason.

“Gabbard is great not only for documenting the Obama/Biden origins of the Russia hoax, but now for exposing the deep-state warmonger machinery trying to incite WW3 by fueling anti-Russian paranoia across the UK and EU,” Dmitriev wrote on X. “Voices of reason matter – restore sanity, peace, and security.”

December 21, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Western media peddle Russia’s ‘abduction’ of Ukrainian children to prolong the proxy war

It is not Moscow, but rather the Kiev regime and its backers who are using children as “pawns of war”

By Finian Cunningham | RT | December 18, 2025

It’s not clear if the Trump administration wants to genuinely resolve the proxy war with Russia, or if it is merely trying to extricate itself from the mess Washington helped instigate. But one thing is clear: the major Western European capitals are desperate to keep the war going.

Various pretexts are being used to frustrate a diplomatic process. NATO-like security guarantees to Ukraine pushed by Berlin, London, and Paris are likely to be a non-starter for Moscow. So too are moves by the Europeans to use Russia’s seized wealth as a “reparations loan.”

Another issue that Europeans are dredging up is the allegation that Russia has abducted Ukrainian children. This emotive issue has support in Washington among the hawkish anti-Russia factions in the US establishment opposed to Trump’s diplomacy with Moscow.

Earlier this month, the European states sponsored a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly calling on Russia to return all Ukrainian children that it is alleged to have forcibly relocated from Ukrainian territory during the past four years of conflict. The president of the UNGA is former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

An article published by the Washington DC-based Atlantic Council contended: “The issue of abducted Ukrainian children is especially relevant for Ukrainians as they debate painful political compromises, territorial concessions, and security guarantees premised on Western assurances. If world leaders cannot secure the return of the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aggression, how could Ukrainians trust that those same leaders can prevent Russia from reigniting the war or committing new atrocities?”

In other words, the allegation of child abduction is being made into a condition for Russia to fulfill for the diplomatic resolution of the conflict.  The trouble is that the condition is impossible to fulfill because the allegation is so vague and unfounded. Russia has denounced the accusation that it forcibly relocated Ukrainian children as a “web of lies.”

In March 2023, the Hague-based International Criminal Court indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, of war crimes related to the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Moscow is not a member of the ICC and rejected the charges as null and void.

Still, however, the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors continue to level the accusations. The Western media, as usual, serve to amplify the narrative despite the lack of evidence.

At the recent UN General Assembly debate, British representative Archie Young stated: “Today is a moment to reflect on the plight of Ukrainian children who have become victims of Russia’s illegal invasion. We all have an obligation to protect children and must not allow Russia to use them as pawns of war. According to the government of Ukraine, corroborated by independent mechanisms, more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been forcibly deported to Russia or within the temporarily occupied territories.”

Note how the British official peddles a series of disputable claims that are transformed into normative facts by the Western media’s repetition.

It is not Russia, but rather the Kiev regime and its Western backers who are using children as “pawns of war.”

Moscow has openly stated that up to 730,000 children have been relocated to the Russian Federation since hostilities erupted in February 2022. Most of the children are accompanied by parents and come from the territories that seceded from Ukraine in legally held referenda.

Of the nearly eight million people who fled Ukraine, the largest share of them – an estimated 35% – have taken shelter in Russia. The second and third biggest host countries for Ukrainian refugees after Russia are Poland and Germany. But the European governments and media are not accusing Warsaw or Berlin of “child abductions.”

In a war zone affecting millions of people, it is absurd to make out that displaced families and their children are being kidnapped. The vast majority of people have willingly sought shelter within Russian territory to escape the violence on the frontlines – violence that has been fueled by NATO states pumping hundreds of millions of dollars’ and euros’ worth of weapons into Ukraine.

Moscow points out that the figure of 20,000 to 35,000 that the Western governments and media claim for children “abducted by Russia” is never substantiated with names or identifying details.

Russian authorities say that the Kiev regime has provided the names of just over 300 individuals. Moscow has endeavored to return individuals where it is mutually requested, although some of the identities provided by the Kiev regime have turned out to be adults or they are not present in Russian territory.

In the chaos of war, it is all too easy to throw around vague numbers and exploit the imprecision for propaganda. The European governments and media are doing that and embellishing the emotive issue with dark claims that Russia is sending masses of Ukrainian children to “re-education camps” for “indoctrination.”

One of the main sources for such claims is the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. It has produced unverified reports that Russia has sent 35,000 Ukrainian children to hundreds of brainwashing centers all across Russia to erase their national identity.

A major supporter of the Yale research group is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This association strongly suggests that the group is a CIA-sponsored propaganda tool. But the US and European media regularly cite the research and amplify its claims as reliable facts.

The exploitation of children for war propaganda is a staple of Western intelligence agencies and the media.

A classic case was in Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s when the Western media were replete with horror stories of the Viet Cong torturing Vietnamese children, as recounted by James Bradley in his book, ‘Precious Freedom’. The supposed communist guerrillas reportedly stabbed Vietnamese children with chopsticks in their ears so that they could not hear the Bible being preached. Such alleged atrocities were widely published by the Western media to whip up public support for the US military deployment “to save Vietnam from evil communists.” But it was all CIA-orchestrated lies. More than three million Vietnamese were killed in a war based on American intelligence and media lies.

A re-run of the psychological operation today is the lurid claims that Putin’s evil Russia has kidnapped tens of thousands of children for brainwashing in detention camps. Some reports even claim Russia has sent the children to North Korea.

The Western media are doing their usual service of peddling war propaganda and ensuring diplomacy is rendered impossible because Russia is portrayed as monstrous.

Finian Cunningham is an award-winning journalist and co-author of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.

December 19, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Map Is Not the Territory: Ukraine, Manufactured Consent, and Europe’s War of Attrition

By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | December 16, 2025

Western headlines are screaming that Ukraine has “encircled” Kupyansk city… a glorified town, selling it as a nightmare for Moscow. But this is not a battlefield report. It is narrative management, timed precisely to negotiations in Berlin. Kupyansk is not Stalingrad. It is not Kursk. It is not even a decisive urban fight. It is a ruined settlement on the Oskol, a former logistics node reduced to rubble, where control is measured not in flags but in fire control, drone dominance, and whether men can be rotated without being killed.

And when even Reuters couches claims as “unverified,” you know what that means. When it hedges, pauses, and inserts distance between claims and confirmation, it is signaling that fog is being weaponised. What exists on the ground is block-by-block ruin fighting, contested neighbourhoods like Yubileynyy, clashes near Mirovoye and Radkovka, infiltration attempts, temporary interdictions. Battalion-scale collisions between exhausted units in a place that barely functions as a glorified town.

The unit scale tells the truth the headlines obscure. Kupyansk has never hosted a force capable of deciding a front. Within the urban core, the Russian presence has been limited and exposed, with little time to dig in deeper, the town’s ruins making sustained fortification difficult, relying on fire control rather than secured occupation. With thousands tied down protecting the flanks and barely a battalion inside the city itself, Ukrainian assaults are not sweeping counteroffensives but concentrated pushes by swarms of worn formations, often built from forcibly mobilised men with minimal training, starving and thin on ammunition, cannibalized from fronts like Sumy, and thrown into an urban graveyard to manufacture leverage.

This is not manoeuvre warfare. It is attritional contact deliberately framed as momentum to serve a media and political narrative rather operational gain. What matters is that the map is not the territory. In this war, a coloured overlay often marks a brief window of drone interdiction, hours, not control. Fire control can deny movement, but without sustainment it cannot secure ground. Fire control without sustainment does not produce breakthroughs. It produces graveyards. Ukraine has been forced by its Western patrons into too many of them already.

Kupyansk does not change the war unless it becomes part of a broader operational rollback and it won’t. Otherwise, it is a bad PR bargaining chip, paid for in blood.

While cameras fixate on Kupyansk, the real pressure story runs elsewhere, across a widening arc Western coverage fragments to prevent pattern recognition. West of Russian liberated Seversk, claims and denials continue, but the geometry is clear: Ukrainian forces are stretched thin, defending ground without strategic depth. Around encircled Lyman, the contest is about lines of communication and Ukranian reserve erosion, not symbolism.

Central to the Donbass arc, Pokrovsk and Mirnograd matter not because of names, but because they anchor logistics. Russian control here forces a stark contrast in how the war is being fought. Ukraine is expending irreplaceable manpower to manufacture moments, brief tactical actions designed to win optics for a day. Russia, by contrast, is trading space, fire control, and logistics denial for outcomes that compound over time. One side is managing headlines. The other is managing the war.

To the south, the picture is more dangerous still. Around Gulyaypole, pressure is persistent and cumulative, not theatrical. And beyond it lies the real anxiety Europe refuses to discuss openly, the slow, grinding push toward Zaporozhye city. This is not a sprint. It is a methodical march Westward. If current trends hold, Zaporozhye can be operationally threatened, even encircled in less than six months. That outcome would dwarf any skirmish in the small town of Kupyansk.

This is where time asymmetry becomes decisive. Russia is fighting a time-positive war: industrial scaling and real capacity that dwarfs the fiat, paper-tiger illusory capacity of NATO; deep manpower reserves; and a level of internal cohesion sufficient to sustain a long campaign. Ukraine, by contrast, is fighting a time-negative war, with catastrophic demographic collapse, mass emigration, forced conscription, and shrinking public consent. Every Ukrainian media counteroffensive now borrows against a future that no longer exists to replenish it.

This is one of the real reasons behind Trump’s push. Less sentiment. Not ideology. Geometry. Timelines. Arithmetic. Washington understands that delay only makes the endgame worse, militarily and politically for project Ukraine. Europe understands this too. But Europe cannot admit it without confessing its humiliation.

So Europe clings to suicidal optics. It inflates Kupyansk. It sells illusory leverage. And it sacrifices Ukrainians to buy time, not for victory, but for narrative survival.

Here is the truth Europe works hardest to bury beneath headlines and choreographed resolve: this war no longer reflects the will of the Ukrainian people, and, in truth, it only ever did through manufactured consent that has now collapsed. Not marginally. Not ambiguously. Overwhelmingly. Even after years of saturation messaging, censorship, emergency laws, and relentless narrative conditioning, roughly four-fifths of Ukrainians now demand peace. It is devastating precisely because it persists despite one of the most intensive information campaigns the modern West has ever mounted.

Instead, men are dragged from streets and their homes, beaten, bundled into vans, forced into uniforms, and sent to the front. Videos of violent conscription squads no longer shock because they are the tragic norm.

This is not mobilisation. It is cowardly and punitive coercion, the final refuge of elites who lack legitimacy but demand sacrifice. It is the politics of cowardice, where those who made the decisions never bear the cost, and those who pay the price were never given a choice. These wars are always fought with other people’s sons, for objectives that dissolve under scrutiny, while the architects retreat behind speeches, security details, and moral posturing.

When a state must kidnap its own citizens to sustain a war, it has crossed the final moral line: it is no longer defending a nation, because it never was, but cannibalising one, deliberately sacrificing its people as a tip of the spear against a stronger Russia, to shield the reputations, fortunes, and careers of elites who will never bleed, never fight, and never answer for the ruin they leave behind.

Washington shattered Europe’s strategic autonomy years ago and quietly handed the bill to the continent. NATO expansion without strategy. Economic warfare without insulation. Energy sabotage without a contingency secured. The result was inevitable… Accelerated deindustrialisation, inflation, social fracture, political fragility. Europe emerged poorer, weaker, and strategically irrelevant, yet still clinging to the language of moral authority.

Rather than confront this collapse, Europe chose the refuge of absolutism. Negotiation became heresy. Compromise became betrayal. Peace became appeasement. Diplomacy itself was criminalised, because diplomacy invites the most dangerous question of all. What was this for?

And that question cannot be answered without consequences. Because peace does something war cannot. War suspends politics. Peace resurrects accountability.

Europe does not fear losing the war as much as it fears surviving it with memory intact.

That is why the war must continue. Not to save Ukraine, but to postpone reckoning, at the hands of Europeans.

Which brings us back to Kupyansk.

Kupyansk is not a battlefield turning point. It is a tombstone. Not only for the men buried beneath its rubble, but for Europe’s moral credibility itself.

What will damn this war in the historical record is not how it began, but how long it continued after its flimsy justification collapsed. When even manufactured consent evaporated, when diplomacy was deliberately buried, when Russian defeat quietly gave way to arithmetic, the war did not stop. It hardened. Not because it could still be won, but because ending it would have forced admissions no ruling class was prepared to make.

Kupyansk is not remembered because it mattered militarily. It matters because it exposes the moment when the war ceased to be about territory at all. It marks the point where Europe chose blood over truth, coercion over consent, and narrative survival over human life. Not out of strength, but out of fear.

History is unforgiving toward wars waged without consent and prolonged without purpose. It does not care about intentions, speeches, or moral language. It records only what was done, who benefited, and who paid. And when the record is written, it will show that Ukraine was not denied peace because peace was impossible, but because peace would have ended the lie.

That is the real defeat.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The lobby is milking the Bondi Beach attack to silence critics of Israel’s genocide

By Jonathan Cook | December 15, 2025

I, for one, am struggling to stomach the spew of hypocrisy from pro-Israel groups like the Community Security Trust and its policy director, Dave Rich, in the wake of Sunday’s Bondi Beach attack.

Establishment media, on the other hand, appear to have a bottomless appetite for efforts by Israel apologists to exploit the genuine fear and grief of the Jewish community to advance a political agenda – one designed to silence criticism of Israel over its two-year slaughter and maiming of Palestinian children in Gaza.

Predictably, the supposedly liberal Guardian once again gave Rich a prominent slot in its comment pages, this time to spin the attack in Sydney into a demand for silencing opposition to Israel’s genocide.

Here are extracts from Rich’s piece in italics, followed by my observations. His all-too-obvious double standards and his glaring misdirection ploys should have disqualified this piece from publication. But the British media simply can’t get enough of this kind of bilge.

Rich: “The mobile phone footage of two gunmen calmly taking aim at families enjoying a Hanukah party is utterly chilling. It takes a special kind of dehumanisation, an ideology of pure hatred and self-righteous conviction, to do that.”

If Rich is so troubled by issues of dehumanisation, why has he remained so steadfastly mute about the long and utterly chilling dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel and by its lobby groups, including his own organisation? Remember, Israeli leaders called the Palestinians “human animals”. It is decades of that kind of dehumanisation that laid the ground for Israel’s genocide. It is precisely because of such dehumanisation that the live-streamed horrors of the past two years made barely any impact on the Israeli public or on opinion among Israel’s supporters.

The truth is it is Rich and his fellow pro-Israel lobbyists who are the ones in the grip of an “ideology of pure hatred” – one that chooses to excuse the mass murder of children when they are Palestinian, blown to pieces and starved for months on end by the very state he identifies with.

Rich: “The whole basis of western liberal democracy, the belief in shared values within a diverse society, is endangered by these attacks.”

No, it’s not the Bondi Beach attack that has endangered “western liberal democracy”. That was irreversibly hollowed out when western leaders chose to actively collude in Israel’s genocide and defy the rulings of the world’s most respected legal institutions, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Western liberal democracy was hollowed out when these leaders chose to side with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and prioritise his exterminationist agenda over the rule of law.

Rich: “Some people react as if this terrorism is akin to a natural disaster or unforeseen tragedy: blind hatred with no cause or purpose, and therefore no deeper explanation needed. But terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum. It is merely the most violent, lethal expression of a set of attitudes and beliefs that are much more widely held than just by those who wield the gun or the knife.”

How true! Terrorism does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is the weapon of the weak, and it feeds off a festering hatred that derives from having one’s community abused and a parallel, suffocating feeling of powerlessness to stop it. That doesn’t justify the Bondi Beach attack, but it does provide us with the “deeper explanation” Rich claims to be searching for.

But even before we read on, we know where he wants to take this.

Rich: “When it comes to antisemitic terror, the ideas that some take as justification for murder are popularised and normalised through the language of much of the anti-Israel movement that has marched up and down our city streets and through our university campuses these past two years.”

And sure enough, there it is. The “antisemites”, according to Rich and the rest of the pro-Israel lobby, are British families marching though their towns and cities to protest a genocide in which the British govermment is actively colluding. They are the criminals, not Israel’s genocide machine.

The “antisemites”, Rich wants you to believe, are those incensed by witnessing Israel slaughter children day after day for more than two years; those incensed at seeing Israel bomb the hospitals needed to treat those children; those incensed at hearing Israel and its supporters deny what we have all seen happening with our own eyes; and those incensed that our governments have not only failed to stop this horror show but have actively demonised their own populations for highlighting their complicity in these crimes.

Rich: “After rapper Bobby Vylan, one half of the group Bob Vylan, chanted “Death, death to the IDF” during a set at the Glastonbury festival in June, it became the rallying cry of anti-Israel protesters everywhere. It got Bob Vylan invited to the Irish parliament and Bobby Vylan on to Louis Theroux’s podcast. Far from a call for death putting the rapper beyond the pale, it made him a celebrity.”

It takes extraordinary chutzpah to exploit the blood spilled in Sydney by special pleading for an Israeli army that is recognised by all major human rights groups, the United Nations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the International Criminal Court to have been routinely committing crimes against humanity in Gaza over the past two years.

If Dave Rich and the Community Security Trust are really so concerned about the dangers faced by Jews because of the many documented, and unpunished, crimes committed by the Israeli army, then maybe he should dedicate a little space to distancing himself and his organisation from that military rather than denying its criminality at every opportunity.

Rich: “Is there a connection between this embrace of a call for death in the name of Palestinian rights, and people inflicting actual death apparently in the name of the same cause? As soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious.”

Both sides can play this game. Is there a connection between the embrace of calls for genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy, and Israeli soldiers inflicting actual death in the name of that cause? Remember Israel’s head of the military said he would deny the people of Gaza food, water and fuel, supposedly in “self-defence”, and that’s exactly what Israel did. Remember Netanyahu himself described the people of Gaza as “Amalek”, a people condemned to genocide by God, and genocide is exactly what Israel did.

Indeed, as soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious. But in the case of Gaza, the death toll is many thousands of times greater than anything inflicted by two twisted gunmen in Sydney.

Rich: “The devastation in Gaza is real and lots of people involved in pro-Palestinian activism do not support antisemitic violence against Jews, whether in Britain or Australia. But like it or not, it seems this movement has generated and sustained a political culture in which violence is both conceivable and enacted.”

Even were this true, it cannot compare to the political culture generated by Rich and his pro-Israel lobbyists. That political culture has not only made violence against Palestinians conceivable but a daily reality for them decade after decade. It is years of dedicated work by the Israel lobby that has ensured the mass murder of Palestinians is viewed by governments, the media and parts of the Jewish community as entirely legitimate.

Rich: “This is now a global emergency of antisemitism, and it is the consequence of two years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, Jews are angry. And they have every right to be.”

No, that is not the global emergency. The real emergency is a rampant anti-Palestinian racism that has utterly normalised genocide and been given institutional support across the West. It is anti-Palestinian racism, not “antisemitism”, that is the consequence of “two years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings”. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, people with a conscience are angry at the two-year genocide endorsed by our governments. And they have every right to be.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Fact Checking The New York Times

Tony Heller | December 6, 2025

The New York Times has a website claiming to show an increase in 90 degree days in US cities. In this short video I fact check their claims using app.visitech.ai

How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born? – The New York Times

December 16, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

For Israel, The Terrorist Attack At Bondi Is An Opportunity To Push For War With Iran

The Dissident | December 14, 2025

Today, a horrific terrorist attack was committed against Jewish Australians who were celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 16 people and sending 40 to the hospital.

But for Israel, the terrorist attack is an opportunity to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.

There is no evidence that Iran has anything to do with the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, and all evidence so far that has emerged shows that it almost certainly was not.

The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying, “We condemn the violent attack in Sydney, Australia. Terror and killing of human beings, wherever committed, is rejected and condemned”, and evidence released so far suggests the attacker identified so far, Naveed Akram, was a follower of Wahhabi Salafist ideology, which is openly hostile to Shia Islam and Iran.

Despite the lack of evidence and evidence showing it was not Iran behind the attack, Israel is using the horrific terrorist attack to manufacture consent for war with Iran.

Israel Hayom, the mouthpiece of Israel lobbyist and pro-Iran war hawk Miriam Adelson, published an article quoting an anonymous “Israeli security official” who claimed -without evidence- that “there is no doubt that the direction and infrastructure for the attack originated in Tehran”.

The Israeli newspaper Times of Israel, reported that Australia is “investigating if Sydney attack was part of larger Iranian plot” at the behest of the Israeli Mossad.

Previously, Israel pressured Australia to repeat baseless claims from the Mossad that Iran was behind anti-Semitic attacks in Australia.

As veteran journalist Joe Lauria reported, in August “Australian intelligence said the Iranian government was behind the firebombing of a Jewish temple in Melbourne last year as well as other ‘anti-semitic’ attacks in the country”, “days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly humiliated Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X for being ‘a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’ after Albanese said Australia would follow several European nations and recognize the state of Palestine.”

As Lauria noted, “The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment based on secret evidence that Iran was involved”.

Australia’s ABC News reported that, “The Israeli government is claiming credit for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and intelligence agencies publicising Iranian involvement in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil,” adding that “in a press briefing overnight, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer effectively accused Australia of being shamed into acting”.

Mencer boasted that “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has made a very forthright intervention when it comes to Australia, a country in which we have a long history of friendly relations”, implying that Israel pressured the Australian government to repeat their baseless claim about Iran being behind the attacks.

ABC reported that the move came days after, “Netanyahu labelled Mr Albanese a ‘weak’ leader who had ‘betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’” and “Israel announced it would tear up the visas of Australian diplomats working in the West Bank in protest against the Albanese government’s moves to recognise a Palestinian state”.

Israel’s evidence-free claims are already being used by the Trump administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran.

The Jerusalem Post reported that, “A senior US official told Fox News that if the Islamic Republic ordered the attack, then the US would fully recognize Israel’s right to strike Iran in response.”

Israel’s weaponisation of the terrorist attack in Bondi is reminiscent of how Benjamin Netanyahu weaponised the 9/11 attacks to draw America into Middle Eastern wars for Israel.

After the 9/11 attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that they were “very good” for Israel, because they would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror”.

This, in effect, meant using 9/11 to draw the U.S. into endless regime change wars in the Middle East against countries that had no ties to Al Qaeda but were in the way of Israel’s geopolitical goals.

The top U.S. general, Wesley Clark, said that after 9/11, the U.S. came up with a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.

Years later, on Piers Morgan’s show, Wesley Clark said that the hit list of countries came from a study that was “paid for by the Israelis”, which “said that if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding” adding that, “this led to all that followed” (i.e. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.)

Yet again, Israel is weaponising a terrorist attack to manufacture consent for the final regime change war on their hit list.

December 14, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why The Wall Street Journal amplifies collaborators instead of Palestinian voices

By Ahmed Asnar | MEMO | December 14, 2025

Once again, The Wall Street Journal has chosen to offer its pages not to genuine Palestinian voices, but to figures who align explicitly with Israeli agendas in Gaza. On 11 December, the newspaper published an opinion piece by Hussam al-Astal, an infamous militia leader presented as a potential military – and possible political – alternative in Gaza. His article echoed Israeli talking points almost verbatim, promoting the fantasy of “disarming Gaza” and for being ready to take part in implementing Trump’s so-called “peace plan” for Gaza in accordance with the Israeli objectives from the plan.

What is most troubling is not al-Astal’s rhetoric itself. His views are neither new nor Palestinian, nor do they reflect any authentic constituency among the Palestinian people in Gaza. What demands scrutiny is The Wall Street Journal’s editorial decision to elevate such a figure while systematically excluding real Palestinian scholars, journalists, and intellectuals who articulate the lived reality, aspirations, and internationally-recognised rights of their people.

According to widely reported Palestinian sources, al-Astal escaped from prison in the early days of Israel’s genocide on Gaza in October 2023. He had previously been sentenced to death in connection with serious criminal charges, including being involved in the assassination of a Palestinian scientist in Malaysia in 2018. Following his escape, he reportedly formed an armed gang operating under Israeli military oversight, engaging in the looting of aid convoys and clashes with Palestinian resistance groups. His militia is said to operate in areas under Israeli fire control, often with aerial cover—an arrangement that speaks volumes about whose interests he serves.

This was not an isolated editorial lapse. In June 2025, The Wall Street Journal published a similar opinion piece by another gang leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, who likewise positioned himself as an alternative for ruling Gaza while attacking Palestinian resistance and looting the people’s aid. Abu Shabab, who was later killed in December under circumstances widely linked to his collaboration, had also reportedly been imprisoned for criminal offenses prior to the war. In both cases, the newspaper chose to amplify figures rejected by Palestinian society, elevating them as if they represented a legitimate political alternative.

What these figures share—beyond their alignment with Israeli objectives—is their well-known illiteracy and complete lack of credibility and political thought. This raises an unavoidable question: who actually wrote these polished English-language opinion pieces? The answer is less important than what it reveals about The Wall Street Journal’s editorial standards and political standing.

The deeper issue is structural. The Wall Street Journal has long denied its pages to Palestinian academics, analysts, and journalists who challenge Israeli narratives with facts, law, and lived experience. Palestinian voices are welcomed only when they validate Israeli policy or undermine Palestinian collective resistance. This is not journalism in service of truth; it is gatekeeping in service of a colonial power.

For decades, much of the Western mainstream media has framed the Palestinian struggle through a distorted lens—portraying occupation as self-defence and resistance as aggression. Palestinians are routinely cast as obstacles to peace rather than a people living under military occupation, apartheid conditions, and now genocide. Over time, this bias has hardened into something more dangerous: complicity.

During Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, this complicity became unmistakable. Major Western outlets, including those that once claimed journalistic rigor, uncritically repeated Israeli allegations of mass rape, beheadings, and other atrocities. Many of these claims were later debunked or contradicted by independent investigations, yet they served their purpose: manufacturing moral justification for the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the majority of them women and children.

By publishing voices like al-Astal and Abu Shabab while excluding genuine Palestinian perspectives, The Wall Street Journal has crossed from bias into participation. It is no longer merely reporting on power—it is helping shape and legitimize a colonial narrative that seeks to replace a people’s political will with proxies and collaborators.

As for Palestinian voices, they will continue to write, document, and speak—whether Western gatekeepers approve or not. New media spaces, independent platforms, and global civil society have already broken the monopoly once held by legacy outlets like The Wall Street Journal. The truth of Palestine no longer depends on their permission.

History has a way of sorting narratives from propaganda. And when it does, The Wall Street Journal will be remembered not for amplifying the oppressed, but for offering its pages to those who work in service of their occupier.

December 14, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Flawed Study Downplays Children’s Risk of Myocarditis From COVID Vaccine

By Josh Mitteldorf, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 3, 2025

Readers of The Defender are familiar with the fact that the COVID-19 mRNA shots pose a risk of myocarditis, especially in children. But they may not know that myocarditis is usually permanently disabling, and in adults, it is often fatal within five years.

Tragically, we are now also learning what the trajectory of myocarditis in vaccinated children actually looks like.

This has been a public relations setback for industry and governments that have been advocating, and sometimes mandating, that children as young as 6 months get the vaccines — even though COVID-19 is almost always mild or symptom-free in young people.

This month, 22 British scientists from prestigious universities published a study intended to ease parents’ minds about risks of the vaccine, and simultaneously scare them about the dangers of getting COVID-19.

The message is that yes, there are rare cases — they always use the word “rare” — in which children get myocarditis after vaccination, but hey, no product can be perfect. And it’s better to risk the vaccine than risk getting COVID-19. Also, they claim, kids are more likely to get myocarditis if they get the virus than they are to get myocarditis from the vaccine.

That’s the message — and the authors and publisher have the clout to widely broadcast that message in a press release and in news headlines in Britain and America.

But what does the study actually say? In short, it asks the wrong question — and even so, the answer they get must be buried in the appendix, because it’s inconsistent with the message they want to promote.

Article summary omitted evidence of vaccine risk

The study design is deeply compromised because the 22 authors constructed a complicated model to avoid doing a straightforward comparison (vaccine only versus disease only).

And even after they cooked the books, even after they took data from almost 14 million children and teens under age 18 in England, they got a result that is barely statistically significant, with overlapping error bars for the risk from COVID-19 and the risk from vaccination.

It gets worse.

The results, which marginally favored the vaccination, were trumpeted in a summary at the top of the paper and announced to the press.

But buried in the appendix, published separately online, is a table that shows a more relevant version of the comparison.

The version in the summary is from an early time frame when the vaccine was not available. The appendix shows comparable data for the time frame in which the vaccine was available, limited to the ages for which the vaccine was offered.

In the appendix, the risk of myocarditis from the disease is half that of the risk from the vaccine. This blatantly contradicts the summary and the headlines generated by the article — and this was a response to the deceptive version of the question, not the more straightforward one that the researchers chose not to answer.

Study authors asked the wrong question

The most pertinent question is the simple one: Did vaccinated children have a higher incidence of myocarditis than unvaccinated children?

This is an easy question to answer, given the data that these authors (but not the public) had access to. In a few minutes, they could have calculated a rate of myocarditis among vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

However, if they did the calculation, they didn’t report the results. My guess is that they did the calculation, didn’t like what they saw, so they didn’t include it in the published article.

As I stated above, I believe the study authors “asked the wrong question.” What I mean is that the article compares the risk of myocarditis from COVID to the risk from vaccination.

But this is not the most relevant question. Why?

Because many people got the vaccine and then got COVID anyway, so they were unnecessarily exposed to both risks.

Conversely, many children who didn’t get the vaccine, didn’t get COVID. Or, they get such a mild case that they don’t even notice it. These children avoided both risks.

This is why comparing the risk of myocarditis from COVID to the risk from the COVID vaccine is not really the pertinent question. It’s not a question of “either or.”

Authors ‘muddied the waters’ by analyzing myocarditis in kids who got vaccine and the virus

The message the authors wanted to imply was that, even though the vaccine increased the risk of myocarditis, it decreased the risk of COVID — and since COVID itself can cause myocarditis, the total risk is actually lower with vaccination than without.

If that is their claim, it’s easy to determine if it is true. The simplest calculation they could have done with the data available to them was also the calculation most pertinent to what parents want to know: Is my child better off with or without the vaccine?

The authors chose not to offer us the simple answer to that straightforward question.

But — given that they asked the wrong question — they might have derived a clean answer just by comparing the subset of children who were vaccinated but never got COVID to the subset who got COVID but were never vaccinated.

Because the study included data spanning two years from all over the U.K., there were hundreds of thousands of children in these subcategories — more than enough to do a clean statistical comparison.

But again, the authors chose not to do this. Or, my guess, they did the comparison and didn’t like the result, so they didn’t include it in the publication.

Instead, the authors analyzed myocarditis in the large group of children who got both the vaccine and the disease. This muddied the waters because there is no clear way to determine whether it was the disease or the vaccine that damaged the child’s heart.

Hence, the complicated model, based on timing.

The possibility that seems likely is that children who got COVID after the vaccination had the highest heart risk of all. Of course, there is the logical possibility that children who got COVID after vaccination had a milder case, with a lower risk of myocarditis.

However, if that had been the result, I would think the authors would not only have included that result, but also headlined it.

One more thing — the study looked only at the Pfizer vaccine. Myocarditis risk from the Moderna vaccine is estimated to be three times higher than Pfizer. They had the Moderna data and chose not to look at it.

Or they looked at it, decided they didn’t like what they saw, and decided not to report it.

‘This is public relations masquerading as science’

So, to summarize:

  • The authors asked a complicated question when a simple one was more relevant.
  • Given this wrong question, they did not do the most straightforward analysis to answer it.
  • Even so, they found that the vaccine held almost twice the risk of myocarditis compared to the disease. This result was only in Table S16 of the Supplementary Appendix — but mentioned nowhere in the body of the paper, let alone in the summary at the top.
  • And still they made prominent announcements to the public, claiming that their study confirms that children are better off with the vaccine than without.

This is public relations masquerading as science. For an article like this to be peer reviewed and featured prominently in Britain’s most prestigious medical journal tells us just how deeply the ecosystem of medical research has been corrupted.

And this is the “science” that our U.S. Food and Drug Administration relies on when they approve dangerous vaccines for healthy children who are at almost no risk from the disease itself.

In most statistical articles, the raw data used for a study are published online and linked in an appendix to the article. However, in this case, the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) granted access to the data exclusively to this prestigious group of scientists.

Personally, I would like to see the raw data and perform the analysis that the 22 scientists should have done from the beginning. Children’s Health Defense is in the process of requesting access from the NHS. Stay tuned …

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.

December 13, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Why is Britain now openly admitting the death of British soldiers in Ukraine?

Strategic Culture Foundation | December 12, 2025

The death of a British paratrooper reported this week was the first public admission by Britain’s authorities that a serving member of its armed forces has been killed in Ukraine.

The timing of the official disclosure and its very public, emotive nature raise questions about the motives of the British authorities. The news of the death comes at a critical moment when London and other European capitals seem desperate to sabotage efforts by U.S. President Trump to find a peaceful settlement to the nearly four-year conflict.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer led tributes in the British Parliament on Wednesday to Lance Corporal George Hooley, who was described as a “hero” who “served our country in the cause of freedom and democracy.”

The British media were plastered with fond photos and sentimental commendations of the dead paratrooper.

Britain’s Minister of Defense [sic] John Healey added: “George’s tragic death reminds us of the courage and commitment with which our outstanding armed forces serve every day to protect our nation.”

How exactly British soldiers in Ukraine are “protecting” Britain is not explained.

The Sun newspaper went further to whip up anti-Russian feelings when it subsequently reported that the Kremlin made “disgusting” comments about the death of the soldier. Moscow had simply dared to ask what the British soldier was doing in Ukraine in the first place, and pointed out that British personnel have been participating in “terrorist” attacks on Russian civilian centers along with Ukrainian military units. That much is fact. Ukrainian forces have been firing UK-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russian territory over the past two years. These missiles could not be operated without British personnel on the ground. Similarly, American-made HIMARS and ATACMS, which have also targeted Russian territory, have also necessarily involved U.S. personnel for operation.

It is an open secret that British, French, American, Polish, German, and other NATO forces have been deployed in Ukraine to fight against the Russian military. Up to now, the NATO authorities have maintained a cynical silence about their involvement, pretending that the estimated 30,000 foreign soldiers in Ukraine are “private mercenaries” who have no official affiliation. Russia’s warnings about NATO being a direct participant in war have been dismissed as “Kremlin propaganda”.

But Moscow’s claims have been previously corroborated. Pentagon classified documents leaked in 2023 indicated that 50 British special forces were deployed in Ukraine, making up the biggest contingency of other NATO commandos in combat with Russia.

In March 2024, a leaked audio recording of Germany’s Luftwaffe commander, Lt Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, was released, in which he told other top officials that the British forces were on the ground operating Storm Shadow missiles.

British elite forces from the SAS and SBS (Special Boat Service), which work in conjunction with the paratroop regiments, are known to operate underwater drones in the Black Sea to target Crimea.

It is estimated that 40 British nationals have been killed in combat in Ukraine, along with other NATO nationals. However, the American, British, French, and other authorities have kept a stony silence about the identities and circumstances, implying that the casualties were private mercenaries and “soldiers of fortune”.

Logically, the NATO powers want to deny the depth of their involvement in the conflict. They are supposed to “merely” support Ukraine with the supply of weapons to defend against “Russian aggression.” The admission of NATO armed forces on the ground is an acknowledgment of the reality that the U.S.-led military alliance is at war with Russia. Of course, many independent observers know that already as fact, as does Russia. Still, it behooves the NATO states to suppress the truth and maintain plausible deniability.

Russia has said, with justification, that all combatants in Ukraine are legitimate targets. That includes members of armed forces who claim to be “peacekeepers” or acting as “military advisors”.

Given the secrecy that Britain and other NATO nations have maintained about deployment in Ukraine, and over previous military casualties, it does seem strange that this week saw such a very public announcement about the death of the paratrooper.

The British authorities claimed that Lance Corporal Hooley was killed in an accident “far from the frontlines” while overseeing the testing of an “air defense system”.

That disclosure appeared to be aimed at portraying the soldier in a minimal role working on “defense”. Together with effusive eulogies in the British media for the paratrooper as an honorable person, the intended effect was to rally public sympathy and anger towards Russia.

Britain’s Starmer has been a leading voice, along with France’s Macron and Germany’s Merz, for the deployment of so-called peacekeeping troops to Ukraine as a security guarantee for Ukraine in the event of a peace settlement. The real agenda, however, is to sabotage any peace deal because the Europeans know full well that Russia would never accept such a presence, seeing it as a backdoor for escalating NATO participation in the conflict.

U.S. President Trump has belatedly realized that the proxy war is a dead-end for NATO, especially as Russian forces speed up their advances following the capture of key bastions, including Seversk, Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk), and Kupyansk. The British and the Europeans are in panic mode to keep the proxy war going because of their vested interests. They can’t accept defeat because of the fatal loss to their political image and fallout from the false narrative they have been spouting to justify a criminal proxy war.

One can expect various provocations and maneuvers to escalate the conflict to avoid peace. Declaring the death of a British soldier should be a damning admission of NATO being at war behind the backs of the public of NATO states. But rather than an admission of culpability, the British authorities, as with other European NATO leaders, are trying to rouse public support for escalation. The civilian head of NATO, former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, gave a speech in Berlin this week in which he stated that European nations must be ready for full-scale war with Russia, like “our grandfathers endured”. The insane European losers want to save their political necks with World War III.

December 13, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow rebuffs ‘absurd’ German hacking accusations

RT | December 12, 2025

German accusations of Moscow’s alleged involvement in “hybrid attacks” are “unsubstantiated, unfounded and absurd,” the Russian Embassy in Germany said in a statement on Friday.

According to Federal Foreign Office spokesperson Martin Giese, the ministry summoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Nechayev earlier in the day to protest alleged disinformation and cyberattacks. He cited alleged interference in this year’s federal election, and an attack on a German flight controller in August by two separate hacker groups, which he claimed had links to Russian military intelligence agency (GRU).

In response, the embassy said the ambassador had “categorically rejected” the “unsubstantiated, unfounded and absurd” accusations of GRU’s involvement.

The accusations are “yet another unfriendly step aimed at inciting anti-Russian sentiment in Germany” and undermining bilateral relations, it said.

The embassy also referred to EU scaremongering and accusations of alleged Russian plans to attack NATO, calling for Berlin to “stop whipping up hysteria.” Russia “poses no threat to European states,” as President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stressed, it said.

The embassy also referred to the US-brokered peace talks on the Ukraine conflict, a recent point of tension between European NATO states and Moscow.

Russia stands ready to negotiate, provided they “take Russia’s security interests into account and contribute to addressing the root causes of the Ukraine conflict,” it said.

“It is regrettable that European elites continue supporting the Kiev regime, prolonging the war to the last Ukrainian, and thwarting any progress toward a peaceful settlement.”

A day earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow views the various “fabrications” thrown about by European NATO countries as being primarily aimed at “complicating” the Ukraine peace process and “prolonging the conflict.”

“The West is running out of financial, logistical, and military resources for waging a proxy war,” he said.

Western leaders are desperately trying to “escalate the situation and remain on the warpath,” by advocating for militarization and hyping up an alleged threat from Russia in the hopes that a large conflict will “erase” their political failures, the top diplomat said.

December 12, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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