Europe creates a ‘Russian government-in-exile’, consisting of a bunch of losers
By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 14, 2026
The Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), part of the Council of Europe (not the European Union), established in October 2025 a platform for Russians in exile called the Russian Democratic Forces, which is intended to represent a new Russian government-in-exile in Europe.
With little media attention, Europe is attempting to elevate the status of the Russian opposition, while openly admitting that the new, so-called opposition lacks the structure and power to make a significant difference. Above all, they admit that the selection of members for this so-called government-in-exile was fundamentally undemocratic.
Following the formation of a so-called representative delegation of Belarusian democratic forces, the Assembly recently decided to appoint a Russian delegation as well – again, without democratic consultation.
Regarding the Russian Democratic Forces, some individuals were invited to participate in hearings organized by Assembly committees. During these hearings, the discussions focused solely on how these figures could help end what they call “Russia’s war of aggression” and on ways to strengthen sanctions against Russia.
The most absurd claim is their desire to guarantee Russians access to free and independent media in order to counter Russian disinformation. This is reminiscent of the sanctions Europe has imposed on Russian media outlets such as RT, Sputnik, Channel One Russia, etc., and, of course, this geopolitical website, the Strategic Culture Foundation, where this article is published. The new media outlets they propose to establish are, naturally, funded by Europe itself – a platform for the so-called Russian government-in-exile.
They will rely exclusively on European disinformation articles opposing the current Russian government. The Russians in exile, out of fear, will write articles filled with anti-Russian propaganda and criticism, afraid of losing their European residence permits or visas should they write anything positive about Russia.
The absurdity of it all, of course, is that Europe itself has been censoring its own media and journalists since new legislation, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), was approved. Since February 2025, the EU has officially implemented the 2022 law to combat disinformation, particularly what they call “fake news” originating from Russia.
Or take the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA): This law came into effect in May 2024 and supposedly protects media pluralism and ensures that journalists can work without state interference or abuse of legal process. An example of this absurdity – and the exact opposite of what the EMFA advocates – is the case of German journalist Hüseyin Dogru, who has been completely cut off from funding due to European Union sanctions and can no longer provide for his family’s basic needs while living in Germany. He is accused of spreading disinformation about Russia and Israel.
Another initiative is the so-called European Democracy Shield, presented in November 2025. This initiative aims to protect the EU’s democratic information space from foreign interference and information manipulation. Yet this initiative is now being violated by Europe itself. As they state: “The European Democracy Shield initiative aims to strengthen information integrity in Europe by addressing issues such as disinformation and election interference.” But this is exactly the opposite of what the EU is doing by establishing – by Europeans – a so-called Russian government-in-exile, which, by their own admission, may not have been entirely democratic in its establishment or candidate selection.
After all, it is the European Union itself, through the European Commission, that has established an undemocratic Russian government-in-exile, as they themselves admit. The president of the so-called committee that approves the candidates and the structure of the platform is German, and other committee members come from Spain and Cyprus. Not a single Russian sits on the Assembly’s board.
They even prepared a list of so-called “democratic” candidates promoting the new Russian government-in-exile – a list of “Participants of the Russian Democratic Forces” for the platform. This list is approved exclusively by the Bureau of the Assembly – the European Union, or in this case, the European Commission – based on a proposal from the President of the Assembly, who, as mentioned, is a European citizen of German nationality. The list of potential candidates is submitted to the President of the Assembly in consultation with organizations of the Russian Democratic Forces whose members meet the criteria, and is approved by them.
This is, of course, utterly absurd. Imagine the reverse situation: Russia establishes a committee for, say, Dutch or German citizens in exile, appoints them as the opposition government for the Netherlands and/or Germany, and recognizes them as a government-in-exile in Russia. Perhaps Russia should do this as counter-propaganda – to show Europe and make it clear that their behavior is absurd, undemocratic, and, above all, insane. I can just imagine the headlines in European media and the outrage from European politicians and journalists – full of words like “undemocratic and criminal” – if Russia were to do this!
Among the members of the so-called Russian government-in-exile are names such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch once convicted in Russia for fraud and theft, who has already served time in a Russian prison, and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who has a far stronger connection to modern-day Azerbaijan or Armenia, having been born and spent his entire childhood in Baku, present-day Azerbaijan.
Another well-known opponent is Vladimir Kara-Murza, who claims to have been poisoned by Putin – similar to the Skripal and Litvinenko cases, or more recently, the allegation that Navalny was poisoned in a Russian prison. He is described as a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and a former political prisoner. He is the vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by the convicted former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. In essence, they promote the interests of the US and Europe and advocate for Russia’s subordination to them, running as puppet presidents and governments for the West.
Also part of the new Russian government-in-exile are the deranged members of the provocative punk rock group Pussy Riot, such as Nadya Tolokonnikova. These individuals, eager to attract attention with provocative actions against the Russian Orthodox Church – actions bordering on Satanism (in Europe they are called feminists) – have been condemned in Russia for their behavior. Wikipedia (a Western propaganda tool) even acknowledges that public opinion in Russia is not sympathetic to the band members. They have been labeled an extremist organization in Russia. These are just a few candidates; the rest of those chosen are even less significant or unknown to the Russian people.
Europe is also using ethnic minorities in Russia – such as the Bashkirs, Chuvash, Tatars, Chechens, and many others – to sow division and thus break up Russia, following the example of the Balkanization of the former Yugoslavia. A good example of the propaganda machine targeting ethnic minorities in Russia is the German Center for East European and International Studies, called ZOiS, located in Berlin, Germany.
For instance, a certain PD Dr. Sabine von Löwis has written an article there on “Conflict Dynamics and Border Regions,” which discusses: “The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to the creation of not only the fifteen successor states but also a series of de facto states and peoples.” The goal is likely to drive a wedge between the various groups living in the Russian Federation.
The Russian government-in-exile, as the EU calls it, was established following the example of the Americans, who have appointed puppet presidents and governments worldwide to destabilize the countries they effectively occupy and thus plunder their resources. Russia itself is rich in resources such as gas, oil, and minerals. Some members of Russia’s indigenous peoples, as mentioned above, are also on the list of the so-called Russian government-in-exile. This is a blatant provocation by the EU to drive a wedge between Russians – or at least that is the intent. In recent years, entire sessions have appeared on YouTube proposing to divide Russia along ethnic lines, just as was done with the former Yugoslavia, which is now under the control of Europe and the US.
Recent examples of US regime change, with European assistance, include Syria, Venezuela, the blockade against Cuba, the ongoing destabilization of Greenland, and, of course, the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s neighbors, such as Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, have also fallen victim to provocations involving regime change and destabilization. This task is now largely reserved for the Europeans – particularly in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia – with US assistance behind the scenes.
But do not think for a moment that Ukraine will be completely abandoned to Europe. The Americans, together with the Europeans, are eyeing the riches, natural resources, and rare earth metals found primarily in the Donbas, which are now largely in Russian hands. Leaving Ukraine to the Europeans is merely a pretext for so-called peace talks.
Times are growing dangerous these days, with an American administration that talks about peace while simultaneously attacking countries, kidnapping presidents, and throwing them in jail. It supports terrorist leaders in Syria and transfers thousands of ISIS terrorists from the Kurdish-controlled al-Hawl camp to Iraq. What will they do with them? Release them for a potential coming war against Iran – an ally of Russia? Hopefully not, but these days, we cannot be sure. The West is in free fall, without rules or morals.
No, Al-Jazeera, Climate Change Hasn’t Altered African Flood and Drought Patterns
By Anthony Watts | Climate Realism | February 3, 2026
Al Jazeera (AJ) recently published an article titled “Drought in the east, floods in the south: Africa battered by climate change” by Haru Mutasa, in which the reporter details recent experiences of drought in East Africa and flooding in southern Africa, asserting that those weather events are proof that climate change is battering the continent. This is false. The article relies on flimsy content such as personal observation, interviews, and evocative imagery to imply causation, ignoring data and trends that show no appreciable changes in flood or drought patterns over time.
Mutasa asserts that “rising seas and intensifying storms” and shifting rainfall patterns are already devastating livelihoods, citing the author’s personal field observations as evidence of a broader climate crisis. Readers are shown photos of dry riverbeds, dead livestock, submerged neighborhoods, and distressed residents, then invited to connect these scenes directly to global warming. The emotional impact is real, but emotion is not evidence.
Let us start with AJ’s most basic error: weather is not climate. Climate is defined by long-term patterns measured over decades, typically 30 years or more. A drought in one region followed by floods in another over a few weeks or months says nothing about a durable climate trend. Africa’s climate has always been highly variable, with sharp swings driven by ocean–atmosphere cycles such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Short-term extremes—sometimes back-to-back—are a known feature of the region, not a recently discovered diagnostical proof of climate change.
The historical record bears this out. Southern and eastern Africa experienced severe droughts and catastrophic floods long before modern greenhouse gas emissions rose. Mozambique’s Limpopo River basin, featured prominently in the article’s flood imagery. The area has a long history of major inundations, including the devastating 2000 Mozambique floods, which displaced hundreds of thousands and occurred during a strong El Niño year. East Africa’s Horn has likewise seen repeated, multi-year droughts throughout the twentieth century, interspersed with episodes of extreme rainfall. These precedents matter because they show that today’s events are consistent with a long pattern of variability rather than proving a novel climate regime.
In fact, science has shown a 50-year seasonal variability across centuries in East African droughts and floods recorded in lake sediments.
When measured data are consulted instead of anecdotes, the alarm bells fade. Climate at a Glance summarizes the global evidence in “Floods” and “Drought,” explaining that there is low confidence in any increasing trend of global flood frequency or magnitude and that drought trends are regionally mixed, not universally worsening. These conclusions align with the cautious language used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), which emphasizes uncertainty and regional variability rather than blanket claims of intensification.
The AJ article substitutes interviews for analysis. Quoting local residents and aid workers about hardship may document suffering, but it does not diagnose cause. Infrastructure deficits, land-use changes, deforestation, river management, dam releases upstream, population growth in floodplains, and limited early-warning systems all play decisive roles in disaster outcomes across Africa. Climate Realism has repeatedly shown how media coverage overlooks these factors while attributing complex events to climate change by default, as catalogued in its Africa-related reporting and extreme-weather analyses accessible via Climate Realism’s search on floods and droughts and Climate Realism’s coverage of drought claims.
Even within the article’s narrative, local management issues loom large. Mutasa notes dam releases in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province sent additional water downstream into Mozambique—an operational decision with immediate hydrological consequences that has nothing to do with global temperature or climate change. Treating such factors as footnotes while elevating climate change as the primary driver of flooding misinforms readers about where real risk reduction lies.
Serious climate reporting distinguishes between events and trends, and between personal experiences and measured evidence.
By presenting interviews and moment-in-time scenes as confirmation of a continent-wide climate verdict, Al Jazeera is misleading its audience by making a causal connection where data show none. Africa’s vulnerability to climate and weather extremes is real, but the causes are multifaceted and long-standing. Ignoring historical precedents and measured trends in favor of an alarming narrative certainty does not inform the public; it misleads it with false headlines.
When Threats Replace Evidence
What an Australian Newspaper Article Reveals About the Vaccine Compliance Machine
Lies are Unbekoming | February 5, 2026
The Sydney Morning Herald wants you to know the penalties. Doctors and nurses who falsify vaccination records face suspension, deregistration, and jail. Parents who seek them out face fraud investigations through Services Australia. The article names specific dollar amounts ($2,500 per child), quotes the Health Minister expressing shock and outrage, and reminds readers that AHPRA—the regulatory body that controls whether medical professionals can earn a living—is watching.
The article reads less as journalism than as a warning to anyone considering dissent.
The Herald is one of Australia’s oldest and most influential newspapers, the rough equivalent of the New York Times in reach and establishment credibility. When it publishes a piece like this, it speaks with institutional authority. The January 2026 article, “Parents are paying $2500 to falsify vaccine records,” arrives at a particular moment in Australian public health: vaccine uptake has “stalled below national targets,” mandate enforcement is creating a black market for exemptions, and parents are organising in Facebook groups 40,000 members strong.
To understand the context, American readers need to know what Australia built. Between 2014 and 2019, five Australian states—New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia—rolled out “no jab, no play” laws, which bar unvaccinated children from childcare and preschool enrollment entirely. The only exemptions are medical, and these require documented life-threatening allergic reactions or severe immunocompromise—conditions so narrow that most families cannot qualify no matter their concerns.
The coercion is not subtle—and it violates the government’s own rules. Australia’s Immunisation Handbook states that valid consent must be given “voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.” Denying a child access to childcare unless the parents comply is textbook duress. The government has built an enforcement apparatus that fails its own stated ethical standards.
The system was designed to make non-compliance economically devastating and socially impossible. And for years, it worked. But now that system is encountering mass resistance, and the Herald article’s purpose is to make examples—to signal what happens to doctors who help parents escape a coercive system, and to parents who refuse to comply.
Buried beneath the threats is a dead baby. Riley Hughes, 32 days old, is the emotional payload. His story opens the piece, provides the moral frame, and transforms regulatory enforcement into righteous protection of the innocent. Without Riley, this article is just an inventory of punishments. With Riley, non-compliance becomes child murder.
The story requires examination.
Riley developed “mild cold symptoms” at three weeks old. His mother took him to a doctor, who said he appeared “perfectly fine.” When he stopped feeding, she took him to the children’s hospital. By day three, doctors “suspected” whooping cough. By day four, he had pneumonia. By day five, he was on life support. He died at 32 days old. Riley died in February 2015—eleven years before this article was published. The Herald reached back over a decade to find its dead baby.
The article states that “The Bordetella pertussis bug had overwhelmed his tiny body.” This is presented as fact. But reading carefully, the diagnosis was never confirmed—doctors “suspected” whooping cough. The journalist’s assertion that pertussis killed Riley is not attributed to any medical source. It is simply declared.
More striking is what the article omits entirely: what happened during those five days of hospitalisation. What interventions were administered to a three-week-old infant? What antibiotics? What was the “life support” that preceded his death? The hospital’s role in Riley’s deterioration is invisible. The medical system appears only as the place where heroic efforts were made to save him from the disease that (we are told) the unvaccinated community gave him.
The article describes Riley as “too young” to be vaccinated against whooping cough, which is given at six to eight weeks in Australia. But it does not mention that under Australian guidelines, Riley would have received the Hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth. He was not an unvaccinated child. He was a vaccinated child who had not yet received this particular vaccine.
If Riley had been completely unvaccinated, that would be the story. “Unvaccinated baby dies of preventable disease” writes itself. Instead, the article performs a subtle shift: a vaccinated infant dies after five days of hospital intervention, and an entire class of people—parents who refused to vaccinate—are scapegoated to protect the system that failed him.
None of this can be stated with certainty. We do not have Riley’s medical records. We do not know what drugs were administered, what procedures were performed, what his body endured in those five days. But that is precisely the point: neither does the Herald, and neither do its readers. The article presents a story with a hole at its centre and fills that hole with a villain—the unvaccinated community—while the institution that actually had custody of Riley during his decline remains unexamined.
What we do know: Riley was vaccinated. He received the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth, as per Australian protocol. He then spent five days in hospital care before he died. This is a vaccinated child who died after days of medical intervention—and the article repurposes his death as a case against vaccine refusal.
The mother, Catherine Hughes, is quoted: “My son would likely be alive today if everyone in my community had been fully vaccinated against whooping cough.”
This is a grieving mother’s belief, given to her by a medical system that needed someone to blame. She has since founded the Immunisation Foundation of Australia and become a professional advocate for vaccination mandates. What the Herald does not disclose: as journalist Alison Bevege has documented, her foundation received $170,000 from Sanofi in 2023 and $100,000 from GSK in 2025. Hughes herself appears in GSK press releases promoting their products. The article presents her as a spontaneous voice of bereaved motherhood. She is a paid pharmaceutical spokesperson.
The article’s foundational premise—that unvaccinated children endanger the community—is not merely unexamined. Even within the mainstream framework of germ theory and disease transmission, the published science contradicts it.
In 2014, researchers at the FDA published a study using baboons to examine how the acellular pertussis vaccine actually works. The results, within the germ theory framework the researchers operated in, were unambiguous: vaccinated baboons exposed to Bordetella pertussis showed few symptoms but became colonised with the bacteria. They were then placed in cages with unvaccinated baboons—and by the researchers’ own account, the vaccinated animals passed the bacteria to the unvaccinated ones. The study’s conclusion: “acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission.”
A 2015 study by Althouse and Scarpino went further. Using epidemiological, genetic, and mathematical modelling data, they argued that asymptomatic spread from vaccinated individuals “provides the most parsimonious explanation for the observed resurgence of B. pertussis in the US and UK.” Vaccinated individuals who show no symptoms carry and spread the bacteria—according to the very framework the public health establishment operates within. The authors noted that this also explains the documented failure of “cocooning”—the strategy of vaccinating family members to protect newborns. By their own logic, it doesn’t work because the vaccinated family members become silent carriers.
Even by the establishment’s own standards, the pertussis vaccine does not prevent colonisation. It does not prevent spread. What it does, according to their own researchers, is suppress symptoms in the vaccinated individual while allowing them to pass the bacterium to others, including infants too young to be vaccinated.
These are peer-reviewed studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and BMC Medicine. The FDA conducted the baboon study.
Meanwhile, within this same framework, the bacterium has apparently evolved under vaccine pressure. A 2014 Australian study found that between 30% and 80% of circulating pertussis strains during a major outbreak were “pertactin-deficient”—lacking the protein the vaccine targets. The authors observed that “pertussis vaccine selection pressure, or vaccine-driven adaptation, induced the evolution of B. pertussis.”
The pertussis vaccine suppresses symptoms. Whether it also creates asymptomatic carriers who spread an apparently evolving pathogen, as the establishment’s own researchers claim, remains their narrative to defend. But even within that narrative, the unvaccinated are not the problem—the vaccine is.
When the Herald article quotes a professor warning about “one of the kids there has whooping cough or measles, and it spreads through the childcare, putting your child at risk,” the establishment’s own science suggests the spreader is more likely to be a vaccinated child with no visible symptoms than an unvaccinated child who would be home sick.
Even within the establishment’s own framework, if Riley had pertussis, the most likely source—according to their own research on asymptomatic carriage—would be a vaccinated person, perhaps someone in his own family who had been “cocooned” as the health authorities recommend. The article does not explore this possibility. It cannot, because the entire enforcement apparatus rests on the premise that the unvaccinated are the danger.
The article is not confused about the science. It is not interested in the science. Its function is compliance enforcement, and its vectors are specific.
The first vector targets medical professionals. The article names a Perth nurse charged with fraudulently recording vaccines—though the case was dropped for lack of evidence. It names a Victorian doctor whose registration was suspended. It quotes AHPRA warning that practitioners found acting fraudulently face suspension or deregistration. The message to any doctor or nurse who might help parents escape the system: we are watching, and we will destroy your career.
This is not new. In December 2020, Dr. Paul Thomas, a Portland paediatrician who had practiced for 35 years, published a peer-reviewed study comparing health outcomes in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children in his practice. The data showed unvaccinated children were significantly healthier across multiple metrics. Within days of publication, the Oregon Medical Board issued an “emergency order” suspending his licence, claiming his “continued practice constitutes an immediate danger to the public.”
The Board’s letter accused Thomas of “fraudulently” asserting that his vaccine-friendly protocol improved health outcomes—the very thing his peer-reviewed data demonstrated. His paper was later retracted under circumstances its authors describe as dubious. Thomas eventually surrendered his licence rather than continue fighting the Board’s conditions, which prohibited him from consulting with parents about vaccines or conducting further research.
The pattern is consistent. Produce evidence that challenges the orthodoxy, lose your ability to practice medicine. The threat in the Herald article is not abstract. Medical professionals in Australia have seen what happens to dissenters.
The second vector targets parents. The article reminds readers that Services Australia investigates Medicare and Centrelink fraud. Parents who pay for falsified records are not just endangering children (according to the article’s framing)—they are committing crimes against the Commonwealth. The article implies that seeking workarounds exposes parents to criminal liability, transforming a decision about their child’s medical care into a prosecutable offence.
The third vector is reputational. The article quotes the Health Minister: “I am shocked and appalled that any doctor or nurse would falsify vaccination records.” Parents in the Facebook groups are framed as reckless conspirators, their concerns about vaccine safety transmuted into selfish endangerment of babies like Riley. The 2025 study cited in the article notes that 47.9% of parents with unvaccinated children “did not believe vaccines are safe” and 46.7% “would not feel guilty if their unvaccinated child got a vaccine-preventable disease.” These statistics are presented as moral indictments.
What the article does not mention: the same study found that nearly 40% of these parents “did not believe vaccinating children helps protect others in the community.” Given the published science on pertussis—even within the establishment’s own framework—these parents have a point.
In 2004, Glen Nowak, the CDC’s director of media relations, gave a presentation to the National Influenza Vaccine Summit titled “Increasing Awareness and Uptake of Influenza Immunization.” His slides explained that vaccine demand requires “concern, anxiety, and worry” among the public. “The belief that you can inform and warn people, and get them to take appropriate actions or precautions with respect to a health threat or risk without actually making them anxious or concerned,” Nowak explained, “is not possible.”
His recipe for demand creation included medical experts stating “concern and alarm” and predicting “dire outcomes” if people don’t vaccinate. References to “very severe” and “deadly” diseases help motivate behaviour. Pandemic framing is useful.
The Herald article follows this template precisely. It opens with a dead baby. It features a professor warning about diseases “spreading through childcare.” The Health Minister invokes “serious complications, hospitalisation, and in some cases, death.” The 14 measles cases since December are presented ominously, without context about how many of those cases involved vaccinated individuals or resulted in any serious illness.
The article also quotes Dr. Niroshini Kennedy, president of the paediatrics and child health division at the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, warning about “vaccine hesitancy.” What the article does not mention: the RACP has a foundation that partners with GSK, a major pertussis vaccine manufacturer. The expert voice warning about hesitancy has institutional financial ties to a company that profits from vaccination.
The financial stakes are not abstract. GSK’s pertussis products Boostrix and Infanrix generated $2.3 billion in 2023. Sanofi’s pertussis vaccine revenue hit $1 billion in 2024, up 10.8% on the previous year, driven by booster demand. When the Herald runs a story demonising vaccine refusers, it serves an industry measured in billions.
The article acknowledges, briefly, that public health experts warned in 2019 that “vaccine mandates can backfire, and simply induce parents to seek loopholes, and, worse, fuel negative attitudes towards vaccination.” This warning has proven accurate. Australia’s escalating mandate regime has not produced the desired compliance. It has produced a $2,500 black market and Facebook groups with 40,000 members sharing strategies for resistance.
The system’s response is not to reconsider the mandates. It is to escalate enforcement and amplify fear. The article is part of that escalation.
The escalation itself is diagnostic. Systems that can defend their policies on evidence do not need to inventory punishments in the newspaper. They do not need to reach back eleven years for a dead baby. They do not need AHPRA warnings and Health Minister quotes and reminders about criminal prosecution. They make their case and let the data persuade.
What the Herald article reveals, beneath its institutional authority, is a system that has run out of persuasive tools. The sequence tells the story: first came the information campaigns, which did not produce sufficient uptake. Then came the mandates—no jab, no play—which produced compliance but also resistance. Then came enforcement against the resisters, which produced a black market. Now comes the threat display in the national press, designed to frighten the black market into submission. Each escalation is a concession that the previous level of coercion failed. Each one is more desperate than the last.
A system confident in its science would welcome questions. A system confident in its products would publish the safety data that parents are asking for. A system confident in its outcomes would point to the evidence and let parents decide. This system prosecutes nurses, deregisters doctors, denies children access to childcare, and runs articles designed to make examples of anyone who dissents. That is not the behaviour of an institution operating from strength. It is the behaviour of an institution that knows it cannot survive scrutiny—and is scrambling to ensure that scrutiny never arrives.
What parents are waking up to, slowly and in growing numbers, is that the fundamental promise—vaccinate your children and they will be protected, vaccinate enough children and the community will be protected—is not supported by the evidence, even within the framework that public health authorities operate in. What they are discovering is that asking questions produces hostility rather than answers. What they are learning is that doctors who support informed consent are being systematically removed from practice, leaving parents with no one in the medical system willing to have honest conversations.
The 40,000 parents in that Facebook group are not there because they read misinformation. They are there because they asked questions their doctors couldn’t answer, or because their child had a reaction that was dismissed, or because they did the research the system told them not to do and found that the confident assurances didn’t match the published science.
The Herald article treats these parents as a problem to be solved through enforcement. It does not entertain the possibility that they might be responding rationally to real information. It cannot, because that would require examining the science—and the science does not support the policy.
Australia has constructed a system where parents lose childcare access if they do not vaccinate, where doctors lose their licences if they support parental choice, where asking questions about vaccine safety is framed as “misinformation,” and where a dead baby is deployed to transform regulatory non-compliance into moral monstrosity.
The article calls this public health. A more accurate description: this is what happens when a policy built on faulty premises meets a population that is beginning to see through it. Unable to defend the science, the system defends itself through threats, fear, and the weaponisation of grief.
Riley Hughes deserved better than to become a propaganda tool for the companies that fund his mother’s foundation. The parents seeking exemptions deserve honest information about what vaccines can and cannot do. The doctors trying to practice informed consent deserve to keep their licences.
None of them are served by an article whose purpose is to frighten dissenters into silence.
The system is telling parents: comply or be punished, and don’t ask questions. The parents are responding: we have questions, and your threats are not answers.
That tension will not be resolved by more enforcement. It will be resolved when someone in authority has the courage to address the questions honestly—or it will continue to escalate until the system’s credibility collapses entirely.
Forty thousand parents in one Facebook group suggest which direction this is heading.
References
The Article Under Discussion:
Olaya, K. (2026, January 31). Parents are paying $2500 to falsify vaccine records. It’s endangering babies like Riley. The Sydney Morning Herald. https://www.smh.com.au/national/parents-are-paying-2500-to-falsify-vaccine-records-it-s-endangering-babies-like-riley-20260127-p5nxah.html
Catherine Hughes Financial Disclosures:
Bevege, A. (2026, February 4). ‘Baby-Killers’ – Nine Newspapers falsely claim unvaccinated people killed a baby by spreading whooping cough. Letters from Australia. https://alisonbevege.substack.com/
RACP-GSK Partnership:
GSK Australia. RACP Foundation partnership announcement. Referenced in Bevege (2026).
Vaccine Revenue Figures:
GSK. (2024). Annual Report 2023. Boostrix and Infanrix/Pediarix revenue figures.
Sanofi. (2025). Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Report. Polio/pertussis/HiB vaccine sales.
Pertussis Vaccine and Asymptomatic Carriage:
Warfel, J. M., Zimmerman, L. I., & Merkel, T. J. (2014). Acellular pertussis vaccines protect against disease but fail to prevent infection and transmission in a nonhuman primate model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 787-92. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1314688110
Althouse, B. M., & Scarpino, S. V. (2015). Asymptomatic transmission and the resurgence of Bordetella pertussis. BMC Medicine, 13(1), 146. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0382-8
Pertussis Vaccine Evolution and Waning Immunity:
Lam, C., Octavia, S., et al. (2014). Rapid increase in pertactin-deficient Bordetella pertussis isolates, Australia. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 20(4), 626-33. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2004.131478
Tartof, S. Y., Lewis, M., et al. (2013). Waning immunity to pertussis following 5 doses of DTaP. Pediatrics, 131(4), e1047-52. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2012-1928
van Boven, M., Mooi, F. R., et al. (2005). Pathogen adaptation under imperfect vaccination: implications for pertussis. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 272(1572), 1617-24. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3108
Dr. Paul Thomas Case:
Oregon Medical Board. (2020). In the Matter of: Paul Norman Thomas, MD. License Number MD15689: Order of Emergency Suspension. https://omb.oregon.gov/Clients/ORMB/OrderDocuments/e579dd35-7e1b-471f-a69a-3a800317ed4c.pdf
Lyons-Weiler, J., & Thomas, P. (2020). Relative Incidence of Office Visits and Cumulative Rates of Billed Diagnoses Along the Axis of Vaccination. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(22), 8674. [Retracted 2021]
Hammond, J. R. (2021). The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board. Skyhorse Publishing.
CDC Fear-Based Messaging:
Nowak, G. (2004). Increasing Awareness and Uptake of Influenza Immunization. Presentation at the National Influenza Vaccine Summit, Atlanta, GA.
Vaccine Mandates and Backfire Effects:
Ward, J. K., et al. (2019). France’s citizen consultation on vaccination and the challenges of participatory democracy in health. Social Science & Medicine, 220, 73-80.
Suppression of Vaccine Dissent:
Martin, B. (2015). On the Suppression of Vaccination Dissent. Science and Engineering Ethics, 21(1), 143-57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-014-9530-3
Australia’s No Jab, No Play Laws:
Australian state governments. No Jab, No Play legislation (2014-2019). New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia.
Australian Immunisation Handbook — Consent Requirements:
Australian Government Department of Health. Australian Immunisation Handbook. Section: Valid Consent. https://immunisationhandbook.health.gov.au/
The Guardian Wants Substack To Start Censoring Creators
The Dissident | February 7, 2026
The British establishment newspaper the Guardian, is pushing for censorship on Substack in a new article titled, “Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters”.
The article used the oldest censorship trick in the book: to scour for examples of obscure individuals who hold extremist or hateful views and use them to push for a broader censorship agenda.
In this case, the author of the article, Geraldine McKelvie, scoured Substack to find Neo-Nazi pages, some with as few as 241 subscribers, and used these examples to demand that Substack further crack down on speech.
The Neo-Nazi pages listed in her article have next to no following, with the biggest one listed at 3,000 subscribers, including paid and not paid.
One of the Neo-Nazi accounts listed in the article, “Erika Drexler”, has only ever written on Substack notes and has never even published a single article .
The real censorship agenda behind listing obscure Nazi accounts on Substack becomes clearer when it goes on to quote Danny Stone, the Chief Executive of the UK Charity, “Antisemitism Policy Trust”, calling for more censorship of “anti-semitism” on Substack.
The charity, which “Works with British parliamentarians, policy makers and opinion formers to address policy issues relating to antisemitism” like many organizations pretending to oppose antisemitism, includes harsh criticism of Israel and its genocidal slaughter in Gaza as “antisemitism”.
The charity’s “Glossary of Anti-Semitic Terms”, includes “Zionist/Zio/Zio-Nazi” as “anti-semetic” terms.
The charity’s report on pro-Palestine rallies in the UK goes even further, claiming that saying, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free”, is “antisemitic” along with “Equating Zionism or Israel with Nazi Germany” and “claims that Israel is committing genocide by treating Palestinians in a similar way in which Jews were treated during the Holocaust”.
The charity even claimed that saying that “Jewish/Israeli soldiers target Palestinian children” is an “antisemitic blood libel”, despite the fact that credible international doctors working in Gaza have proven that IDF snipers routinely target Palestinian children.
Also listed as “anti-semetic” blood libel in the report was, “Israelis are presented as blood-thirsty (and there have even been disgraceful allegations of organ harvesting)”, despite the IDF’s history of organ harvesting being well documented.
The Guardian’s article then goes on to write, “Joani Reid, the Labour chair of the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism, said she planned to write to Substack and Ofcom to ask them to address the Guardian’s findings. She said antisemitism was ‘spreading with impunity’ and getting worse.”
Joani Reid, another Zionist Labour MP has , “explained that her decision to speak out against the issue (of “anti-semitism”) stems from a deep sense of duty, particularly in light of the ‘terrible legacy’ left by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn” the former labour leader who was slandered by the British Zionist lobby as an anti-semite for his sympathy towards Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
The Jewish Chronicle wrote, “She was faced with a difficult choice when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party: ‘either leave the party or take action.’ She chose the latter, becoming actively involved in addressing the rise of antisemitism within the party”, in reference to the “anti-semitism in Labour” hoax, where Corbyn and his allies were painted as anti-semites for their criticism of Israel.
The point of the Guardian’s article is clear: to list off a few random extremist Substack pages in order to usher in a censorship regime on Substack policing “anti-semitism”, to be driven by people like Joani Reid and Danny Stone, who want to silence criticism of Israel.
DOJ records show Jeffrey Epstein donated thousands to Israeli army, Jewish National Fund
The Cradle | February 6, 2026
Documents released by the US Department of Justice show that Jeffrey Epstein donated funds to the Israeli military and the Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organization that funds illegal Jewish settlements in occupied Palestine.
A 2005 IRS filings for one of Epstein’s charitable foundations, C.O.U.Q., show a $25,000 donation to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF).
The US-based charity raises funds in coordination with Israel’s military establishment to support Israeli soldiers and related military infrastructure.
In 2008, as Epstein was facing charges of sex trafficking minors, he traveled to Israel, taking a tour of military bases with the FIDF chairman, businessman Benny Shabtai.
The same IRS records also document a $15,000 donation to the JNF, which works to acquire Palestinian land for illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.
The JNF was founded at the 1901 Zionist Congress for the purpose of buying land in Ottoman Palestine. After Zionist militias violently expelled some 750,000 Palestinians to create Israel in 1948, the new state sold land stolen from Palestinians to the JNF.
Epstein’s C.O.U.Q. foundation also sent contributions to Harvard and Columbia Universities, as well as to Hillel International, which promotes Zionism and pro-Israel advocacy on university campuses across the US.
IN 2019, the New York Times (NYT) reported that C.O.U.Q. received about $21 million in stock and cash from the charities of Leslie H. Wexner, the billionaire retail magnate and owner of Victoria’s Secret.
Another of Epstein’s foundations, Gratitude America, received a $10 million donation in 2015 from a company tied to the private equity billionaire Leon D. Black.
Epstein used his foundations to improve his image as a philanthropist amid reports he was a pedophile and Mossad operative.
The NYT reported that a username apparently associated with Epstein edited the page for the J. Epstein Virgin Islands Foundation to claim it had made $200 million in donations to various causes.
“In reality, the foundation was worth a small fraction of that amount,” the NYT wrote, citing documents obtained from public records in the Virgin Islands.
The western press has sought to downplay Epstein’s ties to Israel and the Mossad, claiming instead that he was working for Russian intelligence.
Though Epstein has close ties to Russia, where the Jewish community has strong influence through the country’s oligarchs, the mafia, and the Chabad Lubavitch religious movement, Epstein’s own emails, released by the Department of Justice, have made his role in working for Israel clear.
OSCE on verge of self-destruction – Lavrov
RT | February 6, 2026
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is in a “profound” crisis and close to unraveling, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned on Friday during talks with the body’s leadership.
Speaking to OSCE Chairman-in-Office Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis and OSCE Secretary-General Feridun Sinirlioglu, who arrived in Moscow on Thursday for what they described as dialogue on the Ukraine conflict, Lavrov suggested that there are too many examples to mention of how the organization has “come close to the real threat of self-destruction.”
The reason for this is “very simple” and is due to the “radical departure of most Western countries” from the foundational principles and declarations of the organization, Lavrov added.
The OSCE, a 57-member body that includes Russia, the US, Canada, and most European and Central Asian states, was created in 1975 to promote security and cooperation across the region. However, Moscow has repeatedly accused the organization of being hijacked by its NATO and EU members to advance Western interests at the expense of pan-European goals.
In December, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said the OSCE was effectively being turned into an instrument of “hybrid war and coercion” against sovereign states, who are “subjected to threats, blackmail, and the harshest pressure using the lowest methods,” for pursuing their national interests.
He also condemned what he called the total “Ukrainization” of the agenda of the OSCE, saying it had narrowed the organization’s work and reduced cooperation to “tiny islands” of engagement.
Talks between Lavrov and the OSCE officials continued on Friday. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously explained that the discussions are focused on “searching for ways to overcome the current deep crisis of the OSCE” and restoring its operations in the “military-political, economic-environmental, and humanitarian, security dimensions.”
Coordinated Media Messaging Is Prepping for Iran War
By Thomas Karat | The Libertarian Institute | February 5, 2026
Between January 27 and January 29, 2026, something carefully orchestrated unfolded across Western capitals. Within this forty-eight hour window, the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group arrived in the Persian Gulf, President Donald Trump declared “time is running out,” the European Union unanimously designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as terrorists, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced “Iran’s days are numbered,” and oil surged 5%. This was not a spontaneous crisis but methodical preparation for military action.
Analysis of 235 news headlines from eleven countries1 reveals a coordinated information operation mirroring Iraq and Libya’s preparatory phases. The pattern: synchronized political statements, expanding legal justifications, managed market reactions, and systematic absence of dissenting voices. What emerges is not diplomacy exhausted but deliberately sidelined.
Forty-seven headlines—twenty percent of the dataset spanning back to 2021—appeared within those two days. This clustering is inconsistent with organic news flow. News organizations covering genuine crises do not synchronize attention with such precision across multiple countries unless events themselves were coordinated to generate exactly this response. The headlines did not drive events; events were staged to generate headlines.
Military deployments require weeks of planning. Carrier groups do not sail on presidential whim. The Abraham Lincoln‘s Gulf presence represented logistical preparation that necessarily preceded public rhetoric by considerable time. Yet political messaging was timed to coincide with arrival, creating the impression of responsive crisis management when reality was long-planned positioning. Iranian protests provided convenient moral framing for plans already in motion.
The European Union’s unanimous Revolutionary Guard terror designation demonstrates similar coordination. Achieving consensus among twenty-seven member states typically requires months of negotiation. Yet this designation moved with remarkable speed, arriving at unanimous approval precisely when it would provide maximum legal cover for military action. International legal frameworks precede military operations in the modern interventionist playbook. The terror designation creates legal architecture for strikes against Revolutionary Guard targets anywhere, transforming acts of war into counterterrorism operations under existing agreements.
Chancellor Merz’s “Iran’s days are numbered” represents an unprecedented declaration from a German leader on Middle East military matters. That Merz made this pronouncement within hours of the EU designation and Trump’s escalating rhetoric points to coordinated messaging at the highest levels. When pressed about advocating military action, Merz offered calculated non-denial: “I am describing reality.” The phrasing reveals purpose—presumes outcome while disclaiming responsibility for advocating it.
Meanwhile, according to multiple reports, Israeli military intelligence officials were sharing targeting data with Pentagon planners. This intelligence sharing represents not consultation among allies but active participation in operational planning. Israeli defense analysts have identified approximately three hundred sites linked to the Revolutionary Guard’s command structure and weapons programs. The message conveyed through these leaks is transparent: if American strikes occur, Israel is already integrated into the campaign. The question is not whether Israel will be involved but whether the United States will join an operation in which Israeli interests are clearly paramount.
Yet behind this public coordination lies a revealing contradiction. According to University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer and multiple Israeli sources, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu privately asked Donald Trump around January 14 not to launch strikes against Iran because Israeli air defenses were insufficiently prepared to handle the inevitable counterattack. After absorbing approximately eight hundred Iranian ballistic missiles throughout 2024 and 2025, along with hundreds more from Hezbollah and Houthi forces, Israel’s Arrow interceptor stockpiles had been severely depleted. The Jerusalem Post confirmed that despite reducing Iran’s pre-war missile arsenal by roughly half, Netanyahu feared the Islamic Republic retained enough firepower to overwhelm Israeli defenses in their current degraded state. The public posture of coordinated operational planning contradicted the private reality of Israeli vulnerability.
This creates an impossible position for the Trump administration. Carrier strike groups cannot maintain forward deployment indefinitely—the logistical burden and operational costs make extended positioning unsustainable without clear objectives. Yet backing down after deploying what Trump himself called a “massive armada” risks appearing weak, undermining American credibility precisely when the administration seeks to project strength. The machinery of escalation, once assembled and publicly announced, develops its own momentum. Political costs of retreat can exceed strategic costs of engagement, even when engagement serves no clear national interest.
The situation grew more complex in late January as Iran responded to American military positioning with its own demonstrations of capability. On January 30 and 31, the Revolutionary Guard conducted live-fire naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, prompting sharp warnings from U.S. Central Command about “unsafe and unprofessional behavior” near American forces. Iran’s military spokesman reminded audiences that “numerous U.S. military assets in the Gulf region are within range of our medium-range missiles”—a statement of fact rather than mere bluster given Iranian capabilities demonstrated repeatedly over the previous year.
Regional powers, meanwhile, moved to constrain American options. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE officials both announced their territories and airspace would not be available for strikes against Iran. Turkey offered to serve as mediator between Washington and Tehran. Egypt engaged in intensive diplomatic consultations with Iranian, Turkish, Omani, and American officials. The architecture of constraint was being constructed even as military assets concentrated. By January 31, both American and Iranian officials were signaling that talks might commence, though with contradictory preconditions: Trump demanding Iran abandon nuclear weapons [no nuclear program, no ballistic missile program, and no support to armed proxy groups] development entirely, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisting defense capabilities remain off the table. Trump told reporters Iran was “seriously talking to us,” while Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, acknowledged that “structural arrangements for negotiations are progressing.”
The question is whether these diplomatic signals represent genuine off-ramps or merely tactical pauses in an escalation that has acquired its own logic. Netanyahu’s private request that Trump delay strikes suggests even the most hawkish regional actor recognizes the costs of actually executing the plans being prepared. Yet the very existence of those plans, the deployment of assets, the public threats, and the coordinated messaging create pressures that constrain diplomatic flexibility. Leaders who threaten military action and then negotiate without delivering on threats risk domestic political consequences. The machinery assembled for coercion can become difficult to dismantle without appearing to capitulate.
The multiplication of justifications over seven days reveals strategic hedging rather than clarifying purpose. Nuclear negotiations, humanitarian intervention for protesters, counterterrorism via the EU designation, and finally explicit regime change language—four distinct rationales in one week. This pattern has precedent. The George W. Bush administration cycled through weapons of mass destruction, democracy promotion, and humanitarian intervention as rationales for Iraq. Paul Wolfowitz later acknowledged that WMDs were selected not because evidence was strongest but because “it was the one reason everyone could agree on”—a marketing decision, not an intelligence assessment.
When governments offer multiple expanding rationales, it indicates the decision to strike preceded the search for justification. A principled case for intervention would stand on a single foundation. The proliferation reveals a predetermined conclusion seeking retrospective legitimization. Each rationale serves a distinct constituency, constructing a coalition no single justification could achieve.
What remains absent from the 235 headlines reveals as much as what appears. Chinese state media produced zero articles captured in Western aggregation despite China’s strategic partnership with Iran and opposition to American intervention. Russian media produced only four headlines—less than 2%—despite Moscow’s regional involvement. Turkish, Saudi, and Arab League perspectives were similarly absent, despite these nations facing direct consequences from regional war. The Iranian perspective itself was reduced to threatening rhetoric with no diplomatic proposals or policy statements beyond deterrence. Western audiences encounter an information environment that presents military action as responding to Iranian aggression rather than initiating it.
This selective amplification follows established patterns. Before Iraq, weapons inspector Scott Ritter’s detailed assessments that Iraq had been disarmed received minimal coverage while administration officials making evidence-free claims dominated news cycles. Millions protesting the war globally in February 2003 generated less coverage than Secretary of State Colin Powell’s fabricated United Nations presentation. The pattern is refined through repetition.
Financial markets, often more honest in their assessments than political rhetoric, sent contradictory signals that warrant attention. Oil prices surged as expected when supply disruption from the Strait of Hormuz closure became possible—20-30% of global oil supply transits this waterway, and Iran possesses the anti-ship missiles and naval mine capability to close it for extended periods. Yet gold, the traditional safe-haven asset that rallies sharply during genuine geopolitical crisis, fell 10% during the same period. Institutional traders with billions of dollars at stake and access to the same intelligence briefings as government officials apparently viewed the escalation as a pressure campaign rather than certain prelude to war. The gold crash suggests sophisticated market participants believe the military posturing serves primarily coercive diplomatic purposes, not inevitable preparation for strikes.
This market divergence creates an interpretive dilemma. Either traders are badly misreading signals—unlikely given the sophistication of institutional risk assessment—or the public escalation deliberately overstates the probability of military action to maximize pressure on Tehran. Yet history demonstrates that pressure campaigns can transform into actual wars when escalation momentum becomes impossible to reverse without political cost. The machinery assembled for coercive purposes can be activated for actual strikes if diplomatic face-saving becomes impossible or if domestic political calculations shift. The invasion of Iraq began as a pressure campaign to force weapons inspections and compliance; it became regime change when backing down appeared politically untenable.
The costs of military action against Iran dwarf previous Middle Eastern interventions yet receive minimal discussion. Iran fields ballistic missiles capable of striking American bases and Israeli cities, anti-ship missiles threatening carrier groups, and proxy forces across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Hezbollah alone possesses 150,000 rockets—enough to overwhelm Israeli defenses. This is not Iraq 2003 with degraded capabilities.
The financial burden would exceed the six trillion dollars already spent on Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran’s population is three times Iraq’s, its military more capable, its geographic position more strategic. Regional destabilization would be immediate. Strait of Hormuz closure for two weeks would drive oil above $150 per barrel, triggering global recession. Every Gulf nation would face impossible choices. Humanitarian consequences measured in hundreds of thousands.
The blowback from intervention would generate more terrorism. The CIA’s own assessments confirm military action creates enemies faster than it eliminates them. The Islamic Republic’s proxy network exists precisely to impose costs on adversaries with conventional superiority. Strike Iran, face attacks throughout the region for years. The presumption that Tehran would absorb strikes without major retaliation contradicts both Iranian doctrine and rational assessment of their capabilities.
What is being assembled is not simply military capability but political momentum. The forty-eight hour window represented orchestrated escalation designed to create facts—legal, political, military, psychological—that constrain future options. Each element reinforces others: assets positioned, consensus constructed, frameworks established, markets reacting, attention concentrated. The machinery operates through accumulation of decisions that individually appear reasonable but collectively narrow space for alternatives.
This is how wars begin in the twenty-first century—not through sudden attacks but through gradual construction of inevitability. Diplomatic options are not explored and exhausted; they are marginalized. Intelligence is curated to support predetermined conclusions. Public opinion is manufactured through coordinated messaging and selective information. And when bombs fall, the question asked is not whether war was necessary but only whether it can be prosecuted successfully.
The next seven to fourteen days will reveal whether coordination produces strikes or sustained coercion. Carrier positioning, intelligence preparation timelines, and rhetorical escalation pace suggest decision point approaching. But whether the outcome is strikes or coercion, the pattern revealed in these 235 headlines demonstrates how consent is manufactured—not through lies alone but through timing, framing, omission, and construction of false consensus that makes dissent appear isolated. Understanding these patterns is essential not merely for analyzing this crisis but for recognizing how power operates when information warfare precedes military action.
Iran riots 2026: How the Erfan Soltani “execution” story went viral – and fell apart
By Yousef Ramazani | Press TV | February 3, 2026
The release on bail of Erfan Soltani, an Iranian national detained during recent riots in the country, on Sunday did more than conclude a domestic legal episode.
It also dismantled a carefully constructed and extremely flawed international narrative that, for weeks, had weaponized misinformation to portray his “execution” as an imminent certainty.
In mid-January 2026, a wave of alarming headlines rippled across global media, claiming without evidence that Iran was preparing to execute a young man named Erfan Soltani.
Major outlets – including the BBC, Euronews, The Guardian, and Sky News – reported his supposed “sentence” as fact, citing scandalous Western-based “human rights groups,” and triggering diplomatic warnings and an avalanche of political reactions.
“Iran set to execute protester days after arrest as Tehran speeds up death sentences,” declared Euronews. ABC News ran with: “Relative speaks out on plight of arrested Iranian protester Erfan Soltani, who had faced execution.” The Hill asked: “Who is Erfan Soltani, Iranian protester Trump mentioned facing execution?”
As the initial fog of propaganda began to lift, the narrative quietly shifted. The Guardian, which had earlier warned of Soltani’s “imminent execution,” later revised its framing: “Execution of condemned Iranian protester postponed, family told.” The BBC followed suit with: “Who is Erfan Soltani, Iranian protester who reportedly had execution postponed?”
The storyline consistently casts Iran’s judiciary as carrying out summary executions – a familiar script deployed in previous cycles of engineered unrest.
Yet on February 1, Soltani was released on bail. His case remains open, but without any death sentence outcome, Iranian judicial authorities had already signaled weeks earlier.
For charges against him, the provision of execution does not exist; they had made it clear.
The stark gap between the initial global coverage and the eventual reality revealed more than a routine correction. It exposed a complex ecosystem in which unverified activist claims, geopolitical pressure, and coordinated digital disinformation converged to shape a predetermined narrative against the Islamic Republic.
This investigation traces how the story was constructed, amplified, and sustained amid foreign-backed riots across Iran. It focuses in particular on the systematic manipulation of Wikipedia by a network of accounts linked to the exiled Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO) cult, designated as a terrorist organization.
It also shows how contemporary information warfare is waged not only through headlines and breaking news, but through the quiet, strategic curation of what is presented as the world’s most trusted knowledge repository.
How a legal case became a global human rights flashpoint
The international narrative surrounding Soltani ignited with striking speed and uniformity in the second week of January 2026, while riots and terrorism were at their peak across Iran.
The initial spark did not originate in mainstream newsrooms, but rather from organizations operating outside Iran. Among the first to circulate claims were the Norway-based, Kurdish-focused Hengaw Organization for Human Rights and the Iran Human Rights (IHR) group.
Both organizations reported that Soltani had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death within an extraordinarily compressed timeframe – allegedly in a matter of days. These assertions were disseminated through their own platforms and amplified across social media.
Hengaw and IHR have a documented record of promoting anti-Iranian narratives and of repeatedly circulating unverified or later-debunked claims in high-profile cases, including those of Armita Geravand and Mahsa Amini.
Their statements contained severe allegations: that Soltani had been denied access to legal counsel, informed of a death sentence almost immediately after his arrest, and was facing imminent execution.
These claims were framed within a broader warning that Iran was embarking on a new wave of summary executions aimed at suppressing the “protest movement.”
The framing was particularly effective from their standpoint. It cast Soltani not as an individual defendant in an ongoing legal process, but as an early signal of an escalated phase of state repression.
Presented under the moral authority of human rights reporting, the narrative offered international media outlets a ready-made, emotionally charged storyline – one that aligned seamlessly with prevailing coverage of unrest and political tension in Iran.
Western media machine and the rush to judgment
Major Western media outlets swiftly amplified these unsubstantiated claims, often with little independent verification of the underlying judicial details.
Headlines quickly shifted from cautious phrasing to declarative assertions presented as fact. The Independent, for example, ran a story titled, “Iran set to execute first protester after ‘no trial and no due process’,” unequivocally treating the allegations as established reality.
The Guardian’s live coverage included an entry stating, “Execution of condemned Iranian protester postponed, family told,” reinforcing the impression that an execution date had already been set and merely delayed.
Broadcast and digital video platforms adopted even more sensational framing. On YouTube, outlets such as NewsX Live ran segments headlined: “Iran Protests Day 17: Iran Set to Execute Protester Erfan Soltani (26) After Fast-Tracked Trial.”
Across media outlets, the narrative structure was remarkably uniform: an innocent protester, a sham judicial process, and an impending state-sanctioned killing.
This coverage was frequently interwoven with statements from Western politicians, most notably reports that US President Donald Trump had warned his administration would take “strong action” should such executions proceed.
The result was a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Media reports appeared to justify political pressure, while political statements in turn validated and amplified the media’s gravest framing.
On social media, the story rapidly achieved viral status under hashtags such as #ErfanSoltani, where it was often stripped of nuance and circulated as categorical proof of Iranian “barbarity.”
At this stage, the narrative’s momentum became self-sustaining. The sheer volume of coverage by respected international outlets lent it an air of inevitability, crowding out a critical component: the perspective of Iran’s judiciary and state institutions.
Iranian counterpoint: Legal clarifications and a different frame
At the same time, from the earliest moments of the international media surge around this particular case, Iranian officials issued firm and detailed denials, grounded in logic.
The Judiciary Media Center described the reports as a coordinated rumor campaign driven by what it termed “media supporters of street terrorists.” Beyond dismissing the allegations, authorities sought to ground their response in legal specifics.
Officials stated that Soltani was arrested on January 10, 2026, during the deadly foreign-backed riots on Bahar Street in Karaj, and charged with “gathering and colluding against the country’s internal security” and “propaganda activities against the state.”
Crucially, they emphasized that these charges – under Iran’s Islamic Penal Code – carry penalties of imprisonment, not execution.
Authorities further stated unequivocally that no death sentence had been issued and that no final verdict had been reached in Soltani’s case, dismissing the media trial.
Some international wire services, including Agence France-Presse (AFP), as well as outlets such as Euronews and CBS News, did report these denials, resulting in a fragmented media landscape of competing claims.
However, these reports often appeared as secondary updates or were framed with distancing language – “Iran claims” or “Iran denies” – subtly casting doubt on the official statements while preserving the primacy of the original allegations.
As a result, the Iranian position struggled to gain equal footing. It was presented less as a substantive legal clarification and more as a predictable rebuttal from an accused state.
This imbalance allowed the execution narrative to remain the dominant global understanding of the case for weeks, despite the absence of any confirmed death sentence.
Digital battleground: Wikipedia’s vulnerability to coordinated influence
While the media storm raged with a familiar viciousness, a more subtle and insidious battle unfolded on Wikipedia – a platform whose content shapes the work of most Western journalists, researchers, and public perception.
Wikipedia’s open-editing model, a cornerstone of its success, also makes it uniquely vulnerable to coordinated influence campaigns orchestrated by well-resourced political actors.
The case of Soltani did not arise in isolation on the platform; rather, it was planted into a digital landscape already carefully cultivated by partisan forces.
For years, Wikipedia administrators have waged a silent war against a network of user accounts dedicated to advancing the agenda of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MKO) terror cult.
This cult, which fought alongside Saddam Hussein during the Holy Defense War in the 1980s and is designated a terrorist group by Iran, has long sought international legitimacy and crafted a narrative of popular resistance against the Iranian government.
Its digital strategy includes systematic infiltration of Wikipedia to whitewash its own controversial history and amplify content critical of the Islamic Republic.
From whitewashing to newsjacking: Soltani case as a target
The emergence in early January 2026 of a new Wikipedia user, PatriceON, exemplifies how this disinformation apparatus exploits breaking news to shape and distort narratives.
Created in July 2025, the account initially gained credibility through minor, low-profile edits before dramatically ramping up activity at the exact moment the Soltani story broke internationally.
PatriceON focused intensively on creating and editing biographies of individuals portrayed as “victims” of unrest, applying a formulaic narrative that emphasized their innocence and state brutality. The account’s sources consistently included exile media outlets and the same human rights groups driving the Soltani narrative.
When the Soltani story erupted, accounts like PatriceON were ready to embed it into Wikipedia’s permanent record with a dual purpose: to frame Soltani’s case through the now-debunked execution narrative, thereby enshrining it as historical fact, and to connect this content within a broader web of articles depicting systemic state violence.
This activity produces a self-referential information loop. For example, an article on “Human rights in Iran” cites the Soltani case, which in turn relies on sources from the very same partisan entities. This cycle creates an illusion of independent verification, effectively “source-washing” activist claims into encyclopedic knowledge.
Unmasking the network: A persistent playbook of deception
The tactics employed by PatriceON were far from novel, following a well-established playbook honed by a network of earlier accounts linked to MKO advocacy.
Wikipedia’s volunteer administrators have repeatedly documented this exact modus operandi across accounts such as Stefka Bulgaria, ParadaJulio, and TheDreamBoat – created between late 2016 and 2017 and eventually exposed and blocked in 2023.
Each account began with a “gnoming” phase, making hundreds of benign edits to non-controversial topics to build edit counts, avoid suspicion, and gain editorial privileges.
Once legitimacy was established, they abruptly pivoted to intense editing of articles on Iranian politics – whitewashing the MKO and promoting opposition biographies.
The sophistication and coordination of this network were revealed through behavioral forensics, including distinctive technical quirks like consistent template misuse that acted as a digital fingerprint. In one telling incident, a user accidentally pasted part of an external email containing instructions, exposing off-platform direction.
The MKO link was further confirmed when the Stefka Bulgaria account petitioned to remove Wikimedia Commons photos of paid non-Iranian (African) protesters at an MKO rally in Paris, an effort documented by journalists as crowd manipulation.
Wikipedia officials concluded these accounts were part of a “complex and multi-person operation” designed to subvert editorial guidelines and promote a singular viewpoint.
The campaign exhibited persistence; blocking one account was quickly followed by the emergence of another, indicating an organized, long-term strategy rather than sporadic activism.
How Wikipedia and media fuel each other
The interplay between covert Wikipedia editing and mainstream media is symbiotic, often indirect but mutually reinforcing.
Journalists working under tight deadlines frequently rely on Wikipedia for quick background. Articles citing reports from organizations like Hengaw or IHR, framed around an alleged impending execution—reinforce the story’s perceived legitimacy.
Conversely, after major outlets like the BBC or The Guardian publish stories, Wikipedia editors, including those linked to influence networks, swiftly cite these articles as “reliable sources,” leveraging mainstream media’s authority to legitimize the narrative within the encyclopedia.
This creates a closed informational loop: activist claims → media amplification → Wikipedia codification → further media citation.
Though initial sourcing traces back to a handful of partisan actors, the journey through respected media intermediaries obscures this provenance.
In the Soltani case, this feedback loop operated with remarkable speed, cementing the execution narrative as accepted fact well before judicial clarifications could surface.
Unraveling: Bail and the narrative’s collapse
The factual cornerstone of the entire international narrative collapsed on February 1, 2026, when Soltani was released from Karaj Central Penitentiary on bail of two billion tomans.
His lawyer, Musa Khani, publicly confirmed the release, and Iranian media reported the news straightforwardly. This outcome was irreconcilable with the widely circulated story of a man on death row facing imminent execution.
Some Western outlets, such as Sky News, acknowledged the release but continued to frame it with headlines like “Iranian protester Erfan Soltani released after death sentence threat,” perpetuating the discredited execution claim as a foundational part of the story.
The contrast was stark: a judiciary accused of summary executions had, in reality, processed a bail application and released the defendant pending trial, standard procedure in legal systems worldwide.
Soltani’s own mother revealed she first learned of the alleged death sentence not from Iranian authorities, but from the BBC, underscoring how the family became collateral in the international media battle.
Aftermath and lingering damage
Despite the resolution, the damage to accurate public understanding was profound. The initial false narrative had already reached global saturation, and diplomatic capital had been expended.
The hashtag #ErfanSoltani remained indelibly linked to “state execution” within the digital ecosystem of social media. On Wikipedia, correcting the record became a difficult and contested process.
Editors seeking to update Soltani’s entry to reflect the bail release faced resistance from those invested in maintaining the earlier narrative. The MKO-linked networks, despite periodic disruptions, showed resilience, the blocking of PatriceON in January 2026 being merely one episode in an ongoing campaign.
Their strategy is long-term and systemic. It does not hinge on winning a single edit battle over Soltani’s case but on persistently shaping hundreds of articles to construct an overarching meta-narrative of Iranian illegitimacy and oppression, into which individual cases like Soltani’s are seamlessly woven as examples.
The protest article as a propaganda platform
The systemic nature of this influence campaign is perhaps most starkly revealed in the ongoing manipulation of Wikipedia’s main article covering the 2025-2026 Iranian protests-turned-riots.
Far from serving as a neutral encyclopedic record, this entry functions as a curated propaganda platform, actively shaped by a coalition of interest groups – including MKO advocates, monarchist partisans, and pro-Israeli editors.
Its foundation is critically compromised by heavy reliance on sources such as the Saudi-funded, Israeli-linked outlet Iran International – a propaganda channel widely documented as a disinformation platform. Yet, its own Wikipedia article is systematically whitewashed by the very same network of editors who promote its narratives.
The result is a narrative rife with blatant falsehoods presented as fact: the article claims an unverified figure of “5 million protesters,” despite independent analysis indicating that, at the peak of the unrest on January 8 and 9, fewer than 20,000 people were on the streets.
It elevates the Israeli-aligned Reza Pahlavi as a principal leader of the “protests” and inflates casualty counts by an order of magnitude, attributing all deaths solely to state forces.
This curated version deliberately omits documented counter-evidence, including forensic proof of terrorist infiltration and shootings, video footage of armed violence against police, extensive damage to infrastructure, and the scale of pro-government counter-demonstrations.
Instead of portraying the complex on-the-ground reality, the article foregrounds imagery from diaspora monarchist rallies in Western capitals, effectively substituting actual events with an externally manufactured political narrative.
This distortion epitomizes the ultimate goal of the coordinated campaign: to entrench a partisan version of history within the world’s most trusted knowledge repository.
British journalism hits rock bottom with latest shocking revelations
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 2, 2026
From the truth about who really killed Diana to the depraved world of government officials sexually abusing children and the subsequent cover-up, it is now clear that nearly all major stories are either blocked from publication or rewritten by Soviet-style propaganda agents working for the British deep state.
Virtually nothing you read in British newspapers about security, defense, and wars is honest journalism. Instead, it is propaganda crafted by a new secret UK military department tasked with rewriting journalists’ copy or, in some cases, simply ensuring their articles never see the light of day.
That is the shocking conclusion of a new investigation by The Grayzone, which obtained secret documents exchanged between the UK and Australian governments over Canberra’s plans to adopt Britain’s “off-the-shelf” operation and incorporate it into its own government practice for handling journalists.
The impressive reporting by Kit Klarenberg and William Evans reveals, in short, that the UK military has created its own censorship department. It either blocks journalists from exposing major stories of public interest or, more commonly, redrafts the thrust of journalists’ pieces to present a different version to the gullible public.
A trove of secret communications reveals how the secretive Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee censors the output of British journalists while categorizing independent media as “extremist” for publishing “embarrassing” stories. What sounds like an account of secret police operations in Eastern Europe during the Soviet era, the documents show that this army intelligence department regularly blocks journalists from continuing to investigate a subject through a formal system called “D Notices” – which, remarkably, journalists almost always respect.
“The DSMA imposes what are known as D-Notices, gag-orders systematically suppressing information available to the public,” The Grayzone report states.
The files provide the clearest view to date of this underground committee’s inner workings, exposing which news items the state has sought to shape or keep from public view over the years. These include “the 2010 death of a GCHQ codebreaker, MI6 and British special forces activity in the Middle East and Africa, the sexual abuse of children by government officials, and the death of Princess Diana,” the report reveals.
British media, it seems, is in a crisis it never anticipated. Its journalists are, in reality, no longer working as journalists but as propaganda agents of the state. Under this system, which nearly all journalists sign up to, when a reporter wants to pursue a story, they must consult this department, which then effectively controls both the journalist and the story from that point forward. The absurd practice of ‘copy approval’ – where journalists send their final draft before submitting for publication – is routinely enforced.
This practice, a milestone in the death of British journalism, comes as no surprise to me. For decades, I have sent questions to the UK’s Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, only to become a victim of the comical, if not pathetic, game that follows. A spokesperson asks for your deadline and then, mysteriously, 30 minutes before that time, you receive a “response” meant to serve as a quote from a senior official. It not only looks computer-generated but is often irrelevant to the subject. This is Britain – a country once seen by the whole world as a beacon of freedom and democracy, now operating like a cheap West African dictatorship, pumping out lies and manufacturing consent on an industrial scale.
That such a secret censorship department exists and flourishes should shock no one. In 2023, my own investigation discovered that UK and US weapons were being resold on the dark web. It wasn’t exactly a great scoop, but the hard work lay in substantiating the story with expert opinions and forensic analysis of photos and website postings. I was amazed as weeks passed while I badgered the Daily Mail’s absurdly young Defense Editor to run the story. He played every trick in the book to avoid it until finally he and others agreed to publish – but watered it down so much, removing all the top quotes from hardcore military and political experts that supported the story’s thrust. Clearly, he and others were under the control of these DSMA censor agents, who could not allow a piece alleging that shoulder-mounted rocket systems used by both the US and UK armies were being openly sold on the black market.
A second, much more detailed investigation – which supported the belief that barely a third of all UK military kit was actually reaching frontline Ukrainian soldiers – I didn’t bother sending to the Daily Mail but published on Patreon. One of its chief findings was that a senior Conservative MP admitted to me in a WhatsApp exchange that the UK had, in fact, installed tracking devices in some of the more expensive equipment, like Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs), but at a certain point these devices were simply switched off and disappeared from the screens. It also revealed the bombastic stupidity of the then–UK Defence Minister, Ben Wallace, who conveniently chose to ignore a UN report identifying the influx of cheap Western-made assault rifles into the Libyan arms bazaar as a main reason for the spike in terrorism in the Sahel region – while insulting the Nigerian president who had made the claims, saying he “probably watches RT television.” When I suggested to Mr. Wallace that a simple way to verify these claims would be to send agents to Libya to conduct their own surveillance, his reply was, “Why don’t you do that?” before blocking me.
Wallace’s extraordinary rudeness shocked me at the time. But it was clear he was used to a much more servile, sycophantic manner from UK journalists who didn’t ask difficult questions – and that I was obviously breaking from tradition. Clearly, the DSMA department controls all those Westminster-based hacks, their stories, and even their story ideas, so it’s understandable that his rage boiled over.
The Grayzone’s findings make for depressing reading for anyone old enough to remember when British journalism was the finest in the world. But they also raise other questions, chiefly: Who is actually behind British titles? Or more specifically, who is funding them? Most UK newspapers don’t make any money, so it’s understandable that a new relationship with the deep state might help them remain relevant – especially now that the news is being baked for them, ready to be served. This has changed the role of the British journalist: no longer the baker, but relegated to the delivery boy on the moped.
Yet where the big titles get their revenue to stay in business remains a mystery. Is part of the same deal on censorship and copy control that the state funds them through surreptitious, murky channels – perhaps via companies with close links to the heart of power? Follow the money.
West’s hypocrisy over Iran and Gaza proves a regime-change operation in Tehran
Strategic Culture Foundation | January 30, 2026
The United States and the European Union are vehemently condemning Iran over alleged repression, while the West says nothing about the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The contradiction, of course, exposes the West’s rank hypocrisy. It also confirms that Iran is the target of a Western regime-change operation.
U.S. President Donald Trump this week repeated his threat to launch a blitzkrieg on Iran, bragging that an armada led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was in place to strike. “Don’t make me do it,” warned Trump with thug-like menace.
Meanwhile, the European Union declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a “foreign terrorist” organization. Given that the IRGC is a central component of Iran’s national security forces, the EU’s blacklisting is effectively designating the Iranian state as a terrorist entity. The EU’s provocation is paving the way for American aggression and all-out war, which will have devastating consequences, not least of all for Europe.
Washington and Europe are ostensibly basing their hostility towards Tehran on dubious claims that the Iranian authorities have committed systematic atrocities in repressing peaceful protesters in Iran demanding political change.
Trump has urged Iranians to keep protesting and vowed that “help is on the way.”
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, hailed the blacklisting of the IRGC, saying: “Repression cannot go unanswered… clear atrocities mean there must be a clear response from Europe.”
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot asserted: “We cannot have any impunity for the [alleged] crimes that have been committed.”
The Dutch top diplomat, David van Weel, added: “I think it’s important that we send the signal that the bloodshed that we’ve seen, the bestiality that has been used against protesters, cannot be tolerated.”
This all sounds noble and chivalrous of Western governments. But it is a contemptuous charade, belying disingenuousness and duplicity.
For more than two years, the Israeli regime has waged a blatant genocide in Gaza. The death toll is estimated at over 71,000, with most of the victims being civilians, women, and children. The real death toll is probably well over 100,000 from bodies buried under rubble from Israeli bombardment that are not accounted for.
Far from expressing any condemnation against the Israeli regime, the United States and the European Union (with minor exceptions) have maintained an odious silence that has afforded political cover for the genocide. The Western states are complicit as a result of their shameful silence. More damning, however, is that the United States and European states, including France, Germany, and Britain, have supplied warplanes, missiles, drones, electronics, and other weaponry to fuel the slaughter.
Trump boasts about his so-called Board of Peace for Gaza and a supposed ceasefire that was claimed to have started in October. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the ceasefire travesty. Thousands of Palestinians are starving or freezing to death in windswept and flooded tents still deprived of humanitarian aid. The genocide continues under the grotesque guise of “peace”.
Trump is an “Israel First” U.S. president more than any of his predecessors, who all consistently gave the Zionist regime a license to kill and occupy. Trump’s complicity is remarkable and suggests his late pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein furnished Israeli intelligence with lots of blackmail material on the 47th president. So, his silence over genocide is explicable.
What about the Europeans, though? Maybe there is blackmail going on, too, to buy their complicity. Nevertheless, the hypocrisy is astounding.
Why aren’t Kallas, Barrot, and the other EU foreign ministers denouncing impunity and repression by the Israeli regime? They selectively apply their morals and faux humanitarian concerns to Iran.
The two scenarios are, in any case, incomparable. One is genocide, the other is civil unrest, which the evidence shows involves foreign orchestration.
Protests began in Tehran on December 28, sparked by legitimate economic grievances. The country of over 90 million has been strangled for decades by illegal Western economic sanctions. Tellingly, the relatively small demonstrations in Tehran’s bazaars at the end of December were rapidly escalated into full-blown violent attacks in several cities. The disturbances appear to have subsided, and there have been huge counter-demonstrations involving millions of people taking to the streets to denounce the violence of what seems to be almost certainly Western-orchestrated gangs.
The Iranian authorities claim that the total deaths after four weeks of violence are about 3,100. Western media reports and governments have cited much larger figures of 6,000 and up to 17,000 deaths. The Western figures are supplied by U.S. or European-based groups, such as the Iranian Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI). These groups are funded by the CIA’s cut-out organization, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Israeli news media have even admitted in reports that the street violence was being directed by foreign agencies. Former CIA chief Mike Pompeo also let it slip that Mossad operatives were behind the disturbances.
The methodical type of violence and damage sustained also indicates a coup attempt. Hundreds of mosques, schools, buses, government buildings, banks, and medical facilities were attacked and destroyed by gun-wielding gangs and arsonists.
Many of the casualties were inflicted on security forces and civilian bystanders in an orgy of violence that indicates a trained cadre of agitators and terrorists. Victims were beheaded and mutilated.
The Western media have conspicuously conflated the deaths and injuries as all attributed to the Iranian security forces, who allegedly used “lethal force to repress peaceful protesters.”
This is the standard operating procedure of Western regime change: to escalate deadly civil strife to destabilize the targeted state. The Western media then reliably row in with a massive propaganda assault to valorize the orchestrated violence and to demonize the authorities.
As Iranian Professor Mohammad Marandi points out, the West’s modus operandi is to demonize foreign countries to justify regime change, and if needs be, to justify all-out military aggression.
In 1953, the same method was used by the Americans and British to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh’s “crime” was that he nationalized the oil industry, depriving Britain of its leech-like control over Iranian natural wealth, which saw most of the population living in poverty and squalor, as vast Persian oil profits flowed into London. For the coup to succeed, millions of dollars were funneled by the CIA into Iran to whip up street gangs, and the Western media on both sides of the Atlantic dutifully painted Mossadegh as illegitimate. He was overthrown, and the Western puppet, the Shah, was installed, presiding over a brutal CIA and MI6-backed regime for 26 years until the Islamic Revolution kicked him out in 1979. Amazingly, from the point of view of chutzpah consistency, more than seven decades later, the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, living in pampered exile in the U.S., is being advocated by the West to take over if the Islamic Republic collapses. Plus ca change!
The same regime-change formula has been repeated over and over in as many as 100 other countries since the Americans and British launched their post-Second World War debut covert operation in Iran in 1953, as Finian Cunningham’s new book Killing Democracy surveys. Crucially, the Western news media play an absolutely vital role in assisting this systematic criminality, as they are doing currently in Iran, and before that in Venezuela.
Only four weeks ago, Washington’s military aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, by U.S. commandos was preceded by a full-court media campaign of demonization, absurdly labelling him a narcoterrorist.
Trump’s aggression towards Venezuela and now Iran is an outrageous violation of the UN Charter and international law. It marks a return to predatory imperialism. And the servile European states kowtow to this all-out predatory criminality with bogus concern about human rights.
We know their concerns are a complete sham and morally bankrupt because if there were any genuine principles, then they would not be so abject in their silence over the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza.
This is why Trump has been so emboldened to treat the Europeans with contempt over Greenland and other issues. If you act like a doormat, then expect to be walked on.
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From the Archives
Genetic baloney in thick slices
MAYBE COULD BE INC.
By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | July 8, 2021
Gene research companies tend to come and go. They start out banging and popping like fireworks in the sky, and then they fade out—selling themselves to larger outfits who’ve hired better liars…
Once upon a time, it sounded easy. Start with a disease, find the gene responsible for the disease, and correct the problem.
Then, researchers wondered, was disease the result of one gene or a group of genes acting together?
Either way, the proof would be in devising cures for diseases using gene therapy. “Not yet, but soon…”
And regardless, the major need was: money. Lots and lots of money.
This need required good PR people. “We have to pump up the idea that we’re on the edge of tremendous breakthroughs. We’re always on that edge…”
This hype also needed to obscure the fact that there wasn’t (and isn’t) ANY gene cure for ANY disease. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Diplomacy is Now a Crime in Britain / Ian Proud
- UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program
- US military withdrawal from Iraq and the collapse of US-Israeli hegemonic project in West Asia
- What does Europe want – a war with Russia?
- She Followed the Actual Data on COVID Vaccines and Masks — Her Career Took a Huge Hit
- Florida AG Sues Pfizer, Bourla Over Deceptive Marketing of COVID Vaccines
- Von der Leyen gifts her spin doctor a job for life
- 10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
- Iranian crew declared Dena training vessel ‘unarmed’ to US warship before deadly torpedo strike: Report
- Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is squeezing the life out of Palestinians – Daily Update
- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
