Brussels warns Slovakia over ‘discriminatory’ dual fuel pricing targeting foreign drivers
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | March 25, 2026
The European Commission has warned Slovakia that its newly introduced dual diesel pricing system — charging foreign drivers more than locals — violates EU law, setting up a fresh clash with Prime Minister Robert Fico over energy policy.
The dispute centers on emergency measures adopted by the Slovak government on March 18, which impose a 30-day restriction on diesel refueling and introduce higher prices for vehicles with foreign license plates. The policy is aimed at curbing “fuel tourism,” as drivers from neighboring countries flock to Slovakia to take advantage of significantly lower diesel prices.
A spokesperson for the European Commission said the measures were “highly discriminatory and contrary to EU law,” stressing that member states cannot introduce pricing policies that differentiate based on nationality.
“While we understand the need to support citizens, especially in these times, measures must not discriminate on the basis of nationality or undermine the integrity of our single market,” the Commission said on Tuesday.
Brussels also cautioned against unilateral action, emphasizing that energy and market disruptions should be handled through coordinated EU-wide measures rather than national interventions.
The Slovak government has defended the policy, arguing it is necessary to protect domestic supply. As reported by Denník N, Fico said the decision was justified given the circumstances and expressed frustration at the Commission’s stance, suggesting Brussels had shown little understanding of Slovakia’s position.
The move comes amid mounting concerns over fuel shortages due to both the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine’s refusal to restart the transit of Russian crude to Europe via the Druzhba pipeline. The pipeline has been offline since January, leaving Slovakia facing potential supply constraints.
In response, Bratislava has sought to prioritize domestic consumers by limiting exports and discouraging foreign drivers from refueling within its borders. Under the new system, drivers with foreign plates are charged prices aligned with those in neighboring countries such as Austria and Poland, while Slovak residents continue to benefit from lower rates.
The price gap stems from Slovakia’s refinery sector, which has been selling diesel below broader European market levels, creating a strong incentive for cross-border fuel purchases.
The dispute also reflects broader tensions between Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, and Brussels over energy transit. Both Bratislava and Budapest have pushed Kyiv to restore flows through the Druzhba pipeline, while simultaneously blocking a proposed €90 billion EU financial package for Ukraine in ongoing negotiations.
The European Commission has offered to send technical experts and suggested EU funding could help cover repair costs, but no agreement has yet been reached.
Both governments in Hungary and Slovakia, however, have accused Brussels of hollow words, claiming the European Commission has sided with Ukraine over the EU member states. Hungary, in particular, believes the delay in restarting the transit is intended to influence next month’s critical parliamentary elections.
The EU never learns – except for the wrong lessons
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | March 13, 2026
Some observers of the current EU ‘elites’, including this author, used to believe that their defining feature – apart from things such as complicity in genocide and wars of aggression with Israel and the US, bigoted xenophobia about Russia and China, and, of course, pervasive corruption – was an absolute inability to learn.
We must admit, we stand corrected: Those running the EU are able to learn. The real problem is their relentless compulsion to learn the wrong thing. We are not dealing with non-learners but anti-learners: where others progress from experience, they regress.
Case in point, their response to the fact that their US-Israeli masters have started a war to end if not strictly all then at least all (barely) affordable energy supplies to the EU’s economies, while its major players are already limping along on a spectrum between walking-wounded (for instance, France, maybe) to comatose (Germany, definitely).
In Germany, still the largest single economy inside the EU, providing almost a fourth of the bloc’s total GDP, industrial demand – orders from factories – fell by over 11% in January. Such a decrease – really, collapse – in orders is “drastic,” as German Manager Magazine notes. According to the Financial Times, this “very weak” start into the new year, puts preceding – and very modest – signs of a recovery from years of stagnation in doubt. Indeed. And all of that disappointing data was gathered before the fallout of the Iran war had even started.
Regarding the latter, it will be severe. Even Berlin’s Ministry of Economics admits that the risks stemming from the war’s consequences, most of them still incoming, is substantial.
In general, the Eurozone – different from but covering most of the EU – is not in good shape either. According to Bloomberg, a very low and yet still over-optimistic Eurostat estimate of expansion by 0.3% for the last quarter of 2025 has just been revised downward to 0.2%. But frankly, who cares at that level of misery?
And for the Eurozone as well, America and Israel’s unprovoked war against Iran is likely to make things much worse. Philip Lane, chief economist of the European Central Bank (ECB), has confirmed that much to the Financial Times : An enduring decrease in oil and gas supplies from the Middle East can (read: will), he warns, bring about a “substantial spike” in inflation and a “sharp drop in output.”
And what is the EU leadership’s response to this deeply depressing outlook for its economy and the European citizens depending on it? Let’s not dream. It is true, if the EU’s ‘elites’ were in the business of protecting European interests and prosperity, they would, obviously, take a sharp turn against both the US and Israel (as well as London in case it were to stick to its special-poodle relationship with Washington).
Yet if the EU leadership had such priorities, it would long have turned against the US, for its blatant exploitation of its vassal regimes via, first, NATO over-expansion and, now, crippling overspending, for Ukraine proxy war outsourcing, and for devastating tariff warfare. It would also long have broken with Israel, for, to name only two compelling reasons, its genocide and serial wars of aggression that are both horrifically criminal and extremely destabilizing and damaging not “only” to the Middle East but the world as a whole and Europe in particular.
In short, the EU would not even be in the mess it is now if it actually took care of Europe. And, by the way, if it were not so craven but had opposed the US and Israel instead of pandering to them, perhaps it could even have contributed to preventing the current criminal war against Iran.
That, however, would not be the EU as it really is. In sordid reality, it is a second iteration of NATO, that is, an instrument of the US empire (notwithstanding showy and silly Greenland hysterics) and of international oligarchic structures. Ordinary Europeans matter only in so far as they are expected to vote – and think and speak – in line with EU ‘elite’ priorities, and when they do not, they are made to.
No wonder then that the utterly unelected and legally extremely challenged EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen – really, the EU’s despot and US viceroy rolled into one – demonstratively does not give a damn about the massive energy price shock that has already started hitting the fragile economies of EU-Europe.
With tanker ships on fire off the Strait of Hormuz, oil surging over $100 per barrel, national reserves being dipped into, gas prices up by 50% in the EU, and, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), oil markets suffering “the largest supply disruption in history,” von der Leyen has had nothing to offer but reverting to the tired – and less than successful – playbook of 2022, originally put together when the Western-Russian proxy war via Ukraine escalated. Tinkering, again, with ineffective price caps, taxes and fees, electricity market structures and price distortions, renewables, and wasting money on subsidies (out of budgets that are already vastly overstretched) – that was about it. No wonder, several national governments have already signaled their impatience with what, in essence, is inactivity and non-strategy.
At least as important, though, was what von der Leyen took pains to rule out: Returning to Russian supplies would be a “strategic blunder,” the EU’s one-woman decider-in-chief declared. Instead, she insists, the EU must stay the course and continue ridding itself of the last remnants of Russian gas and oil. Clearly, von der Leyen is anxious that not everyone in the EU’s ‘elites’ is up to her level of ideological obstinacy and economic as well as geopolitical irrationality. “Some,” she chided, “argue that we should abandon our long-term strategy and even go back to Russian fossil fuels.” Perish the thought! As long as von der Leyen and her type run the EU, it will ruin itself before doing the obvious – making peace with Russia and rebuilding economic ties, including in the energy sector.
And there you have it: This is a leadership style not simply refusing to learn from experience but repeating the worst blunders of the past. The von der Leyen way of policy making – from sanctions (now on round 20, I believe) to pipelines – is akin to negative natural selection: Whatever does not work will be done again, and again, and again. The real question, it seems, is not if the EU “elites” will ever stop being perverse anti-learners, but whether – or when – they will lose control. Mismanaging the massive shock that the US and Israel have sent their way now may finally provoke enough backlash from below to send the von der Leyens packing. For Europe’s sake, let’s hope for the best, even if it’s delivered by the worst.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
No evidence Russia sabotaged Baltic cables – Finnish intel
RT | March 12, 2026
Russia was not behind a series of ruptures in underwater cables in the Baltic Sea, Finland’s spy chief has admitted, adding that the assessment is “very broadly” shared within the European intelligence community.
Seabed infrastructure in the waterway has been repeatedly damaged in a series of incidents over the past two years. Several merchant vessels have been found dragging their anchors across the seabed, damaging power and communication cables in the process.
While some NATO and EU officials have accused Russia of sabotage and “hybrid warfare,” no evidence to back up the allegations has ever emerged. Moscow has repeatedly dismissed such claims as “absurd” and baseless.
Speaking to the outlet Suomen Kuvalehti in an interview published on Wednesday, Juha Martelius, the head of the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo), admitted that no proof of Moscow’s involvement had been found.
“Our understanding has been that there has been no deliberate Russian state activity in the background. It is a very broadly shared view in the other European intelligence community,” he said. The undersea infrastructure has been repeatedly damaged in accidents since as early as the 2000s, yet such occurrences previously did not receive extensive media coverage, he added.
Russia’s own underwater infrastructure was damaged in some of the incidents, Martelius pointed out. Moscow actually seeks to ensure that its own maritime traffic flows through the Baltic Sea undisturbed rather than to cause disruptions in the area, he argued.
“There are many factors here that support the fact that there is no motive in Russia,” he added.
Still, Martelius pointed the finger at the so-called “shadow fleet” allegedly operated by Russia to circumvent Western-imposed sanctions. Such vessels are often poorly maintained, and their crews are under-trained, the spy chief asserted, which has resulted in repeated instances of anchor-dragging causing damage to undersea cables.
Moscow has maintained that the notion of the fleet’s very existence is unfounded, and the term itself is a propaganda trope used to describe vessels that transport cargo outside the coverage of London-based insurance brokers.
The KAL Flight 007 Tragedy
Tales of the American Empire | February 26, 2026
The United States government has admitted that over 200 American military personnel were shot down aboard aircraft while spying over the Soviet Union during the Cold War. American Generals had sent aircraft probing into Soviet airspace to test reactions and collect intelligence. They loved to play cat and mouse games to taunt the Soviets. This was considered good training that provided valuable intelligence. These games resulted in 269 civilian deaths in 1983 when a Korean airliner (KAL Flight 007) was shot down as it flew over the Soviet Union.
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“Secret Casualties of the Cold War”; Air & Space Magazine; Paul Glenshaw; December 2017; https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-sp…
“A Shot in the Dark: The Untold Story of Korean Air Lines flight 007”: Kyra Dempsey (aka Admiral Cloudberg); Medium; May 20, 2024; / a-shot-in-the-dark-the-untold-story-of-kor…
“DISGUISED RC-135W RIVET JOINT OF U.S AIR FORCE CARRY OUT SURVEILLANCE OF CHINESE MILITARY BASES!”; Defense Updates; September 17, 2020; 
• DISGUISED RC-135W RIVET JOINT OF U.S AIR F…
Related Tale: “A U-2 and World Peace were Sabotaged in 1960”; • A U-2 and World Peace were Sabotaged in 1960
Hungary Blocks 20th Package of Anti-Russia Sanctions, $106B Loan to Ukraine – Szijjarto
Sputnik – 23.02.2026
Hungary blocked the 20th package of anti-Russia sanctions, as well as the 90 billion euro ($106 billion) loan to Ukraine, due to Kiev’s shutdown of the Druzhba oil pipeline, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday.
“At today’s meeting, I made it clear that we do not support the 20th package of sanctions and do not give permission for this. And I made it clear that we would not agree to Ukraine receiving a military loan of 90 billion euros. Because the Ukrainians cannot blackmail us, they cannot jeopardize the security of Hungary’s energy supply by conspiring with Brussels and the Hungarian opposition,” Szijjarto told reporters, following a meeting of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers.
Hungary considers Ukraine’s suspension of Russian oil transit through Druzhba as encroachment on its sovereignty, Szijjarto concluded.
The termination of Russian oil supplies via Druzhba pipeline was the result of collusion between Kiev and Brussels, Szijjarto said.
“It turned out to be a shocking fact that Ukraine is really colluding with Brussels, really colluding with the European Commission headed by von der Leyen in terms of blocking the supply of [Russian] oil [via Druzhba pipeline]. It was finally revealed and proven today,” Szijjarto told reporters, following a meeting of the EU Council of Foreign Ministers.
On February 18, Szijjarto said that Hungary stopped supplying diesel fuel to Ukraine. He said this was a response to Kiev’s blackmail, as Ukraine is not resuming the transit of Russian oil to Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline for political reasons, trying to cause an energy crisis in the country and influence the April elections.
The EU countries are preparing for a protracted conflict in Ukraine and want to send their troops there as soon as possible, the minister added.
Ukraine demands 155 billion euros ($183 billion) from the EU only for the maintenance of the army in 2026, a loan of 90 billion euros is not enough for it, Peter Szijjarto said.
“Colleagues have made it clear that the 90 billion euros previously agreed upon and now blocked by Hungary are not enough to meet Ukraine’s financial needs, and in the near future it is necessary to make a decision on sending even more resources, even more money to Ukraine. This was also confirmed by the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, who said that this year they need 155 billion euros only for the maintenance of the army,” Szijjarto told Hungarian journalists, following a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the EU countries.
Britain is once again poisoning peace diplomacy with Russia and fueling war in Europe
Strategic Culture Foundation | February 20, 2026
For discerning observers, there was an obvious attempt this week by Britain to poison a delicate stage in peace negotiations for ending the conflict in Ukraine.
The sabotage effort was as vivid as, well, how should we put it?, as vivid as a brightly colored dart frog from the South American rainforests.
Five European governments signed a joint statement this week that dramatically claimed that Russian opposition figure Sergey Navalny was murdered two years ago in a Siberian prison by poisoning.
The scripted drama and media orchestration always betray a psychological operation intended for public consumption, which warrants the rapid prescription of healthy scepticism as an antidote.
The intergovernmental report claimed that the lethal toxin allegedly used on Navalny was “epibatidine,” which is naturally produced in the skin of the dart frog. Without any evidence, Britain and four other European governments – France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden – asserted that Navalny was murdered by the Russian authorities. Oh, those evil, dastardly Russians… cue the theme music from a James Bond movie!
Moscow rejected the latest claim as “feeblemindedness of fabulists” and condemned the European governments and media for engaging in “necro-propaganda”. Russia claims that Navalny (47) died of natural causes while serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism and corruption. He was thought to be suffering from congenital ill health and on various medications before he began his penal sentence.
The joint European government statement on Navalny’s alleged poisoning is suspect for several reasons. For a start, it provides no verifiable data on the supposed toxicological analysis or how biomedical samples were obtained two years after Navalny’s death. The timing is also suspicious, coinciding with the Munich Security Conference last weekend and the second anniversary of Navalny’s demise on February 16, 2022, suggesting that the announcement was timed to maximize media attention.
Moreover, this week saw another round of trilateral negotiations between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia on finding a political settlement to the four-year conflict in Ukraine. The talks are at a tricky stage with little traction or trust between Kiev and Moscow.
The exotic frog story seems conveniently loaded to poison the atmosphere in the negotiations.
Tellingly, it is the British government that is the main protagonist in instigating the “necro-propaganda”.
This is true to form. It was the British who confabulated the Novichok poison story about double agent Sergey Skripal in 2018, and the polonium radioactive poisoning of another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in a hotel in London in 2006. The Sun tabloid has today dredged up the latter story on the back of the Navalny case. This all speaks of British intel-media orchestration.
In an interview for the BBC state broadcaster, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that the alleged poisoning of Navalny showed that the Cold War is not over and that “we need to be ready for Russian aggression continuing towards Europe.”
She said that Europe must impose more sanctions on Russia and supply more weapons to Ukraine. Hardly conducive to negotiations.
It is remarkable, too, how Britain is not a member of the European Union, yet London appears entitled to define foreign relations with Russia for the 27-member bloc.
It is also significant that the Americans did not seem to be involved in creating the latest twist in the Navalny narrative. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to be blindsided by the development, saying, “We don’t have reason to question it,” but he disclosed that the U.S. had not been involved. “These countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that… it wasn’t our endeavor. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing based on the intelligence [sic] they gathered.”
This has all the hallmarks of Britain’s endeavor, and to be more accurate, it wasn’t based on factual intelligence. It was based on a concocted black propaganda to demonize Russia and derail the peace diplomacy.
Another significant development was that during the trilateral talks in Geneva, Britain’s National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, showed up unexpectedly at the venue in the Intercontinental Hotel, where he held unofficial sideline talks with the Americans and Ukrainians. Powell’s visit was unannounced by the British government. He wasn’t formally invited to attend. Why was a senior British intelligence figure hanging around a venue for private trilateral discussions?
Britain has a malicious record of sabotaging peace diplomacy in Ukraine. In April 2022, just when the Ukrainian and Russian sides had worked out an early end to the conflict that erupted in February, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suddenly intervened to persuade the Kiev regime to fight on, with promises of more NATO weapons. The baleful result has been a four-year war, a slaughterhouse, with over one million Ukrainian soldiers dead and a large number of Russians.
The Trump administration wants to extricate itself from the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. Washington seems to recognize that the gambit for “strategic defeat” of Russia is a dead-end.
Not so the Europeans, who, for various reasons, are still fixated on prosecuting the proxy war. The European political class seems to be more infected by Russophobia and is incapable of rational thinking or diplomatic engagement with Moscow.
The has-been empire that is Britain is taking a lead role in galvanizing the hostility in Europe towards Russia. It is to that end that London is the main protagonist in the so-called coalition of the willing, along with that other has-been empire, France. The proposal to deploy British and French troops to Ukraine as a “security guarantee” in the event of a peace deal is intended to act as a deal-breaker since Moscow has repeatedly stated that deployment of any NATO troops in Ukraine is unacceptable and non-negotiable.
Britain appears to be taking an increasing role in the covert mentoring of the Ukrainian regime. This week, the British Foreign Office announced the opening of a new embassy office in Lvov, in western Ukraine, which is a stronghold for anti-Russian nationalists and NATO weapons supplies. London said the new office in Lvov was to “expand the UK’s diplomatic [sic] presence in Ukraine as the two countries deepen their relationship.”
Ukraine’s former top military commander, Valery Zalushny, was appointed the ambassador to London in 2024. The “Iron General” is an admirer of Nazi figure Stepan Bandera, and is considered to be a strong contender to replace Vladimir Zelensky, no doubt under British tutelage.
Continuing the war in Europe gives the British state a political purpose and standing among the Europeans. For petty self-aggrandizement, London is exploiting Russophobia.
Concocting propaganda is part of Britain’s toxic agenda. The history of London’s incitement of wars in Europe – not least its sinister role in precipitating World Wars I and II – is consistent with the latest maneuvers to keep fueling the conflict in Ukraine.
EU members divided on 20th Russia sanctions package – media
RT | February 20, 2026
EU ambassadors reportedly failed to reach an agreement on a 20th sanctions package against Russia during a meeting on Friday, Reuters has reported, citing diplomatic sources.
The proposed measures, which Brussels said it hopes to finalize by the fourth anniversary of the Ukraine conflict’s escalation on Monday, face opposition from several member states over key provisions.
The main sticking point is a proposed full ban on maritime services for Russian oil tankers which would scrap the existing price cap system, prohibiting all EU companies from providing insurance, banking, shipping, or port access to any vessel carrying Russian crude.
Greece and Malta, two countries with powerful maritime industries, have reportedly emerged as the main opponents of the new restriction, warning that a unilateral EU ban without full G7 backing would cripple their economies and push shipping business toward competitors in India and China.
They have also opposed possible restrictions on the port of Karimun in Indonesia. Italy and Hungary have been reluctant to support sanctions against the port of Kulevi in Georgia. Madrid and Rome have objected to placing sanctions on one of Cuba’s banks.
Furthermore, Hungary and Slovakia have placed a “general reserve” on the entire package, leveraging their veto power to secure assurances over Russian oil supplies via the damaged Druzhba pipeline which have been halted since January.
Reuters reported that EU diplomats could reconvene over the weekend to discuss the proposed sanctions again, ahead of Monday’s Foreign Affairs Council meeting, where ministers hope to formally adopt the package.
Moscow has repeatedly denounced the EU’s sanctions as illegitimate and counterproductive, saying that they have had little effect on Russia’s economy, while decimating Europe’s.
A number of European officials have also consistently opposed the restrictions, with Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico arguing that the EU is “only hurting itself” with the sanctions, describing previous packages as bringing “no benefit to member states.”
Meet The Liberal Zionist And Ukraine War Supporter Advising AOC On Foreign Policy
The Dissident | February 18, 2026
Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent appearence at the Munich Security Conference, which was billed as her showcasing her foreign policy chops gearing up for a possible presidential run, has faced widespread criticism and backlash, not only for her embarrassing mistakes (saying Venezuela was located below the equator, being unable to answer a question about Taiwan and saying the “Trans-Pacific Partnership” when meaning to say the Trans Atlantic Partnership) but for her weak criticism of U.S. foreign policy and repeating of pro-war narratives.
This, however, can be easily explained by the fact that she is being coached by Matt Duss, a longtime foreign policy advisor and a liberal Zionist and staunch supporter of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
Ahead of the conference, the New York Times reported :
She has been receiving regular briefings from the Center for International Policy, a left-wing foreign policy think tank in Washington. Matt Duss, a vice president at the group and a former Sanders aide, said he was among those who had tutored her on foreign policy.
“She is someone who is engaged with parts of the world that are often not represented in Munich,” Mr. Duss said.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance will undoubtedly ignite speculation that she is burnishing her foreign policy credentials before a White House run. But she is keeping everyone guessing. Unlike other more obviously ambitious Democrats, she has not made winking, presidential-coded trips to early primary states in recent months or written a tell-all memoir.
This better explains why she was so weak of U.S. foreign policy: Duss styles himself a U.S. foreign policy critic but often repeats the narratives of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and at times, such as on Ukraine, is with it 100 per cent.
Peddling Liberal Zionism
On Israel and the Zionist lobby, Matt Duss is a typical liberal Zionist, offering some criticism of Israel but ultimately supporting Zionism and Zionist narratives.
A 2011 article on Matt Duss in Politico wrote , “Duss says he’s mischaracterized by his critics as anti-Israel. He is quick to note that he sympathizes with Israel, in part from his personal roots in American evangelical Christianity and that if American criticism of Israel should be harsher, it should also be done with the recognition that Israel is a democracy that should be held to high standards. Iran, meanwhile, is ‘abusing their own people, they support terrorism, and they say all sorts of horrible things about the U.S. and Israel,’ he said.”
This liberal Zionism, apparently influenced by a Christian Zionist upbringing, was on full display during the early months of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, where Duss, repeated Israeli propaganda, smeared actual anti-Zionists and even opposed calls for a ceasefire.
After the October 7th Hamas breakout from the Gaza concentration camp, Duss quoted an article, from New York Magazine, writing, “What we actually witnessed was not ‘the Palestinians’ mounting a violent struggle for justice but a far-right theocratic organization committing mass murder in the name of blood-and-soil nationalism” without mentioning any of the history preceding October 7th, including the Israeli blockade on Gaza which former UK prime minister David Cameron admitted turned Gaza into a “a prison camp” and an “open-air prison”, the previous peaceful protests against the blockade in Gaza in 2018, which were met with Israeli slaughter , the Abraham Accords which sought to get Arab States to abandon the Palestinian cause, and Benjamin Netanyahu putting up a map at the UN which “depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” where “Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased” weeks before October 7th.
In December of 2023, Matt Duss repeated the fabricated claim that Hamas carried out mass rape on October 7th, writing, “Denying the rape and sexual violence that Hamas committed on Oct 7 is disgusting”, repeating a hoax that was used not only to justify the Gaza genocide, but also actual mass rape against Palestinian detainees in Israel’s torture dungeons.
In another article written by Duss in December of 2023, he wrote , “Israel’s methods are not as extreme as Russia’s, and it’s very important to acknowledge that”, ignoring the fact that in November of 2023 , Israel had killed over 10,000 civilians in Gaza while Russia killed 9,806 in Ukraine since the start of the war in 2022.
In a New York Times article, Matt Duss celebrated Israel’s pager attack in Lebanon, which even former CIA director Leon Panetta conceded was “a form of terrorism” writing, “There’s no question that Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah’s leadership in Lebanon in recent weeks was an impressive tactical feat”.
In November of 2023, Duss even opposed calls for a ceasefire in Gaza by defending Senator Bernie Sander’s comments in opposition to a ceasefire at the time (which were approvingly shared by AIPAC ), saying, “I think what the Senator said there about the challenges of a ceasefire being negotiated with an organisation like Hamas are valid”.
While peddling Zionist talking points, Duss took the time to smear actual anti-Zionists, such as labelling the brilliant Anti-Zionist academic Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish son of holocaust survivors, as an anti-semite.
Referring to the Jewish Zionist billionaires attempting to shut down pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Finkelstein wrote , “The Jewish billionaire class has declared war on our nation’s universities: Either you support Israel’s genocidal war or we will destroy you” and Duss replied , “We can and must have a conversation about the very real dangers to academic freedom without antisemitic ‘Jewish billionaire class’ nonsense, which both endangers Jews and undermines the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
Supporting The Ukraine Proxy War
Along with his peddling of Zionist narratives, Duss fully supported NATO and the Biden administration’s proxy war in Ukraine.
In an article for the New Republic in 2022, Duss wrote, “The Biden team clearly did not seek this war (in Ukraine), in fact, they made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it. Having been unable to do that, they’ve acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia while also making clear the stakes of the conflict for the U.S., for Europe, and for the international system.”
In reality, last year, one of Biden’s top advisors for Europe policy, Amanda Sloat, admitted that the Biden administration could have ended the war in Ukraine, and chose not to, saying, “We had some conversation even before the war started, about what if Ukraine comes out and just says to Russia, ‘fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO if that stops the war, if that stops the invasion,’ which at that point it may well have done” and adding, “I guess if you want to do an alternative version of history, one option would have just been for Ukraine to say in January of 2022, ‘fine, you know, we won’t go into NATO, we will stay neutral.’ Ukraine could have made a deal around March/April of 2022 around the Istanbul talks. There is certainly a question, almost three years on now, would that have been better to do before the war started, would that have been better to do in Istanbul talks, it certainly would have prevented the destruction and the loss of life”.
Matt Duss on serval occasions denied the fact that the war could have ended in April of 2022 has Boris Johnson not intervened and stopped the peace deal that Russia and Ukraine agreed to in Istanbul. On Twitter, Duss wrote , “If you’re so committed to your narrative that you believe that Zelensky Could’ve simply ended the devastating war on his country in April but then Boris Johnson showed up and said nah so he didn’t, I recommend stepping back and taking a series of deep, relaxing breaths” and “ doesn’t matter how quickly the Sy Hersh story gets refuted, it’s already become part of the alternate reality where Biden induced Putin to invade and Russia would’ve ended the war in March if Boris Johnson hadn’t said nah.”
This is despite the fact that Boris Johnson’s blocking of the peace deal in Istanbul has been confirmed by
- Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett
- Lead Ukrainian negotiator Davyd Arakhamia
- The foreign minister of Turkey, Mevlut Cavusoglu
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
- Gerhard Schröder, the ex-leader of Germany
- Victoria Nuland then U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs
- Oleksii Arestovych a member of the Ukrainian delegation at the peace talks
- Amanda Sloat, lead Biden advisor on Ukraine
- Andrej Babiš, the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic
Duss has repeatedly praised the Biden Administration for the proxy war in Ukraine, saying in 2023, “The administration … on the way the president has helped manage alliance and partnerships in response to Russia’s invasion of last February, I think has been impressive, I think it shows a way of practising U.S. leadership that forges consensus and then mobilises that consensus.”
As late as January of last year, Duss said, Biden can “claim some credit for rallying allies for the defence of Ukraine against Russia’s invasion”.
Duss even admitted in reference to the Ukraine proxy war that, “the policy I support continues to enrich defense contractors, enriches the military-industrial complex” adding, “I think the goal of reforming that military industrial complex and weakening its power over our politics, that project continues in the longer term even though the policy I support in the shorter term is essentially paying them off.”
The fact that AOC is being “tutored” by Matt Duss on foreign policy explains her failures when speaking on it.
Kaja Kallas: an uncomfortable figure useful to the EU’s Russophobic purposes
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 18, 2026
In recent days, videos of Europe’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, have gone viral on social media, showing her making statements marked by disconnected reasoning, weak associations, and conclusions that do not logically follow from the premises presented. At the same time, she delivered yet another of her “unusual” speeches, declaring that Europe would demand a reduction in the size of the Russian Army – an assertion made without any reference to legal, logistical, or strategic foundations to support such a measure, making the inconsistency of her position evident.
This statement highlights not only the European diplomacy’s disconnect from geopolitical reality, but also the symbolic function of certain figures who maintain positions of international visibility. Kallas, whose political trajectory was consolidated in Estonia with a strongly anti-Russian discourse, has become a piece of ideological rhetoric: she plays the role of a “watchdog” of European Russophobia and does not seem to mind being seen as “foolish” for her irrational public statements.
Beyond this aspect, there is also a practical function in this dynamic. Domestically, Kallas faced considerable political wear in Estonia: her family circle maintained commercial ties with Russia, and nationalist sectors criticized her for economic policies that allegedly weakened the country’s economic stability. In this sense, her promotion to the head of European diplomacy served as a convenient solution – removing a worn-out figure from the domestic scene while at the same time making use of her “angry” stance toward Moscow to sustain the anti-Russian narrative at the continental level.
Kallas’s performance, however, does not represent strategic autonomy. The European Union’s foreign policy is centralized in the presidency of the European Commission, under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen. In this context, Kallas essentially fulfills the role of spokesperson and executor of guidelines defined by the bloc’s hard core, which coordinates sanctions, defense policies, and alignment with NATO and the United States. The contrast between her performative statements and her real decision-making capacity reflects a strategy that prioritizes confrontational rhetoric over political pragmatism.
From a geopolitical perspective, the idea of unilaterally reducing Russian military personnel is unrealistic. Moscow interprets the current conflict as part of a structural dispute over NATO expansion and the strategic containment promoted by the West. Symbolic pressure or European public declarations, devoid of negotiation mechanisms or concrete coercive instruments, produce no practical effect and, on the contrary, tend to reinforce Russian defensive positions, consolidating the perception of permanent hostility.
Moreover, the recent tensions between Kallas and von der Leyen are telling. Kallas reportedly calls her a “dictator” for centralizing power in the Commission – as if the entire EU bureaucratic structure were not designed precisely to maintain that kind of centralization. It appears that von der Leyen represents the transnational elites that control Europe, while Kallas is merely a disposable piece on this chessboard – without any real right to opinion or participation in the bloc’s decision-making process.
Ultimately, Kallas remains, in the racist European view that she herself evokes, a “peripheral” figure of Soviet origins, with a Finno-Ugric native language – hardly “European” in the strict sense, no matter how much she tries to “Europeanize” herself by hating Russia. For Europeans, she is an uncomfortable figure who nonetheless serves a useful purpose: escalating tensions with Russia, which greatly benefits von der Leyen’s “anonymous bosses.”
In this scenario, Kallas embodies a structural tension: her peripheral origins and aggressive posture make her useful as a representative of a confrontational narrative, while also exposing the superficiality of certain European political decisions. The bloc maintains tough rhetoric and ideological mobilization but lacks a realistic strategy capable of dealing with the balance of power in Eurasia – where Europe is a weak and declining pole, not a “superpower,” as Kallas often claims.
If the EU truly intends to preserve its strategic autonomy and contribute to continental stability, it will need to abandon performative declarations and understand that any rearrangement of European security depends on direct negotiations with Moscow, recognition of military and geopolitical realities, and the formulation of measures that combine firmness with pragmatism. Unilateral demands – such as reducing Russian military personnel – are nothing more than symbolic rhetoric, incapable of altering the real dynamics of the conflict.
This dynamic also reveals the hidden side of European politics: the use of peripheral figures, often marginalized or viewed with prejudice, to materialize maximalist discourses that consolidate a narrative of confrontation, while decision-making remains concentrated in a small core of power, far removed from the media statements that go viral and capture public attention.
Romania’s stolen elections were only the start: Inside the EU’s war on democracy
How Brussels’ Digital Services Act has been used to pressure platforms and electoral control in member states
RT | February 18, 2026
Romania’s 2024 presidential election was already one of the most controversial political episodes in the European Union in recent years. A candidate who won the first round was prevented from contesting the second. The vote was annulled. Claims of Russian interference were advanced without public evidence.
At the time, the affair raised urgent questions about democratic standards inside the EU. Newly disclosed documents reviewed by RT Investigations go further. They indicate that the annulment of the Romanian election was accompanied by sustained efforts to pressure social media platforms into suppressing political speech – efforts coordinated through mechanisms established under the EU’s Digital Services Act.
What appeared to be a national political crisis now looks increasingly like a test case for how far EU institutions are willing to go in intervening in the political processes of member states.
The Russian narrative. Again.
On February 3, the US House Judiciary Committee published a 160-page investigation into how the EU systematically pressures social media companies to alter internal guidelines and suppress content. It found Brussels orchestrated a “decade-long campaign” to censor political speech across the bloc. In many cases, this amounted to direct meddling in political processes and elections of members, often using EU-endorsed civil society organizations. The report features several case studies of this “campaign” in action in EU member states, the gravest example being Romania.
It was around the November 2024 Romanian presidential election, the committee found, that the European Commission“took its most aggressive censorship steps.” In the first round, anti-establishment outsider Calin Georgescu comfortably prevailed, and polls indicated he was en route to win the second by landslide. However, on December 6, Bucharest’s constitutional court overturned the results. While a court-ordered recount found no irregularities in the process, a new election was called, in which Georgescu was banned from running.
By contrast, Romania’s security service alleged Georgescu’s victory was attributable to a Russian-orchestrated TikTok campaign. The allegation was unsupported by any evidence whatsoever. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis went to the extent of claiming this deficit was inversely proof of Moscow’s culpability, as the Russians supposedly “hide perfectly in cyber space.” Despite the BBC reporting that even Romanians “who feared a president Georgescu” worried about the precedent set for their democracy by the move, that narrative has been endlessly reiterated ever since.
The US House Judiciary Committee report comprehensively disproves the charge of Russian meddling in the Romanian election. Documents and emails provided by TikTok expose how the platform not only consistently assessed Moscow “did not conduct a coordinated influence operation to boost Georgescu’s campaign,” but repeatedly shared these findings with the European Commission and Romanian authorities. This information was never shared by either party. But the contempt of Brussels and Bucharest for democracy and free speech went much further.
Digital Services Act in action
The committee found Romanian officials egregiously abused the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act before the 2024 election “to silence content supporting populist and nationalist candidates.” Bucharest also repeatedly lodged content takedown requests outside of the formal DSA process, using what committee investigators call “expansive interpretations of their own power to mandate removals of political content.” This amounted to a “global takedown order,” with authorities perversely arguing court demands to block certain content for local audiences were “mandatory not only in Romania.”
This was no doubt a ploy to prevent outsiders, in particular the country’s sizable diaspora, from accessing content featuring Georgescu. His “Romania First” agenda proved quite popular with emigres, numbering many millions due to mass depopulation since 1989. Perhaps not coincidentally, his diaspora supporters have been widely maligned by Western media as fascist enablers. Still, even critical mainstream reports admit they and the domestic population have legitimate grievances, due to Romania’s crushing economic decline in the same period.
Bucharest would clearly stop at nothing to ensure the ‘correct’ candidate prevailed in the first round. Removal demands were plentiful, and on the rare occasions that legal justification was provided, it was based on a “very broad interpretation” of the election authority’s power. For example, TikTok was ordered to remove content that was “‘disrespectful and insults the PSD party’” – a left-wing political faction that was part of the country’s ruling coalition at the time. TikTok twice sought further details of the grounds for this request, but none was forthcoming.
Once Georgescu prevailed, and before the election was annulled, Romanian orders became even more aggressive. Regulators told TikTok that “all materials containing Calin Georgescu images must be removed,” again without any legal basis whatsoever. This proved a step too far for the platform, which refused to remove the posts. It wasn’t just naked political pressure to which TikTok refused to bend. Brussels and Bucharest were assisted first in electoral fraud, then autocratic annulment of the vote’s legitimate result, by local EU-sponsored NGOs.
These were organizations “empowered by the European Commission to make priority censorship requests – either as [EU Digital Service Act] Trusted Flaggers or through the Commission’s Rapid Response System.” Despite their supposed neutrality, the NGOs “made politically biased content removal demands.” For example, the EU-funded Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media “sent TikTok spreadsheets containing hundreds of censorship requests in the days after the first round of the initial election.” The committee characterized much of the flagged content as “pro-Georgescu and anti-progressive political speech.”
This included posts related to “Georgescu’s positions on environmental issues and Romania’s membership in the Schengen Area, and the EU’s system of open borders.” In other words, this was content espousing standard, popular conservative viewpoints, which are absolute anathema to Brussels and Bucharest’s pro-EU elite. Since the committee’s report was released, references to the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media’s EU financing have been deleted from its website.
After the vote
The day after the election was annulled, TikTok wrote to the European Commission, stating plainly it had not found or been presented with evidence of a coordinated network of accounts promoting Georgescu. Undeterred by TikTok’s denials and scarcely bothered by the lack of material evidence, the European Commission pressed forward and demanded information about TikTok’s political content moderation practices and enquired about “changes” to its “processes, controls, and systems for the monitoring and detection of any systemic risks.”
The European Commission also used the “still-unproven narrative” of Russian meddling “to pressure TikTok to engage in more aggressive political censorship.” In response, the platform informed the commission that it would censor content featuring the terms “coup” and “war” – clear references to the perception that democratic processes had been undermined in Romania – “for the next 60 days to mitigate the risk of harmful narratives.” But this was still insufficient for the censorship-crazed commission.
On December 17, 2004, the European Commission opened a formal investigation into TikTok over a “a suspected breach of the DSA” – in other words, failing to sufficiently censor content before and after the first round of Romania’s presidential election. The platform was accused of failing to uphold its “obligation to properly assess and mitigate systemic risks linked to election integrity” locally. EU efforts to bring the platform to heel didn’t end there, either.
In February 2025, TikTok’s product team was summoned for a meeting with the EU’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology. There, they were lectured over the platform’s supposedly “deceptive behavior policies and enforcement” and “potential[ly] ineffective” DSA “mitigation” measures. The US House Judiciary Committee found that the European Commission’s decision to meet TikTok’s product team, “rather than the government affairs and compliance staff whose job it was to manage TikTok’s relationship with the Commission, indicates the European Commission sought deeper influence over the platform’s internal moderation processes.”
Georgescu and the many Romanians who wished to elect him president were punished even more severely. Two weeks after TikTok was threatened by the European Commission, the upstart hopeful was arrested in Bucharest en route to registering to run in the new election that May. Georgescu was charged with “incitement to actions against the constitutional order.” Since then, he has been accused by authorities of plotting a coup and involvement in a million-euro fraud.
When Georgescu’s case finally reached trial this February, these accusations were dropped. He is instead charged with peddling “far-right propaganda.” A report on his prosecution from English-language news website Romania Insider repeated the fiction he owed his first-round victory to a “targeted social media campaign,” managed by “entities linked to Russia.” In the meantime, establishment-preferred candidate Nicusor Dan won the presidency. No doubt satisfied with the integrity of the democratic process given Georgescu was barred from participating, Romania’s Constitutional Court quickly validated the result.
Beyond Romania
Per the US House Judiciary Committee, Romania’s stolen 2024 presidential election is the most extreme example of the EU and member state authorities conspiring to subvert democracy and trample on popular will. But it is just one of many. Since the Digital Services Act came into force in August 2023, the European Commission has pressured platforms to censor content ahead of national elections in Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, Moldova, and Ireland, as well as the EU elections in June 2024.
“In all of these cases… documents demonstrate a clear bias toward censoring conservative and populist parties,” the committee concluded. Ahead of the EU elections, TikTok was pressured into censoring over 45,000 pieces of purported “misinformation.” This included what the report deemed “clear political speech” on topics such as migration, climate change, security and defense, and LGBTQ rights. There is no indication Brussels has been deterred from its quest to prevent the ‘wrong’ candidates being elected to office in member states, or citizens expressing dissenting opinions.
In fact, we can expect these efforts to ramp up significantly. For one, the US committee’s bombshell report generated almost no mainstream interest, indicating Brussels can and will get away with it again. Even more urgently, in April, Hungary goes to the polls. Already, the narrative that ruling conservative Viktor Orban intends to rig the vote to secure victory is being widely perpetuated. And the EU’s censorship apparatus stands ready to validate that narrative, regardless of truth, and popular will.
Keir Starmer-tied think tank paid PR firm to target The Grayzone
By Kit Klarenberg | The Grayzone | February 16, 2026
Leaked files have revealed that Labour Together, the shadowy think tank run by disgraced former top Keir Starmer aide Morgan McSweeney, paid the Washington DC-based corporate intelligence firm APCO Worldwide to spy on journalists who reported on their corrupt handling of campaign finances.
The reporters named appear to have been targeted for their efforts to investigate how the UK’s Labour Party elites spent 730,000 pounds in undeclared donations to install Starmer as their leader.
The files show APCO used those funds to oversee the fabrication of a dodgy, evidence-free dossier claiming that Russia was behind damaging disclosures about Labour Together, which it submitted to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of Britain’s GCHQ — London’s equivalent to the US National Security Agency.
The “significant persons of interest” listed in APCO’s McCarthyite casebook included The Grayzone and myself.
According to my APCO dossier, “While a self described ‘investigative journalist,’ he is an author for the Gray Zone. The site has been described as a ‘conspiracy blog’ and ‘Wagner propaganda channel.’ In 2023,” the dossier reads, I “was arrested by counter-terror police after [I] arrived in the UK.”
APCO bills itself as “a trusted and strategic advisor… that drive[s] our clients’ missions and objectives forward.” Despite its massive contract with Labour Together, the files show the PR firm struggled to identify its targets, and proved unable to establish the most basic facts about them.
When APCO branded The Grayzone as “Wagner propaganda,” it seemed to have confused us with “Grey Zone,” an entirely unrelated and now-defunct Telegram channel affiliated with the Russian military contractor. APCO also claimed I was “arrested by counter-terrorism police” in May 2023 upon returning to Britain. In fact, I had been detained, not arrested.
APCO also targeted journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Holden, who led investigations into Labour Together’s potentially criminal activities, based on leaks and Freedom of Information requests. The PR firm had sought to secure “leverage” over Holden in order to sabotage his work.
The spying scandal began in November 2023, when Britain’s Sunday Times revealed that Keir Starmer’s campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, had failed to declare £730,000 in campaign donations which he diverted to advance Starmer’s rise to Labour leadership. One month later, APCO prepared a memo for Labour Together outlining a strategy to blame the damaging disclosure on Russian hackers and attack the journalists who dared to publish details of the offending documents.
The story was given new life in February 2026, when British journalist Peter Geoghehan exposed a secret contract showing Labour Together paid APCO £30,000 to investigate the journalists it blamed for exposing its legally questionable activities.
It has now gone mainstream, with the Sunday Times publishing a lengthy report branding the Labour operation as a “dirty smear” based on a “lie” about Russian hacking.
However, the Times article omitted any mention of this reporter or The Grayzone, even though we were prominently targeted by Labour Together. In the following investigation, we explain why The Grayzone was targeted, tracing the origins of the slimy spying operation to a network of Labourite operatives who have sought to destroy us since well before Starmer came to power.
“Familiar with masters of the same drivers”
Labour Together was founded in 2015 by McSweeney, Starmer’s longtime svengali. After several failed campaigns for establishment candidates, McSweeney managed to transform his organization into a propaganda juggernaut, soliciting large donations from the UK Israel lobby’s most significant moneyman, Trevor Chinn.
While presenting his campaigning outfit as a plucky little think tank, he wielded it against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the movement behind him. To neutralize the ecosystem of alternative media outlets supporting Corbyn as Labour leader, Labour Together contracted a political operative named Imran Ahmed to spin out a censorship front called “Stop Funding Fake News.”
After weaponizing dubious charges of antisemitism to defund one of the most influential pro-Corbyn outlets, Canary UK, the organization folded, then resurfaced as the much bolder Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Based inside the office of Labour Together, CCDH relied on the funding from Chinn and, as The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal revealed, secretly coordinated with the Israeli embassy in Washington.
McSweeney entered Downing Street as Starmer’s Chief of Staff just one month before Trump’s re-election. Among his most important tasks was repairing relations with the US President. At the time, Trump’s aides were bristling over reports that McSweeney met with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the Democratic National Convention to plot strategy. One of Trump’s top donors, the transhumanist mega-billionaire Elon Musk, also had his knives out for McSweeney after journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker revealed that CCDH’s top priority for 2024 was to “kill Elon Musk’s Twitter.”
McSweeney’s solution was to dispatch one of Labour’s most seasoned – and scandal-stained – fixers to Washington. He was Lord Peter Mandelson, the architect of the neoliberal New Labour wave whose notoriously transactional tendencies seemed to make him the perfect match for Trump. Mandelson made himself a fixture at Butterworth’s, a favorite Capitol Hill haunt of MAGA operatives, and insinuated himself into Trumpist social circles.
In June 2025, the restaurant erected a plaque honoring Mandelson during a ceremony overseen by Raheem Kassam, a close associate of former Trump chief of staff Steve Bannon. There, a mirthful Mandelson raised a toast and proclaimed a special kinship with the MAGA elite: “Although we don’t have identical politics, we are familiar with masters of the same drivers that brought our respective figures to power — President Trump in your case and Keir Starmer in mine.”
But Mandelson was also dogged by the same sex trafficking figure who constantly inhabited the personal lives of both Trump and Bannon: Jeffrey Epstein. Both McSweeney and Starmer had been keenly aware of the ambassador’s friendship with Epstein, but they dismissed the concerns, even ignoring a warning from UK security services.
However, when a series of emails confirming Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein poured forth as part of a release by the US Department of Justice, the ambassador’s position became untenable. Following his firing in September 2025, a new tranche of emails published this January provided an even more damning portrait of their friendship. They showed, for instance, that Epstein channeled money to Mandelson’s husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, for a specious initiative which was never completed. Even worse, the communications exposed Mandelson providing Epstein with advance notice of the impending collapse of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government in 2010, as well as sensitive information about the UK’s “saleable assets.”
McSweeney’s scheming had finally caught up with him. Though Starmer initially praised and defended his longtime campaign guru in parliament, he caved soon after, forcing McSweeney to resign his post on February 8.
In the days since, Starmer has been unable to fill the vacancy. Meanwhile, another senior Labour official is reportedly considering leaving his role as well. Amid the chaos, British media has begun to speculate that the Prime Minister will be next to go.
Will the revelation of Labour Together’s media enemies list, and its secret contract with APCO, be the weight that finally sinks Starmer?
Labour Together’s misdirection ploy: blame Russia
McSweeney was aware that Labour Together had secretly contracted APCO to spy on journalists; however, he didn’t carry out the dirty work himself. That job appears to have been commissioned by his successor at the think tank, Josh Simons, who’s now a senior minister in Starmer’s government.
Simons has dismissed reports that the PR firm was tasked with spying on reporters as “nonsense,” insisting that APCO was merely “asked to look into a suspected illegal hack.” Simons’ disingenuous claims are undermined by newly-leaked documents related to the probe, however.
Perhaps most damning is a December 2023 memo prepared by APCO for Labour Together which shows investigators fretting about “recent articles and blog posts” which threatened to draw attention to the political group’s questionable funding schemes. Information published by these meddling journalists, particularly Paul Holden, “[raised] concern about the source of his information and what more he may choose to publish in the future,” the memo continued.
It was therefore deemed “important to identify the source of the information and to ascertain what additional information could be published.” Labour Together tasked APCO with probing several journalists, dubbed “significant persons of interest.”
The memo speculated that Holden and others may have received leaks from inside Labour Together, Labour party headquarters, parliament, or “illegally-gathered information collected” from a purported “hack” of Britain’s Electoral Commission in 2023. APCO concluded it was “essential” for Labour Together to concoct a strategy to counter the critical reporting.
Its response was to blame the organization’s woes on a Russian hack. But rather than hiring a cyber-security firm to investigate the supposed data breach, it contracted a corporate intelligence firm to attack the messengers.
In February 2024, The Guardian contacted Holden to alert him that the paper was preparing a hit piece alleging he was under investigation by the NCSC for receiving illegally obtained information from Russia. The Guardian had clearly been influenced by briefings from Labour Together, as well as by APCO’s report. Yet the outlet backed off when Holden promised to sue them for defamation.
APCO is now under formal investigation for potential standards breaches by Britain’s Public Relations and Communication Association.
How did The Grayzone wind up on Labour Together’s enemies list?
It is unclear how and why I became a “significant person of interest” in APCO and Labour Together’s secret smear campaign. However, their operation dovetailed with another surreptitious attempt by intelligence-tied actors to smear The Grayzone as Russian agents.
I have never spoken to Paul Holden or other journalists named as the firm’s targets, or conducted any journalistic investigations into Labour Together’s corrupt financial dealings. When APCO initiated its probe, I had mentioned Labour Together in a single article months prior that focused on the organization’s censorship-obsessed spinoff, the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
Such sloppiness and paranoia is the hallmark of Amil Khan, a veteran British government psyops warrior turned “disinformation expert” involved with Labour Together and Starmer’s Labour.
Khan cut his teeth running covert British-funded psychological warfare operations during the Syrian dirty war, supporting violent extremist groups armed and financed by the CIA and MI6. He subsequently founded Valent Projects, which “specializes in addressing online manipulation.” Khan’s outfit produced a paper on social media ratfucking strategies for Labour Together entitled, “Power and Persuasion: Understanding the Right’s Playbook.”
In December 2021, The Grayzone exposed how Valent Projects covertly produced Covid vaccine propaganda funded by the British monarchy’s Royal Institute, using then-popular “BreadTube” personality Abigail Thorn as the front person for its campaign. The investigation apparently placed this outlet in the crosshairs of Khan and his information warfare network.
Less than a year later, The Grayzone exposed Khan again – this time, for his role in a covert conspiracy to destroy us. Enlisted by celebrity former leftist journalist Paul Mason, Khan helped coordinate a harebrained scheme to demonetize and deplatform The Grayzone. The pair discussed going “full nuclear legal to squeeze [The Grayzone] financially,” and proposed publishing intelligence agency-sourced smears to delegitimize this outlet.
As their revenge plot approached its paranoid apogee, Mason and Khan fantasized about hosting an anti-Grayzone summit with some of the most rabid, intelligence-tied opponents of our reporting. Among those they pitched for the gathering was Imran Ahmed, director of the censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which was founded by Morgan McSweeney and shared an office with his Labour Together.
While it is unknown if the anti-Grayzone summit ever took place, we have since learned that Mason enlisted a team of high-priced London lawyers to sue this outlet just days after our article exposing his secret smear campaign appeared. In May 2023, I was detained at the UK’s Luton International Airport and interrogated about The Grayzone’s activities by counter-terror police. Six months later, APCO initiated its covert investigation of me, The Grayzone, and others whose reporting had wound them up on the Labour Together enemies list.
APCO has so far remained silent about the scandal. The Grayzone has submitted a request for comment to Tom Short, the PR firm’s London chief. We received an automated response revealing he conveniently slipped away to the US. Upon Short’s return to Britain, APCO will no longer be able to hide behind bogus allegations of Russian hacking.
Ian Proud: Economic Reset with Russia to Save Europe
Glenn Diesen | Feb 15, 2026
Ian Proud discusses why an economic reset with Russia is required for a stable peace and to prevent Europe from becoming a weakened relic of a unipolar past. As a former British diplomat, Proud performed a number of roles, including the Economic Counsellor at the UK’s embassy in Moscow between 2014 and 2019.
The Peacemonger: https://www.youtube.com/@IanProud
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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