Four Palestinian journalists were injured by Israeli army fire in the occupied West Bank town of Kafr Dan, the Red Crescent Society said today.
The society said two journalists were treated on the spot by its medics while two others were transferred to hospital.
Jaraah Khalaf, one of the injured journalists, said he and other reporters were covering an Israeli siege on a house in Kafr Dan, in the Jenin Governorate, when they came under direct Israeli fire.
“We were all wearing vests that clearly had press identification labels in English (PRESS), and our vehicles carried the same insignia,” he said.
Israeli occupation forces raided the town early today and besieged a house, calling on its occupants to surrender via loudspeakers, according to witnesses.
The house was later demolished by Israeli military bulldozers, while a child and another Palestinian were injured during the raid, according to the Ministry of Health.
Turkish citizens have taken to the streets in Izmir to demonstrate against the docking of an American warship, expressing solidarity with Palestinians and their opposition to US all-out military support for Israel amid the Gaza genocide.
Turkish parties on Monday night gathered at the Izmir port entrance to voice their opposition to the USS Wasp anchoring, one of the ships sent to the region by the US to support the Israeli regime.
Waving the Palestinian flag, protesters held banners reading “Our country’s ports cannot be supply and logistics points for murderers” and “We do not want the US ship that brings war and death to Palestine in Izmir.”
They chanted slogans such as “Down with Israel,” “Down with NATO” and “Down with USA,” demanding the immediate departure of the American ship from the Port of Izmir, as they honored the memory of Palestinians killed in Israel’s US-backed war in Gaza.
The USS Wasp, carrying nearly 1,500 US soldiers, anchored at the port of Izmir on Sunday after participating in bilateral at-sea training with Turkish Navy ships in August. The vessel, along with its accompanying ships, the USS Oak Hill and the USS New York, has been positioned in the region since June as part of deterrence efforts against possible threats to Israel amid high tensions in the region.
Protesters issued a stern warning to the Izmir Governorship, declaring they will not leave the port until the ship departs.
The protesters condemned the United States for its role in causing suffering and violence in Iraq, Syria, the West Asia region, and globally.
“It has been almost a year. Israel is carrying out a brutal massacre in Gaza. By killing tens of thousands of people, Israel is not only committing a great crime against humanity. It is also persistently continuing an unlawful and unscrupulous incitement to drag our region into a bloody war,” the protesters said in their statement.
The statement emphasized that the United States openly backs Israel and its military actions, and questioned its occasional ceasefire calls.
They also called on the Turkish government to remove the American soldiers from the streets of Izmir, after two US Marines from the USS Wasp were assaulted during a port visit in Izmir on Monday, as part of a protest against Israeli actions in Gaza and decades-long “US imperialism.”
“US soldiers who have the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot tarnish our country. Every step you take on these lands will be met with the response you deserve,” the Turkey Youth Union (TGB), which carried out the attack said in its statement on Monday.
Fifteen individuals involved in the incident were detained by Turkey’s police.
The US has ramped up its military presence in the region as the Israel war on Gaza rages on.
Washington has sent 50,000 tons of arms and ammunition to Israel since October 7 when the regime launched its genocidal war on Gaza.
Late last month, the US completed the air delivery of its 500th consignment of weapons and munitions to Israel since it launched its genocidal war in October.
In October 2023, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared: “No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.’”
“A retired senior Israeli general has said that Israel should not ‘shy away’ from permitting the outbreak of severe epidemics amongst Palestinians in southern Gaza as it will bring Israel ‘closer to victory.’
“‘The international community warns us of a humanitarian disaster in Gaza and of severe epidemics,’ retired Major General Giora Eiland, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, wrote Sunday.
“‘We must not shy away from this, as difficult as that may be. After all, severe epidemics in the south of the Gaza Strip will bring victory closer and reduce casualties among IDF soldiers.’
“Eiland went on to say that the Israeli government must take a ‘harder line’ against the US and rule out discussions about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza until all the hostages held in the besieged enclave are released.
“The opinion article elicited an endorsement from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who said, ‘I agree with every word.’”
Zeiad Abbas Shamrouch, executive director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, told me in November: “Due to Israel cutting off some of the supply of water and destroying key water infrastructure and storage tanks, people are being forced to drink water from unsafe sources. Dehydration and waterborne diseases are spreading and medicine is running out. There are outbreaks of chickenpox, scabies and diarrhea due to the shortage of water.”
Drop Site News reported in July in “The IDF Just Destroyed a Key Rafah Water Facility Rachel Corrie Spent Her Last Month of Life Defending” about a video showing the “calculated demolition of a chief water facility in Rafah. The video, in three parts, shows Israeli soldiers planting explosives inside and around the water pumps of a facility in the occupied city. The video — which is captioned in Hebrew, ‘Destruction of the Tal Sultan water reservoir in honor of Shabbat’ — ends with footage of the water facility being blown up. The soundtrack is a song produced by soldiers of the 51st Golani Brigade with lyrics like, ‘We will burn Gaza… shake all of Gaza… for every house you destroy we will destroy ten.’ …
“For months, Israeli forces have been targeting vital water resources in the strip leading to starvation and, according to new reports, worsening access to clean water. Last week, the Israeli military and the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that Poliovirus has been found in Gaza’s sewage, further intensifying the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the occupied enclave.”
The Daily Mail in August reported on Israelis who had been held captive in Gaza: “Blood tests also showed they had been exposed to a range of diseases, including typhus and spotted fever, during their 50 days in captivity. Many of them were also experiencing head lice due to poor hygiene conditions, including a lack of running water.”
The Vaccine
So, why is Israel reportedly agreeing to pauses to allow for administration of the polio vaccine? That may be hard to know for sure, but a few things that should be understood:
The WHO is not what it seems to many people. There’s lots that can be said about that, but what I have examined is that the group’s chief scientist, Jeremy Farrar, who was a central figure, and perhaps the central figure, in the massive propaganda campaign which claimed in 2020 that Covid could not have a lab origin. It is simply not a credible organization just on that basis. Additionally, this gives a great deal of credence to arguments that the WHO is capable of making critical decisions with the aim of control, manipulation and publicity rather than the health and wellbeing of the global public.
The vaccine being given to Palestinian children in Gaza is nOPV2, that is, novel oral polio vaccine, focusing on type 2 polio. Prior oral vaccines have been problematic. They contain attenuated (weakened) polio virus. This can be problematic since, as The Journal of Infectious Diseasesnoted in 2013: “With prolonged replication, attenuated polioviruses used in oral polio vaccine (OPV) can mutate into vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) and cause poliomyelitis [polio] outbreaks.”
OPV was typically given in poorer countries. In rich counties like the US, what has been given is IPV which is made with inactive polio virus and given intramuscularly (an injection), not orally.
According to the Polio Global Eradication Initiative (whose partners include the WHO, CDC and the Gates Foundation), the outbreak in Gaza is from Egypt. Curiously, the Initiative claims “the variant poliovirus could have been introduced in Gaza as early as September 2023” — that is, prior to Oct. 7. The Egyptian polio outbreak according to a recent article in BMC Infectious Diseasescame from a “vaccine-derived polioviruses”. That is, the outbreak now in Gaza appears, according to these sources, to be the result of the negative effects of polio vaccines given in Egypt which mutated.
Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliye in 2012 wrote in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics : “It was hoped that following polio eradication, immunisation could be stopped. However the synthesis of polio virus in 2002, made eradication impossible. It is argued that getting poor countries to expend their scarce resources on an impossible dream over the last 10 years was unethical. … The charade about polio eradication and the great savings it will bring has persisted to date. It is a paradox, that while the director general of WHO, Margret Chan, and Bill Gates are trying to muster support for polio eradication (22) it has been known to the scientific community, for over 10 years, that eradication of polio is impossible.”
nOPV2 is a relatively new vaccine. In March, the WHO noted that nOPV2 has been used since 2021 “under WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL) approval”. A report posted on the CDC website notes that there have been cases of it causing polio as in Burundi and DRC, but apparently at a substantially lower rate than previous oral vaccines. But The BMJ reported in August 2023 in “Polio vaccines: hope, hype, and history repeating?” that despite a great deal of positive media spin: “Before it was approved for emergency use, scientists warned that nOPV2 would not solve the problem set for it: to stamp out vaccine-derived polio. So far, it has not done so. Instead there are unanswered questions about the vaccine’s performance, whether the decision to rely on it was right, and whether there’s a viable path to the dream of global eradication even with a full suite of modernised vaccines.”
It seems remarkable that the WHO and company can spot and prioritize a case of polio amid the carnage and devastation that Israel has wrecked on Gaza. It seems driven by ideology, control or interest rather than prioritizing the needs of the Palestinians in Gaza.
nOPV2 requires another dose in four weeks. It is not clear to me what happens if someone gets one dose and not the second.
While Israeli snipers are targeting children in the head, Israel is being depicted as agreeing to a truce to help save children from polio.
Some have argued Israel’s goal is to ensure that there is not a polio outbreak in Gaza since that might threaten it — it’s an example of enlightened self-interest. However, this reasoning might be undermined by the fact that Israel has been giving its soldiers a polio vaccine. And they have been giving them the IPV vaccine, not the oral one given to Palestinians. This would indicate that they would be immune to it and Israel may effectively come off unscathed from a polio outbreak among the Palestinians. Also, IPV deals with all three types of polio. In 2022, Israel had cases of polio and the WHO reports IPA and OPV were used.
The vaccines may be seen by some as a minimal help to Palestinians in Gaza, preventing yet another disaster. And the minimal pauses resulting may be seen as baby steps toward permanent ceasefire, but this seems quite optimistic, especially given Israel’s posture. It is quite possible that the nOPV2 vaccine is largely being done for public relations reasons. This was the case for the much hyped pier the US government was allegedly building to help the Palestinians in Gaza. Some thought that there was a diabolical plot around the pier — as a mechanism for mass expulsion for example. But it mostly served as a propaganda talking point to communicate alleged US government benevolence for months on end, giving cover for Israel to continue its genocide.
Moreover, this is useful to distract from the failure of the UN to stop Israel’s carnage. Most especially the US-dominated UN Security Council has refused to implement orders from the International Court of Justice and virtually all states — with the notable exceptions of South Africa and Nicaragua — have failed in responsibilities under the Genocide Convention. The General Assembly has failed to take meaningful action using “Uniting for Peace”. So now, the WHO doing a hopefully minimally successful immunization effort is being used in various pronouncements to put a happy face for the UN system on the continuing catastrophe. See recent WHO/UN news conference.
Perhaps most ominously however, it may be problematic to give attenuated oral polio vaccine to a population that is immunocompromised — which most certainly includes the Palestinians in Gaza. They desperately need food and clean water and basic medical care. A host of diseases are ravaging Gaza and reportedly, 100,000 people in Gaza have contracted acute jaundice syndrome, or suspected hepatitis A. From Options for Poliomyelitis Vaccination in the United States: “Those in whom OPV is contraindicated include individuals with immunodeficiency disorders… The risk of VAPP [Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis] in immunodeficient children is 3,000 times that in normal children.”
Israel is virtually alone among industrialized countries in not signing the Biological Weapons Convention. Professor Francis Boyle drafted the U.S. Domestic Implementing Legislation for the BWC, the Biological Weapons Anti-terrorism Act of 1989 that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the United States Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush with the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice . He said the emergency authorization provisions “trigger the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation [PDF] requiring that each recipient or their legal guardians be given informed and voluntary consent… It does not appear that this is being done in Gaza. … They are giving the live polio virus to Gaza kids whose immune systems have been severely compromised already since October 8.” He warns you could have an “entire next generation of Palestinian Children in Gaza wracked and disabled by polio. … This implicitly raises and supports the question whether Israel is engaging in biological warfare against the Palestinians here by means of using the live polio virus.”
As the top of this article indicates, Israel is effectively using biological warfare against the Palestinian people by virtue of knocking out the water facilities. The open question is if the polio rollout is part of that or simply a response by international institutions — perhaps following funding incentives and other pressures — unable or unwilling to do their actual jobs to stop the ongoing genocide.
The UN Human Rights Council and the charity Save the Children have reported on thousands of cases of Palestinian children who have been detained, disappeared or abducted after Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip.
Users on social media are drawing attention to the story of Duha Talat, an 8-year-old Palestinian girl apparently removed from Gaza by an Israel Defense Forces soldier.
Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi reported on the story on his account on the X platform Saturday, writing that the young girl’s whereabouts have been unknown since July.
Tirawi, who is known for monitoring and reporting on the contents of IDF members’ social media accounts, recently uncovered an Instagram post made by Ido Zahar, a soldier serving in the Israeli military’s 432nd Tzabar Battalion. Zahar posted a photo of himself with Talat with no members of her family present. The girl was reportedly taken into custody by the IDF near Gaza’s Rafah border crossing in late July.
Zahar quickly deleted the photo and set his account to private after the Instagram post drew public scrutiny.
The soldier responded combatively when asked for comment on the incident, replying, “No story. No face. No nothing. Please delete this completely from everywhere.”
The Israeli military was similarly tightlipped when Tirawi inquired, with a spokesperson only saying that the incident was reportedly being investigated.
Meet Duha Talat, an 8-year-old child who was taken from her grandfather near the Rafah crossing by occupation soldiers. A soldier from the 432nd Battalion of the Givati Brigade, named Ido Zahar, posted a photo of her on his Instagram account. However, he later deleted the photo… pic.twitter.com/kBtCupZ9RR
Observers noted a similar incident took place late last year when the story emerged of a baby taken from Gaza by an Israeli military captain. During an interview broadcast on the IDF’s radio station Israeli soldier Shahar Mendelson told the story of a crying infant who was taken back to Israel after the IDF’s assault on Gaza City.
A post about the incident on the X platform was reportedly deleted by an official Israeli military account after it was pointed out that the child’s abduction could constitute a war crime. The incident received coverage in Israeli media after the Palestinian foreign ministry called for an investigation.
“A report by Save the Children, titled ‘The Missing Children of Gaza,’ estimated that thousands of children are missing in Gaza, including what the organization describes as ‘detained, disappeared, or abducted [minors],”’ wrote Tirawi. “The UN Human Rights Council, in a press release from May, reported numerous cases of women and girls from Gaza being forcibly disappeared by the Israeli military.”
Tirawi made contact with another soldier from the Tzabar Battalion who claimed Talat was taken into Israeli custody for “safety reasons” after an elderly family member reportedly offered to reveal the locations of Hamas tunnels in Gaza.
Where is 8 Yo Girl Doha Talat, last taken by the IDF near the Rafah crossing late July.
My latest story below
On August 30, we uncovered an Instagram post by Ido Zahar, a soldier from Israel's 432nd Tzabar Battalion. One of his pictures, featured a photo of himself with a young… pic.twitter.com/526o4rLwr7
However Tirawi notes several apparent inconsistencies in the second IDF member’s account.
“We believe it is in the public interest to know the whereabouts and safety of this girl,” continued Tirawi on X. “We also urge any relevant authorities to provide more information about the missing girl.”
Users on social media have taken up the call to draw attention to the story, hoping to convince major media outlets to bring light to young Duha’s case. Users fear Talat has been kidnapped or may suffer the same fate as Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was tragically killed along with her family and two paramedics in January by IDF soldiers outside Gaza City. The act of child homicide led to international condemnation.
Almost 17,000 children have been killed since Israel’s invasion of Gaza last October, according to recent figures from the territory’s health ministry, about 2.6 percent of all children in Gaza. Thousands more have been left trapped under the rubble of Israeli strikes and are presumed dead.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has previously refused to sanction Israeli military units credibly accused of serious human rights violations against Palestinian children, including physical and sexual assault.
A kindergarten was irreparably destroyed in a large-scale Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod overnight, local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said. Following the attack, a decision was made to close dozens of others and transfer some local schools to remote learning, he added.
At least 11 civilians, including two children, were wounded in Ukrainian strikes targeting various parts of the city, Gladkov wrote on Telegram on Monday morning. Nine of the victims required hospitalization, with five of them being in serious condition, he added.
“It is not a good morning here in Belgorod Region. There has been another shelling of Belgorod. The missiles made it through. A kindergarten in Belgorod has been almost completely destroyed,” the governor wrote in a post on Russia’s VK social network.
It is the third educational institution in the city to have suffered significant damage as a result of Ukrainian attacks, following previous hits on another kindergarten and a school, he said.
A decision was made to shut down three dozen kindergartens for a week in the city district of Kharkovskaya Gora, located in the south of Belgorod, closest to the Russian-Ukrainian border, Gladkov announced.
Almost two dozen schools in the area would also switch to remote learning, he added. This Monday, September 2, is the day when the school year begins in Russia. Children typically attend kindergartens for several years, before entering the first grade at about age 7.
The governor acknowledged that working parents might be unhappy about the closure of the preschools, but stressed that protecting the lives of the children was a priority.
Gladkov said that he had already visited the affected kindergarten, adding that if the strike had occurred during the day when the children were inside, “no one would have had a chance to survive.”
Around a dozen communities across Belgorod Region also came under Ukrainian shelling and drone attacks during the night. One person was killed in the village of Shagarovka, with at least six more civilians being wounded in other locations, including the town of Shebekino, according to the governor.
The Russian regions of Belgorod, Kursk and Bryansk, which all border Ukraine, have been a frequent target of cross-border attacks since February 2022. However, the bombardment of Belgorod has intensified over the past few weeks amid the stalling of the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk Region and Russian advances in Donbass.
On Friday, five civilians were killed and 37 were wounded in a Ukrainian missile strike on Belgorod. On August 25, five people lost their lives and 13 more suffered injuries as a result of a Ukrainian attack on the town of Rakitnoe.
After a pandemic, all cause mortality should go down due to a culling effect of the frail and vulnerable. We saw acute COVID-19 become the proximate cause of death in many seniors who were in the final year of natural life.
Now an analysis from Allen indicates that all-cause mortality is up in heavily vaccinated Australia and that at least two thirds in the variation per region is explained by mass COVID-19 vaccination. There are numerous well-documented fatal vaccine serious adverse events which are piling up months and years after the shots. Cumulative toxicity is another factor as a single person is not vaccinated just with the primary series (first two injections), but continued dosing every six months.
Allen, DE. 2024. The correlation between Australian Excess Deaths by State and Booster Vaccinations. Medical Research Archives, [online] 12(7).https://doi.org/10.18103/mra.v1 2i7.5485
These data call for a direct data merge of the vaccine administration and death data in Australia to explore these very uncomfortable relationships. Because the Australian government pushed the vaccines so hard, officials have been stonewalling the public on this important next analysis.
MOSCOW – The number of civilians wounded in the Ukrainian shelling of the Russian city of Belgorod and the Belgorod Region has risen to 46, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
On Friday evening, the governor said air defenses worked over Belgorod and the surrounding region, several air targets were shot down near the city. Later, he reported that the shelling had been carried out from the Vampire multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), five people were killed, 37 were wounded.
“We have again lost civilians as a result of shelling of the city of Belgorod by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Five civilians were killed… 46 civilians were wounded. There are currently 37 people in hospitals, seven of them are children. One child is in serious condition,” Gladkov said in a video published on Telegram.
Video appearing to be from the attack posted on social media show civilian vehicles being hit and no military targets in the area.
Nothing to see here, just the Ukrainians rocketing a random intersection in Belgorod to kill and terrorize civilians.
If the Russians did this we'd have a week of international condemnation, sob-story news articles and deranged posts on this website.
MOSCOW – The Russian Foreign Ministry called on international organizations on Saturday to condemn the recent shelling of the city of Belgorod and its suburbs by Ukraine, which killed five civilians and injured 46 others.
“We once again urge all responsible governments and relevant international institutions to resolutely condemn this brutal act of terrorism and publicly distance themselves from the Kiev regime and its Western patrons, who commit such crimes,” the statement read.
“Silence in response to the unbridled barbarism of the Ukrainian nationalists and their puppeteers from ‘civilized democracies’ would be tantamount to complicity in their bloody deeds,” the ministry warned.
The Friday shelling was planned in advance and constitutes an act of intimidation of the civilian population, the ministry said. Ukrainian troops fired cluster munitions using Czech-made Vampire multiple launch rocket systems, in what it said was another attempt by the regime in Kiev to “kill as many Russians as possible.”
Ukraine is exerting pressure on staff at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in Russia, with threats to kill their family members if they refuse to cooperate with Kiev, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has claimed.
“A lot of families have been separated” during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and Kiev is trying to take advantage of this, Miroshnik, who is tasked by the Moscow’s Foreign Ministry with collecting evidence of Ukraine’s war crimes, told RIA Novosti on Saturday.
Kiev’s security agencies are deliberately looking for relatives of staff members at the power plant who remain on Ukrainian territory, Miroshnik said.
They then use threats against family members, “to put pressure [on the nuclear plant employees] or provoke them to commit a terrorist act or to pass on information in the interests of Ukraine,” he claimed.
There have been cases of people “quitting or changing jobs in order to ‘deprive’ themselves of the opportunity to commit a crime and make sure the blackmailers lose interest in them,” the diplomat noted.
“Unfortunately, the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant is not the only one” experiencing such problems, as employees of other Russian critical facilities are also being pressured in a similar manner, Miroshnik said.
According to the diplomat, Russian security agencies are aware of such practices by Kiev and are working to counter them.
The Zaporozhye nuclear plant, which is the largest in Europe, has been under Russian control since March 2022. Throughout the conflict, Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the facility, and the Russian Defense Ministry has said that several attempts by Ukrainian assault units to retake it have been repelled.
In the fall of 2022, Zaporozhye Region officially joined the Russian state together with Kherson Region and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has a permanent monitoring mission at the Zaporozhye plant, said that since February the station had been hit by drone strikes, experienced loss of power lines, and had one of its two cooling towers damaged by fire earlier this month. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, who is expected to visit the facility next week, described the security situation as “extremely challenging.”
Five civilians have been killed and 37 wounded, including six children, in a Ukrainian missile attack on Russia’s Belgorod Region, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov has said.
Belgorod is north of Kharkov. Russia’s second city. It has endured frequent attacks by long-range Ukrainian artillery, which often fire projectiles supplied by NATO.
“Our air defense system worked over Belgorod and several targets were shot down as they approached the city,” Gladkov said on Telegram on Friday evening. “To our great sorrow, one person died as a result of a direct hit on a passenger car.”
In addition to the vehicle, an apartment building and several commercial buildings were struck, Gladkov said.
The governor later updated the death toll to five.
“One woman and four men died on the spot from their injuries before the ambulances arrived,” he said. Among the injured, seven adults and three children are in serious condition.
According to Gladkov, the attack was carried out with cluster munitions launched by the Vampire multiple-launch rocket system. The same weapon, provided to Ukraine by the Czech Republic, was used in the Christmas market massacre last December, when 25 Russian civilians were killed and 100 more wounded by Ukrainian cluster munitions.
The attack also caused property damage to three apartment buildings in the city, as well as two commercial buildings. Two houses in the nearby village of Dubovoye were set on fire by the incoming missiles, but it was quickly extinguished by emergency services.
The attorney from the Department of Justice who defended the Food & Drug Administration in court admitted on undercover camera that the agency’s actions were an abuse of authority by the government during its public campaign against ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
A trio of doctors recently won a major legal victory in a multi-year lawsuit sparked by the FDA’s viral 2021 public health guidance advising against the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19. The most notable offending tweet stated, “You are not a horse. You are a not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
Department of Justice trial lawyer, Isaac Belfer, defended the FDA in this suit brought by Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Robert L. Apter, and Paul E. Marik. On undercover camera, Belfer admits to a Project Veritas journalist that his client’s legal loss was deserved because the agency overstepped its statutory authority when it publicly tweeted medical advice.
Belfer told our journalist, “So, what the agency has done… [is] unquestionably beyond its authority. Making a recommendation of what drugs to take or not to take, that’s the practice of medicine. And FDA can’t practice medicine.”
The FDA’s public relations campaign also failed to inform the public that the award-winning antiparasitic medicine had a decades-long track record of successful medical usage in humans.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the doctors prescribed ivermectin to tens of thousands of patients and found the drug to be a cheap and effective treatment.
The doctors told Project Veritas that they suspect that the suppression campaign against ivermectin was motivated by the government’s interest in fast-tracking the experimental COVID-19 vaccination. This speedy vaccine roll-out could only be accomplished through the FDA’s emergency use authorization [EUA], and only if no other alternative medications existed to treat COVID-19.
The FDA’s tweets caused a deadly chain reaction. The agency’s pronouncements were swiftly enforced by national medical associations and regulatory agencies, pharmacists refused to fill prescriptions, insurance refused to pay for it, and doctors who prescribed it faced career ruin.
Drs Apter and Bowden told Project Veritas that suppression of ivermectin led to a prolonged pandemic, and potentially millions in excess COVID deaths.
Apter: “It’s not unreasonable to think that there have been a million unnecessary deaths from COVID in the United States because of the public health agency suppression of effective early treatment with repurposed inexpensive medications.”
Bowden: “If more people had access to early treatment in the form of ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine… we could have nipped the pandemic in the bud.”
As a result of the lawsuit, the FDA was forced to delete its social media posts warning against the use of ivermectin for treating COVID-19. Though the FDA removed its public statements, the agency did not change its policy or directives. Because major state and national medical governing authorities look to the FDA as an authoritative source on the appropriate use of drugs, pharmacies still refuse to prescribe ivermectin, and doctors face professional repercussions for prescribing it.
Dr. Talley Bowden was forced to resign her privileges from Houston Methodist Hospital; Apter was referred to the Washington Medical Commission and Arizona Medical Board for disciplinary proceedings; and Marik was forced to resign from his positions at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Apter: “Because of my prescription of ivermectin for COVID I am still facing persecution by the medical licensing boards in spite of the fact that they have not been able to show a single adverse event in my care.”
Bowden: “I have a medical board coming after me because I tried to help a patient get ivermectin. We all had professional repercussions because of our use of ivermectin.”
Though the doctors continue to face professional consequences for their advocacy of ivermectin use for COVID-19, Belfer admits that the doctors dealt a significant blow to the government with their court victory. He told Project Veritas that the agency will think twice before issuing any misguided health advice in the future.
“I think going forward they’ll [FDA] probably be a bit more careful. They [the doctors] got an opinion that was good for them. That kind of limited FDA’s authority. It’s not okay to… actually tell people, ‘You should not take this drug.’”
Dr. Bowden says the fight against government overreach was worth it, because now doctors are vindicated in their years-long quest to protect the health of their patients.
Bowden: “One thing this case did is set a precedent. I think it permanently tarnished the reputation of the FDA. I think the public will takes the FDA little less seriously now, and it keeps them from making the same bold, reckless move in the future when it comes to telling patients what they can and cannot do. Like Isaac [Belfer] said, and we have all said, the FDA is not your doctor. The FDA has no business telling patients what they can take. And we proved in the court of law that they cannot do that.”
Ukrainian troops are seemingly trying to inflict maximum damage on civilian property in the parts of Russia under their control, a senior Foreign Ministry official has said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has tasked Rodion Miroshnik with collecting evidence of Ukrainian war crimes in the conflict. Last week, he visited Kursk Region, which Kiev targeted with a massive cross-border incursion earlier this month.
Evidence on the ground and interviews with dozens of eyewitnesses indicate that Ukrainian forces are deliberately trying to devastate settlements within their grasp, the official told RIA Novosti on Friday.
”There are a huge number of reports of burned out and looted private properties, of auxiliary buildings being destroyed with a purpose. I visited some of such homes literally hours after they got attacked. People were evacuated, but their homes were shot at and burned with a kind of malice,” he claimed.
In some instances Ukrainian troops used incendiary munitions, Miroshnik said. Local residents told him that they saw soldiers firing at homes point-blank from armored personnel carriers and cheering when they went up in flames.
Some properties were apparently hit with shrapnel rockets, the diplomat said. Some munitions are armed with thousands of BB pellet-sized metal balls designed to hit enemy manpower in the field with an airburst.
”I visited someone’s place, which was hit by such a rocket. There seemed to be not a thing that was not pierced by those balls,” the diplomat said. Such an attack “leaves not a single windowpane. A car was turned into a sieve. Walls around were all in holes, and even a gas pipeline forty meters away had 40 holes in it.”
Kiev has deployed thousands of troops into Kursk Region, seizing some border areas but failing to advance deeper into Russian territory. The Ukrainian leader, Vladimir Zelensky, has claimed that the operation was highly successful, citing the capture of Russian border guards, who could be exchanged for Ukrainian troops in Russian custody. His aide, Mikhail Podoliak, has claimed that the attack benefited Kiev by instilling fear into the Russian population and putting pressure on Moscow.
As of Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated Ukrainian military losses in the Kursk operation at up to 7,800. Moscow has ruled out peace talks with Kiev following the attack, citing its targeting of Russian civilians.
ISTANBUL – The Hamas senior official Sami Abu Zuhri said the US administration adopts the Israeli position, which is disrupting ceasefire negotiations, noting that Washington is not serious about obliging Israel to stop its war on the Gaza Strip.
This came in his interview with Aljazeera Net in Istanbul on the sidelines of his participation in a conference held by the “Al-Quds International Foundation”.
Abu Zuhri told Aljazeera Net that the US administration does not show serious intention to obligate Israel to conclude an agreement.
He explained that the Hamas Movement “accepted the proposal of the brokers – Egypt, Qatar and the United States – on July 2, but Israel kept imposing new conditions, although the offer is outlined by the US President Joe Biden’s speech and the UN Security Council resolution.”
On the prospects for the negotiations in the future, Abu Zuhri said, “In all cases, there is an ongoing Israeli war of extermination in Gaza, and all international parties have to assume their responsibilities to stop the Israeli aggression and crimes.”
Abu Zuhri added, “the ball is now in the Israeli and the US court. If the Us administration is serious to reach an agreement, it must intervene to compel the Israeli occupation authority to stop this aggression against the Palestinian people and respect the previously reached agreements.”
With regard to the ongoing developments in the occupied West Bank, and the expansion of the Israeli occupation army’s military operations, Abu Zuhri said that the Israeli occupation army exploits the US cover to expand its aggression in the West Bank, stressing that the Israeli aggression is not limited to Gaza but extends to all the occupied Palestinian territories, especially the West Bank and Jerusalem.
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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