Dutch foreign minister steps down after failed push for sanctions against Israel
Press TV – August 23, 2025
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned on Friday, after he failed to secure cabinet support for new sanctions against the Israeli regime over its ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Veldkamp, a member of the centre-right New Social Contract party, had informed the country’s Parliament he intended to bring in new measures in response to Israel’s plans to escalate attacks on Gaza City and other heavily populated areas in the besieged territory.
But he said on Friday that he could not achieve agreement on “meaningful measures” and had repeatedly faced resistance from colleagues over sanctions already in place.
Among his proposals was a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Veldkamp also revoked three export permits for navy ship components, warning of “deteriorating conditions” in Gaza and the “risk of undesirable end use.”
“I also see what is happening on the ground in Gaza, the attack on Gaza City, and what is happening in the West Bank, the building decision for the disputed settlement E1, and East Jerusalem,” Veldkamp told reporters.
His efforts also included imposing entry bans on hawkish Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, citing their role in inciting settler violence against Palestinians.
His departure leaves the Netherlands without a foreign minister.
Following his resignation, all New Social Contract ministers and state secretaries confirmed their support for Veldkamp and resigned from the caretaker government in solidarity, prompting a political upheaval.
“In short, we are done with it,” party leader Eddy Van Hijum declared, calling Israel’s actions “diametrically opposed to international treaties.”
The Netherlands’ Parliament had repeatedly delayed a debate on sanctions against Israel, a discussion that was already postponed from Thursday, as the Friday afternoon Cabinet meeting dragged on.
“There is a famine, ethnic cleansing, and genocide going on,” said Kati Piri of the merged Green Left/Labor parties. “And our cabinet has been deliberating for hours about whether to take any action at all, shameful.”
Opposition lawmakers had already expressed frustration at the inaction against Israel, with some calling for a no-confidence vote for the minister.
The political crisis comes against the backdrop of an already unstable government. The ruling coalition had collapsed in June when anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders withdrew his support over an immigration dispute.
Since then, the three remaining parties have continued in a caretaker capacity until elections scheduled for October.
Humanitarian conditions in Gaza have sharply deteriorated. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) reported on Friday that “the Famine Review Committee (FRC) has determined that Famine (IPC Phase 5) is currently occurring in Gaza Governorate.”
The FRC further projected that famine thresholds “will be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks.”
Since October 7, 2023, when the Israeli regime began its genocidal assault on Gaza, at least 271 people have died from hunger-related causes, including 112 children, the Gaza health ministry reports.
Beware Universal Mental Health Screening
By Cooper Davis, Jeffrey Lacasse | Brownstone Institute | August 21, 2025
How would your child score on a common mental health screening?
A mental health professional might view the results and conclude that your child has a mental health problem… that needs to be psychiatrically diagnosed and treated, even medicated.
Will this help your child thrive? Or will it reshape their identity in undesirable ways? Will you be comfortable with your child taking medications that alter their developing brains and could perturb their sexuality? When your child reaches adulthood, will they be able to withdraw from these drugs, or will they despair to find out that their body and brain have adapted to them, making this difficult or maybe even impossible?
For any parent with even minor reservations about our current medical and mental health system, these aren’t theoretical questions. A new public policy has just made them very salient.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has signed a new law mandating universal mental health screenings for every child in public school. This includes healthy children with no signs of behavioral problems. Parents can theoretically opt out, but they’ll have to do so repeatedly, as the screenings will be given at least once a year from grades 3-12.
Media coverage has been laudatory, expounding on the importance of “getting kids the help and support they deserve.” But do you know what a mental health screen is and how it works? Before sounding the applause, parents need to understand what these screenings are, how they’re used, and what the potential outcomes of their use might be.
The new law does not specify how children will be screened, what questionnaires will be used, or what procedures will be followed when a child’s answers are seen as troubling. But to get a sense of the ground that self-report mental health questionnaires cover, you can screen your kids right now with a commonly used questionnaire:
While this is a self-assessment, the questions are the same whether you’re a parent or teacher filling this out on behalf of a child. Each of the 35 questions can be answered “never,” “sometimes,” or “often.” The scoring is simple:
- 0 = “never”
- 1 = “sometimes”
- 2 = “often”
If the total score is at or above 28, professionals will consider it likely that your child has a mental health problem. The law doesn’t define what happens next. Ideally, there would be a lengthy (and costly) multi-hour clinical assessment for each such child that views these results skeptically, and heavily considers normal developmental issues and transitory problems. In the real-world mental health system, it’s hard to imagine that actually happening.
Unfortunately, the bias of the current system is towards overmedicalization, overdiagnosis, and overtreatment. The implementation of universal screening is likely to worsen these problems.
In the past, some physicians gave annual chest X-rays to smokers. This was a form of universal screening in response to concerns about lung cancer. At first blush, this sounds reasonable. The problem? False-positive results. Studies showed that annual X-rays did not prevent mortality. They did cause anxiety in patients. And incidental findings were common, causing unnecessary biopsies, procedures, and interventions.
Current screening guidelines now target high-risk individuals. This is an example where the medical establishment carefully weighed the risks and benefits of universal screening and concluded that it was not in the interests of patients, and with a well-defined disease in mind, lung cancer.
Mental health diagnosis is not like cancer. It is a fuzzy, subjective enterprise. We don’t have blood tests or brain scans; we have flawed checklists and clinical judgment. And obviously, being improperly identified as having a mental disorder comes with a real cost for the child.
Screening every single child makes it inevitable that some healthy children will be thrust into the mental health pipeline. Even assuming that the questionnaires work reasonably well, a 15% false-positive rate is likely. Combine this false-positive rate with twice-a-year universal screening from grades 3-12, and your child will have 20 separate chances to be wrongly identified as having a mental health problem…at which point the government ostensibly gets involved in the mental health of your child.
It’s easy to imagine the catastrophic results. A child’s mental health screen inaccurately identifies a mental health problem; the busy therapist confirms a diagnosis; there’s eventually a referral to a psychiatrist, who prescribes psychotropic medication. Out of 20 screenings, this only has to happen once to alter your child’s life forever.
I (C.D.) know, because it happened to me.
I was caught up in a similar diagnostic dragnet in 1991, when my teacher read about Ritalin in Time magazine and began “identifying” students she believed might have the condition, which at the time was known as “ADD” (the “H”, for hyperactivity, came later). My parents chose not to medicate me, but did send me to a psychologist and a pediatric psychiatrist. From them, I learned that my constant chair-tipping, foot-tapping, wiggling, and inability to tolerate boredom — the very traits that drove me to act out in class and leave little space between impulse and action — weren’t just part of me, but symptoms of a medical condition. It was presented as both permanently part of my nature and “acceptable,” yet somehow also extrinsic to me and framed primarily as a “deficit.” (At that time, ADD was not as widely viewed as a full disability as it is today.)
At 17, when I was legally able to decide for myself — though I now view the “informed” part as questionable — I chose to begin drug treatment. Even without the drugs, however, the diagnosis had already shaped my sense of self: diminishing my agency, reinforcing a feeling of abnormality, and feeding the belief that my more organized, conscientious, and inconspicuous peers possessed something essential that I never would. You can hear a fuller account in The Atlantic’s Scripts podcast series (“The Mandala Effect,” Episode 2, on YouTube).
My experience is just one example of how a single screening can lock a child into a lifelong diagnostic identity — and once that process starts, there are few real off-ramps. Surely no one in favor of this law wants that scenario to come true for any child.
But with 1.4 million schoolchildren in Illinois, we’re talking about dealing with the results of up to 28 million separate mental health screenings in the decade after implementation. Will the mental health professionals dealing with this deluge approach the medicalization of your child’s supposed problems carefully, gingerly, sensitively? A 2004 study found that screening 1,000 children for ADHD using the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM criteria would result in 370 false positives. And it’s common for children to be prescribed psychotropic medication at their first consultation with their physician or psychiatrist.
A comprehensive, in-depth psychological assessment for each child might help reduce false positives — but it would also mean spending 3-6 hours assessing each child, which represents a high burden in terms of both time and money. School districts in Illinois already report that a lack of time, expertise, and financial resources presents challenges to implementing universal mental health screening. The law passed anyway.
It’s hard to argue that attempts to identify and measure human misery, suffering, and emotional pain are a bad thing, etc.—especially when the goal is “getting people the help they need.” It sounds right. But the kids who will be screened every year in Illinois? They have many kinds of problems: social, relational, environmental, academic, psychological, and physical problems. Children today have issues navigating a modern life dominated by endless screens, scrolling, and even more endless data.
And also, they have some problems that you’re supposed to have—problems that have been a critical part of growing up since the dawn of time.
Our culture is currently debating the medicalization of human problems, the credibility of medicine, the influence of the pharmaceutical industry, and the ethics of imposing medical authority as state policy. Covid lockdowns were a prime example of this, and, similar to universal mental health screening, they were imposed without consideration of the unintended consequences.
Mandatory Covid vaccinations also led many Americans to rethink the role of government in their bodily autonomy, and to consider how arbitrary social policy could be when it claimed to be for the greater good (e.g., insisting that those with immunity to Covid must still get vaccinated). For those who have grown skeptical of medical authority, universal mental health screening will likely be viewed as another overextension of the government into the lives (and minds) of their children. Children aged 12-17 can already receive psychotherapy in Illinois without parental consent; universal screening offers a new on-ramp to this process.
The new Illinois law seems almost tone deaf, out of step with the lessons learned from Covid. This critique is cultural, social, and ethical in nature. But universal mental health screening is supposedly based on science. The new Illinois law does not give details; it just authorizes universal screening as if it is an unmitigated good. The devil (and the science, or lack thereof) will be in these details – how the policy is implemented. Assuming that the rationale for universal screening is scientific, we present critically important questions that should be addressed as procedures are developed:
- What is the evidence that universal mental health screening improves real-world outcomes for children? Is there evidence that it could cause harm? The scientific rationale for the program needs to be stated clearly, citing compelling data, and explicitly addressing the measures taken to avoid harm.
- Given that Illinois has already implemented universal mental health screening in some school districts, what were the outcomes for the children? After testing positive for a mental health condition, how many were further assessed, and how much time was spent on each child? How many ended up in psychotherapy or on medication? Usually, a pilot program tests the effectiveness of an intervention, and it is only adopted on a wide scale if it is shown to be effective and not harmful – where is that data?
- How many children a year does Illinois expect to inaccurately identify as having a mental health problem (e.g., how many false positives)? How many children will make it from 3rd to 12th grade without ever screening positive? What measures will address the known issue of false-positive results in universal screening? Do Illinois public schools have the time, money, and expertise to carefully assess each child who screens positive for multiple hours to ensure that they do not overdiagnose and overtreat Illinois children? If universal screening results in a surge of children who ultimately end up on psychiatric medication, how will the public know? Implementing this program without addressing these issues ignores the potential harm of universal screening.
- How will Illinois taxpayers know if this program is a success? What metrics will be tracked? The easy out is to focus on the implementation of the program, and if a high proportion of children are screened, call it a success, never mind the details or outcomes. But using the screening of children as a measure of success for a universal screening program is tautology; data must be collected that demonstrates that the program helps children measurably and does not harm them.
There are good reasons to object to the new Illinois program based on general principles. If the issues above go unaddressed, or if sufficient resources are not provided to allow careful and precise identification of children in distress, it has the potential to be a disaster.
Cooper Davis is an advocate, speaker, and writer. He is the Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative (ICI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that advocates for mental health system reform and helps people make informed choices about psychiatric diagnoses, drugs, and drug withdrawal.
ILLINOIS TO FORCE MENTAL EXAMS ON KIDS
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | August 21, 2025
A shocking new Illinois law will force public schools to conduct annual mental health checks on students from 3rd through 12th grade. Jefferey exposes the hidden risks and potential harm this invasive mandate could bring to children.
The war on truth: Why are Palestinian journalists being systematically erased?
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | August 22, 2025
The killing of seven Palestinian journalists and media workers in Gaza on 10 August has prompted verbal condemnations, yet has inspired little to no substantive action. This has become the predictable and horrifying trajectory of the international community’s response to the ongoing Israeli genocide.
By eliminating Palestinian journalists like Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qraiqeh, Israel has made a sinister statement that the genocide will spare no one. According to the monitoring website Shireen.ps, Israel has killed nearly 270 journalists since October 2023.
More journalists are likely to die covering the genocide of their own people in Gaza, especially since Israel has manufactured a convenient and easily deployed narrative that every Gazan journalist is simply a “terrorist”. This is the same cruel logic offered by numerous Israeli officials in the past, including Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who declared that “an entire nation” in Gaza “is responsible” for not having rebelled against Hamas, effectively stating that there are no innocent people in Gaza.
This Israeli discourse, which dehumanises entire populations based on a vicious logic, is frequently repeated by officials who fear no accountability. Even Israeli diplomats, whose job in theory is to improve their country’s image internationally, frequently engage in this brutal ritual. In comments made in January 2024, Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, callously argued that “every school, every mosque, every second house has access to tunnels,” implying that all of Gaza is a valid military target.
This cruelty of language would be easily dismissed as mere rhetoric, except that Israel has, in fact, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reports, destroyed over 70 per cent of Gaza’s infrastructure.
While extremist language is often used by politicians around the world, it is rare for the extremism of the language to so precisely mirror the extremism of the action itself. This makes Israeli political discourse a uniquely dangerous phenomenon.
There can be no military justification for the wholesale annihilation of an entire region. Yet again, the Israelis are not shying away from providing the political discourse that explains this unprecedented destruction. Former Knesset member Moshe Feiglin chillingly said, last May, that “Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy… not a single Gazan child will be left there.”
But for the systematic destruction of a whole nation to succeed, it must include the deliberate targeting of its scientists, doctors, intellectuals, journalists, artists and poets. While children and women remain the largest categories of victims, many of those killed in deliberate assassinations appear to be targeted specifically to disorient Palestinian society, deprive it of societal leadership, and render the process of rebuilding Gaza impossible.
These figures powerfully illustrate this point: according to a report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, based on the latest satellite damage assessment conducted in July, 97 per cent of Gaza’s educational facilities have been affected, with 91 per cent in need of major repairs or full reconstruction. Additionally, hundreds of teachers and thousands of students have been killed.
But why is Israel so intent on killing those responsible for intellectual production? The answer is twofold: one unique to Gaza, and the other unique to the nature of Israel’s founding ideology, Zionism.
First, regarding Gaza: Since the Nakba in 1948, Palestinian society in Gaza has invested heavily in education, seeing it as a crucial tool for liberation and self-determination. Early footage shows classrooms being held in tents and open spaces, a testament to this community’s tenacious pursuit of knowledge. This focus on education transformed the Strip into a regional hub for intellectual and cultural production, despite poorly funded UNRWA schools. Israel’s campaign of destruction is a deliberate attempt to erase this generational achievement, a practice known as scholasticide, and Gaza is the most deliberate example of this horrific act.
Second, regarding Zionism: For many years, we were led to believe that Zionism was winning the intellectual war due to the cleverness and refinement of Israeli propaganda, or hasbara. The prevailing narrative, particularly in the Arab world, was that Palestinians and Arabs were simply no match for the savvy Israeli and pro-Israeli public relations machine in Western media. This created a sense of intellectual inferiority, masking the true reason for the imbalance.
Israel was able to “win” in mainstream media discourse due to the intentional marginalisation and demonization of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices. The latter had no chance of fighting back simply because they were not allowed to, and were instead labeled as “terrorist sympathizers” and the like. Even the late, world-renowned Palestinian scholar Edward Said was called a “Nazi” by the extremist, now-banned Jewish Defense League, who went so far as to set the beloved professor’s university office on fire.
Gaza, however, represented a major problem. With foreign media forbidden from operating in the Strip per Israeli orders, the Gazan intellectual rose to the occasion and, in the course of two years, managed to reverse most of Zionism’s gains over the past century. This forced Israel into a desperate race against time to remove as many Palestinian journalists, intellectuals, academics, and even social media influencers from the scene as quickly as possible—thus, the war on the Palestinian thinker.
The Israeli logic, however, is destined to fail, as ideas are not tied to specific individuals, and resilience and resistance are a culture, not a job title. Gaza shall once more emerge, not only as the culturally thriving place it has always been, but as the cornerstone of a new liberation discourse that is set to inspire the globe regarding the power of intellect to stand firm, to fight for what is right, and to live with purpose for a higher cause.
British investigation reveals Reuters’ Israel bias
Palestinian Information Center – August 22, 2025
GAZA – A British outlet, Declassified, has published an investigative report, based on testimonies from Reuters employees and journalists, highlighting a bias in Reuters’ coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The investigation pointed to a recent article titled “Israel kills Al-Jazeera journalist it says was a Hamas leader”, referring to the killing of Palestinian journalist Anas Sharif. According to the report, although Sharif had worked with Reuters and was part of their Pulitzer-winning 2024 news team, the headline was chosen over more accurate alternatives, suggesting an inclination to echo Israeli framing.
The report further noted that this headline, and similar instances, triggered backlash online and raised deep concerns among some staff at the influential news agency.
One email, published by a resigned Reuters journalist in August 2024, expressed disillusionment with the agency’s framing of the “Israel-Hamas war”, stating that their personal values no longer aligned with the outlet’s approach.
He, along with colleagues, had called internally for Reuters to uphold journalistic principles. However, he concluded that senior management was unlikely to reform and continued to suppress internal criticism.
An unnamed source at Reuters told Declassified that “several journalists felt coverage of the Gaza war lacked objectivity.” In response, these staff members conducted an extensive internal investigation, including both quantitative and qualitative analysis of Reuters’ reporting.
The results formed the basis of an internal open letter shared with newsroom staff, intended to strengthen and rebalance coverage of Gaza.
Reuters journalists were also reportedly questioning why the outlet had not published more stories referencing expert claims of Israeli genocide in Gaza, especially when these claims were treated differently compared to similar allegations concerning Russia’s conduct in Ukraine.
Working through 499 Reuters articles covering Israel and Palestine between October 7 and November 14, 2023, the analysis revealed a consistent pattern: Israel-centric stories received significantly more resources than those focused on Palestinian suffering. This was particularly striking given that over 11,000 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, a figure nearly 10 times higher than Israeli casualties at the time.
The report further noted that in May, Reuters seemed to show early signs of editorial shifts, perhaps reflecting internal criticisms.
Declassified also unveiled an email from Howard S. Goller, Reuters’ International Editor, introducing an update to the outlet’s editorial guidelines on the “War in the Middle East.” This update permits the use of the term “genocide,”but always with attribution—and continues to restrict the use of the term “Palestine.”
Critics told Declassified that Goller’s update reinforces an Israeli-never-critical framing. It omits key context, such as the roles of the U.S. and Israel in derailing ceasefire negotiations.
The investigation adds that these guidelines ignore the illegal colonial settlement enterprise, the Israeli apartheid regime, and dramatically downplay the scale of destruction in Palestine. They also omit how Gaza has become the deadliest place for journalists since the American Civil War in 1861.
Euro-Med: Israel’s killing of Gaza farmers reflects a systematic pattern to enforce starvation
Palestinian Information Center – August 22, 2025
GAZA – The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) condemned Israel’s deliberate killing of five farmers in Khan Yunis, saying the act is part of a “repeated and systematic approach” aimed at eradicating Gaza’s local food production and enforcing starvation as a weapon in the ongoing genocide, now in its 23rd month.
In a statement released Friday, Euro-Med’s field team documented how at approximately 9:00 AM on Thursday, August 21, 2025, at least one Israeli drone-launched missile targeted five farmers from the same family, Suleiman and Mohammed Jamal Darwish al-Astal, Musa Abdullah al-Astal, Mahmoud Naif Mustafa al-Astal, and Mohammed Marwan Ahmed al-Astal, while they were working their land east of Asdaa Prison, west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.
Euro-Med highlighted that the killings coincide with an official declaration by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that famine conditions have been formally recognized in Gaza for the first time. The IPC warned that after 22 months of conflict, over half a million Gazans face “catastrophic circumstances marked by hunger, severe poverty, and death,” and that famine could spread to Deir al-Balah and Khan Yunis by the end of September.
These deaths are not isolated incidents, according to Euro-Med: Israeli occupation forces have killed or wounded hundreds of farmers and continued to destroy hundreds of thousands of dunums of agricultural land, over 93% of Gaza’s approximately 178,000 dunums.
Euro-Med underscored that these actions are carried out under the cover of an ongoing blockade, with major obstructions to aid convoys and deliberate security restrictions that prevent full and equitable aid access to hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
The Monitor emphasized that using starvation as a method of warfare is explicitly prohibited under international humanitarian law. Targeting the food supply, destroying agricultural infrastructure, and depriving civilians of essential means of survival constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined by international law. The deliberate deprivation of food, considered a primary means of civilian survival, also amounts to genocide.
Euro-Med urged the international community to take immediate and decisive action: open humanitarian corridors, lift the siege, and enable delivery of essential food and non-food supplies to Gaza. The group also called for accountability mechanisms to prosecute those responsible, including issuing and enforcing arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders and imposing economic, diplomatic, and military sanctions on Israel to halt its crimes.
New report exposes brutal torture, psychological horror of Gazans in Israeli jails
Press TV – August 22, 2025
Two Palestinian prisoners’ advocacy groups say detainees from Gaza are enduring severe torture and humiliating treatment inside Israeli detention facilities across the occupied territories.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) and the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs released a report detailing systematic mistreatment within the underground Rakevet section of Ramla Prison and the Sde Teiman military camp, both known for brutal abuse of Palestinian detainees.
The briefings, titled ‘Enduring Hell: Gaza Detainees Face Severe Israeli Torture and Terror Behind Bars’, are based on testimonies collected between late July and mid-August.
The findings chronicle the circumstances experienced by individuals detained after being abducted from Gaza, depicting these conditions as among the most dire in many years.
Lawyers who visited inmates in the underground Rakevet unit of Ramla Prison reported that the detainees arrived for their meetings in a state of visible distress, with some weeping and unable to express their traumatic experiences.
Before the visits, the guards physically assaulted and intimidated them, cautioning that they should inform their lawyers that the conditions were “excellent”.
Lawyers were likewise prohibited from disclosing information regarding the families of detainees in Gaza, where the ongoing Israeli genocidal war has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians.
Inmates recounted a system characterized by physical assaults, enforced solitude, and mental anguish. They are deprived of sunlight, permitted merely 20 minutes outdoors every other day, restrained with handcuffs, and compelled to bow their heads.
Mattresses are distributed exclusively at night, leaving the detainees to rest on metal frames throughout the day.
Insults and humiliation are pervasive, as guards are said to compel detainees to curse their own families.
One detainee seemed to have suffered severe beatings, with deep marks on his wrists from handcuffs and streaks of tears on his face.
He stayed quiet throughout the meeting, indicating with his gaze that he was too fearful to voice his thoughts. Lawyers noted a significant level of psychological distress among all detainees they visited.
Multiple detainees reported experiencing severe types of torture while being interrogated and held in detention.
Several detainees described brutal torture during interrogation. One prisoner, identified as AY, said he was arrested in December 2023 and subjected to continuous beatings for 30 days, resulting in torn chest muscles and ongoing pain from prolonged shackling.
Another detainee, YD, reported violent head injuries and rib fractures from beatings during interrogation.
The conditions under which Palestinian inmates are held by Israel are deplorable, with insufficient hygienic standards. Additionally, Palestinian abductees have faced ongoing torture, harassment, and repression.
Palestinian abductees have persistently engaged in open-ended hunger strikes to convey their anger regarding their unlawful detention.
Human rights organizations assert that Israel persists in infringing upon all rights and freedoms afforded to abductees under the Fourth Geneva Convention and international laws.
As reported by the Palestine Detainees Studies Center, approximately 60 percent of Palestinian abductees held in Israeli jails are afflicted with chronic illnesses, with several of them having died either during their detention or following their release as a result of the severity of their conditions.
BC Nurse Fined and Suspended Over Gender Policy Criticism
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2025
A British Columbia nurse has been hit with a one-month license suspension and ordered to pay over $93,000 in legal fees for publicly supporting women’s access to female-only spaces, a stance that the province’s nursing regulator deemed unprofessional.
Amy Hamm, who has spent more than 13 years working in healthcare and had risen to the position of nurse educator, was disciplined by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) after a years-long process sparked by her political expression outside of work.
The controversy dates back to 2020, when Hamm co-sponsored a Vancouver billboard that read, “I ♥ JK Rowling.”
The message, referencing the author’s defense of sex-based rights, triggered backlash from activists and a city councillor. The ad was removed, and formal complaints were submitted to the College, accusing Hamm of hate speech and transphobia.
In response, the College launched an exhaustive investigation into Hamm’s public activity over several years, compiling a 332-page report that examined her tweets, writing, and podcast appearances from 2018 to 2021.
After 22 hearing days stretched across 18 months, the disciplinary panel concluded that four of Hamm’s statements crossed the line into professional misconduct.
The panel claimed that Hamm made comments about transgender individuals that they deemed discriminatory. Hamm has not accepted this finding and is already appealing it at the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
Her legal counsel, Lisa Bildy, said, “In our view, the panel made a number of legal and factual errors that make the decision unsound, and we look forward to arguing these points before the BC Supreme Court. We are now considering whether to appeal the penalty decision as well.”
Bildy also raised broader concerns about the implications for free speech: “This decision effectively penalizes a nurse for expressing mainstream views aligned with science and common sense. The Panel’s ruling imposes a chilling effect on free expression for all regulated professionals.”
Hamm remains defiant. “The College has chosen to punish me for statements that are not hateful, but truthful. I’m appealing because biological reality matters, and so does freedom of expression. I want to express my thanks to the thousands of Canadians who continue to fund my legal case through donations to the Justice Centre,” she said.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is representing Hamm, announced the penalty and reiterated its commitment to pushing back against professional censorship.
Trump administration sued to disclose funding for controversial Gaza aid group
Press TV – August 21, 2025
An American legal advocacy organization has filed a lawsuit to seek the source of funding for the controversial US and Israeli-backed group delivering aid in the Gaza Strip.
The US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a so-called humanitarian group set up to cater to the needs of the Palestinian people, has cost the lives of hundreds of Gazans, already ravaged by famine and genocide.
International aid experts have described GHF’s distribution points as “death traps, criticizing the relief group’s work model as “an insult to the humanitarian enterprise and standards.”
GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay told Channel 4 of the UK last week that Western European countries funded GHF, but that he would not reveal which countries did it.
On Wednesday, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a lawsuit to seek the source of GHF’s funding and its initial tens of millions of dollars paid as salaries and the travel expenses to its aid workers, who have been described as “mercenaries.”
The CCR was investigating the legality of GHF’s charter and demanding that its financial records be revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.
In its lawsuit, the CCR requested that Delaware’s Attorney General Kathy Jennings “investigate GHF and revoke its charter on grounds that it is illegally abusing its privileges with its complicity in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.”
The New York-based firm said it filed its lawsuit against the Donald Trump administration for its failure to comply with its request.
The CCR said it aims to follow the money to find who is funding the failed aid operation.
“Today’s lawsuit seeks records that could shed light on not only the decision-making process… but also on the creation of GHF, its funding and how it plans to use” a US government grant, the CCR said.
“The Center for Constitutional Rights is particularly interested in information that could reveal whether the administration’s distribution of funds has any link to President Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ plan, which would cleanse the area of Palestinians and redevelop it for investors,” the statement said.
Since GHF began its relief operations in southern Gaza in May, which have left over 1,000 Palestinians seeking food aid dead at its four distribution points across Gaza, its funding sources have been a secret.
US military contractors who staff GHF have also been seen in videos shooting at aid seekers – something former US special forces soldier Anthony Aguilar confirmed after leaving the organization.
“GHF, far from alleviating suffering in Gaza, is contributing to the forced displacement, killing and furtherance of genocide of Palestinians,” the CCR said.
GHF food aid distribution points “have become synonymous with scenes of chaos and carnage,” it added.
Meanwhile, human rights experts familiar with the matter say the word “humanitarian” in the title of the organization only serves to “add to Israel’s humanitarian camouflage.”
“Without clear accountability, the very idea of humanitarian relief may ultimately become a casualty of modern hybrid warfare,” they warned.
Analysts say the United States and the Israeli regime created GHF to bypass the United Nations’ central role in aid distribution in Gaza.
The UN has refused to cooperate with the US-Israeli program, calling it a militarized aid model that would result in the displacement of the Gaza people.
Since the Israeli regime launched its genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, most of the population has been forced to relocate, some of them several times.
More than 62,122 people in Gaza, most of them women and children, have been killed during this time, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Hungary on the brink of existential decision: confront Kiev and break with NATO or remain hostage to Ukrainian terror?
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 21, 2025
The recent Ukrainian attack on the Druzhba pipeline — vital for the oil supply of Hungary and Slovakia — marks a turning point in the geopolitical conflict in Eastern Europe. The strike was confirmed by Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, with commander Robert Brovdi publicly celebrating the act of energy sabotage. Far from an isolated incident, this was a deliberate act of aggression against EU member states that have pursued a sovereign foreign policy contrary to NATO’s warmongering agenda.
The attack was not merely military. It was political, economic, and — above all — symbolic. By targeting the core infrastructure that sustains Hungary and Slovakia, Kiev is sending a clear message: dissent within the EU will not be tolerated. Budapest and Bratislava’s opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine and denouncing illegal sanctions against Russia has made them, in practice, targets of the Ukrainian nationalist regime.
Budapest responded firmly. Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó did not hesitate to call the attack “outrageous and unacceptable.” But Kiev’s arrogance remains unshaken. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga not only dismissed Hungary’s criticisms but also claimed that the blame lies with Moscow, demanding that Hungary abandon its “dependence” on Russian energy. This is a perverse inversion of reality, typical of the Zelensky regime, propped up by Washington, London, and Brussels.
But the issue goes beyond oil supplies. Ukrainian hostility toward Hungary is not new — it is only deepening. Since 2014, Hungarians in Transcarpathia have lived under what can only be described as an ethnic apartheid regime. A barrage of cultural and linguistic persecution measures has taken hold: systematic closure of Hungarian-language schools, bans on national symbols, restrictions on the use of the mother tongue in public spaces, and even efforts to erase Hungarian place names in historically Hungarian areas.
Even more alarming is the practice of forced military conscription, disproportionately targeting young Hungarians in the region. There are growing reports, confirmed by independent observers and human rights organizations, that Hungarian recruits are being sent to the most dangerous frontlines in eastern Ukraine — used as cannon fodder in a campaign of collective punishment and population control. Cases of murders during forced enlistments by Ukrainian recruiters have already been documented — but are systematically silenced by a Western media eager to portray Kiev’s crimes as “democratic resistance.”
In this context, Hungary faces a question that can no longer be postponed: how much longer can Ukrainian terror be tolerated? This is no longer a mere diplomatic dispute. It is an existential issue for the Hungarian nation and for the 150,000 ethnic Hungarians who live under oppression in Transcarpathia. The logical answer would be the launch of a Hungarian special military operation on Ukrainian territory — much like what Moscow undertook in defense of the Donbass’ Russians. The objective would be clear: to liberate the ethnic Hungarians and restore historical justice in the region.
At the same time, Budapest must reconsider its membership in NATO and the European Union — structures that have proven hostile to national sovereignty, complicit with the Kiev regime, and sources of regional instability. NATO has armed Ukraine, dragged the continent into war, and now remains silent in the face of aggression against one of its own members. The EU, for its part, treats Hungary’s legitimate concerns over security and cultural identity with contempt, all while financing a failed war machine.
The decision that Viktor Orbán and his government must make is difficult — but inevitable: remain a hostage to the Western powers, or lead the way in a new European realignment, alongside nations that respect sovereignty and traditional values — such as Russia.
The attack on the Druzhba pipeline was not merely an assault on Hungary’s energy infrastructure. It was a warning. Just as the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev is willing to kill its own citizens because of their Hungarian ethnicity, it is equally willing to attack its own territory and sabotage its own infrastructure just to hurt Hungary.
The continued existence of the Kiev Junta is an existential threat to Hungary. And like all existential threats, it demands a response of equal magnitude.
Jurij Kofner: Europe Enters Century of Humiliation?
Glenn Diesen | August 20, 2025
Jurij Kofner is an economist and an economic policy advisor to AfD. Kofner discusses the de-industrialisation and economic decline in Germany, and the wider socio-economic and political challenges that continue to threaten the relevance of Europe.
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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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