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European Commission Accused of Orchestrating $735M Speech-Control Campaign

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 21, 2025

A new report has uncovered an expansive and quietly orchestrated campaign by the European Commission to shape public discourse through nearly €649 ($735M) million in taxpayer-funded projects aimed at regulating online speech.

Titled Manufacturing Misinformation: The EU-Funded Propaganda War Against Free Speech, the document was released by the think tank MCC Brussels and authored by Dr. Norman Lewis, a seasoned analyst of digital communication and regulatory policy.

Behind the EU’s frequent calls to combat “hate speech” and “disinformation” lies what the report describes as a vast ideological infrastructure designed to erode free expression under the guise of safety and civic empowerment.

The Commission, the report states, “has funded hundreds of unaccountable non-governmental organizations and universities to carry out 349 projects related to countering ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ to the tune of almost €650 million.”

That staggering figure surpasses what Brussels spends on transnational cancer research by over 30%, a discrepancy the report calls deliberate: “The EU Commission regards stemming the cancer of free speech as more of a priority than the estimated 4.5 million new cancer cases and almost two million cancer deaths in Europe in 2022, for example.”

While EU officials present these programs as public-interest research, the report argues they constitute a form of “soft authoritarianism,” enshrining speech codes and narrowing acceptable opinion through bureaucratic manipulation. “This is a top-down, authoritarian, curated consensus,” it states, “where expression is free only when it speaks the language of compliance established by the Commission.”

Many of these initiatives feature a distinct use of vague and euphemistic terminology, part of what the report calls “NEUspeak;” a deliberate linguistic strategy designed to obscure intent and preempt scrutiny. The project acronyms alone, such as FAST LISA and VIGILANT, are described as a form of branding deceit.

As Dr. Lewis writes: “These chirpy acronyms don’t just sound like digital voice assistants or wellness apps…they are deliberate, dishonest strategic terms chosen to disguise a real authoritarian purpose.”

Some of the projects don’t only aim to influence the debate, they aim to automate it. AI-powered initiatives are being trained to identify and suppress politically undesirable speech in real-time.

One such project, VIGILANT, is described by its designers as ethical and user-centric, but MCC Brussels challenges this narrative. “VIGILANT is an AI surveillance suite aimed at monitoring, classifying, and profiling speech, users, and networks, which takes the complexity out of controlling freedom of expression.”

The report highlights that the EU’s censorship framework is not only technical, it is pedagogical.

Programs targeting young people are presented as civic education but function more like behavioral grooming. “The ‘capacity building’ is, in fact, the indoctrination of young people to behave and act as speech police,” the report explains. “What appears to be bottom-up reform is, in fact, a pre-scripted system of narrative compliance.”

Another cornerstone of the report is its critique of how taxpayer money is being funneled into what it calls pre-validated “research” meant to affirm political orthodoxy rather than challenge it.

“Research that systematically ‘proves’ this assumption is not research; it is the manufacturing of propaganda used to legitimize the narrative, pre-empt criticism, and thus delegitimize any ideas or narratives that do not conform.”

Far from defending democracy, MCC Brussels contends that the European Commission is subverting it.

“Language is the EU Ministry for Narrative Control’s software infrastructure of control,” the report warns. “When the EU Commission defines hate speech, disinformation or extremism, it is not identifying problems – it is drawing the lines around what can be said, by whom, and with what consequences.”

For Dr. Lewis and MCC Brussels, the takeaway is clear: this is not about protecting society from dangerous ideas, but about insulating a ruling ideology from democratic challenge.

“The Commission rebrands inquiry as a confirmation ritual rather than any honest pursuit of truth,” the report concludes. “A society that redefines surveillance as ‘safety’ or censorship as ‘content moderation’ does not need to silence citizens outright; it simply changes the meaning of their silence.”

May 21, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Ex-Adviser to Yanukovych Shot Dead in Madrid Suburbs

Sputnik – 21.05.2025

Spanish police confirmed to RIA Novosti that Andriy Portnov, ex-adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, was shot dead on Wednesday morning outside a school in the city of Pozuelo de Alarcon near Madrid.

“We did receive a report about his death. We have no information about the perpetrators yet,” the police said.

Earlier in the day, the Cadena Ser radio station reported, citing police and emergency services, that Portnov was shot dead at the entrance to a school in Pozuelo de Alarcon.

Portnov was included in the Ukrainian database Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) as a “traitor to the motherland” in April 2015, according to the information on the Peacemaker website. He is accused of allegedly calling for murdering Ukrainian citizens and encroaching on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian website Peacemaker is known for its scandalous posts, in which it reveals personal data of journalists and other citizens, labeling them “traitors to their homelands.”

Later in the day, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large on the Kiev Regime’s War Crimes Rodion Miroshnik assumed that Portnov could have some information that was dangerous for Volodymyr Zelensky or someone from his entourage.

“Portnov was an influential official in the Yanukovych era. He could well have had information from the ‘forgotten past’ that could ruin the ‘impeccable reputation’ of certain individuals in the current government. Or he could have had other information that was dangerous for someone from Zelenskyy’s circle or for himself,” Miroshnik said on Telegram.

The assassination looks very much like an “extrajudicial execution,” he added.

“It is hard to believe in the random nature of a murder with a control shot to the head, as well as the lack of connection with the Zelensky regime,” Miroshnik added.

Meanwhile, Spanish newspaper 20minutos reported that Spanish investigators did not rule out a connection between Portnov’s murder and the conflict in Ukraine. There is, however, another line of enquiry, which links the murder to organized crime, the report said.

May 21, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘EU sanctions against me a signal to all Europeans’ – German journalist

RT | May 20, 2025

The European Union’s decision to sanction two German nationals could set a dangerous precedent, where Brussels could severely limit the rights of any critic, journalist and blogger Thomas Roeper told RT.

Roeper, who has also collaborated with RT’s German-speaking service, has been accused by the bloc of “destabilizing activities” and slapped with an EU entry ban, as well as an asset freeze.

The European Council, comprising the leaders of EU member states, approved the bloc’s 17th round of sanctions against Russia on Tuesday.

Roeper and German blogger Alina Lipp, both of whom currently reside in Russia, are among the individuals the bloc has targeted for being “involved in activities aimed at undermining the democratic political process in… Germany.”

Speaking to RT later on Tuesday, Roeper said the EU had introduced personal sanctions against him because he has large audiences in Germany.

Brussels’ latest decision to sanction EU nationals should be of great concern to all German citizens, the blogger believes. He noted that the punitive measure against him was adopted despite there being “no court [decision], nobody said which law I have violated.”

“Without any court decision, some bureaucracy decided to freeze my money, to forbid working,” he told RT.

According to the author, the move “is a signal for all people in the European Union, because if they do it to us, and this goes through, tomorrow they will start doing the same… against any critics.”

He described the EU’s allegations against him as ludicrous. “I’m just a blogger sitting here in my kitchen and writing articles and I’m ‘destabilizing’ the EU which has a billion-euro budget for media work,” he quipped.

But what’s “not funny,” he noted, is that while he lives in Russia, people in Germany would have a hard time meeting their basic needs if their rights were curbed in a similar manner.

The EU’s latest round of sanctions primarily targeted Russia’s so-called ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers, which operate outside Western insurance systems. According to Brussels, Moscow has allegedly been using it to circumvent G7-led efforts to enforce a price cap on its crude oil exports.

May 20, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Continues to Destroy Water Sources: Civilians Targeted While Digging Well in North Gaza

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights | May 19, 2025

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest terms the killing of a group of Palestinian volunteers and activists by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) on Sunday, 18 May 2025, in al-Saftawi area in northern Gaza Strip, while they were digging a water well to serve the residents amid the inability of Gaza’s municipalities and local bodies to supply them with water.

Footages capturing the incident revealed the IOF’s horrific crime, as they directly and unjustifiably targeted civilians in blatant disregard for the principle of distinction, which ensures protection of civilians and their property. This crime reflects the IOF’s deliberate destruction of water sources, with the aim of turning Gaza into an unlivable zone and forcibly displacing northern Gaza Strip’s residents.

According to our staff’s monitoring, at approximately 18:15 on Sunday, Israeli warplanes fired at least one missile at a group of activists, who were digging a water well near al-Waleed Petrol Station in a-Saftawi area, north of the Gaza Strip. As a result, seven people were killed, and they were identified as: ‘Awni Mohammed ‘Awni Abu al-Nour (18), Ibrahim Mohammed Isma’il Khela (27), Isma’il Mohammed Isma’il Khela (29), Anas Ramadan ‘Abed al-Razeq Shanan (29), Fawzi Nafiz Mohammed al-Dadad (36), Hasan Mohammed Abu Warda (30), and Tareq Ziyad Mohammed Tanboura (24). Additionally, 5 others sustained various injuries. It is worth noting that the targeted activists were digging the well due to water scarcity in the area and the inability of Gaza’s municipality to pump water into residents’ houses.

This crime was not a separate incident but came as part of a vicious campaign to kill civilians without deterrence and destroy Gaza’s roads, water and health infrastructure over the past 19 months. The Israeli war machine has destroyed more than 330,000 linear meters of water networks and 655,000 linear meters of sewage networks, in addition to approximately 2,850,000 linear meters of roads and streets. Furthermore, 719 water wells have been targeted,1 and complete or partial damage was inflicted on 89% of the water and sanitation sector’s assets. This has resulted in water insecurity for more than 91% of the Gaza population, with 65% of them receiving less than six liters per person per day,2 constituting a deliberate violation of the right to life and human dignity.

According to UN reports, the destruction of Gaza’s water facilities has reached catastrophic and unprecedented levels, as 71% of municipal seawater desalination plants have been destroyed (100% in northern Gaza and Gaza City), along with 69% of water production wells (up to 88% in some areas), and 66% of water tanks. Additionally, the main seawater desalination plant in northern Gaza, which produced 10,000 cubic meters per day,3 was destroyed. Oxfam reported that due to this destruction and fuel shortages, water production has decreased by 84%, worsening the population’s suffering and deepening the crisis of access to safe drinking and domestic water amid the near collapse of the infrastructure.4

PCHR affirms that in this compound crime, the IOF killed innocent civilians struggling to secure their right to water, amid an IOF’s deliberate strategy that violates all international laws and conventions by depriving the Gaza Strip’s population of water and food sources. This materialized through systematic starvation and dehydration, using them as weapons of war aimed at subjugation and displacement of residents, thereby imposing harsh living conditions that align with the elements of genocide, as outlined in Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention. The intent of this strategy is to deliberately inflict conditions of life on Gaza Strip residents calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. The seriousness of these actions lies not only in their transformation of water resources into tools of oppression but also in reflecting a form of ecocide,5 which severely undermines Palestinians’ rights to life, food, land, and dignity, as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

In light of the above, PCHR stresses the urgent need for the international community to condemn these crimes and immediately halt them. PCHR also calls on the member states of the Security Council to awaken their collective conscience and work on issuing a binding and immediate resolution to stop the war, ensure the protection of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and enhance their access to water and essential food supplies by activating Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter against Israel. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to the four Geneva Conventions to pressure and obligate Israel to open safe humanitarian corridors for the delivery of water, fuel, and aid relief, and to allocate urgent resources to repair the damaged water and sewage networks, ensuring the restoration of the bare necessities of life for Gaza’s population.

  1. Gaza’s Government Media Office, Press Release No. (817), an update of the most important statistics of the genocide war on Gaza. ↩︎
  2. Report: Humanitarian response by the UN and humanitarian partners during phase one of the ceasefire. link: https://www.un.org/unispal/document/report-humanitarian-response-by-the-un-and-humanitarian-partners-during-phase-one-of-the-ceasefire/ ↩︎
  3. “Gaza Strip: WASH Infrastructure Damage Assessment”, Analysis of data presented in WASH Cluster Meeting note (12 June 2024) based on finding of UNOSAT (3 June 2024). ↩︎
  4. Oxfam, Report: How Israel has weaponized water in its military campaign in Gaza, June 2024, link: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621609/bp-water-war-crimes-180724-en.pdf;jsessionid=70739990D729E028EB247E737686F0FD?sequence=1 ↩︎
  5. [1] Laurent Lambert, “Ecocide as Genocide: A Human Security Approach to ‘Utter Annihilation’ in Gaza”, October 06, 2024  Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies:
    chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.dohainstitute.org/en/Lists/ACRPS-PDFDocumentLibrary/ecocide-as-genocide-a-human-security-approach-to-utter-annihilation-in-gaza.pdf ↩︎

May 20, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Max’s Story: What Happens When Water Fluoridation Goes Wrong

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 19, 2025

When Utah lawmakers met during the legislative session to discuss and vote on whether to end the practice of fluoridating the state’s drinking water supply, 17-year-old Max Widmaier was there to offer key testimony.

In 2019, when Max was a fifth-grader, he was poisoned when a malfunctioning pump in Sandy, Utah, released undiluted hydrofluorosilicic acid into the water, affecting 1,500 households, institutions and businesses and sickening over 200 people.

An investigation revealed that fluoride was detected in the drinking water at 40 times the recommended levels, and officials failed to notify the public for 10 days.

Max unknowingly drank the over-fluoridated water in school. Soon after, he spiked a high fever, developed tics, had severe emotional swings, and experienced developmental regression so severe that at one point he lost the ability to compose sentences, his mother, Jenny Widmaier, told The Defender.

“I don’t remember fifth grade,” Max told Utah lawmakers. “That year is just a gaping hole where memory should be … because I drank the fluoridated water that day when Sandy City broke its line to public water.”

Jenny said that day, the school called her to pick Max up because he had a fever. She didn’t know if it was a virus, an infection, food poisoning or something else, so she asked Max about what he had been up to. Max mentioned that he drank water at school and it tasted metallic. At the time, Jenny didn’t give it a second thought.

After some severe gastrointestinal distress and about four days sick in bed, Max seemed fine, she said. The following Saturday, he hung out at a friend’s house, ate some tacos, and things seemed normal.

That night, Jenny’s husband, who came home late, checked in on Max before heading to bed. He immediately went to Jenny and asked, “What’s wrong with Max’s face?”

Jenny was surprised by the question. They went downstairs to examine Max together. “I was just watching him,” Jenny said, “and about every 30 to 45 seconds, his whole face would seize up and his head would drop, his chin would drop to his chest, and then he’d lift up and he was fine. He didn’t even notice it was happening.”

She asked Max what was going on with his face, but strangely, he had no idea what she was talking about. “It seemed he was blacking out,” Jenny said.

She called the emergency line for her pediatrician. They told her that if it happened while he was asleep, it could be serious, but that otherwise it was probably just a tic.

The “tic” seemed slightly better the following day, but Jenny took Max to the hospital to be evaluated. While they were there, the provider asked if they lived in Sandy City — which they didn’t.

When Jenny asked why it mattered if they lived in Sandy, the provider said there had been a fluoride leak there.

“Then it sort of clicked into place — the metallic tasting water, and his school is in Sandy,” Jenny said. The provider checked the map and saw that Max’s school was located in the fluoride leak zone. He told Jenny to get Max tested for heavy metals.

Water fluoridation comes with heavy metals

Jenny performed a home test on Max and it was positive for several metals, including chromium and lead. She kept him out of school the next day.

She said:

“At this point it was getting weird. He had reverted to being a 2-year-old. We took him to get some food, and he sat there and he had this little metal cow that he was using to make mooing noises.

“And his ability to put sentences together had declined dramatically. This is a kid who in fifth grade, was scoring high on what’s called the AMC 8 test, which is a mathematics test for eighth graders. And that day, he could hardly put words together into a sentence.”

The family struggled to find a place that could do the appropriate blood tests, although she did finally find an out-of-network provider. A neurologist told her it was late for a tic to present, but that Max probably just had tourette syndrome.

Max also experienced behavioral problems. He had panic attacks and would scream hysterically.

She reached out to the city for help, but got no response. Finally, through Facebook, she connected with Lorna Rosenstein, executive director of Waterwatch of Utah, who “was like my fairy godmother.”

Rosenstein, who had been active in attempting to end water fluoridation in Utah for years, connected Jenny with fluoride toxicity expert Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D., who helped develop a treatment plan for Max so his body could eliminate the toxic levels of fluoride from his system.

In addition to a very strict diet, Max had to undergo several rounds of chelation therapy because he also had high levels of lead, arsenic and cadmium in his blood.

Most members of the public are not aware that heavy metals are present in the hydrofluorosilicic acid — a byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer production process — typically used to fluoridate water.

Max also had to do neurological exercises to retrain his brain. As the fluoride was eliminated from his system, his mental health also returned to normal.

None of the treatments were covered by insurance, Jenny said. The family never received any compensation from the city. The school, however, was very responsive. Jenny said they immediately turned off the water fountains and now provide filtered water for all students.

‘I have horrible balance and my sense of body is all screwed up’ 

“It took us about a year to recover him back to normal,” Jenny said. Max no longer has a tic unless he consumes food or drink with fluoride in it. “I can always tell almost immediately when he has eaten rice that’s been cooked in water, it’s not been filtered because he starts to twitch and his face starts to seize.”

Max told The Defender that his only memories of the entire year-long experience were of getting strange soreness at the edge of his eyes. He said he would blink to make it go away. Those were the blackouts.

When Max accidentally consumes something with fluoride in it today — now more than five years later — he experiences that same feeling and has to blink.

He also continues to have shaky hands. “My handwriting is horrible,” he said, so he uses heavy pens to counter the shaking. “I have horrible balance and my sense of body is all screwed up.”

Intellectually, he said, he feels fully recovered.

Max said he was glad to be able to tell his story to the legislators. “It was an acknowledgement,” he said. “It was like, ‘man what this kid went through is unfortunate’ from people on both sides of the water fluoridation debate.”

Max said he hopes his story raises the question for people about whether adding fluoride to water is worth the risk. “Sure, you can brush your teeth with a fluoride toothpaste or drink fluoridated water, but how much goes to your teeth and how much ends up elsewhere?”

“And there can be some freak accident. Is that a risk you are willing to take?”

Water fluoridation accidents occur frequently — but public often last to know

The 2019 accident in Sandy City was just one of many accidental fluoride spills and overfeeds that happen regularly, according to the Fluoride Action Network, which tracks publicly recorded accidents on a webpage.

Accidents range from a small, 10-gallon spill in 2012 in Connecticut to an incident in New Orleans in 2008, where the fluorosilicic acid ate through its storage tanks and then through a concrete containment tank.

In that case, to avoid a “catastrophic mix of toxic chemicals,” the environment department discharged nearly half a million gallons of the toxic acid into the Mississippi River.

Failure to warn the public about fluoride accidents is also common.

Last month in Richmond, Virginia, an accidental fluoride overfeed caused a discharge of approximately 5,900 gallons of fluoride solution into the drinking water. The city said the previous fluoride system had failed in January, and the recent leak occurred during the installation of a new pump.

The leak began on April 23. However, it wasn’t until April 27 — when a Richmond Water Treatment Plant employee called a state agency to report the overflow and said no one was taking action to address the problem — that any state officials even knew about the spill, 6 News Richmond reported.

The City of Richmond had not notified the Virginia Department of Health, neighboring counties or the public.

Officials said the short-term exposure didn’t cause a public health concern. However, that assertion was based on the claim that, “Fluoride levels detected at the Water Treatment Plant were 2.67 milligrams per liter (mg/L) which is below the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 4.0 mg/L, the highest level that is allowed in drinking water by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” the city’s press release said. “The optimal target level of fluoride is 0.7 mg/L.”

While that may be technically true, last year, plaintiffs who sued the EPA alleging fluoride causes damage at levels far below 4.0 mg/L won their case.

A federal judge ordered the EPA to initiate a process to regulate the chemical, finding that it poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health even at the recommended 0.7 mg/L levels.

The 2.67 mg/L is several orders of magnitude higher than the level at which exposure for children becomes risky, even though it is under the legal limit, and that limit must now be changed.

The city’s press release warned that children under age 9 could be at risk of dental fluorosis — a tooth discoloration — from the leak and should be provided with an alternative water option.

It did not mention any of the recent research that has been making headlines for the last year, showing that ingesting fluoride is linked to reduced IQ, behavioral issues, disruption of thyroid functioning and the gut microbiome in children.

Nor did it mention the risks to pregnant women.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

May 20, 2025 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Montana Becomes First State to Ban Warrantless Data Purchases by Law Enforcement

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | May 18, 2025

Montana has taken a decisive leap where others have faltered, becoming the first state in the US to officially outlaw a widespread government surveillance tactic: buying up private data without a warrant.

With the passage of Senate Bill 282 (SB 282), lawmakers have directly confronted what has become a backdoor into people’s lives, commercial data brokers selling sensitive digital information to law enforcement agencies, sidestepping the need for judicial authorization.

This so-called “data broker loophole” has allowed government agencies across the country to acquire personal details they’d otherwise need a warrant to access.

Instead of presenting probable cause to a judge, agencies could simply purchase location histories and other metadata from third-party brokers who gather it from mobile apps.

These apps often track users’ movements down to the minute, creating comprehensive logs of their daily routines. Until now, that information was effectively up for grabs, and no warrant has been required.

Montana’s new law puts a clear end to that practice. Under SB 282, state and local government entities are now barred from purchasing several categories of digital data, including but not limited to: electronic communications and their contents, geolocation data, financial transaction records, pseudonymous identifiers, and other forms of sensitive personal information such as religious beliefs, health status, and biometric details.

Importantly, the legislation doesn’t eliminate access altogether, it restricts how that access is obtained.

Law enforcement in Montana must now secure a judge’s approval via a search warrant or meet other legal standards such as investigative subpoenas. Consent from the device’s owner is also still a permissible route.

What SB 282 achieves is a ban on the government using cash instead of cause to gather what should be protected digital traces.

This isn’t Montana’s first move to prioritize digital civil liberties.

The state has already passed a range of privacy-forward policies in recent years, including strong limitations on facial recognition, protections for genetic information, and a state constitutional amendment that explicitly shields digital data from unreasonable searches and seizures. SB 282 continues that trend, bolstering Montana’s reputation as a leader in privacy rights.

The structure of the new law aligns with the spirit of a federal bill, the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden.

In the vacuum left by federal inaction, states have begun crafting their own responses. Montana, despite its modest population, is now at the forefront of that movement.

Montana becomes first state to close the “data broker loophole” that allows law enforcement to purchase data without a warrant by enacting SB 282 which prohibits the government from using money to access certain types of sensitive digital information

May 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador dictatorship: Made in Israel

By Alan MACLOED | MintPress News | May 14, 2025

Nayib Bukele may be Palestinian, but the dictatorship he has built in El Salvador is very much made in Israel. From arming his security forces to supplying him with weapons and high-tech surveillance tools, MintPress explores the Israeli influence helping to prop up the man who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”

Arming a Dictatorship

Since Bukele’s ascension to the presidency in 2019, Israeli exports to El Salvador have been rapidly advancing, growing at an annual rate of more than 21%. This increase consists primarily of weapons. Salvadoran forces are well supplied with Israeli hardware. The military and police use the Israeli-made Galil and ARAD 5 rifles, the Uzi submachine gun, numerous Israeli pistols, and ride in AIL Storm and Plasan Yagu armored vehicles.

Some equipment Salvadoran forces use comes free, courtesy of Israeli sources. In 2019, an Israeli NGO, the Jerusalem Foundation (a group that builds illegal settlements on Palestinian land), announced that it would donate $3 million worth of supplies to the Salvadoran police and military.

For others, however, the Bukele administration is paying top dollar, meaning that this relationship is extremely profitable for the high-tech Israeli defense sector.

In 2020, the Salvadoran police paid around $3.4 million for one year’s use of three Israeli spyware products. These tools include GEOLOC, a program that intercepts calls and texts from targeted phones, and Web Tangles, which uses individuals’ social media accounts to build up files on people, including using their photos for facial recognition. A third, Wave Guard Tracer (marketed in some regions as Guardian), tracks users’ movements through the GPS on their phone.

Perhaps the most notorious piece of spyware used, however, is Pegasus, developed by the NSO Group, an outgrowth of the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200. The app hit the headlines in 2022, when it was revealed that repressive governments the world over had used it to surveil thousands of public figures, including kings, presidents, politicians, activists, and reporters. El Salvador was one of the most heavily penetrated nations.  A report from Citizen Lab found that the Bukele administration was using it to secretly monitor dozens of public figures critical of the president, including 22 journalists from the independent outlet El Faro.

Incarceration Nation

Bukele has used these Israeli tools and weapons to crack down on dissent and opposition to his rule. Since 2022, when he declared a State of Exception, suspending rights and civil liberties, he has imprisoned at least 85,000 people, a staggering figure for such a small country. Today, around 2% of the adult population — along with over 3,000 children — languish behind bars in dangerously overcrowded jails.

The most well-known of these is the Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT), which is by far and away the largest prison in world history. Built to incarcerate over 40,000 people, it is to this center that the Trump administration has been sending migrants rounded up by ICE. In a meeting with Bukele in the Oval Office, President Trump stated that U.S. nationals would be sent there next.

El Salvador holds vastly more people in prisons per capita than any other country, and conditions are among the worst in the world. Food is sparse, lights are kept on 24 hours a day, and cells are frequently packed with more than 100 occupants. Those incarcerated at CECOT are allowed no contact with the outside world, not even with their families or lawyers.

Often, the first thing a Salvadoran family hears about their disappeared relative is news that he died while incarcerated. Torture is commonplace. Osiris Luna, the director of El Salvador’s prison system, has even been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in “gross human rights abuses.”

Bukele has justified the mass imprisonment of his countrymen as a necessary step to break the power of organized gangs and drug cartels. Yet a significant portion of those held are his political opponents. Among those detained are union leaders, politicians, and human rights defenders.

Facing the threat of imprisonment or other punishment, El Faro has moved its operations to neighboring Costa Rica.

A Palestinian Who Loves Israel

Amid the chaos, Bukele has fired tens of thousands of public service workers and reduced taxes on the business community. He has also reoriented El Salvador’s foreign policy from a progressive, anti-imperialist stance to allying itself with right-wing governments around the world, including Israel.

Despite coming from a prominent Palestinian family that emigrated from Jerusalem in the early 20th century, throughout his political career, he has made a point of vocally supporting Israel, its culture, and its foreign policy. As far back as 2015, when he was Mayor of San Salvador, the Israeli Embassy had identified him as a “partner for cooperation.”

Three years later, in February 2018, he visited Israel on a trip organized by Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Hotovely, and American Jewish Congress President, Jack Rosen. There, he participated in a security conference attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, and made a public appearance at the Western Wall.

In the wake of the October 7 assault, Bukele voiced his support for Israel and condemnation of Hamas. “As a Salvadoran of Palestinian ancestry, I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear,” he wrote, describing Hamas as “savage beasts” and comparing them to MS-13, one of El Salvador’s most violent gangs.

El Salvador is home to a large Palestinian population; some 100,000 live in the small country. And yet, the Central American nation is far from a stronghold of support for anti-colonial struggles. Palestinians in El Salvador have generally done very well and entered society’s upper echelons. Bukele is actually the third Palestinian to become president.

Historically, the Latin American business community has sided with conservative or reactionary forces, and the Palestinian diaspora has shied away from supporting resistance movements in the Middle East.

“Bukele’s culture is not so much Palestinian as it is neo-fascist. That’s his culture. So he is going to identify with repressive governments around the world,” Roberto Lovato, a Salvadoran-American writer and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told MintPress News.

The country is also home to a large and active evangelical Christian community, for whom Israel’s rise is a key issue. Despite being the son of the country’s most notable imam — one who claimed his son is a practicing Muslim — Bukele has positioned himself as a Christian conservative, and his evangelical supporters say he was chosen by God to rid the nation of gang violence. “I believe in God, in Jesus Christ. I believe in His word, I believe in His word revealed in the Holy Bible,” he said.

Dirty Wars and Dirty Politics

The connections between Israel and El Salvador, however, predate Bukele by decades. During the 1970s and 1980s, the country was a hotspot in the Cold War, and U.S.-backed death squads battled the leftist FMLN rebels. The military regime killed around 75,000 civilians in a dirty war that scars the region to this day. The violence was so extreme and so well-publicized that even the United States sought to distance itself from it. Into that void stepped Israel, providing 83% of El Salvador’s military needs from 1975 to 1979, including napalm. In return, El Salvador moved its embassy to Jerusalem, legitimizing Israel’s claim to the city.

Lovato, a former member of the FMLN, told MintPress that the country was turned into a “laboratory for repression.”

During the Civil War, the U.S. government aligned a whole panoply of different practitioners of torture and mass murder. You had trainers from Taiwan, Israel, and other countries going to El Salvador to train the Salvadoran government to do what they had learned how to do.”

One of the most notable individuals who received Israeli training was Major Roberto D’Aubuisson, leader of a far-right death squad. D’Aubuisson is known to have ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Nicknamed “Blowtorch Bob” for his penchant for using the tool on his opponents’ genitals, his death squad is thought to have killed some 30,000 people, many of whom were tortured to death. Thus, it is no stretch to say that El Salvador’s repressive state apparatus has long been sustained by Israeli money, tech, and know-how.

But this is far from an isolated example. Indeed, Israel has supplied weapons and training to repressive governments around the world, honing the skills acquired suppressing the Palestinian population and taking them global.

In Guatemala, Israel sold planes, armored personnel carriers and rifles to the military, and even built them a domestic ammunition factory. General Efraín Ríos Montt thanked Israel for its participation in a coup that brought him to power in 1982, stating that it went so smoothly “because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis.” Around 300 Israeli advisors worked to train Ríos Montt’s forces into genocidal death squads who systematically killed over 200,000 Mayans. A sign of the deep connections between the two groups is that Ríos Montt’s men began referring to the indigenous Mayans as “Palestinians” during their attacks.

It is a similar story in Colombia, where the country’s most notorious death squads were trained by Israeli operatives, such as General Rafael Eitan. To this day, Colombian police and military make extensive use of Israeli weaponry. So normalized has the Israeli influence become in Colombian society that, in 2011, sitting President Juan Manuel Santos appeared in an advertisement for Israeli mercenary firm Global CST. “They are people with a lot of experience. They have been helping us to work better,” he stated.

Israel also armed and supported the military dictatorships of Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, even as the latter explicitly targeted over 1,000 Jews in the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

In Nicaragua, Israel supplied the Somoza dictatorship, helping it carry out a dirty war. In Rwanda, it sold weapons to the Hutu government as it was carrying out a genocide against the Tutsi population. Israeli weapons were used by Serbia during the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s. And successive administrations in Tel Aviv also helped sustain the Apartheid government of South Africa, sending it weapons and sharing intelligence with it.

Therefore, it should come as little surprise that Bukele’s administration has sought and established such close ties to the Israeli government. These weapons and techniques, honed on the Palestinian population, are going global, helping a government thousands of miles away crack down on civil liberties. While Bukele — a Palestinian — is very much in charge of El Salvador, it is clear that his dictatorship has a distinct Israeli flavor.

May 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Telegram’s Durov names French official he accused of censorship request

RT | May 19, 2025

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has claimed that French foreign intelligence chief Nicolas Lerner personally asked him to censor conservatives on his platform ahead of the contentious rerun of Romania’s presidential elections. The Russian-born entrepreneur said he refused the request.

The accusations of foreign meddling first surfaced last year after Romania’s top court annulled the November election results, in which independent right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu came first with 23%. Authorities cited “irregularities” in his campaign, along with intelligence reports alleging Russian interference – claims Moscow has denied. Georgescu was later barred from running again.

On Sunday, pro-EU centrist Nicusor Dan was elected president of Romania. His conservative, Eurosceptic opponent George Simion accused France and Moldova of attempting to sabotage his campaign.

In a post on X on Sunday evening, Durov said he met with Lerner, head of France’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), in Paris. The agency, operating under the Ministry of the Armed Forces, is tasked with gathering intelligence and combating terrorist threats.

“This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hotel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused,” Durov wrote. “We didn’t block protesters in Russia, Belarus, or Iran. We won’t start doing it in Europe,” he added.

Durov had previously hinted that France asked him to “silence” Romanian conservatives. The French Foreign Ministry rejected the allegations of election meddling as “completely unfounded.”

“France categorically rejects these allegations and calls on everyone to exercise responsibility and respect for Romanian democracy,” the ministry stated, labeling the accusations “a diversionary maneuver” aimed at distracting the public from “the real threats of interference targeting Romania.”

Last year, French authorities charged Durov with facilitating the distribution of child sexual exploitation material and drug trafficking due to alleged moderation failures on Telegram. He was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport in August before being released on €5 million ($5.46 million) bail. Durov, who has denied any wrongdoing, was eventually allowed to leave France in March.

May 19, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Five more Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza; death toll rises to 222

Deceased Palestinian photojournalist Aziz al-Hajjar
Press TV | May 18, 2025

Five more Palestinian journalists have been killed in separate Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip, bringing the death toll to 222 since the start of the Israeli genocidal war against the besieged coastal territory in early October of 2023, according to local authorities.

Photojournalist Aziz al-Hajjar, his wife, and their children were killed on Sunday when Israeli warplanes bombed a house in the Saftawi neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip.

The family of Abdul Rahman Tawfiq al-Abadleh also confirmed that the Palestinian journalist was killed in an Israeli bombardment in the town of al-Qarara, located north of Khan Yunis. They said they had lost contact with Abadleh two days earlier.

Deceased Palestinian journalist Abdul Rahman Tawfiq al-Abadleh

Gaza’s government media office also said Palestinian journalists Nour Qandil and Khaled Abu Seif lost their lives alongside their young daughter in the Israeli strike that targeted their home in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

Deceased Palestinian journalist Nour Qandil and her husband Khaled Abu Seif

Furthermore, Palestinian journalist Ahmad al-Zinati was killed alongside his wife, Nour al-Madhoun, and their children, Muhammad and Khaled, on Saturday night when their tent was bombed in Khan Yunis.

Deceased Palestinian journalist Ahmad al-Zinati alongside his family

The deaths came only two days after Ahmed al-Halou, a reporter for the local al-Quds News Network, was killed in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military resumed bombardment of Gaza on March 18, killing thousands of Palestinians, and injuring many others, after it shattered the 2-month ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas and the deal on the exchange of Israeli captives with Palestinian abductees.

At least 53,272 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and another 120,673 individuals injured in the brutal Israeli military onslaught on Gaza since October 7, 2023.

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and former Israeli minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the besieged coastal territory.

May 18, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Western European Country Asks Telegram to ‘Silence’ Conservatives in Romania

Sputnik – 18.05.2025

A Western European country [Durov did not actually name the country responsible for the request directly but posted an emoji of a baguette, a thinly veiled reference to France] has asked Telegram to “silence” conservatives in Romania ahead of the presidential election run-off, Telegram founder Pavel Durov said on Sunday.

“A Western European government approached Telegram, asking us to silence conservative voices in Romania ahead of today’s presidential elections. I flatly refused,” Durov wrote on his Telegram channel.

He added that Telegram would not limit the freedom of Romanian users or block their political channels.

“You cannot ‘defend democracy’ by destroying democracy. You cannot ‘fight election interference’ by interfering with elections. You either have freedom of speech and fair elections — or you do not. And the Romanian people deserve both,” Durov said.

The presidential election run-off is taking place in Romania on Sunday. The leader of the opposition hard-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, George Simion, who won the first round with 41% of the vote, is facing Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, an independent candidate who came in second with 21%.

May 18, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Call for international probe into the fate of forcibly disappeared Gazans

Palestinian Information Center – May 17, 2025

GAZA – The Palestinian Center for the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons (PCMFD) said that Israel is practicing arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, and extrajudicial killings against civilians in the Gaza Strip, calling for an international investigation.

In a statement issued on Saturday, the center condemned Israel for withholding information about the forcibly disappeared from their families and preventing them from knowing the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, which compounds the suffering of thousands of families in Gaza.

The center called on the UN and the international community to open an independent investigation to reveal the fate and whereabouts of thousands of detainees from the Gaza Strip and to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against them.

The statement stressed that enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity under international law and cannot be tolerated or overlooked, calling for the activation of the mandate of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances and for Israel to be compelled to reveal the fate of those detained and disappeared during the military aggression in Gaza.

PCMFD also called for the inclusion of the issue of missing Palestinians in the work of the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly as an urgent humanitarian issue requiring immediate international action.

Thousands of families in Gaza continue to live in painful limbo, amid the absence of any effective international body tracking the fate of the disappeared and missing, it pointed out, stressing the need to break the silence and act before it is too late.

According to a report by the Palestine Center for Prisoner Studies, the Israeli occupation army carried out field executions of Gazan prisoners who were captured during the war. About 43 prisoners executed by the occupation army have been identified, while it continues to conceal the names of dozens of prisoners who were executed in various ways.

All estimates and testimonies from families and residents of Gaza indicate that the Israeli occupation army has arrested more than 11,000 citizens since the onset of the war on Gaza, subjecting them to all forms of abuse and torture and executing a large number of them.

The Palestine Center revealed that Israel opened new detention camps under army control to accommodate the large numbers of detainees after October 7, and practiced all forms of internationally prohibited torture inside them, in addition to immoral practices that reached the level of rape, depriving prisoners of the basic life essentials, amid an unprecedented policy of starvation. It warned of the continued martyrdom of prisoners in Israeli prisons as a result of such repressive and criminal practices.

The center called on the international community and human rights institutions to intervene immediately and form committees of inquiry to document the crimes of murder and torture against prisoners, to pressure Israel to stop these violations, and to demand that the International Criminal Court bring Israeli officials to trial as war criminals for their direct responsibility for these crimes and for providing cover for their perpetrators.

May 17, 2025 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Germany: Police block activists from leaving country to attend Remigration Summit in Italy in major crackdown

Remix News | May 16, 2025

German activists leaving the airport for the Remigration Summit taking place in Milan on Saturday were stopped and detained at the airport, interrogated for hours, and issued with an exit ban from leaving the country.

The summit will be attended by well-known activists from across Europe, such as the Austrian author Martin Sellner, Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek, and Belgian activist Dries Van Langenhove.

The latter currently faces a potential prison sentence for memes that were posted in a group chat seven years ago. However, not only are German police now cracking down on activists, even leaving the country for the event, but Italian police are also showing up at the hotels of activists attending the event.

Sellner has been putting out a video and posting updates on X on the various actions taken against activists involved in the summit.

“I know them, they are great guys, Generation Identity activists, who have been detained for hours by the German police. They were arrested at the airport in Munich. Two of them were arrested on the plane, where they tried to enter a plane to Milan, Italy, to attend a conference about remigration. And the German state now bans them from exiting Germany for several days until the conference is over. Bans them from exiting. They banned me from entering, and then they threw me out of several cities and basically crushed my readings, and now they’re banning their own citizens, EU citizens from exiting.”

Sellner says that the German government’s reasoning is “crazy,” arguing that allowing the activists to leave “would be detrimental to the German state, the reputation of the German state, if they would go outside and take part in those events, because this would look like the German state endorses those events.”

Sellner argues that the German state is headed into dark territory, mimicking the GDR, communist East Germany, with this exit ban.

“No, you are our property, and it’s our property, our citizens. If you go there, it’s bad for our reputation. That’s why we lock you in like nasty little children. The German state is going full GDR. That’s exactly what the GDR did with the Berlin Wall. They didn’t let their own citizens leave the country, and that’s the case right now. It would be now punishable by law if they try to exit to Italy, Austria, and Switzerland. They’re banned from going to Switzerland, Austria, and Italy for a certain amount of days. The German state can extend this at will.

Of course, they will take immediate legal measures. They have very good lawyers. You need good lawyers in Germany. If you’re an activist, if you’re posting memes on X, you need an excellent lawyer by now. But it’s really crazy. These laws exist, but they might be lying dormant for a while and now the German state is shutting down, switching off the democracy simulation, and moving up and activating the totalitarian mode, the GDR mode.

As for the German activists, six men and two women who were stopped at the airport, Sellner stated they were released after hours of interrogation. They must now report to the police station twice a day.

“Eight young Germans are now banned from LEAVING Germany. If they try it, they commit a crime. They have to check in daily at their local police station. If not, they have to pay an extra fine. The democracy simulation is shutting down,” wrote Sellner.

The explanation they were given for the exit ban was also delivered to them in written form. It reads:

“In the event of an exit from German right-wing extremists, there is a considerable risk of damage to the reputation of the Federal Republic of Germany due to the stays of German right-wing extremists who promote the transnational networking of the right-wing extremist scene, actively promote the inhuman ideology and give it more scope, thus harbors the risk of radicalization of other people and their trips for the development of financial resources and the like.”

Freilich also writes that “it is also due to the history of Germany that the arrival of the activist concerned gives the international impression that the Federal Republic of Germany supports the right-wing extremist ideas openly spread at the event or at least does not adequately address them.”

Essentially, the German state is attempting to make the argument that allowing the activists to attend the summit would be the equivalent of endorsing their beliefs and harming the reputation of Germany. If that is the standard, then apparently it could be argued that any activists Germany does not detain in the future for any conference is a sign that the German state officially endorses the contents of that conference? Such reasoning reaches into the realms of the absurd.

The exit ban on the activists not only applies to Italy, but also to countries like Switzerland and Austria, and will be in effect until May 17, just a minute before midnight.

The activists also shared photos of the last moments they had before they were detained at the airport.

Although Sellner says the Italian police are not involved in this travel ban, and it is the German police at fault, he recently also posted an update on X, noting that an activist staying in Milan was also visited by police and questioned at his hotel.

Sellner says that booking the Remigration Summit has been fraught with difficulties, as vendors and hotels have been continuously canceling on organizers, likely due to pressure from activists. Antifa groups are also active and may try to disrupt the conference, or even more importantly, physically attack those involved.

May 17, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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