What is the definition of a ‘dictator’? In the days that followed Trump’s social media post calling President Zelensky one, British media seized upon the subject and ran with it for days. Various public figures were asked whether Trump was right to use the word and whether they believed Zelensky was actually one. Two figures from the right, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss both said they thought Trump was both wrong to call him one and that in fact he wasn’t one.
This remarkable endearment for Zelensky is really the core of the problem in the west in particular the UK, where its leader Sir Keir Starmer declared that he would be ready to send British troops to Ukraine – a suggestion which was quickly shot down by the elites of Germany and France as preposterous.
It’s rare that the giants of the EU put the British government in its place on world affairs but we are living in unprecedented times of sensational stupidity and perhaps ignorance from politicians which we have never seen before.
Farage’s views on the Middle East tell us he is both ignorant of what is happening there and doesn’t have any advisors covering the region. But his views on Ukraine are even more shockingly deranged. Zelensky is a leader who has shut down anything which resembles an ‘opposition’ both politically and media, he has conglomerated all TV stations into one state-owned entity so as to shut down even the slightest criticism or accountability of his own actions, he has had the few dissident voices arrested and thrown into prison, with some predicting that there are thousands of journalists and media workers. Add to that it is rapidly emerging that the level of corruption and embezzlement linked directly to Zelensky is on a scale that even hard line critics in the West could not have even imagined.
In my own investigation in October 2023, where a very angry Ben Wallace insulted me in a WhatsApp interview before blocking me, I outline how the original, more sensational claim that only about a third of all military equipment sent to Ukraine was actually making it to the battlefield was in fact realistic. This analogy was bandied about for some time and was dismissed by Wallace and others like Alecia Kearns MP as nonsense and yet turned out to be more than just realistic but likely. That is to say that 66 percent of what was being sent to Ukraine was being sold on the black market in Libya making Zelensky and his close circle billionaires.
In recent weeks now mainstream journalists and politicians are talking about the arms scandal and it is only a matter of time before we shall see the realities of this. The British government have always turned a blind eye to it, both in Ukraine and further afield. It would cost them nothing to do a study in the Sahel to evaluate how much of the equipment there funding terrorism is coming from the arms bazaars of Tripoli where all of this kit is ending up. I suggested to Wallace that his own government at the time should send some investigators there (Libya) to look at what’s available. I was more or less told to go there myself and do the job for them.
But Zelenksy support structure for so long has been that of a dictator, in particular media. The hundreds of media outlets in Ukraine which were receiving USAID funding is extensive, not to mention the hundreds of civil servants which support him being on the same payroll. If that doesn’t shock Farage and Truss, then consider the same slush fund which paid out around a 100 million dollars to movie stars to go and visit him and fake their adulation, all for the purposes of cheating the humble U.S. taxpayer by raising his profile.
Who could forget Sean Penn giving him his own Oscar, or Ben Stiller chilling with the Ukrainian leader and making small talk? Angelina Jolie is even reported to have been paid 20 million dollars to meet with him but didn’t even manage that and simply mooched about a bit in the country before jetting back to the U.S. Of course, the celebrities all dismiss these claims, through the same left-wing woke press which is part of their extended political family. But the question we should be asking ourselves is simply this: if they were not paid, then why won’t they show up now and show support at the precise moment when Zelensky needs it the most? Given that these celebrities supported Biden and are Democrats, this would be the most logical thing for them to do. In reality, the wall of silence is what we see.
Dictators don’t stand over their hired killers and watch their victims in their final moments like Idi Amin did. In reality, they only indicate and hint to the thugs on their payroll what she should do to fix problems. Do Farage and Truss actually believe that dissidents are not rounded up and thrown into jail where they are tortured and in some cases murdered? Now that the vultures are circling over Zelensky and many are wondering how many days in office he has left, more reports are emerging with details of such cases. The story of Gonzalo Lira, the American Chilean blogger whose vlogs were often well-informed and threw a very poor spotlight on Zelensky is a very sad one as he was brutally tortured while in prison and finally died. If the Zelensky cabal can do this to an American citizen, perhaps Farage and Truss will not be too surprised when in the coming weeks we will have the same Damascus prison media moment where it transpires that there are certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of journalists, commentators and political rivals in Ukraine’s prisons.
The debate, if we can call it that in the UK, over whether Zelensky is a dictator or not is a remedial one at best as it misses the point. In Britain, during the same period a man was imprisoned for posting a social media comment about a Labour official while a granny was visited by two plain clothes cops about her mere criticism of a Labour councilor’s conduct. Plain clothed detectives!
Britain has descended rapidly into a police state with Starmer as its dictator. The high ground we once had where we scolded China for arresting protestors has now been kicked away from under our feet. We have become China. Britain’s police now cannot deal with crime but prefer being the ‘Thought Police’ and threatening old biddies.
And so the talk about what is a dictator is rather fatuous if not incongruent given that those doing it are part of an elite which only claim to cherish free speech but in fact loath it. Farage cannot be taken seriously on Ukraine but his comments do steer the bumble hack towards darker questions. Who is funding him? And is his own dream of being a PM in the UK going to merely continue the present dictatorship which silences anyone who questions him? His reputation of being thin-skinned and kicking out of his party anyone who questions his ideas is already established. His own repugnance of British media also is well known. Previously in Brussels, his decision led to the closure of the only free speech, anti corruption magazine going, which he was always fearful of exposing his own infidelity while an MEP. And as for Truss, the most inept prime minister Britain has ever had in its long history, whose dictator-like style while in office crashed the economy? How should we interpret her support for Zelenksy? Do both Farage and Truss admire this dictator? The problem is not with the word ‘dictator’, it is more about the people who use it for their own purposes. It is not important whether Zelensky is one or not, rather than he is not a dictator who is servile to Trump and his cabal. Unlike Farage, Zelensky is not our kind of dictator.
Utah lawmakers last week voted to pass the first U.S. statewide ban on adding fluoride to public water systems. The Utah Senate voted 18-8 in favor of the measure after it passed in the House.
If Gov. Spencer Cox signs the bill into law, it will end community water fluoridation. The new law also will give pharmacists new authority to prescribe fluoride supplement pills. Typically, such pills can be prescribed only by a dentist or physician.
Rep. Stephanie Gricius, who sponsored the bill, told The Defender she was thrilled the legislature voted to pass the bill. “Utah leads the nation in so many things and this is just one more example.”
Gricius emphasized that the law allows people to make their own decisions about whether and how to take supplemental fluoride.
“I am a firm believer that the proper role of government is to provide safe, clean drinking water, not medicate the public on a mass scale,” Gricius said. “Because I also believe in medical freedom, I wanted fluoride to remain available to anyone who wanted it for either themselves or their children — which is why we made the prescription easier to obtain through a pharmacy.”
The bill’s Senate sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore, said during his presentation on the Senate floor that the bill is “about protecting our water, reducing unnecessary costs, and ensuring people have the right to decide what they consume.”
Rick North, board member of the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), one of the plaintiffs who last year won a landmark lawsuit over water fluoridation against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said, “Utah’s fluoridation ban bill enjoyed wide support in both the House and Senate, reflecting both concerns over health risks and the firm opposition to adding any drug to drinking water, taking away people’s right to informed consent.”
North added, “If the governor signs the bill, it would be historic, and could be a catalyst for other states and cities doing the same.”
Opposition to water fluoridation has been growing across the country, particularly since a California federal judge ruled in the case brought by FAN, Mothers Against Fluoridation and others against the EPA that water fluoridation at current U.S. levels poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and that the agency must regulate it.
Judge Edward Chen’s 80-page decision outlined the overwhelming scientific evidence that exposure to fluoride is linked to reduced IQ in children. The EPA recently announced it plans to appeal the ruling.
Chen’s ruling followed the publication in August of a key report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Toxicology Program (NTP) that concluded higher levels of fluoride exposure in drinking water are consistently linked to lower IQ in kids.
Fluoride a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production
Gricius started working on the issue last year after a resident approached her about “having individual choice when it comes to what prescriptions she and her children took.”
Local water conservancy districts also reached out to Cullimore to ask the state to ban water fluoridation citing claims of employee safety and the decision in the landmark case against the EPA, Gricius said.
Proponents of water fluoridation argue it protects children’s oral health. However, in October, an updated Cochrane Review concluded that adding fluoride to drinking water provides very limited, if any, dental benefits, especially compared with 50 years ago.
Cullimore also emphasized that many Utah citizens don’t want the chemical added to their water. “This bill does not prohibit anybody from taking fluoride in whatever fashion they want,” he said. It just disallows people who do not want fluoride from having to consume fluoride in their water.”
Cullimore’s district includes the city of Sandy, where a malfunctioning pump in the water fluoridation system released undiluted hydrofluorosilicic acid into the water in 2019, affecting 1,500 households, institutions and businesses and sickening over 200 people.
An investigation revealed that officials failed to notify the public for 10 days and that fluoride was detected in the drinking water at 40 times the recommended levels.
The 18-8 vote to pass the bill in the Republican-dominated Utah Senate on Friday was largely along party lines, with two Republican senators voting against it and one Democratic senator voting for it.
If signed, the bill is set to take effect on May 7. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Cox plans to sign it.
‘We’re watching water fluoridation unravel globally in real time’
Since the September court ruling, many U.S. cities and towns have moved to pause or stop fluoridating their water, signaling that the long-term and largely unquestioned practice in the U.S. is facing heightened scrutiny by the public.
FAN Executive Director Stuart Cooper said the Utah vote is a marker of how significantly public opinion is shifting.
Cooper said:
“This is another significant victory for the public, who didn’t sign up to have a developmental neurotoxin and endocrine disruptor to their drinking water. The NIH-funded science showing neurotoxicity, the NTP report confirming that neurotoxicity and the federal ruling that fluoridation poses an unreasonable risk to human health have all pushed this topic over the tipping point. We’re watching water fluoridation unravel globally in real time.”
Cooper pointed out that 95% of the world and 98% of Europe do not fluoridate, and many countries passed resolutions banning the practice decades ago.
He said states and towns that continue to add fluoridation chemicals to the public water supply “are the extreme outliers and radicals in this situation.”
Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo in December advised governments across the state to stop adding fluoride to their water. Ladapo cited the neuropsychiatric risks — particularly for pregnant women and children — associated with the practice.
Lawmakers in at least three other states have also introduced legislation that would outlaw adding fluoride to community water systems, and four other states are considering bills to make fluoride optional or limit its concentration.
In addition to Utah, lawmakers in North Dakota, New Hampshire and Tennessee are seeking a ban on the practice. Bills in Arkansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and South Dakota would either repeal statewide fluoridation programs or set limits on the amount of fluoride added to water, Bloomberg Law reported.
Hawaii is the only state that does not offer water fluoridation for most residents. However, the military bases there are mandated by the federal government to fluoridate their water.
Bucking national trends, Democratic senators in Connecticut are introducing legislation to make the current levels of 0.7 milligrams of fluoride per liter, recommended by the public health agencies, state law. They are drafting a bill, Senate Bill No. 7, that would continue water fluoridation at current levels in the state even if federal policy were to change.
The state senate democratic webpage reports they are drafting the bill out of concerns that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., recently confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, suggested on social media that the Trump administration would advise all American water systems to remove it from drinking water.
Wales is that part of the UK the authorities have picked as the testbed for the first citywide deployment of what some consider to currently be the most radical form of mass biometric surveillance in public places – “AI”-powered live facial recognition.
What is likely to be the reason behind the “trial,” privacy campaigners are warning, is the eventual permanent deployment of this type of biometric surveillance throughout the country.
South Wales Police said that Cardiff will be covered by a network of CCTV cameras with facial recognition tech embedded in them, while the excuse is providing security during the international Six Nations rugby event. But the police also characterized the move as “semi-permanent.”
This appears to be a distinction between what the police in the UK have used thus far to carry out surveillance based on live facial recognition: vans with one camera.
The decision to move to position a host of cameras in the central zone of Cardiff makes this a significant expansion of the technique.
And while the police are reassuring citizens that expanding live facial recognition “really enhances” law enforcement’s ability to do their job – the Big Brother Watch privacy group slammed the move as a “shocking” development and the creation of an “Orwellian biometric surveillance zone.”
And while capturing everyone’s biometric data, and in that way, according to Big Brother Watch’s Senior Advocacy Officer Madeleine Stone, turning Brits into “walking barcodes” and “a nation of suspects” – in terms of solving crime, this is proving to be a waste of public money.
“This network of facial recognition cameras will make it impossible for Cardiff residents and visitors to opt out of a biometric police identity check,” Stone underlined.
And yet, over the three years that live facial recognition has been in use at sporting venues (only) – the use of the technology has not led to any arrests.
“No other democracy in the world spies on its population with live facial recognition in this cavalier and chilling way,” Stone warned, adding, “South Wales Police must immediately stop this dystopian trial.”
The technology works by capturing the faces of every person passing through an area covered, in real time, to then compare them to a database of those described in reports as “wanted criminals.”
However, when South Wales Police spoke about who is on their “watchlist,” it also included people “banned from the area” and those “who pose a risk to the public.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that the army will remain in Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank for the next year to prevent Palestinian residents from returning, Anadolu reports.
The Israeli army deployed tanks in the northern West Bank early Sunday, marking the first time since 2002 amid military escalation in the occupied territory.
“The Israeli army is expanding its operations in the northern West Bank, and starting tonight, it will also operate in the town of Qabatiya,” Katz said in a statement.
The defense minister said 40,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from Jenin, Tulkarem, and Nur Shams refugee camps.
“UNRWA activity in the camps has also been stopped,” he said. “I instructed the IDF (army) to prepare for a long stay in the camps that were cleared, for the coming year, and not allow residents to return.”
The army has been conducting military operations in the northern West Bank since last month, killing at least 60 people and displacing thousands.
The raids were the latest in Israel’s ongoing military escalation in the West Bank where at least 923 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 7,000 injured in attacks by the Israeli army and illegal settlers since the start of the onslaught against the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
The International Court of Justice declared in July that Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal, demanding the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Following the Munich Security Conference last week, European Union leaders appeared shell-shocked by US Vice President J.D. Vance’s scathing attack on Europe.
He criticized the continent for multiple reasons, including the lack of free speech, arrests of European citizens for inflammatory social media posts, insufficient commitment to security, and destabilization due to both legal and illegal migration. Although Vance seemed to address Western European politicians and officials, it is likely he was speaking over their heads, directly to the public. His words resonated with widespread discontent about politics and politicians across the region, aligning with the prevailing sense of unfairness felt by many ordinary citizens.
Western European leaders, including British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, appeared agitated and uncomfortable with Washington’s tone. Perhaps the hard truths Vance presented have forced them to reconsider their consistently underfunded armed forces. Vance’s warnings made it clear that they cannot indefinitely rely on the US for military power and financial aid, particularly regarding the Russia-Ukraine war. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky also heard that signal and immediately called for a ‘European Armed Force’. Western European leaders arranged an emergency meeting in Paris hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and, astonishingly, Starmer indicated British soldiers could be sent to the Ukraine to enforce any peace deal.
The British public and Parliament were caught off guard by what many see as a reckless proposal from their PM. He announced the possibility of “British boots on the ground” just hours after the Munich meeting ended. This decision, or threat, appears to be a unilateral move by Starmer. It is unlikely to gain widespread support across the country and is already sparking outrage, particularly in the “Red Wall” – Britain’s former industrial heartlands. A poll in The Times just last week showed that only 11% of young people in the UK would consider fighting for their country, showing what we all know: that the UK is deeply divided over class, race, and region.
This is a problem for Starmer and the British liberals who have yet again found their war drums that were put away following the disastrous follies in Iraq and Afghanistan. What was once the Labour heartlands, the de-industrialized parts of the country, have also been the typical recruiting fields for the British Soldier – the white working class. These communities have been badly let down by all politicians have become deeply resentful and detached from what is happening within the politics, media and chattering classes of London.
It is no coincidence that those beating the war drums in London are the same individuals who supported the Iraq invasion and opposed the outcome of the EU referendum that led to Brexit. There has been a distinct division throughout the country since Brexit and I suspect Starmer’s reckless offering up of our military to “peacekeep” for the EU is a signal that he wants a closer relationship with the bloc. Unfortunately for Starmer, his brand of Labour – middle-class metropolitan liberals – will never offer up their own children for military service and will look north towards the very people they have spent the nine years since the Brexit referendum accusing of being racists, bigots, and xenophobes.
Starmer and Macron are deeply unpopular in their own countries. Perhaps they think they can paint over the damage done in their countries by successive neo-liberal governments by pulling the patriotic chord through the threat of war. But Starmer must realise that this will never be his Falklands War moment – when an unpopular Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government turned around their unpopularity by going to war with Argentina in 1982. Working-class populations outside the big metropolitan cities, in places like Blyth, Sunderland, Mansfield and Stoke-on-Trent, have traditionally been patriotic and supported the British military, but they will not follow Starmer and the failed EU leaders into a battle they see as ‘not theirs’.
The lesson here for the Western European political leaders is that ignoring sections of the population, allowing deep divisions and inequalities to fester, and then banging the war drums and expecting the working class to go and fight a war for you is not going to work. They can see right through this, and Vance’s words spoke to them more directly than a despised European elite class ever could.
Dr Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic. She grew up in a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire and became politicized through the 1984 miners’ strike with her family. At 31, she went to the University of Nottingham and did an undergraduate degree in sociology. Dr McKenzie is the author of ‘Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain.’ She’s a political activist, writer and thinker.
The EU’s “Democracy Shield,” is presented as a way to strengthen information integrity online, especially in the context of elections – but which opponents believe is another way for the bloc’s bureaucracy to tighten the screws on tech giants, speech-wise – is facing vocal opposition in the European Parliament (EP).
The initiative’s first monthly meeting heard criticism in particular from MEPs that come from conservative and sovereignty parties, who wanted to know what exactly qualifies as “foreign interference in elections” – and why the double standard in the way social media content is treated compared to legacy, corporate media.
Namely, while the latter, in Europe at least almost without exception aligned with those in power, is free to publish any opinion, including those that are biased and could be reasonably expected to impact the outcome of an election, social media accounts get banned, while platforms are forced to change algorithms to limit the reach of any content branded as “foreign interference.”
To this point, some MEPs asked if only Russia is to be considered as a possible “election meddler” – or if other countries, the US included, can play the same role in some scenarios – and, that could be true of the EU itself.
According to European Conservative, MEP Fidias Panayiotou gave an example: “In my country, Cyprus, in 2004, through USAID, the US spent $60 million on the referendum for reunification.”
The main topic of the meeting is the now long-contested presidential election in Romania, where the “surprise” victory of Calin Georgescu got annulled as Brussels went all-in trying to make sure he is not eventually elected (that crisis is ongoing.)
The fact that Georgescu is not to the establishment’s liking, caused him to be labeled “pro-Russian” and, “ultra-nationalist” – while his use of social platforms to get the message across was condemned as some sort of “foreign interference.”
But “Democracy Shield’s” opponents are warning that – yet again – there is an attempt to misuse the term “disinformation” to undermine people’s, and country’s rights, namely their sovereignty.
In the context of elections, sovereignty is further threatened by initiatives such as setting up a new EU intelligence agency – that critics say may result in even more “centralization of electoral control in the hands of EU institutions.”
The Israeli authorities are preventing the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Nael Barghouti, and the family of prisoner Khalil Abu Al-Rub from travelling to Egypt to welcome their relatives, who are scheduled to be released on Saturday, according to reports by the Prisoners’ Media Office on Friday.
The office revealed in a statement: “The occupation intelligence is preventing the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Nael Barghouti (Abu Al-Nour), from travelling, as she was heading to Egypt to greet her husband who will be released tomorrow in the Al-Aqsa Flood deal.”
The statement added: “The occupation intelligence is preventing the family of prisoner Ashraf Khalil Hussein Abu Al-Rub from travelling to greet their son who is being deported to Egypt.”
Prisoners Barghouti and Abu Al-Rub are among the prisoners who are being deported and exiled from Palestine while their families reside in the occupied West Bank. They are scheduled to be released on Saturday as part of the seventh batch released as part of the prisoner exchange deal.
Earlier on Friday, the Prisoners’ Information Office in the Gaza Strip announced that Israel would release 602 Palestinian prisoners on Saturday, including 50 sentenced to life and 60 serving long sentences.
On January 25th, prominent Palestinian-American journalist and activist Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website, was violently arrested by undercover operatives in Switzerland, en route to a speaking event.
He proceeded to spend three days and two nights in jail completely cut off from the outside world, during which he was interrogated by local defense ministry intelligence apparatchiks without access to a lawyer or even being informed why he was being imprisoned.
Abunimah was then deported in the manner of a dangerous, violent criminal.
Abunimah’s ordeal caused widespread outcry, not least due to Switzerland being the oldest ‘neutral’ state in the world. Such is Bern’s apparently indomitable commitment to this principle, that it initially refused to join the UN lest its neutrality be compromised, only becoming a member in September 2022, following a public referendum.
Moreover, the country routinely scores highly – if not highest – in Western human rights rankings, and has provided a safe haven for foreign journalists and human rights activists fleeing repression.
Abunimah’s flagrantly political persecution and ruthless treatment, undoubtedly motivated by his indefatigable solidarity with Palestine, stands at total odds with Swiss neutrality.
So too Bern’s secret, little-known involvement in Operation Gladio. Under the auspices of this monstrous Cold War connivance, the CIA and MI6 constructed underground shadow armies of fascist paramilitaries that wreaked havoc across Europe, carrying out false flag terror attacks, robberies, and assassinations to discredit the left, install right-wing governments, and justify crackdowns on dissent.
Switzerland’s Gladio unit was known as Projekt-26, the numerals referring to the country’s separate cantons. Its existence was uncovered in November 1990, as a result of an unrelated Swiss parliamentary investigation triggered months earlier.
This probe was launched after it was revealed local security services had kept detailed secret files on 900,000 citizens, almost one-seventh of the country’s total population, throughout the Cold War.
The inquiry found during the same period, P-26 operated “outside political control”, and specifically targeted “domestic subversion”. Its membership ran to around 400, with “most” being “experts” in “weapons, telecommunications and psychological warfare.”
The unit moreover “maintained a network of mostly underground installations throughout Switzerland,” and was commanded by “a private citizen who could mobilize the force without consulting [the] army or government.”
Parliamentarians also concluded that P-26 “cooperated with an unidentified NATO country.”
It was some time before that “NATO country” was confirmed to be Britain. Subsequent investigations shed significant light on London’s mephitic relationship with P-26, and the unit’s role within the wider Operation Gladio conspiracy.
Much remains unknown about the extent of its activities, and will most certainly never emerge. But while P-26 was officially disbanded after its public exposure, the recent persecution of Abunimah strongly suggests MI6 continues to exert unseen influence over Switzerland’s politics, intelligence, military and security apparatus today.
‘A Scandal’
Discovery of P-26 prompted a dedicated inquiry into Switzerland’s “stay behind” network, overseen by local judge Pierre Cornu. It was not until April 2018 that a truncated version of his 100-page-long report was released, in French.
No English translation has emerged since, and a dedicated multi-page section on P-26’s relationship with US and British intelligence is wholly redacted.
Still, the report acknowledged the unit’s operatives were trained in Britain – Gladio’s secret “headquarters” – and remained in regular, covert contact with London’s embassy in Bern.
Oddly, a 13-page summary of Cornu’s report, published in September 1991, was far more revealing. It noted that British intelligence “collaborated closely” with P-26, “regularly” tutoring its militants in “combat, communications, and sabotage” on its home soil. British advisers – likely SAS fighters – also visited secret military sites in Switzerland.
Numerous formal agreements were signed between the clandestine organization and London, the last being inked in 1987. These covered training, and supply of weapons and other equipment.
Describing collaboration between British intelligence and P-26 as “intense”, the summary was deeply scathing of this cloak-and-dagger bond, describing it as wholly lacking “political or legal legitimacy” or oversight, and thus “intolerable” from a democratic perspective.
Until P-26’s November 1990 exposure, elected Swiss officials were purportedly completely unaware of the unit’s existence, let alone its operations. “It is alarming [MI6] knew more about P-26 than the Swiss government did,” the summary appraised.
P-26 was moreover backed by P-27, a private foreign-sponsored spying agency, partly funded by an elite Swiss army intelligence unit. The latter was responsible for monitoring and building up files on “suspect persons” within the country, including; “leftists”; “bill stickers”, Jehovah’s Witnesses, citizens with “abnormal tendencies”; and anti-nuclear demonstrators.
To what purpose this information was put isn’t clear. Many documents detailing the activities of both P-26 and P-27 and the pair’s coordination with British intelligence, apparently couldn’t be located while Cornu conducted his investigation.
Obfuscating the picture even further, in February 2018 it was confirmed 27 separate folders and dossiers amassed during Cornu’s probe had since mysteriously vanished.
Local suspicions this trove was deliberately misplaced or outright destroyed to prevent embarrassing disclosures about “neutral” Switzerland’s relationship with US and British intelligence, and NATO, emerging abound to this day.
At the time, Josef Lang, a left-leaning former Swiss lawmaker and historian, who had long called for the Cornu report to be released in unredacted form, declared:
“There are three possibilities: the papers were shredded, hidden, or lost, in that order of likelihood. But even if the most innocent option is the case, that’s also a scandal.”
‘Clandestine Networks’
The unsolved murder of Herbert Alboth amply reinforces the conclusion that shadowy elements within and without Switzerland were sure that certain facts about the country’s involvement with Operation Gladio would never be known.
A senior intelligence operative who commanded the “stay behind” unit during the early 1970s, in March 1990 Alboth secretly wrote to then-Defence Minister Kaspar Villiger, promising that “as an insider” he could reveal “the whole truth” about P-26. This was right when Swiss parliamentarians began investigating the secret maintenance of files on “subversives”.
Alboth never had an opportunity to testify. A month later, he was found dead in his Bern apartment, having been repeatedly stabbed in the stomach with his own military bayonet.
Contemporary media reports noted a series of indecipherable characters were scrawled on his chest in felt pen, leaving police “puzzled”.
Strewn around his home were photographs of senior P-26 members, “stay behind” training course documents, “exercise plans of a conspiratorial character,” and the names and addresses of fellow Swiss spies.
On November 22nd, 1990, one day after P-26 was formally dissolved, the European Parliament passed a resolution on Operation Gladio.
It called for the then-European Community, and all its member states, to conduct official investigations “into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organizations or any splinter groups, their use for illegal interference in the internal political affairs of the countries concerned,” their involvement in “serious cases of terrorism and crime,” and “collusion” with Western spying agencies.
The resolution warned:
“These organizations operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control and frequently those holding the highest government and constitutional posts are kept in the dark as to these matters… For over 40 years [Operation Gladio] has escaped all democratic controls and has been run by the secret services of the states concerned in collaboration with NATO… Such clandestine networks may have interfered illegally in the internal political affairs of member states or may still do so.”
Yet, outside formal inquiries in Belgium, Italy, and Switzerland, nothing of substance subsequently materialized. Today, we are left to ponder whether Gladio’s constellation of European “stay behind” armies was ever truly demobilized, and if British intelligence still directs the activities of foreign security and spying agencies under the noses of elected governments.
Given London’s intimate, active complicity in the Gaza genocide and ever-ratcheting war on Palestine solidarity at home, Abunimah is an obvious target for the MI6 spy agency.
So too Richard Medhurst, a British-born, Vienna-residing independent journalist arrested upon arrival at London’s Heathrow airport in August 2024 on uncertain “counter-terror” charges.
On February 3rd, Austrian police and intelligence operatives ransacked his home and studio, confiscating many of his possessions, including all his journalistic materials and tools, before detaining and questioning him for hours.
Believing this to be no coincidence, Medhurst asked the officers if London had ordered the raid. An officer replied, “No, Britain doesn’t talk to us.”
Coincidentally, Austria is another ostensibly “neutral” country in which MI6 was embroiled in Operation Gladio. Following World War II, British intelligence armed and trained a local “stay behind” cell comprised of thousands of former SS personnel and Neo-Nazis.
Innocently named the Austrian Association of Hiking, Sports and Society, like its Swiss counterpart, the unit operated with such secrecy that “only very, very highly positioned politicians” were aware.
For his part, Medhurst is absolutely convinced London is behind his persecution:
“Some of these Austrian accusations are very similar to the British ones… I think it’s being coordinated with Britain… British police seized a Graphene OS device from me and [it’s] very unlikely they’d be able to crack it… I suppose that’s why Britain asked the Austrians to raid me, grab anything they could find and go on this massive fishing expedition,” he said.
“The warrant even mentions my arrest in London to try and bolster their case.”
The Canada Files spoke to Canadian lawyer and journalist Dimitri Lascaris, about the Montreal police’s persecution of author Yves Engler, in retaliation for Engler repeatedly criticizing Canadian Zionist fanatic Dahlia Kurtz.
Police in Canada have arrested a Canadian activist and author for criticizing Israel and its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Yves Engler, a vocal critic of Israel and the Canadian military complex, was arrested on Thursday after Dahlia Kurtz, a Zionist influencer, accused him of harassment.
“Tomorrow the Montreal police will arrest me for posting to social media against Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Engler said in an article on Wednesday after Montreal Police reached out to him about their plans to arrest him because of Kurtz’s complaint.
Pointing out that he had “responded to Kurtz’s racist, violent, anti-Palestinian posts on X”, Engler said he had not harassed the influencer, who “supports killing Palestinian children” and “openly calls for state violence against those challenging Canadian complicity in genocide.”
“I’ve never met Kurtz. Nor have I messaged or emailed her. Nor have I threatened her. I don’t even follow her on X (Twitter’s algorithm puts her posts in my feed).”
The father of two was taken into custody on Thursday morning and appeared before a judge later in the day. He spent the night in jail, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday.
After he publicized his scheduled arrest, police pledged new charges of “harassing” police and “obstructing” their work against Engler… Full article
With one stroke of his pen, President Trump accomplished what we have been fighting for over the last 4 years – an end to college and university Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He signed an executive order to halt federal funding to all schools, including colleges and universities, that still impose Covid-19 vaccine mandates on students. While there are only 15 colleges and universities left mandating these shots, the magnitude of his message to higher education leaders should not be underestimated.
Covid-19 vaccine mandates on healthy young adults were never based on scientific data or sound reasoning, but they were harshly implemented nonetheless. These policies coerced a captive population of students to choose between abandonment of their college programs and dreams for the future or complying with decisions over bodily autonomy made by the “experts.”
Beginning in the spring of 2021, colleges and universities mandated students to take shots that never protected against infection or transmission of Covid-19. These mandates were imposed with the mantra that injections were the best way to “protect our community” from severe illness and death – a claim that proved false by the summer of 2021 just prior to mandated compliance for fall 2021 enrollment.
In fact, colleges that never had Covid-19 vaccine mandates had less infections and have no recorded history of severe illnesses or death among their campus communities as compared to colleges that did. It was easy to analyze these data using the colleges’ own Covid infection and vaccination rate dashboards until most of them scrubbed the dashboards from their college websites.
Over 1,000 colleges announced Covid vaccine mandates by the summer of 2021. After a concerted campaign by No College Mandates and other advocacy groups, by the spring of 2022, colleges had slowly begun dropping them. By the summer of 2023, very few colleges imposed the mandates on faculty and staff, but students were still required to comply.
Until this executive order, which tasked our new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to develop a plan to end these coercive policies, our nation’s entire academic apparatus seemed perfectly fine with the continued application of these mandates on students. For example, at CSU Dominguez Hills and CSU Cal Poly Humboldt, only residential students are required to show proof of Covid vaccination prior to enrollment. At Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges only students are required to take Covid vaccines. No other members of the college community must comply.
Coercive and mandatory policies such as these alerted many of us to the fact that student health was not at the forefront of administrators’ concerns. Somehow, they perpetuated the draconian notion that only students were to blame for spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus and that only students must comply to put an end to the pandemic. College leaders knew such strategies were incoherent and illogical, yet they persisted almost entirely unchallenged.
From the very start, many of us lost trust in the hypocrisy of such inconsistencies. It was downright crazy for students to have to put up with such nonsense and risk injury from taking novel and needless medical treatments in the name of “protecting the community.” This is why we refused to stop shining a light on the injustice of it all.
It is with deep gratitude to President Trump and his team for keeping his promise and ending all federal funding to colleges and universities that continue these unnecessary and dangerous Covid-19 vaccine policies. There was zero science or reasoning to support them, and this new executive order might just prevent similar dictates from ever happening again.
But our work is far from done.
Healthcare students are still being forced to choose between their dreams and their autonomy to access hospitals and clinical facilities. To graduate, healthcare students must complete their clinical rotations, and hospitals and clinical facilities have required that these students take updated Covid vaccines even when faculty and staff no longer must comply. There is zero rationale for this patently retaliatory discrepancy.
In Florida, it is against the law for any “a business entity [to] require any person to provide any documentation certifying vaccination…or postinfection recovery from COVID-19, or require a COVID-19 test, to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the business operations in this state or as a condition of contracting, hiring, promotion, or continued employment with the business entity.”
When I called the University of Florida Nursing Program a few weeks ago, however, I was told students are required to receive updated Covid vaccines to complete clinical programs with some providers. Making matters worse, some colleges smugly refuse to disclose these requirements to prospective or even enrolled students, often leaving them to learn about them in the final year of their program.
Ironically, but perhaps not unexpectedly, UF Nursing posted on X just last week that there is a nationwide nursing shortage including in the State of Florida. It blows my mind that those who determine policies affecting the training of our nation’s nurses were somehow unaware that their coercive and nonsensical policies would likely lead to such shortages. After No College Mandates drew attention to this on X, UF Nursing deleted the post.
In Montana, there is a similar problem. Montana law prohibits discrimination based on Covid vaccine status yet the Emergency Medical Technician program at Helena College still requires students to take Covid vaccines to enroll.
I have reached out to representatives in both states to report the college programs that are not following state law because if there is anything I have learned over the past several years, colleges and universities will get away with these discriminatory and punitive policies for as long as they can until someone steps in to put an end to them.
It is uncertain what will happen to healthcare majors whose colleges and universities no longer require injections to enroll but whose clinical partner assignments are still requiring them to complete clinical rotations to graduate. So, while President Trump took a huge step forward to end federal funding to colleges and universities that perpetuate unscientific and unreasonable Covid vaccination, it is not nearly enough to end the coercive policies at partner facilities when the unreasonable and unconstitutional mandates remain for many healthcare students who need to complete clinical rotations at those facilities.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention that there are legislative efforts in at least 9 states* to completely ban mRNA shots. Such efforts promise to stop remaining Covid vaccine mandates dead in their tracks. Until we see those efforts make more progress, we will keep pressuring healthcare programs to end partnerships with hospitals and clinics when those facilities require students to receive Covid injections, and we will keep working with state representatives to hold clinical partners accountable for refusing to follow state law.
It is long overdue that our nation’s healthcare academies leave our healthcare students alone to make their own private decisions over what medical measures to take so they can pursue their dreams and help heal our very sick nation.
*On February 15, 2024, the Idaho Senate blocked the vote to ban mRNA vaccines so as of right now Bill S1036 is dead, and Idaho should no longer be on the map of 9 states.
Lucia Sinatra is a recovering corporate securities attorney. After becoming a mother, Lucia turned her attention to fighting inequities in public schools in California for students with learning disabilities. She co-founded NoCollegeMandates.com to help fight college vaccine mandates.
It has been commonplace for so long that most Americans cannot remember a time before the United States government was out running public relations campaigns urging Americans to take this or that vaccine or other pharmaceutical industry product. Now, an early action by new US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suggests this practice may be coming to an end.
Helen Branswell reported Thursday at STAT News that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “was ordered to shelve promotions it developed for a variety of vaccines, including a ‘Wild to Mild’ advertising campaign urging people to get vaccinated against flu” and that the CDC was informed that Kennedy “wanted advertisements that promote the idea of ‘informed consent’ in vaccine decision-making instead.”
What a major change — a transition from being a pharmaceutical company product promoter to being a promoter of, as Branswell describes informed consent in her article, “the principle that people should be notified of all the risks, as well as benefits, of any medical intervention they receive or any drug they are prescribed.”
This is a good early step by Kennedy. It clarifies a new orientation placing focus on advancing information and choice instead of pushing product. If Kennedy continues on this course, he can accomplish major advancement for health and freedom in America as his appointment suggested would be possible.
An Israeli man attacked an Israeli woman with an axe in Jerusalem on Wednesday, mistakenly believing she was Christian, Anadolu reported yesterday, citing Israel’s Channel 13.
According to the media reports, police suspect that the attack, which took place in Jerusalem’s Old City, was motivated by “hatred of Christians”.
Eyewitnesses told the channel that the suspect shouted “Christian” at the victim before violently attacking her inside her home, leaving her with severe injuries.
The suspect then fled the scene.
The woman, who is around 70 years old and resides in the Old City, sustained serious injuries and remains in hospital for treatment, the reports added.
No statement has been issued by Israeli authorities regarding the incident.
In recent years, attacks against Christians in Jerusalem, including clergy members and tourists, have increased. Settlers frequently spit at and verbally abuse priests, while Israeli police have also been seen physically assaulting them.
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
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