EU’s Kallas blasts Trump over ‘Russian talking points’
RT | February 28, 2025
The European Union’s top diplomat has suggested that US President Donald Trump has adopted Russian narratives about the Ukraine conflict. Kaja Kallas also expressed concern over Washington’s supposed drift away from its long-time European allies.
Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy and former Estonian Prime Minister (2021-2024), is known for her hawkish views on foreign policy.
In an interview with the media outlet Axios on Thursday, she said it had been “uncomfortable” to hear Trump and other senior US officials “repeating Russian narratives and talking points” in recent weeks.
“The statements made towards us are quite strong. The statements regarding Russia are very friendly. It is a change,” Kallas observed. She claimed that if Russia is allowed “back around the international table like nothing has happened,” more armed conflicts will follow, and not only in Europe.
The diplomat also insisted that while US officials are free to “talk with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin all they want… in order for any kind of deal to be implemented, they need the Europeans.” Failure to include the EU and Ukraine in negotiations would prevent any agreement from being implemented, Kallas argued.
Both the bloc’s representatives and officials from Kiev were excluded from the US-Russia negotiations held in Saudi Arabia earlier this month. Washington and Moscow have argued that no other parties were invited because the talks centered on first restoring bilateral relations.
Kallas also balked at criticisms regarding the state of democracy in the EU voiced by US Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference – a speech praised as “brilliant” by Trump. “I refuse to accept that criticism, because it’s just simply not true,” she said.
On Monday, the diplomat similarly remarked that “if [we] look at the messages that come from the US, then it is clear that the Russian narrative is there, very strongly represented.”
Last week, she warned Washington against walking “into the Russian traps,” alleging that Moscow had emerged as the “winner” from the talks in Riyadh.
In recent weeks, Trump has made several critical remarks toward the Ukrainian leadership, characterizing Vladimir Zelensky as a “dictator without elections,” and suggesting that Kiev bears responsibility for letting the hostilities flare up in 2022. While the US head of state has since somewhat toned down his comments, a marked departure from the policy course pursued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, remains evident.
Covid Response at Five Years: Introduction
Brownstone Institute | February 27, 2025
This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot wrote in 1925. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Ninety-five years later, the pre-Covid world ended with a nationwide sigh of submission. Democrats remained silent as government mandates transferred trillions of dollars from the working class to tech oligarchs. Republicans dithered as states criminalized church attendance. Libertarians stood by as the nation shuttered the doors of small businesses. College students obediently forfeited their freedoms and moved into their parents’ basements, liberals accepted widespread surveillance campaigns, and conservatives greenlit the printing of 300 years’ worth of money in sixty days.
With rare exception, March 2020 was a bipartisan, intergenerational capitulation to fear and hysteria. Those who dared to object to the freshly-mandated orthodoxy were subject to widespread contempt, derision, and censorship as the US Security State and a subservient media corps muzzled their protests. The most dominant forces in society used the opportunity to their advantage, pillaging the nation’s treasury and overthrowing law and tradition. Their campaign was devoid of the triumph of Yorktown, the bloodshed of Antietam, or the sacrifices of Omaha Beach. Without a single bullet, they overtook the republic, overturning the Bill of Rights in a quiet coup d’état.
Perhaps no episode better exemplified this phenomenon than the House of Representatives on March 27, 2020. That day, the House planned to pass the largest spending bill in American history, the CARES Act, without a recorded vote. The $2 trillion price tag was more money than Congress spent on the entire Iraq War, twice as much as the cost of the Vietnam War, and thirteen times more than Congress’s annual allocation for Medicaid – all adjusted for inflation. No House Democrats objected, nor did 195 out of 196 House Republicans. For 434 members of the House, there were no concerns of fiscal responsibility or electoral accountability. There wouldn’t be a whimper, let alone a bang; there wouldn’t even be a recorded vote.
But there was one voice of dissent. When Representative Thomas Massie learned of his colleagues’ plan, he drove overnight from Garrison, Kentucky to the Capitol. “I came here to make sure our republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent and empty chamber,” he announced on the floor.
Democrats, the self-professed guardians of democracy, did not heed his call to fulfill their obligation to represent their constituents. Republicans, supposed defenders of originalism and the rule of law, ignored Massie’s invocation of the constitutional requirement for a quorum to be present to conduct business in the House. The supreme law of the land gave way to the hysteria of coronavirus, and the Kentucky Congressman became the target of a bipartisan character assassination.
President Trump called Massie a “third rate Grandstander” and urged Republicans to expel him from the party. John Kerry wrote that Massie had “tested positive for being an asshole” and should be “quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.” President Trump responded, “Never knew John Kerry had such a good sense of humor! Very impressed!”
Republican Senator Dan Sullivan quipped to Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Mahoney, “What a dumbass.” Mahoney was so proud of the conversation that he took to Twitter. “I can confirm that @RepThomasMassie is indeed a dumbass,” he posted.
Two days later, President Trump signed the CARES Act. He bragged that it was the “single-biggest economic relief package in American history.” He continued, “It’s $2.2 billion, but it actually goes up to 6.2 — potentially — billion dollars — trillion dollars. So you’re talking about 6.2 trillion-dollar bill. Nothing like that.”
The bipartisan Covid regime stood behind the President smiling. Senator McConnell called it a “proud moment for our country.” Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Vice President Pence offered similar praise. Trump thanked Dr. Anthony Fauci, who remarked, “I feel really, really good about what’s happening today.” Deborah Birx added her support for the bill, as did Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin. The President then handed Dr. Fauci and others the pens that he used to sign the law. Before leaving, he took time to chastise Rep. Massie again, calling him “totally out of line.”
By the end of March 2020, the pre-Covid world was over. Corona was the supreme law of the land.
The Press Conference That Changed the World
On March 16, 2020, Donald Trump, Deborah Birx, and Anthony Fauci held a White House press conference on the coronavirus. After nearly an hour of unremarkable questions and answers, a reporter asked whether the government was suggesting that “bars and restaurants should shut down over the next fifteen days.”
President Trump ceded the microphone to Birx. As she stumbled through her answer, Fauci flashed a hand signal to indicate that he wished to step in. He walked to the podium and opened a small document. There was no indication that President Trump knew what was coming next or that he had read the paper.
Is the government calling for a shutdown for 15 days? Fauci took the microphone. “The small print here. It’s really small print,” he began. President Trump was distracted. He pointed at someone in the audience and appeared unconcerned with Fauci’s answer. “America’s doctor” continued at the microphone as his boss engaged in a side conversation with someone in the audience.
“In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.” Birx grinned in the background as she listened to the plan to shut down the country. Fauci walked away from the podium, nodded at Birx, and smiled as the press prepared a new question.
The plan that gave them unbridled joy was unprecedented in “public health.” Despite firsthand knowledge of smallpox and Yellow Fever, the Framers had not written epidemic contingencies into the Bill of Rights. The nation had not suspended the Constitution for pandemics in 1957 (Hong Kong flu), 1921 (Diphtheria), 1918 (Spanish flu), or 1849 (Cholera). This time, however, it would be different.
The press conference that day was never meant to be a temporary means to flatten the curve; it was the beginning, “a first step,” toward their vision to “rebuild the infrastructures of human existence,” they later admitted. “We worked simultaneously to develop the flattening-the-curve guidance,” Birx reflected in her memoir. “Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions.” After demanding that buy-in on March 16, the pre-Covid world was over. Longer and more aggressive interventions became reality.
The following day, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security called the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a guide on who was permitted to work and who was subjected to lockdowns. The order divided Americans into two classes: essential and nonessential. Media, Big Tech, and commercial facilities like Costco and Walmart were exempt from the lockdown orders while small businesses, churches, gyms, restaurants, and public schools were shut down. With just one administrative order, America suddenly became an explicitly class-based society in which liberty depended on political favoritism.
On March 21, an image of the Statue of Liberty locked in her apartment appeared on the front page of the New York Post. “CITY UNDER LOCKDOWN,” the paper announced. States chained playgrounds and criminalized recreation. The schools closed, businesses failed, and hysteria ran rampant.
War Fever
When Massie arrived at the Capitol, a war-like fervor had taken over the country. Publications including Politico, ABC, and The Hill compared the respiratory virus to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. On March 23, the New York Times published “What 9/11 Taught Us About Leadership in a Crisis,” offering “lessons for today’s leaders” in response to a “similar challenge.”
The column did not warn against the dangers of impulsive responses leading to unintended consequences, unaccountable government agencies, unscrupulous ideologues, and untold federal expenditures. There were no analyses of how temporary national fear could lead to trillions of dollars wasted on disastrous initiatives. Instead, the “similar challenge” led to familiar smear campaigns.
Thomas Massie and Barbara Lee have very little in common; Massie, an MIT alumnus, styles himself a “high-tech redneck.” His Christmas card featured his family of seven holding guns with the caption “Santa, please bring ammo.” Lee, a California Democrat, volunteered for Oakland’s Black Panther Party and marched alongside Nancy Pelosi at the “Women’s March.” Both, however, stood as lone voices of dissent in the two most defining crises of this century. They served as Cassandras, issuing prophetic warnings that drew the ire of disastrous bipartisan consensus.
In September 2001, Lee was the only member of Congress to oppose the authorization to use military force. With the rubble still smoldering at the World Trade Center, she warned Americans that the AUMF provided “a blank check to the president to attack anyone involved in the Sept. 11 events — anywhere, in any country, without regard to our nation’s long-term foreign policy, economic and national security interests, and without time limit.” A jingoistic press attacked Lee as “un-American,” and she received bipartisan condemnation from her peers in Congress.
When Massie took the House floor nineteen years later, American troops were still in Afghanistan, and the “blank check” had been used to support bombings in at least ten other countries. Like Lee, Massie’s dissent was prescient. He warned that the Covid payments benefited “banks and corporations” over “working class Americans,” that the spending programs were riddled with waste, that the bill transferred dangerous power to an unaccountable Federal Reserve, and that the increased debt would be costly for the American people.
In retrospect, Massie’s points were obvious. The Covid response became the most disruptive and destructive public policy in Western history. The lockdowns destroyed the middle class while the pandemic minted a new billionaire every day. Childhood suicides skyrocketed, and school closures created an educational crisis. People lost jobs, friends, and basic rights for challenging Covid orthodoxy. The Federal Reserve printed three hundred years’ worth of spending in two months. The PPP Program cost nearly $300,000 per job “saved,” and fraudsters stole $200 billion from Covid relief programs. The federal deficit more than tripled, adding over $3 trillion to the national debt. Studies found the pandemic response will cost Americans $16 trillion over the next decade.
What We Knew Then
Time vindicated Massie, but the pro-lockdown advocates have not demonstrated remorse. To evade responsibility for their catastrophic policies, many cower behind the excuse that we didn’t know then what we know now. “I think we would’ve done everything differently,” Gavin Newsom reflected in September 2023. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know.” “Let’s declare a pandemic amnesty,” The Atlantic published in October 2022. The precautions may have been “totally misguided,” wrote Brown Professor Emily Oster, an advocate for school closures, lockdowns, universal masking, and vaccine mandates. “But the thing is: We didn’t know.”
But the evidence from March 2020 refutes the Rumsfeldian invocation of unknown unknowns.
On February 3, 2020, the Diamond Princess cruise ship was set to return to harbor in Japan. When reports emerged that there had been an outbreak of the novel coronavirus aboard the ship, authorities kept it in the water to quarantine. Suddenly, the ship’s 3,700 passengers and crew members became the first contained study of Covid. The New York Times described it as a “floating, mini-version of Wuhan.” The Guardian called it a “coronavirus breeding ground.” It remained in quarantine for almost a month, and passengers lived under strict lockdown orders as their community went through the largest outbreak of Covid outside China.
The ship administered over 3,000 PCR tests. By the time the last passengers left the boat on March 1, at least two things were clear: the virus spread rapidly in close quarters, and it posed no significant threat to non-senior citizens.
There were 2,469 passengers on the ship under the age of 70. Zero of them died despite being held on a cruise ship without access to proper medical care. There were over 1,000 people on the ship between 70 and 79. Six died after testing positive for Covid. Out of the 216 people on the ship between 80 and 89, just one died with Covid.
Those points became even more clear in the ensuing weeks.
On March 2, over 800 public health scientists warned against lockdowns, quarantines, and restrictions in an open letter. ABC reported that Covid likely only posed a threat to the elderly. So did Slate, Haaretz, and the Wall Street Journal. On March 8, Dr. Peter C Gøtzsche wrote that we were “the victims of mass panic,” noting that “the average age of those who died after coronavirus infection was 81… [and] they also often had comorbidity.”
On March 11, Stanford Professor John Ioannidis published a peer-reviewed paper that warned of “an epidemic of false claims and potentially harmful actions.” He predicted the hysteria surrounding the coronavirus would lead to drastically exaggerated case fatality ratios and society-wide collateral damage from unscientific mitigation efforts like lockdowns. “We’re falling into a trap of sensationalism,” Dr. Ioannidis told interviewers two weeks later. “We have gone into a complete panic state.”
On March 13, Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager famously portrayed by Christian Bale in The Big Short, tweeted: “With COVID-19, the hysteria appears to me worse than the reality, but after the stampede, it won’t matter whether what started it justified it.” Ten days later, he wrote: “If COVID-19 testing were universal, the fatality rate would be less than 0.2%,” adding that there was no justification “for sweeping government policies, lacking any and all nuance, that destroy the lives, jobs, and businesses of the other 99.8%.”
By March 15, there were widespread studies on the mental health ramifications of lockdowns, the health impact of shuttering the economy, and the harms of overreacting to the virus.
Even the Covid regime’s wildly inaccurate models, which overestimated the fatality rate of Covid by multitudes, could not justify the response. One of the main bases for lockdown policies was Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College London report from March 16. Ferguson’s model overestimated the impact of Covid on various age groups by degrees of hundreds but conceded that the young faced no substantial risk from the virus. It predicted a 0.002% fatality rate for ages 0-9 and a 0.006% fatality rate for ages 10-19. For comparison, the fatality rate for the flu “is estimated to be around 0.1%,” according to NPR.
On March 20, Yale Professor David Katz wrote in the New York Times: “Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease?” He explained:
“I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself. The stock market will bounce back in time, but many businesses never will. The unemployment, impoverishment and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”
He cited data from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and South Korea which suggested that 99% of active cases in the general population were “mild” and did not require medical treatment. He referenced the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which housed “a contained, older population,” as further proof that the virus appeared harmless to non-senior citizens.
Later that month, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya called for “immediate steps to evaluate the empirical basis of the current lockdowns” in the Wall Street Journal. The same week, Ann Coulter published “How do we Flatten the Curve on Panic?” She wrote: “If, as the evidence suggests, the Chinese virus is enormously dangerous to people with certain medical conditions and those over 70 years old, but a much smaller danger to those under 70, then shutting down the entire country indefinitely is probably a bad idea.”
Harvard Medical School Professor Dr. Martin Kulldorff wrote in April, “COVID-19 Counter Measures Should be Age Specific.” He explained:
“Among COVID-19 exposed individuals, people in their 70s have roughly twice the mortality of those in their 60s, 10 times the mortality of those in their 50s, 40 times that of those in their 40s, 100 times that of those in their 30s, 300 times that of those in their 20s, and a mortality that is more than 3000 times higher than for children. Since COVID-19 operates in a highly age specific manner, mandated counter measures must also be age specific. If not, lives will be unnecessarily lost.”
On April 7, Burry called on states to lift their lockdown orders, which he decried as “ruining innumerable lives in a criminally unjust manner.” On April 9, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who later became the Surgeon General of Florida, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “Lockdowns Won’t Stop the Spread.” Ten days later, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp reopened his state. “Our next measured step is driven by data and guided by state public health officials,” Kemp explained. Shortly thereafter, Governor Ron DeSantis lifted Covid restrictions in Florida.
Brian Kemp, Thomas Massie, and Ron DeSantis didn’t flip a coin on the Covid issue. They knew they’d be accused of endangering fellow citizens, killing grandmas, and overrunning the healthcare system. If they nodded along to the consensus like their peers, then they could have increased their power and perhaps won an Emmy like Andrew Cuomo. Joining the herd was socially and politically fashionable, but their rationality stood athwart the prevailing madness.
Wisdom was in short supply in American government and media. Anthony Fauci and President Trump attacked Kemp for reopening Georgia. The New York Times stoked racial animus to criticize opponents of the Covid regime, telling its readers that “black residents” would have to “bear the brunt” of Kemp’s decision to “reopen many businesses over objections from President Trump and others.” The New York Daily News referred to “Florida Morons” daring to go to the beach that summer, and the Washington Post, Newsweek, and MSNBC chastised “DeathSantis.” While the slanders and hysteria were temporary, a radical and insidious movement sought to permanently transform the country.
The Quiet Coup
Amid the name-calling and memorable headlines of school closures, arrests for paddle boarding, and urban anarchy, the nation underwent a coup d’état in 2020. The First Amendment and freedom of speech were replaced by a censorship operation designed to silence citizens. The Fourth Amendment was supplanted by a system of mass surveillance. Jury trials and the Seventh Amendment disappeared in favor of government-provided legal immunity for the nation’s most powerful political force. Americans found they suddenly lived under a police state without the freedom to travel. Due process disappeared as the government issued edicts to determine who could and could not work. Equal application of the law was a relic of the past as a self-appointed caste of Brahmins exempted themselves and their political allies from the authoritarian orders that applied to the masses.
The groups that implemented this system also benefited from it. State and federal government agencies gained tremendous power. Unshackled from the restraints of the Bill of Rights, they used the pretext of “public health” to reshape society and abolish personal liberties. Social media giants assisted these efforts, using their power to silence critics of the new Leviathan. Big Pharma enjoyed record profits and government-provided legal immunity. In just one year, the Covid response transferred over $3.7 trillion from the working class to billionaires. To replace our liberties, Big Government, Big Tech, and Big Pharma offer a new ruling order of suppression of dissent, surveillance of the masses, and indemnity of the powerful.
The hegemonic triumvirate framed their agenda with favorable marketing strategies. Eviscerating the First Amendment became monitoring misinformation. Warrantless surveillance fell under the public health umbrella of contact tracing. The fusion of corporate and state power advertised itself as public-private partnerships. House arrest received a social media rebranding of #stayathomesavelives. Within months, business owners replaced their “We stand with first responders” signs with “Going out of business” announcements.
Once the rule of law had been overturned, the culture was soon to follow.
Ten weeks after the press conference that changed the world, a Minnesota police officer put his knee on the neck of a Covid-infected, fentanyl-laced career criminal. This led to cardiopulmonary arrest, the death of the man, and a cultural revolution. The BLM and Antifa violent protests in reaction to the death of George Floyd sparked 120 days of rioting and looting in the summer of 2020. Over 35 people died, 1,500 police officers were injured, and rioters caused $2 billion in property damage. CNN covered the resulting arson in Wisconsin with the chyron “FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS.”
With the notable exception of Senator Tom Cotton, politicians were largely complicit in the mass looting and violence. President Trump was absent; while the cities burned on the weekend of May 30, the Commander-in-Chief was uncharacteristically silent. His only communication was that the Secret Service had kept him and his family safe.
Others seemed to encourage the destruction. Kamala Harris raised money to pay bail for looters and rioters arrested in Minneapolis. Tim Walz’s wife, then Minnesota’s First Lady, told the press that she “kept the windows open as long as [she] could” in order to smell “the burning tires” from the riots. Nikki Haley tweeted, “the death of George Floyd was personal and painful for many. In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone.”
And painful it was. Just hours before Haley’s demand for communal suffering, rioters set fire to Minneapolis’s Third Precinct police building. Thousands celebrated around the building as it burned. They looted the evidence rooms as the police inside fled under the mayor’s orders. Two days later, the mobs in St. Louis killed 77-year-old former policeman David Dorn. His death was broadcast on Facebook Live.
Every major institution cowered to the demands of the rising Jacobins. Once proud institutions released statements of self-flagellation, statues of American heroes came toppling down, and crime skyrocketed. In Minnesota alone, aggravated assault increased 25%, robberies increased 26%, arson increased 54%, and murder increased 58%. Vandals toppled Minneapolis’s statue of George Washington and covered it in paint. Minnesota State University removed its statue of Abraham Lincoln from its campus display after 100 years after students complained that it perpetuated systemic racism.
None of this concerned the truth behind Floyd’s death. Typically, deaths in individuals with fentanyl concentrations over 3 ng/ml are considered overdoses. Floyd’s toxicology report revealed 11 ng/ml of fentanyl, 5.6 ng/ml of norfentanyl, and 19 ng/ml of methamphetamine. Floyd’s autopsy concluded that there were “no life-threatening injuries identified,” and the county medical examiner told the local prosecutor that there “were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.” He asked, “What happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?”
Evidently, the answer was a nationwide cultural upheaval. The wreckage spread through the country and beyond June 2020. The racial reckoning left no American institution untouched. “New homicide records were set in 2021 in Philadelphia, Columbus, Indianapolis, Rochester, Louisville, Toledo, Baton Rouge, St. Paul, Portland, and elsewhere,” Heather MacDonald writes in When Race Trumps Merit. “The violence continued into 2022. January 2022 was Baltimore’s deadliest month in nearly 50 years.” New York City removed statues of Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt; California vagrants toppled tributes to Ulysses S. Grant, Francis Scott Key, and Francis Drake; San Francisco vandals dragged statues and prepared to toss them into a fountain until they learned the fountain was a memorial to AIDS victims. Oregon criminals desecrated statues of T.R., Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington.
At Rockefeller University, they removed the portraits of scientists who won the Nobel Prize because they were white men. The University of Pennsylvania took down a portrait of William Shakespeare because it failed to “affirm their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English Department.” The soon-to-be 46th President and his allies announced that there would be racial prerequisites for the selection of its highest-ranking officials – including the Vice President, a Supreme Court Justice, and the Senator from California. The private sector was even worse: in the year after the George Floyd riots, just 6% of new S&P jobs went to white applicants, a result that required mass discrimination.
By Independence Day 2020, the coup d’état had succeeded. The rule of law had been overturned. Former bedrock principles of the Republic – freedom of speech, freedom to travel, freedom from surveillance – were sacrificed upon the altar of public health. A culture that had once championed meritocracy became obsessed with berating the identity of the majority of its population. Hypocrisy in the ruling class grew to the point that there was no longer equal application of the law. The most powerful groups augmented their wealth while the working class suffered under despotism.
This series is meant to outline the freedoms that we sacrificed, and, just as importantly, the people and institutions that benefited from the erosion of our liberties. There are no allegations of the pandemic’s causes. Those speculations, intriguing as they may be, are unnecessary to demonstrate the coordinated upheaval that took place. The bedrocks of liberty enshrined in the Bill of Rights disappeared while the nation panicked. The most powerful people profited while the weakest suffered. Under the pretense of “public health,” the Republic was overturned.
How UK counter-terror police colluded with Zionists to detain me after Beirut trip
By David Miller – Press TV – February 27, 2025
At 21.32 local time on the evening of Monday, 24 February, I stepped off a plane from Istanbul to Heathrow and into the terminal building.
In front of me were a wide circle of people evidently waiting for someone, perhaps for a number of passengers. I knew right away one of them was me.
One of the SO15 (formerly special Branch) plain clothes officers of the Counter Terrorism Command, for it was them, asked for my passport and whether I had started my journey in Istanbul.
Of course I knew that they knew this was not the case. In any case, I had done nothing wrong in – as I said to them – visiting Beirut to cover the funeral of Hezbollah leaders Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
This was my first taste of Schedule 7. They started to explain what Schedule 7 was and I said yes, I know about it. From being stopped before? No, because I am a researcher who studies terrorism legislation.
About then, on the moving walkway, I realised that the circle of people had only been waiting for me. I looked round and counted them out loud. I know I’m a big lad, I said, (I am over 6 foot) but did you really need eight officers to detain me?
So, we got to the interrogation room, which is, as past detainees will know, immediately behind passport control. Anyone coming out of that door is SO15 or a detainee.
For those who may face this experience in the future, it is worth explaining how the process goes. It’s a bureaucratic procedure.
There is a guidance hand book dictating how the process should be handled. First they have to read out the relevant extract from the Terrorism Act. It’s a whole page (see below) and they give you a copy, which they ask you to sign.
The essential bit is that you are being ‘detained’ as opposed to arrested in order that the ’Examining Officer’ can determine if you ‘appear’ to be a person ‘concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism’.
A couple of other details are of relevance. They can’t hold you for more than 6 hours after the time they first apprehend you. You are not under criminal investigation or under arrest and as a result ‘you do not have the right to remain silent’. If they do change their minds and arrest you, you do at that point have the right to remain silent and you should do so.
You have to participate in the process, answer questions and to accept being searched. You don’t have to answer questions that you think they are asking and only need to answer what they actually ask. There is no need to be unduly long winded!
The other point to note is that nothing you say can be used ‘in evidence in criminal proceedings’. (The only exceptions are that if you do not comply, that can be used in evidence and if you later rely on something in court which is ‘inconsistent’ with what you say, then the contents of your interview can be used).
You have the right to contact a next of kin/friend and a lawyer and you should exercise that right. The rules state that if you ask for a solicitor you cannot be questioned until your solicitor has consulted you.
And your solicitor can participate in the questioning either on the phone or in person, if you can get them out of bed to come to wherever you are detained!
Once in the room both I and my luggage were searched. They found little of interest. No devices. The only thing that they brightened at was a very small USB drive, which I had forgotten was in there.
I confirmed that I thought it had no security protection and they took it away. Later it was returned, much to my surprise. What was on it I asked? Only some teaching notes they said in disappointment.
Later, at home I checked. Hilariously there was only one file on the drive: a Powerpoint presentation on the ‘Zionist movement’.
And so we got to the actual interrogation. I estimate that mine started about 23.00, so there was a long period of silence while we waited for the solicitor to call back.
This was partly due to the police deciding that they could not call my first nominated solicitor because he wasn’t on their list, though he should not have needed to be.
Anyway, after I talked to my solicitor, we were off.
What followed was around two hours of questioning about my trip to Beirut. Why did I go, what did I do when I was there, did I support Hezbollah, and many other similar questions.
There is not space to tell it all blow by blow but here are some highlights which might be of use to others who like me are manifestly not involved in the commission of acts of terrorism, as everybody knows.
First, they wanted to know why I went. As I had already intimated when they first stopped me, I was there to cover the funeral as a journalist. As is public knowledge, I work as a journalist on a freelance basis.
I produce a TV show called Palestine Declassified for Press TV, and write for a variety of other publications such as Electronic Intifada, Mintpress, TRT World and Mayadeen English. I mentioned this as well as mentioning that I used to work at the university of Bristol until I was sacked.
They asked about that. I summarised the story including the four occasions on which I was exonerated of ‘antisemitism’ at Bristol (internal enquiry, two external QC reports and the internal appeal), followed by the ‘landmark’ victory at the Employment Tribunal in February 2024.
We went on to discuss my trip to Lebanon. What did I do there? I recounted that I had visited the southern village of Maroun El Ras which is within a mile of the border of occupied Palestine, high on a hill overlooking the colonial settlements of Avivim and Yir’on.
I went with a number of other foreign guests including from Ireland, Yemen, Brazil and various other countries. What was there I was asked? I replied (truthfully) that there was nothing in the village since almost all 600 houses had been destroyed.
The officer seemed confused: why would I want to visit then? Precisely because it had been destroyed by the Zionists, obviously.
We got fairly quickly to the question of whether I supported Hezollah as a proscribed organisation. I referred back to my Employment Tribunal at which similar questions had been asked somewhat ineffectually by the University of Bristol’s counsel Chris Milsom.
There I had said the same thing as I now stated: I ‘support’ the right as given in international law for the Palestinians (and indeed others under occupation) to resist including by armed force.
In case officers in SO15 or other actors need reminding of this, the relevant text is from the UN General Assembly resolution 38/17 of 1983, which states that it
“Reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for their independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle”.
They went on to see if they could entice me into saying I specifically supported proscribed organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah. So, I obviously went on to say that it was not only a question of Hezbollah and Hamas, but also Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the PFLP-GC, which is of course not the same as the PFLP itself, which is not proscribed. It was instructive that my interrogator appeared not to know about PIJ and the PFLP-GC, asking me to repeat each name.
We also visited the topic of deproscription. The officer wanted to know why I thought that all of the four, groups should be de-proscribed.
It seemed like he thought this was a valuable concession from me. But, as he is, presumably, aware, the Terrorism Act (year) specifically notes that it is not illegal to call for de-proscription.
I include a table from the Home Office website which gives a list of the charges that can relate to proscribed organisations.
And then we were on to the question of terrorism. Did that mean that I thought they were not terrorist. At which point I am afraid I referred back to my decades long record of research on the question of terrorism and its role in propaganda including my early work on the struggle to decolonise the north of Ireland.
As if the sentiments encoded in the proscribed list or the Western use of the term ‘terrorism’ itself are necessarily subscribed to even by most British citizens, never mind the rest of the world. Let’s not forget that the way in which we use the term ‘terrorism’ in the west – in particular ‘Islamic terrorism’, has it origin in Zionist propaganda operations as has been shown by, for example, Remi Brulin.
At one point, apparently out of the blue I was asked: Are you a practising Muslim? I expressed some surprise at this question. In his defence my interrogator said that I had earlier noticed and asked about whether the small pile of folded prayer mats in the cupboard was in fact a small pile of folded prayer mats.
I had noted them earlier and wanted to check that’s what they were. Only the best for the predominantly Muslim ‘guests’ of the room! As the Guardian reports only 20% of Schedule 7 detentions are of white people (that’s including ‘white Irish’, and others stopped, like me for their solidarity activities, so it’s likely that the proportion of white ‘far right’ suspects stopped is lower than 20%)
The officer seemed mystified about my attendance at an event in which everyone must have been a supporter of Hezbollah. As if reporting on events and supporting those events is the same thing. He asked if everyone there supported Hezbollah.
I replied that I didn’t feel able to report any great knowledge on the consciousness of perhaps the million people there. But it is certainly the case that there were very many Hezbollah flags.
I did also note that there was a largish contingent from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party and made the point that the sheer numbers present suggested that Nasrallah has something of a larger reputation than just among party members and core supporters.
As we talked the officer started asking about Press TV, for which I work on a freelance basis. He evidently had not known what Press TV was as it took a long time for him to understand – after I told him that it was the English Language TV channel of the Iranian government – the equivalent of the BBC world Service.
Then he wanted to know about whether the people I work with at Press TV are extremists or have extreme opinions. Obviously I had to press him to explain what he meant by extremism. Given the British government abandoned its efforts to define the term in any legally robust way, he fared no better.
So he asked something about how many were opposed to western society. I was not impressed by this, since, as I said, most people in the world are opposed to the West, and many of them are British citizens.
And then; does Press TV support the recent ‘terrorism’ in this country?! Which terrorism, I enquired. And do you know what he said? He only said the Southport attack. That was not terrorism I said. Even his colleague butted in and agreed with me!
So we were back to finding specific examples and – put on the spot – he came up with the stabbing and car at Parliament in 2017. That, of course, was carried out by an individual who had made multiple trips to Saudi Arabia and appeared to have been inspired by an ISIS related ideology.
Before we got any further I was asked if Press TV covered incidents like this. The implication, of course, being that covering such activities might be tantamount to ‘supporting’ them.
Obviously, being a news service Press TV does cover political violence of many types, as does every other news organisation in the world.
But moving on I replied that in fact Press TV is opposed to those kind of attacks. I was on the verge of going on to say that this of course was different to the position of their colleagues in MI6 and in the government and indeed the BBC who are only too happy to collaborate in supporting ISIS/Al Qaeda in Syria if it suits their perception of British foreign interests. But I let that lie.
By now we were winding down and it was pretty clear they were about to release me, even if I had taken their claim that it would be over soon with the requisite heap of salt. At the end they asked if I had anything to ask, like we were coming to the end of a job interview.
I made one statement which was that it was abundantly clear to everyone in the room that I was not a person who was concerned in the ‘commission, preparation or instigation’ of acts of terrorism.
By way of defence of the detention the officer attempted to justify it in term of a British citizens attendance at the funeral of a terrorism leader, a defence which of course worked to deny that they had effectively been instructed by others to stop me. With that we were done and I was released at 1am too late to get home except via a prohibitively expensive taxi.
It appeared abundantly clear that SO15 did not have any real idea of who I was and had not prepared any case against me. It was just a normal Schedule 7 stop.
Except of course, it wasn’t. I had openly announced on X that I was in Lebanon for the funeral and had reported from my visit to Maroun El Ras and the Iran garden, on its outskirts both of which had been totally destroyed by Zionist bombardment.
I also posted a clip of my visit to Kfar Kila showing mass destruction of civilian infrastructure wreaked by the Zionists and my discovery of a US arms firm manufactured detonation wire used in blowing up civilian houses.
I also posted on the funeral itself, including while I was stuck in traffic on the way, as I arrived in the ‘nick of time’ and as the ceremony started.
Of course all of this was very triggering for the genocidal Zionists who track any deviation for the authorised position of pretending that the genocide is not happening and that those that resist are simply ‘terrorists’.
A wide range of anonymous trolls and Zionist regime assets started mass reporting the Met Police calling for me to be arrested and jailed. I know they say that the Zionists don’t have much power, but bouncing the Met into detaining a journalist on assignment seems like power of some sort.
Here is a select list of Zionist agents and assets who called for me to be arrested:
- Gary Spedding the Zionist asset who poses as being pro-Palestine – 23 February 1.44pm
- Sabrina Miller, Daly Mail journalist and former student at Bristol University – 23 February 2.09pm
- Labour Against Anti Semitism (LAAS) – 23 February 7.41 pm
- Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) – 24 February 1.15pm
All of the above were involved in one way or another in the campaign to have me sacked at Bristol, a decision that the Employment Tribunal found was flawed and unjustified, in its ‘landmark’ decision.
This was all topped off by reports on Monday in the Mail (published at 5 to one in the morning just as Monday 24th began) and later (at 5.25 pm) in the Telegraph. This latter report cited the fanatical Zionist Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, who was reported as saying: “David Miller isn’t even bothering to hide his anti-Semitism any more.
He’s now openly boasting of his support for a proscribed terrorist group. It’s shocking that for so long he held a senior position at Bristol University.” Of course no actual ‘antisemitism’ was on display, and I said no words capable of being construed as ‘openly boasting’ of ‘support’ for Hezbollah.
Jenrick has form a far as I am concerned in that he has in the past spent a not inconsequential amount of time trying to have me sacked from my post at Bristol. For example, when he was Housing minister he directly bullied the University of Bristol over my case.
The report ended by saying that the paper had (like the Mail claimed too) contacted me for comment. The facts are that I have had no such query from the Telegraph or from the Mail.
I must say that I did enjoy the column the next day by Stephen Pollard who presided over a significant number of libel defeats in his role as editor of the Jewish Chronicle. ‘Opening a communication from’ me back then he says was like ‘ingesting poison’. My parents would be proud.
What, self-evidently, happened in this instance was that the Zionist pressure worked its way through and an order to detain was issued. As to whether it came from the top of the counter Terrorism Command, the Home Office or elsewhere, we don’t know as yet.
But it is very much of a piece with the general picture post October 7 2023, which is that there is intense Zionist pressure on the counter terrorism and policing apparatus to weaponise both hate crime laws and terrorism legislation.
It is perfectly plain, as I have shown elsewhere that this pressure from Zionist lobby and intimidation groups and pressure from Zionist aligned politicians like Michael Gove, Suella Braverman, Stuart Polak, Robert Halton and the aforementioned Robert Jenrick, more than adequately explains all of the alleged rise in ‘antisemitism’ as well as almost all of the uses of the many Terrorism Acts on the statute books to oppress and repress those who will stand with the Palestinians in virtually any way.
And in recent months the attacks have widened to journalists, who’s historically recognised craft implies that they can report on all events without being attacked directly by the state.
But now, after Richard Medhurst, Sarah Wilkinson, Asa Winstanley and most recently Ali Abunimah, it is clear that journalists too are direct targets of the Zionists operating as they do via the allegedly sovereign justice apparatus of Western states.
David Miller is the producer and co-host of Press TV’s weekly Palestine Declassified show. He was sacked from Bristol University in October 2021 over his Palestine advocacy.
US official vows to imprison pro-Palestine protesters for years
Press TV – February 27, 2025
An official with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) says student protesters who took part in pro-Palestine protests could face years in prison.
Leo Terrell, head of the DOJ task force on anti-Semitism, announced his plans for lengthy prison punishments for those who protested against Israel during its genocide in Gaza.
“We are going to put these people in jail—not for 24 hours, but for years,” Terrell told Israeli broadcaster Channel 12.
Terrell also vowed to “financially attack” the universities where such demonstrations took place.
The announcement came as students at Columbia University began fresh pro-Palestinian protests after two students were expelled for their anti-genocide activism.
The decision to imprison anti-Israel students comes despite the fact that US President Donald Trump declared his intention to “stop all government censorship” and “bring back free speech to America” during his inauguration speech.
One X user responded to the announcement by calling it the “death of the 1st amendment for a foreign nation of Israel.”
“The 1st Amendment in this country ends where Israel begins” stated another.
In the past years, numerous laws have been passed in America that punish criticism of Israel and Zionism.
These include numerous state laws that punish public workers for refusing to buy Israeli products, or the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act which has faced criticism for chilling free speech.
During the previous academic year, US universities and colleges emerged as a focal point for student-led pro-Palestinian protests, igniting a significant wave of demonstrations at universities throughout the world, where hundreds of students called on their universities to divest from companies that have ties to the Israeli regime.
In the spring, after pro-Palestinian students set up tents at Columbia University and school officials brought in city police to clear the demonstration, similar encampments began to emerge at colleges nationwide.
Protests erupted at prominent universities such as Harvard, Yale, MIT, and the University of California, frequently intensifying into clashes between opposing groups’ factions and increasing tensions within the campus environment.
The US police arrested more than 3000 students, professors, and faculty members after accusing the involved activists of “anti-Semitism” and “terrorism” and school administrators threatened some protest leaders with suspension and academic probation.
Jim Jordan Subpoenas FBI: Unraveling Biden Admin’s Big Tech Collusion
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 26, 2025
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed the FBI on Monday for seven categories of information, including on the Biden Administration’s collusion with Big Tech.
In a letter to the new FBI director, Kash Patel, Jordan states that during the mandate of his predecessor Christopher Wray and the former administration, the agency “departed from its core public safety mission” and was able to do this while avoiding “any real transparency or accountability for its actions.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
According to Jordan, this resulted in deep distrust in the FBI, which can be remedied by shedding light on the agency’s involvement in these activities.
Regarding the government-Big Tech collusion, Jordan recalled that during the previous Congress as well, the Committee that he heads undertook to investigate how this was happening, and to what extent.
The results of this oversight so far, as well as discovery in the Missouri v. Biden case (that continues to be litigated in a federal court), have revealed the FBI’s involvement.
In order to determine what the agency’s exact role was and make sure it doesn’t deviate from its mission in a similar way going forward, the Committee is now requesting the documents that Christopher Wray, for the most part, had not produced.
Jordan notes that a subpoena issued in August 2023 sought access to all of the FBI’s internal documents, communications, and notes about any meetings between its representatives and those of Big Tech, and also records related to the censorship of reports about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
What the investigations have revealed to date is that the FBI was falsely presenting the story as “Russian disinformation” while in effect pressuring social media companies to censor it.
Yet another, earlier subpoena, from February 2023, sent to Meta and Google, “revealed that the FBI, on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian intelligence entity, requested – and, in some cases, directed – the world’s largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online,” Jordan writes.
To understand the full extent of the FBI’s role in any unconstitutional activities that also involve “coordination” with social media companies, the Committee wants Kash Patel to now provide all the relevant communications.
The ultimate goal of the investigation is to establish if legislative changes are necessary to prevent the agency from acting in a similar way in the future.
EU Contributes €4M to UNESCO’s Expanding Online Content Regulation and Digital ID Goals
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 26, 2025
The EU is spending another €4 million (just under $4.2 million) on a project it runs together with the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), known as Social Media 4 Peace (SM4P).
Those targeted by this latest contribution from Brussels are Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, and South Africa as newly included countries, whereas what’s already been achieved in Indonesia and Kenya will be “reinforced,” the UN said.
Others that have been a part of the scheme, which critics consider a censorship initiative, are Bosnia and Herzegovina and Colombia. The EU has already given €4 million to SM4P in 2021, when it launched.
According to the EU’s SM4P page, the project’s purpose is to deal with “potentially harmful online content – in particular hate speech.” Now UNESCO announced the latest contribution saying that will help SM4P’s mission to address harmful content in “conflict-prone and polarized” societies.
And the UN agency promises to protect free speech and rights – “of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities.”
Other than the dystopian-sounding declaration of being there to counter “potentially harmful content,” SM4P raises eyebrows for activities such as contributing to the “shaping” of the Global Forum of Networks.
The burgeoning EU-UN partnership to tackle “disinformation and hate speech globally” has also contributed to what is referred to as global policy discussions on digital platform governance.
In the UN’s system of “nesting dolls of censorship projects,” the Global Forum of Networks is set up to allow international regulators to collaborate and implement UNESCO’s Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms – the result of the said “discussions” – and what SM4P will be focused on until 2027.
The Guidelines’ About page states that this initiative’s aim is to “deal with the problems of dis- and misinformation and hate speech online.”
Then there’s the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 goals – including Sustainable Development Goal Target 16.9 (“legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030”), which pushes for digital ID as a way to participate in the digital economy.
That is another goal that SM4P will contribute to, according to the EU page about the project.
In announcing EU’s latest €4 million contribution, UNESCO said that SM4P already has more than 80 partners in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Indonesia, and Kenya – but that its influence in “fostering multistakeholder collaboration and strengthening resilience against online harm” extends “beyond target countries.”
Florida Judge Rules Brazilian Censorship Orders Unenforceable Against Rumble and Trump Media
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 25, 2025
A federal judge in Florida has denied a request from Trump Media and video platform Rumble to block enforcement of orders issued by Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, ruling that the case is not yet ripe for judicial review.
We obtained a copy of the order for you here.
However – that’s not because Rumble and Trump Media have no grounds – it’s because both companies “were not served upon Plaintiffs in compliance with the Hague Convention, to which the United States and Brazil are both signatories nor were they served pursuant to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty between the United States and Brazil.”
The two platforms have been at the forefront in the fight against censorship. In a win for free speech, the court ruled that the direct demands of Rumble and Truth are not through “established protocols” and so Plaintiffs [Rumble and Truth] are not obligated to comply with the directives and pronouncements, and no one is authorized or obligated to assist in their enforcement against Plaintiffs or their interests here in the United States.”
The immediate dispute revolves around a conservative Brazilian commentator living in the US, referred to in the lawsuit as Political Dissident A. This commentator, a vocal critic of the Brazilian Supreme Court, has been accused of “anti-democratic” speech—a charge that US courts would almost certainly dismiss as constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.
US District Judge Mary S. Scriven effectively stated that the two platforms do not need a temporary restraining order against Moraes because Morae’s orders to Rumble have no grounds.
In a statement, a Rumble spokesperson stated: “The court explicitly ruled that Moraes’s directives were never properly served under US or international law…” and that “The court further made clear that if anyone attempts to enforce these illegal orders on US soil, it stands ready to intervene to protect American companies and free speech. The ruling sends a strong message to foreign governments that they cannot bypass US law to impose censorship on American platforms.”
“This is a major victory for free speech and free expression online,” said Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes. “The ruling confirms that would-be dictators in any country can’t force Trump Media or Rumble to censor their opponents. We congratulate our partner Rumble on its principled stand for freedom.”
Erasing 1,700-year history: Israel’s property grab threatens Armenian Christians in al-Quds
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | February 26, 2025
Armenian Christians, the smallest recognized community in occupied al-Quds, are reeling under pressure from Israeli settler-colonial policies aimed at imposing exorbitant taxes, seizing their properties, displacing them, and ultimately Judaizing the historic city center.
On February 18, the Armenian Patriarchate in the holy city issued an urgent communiqué, warning that the local Zionist municipality is attempting to confiscate and auction off properties it owns there.
The Patriarchate is situated in the Armenian Quarter, one of the four sections of the walled Old City, alongside the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Quarters.
This small Armenian community, located in the southwestern corner of the 12.6-hectare Old City, numbers only a few hundred people. As the oldest Armenian diaspora, it has maintained a presence in the neighborhood for nearly 1,700 years, as per historical accounts.
For years, the Armenian community has resisted the expansion of Jewish-only settlements in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds. However, their enduring heritage is now at risk of being erased.
The Israeli regime claims that the Patriarchate has unpaid taxes dating back to 1994—an accusation the Patriarchate denounces as unjust, crippling, and only recently imposed.
It warns that this move could set a dangerous precedent for all Christian communities in the city.
In an effort to halt the foreclosure process on its centuries-old properties, the Patriarchate has filed a petition. The hearing was initially scheduled for February 24 but has since been postponed.
Unjustified tax apartheid
After issuing a desperate appeal and urging supporters to share it on social media platforms, the Armenian Patriarchate came under vicious attack from Zionist hate-mongers, who falsely accused it of evading taxes for 31 years.
In reality, as a Press TV website investigation revealed, Christian church-owned properties were exempt from property taxes for two centuries until a 2018 decision by the Zionist municipality, approved by Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime, overturned this longstanding policy.
Armenian Quarter in al-Quds, the place of 1,700 years of Armenian history
The Zionist settler-colonial authorities then imposed the so-called Arnona, an annual municipal property tax levied on local residents in the occupied al-Quds.
Without any legal basis, the municipality arbitrarily ruled that the historic 200-year exemption applied only to places of worship, while all other church-owned properties would be subject to retroactive taxation from 1994.
This date was chosen because it marked the signing of an agreement between the Zionist regime and Jordan, recognizing Amman’s custodianship over Muslim holy sites in the Old City—while Tel Aviv remained the occupying power.
Overnight, the municipality’s decision saddled the small Armenian community with a 24-year debt. Under Zionist regime laws, properties weighed down with such heavy debts can be seized and auctioned to cover the outstanding amount.
This aggressive campaign was spearheaded by Nir Barkat, a Likud politician, and then-mayor, who sought to tax so-called “non-religious” church properties for a total of $200 million, even ordering the freezing of their bank accounts.
The Armenian Patriarchate was not alone in its resistance. Other Christian leaders also vehemently opposed the move, going so far as to close the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in protest.
The dispute further strained relations between the Israeli regime and the Holy See, which cited local tax disputes as a key reason for delaying ongoing bilateral negotiations on property and economic matters.
Armenian Christians as the primary target
As the smallest and most vulnerable Christian community in the city, Armenians have been the primary target of the Zionist regime’s apartheid policies. The Armenian Patriarchate emphasizes that no other Christian community has faced such unprecedented and irreversible measures.
Following the municipality’s issuance of a seizure order, the Armenian Patriarch sent a letter to Netanyahu, urging him to intervene and halt the municipality’s actions regarding the tax dispute.
The Patriarchate has challenged the legality of these measures, asserting that no judicial ruling has ever subjected it to such obligations.
The petition asserted that the municipality disregarded the statute of limitations for the period between 1994 and 2018, demanding an exorbitant sum without clearly defining the presumed tax base.
The municipality’s actions have been described as aggressive and particularly unjustified; given that it itself owes the Patriarchate millions of shekels in overdue rental fees.
Armenian Quarter numbers only a few hundred people due to Zionist apartheid policies
Despite this, the Patriarchate has refrained from legal action to recover the debt, instead opting for prolonged negotiations to reach an amicable resolution.
In its statement, the Patriarchate also noted that it has repeatedly attempted to present these arguments to municipal authorities, who have refused to reassess the validity of the debt, despite clear violations of legal deadlines and procedures.
The official responsible for rejecting the review of the debt—because the deadline for objections had passed—is the same individual who originally determined the astronomical debt.
“In other words, the municipal employee is acting as the claimant, judge, and executor of the administrative order, serving the interests of his employer—the municipality,” the statement declared.
The petition is therefore directed against both the municipality and the official in question. A hearing was scheduled for February 24; however, just four days before the date, it was announced that the session had been postponed indefinitely due to weather conditions.
If the petition is rejected, the municipality will be authorized to immediately resume the seizure of properties in order to erase the long history of Armenian Christians in the occupied holy city.
Christian communities’ condemnation
Church representatives in the occupied al-Quds, along with the World Council of Churches (WCC), have expressed their solidarity with the Armenian Patriarchate through an official statement.
On February 21, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued a declaration condemning the municipality’s “unjust foreclosure order” and calling for “immediate intervention.”
Christian leaders in occupied al-Quds voiced their “great concern” and “steadfast solidarity” with the Orthodox Armenian Patriarchate in its fight for justice against what they described as an “unverified and exorbitant” tax debt, denouncing it as “dubious and morally unacceptable.”
“It is inconceivable that Christian institutions, which for centuries have safeguarded the faith, served communities, and preserved the sacred heritage of the Holy Land, should now face the threat of property seizure under Israeli administrative measures that disregard due process,” they stated.
Particularly alarming, they noted, is the municipality’s attempt to enforce the debt determination without judicial review, in open defiance of the committee formed to handle such negotiations.
This “reckless move,” they warned, threatens the Orthodox Armenian Patriarchate, sets a dangerous precedent for other Christian institutions, and undermines religious freedom.
They further explained that seizing these assets would strip both the Armenian Patriarchate and its community of essential economic resources, jeopardizing their ability to sustain their presence and fulfill their pastoral mission.
The statement concluded with a powerful declaration: “The targeting of one Church is an assault on all.” The leaders urged Israeli occupation to immediately intervene, halt all foreclosure proceedings, and ensure the resumption of negotiations.
The WCC, a global Christian inter-church organization representing 352 member churches, echoed this condemnation in a separate statement, denouncing the Israeli actions as “a blatant attack on religious freedom” and “an alarming violation of the historic status quo” governing the Holy Sites of al-Quds.
Other hostile moves against Christians
The imposition of a fictitious tax debt is just one example of Zionist attempts to appropriate Armenian property and intimidate the Armenian community.
Another significant case is the ongoing multi-year effort to seize the Cows’ Garden, an undeveloped one-hectare section of the Armenian Quarter.
The controversy erupted in 2020 when the Armenian Patriarchate signed a ten-year contract with the local municipality to convert the vacant land into a parking lot for Jewish settlers in the Old City and pilgrims visiting the Western Wall.
Both Armenians and Palestinians staged protests against the lease agreement, voicing concerns over Armenian land ownership. The Patriarchate maintained that the deal was strictly a financial arrangement, not a sale deed.
The following year, the parking lot was opened, and the Patriarchate signed a new contract with Israeli investors from the Dubai-registered Xana Gardens company to lease the land for 99 years and construct a luxury hotel.
This sparked even fiercer protests and led to the uncovering of an internal corruption scandal. By the end of 2023, the Patriarchate canceled the contract, stating that the investors had misled them regarding financial commitments and final development plans.
In response, the Israeli company escalated its efforts to forcibly acquire the land, resorting to lawsuits, threats, and physical intimidation of Armenians.
Since then, the Armenian Christian community has erected temporary guard stations and has been physically safeguarding the disputed land around the clock for months.
Jewish mobs have been recorded attacking Armenians on multiple occasions. Under the protection of Israeli occupation police, the company sent bulldozers to the site, and at one point, the owner arrived in person, openly calling for the expulsion of Armenians.
Zionist extremists frequently vandalize the Armenian Quarter with hate graffiti, including slogans such as “Death to Arabs and their Armenian Friends.” They have also targeted Armenian families with harassment and violence.
Meanwhile, investigations have revealed the company’s ties to the far-right settler movement, which aids Israeli settlers in seizing Muslim and Christian properties across occupied al-Quds.
Armenians and Palestinians fear the long-term consequences of these policies, warning that they will disrupt the demographic balance and further the ongoing Judaization of the Old City.
Zelensky now with only the dictatorship in London to support him
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 26, 2025
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 Set to Become First State to End Water Fluoridation for All Residents
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 24, 2025
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.
Other studies making similar findings have also been published in major scientific journals this year.
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.
Proponents also underscore that fluoride is a naturally occurring chemical in water, earth and rocks. It can occur naturally in drinking water supplies, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions.
But most surface water contains very low levels of fluoride and roughly three-quarters of Americans have fluoride added to their drinking water. The fluoride added to water systems, typically in the form of fluorosilicic acid, is a byproduct of phosphate fertilizer production — as documents from the fluoride lawsuit confirmed.
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.
Last week, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller also called on Gov. Greg Abbott and the state lawmakers to institute a statewide ban on water fluoridation.
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.
Related stories in The Defender
- Breaking: New Study Linking Fluoride to Lower IQ in Children Sparks Renewed Calls to End Water Fluoridation
- Florida Surgeon General Urges End to Water Fluoridation
- Children Whose Mothers Were Exposed During Pregnancy to Fluoridated Tap Water at Higher Risk of Neurobehavioral Problems
- ‘House of Cards’: Some Cities Hit Pause on Water Fluoridation in Wake of Historic Federal Ruling
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.
Wales Becomes First UK Testbed for Citywide AI-Powered Facial Recognition Surveillance
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 22, 2025
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.”
More: UK Government Fast-Tracking Bill to Monitor Bank Accounts, Revoke Licenses, and Search Homes
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TV Drama Review
Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters
Global Times | October 25, 2026
By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.
The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.
What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.
It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.
China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.
The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue
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