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AP Jerusalem chief participated in secretive Israeli govt anti-BDS event, leaked files reveal


By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | September 6, 2025

AP’s Israel-Palestine news director, Josef Federman, has spun data to minimize the Gaza death count. Leaked documents show he appeared on a panel aimed at assisting “Israel’s ability to effectively portray its narrative” during a gov’t-sponsored propaganda conference chaired by an ex-IDF official who legitimized killing journalists.

The Israeli massacre of five journalists in broad daylight on August 24, 2025 at Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis city prompted a sternly worded statement to the Israeli government from the Associated Press and Reuters, which each employed a reporter murdered by the IDF. The AP subsequently published a detailed investigation demonstrating that the Israeli military knowingly attacked a civilian target, then carried out a double tap strike after a rescue team and journalists arrived on the scene.

While the AP’s statement of outrage about the killing of its photographer in Gaza, Miriam Dagga, has brought the leading wire agency’s tension with the Israeli government to its height, the relationship with Tel Aviv was not always so adversarial.

The Grayzone has reviewed leaked documents revealing that the AP’s news director for Israel-Palestine, Josef Federman, participated in a private 2018 panel discussion aimed at assisting “Israel’s ability to effectively portray its narrative.” His host was a secretive Israeli government outfit dedicated to combatting the global BDS campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. Called the Global Coalition For Israel (GC4I), the event was convened in Jerusalem on June 18, 2018 by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Diplomacy – the de facto propaganda arm of the Israeli government.

The moderator of the panel in which Federman participated was Avital Leibovich, the former spokeswoman for the IDF who has ardently defended the Israeli policy of defining Palestinian journalists as terrorists in order to assassinate them.

Federman has presided over the AP’s coverage of Israel-Palestine since 2014. Throughout Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began in October 2023, Federman has helped shape a narrative that has subtly but effectively advanced Tel Aviv’s objectives, regurgitating the baseless and comprehensively debunked claim that “Israelis were raped or sexually assaulted” on October 7; legitimizing Israel’s violent invasion and theft of Syrian land as a historical “shift,” and relying on bogus data from an Israel lobby-affiliated researcher to minimize the civilian death count in Gaza – a grim toll which now includes one of his colleagues at AP.

Federman’s penchant for uncritically quoting notoriously mendacious Israeli military officials has helped secure his reputation for biased coverage.

Federman’s participation in the 2018 Israeli government anti-BDS event appears to contradict clearly stated AP guidelines on conflicts of interest. According to the AP’s website, “We avoid addressing, or accepting fees or expenses from, governmental bodies; trade, lobbying or special interest groups; businesses, or labor groups; or any group that would pose a conflict of interest.”

In response to a detailed query from The Grayzone about Federman’s participation in the semi-covert conference, AP Vice President of Corporate Communications Lauren Easton stated, “Josef Federman is a professional journalist and a former chairman of Israel’s Foreign Press Association. It is not uncommon for journalists to speak about their work at conferences and other events. It remains AP policy to refrain from accepting honoraria, and that policy was followed here.”

The details of the GC41’s gathering were gleaned from a massive tranche of documents extracted by hackers from Israel’s Ministry of Justice in 2024. A full schedule and list of GC4I conference participants has never been seen before by the public.

View GC4I’s 2018 schedule here.

AP, other agencies join semi-secret Israeli gov’t event chaired by ex-IDF official who justified killing journalists

When GC4I gathered in 2018, it met at the Mamilla Hotel Conference Hall in Jerusalem for two days of discussions and briefings on the fight to crush the growing Palestine solidarity movement and its BDS campaign. The conference opened with an address by Sima Vaknin-Gil, then the Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs. A former Israeli intelligence official, Vakhnin-Gil had emerged as one of the most influential coordinators of the country’s propaganda efforts abroad, especially in the US, where she helps the Israeli government evade the Foreign Agent Registration Act law.

Her speech was followed by a discussion moderated by celebrity Republican pollster Frank Luntz on the feasibility of defining the BDS movement as a “hate group.” Further panels focused on “developing relations in the corridors of power” and “how… legislation in Europe and the United States can be used to reduce funding for organizations delegitimizing Israel.”

On the second day of the GC41 conference, Federman joined a panel aimed at “discuss[ing] the difficulties of reporting fairly and accurately on Israel, while dealing with issues such as BDS, delegitimization, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.”

The panel was explicitly aimed at helping the Zionist operatives gathered at the GC4I “understand the shortcomings in Israel’s ability to effectively portray its narrative, what reporters are looking for when writing an article and why the anti-Israel camp’s narrative resonates in the Western world.”

Avital Leibovich, a former IDF spokeswoman who moved on to the American Jewish Committee, chaired the panel. During her stint at the IDF, Leibovich played a leading role in justifying Israel’s deliberate killing of journalists in the Gaza Strip. In 2012, for example, she fired off a letter to the New York Times which smeared Palestinian journalists slain at the hands of the Israeli military: “Such terrorists who hold cameras and notebooks in their hands, are no different from their colleagues who fire rockets aimed at Israeli cities and cannot enjoy the rights and protection afforded to legitimate journalists,” she wrote.

In 2016, Leibovich appeared at Washington DC’s Newseum amid protests – including by this reporter– and condemnation from the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, which urged the institution in a May 31 letter “not to provide a platform to someone who has justified, on record and to a world audience, Israel’s grave violations of international law and war crimes, and in particular attacks against journalists and press freedoms.”

Chaired by Leibovich, the 2018 GC4I panel featured featured the Jerusalem Bureau Chief of RT, Paula Slier, and Laurent Lozano, who held the same position at Agence France Press, alongside the AP’s Federman. Slier has since left RT, while Lozano is currently AFP’s bureau chief in Dakar, Senegal.

Reached by The Grayzone, Slier described the gathering as “a very pleasant experience.”

She said she considered her participation in a semi-covert Israeli government conference as a normal part of her duties as a correspondent in Jerusalem. “It was a chance for them to hear how foreign channels worked in Israel,” Slier commented. “I used to participate and attend all conferences – whether they were pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian – I thought it important to engage with everyone, and it was also an opportunity to talk about RT.”

GC4I launched at “secret conference” with “closed sessions” on criminalizing BDS

GC4I’s first gathering took place in 2010, at a time of heightened Zionist anxiety about the rising global grassroots movement to boycott Israel. A who’s who of Israeli lobbyists from the US, UK and Australia were on hand, alongside Israeli officials from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the newly created Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

“The aim was to end the perceived lack of co-ordination within the pro-Israel movement, a concern frequently voiced by Israel-advocates,” wrote researcher Hil Aked.

Marcus Dysch of the Jewish Chronicle gained access to a 2014 GC4I meeting in London, England. He described it as a “secret conference… held in closed sessions amid heavy security.”

“We have the resources. We have the intelligence. Most important, we have unbounded determination,” Ronald Lauder, the billionaire Zionist financier and Netanyahu confidant, told the crowd of Jewish communal leaders and Israeli officials in London.

Lauder pledged to leverage his fortune to criminalize the BDS movement: “We will draft and lobby for legislation that will withhold government funding from academic institutions that boycott Israel.”

Reporting back to Jewish Federation at home, minimizing deaths in Gaza

Well before he emerged in the Middle East as a reporter, Josef Federman enrolled as a graduate student at Israel’s Hebrew University.

He grew up in Westborough, Massachusetts, where his parents helped found the B’nai Shalom Congregation, a Reform Jewish synagogue. Federman has returned on two occasions to deliver lectures at the synagogue, once in 2021 to discuss the Abraham Accords alongside an Israeli academic, and again in March 2024, during the height of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, for an event titled, “Reporting from Israel.” That speech was co-sponsored by the Jewish Federations of Central Massachusetts, a top sponsor of pro-Israel lobbying inside the US.

Two months later, the Israeli government seized camera equipment from the AP to prevent it from live-streaming video from the Israeli side of the northern Gaza frontier. While Israel announced that it would return the equipment and allow the broadcasts to continue, the event eerily foreshadowed the Israeli military’s double tap strike on the Reuters live position at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis this August 24.

The following month, Federman published a piece of “AP data analysis” that relied on dubious statistics to advance one of Israel’s most important propaganda objectives in Gaza. According to the headline of Federman’s piece, “Women and children are killed less frequently as war’s toll rises.” The article therefore implied that all men in Gaza between the ages of 18 and 59 were possible militants. Throughout the piece, Federman referred to Gaza’s Health Ministry as “Hamas-run,” casting doubt on its casualty counts.

To legitimize his conclusions, Federman turned to Gabriel Epstein, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, or WINEP, the most prolific think tank of the Israel lobby in Washington DC. WINEP director Robert Satloff, a veteran Israel lobbyist, praised the AP’s Federman for “tak[ing] a big step toward setting the record straight.”

Another researcher cited in the article, Michael Spagat, defended the quality of death counts by Gaza’s Health Ministry. Months later, in September 2024, Spagat revised his view of the death toll, declaring, “I now believe that the true death toll almost certainly exceeds the official total.”

This August, a review of an internal Israeli intelligence database further discredited Federman’s analysis, revealing that 83% of those killed by the Israeli military in Gaza were civilians.

Today, Federman’s “data analysis” on the Gaza death has been discredited by virtually every expert outside the Israel lobby, and by the gruesome reality on the ground. However, a revealing post remains on his personal LinkedIn page which shows him liking a rant by Idit Shamir, consul general of Israel in Toronto, mocking the official death count in Gaza:

“Isn’t it curious?” wrote the Israeli official. “Hamas is clueless about Israeli hostages’ status but has a crystal-clear count of Palestinian casualties before Israeli strikes even occur!”

Now that a fellow AP reporter, Miriam Dagga, has joined the tens of thousands of civilians murdered by Israel in Gaza over the past two years, Federman’s agency has been forced to release a rare expression of outrage at Tel Aviv. The indignation offers a stark contrast from the comity Federman displayed when he bantered at an Israeli government conference with the former IDF official who legitimized the policy that would claim Dagga’s life.

September 7, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

What you need to know about PCHR, Al-Haq and Al-Mezan sanctioned by US

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | September 6, 2025

In yet another glaring example of shielding the Israeli regime from accountability, the United States has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights organizations, including Al-Haq, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

Enacted on September 4, 2025, under the pretext of Executive Order 14203, these measures explicitly target the human rights groups for their legitimate engagement with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israeli war crimes amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

This move, watchdogs argue, represents a direct attack on the core principles of international law and human rights defense, strategically designed to criminalize truth-telling and protect Israeli impunity.

They say it forms a sinister pattern of obstruction, following earlier sanctions against the Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and the ICC itself.

It comes amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has claimed nearly 65,000 Palestinian lives, most of them children and women, since October 2023.

Al-Haq

Established in 1979 in Ramallah, the occupied West Bank, Al-Haq stands as one of the oldest and most respected Palestinian human rights organizations, dedicated to protecting human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory under the strict frameworks of international law.

The organization has consultative status at the UN Economic and Social Council and is a member of international federations like FIDH for its meticulous documentation of Israeli crimes, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and the institutionalized practices of apartheid and settler colonialism.

Al-Haq’s advocacy work has been instrumental in providing critical evidence to the ICC, directly supporting the court’s 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former military affairs minister Yoav Gallant for horrendous war crimes.

The organization’s reaction to the US sanctions was one of defiant condemnation, issuing a statement that labeled the measures an “internationally wrongful act” aimed at shielding the Israeli “Zionist settler-colonial apartheid regime.”

Al-Haq’s director, Shawan Jabarin, emphasized that the sanctions, which freeze assets and criminalize essential transactions, pose a direct threat to operational capacity and staff safety, but the official vowed unwavering resilience, stating: “We will not be silenced.”

This reprisal mirrors a previous Israeli designation of Al-Haq as a “terrorist organization” in 2021, which was widely condemned by major human rights watchdogs at the time.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights

Founded in 1995 in Gaza City by prominent lawyers and activists, including Raji Sourani, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has built a formidable reputation for its grassroots advocacy and legal action against human rights violations in the besieged Gaza Strip.

PCHR holds consultative status with the UN and has been a vital source of documentation throughout the devastating Gaza genocidal war, reporting on Israeli airstrikes, extrajudicial killings, and the crippling blockade that violates international humanitarian law.

Its advocacy work has relentlessly focused on providing legal aid to victims and submitting detailed evidence of war crimes to the ICC, making it a key partner in the international pursuit of justice.

PCHR reacted to the sanctions by directly naming US complicity, stating on its X account, “Yesterday, the US government, Israel’s partner in the ongoing genocide, shamefully sanctioned Palestinian human rights organisations.”

The organization highlighted the chilling effect these sanctions will have, threatening its ability to operate amid a dire humanitarian crisis where its work documenting atrocities and offering legal services is most critically needed.

PCHR framed the US action as a deliberate attempt to criminalize their truth-telling mission and protect Israeli impunity, vowing to continue its advocacy despite the immense risks and calling for global solidarity to counter this blatant intimidation.

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights

The Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, established in 1999 in Gaza, has dedicated its mission to monitoring and documenting human rights violations with a specific focus on the devastating impact of Israeli gencoidal war and siege on the civilian population.

As a member of international networks like FIDH and the OMCT, Al-Mezan has built a reputation for credible reporting on the ground, detailing the destruction of infrastructure, civilian deaths, and the famine-like conditions exacerbated by the ongoing conflict.

Its advocacy work has been pivotal in supporting the ICC’s investigation, providing crucial evidence that contributed to the case against Israeli leaders for atrocity crimes.

Al-Mezan connected the sanctions to the ongoing genocide, stating, “As the genocide in Gaza continues, the US has sanctioned us, @alhaq_org, and @pchrgaza, citing our support & involvement with the ICC’s efforts.”

The organization warned that the US measures constitute a direct attack on their ability to document atrocities and provide essential legal and psychological support to victims, thereby further endangering staff safety and isolating them from international partners.

Al-Mezan urgently called on the European Union and other international actors to invoke blocking statutes to neutralize the sanctions’ impact, framing the US move as an extension of its complicity in the Israeli campaign to eradicate Palestinian resistance and silence any witness to its crimes.

International outrage

The sanctions against these three organizations have been met with universal condemnation from the international human rights community, with leading global NGOs labeling the measures a “blatant attack on human rights” and a “cruel and vindictive effort to punish those advocating for victims.”

UN High Commissioner Volker Türk deemed the measures “completely unacceptable,” arguing they serve only to deepen impunity and silence victims.

This concerted effort to dismantle Palestinian civil society exposes a US foreign policy that has wholly abandoned any pretense of supporting a rules-based international order, choosing instead to act as the legal shield for a Zionist project of dispossession and genocide.

By weaponizing its financial power to sanction human rights defenders, the United States is not merely observing but actively participating in the suppression of the Palestinian people, revealing a profound moral bankruptcy that history will judge with severity.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran’s Araghchi Raps “Deafening Western Silence” on Expansion of Israeli Nuclear Weapons

Al-Manar | September 6, 2025

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rapped what he called the “deafening Western silence” on the expansion of the Israeli nuclear weapons.

“Iran has long warned that the Western hysteria over nuclear proliferation in our region is all fluff. The issue, in their view, is not the existence—or expansion—of atomic weapon arsenals. It is about who gets to advance scientifically, even with peaceful nuclear programs,” Araqchi wrote in a post on his X account on Friday.

“It is therefore not a surprise that there is deafening Western silence over the apparent expansion of the only nuclear weapons arsenal in our region—the nukes in the hands of their genocidal ally. The E3 and the US may be in denial, but their silence is eliminating any credibility to utter anything about non-proliferation,” the Iranian foreign minister said.

The remarks by the top Iranian diplomat came as new revelations point to intensified construction at the Dimona nuclear site, long suspected of housing the Israeli regime’s undeclared nuclear arsenal.

According to a report published by the Associated Press on September 3, satellite images show intensified construction at the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona, a facility long linked to the Zionist regime’s secret nuclear weapons program.

Experts who analyzed the images suggested the work could either be a new heavy water reactor —capable of producing plutonium for atomic bombs— or a facility for assembling nuclear weapons. They highlighted that the Zionist entity’s current heavy water reactor, which dates back to the 1960s, may soon require replacement.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Defunct Weaponization of the U.S. Dollar. The SCO Summit and the Decline of the West’s Financial Hegemony.

By Peiman Salehi | Global Research | September 6, 2025

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) summit in Beijing, marked by both symbolism and substance, underscored the slow erosion of Western financial dominance. While mainstream coverage focused on China’s military parade, the real significance lies in the economic agenda advanced by SCO members. Discussions of a potential SCO Development Bank, expanded use of local currencies, and closer coordination with BRICS initiatives point to a growing determination across Eurasia and the Global South to challenge the monopoly long exercised by the United States and its allies through the IMF, the World Bank, and the dollar system.

For decades, these Western-controlled institutions have functioned as instruments of geopolitical leverage. Structural adjustment programs dismantled social protections, imposed privatization, and locked countries into cycles of debt dependency.

The dollar, presented as a neutral global currency, has been repeatedly weaponized through sanctions, financial exclusion, and manipulation of international payment systems. In this context, the SCO’s economic discussions must be seen for what they are: not technical proposals, but acts of resistance. By seeking alternatives to dollar-based finance and conditional lending, SCO members are asserting that the age of Western financial coercion is no longer uncontested.

China and Russia, the central actors in this process, have both experienced the coercive use of Western financial power.

Sanctions on Russia and tariffs on China have reinforced the urgency of building parallel institutions. For smaller states, particularly in the Global South, the stakes are even higher. Access to credit that is not tied to Washington’s geopolitical priorities could mean the difference between austerity and investment, between dependency and sovereignty. The SCO’s proposals are embryonic, but they point toward a broader trend: the emergence of multipolar finance as a shield against unilateral domination.

Critics in the West have rushed to dismiss these efforts, portraying them as impractical or politically motivated. But such dismissals miss the point. The very fact that alternatives are being openly discussed and partially implemented signals the weakening of Western monopoly. The creation of the BRICS New Development Bank, the use of local currencies in trade between Russia, China, and India, and now the SCO’s initiatives all mark a shift from rhetoric to practice. Each new mechanism reduces the ability of the United States to dictate terms unilaterally.

This does not mean China or Russia will replace Washington as the new hegemons. Rather, it means that unipolarity is ending. The world is moving toward a multipolar order in which no single state can control the flows of finance, trade, and development. For Global South nations, this creates both opportunities and risks. It offers the possibility of diversifying partnerships and rejecting conditionality, but it also requires vigilance to avoid reproducing dependency under new patrons. Multipolarity is not a guarantee of justice, but it is a necessary precondition for breaking the cycle of Western domination.

The SCO summit should therefore be understood as part of a larger civilizational struggle over the architecture of world order. Western hegemony has rested not only on military alliances and cultural influence, but on financial coercion. By weaponizing the dollar, Washington has sought to enforce compliance far beyond its borders. The SCO’s economic agenda represents an attempt to reclaim sovereignty in the face of this coercion, to create breathing space for states that refuse to align with U.S. geopolitical priorities.

What emerges from Beijing is not a fully formed alternative, but a direction of travel. Multipolar institutions are being built step by step, challenging the illusion that Western institutions are eternal or indispensable. For countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this is a call to action. It is an invitation to participate in the shaping of a world where development is not dictated from Washington or Brussels, but negotiated among equals.

The mainstream media will continue to focus on parades and symbols, but the real revolution is occurring in the realm of finance. The SCO summit was a reminder that the West’s monopoly on money and credit is cracking, and that the future of global order will be defined not by a single hegemon but by the collective efforts of states refusing to submit. For those seeking peace, justice, and sovereignty, this is a development to be welcomed, nurtured, and defended.

Peiman Salehi is a Political Analyst & Writer from Tehran, Iran.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

EU energy chief demands permanent ban on Russian imports

RT | September 6, 2025

The European Union must permanently cut off all Russian energy imports, Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jorgensen has declared.

Most EU countries have halted direct imports of Russian crude and gas under sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. However, Brussels continues to push for a full phase-out of Russian energy by the end of 2027 under its RePowerEU Roadmap. The plan calls for ending spot gas contracts, suspending new deals, limiting uranium imports, and targeting the so-called Russian “shadow fleet” of oil tankers allegedly used to bypass sanctions.

Jorgensen, who has championed the plan for months, said the bloc must urgently agree on its framework and stick to it even after the Ukraine conflict ends.

“For us the objective is very, very clear. We want to stop the import as fast as possible,” he told reporters in Copenhagen on Friday. “And in the future, even when there is peace, we should still not import Russian energy… In my opinion, we will never again import as much as one molecule of Russian energy once this agreement is made.”

Jorgensen noted that the US has backed Brussels’ plans. President Donald Trump, frustrated with slow Ukraine peace talks, urged European allies on Thursday to halt Russian energy imports. The July trade deal between Washington and Brussels also included a pledge that the EU would replace Russian oil and gas with American LNG and nuclear fuel.

Hungary and Slovakia, both heavily dependent on Russian supplies, have been the strongest opponents of the phase-out, arguing it would undermine the bloc’s security and raise prices. On Friday, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto accused the EU of “hypocrisy,” saying many members still buy Russian crude through intermediaries even as they call for a phase-out. Jorgensen said he was in talks with Budapest and Bratislava but noted the plan can be approved without them, as it requires only a qualified majority.

Moscow considers any restrictions targeting its energy trade illegal and has warned that abandoning its energy will drive up prices and weaken the EU’s economy by forcing it to rely on costlier alternatives or indirect Russian imports.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Is the West still capable of keeping its maritime trade routes functioning?

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 6, 2025

The West risks facing an asymmetrical response to its illegal restrictions on shipping. Unlike Russia, most developed countries depend on the stable and secure functioning of maritime trade routes. The application of the measures used by the West against itself could trigger a crisis in maritime supply chains due to disruptions in the delivery of strategically important goods and raw materials.

A difficult dependency to manage

Unlike Russia, the West bases its economy and strategic security on a widely interconnected and stable global maritime trade system, established as a founding principle of the maritime power of sea-faring civilizations (Seapower, in the classical geopolitics of Mackinder and Mahan). Most developed Western countries are heavily dependent on the smooth and secure functioning of maritime trade routes to ensure the continuous supply of strategic goods, raw materials, and energy products. Maritime trade is an irreplaceable and essential pillar of Western supply chains, with the increasing complexity and vulnerability of these systems due to geopolitical and environmental dynamics.

This dependence means that illegally imposed restrictions on navigation, or pressure on key maritime routes such as the Suez Canal or the Red Sea passage, can have significant not only economic but also geopolitical impacts. The West as a whole, unlike Russia, which has developed an autonomous strategy to diversify its trade routes, does not have established and functional alternatives for many of its maritime supply lines. And this is a problem that is not easily solved.

In military science, the term ‘asymmetry’ refers to the use of strategies, tactics, and tools that do not mirror those of the enemy, but aim to exploit differences in capabilities, organization, and objectives to strike at the enemy’s weak points. Applied to the maritime domain, asymmetry describes how an actor, often weaker in conventional terms, can challenge a superior naval power by avoiding a head-on confrontation and instead seeking to destabilize its freedom of maneuver, logistics, and route security.

In the current geostrategic context, in fact, a crucial aspect concerns the risk that the West will face asymmetric responses to its illegal restrictions on navigation. This concept of asymmetry is central to the theory of contemporary maritime threats: Western powers, by unilaterally imposing restrictions on the routes or maritime activities of other states (e.g., through sanctions, blockades, or “no sail zones”), could generate unconventional reactions that are difficult to manage structurally, especially now that dominance of the seas is no longer the exclusive preserve of the old Atlantic empires.

The case of Russia is emblematic: despite being heavily affected by sanctions and restrictions on global maritime traffic, it has developed a maritime strategy aimed at building autonomous infrastructure and new routes—such as the development of the Northern Sea Route—to bypass Western restrictions and ensure internal and external economic continuity. The West, on the other hand, despite having provided important regulatory and military tools to ensure freedom of navigation, finds itself exposed to more damaging forms of retaliation precisely because it is unable to easily circumvent the key routes on which it depends.

The application of the same restrictive measures used by the West against itself would, in perspective, result in a potentially acute crisis in maritime supply chains. Disruptions in access to and passage through key trade routes would cause delays in the delivery of strategic raw materials and essential goods, with knock-on effects on industry, agriculture, energy, and final consumption.

The consequences of blockages or restrictions on strategic passages such as the Suez or Panama Canals include not only higher costs due to longer and more expensive alternative routes (with additional costs for fuel, insurance, and sailing time) but also port congestion, increased emissions, and misalignments between supply and demand in global chains. Furthermore, insecurity in maritime routes can raise insurance premiums, contributing to increased international transport costs and fueling market volatility.

Structural differences between the West and Russia and growing instability

Western vulnerability must be viewed in light of the structural differences in maritime management and strategy between the West and Russia.

Russia is gearing up to become a major maritime power, investing in infrastructure, shipbuilding, and new logistics hubs on its territory, aiming for more direct control of its export routes for resources (natural gas, coal, agricultural products) to non-Western markets such as Asia, which are becoming geopolitical and economic priorities.

For example, the Navy’s key role in Arctic routes is already a global excellence, for which the collective West lags far behind. The West, on the contrary, relies on an international maritime trade network that is increasingly subject to high interdependence and multilateral cooperation, and has not yet developed an equivalent system of autonomous routes and infrastructure capable of circumventing unilateral restrictions. This creates an imbalance that can result in asymmetric risk: while Russia can tolerate or circumvent certain restrictions due to its alternative shipping options, the West cannot do the same without serious disruption in terms of trade flows and costs.

Current geopolitical trends increase the likelihood that illegal restrictions on navigation, applied for political reasons, will translate into significant crises in Western supply chains. The effects manifest themselves in:

  • Increased delays and misalignments in the delivery of raw materials and finished products (e.g., critical materials, energy, agricultural products);
  • Higher costs for maritime transport and insurance, reflected in higher prices and potential pass-through to end consumers;
  • Risk of port congestion and logistical disruptions that can trigger temporary regional or global economic crises;
  • Increased geopolitical tensions in key regions, with exposure to maritime conflicts or asymmetric actions by state and non-state actors.

The application of restrictive Western measures on oneself is not only a technical challenge, but also a factor that could trigger chain reactions that are difficult to control, as other maritime powers and regional actors could adopt asymmetric strategies, including the militarization of routes, piracy, and targeted sabotage.

A war of maps

But how did the West construct these restrictions? This corresponds to a ‘war of maps’: whoever controls cartography and security warnings dominates the very perception of freedom of navigation.

Three types of restrictive measures have been applied: economic sanctions, maritime exclusion zones (mainly in areas of open or potential conflict) and the updating of maritime charts. And when sailing, maps are essential.

The map war is a cognitive and regulatory domain, in which the representation of space becomes a weapon, more or less directly. Those who control the maps, i.e., decide what to show, what to obscure, and which routes are safe or prohibited to follow, effectively exercise strategic dominance that influences many actors.

The map war at sea is played out on several levels:

Cartographic: updates to official charts (e.g., NOAA for the US, UKHO for Great Britain) can delimit restricted areas, minefields, and training areas. This forces civilian and military ships to change their routes, even if the sea remains physically free.

Digital: ECDIS and AIS systems, which are mandatory in commercial navigation, receive updates from Western sources (Navtex, Inmarsat, IMO). By adding or removing “digital layers,” the West can channel traffic.

Narrative-legal: maps are never neutral; they reflect a vision of the law of the sea. A NATO map will show as “international waters” areas that Russia or China consider “territorial waters.” It is a form of “cartographic lawfare.”

Operational: navies reinforce on the ground what the map represents. If an area is marked as “restricted” and is patrolled by frigates or naval drones, the cartographic representation becomes reality.

Cognitively controlling space means dominating representation, i.e., conditioning the movements of commercial and military fleets, driving up insurance and logistics costs, legitimizing a certain view of maritime law and, most importantly, transforming the sea into a sort of “mosaic” made up of mandatory corridors and prohibited areas. In other words, it is no longer just the strength of ships that determines control, but also the use of the power of representation, which constrains reality geopolitically speaking.

The problem is that the West, with its maritime powers of glorious memory, cannot be denied, is still convinced that it has immeasurable and unchallenged power. However, this perception does not correspond to the truth. Western leaders have promoted sanctions and restrictive policies, driven by the desire to maintain control that has long since ceased to belong to them, and have ended up compromising their own economies and damaging their interests. The schizophrenia seems never-ending.

Even sanctions have not worked

Economic sanctions and export controls are now the main weapons of US national security. With a simple administrative act, Washington can exclude its adversaries from the dollar-dominated international financial system and limit their access to advanced technology supply chains. These tools, designed to reinforce foreign policy and defense objectives, are often used as an intermediate response: more effective than diplomacy alone, but less risky than direct military intervention. Their apparent low cost and ease of use have encouraged their frequent use, with the risk of gradually reducing their effectiveness and raising doubts about the stability of the dollar as a global reserve currency.

Over the past two decades, these tools have been applied against a growing range of adversaries. The campaign against Iran saw intensive use of financial leverage, in particular through pressure on European banks to sever ties with Tehran, a model that inspired the approach towards Russia after the annexation of Crimea in 2014: targeted sectoral sanctions were introduced, calibrated to affect future growth prospects without causing immediate shocks to energy markets. Subsequently, attention shifted to China, with technological restrictions directed at giants such as Huawei and ZTE in an attempt to slow down the development of advanced capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence and defense.

After 2022, with the start of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the measures became more complex, with oil price caps and new controls on the export of advanced semiconductors introduced in addition to financial and trade blockades, the result of coordination with European and Asian allies. This combination of instruments showed how economic measures can be integrated into a single strategy, even if they fail to produce positive effects. Arrogant rhetoric clashed with harsh reality: sanctions are no longer as effective a deterrent as they once were, and their effect is much less controllable and predictable.

Behind every sanctions package lie intricate decision-making processes, in which coordination with allies and calculation of the effects on global markets play a decisive role, and, above all, a discreet sense of masochism. Countless hours of work, commissions, discussions, and proclamations in the media have produced only an unprecedented accumulation of disadvantages.

Because, to be honest, the sanctions system simply does not work. On the one hand, sanctions have evolved in response to increasingly sophisticated threats, combining financial, commercial, and technological levers, but entirely in a self-congratulatory sense, as they are not pragmatically effective. on the other hand, they have rarely produced significant political change in the affected states on their own, instead generating side effects on the global economy and tensions with the private sector or with Western partners themselves, creating a disastrous boomerang effect.

If the West does not decide to stop, it will be forced to pay the price for all its misdeeds, a price that is much higher and more painful than it can imagine. And then it will be too late to turn back.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Science-for-hire companies violate scientific norms, degrade public discourse, and facilitate the mass poisoning of society

By Toby Rogers | August 27, 2025

Last week, the New York Times published a bizarre “Guest Essay” on autism by Jessica Steier, a Pharma mercenary who has at least ten financial conflicts of interest and no background in autism research. I submitted a reply to the article to correct her disinformation and the NY Times refused to publish it.

Here are the facts for anyone who wants to read them:

Jessica Steier runs a science-for-hire company, “Unbiased Science.” She uses a number of pass-through organizations to launder contributions from large pharmaceutical and chemical companies. However, one can still figure out a lot of her funders (see article on “Unbiased Science Podcast” in SourceWatch). Steier advises an infant formula company and is an affiliate for a company that makes monosodium glutamate (MSG). Her podcast has taken money from 3M, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Moderna, and CSL Seqirus (a flu vaccine manufacturer).

Steier is cartoonishly evil. From SourceWatch:

Steier’s Unbiased Science Podcast:

• Described the herbicide glyphosate as “safe for use”

• Declared polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) in Teflon to be “non-toxic to humans”

• Called the Environmental Working Group Dirty Dozen list of produce with the most and least pesticide residues “a fear-based marketing ploy”

• Claimed GMOs are “safe,” “nutritious,” and “beneficial to consumers, producers, and the environment” and

• Called hydrogenated oil “a safe dietary fat.”

The Unbiased Science Podcast recorded two episodes on organic food and farming in December 2022 and January 2023 in which they argued that organic pesticides are more harmful than synthetic pesticides used in chemical farming…

Andrea C. Love [Steier’s co-host] defended the artificial sweetener aspartame as “safe,” said in an interview that she has “at least one diet soda a day,” and the Podcast posted on Instagram that “aspartame does not pose a health risk to humans, cancer or otherwise, especially at levels we would consume.”

Love and Steier were critical of the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s ranking of the chemicals considered possibly carcinogenic to humans in 2023.

SourceWatch provides even more evidence of Steier’s toxic sophistry here.

For those who are new to these topics, mountains of evidence from The Defender, Beyond Pesticides, and Moms Across America, among others, show why all of Steier’s claims listed above are junk science.

Nearly everything Steier writes in her “Guest Essay” on autism is demonstrably false. For example, Steier:

  • Thinks mercury and aluminum in vaccines are fine even though they are known neurotoxicants (see Grandjean and Landrigan, 2014, Supplementary appendix).
  • Omits the fact that Mark, Anne, and David Geier sued the Maryland Board of Physicians and won (and then a higher court retroactively granted “absolute immunity” to this private board even though the Maryland legislature never gave it that right).
  • Has apparently not read any of the 55 autism prevalence studies in the U.S. since 1970, so she is oblivious to the fact that autism rates have increased 32,158% over that time period.
  • Seems unaware that a Danish study she cited favorably recently issued a correction after they discovered, post-publication, 136% more neurodevelopmental events, including autism and ADHD, that changed their research findings.
  • Has never read, or just plain ignores, the six vaccinated vs. unvaccinated studies that show that vaccines significantly increase autism risk (see summaries in Rogers, 2025).

Science-for-hire companies will say or do anything for money. Steier’s company, “Unbiased Science,” is relatively new. However, it uses the same playbook developed by other notorious science-for-hire firms, including Gradient, Exponent, and Ramboll. They are often referred to as “rented white coats” (see discussion in Rogers, 2019). Anyone citing Steier as a “public health expert” has no idea what they are talking about.

The NY Times devoted considerable resources, including two graphic designers and prominent placement online and in the Sunday print edition, in the attempt to make this trashy hit piece look presentable to its readers. The NY Times’ failure to disclose Steier’s extensive conflicts of interest and its refusal to publish critical comments in connection with this “Guest Essay” make me wonder if this was a paid advertorial at the behest of a pharmaceutical company.

The autism epidemic is a matter of enormous national importance. Yet everything that the NY Times publishes on autism is an attempt to cover up the causes and protect the powerful industries that are culpable. Unfortunately, in the midst of this crisis, the NY Times has abandoned its role as “the newspaper of record” and is now a criminal syndicate that is endangering the health of all Americans.

Toby Rogers has a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focus is on regulatory capture and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. Rogers does grassroots political organizing with medical freedom groups across the country working to stop the epidemic of chronic illness in children. He writes about the political economy of public health on Substack.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Louisiana Surgeon General Warns Parents about ‘Authoritarian’ American Academy of Pediatrics

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | September 6, 2025

In February, I highlighted a statement by Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph L. Abraham, commending it for its pro-freedom tone. I also noted that “I will be watching for follow-up actions.” Well, on Thursday, Abraham came out with a powerful editorial again strongly arguing for employing a pro-freedom approach in relation to medical issues.

In the editorial, Abraham took on squarely the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) — a large and influential organization of pediatricians that Abraham termed an “authoritarian organization” that has been “captured by special interests.” The AAP, Abraham related, “thinks they know better than any parent or doctor in this country and wants you to bend to their will while they hold your child down and give them whatever pharmaceutical product they choose.”

In his editorial, Abraham threw his support behind United States Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who last week strongly criticized the AAP and its “Big Pharma benefactors” after the AAP took yet another step in its over-the-top campaign to maximize the amount of shots injected into children in America.

Abraham’s passionate and informative editorial, published at The Center Square, begins as follows:

By now, virtually every parent in the U.S. understands that COVID-19 shots for healthy children are a very bad idea. Public health authorities in nearly every country on earth abandoned the practice a couple of years ago. Even the World Health Organization (WHO), which admittedly lost whatever credibility it had left during the pandemic, stopped recommending the shot for healthy kids. At no point did the theoretical benefits outweigh the risks of an experimental product that had unknown long-term risks in the pediatric population.

Many are probably wondering why this topic is still being talked about at all, which would have been a valid question until recently, when an organization formerly known as the gold standard for pediatric advocacy defied logic and commanded that all babies, on their 6-month birthday, receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) made this recommendation in response to the CDC’s credibility-restoring move of removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the childhood schedule. They have even gone so far as to sue Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and the CDC over the very sound decision.

This is not the first time the AAP has done something crazy. In 2023, its board voted unanimously in favor of recommending transition therapy for “transgender” kids. We don’t let kids choose what they eat for dinner, much less make irreversible, life-altering decisions. To put a cherry on top of the insanity, the AAP has also called for religious vaccine exemptions to be outlawed. This authoritarian organization thinks they know better than any parent or doctor in this country and wants you to bend to their will while they hold your child down and give them whatever pharmaceutical product they choose.

Read Abraham’s complete editorial here.

September 6, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Senator Ron Johnson Dares to Question 9/11

Corbett | September 6, 2025

WATCH ON: ARCHIVE / BITCHUTE / ODYSEE / RUMBLE / SUBSTACK/  or DOWNLOAD THE MP4

Senator Ron Johnson joins us today to discuss the official 9/11 conspiracy theory and the legitimate questions that he and many other Americans have about that story. We discuss Senator Johnson’s problems with the official 9/11 investigation, whether the Senate can and should hold new hearings on the subject, and what he will be discussing at the upcoming Turning the Tide: 9/11 Justice in 2025 conference in Washington, D.C. We also delve into harm caused by the experimental mRNA injections and the subsequent erosion of public trust in government and institutions.

SHOW NOTES

Turning the Tide: 9/11 Justice in 2025

TRAILER: The 9/11 Files

Dr. Chris Palmer: Full Testimony- Senate Roundtable, Washington D.C. 9/23/24

The 50 Questions NIST Should Have Asked 20 Years Ago

9/11 Suspects

9/11 Trillions: Follow the Money

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson Questions Drs. McCullough, Vaugh & Thorp

VAERS Summary for COVID-19 Vaccines through 4/30/2021

September 5, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

HHS Will Link Autism to Tylenol Use During Pregnancy, Wall Street Journal Reports

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 5, 2025

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to announce that autism is linked to the use of Tylenol during pregnancy in a report expected to be released this month, The Wall Street Journal reported today.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will also likely suggest that low levels of the vitamin folate also contribute to autism. The report will propose that a form of folate called folic acid, or leucovorin, can be used to treat symptoms of the disorder, according to the WSJ.

Acetaminophen, the ingredient found in hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter medicines — including Tylenol products — is routinely recommended for fever reduction and the relief of mild to moderate pain. Pregnant women commonly take it.

The drug has long been linked to liver toxicity, and several studies over the last decade — including one published last month by researchers at Harvard Medical School — have found that children exposed to the drug during pregnancy may be more likely to develop neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD.

Shares of Tylenol, made by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Kenvue, declined nearly 11% Friday after the WSJ published its report.

“Nothing is more important to us than the health and safety of the people who use our products,” a Kenvue spokeswoman told the WSJ. “We have continuously evaluated the science and continue to believe there is no causal link between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and autism.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says Tylenol is safe to use in pregnancy. In 2021, as more evidence of the link was emerging, the organization published a statement opposing a consensus statement supported by a group of 91 scientists in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology. The scientists said that a growing body of research suggests that prenatal exposure to the drug may alter fetal development and increase the risks of neurodevelopmental, reproductive and urogenital disorders.

“ACOG and obstetrician-gynecologists across the country have always identified acetaminophen as one of the only safe pain relievers for pregnant individuals during pregnancy,” the pharmaceutical industry-sponsored medical organization insisted.

An estimated 1 in 31 (3.22%) 8-year-old children had an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis in 2022 — up from 1 in 36 (2.8%) in 2020, and 1 in 1,000 children in the 1990s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest study, published earlier this year.

Studies have also linked Tylenol use in children with permanent impairments in cognition and socialization in susceptible children, including when administered after vaccination.

“The body of evidence around acetaminophen and autism really suggests that the highest risks are not prenatal but neonatal and postnatal,” according to Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.

“If I were to rank the risk periods, neonatal would be the highest, postnatal next and prenatal the least, given that pregnant women will be able to help detox the acetaminophen, reducing the burden on the developing unborn child,” Hooker said.

Kennedy announced in April that the public health agencies had launched a “massive testing and research effort” to determine what causes autism.

He said the effort involves hundreds of scientists globally and promised results by this month. Kennedy said that once the environmental causes of autism are identified, “We’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.”

Last month, Kennedy told President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting that his agency was on track to announce the findings of an ongoing study on the causes of autism in September.

“We’re finding interventions, certain interventions now that are clearly almost certainly causing autism, and we’re going to be able to address those in September,” Kennedy said.

Reuters reported that researchers have submitted more than 100 proposals to participate in the Trump administration’s $50 million study into possible causes of autism. A list of 25 grant winners is expected to be announced at the end of the month.

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.

September 5, 2025 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Washington sanctions Palestinian rights groups for aiding ICC in Gaza war crimes probe

The White House is covering for Israeli war crimes amid its operation to ethnically cleanse and demolish Gaza City

The Cradle | September 5, 2025

The US has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights organizations that previously petitioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel for war crimes in Gaza.

“Today, the Trump Administration is sanctioning three NGOs – Al Haq, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – for assisting in the ICC’s illegitimate actions against Israel. The United States will continue to protect our own sovereignty and the sovereignty of our allies from the ICC’s overreach,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on Thursday evening on X.

The announcement first appeared as a notice on the US Treasury Department’s website on Thursday.

In November 2023, the organizations requested that the ICC investigate Israel for war crimes in response to its actions in Gaza, including carrying out airstrikes on heavily populated civilian areas, imposing a complete siege to cut off food, water, and electricity to the civilian population, and causing the mass displacement of residents.

On 31 October 2023, Israel bombed the Jabalia refugee camp, killing some 120 people, mostly women and children, in one airstrike with a 2,000-pound (907 kilograms) bomb.

In May of 2024, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan requested that the court’s judges issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant on charges of using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.

The ICC issued the arrest warrants in November 2024.

The US responded by imposing sanctions on ICC judges and Khan, calling the Hague-based court a “national security threat.”

A smear campaign was also launched, accusing Khan of sexual misconduct in the workplace.

The ICC was established in 2002 to try cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The jurisdiction of the court is recognized by its 125 member countries. However, the US, China, Russia, and Israel do not recognize the court’s authority.

The US Treasury announcement comes as Israel continues its destruction of Gaza City, which Tel Aviv is seeking to ethnically cleanse of its hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents.

While Israeli leaders say they wish to defeat Hamas, the Israeli military is systematically demolishing Palestinian cities to make way for a mega real estate project backed by Israeli businessmen and the White House.

US President Donald Trump has stated that Palestinians will be forced to leave Gaza, which will be turned into a high-tech smart city and resort hub he has dubbed the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Israel has issued evacuation orders for Gaza City as the demolition moves forward.

“The Israeli forces, when they mark any area by red color and they request the people to leave, they really will destroy it,” said Gaza City resident Mohammed Alkurdi while speaking with AP.

“It’s not something partial like before. It’s 100 percent,” he said. “The house, I’m telling my friends, it keeps dancing all the day. It keeps dancing, going right and left like an earthquake.”

Another Gaza City resident, Amjad Shawa, the director of a Palestinian NGO network, told AP that “Gaza [City] will be leveled and destroyed,” like other cities in the enclave.

After months of Israeli bombing, “there is no Rafah. Almost no Khan Yunis,” Shawa said.

Some residents of Gaza City are choosing to leave ahead of the Israeli warplanes and bulldozers.

For others, leaving is not possible at all due to age, sickness, and lack of anywhere else to go.

“The elders, they’re saying we will die here,” Shawa said. “This has pushed the other members of the family to stay, not to leave.”

September 5, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Britain’s Example Vindicates Rand Paul’s Opposition to ‘Kids Online Safety Act’

By Jack Hunter | The Libertarian Institute | September 4, 2025

In July 2024, Rand Paul (R-KY) was one of only three senators who voted against the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), legislation that sought to protect children from harmful material online. The other two were Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Senator Paul said of his decision:

“How would platforms comply with KOSA’s requirement to mitigate and prevent undefined harms such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders? Should platforms stop children from seeing war coverage because it could lead to depression? Should pro-life messages be censored because platforms worry it could impact the mental well-being of teenage mothers? Would sites permit discussion of a teenager overcoming an eating disorder?”

Fair questions, all. KOSA passed in overwhelming bipartisan fashion in the Senate but has not advanced through the U.S. House. Paul’s problem with it, with giving the government this power, was the many potential unintended consequences—ones that his senate colleagues apparently didn’t even consider.

Yet, Senator Paul’s worries are being proven in real time in the United Kingdom where their Online Safety Act (OSA) has just gone into effect, creating all sorts of problems, great, small, and dangerous.

Wikipedia has threatened to throttle traffic coming from the UK due to the law, where the platform is expected to block minors from “harmful” content, including articles covering “Bulimia nervosa” and “Oxford child sex abuse ring.”

A student might need to research eating disorders or child sexual abuse for educational purposes, but if Wikipedia allows this access, the platform could face fines of eighteen million in British pounds, or 10% of the website’s annual revenue.

Companies aren’t going to want to subject themselves to that kind of punishment.

How would—how can—Wikipedia actually police this? How would the many social media companies be able to keep tabs on the endless labyrinth of potentially worrisome material shared by millions on their platforms and the ages of users who have access to them?

The downsides to such laws are almost impossible to predict. Thanks to OSA, British users who did not want to verify their age have lost access to Spotify. The same was true for some Brits and pizza delivery. No pepperoni pie for you, young lad. Don’t worry, it’s for your own good.

The backlash against OSA has been significant. U.S.-UK dual citizen Liz Mair reported at Real Clear Policy:

“VPN apps, which allow a user to disguise their actual location, became the most downloaded apps in the UK—as Brits sought to dodge the restrictions. And in a matter of days, 500,00 Brits—approaching 1 percent of the population of England—signed a petition urging Parliament to debate a repeal of the law (10,000 signatures are all it takes to force an official response from the government; after 100,000 signatures, Parliament must consider a debate).”

So far, Paul’s KOSA worries looks prescient.

But the unforeseen negative effects of OSA get worse than pizza delivery and streaming services. Far worse.

There is a “Grooming Gangs” scandal in the United Kingdom that is a threat to young women and girls. Mair notes that with the OSA:

“… there have also been some really serious, adverse effects that actually could jeopardize, not enhance kids’ safety. It all demonstrates what many of us who criticized the law when it was a bill, and who have criticized the US companion bill, KOSA, have been saying for a long time: One man’s definition of ‘protecting’ children online can easily wind up hurting kids when a well-intentioned rule comes into effect.”

She’s not wrong.

“If you read up on the scandal, you will discover that it’s not really about ‘grooming’ at all, and much more about really horrific mass rape and abuse of kids orchestrated by gangs here in Britain,” Mair writes.

She notes as a practical matter:

“Maybe tween and teenage girls in areas where these gangs have operated don’t need to be exposed to every last detail, but surely they need to have some idea of the fact that if they accept gifts from an older ‘boyfriend,’ the end result may be really, really atrocious, almost unthinkable abuse—and not groping or unwanted kissing (and not just by the ‘boyfriend’ but dozens of his ‘friends’)?”

This is an important point. Shouldn’t young British girls be able to learn about the methods used by men who might harm them? But instead are being shielded by harsh but useful information in the name of protecting them?

In reality, is OSA really just making kids more vulnerable?

These are the sorts of problems Sen. Paul warned about with KOSA.

Politicians in both parties are always quick to support any legislation that is intended to “protect” children. But maybe they should pause and think about what the negative effects could be, for even a second? Thinking is not popular among politicians and this is bipartisan, with KOSA being co-sponsored by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

Americans of a certain age will recall the PATRIOT Act ushered in rapidly after 9/11 to supposedly better “protect” us was done so by overwhelming majorities in both parties. But instead of targeting foreign terrorists, that law ended up being used more to go after drug dealers.

Giving the federal government these sorts of extra-constitutional powers is never a good idea, and can be used against political opponents across the ideological spectrum depending on which party is in power. As Paul wrote in opposing KOSA, “This bill does not merely regulate the internet; it threatens to suppress important and diverse discussions that are essential to a free and healthy society. That is why a legion of advocacy groups on the left and the right, such as Students for Life and the American Civil Liberties Union, oppose KOSA.”

Rand Paul is right about KOSA and how it might not only harm liberty but endanger Americans if it passes.

The United Kingdom’s example should be proof enough.

September 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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