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Massie And Burlison Introduce Bill To Defund Flock Surveillance Cameras

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026

Two Republican members of Congress have introduced a bill that seeks to stop the federal government from funding surveillance cameras that are used to build mass vehicle and biometric location tracking systems.

Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Eric Burlison of Missouri introduced the Flock-Off Act, H.R. 10221, on September 2.

Massie and Burlison want to cut off the flow of federal money to local and state law enforcement that is used to purchase, maintain, and operate the controversial Flock Safety cameras, but also other similar systems, and any data they produce.

And the proposal seeks to stop federal funding of any cloud services that store data collected by Flock Safety and similar companies, as well as any data-sharing agreements involving these systems.

Massie and Burlison are joined by five other representatives as original cosponsors of the bill: Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Ro Khanna of California, Chip Roy of Texas, and Victoria Spartz of Indiana.

If it becomes law, the Flock-Off Act would represent a significant limitation on the ability of the federal government to help build and maintain surveillance systems that can track people’s movements and identify them through biometric data.

The bill covers automated license-plate readers, cameras that can identify or extract vehicle characteristics, and biometric surveillance cameras. Biometric data is defined as including facial recognition, voiceprints, iris or retinal scans, fingerprints, and gait recognition.

The bill would require federal agencies to decommission federally funded covered systems within 180 days, while state and local recipients would have to stop operating federally supported systems to continue receiving money under the relevant federal program. If they violate the spending prohibition, relevant program funds would be withheld until the improperly spent amount is repaid to the US Treasury.

There are some exceptions: the border, and toll roads. Federal funds could continue to be used for cameras located within one mile of the northern or southern US border, if they are used to detect or interdict “unlawful entry, human trafficking, or drug smuggling.” In addition, automated license-plate readers used solely to collect, administer, or enforce tolls would also be exempt.

Massie said the purpose of the bill is to stop the federal government from helping local police and cities that have “gone beyond the pale” by deploying mass surveillance systems that are reminiscent of those described in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.

“The federal government shouldn’t provide ‘security’ grants to cities and police departments that have gone beyond the pale and turned their communities into a version of 1984,” Massie said. “The Flock-Off Act withholds federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock cameras to surveil law-abiding citizens. Federal taxpayers should not be forced to fund the surveillance state.”

“Technology may change, but our constitutional rights do not,” Burlison said. “The Fourth Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, and advances in surveillance technology should not come at the expense of our privacy and liberty.”

H.R. 10221 was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

September 8, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on Massie And Burlison Introduce Bill To Defund Flock Surveillance Cameras

US Warns UK Against Forcing Platforms to Promote Preferred News

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 8, 2026

The US government has urged its British counterpart to give up on plans to make social media and video sharing platforms give more prominence to news from mainstream media outlets.

The US government’s objection is that this would amount to “mandating that platforms algorithmically amplify government-preferred media.”

The UK proposal was contained in a green paper published in June, titled “Watch This Space: A New Strategic Direction for UK Media.” The document said that the government will “explore legislative options to require social media to make news content from PSM providers, and potentially also national and local news publishers, prominent and easily discoverable.”

The US response to the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s consultation, which closed on August 31, argues that the idea of official judgments about which media outlets are trustworthy is dangerous because it can be used to suppress others and thus harm free expression and competition.

Unlike direct censorship, this would work by promoting government-preferred media, but the effect would be to make it even harder for others to be heard. This is because of the way recommendation algorithms work, and the limited space on a user’s feed – promoting some content means suppressing other content, and thus, speech.

The US government also warned that this policy would have “significant effects beyond UK borders” because of the global nature of the platforms that would be forced to implement it. This could lead to “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.”

The US Embassy and Consulates in the UK published the US government’s response. The British government’s preference is to have voluntary industry agreements. However, if these prove insufficient, the government says it is prepared to legislate.

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport reacted to the US criticism by saying that it “strongly believes” in free expression and fair competition, and that any future action will ensure those are protected.

This is not the first time the UK proposal has been criticized. Among those who previously spoke against it were House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, YouTube, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

The UK green paper cites countering “misinformation” during “crisis” or “unrest” as the reason to make sure that news from public service media providers is easily accessible and prominent. It does not set out a final test for deciding which national or local publishers might also qualify, but that is the crux of the US criticism, and the question remains unanswered.

September 8, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on US Warns UK Against Forcing Platforms to Promote Preferred News

Mark Levin Trashes the Constitution to Protect Violent West Bank Settlers

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | September 8, 2026

Mark Levin is at it again. He is livid over a decision by the UK government to ban trade with violent illegal settlers in the West Bank. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said this week the UK will ban imports of all goods from settlements in the occupied West Bank, in addition to services including financing, construction, infrastructure, real estate, and advertising for settlements.

For Levin and the Zionists in Israel and the United States, a boycott of Kahanist settlers is antisemitism, the same as public criticism of Israel over its slaughter of Palestinians, most of whom are women and children, is hatred of Jews.

Levin considers himself a constitutional lawyer. However, his interpretation of the US Constitution is highly selective. As an ardent and outspoken Zionist and defender of apartheid and genocide, he believes a boycott of Israel is not protected by the First Amendment. The right to boycott was reaffirmed in 1982 with a Supreme Court ruling on NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. It held that nonviolent political boycotts are a form of protected speech. However, this is irrelevant when it comes to Israel.

The case centered around a civil-rights boycott of white-owned businesses in Mississippi. The Court upheld the right to peaceful advocacy, association, and political expression that were integral to the campaign.

In 2022, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed Arkansas’ anti-boycott contracting legislation. The majority determined that the law governed commercial purchasing choices rather than safeguarding speech. In February 2023, the Supreme Court decided not to review an appeal.

However, court rulings in Texas, Arizona, and Arkansas have upheld the right to boycott as as a protected form of political expression under the First Amendment, challenging the legality of anti-BDS laws across the United States.

“Close to 40 states across the U.S. have laws that require ending contracts with and/or divesting from companies that engage in antisemitic boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel,” Levin posted to social media on September 7.

These states whose combined GDP is significant should publicly make clear to countries such as the UK that companies that engage in BDS because of their decisions will face consequences under state anti-BDS laws. By the way, Florida and Texas combined have a much larger GDP than the UK.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement is now illegal in 38 states. Congress has also considered anti-boycott legislation. In 2019, the Senate passed S.1, which contains anti-boycott provisions. In 2023, Republicans, including Marco Rubio, reintroduced the Combating BDS Act.

Most Americans oppose anti-BDS laws by a wide margin. 72% oppose laws penalizing people who boycott Israel while 22% supported such laws, according to the University of Maryland’s Critical Issues Poll.

Levin is not opposed to BDS if it focuses on the correct target. In 2021, for instance, he demanded a BDS-style boycott of big tech and major television networks in response to criticism of Israel. “He argues that the way to fight against distortions and false claims, and to counter the media censors, is take a page from the anti-Israel activists’ playbook,” reported the Jerusalem News Syndicate in 2021.

Does Levin disagree with the colonial protests against British goods in the 1760s and 1770s that led to the Boston Tea Party? Does he believe the Montgomery bus boycott in the mid-1950s was illegitimate? How about the United Farm Workers boycotts in the 1960s, or the NAACP Mississippi boycott of white-owned businesses, also in the 60s?

No, probably not. The only legitimate opposition to BDS concerns Israel. The Zionist state gets a pass and the Constitution is null and void when confronted with spurious accusations of antisemitism.

September 8, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mark Levin Trashes the Constitution to Protect Violent West Bank Settlers

US ambassador threatens Britain with economic retaliation over Israeli settlement trade ban

The Cradle | September 8, 2026

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has said Washington will certainly hit back if Britain proceeds with trade sanctions targeting illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, telling BBC that a response could come from the federal government and from individual US states.

Huckabee said acting in this way against “a partner, Israel” risked a “huge economic impact on British businesses,” which he warned could find themselves “banned” from operating “in a number of states.”

He told BBC the planned ban on illegal Israeli settlement goods would be “discrimination against the Jewish people,” singling out Florida as a state that could move against British trade.

The ambassador had already accused the British government of “Jew hate” over the weekend, responding to criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza by British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who is himself Jewish.

Florida Republican Congressman Randy Fine issued a parallel threat, saying legislation he pushed through as a state lawmaker “would ban any British company forced to comply from doing business with any state or local government in Florida.”

Firms joining the boycott would also be shut out of the state if they needed permits or tax dealings with authorities to function, he said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in a filmed statement, said Britain would land on “the wrong side of history,” calling the step “a grave miscalculation” and “a gross interference in the democratic elections of a sovereign nation.”

This comes after UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham moved to impose a full ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, along with possible sanctions on Israeli ministers and individual settlers.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has publicly attacked British Foreign Secretary Miliband, calling his statement on the E1 settlement project patronizing.

The illegal E1 settlement bloc would cut the occupied West Bank in half, isolate it from occupied East Jerusalem, and bury any prospect of a Palestinian state, an outcome Israeli officials have stated as the goal.

September 8, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on US ambassador threatens Britain with economic retaliation over Israeli settlement trade ban

Buck-Dancing for Zion: Hakeem Jeffries

How Brooklyn’s point man in Congress was groomed to serve Jewish interests over his own constituents

José Niño Unfiltered | September 7, 2026

Jared Kushner and Hakeem Jeffries met privately in New York City in recent weeks, and neither man wanted to discuss it afterward.

The New York Times reported the encounter on August 23, citing five people with knowledge of a session held in a New York City space a mutual friend provided. The two men discussed housing, immigration, and the cost of living. Kushner urged Jeffries to sit down with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles as a follow-up. NBC News confirmed the account the same day. Jeffries’s initial statement never acknowledged the meeting at all, insisting only that “the affordability crisis is not a hoax and nothing short of transformational policy change is acceptable.” He later posted a video on X acknowledging that “Kushner asked for a meeting.”

The timing carried its own message. Democrats lead in nearly every midterm poll, and Jeffries becomes speaker if they capture the House in November. Kushner has told associates that Jeffries ranks as “the most serious” Democratic leader. House Speaker Mike Johnson shrugged at the news on Fox News, saying “I don’t know what that’s about.” Crooked Media co-founder Tommy Vietor was less charitable, posting on X: “Jared Kushner has no actual government job; he just uses his family connections to get money from gulf autocrats and fund corrupt deals. The only way Jeffries should work with him is with demands for documents and subpoenas.”

That reaction captures a long-standing problem with Jeffries. Namely, the qualities that make Jeffries someone Trump’s inner circle can work with are the same qualities that have made him a target inside his own party and nowhere is more apparent than on the issue of Israel.

Jeffries reached that position by a steady ascent through the House. He won New York’s 8th Congressional District in 2012, succeeding Ed Towns, and quickly built a legislative profile around criminal justice reform. He introduced legislation to criminalize chokeholds after Eric Garner’s death and served as the lead Democratic sponsor of the bipartisan First Step Act of 2018, a jailbreak bill that became one of Donald Trump’s most significant legislative accomplishments of his first term.

House Democrats unanimously elected Jeffries to succeed Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader on November 30, 2022, making him the first Black American to lead either party in either chamber of Congress. He was re-elected to the post in 2024. In July 2025 he set the record for the longest House floor speech in modern history, speaking for eight hours and 44 minutes against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and breaking the mark Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) set in 2021. Heading into the 2026 midterms, Jeffries is widely positioned to become speaker if Democrats retake the House.

With Jeffries potentially becoming House Speaker, American Jewry could breathe a sigh of relief knowing that they have a safe pair of hands wielding the speaker’s gavel. Jeffries represents Brooklyn’s 8th District, which Jewish Currents has described as the 15th most Jewish congressional district in the country, and he was raised in Crown Heights, home to the global headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. He has extolled that constituency, telling reporters and audiences that “in New York City we consider Jerusalem to be the sixth borough.”

His public language and, more importantly, his legislative record on Israel have been reliably pro-Zionist throughout his congressional career. Jeffries backed the $1 billion Iron Dome replenishment in September 2021, which passed 420 to 9 over objections from eight progressive Democrats. He voted in favor of the $26.4 billion Israel Security Supplemental, H.R. 8034, in April 2024, which split House Democrats 173 to 37. He voted no on a GOP standalone Israel aid bill, H.R. 6126, in February 2024 that Democrats viewed as a partisan maneuver, and he supported the 2019 anti-BDS resolution H.Res.246 as well as the Antisemitism Awareness Act in May 2024. By 2022 alone, Jewish Currents documented Jeffries raising $440,000 from Israel-advocacy groups—the sixth-highest total among House members that cycle, per OpenSecrets—and he has traveled to Israel five times on AIPAC-sponsored trips since entering Congress in 2013. Jeffrie’s pro-Israel funding surged to over $1 million by the 2024 election cycle.

In July 2026, Jeffries continued his pro-Israel antics. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) offered an amendment stripping $3.3 billion in Foreign Military Financing for Israel from the fiscal 2027 State Department bill. It failed 104 to 314. Among Democrats, 103 voted yes, 98 voted no, and 10 voted present, with Massie the lone Republican supporter. Jeffries voted no. In a Dear Colleague letter, he called the measure “overly broad,” arguing it would hinder humanitarian aid efforts, refugee resettlement, and efforts to undermine resistance groups like Hamas. Notably, he declined to whip the vote, telling members there would be “good faith reasons that will result in members voting in a variety of different ways.”

They would proceed to do so, with his own deputy, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA), announcing she would vote yes because “the status quo is not tenable.” Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi voted yes as well, saying “the Netanyahu government cannot maintain its current course.” Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) stayed with Jeffries. The party’s top two leaders had split publicly on the defining foreign policy question of the cycle, and Jeffries found himself on the shrinking side.

The money surrounding that vote drew immediate scrutiny. Sludge reported that on May 20, AIPAC’s PAC routed two earmarked payments totaling $149,300 to the Jeffries Battleground Protection Fund, the largest earmarked disbursement in the PAC’s history, listed in Federal Election Commission records as an earmark of Jewish billionaire investor Daniel Och.

The AIPAC money flowing into Jeffries’ coffers has raised concerns among progressives. When Jeffries told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show in November 2025 that AIPAC’s PAC could give only “$5,000 or $10,000 per cycle, that’s it,” Sludge called the characterization misleading, noting the group’s conduit system has funneled more than a million dollars in earmarked donations to his campaigns.

That financial relationship has fueled further backlash. When AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC spent $14.5 million in June 2024 to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Jeffries offered only a muted response, telling Punchbowl News that “pro-Israel groups are going to support pro-Israel members of Congress.” Radio host Charlamagne tha God has mockingly nicknamed Jeffries “AIPAC Shakur” for his close alignment with pro-Israel donors.

Other leftist outlets have taken Jeffries to task for his devotion to Israeli interests. His 2026 partnership with liberal Zionist organization J Street to oppose the Massie-sponsored arms amendment drew a pointed critique from CounterPunch, which accused him of coupling rhetoric about restraint with continued support for weapons transfers amid allegations of Israeli conduct in Gaza.

Jeffries’s financial entanglements do not end with AIPAC. Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder later convicted of fraud, donated to Jeffries’s campaign, and Jeffries pledged to donate the funds after FTX’s collapse, according to Bloomberg. Separately, 2026 reporting found that committees tied to Jeffries and other Democratic leaders donated to candidates who had pledged to reject corporate PAC money, even as those same committees accepted funds from corporations including Barclays, CVS and UnitedHealthcare, raising accusations of an indirect funding workaround.

The financial ties only reinforce a rhetorical record that consistently delegitimized Palestinian resistance to Israeli transgressions. In February 2022, he called claims that Israel is an apartheid state “demonstrably false, dangerous and designed to isolate Israel in one of the toughest neighborhoods in the world,” responding directly to Amnesty International’s report on Israeli apartheid. After October 7, 2023, he declared in a press release that “America stands firmly and unequivocally with Israel” and that Congress “must stand with Israel until the invasion by Hamas has been crushed.” He also criticized the phrase “from the river to the sea” in a November 2023 statement as a call for “the complete destruction of Israel,” and stressed in February 2025 that “our commitment to Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and Democratic state and eternal homeland for the Jewish people is ironclad.”

The most recent flashpoint in Jeffries’s career came in August 2026 with a private meeting with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, to discuss “potential areas of common ground” on housing, immigration, and the cost of living. The New York Times noted the meeting’s timing “underscored that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House,” and that Kushner suggested Jeffries also meet with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Kushner reportedly told associates that if anything bipartisan gets done with Congress, Jeffries is “the most serious person among Democratic leaders.”

Despite the criticism he received from progressives, Jeffries defended the meeting on CNN and in a video posted to X, insisting “no one from the Trump cartel is getting a pass” and that he agreed to the sit-down only to “discuss the affordability crisis that exists, that is not a hoax.” This was not the first time Jeffries and Kushner had found common ground. He and Kushner have a prior working relationship dating to their collaboration on the 2018 First Step Act.

Taken together, Hakeem Jeffries is a reliable servant of Israel and the broader Jewish community. Both Trump terms have been Judeo-accelerationist to the core, with Israel getting nearly everything it wants. Naturally, the American public has grown tired of these escapades that only advance Jewish interests and are now prepared to vote the bums out in the upcoming midterms.

Though it should be stressed that in the Jewish-dominated plutocracy we live in there is no meaningful opposition to the Pan-Judah. At best, voters will have to pull the lever for another competing faction of Jewish proxies.

Enter Hakeem Jeffries and his minions.

Regardless of how the political pendulum swings later this year, the Jewish donor networks and political action committees backing Israel face no real downside, secure in the knowledge that a Democratic flip merely elevates Jeffries, an empty suit who is a certified coon for the Cohens in word and in deed.

September 8, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Comments Off on Buck-Dancing for Zion: Hakeem Jeffries

US, South Korea and Japan Begin Joint War Games

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 7, 2026

The US, South Korea, and Japan kicked off five-day Freedom Edge war games in and around the Korean Peninsula.

“The exercise will also incorporate multi-national maritime and aviation capabilities, and introduce enhanced air defense scenarios, medical evacuation training, and maritime interdiction operations,” a statement from Pacific Command (PACCOM) said. “Building on the foundation of Freedom Edge 25, as well as regular trilateral ballistic missile defense and defensive counter-air exercises throughout the year, Freedom Edge 26 stands as our most advanced trilateral cooperation to date.”

The US, South Korea and Japan began holding Freedom Edge in 2024. For the second year in a row, the drills will occur without an American aircraft carrier. The US carrier fleet has been strained by the wars in the Middle East, and the Japan-based USS George Washington was recently deployed to the region.

The military drill often provokes a hostile response from North Korea. During last year’s iteration of Freedom Edge, Pak Jong Chon, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said the drills “pose a grave challenge to the security interests of our state and a major danger of undermining regional stability and escalating military tension.”

On Monday, North Korean Minister Kim Song-gi said Freedom Edge was pushing the situation to the brink. “US-led military demonstrations are being held one after another, without any break in time or space, as military cooperation between the United States, Japan and the Republic of Korea evolves into a dangerous offensive alliance with nuclear elements.” He continued, “This reality poses a serious security threat, pushing instability on the Korean Peninsula and beyond to the brink.”

Last month, President Donald Trump said that the US and South Korean bilateral Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) war games were unnecessarily hostile toward North Korea. “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” he posted on Truth Social.

While Trump cut the UFS drills in half, the Freedom Edge war games have gone forward as planned. South Korean Rear Adm. Kim Ji-hoon called the Freedom Edge drills the “most effective” exercises. “The trilateral Freedom Edge exercise is being executed to counter North Korean nuclear and missile threats and that’s the main purpose of the exercise,” he added.

Trump’s decision to scale back the UFS drills appeared to be part of a push to secure a meeting with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, rebuked the overture, saying that merely scaling back the war games did not change the hostile US policy towards North Korea.

Supreme Leader Kim said Pyongyang remains focused on establishing a nuclear deterrent to prevent Washington and South Korea from starting a war. On Monday, North Korea put its second 5,000 ton destroyer into service.

“The enemies’ concerns will surely be deepened,” Kim said at the commissioning ceremony. “We must establish more clearly a powerful and reliable nuclear war deterrent, to put into practice the diverse and effective operation of our nuclear combat systems and further strengthen our military activities for maritime defense and war deterrence.”

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Comments Off on US, South Korea and Japan Begin Joint War Games

US Placing Missiles in Europe to Cancel Strategic Stability Talks Prerequisites – Russian MFA

Sputnik – 07.09.2026

MOSCOW – The deployment of US ground‑based US intermediate-range and shorter-range missile systems in Europe, in particular in Norway, will nullify the prerequisites for a constructive dialogue with the United States on strategic stability, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

“Steps such as the deployment of US ground‑based US intermediate-range and shorter-range missile systems in Europe, which threaten Russia, will, to put it mildly, nullify the prerequisites for a constructive conversation with the United States on strategic issues,” Zakharova said in a statement.

Russia views the deployment of systems in Norway capable of launching medium- and short-range missiles as yet another step in a series of highly destabilizing actions by NATO, the statement read.

“As part of Russia’s response measures, the locations where US systems are deployed and controlled, as well as the infrastructure supporting them, are becoming the focus of special attention from Russia’s strategic deterrence forces, which includes planning the combat use of the relevant strike assets in the event of an armed conflict,” Zakharova said.

The ministry added that favorable conditions for a substantive and productive dialogue with the United States on strategic stability had not been established now.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Comments Off on US Placing Missiles in Europe to Cancel Strategic Stability Talks Prerequisites – Russian MFA

Analysts warn of ‘colonization’ as US ‘saturates’ Australia with 110 bases

Press TV – September 7, 2026

The United States reportedly wields control over, or has access to, 110 military facilities belonging to Australia — a presence so extensive that analysts now describe it as a “saturation” and even a “colonization” of the Australian continent.

The Guardian, citing information gathered from the database of the Nautilus Institute, reported that the US military or US defense corporations have access to more than half of Australia’s military facilities.

According to the database, the United States controls 17 military facilities on mainland Australia, has access to 75 more Australian-run military installations elsewhere, while US defense corporations have access to an additional 18 facilities.

“This is not a matter of penetration, it’s a matter of saturation,” said Prof Richard Tanter, the database’s author.

“Over half of the defense facilities that we have looked at have some level of American access: that means American personnel, it means American corporations, some of the biggest armaments companies in the world.”

The US military in Australia engages in gathering intelligence, accessing satellite data for targeting information, and communications intercepts.

Other military activities include training for some 2,500 marines on dry-season rotation in the Northern Territory, as well as the pre-positioning of warfighting assets, weapons, munitions, and fuel, stored in case of a regional war in the Pacific.

The US now practically owns Australia’s human, soil, and mineral resources through its control of the nation’s military, according to critics.

The US military presence will continue to expand. From next year up to 1,200 uniformed military personnel will operate from the HMAS Stirling submarine base just off Fremantle.

The government insists that technically this will not be a US base — rather a “rotation” — but there is little contestation of its actual implication.

The AUKUS nuclear submarine agreement, described by former defense minister Christopher Pyne as “a lot more than the submarine procurement,” effectively establishes a new United States submarine base in the Indian Ocean.

“For the Americans, being able to have a submarine base in the Indian Ocean is a massive strategic advantage,” Pyne told a public inquiry.

Dr Vince Scappatura, author of The US Lobby and Australian Defense Policy, described US base access across Australia as a kind of “second wave of colonization.”

“Today we are shaping up to be the ‘tip of the spear’ for US power projection into the region — that’s what the sprawling US base access represents,” he said.

“Each one of those dots on the map represents a point of leverage Washington has over Canberra when it comes to matters of defense and foreign policy.”

Scappatura noted that the phrase “empire by invitation” was originally coined to describe US hegemony over western Europe “but it is applicable equally here. I sometimes describe it as ‘voluntary subordination’.”

The United States has been escalating militarization in the Pacific by resetting ties with regional countries in an attempt to form a coalition against China.

Beyond Australia, US bases and military access points are expanding across Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other regional nations, effectively drawing them into Washington’s orbit.

Critics say this is a desperate bid by Washington to arrest the rise of China, with Australia and other regional countries being used as forward operating bases in what could become a larger confrontation.

Tanter says that the acceptance of the US military presence has become so ingrained within the government and defense that unwinding Australia’s enmeshment within the world’s most powerful military is increasingly difficult.

“This is a massive institutional failure in Australia, a kind of learned incapacity at a political, parliamentary and bureaucratic level,” he said. “We’ve learned how not to ask those questions.”

Dr Emma Shortis, director of international and security affairs at the Australia Institute, says Australia’s increasing integration with the US military has resulted in “an accelerating erosion of Australia’s independent, sovereign, decision-making power.”

“Instead of having the option of saying ‘no’ to involvement in United States wars, involvement becomes the default position,” she said.

She cited the March attack by a US nuclear-powered submarine on an Iranian frigate, sinking it and killing more than 100 people. Three Australian naval personnel were onboard, part of the submarine’s crew: the US did not forewarn Australia of the attack.

“Australia might maintain the pretense of sovereign decision-making power, but that’s not the reality,” Shortis said.

Dr Albert Palazzo, an adjunct professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra and formerly the director of war studies for the Australian army, told the Guardian the US military’s accelerating buildup carries danger for Australian security.

“The Australian government seems to be waltzing its way into a war between the United States and China, by allowing this country to become an outpost or bastion of the US military, and as a platform from which they will launch military force against China,” he said.

Australians’ faith in the US is fragile and fracturing. A Lowy Institute poll showed Australians’ “trust in the United States to act responsibly in the world” has fallen to 31%, the lowest level in its polling history.

Just 21% of Australians have confidence in Donald Trump to do the right thing in world affairs, the lowest level of confidence in a US president yet.

More than twice as many Australians (59%) now believe Australia’s interests are best served by a more independent foreign policy rather than a closer alliance with the US (23%). Just 13% of Australians believe the US is a “very reliable” security ally.

This represents, Shortis says, a “seismic shift” in Australia’s perception of its once-great and powerful friend.

“After following the US into nearly every war since World War II, Australians have had enough. They see tangible risks in being so close to President Trump’s bleak and violent version of America.”

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on Analysts warn of ‘colonization’ as US ‘saturates’ Australia with 110 bases

Inside America’s deadly war on suspected drug boats | Fault Lines Documentary

Since September 2025, the US military has carried out more than 60 strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, killing more than 220 people.

In a military campaign called Operation Southern Spear, President Donald Trump’s administration has claimed to wage war against “narcoterrorism”. Yet the government has released little information about who was killed, the evidence against them or how targets were selected.

In Killing at Sea, Fault Lines investigates the administration’s claims about Operation Southern Spear by uncovering the stories of those targeted and the evidence used to justify lethal military force.

Through the stories of families left searching for answers, alongside witness accounts, physical evidence and interviews with legal experts, Fault Lines asks whether the strikes are lawful, whether they have disrupted the drug trade and what accountability exists for those killed.

From fishing communities in the Caribbean to Washington, DC, Killing at Sea examines a military campaign conducted largely beyond public view—and asks who is being killed in the US’s new war at sea, and why.

September 7, 2026 Posted by | Video, War Crimes | , , | Comments Off on Inside America’s deadly war on suspected drug boats | Fault Lines Documentary

Babies Whose Mothers Drank Fluoridated Water During Pregnancy Scored Lower in Problem-Solving

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 3, 2026

Babies whose mothers drank fluoridated water during pregnancy at and slightly below concentrations currently recommended by U.S. public health agencies scored lower on tests that measure fluid cognition — the ability to think logically and solve problems in new situations.

Fluid cognition is considered the “cornerstone of human cognition, both during development and in adulthood.”

A new study led by Columbia University researchers found that prenatal fluoride exposure resulted in reduced fluid cognition at levels as low as 0.675 milligrams per liter (mg/L).

That’s slightly below the U.S. Public Health Service’s recommended concentration of 0.7 mg/L for fluoridated drinking water and far below the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) maximum contaminant level of 4 mg/L and the World Health Organization’s guideline of 1.5 mg/L, according to the study.

The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and accepted for publication in the American Journal of Epidemiology, analyzed outcomes among 2,514 children born between 2006 and 2019 at 17 sites spanning 23 U.S. states that are part of the Environmental influences on Child Health Cohort (ECHO).

The authors concluded that more research is needed to identify the risky prenatal, postnatal and childhood window when fluoride exposure can harm cognitive development.

Higher fluoride linked to lower fluid cognition

To estimate prenatal water fluoride exposure, the researchers linked publicly available drinking water fluoride measurements to residential address information collected during pregnancy. The study focused only on fluoride from drinking water and did not account for any other sources.

The researchers then compared estimated fluoride intake with children’s cognitive abilities, evaluated using the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery.

Researchers separately examined “fluid cognition,” which included measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, attention and memory, and “crystallized cognition,” assessed through a vocabulary test.

Crystallized cognition is “the breadth and depth of knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal skill a person has acquired through education, experience, and cultural exposure — what has been learned and can be retrieved and applied later.”

The children whose mothers were exposed to higher fluoride levels during pregnancy tended to score lower on the fluid cognition tests.

They found children’s cognition was affected when mothers were exposed to water fluoride levels at and above 0.675 mg/L, or 675 micrograms per liter. That’s below the federally recommended level for water fluoridation.

They also found that every 500 microgram-per-liter increase in water fluoride was linked to an average 3.36-point drop in IQ.

The outcomes were substantially worse among children whose cognitive abilities were assessed before age 7. Their IQ scores dropped up to 13.5 points for the same increase in water fluoride content.

The researchers cautioned, however, that the apparent difference by age requires further study.

“This study adds to a large body of work that looks at how early exposure to environmental contaminants may be associated with the development of the thinking and learning processes that are important for children’s developmental outcomes,” co-senior author Amy Margolis, Ph.D., of The Ohio State University College of Medicine said in a Columbia University press release about the study.

“Continuing to study fluoride and other exposures will be integral in best supporting children’s environmental health and well-being.”

Malin and Thiessen both noted that a limitation of the study was that they didn’t measure individual fluoride intake. Because intake can vary across individuals, failure to measure individual exposure can lead to exposure misclassification.

“Despite this, the authors still observed quite sizable associations between prenatal public water fluoride exposure and child fluid cognition, particularly for children younger than 7,” Malin said.

“Nevertheless, true associations between prenatal fluoride exposure and child cognition may in fact be larger than what this study was able to detect,” she added. “Future individual-level research will be needed to further investigate that question.”

Findings add to evidence in contested court ruling

Water fluoridation in the U.S. has been a political flashpoint since a landmark 2024 federal court ruling concluded that current levels of fluoride added to water at 0.7 mg/L posed a risk to children’s health. The ruling directed the EPA to regulate the chemical under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

The ruling was largely based on the federal National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) six-year assessment of all existing literature on fluoride and neurotoxicity, along with testimony from leading experts at top universities across the world who study the issue.

The NTP concluded that water fluoridation at 1.5 mg/L was linked to lower IQ in children. It also found that people exposed to water fluoridation below 1.5 mg/L could have high fluoride levels in their systems, in part because people can be exposed to fluoride from other sources and/or may drink different amounts of water.

The NTP researchers said their findings about water fluoridation and neurotoxicity were based on studies of water fluoridation at or above current U.S. fluoridation levels.

The groups that sued the EPA also argued that EPA regulations for other toxic chemicals don’t allow exposure at known toxicity levels. For other chemicals, exposure is allowed only at levels that are at least 10 times [lower than] the known toxic exposure level to ensure safety.

An appeals court later overturned the fluoride verdict on a procedural issue, but the court did not disagree with the lower court ruling that fluoridation at current levels poses an unreasonable risk to human health.

The American Dental Association, mainstream media and others have attempted to publicly discount the NTP’s findings, arguing that its data were weak at current levels, or that studies showing the neurological effects of water fluoridation happened in other countries that weren’t similar to the U.S.

The new Columbia University study — conducted in the U.S. at current fluoridation levels — confirmed the NTP’s conclusions and offered findings in line with other recent studies in the U.S.

Ashley Malin, Ph.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine, and lead author of a U.S. study that linked fluoride exposure during pregnancy to neurobehavioral problems in children, told The Defender that the Columbia University study is “significant” because it includes a relatively recent cohort of children from multiple U.S. states.

She said the findings were consistent with other major cohort studies in Mexico and Canada that observed an inverse association between early life fluoride exposure and non-verbal IQ.

Kathleen Thiessen, Ph.D., who co-authored the 2006 National Research Council study on fluoride toxicity, also said the study was consistent with many recent findings.

“Importantly, they see an adverse effect at lower levels of water fluoride than many previous studies have used, and these are U.S. children,” she said.

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 6, 2026 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on Babies Whose Mothers Drank Fluoridated Water During Pregnancy Scored Lower in Problem-Solving

Vaccination Data on Amish Children Screened for 2010 Autism Study Was Never Made Public

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 2, 2026

Controversy is swirling around a 2010 study on autism rates among the Amish, after President Donald Trump on Monday posted a graphic citing the study.

Trump’s post on Truth Social claimed, “No published case has explicitly documented an unvaccinated Amish child with autism.”

The social media post cited a study, conducted in 2008 and 2009 by researchers who screened 1,899 Amish children in Indiana and Ohio for autism. The researchers confirmed seven cases of autism among the children.

The study concluded that among the Amish children in the study, the autism rate was roughly 1 in 271 — far lower than the national rate, which at the time was estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as 1 in 91.

According to Trump’s post, the study authors collected vaccination histories for the children but “did not report any confirmed case” of autism as “completely unvaccinated.”

The post drew a mix of cheers and fact checks, according to health writer Sayer Ji.

Ji called Trump’s post “factually imperfect” but “genuinely important.”

The post contained factual inaccuracies — for instance, it stated that the Amish have been around for 330 years. However, although the Amish broke away from the Mennonites 333 years ago in 1693, Amish settlements in the U.S. didn’t begin until the 1720s.

Trump’s post also drew attention to the verifiable fact that the Amish tend to have lower vaccination rates and lower autism rates, compared to the mainstream.

Ji praised the president for highlighting the 2010 study. “Whatever else you think of the man, he [Trump] pointed at the study,” Ji wrote.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland told The Defender she was pleased that Trump highlighted the relative absence of autism among the Amish, who typically have lower vaccination rates than mainstream communities.

“It’s high time we start dealing with reality — the current vaccine schedule causes brain injury called autism. Let’s be humble enough to learn from the Amish,” Holland said.

What did the 2010 Amish autism study show?

Trump’s post cites a 2010 study conducted by human genomics researchers from the University of Miami and Vanderbilt University, according to a conference abstract about the study.

However, contrary to Trump’s post, the study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The study’s abstract, dated May 22, 2010, appeared on the website for the International Meeting for Autism Research, a research gathering held by the International Society of Autism Research.

The study authors appeared to have presented the study at the May 2010 meeting. There is no online record of the study’s full report.

The abstract’s methods section states that the researchers collected the children’s vaccination data. However, the results section doesn’t state whether the seven Amish children in the study who were identified as having autism were vaccinated or unvaccinated.

The abstract states:

“Preliminary data have identified the presence of ASD [autism spectrum disorder] in the Amish community at a rate of approximately 1 in 271 children using standard ASD screening and diagnostic tools although some modifications may be in order.”

The authors wrote that “further studies are underway” to address the cultural norms and customs that may affect how parents talk about their children’s behavior when interviewed by researchers.

It is unclear if the study authors looked at whether the seven children with autism had been vaccinated.

The study’s lead author, listed as J. L. Robinson, did not respond to The Defender when asked if the researchers ever ran a vaccination-stratified analysis of the seven confirmed autism cases, and why the researchers never published the study.

The Defender asked Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics at the University of Miami and one of the study’s authors, the same questions. However, the inquiry was directed to the university’s public relations director, who did not respond by deadline.

Ji searched online public records to see if the study authors ever spoke again publicly about the study or submitted it for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, but found nothing.

That is significant, Ji told The Defender. “I searched for and could not find any public statement by any of the six authors, in sixteen years, on why the paper never appeared or what became of the data. That absence is the finding.”

Ji said he isn’t accusing the study authors of intentionally burying their data on the Amish children’s vaccination histories. “I am not alleging that any of the six destroyed data or acted in bad faith — I have no evidence of that.”

But their data were effectively “buried,” in that the data were never published and never appeared in a future study.

Ji acknowledged that even if the study had explicitly linked all seven autism cases to not vaccinating, the study wouldn’t prove that unvaccinated children do not get autism, because seven is too small a number to power a statistical model.

But the data would still be helpful because they “would fill a hole in the record and tell us whether the screening infrastructure can be rebuilt at scale,” he said. “A statistician could do it in weeks if the files exist.”

The study authors did not respond when The Defender asked if they still had the original research files for the study.

Given that the study appeared to use federally funded research dollars, according to the abstract, the public deserves to know what happened to the files, Ji said.

Trump focused on uncovering autism-vaccine link

Trump’s post referencing the 2010 study comes amid a roiling debate about vaccines and autism. In May, Trump pressed U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do more to investigate a possible link between vaccines and autism, according to a July 27 Wall Street Journal report.

Last month, Trump signed an executive order calling for sweeping changes to U.S. vaccine policy, including reducing the number of diseases for which kids receive routine childhood vaccines from 18 to 11.

According to The Associated Press, Trump is “fixated on connecting autism to vaccines.”

During a Sept. 22, 2025 press conference, Trump said, “There are certain groups of people that don’t take vaccines and don’t take any pills that have no autism. … The Amish, as an example, they have essentially no autism.”

According to Ji, the 2010 Amish study does not prove that vaccines cause autism.

However, the story of what happened to the 2010 study reveals that when data are collected that could potentially contribute to answering the question of whether vaccines cause autism, that data “doesn’t become available,” Ji said.

In Ji’s view, studies looking at Amish autism rates should examine many factors, including vaccination status, exposure to glyphosate, acetaminophen, ultrasound, diet, endogamy and access to healthcare.

The full results should be made public, regardless of what the studies find. “That isn’t anti-vaccine. It’s science.”

The connection between lower vaccination and autism rates among the Amish was something that investigative journalist Dan Olmsted spent years documenting.

Olmsted, founder of Age of Autism, authored “Age of Autism: Mercury, Medicine, and a Man-Made Epidemic” (2011) and “Denial: How Refusing to Face the Facts about Our Autism Epidemic Hurts Children, Families, and Our Future” (2017) before he passed away in early 2017.

Where did Trump get the graphic he posted?

The Amish continue to be central to ongoing national debate on vaccines. In New York, Amish are threatening to leave the state due to the state’s school-based vaccine mandate, according to an Aug. 26 New York Post report.

Pennsylvania, which is home to the largest Amish population in the U.S., has been making headlines for its current measles outbreak and ongoing investigation of measles-related deaths.

Steve Kirsch created the graphic that Trump posted to social media. On Aug. 14, Kirsch posted the graphic on X with the statement, “Baffling, isn’t it? Autism is only found in vaccinated Amish kids. I wonder why?”

Kirsch told The Defender he created the graphic using ChatGPT.

He instructed ChatGPT to create a graphic based on the 2010 study and based on his understanding that there is no evidence that an unvaccinated Amish child has ever been diagnosed with autism.

“Nobody has ever heard of an unvaccinated Amish child with autism,” Kirsch told The Defender.

Kirsch said he referred to the study as “published” in the graphic because the International Society of Autism Research posted the study’s conference abstract online. He acknowledged that the study itself was never published.

The White House did not respond to our comment request by the deadline.

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 6, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on Vaccination Data on Amish Children Screened for 2010 Autism Study Was Never Made Public

CNAS Wonk Proposes Bombing China’s Artificial Intelligence

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war

By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | September 6, 2026

Jacob Stokes, a former White House official, has suggested taking military action against China to prevent it from winning the race for AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. AGI is a hypothetical AI system that could learn, reason, adapt, and solve problems across a broad range of intellectual tasks at roughly human or greater capability.

Stokes served on the White House national-security staff under then–Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama administration. He is a senior fellow and deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the CNAS.

Center for a New American Security, established in 2007 by Michèle Flournoy, is associated with the Democratic Party. Flournoy held the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy during President Bill Clinton’s administration and served as under secretary of defense for policy under President Barack Obama.

Previously, CNAS was led by CEO Victoria Nuland, who acted as undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2021 to 2024 within the Biden administration’s State Department. According to the Washington Post, CNAS is regarded as Washington’s primary think tank on military matters.

In a CNAS report titled Superpowers and AGI, Stokes argued that Washington should consider extreme scenarios in which China might achieve AGI first, including diplomatic pressure, espionage, cyber operations, sabotage, and military action against data centers.

On September 3, during an online event, Stokes stated that multiple US agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency, should evaluate the intelligence required to substantiate such actions, according to the South China Morning Post.

Stokes and other analysts believe conventional bombs may be used to destroy the physical hardware China needs to train future AI models. It is speculated that the destruction of China’s AGI infrastructure would delay Chinese development by a few years, thus giving the US an advantage.

Although China is very advanced in frontier AI, it does not appear to possess AGI. The best current assessment is that China is probably slightly behind the United States in top-end model capability, while matching or exceeding it in some areas, including efficiency, deployment, open models, robotics, and industrial integration.

Critics argue that an attack on China has the potential to start a nuclear war between the two superpowers. William Hartung of the Project on Government Oversight characterized an attack on Chinese data centers as “the height of recklessness.” He warned that it could trigger a war with “tragic consequences for all concerned.”

Others question whether bombing data centers would actually halt Chinese AI development. China’s AI ecosystem is spread across numerous companies, universities, government labs, cloud providers, chip facilities, and research teams.

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s state-backed Global Times, warned that if the United States attacked Chinese data centers, Chinese retaliation would not be limited to US targets in the Asia-Pacific region. Instead, it could include missile strikes on the US mainland. A Global Times editorial described the proposal as a “dangerous delusion” and argued that treating civilian data centers as military targets was “indistinguishable from terrorism.”

There is no indication that the Trump administration has officially supported, accepted, or directly addressed Jacob Stokes’ suggestion to prepare for the dismantling of Chinese AGI infrastructure. As of September 6, 2026, reports suggest that neither the Department of Defense nor the NSA has provided an official response to the proposal.

Nonetheless, the administration has taken the extensive U.S.-China AI rivalry very seriously. Its approach has focused on ensuring American supremacy in AI, military integration, intelligence gathering, cyber defense, technology regulations, and diplomatic efforts – not openly on preemptive strikes or sabotaging Chinese data facilities.

September 6, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , | Comments Off on CNAS Wonk Proposes Bombing China’s Artificial Intelligence

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