Top FDA official admits she refused the Covid-19 vaccine while pregnant
A senior regulator’s admission reveals uncomfortable truths about silence, ethics and trust inside the FDA
By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | May 22, 2025
One of the most powerful figures at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has admitted she refused the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine while pregnant—even as her agency promoted it as “safe and effective” for all pregnant women.
Dr Sara Brenner’s explosive disclosure, made on 15 May 2025 at the MAHA Institute Round Table in Washington DC, is as revealing as it is troubling.
A preventive medicine physician, Brenner has worked at the FDA since 2019. As the FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner—and briefly its Acting Commissioner—Brenner was at the centre of decision-making.
Dr Sara Brenner on 15 May 2025 at the MAHA Institute
Prior to that she was Chief Medical Officer for diagnostics and was detailed to the White House to support the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response. She didn’t just participate in the pandemic response, she helped shape it from within.
“Knowing what I knew—not only about nanotechnology, about medicine, about the medical countermeasures—but also having a very strong and firm grounding in bioethics… there were many things that were not right,” she told the audience.
That someone with her seniority and access to internal data privately rejected the vaccine, while her agency promoted it to millions of pregnant women, presents a profound ethical dilemma.
Brenner’s concerns about mRNA safety
Brenner explained that her decision was driven by a lack of safety data, particularly around the biodistribution of the vaccine’s lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)—the tiny fat particles used to deliver the mRNA into cells.
“It was unknown at the time what the biodistribution patterns of those products were… That was my primary concern, and that exposure I was very concerned about,” said Brenner.
She had reason to be cautious.
As a nanomedicine expert who built an MD/PhD program in the field, Brenner had spent years researching the “biodistribution, excretion, metabolism and toxicities associated with engineered nanoparticles.”
“Materials that don’t exist in nature—there’s a lot of unknowns,” said Brenner.
She warned that unintended toxic effects—especially in vulnerable populations like pregnant women—could not be ignored.
“Regardless of the medical product or the intervention, there’s always going to be the need to evaluate both the intended outcomes… and the unintended consequences,” she cautioned.
Warnings ignored
Brenner’s concerns echoed those raised in 2021 by Canadian immunologist Dr Byram Bridle, who first exposed internal documents from Japan’s regulatory agency showing that LNPs didn’t remain at the injection site, but travelled throughout the body and accumulated in organs including the ovaries, liver, spleen and bone marrow.
At the time, Bridle’s warnings were aggressively dismissed. His reputation took a hit, and he faced institutional censure from the University of Guelph, where he was a professor, for speaking out against vaccine mandates.
Dr Byram Bridle, Canadian immunologist. Photo credit: Kenneth Armstrong
Now, Brenner’s comments confirm that these concerns were not only valid—they were quietly shared at the highest levels of the FDA.
During the event, Brenner also revealed that her worries extended to breastfeeding and potential exposure to her child after birth.
A 2022 study published in JAMA Pediatrics detected vaccine-derived mRNA in the breast milk of vaccinated mothers for at least 48 hours—the very scenario Brenner had feared.
Yet the FDA made little effort to publicly investigate or address the findings, dismissing them with the vague reassurance that there was “no evidence of harm.”
No mandate for Brenner?
It’s unclear how Brenner managed to avoid the vaccine mandate that applied to all federal employees at the time. She didn’t say. Perhaps she received a religious or medical exemption—but she left that part out.
What she did reveal was that she had concerns—deep enough not to take the vaccine during her pregnancy. Yet she said nothing publicly, while her agency told millions of other women it was safe.
For many, that silence is hard to accept and it has left many asking why she didn’t warn other women about a product with ‘zero’ clinical safety data in pregnancy.
No one but Brenner knows the full story. But the ethical contradiction is hard to ignore.
Silence inside the castle
Brenner acknowledged the immense pressure inside the FDA to stick to the official narrative.
“They don’t let you get very far out of the castle at FDA with your talking points,” she admitted nervously.
She described the period as a “dark night of the soul” for many civil servants, a time when even “very obvious things” took bravery to say.
She eventually found support through a group called Feds for Medical Freedom—federal workers advocating for informed consent, bodily autonomy, and pushing back against government overreach.
A culture change?
Today, under a new administration, Brenner says the culture inside the FDA is shifting. She praised Commissioner Dr Marty Makary and said transparency is finally becoming a priority.
“We’re moving very quickly to make it such that there will be more transparency… so that people can see and evaluate for themselves what the truths are.”
But Brenner’s remarks won’t undo what has already happened—especially to those who were vaccine injured or whose pregnancies were affected.
What her comments do offer is a rare glimpse into the internal dynamics of a government institution that issued sweeping public assurances while failing to acknowledge its own uncertainty.
“There was no acknowledgement of what was unknown. There were only statements and assertions that were really more like beliefs,” Brenner said of the FDA’s messaging during the pandemic.
That may be her most important admission.
This is more than a story about one woman’s personal decision. It is a story about institutional culture, regulatory failure, and the consequences of silence.
Those who spoke up were punished. Those who stayed silent kept their jobs and reputations. And those who were forced to comply were often left to deal with the collateral damage.
When asked whether she believed she had made the right decision in refusing the Covid-19 vaccine, Brenner replied simply, “I believe so.”
Now that she has spoken, the question remains — who else knew, and said nothing?
US roadmap for Syria sanctions removal includes Israel normalization, expulsion of Palestinian factions
The Cradle | May 23, 2025
A State Department proposal circulated among officials lays out “sweeping conditions for future phases of relief or permanent lifting of sanctions” on Syria, including normalizing relations with Israel by signing the Abraham Accords, AP reported on 23 May, citing an anonymous US official familiar with the matter.
US-imposed sanctions have devastated the Syrian economy, plunged millions into poverty, and blocked post-war reconstruction. They were imposed as part of the US and Israeli effort to topple the government of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Assad was ousted in December by militants from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former Al-Qaeda affiliate, with US, Israeli, and Turkish assistance. HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa is now the de facto Syrian president.
However, the US is not yet ready to remove sanctions.
A document issued last week by the State Department’s policy and planning staff has proposed a three-phase road map for sanctions relief, starting with short-term waivers. Permanent lifting of sanctions would only be given after several conditions are met.
According to the document, “Palestinian terror groups” must be removed from Syria to get to the second stage.
The Syrian government must also take control of detention facilities housing ISIS fighters in northeast Syria and carry out a recent deal to incorporate the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into the Syrian army. The SDF currently controls the prisons housing ISIS members and their families, as well as much of Syria’s oil fields.
Phase three would require Damascus to normalize relations with Tel Aviv by joining the Abraham Accords, as well as prove that it had destroyed all of the previous government’s chemical weapons.
If normalization happens, Syria would de facto acknowledge Israel’s annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously pushed for US President Donald Trump’s administration not to lift sanctions on Syria.
President Trump raised expectations that all Syria sanctions would quickly be removed when he announced in Saudi Arabia last week that he would “be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness.”
“We’re taking them all off,” Trump said a day before meeting the Syrian president, a former deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
“Good luck, Syria. Show us something special,” he went on to say.
However, when asked what sanctions relief should look like overall, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said relief would be “Incremental.”
Washington has levied sanctions against Syria since 1979 for its foreign policy opposing Israel.
To block Syria’s post-war reconstruction, the harshest sanctions were imposed in 2019 by Congress through the passage of the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.
As a result, a new law in Congress must be passed to remove the Caesar sanctions. Trump is only able to issue six-month waivers, which is not enough to encourage investors to return to doing business in the country.
On Friday, two Palestinian sources told AFP that the leaders of Palestinian resistance factions have left Syria under pressure from the new authorities in Damascus.
The leaders include Khaled Jibril, son of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) founder Ahmad Jibril, as well as Palestinian Popular Struggle Front Secretary-General Khaled Abdel Majid and Fatah al-Intifada Secretary-General Ziad al-Saghir.
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi
By William Schryver – imetatronink – May 22, 2025
The inexorable decline of the American Empire has arrived at an Imperial Paradox. It must either fight a war and die, or not fight a war and die.
Here are the options:
China
Neither South Korea nor Japan want anything to do with a war against China, leaving only the Philippines dumb enough to play along.
The US apparently pulled another brigade out of South Korea. They’ll pull out more in the future. They know damn well the North Koreans could easily conquer the entire peninsula if they chose to do so.
China and its local seas are a vast ocean away from America, and its capacity to defend its local seas is enormous and growing.
The Pentagon must understand it cannot sustain logistics in a war against China in the western Pacific. It simply cannot be done. Anyone who thinks otherwise must upgrade their proficiency in basic arithmetic.
Iran
In the context of a war against Iran, all the geography is against the US.
Iran is an exceedingly mountainous country that has, over the course of millennia, learned to use those mountains to defend itself against would-be conquerors.
They can field a satisfactorily well-equipped million-man army.
They have learned in the 21st century to burrow deep heavily fortified tunnels into their mountains.
Iran is also much more technologically advanced than most people understand. They have become impressively capable in terms of both offensive and defensive missiles. They pose a far greater challenge than the Yemeni have been over the past year and a half.
Indeed, they pose a “near-peer” challenge against US overseas power projection.
The US Navy could only operate at extreme risk in the southern Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Persian Gulf.
Iran’s sphere of influence
Every US base in the region is well within range of Iranian missile strikes.
The US Navy very demonstrably cannot secure seaborne logistics into the Persian Gulf. They lack both the sealift ships, and the ability to protect them.
They cannot even open the Bab-el-Mandeb!
Russia
From a geographic and logistical standpoint, the only remotely conceivable war is one in Ukraine against Russia.
The US at least has bases and forces already in place in the UK, Germany, Poland, Romania, Finland, and in Baltic chihuahua fantasy-land — and what has served until now as a reasonably secure logistics pathway into all those places.
Of course, whether or not such a condition persists long in a war scenario is another question altogether.
Because, you see, the Russians are now unquestionably the most formidable and battle-hardened military on the planet — at least in the context of a war fought on their doorstep.
So if you’re an empire that thinks it needs a war to reaffirm at least its short-term relevance and fading glory … well, these are your choices.
Did the US Military Withdraw from Afghanistan because of Fentanyl?
Tales of the American Empire | May 22, 2025
It remains unclear why the US military suddenly fled Afghanistan in 2021, leaving behind billions of dollars of equipment. It was clear a decade before that the American occupation was unnecessary and failed to tame the Afghan tribes. By 2021, the US military was needed elsewhere as the war in Ukraine was about to explode while African nations rebelled against their covert French colonial lords. Yet there is hard evidence they left after profits from the secret American opium trade in Afghanistan crashed after Fentanyl became the preferred drug for abusers.
_____________________________________________________
Related Tale: “Protecting the American Opium Trade”; 
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EU hands US state media outlet €5.5 million lifeline
RT | May 22, 2025
The European Union has pledged €5.5 million in emergency funding to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) to prop up the Cold War-era broadcaster, which is widely regarded as a Western propaganda outlet.
Originally created in the 1950s and covertly financed by the CIA to disseminate pro-Western narratives into the Soviet bloc, RFE/RL has more recently operated under the oversight of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order eliminating most of the agency’s funding as part of a sweeping cost-cutting agenda.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas announced the bloc’s financial lifeline on Tuesday, describing it as “short-term emergency funding” to support what she called a “vital” mission. The €5.5 million package will act as a “safety net” to help RFE/RL maintain operations in countries within Brussels’s sphere of interest, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, and several Central Asian states.
“In a time of growing unfiltered content, independent journalism is more important than ever,” Kallas said following a meeting of EU foreign ministers. She acknowledged that Brusssels could not fully replace the lost American funding but emphasized the symbolic value of the move, urging individual member states to offer further support.
Since Trump’s defunding order, RFE/RL has furloughed staff, suspended programming, and launched legal challenges. Although a Washington judge temporarily halted the administration’s decision in April, a federal appeals court later blocked the release of funds pending further litigation. The broadcaster has warned that it faces permanent shutdown in multiple regions if its financial crisis is not resolved.
The Trump administration framed the defunding as part of a broader campaign to dismantle bureaucratic institutions that no longer align with US strategic interests. RFE/RL’s leadership has disputed that rationale, with its president, Stephen Capus, calling the funding cuts a “massive gift to America’s enemies.”
Administration officials and critics have argued that RFE/RL and its sister outlet, Voice of America (VOA), have lost their relevance and veered toward partisan editorializing. Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has publicly called for both outlets to be “shut down,” writing on X: “Nobody listens to them anymore.”
China urges US to stop space threat rhetoric
Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2025
China’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned recent accusations by the United States that Beijing and Moscow pose a growing threat to American space operations.
In a press briefing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning urged Washington to “stop irresponsible rhetoric” and abandon its pursuit of military dominance in space.
“China has always insisted on the peaceful use of outer space, and opposed the weaponization of and arms race in space,” Mao said, responding to US claims that Russian and Chinese technology now poses the ‘greatest threat’ to the United States in space defense.
The renewed US accusations were made by General Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations at the US Space Force, who alleged that both China and Russia possess anti-satellite capabilities that endanger US interests.
Rejecting these allegations, Mao stated that Beijing has no interest in entering a space race, nor in pursuing “space supremacy.”
Instead, she emphasized that it is the US that has designated outer space as a military battlefield, a move that threatens global security.
“The US continues to build up its space forces, form a military alliance in outer space, and contribute to its weaponization, posing a serious threat to universal development and security interests,” she warned.
Mao urged the US to halt its space militarization agenda and work toward “lasting peace and security” in orbit, reiterating China’s long-held position that space should remain a zone of peaceful exploration and cooperation.
Washington accused of militarizing orbital space
Beijing’s remarks come amid rising global concern over the militarization of space, with the US leading efforts to formalize space as a new warfighting domain.
The creation of the US Space Force, coupled with expanded joint military drills and new orbital systems, has drawn criticism from both Russia and China. Both countries have long supported a legally binding treaty to prevent the deployment of weapons in outer space, an initiative that Washington has consistently blocked.
China’s response shows repeated warnings that the US approach to space risks triggering a destabilizing arms race. “We urge the US to stop expanding its military presence in outer space under the guise of national security,” Mao concluded.
Republican Senators Want War, Republican Voters Don’t
By Jack Hunter | The Libertarian Institute | May 22, 2025
Last week over two-hundred Republicans, including every GOP senator except Rand Paul (R-KY), signed a letter urging President Donald Trump to insist that Iran give up all enrichment capabilities in any nuclear deal with that country.
In other words, they don’t want a new Iran deal.
But most Republicans do want a deal. As Responsible Statecraft’s Stavroula Pabst reported on May 12, “As U.S.-Iran talks continue, new polling finds that nearly two-thirds of Republicans support a negotiated deal on Iran’s nuclear program over military action intended to destroy it.”
Pabst explained:
“Indeed, polling published by the University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll program and conducted by the SSRS Opinion Panel Omnibus from May 2 through 5, surveying over 1,000 respondents over 18, showed that a majority of Americans, 69%—including 64% percent of Republicans—view a negotiated agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program, with monitoring, as the best way to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
It seems that on Iran, the Republican members of Congress are out of sync with the voters who put them there.
Stavroula would add of President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, “Witkoff shared one thing in common with the Iranians—that ‘no enrichment’ is a red line, for the Americans who don’t want any enrichment, and for the Iranians, who say they must have it for their civilian nuclear program.”
The Republicans who signed that letter know this. Again, they don’t want a deal.
So many of them want a U.S. war with Iran and have said so many times. President Trump seeking diplomacy over military action wrecks their war plans.
So they play games, like issuing this phony, dishonest letter.
The gap between the majority of Republican voters who want a deal and the nearly two-hundred Republicans in Congress who don’t appears to reflect a difference in the culture of the GOP’s voting base vs. the Washington establishment.
However imperfectly, Donald Trump has imposed an ‘America First’ ethos on Republican identity, something so many of his supporters eagerly embraced. A major part of that identity is no more wars and overseas nation-building. Neoconservative Republicans like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were eventually pushed out of their own party, feigning over alleged MAGA threats to democracy, but in reality with an understanding that their zeal for war and empire ran counter to what Trump represented.
So they bailed. Republican voters didn’t want them anymore. Still, the remaining congressional Republicans of their mindset continue to have to operate in a party that Trump has reshaped, but that doesn’t mean so many have changed from being the reflexively war-happy, Bush-Cheney neocons they’ve been for most of their careers.
The primary difference between neocon Lindsey Graham and neocon Liz Cheney is that Graham has accepted doing what it takes to remain withing Trump’s movement and good graces. On foreign policy, Graham and Cheney don’t differ one bit.
Neocons are what they are. The Republican base is what it is, in 2025.
Regardless, Trump shouldn’t listen to Washington Republicans. He has no reason to.
Responsible Statecraft’s Ben Armbruster laid out why on Monday:
“Neocons and their allies in Washington, Israel, and beyond are making unrealistic demands about the outcome of U.S. talks with Iran on limiting its nuclear program. But President Trump has absolutely no reason to listen to them and should not take them seriously.”
He continued:
“The anti-Iran deal campaign kicked into overdrive last week when Republicans on Capitol Hill sent a letter to the White House calling on Trump to refuse any agreement that doesn’t include the complete dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.”
The neocons are very worried that successful diplomacy could prevent war.
“Every Republican senator except Rand Paul signed a letter to President Trump urging the administration to push for an end to Iran’s enrichment capacity,” Andrew Day, senior editor of The American Conservative, told RS. “They know that this demand is unacceptable to the Iranian regime and are clearly hoping to sabotage Trump’s diplomatic efforts.”
Exactly.
Neocons are going to neocon and will eagerly work for the next war, especially with Iran, for the rest of their lives. It’s how they’re built. “Warmonger” is a pejorative, but it’s also an accurate description of so many of these Beltway creatures.
If MAGA Republicans believe that what makes America great is the actual Americans who inhabit it, neocons measure national greatness by the willingness and ability of the United States to spread its empire to every inch of the globe, with any potential wars being a bonus, not a deterrent.
Neocons and MAGA are oil and water. When Trump said that George W. Bush “lied” the American people into war with Iraq on a Republican primary debate stage in South Carolina in 2016, some said his campaign was DOA for the unpardonable crime of questioning the war in “Bush country.”
We all the know what actually happened: the exact opposite. Trump’s MAGA movement now is the GOP. Bush-Cheney neoconservatism is mostly a faded memory for the base.
Now it the time to kick the neocons when they’re down.
So, to hell with them. Ignore their stupid letters. Deny and denounce their reaching rationales for committing the U.S. to yet another nonsensical tragedy abroad.
Call them on their bullshit.
Instead, make the peace and pursue the diplomacy that most Republican voters currently want and more importantly, would actually put America first, for the first time in a long time.
Republican senators might want war, but the people—Trump’s people—don’t. It’s time for populism on steroids. A robust antiwar conservatism for the twenty-first century. Give the great Smedley Butler his due.
If there was ever a time to give the people what they want, it’s now.
‘Golden Dome’ – US’s Unbreakable Shield or $175B Fantasy?
Sputnik – 22.05.2025
Trump’s $175 billion plan to build a comprehensive ground- and space-based missile shield, while ambitious, may not yield the results the POTUS seems to be hoping for.
The system’s name, ‘Golden Dome,’ was likely inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
The problem is, the Iron Dome is only effective against lone targets or small groups of targets and cannot handle a massed attack, military expert and air defense forces’ historian Yuri Knutov told Sputnik.
The Iron Dome is also meant to intercept jury-rigged rockets fired by Palestinian resistance whereas Trump’s Golden Dome is supposed to tackle intercontinental ballistic missiles, points out Igor Korotchenko, military analyst and editor in chief of National Defense magazine.
Technology- and composition-wise, Trump’s plan appears similar to Reagan’s failed Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) that proposed using lasers, particle beams and even space-based missiles to intercept ballistic threats.
Yet even 40+ years after the SDI was pitched, the US lacks the technology to build such a system, to “reincarnate Reagan’s idea,” as Korotchenko put it.
The development of the Golden Dome is further hampered by the fact that while its ground component essentially means upgrading the existing US anti-ballistic weapons such as THAAD, Aegis and Patriot, the missile shield’s space component would have to be built from scratch, Knutov points out.
All in all, the Golden Dome is not going to be capable of repelling a mass ICBM launch.
The Israel Embassy Shooter Manifesto
By Ken Klippenstein | May 22, 2025
I’ve obtained the alleged manifesto written by Elias Rodriguez, suspect in the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC on Wednesday.
I believe the document to be authentic for several reasons, including the fact that it is signed by Rodriguez and timestamped well before he was named by law enforcement or any media. I am publishing it here not to glorify the violence — which I find abhorrent and condemn — but so the public can better understand the truth of what happened.
Refusing to confront the content of these texts often creates an information vacuum that is quickly filled by hoax documents, conspiracy theories, or selective leaks from authorities that can distort the facts. I believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, especially when politics is involved, as the document makes clear is the case here.
Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela A. Smith identified Rodriguez as a 30-year-old man from Chicago who she said shouted “Free Palestine!” at the scene. The manifesto echoes this message, citing the war in Gaza as its central grievance and framing the killings as an act of political protest.
Below is the document in full.
Explication
May 20, 2025
Halintar is a word that means something like thunder or lightning. In the wake of an act people look for a text to fix its meaning, so here’s an attempt. The atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine defy description and defy quantification. Instead of reading descriptions mostly we watch them unfold on video, sometimes live. After a few months of rapidly mounting death tolls Israel had obliterated the capacity to even continue counting the dead, which has served its genocide well. At time of writing the Gaza health ministry records 53,000 killed by traumatic force, at least ten thousand lie under rubble, and who knows how many thousands more dead of preventable disease, hunger, with tens of thousands now at risk of imminent famine due to Israeli blockade, all enabled by Western and Arab government complicity. The Gaza information office includes the ten thousand under the rubble with the dead in their own count. In news reports there have been those “ten thousand” under the rubble for months now, despite the continual making of more rubble and repeated bombing of rubble again and again and the bombing of tents amid the rubble. Like the Yemen death toll which had been frozen at some few thousand for years under Saudi-UK-US bombardment before being belatedly revealed to stand at 500k dead, all of these figures are almost surely a criminal undercount. I have no trouble believing the estimates that put the toll at 100,000 or more. More have been murdered since March of this year than in “Protective Edge” and “Cast Lead” put together. What more at this point can one say about the proportion of mangled and burned and exploded human beings whom were children. We who let this happen will never deserve the Palestinians’ forgiveness. They’ve let us know as much.
An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares with many unarmed actions. Nonviolent protest in the opening weeks of the genocide seemed to signal some sort of turning point. Never before had so many tens of thousands joined the Palestinians in the streets across the West. Never before had so many American politicians been forced to concede that, rhetorically at least, the Palestinians were human beings, too. But thus far the rhetoric has not amounted to much. The Israelis themselves boast about their own shock at the free hand the Americans have given them to exterminate the Palestinians. Public opinion has shifted against the genocidal apartheid state, and the American government has simply shrugged, they’ll do without public opinion then, criminalize it where they can, suffocate it with bland reassurances that they’re doing all they can to restrain Israel where it cannot criminalize protest outright. Aaron Bushnell and others sacrificed themselves in the hopes of stopping the massacre and the state works to make us feel their sacrifice was made in vain, that there is no hope in escalating for Gaza and no point in bringing the war home. We can’t let them succeed. Their sacrifices were not made in vain.
The impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion, then. The impunity we see is the worst for those of us in immediate proximity to the genocidaires. A surgeon who treated victims of the Mayan genocide by the Guatemalan state recounts an instance in which he was operating on a patient who’d been critically injured during a massacre when, suddenly, armed gunmen entered the room and shot the patient to death on his operating table, laughing as they killed him. The physician said the worst part was seeing the killers, well known to him, openly swagger down local streets in the years after.
Elsewhere a man of conscience once attempted to throw Robert McNamara off a Martha’s Vineyard-bound ferry into the sea, incensed at the same impunity and arrogance he saw in that butcher of Vietnam as he sat in the ferry’s lounge laughing with friends. The man took issue with McNamara’s “very posture, telling you, ‘My history is fine, and I can be slumped over a bar like this with my good friend Ralph here and you’ll have to lump it.'” The man did not succeed in heaving McNamara off a catwalk into the water, the former secretary of state managed to cling to the railing and clamber back to his feet, but the assailant explicated the value of the attempt by saying “Well, I got him outside, just the two of us, and suddenly his history wasn’t so fine, was it?”
A word about the morality of armed demonstration. Those of us against the genocide take satisfaction in arguing that the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity. I sympathize with this viewpoint and understand its value in soothing the psyche which cannot bear to accept the atrocities it witnesses, even mediated through the screen. But inhumanity has long since shown itself to be shockingly common, mundane, prosaically human. A perpetrator may then be a loving parent, a filial child, a generous and charitable friend, an amiable stranger, capable of moral strength at times when it suits him and sometimes even when it does not, and yet be a monster all the same. Humanity doesn’t exempt one from accountability. The action would have been morally justified taken 11 years ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible, would seem insane. I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.
I love you Mom, Dad, baby sis, the rest of my familia, including you, O*****
Free Palestine
– Elias Rodriguez
Europe must bear consequences of forcing return of UN sanctions against Iran: FM
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
Press TV – May 21, 2025
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has cautioned the US’s European allies in a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran against invoking the so-called “snapback mechanism” to re-impose the United Nations sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Speaking to Saudi Arabia’s Asharq News network on Wednesday, the top diplomat emphasized that such a move would end participation by the European parties — the UK, France, and Germany — in the deal that is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
He added that the trio’s potential recourse to the mechanism would lead to significant consequences and potential irreversible escalation of tensions, referring to the likelihood of strong retaliatory steps that the Islamic Republic could take in response.
Araghchi reiterated Iran’s readiness to engage in diplomacy, expressing hope that the European parties too would demonstrate determination to resolve the current impasse.
The deadlock occurred when the United States ditched the JCPOA in 2018, and returned the illegal and unilateral sanctions that the agreement had lifted.
This was followed by the European trio’s failure to return the US to the accord, as they had said would do, as well as their walking in Washington’s footsteps by returning their own sanctions.
In response to the betrayal, Iran began a number of legitimate and gradually escalating nuclear countermeasures.
“The situation we’re in is by no means Iran’s fault. It is the fault of the United States, which withdrew from the JCPOA, and the fault of the European countries that failed to compensate for the US’s withdrawal,” Araghchi added.
‘Uranium enrichment absolutely non-negotiable’
Addressing the topic of Iran’s peaceful uranium enrichment activities, the foreign minister said the activities were a principled and fundamental issue for Iran.
He emphasized that the enrichment program was a major scientific achievement developed by domestic scientists and held immense value for the Iranian people.
The official, meanwhile, paid tribute to the seven-strong Iranian nuclear scientists, who were assassinated amid their invaluable contribution to the Islamic Republic’s peaceful nuclear energy program.
According to Araghchi, the victims’ sacrifices towards advancement of the program had made the nuclear issue “absolutely non-negotiable.”
Fifth round of Iran-US talks to be held on May 23: Oman
Press TV – May 21, 2025
The fifth round of indirect negotiations between Iran and the United States will take place on May 23, according to Oman’s foreign minister.
Badr al-Busaidi made the announcement on Wednesday, adding that the talks will be held in the Italian capital, Rome.
Three of the previous rounds took place in the Omani capital, Muscat, and the second round in Rome.
Iranian and US officials have not commented on the announcement so far.
The talks focus on producing a replacement for the 2015 nuclear deal, which was derailed by American withdrawal in 2018.
Iran had previously declared it would decide whether to take part in the next round of the talks after US officials claimed any deal would not allow Tehran to enrich uranium.
Iran says it will not forgo its right to uranium enrichment, which is guaranteed under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning
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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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Aletho News- Larry Johnson: U.S. Desperation Grows as Iran Is Winning
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