Westerners, especially Atlanticists, are great at advocating for the setting of wildfires, and for starting those wildfires, but they seldom give much thought to what happens once they set a conflagration in motion
13 Things Your Pediatrician Was Trained Not to Tell You
An Essay on the Profession Trained for Compliance, Not Curiosity
Lies are Unbekoming | September 11, 2026
This essay engages material framed in establishment terms: vaccines, immunity, deficiencies, contagion, developmental disorders. In quotation, attribution, and official body names, that vocabulary appears as the establishment uses it. In my own analytical voice, the terrain paradigm operates. The two registers do different work. One shows what the profession says about itself. The other names what is happening to the child.
The Training
“Nothing bad should be said about any vaccine.”¹ That is what Suzanne Humphries, a board-certified nephrologist, was taught during her American medical training. Vaccines are administered on schedule. Adverse conversation was not encouraged. It was actively closed down.
Lawrence Palevsky, a pediatrician practicing in New York, describes the same experience. What he was taught in medical school and residency, he later realized, differed sharply from what he observed in his own patients and read in the primary literature.²
Robert Sears, a California pediatrician, describes reading a book in medical school that documented severe injuries from the DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-whole-cell-pertussis) vaccine. The vaccine was eventually removed from the American market. Sears kept reading. What he found was not what he had been taught.³
Rachael Ross, a family physician who spent three seasons cohosting the syndicated show The Doctors, described a similar reckoning in a widely read 2016 blog post. She had watched the schedule grow from sixteen doses of four vaccines during her own childhood to sixty-nine doses of sixteen vaccines by age eighteen. Medical school and residency, she wrote, had taught her to give them all on time, without question.⁴
Jayne Donegan, a British general practitioner, wrote in the foreword to Humphries’ Dissolving Illusions that her medical training left vaccination as an “article of faith” that could not be interrogated. The curriculum was already so crowded that there was no room to ask why non-vaccine-preventable disease deaths had also declined during the twentieth century for reasons unrelated to any injection.⁵
None of these physicians is fringe. Each trained inside the profession. Each describes the training in similar terms: a set of scripts about safety, efficacy, and schedule, delivered as certainties, with no time in the curriculum to interrogate the primary literature that would complicate them. A pediatrician does not know what she was trained not to know. She cannot ask questions she was trained not to ask.
American pediatric practice covers the child from birth through age eighteen, and in many practices through age twenty-one. What follows is a chronological walk through what that profession was trained not to tell you, across that entire arc. Thirteen items. In order.
1. The Cord Cut Before the Blood Finished Moving (birth)
A newborn’s blood volume is meant to be topped off from the placenta in the minutes after birth. When the cord is left intact and pulsing, roughly a third of the baby’s total blood supply, along with the iron that supply carries, transfers across before the placenta is expelled. That iron is the reserve intended to carry the child through the first six months of life.
The standard hospital practice throughout the late twentieth century was to clamp within seconds. The World Health Organization now recommends waiting at least one minute. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists came around in 2017. Most hospital deliveries in the United States still clamp early, driven by workflow, the neonatal warmer schedule, and the syringe already on the tray.
Your pediatrician does not raise this. The obstetrical team performed the clamp. The pediatrician receives the baby afterward and plots the numbers she is given. The infant she inherits is the infant who lost a third of the placental transfusion at hour zero.
Six months later, that same pediatrician will run an iron level, note the low result, and prescribe supplementation. The low reading she treats was produced by the system at birth. She is not trained to draw the line between the two events. She is trained to run the number and write the script.
The curious pediatrician would ask what a child born with a full complement of placental blood looks like at six months. The compliant pediatrician cannot ask, because the reference population she was trained on is the population that was clamped early.
2. The Vitamin K Injection (first hours)
Within hours of birth, the newborn receives an intramuscular injection of phytonadione, the compound sold as vitamin K1. The dose is one milligram. Breast milk carries roughly one to two micrograms of phytonadione per liter, and a newborn’s colostrum intake on day one delivers a fraction of a microgram; the injection is thousands of times that dose, and the published pediatric literature confirms that plasma phytonadione levels for two weeks after the shot run one to two thousand times higher than normal adult values. The injection also contains benzyl alcohol, polysorbate 80, and propylene glycol as excipients. The delivery site is the infant’s leg. The parent, if consulted at all, is told the shot prevents a bleeding condition called hemorrhagic disease of the newborn.
The condition exists. What is not explained is why. Newborn phytonadione levels are low at birth by design; the compound is produced by the gut bacteria that colonize the infant’s digestive tract in the first days, and levels rise on the biological schedule the infant’s body follows. Levels are further supported by the maternal transfer that continues through breastfeeding. The “deficiency” the injection corrects is the state a healthy newborn is meant to occupy for the first days of life while the gut ecology establishes itself.⁶
The bleeding events the injection is designed to prevent cluster in infants who have been subjected to the standard hospital birth sequence: early cord clamping, which strips the placental transfusion of clotting factors; maternal medications passed through delivery; the injection itself as a source of tissue injury; and, in male infants, circumcision. The intervention creates the conditions in which bleeding becomes more likely, then presents itself as the solution to the problem it has helped produce.
Two forms of the shot exist. The oral form is available in some countries and delivers a smaller dose across three administrations in the first weeks of life. The intramuscular form is the American standard. The intramuscular form has been associated in the published literature with elevated rates of childhood cancer, a finding disputed by subsequent industry-funded studies but never resolved. The oral form does not appear in that literature.⁷
This is the first injection. It is the moment at which the infant’s body, hours old, receives an industrial compound at pharmacological doses that no biology has any history with, into a system that has been producing its own supply on schedule for as long as human infants have been born. It is also the moment at which bodily sovereignty is handed over: the first substance introduced by needle before the first feed, before the first look at the mother’s face, before any element of the child’s own biology has had time to establish itself. The parent is rarely told what phytonadione is, where it comes from, what else is in the syringe, or that an oral alternative exists. The consent process is a signature.
Your pediatrician was trained that hemorrhagic disease is prevented by the injection. She was not trained to ask why the disease clusters in the population subjected to the delivery-room sequence, or what a newborn’s clotting profile looks like when the earlier interventions never happened.
3. The Hepatitis B Shot Before the First Feed (first day)
Hepatitis B, in the establishment’s account, is transmitted through blood-to-blood contact or sexual contact. In the United States it is given as an injection to every newborn within twenty-four hours of birth, regardless of the mother’s status. Denmark, which shares its borders with high-travel Europe, gives the shot only to infants born to mothers who carry the condition themselves.⁸
The safety claim rests on clinical trials. Those trials, for hepatitis B and for the childhood schedule generally, do not compare the vaccine to an inert placebo. The comparator is another aluminum-adjuvanted formulation, or a different vaccine, or the “background” mixture of the product minus the antigen. Adverse events in the “placebo” arm therefore match adverse events in the vaccine arm, because both arms received a substance that produces adverse events. The trial reports that the vaccine is “safe compared to placebo.” The label reflects the conclusion. What the label does not reflect is that the placebo was not a placebo. This is the load-bearing methodology under every safety claim on the childhood schedule. No vaccine on the schedule has been tested against saline in a pediatric population large enough to detect serious harm.⁹
The consent process at the American bedside is not consent. The mother has just given birth. The Vaccine Information Statement is handed over as the needle is prepared. The package insert, which contains the excipients, the adverse event history, and the acknowledged absence of long-term studies, is not offered. The CDC itself states that the Vaccine Information Statement is not an informed-consent document.¹⁰
The Belmont Report, drafted after the 1974 Research Act, identifies the three components of ethical consent: information, comprehension, and voluntariness.¹¹ The pamphlet handed to the mother is not information. The mother in her eighteenth hour of labor cannot comprehend the pamphlet even if she reads it. The room in which declining is coded as neglect does not offer voluntariness.
The Emergency Use Authorization products marketed for children under twelve during the COVID period had blank package inserts.¹² There was no clinical trial data to disclose. There was nothing to comprehend. The consent form still had a signature line.
Your pediatrician does not raise the Belmont Report. She does not know it exists. She was trained to hand over a pamphlet. Consent, as the Belmont Report defines it, was not part of the training.
4. The Circumstraint (first days)
Boys born in American hospitals are commonly circumcised within the first forty-eight hours of life. The procedure is elective, performed on healthy tissue, without therapeutic indication. The device most commonly used to hold the infant during the procedure is called the Circumstraint, a plastic form that immobilizes the baby’s arms and legs so the surgeon can work.
Forrest Maready has written on what happens inside the infant’s body during this event.¹³ Three triggers activate the dorsal vagal complex simultaneously: the injected local anesthetic registers as chemical intrusion, the incision as tissue injury, and the strap and plastic form as restraint. The infant cannot fight and cannot flee. Under sustained restraint, the primal system routes into shutdown. Images of babies on the Circumstraint mid-procedure show glassed-over eyes and a stillness that is not calm. It is dissociation, the same primal response animals and reptiles exhibit under capture, and the same response World War I soldiers exhibited when frozen in place under sustained fire.
The procedure requires written consent. It does not require informed consent. Parents are not shown the Circumstraint, or what dorsal vagal shutdown looks like. They are told the boy will not remember.
Whether the child remembers with his cortex is beside the point. The body remembers with its wiring. Maready traces the same trigger pattern, the same shutdown response, in the shots administered later, where the parent’s or nurse’s restraint constitutes the third trigger and delivers the injected metals into a body whose lymphatic system is now primed to transport them.
Your pediatrician was not trained in polyvagal theory. The circumcision was billed separately, performed by a different practitioner, and by the time she sees the child for the first well-baby visit, the file is closed and the incision has healed.
5. The Formula Sample in the Discharge Bag (first weeks)
Breast milk is more than food. It is a continuation of the mother’s biology into the infant. It delivers living stem cells, signalling molecules, protective proteins, and dozens of maternal components the infant’s biology integrates into its own.¹⁴ Colostrum in the first days carries a concentration of maternal material no manufactured product can replicate. The list of components identified in breast milk grows every year.
What formula provides is a mix of macronutrients dissolved in vegetable oils, built from cow’s milk protein or soy. It is what a mother feeds her baby when the biology cannot function or when she has no other option. It is not equivalent to what it replaces.
Formula recommendation frequently begins in the hospital. If the baby is slow to latch, if the mother is exhausted, if the nursing staff has other beds to turn over, a bottle of formula appears. The discharge bag contains a formula sample. The pediatrician’s office keeps sample cans for the first well-baby visit. What the office does not keep is a lactation consultant on staff.
The consultant costs money. The formula is provided by the manufacturer. The infrastructure of the American pediatric practice is built around the availability of formula and the absence of professional breastfeeding support. When troubleshooting is needed, the referral goes to a private lactation consultant the family pays for out of pocket, or, more commonly, the referral does not go anywhere and the mother receives a can of Similac.
The pediatrician was trained to identify failure to thrive. She was not trained to identify a poor latch, an undiagnosed tongue tie, engorgement, mastitis, or the constellation of ordinary breastfeeding difficulties that resolve with skilled support. The training treated breastfeeding as a preference and formula as a substitute of equivalent value. Neither claim survives the primary literature.
6. The Growth Chart Announcement (every visit)
At every visit, the baby is weighed and measured. The numbers are plotted against a curve. The pediatrician announces the percentile. Anything below the fiftieth is met with concern. Anything below the tenth triggers supplementation, formula, referrals, and repeat visits.
The curve is a statistical instrument. It plots where a population’s babies actually fell, not where healthy babies should fall. The reference standards against which most American pediatricians still work were built substantially on formula-fed populations, until the World Health Organization revised its curves in 2006 based on breastfed infants. A breastfed baby, whose weight-gain curve flattens naturally after four to six months, tracks below the older references and appears to be failing. The formula-fed baby was the standard against which the breastfed baby was measured and labeled as failing to thrive.
The percentile is not a diagnosis. Half of all babies are, by definition, below the fiftieth percentile. This is what percentiles are. The pediatrician’s alarm at the number is not a medical judgment. It is a script triggered by a chart.
The mother leaves the visit worried about her baby’s weight. She adds a bottle. The pediatrician marks the intervention on the record. At the next visit, if the number has climbed, the intervention is validated. If it has not, the recommendation escalates. More bottles. Iron drops. Cereal at four months. Formula-based supplementation.
The chart does not measure the child’s thriving. It measures her position relative to a reference population that was itself constructed by earlier interventions. The chart manufactures the pathology it then addresses.
7. The Iron Drops at Six Months (six months)
The four-month or six-month iron level comes back low. The pediatrician prescribes ferrous sulfate drops or recommends iron-fortified cereal. The parent complies. The drops stain the baby’s teeth, alter the stool, and are frequently spit up. The parent gives them anyway because the pediatrician said the number was low.
The number was low because the placenta was cut early. The reference range was developed on infants who were also cut early. The whole system, from delivery-room workflow to the reference range on the lab printout, was calibrated around interventions that removed the natural iron reserve at birth.
The intervention at hour zero produced the finding at month six that justifies the intervention at month six.
Ferrous sulfate is an industrial iron compound the infant’s body has no biological history with. It is aggressive on the gut lining, contributes to constipation, and drives oxidative stress the six-month-old is developmentally ill-equipped to buffer. The clinical trials on infant iron supplementation are almost entirely funded by the manufacturers of the supplements themselves or the cereals into which those supplements are compounded.
Iron in the form the child’s biology expects arrives packaged inside whole foods: liver, red meat, egg yolk, shellfish. These are the traditional first foods documented by Weston Price across traditional cultures around the world.¹⁵ None of Price’s cultures gave their infants iron drops. None of Price’s cultures produced the infants the American pediatric system labels as low in iron at six months.
Your pediatrician was trained in the intervention. She was not trained in what a child looks like when the intervention is not needed because the earlier interventions never happened.
8. Amoxicillin for the Ear (infancy onward)
The child has an earache. The pediatrician looks in the ear, notes the red drum, and writes a script for amoxicillin. Ten days. The ear improves. Three weeks later, the ear is red again. Another course. By eighteen months, the child has been on four rounds of antibiotics. The referral to ENT for tubes is in the file.
A 1994 study in Annals of Allergy identified food allergy in 78 percent of a series of 104 children with recurrent middle-ear fluid. Of the food-allergic group, 86 percent showed significant reduction on a sixteen-week elimination diet; when the offending foods were reintroduced, 94 percent recurred. The common offenders were cow’s milk, eggs, wheat, corn, soy, and peanuts.¹⁶ Children with undiagnosed cow’s milk allergy are roughly twice as likely to have recurrent ear problems. The ENT specialist David Hurst has spent his career documenting that allergy is the primary driver of chronic middle-ear fluid, and that aggressive allergy management resolves most cases.¹⁷
Your pediatrician does not ask about the child’s diet. She does not ask whether the ear inflammation clusters after certain foods. She writes the amoxicillin. The amoxicillin, over successive courses, does documented damage to the child’s gut ecology, contributing to the food sensitizations that will produce the next allergy diagnosis and the next inflammation and the next round of prescriptions.¹⁸
Heather Fraser has documented the loop.¹⁹ Antibiotic exposure is associated with elevated risk of food allergy. The food allergy drives the inflammation that produces the fluid that invites the prescription. The prescription drives the next allergy. The pediatrician sees the ear. The pediatrician does not see the loop.
9. The Autism Screening at Eighteen Months (eighteen to twenty-four months)
The M-CHAT is administered at the eighteen-month and twenty-four-month well-child visits. It is a screening questionnaire designed to catch signs of autism early. Parents whose children screen positive are referred for further evaluation.
By eighteen months, an American child following the CDC schedule has received over twenty vaccine doses. The MMR is typically administered at twelve to fifteen months. The pattern of parental accounts documented across the literature is consistent: the child was developing normally, received the shots at fifteen to eighteen months, and regressed.²⁰
J.B. Handley’s son Jamison is one such case. At eighteen months, Jamison was sick, never sleeping, gut in distress, alternating between diarrhea and constipation. His behavior had shifted. He ran along walls turning his eyes to the side, spun in circles, and played with his trains in odd ways. He had been an early talker, but the words had disappeared. UCSF confirmed the diagnosis: autism, the severe kind. The presiding doctor told the family to expect institutionalization. Within two weeks of beginning biomedical treatment under a different physician, Jamison’s belly had flattened, his eye contact was returning, and the dark circles under his eyes were clearing.²¹ The pattern that took his family months to piece together is the pattern the M-CHAT is designed to detect after the fact.
The screening does not prevent autism. It catches autism after the damage is measurable. It is a diagnostic backstop, timed to the developmental window in which regression is typically noticed, which is the same developmental window in which the schedule delivers its heaviest early load.
The rate is now one in thirty-one American children.²² A fully vaccinated Danish child receives thirty doses of vaccine against ten diseases across childhood, delivered in eleven injections thanks to multivalent combinations. A fully vaccinated American child, as of 2024, received between eighty-four and eighty-eight doses against seventeen diseases.²³ The pediatrician who administers the M-CHAT does not draw this comparison. She was trained that autism is genetic, that the cause is unknown, and that no controlled comparison of fully vaccinated versus never-vaccinated populations has ever been conducted. The last of these is true. The absence of the study is itself the finding.
The screening timing is the confession. The system knows when regression happens. The system built the screening around that window. What the system does not do is investigate the exposures delivered during the same window.
The Intervention Cascade: How Modern Medicine Creates the Birth Emergencies It Claims to Prevent (Part 2)
10. The Tonsillectomy Recommendation (early childhood)
The child has recurrent throat inflammation, or the tonsils appear enlarged, or the sleep is poor. The pediatrician refers to ENT. The ENT recommends removal. The parents comply.
During the American polio era, fifty to eighty percent of middle- and upper-class American children were tonsillectomized. Anderson’s 1943 Utah data showed that poliomyelitis was more than 2.5 times as common in tonsillectomized children. Bulbar polio, the form that paralyzed the muscles of breathing and swallowing, was sixteen times more common. Forty-three percent of the bulbar and bulbospinal cases had been preceded by a tonsillectomy within thirty days.²⁴ After the connection surfaced in the medical literature, tonsillectomy rates collapsed. The procedure never recovered its earlier prevalence, though it remains common enough to be a routine referral.
The tonsils are lymphatic tissue. They are part of the body’s cleansing and repair infrastructure, positioned at the entry point of the digestive and respiratory tracts to sample what comes in and to house the response. Removing them because they are inflamed is comparable to removing a filter because it is doing its job.
The recurrent throat problems have a driver. Maready has documented one pattern in the sudden-onset behavioral and neurological conditions labeled PANDAS and PANS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections, and Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome). Aluminum from prior vaccinations creates a metal burden in the brain and lymphatic system. A subsequent inflammatory event produces a sudden onset of behavioral and neurological symptoms.²⁵ Removing the tonsils and giving antibiotics produces temporary relief. The underlying loop persists.
Your pediatrician was trained to identify the surgical indication. She was not trained to ask what the tonsils were responding to, or what the removal costs the child in the years afterward when the filter that used to sample the air is no longer there.
11. The Stimulant Prescription (school age)
The teacher flags the boy. His mother takes him to the pediatrician. A screening tool is administered. The prescription follows. Ritalin, Adderall, Vyvanse, Concerta. The child is medicated through the school day.
The DSM criteria for ADHD are behavioral. There is no biomarker. There is no imaging finding required for the diagnosis. There is no laboratory test. The condition is defined by the behavior and validated by the response to the stimulant, which by design produces focus and compliance in almost any child regardless of underlying condition.
Maready has proposed that the behavioral pattern derives from damage to a small brainstem structure called the locus coeruleus, which regulates the release of norepinephrine and mediates the fight-or-flight response.²⁶ Damage produces hypersensitivity and continuous norepinephrine release. The child is locked in a low-grade panic state. He cannot sit still because his body is preparing for a threat that never resolves. The gut problems that frequently accompany the ADHD presentation follow from the same diversion of resources away from digestion. Many parents notice that their child’s behavior improves markedly during a fever, which fits the same mechanism: the locus coeruleus diverts its norepinephrine output to raising body temperature, giving the child a temporary respite from the constant stress signal.²⁷
The metals implicated in the damage, in Maready’s account, are the aluminum-based adjuvants injected in the leg during infancy and transported by the lymphatic system toward the brainstem.²⁸ Studies have documented elevated aluminum in the hair of children diagnosed with hyperactivity. The stimulant does not address the damage. It masks the presentation by driving further neurotransmitter release, in the way that pressing harder on a broken accelerator does not fix the car.
The pediatrician was trained in the diagnostic criteria and the medication. She was not trained in the injection pathway, the lymphatic transport, or the brainstem lesion. The prescription pad was faster than the investigation.
12. The SSRI for the Teenager (adolescence)
The teenage girl is depressed. Her pediatrician writes the SSRI. American pediatric and family practice are the frontline prescribers of adolescent SSRIs; referral to a child psychiatrist happens only for complex cases. The FDA’s own black-box warning, added in 2004, states that these compounds increase suicidal ideation in children and adolescents. The warning appears on the label. It is rarely raised in the conversation before the script is signed.
In 2012, GlaxoSmithKline paid three billion dollars to settle claims that it had downplayed the risk of paroxetine, marketed as Paxil, in adolescents.²⁹ The company had promoted the drug for uses the FDA had not approved and had withheld safety data. The settlement was the largest healthcare fraud settlement in American history at the time. Nearly every major pharmaceutical company has been caught in comparable settlements. The prescriptions kept flowing.
Teenage depression has risen sharply during the period in which the pediatric schedule expanded, the smartphone was placed in every hand, sleep was compressed, sunlight exposure collapsed, gut ecology was serially disrupted by antibiotic courses, and the food supply was reengineered around industrial seed oils and ultra-processed carbohydrates. Each of these has documented effects on mood and cognition. None is investigated at the sixteen-year-old’s medication appointment.
The SSRI is not a diagnosis. It is a management protocol. It changes what the neurotransmitter machinery is doing without asking what damaged the machinery in the first place. The teen who does not respond gets a second SSRI. The teen who responds badly gets an antipsychotic added. The teen who spirals gets hospitalized. The chart records the diagnosis codes and the medication trials. The chart does not record what happened to the child between age one and age fourteen.
Your pediatrician was trained to identify depression and to prescribe the first-line medication. She was not trained to ask what a healthy sixteen-year-old looks like, or what would have to change in the child’s life for the depression to resolve without the compound.
13. The Gardasil Series (eleven to twelve)
The eleven-year-old girl is offered the HPV vaccine at her pediatric well-visit; American pediatric care runs through adolescence, and the HPV series is a scheduled pediatric-office item. In many practices, the shot is bundled with the meningococcal and Tdap boosters at the same visit, an arrangement the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends explicitly to improve series completion.³⁰ The practice’s incentive is to have the teenager walk out with all three.
The clinical trials submitted for HPV vaccine approval did not use saline as the placebo. The comparator was the aluminum adjuvant, which produces its own inflammatory and neurological effects.³¹ The trials measured precancerous lesions, not cervical cancer, which develops on a timeline decades longer than the trials ran. The insert states that the product has not been evaluated for carcinogenicity or genotoxicity.³²
The injury patterns reported after HPV vaccination include postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, seizures, chronic fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, motor symptoms, and premature ovarian failure. Mary Holland has documented individual cases in detail. Alexis Wolf was thirteen when she started the series in 2007. After the second dose her health deteriorated. After the third she could no longer focus, sleep, eat, or behave normally. Today, at twenty-five, she has daily seizures. Colton Berrett was thirteen when he received the third dose. He became paralyzed from the neck down and remained on a ventilator until his suicide, two months before his eighteenth birthday. Joel Gomez was fourteen when he died in his sleep after the second dose.³³
The American pediatric office does not present the trial design. It does not present the package insert. The pediatrician was trained that Gardasil prevents cervical cancer. That claim is not supported by the trials. The claim she was trained to make is the claim she makes.
In Japan, after the injury patterns became public, uptake dropped from around seventy percent to under one percent.³⁴ The Japanese Ministry of Health withdrew its active recommendation. Girls in Japan are still eligible to receive the shot. Their parents are informed. Most decline.
The Well-Child Visit Is Not a Health Check
Thirteen items across one childhood, all delivered by the same profession and shaped by the same training.
The nurse walks in with the shot tray already prepared. A Vaccine Information Statement is handed over as the needle is uncapped. The growth chart appears on the monitor and a percentile is announced. The developmental questionnaire sits on the clipboard. Next shots are read off the schedule. Questions raised meet a script. Parents who decline meet a second script. Parents who persist are fired from the practice.
None of this measures whether the child is thriving. The visit measures whether the child is on schedule for the shots, the screenings, the growth curve, the developmental milestones, and the medication trials. The well-child visit is a compliance check. It has been a compliance check for as long as most parents alive today have been alive. What changed is the length of the compliance list, which as of 2024 ran to eighty-four to eighty-eight doses covering seventeen diseases, an autism screening at eighteen months, a stimulant prescription at seven, an SSRI at fourteen, and a Gardasil dose at eleven.
The pediatrician cannot do the health check because she was not trained for it. She was trained to plot, prescribe, inject, refer, screen, code, and bill. The health check is what a curious pediatrician would do. The profession does not produce curious pediatricians. It produces compliant ones, because the training rewards compliance and punishes curiosity, and the compliant pediatrician takes home the same salary whether the child in front of her is thriving or not.
The mother in the exam room is the one who has to do the health check. She has to hold the developmental history the chart does not track. She has to notice what changed after which appointment. She has to ask what the pediatrician was trained not to ask. She has to know what a healthy child looks like, because the person paid to know does not.
How To Explain It To A 6 Year Old
Imagine a driving school where the students learn one thing. They learn the map. Every morning, the teacher hands out the map. It shows every road and every turn.
The students memorize the map. When they get their driver’s license, they can drive the map perfectly.
They cannot, however, look out the window.
Looking out the window was not on the map. Looking out the window is not what the driving school taught. If a dog runs into the road, the map does not have a dog. If the tire goes flat, the map does not have a tire. The students keep driving the map. They drive right through the dog. They drive on the flat tire until the wheel comes off.
If you asked one of these drivers why they did not stop, they would say the map said to keep going.
Your pediatrician has a map. It is called the schedule. It tells her which shots to give and which drops to prescribe and which screenings to run and at which age. She learned the map very well and can drive it in her sleep. She was not taught to look out the window.
The window is your child. The window is what your child looked like last week and what your child looks like this week. The window is what changed after the last appointment. The window is whether your child is thriving, or is quietly, slowly becoming someone the map does not have space for.
You are the one at the window. Your pediatrician is at the map. Both of you are trying to help your child. Only one of you can see her.
Medical Disclaimer
This essay is a work of analysis and commentary. It is not medical advice. It is not a prescription. It is not a substitute for the judgment of a practitioner who knows your child. Decisions about vaccination, medication, surgery, and pediatric care belong to the parent and to the practitioner the parent chooses. The purpose of this essay is to widen the frame of what a parent knows before those decisions are made.
In Print
Thirteen of my books are now available as paperbacks, printed to order through Lulu and shipped worldwide. The Unvaccinated lays out the completely unvaccinated as a comparison group across twenty chapters and five appendices — as far as I know, the only book of its kind. Medicalized Motherhood follows a woman through 123 documented interventions from teenage pill to postpartum discharge. Drilling for Profit argues that cavities, gum disease, and crooked teeth are a dietary problem the dental profession treats surgically. What Your Vet Can’t Tell You applies the same critique to pets — food, vaccines, and a profession trained by the industries whose products cause the harm. Escape from Psychiatry documents the fabrication of the DSM, the collapse of the serotonin hypothesis, and the specific damage done by every major psychiatric drug class.
Two go to the paradigm underneath the whole shelf. No Contagion, co-authored with Jamie Andrews, catalogues 258 failed contagion experiments and the case against germ theory itself. No Virus takes the examination one layer deeper — the isolation problem, the collapse of virology’s foundational claims, and a disease-by-disease reappraisal of the entities the framework is built on.
Four take on the remedies and paradigm questions mainstream medicine actively suppresses. The DMSO Book covers 100,000 studies, zero deaths, and one approval — the suppressed science of medicine’s most versatile compound. Chlorine Dioxide: The Forbidden Remedy collects the interviews, protocols, and evidence from the doctors and researchers they tried to silence. The Iodine Book recovers an essential mineral driven out of easy reach by bromide, fluoride, and perchlorate — and the pharmacological tradition that kept its therapeutic use alive across the decades mainstream medicine set it aside. The Hydrogen Peroxide Book recovers a century of practice with a compound the body already makes — mitochondrial, phagocytic, part of thyroid hormone synthesis — suppressed precisely because its clinical utility threatened the pharmaceutical direction that captured twentieth-century medicine.
Two more take on the remedies already in your kitchen. Baking Soda locates sodium bicarbonate inside the terrain framework industrial medicine buried — the compound already in your cupboard, and what it does at the level of the blood, kidneys, lungs, digestion, and skin. The Castor Oil Book recovers four thousand years of documented practice on the medicine mainstream healthcare quietly stopped talking about — the kitchen bottle that doesn’t sit well in a system built on prescriptions and procedures.
A physical book reaches the person a Substack post never will — the sceptical relative, the friend who won’t click a link but might open a book, the visitor whose eye lands on a coffee table. The full shelf is at lulu.com/spotlight/unbekoming. Buy one to keep, and one to give away.
References
- Suzanne Humphries, quoted in J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2018).
- Lawrence Palevsky, quoted in J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic.
- Robert Sears, quoted in J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic.
- Rachael Ross, “Vaccines, Vaccine Injury, and My Perspective as a Doctor and Mom,” Dr. Rachael (July 1, 2016), http://drrachael.com/vaccines-vaccine-injuries-my-perspective-as-a-doctor-and-mom/.
- Jayne L. M. Donegan, Foreword to Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History (2013).
- Thomas Cowan, Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness (Chelsea Green, 2018), on newborn phytonadione biology and gut colonization.
- Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions, on intramuscular versus oral vitamin K administration and the childhood cancer literature.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on the Danish Childhood Vaccination Program.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on the corrupted placebo methodology across the pediatric vaccine trial literature.
- CDC, “Vaccine Information Statements: Frequently Asked Questions,” in Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases (Pink Book), 14th edition, Appendix C.
- National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research (1979), cited in Edward Geehr, Unavoidably Unsafe.
- Edward Geehr, Unavoidably Unsafe, on Emergency Use Authorization and blank package inserts.
- Forrest Maready, Crooked: Man-Made Disease Explained, on the dorsal vagal complex and the Circumstraint.
- Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions, on the cellular components of breast milk and colostrum.
- Weston A. Price, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (1939), documenting traditional cultures and their infant feeding practices.
- Heather Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, citing 1994 Annals of Allergy study on food elimination and ear inflammation.
- David Hurst, cited in Heather Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, on allergy as the primary driver of chronic middle-ear fluid.
- Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, on antibiotic exposure and food allergy risk.
- Fraser, The Peanut Allergy Epidemic, on the antibiotic-allergy-inflammation loop.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on parental accounts of regression following the fifteen-to-eighteen-month shots.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on the regression and recovery of his son Jamison.
- CDC, “Prevalence and Early Identification of Autism Spectrum Disorder Among Children Aged 4 and 8 Years — Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, 16 Sites, United States, 2022,” MMWR Surveillance Summaries 74, no. 2 (April 17, 2025).
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Assessment of the U.S. Childhood and Adolescent Immunization Schedule Compared to Other Countries” (2025), https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/assessment-of-the-us-childhood-and-adolescent-immunization-schedule-compared-to-other-countries.pdf.
- Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk, Dissolving Illusions, on tonsillectomy and bulbar polio (Anderson, 1943 Utah data).
- Forrest Maready, Crooked, on PANDAS and PANS as aluminum-inflammation cascades.
- Forrest Maready, Crooked, on the locus coeruleus and ADHD.
- Forrest Maready, Crooked, on fever, norepinephrine, and behavioral improvement in autism and ADHD.
- Maready, Crooked, on aluminum adjuvant transport via the lymphatic system.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on the GlaxoSmithKline paroxetine settlement.
- CDC, “General Best Practice Guidelines for Immunization: Timing and Spacing of Immunobiologics,” on ACIP recommendations for simultaneous administration of adolescent vaccines at the 11-to-12 visit.
- Holland et al., The HPV Vaccine on Trial, on Gardasil clinical trial placebo design.
- Holland et al., The HPV Vaccine on Trial, quoting the Gardasil package insert on carcinogenicity and genotoxicity evaluation.
- Holland et al., The HPV Vaccine on Trial, on the cases of Alexis Wolf, Colton Berrett, and Joel Gomez.
- J.B. Handley, How to End the Autism Epidemic, on the collapse of Japanese HPV vaccine uptake.
Additional Sources
Thomas Cowan, Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness (Chelsea Green, 2018).
Herbert M. Shelton, Natural Hygiene: Man’s Pristine Way of Life, and the collected articles on pediatric care.
John H. Tilden, Toxemia Explained: The True Interpretation of the Cause of Disease (1926).
Daniel Roytas, Can You Catch a Cold? Untold History and Human Experiments.
Torsten Engelbrecht, Claus Köhnlein, Samantha Bailey, and Stefan Lanka, Virus Mania, 3rd edition (2021).
Mark Bailey, The Final Pandemic: An Antidote to Medical Tyranny (2023).
Dawn Lester and David Parker, What Really Makes You Ill? Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease Is Wrong.
Sally Fallon Morell, The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care.
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014), on early-life trauma and dissociation as embodied phenomena.
Peter Gøtzsche, Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare (2013).
Trita Parsi: Massive Houthi Victory Transforms U.S.-Iran War
Glenn Diesen | September 12, 2026
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Follow the Substack of Trita Parsi: https://tritaparsi.substack.com/
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Iran has good reason to bar IAEA inspectors from returning amid US aggression: Author
Press TV | September 12, 2026
Iran’s refusal to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors back into the country amid ongoing US aggression is understandable, says a US-based author and activist, urging the UN nuclear watchdog to inspect Israeli nuclear facilities as well.
Speaking to the Press TV website, Anthony Donovan, a war veteran and political campaigner, said he supports Iran’s decision not to allow IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi and his team into the country while Iran remains under attack by the United States, Western countries and their allies.
“IAEA will be welcome when the threats cease. Perfect good sense. You have good reason to not trust Grossi and the US pushing for this absurd resolution in the UNSC,” Donovan said.
He added that the nuclear watchdog should instead be demanding an end to the attacks and warning about the dangers posed by military action against nuclear facilities.
“The IAEA needs to immediately and strongly demand an end to these bombings and aggressions, express the outrage at the danger this can pose,” Donovan said.
His comments came after the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a politically motivated resolution drafted by the United States, Britain, France and Germany calling on Grossi to report Iran to the UN Security Council and General Assembly.
The resolution was adopted with 23 votes in favor on Wednesday, while Russia, China and Niger voted against it and eight countries abstained. The move marked the first time in 20 years that Iran had been referred to the Security Council over its nuclear obligations.
Iran’s ambassador to international organizations in Vienna, Reza Najafi, dismissed the resolution as a “political tool” and said Tehran would cooperate with inspectors only “to the extent that circumstances and safety permit.”
It comes as the IAEA has been unable to access some Iranian nuclear facilities since a US-Israeli military aggression in June 2025 that included strikes on safeguarded nuclear sites. Access remained blocked after a broader aggression was unleashed against Iran on Feb. 28.
For Donovan, the circumstances surrounding the latest pressure on Iran made renewed inspections particularly problematic.
He said the West has remained heavily “obsessed” with Iran’s nuclear program even though “it has been inspected more than any other country.” He also warned against repeating the use of the unfounded nuclear weapons programs as a pretext for military action, citing the experience of Iraq.
“The echo of using the nuclear program as we did in Iraq is before us again, an excuse to bomb and kill, to violate all known international law, humanitarian law, and our own laws,” he said.
Donovan said inspections could resume once hostilities end and trust between Iran and the international community is restored, while noting that any future inspection regime should also address Israel’s clandestine nuclear facilities.
“When there is a true lasting peace, which seems very far away, and when there is mutual trust renewed, which is very far away, Iran remains naturally open to allow inspections, along with a requirement of full inspection of Israel’s nuclear weapons facility,” he said.
Israel’s nuclear program
Donovan pointed to a double standard in international nuclear oversight, noting that Israel should face the same scrutiny demanded of Iran.
He said President John F. Kennedy had “tried to prevent” the Israeli regime’s ability to gain access to nuclear weapons.
“Israel lied to him, built a mock facility hoping to fool him. He intuited that and gave several strong ultimatums to [then-prime minister David] Ben Gurion and his government to allow full inspection by his team and warned of serious repercussions if this was not allowed,” said Donovan.
Kennedy, he added, “was adamant they not get the bomb and was killed within months of these demands.”
He also linked the issue to Kennedy’s broader efforts to reduce the dangers of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, including his back-channel communications with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and the 1963 Atmospheric Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
“The Test Ban Treaty was a phenomenal success,” Donovan said, adding that Kennedy viewed it as an initial step toward ending the nuclear arms race.
Donovan noted that after Kennedy’s assassination, the US approach toward Israel’s nuclear program changed.
He also criticized the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), saying it had been weakened over time by nuclear-armed states and that Israel had not joined it.
Israel has never signed the NPT and has not submitted its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspections. The regime maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity and has never officially acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons.
Estimates of the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal vary widely, but it is widely believed to possess hundreds of nuclear warheads and maintains delivery capabilities involving missiles, aircraft and submarines.
Donovan noted that focusing on Iran while nuclear-armed entities continue to expand their arsenals represents a dangerous double standard.
“The fact that we keep pointing at Iran maybe getting a weapon, while we are all wildly building these omnicidal devices claiming they ‘Ensure our Future,’ our security, etc. is blind, dangerous and extremely egocentric,” he said.
He said Iran’s historical experience had also shaped his understanding of Tehran’s security concerns, citing past wars and Western involvement in regional wars.
“I understand better now why it was important for Iran to be prepared for such murderous colonists,” Donovan said, referring to the US-Israeli front that has “violated life” in Iran, Palestine and Lebanon.
The author added that he would continue to call his representatives to “listen to any but Israel.”
“Fortunately, things are changing; people are rising. Most here know what we are doing in Iran is criminal, wrong,” he added.
Invoking 9/11 to justify war against Iran is ‘utterly absurd’: Tehran
Press TV – September 12, 2026
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has rejected US attempts to invoke the anniversary of the September 11 attacks to justify a “reckless and unlawful war” against Iran, saying Washington’s narrative on terrorism is riddled with fundamental contradictions.
In a post on X early Saturday, marking the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Esmaeil Baghaei criticized remarks by the US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on terrorism and Iran.
“The narrative advanced by the US Secretary of War on the anniversary of 9/11 is riddled with fundamental contradictions,” he said.
Baghaei said the US could not simultaneously wage aggression, carry out assassinations, and cause civilian casualties while claiming exclusive authority to define terrorism and determine whose violence was legitimate.
“The perpetrators of 9/11 were not Iranians; they were the very same people whom the US itself had armed, organized, or otherwise cultivated in the preceding decades,” he said.
He also criticized the US-led “war on terror,” saying the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had brought years of war, occupation, civilian deaths, and widespread devastation.
“Against this backdrop, invoking the anniversary of 9/11 to justify a reckless and unlawful war against Iran is utterly absurd,” Baghaei said.
He further rejected attempts to justify the US war against Iran through counterterrorism rhetoric, stressing that the war involved the assassination of officials of a sovereign state and attacks on civilians, including women and children.
“A criminal war that has involved the assassination of officials of a sovereign state and the targeting of civilians, including women and children, cannot be made morally coherent simply by wrapping it in the language of counterterrorism,” he said.
The American invasion of Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, less than a month after the September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people in the United States. Washington presented the foolhardy military adventure as the opening battle in a so-called “war on terror.”
Yet after 20 years of brutal military occupation, trillions of dollars spent, and enormous human suffering resulting from the US-led coalition’s horrendous war crimes, the occupiers have not achieved a political settlement or eliminated the forces they had vowed to defeat.
Anthropic bans Israeli account over Iran, Gulf social media citizen profiling
The Cradle | September 11, 2026
An operation run by or on behalf of the Israeli-Singaporean commercial intelligence vendor S2T Unlocking Cyberspace used Claude models to map, classify, and profile social media users across Iran and the Persian Gulf, according to a threat intelligence report published by Anthropic on 11 September.
The platform recorded the locations of users, sorted them as supporters or opponents of their governments, and grouped populations into six demographic categories covering urban, clerical, military, youth, diaspora, and rural.
Its output was written in formal Arabic and styled as official government communications, with sentiment scores broken down by Gulf nationality alongside recommended counternarratives.
The actor fed the model batches of roughly 25 social media posts at a time and directed it to return each poster’s demographic group, location, and political leaning, with confidence ratings attached to every finding.
Anthropic identified a second workstream of more than 255 fabricated social media accounts, which the company said indicated the actor was assembling a stock of fake profiles for later deployment.
In a separate task, the actor directed the model to generate posts for online personas in Persian, Arabic, English, and German, intended to pass as members of both pro- and anti-government Iranian populations.
The company said its findings independently corroborate a February 2023 investigation by the journalism network Forbidden Stories, which documented an S2T surveillance product described in a company brochure recovered from leaked Colombian military files.
Anthropic said the capabilities in that brochure map closely onto the behavior it observed.
Anthropic added that it identified the activity at its pilot stage and found no evidence that later stages of the surveillance chain described by Forbidden Stories were used against real targets before the account was banned.
Israel has invested heavily in cyber capabilities, signals intelligence, artificial intelligence (AI), and advanced surveillance – a technological expansion that shifted the balance of its intelligence collection away from recruited human agents.
Mossad chief Roman Gofman dismissed two of the agency’s most senior officials in August over the failed plot to topple the Iranian government earlier this year.
One had run the intelligence directorate since December while the other headed the Mossad’s Iran division, and both were among the architects of a plan to bring down the Iranian government by igniting nationwide protests and supplying military and communication equipment to opposition groups and insurgents.
Channel 12 said the plan was drawn up in coordination with Washington and was meant to unfold under joint Israeli-US airstrikes.
The New York Times reported on 22 March that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had embraced the Mossad’s promise of a popular revolt when he urged US President Donald Trump into the war, and had grown frustrated when no uprising came.
Before the war on Iran, then-Mossad chief David Barnea had told Netanyahu and Trump that once Iran’s leaders were killed, his agency could galvanize the Iranian opposition into renewed mass unrest, swiftly producing regime change.
Leaked chemical dossier reveals Israel’s role in Sudan’s civil war: Report
Press TV – September 11, 2026
A dossier of evidence alleging chemical weapons use by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) was compiled by Israeli intelligence and shared with Western media outlets in a coordinated operation to discredit the army and bolster its paramilitary rival, a report says.
The dossier, described by the New York Times and Washington Post over the weekend as “shared by a Middle Eastern intelligence agency,” contained nearly 150 documents, bomb blueprints, images, videos, voice notes and several thousand intercepted text messages allegedly detailing how a secretive SAF unit developed and produced chlorine bombs over six months in 2024.
Multiple Sudanese and US sources told Middle East Eye that the “Middle Eastern intelligence agency” is Israeli, and that the dossier was nearly identical to one Israel handed to the US government before Washington sanctioned Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the SAF, in January 2025.
A former US official described the interception of vast numbers of messages as “an advertisement for Pegasus,” the spyware developed by Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group to infiltrate mobile phones.
“The thing that is shocking is how much Mossad has been tracking this,” one Sudanese security analyst, who could not be named, told Middle East Eye.
“I knew Mossad had interests in Sudan… but the level and depth and length of surveillance suggests that Israel is more involved in Sudan than we think.”
The revelations raise serious questions about Israel’s role in Sudan’s civil war and appear to confirm that Israeli intelligence is actively siding with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) — whose main patron is the United Arab Emirates — against the Sudanese army.
On 13 September 2024, the RSF released a statement accusing the army of firing “toxic” missiles on al-Jaili, a crucial oil refinery north of Khartoum controlled at the time by the paramilitary.
There were no confirmed deaths in the attack, and there are no other confirmed occasions in which the SAF used chlorine bombs. The dossier does not contain medical evidence or testimony from any victims.
In a statement shared with Middle East Eye, the Sudanese government clarified that Sudan is a state party to the Chemical Weapons Convention and “has remained committed to its provisions and procedures, including the non-production, non-stockpiling and non-use of chemical weapons.”
It said that “all chlorine stocks in the country are designated exclusively for water purification, civilian industrial uses and energy, and it stands ready to demonstrate this before any competent international body.”
Israeli sources involved in the Zionist regime’s decision-making in the Horn of Africa have previously sought to develop and maintain relationships with a variety of different players, rather than backing one side or another.
“The Israeli love story with Hemedti intensified in 2021,” one North African analyst told Middle East Eye, referring to RSF head Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo Musa. The RSF chief was believed at the time and afterwards to have developed ties with Mossad.
In the leadup to Sudan’s war, then-Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen met Burhan as part of what the Israelis called a “historic diplomatic visit” intended to pave the way for the finalization of a peace agreement. The war scuppered this.
But Hemedti maintained his ties with Israel, whose key ally the UAE continued to support the Sudanese paramilitary — charges Abu Dhabi still denies, despite mounting evidence, including from the United Nations.
“This feels like they are picking sides,” a former US official said of Israel, the dossier and the RSF. “The intelligence they shared with Washington succeeded in getting Burhan and the SAF sanctioned.”
“The Israel-UAE relationship has only grown deeper,” the source said.
Last month, Africa Intelligence reported that two of Hemedti’s brothers, Abdul Rahim and Algoney, had travelled secretly to Tel Aviv in May 2025 and again in February this year to meet with Israeli intelligence and foreign ministry officials.
The dossier’s Israeli origins fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence operations aimed at shaping narratives, influencing Western media and undermining governments that refuse to align with its regional agenda.
By feeding selectively leaked and unverified material to American newspapers, Israeli intelligence has succeeded in manufacturing a chemical weapons scandal that has been used to justify sanctions against Sudan’s army leadership while its rival — accused of genocide by the UN — receives continued support from Israel’s Persian Gulf allies.
Is the Noose Tightening on Iran?
By Bryan Anthony Reo – New Eastern Outlook – September 11, 2026
The Western takeover of Syria, the weakening of Hezbollah, and now the capitulation of Hamas signal that Western/American/Israeli penetration of Iranian outer defenses is essentially complete. The only remaining coherent and unassailed bastion outside of Iran is found among the Houthi. There remains Iran itself, which has weathered six months of American and Israeli aggression.
Western Encroachment on Russia from the South and West
Over the last fifteen or sixteen years, I have followed and analyzed certain developments across the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Central Asia, and I have noticed a pattern, a theme, a trend — that trend being the dismantling of certain sovereign states aligned with Russia and Iran, or at least committed to their own sovereignty in resistance (or perhaps rather, ‘defiance’ is a better term) to the attempts at policy imposition by Western nations (usually the USA, sometimes France or the UK or Israel).
Iraq went down in 2003.
Then in the recent modern era, Libya was one of the first to be dismantled with the toppling and murdering of Colonel Gaddafi in 2011.
Syria followed in 2024, but fortunately Assad and his family were able to leave safely.
Lebanon was fractured and crippled decades ago and limps along on life support, with only Hezbollah holding the line to protect Lebanese national sovereignty.
Jordan was bought off and is a pathetic satellite of the USA, as is Egypt, with both of those nations having puppet governments that have betrayed their people and their regional partners for American dollars and Western approval.
It is now increasingly obvious and apparent that the Arab Spring was nothing more than a color revolution aimed at the Arab world, the way color revolutions occurred in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova, and were attempted elsewhere (i.e., Belarus). The Arab Spring was intended to plunge the Arab/Islamic world into chaos and allow the replacement of the post-Cold War era Arab nationalist strongmen with weak, fractured coalition parliaments and fractured states or simply outright chaos (Libya) or Israeli/American puppet regimes.
In some sense, it would be reasonable to label the American advance across the Arab world, from North Africa to the Middle East, as long-term strategic “shaping operations” to remove genuinely sovereign and pro-Moscow governments from the board, so that American and Israeli positions throughout the region become almost unassailable and Russia is denied easy access to the Mediterranean and Iran is denied outer defensive bastions. This advance has been so blatant it is almost impossible not to notice, and attention must be called to it.
Iran Alone Defies America in Central Asia/Middle East
Iran and a few partners (Hezbollah, Houthi, etc.) throughout the region are all that remain in defiance of the Israelis and their American muscle/enforcers.
Syria has become a puppet satellite of the USA/Israel and has effectively ceded a large portion of southwestern Syria to the Israeli “security zone” that has resulted from Israel’s advance from the Golan Heights.
It should be increasingly obvious that Israel will never leave the territory it has occupied in Syria; it will move soldiers in, construct more permanent outposts, and then move settlers in.
Meanwhile, the Damascus branch of Al Qaeda, installed by the CIA and Mossad, is more concerned with trying to provide a legal basis by which they can murder former Syrian President Assad than with maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria against Israeli expansionism.
Across the border in Lebanon, Israel and the USA are working hard to plunge Lebanon into a renewed civil war, as that is the most probable outcome from the policy being foisted on Beirut, specifically the “disarm Hezbollah at all costs” policy. Any significant armed attempt by the anemic, corrupt, Western-aligned government in Beirut to disarm Hezbollah will likely result in a civil war.
While this is happening in the near periphery of Israel, closer to home, in Gaza, it appears that Hamas has capitulated, or at least their senior leaders are prepared to cut and run and toss their fighters under the bus so long as they have personal security guarantees and are able to depart Gaza with their families and wealth.
The disarmament of Hamas will begin the final chapter in the story of the Palestinian people, and this chapter will end with their permanent mass expulsion from the remnants of the Palestinian territories and the formal annexation of those territories into the state of Israel and their population by Zionist settlers.
It will also mean that in regard to the regional chessboard, the only pieces remaining on the board in opposition to Israel and America are essentially Hezbollah, the Houthi, and Iran itself.
Despite American Propaganda, Iran is Actually Winning
CNN claims “80% of all traffic transiting Hormuz is going through the American route,” which, on its face, is plausible and is likely the case.
However, the CNN article does not tell the actual story: that traffic transiting Hormuz is down at least 90-95%.
Thus the notion that “80% of all traffic transiting Hormuz uses the American route via Oman” becomes far less impressive when one analyzes it through the lens of the traffic being 95% reduced from where it had been before the war.
I once had a potential client ask me to take a loser of a case on contingency; he even said, “You can have 100% of the money,” after which I told a colleague, “One hundred percent of zero is still zero.”
80% of 5% is a minuscule 4%, which means 4% of the pre-war traffic is using the American route via Oman. This is hardly something to brag about and it is not evidence that Iran is days from collapse or that the USA has won or is in the process of winning.
By the very nature of the situation, Iran wins by default if the US fails to maintain Hormuz open and freely available for maritime commerce. If the USA is unable to subdue Iran, then Iran prevails. All Iran has to do is avoid losing. It is similar to how in a lawsuit the plaintiff has the burden to prosecute a claim against the defendant in order to succeed and prevail; if the defendant simply avoids losing, then the defendant wins. If Iran is able to avoid botching the defense of their country and come through the war with their regime intact and while maintaining control over the Strait, or at least effectively maintaining area denial of the Strait, then Iran wins.
The Americans can sink some Iranian ships and try a repeat of Operation Praying Mantis, but this isn’t the 1980s, and Iran is a much harder target.
The US can likely even manage commando raids and strikes on Kharg Island, but it won’t be able to take and hold the island. Likewise, the USA is not capable of taking and*holding Qeshm Island (something likely necessary to exercise any significant long-term control over the Strait of Hormuz). An American operation to seize Qeshm Island, unless it has a plan for how to resupply the occupying forces with food and water in the face of drone and missile attacks interdicting the supply craft, is essentially an operation in “how long can these men hold out until they have to surrender to Iran due to hunger and thirst.” In short, an American invasion and occupation of Qeshm Island would be extremely ill-advised, unless President Trump has some secret logistical weapon, or a “trump card” that the American public is simply not aware of.
Negotiations with Iran are the Only Way Forward (But Iran Has NO Reason to Trust Americans Now)
It is painfully obvious that the only way forward for the United States in regard to Iran is to enter into negotiations, negotiations that would have to be fair, reasonable, sincere, and honest. However, given the American tendency to engage in direct strikes and targeted killings (assassinations) of the people they are negotiating with, it is doubtful if the Iranians are going to believe anything the Americans have to say at this stage.
Negotiations with Iran would also require (at least implicitly) the recognition of Iran as having legitimate national and regional interests if not indeed being an actual regional power in Central Asia and the Middle East, something the United States appears unwilling to do, largely because of Israeli/Zionist influence being exerted on American policy.
How can any sincere American diplomat go to Iran and ask, in good faith, that they trust him? How can he suggest, in good faith, that they work with American envoys? We have an established record of murdering diplomats during breaks in diplomatic sessions. How does any nation recover and come back from this reputation?
Neo-Con Provocations and Delusions Hinder Negotiations
At the present time it seems the United States is living in a fantasy land where it can endlessly sustain and support Ukraine in its war against the Russian people in Donbas and Crimea (using Ukraine as a NATO puppet to advance NATO/American interests in Eastern Europe), escalate on the Korean Peninsula against North Korea; continue to aggress against Iran in the Persian Gulf and wider region; support Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah; support the Saudis against the Houthi; and pivot forces from Europe to the Pacific and East Asia as part of a long-term program to contain and curtail China as a prelude to attempting to dominate China.
It is a very ambitious American grand strategy, and while lacking the resources to be successfully pursued, it also lacks any coherent overarching worldview that would string it all together and explain the motive, reasoning, or the telos. At present, it seems America is a mediocre chess-player simply moving pieces back and forth across the board, without any rhyme or reason, although that is the conclusion one reaches at a casual glance. A more thorough analysis would reveal that America’s policy in regard to Iran is primarily aimed at fulfilling long-term Zionist ambitions in the region and providing a puppet government in Tehran amenable to the stationing of American military assets (including nuclear weapons) that would be used to coerce and threaten Russia for the purpose of pursuing the long-term American neo-con goal of causing the collapse of the Russian Federation as a coherent, centralized polity.
America is presently trying to escalate with Iran and Russia, and is always eager and willing to unnecessarily confront, provoke, or escalate with the DPRK and China as well.
What is the American End Goal? Short-Sighted Regime Change?
Let us suppose that American/Zionist goals are accomplished in Iran, and Iran collapses; at that point the USA will have opened a southern front against Russia, with the ability to threaten Russia by projecting power across the Caspian and by escalating provocations throughout the Caucasus region as a way to distract, divide, weaken, and strain Russian resources.
But to what end? For what purpose? Why? While attending recent seminars at the University of Oxford in Aristotle’s Politics and Nuclear/Particle Physics, I had the opportunity to discuss ongoing geopolitical matters with a variety of European classmates. The vast majority (80%) had the standard mainstream EU/UK/Atlanticist line, and some were militantly anti-Russian. One (a man born in the Latvian SSR in 1986) openly said he wanted to see “democracy” rise up in Iran, topple the Islamic Republic, and to see “Putin toppled” in Moscow, and Western liberal democracy take over Russia.
My challenge to all of that was multi-faceted, but one aspect I consistently hammered home was “Why? What comes next? The US has a very bad track record of collapsing regimes and dealing with the aftermath… Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria… Why would we want to collapse stable states such as Iran and Russia? Even if we could, why would we want to collapse those states? What about the aftermath? What about thinking five years or ten years down the road instead of just thinking about the next six months or twelve months? The leaders in Iran and Russia are reasonable and rational, and those powers being intact and stable are crucial to regional stability; why remove them and have them replaced with, well, who really knows, some unknown quantity that might be a lunatic or a zealot or something unreasonable.”
I have very little appetite, and no sympathy, for the view that the USA should lead the way in toppling all non-Western governments so they can be replaced by what would presumably be Western-aligned parliamentarian democracies of the plutocratic variety. Westerners, especially Atlanticists, are great at advocating for the setting of wildfires, and for starting those wildfires, but they seldom give much thought to what happens once they set a conflagration in motion.
Many of the Russophobes cannot see past their own hatred of Russia and of President Putin, and they cannot wrap their minds around the simple truth that the West is fortunate to be able to deal with and interact with a Russia that has historically strong and visionary leadership in the form of true statesmen such as Putin and Lavrov, who are well-educated, experienced, and have coherent and sensible worldviews shaped by a proper and true classical education, whereas most Western leaders are fungible, interchangeable bureaucrats educated in technocratic parliamentary procedure and institutional rules.
Much like we are with Iran, we in the West are squandering golden opportunities for historic cooperation and mutual benefit with Iran and Russia because we are pursuing absurd policies based on, well, frankly, crap beliefs, garbage intelligence, and an incoherent worldview formed in the crumbling and decaying ruins of post-modernity.
Whether or not the US is actually succeeding in tightening a noose against Iran, it is certainly expending significant resources in an effort to do so, although it presently seems to have very little to show for all the effort.
Bryan Anthony Reo is a licensed attorney based in Ohio and an analyst of military history, geopolitics, and international relations
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Persian Gulf states to meet in Oman to discuss regional security, Hormuz navigation: Iran
Press TV – September 11, 2026
Iran and other Persian Gulf littoral states will meet in Oman on Monday to discuss regional issues, including arrangements for safe commercial navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, says Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.
Speaking on Friday, Baghaei said the meeting would bring together Iran, Iraq and other countries bordering the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman, describing the initiative as an important step toward strengthening regional understanding and cooperation.
He said Iran had consistently sought to build trust and cooperation among regional countries to promote peace and stability without “destructive and divisive interventions” by actors from outside the region.
The meeting in Muscat is also expected to address the outcome of recent Iran-Oman talks on establishing safe routes for commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, Baghaei said.
Iran and Oman have been engaged in negotiations for nearly three months over arrangements for safe navigation through the strategic waterway. On Aug. 25, the two countries announced discussions on a phased framework that would initially establish a temporary joint maritime corridor, alongside a joint mine-clearance project.
The framework is aimed at restoring safe navigation while preserving the sovereignty and sovereign rights of coastal states. Technical talks are expected to continue toward a permanent navigation corridor and an agreement on the future administration of the waterway.
Baghaei recalled the understanding reached between Tehran and Muscat on temporary shipping routes, saying Iran remained committed to efforts to ensure the safety of navigation through the strait.
“However, naturally, as long as the aggressive actions and illegal interventions of the United States, including the naval blockade and economic warfare, continue, the security of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz cannot be guaranteed,” he said.
The Strait of Hormuz is a major global energy chokepoint, with roughly one-fifth of global oil demand passing through the waterway. Iran has maintained heightened restrictions on navigation since the start of the US-Israeli military aggression against the country on Feb. 28, citing security concerns and the need to safeguard its sovereignty.
Back on August 25, Oman’s Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi stressed that future management of the strait and a permanent solution would follow the terms of the Islamabad memorandum of understanding, particularly its Article 5.
The memorandum, signed by Iran and the United States in June, aimed at ending the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, included an arrangement under which Iran agreed to allow fee-free maritime transit through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days.
Tehran subsequently established a special maritime route for vessels crossing the chokepoint; however, the US established unauthorized routes along Omani shores in violation of the agreement. In response, Tehran reimposed restrictions.
The joint Iran-Oman statement also pointed to the importance of consultations with other countries bordering the Persian Gulf and called for adherence to international law and respect for the sovereign rights of coastal states.
The meeting will be the first of its kind between Iranian diplomats and their regional counterparts following the start of the US-Israeli aggression, during which the US used the soil and airspace of some of these countries, including Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE, to launch criminal attacks against Iran.
Araghchi: US acknowledgment of Bahrain damage exposes cost of Israel’s wars
Press TV – September 11, 2026
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has referred to Acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao’s remarks on extensive damage to US facilities in Bahrain, saying Americans should not pay for Israel’s wars.
“We appreciate the candor of Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao. Our powerful Armed Forces did indeed ‘blow the hell out of the 5th Fleet HQ in Bahrain,’ as well as other bases supporting US aggression,” Araghchi wrote on X on Friday.
“The American people deserve better than footing the bill for Israel’s wars,” he said.
Cao acknowledged in a September 9 interview with The Epoch Times the extensive damage inflicted on US naval facilities in Bahrain by Iranian attacks.
Cao said Iranian forces had “blew the hell out of Bahrain,” referring to the damage sustained by Naval Support Activity Bahrain, which serves as the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.
The damage also disrupted operations involving the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, with Cao saying there was “no place for them to pull in.”
The comments come after open-source and satellite imagery had also pointed to significant damage at US facilities in Bahrain during the early stages of US-Israeli aggression against Iran which began on February 28.
Adm. Daryl Caudle, the US Navy’s top uniformed officer, said earlier this month that the Navy would not return to the Bahrain facility “anytime soon” because of the damage.
Jim Webb, a US Marine infantry veteran and independent national security consultant, said Cao’s latest comments suggest that the current US force posture in West Asia “is unsustainable without continuing to be under attack.”
“I don’t think there’s any way, you know, in the short, medium, or potentially even long term, that we can adequately defend a place like NSA Bahrain, or let alone the rest of the logistics bases there,” Webb told The Epoch Times.
Webb said keeping US troops at bases in the region makes those troops “constant targets.”
Cao said the Navy was reviewing whether the facility would be needed for future high-intensity deployments, adding that he had assigned a task force to examine the issue.
The USS Abraham Lincoln recently ended an extended deployment of nearly nine months, including around 200 days in a combat zone, after arriving in Thailand earlier this month.
The deployment had faced scrutiny over shortages of food and water, plumbing problems, declining morale among sailors as well as concerns about sailors’ mental health and the risk of self-harm.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, however, rejected reports about conditions aboard the carrier, claiming they are “completely misrepresented.”
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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