The Pandemic Planners Come for Hoof and Hen… and Us Again
By Clayton J. Baker, MD | Brownstone Institute | January 4, 2025
On December 31, 2024, the world received a year-end parting gift from the good folks at NIAID, Anthony Fauci’s old fiefdom at the National Institutes of Health. NIAID – the same unaccountable and secretive agency that Fauci used to fund the gain-of-function research of Ralph Baric at UNC Chapel Hill and the Bat Lady in Wuhan that resulted in Covid – has a new director, one Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo.
Marrazzo and another NIAID colleague, Dr. Michael G. Ison, wrote a year-end editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that accompanies a research paper on recent H5N1 Bird flu cases in the United States, as well as a case report of a lone case of severe illness associated with Bird flu in British Columbia.
Marrazzo and Ison summarize the findings of the research paper and case report as follows:
Investigators now report in the Journal a series of human cases from the United States and Canada. The former series involves 46 case patients with generally mild, self-limited infection with [Influenza type] A(H5N1): 20 with exposure to poultry, 25 with exposure to dairy cows, and 1 with undefined exposure.…Most case patients presented with conjunctivitis, almost half with fever, and a minority with mild respiratory symptoms, and all recovered. The only hospitalization occurred in the case patient with undefined exposure, although hospitalization was not for respiratory illness.
They elaborate on the single case of serious illness:
In Canada, a 13-year-old girl with mild asthma and obesity presented with conjunctivitis and fever and had progression to respiratory failure…After treatment that included oseltamivir, amantadine, and baloxavir, she recovered.
In other words:
- Over an eight-month period, from March to October 2024, 46 cases of human bird flu occurred in the United States, a country of 336 million people.
- There were zero deaths.
- 45 out of 46 infected persons had known exposure to animals.
- The majority of the cases consisted of conjunctivitis (commonly known as “pink eye”).
- Only one US patient was hospitalized, but this was not due to pneumonia – the principal life-threatening complication of influenza – and the patient recovered.
- One severe case was identified in Canada, a country of 40 million people, in an asthmatic, morbidly obese girl. She was treated successfully with respiratory support and existing antiviral medications, and she recovered.
Does this sound to you like a public health emergency worthy of the legacy media’s recent exhumation of discredited Covid-era fear-mongers like Dr. Leana Wen and Dr. Deborah “Scarf Lady” Birx? Does it justify their hair-on-fire pronouncements on cable news shows everywhere, pushing for indiscriminate PCR testing of animals and emergency authorization of more mRNA vaccines for humans?
Does this sound to you like justification to continue to kill and destroy (pro tip: “cull” means kill and destroy) millions upon millions of farm animals, when most animals who contract Bird flu survive, recover, and develop immunity?
Does this sound to you like justification for another Emergency Use Authorization of another mRNA vaccine?
No? Me neither.
But wait, there’s more.
In their editorial, NIAID experts Marrazzo and Ison fail to mention the following:
- There have been zero cases of human-to-human transmission of this virus.
- The current circulating clade of the virus has been determined by independent researchers to very likely have originated at a US Government gain-of-function laboratory, namely the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory (SEPRL) in Athens, GA.
- Multiple bioweapons laboratories, including the Yoshihiro Kawaoka lab at the University of Wisconsin, and the Ron Fouchier lab in the Netherlands (both of which have been affiliated with NIAID and with work done at SEPRL) have been doing gain-of-function research on Bird flu for many years, including experiments so outrageously dangerous that their work prompted President Obama’s ultimately unsuccessful ban of gain-of-function research in 2014.
- In 2019, NIAID reapproved and resumed funding Kawaoka and Fouchier’s dangerous work at increasing human transmissibility of Bird flu – the very same gain-of-function research that had prompted Obama’s ban.
- According to its package insert, Audenz, the current Bird flu vaccine, was associated with death in 1 out of every 200 recipients, compared to 1 in 1,000 placebo recipients.
- According to openthebooks.com, and as reported in the New York Post, NIH scientists received royalties totaling $325 million from pharmaceutical companies and foreign entities over more than a decade.
So, what are our friends at NIAID’s recommendations?
For one, they stress the “urgent need for vigilant surveillance of emerging mutations and assessment of the threat of human-to-human transmission.”
Are they advocating for the willy-nilly testing of entire livestock herds, as promoted by Birx, which is sure to create a preponderance of false positives?
Are they calling for the continued mass killing and destruction of millions upon millions of farm animals, whenever a fraction of the animals test positive for the virus?
Instead of PCR-swabbing every cow, chicken, and farm worker on Earth, how about we stop creating new mutant variants of H5N1 in the labs, since that’s where the current problem originated? How about we stop funding such utter madness with our tax dollars, funneled through corrupt government agencies like NIAID?
After all, you don’t save Tokyo by creating Godzilla.
But Marrazzo and Ison make no mention of this common-sense, sane approach.
Instead, they also stress the need for more – you guessed it – vaccines. They write:
we must continue to pursue development and testing of medical countermeasures…Studies have shown the safety and immunogenicity of A(H5N1) vaccines…studies are ongoing to develop messenger RNA–based A(H5N1) vaccines and other novel vaccines that can provide protection against a broad range of influenza viruses, including A(H5N1).”
Aside from attesting to the “safety” of a product where 1 in 200 users die, the use of the word “countermeasures” is extremely telling. It is a military term, not a medical one. We have already seen this game played with Covid. The gain-of-function lab research is done to produce a lab-manipulated, weaponized version of a virus, a version that is transmissible among and toxic to humans – in other words, a bioweapon. The vaccine is the countermeasure to the bioweapon. The vaccine is the intellectual property of those who created the bioweapon, and it is worth a fortune once the weapon has been unleashed. It is as simple as that.
“Pandemic preparedness” is a gigantic, deadly protection racket. I have described it in the past as arsonists running the fire department. That is precisely what happened with Covid, and that is what is being attempted with H5N1 Bird flu.
Moving forward to a new administration that has expressed a commitment to rooting out corruption in the pharmaceutical/medical/public health realm, improving the health of citizens, and restoring trustworthiness in medicine, I recommend the following steps to combat the H5N1 Bird flu, and to end the “pandemic preparedness” racket that threatens to hold the world hostage again and again, as it did during Covid.
- Immediately end and outlaw all gain-of-function and other bioweapons research in and funded by the United States, and apply all possible diplomatic pressure to eradicate it from the Earth.
- Eliminate all special protections from liability for vaccines, including the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act and the PREP Act.
- Refocus Infectious Disease research on new therapeutics, rather than power-seeking and profit-driven vaccine development.
- Completely reform the National Institutes of Health, and close the incorrigibly corrupt NIAID altogether.
The fear pornographers must be discredited. We must make realistic and sensible decisions about our food supply.
We must learn the lessons of Covid, and live in knowledge rather than in fear.
We must end the protection rackets, confidence games, and shakedowns that government insiders impose on us like mafiosi.
Happy New Year!
Uncle Sam and Banderite bandits destroy Europe while Euro lackeys hail liberation
Strategic Culture Foundation | January 3, 2025
This new year began with a new era that presages Europe sliding irrevocably into economic darkness and abject suzerainty under U.S. dominance.
Uncle Sam has won a decades-long ambition to dominate Europe entirely, thanks to the help from a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine and the pathetic European politicians who hail the slavery of Europe as some liberation.
The people of Europe are facing a foreboding period of economic hardship. We can confidently say that because the most fundamental of economic inputs – fuel energy – is about to become more expensive and precariously supplied for the European Union.
Russia’s decades-long energy relations with Europe are now severed. It seems an astounding final act of reckless self-harm. The European Union’s economies have been floundering from an energy crisis caused by EU leaders willfully cutting off supplies of Russian gas. Now, with the last major transit route shut down, Europe is heading toward economic, social, and political self-destruction.
On Wednesday, New Year’s Day, the Ukrainian regime cut off the last supply route of Russian gas to the European Union. This regime, which glorifies Stepan Bandera and other Nazi-era fascists, is, in effect, holding the entire European Union hostage with its Russophobia and relentless corruption.
The arrogance and audacity are astonishing. The Ukrainian regime does not have an elected leader (Zelensky canceled elections last year), it is not a member of the EU, it has milked European taxpayers of hundreds of billions of Euros, and now has unilaterally shut down the last gas pipeline from Russia to the EU.
Ironically, the pipeline was called the Brotherhood Pipeline. It was conceived in the 1970s and began operating in the 1980s, carrying natural gas from Russia’s Western Siberia to the EU. Ukraine received generous transit fees for the overland route. The decades-long era of transcontinental cooperation was killed on December 31 by a Banderite regime that has the cheek to claim its actions are virtuous to “stop Russian blood money”.
Incredibly, too, various European leaders also hailed the Ukrainian action as a liberation from Russian energy dependence. Some Western media even tried to cast Moscow as the villain that instigated the cut-off. The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, for example, inverted reality with the headline: “Russia ends exports of natural gas to Europe via Ukraine”.
To his credit, Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico seems to be the only sane leader among the EU’s 27 member states. He condemned what he called Ukraine’s “sabotage” of Europe’s energy supply and its economies. Fico warned that the European Union is facing a full-blown economic disaster as a result.
The Ukraine transit route supplied Slovakia, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic. Now, those countries will have to find alternative supplies from international markets. The Ukrainian route also supplied Moldova, which is facing an immediate energy crisis. Russia claims that the Moldavian government owes outstanding bills for past gas supply.
The Brotherhood Pipeline harks back to an era of friendship and cooperation even though it was conceived during the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. The 4,500-kilometer pipeline was partly financed by German capital.
Another ambitious Cold War-era supply route was the Yamal Pipeline, which ran over 4,100 km from Siberia to Poland and Germany. Its operation was halted in 2022 by Poland following the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.
The more recently constructed Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that ran 1,200 km under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany were blown up in 2022. That covert act of sabotage was no doubt carried out by the United States under the orders of President Joe Biden, according to the respected investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
The upshot is that all major Russian natural gas supply lines to Europe have now been terminated. The only one remaining is Turk Stream which runs under the Black Sea to Turkey. But it mainly supplies Balkan countries that are not in the EU.
In the space of two years, Russia has gone from being the major supplier of EU gas imports (over 40 percent) to being a minor source. The big winner of the phenomenal market disruption is the United States, whose exports of liquefied natural gas to the EU have tripled. Another winner is Norway, which is not an EU member. Other sources of gas for Europe are Azerbaijan and Algeria.
However, the unprecedented extra costs to Europe for this enormous rearrangement in its energy trade are encumbering the EU economies, industries and households with crippling burdens. New pipelines have to be built, as well as new terminals to receive the shipped gas. U.S. exports cost 30 to 40 percent more than the Russian product.
The slump in the German economy from higher energy costs is directly caused by the cutting off of abundant and affordable Russian gas. And it is going to get even worse. The grim fate of Germany heralds the economic misery that the whole EU is sliding headlong into.
The history of Europe’s economic demise is as obvious as it is blatant.
Of course, it is all about the United States using and abusing its Western “allies” for its own interests. For Western imperialists, there is no such thing as allies, only interests. And the Americans are exacting that maxim to the hilt.
For decades, the U.S. has vehemently opposed the energy trade between the EU and Russia. Back in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s administration tried its best to block the development of the Brotherhood Pipeline with threats of economic sanctions. The Americans openly said they didn’t want to see Europe and the Soviet Union developing cooperative relations.
At least in earlier times, the European governments appeared to have more independence and backbone. Germany, France, Italy and others rebuffed Washington’s demands to shut down the gas projects.
The long-running strategic aim of the U.S. to displace Russia as an energy supplier to Europe has now been realized. It’s a sign of the desperate times and lawlessness that American military operatives attack European infrastructure.
The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines and the proxy war in Ukraine have secured the strategic aim of the U.S. and its NATO proxy – keeping the Germans (Europeans) down, the Americans in, and the Russians out.
So much for the free-market capitalism and rules-based order that American and European elites preach. The practice is brute economic competition and dominance down the barrel of a gun. Millions of lives have been destroyed in this “great game” of American imperialist chicanery, and the proxy war in Ukraine is risking the escalation to a nuclear Third World War.
The Banderite regime – an echo of the Nazi past – has enabled the United States to enslave Europe to Washington’s imperialist desires.
Tragically, a coterie of elitist European political leaders are so obsessed with Russophobia and servility to their American overlord that they are crowing with delight at cutting off Russia.
Russia will not suffer. Its vast energy resources are finding alternative lucrative global markets. The victims are the European citizens who are being plunged into wretched economic hardship due to the machinations of American capital, its Banderite tools, and Euro fools.
What US mediation? 1000 Israeli violations in Lebanon go unchecked
The Cradle | January 2, 2025
Under the supervision of US special envoy and former Israeli soldier Amos Hochstein, Beirut and Tel Aviv reached a ceasefire agreement on 27 November after almost 14 months of intense conflict against the backdrop of the war on Gaza.
The Israeli military pledged to withdraw from Lebanese territory within 60 days of the agreement’s enactment.
To ensure compliance, a monitoring committee led by US General Jasper Jeffers was established, focusing on enforcing the cessation of hostilities and the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.
Rampant Israeli violations
But Israel immediately undermined the truce, committing nearly 1,000 violations within the first month alone – one of many cases of the occupation state’s disregard for international agreements.
Additionally, occupation forces have continually obstructed the Lebanese army’s deployment at key points in southern Lebanon, and have leaked plans that Tel Aviv intends to maintain control over strategic areas in the country. Reports suggest there is an Israeli effort underway to establish a security buffer zone spanning from Abbad to the villages of Odaisseh and Kfar Kila.
Map showing areas of Israeli military presence (in yellow) south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, following the declared ceasefire. (Updated December 2024)
Meanwhile, from the onset of the ceasefire, Hezbollah assured the Lebanese government that it would not retaliate during the 60-day truce period, adhering strictly to the agreement terms and allowing the government and army to address Israel’s daily provocations.
The ceasefire followed intense internal and international pressure on the resistance movement to halt its battle with Israel, especially as the latter began to dangerously expand its bombing targets across the country. Simultaneously, the Israelis – having failed to achieve their stated war objectives and taken daily troops losses in their ground invasion – were pushing hard for a truce, citing the need to prevent an escalation that could extend to Beirut, risking mass civilian casualties.
This agreement may not be ideal for either party, but it is feasible to implement. Israel achieved tangible successes but failed to crush Hezbollah or eliminate it as an organization. For Hezbollah, the priority was ending the war to halt the destruction, despite the damages it sustained.
Consequently, both sides reached an agreement that Hezbollah described as a reiteration of the 1701 Resolution. It was not a deal of humiliation or defeat, contrary to how the group’s adversaries are eager to portray it.
It is important to note that Hezbollah chose a middle path between Hamas’ call to ignite a broader conflict under the banner of “Al-Aqsa Flood” and a policy of non-intervention, given that the Palestinian movement’s leadership did not involve Hezbollah in its decision to go to war.
Ethically, Hezbollah opted to open a limited support front, clearly defining its objectives: to exhaust the Israeli military and pressure it into halting the assault on Gaza. However, this calculation later proved to be flawed.
When the support front escalated into a full-fledged war, Hezbollah declared that its aim was to stop the conflict. When Israel requested a cessation of hostilities, Hezbollah agreed under acceptable conditions.
Ultimately, after over a year of conflict sparked by the Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Hezbollah and Israel reached a 13-point agreement mediated by the US and France. While Tel Aviv agreed to withdraw from Lebanese territory within 60 days, its actions during the ceasefire depict a relentless drive to achieve militarily what it could not during the war.
The destruction of Lebanese homes and towns during the first month of the truce already far exceeds that caused during the conflict, with villages such as Bani Hayyan, Markaba, Shama, Al-Bayada, and Wadi al-Hujayr suffering devastating damage.
Israel’s brazen violations are not just restricted to border towns. Its truce violations include the prohibited operation of war drones over Beirut and its southern suburbs, and substantial military strikes in villages across the eastern Bekaa Valley.
The US looks the other way
The ceasefire monitoring committee, led by Tel Aviv’s staunchest allies, has faced significant challenges, largely due to Israel’s unwillingness to comply with the terms of the truce.
Sources reveal to The Cradle that so far, two meetings have been held at the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) headquarters in Naqoura, southern Lebanon, with Israeli officers present, followed by a third meeting attended by Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati – without the Israelis present.
The sources added that the first meeting lasted just 40 minutes, limited to introductory discussions on core topics. The second session, however, was marked by discord, as the Israeli side failed to uphold previously agreed-upon terms.
During that meeting, it became apparent to all that while the Lebanese army had finalized and approved a deployment plan for the western, central, and eastern axes, the Israelis refused to present any withdrawal strategy. Instead, they shifted blame to the Lebanese army for what they called “slow deployment,” further suggesting that the 60-day truce deadline was merely symbolic, not binding for the withdrawal of Israeli forces, and intended only for the withdrawal of Hezbollah troops from south of the Litani River.
Israeli representatives went further, baselessly claiming that the Lebanese army had no intention of implementing the agreement’s provisions to withdraw Hezbollah from south of the Litani.
During the discussions, Lebanese General Edgar Lowndes is said to have stormed out of the meeting after heated exchanges with the Israeli side, which downplayed its repeated attacks in Lebanon as insignificant and refused to classify them as breaches of the agreement. The Israeli delegation specifically argued that their use of drones in Lebanese airspace was not a violation of the truce, suggesting that the air breaches would continue unchecked.
The lead US official – a general – brought Lowndes back to the meeting and tried to keep the proceedings more formal thereafter. Following the session, high-level contacts took place between various committee members, with Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati gathering French and American officers and the UNIFIL Commander to emphasize the need for Israel to respect the signed agreement that the Israeli army would withdraw from Lebanese territory within the agreed upon deadline.
In this context, the US general confirmed that envoy Hochstein would participate in the next committee meeting on 6 January to confirm the ambiguous issues, and agreed with his Lebanese counterparts that Israel is violating the ceasefire through its actions.
Patience amid provocation
While Hezbollah has exercised restraint and refrained from delivering any significant response beyond a single retaliation at the “Ruwaisat al-Alam site belonging to the Israeli enemy army in the occupied Lebanese Kfar Shuba Hills,” Israeli provocations have continued to test the limits of the ceasefire on a daily basis. As a source close to Hezbollah informs The Cradle :
“We will be patient until the 60-day period expires and diplomatic opportunities are exhausted, and after that there is no solution but resistance.”
International mediators now face growing pressure to enforce the agreement, with Lebanese Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri emphasizing the importance of French involvement in the monitoring process, given US partiality toward Israel.
The Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs filed a formal complaint with the UN Security Council, citing 816 violations between 27 November and 22 December. Prime Minister Mikati has called for the swift and complete implementation of Resolution 1701, cautioning that delays could destabilize the region further.
Beirut also called for “enhanced support for UNIFIL and the Lebanese army to guarantee the protection of its sovereignty and to create the necessary security conditions for restoring stability and normalcy in the south of the country.”
It is evident that Israel is leveraging its perceived upper hand to manipulate the ceasefire agreement, interpreting its terms to align with its strategic objectives. By acting as if the balance of power has irreversibly shifted in its favor, the occupation state not only challenges the Lebanese side but openly flouts the agreement with actions such as air violations, justified under the guise of self-defense.
These provocations, coupled with threats to reignite hostilities and forcibly expel Hezbollah, reveal a calculated effort to establish new facts on the ground that were never part of the original accord.
How likely is a ceasefire In Gaza?
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | January 2, 2025
As the Gaza ceasefire talks stall yet again, some analysts argue that Donald Trump’s inauguration could be the key. However, the prospects for ending the war are dependent upon a variety of other factors that are making an Israeli victory impossible.
Despite the recent progress towards securing a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the Zionist regime has again employed its delaying tactics in order to find the opportune moment. While the Resistance in Gaza has proven flexible on the fine details of a prisoner exchange and cessation of hostilities, it has also proven steadfast on the battlefield, making an Israeli victory declaration implausible.
The popularly accepted analysis at this stage is that with the start of Donald Trump’s second term in office, the possibility of a Gaza ceasefire will increase greatly. It is believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could even present the implementation of such a deal as a gift to Trump; kick-starting his Presidency with a diplomatic breakthrough.
It is also true that the Zionist Entity’s richest billionaire, Miriam Adelson, had pledged 100 million dollars to the Trump campaign, with the quid pro quo that in return for bankrolling his presidential bid, he would permit an Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.
What Could Make or Break A Gaza Ceasefire
The reality that must be accepted when it comes to the Israeli approach to a Gaza ceasefire/prisoner exchange agreement is that the United States will not use its leverage to secure one and instead only seeks to support the Zionist entity towards securing the best possible deal. Therefore, arguments presented about the possibility of the Trump administration actually using Washington’s leverage are ludicrous and should be discarded as fanciful.
The reason why Donald Trump could make a difference in this case comes down to two major factors: His support within the Zionist regime and his willingness to permit them to completely crush the idea of a so-called “Two-State solution”.
There is no one that commands quite as much public support amongst Israelis as Donald Trump, in fact, he is more loved by them than his own population in the United States. This means that his word carries weight and him throwing his support behind the Netanyahu-led coalition could force the more fundamentalist elements of his government to fall into line. In addition to this, there will be no hesitancy when it comes to permitting an Israeli annexation of the occupied West Bank.
These two components are essential for ensuring that a Gaza deal will not collapse the current Israeli coalition. If the Israeli PM is going to secure the support he needs for such a ceasefire, he needs the extremists on his side and can only do this by fulfilling the pledge to annex the West Bank.
Another major issue, besides the domestic Israeli political divisions is the activity and risk of battle across a variety of fronts. In order to annex the West Bank, the Israeli military will need to deploy enormous numbers of soldiers, private security forces and occupation police into the territory. In the event of mass civil unrest, or even a worse scenario for them like the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, they will need to send a force that could amount to hundreds of thousands of fighters, into the territory in order to control the situation.
Already the Zionist military is in a State of exhaustion, with many of its soldiers refusing to show back up when called upon to redeploy into the Gaza Strip. They have tens of thousands of wounded fighters and countless others suffering from psychological disorders, all of which place a burden on the regime alone. There’s also a deficit that has to be filled in the rank and file that the Israelis need in order for their military to function at proper capacity, which has led to desperate attempts to draw in new reserve soldiers and force the Ultra-Orthodox population to draft their young.
In the best case scenario for the Israelis – when carrying out their annexation – they will still need to dedicate a tremendous amount of resources and manpower to fulfilling the task properly. This is essential to understanding why the annexation will prove extremely difficult in the event that one of the various war fronts expands, particularly the Lebanon or Syria fronts.
While the future of resistance inside Syrian territory is unclear and not certain, if such a force does manage to rise and challenge the occupation of their territory in the south, it will require major investments to combat it and will be greatly draining for the Zionist armed forces. Although this appears to be the least likely of the fronts to again deteriorate into war, it is certainly still a question mark.
Then we have Lebanon. The Israelis have not respected the ceasefire for a single day since its announcement, committing hundreds of violations. The Zionist regime is not only continuing to maintain its presence in southern Lebanon, but has even penetrated further into the country during this period, forcing their way into territories that they couldn’t reach due to the fierce resistance against them.
The Israelis now discuss re-occupying southern Lebanon, blow up homes, mosques and other infrastructure daily, murder civilians, bomb targets deeper into the country and provocatively fly their flags in the south. Such a situation has not occurred since Hezbollah kicked the Zionist regime out of their nation in 2000, battering the Israelis again in 2006 and liberating their land. There is no conceivable way that the situation in Lebanon can remain like this, either the Israelis decide to leave the country altogether, or they will eventually face a response from Hezbollah.
If these fronts ignite, or tensions escalate with Iran, annexation will prove a difficult task for the decision makers in “Tel Aviv”, as they will be faced with a potentially dangerous predicament. Again, without the annexation of the West Bank, it is hard to imagine the Zionist regime being able to conclude a Gaza ceasefire.
On top of this, the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza has shocked everyone and is not only continuing to fight, it still possesses the rocket capabilities to strike occupied Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. In fact, the last burst of long-range rockets from the Gaza Strip towards occupied Jerusalem were fired from Beit Hanoun, an area in the besieged enclave that the Israelis have been stationed in throughout almost the entirety of the war.
Palestinian Resistance fighters continue to kill and injure Israeli soldiers, destroy and damage their military vehicles, while also firing rockets and drones. This is happening almost 15 months into the fighting and with no known supply lines to Gaza. Yet, the people continue to remain steadfast, while the resistance continues to recruit more fighters and manufacture new weapons.
Because of the refusal of the people of Gaza to lessen their cause, they have thwarted several attempts to impose a new rule upon them. Despite suffering through a Genocide and losing everything around them, they have not allowed for a foreign regime and fighters to be imposed. Also, the Zionists have not come up with any valid strategy to allow for a takeover of the Palestinian territory, having failed to destroy Hamas.
This is another issue that rears its head, what will the day after look like? There is no clear answer to this question yet and none of the proposals on the table will give the Zionists the image of a full victory that they have proposed from the start.
Last ditch media sanctions from the West against Russia are like a sick child crying for help
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | January 3, 2025
Many analysts will be wondering what Trump will do about Russian sanctions when gets into the Oval office, although there is some optimism that he will try and reverse them. He is cautious not to get into a debate about this subject, which leads me to suspect that this will be one of the bombshells he will drop on the Biden administration which left him the small gift of signing off over a billion dollars of military aid to Ukraine. What almost no Americans understand though, which is largely the fault of mainstream media, is that these military spending sprees are really all about feeding a dual-purpose racket which really has nothing to do with the actual war in Ukraine, which everyone now admits Russia is winning. On one hand, it is of course pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the 5 main arms manufacturers in the U.S. in a move which could arguably be called illegal state aid; on the other hand the kit which is sent to Ukraine from the U.S. – and the UK – is mainly being sold on a number of black markets, with only about 30 percent or thereabouts actually reaching Ukrainian troops. My own investigation has proved that the Zelensky cabal are selling off the heavy equipment like armoured personal carriers (APCs) and lorry loads of American made assault rifles to dealers in the international arms bizarre of Libya – where Middle Eastern terrorists, or their affiliates in the Sahel buy it at bargain prices.
And Trump certainly understands the racket and will want to stop it. Dropping the mother of all bombshells on the Biden legacy by scrapping the sanctions and blocking any more aid would be an effective way to do that.
But it’s the sanctions on Russia media which he should also give priority to, given that, with the state of western media being such a shambles, we had to rely on RT for example, in the UK and U.S., to ask the difficult questions and hold our administrations to account.
The recent news at the end of December that the EU is cracking down even further on Russia media and individuals who are active within it – journalists and others – is another parting shot which smacks of desperation. The West is under no illusions privately that it is losing the war in Ukraine and is wondering how it can tell a fairy tale story to its own voters so as to deflect blame with the sole purpose of staying in power. This is really what media sanctions are all about. Shutting down any narrative that could possibly hold you to account and expose the tawdry reality of the mess the West has made in Ukraine based on the military industrial complex gaining too much power and eating up elites in its path. The Biden administration will be remembered for this. A new dawn in just how much power these arms manufacturers have and what lengths they can go to, to get the big contracts. This will all come out in the Trump administration with documentaries about Biden and his son’s laptop and how Ukraine was a holiday camp for them to go to with empty suitcases and return with a few million dollars. Like a cash machine which keeps churning out cash due to a computer glitch. The lure of Ukraine and corrupt western elites is nothing new. But during Trump’s first term citizens of the West are going to see the dark side to the events which led up to Russia’s invasion. And it stinks.
Part of that racket, going back even to 2013 or 2014 was to try and shut down Russian media. In reality, it was simply RT which elites noticed was gaining popularity in many European countries from people who had lost all faith in their own media which had fallen into the grubby hands of the powerful elites and their dirty games long ago. It used to be the case that in Brussels, the hold that the powerful institutions had on journalists was so strong in such an abusive relationship that what we saw each day on TV and in the newspapers was pure EU propaganda on a scale that even the Soviet Union could not muster. There used to be however the contrast between Brussels and member states where the media were more robust and anti-establishment. But no more. Now the political journalists along with the defence correspondent in the UK for example are practically government propaganda agents who probably think they were journalists once. Their work is to keep the lies about Ukraine, as one example, flowing so that the public are distracted and can’t focus on what is under their nose. Sometimes the plain truth is so close to the person looking for it, that it can’t be seen. Distance is required. When RT operated in the UK, there was this certain environment which questioned more and provided an alternative viewpoint which was needed in any functioning democracy. Trump’s priority should be to finish the sanctions and adopt a more grown-up approach to resolving Ukraine as the Russians want a longer-term solution rather than quick fix buggerydoo. Ending the sanctions on Russian media would be a good message to western elites that have fed from the trough for so long with the lies which have been created that their time is up. Trump’s back.
Bernie Sanders confronts Musk on Indian immigrants
RT | January 3, 2025
US Senator Bernie Sanders has taken a swipe at Elon Musk over his defense of the H-1B immigration program, arguing that it only helps enrich billionaires who rely on cheap foreign labor while undermining ordinary Americans.
The H-1B visa program allows US companies to employ foreign workers in fields requiring advanced skills in fields such as technology, engineering, and medicine. It has been described as the only significant channel for foreign graduates to enter the US workforce, with the vast majority of approved petitions going to Indian nationals in recent years.
Both Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who US President-elect Donald Trump picked to lead his proposed ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ initiative (DOGE), have spoken out in support of the program. Musk, reportedly a former H-1B recipient, suggested that this type of visa “made America strong” by attracting foreign talent, while vowing to “go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
Musk’s critics say the H-1B program has been of great benefit to his own companies – Tesla and SpaceX – as well as other big US corporations.
Writing on X on Thursday, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, joined the critics.
“Elon Musk is wrong. The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make,” he wrote.
Sanders noted that from 2022 to 2023, the top 30 largest US companies using the program hired over 34,000 new employees under H-1B, while laying off at least 85,000 American workers.
“The H-1B program must be ended. Bottom line. It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker,” he said.
In 2016, Trump, who is known for his hardline stance on immigration, called the scheme “very unfair” to American workers and said it should be ended.
In late December, however, Trump appeared to have changed his mind and expressed support for the program.
“I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” he said. Asked about the apparent flip-flop, Trump denied that he ever changed his mind, the New York Times reported.
Some of Trump’s biggest supporters, however, are critical of H-1B. Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist under Trump, called the program a “scam” that benefits “Silicon Valley’s sociopathic overlords.”
“It’s disgusting to talk about ‘high-skilled foreign workers’ while bringing in slave labor,” he said.
Netanyahu Ordered the 2003 Invasion of Iraq
Tales of the American Empire | January 2, 2025
Recent revelations prove the primary reason for America’s 2003 unprovoked invasion of Iraq was because Israel wanted seven Muslim nations destroyed to allow for its expansion. This war was part of a plan for Greater Israel. This Zionist plan to massively expand Israel was ignored by sane people for decades because it is unrealistic and would require the ethnic cleansing of tens of millions of native Arabs.
The key proponent of this plan is long-time Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There is no doubt that he is mostly responsible for the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Netanyahu is now demanding the corrupt American government make Greater Israel possible by helping destroy Lebanon and Iran.
________________________________________________
Related Tale: “Stealing Oil from Iraq”: 
• Stealing Oil From Iraq
Related Tale: “Conquering the Middle East”: • Conquering the Middle East
“Greater Israel: The Zionist Plan for the Middle East”; Michel Chossudovsky; GlobalResearch; June 7, 2020; https://www.globalresearch.ca/greater…
“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”; Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean…
“One way to counter Iran’s aggression. Change the map of the Middle East”; Fox News Opinion; Michael Makovsky; December 28, 2017; https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/one-w…
“CIA Spy on 9/11, Enhanced Interrogation, AI, Jeffrey Epstein | John Kiriakou |”; Dalton Fischer; YouTube; November 19, 2023; • CIA Spy on 9/11, Enhanced Interrogati…
“CMD CMSgt Dennis Fritz: Why the US Invaded Afghanistan and Iraq”; Judge Napolitano; YouTube; October 30, 2024; • CMD CMSgt Dennis Fritz : Why the US…
“Oil Wars: Exposing US Foreign Policy in Middle East | Gary Vogler Interview”; Counter Currents; YouTube; October 12, 2024; • Oil Wars: Exposing US Foreign Policy …
“Worth the Price?” New Film Shows How Biden Played Leading Role in Push for U.S. to Invade Iraq; Democracy Now; February 18, 2020; • “Worth the Price?” New Film Shows How…
Related Tales: “Conquering the Middle East” playlist: • Conquering the Middle East
H-1B Visas: A Lesson from Canada
By Laura Rosen Cohen | Brownstone Institute | January 2, 2025
President Trump has been very busy lately, driving leftist and Liberal Canadians utterly out of their minds by wickedly and hilariously trolling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau while simultaneously threatening a massive 25% tariff on the Canadian auto industry. With a solitary few taps of fingers on his phone, Trump cornered Canada by brewing an artisan Trumpian “threat to start some conversation” online. It went something like this: “Nice auto industry you got there. Would be a real shame if something happened to it!”
This “conversation starter,” which could also be rightly characterized as an existential death blow to the Canadian auto industry, forced Prime Minister Trudeau to hastily jet down to Mar-a-Lago. There, he unceremoniously flopped in his mission to mitigate damages, which has since been followed by the pilgrimage of several other notable Trudeau lightweights to continue the conversation. Maybe Mr. Wonderful will have better luck.
You could be forgiven if you thought the main lessons learned from this episode are that Canadians have a very fragile sense of humor, and that they bristle at being reminded how fully dependent the Canadian economy is on America. All of that is, of course, true. But if you thought that was the main event, you’d be wrong. The two main takeaways are that any industry that is being protected will, at some point, have an economic and policy moment of reckoning, along the lines of Herbert Stein: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop. And the second lesson is that it will likely play out in part, in real time on X. The Trump-Trudeau show, however, is just a shiny bauble. The real policy landmine in America is immigration, both legal and illegal.
This brings us to the H-1B visa issue in America, which is currently being “debated,” right in front of our eyes on X. On the surface, it seems to be a relatively simple philosophical debate; are you in favor of bringing in foreign workers for the jobs that Americans allegedly cannot do? Or do you favor policies that incentivize hiring Americans? Battle lines are even being drawn among conservative thought leaders and MAGA-adjacent personalities like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and others.
The public divide seems to be about being in favour of skilled immigration, or being anti-immigrant. But this framing is a distraction. The real issue, of course, is how writer Lee Smith puts it, which is that “… H-1B matters because it’s an effect of the core issue — indeed the reason DJT is POTUS — a political and corporate establishment that has waged a half-century long campaign to destroy the American middle class.”
Bingo. And this is where it behooves the Trump administration to learn from the failed Canadian experience with our H-1B visa equivalent: the Temporary Resident Permit or TRP.
Officially, the TRP gives status to non-citizens or permanent residents (the last step before citizenship) to be legally in Canada for a temporary purpose. This can include international students, tourists, or foreign workers. (The TRP does not apply to visa-exempt countries.)
Unofficially, the TRP is a literal cash cow for Canadian universities, and a veritable backdoor to get into Canada via an increasingly shifty diploma mill industry which contains a possible human trafficking element. There are also endless social media accounts that shamelessly explain how to game the system and remain in Canada. Plenty of Canadian corporations have benefitted from the influx of cheap labour, so much so that the Trudeau government has been forced to eat its hat on the TPR program and put new limitations in place, and not just on the TPR program but immigration in general. But the “temporary” population of Canada is now close to 10% of the Canadian population, and Canada has no real plan to get TPR permit holders to go home or to dissuade them from seeking asylum. Unsurprisingly, the temporary population simply doesn’t want to leave.
The final, glaring issue with both the H-1B and TRP is the undeniable fact that they are gateways to North America’s robust anchor baby (“birth tourism”) industry. In Canada, birth tourism, aided and abetted by almost nonexistent enforcement has added extra layers of stress to Canada’s already fiscally unsustainable socialized medical system.
“Temporary” programs in both Canada and America rarely benefit their existing populaces. More often than not, they habitually displace and punish the middle class. That’s a feature and not a bug. The H-1B acts in a similar fashion for skilled, white-collar workers. Moreover, as Milton Friedman famously said, “There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.” Here’s hoping the incoming Trump administration takes heed of Canada’s abject failure to rein in its permanent “temporary” population and reigns in the policies that more often than not, discriminate, decimate, and impoverish the native citizenry.
Under the radar: ‘Israel’s’ ruthless expansion and Syrians’ struggle
By Sara Salloum | Al Mayadeen | January 2, 2025
“Israel” capitalized on the fall of the Syrian regime on the 8th of this month, launching a wide-scale operation to destroy the qualitative capabilities of the Syrian Arab Army. The operation targeted missile weapons stores, manufacturing and development sites, air force facilities, air defense systems, radar installations, research centers, and naval combat assets. Israeli warplanes are still freely parading in Syrian airspace, with Syrian citizens always hearing the sounds of Israeli reconnaissance planes overhead.
In this scenario, the Syrian Arab Army would have lost the majority of its weaponry. If reconstituted, it would become a fragile and symbolic army force, incapable of effectively facing an overwhelming, American-backed Israeli military that occupies whatever land it wants, and bombs whatever it wants, whenever it wants.
While the head of the new Syrian administration, Ahmad al-Sharaa, (formerly Abu Muhammad al-Julani), was busy receiving political and security delegations from various countries, “Israel” initiated a large-scale ground incursion into southern Syria. This action was justified by the new governor of Damascus who stated, “Recently, Israel might have felt afraid, so it advanced a little and bombed a little. These fears are natural, but Syria’s problem is not with Israel, and we do not wish to tamper with Israel’s security.”
In full view of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) posts, Israeli forces violated the 1974 agreement and took control of more than 10 Syrian villages, covering an area of more than 20,000 km²,
Abu Muhammad, a resident of the Quneitra countryside, told Al Mayadeen English what happened:
“The Israeli forces raised their flag on the Quneitra Governorate building, and destroyed numerous houses in the surrounding countryside, along with small farms in various towns. They bulldozed lands and farms and uprooted trees, and erected earthen barriers and fortifications around the Mantara Dam, Syria’s second-largest dam, cutting off our water supply. Additionally, they installed extensive surveillance cameras and communication devices. When civilians protested against their actions, the Israeli forces fired live ammunition directly at them, resulting in numerous injuries.”
Neocon Sanctions Architect Beats Drums of War With Iran Amid Trump’s Looming Return
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 02.01.2025
Donald Trump will be back in the White House in less than three weeks. While he’s expressed opposition to regime change in Iran, and pride in being the first president in decades not to start any new wars during his first term, his adamant support for Israel, and the tapping of hawks for his new administration have sparked fears of US aggression.
The United States “should give diplomacy a final shot – while preparing to use military force” against Iran to destroy its nuclear program, prominent Iran sanctions cheerleader and former State Department deputy special envoy Richard Nephew has suggested.
In a new piece for Foreign Affairs magazine, Nephew argues that while there are plenty of “good reasons not to bomb Iran,” like engulfing the Middle East in even greater turmoil and “undermin[ing] US credibility if the attacks don’t succeed,” the “case against military action is not so neat,” given Washington’s paranoia about ‘Iranian nuclear weapons’, and the limited prospects for sanctioning Tehran into submission given its newfound economic and security partnerships with BRICS allies.
Unless the Trump administration is “prepared to live in the world that Iranian nuclear weapons would create, it may have little choice but to attack Iran – and soon,” Nephew claims, even while admitting that “Iranian nuclear weapons would not present a near-term existential threat” to the US as much as it would its regional “partners” (i.e. Israel).
Nephew isn’t the first to float an attack on Iran following Trump’s reelection in November, with DC Beltway media running opinion pieces like “Israel should strike Iran now, paving way for Trump 2.0,” and sources telling the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s transition team is weighing an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. In November, former CIA chief Leon Panetta warned that Trump could give Israel a “blank check” on Iran and ultimately spark a war between the regional powers.
The brainstorming about a direct attack on Iran comes in the wake of the abject failure of the US’s 40+ year strategy of crushing the Islamic Republic through sanctions, saber-rattling and attempts at regime change, which have pushed the country to strive for economic and military self-sufficiency, and to expand its strategic footprint regionally.
Will Trump Attack Iran?
Trump is a well-known Iran hawk, pulling the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal in 2018 at Israel’s behest, and expressing full-throated support for Tel Aviv amid its conflict with the Iran-led Axis of Resistance over the past 15 months. He’s also staffed his new administration with a number of avowedly pro-Israel Iran hawks, including Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz.
At the same time, Trump’s past frustrations with Benjamin Netanyahu, who rushed to congratulate Joe Biden after the highly contentious 2020 election, combined with resistance to advice from aides to escalate militarily against Iran, and support for initiatives to scale back the US military footprint in the Middle East during his first term, make the future of US policy vis-a-vis Iran and the Middle East region uncertain.
US judge awards pro-regime change journo Shane Bauer $113 million seized from Iran
By Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal · The Grayzone · January 1, 2025
UPDATE: U.S. District Senior Judge Richard J. Leon has awarded pro-regime change journalist Shane Bauer a whopping $113 million in money seized from Iran by the US sanctions regime.
Together with his ex-wife, Sarah Shourd, and their friend, Joshua Fattal, Bauer sued the Iranian government for millions in damages they claim to have incurred during their two year-long imprisonment in Tehran. The three Americans were arrested by Iranian soldiers near the border of the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2009. At the time, Bauer was studying in Damascus, Syria on a US Department of Defense-sponsored fellowship. Judge Leon ruled that “Iran is liable for false imprisonment,” and “for intentional infliction of severe emotional distress as to all plaintiffs.”
Leon has awarded Bauer, Fattal, Shourd and their families more than $500 million in seized Iranian state funds which could have been used to purchase medicine, sanitation equipment and food for citizens of the heavily sanctioned nation. As The Grayzone reported below, “Bauer and his ex-wife, Shourd, posed as staunch opponents of US sanctions against Iran and other nations. In 2016, for example, Bauer characterized Hillary Clinton’s call for Iran sanctions as ‘totally irresponsible.’ Shourd, for her part, condemned sanctions against Iran for ‘hitting the poorest of Iranians the hardest.’”
Bauer is currently reporting from Damascus, where the former Al Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has toppled the Syrian government and assumed power – a development he appeared to support. He and his fellow plaintiffs have not commented on the judgment they received against Iran.
Judge Leon’s full decision can be viewed here.
Below, in their initial August 30, 2022 report on Bauer’s lawsuit against Iran, Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal detail his history of agitation for Western-sponsored regime change operations across the globe, and his record of sordid attacks on The Grayzone, including his promotion of a failed frivolous lawsuit that aimed to destroy this publication.
Over a decade since he rose to prominence as a protagonist in an international drama of espionage and imprisonment, American journalist Shane Bauer and his family filed suit against Iran’s government in a Washington DC-based US District Court, seeking compensation for $10 million in damages resulting from his two year detention in Tehran.
Bauer’s ex-wife Sarah Shourd and their friend, Joshua Fattal, filed simultaneous lawsuits, seeking $10,000 and $10 million respectively.
The trio’s cases were filed in a Washington DC federal court with Judge Richard J. Leon – the same justice who ordered the Iranian government to pay the Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian $180 million in damages for his 18-month detention in the country.
In 2011, an Iranian court sentenced Bauer and Fattal to a total of eight years in prison each after they were convicted of illegally crossing the country’s border and spying for the United States. The two each served a total of two years, while Shourd was granted a compassionate release from Iranian prison after 13 months of detention.
Before his imprisonment, Bauer trekked throughout Africa and the Middle East while working as an English teacher and roaming reporter, racking up an impressive collection of passport stamps. Following his 2011 release, he established himself as a journalist specializing in undercover investigations, working a stint as a senior reporter for Mother Jones magazine in between various freelance gigs.
Bauer simultaneously emerged as a prolific apologist for US-backed regime change operations from Syria to Nicaragua, while justifying the US assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani. A relentless antagonist of anti-interventionist public figures, he has pushed for big tech platforms to censor media personalities that challenged Washington’s regime change agenda.
Bauer has even promoted a failed legal action against The Grayzone by a fellow journalist who had received a large sum of assets seized by the US government from Iran.
In 2018, Bauer’s book of undercover reporting, “American Prison,” which saw him take a job as a prison guard to gain inside access to a private prison, wound up on former President Barack Obama’s “Favorite Books of 2018.”
By the following year, as Bauer’s journalistic output declined, his attacks on anti-war media figures only escalated. Today, many of his most malicious tweets have been scrubbed, he is no longer employed by Mother Jones, and he says he is “working on a book about Americans in the Syrian war.” If Bauer scores a lucrative payout in US federal court, however, he may never need to worry about a freelance fee again.
And if successful, he and his former cellmates will ultimately be paid out with Iranian government assets seized by the United States through its international sanctions regime. In other words, the trio plans to benefit from looted public funds which Tehran could have otherwise used to purchase medicine, food, or fund social programs for its people.
Studies have found that the “Iranian economy and households are affected enormously” by sanctions targeting the country’s oil exports. In one particularly egregious instance of theft, the US government seized an Iranian oil tanker in 2021 and hauled it to Texas, where it sold the stolen crude for $110 million.
Before launching their lawsuits, Bauer and his ex-wife, Shourd, posed as staunch opponents of US sanctions against Iran and other nations. In 2016, for example, Bauer characterized Hillary Clinton’s call for Iran sanctions as “totally irresponsible.” Shourd, for her part, condemned sanctions against Iran for “hitting the poorest of Iranians the hardest.”
Bauer’s sudden bid for millions of dollars seized from the Iranian people by the US government raises new questions about a character whose journalistic career was shrouded in suspicion.
Long before his arrest in Iran, Bauer’s moves throughout Africa and the Middle East tracked closely with US foreign policy initiatives, and were sponsored by a US Department of Defense fellowship for several years.
To top it off, the lawyer Bauer enlisted to secure millions from Iran’s government counts one of Washington’s most infamous spies among her previous clients.
“the lack of coordination on the part of these hikers… indicates an intent to agitate”
The background to Bauer’s lawsuit originates in a July 2009 expedition he, his then-girlfriend Sarah Shourd, and their friend Joshua Fattal took to the Iranian border, where they were subsequently arrested.
The three Bay Area natives and self-described social justice activists insisted that their incursion into Iran was the result of an honest mistake. They claimed to have crossed the border unknowingly during a hiking trip near the Ahmad Awa waterfall in Iraq’s Sulaymaniyah Province, a region which fell under control of US-backed Kurdish militias following the US invasion of 2003.
According to Bauer’s legal complaint, when Iranian border guards arrested him and his companions, “Shane and Mr. Fattal instead became limp, as they would often do when protesting.”
While in Iranian custody, Bauer’s captors discovered photographs on Shourd’s camera showing they had visited Tel Aviv, Israel. The two said they traveled to Israel to visit an American friend, Tristan Anderson, who had been badly wounded and hospitalized by an Israeli teargas canister during a protest against Israel’s apartheid wall.
During Bauer’s trial, an Iranian judge listed each of the entry stamps on his second passport. They included Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Israel.
Iran’s government was not the only party that rejected the trio’s excuses for their presence on the border. An Iraqi police officer claimed to the Iranian TV station Al-Alam the hikers were “working with the CIA.”
Meanwhile, a classified 2010 US military report stated that “the lack of coordination on the part of these hikers, particularly after being forewarned [of their proximity to the Iranian border], indicates an intent to agitate and create publicity regarding international policies on Iran.”
While Shourd denounced the US military assessment as “ridiculous,” her and her friends’ visit to the Iranian border came at a precarious time for the country’s government.
Indeed, their arrest occurred just weeks after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a firebrand personality considered hostile to the West, secured reelection by a nearly 30 percent margin. The result sparked massive demonstrations in Tehran and gave way to the so-called “Green Movement,” a sustained protest campaign against Ahmadinejad’s mandate that eventually aided the 2014 electoral victory of Iran’s reformist bloc.
Throughout the summer of 2009, Western media granted the “Green Movement” wall to wall coverage, crediting it with drawing the largest protest crowds since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. In her memoir of captivity, Shourd recounted that during a trip to Sweden, “Stockholm’s sizable expatriate Iranian community protested in solidarity with the uprising in their home country.”
“My brother, Alex, and I documented the anti-Iran rally in Sweden,” she recalled.
Shourd later wrote that while imprisoned in Iran, the Green Movement “made me want to participate in undermining the regime that was causing me and my family so much pain.”
When the story of “Three American Hikers Held Hostage in Iran” emerged in July 2009, their tale was presented as further proof of the embattled government in Tehran’s anti-American sentiment and lack of regard for human rights. Shourd later expressed gratitude to the Iranian government “for using us to further deepen your own crisis of legitimacy around the world and with your own people.”
Their detention also corresponded with the launch of President Barack Obama’s economic assault on Tehran, a strategy which saw Washington levy hefty financial sanctions against Iran’s government in a bid to force it to negotiate limits on its domestic nuclear program.
Bauer’s lawyer represented top US spy jailed in Cuba
Bauer’s lawsuit accused the Iranian government of a slew of crimes against both himself and his family. Notably, it claims Bauer was subjected to torture, assault, and battery while in Iranian custody.
Bauer’s 2014 memoir, “A Sliver of Light,” which he co-authored with Shroud and Fattal, offers a strikingly different narrative, however. In the book, Bauer recalled taunting a prison guard to assault him and acknowledged that Iranian authorities were reluctant to do so.
“If he can’t frighten me, all he can do is hit me, and if he does that, he will be hurting himself,” Bauer explained.
“We are hostages, and hostages are currency, and currency is not to be damaged. Making him beat me is my only way to fight back,” he continued, after saying he repeatedly screamed at the guard: “Hit me!”
While Bauer’s lawsuit appeared to contradict the account offered in his memoir, it is far from an amateurish legal complaint. He and his family are represented by Emily P. Grim, a partner at the elite Gilbert, LLP law firm, which is located just blocks from the US Capitol.
Grim’s biography on Gilbert’s website boasts: “Her clients include Alan Gross, an American jailed in Cuba from 2009 to 2014 for his work on a U.S. Government project to increase Internet access in Cuba’s Jewish community, and Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine imprisoned in Iran from 2011 to 2016 on false charges of espionage.”
Before he became Grim’s most famous client, Alan Gross was arrested by Cuban security officers in 2009. At the time, Gross was working for the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, a soft power arm of American foreign policy that has overseen countless destabilization plots around the globe. The USAID program that sponsored Gross’ work in Cuba was funded through the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, a US law that explicitly called for regime change in Cuba.
When Cuban authorities apprehended Gross during his fifth trip to the country, they discovered his phone was linked to a SIM card that was distributed exclusively by the Pentagon and the CIA. The USAID employee had previously smuggled large amounts of illicit technology into Cuba, apparently as part of an effort to establish a network of covert internet access points throughout the country.
Amir Hekmati is the second-most notable client of Bauer’s lawyer, Emily Grim. A former marine, Hekmati helped develop a translation system financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA. Iran jailed Hekmati and sentenced him to death after convicting him on espionage charges. Following the diplomatic breakthrough of the Iran-US nuclear deal, he was released in 2016 as part of a prisoner swap.
Though Hekmati was initially rewarded a $20 million payout of seized Iranian assets, the Department of Justice eventually cut him off when the FBI became suspicious that the American had traveled to Iran to sell classified information about US operations in Afghanistan to the government, and not to visit his grandmother as he claimed.
Despite angry protestations, Grim’s firm has been unsuccessful in persuading the courts to complete her client’s payout.
Gilbert LLP has not responded to multiple emailed requests from The Grayzone regarding Bauer’s lawsuit. Bauer and Shourd have also ignored requests for comment delivered by Twitter and email.
Bauer sponsored by Pentagon grant that mandates “contributing to the national security of the United States”
Shane Bauer has lashed out at anyone who has accused him of having worked with the US government. However, his memoir raised more questions about his relationship with Washington than it has answered.
In one particularly revealing section, Bauer recalled an interrogation he experienced at the hands of an English-speaking Iranian he nicknamed “Weasel.”
“In our other sessions, you listed twenty-four countries that you have been to. Who funded those trips?” Weasel asked Bauer, who was 29 at the time.
“I know what he is getting at,” Bauer recalled, “and it is a legitimate question. If I can’t account for my funds, how can I prove that I am not being funded by the CIA? The problem is, I don’t think my honest answer is that believable.”
Bauer ultimately told Weasel that he saved money while “working as a welder” until he was 19 before traveling “through Europe and the Middle East.”
“Does this asshole believe a word I’m saying?” Bauer recalled wondering.
The line of questioning proceeded with Weasel asking whether the US government paid for any of Bauer’s trips.
“Shit! He knows about the grant…” wrote Bauer. ‘No,’ I say.”
Bauer was referring to the Boren Award, a Department of Defense sponsored grant that covered his Arabic studies in Yemen and Syria. When “Weasel” asked who funded the program, Bauer once again admitted to lying, telling him it was the State Department.
From Bauer’s co-authored account of captivity in Iran, “Sliver of Light”
Boren fellowship recipients are required to pay back their award through governmental service by “contributing to the national security of the United States in the Department of Defense, any element of the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of State.”
From the Boren Awards website
In less common instances, Boren recipients are allowed to fulfill their obligations to the US government in other departments. However, the overwhelming majority of grantees do so with the aforementioned agencies. Bauer never specified whether or not he fulfilled his obligation to the fellowship – or how he did it. He did claim, however, that the professor who encouraged him to apply for the grant stated none of their students actually went into government.
Yet when journalist David Ravicher inquired with a Boren representative about the program, he was informed “that 98 percent of its recipients fulfill this requirement and the rest receive deferments. Otherwise, the Treasury Department hunts them down.”
Before stepping into Iran, Bauer winds strange trail through the region
Shane Bauer entered journalism while enrolled at the University of California-Berkeley’s Peace and Conflict Studies program, which he graduated in 2007. It was at UC-Berkley where he met Shourd.
Bauer’s first dabbled in undercover journalism while in Yemen in 2005. At the time, the Houthi movement had just launched its insurgency against the Yemeni government. The civil conflict eventually triggered a brutal and ongoing military intervention by the US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to crush the Houthi advance.
According to the UC-Berkeley Alumni Association’s newsletter, Bauer was employed in Yemen by “a pro-government, English-language paper.” While the Alumni Association did not say which paper that was, Bauer earned a byline in 2005 from the Yemen Observer, a paper founded by the longtime press secretary to then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bauer eventually “decided to sneak into a city occupied by Houthi rebels which no Western journalist had visited,” the newsletter wrote. While disguised in local garb, Bauer and a British pal were detained by local authorities in the city of Saada and released a day later.
Bauer also spent two summers in the Darfur region of Sudan while enrolled at UC-Berkeley. At the time, between 2006-07, Darfur-based rebel groups from the Sudanese Liberation Army, or SLA, were facing international pressure to enact a peace deal with Sudanese President Omar Bashir, who was labeled a state sponsor of terror by the US.
In 2007, Bauer managed to score an interview with the vice intelligence director for SLA General Secretary Minni Minnawi, who had signed the deal. According to the Institute for International and Strategic Relations, a French think tank, Minnawi had been backed by the CIA as the only rebel faction leader to ink the agreement with Khartoum. He was later flown to Washington to meet with President George W. Bush. Today, he serves as the governor of Darfur while his forces fight in Libya under the command of Khalifa Haftar, another former CIA asset.
SLA General Secretary Minni Arko Minnawi and President George W. Bush
In his memoir of captivity in Iran, Bauer wrote that his interrogator demanded to know how he entered Sudan in 2007. The inquiry caused Bauer to worry that Iran may have been aware of his “history of government funding and my history of illegally crossing borders,” he recalled. Bauer told his interrogator that he “entered [Sudan] as a guest of the Sudanese Liberation Army.”
Not long after his jaunt into Darfur, Bauer arrived in Damascus, Syria with his then-girlfriend, Shourd, for several months. At the time, Washington was cultivating opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad through civil society networks around the country.
Bauer and Shourd said they studied Arabic at Damascus University, taught English to Iraqi refugees, and used the country as a base for reporting around the region. (On her personal webpage, Shourd says, “In 2007, I moved to Damascus, Syria…” In an interview with the Pulitzer Center, however, she states, “In 2008, I moved to Damascus, Syria…”)
A confidential November 2008 cable by Maura Connelly, then the Charges D’Affaires for the US Embassy in Damascus, identified English teachers and visiting Fulbright scholars in Syria as important cogs in US “public diplomacy” efforts against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
The US embassy’s “English Language Fellow (ELF) for 2008-2009 remains in country and is using her numerous contacts among Syrian English teachers to conduct training in Damascus and country-wide,” Connelly noted.
Bauer and Shourd’s teacher in Damascus, Majid Rafizadeh, happened to have been on a Fulbright scholarship at the time. A Syrian-Iranian academic, Rafidzadeh has since emerged as a fervent supporter of Iranian regime change who has supplied testimony to Congress advancing the interventionist goals of hardline neoconservatives.
Bauer later reflected “how, back in 2009, my Syrian friends would fantasize about being rid of the dictator and his secret police, but no one could have imagined that the Arab Spring would come two years later.”
Bauer escalates online attacks, enters Syria under US occupation
Years after the so-called Arab Spring swept through the region like a hurricane, leaving unimaginable ruin in its wake, Bauer was still pumping out online attacks against prominent critics of US meddling.
By 2019, his attacks on opponents of the US-backed dirty war on Syria had grown so unhinged, his detractors began to taunt him with the refrain: “Take a hike.”
Bauer also took aim at former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for daring to criticize the US military occupation of northeastern Syria, insisting it was a noble anti-terrorist mission. In fact, Dana Stroul, a senior Biden Department of Defense official, has openly stated that the US military “owns” the “resource rich” region of Syria in order to exploit its wealth and starve Damascus into capitulating to the West’s agenda.
At the time, Bauer had recently returned from a visit to the US-occupied northeastern region of Syria for a series of field reports lamenting Washington’s refusal to remove Assad by force. Published in the May/June 2019 issue of Mother Jones, the series opened with a quote by a Kurdish border guard practically begging the US to plunder Syria’s natural wealth: “We have oil, so much oil. Let them stay and take the oil.”
Careful readers may be wondering whether Bauer entered the country legally or not. In fact, Syria’s government denied Bauer’s visa, prompting him to “sneak in” through the border controlled by the US military and its Kurdish allies.
Since Bauer’s reports from US-occupied Syria in 2019, he has produced only one article: a profile of a rogue local US police force for The New Yorker. That was nearly two years ago.
With no known sources of income apart from his two published books and the one apparently on the way, Bauer turned to the US government and the funds it seized from the Iranian people for a massive payday.
View the initial legal complaint, Shane Bauer v. the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, here.
Toxic waste from India’s 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy site moved for disposal
Press TV – January 2, 2025
The toxic waste at India’s 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy site has been removed after 40 years.
Local authorities said on Thursday that all the toxic waste from the site had been removed.
The Indian authorities added that the waste had been transferred to a disposal facility where it would take three to nine months to incinerate.
Twelve tankers carried the 337 metric tons of toxic waste 230km to the Pithampur incineration plant amid heavy security, Swatantra Kumar Singh, the director of the Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation department, told media.
A trial run for the disposal of 10 metric tons of waste was conducted in 2015 and the disposal of the remaining 337 metric tons will be completed within three to nine months, the state government said in a statement.
Singh said the trial run for waste disposal conducted by the Federal Pollution Control Agency found emission standards under prescribed national standards.
He added that the disposal process is environmentally safe and will be done in a manner that cannot harm the environment of the local ecosystem.
Critics, however, opposed the plan, claiming it would be hazardous to the environment. Bhopal-based environment activist, Rachna Dhingra, who has worked with survivors of the Union Carbide pesticide factory tragedy, said the solid waste remaining after the incineration would be buried in a landfill and this will cause water contamination and result in environmental concerns.
He said the perpetrators of the disaster need to be held responsible for cleaning up the mess. “Why is the polluter Union Carbide and Dow Chemical not being compelled to clean up its toxic waste in Bhopal,” Dhingra said.
Built in 1969, the Union Carbide plant, which is now owned by Dow Chemical, was seen as a symbol of industrialization in India, generating thousands of jobs for the poor and, at the same time, manufacturing cheap pesticides for millions of farmers.
However, during the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984, a deadly gas, methyl isocyanate, leaked from the pesticide factory then owned by American Union Carbide Corporation, killing an estimated 5,000 to 22,000 people as a direct result of exposure to the leak.
Also, the leaked gas has led to more than half a million people suffering some degree of permanent injury from gas poisoning in Bhopal, the capital city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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