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Amendments in US’s New Security Doctrine Largely Align With Russia’s Vision – Kremlin

Sputnik – 07.12.2025

The adjustments made to the new US National Security Strategy are largely consistent with Moscow’s vision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

“The adjustments that we are seeing, I would say, are largely consistent with our vision,” Peskov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.

On Friday, the White House published a new US national security doctrine that calls on Europe to take responsibility for its own defense. The document also suggests that the White House disagrees with European officials on their stance regarding the conflict in Ukraine.

Responsibility for the possible seizure of Russian assets will be shared by individuals and entire countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said.

“Listen, we will have both national responsibility and personal responsibility, personal and legal responsibility for these actions,” Peskov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.

Peskov also recalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) opposed the seizure of Russian assets and urges caution to avoid negative repercussions on the international financial system.

“We hear that the International Monetary Fund has issued a statement addressing this issue with great caution and calling for such measures to avoid any negative impact on the international financial system. That is, even the IMF [opposes], and what is the IMF? It is what they created, it is the foundation of monetary policy in the monetary world. So it turns out that this foundation is now turning against its progenitors, saying ‘Come to your senses,’” he said.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Vaccine injury lawyer delivers scathing rebuke of childhood vaccine schedule — Offit, Hotez decline to debate

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 5, 2025

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee today heard from a vaccine injury lawyer who proposed the committee revisit the childhood vaccine schedule.

Attorney Aaron Siri told members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that the vaccines were recommended without sufficient data and that the expansion of the schedule coincided with a rise in chronic illness among U.S. children.

Siri, a vaccine critic and author of “Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines,” called for a reexamination of the childhood immunization schedule based on “robust” safety data.

Siri challenged claims that the childhood vaccination schedule has been tested in its entirety, that the vaccines are safe and that routine childhood vaccines have been proven to prevent transmission.

He also questioned claims that scientists have conducted the testing necessary to assert definitively that there is no possible link between vaccines and autism.

Siri recommended ACIP revisit childhood vaccine recommendations based on “robust” clinical trial and post-licensure safety data and called on the committee to respect the “right of informed consent.”

“Mandates make vaccines political” and also “impact those who most need to avoid” certain vaccines, he said. When people report vaccine injuries, members of the medical community “pretend that they don’t exist.”

Siri represents plaintiffs in vaccine-related lawsuits against federal agencies and pharmaceutical companies.

Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said Siri “accurately compared the pre-1986 Act vaccine schedule with the post-1986 schedule, when doctors and vaccine manufacturers have been absolved from all real responsibility for the vast vaccine injuries they have caused,” Holland said.

The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 granted vaccine makers immunity from liability for most injuries caused by their products.

ACIP didn’t vote on any aspect of the childhood vaccine schedule today. In June, ACIP formed a committee to study the cumulative effect of all vaccines given during childhood.

Key vaccine advocates declined ACIP’s invitation to deliver presentations

Siri’s presentation came shortly after ACIP voted to end the recommendation that all infants born in the U.S. receive the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine within 12-24 hours of birth.

The committee also voted to recommend that families determine whether to give their child the Hep B shot at birth through individual decision-making and consultation with their physician.

Siri cited the licensing of Hep B vaccines as an example of flawed studies leading to the licensing of a vaccine. He called those studies “underpowered” and “industry-funded.”

Siri’s presentation stirred controversy even before it began. In a post on X yesterday, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee, dismissed Siri’s qualifications and said ACIP “is totally discredited.”

Siri responded that Cassidy’s post was “deeply ironic,” given that vaccine manufacturers are legally protected from lawsuits.

“Childhood vaccines are the only product in America where you cannot ever sue the company that killed or injured your child on the basis the company could’ve made the product safer. If vaccines are so safe, why do they need this protection?” Siri wrote on X.

ACIP member Dr. Cody Meissner called Siri’s presentation a “terrible distortion of all the facts” and said Siri shouldn’t have been invited. Earlier, Meissner voted against the proposal to end the universal Hep B vaccine recommendation for newborns.

ACIP also addressed controversy over Siri’s presentation and the lack of a pro-vaccine counterweight. Mina Zadeh, Ph.D., ACIP’s executive secretary, said the committee “invited several people to give us a broad perspective” on the childhood vaccination schedule.

Those invitees included two prominent and outspoken promoters of vaccines — Dr. Paul Offit and Peter Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. Both declined. Hotez told STAT that Siri “shouldn’t be there in the first place.”

Siri responded that the U.S. has “the worst health outcomes of all developed countries.”

Liability shield disincentivizes vaccine makers from performing proper safety testing

Siri used the opportunity today to criticize the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. He said the liability shield provided by that law disincentivized vaccine manufacturers from focusing on the safety of their products.

“Companies, including pharmaceutical companies, are driven by economic self-interest,” Siri said. “With drugs and non-routine vaccines, they … remain liable for the injuries caused by those products after they come to market and hence, they have an economic self-interest in doing robust clinical trials beforehand.”

“When it comes to routine childhood vaccines … they don’t have those same concerns,” Siri said.

He said the number of vaccines on the childhood schedule skyrocketed — from three to 72 — after Congress passed the 1986 act. Those initial three vaccines “were causing so much harm, all the manufacturers stopped making them or went out of business,” prompting the passage of the act.

“For every other product I’m aware of, the solution is to make a better, safer product. But when it came to these vaccines, Congress went a different way” by giving these companies “unprecedented broad immunity,” Siri said.

‘You can’t find what you’re not studying’

Siri also criticized the shortened clinical trial process for childhood vaccines, which results in recommendations being made on the basis of insufficient data and the inability to detect any long-term health impacts from the vaccines.

“Most recommendations for routine use by ACIP of a particular vaccine happened very shortly after its licensure, and hence the primary data often available for a specific vaccine would have been its clinical trial data,” Siri said.

He also criticized the lack of post-licensure safety monitoring.

“You can’t find what you’re not studying,” Siri said. “When you give a product to a baby or an infant in particular, you often won’t know what neurological, immunological or developmental issues that product can cause until you’ve tracked that child for at least a few years.”

Citing autism as the “injury claimed to be the most thoroughly studied,” Siri said the medical community has not conducted studies that would definitively eliminate a vaccine-autism link, even though the 1986 act listed autism as one of 11 conditions that warrant further study to determine a possible link with vaccination.

“It was a commonly claimed enough injury back in 1986 … to make it on this list of 11 conditions,” Siri said.

U.S. ‘an international outlier’ on childhood vaccination

Today’s meeting also included a presentation by Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., who earlier this week was named the next leader of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Høeg compared U.S. childhood vaccine requirements and health outcomes with those of her native Denmark. There are “eye-opening differences in the recommendations” between the two countries, she said.

While the U.S. requires 72 core childhood vaccine doses, Denmark requires 11 — in line with most other high-income countries. Høeg said this makes the U.S. “an international outlier” on childhood vaccination.

The higher vaccine load “results in an increased exposure to aluminum,” Høeg said, with U.S. children exposed to 5.9 milligrams (mg) of aluminum by age 2 and 8.0 mg by age 18. In Denmark, the corresponding figures are 1.4 and 2.9 mg, similar to other high-income countries.

While there isn’t “robust enough” data indicating “specific health concerns” resulting from this level of aluminum exposure, Høeg said there also is insufficient data to establish a safe level of exposure.

“We need to admit that we may not know what the side effects of doing this, especially all at once, could be,” she said.

Increased vaccination also hasn’t delivered better health outcomes for U.S. children, according to Høeg. She cited the examples of the Hep B and meningococcal vaccines, which Denmark does not recommend for children, unlike the U.S. Yet, levels of hepatitis B and meningitis among children in the two countries are similar.

Høeg said U.S. health agencies should “avoid overmedicalizing childhood” and owe American children recommendations that are “based on data and not politics.”

Potential risks of post-vaccine aluminum accumulation ‘a warranted concern’

Dr. Evelyn Griffin, an OB/GYN and member of three ACIP work groups called for more research into the safety of aluminum-based adjuvants used in vaccines.

Griffin said aluminum salts are the most widely used adjuvant. Yet, the mechanisms underlying the use of aluminum salts in vaccines “are not fully understood.” She said only one peer-reviewed study has examined the effects of aluminum in infants’ blood following vaccination — but that study used a small sample and didn’t collect long-term data.

According to Griffin, current FDA aluminum exposure limits are increasingly questioned, as “appropriate testing was not performed.” She said recent studies have suggested that aluminum accumulation is “a warranted concern” and called for studies on the long-term impact of aluminum exposure and who is most at risk.

Griffin called on ACIP to determine how it can assess the safety and effectiveness of adjuvants in currently recommended vaccines for all ages, including studies regarding whether multiple aluminum-containing vaccines should be administered on the same day during early infancy.

In October, ACIP announced the creation of a new work group that will study the safety of aluminum adjuvants. ACIP did not hold a vote relating to the aluminum content of vaccines at today’s meeting.

Watch the ACIP meeting here.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

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

Putin’s India Visit Signals Folly of Western Pressure – Academic

Sputnik – 06.12.2025

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India may have sealed dozens of strategic partnerships, but its core purpose transcends trade: Moscow is using its Soviet-era ally to send a defiant message to the West that it will not be isolated over the conflict in Ukraine, US academic Ramesh Mohan says.

Putin left New Delhi on Friday after witnessing with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the signing of over a dozen bilateral agreements on technology, agriculture, tourism and defense cooperation. The subject of Ukraine or the increasingly bellicose US and EU sanctions against Russian oil weren’t in any of the signed documents.

Yet, those in the room — or thousands of miles away in any of the Western capitals that had been plotting their next move against the Kremlin — could not have missed the true significance of Putin’s two-day visit, said Mohan.

“The core message here is that Russia still maintains strong global alliances despite the multitude of Western sanctions and attempts to isolate Moscow over the war in Ukraine,” Mohan, an economics professor at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, told Sputnik.

Mohan, who also teaches about economics in international politics and regularly leads Bryant University study missions to Asia, said Modi was also sending a message to the world that US pressure will not dictate India’s policy.

“Modi is showing the West that India will not be cowed into abandoning its own national and strategic interests,” said Mohan. “The Russia-India alliance, particularly, is a long-standing, privileged partnership rooted in the Soviet era. I don’t ever see India forsaking that.”

The last time Putin met Modi was in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping when they attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in the Chinese port city of Tianjin in September.

The visual display of camaraderie between the three leaders had sent a message to the world even then that the so-called Global South solidarity could not be broken in the face of Western pressure, said Mohan.

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

Trump files for divorce from NATO over Ukraine

By Larry Johnson | RT | December 6, 2025

It is one thing to produce a written national security strategy, but the real test is whether or not US President Donald Trump is serious about implementing it. The key takeaways are the rhetorical deescalation with China and putting the onus on Europe to keep Ukraine alive.

The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the US, released by the White House on December 4, 2025, marks a potentially profound shift in US foreign policy under Trump’s second administration compared to his first term as president. This 33-page document explicitly embraces an ‘America First’ doctrine, rejecting global hegemony and ideological crusades in favor of pragmatic, transactional realism focused on protecting core national interests: Homeland security, economic prosperity, and regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere.

It critiques past US overreach as a failure that weakened America, positioning Trump’s approach as a “necessary correction” to usher in a “new golden age.” The strategy prioritizes reindustrialization (aiming to grow the US economy from $30 trillion to $40 trillion by the 2030s), border security, and dealmaking over multilateralism or democracy promotion. It accepts a multipolar world, downgrading China from a “pacing threat” to an “economic competitor,” and calling for selective engagement with adversaries. However, Trump’s actions during the first 11 months of his presidency have been inconsistent with, even contradictory of, the written strategy.

The document is unapologetically partisan, crediting Trump personally for brokering peace in eight conflicts (including the India-Pakistan ceasefire, the Gaza hostage return, the Rwanda-DRC agreement) and securing a verbal commitment at the 2025 Hague Summit for NATO members to boost their defense spending to 5% of GDP. It elevates immigration as a top security threat, advocating lethal force against cartels if needed, and dismisses climate change and ‘net zero’ policies as harmful to US interests.

The document organizes US strategy around three pillars: Homeland defense, the Western Hemisphere, and economic renewal. Secondary focuses include selective partnerships in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Here are the major rhetorical shifts in strategy compared to the previous strategies released during the respective presidencies of Trump (2017) and Biden (2022):

  • From global cop to regional hegemon: Unlike Biden’s 2022 NSS (which emphasized alliances and great-power competition) or Trump’s 2017 version (which named China and Russia as revisionists), this document ends America’s “forever burdens” abroad. It prioritizes the Americas over Eurasia, framing Europe and the Middle East as deprioritized theaters.
  • Ideological retreat: Democracy promotion is explicitly abandoned – “we seek peaceful commercial relations without imposing democratic change” (tell that to the Venezuelans). Authoritarians are not judged, and the EU is called “anti-democratic.”
  • Confrontational ally relations: Europe faces scathing criticism for migration, free speech curbs, and risks of “civilizational erasure” (e.g., demographic shifts making nations “unrecognizable in 20 years”). The US vows to support the “patriotic” European parties resisting this, drawing Kremlin-like rhetoric accusations from EU leaders.
  • China policy: Acknowledges failed engagement; seeks “mutually advantageous” ties but with deterrence (e.g., Taiwan as a priority). No full decoupling, but restrictions on tech/dependencies.
  • Multipolar acceptance: Invites regional powers to manage their spheres (e.g., Japan in East Asia, Arab-Israeli bloc in the Gulf), signaling US restraint to avoid direct confrontations.

The NSS represents a seismic shift in America’s approach to NATO, emphasizing “burden-shifting” over unconditional alliance leadership. It frames NATO not as a values-based community but as a transactional partnership in which US commitments – troops, funding, and nuclear guarantees – are tied to European allies meeting steep new demands. This America First recalibration prioritizes US resources for the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, de-escalating in Europe to avoid “forever burdens.” Key changes include halting NATO expansion, demanding 5% GDP defense spending by 2035, and restoring “strategic stability” with Russia via a Ukraine ceasefire. While the US reaffirms Article 5 and its nuclear umbrella, it signals potential partial withdrawals by 2027 if Europe fails to step up, risking alliance cohesion amid demographic and ideological critiques of Europe. When Russia completes the defeat of Ukraine, the continued existence of NATO will be a genuine concern.

The strategy credits Trump’s diplomacy for NATO’s 5% pledge at the 2025 Hague Summit but warns of “civilizational erasure” in Europe due to migration and low birth rates, speculating that some members could become “majority non-European” within decades, potentially eroding their alignment with US interests.

Trump’s NSS signals a dramatic change in US policy toward the Ukraine conflict by essentially dumping the responsibility for keeping Ukraine afloat on the Europeans. The portion of the NSS dealing with Ukraine is delusional with regard to the military capabilities of the European states:

We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation… This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons.

As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.

Not surprisingly, this section of Trump’s NSS has sparked a panicked outcry in Europe. European leaders, including former Swedish PM Carl Bildt, called it “to the right of the extreme right,” warning of alliance erosion. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) praise its pragmatism, but flag short-sightedness, predicting a “lonelier, weaker” US. China views reassurances on sovereignty positively, but remains wary of economic pressures. In the US, Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow, deem it “catastrophic” for alliances, i.e. NATO.

Overall, the strategy signals a US pivot inward, forcing NATO allies to self-fund security while risking fractured partnerships with Europe. It positions America as a wealthy hemispheric power in a multipolar order, betting on dealmaking and industrial revival to sustain global influence without overextension.

Larry Johnson is a political analyst and commentator, former CIA analyst and member of the US State Department’s Office for Counterterrorism.

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

The Real Story Behind Trump’s Pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández

José Niño Unfiltered | December 6, 2025

The news came in quietly from a federal prison in West Virginia. Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras once sentenced to spend most of the rest of his life behind bars, had walked out of Hazelton penitentiary a free man.

According to an AP report, Hernández had received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump after a conviction that tied him to hundreds of tons of cocaine shipped into the United States. On paper, this was a spectacular reversal of fortune for a man whom federal prosecutors had branded the head of a Central American narco state. In practice, it looked like something else. It looked like a reward for loyalty to the one cause that towers above all others in Washington and in Trump world.

Hernández did not rise overnight. He entered Congress in the late 1990s, representing the rural department of Lempira, and spent more than a decade climbing inside the National Party machine. He then became president of the National Congress and finally president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022. While he projected the image of a tough conservative modernizer at home, another storyline unfolded in U.S. courtrooms.

Federal prosecutors charged him with a vast cocaine conspiracy involving the movement of multi-ton loads into the United States and with the possession of machine guns and other weapons in support of that network. The Justice Department later described his administration as a narco state fueled by millions in cartel bribes. Testimony and media investigations painted an even darker picture. According to Democracy Now, Hernández allegedly used Honduran security forces to protect drug shipments, partnered with major traffickers including the Sinaloa cartel, and used drug money to build his own political power. His brother Tony Hernández ended up with a life sentence in a U.S. prison on similar charges.

Court filings and investigative reports in outlets like CNN repeatedly tied the sitting Honduran president to drug traffickers. U.S. prosecutors said he took payoffs from drug networks as early as 2004. Hernández’s story also intersected with one of Honduras’s most prominent Jewish families. Prosecutors alleged that he received bribe payments and other favors from the Rosenthal family, a powerful clan of Romanian-Jewish origin led by Jaime Rosenthal, whose Grupo Continental controlled Banco Continental, a soccer club, and auto import businesses, as reported by Reuters.

The Rosenthal patriarch, a frequent Liberal Party presidential hopeful of Romanian Jewish extraction, stood near the top of the Honduran economic and political pyramid for decades. For his part, Hernández treated that network as another source of money and influence. A Univision investigation detailed allegations that he used drug money to finance political campaigns. After his arrest, Honduran authorities seized dozens of properties, vehicles, businesses, and other assets linked to his family.

The saga culminated in extradition to the United States in 2022. A New York jury convicted Hernández in March 2024, and a federal judge handed down a 45-year sentence plus supervised release in June of that year. By any normal standard, this was the end of the story. A disgraced former head of state, proven in court to have worked hand in glove with traffickers, destined to spend the rest of his days in prison.

However, Hernández did not bet his future on normal standards. For decades, he had invested in a different kind of protection. That protection wore a blue and white flag with a Star of David at the center.

His relationship with Israel began long before he held national office. As a young man in the early 1990s Hernández traveled to Israel under the auspices of Mashav, the Israeli Agency for International Development Cooperation. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted that he completed a Mashav enrichment course in 1992, at the beginning of his diplomatic career.

Three decades later, at the opening of the Honduran embassy in Jerusalem, Hernández stood before an audience and called that first visit to Israel a “life-changing” experience. He said the trip had shaped his view of security, agriculture, and innovation.

Once he entered the presidential palace, Hernández turned that personal link into state doctrine. In October 2015, he arrived in Jerusalem as head of state and told an audience convened by the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and the World Jewish Congress that “As long as I am president, Honduras will stand behind Israel.” The World Jewish Congress described the event in glowing terms and singled out his declaration that ties between the two countries had never been closer.

This was not idle rhetoric. Hernández set out to reposition Honduras as one of the most reliable pro-Israel governments in Latin America. Honduran and Israeli diplomats had initially signed formal relations in the 1950s, and Honduras had allowed Jewish immigration during the Second World War. Under Hernández, those historical connections became the foundation for a new foreign policy.

He adjusted the Honduran voting record at the United Nations so that his country would abstain from or oppose resolutions deemed hostile to Israeli interests. During the 2017 General Assembly vote that condemned the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem, Honduras was one of only a tiny group of countries that sided with Washington and Israel against the overwhelming majority.

Hernández also opened a diplomatic and trade office in Jerusalem, signaling recognition of the city as Israel’s capital. He then promised to relocate the full Honduran embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, issuing joint statements with Israeli and U.S. officials that set public deadlines for that step. In June 2021, he completed the move. At the inauguration, Hernández proclaimed that he was “here today in the eternal capital of Israel” and vowed to work “against antisemitism, often presented as anti Zionism,” as quoted by Israel Hayom.

Israel rewarded this loyalty with gestures of its own. It agreed to reopen its embassy in Tegucigalpa and provided security cooperation, technical assistance and emergency relief after devastating hurricanes and during the early stages of the COVID era.

Furthermore, Hernández pushed Honduras into the orbit of Christian Zionist networks. The Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, an institution that promotes Christian support for Israel and campaigns against antisemitism and BDS, gave him its Friends of Zion Award in 2019 for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and for his diplomatic support. The Friends of Zion Museum and the Jerusalem Post emphasized that he now shared an honor roll with figures like Donald Trump and other leaders celebrated for their pro-Israel policies.

In the security arena, Hernández took positions that aligned perfectly with Washington and Tel Aviv. His government designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, a move welcomed by major American Jewish groups. This decision mirrored similar steps by other U.S.-aligned governments in the region–such as Argentina under Mauricio Macri–and confirmed that Tegucigalpa had no intention of straying from the Judeo-American consensus on Middle East security.

Even when the walls began to close in, Hernández treated Israel as his ultimate safety net. As his legal exposure increased and the prospect of extradition grew more likely, he reportedly turned to Israeli officials to ask for help in delaying or preventing his transfer to U.S. authorities. The Times of Israel reported that plea and underscored Hernández’s assumption that his years of unwavering support had earned him political capital in Jerusalem.

That calculation looked naïve when he arrived in New York in chains. It looks far more rational now that Donald Trump has delivered a pardon.

Trump himself cultivated a brand as perhaps the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moved the U.S embassy there, backed the annexation of the Golan Heights, and surrounded himself with advisers and donors who made support for Israel a central test of loyalty. The Friends of Zion Museum honored him with the same award it later gave Hernández, presenting both men as partners in a shared historic mission.

So when Trump announced in late 2025 that he would pardon Hernández, it was natural for mainstream outlets to emphasize the legal controversy and the scale of the drug conspiracy. But there is another thread that runs from the Mashav classroom in the early 1990s to the Jerusalem embassy ribbon cutting to the moment the gates opened at Hazelton. That thread is the politics of Zionism in the Americas and the unwritten rule that governs advancement and protection in that world.

Hernández spent his adult life proving that he would stand behind Israel. He did it in the United Nations chamber, in ceremonial torch lighting invitations, in embassy relocations, in his fights against BDS and in his designation of Hezbollah. He did it in speeches where he promised that “as long as I am president, Honduras will stand behind Israel” and in the moment when he described Jerusalem as the “eternal capital of Israel.”

Trump saw that record and recognized a fellow shabbos goy traveler. He understood that this was not just a corrupt Central American politician but a loyal member of a global pro-Israel camp who had delivered meaningful victories in a region where Israel has long worked to secure dependable allies. In a political universe where servility to world jewry carries more weight than any anti-corruption sermon, Hernández did not just have a lawyer. He had a patron.

The pardon of Juan Orlando Hernández is therefore more than a quirky case of presidential clemency. It is a message about the real hierarchy of values in U.S. foreign policy in the Trump era. Flooding American streets with cocaine will not necessarily erase your credit if you have spent years moving embassies to Jerusalem, voting the right way at the United Nations, and branding your small Central American country as an extension of Israel’s diplomatic network.

In that world, a man who helped turn his own nation into a narco playground can still find a way out of a 45-year sentence, as long as his record on Zionism is pure and his friendship with the most pro-Zionist president in modern U.S. history remains intact. For Juan Orlando Hernández, that friendship did not simply buy influence. It bought his freedom.

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

DR BOB SEARS DISCUSSES ‘VACCINES AND THE DISEASES THEY TARGET’

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | December 4, 2025

Pediatrician Dr. Bob Sears joins Del to unpack ACIP’s hepatitis B vaccine debate, the near-total absence of long-term safety data for newborn vaccination, and why the U.S. is an outlier in giving this shot on day one of life. He discusses the Physicians for Informed Consent’s new Silver Book “Vaccines and the Diseases They Target”, designed to give doctors and parents clear, side-by-side numbers on disease risk and vaccine risk so real informed consent can finally happen.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Book Review, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | | Leave a comment

Final SIGAR report finds decades of US corruption, waste in Afghanistan

Press TV – December 5, 2025

The final audit from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) paints a stark portrait of how tens of billions of dollars ostensibly earmarked for nation‑building were diverted, misused or wasted.

According to SIGAR’s report, from 2002 to 2021 the United States appropriated about $148.21 billion purportedly for Afghan reconstruction. Of that sum, roughly $88.8 billion went to security‑sector projects, while other enterprises disguised as development, humanitarian assistance, governance and institution‑building consumed the rest.

But the watchdog estimates that between $26 billion and $29.2 billion of those funds were lost to waste, fraud and abuse—red flags that preceded the Afghan government’s collapse and the rapid Taliban takeover in 2021.

The report logged 1,327 separate cases of misuse, mismanagement, or corruption tied directly to US‑funded programs.

Among the failures major investments in the Afghan security forces were undermined by inflated troop rolls, ghost‑salary schemes, and an inability to maintain complex gear.

As SIGAR’s acting inspector general put it, “the government we helped build… was essentially a white collar criminal enterprise.”

SIGAR’s acting inspector general, Gene Aloise, told reporters that the project was undermined by “early and ongoing US decisions to ally with corrupt, human-rights-abusing power brokers.”

This strategy, he continued, strengthened insurgent networks and eroded hopes for stable governance in Afghanistan.

Large‑scale hardware and infrastructure also went to waste. The United States funded planes, bases, and military assets, many never used or deteriorating rapidly post‑contract.

One instance involved transport aircraft bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that were later scrapped or abandoned when maintenance systems collapsed.

Despite almost $90 billion spent on training and equipping army and police forces, Afghan troops disintegrated quickly when US support ended, added the report.

Moreover, even broader cost estimates for the war paint an even more sobering picture.

Estimates put the total US cost — including military operations, veteran care, interest on borrowed funds and other long-term liabilities — at more than $2.3 trillion over the two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.

Based on the SIGAR’s final judgement, the much-hyped mission to purportedly build a stable, democratic Afghanistan delivered neither stability nor democracy.

In September, President Donald Trump sparked a fresh geopolitical firestorm with his calls to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, signaling a willingness to re-establish a US military presence in a country that has warned against any return of foreign troops.

Trump said the United States was “trying to get [Bagram] back” and described it as “one of the biggest air bases in the world,” highlighting its strategic runway and location to contain China.

Two days later, he posted on social media that if Afghanistan does not return the base, “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN.”

US military officials warn that retaking Bagram would require “tens of thousands” of troops along with massive logistical and air-defense support to hold the facility, a scenario that could mirror the pitfalls of the long Afghan war.

The United States had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks, even though not a single Afghan national was among the hijackers.

Over the course of the 20-year US occupation of the Asian nation, hundreds of thousands of Afghans lost their lives.

When Washington and its allies deployed troops in 2001, they claimed their mission was to dismantle al-Qaeda under what became known as the US “war on terror.” Yet two decades later, in August 2021, the Taliban quickly retook multiple provincial capitals and then entered Kabul with virtually no resistance.

The rapid collapse of the US-backed government forced Washington into a rushed and chaotic evacuation of diplomats, citizens, and Afghan partners — a scene that drew intense criticism for the US government’s mismanagement of its own exit.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US warns Europe of ‘civilizational erasure’

RT | December 5, 2025

Europe is facing potential “civilizational erasure” as the continent’s policymakers encourage censorship, crack down on political opponents, and turn a blind eye to mass immigration, the new National Security Strategy released by the administration of US President Donald Trump warns.

The landmark and strongly worded document released on Friday says that while the EU is showing worrying signs of economic decline, its cultural and political unraveling poses an even greater threat.

The strategy cites EU-backed immigration policies, suppression of political opposition, curbs on speech, collapsing birthrates, and “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” warning that Europe could become “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

The document argues that many European governments are “doubling down on their present path,” while the US wants Europe “to remain European” and abandon “regulatory suffocation” – an apparent reference to America’s stand-off with the EU over its strict digital market guidelines, which Washington claims discriminate against US-based tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

One of Washington’s key goals is “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” the paper adds.

Trump’s strategy notes that the rise of “patriotic European parties” offers “cause for great optimism,” in a reference to growing bloc-wide support for right-wing Euroskeptic parties calling for strict immigration limits.

The document proclaims that “the era of mass migration is over.” It argues that large inflows have strained resources, increased violence, and weakened social cohesion, adding that Washington is seeking a world in which sovereign states “work together to stop rather than manage” migration flows.

The strategy also comes amid Trump’s push to convince European NATO members to spend more on defense. At one point, he threatened not to defend “delinquent” countries in an attack if they fail to meet his demands. At a summit earlier this year, the bloc endorsed a new plan to move toward combined defense-related spending of up to 5% of GDP, far above NATO’s longstanding 2% benchmark.

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

US puts normalizing relations with Russia among ‘core interests’

RT | December 5, 2025

The US has placed the restoration of normal ties with Russia and a rapid end to the Ukraine conflict at the center of its newly released National Security Strategy, presenting both aims as among America’s core interests.

The 33-page report outlining President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy vision was released by the White House on Friday.

”It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” the paper states, “in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

It notes that the Ukraine conflict has left “European relations with Russia… deeply attenuated,” destabilizing the region.

The report criticizes European leaders for “unrealistic expectations” regarding the outcome of the conflict, arguing that “a large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy.”

America, it says, is ready for “significant diplomatic engagement” to “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” reestablish stability, and “mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”

In contrast with the US national strategy during Trump’s first term, which emphasized competition with Russia and China, the new strategy shifts the focus to the Western Hemisphere and to protecting the homeland, the borders, and regional interests. It calls for resources to be redirected from distant theaters to challenges closer to home and urges NATO and European states to shoulder primary responsibility for their own defense.

The document also calls for an end to NATO expansion – a demand that Russia has repeatedly made, calling it a root cause of the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow views as a Western proxy war.

Overall, the new strategy signals a shift away from global interventionism toward a more transactional foreign policy, arguing that the US should act abroad only when its interests are directly at stake.

The strategy is the first of several major defense and foreign-policy documents the Trump administration is expected to release. These include an updated National Defense Strategy, the Missile Defense Review, and Nuclear Posture Review, which are expected to echo the strategy’s direction.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: New US National Security Strategy Marks Death Blow to NATO Expansion

Sputnik – December 5, 2025

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy has sent shockwaves across the globe, dropping ‘Russian threat’ language completely and crossing out the vision of NATO “as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Sputnik asked prolific geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter to break down the document and its implications.

The new US National Security Strategy is based on “the reality that Russia is not a threat to Europe or the United States, recognition that Russia has been artificially cast as such a threat now for decades, and [that] the consequences of this miscasting” have been an unmitigated “disaster for Europe and a threat to the national security of the United States,” the former Marine Corps intelligence officer told Sputnik.

The document signals that the White House has been “able to free itself… from the legacy of post-Cold War-era Russophobia” seeking to weaken and “strategically defeat” Russia, Ritter said.

“The Trump administration recognizes that this is an inherently destabilizing policy,” not to mention “extraordinarily dangerous,” since confrontation with Russia “ultimately means nuclear war,” the observer stressed.

In this new geopolitical calculus, Europe in its current trajectory is far more of a threat to itself, the US, and international peace and security than Russia, Ritter argues, reiterating that European Russia hawks’ policy is “incompatible” with US national security objectives.

No More NATO Expansion

The new NSS also “puts an end and drives a stake through the heart of the beast of Ukraine’s unrealistic expectations regarding NATO membership, and Europe’s equally unrealistic expectations that at some point in time, Ukraine could become a member of NATO,” Ritter says, commenting on the NSS’s prioritization of “ending” NATO’s status “as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

The document effectively signals “the end of the European enterprise” and the idea that Europe is a geopolitical equal of the US, and one able to “dictate” policy outcomes to Washington, Ritter says. “That’s over. The United States says no, you’re done. Moreover, we say the trajectory that you’re on is incompatible with the national security of the United States.”

Behind the scenes, things get even more interesting, Ritter believes, pointing to “whispers from people who are knowledgeable” about the intent behind the document to the effect that the US will not bail out Europe if it starts a war with Russia.

“This is an extraordinarily important document because it literally represents a divorce of decades of legacy policy that postured the United States and Russia as opponents who should be preparing to fight each other,” Ritter emphasized.

Beyond that, the NSS’s point on ‘no NATO expansion’ and lack of positioning Russia as a threat effectively means “there’s no legitimate reason for NATO to exist,” unless it can transform into a genuinely defensive alliance.

“NATO, as it currently exists, will no longer exist. If [it] is to continue to survive, it must re-identify itself as a defensive alliance focused on securing a reasonable and rational Europe, and not this alliance capable of standing toe-to-toe with Russia, expanding… ever eastward towards confrontation with Russia, and a NATO that embraces a strategy of the strategic defeat of Russia. That NATO is dead. That NATO will never be resurrected,” Ritter summed up.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

EU Fines X $140 Million Amid Free Speech Clash

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 5, 2025

The European Union pulled the trigger on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. On Friday, Brussels fined X a massive $140 million for what it described as “transparency failures” under its censorship law, the Digital Services Act. In plain terms, the EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants.

Of course, officials insist the penalty is not about censorship. It is about “accountability.” Yet every part of the fine print points to the same thing: a government demanding more control over what people say and see online.

The European Commission called X’s blue check system “deceptive” because Musk turned what used to be a verification badge into a paid feature anyone can buy. In the eyes of Brussels, that is chaos, a marketplace where speech is treated like a right, not a licensed activity.

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, summed up the mood. “Deceiving users with blue check marks, obscuring information on ads, and shutting out researchers have no place online in the E.U.,” she said. “We are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.”

European regulators also accuse X of not sharing advertising data and refusing to give researchers access to its user information. The law says platforms must open up to “independent research.” In reality, that means academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations, getting privileged access to social data, exactly the kind of surveillance the DSA claims to prevent.

Officials call this “transparency.” It is a transparency that flows one way, upward, toward the state. Musk’s decision not to hand over user data now counts as a punishable offense.

When asked to explain how they calculated the €120 million penalty, the Commission offered a masterpiece of vagueness about “proportionality” and “the nature of the infringements.” The only clear metric seems to be how defiant a company is about following orders.

From Washington, the outrage came fast. “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” said Vice President JD Vance. Musk responded with his usual brevity: “Much appreciated.”

In the same breath that Brussels punished X, it closed an investigation into TikTok without a fine. TikTok, after all, promised to “cooperate” and adjust its design. “If you comply with our rules, you don’t get a fine,” Virkkunen told reporters.

That sentence could serve as the EU’s motto. Compliance equals peace. Free speech costs money.

The European Union has moved beyond suggesting rules for online speech and is now issuing orders. American social media platforms are facing a steady increase in censorship demands from Brussels, framed as “transparency” and “safety” obligations.

Each new regulation adds another layer of political oversight, turning what used to be private platforms into instruments of European policy.

The DSA sits at the center of this system. The law forces companies like Meta, Google, and X to remove “harmful” content, grant access to internal data, and submit regular reports on how they handle information deemed risky by regulators.

None of these terms have clear definitions, which gives officials the freedom to decide what speech is acceptable after the fact. In effect, the EU has built a structure that allows censorship by procedure rather than decree.

US companies are learning that “transparency” now means constant surveillance from European regulators and activist groups. The enforcement process rewards compliance, not innovation. Platforms that fail to align with the EU’s preferred moderation standards face public scolding and multi-million-dollar fines. Those who comply end up filtering speech to avoid further punishment.

This has turned into a quiet export of European political culture. The EU’s rhetoric about “accountability” and “responsibility” conceals a growing ambition to shape global online discourse.

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

Revealing Information on 2016 Election May Help Restore US-Russia Ties: Ex-Trump Advisor

By Lenka White – Sputnik – 05.12.2025

Once the full investigation records on Russia’s alleged 2016 election interference are declassified, Americans will stop viewing Russia as an enemy — potentially opening the door to restoring bilateral ties, George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign adviser, told Sputnik.

Papadopoulos was one of the central figures in the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election of 2016. In 2018, the ex-adviser was sentenced to 14 days in prison and a fine of $9,500 for allegedly giving false statements to the FBI. In 2020, US President Donald Trump granted Papadopoulos full pardon.

“I think as long as all information is declassified, people speak about the truth, and the judges and the court system abide by the law, then people will finally understand what really happened. People in America will not see Russia as an enemy, hopefully, anymore, and this will foster a new era for both peoples and the globe, which I think is desperately needed in today’s very unstable world,” he said.

Papadopoulos expressed belief that there is a lot more sensitive information that has to come out, including regarding the involvement of other foreign governments that were working with the Democrats in the Obama administration.

“But as of right now, I think it is a very good first step. We have seen indictments, and credibility in the justice system is being restored, and this is a very big boost, I think, to people like myself, President Trump, and others who were involved in this fake scandal,” Papadopoulos added.

A CIA review concluded in July that the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election campaign was conducted with anomalies, such as excessive involvement of agency heads.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in August that the ICA was based on false information, including the Steele Dossier, as part of a smear campaign against Trump. The claims led to politicized investigations, arrests, and heightened tensions between the US and Russia.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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