International Center for 9/11 Justice – October 9, 2026

One year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, independent journalist James Lee takes the stage to ask a difficult question: Are there still unanswered questions about what happened—and who gets to investigate them?

Speaking at the 9/11: 25 Years Later conference, Lee examines what he considers inconsistencies and unresolved issues in the case, including the handling of potential evidence, the rapid clearing of the crime scene, questions about the investigation, and the media’s portrayal of the events.

Lee also explores Charlie Kirk’s relationship with Turning Point USA, the organization’s reported shift in funding and political messaging, and Kirk’s publicly expressed frustrations over Israel and its influence on American politics. He raises allegations of possible foreign involvement, which remain unproven in this presentation, and calls for further scrutiny rather than unquestioning acceptance of any single narrative.

The speech expands into a broader argument about free speech, the First Amendment, citizen journalism, and the responsibility of independent researchers to scrutinize institutions and challenge powerful interests. Drawing parallels with the JFK assassination and 9/11, Lee urges audiences to keep asking questions and examining evidence.

Watch the full presentation and decide for yourself which questions deserve further investigation. The allegations and interpretations discussed are those of the speaker and should not be taken as independently verified findings.

Subscribe for more talks, investigative journalism, and presentations from the 9/11: 25 Years Later conference.

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CNN’s plague scare in Russia: “damn them if they do, damn them if they don’t.”

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

We are going to talk about various aspects of the supposed ‘plague outbreak’ in Russia but there is a greater tendency at hand when we look at the media interpretation of this event be it real, fake, or an enigma of sorts. If anyone is familiar with my work they would have heard me say something to the effect of “everything you know about Russia, written in English, is a lie” and I still believe this statement. When Western politicians declare that “Russia has the economic potential of Spain” or that “Russia is Nigeria with snow” or other such statements they are not lying in a direct and conscious way.

Based on all the data and information that they have ‘over there’ about Russia’s economy this view was logically ‘true’. If you crunch the numbers based on Western data then I guess Russia is just an enigmatic economy wrapped in mystery the size of a second-tier EU nation, but obviously this is not the case in reality. Russia is horribly draconian and repressive, because it is written all over the place that this is indeed the case. The calculations that Russia would immediately fold and that the ‘Ruble would be rubble’ after the Special Military Operation began were not fake, they were just based on false data. If you look at the West’s information about Russia, it would really seem that the nation’s economy stands only on oil prices, the population is waiting for a single spark to rise up against the tyrant, and that overall, the house of cards is just waiting to be blown over. But as the war years have proven, this has not been the case, but the initial calculations were ‘correct’ based on the data put into them.

Even the famous quote by Lenin that “a lie told often enough become true” ironically may not have ever been said by him, but this pseudo statement makes Russia look bad so the West keeps saying it. In Russia, because some people have been arrested for online activities since the start of the Special Military Operation, that would include organizing terrorism, this is “bad”, but the fact that there are 70 times more people behind bars in the UK for what they have said online doesn’t count, because that is different and has never once been considered by a British journalist. Arrests for statements and actions online only applies to those who are bad as proof that they are bad.

If Russia’s army is strong this is militarism, if Russia’s army is weak this is proof of corruption and ineptitude. If there are trials for corruption this is proof of the heavy-handed Putin regime taking out its enemies, and if there were not trails for corruption then it is proof of corruption and the totalitarian control of the regime. There is no possible win state for Russia in the Western press, even during the supposed media friendly treatment of Yeltsin in the good ole days, the entire establishment was an orgy of shadenfraude at the downfall of the USSR and humiliated state of 90s Russia.

To put things in very blunt terms: if something happens or is said to have happened related to Russia:

-If the Russian media goes along with it then that is proof that Russia is bad

-If the Russian media resists that is proof of a cover up for the evil deed that proves Russia is bad

– Ultimately, any action or inaction by Russia is bad and proof of its badness.

CNN’s take on this issue is stock Russophobia

And right on cue comes CNN to prop up this plague narrative that seems to be fake at its core. But we will talk about what is actually happening with this ‘outbreak’ a bit later, but for now let’s stick to the media side of things. Even in the title of the CNN article in question “Checklists, masks and mystery: What we know about the plague scare in Russia” you can already see the spin revving up.

“Russian authorities have sought to allay global worries over the death of a young woman who worked at a Siberian anti-plague laboratory. But moves to isolate her contacts and introduce new disease-control measures at local hospitals have raised concerns among people who fear they’re not being told the full story.”

In regards to the paragraph above, as you can see, the Russian side is bad because it has a different narrative and has the audacity to share it with the world. However, if the Russian media were to have been silent on this, it would also be bad as it would be proof of guilt via inaction. The fact that the Russian authorities are doing some actions to try to stop an outbreak is bad because these measures create fear or something, but at the very least this is good enough to use for condemnation. However, if the government took extreme measures this would be ‘draconian’ and if they took no measures this would be ‘horribly irresponsible’. So taking medium level measures is ‘fear inducing’ or something and of course this is bad and absolutely unacceptable.

“Ulyana Gavryunina, a 29-year-old blogger from Angarsk, a city in the Irkutsk region, told CNN she had to change maternity hospitals at 40 weeks pregnant after newly imposed quarantine restrictions meant her husband could no longer be with her during labor.”

So because the local government has limited facilities, sadly this woman had to give birth in less than ideal conditions. This is unfortunate for her and I am sure it was quite frustrating, but again CNN says the Russian authorities taking action is bad because it affected people negatively, yet if they did nothing it would also be just as bad. If the people had not been quarantined at that facility that would be ‘dangerous and irresponsible’ or something like that.

“Russia’s health watchdog said Wednesday said there is no epidemic risk following the woman’s death, and that it was winding down response. Rospotrebnadzor said medical monitoring has been completed for “over 90%” of contacts of the deceased lab worker, and no “dangerous” pathogens have been found. But unanswered questions remain.”

The expression “but unanswered questions remain” was used here to negate the opinion of the Russian government. If this paragraph were to have ended without these words, it would make the views of local authorities seem fully legitimate. When “questions remain” it hints at a conspiracy, that the official story does not match reality. Again, no matter what the Russian authorities would have publicly stated the response would have been bad because CNN sees them as the enemy. The enemy can do no right. And Russia’s actions are the actions of an enemy and thus they are universally negative to any proper journalist.

“According to its website, the Anti-Plague Institute employs around 95 researchers and is a major public health facility responsible for monitoring and preventing outbreaks of high-risk bacterial and viral infections across Siberia and Russia’s Far East.

The institute was established in 1934 to combat plague and continues to study the disease because Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the plague, still circulates naturally in wildlife across parts of Siberia and neighboring regions.”

Shockingly, CNN did not label the research facility where Ms. Shipilova worked as a biolab or some other nefarious term. They actually ‘took their word for it’ and just relayed information from their website. This was both true and pleasant to read.

So what actually happened?

Now let’s discuss the actual situation with a potential plague and the mysterious death of the disease researcher who was working on fighting it. There is a video from an unnamed American woman living in Irkutsk (Channel name: American in the Motherland) about the entire situation that in less than 15 minutes breaks down the whole story with sources, facts, and video directly from the region. I will share the bullet points of her presented views for brevity. As you can see, just one citizen journalist yet again crushes the mainstream media point-by-point. The image below is from the video and shows the ‘brilliance’ of the international press and their hot takes on this issue.

The videos key points were:

• There are no mass lockdowns in Irkutsk or anywhere else in Russia, the only people who are quarantined had direct contact with the woman who died (Daria Shipilova) and their number is less than 200.
• Shipilova did not work at a military biolab, but a plague\disease research institute designed to fight diseases. It’s location and work was neither secret nor military.
• Shipilova was hospitalized outside of Irkutsk because at that location they had a facility designed to handle this type of disease outbreak from the Covid era, not as part of some conspiracy.
• There is no second other death from the same cause as Ms. Shipilova’s demise.
• Daria Shipilova’s cause of death was “pneumonia of an unknown origin”
• The ‘broken test tube’ narrative is a myth as it was thought up by some Russian blogger. When working with serious diseases they don’t just walk around an office-like environment with fragile test tubes. Russia does not operate by the same methodology as the Umbrella Corporation, flailing around with fragile vials of diseases willy-nilly.
• The Russian side found no evidence of an accident at the research facility.
• The researcher did not travel to Buryatia prior to her death. Thus, she did not get the disease from local marmots or other types of rodents.
• There have been no other cases of what killed Ms. Shipilova at the moment of writing this article or the creation of the video linked above.
• The plague is treatable as it is caused by bacteria that continues to exists around the world. A handful of people in the USA and other countries still contract it every year. Antibiotics are an effective countermeasure against it, thus this does not seem like cause for international panic.

Why did the plague pass on medieval Russia?

One thing that is important about to note about this issue, is that historically, although the Bubonic Plague did kill people outside of Western Europe, it only had devastating effects within it. Russians continue to be proud to this day of having a high level of cultural hygiene that dates back to medieval times. Dark Age Russians and others outside of the West seemed to ‘put two and two together’ about the necessity for regular bathing and washing one’s hands. This hygienic culture is believed to be the reason why Russia had such a massive population in the 1800s compared to others around them. Many in Russia believe that if it weren’t for massive mistakes like WWI, The Revolution, WWII, and the 90s they would have a current population halfway closer to something like China’s or India’s.

So from a Russian cultural standpoint this very much looks like another campaign of projection; a third of England died to the plague, only a handful in Russia did. Thus, the Black Death had really no cultural impact on Russia, and judging by writings from the 1800s, tuberculosis seems to have been a much more long-term nagging problem for this society that to this day still has relevance. There are anti-tuberculosis facilities all over Russia and one cannot immigrate to the country if they have signs of it. The whole ‘living with vermin’ thing was not a fact of life for medieval or modern Russians, that honor goes to the enlightened liberal West.

The Media is the disease.

We only looked at one particular written piece on this issue, but there are plenty of insane musings from the Western press that follow the “damn the Russians if they do, damn them if they don’t” formula. Headlines like this one from the Daily Mail are the perfect example:

“Trump offers Putin lifeline as Russia scrambles to contain deadly airborne plague after lab worker’s death”.

Again, if ‘Putin’ did nothing he would be bad, but he is doing something, thus he is ‘scrambling’ in a panicked way which is also bad. Trump offering him a ‘lifeline’ means that Putin has no choice to accept this help, whatever it may be or he is bad. But guess what? If he does accept the lifeline it surely means he is weak or something which means he is bad.

When you go back and really look at the historical representation of ‘Russian realities’ in English-language media you see this hysterical Nietzschian untermensch narrative manipulation in everything. Putin has been on the brink of being ousted since 2000 and the Russian economy has been on the verge of collapse since then too. Everything written about Russia in English in the West is a lie.

A proxy war against Russia is now spiralling into an all-out confrontation.

Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern discusses how the Western official news media have systematically promoted lies about the Bucha Massacre in Ukraine.

No Western official outlet has questioned the narrative purporting that Russia perpetrated a mass killing of civilians. Credible Russian information to the contrary is dismissed out of hand as Kremlin propaganda.

Ironically, it is Western media that are seen as the propagandists and the purveyors of Big Lies – if one cares to examine the record objectively.

The alleged Bucha atrocity involved the apparent execution of hundreds of civilians by Russian forces as they were withdrawing from Kiev and surrounding areas at the end of March 2022. European leaders ritualistically visit a memorial in Bucha and condemn Russian barbarity.

The political objective of those shocking Western media claims was to sabotage a potential peace deal with Moscow and to prolong the proxy war with the aim of NATO strategically defeating Russia. That culminated in nearly five years of war, millions of casualties, a failed NATO objective, and worse still, the danger of a general war in Europe going nuclear.

Ray McGovern points out that the timeline of the Bucha killings does not fit the Western media narrative. The corpses on the streets of Bucha appeared days after the Russian forces made their withdrawal to what was then the East of Ukraine.

Recently, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov presented new details at the United Nations that substantiate the claim that the Bucha killings were a false-flag propaganda stunt to smear Russia and to wreck any prospect of an early peace deal with Ukraine. A Russian-led investigation reveals that many of the alleged civilian victims whose names are inscribed on a memorial wall were identified as Ukrainian soldiers who had been killed in action and buried elsewhere.

The Russian report is entitled “Heirs of Goebbels: falsification of the events in Bucha and bloody staged performances of the Kiev regime.” (Western internet has suppressed links to the report, though it can be accessed from the Russian foreign ministry.)

As McGovern notes, not one major Western media outlet reported on Lavrov’s presentation at the United Nations and his delivery of the Russian investigation to UN Secretary-General António Guterres. McGovern believes the perpetrators were MI6, CIA, and the Kiev regime operatives.

This egregious example of Western media suppression of Russian information and perspective on the conflict in Ukraine is repeated over and over. Another example, as McGovern amply recounts, was the attempt by Moscow to engage the United States and European NATO partners in a security treaty in late 2021. Washington and European partners dismissed the diplomatic efforts to avert war, which then erupted on February 24, 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine.

The Russian invasion was not unprovoked aggression, as Western media have dutifully asserted. It was a preemptive response to NATO covert aggression via the NeoNazi Kiev regime over seven years since the coup in 2014.

The Nord Stream gas pipeline sabotage is another case study of how Western media have systematically ignored the evidence implicating a NATO provocation and the background to the proxy war against Russia.

Official Western media are in the service of a political agenda and not the public interest. Their function is to prevent popular understanding of the real nature of the war in Ukraine, a proxy war against Russia that is now spiralling into an all-out confrontation.

We refer to the quote from Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, who warned: “Our liberty [democracy] depends on freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Ray McGovern laments that there has been a dreadful erosion of democracy and media independence over recent decades since the end of the Cold War and the rise of U.S. unilateralism.

However, on a positive note, he sees hopeful signs from the phenomenal growth in alternative media and independent information, generating more critical public awareness of government abuses of power. He believes that genuine democracy can survive and thrive – despite the official Western media whose power is waning as more people realize its insidious role in promoting criminal wars.

Ray McGovern worked as a CIA intelligence analyst for nearly 30 years under seven presidents, the first being John F Kennedy in 1963. On his retirement, he was awarded the Intelligence Commendation Medal. He handed back the medal in 2006 in protest over the CIA’s practice of systematic torture. He has repudiated the Agency as an enemy of democracy.

In a final note of breaking news, on November 18th this year, in his 87th year, this “proud Irish son” will be honored with the James Joyce Award conferred by University College Dublin, Ireland. The prize is bestowed by the students of UCD’s Historical and Literary Society for his independent thinking, intellectual courage, and distinguished contribution to public information and democratic society.

Trump adviser Alex Bruesewitz asked Fox News’ Mark Levin to weigh in on an Israeli news report that Netanyahu planned to use Levin to influence Trump on the Iran deal

At least two of Bryan’s band members were also wearing Palestine jerseys. Drummer Nate Head bore a jersey with Palestine on the front & on the back, the name “Hind Rajab”, a 5-year-old girl in Gaza killed by the Israel

Mosca è pronta a confrontarsi con il mondo intero sulle menzogne propagandate dagli occidentali. L’Occidente, invece?

Segue nostro Telegram.

Il report Heirs of Goebbels

Dopo il 31 marzo 2026 ha cominciato a circolare in inglese un report di venti pagine intitolato Heirs of Goebbels: falsification of the events in Bucha and bloody staged performances of the Kiev regime. Lo firma il «Tribunale pubblico internazionale sui crimini dei neonazisti ucraini», organismo presieduto da Maksim Grigor’ev, che per il testo integrale rinvia al sito del Fondo russo per lo studio dei problemi della democrazia. La tesi sta già nel titolo: gli eventi di Bucha del marzo 2022 sarebbero stati falsificati dall’Ucraina con l’appoggio dei governi occidentali, secondo una tecnica che il testo accosta alla provocazione nazista di Gleiwitz del 1939.

Il documento merita una lettura attenta proprio perché non si limita alla negazione. A differenza delle smentite russe dell’aprile 2022, costruisce il proprio argomento su materiale ucraino verificabile: le targhe del memoriale, i necrologi militari, i siti commemorativi locali, le dichiarazioni della Presidenza. È su questo terreno che va discusso. La domanda che pongo qui è più stretta di quella del report e, credo, più utile: chi compare davvero sul Muro della memoria di Bucha, con quale qualifica, e che cosa succede quando una categoria commemorativa viene usata come categoria giuridica e statistica. La risposta chiama in causa tanto chi ha costruito la narrazione ufficiale quanto chi pretende di smontarla.

L’impianto è semplice. Dopo il richiamo a Gleiwitz, il testo elenca quattro metodi di falsificazione che il governo ucraino avrebbe impiegato: la presentazione come civili di militari caduti in combattimento; l’attribuzione alla Russia di morti causate dal fuoco ucraino; il conteggio tra le vittime di anziani morti di malattia; l’uccisione deliberata di propri cittadini davanti alle telecamere. Il bersaglio dichiarato è la formula ufficiale secondo cui il memoriale conterrebbe «509 nomi di civili identificati», formula che il report attribuisce al sito della Presidenza ucraina, al sindaco Anatolij Fedoruk, a Euronews e ai ministri europei presenti alla commemorazione del 31 marzo 2026.

Il nucleo del documento (pp. 3–12) è un elenco di circa trenta nomi, ciascuno accompagnato dalla foto della targa e, spesso, da un ritaglio di stampa ucraina. Li si può raggruppare in cinque classi. La prima comprende persone indicate come membri di Azov o di unità collegate: Jevhen Petraš, Jevhen Vas’kovyč, Illja Chrenov, Bohdan Knyščuk, Volodymyr Bisaha. La seconda riunisce militari regolari: il pilota Ruslan Bilous (Belous) della 7ª brigata di aviazione tattica e il suo compagno d’equipaggio Roman Dovhaljuk, il cecchino Oleh Cymbal della 80ª brigata d’assalto aereo, Vadym Smetans’kyj della stessa brigata, un colonnello dell’SBU, un maggiore del Dipartimento di protezione statale, il comandante della guardia al commissariato militare di Bucha. La terza raccoglie membri della difesa territoriale o di formazioni volontarie: Anatolij Korytko, Serhij Smyrnov, Oleksandr Blahodatnyj, Andrij Verbovyj, Mychajlo Bojčenko. La quarta riguarda civili che avrebbero preso parte ad azioni ostili: Oleksandr Šarava, uscito di casa con bottiglie incendiarie il 27 febbraio 2022; Vitalij Fesjuk, osservatore che trasmetteva i movimenti dei mezzi russi; Oleksandr Bondar, che secondo la stampa ucraina compiva ricognizioni per le forze armate. La quinta riguarda persone morte fuori dalla città (a Vorzel’, Moščun, Kopylov, Zdvizhevka, Guta-Mežigorskaja, Irpen’) e una donna di 68 anni, Halyna Semenjuk, morta di tumore.

A questo elenco il report aggancia due riferimenti giuridici corretti nella sostanza: l’art. 51, par. 3, del Primo Protocollo addizionale, per cui i civili perdono la protezione quando e per il tempo in cui partecipano direttamente alle ostilità, e un passo divulgativo del Comitato internazionale della Croce Rossa sullo stesso principio. Le pagine 12–20, infine, riportano sedici testimonianze su bombardamenti ucraini «a favore di telecamera». Nessuna riguarda Bucha: i testimoni parlano di Avdeevka, Ugledar, Toreck / Dzeržinsk, Lisichansk, Kurakhovo, in episodi che vanno dal 2021 al 2024. Il passaggio da quel materiale a Bucha è affidato a una frase esplicita: la pratica delle uccisioni deliberate «consente di concludere ragionevolmente» che lo stesso sia avvenuto anche lì.

Il quadro normativo

Il diritto internazionale umanitario definisce il civile per esclusione. Secondo l’art. 50 del Primo Protocollo è civile chiunque non appartenga alle forze armate come definite dall’art. 43, cioè a tutte le forze, i gruppi e le unità organizzati posti sotto un comando responsabile. In caso di dubbio la persona va considerata civile, e la presenza tra la popolazione di individui non civili non priva la popolazione del suo carattere civile. Il civile che partecipa direttamente alle ostilità resta civile, ma perde la protezione dagli attacchi per la durata della partecipazione. La Interpretive Guidance del CICR fissa per tale partecipazione tre requisiti cumulativi (una soglia minima di danno, un nesso causale diretto, un nesso bellico) e distingue il civile che agisce in modo episodico dal membro di un gruppo armato organizzato con funzione di combattimento continuativa, che perde la protezione per tutta la durata di tale funzione.

Due ulteriori norme contano per il caso di Bucha. La prima è la levée en masse: gli abitanti di un territorio non ancora occupato che, all’avvicinarsi del nemico, prendono spontaneamente le armi senza aver avuto il tempo di organizzarsi sono combattenti legittimi, se portano apertamente le armi e rispettano le leggi di guerra. La seconda è interna. La legge ucraina «Sui fondamenti della resistenza nazionale», in vigore dal 1° gennaio 2022, ha fatto delle Forze di difesa territoriale una componente delle Forze armate e ha istituito le formazioni volontarie delle comunità territoriali (DFTH) come unità paramilitari destinate a compiti di difesa territoriale. Chi apparteneva a queste strutture, per il diritto internazionale umanitario, non era un civile.

C’è però un punto che il report non tocca mai. Stabilire che una persona era un combattente non dice nulla su come sia morta. Un combattente catturato, ferito o arreso è hors de combat, e ucciderlo è un crimine di guerra.

Alla prova della guerra informativa

Secondo i commentatori occidentali, il report non è credibile, perché contiene alcune imprecisioni giuridiche. Degli errori tecnici ci possono stare, ma guardare il dito ignorando la luna è un errore madornale. A Bucha, il crimine è stato compiuto dagli ucraini, non dai russi. E c’è un crimine atroce che è divenuto uno strumento di propaganda, parte di una guerra informativa che era indispensabile per l’Occidente collettivo.

Bucha ha rappresentato uno dei momenti decisivi della guerra dell’informazione sviluppatasi intorno al conflitto russo-ucraino. Dopo il ritiro delle forze russe dalla città, le immagini dei cadaveri presenti nelle strade e le testimonianze raccolte sul posto furono rapidamente diffuse dai media internazionali, trasformandosi in un potentissimo dispositivo comunicativo. Tutto avvenne con estrema velocità, con i media occidentali che,  a reti unificate, diffondevano il materiale dappertutto, costruendo l’immagine della guerra come aggressione caratterizzata da atrocità sistematiche, nella quale la Russia veniva progressivamente rappresentata non soltanto come avversario militare, ma come responsabile di crimini contro la popolazione civile. Le immagini possedevano, in questo senso, una forza persuasiva superiore a quella di molte argomentazioni diplomatiche: il corpo del civile ucciso diventava una prova visiva capace di condensare in pochi fotogrammi un’intera interpretazione del conflitto.

Bucha assunse così una funzione strategica nella comunicazione occidentale e contribuì a consolidare il consenso pubblico alle sanzioni, all’isolamento diplomatico di Mosca e all’incremento dell’assistenza politica e militare a Kiev. Osservate come un evento tragico, come tragica è ogni guerra, sia stato trasformato in un’arma di guerra. Del valore dei morti, della verità delle loro biografie, a nessun media occidentale importava. L’unica cosa necessaria era incolpare la Russia e motivare l’escalation di un conflitto folle.

Ma la verità prima o dopo viene a galla.

È così che il Ministero degli Affari Esteri russo ha ha riportato il caso di Bucha al centro dell’attenzione internazionale. La portavoce Maria Zakharova ha dichiarato che Mosca intende sollecitare le Nazioni Unite a riesaminare gli eventi, sostenendo che l’ONU non avrebbe partecipato direttamente alle indagini svolte all’epoca, finendo invece per assumere come prevalente la versione fornita da Kiev. Pochi giorni dopo, anche il ministro degli Esteri Sergej Lavrov è tornato sull’episodio, denunciando quella che considera una pratica tipica della guerra dell’informazione: costruire rapidamente una narrazione, trasformarla in verità dominante e impedire che versioni alternative possano raggiungere il pubblico.

È precisamente questo, secondo Lavrov, il meccanismo attraverso cui l’Occidente avrebbe consolidato la propria interpretazione di Bucha. La prima narrazione occupa lo spazio informativo disponibile come una trincea vuota: una volta conquistata e difesa dai grandi media, sostituirla richiede uno sforzo enormemente maggiore. Nel caso di Bucha questo processo avrebbe impedito fin dall’inizio un esame realmente imparziale degli avvenimenti.

Resta dunque una questione centrale: perché riaprire oggi il dossier Bucha? Perché Mosca è pronta a confrontarsi con il mondo intero sulle menzogne propagandate dagli occidentali. L’Occidente, invece?

While mainstream media covered the flydubai incident ad nauseum, Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank were killing Palestinians and marauding their land

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L’arrestation d’Ian Proud par la police secrète à l’aéroport de Londres marque un nouveau plus bas dans la mesure où l’État profond peut aller pour contrôler un faux récit.  

L’arrestation d’Ian Proud par la police secrète à l’aéroport de Londres marque un nouveau plus bas dans la mesure où l’État profond peut aller pour contrôler un faux récit. Mais cela montre aussi un nouveau niveau de peur.

Aussi fou que cela puisse paraître, il semble bien que les nations d’Europe occidentale, du moins, se préparent à entrer en guerre contre la Russie à un moment donné dans un avenir pas trop lointain. Ce qui est particulièrement inquiétant, c’est qu’il semble y avoir un vide distinct dans tous les domaines de ce que nous pourrions appeler largement les « médias » pour remettre en question ce récit. Il y a trente ans, il était considéré comme normal que les journalistes soient la source de questions embarrassantes envers les acteurs étatiques et soient généralement une épine dans le pied, puisqu’ils remettaient en question chaque décision prise et chaque idée présentée. Notre travail était d’être anti-establishment et d’adopter un point de vue très cynique sur la « politique ». Cela n’avait rien de remarquable. C’était ce que nous faisions. Être méprisé par les grandes puissances faisait partie du travail ; travailler à des heures antisociales et avoir peu d’amis en faisait aussi partie.

Aujourd’hui, il n’y a plus de journalistes dans ce que nous appelons les médias « grand public » pour faire cela. Ils ont été remplacés par des « créateurs de contenu » plus jeunes, plus habiles avec les réseaux sociaux, qui croient que le journalisme est plus ou moins un rôle grammatical, où la matière première vous est remise avec toutes les informations qu’elle contient, et où le rôle du journaliste est simplement de la raffiner au style du jour pour la consommation de masse.

Le danger de cette transition est que presque tout ce qui nous est présenté comme des nouvelles est en réalité faux, ou au mieux lourdement expurgé pour maintenir les masses là où l’élite veut qu’elles soient : contenues, préparées et mal informées.

La guerre en Ukraine en est un excellent exemple. La principale raison pour laquelle les populations aux États-Unis et au Royaume-Uni sont si fabuleusement biaisées contre la Russie et si sympathiques à l’égard de l’élite corrompue de Kiev est que, pendant des années, elles ont été lavées le cerveau avec des « nouvelles » sur la Russie qui étaient négatives et qui alimentaient astucieusement un préjugé raciste – un préjugé cultivé depuis au moins une décennie, sinon plus. Le résultat est qu’aujourd’hui un certain nombre de mensonges sont devenus établis dans les salles de rédaction, où les journalistes, même ceux qui savent, contournent simplement les nuances et présentent une histoire de conte de fées, conçue pour être comprise par les masses qui n’ont pas d’autres sources d’information pour même la remettre en question.

Tout récemment, des médias occidentaux ont rapporté une « peste » en Russie, avec des histoires de « confinement », à la suite du cas d’un travailleur dans un laboratoire mort d’une pneumonie dans des circonstances encore incertaines. Les médias occidentaux, dans le cadre de leur rôle consistant à maintenir la russophobie à son apogée, sont si verrouillés et chargés que leurs réactions « à la gâchette facile » aux mauvaises nouvelles venant de Russie sont compréhensibles. Ils sont aussi avides de contenu accrocheur, et de telles histoires nourrissent un public affamé qui a déjà eu sa première dose de ce genre d’histoires d’hystérie COVID et qui en veut davantage. La vérité est totalement immatérielle. L’hystérie et les mensonges sont ce qui est injecté à un rythme fébrile par des « créateurs de contenu » aux dents et aux griffes rouges, l’écume à la bouche dans leur désir de servir l’État profond et les élites qui ont tant investi dans un agenda.

Le contraste entre la Russie et l’Occident est intéressant, cependant, lorsque nous examinons les médias. Tout récemment en Russie, le correspondant de la BBC basé à Moscou a fait vibrer Internet sur les réseaux sociaux avec sa courte interview du ministre russe des Affaires étrangères, qui a eu la gentillesse de répondre à sa question orientée sur l’idéologie de guerre de la Russie avec l’Ukraine. Ce que absolument personne n’a relevé, c’est à quel point la Russie est heureuse d’accueillir des journalistes étrangers qui ont un agenda si distinct pour alimenter la russophobie chez eux, tandis que les journalistes russes sont interdits dans ces capitales de l’UE depuis des années. La vieille Europe, qui tenait autrefois si cher des valeurs comme la liberté de la presse, a adopté le modèle soviétique, tandis que la Russie est en réalité plus avancée en ce qui concerne ces principes de ce que nous attendons dans une démocratie. La Russie n’a pas peur des questions embarrassantes, contrairement à l’Occident.

Nous devrions nous demander qui bénéficie réellement d’une guerre avec la Russie.

Est-ce trop sceptique et « théoriste du complot » de supposer que le complexe militaro-industriel a fait du lobbying avec succès pour une telle guerre pendant AU MOINS une décennie et, surtout, qu’il a réussi à convaincre l’establishment du renseignement et de l’armée au Royaume-Uni d’utiliser son levier sur les médias pour fournir aux journalistes la matière première qui renforce un préjugé contre la Russie ?

Normalement, une telle idée pourrait être rejetée comme pure absurdité. Mais considérez simplement jusqu’où le Royaume-Uni, par exemple, est allé pour éradiquer toute couverture médiatique pouvant être considérée comme au moins favorable à la Russie – ou même simplement pour tenir le gouvernement britannique responsable en posant les questions que les journalistes britanniques ont cessé de poser. Si l’élite au Royaume-Uni qui contrôle les journaux déficitaires (réfléchissez-y) est si sûre de sa logique selon laquelle la Russie est l’ennemi avec lequel nous devons aller en guerre, pourquoi est-elle si terrifiée par des journalistes – ou quiconque, d’ailleurs – qui expriment simplement un point de vue avec des questions sur le récit ?

Je ne peux pas être le seul commentateur occidental à croire que les agents doubles Sergueï Skripal et sa fille Ioulia n’ont pas été empoisonnés avec l’agent neurotoxique Novitchok à Salisbury en 2018, ce qui a été rapporté à l’époque comme ayant « déclenché une immense crise diplomatique entre la Grande-Bretagne et la Russie ». N’est-ce pas la véritable histoire que les chefs de la sécurité britannique ont décidé, après avoir découvert que Sergueï Skripal était en réalité un triple agent qui transmettait des informations à Moscou, qu’il était dispensable ? Et quel meilleur moyen de soi-disant donner une leçon aux Russes, tout en blâmant Moscou pour sa mort, que de l’assassiner lui et sa fille en utilisant un agent neurotoxique qui était soit du Novitchok – qu’un laboratoire britannique situé juste en bas de la rue où vivaient les Skripal avait commodément dans un réfrigérateur – soit un poison similaire ? Ce qu’il est important de noter à propos du Novitchok, c’est que les victimes meurent généralement instantanément au contact. Ce qui est probable, c’est que les Skripal n’ont pas été empoisonnés par la substance russe mais par une version britannique d’un autre agent neurotoxique. C’est un exemple choquant de la médiocrité du journalisme britannique que les scribouillards au Royaume-Uni rapportent simplement l’incident Skripal d’empoisonnement au Novitchok sans le moindre fragment de preuve pour l’étayer. Ils n’ajoutent même pas une note de scepticisme dans leurs reportages sur la substance et sur qui « affirme » qu’il s’agit de Novitchok.

Nous voyons le même niveau choquant de reportages atroces et biaisés sur la guerre en Ukraine, que le public britannique a simplement été informé par le récit médiatique comme une « invasion » par l’armée de Poutine. Aucun contexte, aucune nuance, aucun aperçu de la perspective russe, car personne ne peut supporter, semble-t-il, que l’histoire soit obscurcie par les faits.

Et c’est la même chose avec l’histoire de la « peste » russe, comme ce fut le cas avec l’histoire de l’« attaque » de la base de la RAF récemment, qui était probablement juste des voleurs locaux achetant de l’essence de contrebande à des soldats américains/britanniques corrompus cherchant à se faire un peu d’argent rapide à la base britannique. Remarquez avec quelle rapidité Trump a utilisé l’histoire comme base pour déplacer tous les bombardiers américains hors de la base et les renvoyer sur le sol américain, où ils sont complètement inutiles dans sa soi-disant guerre au Moyen-Orient. Pour Trump, c’était une occasion pour un autre coup médiatique qui le maintient à la une et tout le monde dans l’expectative. Il était probablement reconnaissant aux Britanniques de lui avoir offert la matière première. Un autre problème de cette nouvelle génération de journalistes est leur complaisance à rapporter des « nouvelles » qui ne sont pas du tout des nouvelles, mais simplement du matériel utilisé comme distraction, un jour à la fois. Trump est un maître dans la manipulation des médias avec ce jeu, disant généralement quelque chose de si stupide et de si controversé, ce qui détourne les journalistes du vrai journalisme. Si vous pouvez occuper les journalistes avec des articles sur le dernier commentaire ou la dernière déclaration idiote de Trump, alors vous les contrôlez en contrôlant leur temps.

Regardez simplement comment l’affaire Epstein n’est pas rapportée ni enquêtée. Comment Trump s’en est sorti impunément, puisque depuis le 28 février l’attention des journalistes a été détournée vers la guerre avec l’Iran – ce qui est l’une des raisons pour lesquelles Trump maintient cette histoire vivante avec des mouvements de troupes constants et des discours sur une attaque massive après les élections de mi-mandat. Les gens n’ont pas fait le lien entre la fuite du matériel Epstein et le déclenchement de la guerre avec l’Iran pratiquement le même jour.

Pour les Britanniques, l’histoire « les Russes arrivent » n’a aucun article cynique de la part de journalistes qui sont à 100 % complaisants avec son récit erroné. La peur des élites à Londres est cependant palpable, celle qu’elle sera toujours remise en question par des acteurs marginaux occupant de la bande passante sur les réseaux sociaux. Dans le passé, c’était le correspondant de RT à Londres, qui pouvait poser des questions difficiles et être généralement une épine dans le pied du village de Westminster qui contrôlait les journalistes comme des rats tenus dans un panier. La principale raison pour laquelle RT a été expulsé du Royaume-Uni était qu’il offrait un style de reportage sur la politique britannique qui nous avait quittés depuis trente ans – tel est le monde trouble de l’État profond et la façon dont il a vu comment, à Bruxelles, les journalistes pouvaient être manipulés jusqu’à devenir des sténographes pour lui.

Pourtant, même avec ce nouveau style stalinien de contrôle des médias au Royaume-Uni, l’État est branlant. Même avec la mise en place impressionnante qu’il a maintenant de domination médiatique totale, où les journalistes débitent des ordures totales sur la guerre en Ukraine ou sur ce qu’on leur dit d’écrire sur le Moyen-Orient, la peur est toujours là.

L’exemple du vidéoblogueur Ian Proud, un ancien diplomate britannique autrefois basé à Moscou, est inquiétant mais poignant. Le simple fait de se rendre à Moscou pour assister à une conférence où Poutine parlait a suffi pour qu’il subisse le traitement complet de la Stasi à l’aéroport de Heathrow – détenu et tout le contenu numérique saisi.

Les interviews YouTube de Proud, avec son style de présentation ringard, s’avèrent populaires car il offre simplement une vision plus sobre de la Russie et du Foreign Office britannique, son ancien employeur. Ces interviews attirent l’attention des espions britanniques, qui sont si nerveux à l’idée que la vérité sur la Russie éclate et que les mensonges honteux qui sont maintenant emballés pour le public britannique soient révélés, qu’ils ont dû infliger à Proud la routine américaine de « fouille en prison ». La Grande-Bretagne, un pays qui était autrefois un phare pour le monde avec sa vision de la liberté et en particulier sa passion pour la liberté d’expression, est tombée à un niveau que nous ne pouvons comparer qu’à un pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest qui vient d’installer un nouveau dictateur, complet avec des lunettes noires et des épaulettes. Ce que l’affaire Proud à l’aéroport de Heathrow montre, c’est que ce nouveau régime au pouvoir ne reculera devant rien pour contrôler un récit, et que le dernier bastion de la liberté d’expression – les podcasts YouTube – est la prochaine cible. Plus la chaîne de Proud devient prospère, plus il est inévitable qu’il soit contraint de quitter le Royaume-Uni et de s’installer en Russie pour continuer à exercer la liberté d’expression. Les glands d’épaule de l’État profond britannique ne dormiront pas bien tant que le pays n’aura pas un récit médiatique qui ferait rougir Joe Staline – et les journalistes britanniques les aident à atteindre cet objectif.

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 6, 2026

Ian Proud’s arrest by secret police at a London airport marks a new low in how far the deep state can go to control a false narrative. But it also shows a new level of fear.

As mad as it sounds, it does appear that Western European nations at least are preparing themselves to go to war with Russia at some point in the not-too-distant future. What is particularly worrying is there seems to be a distinct vacuum in all areas of what we could broadly call ‘media’ in questioning this narrative. Thirty years ago it was considered normal for journalists to be the source of vexing questions towards state actors and to generally be a pain in the arse as they questioned every decision made and every idea presented. It was our job to be anti-establishment and to take a very cynical view of “policy”. There was nothing remarkable about this. It was what we did. Being despised by the greater powers was part of the job; working anti-social hours and having few friends also came with it.

Today there are no journalists in what we call ‘mainstream’ media doing this. They have been replaced by younger, more social-media-savvy ‘content creators’ who believe that journalism is more or less a grammatical role, where the raw material is handed to you with all the information therein, and the role of the journalist is simply to refine it to the style of the day for mass consumption.

The danger of this transition is that nearly all of what we are being presented with as news is actually fake, or at best heavily redacted to keep the masses where the elite want them to be: restrained, prepped and misinformed.

The Ukraine war is an excellent example. The main reason why people in the U.S. and UK are so fabulously biased against Russia and are so sympathetic towards the corrupt elite in Kiev is that for years they have been brainwashed with ‘news’ about Russia which has been negative and which cunningly feeds a racist bias – a prejudice which has been cultivated over at least a decade, if not more. The result is that now a number of lies have become established in newsrooms where journalists, even those who know, simply navigate around nuance and present a fairy-tale story, designed to be understood by the masses who have no other sources of information to even question it.

Just recently, Western news outlets reported a “plague” in Russia, with stories about a “lockdown”, following a case of a worker in a laboratory dying of pneumonia in circumstances which are still not certain. Western media, as part of their role to keep Russia-phobia at its peak, are so locked and loaded that their ‘hair-trigger’ reactions to bad news stories from Russia are understandable. They are also hungry for clickbait, and such stories feed a starved audience which has already had its first fix of such COVID hysteria stories and wants more. The truth is entirely immaterial. Hysteria and lies are what’s being fed at a feverish rate by ‘content creators’ red in tooth and claw, foaming at the mouth with their desire to serve the deep state and the elites who have invested so much in an agenda.

The contrast between Russia and the West is interesting, though, when we look at media. In Russia just recently, the BBC correspondent based in Moscow made the internet buzz on social media with his short interview with Russia’s foreign minister, who was kind enough to answer his loaded question about Russia’s war ideology with Ukraine. What absolutely no one noted was how Russia is happy to accommodate foreign journalists who have such a distinct agenda to feed the Russia-phobia back home, while Russian journalists have been banned in those EU capitals for years. Old Europe, which once held such values as a free press so dearly, has adopted the Soviet model, while Russia is actually more advanced when it comes to such tenets of what we expect in a democracy. Russia has no fear of the awkward questions, unlike the West.

We should be asking ourselves who really benefits from a war with Russia.

Is it too sceptical and ‘conspiracy theorising’ to assume that the industrial military complex has been successfully lobbying for such a war for AT LEAST a decade, and critically, it succeeded in convincing the intelligence and military establishment in the UK to use its leverage with media to provide journalists with the raw material which enhances a prejudice against Russia?

Normally such an idea could be dismissed as pure nonsense. But just consider how far the UK, for example, has gone to eradicate all media coverage which could be deemed as at least leaning towards Russia – or even simply just holding the UK government to account by asking the questions that British journalists have stopped asking. If the elite in the UK who control the loss-making newspapers (think about that) are so sure of their rationale that Russia is the enemy whom we must go to war with, why are they so terrified of journalists – or anyone, for that matter – simply holding a view which questions the narrative?

I can’t be the only Western pundit who believes that double agents Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were not poisoned with nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018, which was reported at the time as “sparking a huge diplomatic crisis between Britain and Russia”. Isn’t the real story that British security chiefs decided, upon discovering that Sergei Skripal was actually a triple agent who was feeding information back to Moscow, that he was dispensable? And what better way to supposedly teach the Russians a lesson, while blaming Moscow for his death, than to murder him and his daughter using a nerve agent which either was Novichok – which a British lab just down the road from where the Skripals lived had conveniently sitting in a fridge – or a similar poison? What’s important to note about Novichok is that the victims usually die instantly upon contact with it. What is likely is that the Skripals were not poisoned by the Russian drug but a British version of another nerve agent. It is a shocking example of how poor British journalism is that hacks in the UK simply report the Skripal incident of Novichok poisoning without a single shred of evidence to back it up. They don’t even add a note of scepticism in their reporting about the drug and who is “claiming” that it is Novichok.

We see the same shocking level of atrocious, biased reporting about the Ukraine war, which the British public were simply told through the media narrative was an “invasion” by Putin’s army. No background, no nuance, no glimpse of Russia’s perspective, as no one can cope, it would seem, with the story being clouded by facts.

And it’s the same with the Russia “plague” story, as it was with the RAF base “attack” story recently, which was probably just local thieves buying contraband gasoline from corrupt U.S./UK soldiers looking to make a quick buck at the UK base. Notice how quickly Trump used the story as a basis to move all U.S. bombers off the base and back to U.S. soil, where they are completely useless in his so-called Middle East war. For Trump it was an opportunity for another media stunt which keeps him on the front pages and everyone guessing. He was probably grateful to the British for being offered the raw material. Another problem of this new generation of journalists is how compliant they are to report “news” which isn’t news at all, but just material used as a distraction, one day at a time. Trump is a master at manipulating media with this game, usually saying something so stupid and so controversial, which draws journalists away from doing real journalism. If you can occupy journalists with writing up stories about the latest idiotic comment or statement by Trump, then you control them as you control their time.

Just look at how the Epstein story is not being reported and investigated. How Trump got off scot-free, as since February 28th journalists’ attention was diverted to the war with Iran – which is one of the reasons why Trump keeps this story alive with constant troop movements and talk of a massive attack after midterms. People have not made the link with the Epstein material being leaked and the war with Iran kicking off practically on the same day.

For the British, the “Russians are coming” story has no cynical write-up by journalists who are 100 percent compliant with its erroneous narrative. The fear of elites in London is palpable, though, that it will always be questioned by fringe actors taking up bandwidth on social media. In the past this was the RT correspondent in London, who was able to ask difficult questions and generally be a thorn in the side of the Westminster village which controlled journalists like rats held in a basket. The main reason why RT was kicked out of the UK was that it offered a style of reporting on UK politics which had since left us thirty years ago – such is the murky world of the deep state and how it saw how in Brussels journalists could be manipulated until they become stenographers for it.

Yet even with this new Stalinist style of media control in the UK, the state is wobbly. Even with the impressive set-up it has now of total media dominance, where journalists pump out total garbage about the Ukraine war or what they are told to write about the Middle East, still the fear is there.

The example of video blogger Ian Proud, a former UK diplomat once based in Moscow, is worrying but poignant. Simply going to Moscow to attend a conference where Putin was speaking was enough to have him get the full Stasi treatment at Heathrow airport – detained and all digital content seized.

Proud’s YouTube interviews, with his dowdy style of presenting, are proving to be popular as he simply offers a more sober view of both Russia and the UK Foreign Office, his former employer. These interviews are getting the attention of UK spooks, who are so nervous about the truth getting out about Russia and the shameful lies which are being packaged now for the British public, that they had to give Proud the American prison ‘shake down’ routine. Britain, a country which once was a beacon for the world with its view of liberty and in particular its passion for free speech, has fallen to a level which we can only compare to a West African country which has just had a new dictator installed, complete with black aviators and epaulettes. What the Proud Heathrow airport case shows is that this new regime in power will stop at nothing to control a narrative, and that the last bastion of free speech – YouTube podcasts – is the next target. The more successful Proud’s channel becomes, the more inevitable it is that he will be forced to leave the UK and settle in Russia to continue practising free speech. The shoulder tassels of Britain’s deep state will not sleep well until the country has a media narrative which would make Joe Stalin blush – and British journalists are helping them with this goal.

By Jill Erzen | The Defender | October 2, 2026

Tracy Beth Høeg, M.D., Ph.D., an epidemiologist and sports physician, said her decision to follow the data during the COVID-19 pandemic came at a steep professional price.

Her research challenged policies on school closures, masking and COVID-19 vaccines. She said the fallout included losing her position at the University of California, Davis, being dropped from an NPR interview and being fired from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Høeg said her experience exposed the unwillingness of universities, media and public health institutions to adapt when research conflicted with their accepted narratives.

In an interview this week with investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker on The DisInformation Chronicle, Høeg said institutions too often treated the accepted narrative as settled and then dismissed or attacked people who questioned it.

That approach did more than distort the public discussion about COVID-19, Høeg said. It also created a scientific and institutional culture that could affect how other medical questions are handled long after the pandemic.

For Høeg, the solution is simple: Scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads.

“It’s a core belief of mine that you have to be objective when you’re doing scientific studies,” she said. “Otherwise, you just shouldn’t do them. It’s pointless if you’re not willing to be objective.”

‘I … didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in’

During the pandemic, Høeg published 30 to 40 papers on COVID-19 transmission, masking, youth sports, vaccine risk-benefit, pregnancy, long COVID, visitor restrictions and testing.

Some of her research challenged widely accepted claims.

One study found little evidence of COVID-19 transmission among children in Wisconsin schools, which was consistent with data from Europe. Another examined myocarditis risk in boys after their second Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine dose and found the risks outweighed the benefits in boys who didn’t have underlying health conditions.

Høeg said she didn’t initially understand the professional risks she was taking by challenging the prevailing narrative.

“There was sort of a hesitancy to do this sort of research because I think people were afraid for their careers,” she said. “I actually was blessed with having recently moved from Denmark and didn’t realize the jeopardy that I was putting myself in by doing these sorts of studies.”

At the time, Høeg was conducting research at the University of California, Davis.

She said the university received calls, including from Nature magazine, complaining about her studies on pandemic policies. Eventually, the university asked her not to use her affiliation with the school.

Høeg said the university refused to renew her voluntary position in 2022, after the European Journal of Clinical Investigation published her study on myocarditis risks in boys who received the COVID-19 vaccine.

NPR also dropped an interview with Høeg for “All Things Considered” after she raised concerns about masking children during outdoor sports.

In a pre-interview discussion with NPR, she told the outlet, “We don’t have evidence that these masks work to prevent transmission. … Bottom line is, we shouldn’t be doing these unproven things to children that are harmful.”

Soon after, NPR told Høeg she was no longer needed for the interview.

“It does say a lot about our universities and institutions because it’s like they had been brainwashed to an extent to believe what the media was saying rather than actually look at the data,” Høeg said.

‘They repeated the same wording … even when the data didn’t back it up’

In 2022, Høeg and her colleagues conducted a follow-up analysis of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on school mask mandates.

Høeg said their analysis used a larger dataset and a longer time period and reached the opposite conclusion about the relationship between mask mandates and COVID-19 transmission among children.

The team’s submission to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) was rejected. Høeg said reviewers described the submission as “rife with polemics.”

“Well, maybe it’s polarizing if you disagree with it,” Høeg said.

The rejection unearthed an underlying problem at the CDC, according to Høeg.

“They have a scientific agenda,” she said. “And so as soon as you have a scientific agenda, science has been thrown out the window. Science doesn’t have an agenda other than to find the truth.”

A 2024 analysis by Høeg and colleagues examined 77 mask studies published in the MMWR beginning in 2020. According to Høeg, 75% of the studies said masks were effective, while only 14% reported statistically significant results and none were randomized studies.

One finding especially stood out to her: She said 5% of the studies found masks were connected to higher infection rates, yet “they still concluded that masks worked.”

“They repeated the same wording over and over again in each of the studies, that ‘masks are necessary to decrease the spread’ and ‘masks are critical in controlling the case rates of COVID-19,’” she said. “They use the same sort of wording even when the data didn’t back it up at all.”

‘Why are we demonizing people for looking into this?’

Those concerns followed Høeg into the FDA in late 2025 when she was named acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).

A leaked memo from then-FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad said career staff had linked at least 10 child deaths to the COVID-19 vaccine between 2021 and 2024.

Høeg said she reviewed the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports and found that investigations involving medical records and autopsies had already been conducted.

“My question at the time was … why are these not being made public?” Høeg told Thacker.

Høeg said news leaked that she would present information about the deaths and their possible association with COVID-19 vaccines. She said the media response focused on portraying her as an “anti-vaxxer” rather than asking why the deaths had been investigated but not publicly disclosed.

“If we have these sorts of deaths happening in children due to medical products of any kind, why are we sitting on them for years?” she asked. “That’s the take-home I want people to have from this.”

She also questioned why people who investigate potential safety problems are attacked for trying to expose the dangers.

“Why are we demonizing people for looking into this? … Isn’t that what the public wants?” she asked.

‘The deep state really is a thing’

In May, just days after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned, Høeg said she arrived at work to find media reports claiming she had resigned — something she said she knew nothing about.

FDA lawyers later asked her to resign, but she refused to sign the letter. She was subsequently locked out of the agency’s systems and escorted from the building.

Høeg said she never received a performance-based explanation for her termination. She also said the person identified as the author of her termination memo later denied writing or seeing it.

According to Høeg, agency lawyers told her the order came from “way above their pay grade.”

The experience changed how she viewed other departures from the agency. “It opened my eyes to the fact that maybe a number of the people who I thought had resigned really had not resigned,” she said.

“The deep state really is a thing,” she added.

‘Women who want to get pregnant … should be told about these risks’

For Høeg, the concerns she encountered during the COVID-19 era are not limited to COVID-19.

In 2025, she helped organize an FDA panel examining potential risks associated with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, during pregnancy.

The American Psychiatric Association criticized the panel for what it called “misinterpretation and unbalanced viewpoints.” Høeg said the media also portrayed any discussion of potential risks as “misinformation about SSRI use” and a signal that depression wasn’t being taken seriously.

According to Høeg, the panel discussed risks already addressed in FDA labeling and scientific research, including miscarriage, premature birth, postpartum hemorrhage, congenital heart defects and neonatal adaptation syndrome.

“This should not be controversial that women who want to get pregnant and who are pregnant should be told about these risks,” she said.

She also warned about the lack of ongoing monitoring of drug safety.

“The FDA is not actively investigating the safety of these products in pregnancy or at all after the initial trials are done,” she said.

Høeg said the discussion should not be interpreted as an argument against treating depression. “I don’t think that any of this should be synonymous with not taking depression seriously,” she said. “That’s just nonsense.”

‘There’s just no reporting on this. … People have died taking this drug’

Høeg also discussed Tavneos, the Amgen-manufactured brand name for avacopan, a drug approved to treat a type of blood-vessel inflammation.

While at CDER, Høeg said she raised concerns that the pivotal clinical trial used to approve the drug had included manipulated data.

According to Høeg, at least eight deaths had been attributed to the drug because of liver injury.

The New England Journal of Medicine later retracted the paper detailing the trial, and European regulators withdrew the drug’s authorization. While the FDA has proposed withdrawing Tavneos’ approval, it remains available in the U.S.

Yet, the media barely covered it.

“There’s just no reporting on this,” Høeg said. “People have died taking this drug. … We asked for them to withdraw it from the market, and the media is just totally silent.”

Thacker: ‘There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber’

Høeg said it is troubling that some of the most disputed COVID-19 policies are still treated as settled questions.

“How is this still part of our collective conversation that people … are still saying school closures were necessary and mask mandates were necessary?” she asked.

Thacker said the failure to learn from those policies could have consequences during the next pandemic. People who developed a “false sense of safety from masks” during COVID-19 could mistakenly assume masks will protect them from a more dangerous virus in the future, he said.

Thacker also questioned whether the country understands anything about the COVID-19 vaccines. “There was no real learning in the end. … If anything, we became dumber,” he said.

Høeg said the problem stems from the widespread failure to reconsider policies when the evidence changed.

“Once the government decided this is what we have to do, they just kept digging in, even though the data didn’t support it,” she said.

“This is why I keep doing these interviews, because it’s important for people to know the truth.”

Watch Høeg on ‘The DisInformation Chronicle’ podcast here:

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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.

When the establishment media jettisons even the semblance of critical distance from the state

By Jonathan Cook | September 30, 2026

It’s easy to forget that the western media – the so-called “free press” – likes to distinguish itself from media in authoritarian regimes on the basis that, unlike them, it asks critical questions of the powerful, reports facts objectively, and formulates its analyses dispassionately.

They do propaganda, we do news – or so the western media argues.

The feverish coverage since five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning close to RAF Fairford in the UK is blowing a very big hole in that claim.

Here are the known facts so far.

Three white vans, bearing the logo of a genuine fuel transit company, were spotted by a local farmer on the road outside her property as she returned from a party. Police arrived promptly and arrested the men, who were all British nationals in their twenties.

On Tuesday, it emerged that one of the arrested men actually called the police earlier – seemingly the reason officers were on the scene so quickly.

Although the men were initially arrested on explosives charges, no “viable” explosives were found. Although they were arrested on terrorism charges, which allow for 14 days of detention, they were released on bail under normal criminal laws in less than two days.

It has also emerged that the men had several empty “barrels” in their vans, plus one that contained what police described disturbingly as an “accelerant”.

Actually, that was simply a reference to petrol. The stuff that goes into vehicles to make them accelerate.

British prime minister Andy Burnham held a rare national emergency Cobra meeting over the incident.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration got involved because RAF Fairford, despite its name, is in reality a US air base from which American planes are waging an illegal war of aggression against Iran, with the UK’s blessing.

US Secretary of state Marco Rubio has said the incident “clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor”. When asked whether Iran was that actor, Trump replied: “It might be.” He added: “I know the answer… I can be very specific, but I’d rather not say.”

According to a report in the New York Times, “American and British intelligence services worked with Israel and Western countries to discover the threats against US bases, including ones in Germany.” [my emphasis]

Despite these sparse facts, the British media have uniformly rushed to a single conclusion: that this was almost certainly part of an Iranian terror plot to target the US airbase and its planes. The only room for debate allowed is whether the five men were witting or unwitting actors in that plot.

As the Guardian reported in its Wednesday edition, referring to this as a “complex investigation”: “An Iranian link to the bizarre events in the Gloucestershire countryside over the weekend is seen as increasingly likely.”

As context, let us note the following: that British and US officials have every interest in trying to hype this incident as an Iranian “terror plot”, whatever the actual evidence suggests.

Why? Because the US is waging an illegal war on Iran, and the UK is allowing it to do so from British soil. Under the rules of war, Iran has every right to attack RAF Fairford.

If the British state and billionaire-owned media were actually serving as a truly “free press”, they would be offering the context that RAF Fairford is a legitimate military target and that any attack on it by Iran would not constitute terrorism.

Of course, none have done so.

Instead, they have loyally regurgitated the British and US security services spin of a “terror plot” – based on no tangible evidence at all – that paints Britain and the US as the victims of a sinister and unwarranted act of Iranian aggression.

But context aside, an objective, sceptical media – a “free press” – would be reserving judgment on what had happened. It would be asking difficult questions. It would be offering plausible counter-narratives.

Again, none of this is happening. In the British media, there has been a lemming-like rush towards accepting uncritically the very conclusions that best serve British and US state interests.

The constant highlighting of a terrorism connection to the arrested men – for which there is no apparent evidence – is precisely the kind of coverage you would expect from state media in an authoritarian regime. This is about whipping up a public mood of fear, not about transparent fact-finding.

Notably, unlike the British media, the New York Times report does allow for another possibility, even if it instantly ignores it and then joins the British media in treating what evidence there is as proof of an Iranian terror plot.

The Times opens with a question: “The potential ambiguities – were the men Iranian operatives, petty gas thieves, or both? – added to the confusion surrounding the arrests that the authorities have yet to fully explain.”

“Petty gas thieves”! Men in vans with empty barrels close to a farm in the middle of the night. Is it possible they could simply be criminals?!

In fact, this conjecture has been all over social media since the first reports of the men being arrested surfaced. As new details have emerged, those suspicions have only grown.

And yet Britain’s “free press” has uniformly ignored this counter-theory in favour of the US and British security services’ narrative.

Doubtless, British journalists covering this incident would call the idea that this was simply a criminal group caught in the act unhelpful “speculation”.

But how is their no-more-plausible, and possibly less plausible, theory that this was an Iranian terror plot not equally speculation – if in their case, speculation that happens to be extremely helpful to the British and US security establishments?

There are other theories we could posit too, given the known facts. Israel, which originally pushed for the illegal and disastrous war on Iran, has been looking for a way to persuade the Trump administration to return to a full-scale bombing campaign.

El 26 de agosto de 1346 se disputó una de las batallas más importantes de la Guerra de los Cien Años, la de Crécy, en la que el ejército inglés de Eduardo III derrotó al francés de Felipe VI de forma tan contundente que permitió al primero sitiar Calais y determinar el sino de la […]

How Sesame Street, CNN, and federal health officials turned a children’s vaccine campaign into a one-way lesson in trust.

By Sayer Ji | September 30, 2026

How a $240 million messaging machine put a three-year-old puppet to work selling an mRNA shot to parents of infants — and what the government has quietly admitted since.

On June 28, 2022, Sesame Street posted a 60-second video to its YouTube channel titled “Elmo Gets the COVID-19 Vaccine | PSA.”

It’s a well-made piece of persuasion. Elmo, who has been three and a half years old since 1984, shows off his “super duper” bandage. There “was a little pinch. But it was okay.” Then his father, Louie, looks into the camera and speaks to every hesitant parent in America:

“I had a lot of questions about Elmo getting the COVID vaccine. Was it safe? Was it the right decision?”

Eleven seconds later, the doubt has been resolved for you:

“I learned that Elmo getting vaccinated is the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors and everyone else healthy and enjoying the things they love.”

A hug follows. Then an announcer: “It’s okay to have questions about COVID vaccines for your kids.”

That’s the move worth studying. The ad takes the parent’s instinct to ask questions, gives it to a beloved puppet, and answers it before the parent has a chance to. It presents doubt so it can close it down.

This was not a whimsical one-off from a children’s television workshop. It was one output of what its own organizers called the largest communications program in our nation’s history, built with federal public-health agencies, a major medical trade association, and tens of millions of corporate dollars.

Four years later, Pfizer-BioNTech’s product is no longer authorized for children ages six months through four years. Federal guidance and product labeling have also narrowed which pediatric uses are on-label, a shift sharply at odds with the PSA’s broad, categorical reassurance. Nobody made a puppet video about that.

This is the story of who built the campaign, what it cost, and what came after.

Part I: Who Was Behind It

Sesame Workshop’s own press release is candid about who was in the room. The PSA was released “in collaboration with the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative,” and it was “produced in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).”

Five institutions. Each one deserves a name and a face.

Sesame Workshop

The nonprofit behind Sesame Street produced and released the spot. Its campaign lead was Dr. Jeanette Betancourt, Senior Vice President of US Social Impact. Its president at the time, Sherrie Westin, was named CEO in July 2024.

The clearest statement of what Sesame thought it was offering came from its own chief marketing officer. Launching an earlier round of vaccine PSAs, Samantha Maltin, EVP and CMO, said the goal was to:

“… harness the power of Sesame Workshop and the reach of the Ad Council…”

Harness the power. The asset being put to use was fifty years of trust that parents and children have placed in these characters.

The Ad Council

The Ad Council turns corporate media budgets into “public service” messaging. Its president and CEO, Lisa Sherman, was the campaign’s public face. On the Elmo spot:

“It’s important that parents feel informed and confident about what the COVID-19 vaccines mean for their families, and we are proud to work with our partners, medical experts – and of course Elmo – to spread that message.”

She also named the urgency: this was “an important decision many need to make in advance of the upcoming school season.”

COVID Collaborative

The COVID Collaborative is a bipartisan assembly of former officials, and it convened the vaccine education initiative with the Ad Council. Its CEO is John Bridgeland, former Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Its president is Gary Edson, and its co-chairs are former Idaho Gov. and Sen. Dirk Kempthorne (R) and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D). The Collaborative is a project of UNITE, chaired by Tim Shriver.

The CDC

The CDC was a named production partner, and it wasn’t a passive one. According to the campaign’s organizers, the CDC provided scientific guidance on all aspects of the campaign, and its brand appeared on select creative assets.

The American Academy of Pediatrics

The AAP, the pediatricians’ professional association, was the other named production partner. Its president in 2022 was Dr. Moira Szilagyi. Looking back later, she said: “Somewhere what got lost in our country, I think, was what a miracle these vaccines were.”

Keep the AAP in mind. It comes back in Part IV.

Part II: Follow the Money

The Elmo spot was built on a large funding structure, and its size helps explain how thoroughly this message saturated American media.

The corporate fund. On November 23, 2020, before any vaccine was authorized, the Ad Council announced a $50 million fund for the COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative, created with the COVID Collaborative. By February 2021 it had exceeded that goal.

The COVID Collaborative reports more than $52 million raised. The leading contributors it names are Amazon, Apple, Bank of America, Cisco, CVS Health, Facebook, General Motors, Google and YouTube, the Humana Foundation, NBCUniversal/Comcast, Salesforce, Verizon, Walgreens, and Walmart.

Two of those names stand out. CVS Health and Walgreens both gave the shots the campaign was promoting in their own pharmacies.

The donated media. The money was only the seed. By October 26, 2021, the initiative had surpassed its goal of $240 million in donated media and related publicity. Donors of airtime and ad inventory included Disney (ABC, ESPN, Hulu), FOX, NBCUniversal and Telemundo, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia, Facebook and Instagram, Google and YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Spotify, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and The Weather Channel.

Several of the same platforms that donated airtime and advertising inventory to the vaccine-education campaign were simultaneously under public and private pressure to enforce COVID-19 misinformation rules against specifically identified individuals, including people named in CCDH’s ‘Disinformation Dozen’ report. YouTube later [restored] my channels and stated that, after review, they did not violate its Community Guidelines.

The taxpayer layer. Alongside the private effort, HHS ran its own $265 million COVID public-education campaign starting in summer 2020. That included a $250 million NIH award to the Fors Marsh Group, which created the “We Can Do This” brand, all paid for through a $300 million interagency agreement drawing on CDC’s CARES Act funds. Under its “Vaccinate with Confidence” framework, the CDC funded more than 200 partners. Across the March 2021–December 2022 rollout, it funded 110 primary and 1,051 subrecipient partners at the national, state, and community level.

A note on accuracy. I have not found documentation that Pfizer or Moderna directly paid for the Elmo spot, and the campaign materials don’t list them as partners. Pfizer does appear as a Sesame Workshop donor in later years, in the $100,000–$249,999 band of its 2024 impact report. That’s worth knowing, but it’s a separate fact. The documented structure is damning on its own: corporate money, federal science guidance, and a medical trade association, all speaking through a puppet.

Part III: It Wasn’t One Ad

The Elmo spot was the youngest-audience edge of a sustained effort to put Sesame Street characters to work for vaccine messaging.

• November 2021: CNN and Sesame Street co-produced a family town hall, “The ABCs of COVID Vaccines.” That same month, Big Bird delivered his own pro-vaccine message to young viewers, which drew public criticism from Sen. Ted Cruz.
• June 2022: Elmo’s PSA, released days after the FDA’s emergency authorization for children as young as six months.
• Later: Sesame Workshop, the Ad Council, COVID Collaborative, and CDC launched a further series of PSAs with Elmo, Louie and other Muppets, “created in close partnership with the CDC.”

The criticism started right away. Cruz accused Sesame Street of having Elmo “aggressively advocate” for shots in young children and noted that the spot cited no scientific evidence. The comedian Russell Brand put it more sharply:

“When it starts getting into complex territory that involves the power of the state, the influence of pharmaceutical companies, the impact of coronavirus on young children — these are not issues I want resolved by members of Elmo’s family.”

The critics were dismissed as cranks at the time. Here is what the government has said since.

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Part IV: The Walk-Back Nobody Advertised

There was no $240 million campaign for any of what follows. No Muppets and no hug at the end. It came out as label changes, regulatory memos, and footnotes in clinical guidance.

The cardiac warning got stronger

On June 25, 2025, the FDA required and approved expanded warnings about myocarditis and pericarditis on Pfizer’s Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax. The new label estimates about 8 cases per million doses in people aged 6 months through 64 years, and about 27 per million in males aged 12 through 24, in the week after vaccination.

The most important sentence isn’t about frequency, though. It’s about what happened to the hearts afterward:

“… at a median follow-up of approximately 5 months post-vaccination, persistence of abnormal cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) findings that are a marker for myocardial injury was common. The clinical and prognostic significance of these CMR findings is not known.”

Read it twice. Five months out, markers of heart-muscle injury were “common,” and the agency says their long-term significance is “not known.” This isn’t a critic’s claim. It comes from an FDA-funded, FDA-co-authored study, and it’s now printed on the label.

The spot told parents “there was a little pinch. But it was okay.” Nobody in the ad said “unknown long-term cardiac significance.”

The authorization for the youngest children was pulled

On August 27, 2025, Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID vaccine was no longer authorized for children under 5. CDC’s current clinical guidance puts it plainly: “Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine is no longer authorized in the United States for children ages 6 months–4 years.”

That is the age group the Elmo spot was released to reach. It went out days after emergency authorization opened the shots to children as young as six months. Four years later, one of the two products it promoted to parents of those children can’t legally be given to them.

Healthy children are now “off-label”

The broad “everyone six months and older” recommendation is gone. In May 2025, HHS dropped the routine recommendation for healthy children, and the CDC moved to what it calls shared clinical decision-making.

CDC’s current guidance, updated September 23, 2026, limits Moderna’s approval for the youngest children to those with “at least one condition that places them at increased risk for severe COVID-19.” Then it states the conclusion outright:

“Vaccination of children 5-11 years of age with any product other than Spikevax or Comirnaty and vaccination of children in this age group without high-risk conditions is off-label use.”

“Vaccination of persons 12-64 years of age without high-risk conditions is off-label use.”

In 2022, the message was that vaccinating Elmo was “the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors and everyone else healthy.” In 2026, the CDC’s own wording is that giving the shot to a healthy child is off-label.

The deaths question

On November 28, 2025, Dr. Vinay Prasad, then director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, sent staff a memo headed “Deaths in children due to COVID-19 vaccines and CBER’s path forward.” He wrote that career staff “have found that at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” based on an initial review of 96 child deaths reported to VAERS between 2021 and 2024.

The FDA’s formal analysis, made public in May 2026, came back more cautious. Of the 96 reports reviewed, none were classified as “certain.” Five were classified “possible” and two “probable,” mostly involving myocarditis, with an average age of 13. The agency stressed that these classifications don’t prove causation.

Media coverage framed that result as a debunking. Set the headline aside, though. The FDA’s own conservative review, using WHO causality criteria, still found seven child deaths it could not rule out as vaccine-related, and it called two of them probable.

And yet, still being promoted

This is where the irony stops being subtle.

Visit the FDA’s parent-facing page today, Vaccines for Children – A Guide for Parents and Caregivers. The COVID-19 vaccine is still listed alongside measles and polio among “the most commonly administered vaccines.” And parents are still told:

“Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to prevent COVID-19, including the potential consequences of hospitalization and death.”

That’s Louie’s line almost word for word, four years later, from the same agency whose label now carries the cardiac warning, whose authorization for under-5s was pulled, and whose own reviewers flagged seven child deaths.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, a production partner on the Elmo spot, hasn’t backed off either. As of September 2026, the AAP recommends COVID-19 vaccination for “all infants and children ages 6 months through 23 months,” and for “anyone ages 2 to 18 who isn’t at risk but whose parents or guardian wants them to get a shot.”

So we have two different postures at once. The regulator has narrowed approval, expanded the warning, and reclassified healthy-child use as off-label. The professional association that helped make the puppet ad still recommends the shot for every baby. And the FDA’s own parent guide still uses the 2022 talking points.

Part V: What They’ll Say — and Why It Doesn’t Save Them

Serious readers deserve the strongest counterargument, so here it is.

CDC’s guidance cites a retrospective cohort of more than 4 million people aged 16–25 from 2020 to 2025. It found myocarditis incidence of 0.05% after COVID illness versus 0.005% after vaccination. In other words, the infection carries a higher myocarditis risk than the shot.

That’s a legitimate data point and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t exist. It doesn’t answer the question this piece is asking, for three reasons.

First, the comparison is an average over a population of teenagers and young adults. It says nothing about a healthy toddler with near-zero risk of severe disease. That’s the child this campaign targeted, and the child for whom the CDC now calls the shot off-label.

Second, it doesn’t address the finding printed on the label: persistent markers of heart-muscle injury at five months, of “not known” significance. The open letter discussed below says there are “no studies demonstrating prevention of hospitalization or death” in children. If that’s right, an unknown cardiac risk is being weighed against a benefit that was never shown.

Third, and most importantly, the argument here doesn’t depend on any contested injury number. It depends on an asymmetry. When the product was being promoted, it got a puppet, $50 million, a quarter-billion in donated airtime, the CDC’s logo, and the pediatricians’ endorsement. When the regulator narrowed the product, it got a label revision and a footnote. The public was sold a certainty the evidence never supported, and was never told when that certainty was withdrawn.

That isn’t public health communication. It’s a marketing campaign that never issued a correction.

Part VI: The Petition — Why I Signed

Earlier this month, 168 physicians, scientists, researchers, lawmakers, and health-freedom advocates, representing more than 63 million followers, sent an open letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump demanding removal of the mRNA platform. The effort was coordinated by Dr. Mary Talley Bowden. The signatories include Rep. Thomas Massie, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louisiana Deputy Surgeon General Dr. Sean Troxclair, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Aseem Malhotra, Tucker Carlson, and others.

I’m one of them, and I want to explain why.

The letter’s first demand is to “ban mRNA/gene therapy-derived technologies for all vaccines.” That includes the products still being given to children. Its other demands are to end the PREP Act declaration and its “ironclad liability shield for manufacturers and administrators,” ask Congress to repeal the PREP Act, ban direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising, end the incentive structures that push providers toward medical coercion, and end conflicts of interest at the CDC, FDA, NIH, and NIAID.

On children specifically, the letter makes the point this whole piece has been building toward:

“Parental choice is not realistic when parents are not getting informed consent on the true risks of these products.”

It also takes on the “shared clinical decision-making” framework directly:

“By treating the decision to inject a child with mRNA as a ‘shared decision,’ while treating routine injections as the default, a dangerous legal precedent is being set that assigns powers to the federal government that have historically belonged solely to parents.”

According to the letter, more than 50 million Americans received mRNA COVID shots this year, including about 7 million children, and HHS has awarded $1.24 billion in contracts to Pfizer for future mRNA shots, “including for children.”

The Elmo spot is exactly why that line about informed consent matters. You can’t give informed consent to a hug from a puppet. A one-minute ad that turns a parent’s hesitation into a script and then answers it in eleven seconds isn’t informing anyone. It’s persuasion aimed at the people least able to push back: parents who trust Sesame Street and children who love Elmo.

The letter isn’t the only pressure. Children’s Health Defense’s citizen petition, asking the FDA to revoke the Pfizer and Moderna licenses, has been pending since December 8, 2025 and has drawn more than 104,000 public comments in support. On September 25, the Independent Medical Alliance called on the CDC to immediately withdraw its “off-label” recommendation for healthy infants, children, and adults.

HHS’s response to the open letter, through press secretary Emily Hilliard, was that Secretary Kennedy “believes mRNA products warrant heightened scientific scrutiny,” and that HHS had “wound down investments in mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory viruses because the technology does not effectively protect against infection from rapidly mutating viruses such as COVID-19 and flu.”

Think about that sentence next to the Elmo spot. The federal health department now says the technology “does not effectively protect against infection” from COVID. In 2022, a puppet told America it was “the best way to keep himself, our friends, neighbors and everyone else healthy.”

Heightened scrutiny isn’t enough. A product that federal officials now concede doesn’t reliably prevent infection, that carries a cardiac warning with unknown long-term significance, whose own regulator calls it off-label for healthy children, and whose makers are protected from liability should not be given to children at all.

Conclusion: The Correction That Never Aired

Every institution in the Elmo spot is still operating. Sesame Workshop is still making children’s programming. The Ad Council is still running “public service” campaigns. The CDC’s logo is still on its creative. The AAP still recommends the shot for every infant. The FDA’s parent guide still repeats Louie’s line.

None of them has produced a PSA that says: We told you this was the best way to protect your baby. Since then the label has been changed to warn about heart injury. The authorization for the youngest children was withdrawn. The government now calls this use off-label for healthy kids. We’re sorry we used Elmo to tell you otherwise.

That’s the one-minute spot this country is owed. Until it airs, the original belongs where I’ve put it: in the Hall of Fame of the Covid-era Mockingbird Media, as a case study in what happens when institutions that are supposed to earn a parent’s trust decide to manufacture it instead.

Watch it again. Listen for the moment Louie asks, “Was it safe?”

It was a good question. It still is. They just never let him wait for the answer.

The map, which contradicts international law, shows no West Bank or Gaza, and appears to include the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

Google has asked the European Union’s General Court to suspend an order requiring it to make search data available to competing search engines and artificial-intelligence services while its wider legal challenge proceeds.

The application for interim measures follows Google’s challenge to a European Commission decision adopted in July under the Digital Markets Act. The company argues that implementation before the court rules on the main case could cause serious harm to the privacy of European users.

The Commission maintains that its requirements already contain safeguards for privacy, security and personal data.

At the centre of the dispute is Article 6(11) of the Digital Markets Act, which requires Google to give eligible rival search services access to anonymised ranking, query, click and viewing data on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

The Commission opened specification proceedings in January and adopted binding measures on 16 July.

The rules explicitly allow AI chatbots offering search functions to qualify for access.

Brussels argues that Google has accumulated a quantity of search information which competitors cannot readily reproduce. User queries and interactions can improve search algorithms, reinforcing the position of an established provider and creating a substantial entry barrier for newcomers.

EU Today examined the issue in April, when the Commission first set out its proposed Google search-data sharing measures.

The final July decision turned those proposals into binding requirements.

The inclusion of AI services gives the case wider significance. Generative AI products increasingly answer questions directly rather than sending users through a conventional list of search results. That is putting AI developers and traditional search engines into increasingly direct competition.

The Commission’s data-access framework is intended to reduce the advantage obtained from data accumulated by designated gatekeepers and make it easier for competing services to enter the market.

Access will not be unrestricted.

Applicants must operate a genuine online search service in the EU and satisfy eligibility requirements. Established applicants generally need at least 50,000 average monthly EU users during the previous year, while newer companies can qualify under investment criteria.

They must also comply with security and data-protection requirements and undergo independent auditing. The Commission can exclude applicants presenting public-security risks, while the data must be processed within the European Economic Area or under arrangements providing equivalent protection.

Google argues that these safeguards do not remove the underlying privacy risk.

The company has therefore asked the General Court for an interim suspension while judges consider the legality of the Commission’s decision.

The case adds another front to an increasingly difficult relationship between Google and Brussels.

In July, the Commission imposed two Digital Markets Act fines on Google totalling €890 million. As EU Today reported following the penalties, one case concerned Google’s treatment of its own services in search results while another dealt with restrictions preventing app developers from directing users towards alternative offers.

The dispute subsequently developed into a wider transatlantic issue when President Donald Trump threatened a Section 301 trade investigation in response to the EU penalties, a development examined by EU Today.

Google has meanwhile begun altering some of its European services in response to regulatory pressure. Earlier this month it changed the presentation of European search results, while warning that the new format could make searches less useful.

The present case is different because it deals with access to the underlying information generated by searches rather than only the way results are displayed.

The Commission wants qualifying competitors to obtain data that could help them improve their own services. Google says opening those datasets creates privacy and security risks which cannot simply be reversed if it eventually wins the court case.

That is why the interim application is important.

Google is not asking the court merely to overturn the Commission decision at the end of the litigation. It wants implementation halted before the full case is resolved.

Unless judges intervene, the Commission timetable continues.

The wider dispute will determine how far Brussels can require a dominant digital platform to share data accumulated through its own users in order to encourage competition — an issue that is becoming increasingly important as search and generative AI converge.

The Government is keeping a blacklist of people who question its policies, with social media posts criticising the Government being monitored and investigated by officials.

The post The Government is Keeping a List of People Who Question its Policies appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

By Thomas J Shepstone | Energy Security and Freedom | September 24, 2026

A little over a year ago, a study titled “Warming Accelerates Global Drought Severity” was published in Nature, a climate-consumed journal that has lost all credibility among serious folks. The authors included multiple academics from the University of Oxford in the UK, an elitist institution if there ever was one.

The abstract of the study said this (emphasis and paragraphing added):

Drought is one of the most common and complex natural hazards affecting the environment, economies and populations globally. However, there are significant uncertainties in global drought trends, and a limited understanding of the extent to which a key driver, atmospheric evaporative demand (AED), impacts the recent evolution of the magnitude, frequency, duration and areal extent of droughts.

Here, by developing an ensemble of high-resolution global drought datasets for 1901–2022, we find an increasing trend in drought severity worldwide. Our findings suggest that AED has increased drought severity by an average of 40% globally.

Not only are typically dry regions becoming drier, but also wet areas are experiencing drying trends.

During the past 5 years (2018–2022), the areas in drought have expanded by 74% on average compared with 1981–2017, with AED contributing to 58% of this increase. The year 2022 was record-breaking, with 30% of the global land area affected by moderate and extreme droughts, 42% of which was attributed to increased AED. Our findings indicate that AED has an increasingly important role in driving severe droughts and that this tendency will likely continue under future warming scenarios.

The study also produced numerous headlines in popular media such as these:

• The New York Times (4 June 2025): “Higher Temperatures and a Thirsty World.”
• The Guardian (3 July 2025): “Weatherwatch: how ‘thirstier’ atmosphere is making droughts more severe.”
• ScienceAlert : “Our Atmosphere’s Growing Thirst Is a Hidden Cause of Worsening Droughts.”
  Lead author Solomon Gebrechorkos wrote that atmospheric thirst caused ~40%
• Earth.com :
  • “How a thirsty atmosphere is making global droughts much worse.”
  • Later follow-up: “Earth has become a planet where the air is always thirsty, and that’s quickly drying out the land.”
• Oxford / UC Santa Barbara / Cardiff University press releases (widely picked up): “Earth’s growing thirst is making droughts worse, even where it rains” and “The atmosphere’s growing thirst is making droughts worse, even where it rains.”
  These used the same 40% figure and an “invisible sponge” metaphor.
• Climate Central (October 2025): “Warmer, Thirstier Air Worsens Drought.”

Now, the whole thing has been retracted. Here’s that story, translated from the German publication Science Files:

Drought Catastrophe Cancelled: The Next Climate Change Junk Paper Has Been Retracted
By Michael Klein
September 16, 2026

Because the climate is changing, the atmosphere drinks more [perhaps out of frustration]; because the atmosphere drinks more, it becomes drier on Earth…

Most of the authors from the not fully named “author pack” make their living at the University of Oxford, and they all announced the apocalypse by drying out in 2025:

Since 1981, they calculated, droughts on Earth have become more severe and more intense;

• An increased “thirst” of the atmosphere made droughts from 2018 to 2022 40% more severe than in the 37 years before that.
• Comparing the two periods: 5 years since 2018 versus 37 years since 1981, the area affected by drought has become 74% larger, 58% of that due to an increased “thirst of the atmosphere.”
• Since 2022, 30% of the Earth’s land surface has been affected by moderate to extreme drought;
• With further climate change, all of this will become much worse.

These are the results that Gebrechorkos and his co-authors spread via the mainstream media, and these are the results that are all wrong.

The authors miscalculated, mixed up data, weighted them incorrectly, compared apples at the equator with dry ice in the Arctic. The comparison periods on which all the results that made it into the media are based are incorrectly coded, so data were assigned incorrectly…

The fact that the junk study has been withdrawn does not change the fact that the articles in the mainstream media, such as the one from ZEIT that we presented above, are still there, have not been provided with any correction, and even if they had been provided with a correction, it would remain largely without effect, because contributions like that of Gebrechorkos et al. (2025) are, in my view, only written in order to be distributed by the media and to hype up the climate apocalypse.

This is not a claim made off the cuff, but one that can be demonstrated from the original contribution by Gebrechorkos et al. (2025), a contribution that was designed in such a way that the “dryness” of the Earth and its soils estimated at the end — a largely arbitrary value, the result of an absurd calculation — is maximized.

This is why the entire climate movement is collapsing. It’s all built on hype by those with special interests in perpetuating a grift, in this case, a pursuit of academic praise and, no doubt, research money put up by other grifters.

RT | September 29, 2026

Five young men from London who were caught near a British airbase heavily used by the US in its war against Iran have triggered a media frenzy across the London establishment’s mainstream media. The so-called “Fairford incident” lit up the British deep state media echo chamber.

However, what was initially reported as a possible Iranian or Russian-backed plot to blow up the RAF’s Fairford airbase, has so far revealed a farcical attempt to warn the British Army of a possible threat, and produced complaints from Washington, a lot of unanswered questions, and no explosives.

What happened at Fairford?

The drama in Gloucestershire, southwest England, began after a local resident noticed three vans blocking a road after midnight on Saturday near RAF Fairford, and a group of “hooded and ‘balaclava’d’ men” running from her car headlights.

Having failed to get an answer at the Ministry of Defence security hotline she dialed 999 and alerted police to “three suspicious vehicles.”

Armed counter-terror police swooped in, detained five men near the nearby village of Whelford, and found three white vans bearing fuel company insignia, raising fears they could contain explosives.

How did British security services react?

A counter-terrorism emergency was declared. About 85 local homes were evacuated, a 400-meter cordon was thrown around the scene, and military bomb disposal experts sent in a robot to examine the vehicles – which found no viable explosives.

The British mainstream security state press went into speculative overdrive, “monitoring” an incident near the key RAF base.

Who are the Fairford incident suspects?

Police have not named the five men but say all – photographed while sitting shirtless after their arrest – are British nationals from London aged between 23 and 25. They were initially arrested on suspicion of offenses under the Explosives Act and were later detained on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act.

Then, less than 24 hours after their detention, all five were released on bail.

What do British police officially suspect?

UK counterterrorism chief Laurence Taylor stressed that releasing the men did not mean the case was over. The suspects remain under “stringent” restrictions while investigators pursue “multiple new lines of enquiry,” he insisted.

US President Donald Trump, who initially claimed the men had already been under observation and were “looking to do big damage,” later complained about their release.

“We know everything about them,” he told reporters. “I would not have released them.”

Britain can hold terrorism suspects without charge for up to 14 days, meaning police were not legally forced to release the five when they did.

Who declared a foreign power was involved?

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that the incident “clearly involves the hands ‌of a foreign actor.”

Tehran has warned that military facilities used for US attacks on Iran could be treated as legitimate military targets. However, it has never claimed responsibility for any strikes outside of the Middle East.

British media reports have cited anonymous sources suggesting investigators were examining possible Iranian involvement. Russia and an “islamist state” were also mentioned by Reuters, citing anonymous sources.

Tehran’s embassy in London slammed the suggestions of Iranian involvement as “unfounded and malicious speculations” that fueled Iranophobia in Britain.

How is Britain escalating war rhetoric?

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband used his Labour Party conference speech on Monday to call for more preparedness against growing security threats, opening his speech by pointing directly to the Fairford incident.

The media machine has been playing its part in whipping up the war hysteria. Sky News aired a mockumentary titled ‘The Wargame’ playing out a crisis leading to a possible nuclear conflict with Russia. The BBC also urged readers to ask themselves whether they are “psychologically prepared for war”.

British authorities last year arrested four Iranian nationals over what was described as a major suspected terrorist plot. Police eventually released all four from custody without charge.

Is the Fairford incident a false flag?

There is no evidence of that, and watching the story move from a worrying local incident, through to a counter-terror operation involving “possible truck bombs,” to the release of five men on bail within 24 hours and an admission that the vans involved contained no explosives, can hardly count as a well-executed false flag plot.

Can the British government be believed?

That does not mean the British government deserves blind trust on intelligence claims.

The obvious historical example is the 2003 invasion of Iraq, . Prime Minister Tony Blair strongly backed US President George W. Bush’s false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. RAF Fairford itself was used by US bombers during that war.

Trump may be saying plenty about Tehran that echoes Bush’s rhetoric. But there is currently no evidence that UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has decided to follow Blair down the same road.

What is the last refuge of a scoundrel?

When facts run out of road the British commentariat will reach the Hybrid War refueling post.

Hybrid war is by definition almost impossible to verify. Sky News, for instance, interviewed Martin Gallagher, a former police superintendent, who argued that masterminds are trying to manipulate British authorities by making them “cry wolf” now, before a “real attack” could happen in the future

Is Western Europe caught in its own echo-chamber?

Last week, Spain’s El Mundo, citing anonymous Latvian security sources, reported that the CIA had warned of a Russian kamikaze drone plot targeting Spain, France or Italy, involving merchant ships in the Mediterranean. The story raced around Europe before senior officials in Italy and France debunked it.

Last month in Sweden, a Russian couple vacationing from Spain became the focus of a security scare after camping near a property connected to the CEO of arms manufacturer Saab. Quickly labeled as possible spies or assassins in the press, the tourists were cleared of any wrongdoing and told to leave Sweden, their holiday ruined.

Germany has taken a much firmer line over an August drone incident at Leipzig/Halle Airport, which Berlin formally called a failed hybrid attack carried out by Russia. The German government has refused to disclose the evidence underlying its claim, however, fuelling speculation that the situation was staged for political reasons.

The great European drone scare of 2025 also produced some awkward endings. No evidence has been produced of any malign operation around the multiple allegations, and most have been disproven by mainstream journalists in Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, where the army is thought to have actually shot at a passenger plane.

And then there is “Havana Syndrome.” US officials were looking for some kind of Russian, Chinese or other foreign directed-energy weapon, but only found an argument that CIA agents who were purportedly victimized should be paid compensations for the damage they suffered, regardless of its cause.