How Israel's Iron Dome Works (And Why It Doesn't Intercept Every Missile)

MSN

If you have watched any news coverage of Israel's conflicts against Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran, you have likely seen Israel's "Iron Dome" airborne threat defense system in action. Raytheon, one of the developers of the defense system, claims that it's the "world's most used system" of its kind. Rafael, an Italian defense company that also develops the Iron Dome, says that it has made more than 5,000 successful interceptions over 14 years since it was first deployed in Israel.

So what is the Iron Dome? How does it work? And what are its shortcomings? First, Iron Dome is the brand name given to its tailor-made missile defense system. It was developed jointly by both Raytheon and Rafael in 2011 and, in basic terms, uses missiles to intercept other missiles. Additionally, it can be used to intercept smaller targets like individual mortars, short range rockets, and artillery shells. It has also proved effective in the ever-changing battle against drones. For threats at a higher altitude, the David's Sling defense system takes over.

How It Protects Against Threats

The Iron Dome doesn't describe a single missile or missile launcher. It's a system of different components that work together to make a "net" of sorts over Israel's cities or otherwise populated areas. Raytheon notes that, all told, there are 10 individual Iron Dome batteries located around Israel.

Each battery consists of missile launchers (either three or four launchers), a radar installation, and the actual missiles. Israel uses its own "Tamir" missile, supplying 20 per battery. The Tamir has the advantage of being comparatively inexpensive, reportedly between $40,000 and $50,000 for each missile. For reference, a Patriot surface-to-air missile can cost well over $3 million each.

Once a threat is detected by the Iron Dome's radar, it launches a Tamir missile to intercept. The missile is guided via not only a datalink to the radar system and Israel's missile operators, but also an onboard radar system. That means that once the missile is launched, if it loses connection with forces on the ground, it can still intercept.

Read more

One excavator, 10,000 bodies, a sea of rubble: Inside Gaza's effort to retrieve and bury its dead

Tareq S. Hajjaj | Mondoweiss

Under the relative calm of a ceasefire, Civil Defense crews in Gaza are undertaking the monumental feat of recovering thousands of bodies still trapped under the rubble.

Fatima Salem waits outside anxiously, as rescue crews dig through the rubble of her family's home in Gaza City on December 15th. With bated breath, she clings to the hope that all 60 of her family members - brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren - who were buried under the rubble after an Israeli airstrike targeted their building, will be rescued.

But this was not a typical rescue operation, and Fatima was not waiting for signs of life. She knew everyone was dead. That's because the airstrike on her family's home happened almost exactly two years ago, on December 19, 2023, just two months into the genocide.

The 60 members of the Salem family are some of an estimated 10,000 Palestinians whose bodies remain trapped under the extensive rubble across the Gaza Strip. Due to two years of active Israeli bombardment, the targeting and killing of civil defense crews, and the lack of heavy duty machinery required to excavate the tons of concrete rubble, rescue missions in Gaza have been largely stalled.

But on December 15, the Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip announced the start of a long recovery process of bodies that have remained under the rubble for two years. The operations are focused only on the areas in the Gaza Strip not actively being occupied by the Israeli military, which accounts for roughly half of the territory.

The first rescue mission was for the Salem family in Gaza City.

Read more

Iran in ‘full-scale war’ with US and Europe, says president

The Independent

Iran’s president has claimed that his country is in an all-out war with the West, days before Donald Trump meets with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Masoud Pezeshkian said that the “full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe” was worse than Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, in which hundreds of thousands of people died.

“We are in a full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe; they do not want our country to stand on its feet,” he said in the interview published on the website of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Saturday.

Mr Pezeshkian said the West’s war against Iran is “more complicated and more difficult” compared to the 1980-88 war with Iraq that left more than 1 million casualties on both sides.

“In the war with Iraq, the situation was clear: they fired missiles, and I also knew where to hit,” he explained. “Here, they are besieging us from every aspect, they are putting us in difficulty and constraint, creating problems – in terms of livelihood, culturally, politically, and security-wise – while raising society’s expectations. 

Read more

How many countries has Israel attacked in 2025?

Hanna Duggal | Al-Jazeera

Israel has attacked more countries than any other country this year.

In 2025, Israel attacked at least six countries, including Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, Syria, and Yemen.

It also carried out strikes in Tunisian, Maltese and Greek territorial waters on aid flotillas heading for Gaza.

According to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), an independent conflict monitor, from January 1 to December 5, Israel carried out at least 10,631 attacks, marking one of the broadest geographic military offensives in a single year. [...]

According to ACLED, in 2025, up to December 5, 2025, Israel attacked:

• Gaza and the occupied West Bank 8,332 times
• Lebanon 1,653 times
• Iran 379 times
• Syria 207 times
• Yemen 48 times
• Qatar once
• Tunisian waters twice, Maltese and Greek waters once each

Read more

Suspect in Paris metro stabbings transferred to psychiatric hospital

France 24

The suspect in the stabbing of three women on the Paris metro has been moved to a psychiatric hospital after being released from custody, prosecutors announced Saturday. The 25-year-old man is accused of attacking the victims at separate locations along the Line 3 metro track. The victims' injuries are not life-threatening.

The suspect in the stabbing of three women in the Paris metro was released from custody and moved to a psychiatric hospital, prosecutors said on Saturday.

The man was arrested suspected of stabbing three women in the Paris metro on Friday as the capital's end-of-year festivities were in full swing.

The three victims were attacked at three different locations along the Line 3 metro track that runs across central Paris. They were injured, but not critically.

Continued police custody was not appropriate for the suspect because it is "considered incompatible with the state of his health", the prosecutors' office said.

Police had used surveillance-camera footage and mobile-tracking tools to locate the 25-year-old suspect in the Val d'Oise region north of Paris.

Transport police had opened an investigation into attempted homicide and assault with a weapon.

The interior ministry said the man was a Malian citizen imprisoned in January 2024 for aggravated theft and sexual assault. He had been required to leave France after being released in July.

The man had been placed in an administrative detention centre but failure to obtain a consular travel document required for his deportation had meant he was released after 90 days, as required by law, the statement said.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez last week called for "maximum vigilance" during the festive season in a message to senior officials due to what he said was a "very high level of the terrorist threat" and "the risk of public disorder".

Nunez specifically asked for particular attention to be paid to security on public transport.

Read more

'Incredible victory': Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools

Joseph MacKinnon ) Blaze Media

Judge Roger Benitez issued a permanent injunction against policies that require educators to keep parents in the dark or indulge gender delusions.

Democrat policies proudly championed in California by Gov. Gavin Newsom have for years kept parents in the dark about their children's mental health and personal circumstances — particularly about whether their kids are masquerading as members of the opposite sex at school and undergoing a so-called "social transition" with the help of school staff.

Unwilling to lie to parents in violation of their faith and ethics, and facing the prospect of retaliation or dismissal over their dissent, Christian educators Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori West filed a lawsuit in 2023 with the help of the religious liberty group the Thomas More Society.

By October, their legal challenge targeting secretive, grooming transgender policies across the state had evolved into a class-action lawsuit involving other adversely impacted teachers as well as parents.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez delivered Democrat officials and other gender ideologues a big upset on Monday, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs and against the grooming regime.

Benitez noted at the outset of his 52-page ruling that long before the advent of compulsory education in the U.S., "parents have carried out their rights and responsibility to direct the general and medical care and religious upbringing of their child."

Read more

Epstein, Israel, and the CIA: How the Iran-Contra Planes Landed at Les Wexner's Base

Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain, and Harrison Berger | Drop Site News

Jeffrey Epstein helped Leslie Wexner repurpose the CIA's Iran-Contra planes from arms smuggling to shipping lingerie.

This week, the New York Times awoke from its slumber to publish an extensive investigation on Jeffrey Epstein that purported to put to rest the question of how the man made his money early in his career. In it, the Times dismisses the possibility that Epstein could have worked for or adjacent to intelligence agencies. "Abundant conspiracy theories hold that Epstein worked for spy services or ran a lucrative blackmail operation, but we found a more prosaic explanation for how he built a fortune," the paper wrote.

To the paper's credit, their journalists have put into the record some details that took an impressive effort to track down. For instance, the paper reported about Epstein's business associates in the early 1980s:

Epstein had been spending extravagantly, and despite his lofty compensation at Bear Stearns and his work for [Douglas] Leese, he found himself strapped, even occasionally bouncing rent checks. Back in New York, he joined forces with John Stanley Pottinger, a lawyer who had recently left a senior post in the Justice Department. Epstein, Pottinger and Pottinger's brother rented a penthouse office in the Hotel St. Moritz on Central Park South. (The broker, Joanna Cutler, told us that Epstein initially stiffed her on the commission.)

The Times deserves credit, we suppose, for digging up that nugget from his one-time broker — but had the paper decided to look up rather than look down, they may have noticed something a bit more revelatory in their own reporting.

Stanley Pottinger, as it happens, was a notable figure in the scandal that became known as Iran-Contra, in which the CIA used Israel as a middleman to move off-the-books weapons to Iran. In the early 1980s, under the CIA's supervision, Pottinger advised an Iranian banker on shipping embargoed arms to Iran using fraudulent paperwork and overseas "dummy companies" — in the very same period that Pottinger and Epstein worked together selling "tax-avoidance" strategies from a penthouse by Central Park. Pottinger's system eventually gave rise to a network of covert intermediaries shipping arms around the world; the CIA's profits became a slush fund used to illegally bankroll the insurgent Contra army, who waged a war against Nicaragua's leftist government while simultaneously trafficking cocaine to the United States.

Read more

The real story behind the Russia-Ukraine war — and what happens next

David Stockman | International Man

Notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was "unprovoked" and unrelated to NATO's own transparent provocations in the region.

The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.

Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?

After all, if despite Rubio's treachery President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.

The answer, however, is a resounding no!

Our firm rebuke of the hoary Munich analogy as it has been falsely applied to Putin is based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that's what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935-1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war: German military spending had already reach 23% of GDP, even before its invasion of Poland in September 1939 and its subsequent commencement of actual military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

Read more

Netanyahu's new slant to lure Trump into war with Iran

Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation

Neither Hamas, nor Gaza Phase Two, lies predominantly behind Netanyahu's summit intent - but rather Iran.

In these last days, the Trump Administration has boarded or seized three tankers either loaded with Venezuelan oil or destined for Venezuela (such as the Bella1). The most egregious seizure - in terms of illegality - being a Chinese-owned, Panama-flagged vessel reportedly destined for China - and on no one's sanctions list.

In a different zone of conflict, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) last Friday claimed that it had struck a Russian so-called 'shadow fleet' tanker, the Qendil, with aerial drones in waters of the Mediterranean Sea off Morocco. The SBU did not give further details of the attack, including how the SBU deployed a drone in the Mediterranean (2,000 Km from Ukraine), or the site from which it was launched. The SBU source said the cargo ship was empty at the time of the attack.

President Putin, in midst of his annual question and answer marathon, vowed that Russia would retaliate.

'Blockades', seizures and attacks, very plainly, are acts of war (despite the U.S. claim that America owns all oil produced by Venezuela - until all historical U.S. legal claims against Venezuela are satisfied). This tanker-episode is yet another ratchet to the drift to lawlessness in U.S. foreign policy.

These acts pre-eminently are aimed at China (which has large equities in the Venezuelan oil industry) and Russia, which has longstanding ties to both Venezuela and Cuba (now under Trump 'blockade' too). Add to that the $11bn in weapons being sent to Taiwan — with a significant amount of medium to long-range missile systems being part of the planned transfer, including 82 HIMARS launchers with Army ATACMS missiles, allowing Taipei forces to hit targets across the Taiwan Strait.

This latter transfer has infuriated China.

What this suggests is that the National Strategy Statement (NSS) in respect to China (it states that Washington views China as no longer constituting a 'prime threat', but only as an economic competitor) is meaningless rhetoric. China is being treated as an adversarial threat and will respond as such.

Read more

Gazans are taking matters into their own hands by launching community reconstruction efforts

Noor Alyacoubi | Mondoweiss

With limited resources, Palestinians in Gaza and in exile are funding community reconstruction efforts amid the absence of international aid. “We have to keep trying to help Gaza rise again,” an organizer with the Sameer Project tells Mondoweiss.

Abu Ahmad, a displaced resident of northern Gaza, thought he would be living with some sort of roof over his head by now. Instead, he and his family remain exposed to the cold and the rain with only a threadbare tent for shelter. He told Mondoweiss:

"When the ceasefire was announced, I believed I would finally be able to rebuild my home, or at least get a caravan to survive the winter. Instead, we only hear about plans and conferences. Nothing has actually changed."

Abu Ahmad's home now lies beyond the so-called Yellow Line, which cuts Gaza in half and has been progressively expanded by the Israeli army to cover larger swathes of land to fall under its control.

Almost two months into the ceasefire, international conferences on Gaza's reconstruction and frequent promises to rebuild have so far amounted to little. According to UN estimates, 25 hospitals are out of service, nearly 70% of housing units have been partially or completely destroyed, 85% of water and sewage facilities have been damaged, and 95% of schools are reduced to rubble.

Amid these conditions, humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials have entered at rates far below the agreed-upon amounts as part of the ceasefire deal. Gazans have characterized the present humanitarian situation as a "new form of genocide."

U.S. President Donald Trump has envisioned turning Gaza into a Middle East "Riviera," while his 20-point "peace" plan would see Gaza run by a foreign "Board of Peace" that amounts to a Mandate-like form of colonial rule over the Strip.

Meanwhile, Egypt plans to host an international conference on Gaza's reconstruction, estimating that $70 billion would be required to rebuild it. Qatar and other countries have also pledged support. On the ground, however, no tangible reconstruction efforts have begun, widening the gap between political statements and lived reality.

Read more

The Deep Roots of Today’s Geopolitics

Peter Turchin | Cliodynamica

China, Russia, and Iran—what is the common denominator? Most obviously, they are the main geopolitical rivals of the United States today. As Ross Douthat recently wrote in an NYT opinion, Who Is Winning the World War?, “it’s useful for Americans to think about our situation in global terms, with Russia and Iran and China as a revisionist alliance putting our imperial power to the test.”

Today’s post is about a much less appreciated similarity, having to do with deep history of these Eurasian empires.

As I have argued in a series of publications over the past 20 years, and most comprehensively in the forthcoming book, the main driver of “imperiogenesis” (processes underlying the rise of empires) is interstate competition. The intensity of this competition, in turn, is dialed up by advances in military technologies. Each military revolution, thus, generates a set of mega-empires. Today we live in the historical shadow of two most consequential military revolutions.

The iron-cavalry revolution dates to about 1000 BCE. Although horse riding and iron smelting were invented independently (and in different regions, see the infographic below), by 500 BCE they were spreading together (for the spread maps, see Figures 2 and 3 in our article, Rise of the War Machines). And the detailed story of this military revolution and its profound effects on world history are in my book Ultrasociety.

Read more

New Epstein release heaps further shame on Andrew Windsor

Canary News

On 19 December, the US Justice Department released more materials related to the dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. While they only released around 10% of what they have (and 90% of it was redacted), we did get to see new material related to Epstein, including the following about Andrew:

The ***ist formally known as prince

Earlier this year, the Royal Family stripped Andrew of all his titles. This is why he’s now known as ‘Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’ or ‘the creepy Epstein-loving one’ instead of ‘prince Andrew’ or the ‘Duke of York’.

When the king de-royaled his brother, many suspected that more disgusting revelations would soon emerge. These suspicions were confirmed in October, when publishers posthumously released the memoir of Andrew’s late accuser Virginia Giuffre:

Read more

US Navy effectively becomes a tool of modern piracy

Drago Bosnic | Aletho News 

The political West has been conducting an unprovoked aggression against the entire world for at least half a millennium at this point. Whether through direct attacks and occupation or various forms of colonialism (that lasts to this day), the world’s most aggressive power pole has been a threat to every other country on this unfortunate planet. Although certainly not the only one, the primary tool of Western power projection have been navies, which is hardly surprising given the political West’s thalassocratic nature. Through naval supremacy, Western (primarily Anglo) powers have spread their colonial empires to virtually every corner of the world, exterminating the native populations along the way and settling in their lands. 

Entire continents (such as North America and Australia) were secured through brutal genocide of the locals who now live in small, scattered communities (so-called “reservations/reserves”). The genocidal campaign continued throughout the Atlantic and Pacific, where numerous islands and maritime trade routes remain in Western hands to this very day. Controlling these areas is key to maintaining its stranglehold over global trade, as seen during the latest US attacks on inbound and outbound Venezuelan shipping. However, the Pentagon seems to be expanding this aggression to other countries trading with Caracas, including China, which is a major importer of Venezuelan commodities (particularly crude oil). 

Read more

President George HW Bush ‘knew’ of 1964 alien contact with humans in New Mexico: documentary

New York Post 

The truth is out there — and late President George H.W. Bush apparently knew it — telling a federal official that an alien made contact with humans at a secretive New Mexico air base in 1964, according to testimony in an explosive new documentary.

Eric Davis, an astrophysicist who was a scientific advisor on the since-disbanded Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, created by Congress in 2007 by late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), claimed that Bush confirmed to him in a private conversation details of contact between the military and an alien creature at Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County.

Bush told him that three spaceships were seen approaching the base and that an interstellar being emerged from one ship and had a face-to-face encounter with military and CIA officials, Davis said during an interview in "The Age of Disclosure," a documentary by filmmaker Dan Farah that went live on Amazon Prime on Friday.

"One of them landed on the tarmac and a non-human entity deboarded the craft that landed and interacted with uniformed Air Force and civilian CIA personnel," Davis claimed.

"And when [Bush] asked for more details he was told that he did not have a need-to-know," he relayed.

Bush, a former decorated Naval aviator and director of the CIA, was allegedly informed of the encounter after his term as president, according to Davis, who said the two spoke in a series of private conversations in 2003.

Davis didn't describe the alien craft or the aliens, or discuss any material evidence for the claims.

The eagerly-awaited documentary focuses on a supposed top-secret government UFO-retrieval operation dubbed the "Legacy Program," and features US officials who claim direct knowledge that aliens exist and have visited Earth — without actually providing new physical evidence.

Davis claims in the film that alien bodies were recovered in Russia in 1988, pulled from the wreckage of a large tic-tac shaped UAP, or unidentified anomalous phenomena.

Hal Puthoff, a former AATIP member, quantum physicist and longtime disclosure advocate, claimed there were several different types of ETs.

Read more

Netanyahu to ask Trump to support another attack on Iran

Dave DeCamp | antiwar.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to ask President Trump to support another US-Israeli war on Iran, according to an NBC News report from Saturday. The Israeli PM is expected to make the case during a December 29 meeting at Mar-a-Lago.

The report said that Netanyahu will stress Israel's concern over Iran's production of ballistic missiles and will present Trump with options for the US to join or assist Israel with an attack on Iran. Israeli officials are also warning that Iran is reconstituting its nuclear sites that were bombed by the US during the war in June, but that was not their immediate concern.

According to a report from Israel Hayom, Israeli officials are preparing an "intelligence dossier" on Iran to present to Trump. Netanyahu's office has said the meeting will take place on December 29, though President Trump suggested last week that it wasn't finalized, saying, "We haven't set it up formally, but he'd like to see me."

Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has been warning that another war with Iran was likely since Israel didn't achieve all of its goals during its previous attack on the country, pointing to the fact that Iran's missile strikes forced Israel to agree to a ceasefire quickly.

Read more

Israel's growing role in Taiwan's air defense alarms Beijing

Uriel Araujo | Infobrics.org

Israel's expanding ties with Taiwan, particularly in missile defense, are quietly reshaping regional geopolitics and alarming Beijing. In this context, even small defense transfers could undermine years of careful diplomatic calibration.

Israeli-Taiwanese cooperation, long discreet and underreported, is now moving into far more sensitive terrain. Recent reports indicate that Israeli know-how has been quietly feeding into Taiwan's emerging missile-defense architecture, the so-called "T-DOME," a system explicitly inspired by Israel's Iron Dome. As a matter of fact, this development has already triggered a blunt diplomatic rebuke from Beijing, raising uncomfortable questions about Israel's long-standing balancing act between rival global powers.

A detailed account of this growing cooperation comes from Nadia Helmy, Visiting Senior Researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), who notes that Chinese intelligence agencies have detected expanding Israeli assistance to Taiwan's missile shield, particularly in radar integration, command-and-control architecture, and layered interception concepts. According to Helmy, Beijing views this cooperation not as an isolated commercial exchange but as a strategic signal, thereby crossing a political red line.

Read more

30% of San Francisco hit with power outage that left 130,000 in the dark

Comment: A taste of things to come...Welcome to SMART city, WI-FI ready!

--------

Nicholas McEntyre | New York Post

Self-driving cars stalled in middle of streets

San Francisco plunged into darkness when nearly 30 percent of the city was struck by a power outage, which brought vital transportation, such as self-driving cars, to a grinding halt on Saturday night.

Over 130,000 houses and businesses were left in the dark, largely in the northwest part of San Francisco, including the Richmond, Sunset, Presidio, and Golden Gate Park sections, officials said on Saturday.

As of early Sunday morning, more than 29,000 people were still without power, according to PowerOutageUS.

The "citywide" outages forced Waymo to halt its driverless car service, stranding the autonomous vehicles in the middle of the streets, SF Gate reported.

Read more

Israeli Cabinet approves 19 new apartheid colonies in occupied West Bank

Brett Wilkins | Common Dreams

"The ONLY reason Israel gets away with this naked thievery is US military and political support," said one observer.

Israel's Cabinet on Sunday finalized approval of 19 new Jewish-only settler colonies in the illegally occupied West Bank, a move the apartheid state's far-right finance minister said was aimed at thwarting Palestinian statehood.

Cabinet ministers approved the legalization of the previously unauthorized settler outposts throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, bringing the total number of new settlements in recent years to 69.

The move will bring the overall total number of exclusively or overwhelmingly Jewish settlements — which are illegal under international law — to more than 200, up from around 140 just three years ago.

Included in the new approval are two former settlements — Kadim and Ganim — that were evacuated in compliance with the now effectively repealed 2005 Disengagement Law, under which Israel dismantled all of its colonies in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank.

Read more

Can the Dark Ages Return?

Victor Davis Hanson | American Greatness

Western civilization arose in the 8th century B.C. Greece. Some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age. That chaos followed the utter collapse of the palatial culture of Mycenaean Greece.

But what reemerged were constitutional government, rationalism, liberty, freedom of expression, self-critique, and free markets — what we know now as the foundation of a unique Western civilization.

The Roman Republic inherited and enhanced the Greek model.

For a millennium, the Republic and subsequent Empire spread Western culture, eventually to be inseparable from Christianity.

From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and from the Rhine and Danube to the Sahara, there were a million square miles of safety, prosperity, progress, and science — until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD.

What followed was a second European Dark Age, roughly from 500 to 1000 AD.

Populations declined. Cities eroded. Roman roads, aqueducts, and laws crumbled.

In place of the old Roman provinces arose tribal chieftains and fiefdoms.

Whereas once Roman law had protected even rural people in remote areas, during the Dark Ages, walls and stone were the only means of keeping safe.

Finally, at the end of the 11th century, the old values and know-how of the complex world of Graeco-Roman civilization gradually reemerged.

The slow rebirth was later energized by the humanists and scientists of the Renaissance, Reformation, and eventually the 200-year European Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Americans do not believe that our current civilization could self-destruct a third time in the West, followed by an impoverished and brutal Dark Age.

But what caused these prior returns to tribalism and loss of science, technology, and the rule of law?

Historians cite several causes of societal collapse — and today they are hauntingly familiar.

Read more

The Evidence is Clear: Masks Don’t Do Anything

Activist Post

We’re being hit with the “Super Flu” (allegedly), and that means everyone wants us to wear masks again.

We went over this (a lot) in 2020. Then we went over it again in 2023. Masks don’t work, they never worked, and – prior to 2020 – the academic literature was very clear on this.

In a 2016 literature review, infection control expert Dr John Hardie found [emphasis added]:

Between 2004 and 2016 at least a dozen research or review articles have been published on the inadequacies of face masks. All agree that the poor facial fit and limited filtration characteristics of face masks make them unable to prevent the wearer inhaling airborne particles. In their well-referenced 2011 article on respiratory protection for healthcare workers, Drs. Harriman and Brosseau conclude that, “facemasks will not protect against the inhalation of aerosols.”

[…]

Health care workers have long relied heavily on surgical masks to provide protection against influenza and other infections. Yet there are no convincing scientific data that support the effectiveness of masks for respiratory protection.

[…]

It should be concluded from these and similar studies that the filter material of face masks does not retain or filter out viruses

Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review

That study was removed from the website of the Journal of Oral Health in July 2020, because it was “no longer relevant in our current climate”. Which is perfectly normal, I’m sure.

Read more

What are Israel Bonds, and why have they become a target for the BDS movement?

Michael Arria | Mondoweiss

In recent weeks, activists have achieved major victories in getting states to divest from Israel Bonds. But what exactly are Israel Bonds, what role do they play in the Israeli occupation, and how are activists successfully mobilizing against them?

Last month, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) announced that it will invest an additional $5 million in Israel Bonds, making the school the largest Israeli bondholder among universities worldwide.

“This is a sound financial decision — but equally important, it is a statement of solidarity that reflects our vision for the future,” declared FAU president Adam Hasner in a press release. “As a leading university and a member of the South Florida community, we cannot ignore what is happening to Jewish students across the country, and we are proud of the steps we are taking to become the safest and most welcoming university for Jewish life in America.”

The announcement comes amid growing protests over the issue, as multiple states have divested from the bonds in recent weeks after pressure campaigns from activists.

What are Israel Bonds, what role do they play in the Israeli occupation, and how are activists successively fighting against them?

What are Israel Bonds?

Israel Bonds are loans to the Israeli treasury that help sustain the country’s economy. In this economic arrangement, the U.S.-based Development Corporation for Israel (DCI) underwrites debt securities issued by the Israeli government.

The idea was devised by Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, when the country faced vast economic challenges.

Israel has consistently appealed to the U.S. Jewish population to invest in the bonds, particularly during times of turmoil in the region and Zionist military campaigns. Between October 7, 2023, and March 2024, Israel received more than $8 billion through Israel bonds.

Read more

'A lie and propaganda': DNI Gabbard fact-checks Reuters' Russia scaremongering in real time

Zero Hedge 

On Saturday afternoon, Reuters posted an anonymously-sourced story pushing the idea that Russia is bent on reconstituting the Soviet Union. Before the metaphorical ink had dried, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi  Gabbard pounced, condemning the story as "a lie and propaganda" on behalf of "warmongers" seeking to derail President Trump's drive to end the long and bloody Ukraine war.  

From selling the Iraq invasion to achieving a news and social media lockdown on Hunter Biden's laptop, the Deep State has long used major media outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and Washington Post to inject their agenda-advancing narratives into America's town square. Displaying the typical modus operandi with its Saturday night story, Reuters vaguely attributed the purported US intelligence conclusions about Russia to "six sources familiar with US intelligence." 

According to those sources, "US intelligence reports" are warning that, despite Putin's outwardly earnest claims that he wants to end the Ukraine war -- claims credited by Trump -- Russia not only wants to conquer all of Ukraine but also other European territories that were part of the Soviet Union. "The reports present a starkly different picture from that painted by...Trump and his Ukraine peace negotiators," wrote Reuters journalists Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and John Irish. Shortly after Banco promoted the story on X, Gabbard lashed out: 

"No, this is a lie and propaganda Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides.

Dangerously, you are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace effort, and fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe."

Read more