Polling Reveals A Profound Shift on Vaccines: We Can't Let Pharma Bury It

The Forgotten Side of Medicine

Story at a Glance:

- Due to widespread media and scientific censorship, accurate information which challenges pharmaceutical interests is difficult to obtain. Polling offers a unique means to bypass this blockade.

- Extensive polling shows 9%-34% of COVID vaccine recipients developed side effects from the vaccine, 7-13% developed serious side effects, 7.5-22% know someone with a severe vaccine injury, 24-28% know someone who they believe died from the vaccine and 46-55% believe the COVID vaccines have killed a significant number of people.

- These results are profound and likely account for the unprecedented loss of trust in doctors and hospitals since COVID (from 71.5% to 40.1%) which is mirrored by a significant loss of trust in the pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities and support for childhood vaccinations (which, now, almost half of the population no longer fully trusts).

- MAHA's policies and accomplishments, including those towards vaccines, are now some of the most popular issues with the electorate — but unfortunately are not being effectively promoted to the public due to media censorship.

- To prepare for the midterms, the Trump administration has pivoted away from vaccines due to (likely biased) polling data suggesting that vaccines are a toxic issue that must be avoided to have a chance of winning the election.

- I believe this pivot is a mistake as the polls (detailed in this article) show immense support for RFK's actions on vaccines. Furthermore, this mistake is very similar to what happened in 2020 as the Trump administration struggled to address COVID and failed to secure the 2020 election.

Joe Rogan recently had RFK Jr. on his show, and there, RFK presented an excellent summary of the wide range of remarkable (and previously impossible) things he and his team have been able to pull off after a year due to them having the president's complete support to challenge the vested interests that profit off of keeping us sick. As such, for those of you who want to know what MAHA is actually doing, I would highly recommend watching it.

Unfortunately, this segment also confirmed something I was quite worried about: RFK, someone I know sincerely cares about vaccine safety, did not once discuss vaccines with Rogan, even in numerous instances where it would have been the most expected subject to insert after related points were raised. Based on this (and many other shifts I've noticed recently), I am relatively certain the Trump administration received polling data that made them decide the vaccine subject needed to be avoided until after the midterms and that instead "safer" topics with a more widespread appeal needed to be focused on now. In this article, I will provide the data that shows why this is a mistake and the key steps we can take to correct it.

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Marco Rubio: An Abhorrent Choice for Secretary of State

Comment: A reminder of who Trump's Marc Rubio is...Unfortunately, despite the scope of this article (from November 2024) it does not focus on where the real danger lies with this man: his rampant loyalty to Israel and his worship of the very worst elements of Zio-conservatism.

----------------------------

Jeremey Kumarov | Covert Action Magazine

He is part of a group of extreme right-wing hawks devoid of ethics set to run Trump’s foreign policy team

President-elect Donald Trump named Florida Senator Marco Rubio as his nominee for Secretary of State, an abhorrent choice that shows Trump’s claim to be a peace candidate to be a complete illusion.

The New York Times reported that, since he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rubio has “staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in particular.”

Supportive of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, 2011 U.S. bombing of Libya and genocidal U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, Rubio has further expressed unalloyed support for Israel’s war in Gaza, claiming that Hamas was to blame for Palestinian civilian deaths.

The New York Times emphasized that Rubio has been among the most outspoken senators on the need for the U.S. to be more aggressive on China.

While sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, he demanded that the Biden administration block sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, after it released an artificial intelligence processor chip-powered laptop.

Sanctioned by the Chinese government for supporting an anti-Chinese uprising in Hong Kong, Rubio introduced the “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act” that would fast-track U.S.-Taiwan military coordination, and has called for Taiwan to increase its defense spending, which is not a majority view in Taiwan.

Zhu Junwei, a former researcher in the People’s Liberation Army and director of American research at Beijing’s Grandview Institution think tank, told the Australian Financial Review that Rubio’s appointment would “be a nightmare coming true.”

Rubio’s selection is also a nightmare for Cubans, given his stature as a leader of Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban expat community.

Falsely claiming that the Castro/Díaz-Canel regime has served as a puppet for Communist China, Iran, and most recently Russia, Rubio’s overriding priority as Secretary of State will be to achieve Washington’s long-standing goal of overthrowing Cuba’s socialist government by expanding on an already crushing embargo, and by supporting dissident movements through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other State Department-linked agencies.

The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio asserted on the campaign trail that his family came to the U.S. to escape persecution by Fidel Castro’s government. However, a review of government immigration records revealed that Rubio’s parents actually came to Miami in 1956 in order to escape persecution by U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista whom Castro overthrew.

Rubio’s grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia went back to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution to take a job in the Cuban Treasury Ministry, though later had a falling out with the Castro regime.

During Rubio’s 2016 presidential run, The New York Times quoted from a Havana resident living on the street where Rubio’s father grew up who gave Rubio a vigorous thumbs down when asked about him. Héctor Montiel, 66, said that, “if Marco Rubio becomes president, we’re done for. He’s against Cuba in every possible way….Rubio and these Republicans, they are still stuck in 1959.” Echoing similar sentiments, Alain Marcelo, 46, told The New York Times: “He [Rubio] wants to kill us!…Viva Fidel. Rubio’s our enemy!”

Born in 1971, Rubio was an indifferent student who played football at Tarkio College in Missouri before earning degrees from the University of Florida and the University of Miami School of Law.

Rubio’s dishonesty was evident when he claimed to be unaware of his brother-in-law Orlando Cicilia’s direction of a $75 million cocaine smuggling ring from his home in West Kendall, Florida, in the 1980s where Rubio lived as a teenager.

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Israel and its relationship to the Islamic State

Jonathan Yen | Mises Institute

This week, ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL, IS, or Daesh, has reappeared in the headlines following the killing of two Iowa National Guardsman — Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard — in an ISIS airstrike in Palmyra, Syria. These two American men are only the latest of the over 40,000 soldiers, from numerous different nations, who have lost their lives in the war against ISIS — a war which America's supposed greatest ally against terrorism, Israel, has not assisted.

The AIPAC website proudly proclaims that Israel is an "Indispensable Ally" against terrorism; and indeed, the Trump administration has continued funding the Israeli government at massive expense, including a $4 billion dollar military aid package earlier this year.

Just this last week, a Newsweek Opinion author insisted that the United States must continue to support Israel, claiming:

"Instability around Israel does not stay local. It affects energy markets, counterterrorism efforts, nuclear proliferation, regional power balances and American credibility worldwide. A weakened Israel would invite wider conflict and embolden adversaries far beyond the region. Supporting Israel is not about subsidizing complacency. It is about preventing dangerous chain reactions in one of the world's most volatile regions."

A similar opinion piece in the New York Times bemoaned the breakdown of American support for Israel, claiming that Israel and the United States have been natural allies in the fight against "radical Islam." But is this true? Are these calls by regime media for a closer military relationship with Israel to stop terrorism based in fact? In fact, why does ISIS still have a presence in Syria at all?

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The American blitzkrieg on Venezuela: No one is safe

Tarik Cyril Amar | RT.com

The military incursion and kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro shows how normalized the outrageous has become.

After five months - really two-and-a-half decades - of ever-escalating preparations by increasing diplomatic, economic, and clandestine warfare, the US has finally executed a full regime-change invasion in Venezuela. The final attack, focused on kidnapping the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from the capital Caracas, was short. But the campaign has certainly not been bloodless. While we know little about what exactly happened on the ground, Washington's perfectly criminal strikes on alleged smuggling boats at sea which served as the core of the attack's preparatory propaganda barrage, have already killed over 100 victims, not to speak of the overlooked victims of sanctions.

Then, what American officials have called a "large-scale strike" against Venezuela in the early hours of January 3 targeted not only Caracas but several locations throughout the country. For whatever reason, resistance to this "dark and deadly" (in President Donald Trump's words) operation, seems to have been minimal. In view of the long and very visible military buildup, as well as psychological warfare campaign that preceded these night raids, it is hard to believe that they came as a surprise. Betrayal, subversion, and secret, nasty deals may well have played a role.

While such things will probably remain murky for a while - or forever - other, more important aspects of the US invasion of Venezuela are unambiguously clear: It is absolutely, irredeemably illegal, a massive and open breach of the UN Charter's prohibition of wars of aggression. Even some of America's most loyal 'Atlanticist' vassals in Europe have to admit that much, for instance, a recent op-ed in Germany's ultra-mainstream Die Zeit newspaper.

Washington's pretexts are, as so often, flimsy insults to everyone with half a brain. Venezuela and Maduro are not contributing anything significant - if anything at all - to America's very own and never-ending drug problems, neither with regard to cocaine nor fentanyl. And Maduro's election in 2024 may have been fair or not. The decisive, conclusive point is that such issues must be dealt with inside a sovereign country and can never justify military intervention from outside. Or who is going to be next? Germany for the extremely dubious way (polite expression) its mainstream parties have locked the New-Left BSW out of parliament in what may well amount to a cold coup?

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Ex-CIA Director Joins Board of Ukraine’s Largest Drone Company

Jeremy Kuzmarov | Covert Action Magazine

Mike Pompeo, CIA Director and Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, has long been a Ukraine war hawk, calling Russia’s actions genocide, stating that Crimea should be returned to Ukraine (when its people voted overwhelmingly to be part of Russia) and consistently advocating for increased military aid to Ukraine.

Pompeo’s tenure as CIA Director in 2017-2018 coincided with a significant expansion of the CIA’s involvement in Ukraine. The CIA set up 12 clandestine bases following the February 2014 CIA-backed Maidan coup that fueled the conflict with Russia.

In November, AP News reported that Pompeo had joined the advisory board of Ukraine’s leading defense company, Fire Point, which develops long-range drones capable of striking targets deep inside Russia.

At a press conference announcing his appointment, Pompeo said that his mission with the company was to help Fire Point become an important supplier for Western hardware [i.e., drones].”

CovertAction Magazine reported last February on how the CIA—going back to Pompeo’s time as Agency director—had played a key role in the development of Ukraine’s drone industry by making billion-dollar investments in it and sending intelligence officials to help out with it.

The same article detailed how Ukrainian drone strikes had struck oil refineries and gas processing plants, causing terrible environmental damage, and struck civilian infrastructure, including apartment buildings and hospitals, and killed three civilians walking on the street in the Belgorod border region.

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Interview: Insider Sources Reporting MASSIVE Global Event Imminent

Armstrong Economics

Artificial Intelligence in Support of Israeli Intelligence. The Planning of Genocide. “What Will Gaza Look Like in the Future”

Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research

Using Artificial Intelligence this is the “political simulation” of  “what Gaza will look like in the future.”

This was an initiative of Gila Gamliel-Demri, who was Israel’s Minister of Intelligence in 2023-2024. The last sentence pertains to a Ministry of Intelligence “Secret” Memorandum pertaining to “Voluntary Immigration” for Gaza, which was submitted to the Netanyahu Cabinet on 10.13.2023..

Translation 

‘Exposure: This is what Gaza will look like in the future.

Voluntary Gazan migration only with Trump and Netanyahu.

It’s us or them!

Link to the voluntary immigration plan from Gaza that I submitted to the cabinet in the first week of the ‘Iron Swords’ war on 13.10.23 in the first comment.”

[...]

There is one statement in this video production which is not based on Artificial Intelligence. It’s the so-called. “Voluntary Immigration Plan”, namely Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence “Secret” Memorandum  which was released on October 13, 2023 and adopted by the Netanyahu Cabinet.

What this entails is the admission that there was a detailed intelligence and military agenda to “Wipe Gaza off the Map”, planned well in advance on October 7, 2023... 

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Alarm as Trump Requests Permanent Reauthorization of NSA Mass Spying Program Exposed by Snowden

Common Dreams

Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates raised alarm Thursday after the Trump administration called on Congress to reauthorize an NSA mass surveillance program that was exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The New York Times, which obtained the Trump administration's request to Congress, reported that "the administration urged lawmakers to make permanent the legal authority for the National Security Agency to gain access to logs of Americans' domestic communications, the USA Freedom Act."

"It's long past time that this surveillance program was shuttered once and for all."
—Patrick Toomey, ACLU

"The law, enacted after the intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden revealed the existence of the program in 2013, is set to expire in December, but the Trump administration wants it made permanent," according to the Times.

The administration claimed in its letter to Congress—which was signed by outgoing National Intelligence chief Dan Coats—that the NSA has suspended the spying program, but Free Press Action government relations director Sandra Fulton said in a statement that this "should give little comfort to those whose privacy rights are routinely violated by authorities."

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The Trump Administration Is Using the Full Power of the U.S. Surveillance State Against Whistleblowers

The Intercept

 

Government whistleblowers are increasingly being charged under laws such as the Espionage Act, but they aren’t spies.

They’re ordinary Americans and, like most of us, they carry smartphones that automatically get backed up to the cloud. When they want to talk to someone, they send them a text or call them on the phone. They use Gmail and share memes and talk politics on Facebook. Sometimes they even log in to these accounts from their work computers.

Then, during the course of their work, they see something disturbing. Maybe it’s that the government often has no idea if the people it kills in drone strikes are civilians. Or that the NSA witnessed a cyberattack against local election officials in 2016 that U.S. intelligence believes was orchestrated by Russia, even though the president is always on TV saying the opposite. Or that the FBI uses hidden loopholes to bypass its own rules against infiltrating political and religious groups. Or that Donald Trump’s associates are implicated in sketchy financial transactions.

So they search government databases for more information and maybe print some of the documents they find. They search for related information using Google. Maybe they even send a text message to a friend about how insane this is while they consider possible next steps. Should they contact a journalist? They look up the tips pages of news organizations they like and start researching how to use Tor Browser. All of this happens before they’ve reached out to a journalist for the first time. 

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The End of Russiagate

Aaron Maté
Le Monde Diplomatique

The former special counsel still has a lot he can clarify.

"For two years, Democrats have waited on Robert Mueller to deliver a death blow to the Trump presidency," The New York Times observed on July 20. "On Wednesday, in back-to-back hearings with the former special counsel, that wish could face its final make-or-break moment." The very fact that Democrats had to subpoena Mueller in order to create this final moment should in fact be the final reminder of what a mistake it was for Democrats to have waited on him. If Mueller had incriminating information yet to share, or had been stymied from doing his work, or if Attorney General William Barr had somehow misrepresented his findings, then it stands to reason that Mueller would be welcoming the opportunity to appear before Congress, not resisting it. The reality is that Mueller's investigation did not indict anyone on the Trump campaign for collusion with Russia, or even for anything related to the 2016 election. Mueller's report found no evidence of a Trump-Russia conspiracy, and even undermined the case for it.

That said, there are unresolved matters that Mueller's testimony could help clarify. Mueller claimed to have established that the Russian government conducted "a sweeping and systematic" interference campaign in order to elect Trump, yet the contents of his report don't support that allegation. The Mueller report repeatedly excludes countervailing information in order to suggest, misleadingly, that the Trump campaign had suspect "links" and "ties" to people connected with Russia. And Mueller and other intelligence officials involved in the Russia probe made questionable investigative decisions that are worthy of scrutiny. To address these issues, here are some questions that Mueller could be asked.

I should note that missing from my list is anything related to obstruction. This topic will surely dominate Democrats' line of questioning, but I view it as secondary and more appropriate for a law school seminar. The core issue of the Mueller investigation is alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's potential coordination with it. The obstruction issue only began to dominate after it was clear that Mueller had found no such conspiracy. Although the report does show examples of Trump's stated intent to impede the Mueller investigation, the probe itself was unhindered.

There is also the fact that Mueller himself declined to make a call on obstruction, and even presented arguments that could be used to refute it. The obstruction section of the report notes that Trump was not "involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference." Although not dispositive, Mueller says that "the absence of that evidence affects the analysis of the President's intent and requires consideration of other possible motives for his conduct." In a joint statement with Barr, Mueller also made clear that "he was not saying that, but for the [Office of Legal Counsel] opinion, he would have found the President obstructed justice." Accordingly, I see no reason why congressional Democrats are so confident that Mueller found otherwise.

1. Why did you suggest that juvenile clickbait from a Russian troll farm was part of a "sweeping and systematic" Russian government interference effort?

The Mueller report begins by declaring that "[t]he Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." A few paragraphs later, Mueller tells us that Russian interference occurred "principally through two operations." The first of these operations was "a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton," carried out by a Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).  

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Provocations in the Gulf of Oman: Will John Bolton Get His War on Iran?

Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Pepe Escobar, and Yves EnglerGlobal Research 

“America’s declared policy should be ending Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution before its 40th anniversary…Recognizing a new Iranian regime in 2019 would reverse the shame of once seeing our diplomats held hostage for 444 days.” – John Bolton (January 15, 2018) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW 




Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Coincidentally or not, America’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran began within a month of John Bolton’s installment as National Security Advisor. On May 8th of 2018, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. was backing out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S. under President Barrack Obama along with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Germany and the EU in July of 2015. Consequently, the sanctions imposed on Iran previous to the JCPOA were reinstated, and additional sanctions imposed by the end of the year.

In April of this year, the Trump Administration took the unprecedented step of declaring the Middle East country’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to be a terrorist organization.

Two weeks later, the Trump Administration ended the waivers it had extended to other countries which had to that point allowed them to escape sanctions for purchasing Iranian oil. The aim of this manoeuvre being to strangle the Iranian economy by preventing its ability to profit from the sale of its main source of revenue.

Two weeks after that, Bolton announced the deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group and Air Force Bombers to the Middle East as part of an effort to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

The following week, four tankers were attacked in the Persian Gulf. Bolton and Secretary of State Pompeo blamed Iran for the attacks.

America’s choke-hold on Iran’s economy continued to tighten with further sanctions on May 8th of this year, the anniversary of Trump’s JCPOA pull-out.

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See also: Gulf of Oman: Unconvinced EU foreign ministers call for independent investigation after US claim Iran is behind tanker attack

Mueller Caught In Another Deception; Key ‘Russia Link’ Exposed As Informant For US, Ukraine

Zero Hedge

A Ukrainian businessman painted in the Mueller report as a sinister link to Russia was actually a “sensitive” intelligence source for the US State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian issues – and passed messages between the Washington and Kiev, according to The Hill‘s John Solomon.

Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, was described on page 6 of the Mueller report as having “ties to Russian intelligence” – and was cast in a sinister light as a potential threat to democracy. Mueller completely omitted the fact that Kilimnik was working as an informant and intermediary between America and Ukraine, and subsequently indicted him for obstruction of justice.

Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either.
He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show.
The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded. –The Hill

What’s more, the chief political officer at the Kiev embassy from 2014 to 2017, Alan Purcell, told the FBI that State officials – including senior embassy officials Alexander Kasanof and Eric Schultz, thought Klimnik was such a valuable asset that they wouldn’t mention his name in official cables out of fear that WikiLeaks would expose him.

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Bipartisan Support for Trump’s Aggressive Iran Policy Reveals the Hollowness of Russiagate

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

In early May, MSNBC news host Rachel Maddow — known as one of the top promoters of the new Cold War and Russiagate in American media — emphatically endorsed regime change in Venezuela after she claimed that President Donald Trump’s hawkishness towards the South American country had changed, all because of a single phone call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. 
 
Though Maddow’s claims were arguably the most extreme in suggesting that Trump was “taking orders” from Putin on Venezuela, she wasn’t alone in making them. For instance, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks also made the claim that the Trump-Putin phone call on Venezuela was “direct evidence that he is literally taking orders from Putin.” In addition, several corporate media outlets supported this narrative by suggesting that Trump “echoed” Putin’s Venezuela stance after the phone call and directly contradicted his top staffers and even himself in doing so.

Yet now, strangely, those same corporate media voices remain silent on the Trump administration’s other regime-change project — in Iran — despite the fact that the Putin-led Russian government is set to be the biggest winner as tensions between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic boil over and threaten to send the Middle East into a fresh bout of destruction and chaos.  

As tensions between the U.S. and Iran have grown in recent months, analysts in both corporate and independent media have speculated about what country is set to benefit the most from the U.S.’ campaign of “maximum pressure” and regime change against the Islamic Republic. Of the many analyses, two countries have stood out as likely beneficiaries: Russia and China.

The cases for China and Russia’s benefit are somewhat similar given that the Trump administration’s focus on Iran results in less pressure on both Russia and China. This is despite the fact that, officially, the U.S.’ current National Defense Strategy explicitly calls for focusing attention on preparing for a “long war” against Russia and China to prevent either from superseding the U.S. as a global superpower. Yet, with the U.S. focused on regime change in Iran and Venezuela, Russia and China can avoid bearing the brunt of U.S. military adventurism, either directly or by proxy, while the U.S. wears itself thin by trying to do it all at once.

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Fmr UK Minister warns Washington's brazen Mid East policy could lead to 'new world war'

Sputnik

The arrival of the Trump administration in the White House has marked a major shift in US policy towards Iran. Since then, Washington has withdrawn from the landmark Iran nuclear deal and ramped up its military presence in the region, targeting the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with The Guardian, Alistair Burt, former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who left office at the end of March 2019, has shared his concerns regarding Washington's Middle East policy under Donald Trump, pointing out that in its current state it could spark a war.

"America at present does not believe in compromise - it is a case of hitting them in the nuts first, and sooner or later they follow. It is a not unfamiliar technique, and not always unsuccessful. And [Trump's] proud of it", he said.

Burt argued that instead of bluntly pushing its agenda, Washington should sit down at the negotiating table with other Middle East states, including Iran. He added that unless the parties find a solution to the constantly escalating tensions, they might turn into something far worse.

"If nothing changes, this is going to get worse and somebody somewhere is going to do something stupid and you will have the modern equivalent of the Archduke being shot in some nameless street in Sarajevo", Burt said in an obvious reference to the incident that led to the outbreak of the First World War.

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Trump Targets UK, Australia And Ukraine Over 'Greatest Hoax In The History Of Our Country'

Zero Hedge

President Trump on Friday said that he wants Attorney General William Barr to investigate the UK, Australia and Ukraine for their roles in the 'greatest hoax in the history of our country.'

Speaking with reporters at the White House on Friday before his trip to Japan, Trump discussed his decision this week to issue a sweeping declassification order - leaving it in the hands of Barr to determine exactly what happened to Trump and his campaign before and after the 2016 US election. 

"For over a year, people have asked me to declassify. What I've done is declassified everything," said Trump, adding "He can look and I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine." 

"It's the greatest hoax probably in the history of our country and somebody has to get to the bottom of it. We'll see. For a long period of time, they wanted me to declassify and I did."

"This is about finding out what happened," said Trump. "What happened and when did it happen, because this was an attempted takedown of the president of the United States, and we have to find out why."

"We're exposing everything. We're being a word that you like, transparent. We're being, ultimately we're being transparent. That's what it's about. Again, this should never ever happen in our country again."

After the Mueller report made clear that Trump and his campaign had in no way conspired with Russia during hte 2016 election, Democrats immediately pivoted to whether Trump obstructed the investigation. Trump and his supporters, however, immediately pivoted to the conduct of the US intelligence community, including the involvement of foreign actors and possibly their governments. 

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Trump Attacks Military Industrial Complex and Calls for Infrastructure Investments in the Middle East

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture

For the first time in over half a century, an American President has actually come out attacking the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, everyone knows of President Dwight D. Eisenhauer’s famous outgoing 1961 speech warning the world (and the incoming President Kennedy) what sort of monster had arisen at the heart of America’s defense institutions. Very little on the matter was said on the frightening topic by decades of political leaders who rose to prominence in the shadow of JFK’s corpse. Instead, the beast grew like a malignant cancer over the ensuing years as a major branch of the British-run deep state that carried out a coup with Sir Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in 1946 and the MI6-directed re-organization of American intelligence with the creation of the CIA in 1947.

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, networks of neoconservative contaminated all branches of government in both parties bringing the USA into a frenzied military doctrine centered on regime change wars, oil-centered geopolitics and unipolarism totally uncharacteristic with the better constitutional traditions of the nation. This geopolitical doctrine nearly drove the west into a full military confrontation with Russia and China in recent years.

The Tide Begins to Turn

On May 20 speaking to Fox News, President Trump echoed Eisenhauer’s warnings. Under a coterie of Trump’s war-mongering advisors such as John Bolton, Gina Haspel, Terrence O’Shaughnessy and Mike Pompeo, America has recently been brought to the brink of war with Iran. While Trump has too often accommodated this hive of neocons, his recent statements and repeated calls for cooperation with Russia and China demonstrate a sound push back which should be taken very seriously. In that Fox interview Trump said:

“With all of everything that’s going on, and I’m not one that believes—you know, I’m not somebody that wants to go in to war, because war hurts economies, war kills people, most importantly—by far most importantly.”
You know, in Syria, with the caliphate, so I wipe out 100 percent of the caliphate. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have these crazy people who run around blowing up stores and blowing up things—these are seriously ill people. I don’t want to say, ‘Oh, they’re wiped,’ you know, ISIS. But, I wiped out 100 percent of the caliphate. I say, ‘I want to bring our troops back home.’ The place went crazy. You have people here in Washington, they never want to leave.”
‘You know what I’ll do, I’ll leave a couple hundred soldiers behind,’ but if it was up to them, they’d bring thousands of soldiers in. Someday people will explain it, but you do have a group, and they call it the military-industrial complex. They never want to leave. They always want to fight.”

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Tulsi Gabbard: War With Iran 'Better Serves The Interests' of 'Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia' Than U.S.

Chris Menahan
Information Liberation

Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Rep Tulsi Gabbard spoke out against launching a war with Iran on Tucker Carlson's show Thursday and warned the consequences could be "devastating" for America.

From Fox News:

"I know where this path leads us and I'm concerned because the American people don't seem to be prepared for how devastating and costly such a war would be," Gabbard said Thursday during an appearance on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

[...] "So, what we are facing is, essentially, a war that has no frontlines, total chaos, engulfs the whole region, is not contained within Iran or Iraq but would extend to Syria and Lebanon and Israel across the region, setting us up in a situation where, in Iraq, we lost over 4,000 of my brothers and sisters in uniform," Gabbard said. "A war with Iran would take far more American lives, it would cost more civilian lives across the region."

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Russia-obsessed Journalist Plays The Victim Card, Demands More Social Media Censorship

Eino Virtanen
Sott.net

A group of self-identified 'fake news victims' recently published an open letter in Avaaz.org to social media giants and their CEOs: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Jack Dorsey (Twitter) and Susan Wojcicki (Youtube). Their plea goes as follows:

"This week victims of disinformation from across the world have come to Silicon Valley to confront social media companies for the first time. The meetings were highly emotional, bringing social media employees to tears, as they came face-to-face with the human cost of the crisis fueled by their platforms. Following their meetings, these victims have issued an open letter calling for urgent action to stop the spread of disinformation and to recognize the deadly damage it can cause."

One of the 'victims' is Finnish mainstream media journalist, Jessikka Aro, who focuses almost exclusively on bashing Russia and Putin, and 'exposing the trolls in our midst'.

Aro became a visible 'Russia-expert' in Finland after writing an article in 2015 filled with wild speculations about the St. Petersburg 'Troll Factory', i.e the Internet Research Agency (IRA). In reality the IRA was revealed to be not much more than a low-level social media marketing (spamming) company with zero impact on the 2016 elections. Just as the whole Russia-collusion story has been proven to be false, the basis of Aro's journalistic career rests on similar outlandish conspiracy theories. Aro has won international awards for her work, and in March this year was set to travel to Washington and claim a $5,000 grant for winning the International Women of Courage Award issued by the US State Department, until it was rescinded because someone there came across her bashing of Trump as 'Russian agent' on Twitter.

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62 Organizations to U.S. Congress: Pass Legislation to Halt a “March to War” with Iran

NIAC Action

In light of President Trump and John Bolton’s dangerous escalations against Iran and a forthcoming intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill this afternoon, 62 organizations – including J Street, Indivisible, NIAC Action and Win Without War – sent a letter calling on Congress to pass legislation to halt a march to war with Iran.
 
The combined groups, representing millions of Americans concerned about renewed threats of war with Iran, signals a strong desire for Congress to step up and block Trump from leading America into yet another war of choice.

“Last Fall, Americans voted for a new Congress to act as a co-equal branch of government that would finally serve as a check on this president and his reckless impulses,” said NIAC President Jamal Abdi. “Now Trump and his National Security Advisor John Bolton are taking this country to the brink of a completely avoidable military confrontation. It’s time for Congress to turn its words into action by passing legislation to stop Trump and Bolton from starting an illegal war.”
“President Trump’s chaos-first foreign policy centers around his penchant for turning challenges into crises,” said Win Without War Advocacy Director Erica Fein. “His Iran policy is no different: President Obama took us off the path to war, but now Trump and Bolton have put us back on it. It’s time for Congress to put the brakes on a Trump-Bolton war with Iran.”
“If the Trump administration were to launch a war of choice against Iran it would have devastating consequences for the United States, Israel and the entire region,” warned J Street head of government affairs Dylan Williams. “Congress must fulfill its constitutional responsibility by making absolutely clear that the president is not authorized to trigger a new conflagration in the Middle East.”

According to the letter,

“As the drumbeat for war grows louder, Congress must fulfill its Constitutional duty and enact further constraints to unequivocally prevent the administration from launching an unauthorized war.” The letter concludes, “The American people do not want another disastrous war of choice in the Middle East. Congress has the chance to stop a war before it starts. Please take action before it is too late.”

Please see full text here.

Leaked Pentagon Plan Calls For 120,000 Troops To Counter Iran

ZeroHedge

As Michael Pompeo travels to Brussels to discuss the Iranian threat amid a flare-up in tensions that has brought the US to the brink of an armed conflict, the New York Times has published details from a confidential military plan presented to top national security officials that envisions sending as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East should Iran attack American forces or start ramping up work on nuclear weapons (something it has promised to do if its European partners don't meet their commitments under the Iran deal).

Though the revised plan - it had been modified to incorporate suggestions from John Bolton - doesn't include plans for a land invasion, it does reflect "the influence of Mr. Bolton, one of the administration's most virulent Iran hawks, whose push for confrontation with Tehran was ignored more than a decade ago by President George W Bush."

It's unclear whether Trump himself has seen, or been briefed on, the plan. Asked about it, Trump said "we'll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it would be a very bad mistake."

Here are a few key details from the plan according to more than a half-dozen senior administration officials who spoke with the NYT:

Read more