Epstein Files Contain Child Abuse and Murder: “End of Western Order

US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s recent admission regarding the latest tranche of Jeffrey Epstein files is bombastic, to say the least. In explaining why millions of pages remain withheld, Blanche stated that the unreleased material includes any depiction of child sexual abuse, and, crucially, documents and images depicting “death, physical abuse and injury” (around 5min10s).

The point here is that Blanche did more than merely restate standard protocol: by specifying these categories, he implicitly confirmed that such material exists within the Epstein files: an acknowledgment that the Epstein archive contains images of child sexual abuse material, as well as physical harm and even death, which are being withheld because of their graphic content. Thus, part of what remains hidden is allegedly not being hidden to protect state secrets, but because it depicts crimes of extraordinary gravity. In a sane world, that alone should have triggered wall-to-wall outrage.

This context casts a harsh light on the recurring references to torture and murder scattered throughout the Epstein files themselves. Some of these appear in emails and exchanges involving Epstein and his associates, that may sometimes be dismissed as dark humor, metaphor, or hyperbolic parlance. Yet victims such as Virginia Giuffre have described sado-masochistic-like sexual abuse and torture taking place in Epstein’s New York mansion.

It is reasonable to assume that not everything in the Epstein files is true. Some entries consist of anonymous tips sent to the FBI, which may or may not be credible. Some include allegations so grotesque that are hard to believe, mentioning cannibalism, or baby trafficking involving high-level political figures, not to mention the allegation that a sheik gave his own “virgin daughter” as a “gift” to US President Donald Trump, mentioned various times in sexual abuse contexts.

Sensationalism aside, it would be equally naïve to assume that any monstrous allegations are, by definition, false. One may recall that drug cartels have been credibly accused of ritualistic violence and murder and even cannibalism. Cartel members and associates today, one may recall, are not just street gang members, but also businessmen and high-ranking politicians.

US intelligence cooperation with organized crime, as I’ve written, including cartels capable of extreme atrocities, is not a conspiracy theory but a historical fact. Thus, if even, say, only 10% of the most horrific Epstein material is true, that is more than enough to constitute a scandal of civilizational proportions – not the mention the material that has not been released for the aforementioned reasons.

And we are not really talking about the “underworld”: “overworld” would be a better description. The Epstein network includes billionaires, media celebrities, former presidents, and royalty. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has now called for Prince Andrew to testify (the latter was photographed – fully dressed – on four, on top of a woman that appears to be unconscious on the floor).

One could argue that this is the worst elite scandal since the Roman times of Caligula and Nero, also echoing the likes of Gilles de Rais or Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Something is profoundly rotten in the West.

Against this backdrop, recent attempts to reframe Epstein as part of a “KGB honey trap” operation look like crude misdirection. A Daily Mail’s recent piece has ridiculously enough suggested that Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation was essentially a Russian intelligence scheme, pointing to his attempts to secure meetings with Vladimir Putin (which turned out never happening) and the presence of trafficked Russian or Eastern European women in his orbit.

Epstein was constantly pitching ideas, seeking meetings, and inserting himself into elite networks worldwide. The man was not merely a pimp and human trafficker (albeit that was part of his web of blackmail and influence); he functioned as an intermediary, a power broker and fixer, plus a consultant, lobbyist, and an “articulator” of interests across finance, politics, and intelligence. In the emails one can see him casually advising and discussing business opportunities with major European bankers, while signing agreements pertaining to  risk analysis and algorithm-related work.

In a March 2014 email exchange with Ariane de Rothschild, a prominent Swiss banking executive, Epstein responded to her mention of discussing Ukraine by saying that the US-supported Maidan coup in that country should provide “many opportunities.” This was no “Russian asset” but rather a Western operator sniffing around geopolitical flashpoints. In the files, by the way, there are also discussions about trying to seize Libya’s frozen state assets.

Even Ghislaine Maxwell’s father alleged “Russian” angle (suggested by the Daily Mail piece) revolved in fact largely around Jewish émigré networks from the Soviet Union, which in that context intersected far more with Israeli and Western intelligence milieus (Robert Maxwell was a well-known Israeli spy). The Epstein operation was embedded in the Western establishment; attempts to externalize blame look like narrative damage control.

As I’ve argued, the Epstein scandal intersects with a long history of US intelligence involvement in blackmail, sexual compromise, and child abuse scandals. What has emerged thus far may only be the tip of the iceberg.

This scandal in fact resonates quite timely with broader discussions about the coming end of the West-centered global order, now openly acknowledged in Davos. Moral legitimacy still kind of matters in geopolitics. To put it simply, when Western elites lecture the world on “values” while sitting atop a sewer of abuse, blackmail, and impunity, their authority collapses. The Epstein files are thus not just about criminal justice; they are about systemic decay.

Caution is of course still required. Scrutiny must be meticulous, and sensationalism avoided. Yet minimizing what the US Deputy Attorney General has effectively admitted is no longer tenable: the Epstein files contain child sexual abuse, graphic violence and murder. If the Western establishment wants to talk about a “rules-based order,” it might first want to talk about the rules governing Epstein’s world – which is also the world of the crème de la crème of Western politics and finance.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/epstein-files-contain-child-abuse-murder/5914478

Epstein Files: Kosovo Narco-terrorists helped Traffic over a Million Children for Deranged Western Elites

It’s no secret that the political West is involved in some of the most heinous crimes in human history, whether it’s centuries of brutal colonialism, slave trade and general aggression against the entire world, or the promotion of the so-called “Western values” that make anyone sane sick to their stomach.

However, the criminal oligarchy running the United States, United Kingdom, European Union and NATO is actually far worse than you could possibly imagine, as evidenced by the released Epstein files.

It turns out that all the “crazy conspiracy theories” we’ve been hearing about over the last several decades are not only true, but are just the tip of the icebergThe potential for monstrous evil that these criminals have demonstrated makes normal people recoil in disgust.

It will probably take years (if not decades) to review all released Epstein files (upwards of 3,5 million), but what we do know is more than enough to see the bigger picture.

Namely, things that were previously designated as “insane conspiracy theories” present only on the “fringes of the Internet”, are now widely available for everyone to see and question their own willful blindness to the horrifying crimes committed against those who need protection the most – children.

The files suggest that millions of them have been trafficked by a massive globalist pedophile network employed by Western elites (including the most prominent royalty). The role of the US/EU/NATO’s numerous vassals and satellite states in this monstrous process is also critically important.

This is particularly true for the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia, now formally under the control of Albanian narco-terrorists.

Due to their propensity to serve the most powerful master, Kosovar ethnic Albanians were the perfect NATO collaborators (just like they were Nazi collaborators during WWII), kidnapping civilians during the 1999 US/NATO aggression on Serbia (then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) for organ harvesting and trafficking on the black market. It should be noted that even some non-compliant ethnic Albanians were also kidnapped, although the vast majority of the victims were Serbs and other non-Albanian groups. However, this monstrous practice was only one segment of NATO-backed criminal activities in occupied Kosovo and Metohia.

Namely, the aforementioned Epstein files reveal that the Albanian narco-terrorist entity that brands itself “Kosovo” was involved in trafficking at least a million children for the “needs” of Western elites that are heavily involved in pedophilia, sex trafficking and organ harvesting.

The children originated from all over the world, according to what’s called “the Kosovo children activity book”. Many of these kids were moved from Thailand and then further to Western countries where their trace is lost. We don’t have any exact information on the fate of these children, but given the attempts of Western authorities to cover up monstrous crimes, we can only imagine what happened to them. Namely, back in 2009, Mexican model Gabriela Rico Jiménez was filmed in distress, screaming and shouting about cannibalism.

She was taken into custody and vanished afterwards. There are no records of her being in jail, mental hospitals or anywhere else. She simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Had Jiménez been “clinically insane”, she would’ve ended up in a psychiatric ward. Had she been lying, she would’ve been prosecuted and convicted. But neither of those two things happened, with the mainstream propaganda machine doing everything in its power to cover up the case, proclaiming anyone who dared investigate it a “crazy conspiracy theorist”. Seven years later, the Pizzagate scandal was uncovered, involving Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign chairman John Podesta. Yet again, we had another “crazy and baseless conspiracy theory”.

The main difference this time was that Russia became the designated scapegoat for everything, so the deeply corrupt DNC screamed at the top of its lungs that “the evil Kremlin” was behind the leaks in an attempt to “smear the good name” of the Clinton crime family.

This later became one of the cornerstones of the so-called “Russiagate”, an actual conspiracy theory pushed by the mainstream propaganda machine in order to smear Donald Trump. However, while the debunked Russiagate conspiracy theory was flaunted everywhere by Western media, any mention of the Pizzagate pedophile scandal was severely punished. This happened to several prominent journalists, including Ben Swann, who was fired for daring to cover Pizzagate.

It should be noted that Wikipedia still brands it a “baseless and debunked conspiracy theory”, while insisting that Russiagate is “real”.

However, thanks to the Epstein files, we now know unequivocally that Wikipedia is a tool of the mainstream propaganda machine, as evidenced by an email that shows how Epstein’s associates edited his Wikipedia entry to remove his mugshot and hide his conviction as a sex offender. Still, this is not enough for the mainstream propaganda machine, because it needs to shift attention from Western pedophile-cannibalistic elites and blame it all on… …well, who else but “evil Russia” and its “bloodthirsty dictator” Vladimir Putin. Namely, the pathetic Western media are now calling the Epstein files a “giant Russian honey trap”.

However, reading through the comment sections of virtually all major outlets that published such nonsense demonstrates that there’s still hope for the world, as nobody with two functioning brain cells believes a single word written by these NATO propagandists. In fact, many are quoting President Putin’s words from nearly two years ago, when he said that “for centuries, Western elites have been used to stuffing their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money” and warned that “the ball of vampires is coming to an end”. Many thought that this was merely a metaphor for the political West’s propensity to destroy countless countries, killing millions in the process. However, the Epstein files demonstrated that this statement was eerily literal. On the other hand, Putin’s conclusion gives us hope.

Namely, the notion that “the ball of vampires” is coming to an end is the light at the end of a tunnel of Western darkness that befell our unfortunate world. This was most evident in NATO-occupied Ukraine, where the Russian military uncovered horrifying details about what the Neo-Nazi junta and its NATO overlords were doing to Ukrainian children. Namely, back in 2022, in the early months of the special military operation (SMO), a video surfaced of a Russian soldier, Shukhrat Adilov, interviewed by a Russian TV channel. Adilov was barely able to put into words the monstrous treatment of toddlers and preschool kids he saw. Children aged 2-7 from areas around Izyum were brutally massacred and then had their organs removed for trafficking.

There was also a testimony by Vera Vayiman, an OSCE observer, who gave a similar account. US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor effectively confirmed both Adilov’s and Vayiman’s findings. The Epstein files are yet another confirmation of these horrendous crimes by the political West. However, even more disturbingly, as previously mentioned, this is only the tip of the iceberg of things we’re yet to uncover. It should also be noted that InfoBRICS was among the first major media outlets to report on the massive scale of Western-backed child trafficking from NATO-occupied Ukraine, with tens of thousands of kids ending up in Europe and North America, where they are subjected to unimaginable horrors, all for the enjoyment of deranged elites.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian kids were evacuated by Russia on the orders of “bloodthirsty tyrant” Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The Kremlin moved the children to safety in Russia, where they were eventually reunited with their families, including fathers who were enemy combatants and fought the Russian military. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine still tried to present it as a “mass kidnapping”. However, this wasn’t enough, so the ICC (a NATO-controlled NGO impersonating an “international court”) indicted both Putin and Lvova-Belova for the said “kidnapping”. Obviously, the pedophile-cannibalistic Western elites that control these “international justice institutions” were fuming that so many kids escaped, so they resorted to desperate measures to get them. However, as President Putin said, “the ball of vampires” is indeed over!

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/epstein-files-kosovo-narco-terrorists-helped-traffic-over-a-million-children-for-deranged-western-elites/5914698

The Illusion of Modern Medicine

Dr Gary Null

“We spend more money treating disease than any society in history yet remain among the sickest—because healing was never the system’s goal.”

What does it say when the President and his inner circle decide that they’re going to raise the national defense budget from about 800 billion dollars to 1.5 trillion? And to give a perspective, that is more than the next ten nations’ military budgets combined. What no one is asking is how the Pentagon has never passed an audit and trillions of dollars are missing, and nobody seems to care.

When a person goes in for a stomachache, this takes about five hours in an emergency room and they give the patient nothing except a hot pack to put on the belly, and a saline solution costing the hospital about $10—yet the patient receives a $10,000 bill. That’s considered normal.

When there is no effort by any of the major agencies— CDC, U.S. Public Health Service, the FDA, National Institute on Cancer, National Institute on Aging, the USDA, the Surgeon General—none of these are promoting what anyone who has studied nutrition in public health would consider a healthy, disease-preventing lifestyle and diet.

Not a word. And all the commercials are for foods and beverages that actually promote inflammation and by extension, disease. And yet the average person cannot afford to be sick.

Our Medicaid and Medicare system is overburdened. But that means that there’s an intention to promote unilateral, massive amounts of money being spent when we’re already the most powerful military in the world. And how does that actually help the average person? What is apparent is that we could have and should have a form of universal healthcare that promotes prevention, which puts curricula in from kindergarten right through graduate school, year after year.

People could be shown the real positive and proven science that your choices, if healthy, can make a difference. None of that is promoted though. In fact, for nearly 100 years, those promoting what we would all agree today are healthy lifestyle choices such as meditation for stress reduction, exercising to maintain weight and glucose and blood pressure, to high fiber, whole grains, and plant-based diets, are being silenced and marginalized.

All of the science supports that, yet none of the agencies do. Their excuse is always, “everything in moderation.” That’s supercilious.

It makes no sense. You mean a toxin is okay if it’s not a high level of toxin? Well, just imagine this -parts per billion of mercury can be deadly to neurons in the brain.

Think of all the toxins that were banned, not because of government exposés and getting rid of them, but because whistleblowers or concerned journalists exposed them. And then the government was forced to take them out of public service.

So now we have tens of millions of Americans who are non-insured or underinsured. One accident, one stay in a hospital could virtually bankrupt them. Yet, as we have reported in previous articles, we could save trillions of dollars per year if we provided universal health care through Medicare and got rid of the corruption, get rid of the 33% of that amount of the five-plus trillion dollars of the insurance industry. And we choose not to.

I see no demonstrations anywhere. I don’t see doctors, hospital staff, pharmacists, nurses, educators, teachers, all getting together and saying, shouldn’t we demonstrate that we need a better health care system?

And if these are the people who are supposed to be the best and brightest, what about those who are not in that elite cabal but have good science, reason, good public health backgrounds? Why don’t you get their advice? That doesn’t seem to be allowed. We need an awakening. We need a new way of knowing.

And we need to understand who profits when we’re sick. And why there’s a lot of good information in the National Library of Medicine not shared with the American public to enable them to make better and healthier choices.

For decades, we were told to trust that modern medicine had finally learned from its past—that today’s recommendations were grounded in solid science, not fashion, fear, or profit. Yet when you step back and look honestly, a troubling pattern emerges: one medical certainty after another quietly collapses, long after millions of people have already paid the price.

And yet, it is being denied. Let’s just give a few examples of things that the public was encouraged to do that were actually wrong and contributed to death and disease. It’s a long list.

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

Hormone replacement therapy is a clear example. For years it was promoted as a near-miracle for women—protective for the heart, the brain, even longevity itself. Then came the Women’s Health Initiative, which revealed higher risks of heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, and cancer. Doctors abruptly reversed course, urging women to stop. Today, we’re told the problem wasn’t the hormones—it was the timing, the dose, the delivery method. But the biology hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the narrative.

Statins for Primary Prevention

Statins were aggressively prescribed to millions of healthy people based on cholesterol reduction, not meaningful improvements in longevity or quality of life. Over time, evidence showed marginal benefit for primary prevention, alongside increased risks of muscle damage, cognitive impairment, diabetes, and fatigue—prompting repeated guideline rollbacks without a public reckoning.

Routine Mammography

Once promoted as a lifesaving universal screen, mammography has been reevaluated due to high rates of false positives, overdiagnosis, unnecessary biopsies, and overtreatment. Revised recommendations now quietly admit that routine screening can cause more harm than benefit—especially in younger women—yet the original fear-based messaging persists.

Antidepressants (SSRIs)

Marketed as correcting a “chemical imbalance” later admitted to be a myth, antidepressants were widely prescribed despite modest efficacy over placebo. Long-term use is now associated with emotional blunting, sexual dysfunction, withdrawal syndromes, and increased suicidality—particularly in younger patients—forcing slow, reluctant reversals in prescribing enthusiasm.

Opiates for Chronic Pain

Pharmaceutical assurances that prescription opioids were safe and non-addictive led to mass prescribing and a public health catastrophe. What was once standard care is now recognized as reckless, yet accountability remains diffuse and incomplete.

Hormone Suppression and Medicalized Transitions

Interventions promoted as “fully reversible” and evidence-based were adopted ahead of long-term outcome data. As detransition cases and adverse effects emerge, medical authorities are quietly retreating from earlier certainty—again revealing a pattern of experimentation without informed consent.

Low-Fat Diet Doctrine

For decades, Americans were told fat was dangerous and carbohydrates benign, contributing to metabolic disease, obesity, and diabetes. The reversal—now acknowledging the harms of refined carbohydrates and sugar—came only after widespread damage had already been done.

Across these reversals, the pattern is consistent: early enthusiasm, institutional endorsement, mass prescribing, delayed harm recognition, quiet revision—never accountability. Medicine repeatedly mistakes intervention for progress, and marketing for science.

The common thread is not science evolving—that’s healthy. The problem is premature certainty. Medicine repeatedly embraces interventions before the evidence is mature, discourages dissent while profits flow, and then revises its guidance quietly, without apology, without accountability, and without acknowledging the human cost.

Cancer is perhaps the clearest illustration of medicine’s misplaced confidence. After declaring a “War on Cancer” in the 1970s, we were promised breakthroughs, cures, and decisive victories. Trillions of dollars later, the standard approach remains largely unchanged: cut it out, burn it, poison it. Chemotherapy and radiation may temporarily shrink tumors, but they rarely address why cancer developed in the first place—chronic inflammation, immune suppression, toxic exposure, metabolic dysfunction, and nutritional deficiency. Survival gains are often incremental, purchased at the cost of severe suffering, while prevention and immune-based strategies remain marginalized. Despite extraordinary technological sophistication, medicine still struggles to offer a coherent, whole-body strategy for stopping cancer before it starts—or keeping it from returning.

Heart disease tells a similar story. It remains the leading cause of death, even as patients are placed on lifelong medications, stents, bypass surgeries, and implanted devices. Cholesterol numbers are lowered, arteries are propped open, symptoms are managed—but the underlying disease process continues. Rarely does conventional care prioritize reversing insulin resistance, reducing systemic inflammation, correcting nutritional imbalances, or addressing chronic stress. The result is a system that excels at emergency rescue but performs poorly at restoration. Patients survive heart attacks only to remain chronically ill, medicated, and dependent on a model that never truly aims for healing.

One of the most revealing—and most ignored—chapters in modern cardiology comes from the work of Dr. Dean Ornish. His clinical studies demonstrated that severe coronary artery disease could not only be slowed, but in many cases reversed, using comprehensive lifestyle changes: a whole-food, plant-based diet, moderate exercise, stress reduction, and social connection. Patients showed improved blood flow, fewer cardiac events, and reduced need for surgery—without drugs or invasive procedures. And yet, despite being published in major peer-reviewed journals and even accepted for limited Medicare reimbursement, Ornish’s approach was never embraced by mainstream cardiology or public health systems. The reason was never scientific—it was economic. Lifestyle change doesn’t generate repeat procedures, lifelong prescriptions, or billion-dollar device markets. So, while medicine continued to expand its arsenal of stents and surgeries, a proven, low-cost, low-risk path to healing the heart was quietly sidelined—not because it didn’t work, but because it wasn’t profitable enough to survive in a disease-driven system.

It just shows the corruption and greed in the industry, because this is not being done by stupid people who are just making human errors.

What these failures share is a narrow focus on disease management rather than health creation. Medicine has become extraordinarily skilled at intervening late, aggressively, and expensively—yet remains remarkably ineffective at addressing root causes. This is not a failure of individual doctors, but of a system trained to treat the body as a collection of parts rather than an integrated, self-healing organism.

There are well thought-out and lavishly funded campaigns where you attack every holistic doctor and try to take their license. They attack people who have legitimate backgrounds academically, but they’re not using the standard protocols. Instead of learning from them—learning how their patients are healing—they are punished. There is an effort to gaslight them, destroy them and remove their hard-earned credentials.

It didn’t matter what evidence you had that suggested, and at times demanded, caution. In fact, in every area, whenever you challenged them, they would gaslight you, and they would use algorithms to ensure that nobody knew that these alternative health care providers existed. So, there’s an ongoing campaign, and Wikipedia is at the head of it.

Unbelievably, the last administration, the Biden administration, had a new department of disinformation. It meant they would decide what was legitimate and what was not. And of course, if you hesitated about getting a vaccine, then you were a vaccine denier.

And even one of the former top people at Facebook acknowledged that over a million articles and information pieces on vaccines—safety and efficacy—were banned because they thought it was disinformation. In point of fact, it wasn’t. But what they were promoting was disinformation and misinformation and wrong information, when it was allowed.

True healing does not begin with aggressive intervention. It begins with real humility, prevention, lifestyle, nutrition, and respect for the body’s intelligence. Until modern medicine relearns that lesson, these reversals will continue—and so will the suffering that follows them.

A truly rational healthcare system would begin with a simple premise: care should be universal, preventive, and administered in the public interest—not filtered through profit-driven intermediaries.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/illusion-modern-medicine/5914682

Oman to broker fresh round of Iran-US talks on February 6

This combo shows Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, left, pictured in Tehran, Iran, February 25, 2025, and Steve Witkoff, White House special envoy, pictured in Washington, March 19, 2025. (Photo: AP)

Press TV

Iran will hold indirect nuclear negotiations with the United States on February 6 in Oman’s capital, Muscat, Iranian media reported on Wednesday.

The reports said the talks will be limited to the nuclear issue and the lifting of sanctions on Iran.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi will head the Iranian delegation, which will also include senior diplomats Majid Takht-Ravanchi and Kazem Gharibabadi.

US envoy Steve Witkoff will represent Washington in the talks, and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner may also be present.

The format of the talks will be similar to the talks held before the US-Israeli aggression against Iran last June.

The new round of talks was first set to be held in the Turkish city of Istanbul, but the venue was changed at Iran’s request.

Tehran has repeatedly stressed that talks should remain focused solely on the nuclear issue, ruling out negotiations over its missile program or regional presence.

Iranian officials say any talks with the United States could be productive only if held in an atmosphere free of threats and illogical demands.

Araghchi and Witkoff led five rounds of nuclear talks between Iran and the United States last year before negotiations were derailed when Israel launched an unprovoked war of aggression just two days ahead of a planned sixth round.

The aggression, which was later joined by the US, left over a thousand people martyred in Iran and damaged the country’s civilian, military, and scientific infrastructure.

The February 6 talks will be held amid heightened tensions in West Asia following a massive military buildup in the region.

In early January, Trump threatened Iran with attacks if the country harmed what he called “peaceful protesters.”

Only days later, on January 8 and 9, armed groups launched coordinated attacks on police stations, military bases, and other sensitive sites, as well as civilian infrastructure, in various cities, prompting security forces to respond.

Iranian officials say the attacks were designed to create mass casualties and destabilize urban centers across the country.

Officials have repeatedly criticized Western media outlets for circulating false casualty figures and blaming the Iranian government.

Some Western reports have claimed up to 30,000 deaths. However, official Iranian records show 3,117 people were killed in the riots, including 2,427 civilians and security personnel martyred by terrorists.

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/02/04/763515/Iran-US-negotiations-to-be-held-in-Oman-on-Friday-report

START Treaty: Where No Deal is the Best Deal Possible

New START Treaty Expiring Raises Fears of New Nuclear Arms Race ...

Dmitry Orlov

The New START treaty, the last remaining agreement constraining Russian and US nuclear weapons, expires today, February 4, 2026. There are no negotiations to extend the terms of the treaty. Russia offered to simply extend it, but Trump responded: “if it expires, it expires”. Well, now they’ve all expired: SALT II expired in 1986 under Ronald Reagan; START II was effectively shelved as a result of the 2002 U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty; and now New START has expired. There are now no treaties between the US and Russia limiting the buildup of nuclear weapons.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that the US nuclear weapons business (everything in the US is a business, even nukes) is, at this point, rather boutique. The US would be lucky to keep its existing stockpile of nukes functioning, never mind making new ones. Most of its Minuteman missile silos are no longer serviceable and just need to be filled with cement and abandoned. Its submarine-launched Trident missiles are none too reliable (one, when tested, almost killed the British defense secretary; another flew off in the general direction of Florida but, luckily, didn’t make it). What’s more, the US nuclear attack submarines are rather old and cannot be replaced as quickly as the old ones have to be retired. And then there are the ancient B-52’s, plus a small assortment of newer bombers, that can launch Tomahawk missiles which even old Soviet-era air defense systems can shoot down without too much trouble, never mind the newer ones.

Russia’s strategic forces, on the other hand, are fully rearmed, following a completely different strategy: build a weapon, keep it in deployment until its certified service life is about to end, then scrap it and replace with a fresh one. (The Americans simply extend the service life and hope for the best.) Russia also has new delivery systems: for example, there is the Sarmat ICBM which follows a sub-ballistic, arbitrary trajectory such as over the South Pole armed with Avangard hypersonic reentry vehicles. There is also the Poseidon nuclear-powered torpedos which can lay in wait on ocean bottom for years, then attack and cause a tsunami. And then there is the Burevestnik (“Storm Petrel”) nuclear-powered cruise missile which has infinite range and can fly around for weeks on end before destroying its target. The US cannot hope to reliably intercept any of these, and in the case of Avangard — not at all. On the other hand, Russia has very advanced air and space defense system that can intercept just about anything the US can throw at it. Major Russian cities are particularly well defended.

Thus, a nuclear duel between the US and Russia might end rather badly for Russia but will with complete certainty terminate the existence of the US and all of its inhabitants. This should keep the Americans at bay. And while the US has a “defense” doctrine that allows a nuclear first strike, Russia does not. Thus, neither side has reasons to feel particularly threatened: the US can’t attack Russia while Russia won’t attack the US unless the US attacks it first, which it can’t do.

In light of this, what are we to make of the complete and total lack of arms control agreements between the US and Russia? Is it a glaring failure of US diplomacy that should cause Concerned Scientists to gibber with anxiety while adjusting their famous clock ever closer to permanent midnight? Or is it just as it should be, given that the US is non-agreement-capable (which sounds clumsy but is the best translation possible of the Russian недоговороспособные) but can be kept under control provided a sufficiently frightening nuclear gun is permanently held to its head by Russia’s Strategic Defense Forces? I now turn it over to Anna, who argues for the latter using the current fracas with Iran as an example.

Europe is once again pretending to act on principle, but in reality it is doing what is convenient. The decision to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is being presented as a moral gesture, as a fight against evil in its purest form. In reality, it’s the same old European game: start out with polite dialogue, smiles, handshakes, promises of “détente” and a “diplomatic track,” and then execute a swift about-face as soon as the wind shifts and a new agenda emerges. In this case, it’s Washington and Trump, for whom the EU dutifully provided legal cover for a potential military adventure against Iran, in advance rebranding it as an “anti-terrorist operation.” This isn’t about Iran or the IRGC; it’s about Europe’s habit of presenting cynicism as values ​​and betrayal as a difficult but necessary decision.

For Tehran, this blow is painful not because the Iranians are naïve, but because they remember history. Just yesterday Macron was shaking hands with them and talking about reducing tensions. Just yesterday Europeans were promising to restore diplomatic relations after the latest round of conflict in the Middle East. Just yesterday they were selling Iran the idea of concessions today, investments and recognition tomorrow. And all of this had happened before. It almost happened in 2017, when France blocked attempts to designate the IRGC as terrorists because it wasn’t convenient: at the time, France’s Total was developing the South Pars oil field. It did happen in 2019 with the INSTEX mechanism, which was supposed to provide for trade and deliver humanitarian supplies. It was all accompanied with fine words about an “open Iran” and a “return to the global economy.” And then, every time, the entire architecture of “dialogue” crumbles, as if it never existed.

At this point, European policy is for all concerned a poorly disguised swindle: promises work only as long as they are beneficial to the Western side. As soon as the benefit comes into doubt, commitments are nullified and the trusted partner is relabeled as an existential threat. Gaddafi, too, once believed that agreements with Paris were a sort of insurance policy. He faithfully fulfilled his end of the bargain, financing French election campaigns and agreeing to compromises. The result: French planes bomb Tripoli and a NATO operation that ends in his death. The Yugoslav Milošević was promised association with the EU and international recognition, followed by 78 days of bombing (illegal without a UN sanction) and a sojourn in prison from which he emerged as a corpse. These are not exceptions, excesses or mistakes; they are part of a repeating pattern of betrayal with which Europe feels surprisingly comfortable.

That’s why when the Iranians use the word “betrayal,” they are not being emotional but are making a diagnosis. Europe isn’t simply changing its position—it’s doing so systemically, exploiting trust as a vulnerability. For the Europeans, betrayal isn’t a glitch — it is a tool: flexible, adaptable and oh so convenient. Today it’s business and diplomacy, tomorrow it’s sanctions and terrorist lists, the day after it’s terrorist attacks against a country’s leadership. And each time, this is presented as a necessary measure, a moral duty to act in the defense of some abstract values.

The most alarming thing here isn’t even the Iranian story, but the ease with which such a scenario is being projected onto Russia. The difference is that attacking Iran is dangerous while attacking Russia is suicidal. Nevertheless, the instinct of self-preservation seems to have failed the Europeans. All of the familiar disingenuous intonations are increasingly heard from Europe toward Russia: let’s talk, let’s rebuild bridges, let’s return to “normalcy.” Let there be documents, guarantees, solemn pronouncements about a common space and a shared destiny. Everything will seem convincing—right up until the moment when another political U-turn makes Russia a convenient target for a new label. Overnight, they will turn out to be terrorists and an existential threat requiring containment and deterrence—all of the vocabulary is already there, just waiting for the right trigger to unleash the torrent of well-rehearsed phrases.

In this sense, the decision about the IRGC isn’t about Iran or even the Middle East; it is about Europe as such. It is about its habit of shaking hands and smiling as preparation for lunging with a dagger. It is about its entirely unfounded belief that their “negotiating partners” have short memories and that history is something abstract and irrelevant to the present day. The traitor’s kiss is the stock-in-trade of European politics.

Any attempt by the West to restart “honest dialogue” should be countered with a maximally detailed, maximally public review of every single act of Western perfidy and betrayal, followed by detailed discussions of reparations that are yet to be paid for it, to be reviewed case by case.

[…]

Via boosty.to/?userId=6221383

Lawsuit Challenges National Park Service Ban on Cash Payments

Close-up of overlapping United States one-dollar bills showing central portrait, large 1 numerals, and green Treasury seals.

A federal appeal challenges whether Americans can still spend real dollars on their own public land, or must surrender privacy to do so.

Across the United States, cash is quietly disappearing from places that once took it without question. Government agencies and private businesses now route even the smallest transactions through digital networks that record who paid, when, and where.

This has created a growing dependence on card processors and mobile payment companies that profit from every exchange and hold the power to deny or suspend access.

That dependence has now reached federal land. The National Park Service has begun refusing cash at dozens of parks and historic sites, forcing visitors to use electronic payment systems to enter public property.

A lawsuit challenging that policy argues that by excluding physical currency, the agency is violating federal law and pushing citizens into a digital system that tracks their movements and spending.

Attorney Ray Flores has filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, seeking to overturn the dismissal of a lawsuit against the National Park Service (NPS) for refusing to accept cash at dozens of federal sites.

We obtained a copy of the filing for you here.

The case, backed by Children’s Health Defense, centers on whether a federal agency can legally decline the very currency the government itself issues.

At issue is the NPS policy that bars visitors from paying park entrance fees with cash. The appeal argues that the agency has violated both the Administrative Procedure Act and the Legal Tender Statute, which defines US coins and bills as “legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.”

Flores wrote that the district court’s earlier decision effectively “demonetized the U.S. Dollar on federal property without justification.”

His brief asks the appeals court to declare the policy unlawful or send the case back for trial.

“NPS’s no-cash policy begs a commonsense question – does the U.S. Government have the right to refuse to accept the currency it demands we use? The commonsense answer is, obviously not.”

The case began when New York artist Toby Stover visited the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park. The filing recounts:

“A man in an NPS uniform welcomed her. He asked her if she would like to take the 3:30 tour. She replied that she would. He asked for $10, which she attempted to hand to him. He affirmed ‘we don’t take cash’ and would not permit her to enter.”

Stover later learned that nearly thirty other national parks and historic sites had adopted the same cashless rule. “Hyde Park’s entrance fee,” the brief notes, “is still only payable by ‘Credit/Debit only’ according to its website.”

Flores argues that this denial was not symbolic or technical. “Her U.S. currency is utterly worthless at Hyde Park to this day,” he wrote, adding that “Ms. Stover’s harm not only happened, but occurs any time she sets foot on any one of NPS’s no-cash venues.”

The brief invokes the Legal Tender Statute, which states that “United States coins and currency…are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues.” Flores contends that no law grants the NPS power to create “a surrogate legal tender (i.e., electronic payments).” He wrote, “This Court must not permit any government agency or District Court to designate a replacement for U.S. currency.”

The appeal calls the district court’s reasoning circular. “The District Court avoided deciding the substantive issues of the illegality of the NPS’s no-cash policy by blaming the victim,” the filing says.

“The NPS employee’s turning her away resulted in concrete injury and actual and continuing harm as long as Hyde Park’s no-cash policy remains in place.”

Flores describes the implications in stark terms:

“The minute she walked onto federal property owned for the public good and was told she needed to use a private payment, her U.S. currency became worthless. Money is a unit of account, medium of exchange, and a store of value. The moment she walked on the property, it lost all its value.”

The appeal frames the case as a test of governmental boundaries. “No U.S. law allows the NPS to exclusively define legal tender as electronic payment,” it states.

“The District Court pretended or presumed such a law existed when it ruled that Ms. Stover brought the harm upon herself when she tendered U.S. currency at Hyde Park.”

Flores warns that allowing such policies to stand would erode public trust in the dollar itself. “The U.S. Government’s demonetization and devaluation of its U.S. Dollar is a dangerous gamble,” he wrote.

In his introduction, Flores framed the issue in terms of national identity and law:

“Will history remember Toby Stover vs. U.S. National Park Service as the case that helped rescue the dollar’s dignity, or as the beginning of its quiet demise? In a democracy built on laws and liberty, the answer matters.”

Privacy at the Core

The case extends beyond monetary policy. Stover maintains that cash is a safeguard for personal privacy and accessibility. She says that denying cash limits public participation and exposes all transactions to tracking and financial data collection. For those without cards or bank accounts, cashless entry creates a barrier to public space itself.

As federal agencies move toward digital-only systems, the outcome of this appeal could define whether Americans retain the practical right to use physical money in government-run settings.

Flores’s filing concludes with a call for judicial correction:

“The NPS replaces U.S. currency with surrogate electronic payment. The District Court’s assumption that electronic payment is the new U.S. currency is reversible error.”

If the appellate court agrees, it would restore the dollar’s role on federal land and affirm that public institutions must continue to accept cash, a tangible instrument of both payment and privacy.

[…]

Via https://reclaimthenet.org/lawsuit-challenges-national-park-service-ban-on-cash-payments

Leaked Report Vietnam preparing for possible US military aggression

US Secretary of War, Peter Brian Hegseth (L), and General Secretary of Vietnam’s Communist Party To Lam talk during a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, November 2, 2025. (Photo by AP)

Press TV

A leaked internal document shows Vietnam is preparing, politically and militarily, for a potential US invasion, casting Washington as a threat to the country’s sovereignty rather than a reliable partner.

Just a year after bringing its ties with Washington to their highest diplomatic level, Vietnam’s military leadership has been preparing for a possible American “war of aggression,” viewing the US as a “belligerent power,” according to a report released on Tuesday by The 88 Project, a human rights group monitoring developments in Vietnam.

The document underscores Hanoi’s deep concern that Washington could try to destabilize the Vietnamese government through a so-called “color revolution,” drawing parallels to Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution and the Philippines’ 1986 Yellow Revolution—both widely viewed by Vietnamese officials as products of US interference.

“There is a consensus here across the government and across different ministries … This is not just some kind of a fringe element or paranoid element within the ruling Communist party or within the government,” said Ben Swanton, co-director of the 88 Project and the author of the report.

The Vietnamese document, titled “The 2nd US Invasion Plan,” was completed by the Ministry of Defense in August 2024 and outlines what officials see as an escalating pattern of American military behavior across multiple administrations.

Vietnamese military analysts trace a pattern over three American administrations, from Barack Obama through Donald Trump’s first term to Joe Biden, noting that Washington has steadily intensified its military and strategic engagements across Asia.

“Due to the US’s belligerent nature we need to be vigilant to prevent the US and its allies from ‘creating a pretext’ to launch an invasion of our country,” the plan says.

The document paints a dark picture of Washington’s intentions, asserting that the US seeks to “spread and impose its values regarding freedom, democracy, human rights, ethnicity and religion” as a means to undermine and ultimately dismantle Vietnam’s socialist political system.

Swanton writes that “The 2nd US Invasion Plan” offers a rare and blunt insight into Hanoi’s foreign policy thinking, showing that Vietnam views Washington not as a genuine strategic partner but as an existential threat, and has no intention of being drawn into a US-led bloc aimed at China.

Recent US military actions abroad have further reinforced these fears. Washington’s operations in and around Venezuela, including the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores on January 3, have intensified Vietnamese distrust toward closer engagement with the US.

Experts warn that any US military aggression against Cuba, another close ally of Hanoi, would send shockwaves through Vietnam’s military and political leadership, severely disrupting the “fragile regional and strategic balance.”

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/02/03/763445/Vietnam-preparing-for-possible-US-military-aggression–Internal-document

 

Pandemic simulation, vaccine gatekeeping, and STIs: Bill Gates’ Epstein ties

Pandemic simulation, vaccine gatekeeping, and STIs: Bill Gates’ Epstein ties

RT

Unsealed documents have raised big questions about the billionaire’s health agendas and personal scandals

Newly released Jeffrey Epstein files from the US Justice Department have delivered a barrage of revelations about Bill Gates’ entanglement with the convicted sex offender. Over 3 million pages of emails, notes, and photos paint a troubling picture: Was Gates leveraging Epstein’s shadowy network for global health dominance?

The disclosures warrant answers from the multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder turned “philanthropist,” whose foundation wields outsized influence on worldwide vaccination and data systems.

Vaccine Gatekeeping

Gates’ role in global vaccine distribution was amplified by accusations from Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and a key figure in the ongoing Ukraine peace talks. Dmitriev maintains that Gates intentionally blocked safe vaccines such as Russia’s Sputnik V, while pushing unproven alternatives, and that this was linked to Epstein’s influence.

It’s the kind of link Epstein had with disgraced British Lord Peter Mandelson, who while UK business secretary allegedly confirmed to his pedophile financier friend that the EU had agreed a €500 billion bailout to prop up the euro in May 2010.

Dmitriev’s accusations against Gates echo broader criticisms of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance that Gates granted $750 million to in 2000. Gavi claims it pools funds from governments, philanthropists, and industry to buy and distribute vaccines in low-income countries. Detractors argue that, dominated by the Gates Foundation – its largest private donor – Gavi prioritizes selling expensive new vaccines instead of actually providing healthcare.

Recently, US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled American funding from Gavi, citing science on vaccine safety and public trust. The move echoes long-standing debates over stifling dissent during the global Covid-19 lockdown and vaccination program.

DOJ files also show Gates discussing polio eradication in Pakistan and Afghanistan with Epstein’s input. The disgraced financier had no health expertise, so his deep involvement in these sensitive, geopolitically charged efforts raises red flags about hidden influence, conflicts, or leverage – especially given Gates later called associating with him a “huge mistake.”

2017 pandemic simulation

Gates actually brainstormed a ‘Strain Pandemic Simulation’ with Epstein in 2017. Emails reveal the billionaire outlining deliverables on health data and neurotechnologies, including specs for this simulation – years before Covid-19. This aligns with Dmitriev’s claims that Gates collaborated with Epstein on such a simulation that year, amid talks on secure personal health data systems and whitepapers on neurotologies related to chronic diseases and national defense.

This isn’t Gates’ first simulation rodeo; he co-hosted Event 201 in 2019 with Johns Hopkins and the Davos World Economic Forum, modeling a coronavirus outbreak.

Explosive personal allegations

Epstein’s 2013 draft emails, seemingly penned for Boris Nikolic – Gates’ former chief science adviser at the Gates Foundation and a biotech investor named as backup executor in Epstein’s will – contain drop jaw-dropping claims.

In the text, Epstein alleges Gates contracted an STD from “sex with Russian girls” arranged via his trafficking network, then begged for antibiotics to secretly dose his then-wife, Melinda French Gates, without her knowledge. Gates also purportedly sought Adderall for bridge tournaments and facilitated illicit trysts.

In a bizarre twist, Epstein’s email received a 2013 permanent ban from Microsoft’s Xbox Live for “harassment, threats, and/or abuse” deemed “severe, repeated, and/or excessive.”

Melinda divorced Bill Gates in 2021, citing his Epstein ties. She’s now worth $29.6 billion.

Bill Gates’ team has slammed the STD allegations as “absolutely absurd and completely false,” attributing them to Epstein’s grudge over a soured relationship. Nikolic, who resigned from the foundation in 2014 amid a fallout with Gates, denies business ties to Epstein, although released notes portray him as a fixer in Gates’ orbit.

Amid the global furor over which members of the global elite were linked to Epstein, and how they used their positions to his benefit, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that the real victims at the heart of this influence operation were vulnerable young women who were sexually abused by the global elite.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/631908-bill-gates-epstein-ties/

Best selling apps and games made by Israeli intelligence

Nate Bear

The developers behind hundreds of Android and iPhone apps with billions of downloads are former Israeli spies whose apps are generating significant revenues for Israel’s genocidal war economy.

The apps I’ve identified range from innocuous image and video editing apps to casual games, and most users won’t be aware they’re installing Israeli products on their phones. Many of these app developers operate under the radar, their ownership structures are opaque and the identity of their owners isn’t commonly known.

The identification of these apps should add another frontier to the boycott, divest, sanctions movement, as it provides a straightforward way for ordinary people to avoid Israeli products that contribute to apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The proliferation of these apps on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store also raises questions over privacy and the harvesting of personal data, given the reputation of Israeli technology and past scandals involving spyware being smuggled onto devices by apps made in Israel.

One of the most significant Israeli app holding companies and developers is ZipoApps, whose model is to buy-out and monetise apps at a large scale. The apps owned by Zipo (which also goes by the name Rounds.com) include a suite of photo and video editing apps that have received hundreds of millions of total installs. Individual apps include Collage Maker Photo Editor and Instasquare Photo Editor: Neon, both of which have received more than 50 million downloads from the Google Play Store. Other ZipoApps products include baby photo editing and retouching tools. In 2022, the founder and CEO of Zipo, Gal Avidor, told an interviewer (in his only interview to date), that all the founders of the company are former Unit 8200 Israeli intelligence personnel. On Reddit, users have complained about ZipoApps approach to privacy and data mining. One popular group of tools known as Simple Gallery went from free and open source to a paid product with ads and trackers just one week after ZipoApps acquired it.

Another Israeli-owned photo editing app on the Play Store is the AI-powered Bazaart, which was founded by Dror Yaffe and Stas Goferman, two former IDF intelligence officers. Goferman far exceeded his mandatory service, spending a decade in the IDF up to 2011.

Facetune, made by the developer Lightricks and available for Android and iPhones, is another Israeli photo editing app with over 50 million installs. Users on the Apple Store have called Facetune, which demands access to unique identifiers and your location, a scam. The co-founder of Lightricks, Yaron Inger, spent five years in Unit 8200.

If you’re into mobile gaming, or if you create mobile games to sell, you will have come across Israeli company Supersonic from Unity, probably without knowing it. With billions of downloads in recent years, Supersonic is one of the largest mobile game publishers in the world with revenues estimated at around $23 million per year. Earlier this year the company reported that they owned three of the top ten most downloaded casual player mobile games in the world: Build a Queen, Going Balls, and Bridge Race. Trash Tycoon is another popular title. The company also has a game called ‘Conquer Countries’ which has been downloaded millions of times and on its advertising tile features a cartoon version of Donald Trump. The founder of Supersonic, Nadav Ashkenazy, spent seven and a half years in the IDF where he rose to become the head of operations for the Israeli air force, managing almost half the full-time staff. You can see all Supersonic’s games here.

A better-known Israeli mobile game app maker whose revenues we don’t have to estimate is Playtika. Listed on the NASDAQ, Playtika brings in revenues of more than $2.5 billion, generating significant taxes for Israel’s mass slaughter machine. Playtika, which builds gambling apps, is firmly enmeshed in the genocidal Israeli war machine. The company was founded by Uri Shahak, son of the former head of the IDF, Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and last year its annual report revealed that 14% of its staff had been called up as reservists to participate in the genocide in Gaza. Current CEO Robert Antokol says the company has a “responsibility” to Israel and the taxes paid by its staff are “wonderful for the Israeli economy.”

Another Israeli company whose apps have been downloaded billions of times is Crazy Labs. With an estimated company value of around $1 billion and sales estimated at up to $200 million, Crazy Labs is another app maker integral to the Israeli economy. Its best-selling titles are Phone Case DIY, Miraculous Ladybug & Cat Noir, and Sculpt People. You can see the full list of the Crazy Lab apps on the Google Play Store. The founders of Crazy Labs are all ex-IDF, including Sagi Schliesser, who well exceeded his mandatory service by staying in the IDF and helping build the digital architecture of apartheid for eight years.

An app you may have heard of, but not have known is Israeli, is Moovit. The urban transport app was founded by a number of ex-IDF including Nir Erez who spent years at the IDF’s specialist computing centre known as Mamram, which Israeli propaganda says creates ‘cyber warriors.’ As the unit which runs the military’s intranet, Mamram is central to Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Moovit, which has close to one billion users and delivers significant revenues to Israel, has been an official partner of the Olympic Games, the European football championships and also partners with Microsoft.

With hundreds of millions of installs, Call App, which screens phone calls for spam, is another product of Israel’s military economy. The founder and CEO of Call App, Amit On, spent three years in Unit 8200 in the 2000s. The app has over 100 million users.

On the ride-hailing front, Gett, which is focused on corporate passengers and is particularly popular in London as a way to hail black cabs, was founded by ex-Unit 8200 Roi More and Shahar Waiser. A notable mention for GPS navigation app Waze, probably the most famous Israeli app of the last decade, acquired by Google in 2013 for $1.3 billion and also founded by ex-Unit 8200 spies.

Another fast-growing Israeli app which has been featured on Oprah, in the New York Times and on CNN is Fooducate, whose founder, Hemi Weingarten, flew bombing missions for the Israeli air force.

Other Israeli air force veterans behind popular apps include husband and wife team Gilad and Liat Mordechay Hertanu, who run the personal assistant and calendar-syncing app 24me. Liat was an officer in the Israeli air force while Gilad was a pilot who flew bombing missions.

This expose, which follows my investigations into former Unit 8200 building AI for big tech giants, and the ex-IDF soldiers working at Meta and Google, further confirms how deeply and insidiously embedded Israel is in our digital lives.

These investigations also reveal how Israel is foundationally reliant on being in a permanent state of dominance over the Palestinians, because the only thing of value the country produces are tech companies founded by ex-IDF. Without being able to train their citizens as spies and soldiers, and butcher Palestinians at will, Israel’s economy would collapse.

Yet most people who use these apps will have downloaded them in good faith with little idea they are contributing to Israel’s occupation-apartheid-genocide economy. In addition, these apps will be gathering information and data, including large amounts of personal images, and delivering them to devotees of Israel committed to maintaining the country as an apartheid state.

[…]

Via https://www.donotpanic.news/p/the-best-selling-apps-made-by-israeli

The Islamic World’s Greatest Writer al-Jahiz

al-Jahiz's Book of Animals: The transcendent value of disgust | 1001 ...

Episode 4 – The Islamic World’s Greatest Writer al-Jahiz

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

Al-Jahiz (776-868 AD) wrote over 200 books, mainly fiction and satire. Thirty are still in print today.* The Arabic alphabet (derived from Aramaic) first emerged in the in the first half of the fourth century in the Nabataean kingdom.

The Ancient City of Petra | AMNH

Before that all Arabic stories and poems were transmitted orally. Because it borrowed a number of words and expressions from Persian, the Abbasid caliphate undertook a systematic effort standardize the Arabic language so it wouldn’t become too Persianized.

Al Jahiz was born in the port city of Basra, an important center of trade,culture and learning surpassed only by Baghdad and Samara. One of his grandfathers was a freed African slave. As a child he helped sell fish to support his family until his mother found the money to send him to a Koranic school to learn to read and write. After completing school he attended lectures on philology (study of language), lexicology (study of derivation of words) and poetry.

His first publication was a treatise on the nature of the Abbasid caliphate. He also wrote animal fables, satires about the rich and famous and books about zoology (he’s considered the world’s first zoologist, rhetoric and polemics, grammar, etymology and literary criticism.

He moved to Baghdad when he was 40 after Harun al-Rashid’s son al-Ma’mun summoned him to tutor his children. Unfortunately the children, frightened of his boggle eyes, rejected him as their tutor because his boggle yes scared them (his nickname al-Jahiz translates as “Boggle Eyes” in English).

He was also the first writer in history to discuss evolution and competition among animals to pass on their successful characteristics to their offspring.

Some of his more famous titles include

  • The Book of Misers
  • The Art of Keeping One’s Mouth Shut
  • Against Civil Servants
  • Levity and Seriousness
  • The Book of Mule (concerns men’s fixation with penis size)

*I think this says a lot about the role of the House of Wisdom in standardizing the Arabic language. English books from the 9th century AD are impossible to decipher without years of study.

Old English language products

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5756995