Synthetic ‘Vitamin’ Soon to be Added to UK Flour (& Already in NZ’s) is Known to Cause Miscarriage

Posted on September 30, 2026 by stuartbramhall

October 1, 2026
Pam Vernon

“Only Moldova and Kosovo mandate it… No Western European country currently does… stent and dialysis warnings removed … No prescription. No informed consent. No individualized dose. No Commons vote. No comprehensive ethics review. No full medical risk-benefit assessment. The mandate begins December 13.“ slaynews.com

The UK Government will begin adding a drug to the nation’s flour that is known to trigger miscarriages in pregnant women, arguing that it’s necessary for the “greater good,” exposing tens of millions of people to the substance through everyday foods, regardless of whether they want it.

The move will mandate the mass-medicating of the population by forcing commercial flour producers to add synthetic folic acid to the nation’s food supply.

Beginning December 13, 2026, virtually all non-wholemeal wheat flour produced by major British mills must contain synthetic folic acid under government regulations approved without a vote on the floor of the House of Commons.

The mandate will expose tens of millions of people to the substance through bread and countless other everyday foods whether they need it or not.

There will be no prescription.

There will be no individualized dosage.

There will be no medical screening.

And there will be no meaningful way for most consumers to avoid it.

The government argues that forcing folic acid into staple foods serves the “greater good” by reducing neural tube defects during pregnancy.

But evidence underpinning the policy includes a major randomized trial in which significantly more pregnancy losses occurred among women receiving folic acid-containing supplements.

The same substance also carries warnings from the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) for people with certain medical conditions.

Nevertheless, Britain is about to put it into the food supply for everyone.

Government Will Force Synthetic Folic Acid Into Flour

Folic acid is routinely marketed as “vitamin B9.”

It is not the naturally occurring form of vitamin B9.

Natural vitamin B9 is folate, a reduced molecule required by cells throughout the body.

Folic acid is a synthetic oxidized compound that must be converted by the body before it can be used.

When sold separately, folic acid is regulated as a licensed medicine and supplied with a patient information leaflet detailing contraindications, drug interactions, and circumstances in which medical advice should be sought.

The NHS specifically warns some patients not to take folic acid without consulting a doctor.

But from December, that same substance will be routinely added to one of Britain’s most widely consumed food ingredients.

A government minister was asked in Parliament what people who have already been advised to avoid folic acid are supposed to do when it is added to flour.

The government’s answer was that patients should read the leaflet supplied with their medicine and consult their doctor.

There is one obvious problem.

A loaf of bread does not come with a drug information leaflet.

Mandate Takes Effect December 13

The Bread and Flour (Amendment) Regulations 2024 require commercial mills producing more than 500 metric tons of flour annually to add 250 micrograms of folic acid to every 100 grams of non-wholemeal wheat flour.

The regulations were introduced through a statutory instrument.

There was no vote on the floor of the House of Commons.

The rules transformed folic-acid fortification from something previously prohibited into something the government will now force major producers to do.

Wholemeal and gluten-free flour are exempt.

For most consumers, however, avoiding fortified flour will be extremely difficult.

The milling industry’s own trade body says flour is present in roughly 30% of products on supermarket shelves.

Approximately 99.8% of British households buy bread.

Folic acid is already appearing voluntarily in foods ranging from sausages and meat substitutes to soup, gravy products, and flavored milk drinks.

Once mandatory fortification begins, repeated exposure throughout the day will become routine.

The actual amount consumed will depend on what each person eats.

That means children, adults, pregnant women, cancer patients, elderly people, and everyone else will receive different uncontrolled doses through their diet.

Pregnancy Trial Recorded Significantly More Fetal Deaths

The most alarming questions surround the very evidence used to justify the policy.

One major randomized trial examined folic-acid supplementation among women without an elevated risk of neural tube defects.

The Hungarian study, led by Andrew Czeizel and reported fully in 1994, recorded six neural tube defects in the control group and none among women receiving a multivitamin containing folic acid.

That result became foundational to global folic-acid policy.

But the same study recorded something else.

Every category of pregnancy loss, including miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth, and other fetal deaths, was higher in the group receiving the folic-acid-containing supplement.

Combined, there were approximately 70 additional pregnancy losses in that group.

The difference was statistically significant.

The neural tube defect result became the headline used to drive folic-acid policy around the world.

The pregnancy-loss result did not.

After adjusting for the higher conception rate in the treatment group, critics calculate that the trial recorded approximately nine additional fetal deaths for every neural tube defect prevented.

Researchers Raised ‘Terathanasia’ Possibility

The finding troubled Czeizel himself.

In 1997, Czeizel and epidemiologist Ernest Hook published a paper in The Lancet examining whether folic acid could be preventing recorded neural tube defects by causing pregnancies involving seriously damaged fetuses to terminate earlier.

They called the proposed mechanism “terathanasia.”

In other words, the apparent reduction in babies born with neural tube defects could potentially have reflected the selective loss of affected pregnancies rather than prevention of the defect itself.

Clinical geneticist Judith Hall responded that pathological examination of the lost pregnancies would be highly desirable.

Yet the central question was never definitively resolved.

Nearly three decades later, the British government is preparing to expose almost the entire population to folic acid through staple food.

Government’s ‘200 Babies Saved’ Claim Falls Apart Under Scrutiny

Officials repeatedly promote mandatory fortification using the claim that approximately 200 pregnancies affected by neural tube defects could be prevented each year.

But the government’s own more recent assessment produces a dramatically different picture.

Its model estimates just 31 fewer affected live births annually in England.

Around 28 involve children who would otherwise be born with disabilities.

Approximately three involve fatal cases of anencephaly, in which major portions of the brain and skull fail to develop.

Much of the remainder of the celebrated “200” figure comes from projected reductions in abortions performed after prenatal scans identify neural tube defects.

Yet the public-facing message has repeatedly been framed around saving hundreds of babies.

The government’s own numbers show something very different.

Millions Exposed for Benefit Affecting Tiny Fraction of Population

Britain has a population approaching 70 million.

Almost all of those people can receive no pregnancy-related benefit whatsoever from mandatory folic-acid fortification in any given year.

Men cannot benefit from the stated purpose.

Children cannot benefit.

Post-menopausal women cannot benefit.

Millions of other women will not be pregnant.

Nevertheless, all will be exposed.

The government has therefore chosen to medicate an entire food supply to target a comparatively tiny section of the population.

The policy becomes even more bizarre because chapati flour is exempt despite Bangladeshi mothers having a disproportionately high risk of neural tube defects.

NHS Warns Cancer and B12 Patients

The government’s own health service already acknowledges that folic acid is not appropriate for everyone without medical consideration.

The NHS advises people with certain conditions, including vitamin B12 deficiency and some cancers, to seek medical advice before taking it.

Britain has approximately 3.5 million people living with cancer, with more than 400,000 new diagnoses each year.

Vitamin B12 deficiency is also common, particularly among older adults.

Folic acid can mask the blood abnormalities caused by B12 deficiency while neurological damage continues.

That damage can become permanent.

Yet those patients will soon encounter synthetic folic acid simply by eating ordinary foods made with mandated flour.

NHS Quietly Removed Warnings as Mandate Approached

As implementation of the policy approached, warnings relating to dialysis and coronary stent patients disappeared from the NHS folic-acid guidance.

Internal records obtained through freedom-of-information requests showed that the dialysis warning was removed because staff described the evidence as “confusing.”

There was no recorded justification for removing the stent warning.

When challenged in Parliament, the responsible minister said the NHS page had simply been made shorter and easier to understand.

No new clinical trial demonstrating safety was cited.

The stent warning was subsequently restored after a member of the public challenged the change.

The dialysis warning remains absent.

No Safe Upper Level Established for Children

There is another major problem.

British experts were unable to establish a conventional safe upper intake level for folic acid.

Instead, authorities adopted a guidance level because the evidence surrounding adverse effects was inadequate.

For children, no safe upper level was established because there was insufficient evidence.

Yet children will consume fortified flour every day.

The amount will depend on how much bread, cereal, pastries, pizza, processed food, and other flour-containing products they eat.

The government will mandate the dose in the flour.

Nobody will control the total dose entering each child’s body.

Cancer Signal Raises More Questions

A pooled analysis of randomized trials has also raised concerns over cancer incidence at folic-acid doses relevant to fortification.

Using individual-level trial records, cancer incidence was 23% higher in lower-dose folic-acid groups.

Using published trial summaries, the increase was 18%.

The same signal did not appear at doses above one milligram.

When all dosage levels were combined, the difference disappeared.

The lower-dose findings are particularly relevant because mandatory food fortification operates within that lower exposure range.

Nevertheless, Britain is pressing forward with population-wide exposure.

No Ethics Assessment, No Full Risk-Benefit Analysis

The government did not publish a dedicated ethical assessment examining whether it is acceptable to medicate an entire population without individual consent.

Nor did it conduct a full medical risk-benefit assessment balancing the predicted reduction in neural tube defects against potential adverse effects across tens of millions of people.

Instead, the government conducted a financial assessment.

That document acknowledged potential harms involving cancer patients and people with undiagnosed B12 deficiency.

Those harms were classified as “non-monetised effects.”

Their assigned financial value was effectively zero.

The government’s economic defense is that adding folic acid costs almost nothing.

The estimated cost is roughly 0.008 pence per loaf.

But the price of the chemical was never the central issue.

The issue is whether a government should be able to put a licensed synthetic medicine into staple food and expose nearly 70 million people without their consent.

WHO Ties Fortification to 2030 Agenda

The World Health Organization promotes folic-acid fortification as part of efforts linked to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

Yet WHO itself has rated the certainty of evidence behind parts of its recommendation as low or very low.

Mandatory fortification is also far from universal across Europe.

Only Moldova and Kosovo mandate it.

No Western European country currently does.

Britain’s own Food Standards Agency rejected mandatory fortification in 2002 because of concerns surrounding vitamin B12 deficiency and consumer choice.

Those concerns have now been swept aside.

Britain Crosses an Extraordinary Line

This policy goes far beyond telling pregnant women to take a vitamin.

The government is altering the nation’s staple food supply.

It is forcing commercial producers to add a synthetic medicine consumed by almost everyone.

People who have been told to seek medical advice before taking folic acid will consume it.

Children will consume it despite authorities having no established safe upper intake level for them.

Millions of people who can receive absolutely no benefit from preventing pregnancy-related neural tube defects will consume it.

And they will consume different amounts depending entirely on their diets.

No prescription.

No informed consent.

No individualized dose.

No Commons vote.

No comprehensive ethics review.

No full medical risk-benefit assessment.

The mandate begins December 13.

By then, the British government will have crossed a profound boundary: from advising citizens what medicine they should take to putting that medicine directly into their food.

A petition is now seeking to force Parliament to finally debate what is about to be done to the entire country.

Via https://envirowatchnz.com/2026/10/01/the-synthetic-vitamin-soon-to-be-added-to-uk-flour-already-in-nzs-is-known-to-cause-miscarriage/

The fallacy of US delusions about Iran’s economic collapse

Posted on September 30, 2026 by stuartbramhall

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s prediction that Iran’s economy would soon collapse underscores the depth of delusion within the current American leadership.

Press TV

Wednesday, 30 September 2026

“Iran is absolutely not sanctionable,” Deputy Economy Minister Mortaza Zamanian said this week as Tehran worked to keep trade flowing despite Washington’s latest sanctions campaign.

Zamanian cited Iran’s extensive borders, established commercial routes and longstanding trading relationships, saying that they make it impossible for external pressure simply to switch off the country’s economy.

His remarks came as Washington intensified its economic terrorism against Iranian oil, shipping, aviation, finance, technology and foreign companies supporting those sectors.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Iran would probably make its final oil deliveries to China within two weeks, after which, he asserted, “they will have nothing.”

That prediction deserves comparison with history, because American administrations have imposed increasingly severe sanctions since 1979 while repeatedly expecting economic pressure eventually to produce decisive Iranian economic collapse.

The economy did not disappear under those campaigns; instead, Iran developed domestic industries, expanded regional commerce, strengthened Asian trade and accumulated extensive experience operating outside Western financial systems.

The proposition that an economy which has absorbed American sanctions for almost half a century will suddenly become economically empty within two weeks therefore indicates the depth of delusion among the current US leadership.

Iran enters the current confrontation with a large domestic market, substantial productive capacity, enormous energy resources and deeply established commercial relationships extending across neighboring countries and wider Eurasian markets.

The World Bank describes Iran as relatively diversified for an oil-exporting economy, with substantial manufacturing, agricultural and service activity supported by a large population and significant domestic consumption.

That domestic market sustains production across food, pharmaceuticals, construction materials, steel, petrochemicals, machinery and consumer goods, meaning Iranian production does not depend entirely upon continuous access to Western consumers.

Iran has also developed major industrial capabilities suited to its own resources and infrastructure, including steel, refining, petrochemicals, cement, power generation, construction, food processing and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

These capabilities have continued developing despite restrictions on Western investment and technology, demonstrating that Iranian industrial activity does not depend upon permanent participation by Western companies.

Iran’s prolonged exposure to sanctions has produced accumulated technical and commercial knowledge, giving Iranian companies decades of experience managing restricted supply chains and unreliable access to foreign suppliers.

When foreign manufacturers withdraw, Iranian companies have learned to redesign equipment, substitute components, develop domestic suppliers and cooperate with businesses from countries willing to maintain commercial relationships.

Academic research has documented this process, showing that sanctions can simultaneously restrict foreign technology while encouraging domestic technological development and adaptation within affected Iranian industrial sectors.

The resulting knowledge extends beyond individual companies, because engineers, technicians, procurement specialists and managers have accumulated practical experience managing shortages, substitution and alternative sourcing.

Iranian manufacturers therefore do not design procurement systems around the assumption that every international supplier will remain available indefinitely, making adaptation part of ordinary commercial planning.

Iran’s geography provides another economic advantage, because the country borders Turkey, Iraq, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan while possessing coastlines reaching the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman.

Those borders connect Iranian commerce with the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, the Persian Gulf, Turkey and Iraq, while transportation corridors also connect Iran with Russia and wider Eurasian markets.

Financial sanctions can make transactions more difficult, but they cannot physically relocate Iran or eliminate its access to neighboring markets, suppliers, transportation routes and established regional trading relationships.

Iran has consequently developed commercial links involving Iraq, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia and China through years of sustained economic interaction.

The World Bank has documented Iran’s increasing trade orientation toward neighboring countries and China as sanctions restricted conventional international relationships, making this regional pivot an established economic feature.

China adds another dimension because it combines enormous industrial capacity with sustained demand for Iranian energy while supplying machinery, manufactured products and industrial inputs required throughout Iran’s domestic economy.

The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission identifies China as Iran’s largest trading partner and estimates that China imported approximately 1.4 million barrels of Iranian crude daily during 2025.

Chinese independent refiners have continued purchasing Iranian crude through commercial arrangements designed to reduce their exposure to American financial restrictions and sanctions enforcement.

That relationship demonstrates why Iran does not require unrestricted access to every Western market when Chinese demand and extensive regional commerce provide alternative markets for Iranian commodities.

Iran’s energy resources provide enormous economic depth, with the World Bank ranking the country second globally in proven natural-gas reserves and fourth globally in proven crude-oil reserves.

Those resources provide export potential while also supplying abundant domestic energy and petrochemical feedstocks supporting manufacturing, electricity generation, transportation and numerous energy-intensive industrial activities.

Iran has consequently developed a substantial downstream economy converting hydrocarbons into refined products, petrochemicals and industrial inputs rather than depending exclusively upon crude-oil exports.

The World Bank has noted that sanctions encouraged additional processing of hydrocarbons into petrochemicals, illustrating how restrictions contributed to changes within Iran’s export structure.

Iran has also developed financial mechanisms outside conventional Western banking, including bilateral currency arrangements, exchange houses, barter, intermediary companies and indirect settlement channels supporting international commercial activity.

The World Bank has documented growing use of bilateral currency exchange, barter and indirect payment mechanisms as Iranian trade shifted increasingly toward neighboring countries and China.

These arrangements provide alternative methods for exchanging value when conventional dollar-based transactions become unavailable or prohibitively difficult.

Their existence helps explain why Washington increasingly targets third-country banks, intermediaries and commercial facilitators, because Iranian commerce extends through extensive international networks beyond domestic financial institutions.

Against this background, Bessent’s prediction assumes that eliminating a major source of oil revenue would effectively remove the broader economic foundations supporting Iran’s productive system and commercial institutions.

Iran’s economic structure is considerably broader, because oil exports represent one component of national activity alongside manufacturing, agriculture, services, domestic consumption and regional commerce.

The World Bank estimates that Iran’s economy contracted during the Iranian year ending March 2026, while simultaneously describing adaptation through changing trade patterns and alternative payment mechanisms.

Economic contraction, however, is fundamentally different from the disappearance of productive capacity, infrastructure, commercial institutions and domestic relationships sustaining millions of Iranian consumers and businesses.

American sanctions have repeatedly targeted Iranian banking, oil exports, investment, technology, shipping and foreign companies, yet Iran has retained its industrial base and redirected substantial trade toward neighboring countries.

Washington possesses powerful financial tools, but financial restrictions cannot physically eliminate Iran’s factories, oilfields, farms, engineers, consumers, ports, borders or commercial relationships accumulated over decades.

The central question is therefore whether American pressure can erase the productive, geographical, resource and commercial foundations Iran has accumulated across nearly half a century of economic adaptation.

Nothing in Iran’s economic history demonstrates that those foundations can disappear within two weeks, particularly while the country retains domestic production, regional markets, energy resources and established commercial relationships.

Iran therefore enters the present confrontation with domestic capabilities, energy resources, industrial capacity, geographic advantages and international relationships capable of keeping its economy operating despite intensified American terrorism.

Via https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/30/777309/The-fallacy-of-US-delusions-about-Iran%E2%80%99s-economic-collapse

Why Our “Populist Moment” Keeps Failing

Posted on September 30, 2026 by stuartbramhall

Connor O’Keeffe

America is in a populist moment. Or at least, that’s what we’ve been hearing for the last decade.

Ever since Donald Trump shocked the legacy press, “expert” pollsters, and the political establishment more broadly in November of 2016, we’ve seen endless attempts to explain what was, at the time, seen as a perennial sea change in American politics.

A consensus quickly emerged that pointed to a “populist surge” on the right, driven by rural white voters who were angry about the financial crisis and the political class’s failure to “stem the tide” of illegal immigration. The establishment tried to frame this all in a way that was flattering to themselves. Trump’s popularity, we were told, came from a particularly nasty group of uneducated rural whites who were enraged about having to compete with non-white people and stupid enough to fall for Trump’s lies.

But anyone looking closely could see that that characterization was, at best, a gross and overly narrow simplification. While rural white populations provided a lot (not all) of the votes and fuel for the Trump movement, its ideological thought leaders were largely young men living in or around blue cities, connecting and interacting with each other online.

Also, at the same time, there was a significant populist surge on the left. This was a bipartisan, or even non-partisan, political phenomenon. Establishment Democrats have done a far better job than their Republican counterparts at keeping their populist wing in line—largely thanks to its political leader, Bernie Sanders, who was always willing to roll over and support the establishment candidate when the time came. That said, the success of several “post-woke” democratic socialists in this year’s primaries suggests that establishment Democrats are now also losing control.

So it’s not merely some handful of uneducated rural white voters. There has been a widespread sense, across the political spectrum, that America’s institutions are not merely failing, but are actively working against the interests of everyday Americans. And that is true.

The massive federal government built up in DC over the last century or so was never meant to serve the interests of the American people as a whole. It has always been a tool for enriching the political caste and their well-connected friends in the “private sector.” They’ve done that directly with tax-and-spend programs and indirectly by using rules and regulations that warp entire industries to benefit some well-connected firms already on top.

The political establishment has gone to great lengths to hide their expropriative activities behind deceptive propaganda and fake appeals to the common good. But especially after they’ve taken the opportunity to greatly ramp up their schemes in response to crises of their own making—like the 2008 financial crisis—it became a lot harder to stop people from noticing that, somehow, the elites are ripping them off.

The “populist anger” against the elites that resulted has enabled Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party and fueled an escalating civil war within the Democratic Party that appears to be nearing a similar establishment defeat. And this anger has been the defining feature of American politics for at least ten years now.

What, then, has this populist moment accomplished? What has been done to liberate the American people from our corrupt political class, or at least to meaningfully improve the safety and material well-being of everyday Americans?

The truth is, on nearly all fronts, the results have been abysmal.

Broadly, this populist wave was meant to end the “corruption” in DC—or to stop politicians and bureaucrats from using government to enrich themselves and their friends. It was meant to end the endless series of wars fought to benefit foreign groups and governments along with well-connected firms in the “defense” and energy sectors. And it was meant to reorient the American system from one that serves the interests of corporate giants and financial elites to one that serves small businesses and local communities.

On the right, populists also wanted to stop or reverse the demographic changes resulting from the post-1965 immigration system. And populists on the left wanted to reverse the rising levels of economic inequality.

Over the last decade, every single one of these problems has gotten worse. Why?

There are, of course, plenty of specific mistakes, shortcomings, or outright failures we could examine on all these fronts. But, at the end of the day, all come back to the same fundamental problem: the populist right grew bored with economics.

The truth is, the current wave of anti-establishment, anti-elite political sentiment did not really begin ten years ago with the election of Donald Trump. It began earlier, right in the wake of the financial crisis. There was, of course, the Occupy movement on the left, but that mostly boiled down to calls to send bailouts everywhere in the economy rather than just to the big banks, or even for a full-on socialist revolution. Economic literacy was never at home in that movement.

However, on the right, the post-meltdown anger was channeled in a much sounder direction. First with the early TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party protests, which at least identified the correct villain. But then especially with the presidential campaigns of Ron Paul.

What set Ron Paul’s presidential runs apart was not that he spoke about how the current system was ripping people off and needed to be radically reformed—all candidates speak like that to at least some extent. What set him apart was that he, and he alone, correctly identified the mechanism the political class uses to rip the American people off: the Federal Reserve System.

If you listened to Ron Paul argue for ending the Fed, it’s clear he didn’t view it as one policy position among many on his domestic platform, but as the single federal entity fueling every other issue—at home and abroad—that he was talking about. And he was exactly right.

The control the central bank gives the political class over the banking system, the financial sector, and the monetary system itself has allowed it to transcend previous fiscal limits and fund its various ballooning federal programs with inflation, or money printing.

In other words, all the things the populists have claimed to oppose: the ever-growing administrative state that is warping the economy—and increasingly all parts of life—to the benefit of well-connected companies and interest groups, the enormous warfare state that we’re constantly forced to pay to expand only for it to get offered up for sale to the highest bribers, and what is effectively a massive corporate welfare system for the well-off firms at the top of the financial sector; all of it is only possible at the levels we see today because of the Federal Reserve.

That is not because the shift from traditional taxing and spending to inflation eliminates the cost or makes it more affordable. It’s because printing the money hides the cost, initially, from those who pay it. The political class is able to impose heavy taxes on the population that are barely noticeable at first, only appearing later as a general and unavoidable rise in prices that is easy to blame on “greedy” grocery store owners, for example.

That unceasing rise in prices that is clearly making just about everyone worse off does generate a lot of anger. But it’s anger that has, so far, been easily directed away from the actual culprits towards politically-convenient villains for both parties.

Add to that the ways the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates traps us in our familiar cycle of artificial, unsustainable economic booms and painful recessions, and encourages people to engage in high-time-preference behavior—a major institutional driver of much of the “degeneracy” the populist right has been speaking out against. And how the “culture wars” and ethnic conflicts that inevitably result as multiple nations, peoples, or cultures are forced to live under a single state get supercharged when that state is able to transcend normal limits and grow far more powerful, and it starts to become clear why the Fed sits right under the surface of most of the seemingly unrelated political issues animating people today.

That is why Ron Paul and the anti-establishment movement he led made opposition to the central bank their top priority. But it didn’t last.

By the time Trump came in and took control of the anti-establishment, populist energy on the right, Ron Paul’s focus on the Fed had already grown old, or stale, in the minds of populist right-wingers. They had moved on.

But importantly, what had happened was not some intellectual shift from one economic vision to another. It was a shift in focus from the root of the problem to various isolated symptoms.

And that, more than anything else, is why the populist right will continue to fail.

“Populists” can talk, until the end of time, about how they want to restructure federal policy to benefit Americans rather than the big multinational corporations it’s designed to serve, rein in the warfare state and the various foreign and domestic lobbies using it for their own ends, and tackle the nation’s cultural rot and escalating degeneracy. But as long as they remain uninterested in targeting the central federal apparatus that is fueling all this behavior, they’re not really serious about stopping it.

And that clearly describes the Trump movement, as it exists today. The lack of interest in actually taking on the root of the problems he ran on and talks about has made it easy for the political establishment to co-opt Trump’s administration and direct it back towards maintaining and even expanding the federal rackets causing the populist anger.

Now, Trump’s unwillingness to fix the inflation crisis is likely to hand power to the democratic socialists on the left. Americans tend to have a default—and justified—aversion to socialism. But these are the only candidates leaning into the populist anger who remain largely unstained by having been in office in recent years as this inflation crisis goes unaddressed. But, of course, the socialists also have no interest in actually addressing it. They merely want to use it as an excuse to ram through all their dream tax-and-spend programs—all of which will only make the problem far worse.

In other words, the populist anger we’ve seen escalate for years now is unlikely to dissipate any time soon. But, as long as today’s populists refuse to confront the economic foundation of the system they claim to oppose, that anger will keep getting redirected toward fighting symptoms while the machinery producing them grows stronger.

Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig von Mises, and the intellectual tradition they embodied already identified that system’s real center of gravity. We already know the answer. All that’s left to do is act on it.

Via https://mises.org/mises-wire/why-our-populist-moment-keeps-failing

Ultra-orthodox Jews condemn IDF as ‘enemy army’

Posted on September 30, 2026 by stuartbramhall

Published 30 Sep, 2026 16:27

Thousands of Haredi Jews marched through the streets of Jerusalem overnight, protesting the Israeli military conscription and honoring incarcerated draft dodgers from the ultra-Orthodox community.

The march began in Jerusalem’s Geula neighborhood, with many streets in the area cordoned off. The police, however, avoided deploying officers into the crowds in an apparent attempt to avoid provoking violence. The demonstration was organized by multiple hardline Haredi anti-draft groups, including the Jerusalem Faction and other anti-conscription activists, who expressed hope the event would be peaceful. No major incidents were reported.

Some 50 formerly jailed draft evaders reportedly showed up at the event, with the crowds celebrating them as true martyrs who had suffered for what the event organizers described as their adherence to Judaism. The ultra-Orthodox community overwhelmingly opposes compulsory military conscription into the IDF, viewing full-time Torah study as their primary duty.

Demonstrators carried assorted placards and banners during the march, including signs equating Haredi military prisoners to “hostages.” Some placards even condemned the IDF as an “enemy army” and reiterated the Haredi refusal to sacrifice their children “on the altar of Zionism,” footage from the scene shows.

Some protesters were seen riding an open-roof double-decker bus, blasting traditional songs and dancing in the streets.

The demonstration comes two days after hundreds of Haredi Jews rallied in Bnei Brak to honor 160 ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers released from a military prison. While the event was described by organizers as a homecoming party, it turned political and was used to launch the Color Black, a newly registered Haredi political party. Its program largely revolves around securing military-service exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox community.

While military service is mandatory for most Israeli citizens, both men and women, members of the Haredi community have enjoyed an exemption for decades. The arrangement ended in 2014, resulting in repeated clashes between the ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Israeli authorities.

Tensions escalated amid the Gaza war, with the Supreme Court ruling in 2024 that thousands from the community were subject to conscription. The mass draft of ultra-Orthodox, however, has been repeatedly delayed, with the authorities reportedly winding down the conscription effort recently ahead of parliamentary elections.

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Via https://www.rt.com/news/646515-orthodox-jews-protest-draft/

Bessent and Lutnick Building Parallel Financial System on Stablecoins without Government Oversight While Crashing US Dollar Intentionally

Posted on September 30, 2026 by stuartbramhall

Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News

Leah of the Leah Files has just published her 4th article in her “Currency Killer” series about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s attempts to take over the U.S. financial system by crashing the U.S. dollar and replacing it with stablecoins, and specifically with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s Tether stablecoin, the largest stablecoin in the world which is now rapidly buying up U.S. Treasuries.

Here is my coverage of her first three articles in this explosive investigative series that I have yet to see anyone else cover in either the corporate or alternative media: Part 1 & 2: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Just Restructured The American Financial System to Destroy the U.S. Dollar Part 3: The Epstein Digital Financial System is Getting Ready to Replace the U.S. Dollar

In this 4th article in the series, Leah covers the GENIUS Act, which has already been signed into law, but has a comment period before it is enacted that will close on October 19.

As Leah writes, this is not simply “corruption as usual” in Washington D.C., where conflicts of interest rule the day.

No, this is entirely different – it is the complete hijacking of the U.S. financial system and putting it into the hands of a very few powerful people, and one very powerful company: Tether.

As Leah writes:

That is not a stablecoin company. That is a parallel financial system, every function of a central bank plus every function of an intelligence service, in one private entity, owned by four men who control 86 percent of the equity, incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, physically located in El Salvador, and paying zero corporate tax on $13 billion in annual revenue.

In 2024 during the Presidential campaign season in the U.S., I exposed many of the Silicon Valley billionaires who follow the teachings of Curtis Yarvin, and believe that democracy is a poor form of government, and would instead prefer a monarchy.

Peter Thiel heads this list, along with his protege and disciple, J.D. Vance, who is now the Vice President of the United States. See: Big Tech “Far-Right” Billionaires want to Eliminate Politicians and “Democracy” as They Believe They can Run the World Better by Themselves

Of course “democracy” and the illusion that people can vote politicians into office to affect change is considered a “Constitutional Right”, and this belief is drilled into every American through our educational system.

So overthrowing the government and installing a king is just not something that would go over too well in the U.S.

However, hijacking the American financial system by crashing the U.S. dollar, replacing it with stablecoins, and putting it into the hands of a few powerful people in the private sector would accomplish almost the exact same thing, and Leah exposes it all in her series and in this latest article, which is must reading for everyone.

The Currency Killer Part IV: The Machine

They built it in eighteen months and it has been turned on. We have three weeks to make a change.

by Leah
The Leah Files

Excerpts:

Scott Bessent, the man running the US Treasury stood in front of a room in Dallas on September 10 and said five words that should have ended his career: “I am the house now.”

He was not joking. He tripled the government’s bond buyback program the same week. The next day, the DOJ publicly thanked Tether for helping freeze $52 million in criminal funds. Two weeks before that, his Treasury Department deleted the only federal database tracking who owns shell companies in America, and then published the rules that will govern stablecoins forever.

All of that happened in thirty-one days.

In Part I, I showed you how Bessent spent forty years breaking currencies and then took the keys to ours. In Part II, I showed you how Lutnick’s family built the custody operation with a Tether loan. In Part III, I traced Tether to Epstein’s crypto network and documented the empire they are building with the profits.

This is Part IV. This is what it looks like when all of it runs at the same time, and there is a clock on it. The GENIUS Act comment period closes October 19. That is three weeks from now. After that, the rules governing stablecoins in America get finalized by the man who profits from their growth, and the company those rules will govern just hired the man who wrote the law to be its CEO.

“I AM THE HOUSE NOW”

On September 10, Scott Bessent stood in front of a room in Dallas and said five words that should have been on every front page in America, “I am the house now.”

He was responding to critics who called his Treasury interventions reckless, after bond traders pushed back against his buyback program and drove yields higher instead of lower. His response was not to adjust, it was to triple down.

The Treasury announced it would buy back up to $6 billion in bonds in a single week, triple the normal operation. Bessent has doubled the buyback program twice since taking office, from $2 billion per operation to $4 billion, and now effectively to $6 billion per week, an escalation that no previous Treasury Secretary has attempted because no previous Treasury Secretary was a career currency trader who spent four decades learning how to move bond markets by force.

Here is what “I am the house now” means when you translate it from hedge fund speak. It means he is not managing the bond market, he is running it, setting the prices, deciding which bonds get bought, at what maturity, and at what yield.

The people on the other side of every one of those trades are the stablecoin issuers whose reserves the GENIUS Act requires to be held in Treasury bills maturing within 93 days.

When George Soros said something similar before breaking the Bank of England, he was a private citizen betting against a government.

Bessent was the man next to him when he said it.

Now Bessent is the government, and the bond market he is running determines what your mortgage costs, what the dollar is worth, and how much the country pays to borrow money.

That has never happened before, and he said it out loud.

Fortune reported that bond yields are higher now than before Bessent intervened, which means the plan is not working the way a normal Treasury Secretary would want it to work. But it is working exactly the way a currency attacker would want it to work, because higher long-term yields and lower short-term yields is the exact trade that benefits stablecoin issuers who hold short-term T-bills.

Bessent knows this because he spent forty years doing this.

THE NUMBERS

Here is what Bessent is actually doing with the bond market, because the numbers tell a story the headlines are not.

The GENIUS Act requires every stablecoin to be backed by Treasury bills maturing within 93 days. Not bonds, not notes. Short-term bills specifically. That means every new dollar of stablecoin growth creates a dollar of mandatory demand for one very specific type of government debt.

Now look at what Bessent did with supply.

Before he took over, the government was adding about $31.7 billion in T-bills per month. Under Bessent, the average rose to $45.7 billion. Then in June 2026, it exploded: T-bills outstanding jumped from $6.691 trillion to $7.248 trillion in two months. That is $557 billion in sixty days, 8.8 times the pre-Bessent pace. He is flooding the market with exactly the securities that stablecoin issuers are required by law to buy.

And there is only one buyer large enough to absorb that at scale. Tether held $98.5 billion in T-bills at the end of Q1 2025. By June 2026 it was $141 billion. They are already the 17th largest holder of US government debt on earth, bigger than Germany, and their CEO has said publicly they want to be top five.

Here is what that means for your wallet.

An academic study found that Tether’s buying lowers short-term yields by 24 basis points, which saves the US government roughly $15 billion a year in borrowing costs. The government is paying less on its debt because Tether is buying it. Standard Chartered projects stablecoin issuers will need $1 trillion in T-bill reserves by 2028. Bessent himself says $2 trillion.

Read that again.

The US government is becoming financially dependent on a private company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands to finance its own borrowing. And the man running the Treasury is the one making it happen.

That is the feedback loop nobody is naming.

Bessent issues the T-bills. The law requires Tether to buy them. Tether’s buying lowers yields and saves the government money. The government becomes dependent on Tether’s demand. Tether becomes too important to regulate. And Tether takes the yield from those T-bills and converts it into something else entirely.

Bessent has gutted every agency that would be watching any of this. FinCEN, the agency whose entire job is tracking dirty money, took an 11 percent staff cut with 30 more positions proposed for elimination, and the beneficial ownership database was ordered deleted.

The Public Integrity Section, the DOJ unit that prosecutes corrupt officials, went from 36 lawyers to 2 and from 190 open cases to about 20. Seventeen inspectors general were fired in a single night. The FBI’s public corruption squad was dissolved. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement was paused by executive order.

THE LOOP

Here is how it works when you put all the pieces together, six steps where each one feeds the next.

Step one: Bessent floods the market with short-term Treasury bills, tripling the buyback program to $6 billion per week and shifting debt issuance toward shorter maturities in what analysts call the “Treasury Twist.”

Step two: the GENIUS Act requires every stablecoin to be backed by reserves held in T-bills maturing within 93 days, which means every new dollar of stablecoin growth creates a dollar of mandatory demand for the exact securities Bessent is issuing.

Step three: Tether buys those T-bills, currently holding $141 billion in US Treasuries, making it the 17th largest holder of US government debt on earth and bigger than Germany, earning roughly $13 billion a year in yield.

Step four: Tether uses that yield to build the empire, deploying more than $5 billion since late 2023 into farmland, fertilizer, AI data centers, satellite companies, robotics, media platforms, gold, and bitcoin.

Step five: the empire generates revenue, with Adecoagro alone producing $467 million in annual EBITDA, the farmland growing crops, the bitcoin mines running on sugarcane electricity, the gold lending operation earning interest, and StableFund deploying private credit, with every subsidiary producing cash that flows back to Tether.

Step six: Tether issues more stablecoins, which require more T-bill reserves, which creates more demand for Bessent’s bonds, which keeps yields low, which lets the government borrow cheaply, which means Bessent can issue more T-bills.

That is the loop, and once it reaches scale no future president can dismantle it without crashing the bond market. At $1 trillion in stablecoins, the US government depends on Tether to finance its operations.

At $2 trillion, Bessent’s own projection for 2028, stablecoin issuers hold a quarter of all T-bills outstanding. At $4 trillion, the whole thing is permanent, because the interest rates on your mortgage, your car loan, and your credit card would all spike overnight if anyone tried to unwind it.

We are at $302 billion right now and the clock is running….

Read the Full Article at The Leah Files – this is just a portion of everything she reports on that I have republished here.

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2026/bessent-and-lutnick-are-building-a-parallel-financial-system-on-stablecoins-without-government-oversight-while-crashing-the-u-s-dollar-intentionally/?ct=YTo1OntzOjY6InNvdXJjZSI7YToyOntpOjA7czo1OiJlbWFpbCI7aToxO2k6MjA2Mjt9czo1OiJlbWFpbCI7aToyMDYyO3M6NDoic3RhdCI7czoyMjoiNmFiZDI1OTI2Yjk4ZTg1OTU3MTM5MSI7czo0OiJsZWFkIjtzOjY6IjgwOTY5NCI7czo3OiJjaGFubmVsIjthOjE6e3M6NToiZW1haWwiO2k6MjA2Mjt9fQ%3D%3D

Force CIA to Disclose Chile Records

Posted on September 29, 2026 by stuartbramhall

How Trump's government-cutting moves risk exposing the CIA's secrets ...

by Jacob G. Hornberger | Sep 28, 2026

For some odd reason, the CIA steadfastly refuses to disclose all of its records relating to the 1973 Chilean coup, which the CIA ardently supported. The CIA says that “national security” will be jeopardized if its records are disclosed to the American people.

That’s ridiculous. What do they think will happen — that the United States will fall into the ocean or be taken over by the communists, the terrorists, the Muslims, or some other scary boogeyman?

The disclosure issue is more relevant than ever, given that September 21 was the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Orlando Letelier and his assistant Ronni Moffitt on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Letelier had served in the administration of Salvador Allende, a socialist who was democratically elected president of Chile in 1970. U.S. officials, especially those in the U.S. national-security establishment, concluded that Allende posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security.” Therefore they set into motion the events that would ultimately lead to the violent 1973 coup, which resulted in one of the most brutal military tyrannies in history — one supported by the U.S. government.

Letelier and Moffitt were driving to work that September 21 morning when a car bomb exploded and killed them both. Moffitt’s husband, who was also in the car, survived. It was a knowing, deliberate, intentional act of murder and terrorism here in the United States.

It was ultimately determined that the person in charge of planting the bomb was a man named Michael Townley. He confessed to traveling from Chile to the United States and organizing a team of Cuban exiles that assisted him in planting the car bomb.

It has always been assumed that Pinochet ordered the bombing, in large part because the CIA conducted an investigation that concluded that Pinochet did, in fact, order the bombing. That conclusion has become an important part of the historical case against Pinochet. In fact, some people are demanding the release of the CIA’s long-secret Chile records to help establish that Pinochet did, in fact, order the bombing.

That’s, of course, a distinct possibility. Letelier was living here in the United States and working for a think tank that was actively working in opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship, including trying to convince Congress to cut off aid to the Pinochet regime. Thus, it stands to reason that Pinochet certainly had a motive to kill Letelier.

However, there is something else to consider. Pinochet was not a dumb man. He had to realize that if a major terrorist attack on American soil could be traced to his regime, his good, solid relationship with the U.S. government, including foreign aid to Chile, would be finished. It is very difficult to believe that he would have been willing to take that chance just to silence a prominent critic of his regime.

There is another possibility, one that the U.S. officials and the U.S. mainstream press are loathe to consider. That possibility is that it was the CIA, rather than Pinochet, that ordered the hit on Letelier.

Yes, I know what U.S. supporters of the CIA will respond. They’ll point to that CIA investigation that concluded that it was Pinochet who ordered the hit. But isn’t that sort of like saying that the Gestapo investigated one of its murders and concluded that someone else did it? If the hypothesis being investigated is CIA involvement in the assassination, how can the CIA’s own official conclusions be treated as dispositive, especially given the CIA’s longtime expertise in covering up its assassinations?

Let’s consider some other unusual factors:

1. As part of its effort to prevent Allende from taking office, the CIA supported and encouraged Chilean military conspirators seeking to remove Gen. René Schneider, including through kidnapping. Schneider was subsequently shot during a kidnapping attempt and died three days later.

What does that have to do with Letelier? Well, if they’re willing to violently remove Schneider from office, why would they be reluctant to terminate a critic of the man who they helped install into power, Augusto Pinochet? After all, don’t forget that Letelier was a dyed-in-the-wool socialist, one who had actually served in the administration of the socialist president who was considered to be a grave threat to U.S. national security. Therefore, CIA officials would have considered it to be no big deal to terminate the life of such a man through a state-orchestrated assassination. Moreover, the CIA would have known that it would never be punished for assassinating someone it deemed to be a threat to “national security.”

2. Manuel Contreras served as Pinochet’s director of its brutal internal security force — DINA. Townley implicated Contreras as the DINA official responsible for ordering the operation, and Contreras was ultimately convicted in Chile for the Letelier assassination. Contreras maintained that the CIA, rather than Pinochet, was behind the assassination.

3. While serving as director of DINA, Contreras maintained an intelligence relationship with the CIA and even received a cash payment from the agency.

4. It’s worth mentioning that Townley had contacted the CIA before the Letelier assassination. The CIA has maintained that Townley initiated those contacts and that it never recruited him.

5. Townley was given what can only be described as one of the sweetest sweetheart deals in the history of U.S. criminal jurisprudence. After all, don’t forget — he was the person who was in charge of the operation that planted the bomb in Letelier’s car. There was no question but that this was a premeditated act of brutal murder of two totally innocent people. Anyone else would have been given nothing less than a life sentence.

Yet, Townley was permitted to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to murder and given only a 10-year sentence — with parole eligibility after only 3 years 4 months. The government also agreed to protect Townley (an admitted murderer) and his family. Interestingly, he would not be required to testify concerning other crimes committed outside U.S. jurisdiction.

This cold-blooded murderer was released from prison after serving only five years in prison.

It gets better.

Townley was permitted to enter the federal witness protection program. In fact, given that he was in this program during his five years of incarceration, we don’t really know where his “incarceration” took place — or even if it was inside a penitentiary, especially given his plea bargain guaranteed him with parole eligibility after only 3 years 4 months. To this day, Townley is presumably living the good life under a secret identity, being fully protected by the U.S. government.

How do U.S. officials justify this extraordinary treatment of an admitted cold-blooded murderer? They say that he was used to build a case against his DINA superiors, including Contreras. Really? Then why not keep him in prison until such time that Contreras or any other Chilean officials are brought to the United States to stand trial? Why agree to release him before that? Contreras was never extradited to the United States to stand trial and, as I state below, Chilean official Armando Fernández Lario was prosecuted and convicted and was forced to serve only 5 months in jail. In other words, Townley got a free pass.

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that prior to the Letelier assassination, Townley traveled to the United States, where he met with CIA officials. The CIA says that nothing came out of that meeting. Of course, the CIA, as everyone knows, would never lie.

Oh, U.S. officials also justify the sweetheart treatment of cold-blooded murderer Townley by saying that he helped them secure convictions of the Cuban exiles that were part of his bomb team. What? Isn’t the standard procedure to offer sweetheart deals to the little people in a murder in order to get the people at the top? Why not offer the sweetheart deals to the Cuban exiles in order to secure a conviction and life sentence for Townley, the man who recruited and organized them?

While we are on the subject of Cuban exiles, need I mention the CIA’s longtime close relationship with Cuban exiles? Wasn’t it Cuban exiles that the CIA used in its fiasco invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961?

6. Let’s do a quick examination of the sentences that the Cuban exiles on Townley’s team received for having helped to assassinate two innocent people on the streets of Washington, D.C.

José Dionisio Suárez Esquivel. 12-year sentence. Released after serving only 7-8 years.

Virgilio Paz Romero. 12-year sentence. Released after serving only 6-7 years.

Alvin Ross Díaz. Initially received life sentence. Convictions reversed on appeal. On retrial, acquitted of murder-related charges because the jury didn’t believe Townley.

Guillermo Novo Sampol. Initially received life sentence. Convictions reversed on appeal. On retrial, acquitted of murder-related charges because the jury didn’t believe Townley.

7. Chilean official Armando Fernández Larios. Sentenced to 27 months to 7 years. Served only 5 months before being released because of his cooperation.

Whether the CIA’s still-secret records contain evidence bearing on CIA involvement in the Letelier/Moffitt assassinations is impossible to know. Regardless, after 50 years, the American people should not have to take the CIA’s word for what its remaining Chile records do or do not show. And, no, America will not fall into the ocean or be taken over by the Reds, the terrorists, the Muslims, or anyone else if the CIA is forced to divulge all of its 50-year-old records relating to Chile.

Via https://ronpaulinstitute.org/force-the-cia-to-disclose-its-chile-records/

Strikes paralyze France as Macron’s popularity flatlines

Posted on September 29, 2026 by stuartbramhall

New Day of Strikes in France as Pension Anger Persists - The New York Times

29 Sep, 2026

A series of mass protests has gripped France ahead of the French government’s plans to slash some €56 billion from its social spending.

Firefighters, healthcare workers, transport staff and other civil servants took part in a nationwide strike on Tuesday, backed by all of the country’s major public-sector unions. More than 170 marches were planned across France, with demonstrators blocking roads and scuffling with police in Paris, and firefighters setting flares alight atop the iconic July Column at the Place de la Bastille – built to commemorate the overthrow of King Charles X in 1830. French students also clashed with police outside schools across the country.

The protesters’ demands are familiar: higher wages, better working conditions, and more funding for public services. However, while public sector employees have accused President Emmanuel Macron’s government of underfunding and dismantling their departments for years, they argue that their situation has recently been made unbearable by record fuel prices and wages that have failed to keep pace with inflation.

France has raised public sector pay by 5% since Macron took power in 2017, while cumulative inflation has risen 24% in the same time period.

The SNUipp-FSU teachers’ union has claimed that 40% of primary school teachers are on strike, while one in four firefighters have walked off the job, according to government estimates. France’s left-wing CGT union described the day’s strikes as a “black day,” intended to “truly express our anger.”

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu is set to unveil €54 billion ($62 billion) worth of cutbacks in his 2027 budget on Thursday. Lecornu denies that he has drafted an “austerity” budget, but left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, a supporter of the strikes, has said that it would only heighten unrest, and has vowed to undo the budget and cancel government debt if elected president next year.

Macron, who has served two terms and cannot contest April’s election, is currently polling at less than 18% approval, according to an Ifop poll published earlier this month. Although the French president has seen worse approval numbers in other polls, 18% is an historic low in an Ifop survey.

Tuesday’s strikes are compounded by a growing student protest movement. High school students complaining about overcrowded and neglected classrooms have blockaded more than 300 schools in multiple cities, according to media reports.

The students – predominantly black and Middle-Eastern teenagers from deprived suburbs – set dumpsters on fire outside a school in Lille on Monday and clashed with police in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. In some areas, the protests have degenerated into riots, with youths shooting fireworks and engaging in running battles with riot police.

Police arrested 164 students and rioters on Monday, and at least 40 on Tuesday, according to the latest figures from French media.

Via https://www.rt.com/news/646434-france-students-protest-strikes/

Republicans distancing themselves from Trump ahead of US midterms

Posted on September 29, 2026 by stuartbramhall

Seen in a prompter, US President Donald Trump speaks during the America.gov launch event at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium on September 29, 2026, in Washington, DC. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV

Sept 29, 2026

The Republican Party candidates running for the upcoming House and Senate elections in the United States are increasingly distancing themselves from Donald Trump as the approval ratings of the president continue to fall because of issues like the failed aggression against Iran and its impacts on the US economy.

A Tuesday report published on the website of Newsweek showed that more Republican lawmakers fighting for the November elections are removing images of or references to Trump from their campaign websites.

Newsweek said it had carried out a comparison between current and archived versions of campaign websites using the Wayback Machine, showing that a number of Republican candidates, especially those bracing for tight races, had downplayed their relationship with Trump and his agenda.

The lawmakers studied in the report included Michael Whatley in the North Carolina Senate race, Ohio Senator Jon Husted, Michael Bouchard, running to represent Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, and Florida House candidate Mike Beltran, who have removed Trump’s images and references from their campaign websites.

Newsweek said campaign websites had also wiped references to Trump’s “America First” policy and replaced it with local issues like affordability.

Trump’s approval ratings have dropped to record lows, with many blaming his disastrous handling of the aggression on Iran and its economic impacts for the US for the fall in support for the Republicans.

Political analysts expect the Republican Party to suffer a major defeat in the November elections only because of Trump’s failure in government.

Mike Madrid, a Republican political strategist, told Newsweek that Republicans are openly distancing themselves from Trump because they see more value in it than living with the image and legacy of the US president.

“Trump is now more of a liability than an asset… It’s unprecedented,” he told Newsweek, “and will likely prove devastating in November,” said Madrid.

Via https://www.presstv.co.uk/Detail/2026/09/29/777290/republican-lawmakers-trump-image-removal-campaign-websites

‘Distance yourselves from Israel’: IRGC urges US population to question govt policies

Posted on September 29, 2026 by stuartbramhall

(Photo credit: IRNA)

The Cradle

SEP 29, 2026

The IRGC letter vows that Tehran will ‘continue fighting’ while calling on US citizens to ‘see through’ false claims made by Washington

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) released a letter on 29 September addressing the US population – urging it to “force” Washington to “distance” itself from Israel, and expressing a readiness for “coexistence and peace,” while also vowing to continue fighting for Iran’s rights.

“Our purpose in sending a letter to the US people goes beyond media propaganda and creating familiarity with Iran’s reasoning. This is not a short-term or purely promotional move … Choosing a ‘letter’ as a tool to convey our message directly and clearly was a method selected based on the realities on the ground,” said IRGC spokesman Hossein Mohebbi.

“The countries neighboring or located near the US, whether along its land or maritime borders, do not possess the military and security capabilities to pose a serious threat to the US,” he added following the letter’s release, urging US citizens to question Washington’s military expansionism and the presence of hundreds of its military bases across the globe.

Mohebbi went on to ask, “What is the purpose of deploying 800 US military bases around the world?”

The letter itself poses several questions to the US people, while urging them to “see through” the official claims made by Washington.

This included US, as well as Israeli, claims regarding the Iranian nuclear program.

“For 25 years … the [US] claimed that Iran is only … months or weeks away from building a nuclear bomb … If this were true, why has Iran not yet gone through with its plan to build a bomb? If Iran was only a little while away from making the bomb 25 years ago, when it was far less technologically advanced … then it should possess dozens of nuclear bombs today.”

It also pointed to US intelligence reports acknowledging that Tehran is not looking to weaponize its program.

Additionally, it slams US official claims and declares to the US people that Washington’s bases were “decimated” throughout the war.

This has been confirmed through satellite imagery and western media, not just Iranian outlets.

Tehran, through the letter, also repeated its longstanding declarations to the people of the US that Iran is opposed to their government and not them themselves.

“The people who burn the American flag are not hostile to the American people; it is the oppression and aggression of the American government that they are denouncing,” the letter reads.

“We can live together in peaceful coexistence. Remove from power the evil, deceitful, and violent politicians who are responsible for America’s current state. Entrust your affairs to the wise, not the wily. Make sure your politicians understand that the world has changed,” it adds.

The letter also urges the US people to “distance itself from Israel, as the occupiers of Palestine will, sooner or later, have to leave the land they occupy and return to their countries of origin.”

The letter stresses that Tehran will “continue fighting” despite “all the hardships that our enemies impose on us.”

It comes as reports indicate Washington is planning to renew bombing against Iran. Tehran has vowed much wider retaliation than before in the event of such actions.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/distance-yourselves-from-israel-irgc-urges-us-population-to-question-govt-policies

India backs Palestine at BRICS while arming Israel

Posted on September 29, 2026 by stuartbramhall

Photo Credit: The Cradle

Gaurav Kumar

SEP 29, 2026

On 12 September, the BRICS bloc, whose members now include Egypt, Iran and the UAE, adopted a 45-page, 140-paragraph New Delhi Declaration in the Indian capital. Its Gaza passages, paragraphs 30 to 34, condemned starvation as a method of warfare, opposed the forced displacement of Palestinians, and noted the provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. India chaired the summit and signed the declaration with the other 10 members.

Palestinian Ambassador to India Abdullah Abu Shawesh later congratulated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on hosting the summit and welcomed its references to Palestine. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Ramallah welcomed it too, but stressed that words had to be followed by practical and concrete steps.

Seven months earlier, Modi stood in the Knesset and, offering condolences for the 7 October 2023 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, told Israeli lawmakers: “India stands with Israel, firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond.”

The following day, alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, he elevated ties to a “Special Strategic Partnership” and spoke of “joint development, joint production, and transfer of technology” in defense.

The two positions coexist in New Delhi’s foreign policy. India has deepened its strategic relationship with Israel while keeping its distance, in diplomatic language, from Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

Trade and production records show how much deeper the military relationship has become. India buys Israeli weapons, builds Israeli-designed systems at home, and ships defense goods to Israeli buyers.

Amnesty International and a UN Commission of Inquiry have described Israel’s campaign in Gaza as genocide. Where Indian-made parts went after delivery remains difficult to establish, making the export records and the government’s refusal to publish end-use details central to the question of India’s role.

Israel’s largest arms customer

India recognized Palestine in 1988 and established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992. Since then, weapons have driven the relationship. India was the world’s second-largest importer of major arms in 2021–25, taking 8.2 percent of global imports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Israel supplied 15 percent of India’s imports, behind Russia at 40 percent and France at 29 percent.

India is also Israel’s largest customer for major arms, receiving 29 percent of its exports in that period. Meir Ben Shabbat, Israel’s former national security advisor, told the Jerusalem News Syndicate (JNS) this summer that Indian orders help fund the research and development on which the Israeli army relies. SIPRI puts the growth in Israel’s overall arms exports between the two five-year periods at 56 percent, a separate measure from India’s share.

In February, reports of roughly $8.6 billion in new deals for India’s air force included Rafael’s SPICE 1000 guided-bomb kits, Elbit’s Rampage missiles, Israel Aerospace Industries’ Air LORA ballistic missile and Rafael’s Ice Breaker cruise missile.

Yet the government’s official list of 27 outcomes from Modi’s visit names artificial intelligence (AI), cyber cooperation and a quota of up to 50,000 Indian workers, but no arms contract. Those workers are expected to help fill gaps left after Israel cut permits for Palestinian laborers following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. Reports of arms deals appeared in the trade press, while the government’s public list left them out.

Battle-tested weapons, made in India

Israeli systems sit across India’s military: the Barak 8 air defense missile, co-developed with India’s state Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO); Heron and Searcher drones; SPYDER air defense; Spike anti-tank missiles; and Phalcon airborne radars.

India reportedly used Israeli Harop loitering munitions and Rampage missiles against Pakistan in May 2025, during Operation Sindoor, after gunmen killed 26 people, mostly tourists, at Pahalgam in Indian-held Kashmir. Their place in India’s arsenal helps explain why New Delhi has shown little appetite for an embargo of the kind imposed by some European governments.

New Delhi now builds what it once bought. In Hyderabad, Adani Elbit Advanced Systems, a venture between Israel’s Elbit Systems and India’s Adani Group, assembles Hermes 900 drones, the long-endurance model the Israeli army flies over Gaza.

A company representative, who was not authorized to speak publicly, tells The Cradle that the plant had exported parts for more than 20 of the drones for “surveillance and reconnaissance,” but would not name the buyer. The Wire reported in 2024 that the venture had sold more than 20 Hermes 900s to Israel.

A second venture, PLR Systems, pairs Adani with Israel Weapon Industries, maker of the Tavor rifle. The same conglomerate controls Haifa, one of Israel’s two main seaports, which it bought in 2023.

The bureaucracy is locked in too. In November 2025, India’s Defense Secretary Rajesh Kumar Singh and Israeli Defense Ministry Director General Amir Baram signed a memorandum in Tel Aviv on co-development and co-production. Baram was back in New Delhi to meet Defense Minister Rajnath Singh in June 2026

Indian arms bound for Israel

In May 2024, the cargo ship Borkum, which had sailed from Chennai, dropped a planned stop at Cartagena in Spain after protests over claims it was carrying explosives for Israel. Documents later seen by Al Jazeera indicated it was bound for Ashdod with rocket engines and rockets aboard; the ship’s German manager denied loading any cargo for Israel.

In May this year, an Al Jazeera analysis of Israeli import data ranked India second only to the US as a source of military-related goods entering Israel during the war, at about 26 percent.

On 30 July, Amnesty International published Made in India. It examined 2,596 shipments of weapons, ammunition, parts and components from India to Israel between 7 October 2023 and 30 November 2025, including 564,970 explosive-ordnance parts, such as drone warheads and artillery shell casings, and 390,516 small-arms components. Some shipment categories can have both civilian and military uses; Amnesty says it excluded shipments it judged to have purely civilian or defensive purposes.

Three of the nine exporters Amnesty named are owned by the Indian state: Munitions India, Advanced Weapons and Equipment India, and India Optel.

According to Amnesty’s findings, Munitions India shipped 1,000 155mm high-explosive artillery rounds to Elbit Systems, and Advanced Weapons and Equipment India sent Elbit 120 81mm mortar launchers in February 2024.

Amnesty’s Secretary-General Agnes Callamard said India supplies arms to Israel “through its ownership and control over key supplier companies.” New Delhi has not joined the UN Arms Trade Treaty. Amnesty argues that India risks complicity in violations of international law; no court has ruled that these particular transfers make India complicit in genocide.

The licenses New Delhi will not show

The Indian government’s public response to Amnesty’s report was brief. Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said on 31 July that India has a “robust legal and regulatory framework” on strategic trade controls.

He did not address individual shipments. Amnesty says neither the government nor the nine companies gave a written response. The Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), a think tank funded by the Defense Ministry, argued that India is not among Israel’s leading suppliers of major arms and that exports had not spiked after the war began.

Its comparison uses a narrower category than Al Jazeera‘s ranking of military-related imports, so the two claims do not directly contradict each other.

Responding to questions from The Cradle, Maj. Gen. Shashi Bhushan Asthana, a retired Indian army officer with experience in West Asia, disputed the implication that all of the shipments Amnesty identified were military supplies.

Asthana estimated that roughly 39 percent involved military-use items, and said many underlying contracts had been signed before October 2023. In his view, shipment dates alone do not establish whether the goods were supplied specifically for the war in Gaza.

K.C. Singh, a former Indian ambassador to Iran and the UAE, was more pointed. In an interview with The Cradle at the India International Centre in New Delhi, he said India’s growing alignment with the US and Israel had become hard to overlook.

A customs record, he said, cannot prove that an Indian part reached Gaza, but New Delhi publishes nothing that could disprove it either. Licenses issued under India’s SCOMET export-control list, and the end-use assurances attached to them, are kept secret.

Who approved the shipments, what assurances the Israeli buyers gave and whether state-owned exporters face additional scrutiny remain unanswered, he added.

The record India keeps private

Defenders of India’s policy point to a relationship that predates the war, supplies forces facing China and Pakistan, and serves Modi’s drive to manufacture weapons at home. They argue that buying from Israel and producing with Israeli companies do not prevent New Delhi from supporting a Palestinian state.

The export figures nonetheless raise a question about the influence of Israel’s largest arms customer. Spain, Slovenia, and the Netherlands have halted or restricted arms trade with Israel over Gaza. New Delhi has deepened co-production instead.

India endorsed two texts this year that speak to the same war from opposite ends of its policy. In New Delhi, it condemned starvation as a method of warfare. In Jerusalem, it pledged closer defense cooperation with the state accused of employing it.

The documents do not explain how Indian military exports are assessed against India’s stated concern for Palestinian civilians. In the Knesset, Modi said no cause could justify the murder of civilians; his government has offered little public detail on what its factories send to Israeli arms makers.

India’s silence on the arms trade also sits uneasily with its claim to speak for the Global South. After chairing a BRICS summit alongside Iran, Egypt, and the UAE, New Delhi is still courting Arab capitals whose energy exports sustain India and whose economies employ millions of its workers.

On 26 September, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told the UN General Assembly (UNGA) that lasting peace requires a two-state solution and that India was contributing to relief for Palestinians. He said nothing about the arms trade.

India can maintain relations with Israel while supporting Palestine, as successive governments have done. The harder question is whether New Delhi will disclose enough about its exports for its citizens to judge the consequences of that policy.

Publishing the relevant export licenses and end-use conditions would make that scrutiny possible. Joining the Arms Trade Treaty or pausing transfers to Israeli arms makers would go further, and carry political and strategic costs that the government would have to weigh. It has announced none of these steps.

India’s support for Palestine was again on the record in New Delhi and New York this month. Its customs and shipping records show artillery rounds, drone parts, and rifle components sent from Indian ports to Israeli arms makers during the war. New Delhi has yet to explain how those exports fit with the language it endorsed at BRICS, or what checks it has imposed on their use.

Via https://thecradle.co/articles/india-backs-palestine-at-brics-while-arming-israel

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