Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

They’ve been shared by the vast majority of humanity throughout history in their own contexts...

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated the AfD, just topped a recent poll as the country’s most popular party, as “extremist” before withdrawing it pending litigation. This label would legitimize surveillance of them and can set the pretext for banning them. Vice President JD Vance condemned this earlier move as equivalent to building a new Berlin Wall while Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on Germany to reverse its decision and also end its “dangerous open border immigration policies”.

Lost amidst a lot of the debate over this controversial decision is the basis upon which it was made: “The party's prevailing understanding of the people based on ethnicity and descent is incompatible with the free democratic basic order.” 

The AfD believes that ethnic Germans have a special connection to their country due to their shared culture and experiences, which non-ethnic German citizens lack, especially those from civilizationally dissimilar societies across the Global South who only recently arrived there.

These views actually aren’t extremist at all since they’ve been shared by the vast majority of humanity throughout history in their own contexts. In fact, they’re still popular in non-Western societies, the same places from which most of Germany’s non-ethnic-German population originates. From Africa to West Asia and the Indo-Pacific, most of these countries believe that original inhabitants have a special connection to their country, which can take several generations for newcomers’ descendants to share.

It’s only the radical liberal-globalist ideology espoused by the Western elites that denies this special connection or pretends that it’s always shared by all newcomers once they step onto foreign soil. To be clear, acknowledging this special connection doesn’t imply that members of non-titular nationalities who obtain another country’s citizenship don’t deserve any rights, rather it’s meant as a safeguard of the titular nationality’s socio-cultural rights. It’s here where the Russian example is instructive.

One of the constitutional amendments that entered into force after 2020’s referendum stipulates that “The state language of the Russian Federation throughout its territory is the Russian language as the language of the state-forming people, part of the multinational union of equal peoples of the Russian Federation.” It reaffirmed the equality of all Russian citizens while emphasizing the role that ethnic Russians and their language have historically played in forming their cosmopolitan civilization-state.

Separately, legislation was passed mandating that foreigners pass tests on Russian language, history, and legal basics in order to obtain long-term permission to reside in Russia, let alone citizenship. This is meant to mitigate the socio-cultural threat posed by those who refuse to assimilate and integrate, which Patriarch Kirill drew attention to on three occasions in 2023 and 2024 here, here, and here. He and Putin, however, also united in condemning ethno-religious hate speech after the Crocus terrorist attack.

What the Russian example shows is that a titular nationality’s special connection to their country can be recognized without doing so at the expense of other nationalities. The same goes for having policies for ensuring that migrants assimilate and integrate. None of this is “extremist”; it’s respectful, pragmatic, and sensible, which is why the AfD wants the same in Germany. These views on nationality are the historical norm for humanity, not the exception, which makes the liberal-globalists the real extremists.

VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, is celebrated on May 8 each year to mark the formal end of World War II in Europe. 

On this day in 1945, Allied forces accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, bringing nearly six years of brutal conflict in Europe to a close. The day is commemorated to honor the courage and sacrifice of those who fought and died during the war, and to celebrate the return of peace to the continent. 

Today, on the 80th anniversary of VE Day, that peace suddenly seems fragile, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the crumbling transatlantic alliance have rattled Europe’s long-lasting sense of security.

As Statista's Felix Richter reports, with the United States under Donald Trump no longer seen as a reliable partner and Putin’s Russia posing an unpredictable threat, concerns about possible military conflicts have risen across Europe. 

According to Ipsos’ monthly What Worries the World report, more and more Europeans fear the prospect of war, naming it among the top three concerns their country is currently facing. As our chart shows, those concerns are particularly widespread in Poland, which is not a surprise given its border with Ukraine and proximity to the war that has been raging on for more than three years now.

You will find more infographics at Statista

But growing concern about military conflicts isn’t limited to Eastern Europe, with the Netherlands, Germany and France also seeing significant increases in the share of respondents who picked war as a top 3 concern. 

Looking beyond Europe, fears of war are less widespread in other parts of the world, with an average of 12 percent of respondents naming it a top concern across 29 countries. 

Interestingly, armed conflict is not a major concern for people in South America, with less than five percent of respondents in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Argentina and Peru naming war as a top concern.

Authored by Kurt Schlichter,

Britain started arresting people for tweeting unapproved things, and France decided to arrest its leading opposition politician, so what happened in Germany was not a surprise. After all, Germans are the best at fascism. 

There, the establishment parties used the internal security apparatus to formally designate the AfD, which is an upstart populist party with a plurality of voter support, particularly by the young and by the eastern Germans, an extremist organization. This basically means it’s open season for the heirs to the Gestapo and Stasi; banning it completely is the next step. Already, AfD supporters are being fired from civil service jobs. I guess with Germans, the only thing that changes is the uniform. Actually, that goes for all Europeans. They paid lip service to the idea of normal people having a say in their own governance but never believed in it. It was all a lie and a scam, but the mask is coming off. The ruling class is offering Europeans the choice between capitulation and rebellion.

Now, let’s not get too uppity here in America because our own garbage establishment would love to do the same thing. Its obstacles are that it’s so dumb and that Americans are not yet a nation of low-T femboys; we also pack heat. Our ruling class tried to frame Donald Trump after trying to bankrupt him, and when that didn’t work out, one establishment-friendly guy tried to murder him. The other guy who tried to murder him might be establishment-friendly, but we don’t know anything about him for some reason. The point is we have a Boomer generation ruling class that is desperately seeking to cling to power and is willing to do anything to keep it. Anything. This is a matter of life and death, and they’re willing to take lives and deal death to keep their power. As they keep losing, which they will – none of this is happening because they are intrinsically strong or competent – they will go further and further. More oppression. More tyranny. More bloodshed. It’s all worth it to them. Their power is all that matters.

This isn’t going to work out well. History teaches us what happens when you suppress the voice of people expressing legitimate grievances and boy, are people’s grievances ever legitimate. Economic dislocation. Anarcho-tyranny. A sanctioned invasion by Third World barbarians who rob, rape, and murder our citizens. Normal people have legit gripes, and they will be heard. It’s just a matter of what sound they make – voices or explosions.

Now, of course, this phenomenon isn’t just limited to these countries. We’ve seen similar antics in Brazil, Israel, Romania, and elsewhere. The entrenched establishment parties have no answer to the critiques of their gross incompetence, corruption, and arrogance, yet they are determined to hang onto power at all costs. Free speech and democratic norms – they don’t matter. Why, the situation is so extreme, the peril so perilous, that these concepts must give way. We must protect democracy by utterly destroying democracy. But of course, these people never actually believed in free speech or democracy or any of that stuff. They only believed in their own power. They dress themselves in the skin suits of the institutions they invaded, infested, and obliterated. We’re supposed to respect them because they were once respectable, but the problem for the establishment, the insurmountable challenge it faces, is that we normal people are neither blind nor stupid. We can see what’s happening, especially now that the regime media monopoly has been broken.

Of course, they tried to handle that, too. Remember “misinformation?” Oddly enough, the Venn diagram of “misinformation” and “Things the ruling class doesn’t want people to say or hear” is a single circle. Go back in time to 20 years ago and try to imagine somebody explaining to you that the government set up a specific organization to force media companies to suppress the points of view of the opposition. Sure, the regime media has always been left, but the idea of the U.S. government running an unapologetic censorship operation would’ve been insane. They would’ve summoned big dudes with butterfly nets to haul away anyone predicting that. And yet it was true. It happened. Our government did that, and other Western governments are even more open about it. The Germans are actively proud of their speech suppression, proving once and for all that Morgenthau was right.

This can’t continue forever. It’s not going to continue forever. This status quo is unsustainable. Our elite has failed. The ruling class is trash, and everybody knows it. However, alone among the countries around the globe, it’s only America that seems to be able to beat the largely Boomer-driven reactionary response. Canada famously just reelected the same people who destroyed their country over the last 10 years. That was Trump’s fault, of course – Canadians apparently have no agency. The Australians did something similar. France and Germany both had an establishment coalition made up of parties that should be at each other’s throats instead unite to stop the populists from being heard. Le Pen is headed to jail and AfD is likely to be banned. In Romania, the EU regime just canceled the election. And again, this is all going to be cheered on by regime media lackeys as necessary for the protection of democracy, “democracy” meaning their perpetual stranglehold on power.

So, how is it going to play out? Well, the Boomers of the West are either going to give up power like a normal generation would, or they are going to have power stripped from them. What’s not going to happen is that normal people around the world are going to shrug their shoulders and submit to serfdom. The right thing to do would be self-sacrifice and voluntary retirement, but of course, when have you ever seen the Boomers do anything that benefited anybody but the Boomers?

Well, it’s theoretically possible that we avoid chaos and convulsion, but every day it looks less and less likely that we will be able to. We’re facing greedy, stupid, and narcissistic people whose poor judgment has brought us to this place and whose poor judgment will tip us over the edge.

The big question is where the conflagration ignites. Is it going to start in Europe? Maybe the great revolt begins in some Third World country. Trump already represents a revolt in the United States; if he fails, the guy who comes next won’t be so nice. But the backlash is going to start somewhere. What can’t go on won’t go on, and this will not go on.

Authored by Arthur Schaper via American Greatness,

The United States, the American people, Donald Trump, and even myself: we have all been humbled over the last four years—or the last sixteen years … or even thirty years.

And we needed it.

More than thirty years ago, following the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States emerged as the leader of the pack in a once-bipolar world. The Soviet Union collapsed, socialism sloughed off, free enterprise became commonplace as the solution to all our problems, and the liberal democratic process was winning. “It is the End of History,” Francis Fukuyama (arrogantly, short-sightedly) prophesied.

Of course, history didn’t stop, and we had lessons to learn.

Some suggest that this fantasy of global liberalism came crashing down on September 11, 2001. Let’s not forget February 26th, 1993, when Islamic terrorists attempted to topple the World Trade Center by detonating the foundation of one tower to crash into the other.

Islamic terror replaced the adversarial communist regimes as our enemies. America was complacent, prosperous, and secure in its secular liberalism. Instead of remembering what made the West the best—the Gospel, our Judeo-Christian heritage, Biblical truth, our reliance on a Living Savior instead of humanist self-reliance—we got self-righteous and self-satisfied. “We beat the Russians! We are the only player on the world stage!”

Thus, it seemed that there was nothing left to fight but ourselves.

But that was never the case. Marxism’s vision of a stateless world dominated by class conflict never emerged, but Pan-Americanism would never work, either. An America-defined globalism not only offended other nations, but it also undermined the American citizen and the American experiment.

With an obsessive focus on free trade, cheap labor, and making money while ignoring national identity—borders, language, culture, faith, family, and freedom—Americans witnessed the wonders of the American dream turn into an elite fantasy that only the rich and politically connected could enjoy.

We got arrogant, then fearful and angry; we stopped believing in what really made America great. We forgot who we are. We needed to be humbled.

And what is humility? A biblical definition is apropos, I think:

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” (Romans 12:3)

American exceptionalism is a real thing. We the People of the United States should be proud of our heritage. That recognition does not justify American supremacism, however. Nor does it mean our safety, security, or sovereignty depends on what other countries do and believe.

The United States embraced some humiliating defeats not just on September 11, 2001, but in the waning year of the George W. Bush administration, when risky financing and overextended loans inflated housing prices and unleashed the Great Recession.

Instead of taking stock of where we were wrong, we went with a false messiah, Barack Obama, who chimed, “We are the change we have been waiting for.” But we were the ones who caused our own downfall. How could we make changes if we did not change?

From this self-righteous refusal to own our failures came the Occupy Movement, Black Lives Matter, and the re-radicalization of race. Obama long harbored bitter disgust for the United States, and he seduced the American public. Under the Obama Administration, humility was minimized and disparaged, for sure. One of the most repeated words in the 44th president’s speeches was “I.” It was all about him, and to hell with America.

And the country was humbled for the worse. Obama called us all racist and insisted that we needed the government to run our healthcare. He exhorted us to flood our country with “undocumented immigrants” so that we could pay back for all the wrongs that American imperialism had caused. America fell into decline.

Then came Trump, and with him the mantra “Make America Great Again.”

He talked about God restoring America’s previous glory. But was that something he could do himself? Not at all. In too many ways, his first term had some of the hallmarks of amateur hour. He surrounded himself with bad advisors, went with tired ideas, and didn’t transform the Art of the Deal into the Art of Governing.

Election 2020, with COVID, George Floyd, massive spending, and a frustrating Congress, did not help matters. Americans still had not learned their lesson.

We need God. We need biblical truth. We need to restore our Judeo-Christian heritage, our Anglo-American legal traditions, and our revolutionary legacy.

America’s further humbling came under bumbling Joe Biden. Defined by Biden-Harris’ arrogant incompetence, suffused with dementia and DEI, America became weaker, worn out, and adrift, all while witnessing the left’s culmination of all their wishes. Obama got his third term.

Then Trump ran again. He faced challenges from the right because he hadn’t gotten the job done. Perhaps those challenges shaped his second-term determination. Then came a would-be assassin’s bullet, which changed the course of history in our favor.

Trump has acknowledged, “God saved my life.” And why? “To Make America Great Again.”

His second inaugural speech was all business, with a clear reliance on where his—and our—power comes from: God.

Trump is a different man, acting like the president I wanted in 2016, whom I had anticipated DeSantis would be.

Like Homer’s eponymous hero, Trump is a man of many turns, and he’s turning out real results. Ulysses has come home. He has finished off all the suitors, he has his wife Penelope, and the gods are smiling at him. He learned his lesson. He gets it.

President Trump 2.0 has accomplished much of what we had expected in 2017, and more. Trump now knows his limits, and he knows what he can—and must—do. That is true humility.

If his supercharged successes continue, it makes all the disappointments, frustrations, and confusions of the previous six years worth the aggravation.

Authored by Andrew Lowenthal via The Brownstone Institute,

Last week, my non-profit liber-net unveiled a new database of US government awards to mis-dis-and-malinformation (MDM) and other content control initiatives. A previous Network Affects post broke down where that money came from. This one details where the money went, specifically the countries, regions, topics, and activities, and the top organisations that took home the cash.

The below graphs are based on 867 awards made between 2016-2024, out of nearly 1,100 that we reviewed from 2010 to the present day. You can review our process and methodology here. You can see all the graphs from the last post, this post, and a few more here.

When it comes to MDM funding, the vast majority of the awards went to US-based initiatives. The graph below includes a contract totaling nearly $1 billion to military contractor Peraton, but even without it, US recipients received around $318 million, dwarfing the next country, Kazakhstan, at $20 million. Out of the nearly $1.5 billion spent across the 867 awards, around $187 million left the US from a roughly $6.7 trillion annual federal budget.

The “US taxpayers are wasting money on foreigners” narrative isn’t the story here, at least not in the mis/disinformation space.

When you zoom out, it looks like this:

That said, when you look at the data by unique awards (individual grants and contracts made), American organisations are still the main recipients, though it isn’t quite as skewed – US organisations received 220 of the 867 awards made. 

Looking at unique awards is important in part because of the internal government resources and focus it represents. Giving out money costs money, whether it is $1,000 or $1,000,000.

Below, we’ve broken the individual awards down by region. After the US, Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are the main focus areas, mostly as a counter to Russian influence.

Here are the unique awards on a map:

Another interesting view is which countries the “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees” awards went to. These are awards where the organisation is not explicitly named (this can be for security justifications or a host of unknown reasons), though in some cases it is easy to deduce what the organisation is (e.g., through the awardee address that is sometimes referenced in the USAspending record).

This is how the Misc. awards break down by country outside the US:

You can view the Misc. awards in our searchable database.

What topics did the money go to? The below outlines our analysis of the major themes. Note that while this is a pie chart, we’ve tagged individual awards with more than one topic as they were frequently combined, such as vaccine “misinformation” in minority communities.

This is how it breaks down among the top eight funders:

We have also classified the awards by the types of activities they entailed, such as conferences, research, or technology development. These were often a little harder to classify, but the general outline is still useful in understanding what “counter-misinformation” work looks like in practice.

Lastly, who got most of the money? 

The two visualisations below detail the top 30 awardees by dollar amount and by the number of individual awards. The $80 million award to the CDC Foundation is a kind of internal transfer the CDC gave to a technically external (but heavily linked) 501(c)(3).

And the unique awards which reveal some more familiar names and close government relationships. The number of awards doesn’t correlate too tightly with the overall funding received.

You can find explore and find more in the database. Enjoy!

Republished from the author’s Substack

Via Middle East Eye

The organization set to administer Israel's controversial plan to take control of humanitarian aid distribution in Gaza will use private contractors to secure hubs where Palestinians will receive 1,750 kcal meals that will cost donors a little more than a dollar each.

Details about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) strategy for Gaza are laid out in a 14-page document circulating amongst aid organizations working on Gaza and seen by Middle East Eye.

The hitherto unknown nonprofit, which was registered in Switzerland in February, has been touted as the umbrella body that will seemingly take over humanitarian operations in Gaza while inviting NGOs to "take advantage" of its "logistics, security and transparency frameworks".

Via AFP

The pitch-like document offers detailed information about how the foundation, largely led by Americans and involving a mix of disaster relief, security and financial experts, will operate and how it is organized, though some details appear yet to be finalized. The document is undated.

The new details have emerged as UN agencies and international aid organizations, which have roundly rejected the plan that GHF would administer, reportedly coming under pressure from the US government to participate. Earlier this week, Amnesty Switzerland raised concerns that, based on the information available, GHF could be risking contributing to international crimes through its services. 

The Israeli operation appears to already be underway. Israel security cabinet approved its plan on Sunday with satellite evidence emerging on Wednesday suggesting that work has already begun to build the humanitarian hubs from which aid will be distributed.

'New operating model'

According to the document, the foundation says it is offering "a new operating model", blaming aid diversion, active combat and "restricted access" as reasons why millions of civilians have been left without food, water and other supplies.

It does not specify the blockades on aid that Israel has put in place, including over the past two months, that have led the enclave’s population to the brink of mass starvation. Instead, it says Hamas and criminal organizations have intercepted, taxed and resold aid, and that Israeli "domestic security concerns and political pressure limit Gaza access and drive risk-averse policy toward humanitarian organizations".

The document repeatedly frames one of the main issues the foundation serves as fixing “eroded donor confidence”, saying it was established to “restore that vital lifeline through an independent, rigorously audited model that gets assistance directly – and only – to those in need”.

GHF says it is set to establish four “secure distribution sites” that will each serve 300,000 people “with capacity to expand past 2 million”. Pre-packaged rations, hygiene kits and medical supplies will be delivered to the sites via armored vehicles “through tightly controlled corridors, monitored in real time to prevent diversion”.

“At just US $1.3 per meal… donors can see immediate, measurable impact,” the document says, later indicating that each meal will be 1,750 kcal.

It is unclear how many meals would be provided daily, though it is suggested that donors might be offered a chance to fund "a family-box" which would contain 50 meals at a time. The World Food Programme aims to provide recipients of food aid with at least 2,100 kcal per day.

The Israeli military will “not be stationed at or near” the sites. Instead, security will be provided by “experienced professionals, including personnel who previously secured the Netzarim Corridor during the recent ceasefire”. The document says aid will be distributed “without regard to identity, origin or affiliation” and "delivered purely based on need, with community dignity and safety as top priorities".

Some pro-Palestinian advocates have warned over a US-controlled aid scheme, after Trump White House blasted a 'compromised' UNRWA:

Breaking: Israel has just bombed an aid center in northern Gaza, killing dozens of civilians. In doing so, it paves the way to force the population into submission to the U.S. starvation plan through a private company, ending the role of UNRWA and international agencies. pic.twitter.com/KoUDSCypVa

GHF and its partners are said to be “actively engaging local communities to generate support” for its operations and will train “additional local champions” to expand the programme.

“This effort aims not only to safeguard humanitarian access, but to ethically empower traditional community leaders to reestablish constructive influence supporting the organic restoration of local communities,” the document says.

American executives

GHF’s board of directors includes Nate Mook, the former CEO of World Central Kitchen and a special advisor on Ukraine to the Howard G Buffett Foundation.

It also includes Loik Henderson, who is said to be a legal and business professional with 20 years experience including to Fortune 500 companies; Raisa Sheynberg, a vice president of government affairs and policy at Mastercard who previously led Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency project and also worked on national security and economic policy for the US government; and Jonathan Foster, founder and managing director of Current Capital Partners LLC.

The foundation will be run by three Americans with disaster relief experience, led by executive director Jake Wood, founder and former CEO of Team Rubicon, a US-based disaster relief organization. Wood is a Marine Corps veteran and the founder of Groundswell, a platform “reinventing employee giving through donor-advised funds”.

Chief operating officer David Burke is a “strategic operations expert” who previously worked at Team Rubicon and is also a Marine Corps veteran.

John Acree, a former USAID official, will serve as head of mission. In addition to experience in disaster response and civil-military coordination, the document notes that he served as “chief of party” on US government contracts in Latin America and the Caribbean worth more than $45m.

An advisory board includes Bill Miller, a former UN and US State Department official, and retired Lt General Mark Schwartz, a former US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority. David Beasley, the former governor of South Carolina and former executive director of the UN World Food Programme, is listed as “to be finalised” as a potential board member.

The document suggests that major donors are “invited to nominate additional candidates for board membership”. It also says discussions are underway with “prominent Palestinians” to join the board.

'Every dollar traceable'

The document focuses repeatedly on how GHF will be transparent, saying it has secured banking with US-based Truist Bank and JPMorgan Chase. “Real-time monitoring and beneficiary feedback loop into public dashboards so every dollar is traceable and every outcome verifiable,” it says.

Truist, it notes, has “demonstrated its commitment to humanitarian and disaster relief efforts” including through committing $725m to recovery initiatives in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year.

A separate Swiss GHF affiliate is being created “to address donors who would prefer to participate outside of the US structure”.

Goldman Sachs is said to have made a verbal commitment to establish a bank account for the entity “which should be completed shortly". It also says it is “in the process of retaining one of the world’s most respected audit and assurance firms” to provide third-party oversight of its financial and operational practices, and that it is also in discussion with accounting firm Deloitte.

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

“Jocelyn, you know, I just, I'm really uncomfortable with this conversation because you're like actually spreading rumors that you don't know anything about.”

The charge from NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya came during an uncomfortable and confusing interview with Science Magazine reporter Jocelyn Kaiser last week. The DisInformation Chronicle is releasing a recording of the interview and a transcript.

During almost 20 minutes of back and forth, Kaiser pressed Bhattacharya several times to account for canceled grants as well as news accounts of turmoil inside the agency, while Bhattacharya asked Kaiser to clarify and explain exactly what she was asking. Kaiser’s interview then ended up in two Science Magazine articles that falsely implied Bhattacharya misled Kaiser about a new policy on NIH grants.

Confusing, contentious exchange

Skipping about in a rambling, meandering path, much of the Kaiser interview concerned reports of problems that Bhattacharya claimed he had fixed in his first month as director. However, a proposed policy to ensure that subawards to foreign universities were better managed seemed to take center stage.

KAISER: Okay, so since you brought it up, kind of skipping around here, but so as you know, as you may not have seen the story. But we had heard it too, that there's going to be a policy canceling collaborations, foreign collaborations.

BHATTACHARYA: No, that's false.

KAISER: Is there going to be some sort of policy that...

BHATTACHARYA: There was a policy, there's going to be policy on tracking subawards.

KAISER: What does it mean?

BHATTACHARYA: I mean, if you're going to give a subaward, we should be able—the NIH and the government should be able see where the money's going.

Later in the interview, Kaiser noted that Nature Magazine ran an article on a proposed NIH policy that reported all foreign grants might end.

“I mean, Nature also is spreading rumors, right?” Bhattacharya responded. “There's no announced policy about, what did you say, like ‘halt foreign collaborations.’ Not true.”

Based upon unnamed sources but headlined as an “exclusive,” Nature Magazine reported that the NIH was threatening thousands of global health projects by ceasing foreign awards to laboratories and hospitals outside the United States. Further down in the piece, Nature reported that it was unclear from sources whether the policy “would apply to all research funds to non-US institutions or only ‘subawards’, which are NIH funds that a US researcher can give to an international collaborator to help complete a project.”

Confusion over whether the upcoming NIH policy would cover all research funds or just subawards continued throughout Science Magazine’s interview, with Bhattacharya telling Kaiser she would have to wait until the policy is announced. “There's no intent to cancel the foreign collaborations, it's just not true,” Bhattacharya said. “That's just a rumor being spread falsely by Nature. And now apparently, I hope you don't spread it.”

Shortly after the interview, the NIH published their new policy which only covers subawards. “NIH continues to support direct foreign awards,” the policy reads.

“’This is insane:’ New NIH policy on funding foreign scientists stirs outrage,” reported Science Magazine’ headline. Hinting to readers that Bhattacharya lied to Kaiser in his interview, Science Magazine falsely implied that Nature Magazine had reported the upcoming policy would only concern subawards.

Concerns about subaward changes grew earlier this week, with Nature reporting on an apparent draft of the policy on Wednesday, before it was finalized. NIH’s new director, Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, dismissed the report as “rumors” in an interview with Science on Thursday morning, hours before he announced the new policy.

In a post on Bluesky, Science reporter Jon Cohen also implied that Bhattacharya had lied during the interview.

During Kaiser’s interview, Bhattacharya can be heard explaining that changes in subawards were partly spurred by problems encountered with EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit run by Peter Daszak which gave an NIH subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In the last week of the Biden Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) debarred EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak from receiving federal funds, in part because EcoHealth Alliance had been unable to provide records from the Wuhan Institute of Virology “in response to NIH’s multiple safety-related requests.”

“You wrote about the EcoHealth Alliance,” Bhattacharya told Kaiser, in the interview.

“I did, yeah. Straight, I mean,” Kaiser responded.

“It wasn't all that straight,” Bhattacharya replied.

Unfortunately, Science Magazine lived up to Bhattacharya’s characterization with reporting that wasn’t all that straight about EcoHealth Alliance.

Straight out of Science

Science Magazine’s lead reporter on the new NIH subaward policy is Jon Cohen, a science writer with a rather tattered history of ethics. In 2023, Tablet reported that an anonymous whistleblower emailed Cohen “a grenade of an allegation” claiming that the virologist authors of a prominent paper were not the true authors. Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the “Proximal Origin” paper dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident and was later promoted promoted by Francis Collins in his March 2020 NIH Director's Blog and by Anthony Fauci during a televised White House briefing the following month.

Here's Tablet’s report:

Cohen was handed an opportunity that most journalists can only dream of—a potentially career-making scoop dropped in his inbox by a seemingly knowledgeable anonymous source—and a scoop, it turns out, that was in many ways correct. But he never pursued the story.

Instead, Tablet reported, Cohen forwarded the email to the paper’s lead author, who then forwarded it on to Anthony Fauci.

The purple headline for Science Magazine’s piece “This is insane” is a quote ripped from the mouth of Gerald Keusch, a virologist and an emeritus professor at Boston University, with close ties to EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak.

Due to Daszak’s undisclosed ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs disbanded a Lancet task force investigating the origins of Covid virus in 2021. Specifically, Daszak had not disclosed that several hundred thousand dollars of an EcoHealth Allliance NIH grant had been sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a subaward. Sachs also discovered that emails showed Daszak had orchestrated a February 2020 statement in the Lancet alleging that it was a “conspiracy theory” to argue that the pandemic could have started from a laboratory leak in Wuhan.

Keusch had signed onto Daszak’s “conspiracy theory” Lancet letter and was a co-investigator on an NIH grant to EcoHealth Alliance when Sachs shut the task force down. HHS suspended the EcoHealth grant with Keusch as co-investigator in March 2024, some months before debarring Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance.

Despite this history, Science Magazine quoted Keusch as an unbiased source, who claimed that “no compelling evidence supports the allegation that the virus leaked from WIV.”

A few minutes on Google finds several reports undermining Keusch’s claim.

In the final months of the Biden administration, the CIA assessed that the COVID virus is "more likely" to have leaked from a Chinese lab than to have come from animals. The current CIA director released the report in January. Both British and German intelligence were reported in March to have concluded back in 2020 that the virus likely leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the French National Academy of Medicine released a report last month that found “a body of facts and arguments” support the conclusion that he SARS-CoV-2 pandemic originated from a leak at a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

Keusch was also caught in a House report released last year coordinating with the NIH’s David Morens to keep EcoHealth Alliance funded and to hide government records of this collusion. NIH scientists are required produce emails and other records under the Freedom of Information Act.

For example, the New York Times reported:

“I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear after i am foia’d but before the search starts, so i think we are all safe,” Dr. David Morens, a former senior adviser to Dr. Fauci, wrote in February 2021. That email chain included Dr. Gerald Keusch, a scientist and former N.I.H. official, and Peter Daszak, the president of EcoHealth Alliance, a virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers.

“Plus i deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to gmail,” Dr. Morens added, referring to his personal Gmail account.

In emails released by House investigators, Keusch and Morens also shared ideas to pressure NIH leadership to fund EcoHealth Alliance. This included writing essays and placing stories with writers Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman at Science Magazine.

“I did try to get Jon Cohen and Meredith Wadman moving on a new article,” Keusch wrote in an April 2021 email to Morens, “but as you know they both declined at this point because it was not news.”

Some months after attempting to place a story in Science with Cohen and Wadman, Keusch emailed Morens that the Washington Post had rejected an essay he had submitted to defend EcoHealth Alliance. However, Keusch wrote, Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen had helped him find a possible home for the essay at Science and suggested that he also try a columnist at the LA Times.

A few days ago, Kaiser published excerpts of her confusing interview with Bhattacharya. In the article, Kaiser again falsely stated that Bhattacharya had dismissed as rumors “Nature news article reporting that NIH planned to suspend subawards for foreign collaborations.” In fact, Nature had speculated the new policy might end all foreign awards.

“Again, the policy is in process,” Bhattacharya said during the interview with Kaiser. “But the aim of the policy ultimately is so that we can track subawards.”

Click here and scroll down listen to the leaked interview plus transcript...

Authored by Zena le Roux via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Fibromyalgia is a difficult condition to diagnose and even harder to treat—especially since it presents no visible injury, yet causes widespread, chronic pain.

Nelli Kovalchuk/Shutterstock

So when a 2022 clinical trial tested magnesium as a potential treatment, it was easy to be skeptical. Could something as basic as a mineral supplement really make a difference? Some providers definitely think so.

“Magnesium levels are one of the first things I address when someone presents with persistent pain,” said Jodi Duval, a naturopathic physician and owner of Revital Health, in an interview with The Epoch Times.

Study Findings

The clinical trial found—for the first time—that magnesium may help ease fibromyalgia symptoms, particularly stress and pain. Participants were randomly assigned to take either 100 milligrams of a slow-release magnesium supplement or a placebo once daily for one month.

The study’s primary goal was to assess whether magnesium could lower stress levels—since stress often triggers fibromyalgia flare-ups. Researchers also tracked pain, sleep quality, fatigue, and overall well-being.

At the end of the month, the results were mixed. Overall stress levels trended downward in the magnesium group, but the results were not significant. However, on closer examination, researchers noticed something interesting: Among participants who started the study with mild to moderate stress, magnesium made a clear difference. In that subgroup, stress scores dropped significantly, while the placebo group saw little to no change.

Pain severity also declined with magnesium supplementation—a small but meaningful shift that suggested the mineral might have a role in easing fibromyalgia’s burden. In moderately stressed participants, pain scores dropped from 5.7 to 5.1 on a 10-point scale, while the placebo group showed no improvement.

Sleep, fatigue, and overall quality of life remained largely unchanged between groups. Still, for people who have grown tired of side effects and short-lived solutions, magnesium’s gentle, low-risk benefits may be worth noting.

Fibromyalgia and Headaches

Fibromyalgia and headaches are just two of the many conditions where magnesium’s potential role in pain relief is being studied.

In fibromyalgia, patients are often found to have lower magnesium levels in their blood, hair, and diet. 

Magnesium blood levels are typically tested through a serum magnesium test, though this measures only a small fraction of total magnesium in the body—since most magnesium is stored in bones and tissues. It’s important to note that a normal serum level doesn’t necessarily rule out magnesium deficiency in tissues. In some cases, hair analysis or urine tests can be used to assess magnesium status, though these methods are less common.

“I’ve seen great results with magnesium in cases of fibromyalgia, fatigue-pain syndromes, migraines, tension headaches, and more,” said Duval.

Magnesium plays a pivotal role in the development and progression of both migraines and tension-type headaches. While the exact cause of migraines remains unclear, magnesium is known to influence certain mechanisms, including neurotransmitter release, brain excitability, and blood clotting. Low magnesium levels have consistently been linked to migraines, and some studies suggest that supplementation may help reduce the frequency or severity of attacks.

Pick up some potent magnesium here...

One study found that 80 percent of patients given 1 gram of intravenous magnesium were pain-free within 15 minutes.

In some cases, supplementation has led to long-lasting improvement in people with tension headaches—lasting up to a year or more. In one case-control study of 40 patients, a magnesium infusion completely eliminated pain in 32 participants within 15 minutes.

How Magnesium Works

Magnesium is emerging as a promising solution for chronic pain, but how exactly does it support pain relief?

One of the key ways magnesium helps reduce pain is by blocking N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors, which play a critical role in nerve cell communication. While these receptors are important for learning and memory, the overactivation of NMDA receptors allows excessive calcium to enter neurons, contributing to pain. By preventing calcium from entering cells through NMDA receptors, magnesium helps prevent the nervous system from becoming overly sensitive to pain and offers relief for various pain conditions.

Additionally, magnesium conserves the electrical potential of nerve cells, further aiding in pain regulation.

“Magnesium is a powerful modulator of both pain and inflammation,” Duval said.

It is a foundational nutrient—without it, other pain therapies often don’t work as effectively, she added.

Magnesium’s role in reducing pain perception could also be linked to its ability to regulate muscle contraction and protect cartilage from degradation, Emma Laing, a registered dietitian nutritionist with a doctoral degree in foods and nutrition, told The Epoch Times.

Oral and intravenous (IV) magnesium supplementation differ in how quickly and effectively they work. Oral supplements—typically pills or powders—are best for mild to moderate deficiencies or long-term maintenance, though they may cause digestive side effects such as diarrhea and are absorbed more slowly.

On the other hand, IV magnesium is administered directly into a vein and is used in more urgent or severe cases—like eclampsia, arrhythmias, or when the oral route isn’t an option. It works quickly and bypasses the gut. However, IV administration needs medical supervision due to the risk of overdose and isn’t a good option for routine use.

Magnesium’s effectiveness in managing pain depends not only on its mechanisms but also on the form in which it’s taken. Magnesium glycinate, for example, is well-absorbed and has a calming effect, making it ideal for muscle tension, such as that experienced with fibromyalgia, Duval said. She also mentioned that topical magnesium chloride, commonly found in Epsom salts, is excellent for offering targeted relief to sore muscles.

Oral magnesium L-threonate is particularly beneficial for neuroinflammation and brain-based pain, such as migraines, as it can cross the blood-brain barrier, she added.

Easy Ways to Get More Magnesium

Duval recommends several magnesium-rich foods for patients managing chronic pain, including:

• Pumpkin seeds
• Leafy greens
• Avocados
• Cashews
• Dark chocolate
• Bananas

To add these into your daily meals, try sprinkling pumpkin seeds over your breakfast, incorporating greens into every lunch and dinner, and enjoying magnesium-rich snacks like nuts or avocado with a pinch of sea salt, she said. It typically takes two to four weeks of consistent dietary intake or supplementation to notice changes in chronic pain.

However, Duval often focuses on symptoms rather than relying solely on blood tests to measure progress.

“Tissue magnesium levels in the body can be low even when blood levels appear normal,” she said.

Drug Interactions

When considering supplementation, caution is advised, as magnesium supplements can interact with certain medications and other supplements.

For example, magnesium may reduce the effectiveness of certain blood pressure medications, such as calcium channel blockers and diuretics, which can either lower or increase magnesium levels in the body. Additionally, taking magnesium alongside supplements like calcium or vitamin D may require adjustments in dosage. It is therefore crucial to consult with your health care provider before starting supplementation.

Laing advises that working with a registered dietitian nutritionist can help ensure you’re getting the right amount of magnesium for your age, lifestyle, and medical history.

Moving Forward

While magnesium isn’t a silver bullet, emerging research suggests it may offer gentle support—particularly for stress and pain. For those navigating daily discomfort, even small, consistent steps toward better magnesium intake can make a meaningful difference.

Authored by Robert Curry via RealClearHistory,

Unalienable rights and self-evident truths are the two core ideas of the American founding.  

Expand the number of core ideas under consideration to three and you get unalienable rights, self-evident truths, and free market economics.

You could call them the three pillars of the American Idea.

These three pillars are the direct gifts to America of three great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment: Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid.

Their thinking — known today as “common sense realism” — took America by storm at precisely the right time to shape America fundamentally.

Francis Hutcheson

Francis Hutcheson: “Our rights are either alienable or unalienable …”                     

A revolution in thinking about our rights preceded the American Revolution. In the words of George Washington, America’s founding took place during a time “when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period.” Hutcheson’s analysis of our rights showed the way.

The meaning of Hutcheson’s distinction was sharp and clear in the founders’ time but to understand it today you and I must first be clear about the meaning of “alienable.” Here is its complete definition in my dictionary: “adj. Law. Capable of being transferred to the ownership of another.” Your right to your car is an alienable right; because your car is your property, you can sell your car or give it away — but our rights to our lives and our liberty are unalienable, that is, not property, not capable of being transferred to the ownership of another.

Hutcheson was challenging John Locke’s account of our rights — and in so doing he helped ignite the American Revolution. Locke, you see, had defined our rights in terms of property. Locke: “Man … hath by nature a power … to preserve his property — that is, his life, liberty and estate.” According to Hutcheson and the founders, our rights to our lives and our liberty are not property; those rights are unalienable, inherent, essential, and not transferrable.

Hutcheson’s distinction provided the intellectual foundation for two of the greatest achievements in world history, Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” and the Declaration of Independence. Adam Smith’s focus was our alienable rights; the American founders focused on our unalienable rights.

The Declaration and “Wealth” both entered the world they were to transform in the same year, 1776.

1776 marks the economic and political boundary between the world in which you and I live and all that had gone before.

Adam Smith

Francis Hutcheson mentored Adam Smith. Upon Hutcheson’s death, Smith was appointed to the prestigious professorship at the University of Glasgow Hutcheson had held.  

Smith’s epoch-making “Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” is the foundation of free market economics. Hutcheson’s analysis of our rights set the direction Smith took. In “Wealth” Smith famously demonstrated that the division of labor is the source of the wealth of nations. In one of the most frequently quoted passages from “Wealth,” Smith makes clear the source in human nature of the all-important division of labor: “This division of labour … is the necessary … consequence of a certain propensity in human nature … ; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” The division of labor depends on the right to exchange (alienate) our property and labor. We can “truck, barter, and exchange” because our right to our property is, as Hutcheson had shown, “naturally alienable.”

The social order that resulted from the new thinking of the Scottish and the American Enlightenments was a far cry from the world that assigned supremacy to hereditary monarchs and hereditary aristocrats. The great economist Ludwig von Misses described that new social order like this: It “assigned supremacy to the common man. In his capacity as a consumer, the ‘regular fellow’ was called upon to determine ultimately what should be produced, in what quantity, and of what quality, by whom, how, and where; in his capacity as a voter, he was sovereign in directing the nation’s policies.”

Thomas Reid

When Jefferson wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” he was relying on the thinking of Thomas Reid.

Reid’s “An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense” was published in 1764, the same year he was awarded the prestigious professorship formerly occupied by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith.

As I write in my book “Reclaiming Common Sense”: “Reid’s philosophical purpose was to provide a foundation for morality and for knowledge. He argued that there is an endowment of human nature that makes both morality and knowledge possible, and he called it common sense … With it we are able to make rational judgments and moral judgments. Common sense is the human attribute that makes it possible for us to be rational creatures and moral agents.  

Reid’s fundamental insight was that our ability to make sense of our experience presupposes certain first principles. Because these principles are implicit in our conduct and our thought, they cannot be proved; there are no other truths from which they can be derived. However, to deny or even to doubt any of them is to involve ourselves in absurdity. Consequently, the principles of common sense have the special authority of first principles: we cannot operate without them.”

The Progressives

From their beginning, the purpose of the Progressives has been the step-by-step — that is, the progressive — undoing of the America of the founders. Their relentless campaign has done tremendous damage. If you and I are to do our part in helping to restore America, we need to go into action armed with a clear understanding of the American Idea. That is why I wrote the two common sense books listed below.

Chinese auto parts makers have tripled their presence in Thailand with the arrival of BYD and other car brands, transforming the country into a key supply base for Asian markets, according to Nikkei.

And we can't help but notice the timing - with tariffs on goods coming from China through the roof - seems to be...coincidentally beneficial for Chinese corporations.

In the Eastern Economic Corridor, about two hours from Bangkok, new factories are rapidly rising. Battery maker Sunwoda Electronic is investing over $1 billion to build a lithium-ion battery plant, with mass production set for 2025. Battery cells will be made locally, and a Thai official noted it’s likely to become Southeast Asia’s first plant producing batteries from cells.

More than 20 Chinese auto brands, including BYD and Great Wall Motor, have entered Thailand.

BYD’s factory, which began production in July 2024, is becoming the hub of a growing supply chain. Alongside Sunwoda, battery makers CALB, Gotion, and SVOLT have started local production, while CATL is building a joint venture plant with Thailand’s state-owned PTT.

However it may not all be tariff related. Nikkei writes that Chinese manufacturers began accelerating their investments in Thailand around 2018, amid rising U.S.-China trade tensions.

As of March, Chinese-invested auto parts companies in Thailand reached 165—over triple the number from the end of 2017. Across Southeast Asia, Chinese companies established more than 7,000 firms by 2023, with direct investment topping a record $25 billion that year.

This growth is expected to continue. In April, Ningbo Tuopu Group announced plans to invest up to $300 million in a Thai factory, saying the move would help it “win more orders and strengthen support for important foreign customers.”

Nikkei writes that Japanese automakers, dominant in Thailand since the 1960s, have built a network of about 1,400 local suppliers through joint ventures and vertically integrated operations. In contrast, Chinese carmakers are building independent supply chains, often excluding Japanese-linked suppliers.

Chinese parts are nearly 30% cheaper than those from Japanese firms, and Chinese companies typically produce core components like batteries in-house or source them from affiliated suppliers. “Thai suppliers will not be able to fully benefit from the Chinese push into the country,” Sompol said.

A Thai Summit Group executive noted that Japanese automakers may eventually switch to lower-cost Chinese parts, which could force Japanese suppliers in Thailand to downsize or exit the market. Although Toyota and Honda still hold over 70% of Thailand’s new car market, their lead is shrinking under Chinese pressure, the report concludes.