Chair of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Sen. Bill Cassidy, indefatigable advocate for indiscriminately injecting all newborn babies with a vaccine for a disease contracted through intravenous drug use and unprotected sexual intercourse (hepatitis B), who has never seen a baby he didn't want to inject with a Pfizer product, made no secret of his role in killing Trump's nomination for Surgeon General, Casey Means.

(Per reporting from Politico, Cassidy was joined for this particular battle in his ongoing war to destroy the MAHA agenda by two other GOP Senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.)

The irony here is that the Means siblings, Casey and her brother Calley, a former (allegedly former) big food lobbyist, burst onto the scene out of nowhere a couple of years ago in what many consider an attempted astroturfed co-opting of what was originally a grassroots revolt against the medical establishment post-COVID, a theory that I half-subscribe to and have covered in depth before.

President Donald Trump's administration has done something unprecedented.

It has committed itself to UFO transparency, putting its weight and authority behind a series of intriguing files, images and videos.

Some were previously unclassified. Others were previously classified.

Since its launch on Friday 8 May, the WAR.GOV/UFO website, hosting the files, has received nearly 500 million hits as of 14 hours ago.

We now expect the next batch of material, in what appears to be an ongoing process.

The collective West's anti-Russian obstinacy has proven to be a total failure.

Historical memory shaping the present

May 9 is one of the most significant dates in Russian history: Victory Day, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Today, 81 years after that victory, the anniversary takes place in a context profoundly different from the past, marked by an ongoing conflict and a fragile truce that offers uncertain glimmers of hope for a possible de-escalation.

In Russia, Victory Day is not merely a historical celebration, but a central element of national identity and a warning to the entire world. The so-called "Great Patriotic War" has left a deep imprint on the collective consciousness, with millions of victims and a legacy of sacrifice that is commemorated every year through parades, memorials, and official speeches. A sacrifice that, as President Vladimir Putin recalled in his speech in Red Square, has forever marked the history of the Motherland and the consciousness of the Russian people — a sacrifice that earned a victory greater than it appears, because it allowed all of Europe to be redeemed.

There are moments in history when the world changes with noise — sirens, speeches, falling statues. And then there are moments when it changes so quietly that almost nobody realizes it is happening. We are living through the second kind. No formal announcement marked the transition. No historic summit collapsed on live television. No leader stepped forward to say: the old rules no longer apply. And yet, somewhere between the war in Ukraine, the tightening strategic alignment between Russia and China, and the silent expiration of the New START in February 2026, the global system that kept great-power rivalry inside predictable boundaries began to dissolve. Not explode. Dissolve.

For decades, the world's stability did not come from trust. It came from limits. From inspection regimes. From numbers written into treaties. From the strange comfort of knowing exactly how dangerous your adversary was allowed to be. Military planners in Moscow and Washington worked with ceilings. Diplomats worked with verification schedules. Leaders worked with red lines that had legal meaning. Those ceilings are now gone, and most of the public has not noticed because nothing dramatic happened the day they disappeared.

"They said it could never happen... but it did."

Within hours, power grids failed, water stopped, and communication went silent. What followed wasn't chaos — but a slow, terrifying realization: no one was coming.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's crimes in a closed-door interview with House lawmakers, but Democrats argue the Cabinet secretary is "covering up" for the Trump administration.

Lutnick sat for a voluntary transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, as part of the panel's growing investigation into Epstein. Since it was voluntary, Lutnick was not under oath and would not face legal jeopardy for any false statements. Other witnesses, including former Attorney General Pam Bondi, are expected to speak with the committee in the coming months under the same stipulations.

He is the first sitting Trump administration official to speak with lawmakers for the probe.

On the eve of Victory Day

Threats by Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO, expressed on March 27, 2026, at an investment forum in Miami, statements by J.D. Vance about Europe's loss of its identity during an interview with Fox News on March 15, 2026, along with the refusal of European countries to directly join the aggression against Iran and participate in the adventure of the 'military unlocking' (and then - blocking) of the Strait of Hormuz are dividing Europe and America more than ever in the last 100 years. These developments demonstrate that European 'strategic autonomy', so desired by the liberals, is much closer than it seems. The main question is who will dictate the future agenda in the current toothless and frigid Europe. There are enough applicants: disgusting Brussels eurocracy, chatty and smug Gaulish sodomites and, finally, the German leadership that has grown increasingly vocal about its claims to hegemony in the Old World, while emasculating the responsibility of its ancestors for the crimes of Nazism in the public perception. Let us focus on the latter in more detail.

There is nothing new in the actions of the German leadership (first of all, the descendant of the Nazis Merz & Co). The endeavor to revise the disappointing outcomes of World War II was undertaken by the defeated state almost immediately after the end of the war. The purpose of Nazi followers was to compensate for the political, territorial, ideological and economic costs incurred as a result of the complete military defeat and collapse of German statehood. Along the way, they tried to neatly filter out the atmosphere impregnated by the spirit of Prussian militarism and the stench of National Socialist ideology. The German elites remaining in the western zones of occupation formally and quickly abandoned the legacy of Hitler, who had led his thousand-year Reich to collapse. But they had no desire to truly reject the very ideology of Nazism. Why?

Forty years after the Delhi Declaration, the world is again searching for a new order, but this time without shared rules or a usable blueprint.

"A new world order must be built to ensure economic justice and equal political security for all nations. An end to the arms race is an essential prerequisite for the establishment of such an order."

This year marks the 40th anniversary of those words from the Soviet-Indian Delhi Declaration, signed in 1986 during Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to India and his talks with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. It was one of the first major documents of the late Cold War era to openly speak of the need for a 'new world order'.

At the time, the Soviet leadership believed this order would emerge through what it called 'new political thinking'. The idea was that former adversaries would abandon confrontation and combine the best elements of their respective systems to create a more stable and equitable international framework. It was an ambitious vision: A joint effort to rebuild global politics from the ruins of ideological rivalry. But history, however, had other plans.

On May 2nd it was reported to the World Health Organization that a "cluster" of passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius had fallen ill with "severe respiratory illness".

As of May 4th, seven passengers had fallen ill, resulting in three deaths. Lab testing "confirmed" Hantavirus infection in two of the cases, the other five remained "suspected".

As of this morning, an eighth case - and third "confirmed" - has been reported.

"Confirmed" is a tricky word here, because we're talking PCR tests. We're all painfully familiar with those.

Hantaviruses allegedly asymptomatically infect rodents, and can spread disease in people via aerosolized saliva, urine or excrement. The early symptoms are "similar to flu - a fever, fatigue, muscle aches. They may also get shortness of breath, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting or diarrhoea", according to the BBC.

Person-to-person transmission is occasionally anecdotally reported, but a recent 2022 study concluded there was no evidence to support this..

That's why it was noteworthy that the WHO reported there were no rats on board the cruise ship, something that is a) very unlikely to be true and b) they couldn't possibly know at this stage, since the ship is isolating off the Canary Islands.

They were clearly prepping the ground for a "it's mutated to infect person to person" narrative.

But, at the same time, WHO officials have been downplaying the pandemic potential. Earlier today, Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director of epidemic and pandemic management, gave a press conference outlining that this is "not like coronavirus", and that the pandemic threat is extremely low.

"Existential":

With the ranks of its foreign sympathizers plummeting all around the world and all across the political spectrum, the State of Israel is quadrupling its budget for so-called "public diplomacy," bringing its 2026 spending on foreign influence campaigns to a massive $730 million.

With the country's growing unpopularity threatening US financial, military and diplomatic support, Israel's foreign minister has said an intensified effort to mold global opinion is an "existential issue." Both inside and outside of Israel, the country's public diplomacy effort is also referred to by its Hebrew name: hasbara. Even before the 2026 ramp-up in spending, Israel's spending on hasbara was already striking.

Recent disclosures about 2025 hasbara spending shed some light on how Israel goes about shaping public opinion. Per the Jerusalem Post, that year's outlays included a $50 million social media ad campaign carried out on Google, YouTube, X and Outbrain. Another $40 million covered the hosting of foreign delegations. "We flew a lot of delegations to the country - whether it's pastors, whether it's politicians, universities," Israeli Consul General Israel Bachar told the Jerusalem Post. "Everyone who returns from the country understands better and is more supportive. But you have to fly out a lot of people."

The Israeli army shelled towns in southern Lebanon with phosphorus munitions Tuesday, according to the National News Agency NNA.

The agency reported that the towns of Kounine and Beit Yahoun in the Bint Jbeil district were targeted with artillery shells containing phosphorus, which are banned internationally.

Israeli warplanes separately carried out airstrikes on the towns of Kafra, Braachit and Safad al-Battikh in the Tyre district, said the report.