Puppet MastersS


Bomb

Zelensky gave Putin 'reason to bomb the hell out of' Ukraine - Trump

Trump
© Charlie Neibergall/APUS President Donald Trump
The US president said he "didn't like" Kiev's escalatory attacks on Russia's nuclear triad.

The recent Ukrainian drone attacks on long-range nuclear-capable Russian bombers have sharply increased the risk of escalation and given Moscow a valid reason to retaliate with force, US President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday.

In addition to launching a coordinated drone strike on multiple airbases, Ukraine also blew up railway bridges in Russia last week, derailing both civilian and freight trains, killing at least seven people, and injuring over 120 others, including children. President Vladimir Putin discussed the attacks in a phone call with his US counterpart on Wednesday, warning that Moscow's inevitable response is justified.
Trump told journalists on Friday that he "didn't like" the escalation when asked whether Kiev's attack on a key component of Russia's nuclear triad changed his view of "what's at stake" and what "cards" Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky holds.

"Well, they gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of them last night," Trump stated. "That's something I didn't like about it. When I saw it, I said: 'Here we go... now it's going to be a strike.'"

Comment: Russian payback? Moscow confirms strikes on defense industry in Kiev:
The Russian military has carried out several long-range strikes on military-industrial targets in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

In a statement on Tuesday, June 10, 2025 the ministry said its forces launched a group attack using high-precision missiles and assault drones against several defense-related targets, including "aircraft, missile, armor and shipbuilding industrial facilities in Kiev."

Russia also attacked command centers, troop deployment sites, weapon and equipment storage hubs, military airfield infrastructure, ammunition warehouses, and fuel depots, the officials added.

"The goal of the strike has been accomplished. All designated targets have been hit," the ministry stated. Officials in Moscow have said Russian strikes are only aimed at military-related facilities and not civilians.

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian officials stated that the strikes targeted not only Kiev but also Odessa Region, with at least 19 fires reported. They added that at least two people were killed and 13 injured. In Kiev, the local authorities said the attack damaged facilities in several districts, including non-residential buildings and a business center, which reportedly once hosted a British visa center. Other reports claim that in the latter case, the attack hit the Artyom plant which produces military equipment.

Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky has called the barrage "one of the largest strikes" on the Ukrainian capital, claiming that it involved 315 drones and seven missiles. He also criticized the US for what he called a reluctance to put pressure on Russia and urged Washington to take "concrete actions."

The attack comes after Kiev ramped up drone strikes into Russia, with Moscow accusing Ukraine of attempting "terrorist" attacks on the country's railway infrastructure which led to civilian fatalities. Moscow has also accused Kiev of targeting airbases that host nuclear-capable bombers.
How do you count 315 separate drones?


Cut

US to cut Ukraine aid - defense secretary

Hegseth
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images1 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth • US Capitol • June 10, 2025
A peaceful end to the conflict is in Washington's interests, Pete Hegseth has said.

The White House will be slashing military funding for Ukraine as the administration of US President Donald Trump seeks a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said.

The Pentagon chief made the statement before the House Appropriations Committee in Congress on Tuesday.

"It is a reduction in this budget," Hegseth said when asked about upcoming military aid funding for Ukraine.

"This administration takes a very different view of that conflict," he added.

Trump has worked towards negotiating an end to the Ukraine conflict and has diplomatically re-engaged with Russia. Since he took office in January, Moscow and Kiev have restarted direct talks for the first time since 2022, when Ukraine unilaterally left the first Istanbul negotiations.

"A negotiated peaceful settlement is in the best interest of both parties and our nation's interests especially with all the competing interests around the globe," Hegseth said.

Comment: Zelensky is not in charge of his expectations. Trump is.


Bizarro Earth

We've been here before: The Roman Republic experienced globalization, dilution of culture, transformation into empire

Victor David Hanson
© John Anderson Media/YouTubeVictor David Hanson
On Date June 8, 2025 Victor Davis Hanson compares America's current historical moment to the period surrounding the life of Christ, when the Roman Republic transformed into the Roman Empire, during an interview with Bradley Devlin of The Daily Signal.

"I think we're somewhere in that period between the Battle of Actium (31 BC) and the death of Octavian Augustus (14 AD)," Hanson said. "We're in a transitional period where globalization is the modern equivalent of an empire, because it is — if you think about it — run by the United States."

"Everybody wears a suit and tie if they're a diplomat, jeans are everywhere, everybody's got a cell phone... Everybody emulates the United States. Every time I look at a Chinese airplane or a Chinese uniform, I just think that they stole it from us."

Nuke

Iran says it obtained trove of documents on Israel's secret nuclear arms program

dimona israel nuclear weapons negev
© Thomas Coax / AFPA partial view of the Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel's Negev Desert, September 2002.
Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib is claiming Tehran has acquired a "treasure trove" of sensitive Israeli documents, including information on Israel's secret (but long not-so-secret) nuclear weapons program, as well as apparent evidence of US and European knowledge and support.

"The transfer of this treasure trove was time-consuming and required security measures. Naturally, the transfer methods will remain confidential, but the documents should be unveiled soon," Khatib said. He vowed to make them public, at which point this could force either an Israeli or US official statement.

Iranian state TV unveiled the alleged clandestine operation on Saturday, though no evidence was provided. Additionally, Israel has yet to acknowledge anything regarding theft of its files, which may have occurred through a cyber-breach.

Comment: That's not all Iran obtained according to an X thread by Mohammad Ghaderi.

The Threadreader summary:
1 The first unofficial details of the documents and information obtained from #Israel by #Iran. It's truly shocking. Read more...

-Tel Aviv's dangerous four-year roadmap in the nuclear field
-Nuclear military industry facilities, bases, infrastructure and processes

2 - Weapons import plan from the #America & their storage & storage location
- Huge bribes to four famous figures in the Arab world to advance the Abraham Peace Project
- Complete profiles of 23 senior Israeli spies and their network of contacts in the countries of the region

3 - Information on about 6 million Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Telegram users
- Secret information on water, electricity, telephone, urban transport, postal & health & healthcare systems
- Information on 400,000 judicial & criminal & police & legal cases of the judiciary

4 - Information on prisons, prisoners and their crimes
- Personal information on #Netanyahu and his wife, including medical documents, testimonies of judges and doctors, bribery cases and threats of complainants to withdraw complaints

5 - Information on corruption networks, including organ trafficking networks, drug distribution, sexual exploitation of women and children
- Information Finance, money, banking and insurance

6 - Information obtained from #Netanyahu's private office, including 6 4-terabyte hard drives and 1,720 sheets of secret documents
- #Mossad's secret archive

7 - Private information of #Netanyahu's opposition leaders in the Knesset, including hidden cameras in their bathrooms, bedrooms & inside their homes & information from hacking their mobile phones & personal computers, which were used in Bibi's office to blackmail his opponents

8 - Several thousand copies of high-quality aerial images of all the regime's cities, infrastructure, ports and important places
- 40,000 hours of CCTV footage from the regime's important political, military, security and government sites

9 - A film of #Netanyahu's debate with some Knesset members that was removed from all the regime's archives due to widespread revelations/ END
How will Iran exploit the breach, if indeed it happened. If it did, so much for Israel's vaunted security tech.


Lightning

'Korean Donald Trump' emerges from the chaos in Seoul

Lee Jae-myung Kim Hea-Kyung
© Chung Sung-Jun / Getty ImagesDemocratic Party presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung and his wife Kim Hea-Kyung at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, June 4, 2025.
On June 3, 2025, a snap presidential election was held in the Republic of Korea in which Democratic candidate Lee Jae-myung won with over 49% of the vote.

The election followed an attempt on December 3, 2024 to impose martial law in the country, which led the Constitutional Court to unanimously vote for the impeachment of then-President Yoon Suk-yeol. There were several candidates, but the main contest took place between the ruling conservative People Power Party and the opposition Democratic Party.

Attention

How to fact-check techno-feudalism?

Global Digital Forum
© Public Domain
The Global Digital Forum last week in delightful Nizhny Novgorod represented a landmark in the quest for a more equitable media landscape across the whole Global South.

Pride of place was taken by a new ambitious association, the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN). The last session of the forum was focused essentially on how to fight all the toxic declinations imposed by the post-truth anti-cultural ambiance - as in fact-checking an avalanche of fake news coming in most cases from states and official institutions.

Guest of honor was superstar Russian Foreign Minister spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, relaxed, in great spirits, who went full Deng Xiaoping by urging everyone to "fight for the truth and seek out the facts".

By a twist of fate, the timeline left me with only two minutes to somehow wrap up our quite enlightening discussion. So I went hardcore and quoted Nietzsche: "There are no facts, only interpretations". Later on, I was surprised at how that had struck a nerve especially among African delegates.

The key point is that in the artificially fabricated post-truth environment, not only facts are only facts if we say so; most of all, only one interpretation is allowed - be it from the Empire of Chaos, whoever may be in power, or from a Kafkaesque mechanism such as the European Union (EU)/European Commission (EC).

If you deviate from the official interpretation, they will come after you. That has led, for instance, in Europe, to journalists/EU citizens being prevented even from traveling to their own nation-states, and having their accounts frozen, or EU citizens being prevented from covering a supposedly democratic election (in Romania), and immediately deported (outside of the EU).

A startling essay on Nietzsche amplifies the diagnostic of Europe's current cultural suicide. Nietzsche was an "untimely" outsider, a steppenwolf, pledging allegiance to no one and nothing, silently grappling with "the flat exhaustion of bourgeois modernity", and searching, in vain, for "silhouettes among shadows".

Nietzsche, in the late 19th century, was already a symbol of Resistance. Resistance as we see it today - from the Axis of Resistance in West Asia to Orthodox Christian military batallions fighting for the freedom of Novorossiya. No ceremony ever greeted Nitzsche: he was always alone. He shattered illusion after illusion as his solitude "became liturgy" and "his body turned into protest." He impersonated "the ghost of nobility". A species in extinction - indeed.

Chess

Simplifying Putin's Ukrainian multi-dimensional matrix

Lindsey G
© UnknownUS Senator Lindsey Graham
Not only does the Western media have no connection to the truth but, outside of sport and weather forecasts, it is not meant to have any such link.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
- Ephesians 6:12
If Putin's Ukrainian issue was merely about dealing with Donald Rumsfeld unknown unknowns, Russia would have put paid to it years ago. But things are infinitely more complicated than that. Putin, which we use as a shorthand for Russia's High Command, must achieve his strategic objectives, which include but are not confined to eviscerating the Nazi hardliners and their MI6 handlers at the centre of power in Kiev, kicking NATO bag and baggage out of Russia's front yard, and securing regional stability to benefit the varying geopolitical and economic national interests of Russia and contiguous countries. Even that abbreviated web encompasses a vast array of political, military, informational, and economic dimensions, which are further compounded by the various irredentist movements, diplomatic double crosses, disinformation campaigns, and military interventions NATO use to frustrate Russia's goals, all while cranking up international pressures and violent, internal Russian dissent.

Although Russia needs a layered, interconnected approach encompassing military actions, diplomatic efforts, and information warfare, to apply some sort of a tourniquet to these torrents, the best I can presently do is to help clarify how these elements must interplay to shape Russia's policies and actions in Ukraine, and to thereby suggest an appropriately calibrated and nuanced approach to this ongoing conflict and its geopolitical dynamics.

Comment: A twist on the tale of Goliath comes to mind. Graham is no David.


Footprints

RFK Jr. removes all members of CDC panel advising U.S. on vaccines

Kennedy
© Ken Cedeno/ReutersU.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before the Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing on the Dept of Health and Human Services budget • Capitol Hill • May 20, 2025
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he is "retiring" all 17 members of a crucial government panel of vaccine advisors, a shocking step that could help to sow doubts about immunizations in the U.S.

"A clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science," Kennedy said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

Kennedy is removing all members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group reviews vaccine data and makes recommendations that determine who is eligible for shots and whether insurers should cover them, among other efforts.

Eye 2

Ukraine using terror tactics to disrupt peace talks - senior Russian diplomat

Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik.
© RTRussian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik.
Bridge bombings in Bryansk and Kursk regions were designed to force Moscow to withdraw from negotiations, Rodion Miroshnik has told RT.

Ukraine is using terrorist tactics at a state level to derail peace negotiations with Moscow, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has told RT.

Recent acts of railway sabotage in Russia's Bryansk and Kursk regions have damaged passenger and freight trains, killing seven people and injuring 113. Russia's Investigative Committee has called the incidents "terrorist attacks" planned by Ukraine to inflict maximum civilian harm. The attacks were carried out the day before the second round of direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul on Monday.

Miroshnik, an ambassador-at-large for the Russian Foreign Ministry, who is tasked with investigating the Ukrainian military's alleged war crimes, said in an interview on Wednesday that Kiev was orchestrating a series of violent acts aimed at undermining peace talks with Moscow, which are being facilitated by both the US and Russia.
"Ukraine is using terrorist tools that are banned by international law at the level of the state," he said.

Caduceus

RFK Jr.: HHS analyst working to recover 'lost' vaccine safety data from CDC system

Dr. David Geier  Robert F. Kennedy
Dr. David Geier and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy
David Geier, long-time vaccine researcher, is helping rebuild access to CDC-linked datasets as critics question his credentials and past.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that David Geier, a senior data analyst at the agency, is leading efforts to recover missing datasets from a federal vaccine safety system. The project involves the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-run program used for analyzing adverse effects of vaccines.

According to Kennedy's statement posted on social media platform X, Geier is working alongside other scientists to reassemble and depersonalize the so-called "lost" VSD data, which the CDC has acknowledged are missing or incomplete. Kennedy said the goal is to publish the data on a public-facing website to allow outside researchers access for replication and scrutiny.

Comment: Kennedy's statement is long, but worth reading in full. Maryland maliciously targeted Geier and his father for producing extremely inconvenient data for the vaccine fanatics:

From X:
In her faithful recitation of Big Pharma's talking points, @WSJ @l_e_whyte parrots the defamation that an @HHSgov contract researcher David Geier was disciplined by the Maryland Board of Physicians for practicing medicine without a license. Whyte's exercise in character assassination is part of the vaccine industry's 23-year crusade to discredit Geier and his father, Dr. Mark Geier, an internationally revered physician and scientist, whose only crime was publishing a series of peer-reviewed research papers linking mercury in vaccines to neurological injuries in children. The Maryland Board's inquisition against the Geiers was part of that vendetta. While Whyte's characterization of the Maryland Medical Board's disciplinary action against Geier is technically true, Whyte chose to omit some important context: Here is the whole truth.

In 2011, the Maryland Board of Physicians brought charges against David Geier for the unlicensed practice of medicine because he had occasionally assisted his father when Dr. Geier treated challenging children with autism. The Board alleged no harm to nor complaints from patients. The Board's own appointed Administrative Law Judge who presided over the court proceedings with attorneys, witnesses, and evidence, found David Geier innocent of all charges. Nevertheless, the Maryland Board of Physicians, without additional evidence or court proceedings, took the unprecedented step of overturning their own Administrative Law Judge, summarily declaring David Geier violated the Maryland Health Occupations Article.

In response, David and his father filed a civil case in Maryland State Court against the Maryland Board of Physicians for violating their civil rights. During a lengthy trial, the Maryland Board of Physicians prosecutor and the lead investigator apologized to Geier in open court for engaging in unprofessional misconduct in their official capacities. The presiding State Court judge, Ronald Rubin found the prosecutor, investigator, and multiple members of the Maryland Board of Physicians acted with "actual malice" against David Geier and awarded the Geiers $2.5 million in compensation and an additional $2.5 million in legal fees. The Maryland Appeals Court later reversed the damages judgment finding that the defendants were absolutely immune from civil actions, but the court did NOT overturn the findings of malice. Liz Whyte chose to ignore this judicial exoneration of the Geiers in her biased reporting.

David Geier has an extensive background as a research scientist. He has published nearly 200 studies in peer-reviewed academic journals as well as medical textbook chapters, and other publications, and has made numerous invited presentations regarding his scientific research at prestigious worldwide academic conferences including two presentations to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences on the topic of vaccines.

Liz Whyte calls Geier a "vaccine opponent" and an "anti-vaccine activist." But David Geier has never been anti-vaccine. To the contrary, he has published numerous studies supporting the use of routine vaccines.

To bolster her case, Whyte quotes Dr. Walter Orenstein, the longtime former Director of CDC's National Immunization Program, saying "[David Geier] has no record in the scientific community of doing valid work." Yet in 2019, Orenstein himself positively peer-reviewed Geier's study validating measles vaccine effectiveness, commenting, "The authors are to be commended for undertaking this study and the research should be very helpful."

A few of Dr. Geier's studies have revealed inconvenient facts about the use of mercury in American vaccines. These offenses precipitated the vicious campaign to vilify and marginalize the Geiers. These sorts of public persecutions and gaslightings are now familiar to thousands of doctors and scientists who asked questions about COVID vaccines. Among those targeted for similar abuse are Dr. @NIHDirector_Jay Bhattacharya, @DrMakaryFDA , @DrOzCMS, and CBER Director Dr. Vinay Prasad, all of whom help me run this Department.

I brought Geier into HHS specifically because of his unique expertise on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. The CDC maintains the VSD at an annual cost of approximately $20 million as a tool for surveillance of vaccine injuries. In 1999, an in-house study of the VSD by CDC showed an alarming and elevated risk for autism and other neurological diseases among children receiving certain vaccines early in life. The CDC in-house researchers found an astronomical increased 11.35x risk in one run of the raw data and reduced that in a subsequent iteration to a still frightening 2.68x increased risk by unethically altering study protocols. CDC has repeatedly claimed to have lost the critical data underlying that research. Those alarming findings prompted CDC to terminate the VSD data sharing program and take draconian steps to prevent outside researchers from ever again accessing the VSD. Beginning in 2001, CDC created an architecture of byzantine rules to block independent scientists from access. CDC also disaggregated the VSD data and put it under control of private corporations to further ensure that it could never be studied by external researchers.

In 2002, the U.S. Congress Government Oversight Committee ordered CDC to allow Dr. Geier and his son to access the VSD data, which the agency maintains at enormous expense to the U.S. taxpayers. In extraordinary acts of insubordination, CDC repeatedly refused that Congressional order. When a frustrated Committee Chair, Representative Dan Burton, threatened to come personally to the CDC's Research Data Center (RDC) in Hyattsville to force the CDC to allow the Geiers to examine the data, the CDC responded that it would repel the Chairman with armed guards. After two years and multiple Congressional subpoenas, CDC officials finally allowed the Geiers access. However, CDC continually obstructed the Geiers' ability to actually study the VSD. Among a long retinue of manufactured impediments, CDC assigned a pair of burly monitors to oversee the Geiers' every movement. Government health officials whited out data before handing data sets to the Geiers. They forced the Geiers to review data in a windowless room heated to over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. They gave the researchers computers with no instructions on how to use them and no user interface. They wiped the Geiers' hard disks and destroyed their hard drives when the researchers temporarily left the study room. Ultimately, CDC officials sent letters to the HMOs that now controlled the data, falsely accusing the Geiers of misusing the data. This is a scandal that the Wall Street Journal should consider investigating rather than Ms. Whyte's knee-jerk defense of agency and corporate corruption.

With help from Congress, the Geiers spent a decade in and out of the VSD banging heads with CDC stonewallers. Despite all of CDC's efforts, they published 19 articles based upon their findings.

In 2005, the Institute of Medicine took testimony regarding the Geiers' ordeal and issued a scathing 140-page report with 27 recommendations for CDC to guarantee public access to the VSD. The CDC implemented none of these recommendations and continued to fight to keep the Geiers out of the VSD. As a result of CDC's efforts, David Geier is the only living independent researcher to have had access to the VSD.

HHS has now contracted Geier to advise other scientists on how to find the "lost" data and reaggregate the VSD datasets so that HHS can depersonalize them to protect patient privacy and make the "lost" datasets available on a public-facing website to any scientist who wants to study them.

All future HHS studies on vaccine safety and effectiveness will be replicable. Whenever possible, we will depersonalize the data to protect patient privacy and make the data publicly available. Our protocols for all our in-house @NIH , @CDCgov , and @US_FDA studies will be published in advance. Everything we do will be transparent and replicable. This is our best strategy for restoring CDC's historic commitment to gold-standard science. This is how we will revive public trust in our public health agencies.