Note: First published April 15, 2024. Global Research reprise.

Accusing countries of alleged intentions or ongoing programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) has long been the mainstay of America's foreign policy.

Regardless of whether it was a completely unfounded claim or one based on solid intelligence, the openly imperialist foreign policy of the United States is such that it's virtually impossible to survive it without resorting to WMDs.

North Korea is probably the most prominent example of this, as the small country (relative to its neighbors) was being directly threatened by the US only half a decade ago, while it now fields an arsenal worthy of a "pocket superpower".

Worse yet for the Pentagon, Pyongyang now also has a robust tactical arsenal, in addition to its strategic one that can reach virtually any target in the continental US. Interestingly, this now includes hypersonic weapons, a field in which Washington DC is now lagging behind Pyongyang, Beijing and Moscow.

Ironically, if the US stops complaining about a country having nuclear weapons (or any other type of WMDs), then that country is safe, as Washington DC will know it can't act with impunity.

However, when a country most likely doesn't have WMDs, the US keeps accusing and threatening it before launching an illegal full-scale invasion.

The example of Iraq serves as a painful lesson of that strategy.

Five surprises:

1. Jeffrey Epstein's failure to develop any business or political connection to the Kremlin or Russian oligarchs.
2. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's open break with Kirill Dmitriev's negotiating strategy with the US; indirect criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
3. Escalation of the US war at sea against Russian oil trade, sea lanes, and tankers, and the continuing delay in Putin's orders to the Russian Navy.
4. The disagreement between Putin and President Xi Jinping.
5. The precarious balance of force deterring US and Israel from attacking Iran, and Russian assessments of the survivability of the Iranian government

Recorded on Thursday afternoon, US Eastern Time, view or listen to the newsbreaking discussion with Dimitri Lascaris.

For background and documentary evidence:

The Epstein Evidence.

Jeffrey Epstein was a specialist in insider trading; leveraged puts, calls and other derivatives; distressed asset and bankruptcy fraud; tax evasion schemes; and money laundering. They were his principal source of income and of his wealth at death; that has been estimated at $380 million in cash, stocks and other investments, plus real estate assets in New York, Paris, and the Caribbean, for an aggregate of $578 million.

Between 1999 and 2018 Epstein's two US Virgin Islands-based companies, Financial Trust and Southern Trust, generated more than $800 million in revenue comprising more than $360 million in dividends, and $488 million in fees from high net-worth clients. They invoiced Epstein for "estate planning" and other financial services. Follow the Forbes reporting on the sources and method of this money-making here and here.

Washington still reportedly owes the intergovernmental organization billions of dollars in mandatory funding

The US has paid $160 million towards the more than $4 billion it owes the UN in the first payment since President Donald Trump's return to the White House.

The UN faces a mounting financial crisis, while the US president positions his Gaza Board of Peace to "oversee" the global body. Some experts have already warned that the initiative could undermine the UN.

Washington's latest contribution is a "partial payment of its past dues," Reuters cited a UN spokesperson as saying on Thursday.

The money is a small fraction of the $2.19 billion the US reportedly owes for the UN regular budget and $2.4 it owes for current and past peacekeeping missions. The US is responsible for around 95% of the overdue payments to the UN's regular budget, Reuters quoted the organization's spokesperson as saying.

British Intelligence is never too far from the wars and chaos in the so-called Middle East region. In Syria MI6 has taken centre stage for the last 75 years in the intelligence operations to overthrow successive Syrian governments and now the aim is the final war against Iran with Syria as the staging post.

In September 2025, the Express was issuing dire warnings that "tens of thousands of ISIS extremists could be unleashed on Britain and the West if the camps holding them in Syria are taken over by a new regime", meaning the Al Jolani/Al Qaeda regime brought to power by London, Washington, Ankara, and Tel Aviv. At the same time, CENTCOM was urging countries to repatriate their ISIS citizens to reduce the pressure on the overcrowded and sordid camps overflowing with unrepentant fighters and their families.

Fast-forward to February 2026, and that is exactly what has been allowed to happen. The 'New Syria' forces, comprising ISIS, Al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood factions, some Syrian, the majority foreigners, have seized the ISIS holding camps in north-east Syria from the former caretakers — the US/Israeli-backed Kurdish Separatists.

Suddenly, Washington's support for the Kurdish autonomous region appeared to collapse in favour of an HTS/Al Qaeda centralised regime. The former promises of Kurdish independence and privilege within Syrian borders seemed to dissipate rapidly as Al Jolani's murderous militias released their own relatives and former ISIS comrades from some of the biggest prison camps in this oil-rich corner of Syrian territory.

Finally admitting the obvious - that the CIA knew of the attack in advance - is a step towards normalizing it.
Only a few will be tempted to celebrate: German magazine Spiegel - once, a very long time ago, a proud flagship of critical investigate journalism but now an often cringe-inducing, radical-Centrist government and establishment mouthpiece - has noticed the obvious fact that Germany's American overlords were involved in the 2022 Nord Stream attack from the very beginning.

Spiegel - to paraphrase the title of a Soviet television classic starring the immortal Viacheslav Tikhonov - has now been authorized to announce: From the spring of 2022 (at the latest) Ukrainian saboteurs and CIA spies - already well-acquainted with each other "for years" (How did that happen, by the way? Never mind, we know) - were meeting to develop the idea of launching the greatest single eco-terrorist attack in Europe's history. On an "ally."

You don't say, Hauptmann Obvious! Honestly, what's next from Hamburg's brightest? "Gulf of Tonkin Incident - Did the US Lie?"; "Breaking: Gleiwitz Attack - a Nazi Black Op?"; "The Schlieffen Plan: Did it Fail?"; "Kaiser Wilhelm - Not so Bright after all?" Have all the cringo-meters really gone the way of Germany's notoriously dysfunctional railways? Is there no one left at Spiegel with a basic sense of professional shame and elementary decency?

The same can by asked regarding German mainstream media as a whole. Markus Lanz, one of Germany's most styled and prominent - and soporifically anodyne, too - talk show hosts, has recently "amused" us (yes, scare quotes) with speculations both asinine and callous: Was the ugly - English frog formerly known as Prince Andrew perhaps only trying to help when caught on candid Epstein Mossad camera kneeling over a prone girl?

Frankly, the new Spiegel line on Nord Stream is not much better. Its only advantage is that, at least, it is not de facto covering for a pedophile monster, just for Germany's US "allies" and Berlin's spongers in Kiev, which devastated its vital infrastructure and crippled its economy by locking in excessive energy costs.

For discerning observers, there was an obvious attempt this week by Britain to poison a delicate stage in peace negotiations for ending the conflict in Ukraine.

The sabotage effort was as vivid as, well, how should we put it?, as vivid as a brightly colored dart frog from the South American rainforests.

Five European governments signed a joint statement this week that dramatically claimed that Russian opposition figure Sergey Navalny was murdered two years ago in a Siberian prison by poisoning.

The scripted drama and media orchestration always betray a psychological operation intended for public consumption, which warrants the rapid prescription of healthy scepticism as an antidote.

The intergovernmental report claimed that the lethal toxin allegedly used on Navalny was "epibatidine," which is naturally produced in the skin of the dart frog. Without any evidence, Britain and four other European governments - France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden - asserted that Navalny was murdered by the Russian authorities. Oh, those evil, dastardly Russians... cue the theme music from a James Bond movie!

Moscow rejected the latest claim as "feeblemindedness of fabulists" and condemned the European governments and media for engaging in "necro-propaganda". Russia claims that Navalny (47) died of natural causes while serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism and corruption. He was thought to be suffering from congenital ill health and on various medications before he began his penal sentence.

The joint European government statement on Navalny's alleged poisoning is suspect for several reasons. For a start, it provides no verifiable data on the supposed toxicological analysis or how biomedical samples were obtained two years after Navalny's death. The timing is also suspicious, coinciding with the Munich Security Conference last weekend and the second anniversary of Navalny's demise on February 16, 2022, suggesting that the announcement was timed to maximize media attention.

Moreover, this week saw another round of trilateral negotiations between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia on finding a political settlement to the four-year conflict in Ukraine. The talks are at a tricky stage with little traction or trust between Kiev and Moscow.

The exotic frog story seems conveniently loaded to poison the atmosphere in the negotiations.

Tellingly, it is the British government that is the main protagonist in instigating the "necro-propaganda".

While Epstein may have seemed to enjoy committing his crimes, we must not forget that he worked for a secret service, Mossad. The horrors he perpetrated were primarily a means of blackmailing his associates. Although, for the moment, no Ukrainian figure has been directly implicated, numerous elements compel us to investigate who in Ukraine supplied children to the Epstein network.

The Epstein affair has shaken all developed nations. To summarize the facts: billionaire Jeffrey Epstein organized a network of informants for Mossad and the Franco-Swiss branch of the Rothschilds. In order to gain leverage over them, he gradually drew his targets (scientists, financiers, and politicians) into a series of increasingly atrocious games. Initially, he offered them extramarital affairs, then relationships with increasingly younger partners, and finally, he involved them in torture, murder, and cannibalism. People who rise to positions of power in society may feel the need to test the extent of their influence. They can only measure it by the magnitude of their transgressions, engaging in universally condemned practices with impunity.

This type of blackmail is not new. In France, we saw the Doucé affair (1990), and in Belgium, the Dutroux affair (1995-1996). The targets of this blackmail were never brought to light. A few names of prominent figures were merely mentioned, but the high-ranking criminals were never arrested. What is new in the Epstein case is that the US justice system has 9 million pages of documents, a third of which it has already released to the public.

Trump may pretend that Israel is a client state of Washington which has to toe the line, but in reality, it is clear that Israel is calling the shots.

Trump has the option of going to war with Iran and receiving much-needed campaign funds from Israel for the midterms - or opting to defy Bibi and facing certain defeatby losing both houses and facing certain impeachment. Can the Iranians save him?

Is Trump serious about going to war with Iran? To understand this, it's important to examine his relationship with Netanyahu and to see who has the advantage when it comes to dragging the U.S. into a war, and whether Israel can actually be a greater threat to the U.S. than Tehran can ever be.

Senator Lindsey Graham has taunted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a movie quip as tensions soar over nuclear talks and a military buildup.

US Senator Lindsey Graham has publicly mocked Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dismissing his military threats as Washington and Tehran remain locked in high-stakes nuclear negotiations.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Khamenei warned about US warships being sent toward Iran, writing that although they are "a dangerous piece of military hardware," what is more dangerous is "the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea."

"Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man," the hawkish Republican senator responded on Wednesday, apparently referencing a line from the 1969 western 'True Grit.' "See you at the movies. Oh I forgot, you don't have movies," the senator concluded.

The Meta boss has claimed that Instagram doesn't hook kids, but internal documents suggest otherwise.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has rejected allegations that his Instagram platform deliberately targets children and damages their mental health, in a trial that could open the floodgates to a wave of judgments against the social media giant.

Zuckerberg took the stand in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday. The plaintiff in the lawsuit, a 20-year-old California woman known as 'Kaley', alleges that she developed anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia after becoming addicted to Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms as a pre-teen.

Alphabet, which owns YouTube, is also named as a defendant in the case, while TikTok and Snap settled with Kaley out of court. Dozens of parents who blame these platforms for their children's mental health problems or death by suicide attended the trial, and around 1,600 similar lawsuits are pending.