Israel's PR campaign against Gaza Health Ministry has run its course

Throughout the Israel Defense Forces rampage across Gaza, the State of Israel and its collaborators and sympathizers around the world have ridiculed the alarming death toll maintained by Palestinian health authorities, dismissing the count as a gross exaggeration aimed at maliciously demonizing Israel. Now, after more than two years of casting doubts, the IDF has finally admitted its own estimates match the Gaza Health Ministry's accounting of some 70,000 confirmed dead.

It's a grand example of Israel's long-running practice of vehemently denying accusations — and vilifying accusers — before eventually acknowledging their validity. Those acknowledgements usually come after overwhelming evidence has been produced, by which time the denials have provided some degree of protection for Israel's standing. Where the Gaza death toll is concerned, the IDF's capitulation seems to some extent preemptive, in anticipation of an eventual opening of Gaza to journalists from around the world. However, the long string of denials helped muddy the waters, giving Israel and its allies a degree of cover as the IDF's astonishing death-and-destruction blitz was carried out.

High on the minds of Costa Rican voters as they went to the polls on Sunday was undoubtedly the surge in drug-related violence across the otherwise stable Central American country, which has been a trend for the region generally.

Conservative candidate Laura Fernandez by Monday morning was able to quickly declare victory in the presidential election after early results confirmed a decisive lead, causing her nearest rival to concede. She took nearly half the vote.

By early Monday, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal reported that ballots from 81% of polling stations had been counted, giving the Sovereign People's Party candidate 48.9% of the vote. The figure clears the 40% threshold needed to avoid a runoff, effectively ending the race in the first round.

January 2026 marks a rupture. It is no longer possible to treat the Epstein case as a sexual scandal involving powerful individuals. What has now come to light - documents, images, records, explicit connections - has pushed the debate to another level. This is no longer about "abuses," "excesses," or "individual crimes." What has been exposed points to systematic, organized, ritualized practices. And that changes everything.

For years, the public was conditioned to accept a narrative of ambiguity. There were always doubts, always a lack of "definitive proof," always a call for caution. That time is over. The material released leaves no room for ingenuousness. When evidence emerges of extreme violence against children, of practices that go beyond any conventional criminal category, the discussion ceases to be legal and becomes civilizational.

What is at stake is no longer who "visited the island" or who "caught a ride on Epstein's plane." What is at stake is the fact that networks of this kind only exist when they are backed by deep institutional protection. There is no ritual pedophilia, no human trafficking on a transnational scale, no systematic production of extreme material without political, police, judicial, and media cover. This is not conspiracy: it is the logic of power.

From this point on, the West can no longer hide behind the idea of gradual decline. It is not merely cultural degeneration or a loss of values. It is something darker: an elite that operates outside any recognizable moral limits and yet continues to govern. People directly or indirectly involved with this world continue to decide elections, wars, economic policies, and the fate of entire societies.

Another decisive element is that we still do not know who is behind the leak. This uncertainty is central. It may be a move by Donald Trump or by sectors aligned with him, attempting to definitively destroy their internal enemies and reorganize power in the United States in a minimally positive direction. It may be the opposite: a controlled release of material intended to pressure Trump into serving the interests of the Democrats and the Deep State.

The Princess is apologizing for her close Epstein ties, just as her son is on trial for rape.

The royal family in Norway is reeling with the repercussion of the latest - and probably last - document release on the Epstein files.

The three and a half million additional documents were released by the DOJ pursuant to the approval of the House Resolution 4405, the 'Epstein Files Transparency Act'.

The released files cast a very negative light on Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit.

DPA reported:

"According to media reports on Saturday, the 52-year-old is mentioned several hundred times in the documents published by the US Department of Justice on Friday. It became known years ago that Mette-Marit had contact with Epstein."

A visit to Epstein's estate in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2013, is creating waves, as the Royal Palace confirmed that Mette-Marit had 'borrowed Epstein's house' through a mutual friend, staying there for four days.

Guri Varpe, spokeswoman for the Norwegian royal family made a point to add that the crown princess 'never stayed on the multimillionaire's private island, Little Saint James'.

"On Friday evening, the crown princess apologized. She had 'not checked Epstein's background more thoroughly', she explained in a statement released to several Norwegian media outlets. She said she had shown 'poor judgement' and regretted 'having had any contact with Epstein at all'.

'It's just embarrassing', she continued. She expressed her 'deep sympathy' and solidarity with the victims of the sex offender."

The United States has now published two of the three pillars of its main strategic doctrine: the National Security Strategy at the end of 2025 and, in January, the National Defense Strategy. Only the Nuclear Posture Review remains. Many observers described US President Donald Trump's security strategy as revolutionary. In Russia, it drew cautious and in some cases even approving reactions. The defense strategy develops many of the same ideas, although it softens the language on certain issues, including Russia. What stands out in both texts is their blunt, almost cynical tone. The usual moral packaging has largely disappeared. That clarity, uncomfortable as it may be, is useful.

The new Pentagon strategy openly breaks with the philosophy that guided US policy for decades. The language of a "rules-based world order" and the missionary liberalism of "nation-building" through regime change are effectively discarded. These doctrines, associated with Trump's political opponents, are treated as failures that led to endless, exhausting wars such as Afghanistan. In this sense, Washington is not repenting, but drawing a pragmatic conclusion: attempts to remake other societies in America's image have proven too costly and too unreliable.

America's Middle East record is failure, not freedom: Iran isn't a threat, intervention backfires, and our money and blood are better spent fixing problems at home.

By the time this piece publishes, the United States military might already have launched air strikes on Iran. Indeed, planes could be launching while I write this. Nevertheless, here is a list of seven reasons why our government should not intervene in the Middle East.

1) It has never gone well. That is unlikely to change now. In 1953, the CIA overthrew the elected government of Iran to help the British more easily extract oil. We then installed the Shah, whom lots of Persians didn't like. That problem came to a head in 1979 with the Shah being deposed and the religious fundamentalists, led by the Ayatollah, coming to power. That was not a success story for the United States.

Then there are the horrific boondoggles in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lies that drew us into the First Gulf War (babies stabbed in incubators!), the Syrian civil war, the disastrous collapse of Libya after Obama's airstrikes, the Arab Spring nonsense, and the intervention in Lebanon that led to 200 Marines getting killed. I could go on.

The American government has a long pattern of failure in the Middle East.

The new arms sales bypassed congressional approval and coincide with the US's ongoing militarization of West Asian waters to reignite the war against Iran.

On January 30, the US government authorized significant arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia, amounting to approximately $15.7 billion, as the White House continues to escalate threats of war against Iran.


The US State Department approved four arms packages for Israel totaling $6.67 billion, which includes a $3.8 billion deal for 30 Apache attack helicopters and a $1.98 billion sale of 3,250 Joint Light Tactical Vehicles.

Additional approvals include $740 million for power packs for armored personnel carriers and $150 million for light utility helicopters.

House Democratic Representative Gregory Meeks called the move shameful for "bypassing the Congressional review process" and a repudiation of Congress' oversight role by Donald Trump.

Mondoweiss interviews author Harsha Walia about the history of ICE and how Trump's immigration crackdown is closely linked to U.S. imperialism abroad, including in Palestine.

This week, over 1,000 advocacy organizations sent a letter to Congress demanding that lawmakers stop funding United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.

The call comes amid widespread protests over the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

The letter asks:

"How many more people have to die, how many more lies have to be told, and how many more children must be used as bait and abducted before Congress fulfills its responsibilities and stops these out-of-control agencies from continuing to violently attack our immigrant communities and communities of color, as well as their many allies and supporters?"

Does Trump's ICE represent a shift in U.S. immigration policy, or is it merely a continuation of the existing strategy? How do these tactics connect to U.S. policy abroad and the country's wider imperial designs?

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has introduced the Stop Citizenship Abuse and Misrepresentation (SCAM) Act that would strip citizenship from individuals who commit serious crimes within 10 years of their naturalization.

According to Schmitt, the legislation would expand the grounds for beginning the denaturalization process to include: welfare fraud, aggravated felonies and joining a terrorist organization, including gangs and cartels, as well as, committing substantial fraud against a federal, state, local government assistance program, including aggravated felony or espionage.

Fox New reports that the SCAM Act would create a 10-year window, post-naturalization, which would lower the threshold for federal authorities to strike an individual's citizenship and to begin deportation proceedings.

Over the past two weeks, two important messages were conveyed to Iran, both of which were rejected.

One came from the U.S. and the other from Israel. The former was: "We [the U.S.] will carry out a limited attack and you should accept it; or at least, give only a symbolic response". Tehran rejected this request, saying that it would consider any attack to mark the beginning of a full-scale war.

Israel's message, delivered through one of the various mediators, was: "We will not participate in the American attack". It asked Iran therefore, to not target Israel. This request also met with a negative response, together with the explicit clarification that were the U.S. to commence military action, Israel would be immediately attacked. In parallel, Iran informed all states in the region that any attack launched from their territory or airspace, would result in an Iranian attack on whomsoever facilitated such U.S. military action.

As background, the Iranian perception of threat of U.S. military action has moved beyond the level of a manageable threat, to that of an existential threat. Consequently, writes Iranian analyst Mostafa Najafi, Iran's leadership has "concluded that a U.S. attack — even if limited in scope — [would] not lead to the end of a conflict ... [Rather, it would] result in the continued shadow of war and increased security, economic, and political costs for the country. On this basis, a comprehensive response to any attack, even whilst accepting its consequences, is viewed as a strategy for restoring deterrence and preventing the continuation of sustained military pressure".

It seems, given the report by Israeli Channel 14's Hallel Rosen on the talks between the U.S. Commander of CENTCOM General Cooper and his Israeli counterparts on 25 January, that Cooper and his team told their Israeli colleagues that the U.S. Administration were seeking only a 'clean, quick, and cost-free operation in Iran' - one that would not require a significant drain on resources, nor result in the U.S. becoming entangled, nor slipping into widespread complications inside Iran.

Iran, of course, is not Venezuela. It seems that Trump's quest for an 'In-Boom-Out' standout operation for Iran is proving elusive. It carries too high a risk of a bad look - not playing as a 'winner' - especially at a time when Trumps' approval rating is suffering.

U.S. Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had arrived in Israel (from Davos, where they had focussed on both Ukraine and Gaza), to meet with Netanyahu on the Saturday that the CENTCOM team were in town.

No doubt Witkoff conveyed to Netanyahu - viewed from the political plane - Trump's hesitations about the prospective attack on Iran which General Cooper was outlining in Tel Aviv).

The principal message that Witkoff would have brought was Trump's invitation issued the same weekend both to Netanyahu and Putin to join Trump's Board of Peace(including its Gaza component).