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August 2025

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My Say: Pictures and Propaganda

By on August 18th, 2025

An Allegedly Armless Lebanese Child, Wounded by Israeli Bomb, Actually Has Both Arms Intact August 23, 1982

The difference today is that President Donald Trump has Israel’s back and is fighting antisemitism while Ronald Reagan turned away and abstained in the vicious UN response to Israel’s bombing  of  the Osirak nuclear research reactor being built near Baghdad. rsk

https://www.jta.org/archive/an-allegedly-armless-lebanese-child-wounded-by-israeli-bomb-actually-has-both-arms-intact

An allegedly armless child, whose picture is reportedly displayed on President Reagan’s desk as a symbol of suffering in Lebanon, turns out to be a boy, not a girl as alleged, with both arms intact. The child, identified as four-month-old Eli Massou, whose mother is 16 years old, was discharged from the hospital a few days after the picture was taken.

According to the caption accompanying the United Press International photo distributed throughout the world, it was a picture of a baby girl swathed in bandages after both arms had been blown off by a misdirected Israeli bomb. The child was seen held in the arms of a nurse.

After a news report that Reagan had publicized the picture as a symbol of suffering in the Lebanon war, the Israel medical corps started to track down the infant and the nurse holding him.

The nurse and the doctor who treated the baby were found, and sworn depositions were taken from them. The child was tracked down along with his mother in a Lebanese village where they had taken refuge after they were both released from the hospital.

According to the medical report, one of the infant’s arms was broken in a bombing raid. The arm and his face were also slightly burned. His mother was also slightly injured in the raid and his father was killed. Doctors said the child was completely swathed, as shown in the UPI photo, because that is the standard procedure of dealing with an infant whose arm has been broken to prevent unnecessary movement during medical treatment.

Photographs of the apparently now healthy baby were published in Israeli papers today. Copies have been sent to the Israel Embassy in Washington, which presumably sent a copy to the White House to replace the incorrectly-captioned picture on the President’s desk.

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They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation. But All 12 Suffer from Other Health Problems. A Free Press investigation found that viral photos lacked important context: The subjects have cystic fibrosis, rickets, or other serious ailments.By Olivia Reingold, Tanya Lukyanova

By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/they-became-symbols-for-gazan-starvation

For the past several weeks, critics have fumed at The New York Times over a misleading photo of an 18-month-old boy in Gaza on its front page. It turns out that Muhammad Zakariya Ayyoub al-Matouq, who was a symbol for a story about widespread hunger in Gaza, wasn’t simply suffering from malnutrition. He had pre-existing health issues “affecting his brain and his muscle development,” according to an updated version of the story. But that detail didn’t find its way into print.

When the so-called paper of record updated its story with an editors note four days later, it also quietly deleted the mother’s claim that her son was “born a healthy child.” There was still no mention of the boy’s brother, who appears healthy in the background of another photo that appeared online.

This incident wasn’t just a one-off.

An investigation by The Free Press reveals that at least a dozen other viral images of starvation in Gaza also lacked important context: The subjects of those photos have significant health problems. Those appeared all over social media, in the reports of leading international aid organizations, and on some of the most prestigious news outlets in the United States, including CNN, NPR, and the Times—without disclosing the complicated medical histories that help explain their stark appearances.

It’s not that there isn’t hunger in Gaza. There is. The World Health Organization reported 63 deaths from malnutrition last month alone, including 25 children. Some of them might have been sick or worse even if there was no war. In 2022, about 50 Gazans under the age of 20 died from malnutrition, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Yannay Spitzer, an economist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem who has been tracking food prices in Gaza during the past few months, said hunger in Gaza is largely declining since Israel resumed aid deliveries in late May after its nearly 80-day blockade. During that period, prices for basic necessities like flour skyrocketed by 4,000 percent, according to his review of data from the Gaza Chamber of Congress and the World Food Programme.

“If a situation like that lasts more than a few days, a lot of people will go hungry but not starve to death en masse. That’s the beginning of a process, which the media portrayed as already at the catastrophic end stage,” Spitzer said, before pausing. “But it never happened.”

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Whistleblower Dr. Marvin Rapaport Exposes Political Medicine and its Elusive “Hidden” Allergy by Linda Goudsmit

By on August 18th, 2025

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28779/whistleblower-dr-marvin-rapaport-exposes

goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

In my January 30, 2022 article, “A Short History of Medicine and Megalomania,” I explain how holistic medicine is actually the original western medicine established on the principle of strengthening the immune system to fight off pathogens in the environment. It is traditional western medicine that is the alternative medicine because its fundamental premise is that medications are required to be healthy:

My point is that the chemical/pharmaceutical companies are pouring toxic chemicals into the environment that destroy public health -> then the chemical/pharmaceutical companies offer more chemicals and pharmaceuticals to “cure” what they caused in the first place. It is a never-ending cycle of destruction of public health. The United States is at the bottom of the totem pole in world health because the American medical community is driven by unscrupulous globalists and the corrupt politicians who serve them.

RFK Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, is enlightening in this regard because it connects the dots and shows how John D. Rockefeller actually set the stage for the corruption in medicine and academia today. Rockefeller funded the medical education and research that supported the germ theory, but all with his political agenda. If anyone is responsible for political medicine and monsters like Gates and Fauci, it is John D. Rockefeller.

Rockefeller politicized medicine because he understood that vaccines could be used for population control and total social control. The medical tyranny of Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci today, began with John D. Rockefeller and has spun out of control. Big Pharma IS a military wing of the government––medicine has been weaponized and is being used against innocent populations––including our own.

Until President Trump resumed office in 2025, the science was being controlled by corrupt eugenicists like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates who offer political medicine disguised as public health. The staggering profits made by Big Pharma at the expense of public health during the COVID19 debacle is a stupefying crime perpetrated with the protection of indemnification from vaccine harm. Hopefully, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now at the helm of the Department of Health & Human Service (HHS), this unconscionable indemnification will be terminated. But what about Big Pharma’s lesser-known crimes?

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Putin, Trump, and the Elusive “Peace” Trump’s Alaska summit with Putin yielded no ceasefire, but it revealed the contours of a possible peace—where diplomacy, exhaustion, and hard limits define the battlefield’s end. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on August 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/18/putin-trump-and-the-elusive-peace/

At the August 15 Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin performed as expected. He desperately wants an end to Western sanctions, détente with the U.S., and assurances that the U.S. will not impose a disastrous anti-Russian secondary boycott—and, apparently, some additional Ukrainian territory.

Consequently, Putin, in his media synopsis, talked more about restored friendship with a “neighborly” United States under Trump. He scarcely mentioned Ukraine directly—other than to imply to Westerners that he seeks not merely to annex a foreign country, but to reclaim what he views as a former Soviet province with ancient ties to the Russian people.

Trump did not get his ceasefire with Putin. But he quickly pivoted to remind us that the table is set for a supposedly comprehensive peace without first requiring a temporary cessation of arms.

Trump addressed the media more succinctly and with greater discretion than Putin, appearing more optimistic that the Russian-American hostility was thawing. And he views normalization as a necessary step toward comprehensive peace in the weeks to come.

The left lambasted Trump for speaking politely of Putin and vice versa. There was additional criticism of a Fox interview in which Trump mentioned “land swaps” and for his supposed prior naïveté in believing he could obtain a ceasefire with Putin.

Yet for all the posturing, we have known for some time the general outlines of a peace, how it could come about, and why it has not yet happened.

Ukraine will not join NATO, but will likely be fully armed by the West. Ukraine lacks the power to retake Crimea or the Donbass, but with Western aid, it can preserve most of its territory.

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The Trump-Putin 2025 Summit The battle lines are drawn. by Craig Luther

By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-trump-putin-2025-summit/

So just what was the outcome of the recent – and historic – Trump/Putin Summit at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska? Oddly enough, we still don’t know. All that we do know is that the two world leaders talked for several hours, made brief public statements, then reboarded their respective planes and hightailed it out of town, leaving behind a bewildered world press and a plethora of unanswered questions.

In the U.S. media, the details will inevitably dribble out in dribs and drabs, colored in each case by whatever “angle” confirms the interlocutor’s biases. This is already the case, of course, with Trump-loathing “journalists” at CNN bashing the president for putting that murderous international pariah, Vladimir Putin, back on the world stage (“Trump’s getting ‘played’ once again by Putin!”), while right-leaning pundits at Fox News praised President Trump for his putative leadership and efforts to bring an end to a major European war (“at least Trump’s trying to do something, while Biden never even picked up the phone to call Putin!”).

Thus have the domestic battle lines been drawn: full disclosure, I lean toward the latter perspective. Yet as a historian who has spent all of this century studying conflict in this uniquely violent corner of the world (eastern Europe), I will try to lay out my thoughts with all the objectivity I can muster.

Let me begin by pointing out that the western narrative on most everything from Putin’s health to the status of the Russo-Ukraine war is often little more than gaslighting. Perhaps you think I just violated the pledge I made directly above, but consider: For years we’ve been assured that Putin is sick, he’s even dying; he has cancer or some other dreadful malady. And, yet, after all this time, he’s still here, and he looked vigorous and athletic as he walked down the red carpet to shake hands with President Trump. So scratch that little fairytale. We’re also told that endless rounds of sanctions are bringing Russia to its knees, but somehow it has managed since February 2022 to transition to something close to a total war footing, producing more drones, tanks, artillery, missiles and munitions than the U.S. and all other NATO countries combined.

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Defending Savagery in the Name of Multiculturalism A kinder, gentler child sacrifice. by Mark Tapson

By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/defending-savagery-in-the-name-of-multiculturalism/

What’s not to like about multiculturalism? After all, isn’t diversity our strength? Don’t cultural influences from around the world add spice and flavor to the bland, Eurocentric West, which some people even say has no culture of its own? Take food, for example; as everyone always points out when this topic comes up, different cultures bring a smorgasbord of vibrant cuisines to the West! Also rape gangs, no-go zones, and machete attacks, but that’s a small price to pay for a corner kebab stand.

Many years ago, when I was a musician paying no attention to politics, nothing excited and inspired me more than the mix of multicultural influences that rockers like Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne incorporated into pop music. My favorite section in record stores was labeled simply “world music,” where I immersed myself in exotic artists like South Africa’s Johnny Clegg and Savuka, Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, avant-garde Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the drummers of Brazil’s Olodum, all of whom found crossover success in America and Europe. That’s all the word “multiculturalism” meant to me.

I didn’t learn until many years later that multiculturalism also referred to a subversive movement, born of political correctness, that swept through academia, where so many stupid and destructive ideas are born and nurtured, and from there out into the culture at large. Multiculturalism takes the relativistic position that all cultural expressions are equally valid, that all cultures should be equally celebrated rather than judged – except for Western civilization, which is viewed as the fount of all oppression, exploitation, and genocidal violence in world history. In fact, as Keith Windschuttle wrote in The New Criterion, multiculturalism is “entirely a negation of Western culture and values.” Its raison d’etre is not to promote tolerance and diversity but to undermine the West.

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Let’s Pause To Marvel At Trump’s Incredible Border Victory

By on August 18th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/15/lets-pause-to-marvel-at-trumps-incredible-border-victory/

Earlier this month, Customs and Border Protection recorded fewer than 7,832 illegal border crossings in July. That’s a staggering number when you consider that the 25-year average for that month is 76,000.

Even more staggering is that this should never have happened. At least, not if you believed President Joe “Autopen” Biden.

For four years straight, Biden and his minions told the American public either that the border was secure, or that the problem was impossible to fix due to Republican intransigence, or some combination of the two.

Here, for the record, is a sampling:

March 2021: “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. That happens every year.” – Joe Biden.
March 2021: “The border is secure, and the border is not open.” – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
June 2021: “The administration has made significant progress at establishing a well-managed and secure border while also treating people fairly and humanely. The American people support this approach.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2021: “The border is secure. We’re executing our plan.” – Mayorkas.
July 2022: “Look, the border is secure. We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.” – Mayorkas.
Jan. 2023: “Our problems at the border didn’t arise overnight and they’re not going to be solved overnight. It’s a difficult problem.” – Biden.
Jan. 2023: “Biden-Harris Administration today is announcing new enforcement measures to increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully.” – White House statement.
Feb 2023: “We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border.” – Biden.
July 2023: “Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely, even within our fundamentally broken immigration system, is working.” – Mayorkas.
Feb. 2024: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” – Biden.
May 2024: “The president has such limited ability to issue executive orders that would have an impact on the border. He can’t conjure resources out of thin air.” – Sen. Chris Murphy.
June 2024: “Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border.” – Biden.
June 2024: “Over the past three years, while Congress has failed to act, the president has acted to secure our border.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2024: “The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.” – Kamala Harris.

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Here We Go Again – The West’s Palestinian State Fantasy by Nils A. Haug

By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21834/palestinian-state-fantasy

Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension.

“If you notice, the talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize a Palestinian state. And then you have other people come forward, other countries say, well, if there is not a ceasefire by September, we’re going to recognize a Palestinian state. Well, if I’m Hamas, I basically conclude, ‘let’s not do a ceasefire because we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.'” — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The situation in Gaza could quite easily have been resolved many months ago if Hamas had laid down its weapons and released the hostages it had no business kidnapping in the first place. This did not happen. Nevertheless, Israel is blamed for trying to get its tortured and starved hostages released. What would France, Britain, Canada or Australia have done? The party responsible for Gaza’s collateral damage is Hamas.

Israel… is doing its best in horrendously dangerous circumstances to feed the hungry people of Gaza, while Hamas deliberately starves the hostages, and has lately photographed them digging their own graves.

A Palestinian state would, in addition, continue trying to conquer more of Israel’s historic homeland, and try to drive Jews out of it, as they openly vow to do…

That, it seems, is Macron’s view of a “just and lasting peace”.

“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them: Carve out a piece of the French Riviera, and create a Palestinian state. They’re welcome to do that, but they’re not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. ” —US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, June 1, 2025.

A further reason that Western efforts to impose a Palestinian state are inadvisable is that they ignore a warning from the Trump administration that “any country that takes ‘anti-Israel actions’ will be viewed as acting in opposition to US interests and will face diplomatic consequences.”

“There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust. To establish a Palestinian state after October 7 is a huge prize not only for Hamas [but] for Iran.” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, February 6, 2025.

The question remains how any rational national leader can simply discount Israel’s attitude towards an independent Palestinian (terrorist, Jihadist) state within or alongside its borders? Would those leaders countenance an uppity ISIS or Al Qaeda on their borders? Yet, Starmer and Macron (together with leaders of Spain, Norway and Ireland) are doing exactly that. Is it possible that they are endeavouring to accommodate the millions of Muslim voters they have helped infiltrate into their own broken countries?

This irony is that many in the West who are advocating “social justice for all people” think nothing of vilifying the Jews.

At this point in history, Israel’s legitimate actions consist in defending its people — and the stunningly ungrateful West — from a horror disguised within a veneer of fake “moral clarity,” along with false charges of a supposed genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee remarked, “If Israel is trying to commit genocide, they are really, really bad at it.” In fact, Israel is defending the West — the very people undermining them — from a genocide. Publicly expressed slogans targeting Jews simply support the murderous intent of the enemies of Israel and those apparently trying to help them finish the job.

A majority of Western leaders clearly refuse to exercise integrity when it concerns the Palestinian issue. Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension. Perhaps this phenomena is best described as a “cognitive bias” that can “lead to a person interpreting all new information as supporting their preconception.”

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The Palestinian Authority’s Human ‘Slaughterhouse’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21846/palestinian-authority-slaughterhouse

None of these countries… [France, Canada, Australia, the UK] has demanded that the Palestinian Authority halt its human rights violations against its own people. Ending financial and administrative corruption and excluding Hamas from governance is pointless as long as the PA continues to crack down on its political rivals and impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech.

Last month, Palestinian Authority security officer Ammar Saeed Abu Thahri reportedly died while in PA custody. It remains unclear why Abu Thahri was arrested by PA security forces in the first place.

“Most of the arrests were related to freedom of expression or participation in demonstrations in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.” — Palestinian human rights group Lawyers for Justice, safa.pa, July 30, 2025.

The Palestinian Authority security officers who beat political activist Nizar Banat to death in 2021 have still not been punished. Banat, an outspoken critic of the PA leadership, was beaten to death by PA security officers in Hebron.

“We have documented hundreds of cases of arrest, torture, and ill-treatment of activists and political opponents since Nizar’s killing…. Those involved in most of these crimes have not been held accountable.” — Lawyers for Justice, June 24, 2025.

If France, Australia, the UK and Canada really cared about the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the PA respect public freedoms and stop its crackdown on political and human rights activists.

The last thing the Middle East needs is another Arab dictatorship run by corrupt leaders whose main goal is to batter their own people while siphoning off still more European and international aid money into their own bank accounts.

France, Canada, Australia, the UK and other Western countries that recently pledged to recognize a Palestinian state have said that their decision is “predicated” on commitments from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to undergo critical governance reforms, as well as excluding the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group from a future Palestinian government.

None of these countries, however, has demanded that the PA halt its human rights violations against its own people. Ending financial and administrative corruption and excluding Hamas from governance is pointless as long as the PA continues to crack down on its political rivals and impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech.

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