Cooling Towers Full of Legionella, Lettuce Full of Cyclospora, and a CDC Full of PowerPoints

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHThis summer has brought one infectious disease threat after another, and disappointedly, our government agencies look flat-footed.🦠 Legionnaires’ Strikes New York: Why Your Medicine Cabinet Is the New Front Line of Public HealthAs cooling towers on the Upper East Side pump Legionella into the summer air, the difference between a treatable infection and a fatal outcome increasingly comes down to one question: do you have the right antibiotics on hand?📊 The Outbreak Unfolding Right NowNew York City is in the grip of a Legionnaires’ disease cluster that has already claimed its first life. As of mid-July 2026, the numbers are stark:67 confirmed casesacross Manhattan’s Upper East Side55 hospitalizations—12 people currently admitted, 43 discharged after treatmentOne confirmed death, with Health Commissioner Dr. Alister Martin confirming the fatality on Friday76 buildingswith cooling towers testing positive forLegionellabacteria, all ordered to drain, clean, and disinfectAnd this comes just one year after a Harlem cluster sickened 92 people and killed seven. The CDC puts Legionnaires’ mortality at roughly 10%—a number that should terrify anyone over 50, anyone who smokes, anyone with a chronic lung condition, and anyone on immunosuppressive medications. That’s tens of millions of Americans walking around with elevated risk and no idea that the air they breathe could be carrying a gram-negative bacterium with a taste for alveolar macrophages.🔬 What Makes Legionnaires’ So Dangerous—and So TreatableLegionella pneumophilais a gram-negative bacillus that thrives in warm, stagnant water. Cooling towers, hot tubs, shower heads, decorative fountains—anywhere water aerosolizes,Legionellacan hitch a ride straight into your lungs. It is not contagious person-to-person. You cannot get it from drinking contaminated water. The infection occurs exclusively through inhalation of contaminated mist or vapor.Once inside the lungs, the bacteria invade and multiply within alveolar macrophages—the very immune cells meant to destroy them. The resulting pneumonia presents with fever, chills, muscle aches, cough, and often extrapulmonary symptoms including confusion, headache, and diarrhea. Standard empiric antibiotic regimens for community-acquired pneumoniamay not cover Legionella adequatelyif the wrong agents are chosen.This is where the rubber meets the road. A patient walks into an ER with fever, cough, and shortness of breath. It takes hours to be seen and get a chest x-ray.  If that first azithromycin dose is delayed, underdosed, or omitted from the empiric regimen, the patient deteriorates while the lab runs its urine antigen test—a test that, critically, only detectsL. pneumophilaserogroup 1, missing roughly 30–40% of Legionella infections caused by other serogroups and species.The urine antigen test takes hours to days. The culture on buffered charcoal yeast extract agar takes three to five days. PCR is faster but not universally available. By the time the diagnosis is confirmed, a patient on inadequate empiric therapy may already be decompensating.💊 The Treatment Triad: Azithromycin, Doxycycline, and FluoroquinolonesThe CDC, and every infectious disease authority agree on the treatment hierarchy for Legionnaires’ disease:🥇 Inpatient Respiratory FluoroquinolonesLevofloxacinormoxifloxacinare the preferred agents—particularly for hospitalized patients, immunocompromised patients, and severe disease. They achieve excellent intracellular penetration, high bioavailability allowing oral step-down therapy, and bactericidal activity againstLegionella. A typical course runs 7–14 days, extending to 3 weeks for the severely immunocompromised.🥈 Outpatient AzithromycinAzithromycinis highly effective and is the macrolide of choice. It achieves concentrated intracellular levels, has a long half-life allowing once-daily dosing, and for mild-to-moderate disease in immunocompetent patients, a 5–10 day course gets the job done. Clarithromycin and erythromycin are inferior alternatives—less well-tolerated, more drug interactions, and frankly, azithromycin has largely rendered them obsolete for this indication.🥉 Alternative: DoxycyclineFor mild pneumonia in immunocompetent patients who cannot tolerate macrolides or fluoroquinolones,doxycyclineis a reasonable alternative. It achieves adequate intracellular levels and coversLegionella, though it is generally considered second-tier compared to azithromycin and the respiratory fluoroquinolones.🎯 The Wellness Company Medical Emergency Kit: Pre-prescribed Antibiotics, One Box, Zero ExcusesHere is whatThe Wellness Company’s Medical Emergency Kitcontains that directly applies to a Legionnaires’ outbreak:Antibiotic Kit Contents Legionnaires’ RoleAzithromycinGeneric Z-Pak First-line macrolide; 5–10 day course for mild-moderate diseaseDoxycyclineBroad-spectrum tetracycline Alternative for mild pneumonia in immunocompetent patientsCiprofloxacinFluoroquinolone Active againstLegionella(though levofloxacin is preferred; ciprofloxacin still provides fluoroquinolone-class coverage)The kit also includes amoxicillin-clavulanate, cephalexin, and TMP-SMX—not directly indicated for Legionella, but critical for the broader landscape of bacterial infections that someone might face while the healthcare system is overwhelmed with an outbreak.Let’s be blunt about what this means in practical terms. You are a 55-year-old man living on the Upper East Side. You smoke. You wake up with a fever of 102°F, chills, a hacking cough, and muscles that feel like you’ve been beaten with a baseball bat. You’ve just heard on the news that 76 buildings in your neighborhood haveLegionella-positive cooling towers. You call your doctor. The earliest appointment is three days out. You go to urgent care. They swab you for flu and COVID, both negative, and send you home with instructions to rest and hydrate. You get sicker.Without the kit:You wait. The pneumonia worsens. You end up in the ER, hypotensive, hypoxic, and the admitting team starts broad-spectrum antibiotics that may or may not include Legionella coverage. The urine antigen test is ordered but won’t result until tomorrow. You’ve now joined the hospitalization statistics.With the kit:You recognize the symptom constellation—fever, cough, myalgias, known local Legionella outbreak. You start azithromycin immediately. Within 48 hours, your fever breaks. You complete a 7-day course. You never see the inside of a hospital room.This is not hypothetical. This is the difference between a75 kit and a $45,000 hospital admission. This is the difference between recovering in your own bed and being one of the 10% who don’t survive.🏛 The Absurdity of Our Public Health Spending PrioritiesLet’s talk about what American taxpayers pour into the infectious disease apparatus every single year:NIAID budget (FY 2026): $4.175 billion—down 36.4% from the prior year, but still over four billion dollarsCDC discretionary budget (FY 2026): $4.243 billion, with an additional $5.485 billion requested for FY 2027Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases division alone:roughly $927 million in FY 2027 projectionsNIH infectious disease research:billions more flowing through RPG grants, research centers, and R&D contractsState, tribal, local, and territorial health departments:the CDC funnels the majority of its annual funding to these entitiesAdd it all up and the American taxpayer is funding a multi-billion-dollar infectious disease bureaucracy spanning dozens of agencies, employing tens of thousands of people, occupying sprawling campuses in Atlanta, Bethesda, and Washington, D.C.And yet this summer—summer 2026—what have those billions delivered?Acyclospora outbreaksickened over 5,000 people in Michigan alone, hospitalized more than 100, and spread across 34 states because the CDC had stopped tracking cyclosporiasis a full year earlier and the FDA took weeks to trace contaminated lettuce back to a single lettuce supplier in Mexico.  Public health messaging omitted PCR testing on stook and immediate treatment with TMP-SMX.  Patients suffered for weeks with explosive diarrhea while the multi-billion-dollar surveillance apparatus twiddled its institutional thumbs.Now, aLegionnaires’ clusterhas killed at least one person, hospitalized 55, and forced the disinfection of 76 buildings in one of the wealthiest zip codes in America—and the official public health guidance is essentially “building owners should maintain their cooling towers” and “seek medical attention if you have symptoms.” No proactive distribution of antibiotics. No public awareness campaign about what Legionnaires’ looks like and what to do if you suspect it. No acknowledgment that the diagnostic pipeline for Legionella is slow, incomplete, and leaves patients vulnerable during the critical window when early antibiotics could prevent severe deterioration.Meanwhile,The Wellness Company—a private entity operating entirely outside the government bureaucracy—has put together a Medical Emergency Kit containingazithromycin, doxycycline, and ciprofloxacin, the precise trio of antibiotics that coverLegionella pneumophila, and made it available to any American with the foresight to spend less than the cost of a single urgent care co-pay.The contrast is almost too perfect. Billions in taxpayer funding. Dozens of agencies. Thousands of employees. Endless congressional justifications filled with buzzwords like “data modernization,” “laboratory capacity,” “frontline readiness,” and “biothreat radar.” And when actual pathogens start sickening and killing Americans, the most practical, life-saving intervention available to the average person is aMedical Emergency Kitpurchased from a private company that had the audacity to ask a simple question:what if people could just have the right medications at home?The public health establishment hasn’t just taken a back seat toThe Wellness Companythis summer—it’s been left at the curb while Americans who took responsibility for their own preparedness drove themselves to safety. The cyclospora outbreak and the Legionnaires’ cluster are not anomalies. They are previews of a future where the gap between institutional promise and institutional performance grows wider every year, and where the people who thrive are the ones who stopped waiting for the CDC to save them and started saving themselves.Thanks for reading FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse™)! This post is public so feel free to share it.SharePlease subscribe toFOCAL POINTSas a paying ($5 monthly) or founder member so we can continue to bring you the truth.AlterAImay be used to assist in searches, synthesis, and review.Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHChief Scientific Officer, The Wellness Companyhttps://www.twc.health/pages/focal-points

Summary: Americans thankful for Emergency Medical Kits from The Wellness Company


Lurching from One Fabricated Crisis to the Next

As the war in Iran intensifies into another “Forever War” that will kill and maim hundreds of thousands (if not millions) and cost trillions, “We the People” should pause to review all the crises—all the purported threats to national security and public safety—that have racked our Republic since President Johnson used the phony Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 to escalate the war in Vietnam. The face of “the enemy” is constantly changing, but the “threat” he poses to us is always an iteration of the same melodrama run by the same complex of manipulators and profiteers.I would be extremely grateful if you would like and share this post, and purchase a copy of the book (Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions), which will be published tomorrow (July 21, 2026).Subscribe nowShare

Summary: Video trailer to my new book, "Mind Viruses," shows how each purported threat to national security and public safety has followed the same program run by the same Complex that profits from panic.


MALONE.NEWS · BOOK REVIEWThe Official Record Is Moving. This Book Is Where It Points.The White House has declassified intelligence on voting-system vulnerabilities. A captured Venezuelan spy chief is writing letters to the President. Ralph Pezzullo’s Stolen Elections is the fullest account yet of the story those developments only begin to tell. Read it, and decide for yourself.Review by Robert W. Malone, MDOn the night of July 16, 2026, President Trump stood in the East Room and declassified a body of intelligence on the security of American elections, then laid it before the country in a primetime address. Alongside the speech, the White House released four sets of documents. They covered vulnerabilities in electronic voting and ballot-counting systems, China’s acquisition of American voter data, a Michigan voter-registration investigation, and noncitizens on state rolls (Fox News 2026).The centerpiece was a declassified CIA memo dated June 29, 2026. It records that the intelligence community rated Smartmatic’s purchase of the American firm Sequoia Voting Systems a moderate threat to national security in 2006, and that the concern was serious enough to force a divestiture through a federal review in 2007 (Military.com 2026). It summarizes reporting that Venezuela built the capacity to alter its own elections. It also draws one clear line. Neither Smartmatic nor the Venezuelan government, the memo concludes, held the access required to change an election result outside Venezuela (CNN 2026).That conclusion is the seam between the official record and this book. The record stops at the exact point the book keeps going.The declassification is one piece of a wider push. The recently resigned Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had taken an unusual and expanding role in election security prior to her departure. Her office obtained voting machines from Puerto Rico and tested them for vulnerabilities, and she was present as FBI agents executed a 2020-related search warrant in Fulton County, Georgia (CNN 2026). The administration has moved on the policy front as well. A March 2026 executive order on citizenship verification and mail ballots was partly blocked in the courts, then partly revived when a federal appeals court let the Postal Service continue its ballot-mail rulemaking on July 17 (NPR 2026; New York Post 2026). The President has said he intends to end mail-in ballots and the machines themselves before the midterms (The Hill 2025).And in a jail in Brooklyn sits Nicolás Maduro, captured and brought to New York to face narcoterrorism charges. His former military intelligence chief, Hugo Carvajal, pleaded guilty in 2025, wrote a letter to President Trump in December, and had his sentencing postponed with no new date, which legal observers read as a possible sign of cooperation (CNN 2026). Carvajal’s letter names Smartmatic.Whatever you conclude about any single item, the larger fact is settled. Three years ago, raising these questions got people banned from platforms. Today the same questions drive presidential declassification, federal prosecution, and executive orders. The topic that was forbidden is now the top of the front page.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareInto this moment, a bookRalph Pezzullo did not writeStolen Electionsto catch a news cycle. He is aNew York Timesbestselling author who has spent a career co-writing with intelligence and special-operations figures, including the former CIA officer Gary Berntsen, with whom he wroteJawbreaker. That matters, because Berntsen is one of the two men at the center of this book. The other is Martin Rodil, a Venezuelan-American financial investigator who worked cases for the DEA. Together, the book tells us, they spent four years running a private criminal investigation into election fraud, at real risk to themselves, with no help from the agencies whose job this was, and in some instances against their active resistance. The book’s path to print carried the same friction. Pezzullo says a major trade publisher signed the book and paid an advance, then declined to release it, and he brought it out himself.I am not going to walk you through what they found. Spoiling it would rob the book of its reason to exist. But the method is worth describing, because the method is what holds you.Pezzullo writes like the professional storyteller he is. The investigation reads like the field reporting it was, source by recruited source, and the men doing the recruiting are the genuine article rather than podcast personalities. The book does not ask you to take its word. Its appendices carry the documents: the federal indictment of Smartmatic co-founder Roger Piñate, the record of USAID grants that pushed this software abroad, Treasury sanctions, the account of a Serbian engineer at the center of the system, and Carvajal’s letter to the President reproduced in full. When Pezzullo makes a claim you can check, he shows you where to check it. That discipline is rare in this genre, and it is why the book earns a serious reading.The scope is enormous. Pezzullo argues that the manipulation reaches across seventy-two countries and back through more than a decade of American elections. He traces Smartmatic from a 2004 Venezuelan referendum to the largest county in the United States. He names the people he believes built the system and the people he believes protected it. If even a fraction survives scrutiny, the story is a large one. He believes all of it survives, and he argues it with more specificity than anyone before him.Where the book goes past the record, and why that is the reason to read itThe memo’s conclusion is where the disagreement starts. The government’s own declassified assessment says the access needed to alter an American election from Venezuela did not exist. Pezzullo argues that it did exist and was used. That is not a small gap. It is the central question, and the administration’s own document lands on the opposite side of it from the book.I am not going to paper over that, and you should be suspicious of any reviewer who does. Parts of this book rest on anonymous sources whose claims cannot be independently verified. The most sweeping assertions, that specific past presidential outcomes were determined from abroad, go well beyond what any court, any audit, or any declassified memo has established. The Carvajal material is a live development, and reading a former spy chief describe the system from the inside is arresting. It is also a set of allegations from a man who pleaded guilty to narcoterrorism and has every reason to tell this administration what it wants to hear, and no court has tested a word of it. A related document circulating online, a list purporting to name dozens of bribed American senators, appears to be fabricated even by the account of sympathetic writers (Houk 2026). The information environment around this story is treacherous, and a careful reader has to keep his footing.None of that is a reason to skip the book. It is the reason to read it.You are going to form a view on this. The President is declassifying documents about it. Federal prosecutors have indicted a voting-machine company and its parent, though on financial crimes rather than vote-rigging, and have traced money from the Los Angeles contract into the same structure used to bribe an election official abroad (Willkie Compliance Concourse 2025; The Guardian 2025). A cooperating witness may be about to talk. You can form your view from headlines and hostile summaries, or from the fullest primary argument anyone has assembled.Stolen Electionsis that argument. Reading it does not commit you to believing it. It commits you to understanding, in detail and from the source, what the official record is now circling. A serious citizen reads a serious claim and weighs it for himself.This is the ground Malone.News intends to hold, and it is nearly empty. Most of the press will not touch the book except to sneer. Much of the alternative media will cheer it without reading past the jacket. Almost no one stands in between, crediting what is documented and marking plainly what is not. An honest center-right reader deserves that middle ground, and few are offering it.Read it before you decideThe declassified memo, the captured regime, the cooperating spy chief, the indicted vendor, the executive orders working through the courts. None of it is a forecast. It is this month’s news. Ralph Pezzullo wrote the backstory to all of it before most of it broke, and he wrote it as a narrative you will not put down and a dossier you can argue with.You will not agree with every page. I did not. That is not the standard for whether a book is worth your time. The standard is whether it sharpens how you see the question and equips you to judge it for yourself, and by that standardStolen Electionsearns its place on the shelf beside the declassified documents it anticipates.Buy it. Read it. Then hand it to the person in your life who still believes this question was settled, and ask them to do the same.The record is moving. Get ahead of it.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.About the authorRalph Pezzullo is aNew York Timesand international bestselling author whose books have sold more than six million copies. He has written more than thirty of them, most by the same method: working with CIA officers, Special Forces soldiers, and federal agents to turn their firsthand accounts into print. The best known isJawbreaker, his inside history of the CIA’s pursuit of Osama bin Laden, written with the former CIA officer Gary Berntsen, who is one of the two investigators at the center ofStolen Elections. Paramount Pictures bought the film rights toJawbreaker, with Oliver Stone attached to direct. His other books includeZero Footprint,Left of Boom,Ghost, and theSEAL Team Sixseries. He covered Latin America as an Associated Press correspondent, and he grew up inside American diplomacy as the son of Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo, who helped negotiate the 1979 departure of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. He hosts the documentary podcastHeroes Behind Headlines. He has reported this world for decades, and that record is why the book deserves a hearing.Ralph Pezzullo,Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide. HBH Books, hardback September 2025, paperback January 2026. Hardback ISBN 979-8-9997530-0-7; paperback ISBN 979-8-9997530-1-4.Available on Amazon. More atstolenelections.us.Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, is a physician-scientist, an inventor of the foundational mRNA vaccine technology, and a co-author, with Jill Glasspool Malone, PhD, of Lies My Gov’t Told Me and the forthcoming Homesteading for Health. He writes at malone.news.REFERENCESCentral Intelligence Agency. 2026. “Summary of Select Intelligence Reporting From 2004 to 2020 on Venezuela’s Electronic Voting Manipulation Capabilities.” Declassified memo dated June 29, 2026.CNN Politics. 2026. “Key moments from Trump’s speech claiming declassified documents show US election vulnerabilities.” July 17, 2026.CNN. 2026. “Could Hugo Carvajal Barrios be a witness in Maduro trial?” April 26, 2026.CNN Politics. 2026. “Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard’s office obtained and tested voting machines in Puerto Rico.” February 4, 2026.Fox News. 2026. “Trump White House releases election integrity files after primetime address.” July 2026.The Guardian (Zetter, Kim). 2025. “New Allegations Against Smartmatic Executive in Company’s Voting Machine Contract with LA County.”Houk, John R. 2026. “Looking at the ‘Venezuela List’ Attributed to Hugo Carvajal.” January 6, 2026.The Hill. 2025. “Trump takes aim at mail-in ballots, ‘controversial’ voting machines.” August 2025.Military.com. 2026. “Trump Declassifies CIA Intelligence on Alleged Maduro Election-Rigging Efforts.” July 2026.NPR. 2026. “Trump signs a new executive order on voting. Experts say he lacks the authority.” March 31, 2026.Pezzullo, Ralph. 2025. Stolen Elections: The Takedown of Democracies Worldwide. HBH Books.New York Post. 2026. “USPS to move forward with major mail-in voting change: ‘A win for election integrity.’” July 18, 2026.Willkie Compliance Concourse. 2025. “Smartmatic Charged in the Southern District of Florida for Allegedly Bribing a Philippine Official.” October 27, 2025.

Summary: White House declassified voting system vulnerability intelligence. A captured Venezuelan spy chief is writing letters to the President. Ralph Pezzullo's Stolen Elections is the fullest accounting yet.


Actor Eric Dane of Grey's Anatomy Dies of Rapidly Progressive Post-COVID-19 Vaccination Neurologic Syndrome

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHOne of the most tragic deaths in my practice over recent years was a man in his seventies who died from a COVID-19 vaccine-induced ALS-like neurologic syndrome.  He came to mind when I heard about the death of actor Eric Dane—the man millions knew as Dr. Mark Sloan, onGrey’s Anatomy.The Cruel Irony of Dr. McSteamy: Eric Dane, Rapid ALS, and the Silence on VaccinationEric Dane—the man millions knew as Dr. Mark Sloan, “McSteamy” onGrey’s Anatomy—died on February 19, 2026, at just 53 years old. His death certificate reads amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. What it doesn’t say, and what the celebrity obituaries won’t touch, is the timeline that raises questions the medical-media complex would prefer nobody ask.Dane’s case was not the typical slow-burn ALS familiar to pre-pandemic neurology. It was a freight train.Subscribe nowRead more

Summary: ALS-like illness takes a more rapid and fatal course then previously understood


The Fabian Society:

Audio Version:I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcastwhile mowing the mare pasture the other day. Joe had Rupert Lowe on, aBritish politician and businessman who has served as a Member of Parliament since July 2024. Lowe is currently the leader of Restore Britain. In that conversation, theybriefly touched on the Fabian Society and its infamous wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing emblem shown above.Most people have not heard the name. Few remember what the Fabian Society actually was, or why it still matters. Yet it is the most important organization that you have hardly heard of.  The Fabian Society is directly responsible for the new world order foisted upon us by the globalists in the 20th century.  But let’s start at the beginning.The Fabian Society was founded in London on January 4, 1884, as an offshoot of an earlier organization called the Fellowship of the New Life. That movement promoted ethical living, social reform, and the belief that society could be remade through gradual cultural change rather than revolution. Some members concluded that personal example was not enough. If they wanted to reshape society, they would have to reshape government as well. The Fabian Society became their political vehicle.Unlike Marxists, the Fabians rejected violent revolution. Their strategy was far more patient. Rather than tearing down existing institutions, they intended to slowly capture them from within. Schools, universities, civil service, journalism, law, and eventually political parties all became vehicles through which socialist ideas could be normalized one small step at a time.Their symbols reflected that strategy. The tortoise represented gradual, almost imperceptible progress toward socialism. Their original coat of arms, however, was far more revealing: a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The symbolism was difficult to miss. The Society openly embraced the idea that its goals would be achieved through persuasion, incrementalism, and careful political camouflage rather than open confrontation. Unsurprisingly, the wolf emblem eventually disappeared as its public relations value became impossible to defend.During the early twentieth century, Fabian writers developed an intellectual framework for industrial Britain that emphasized cooperative economics and steadily reducing the role of private ownership of capital and land. Their influence extended well beyond pamphlets and lectures. Fabian ideas became deeply embedded within the British Labour movement, helping shape generations of politicians, civil servants, academics, and policy advisers.That influence has hardly disappeared. Throughout the twentieth century, the Fabian Society remained one of Labour’s most influential intellectual institutions and that has continued into the 21st century. They publish policy papers, host conferences, train young political leaders, and cultivate future Labour officials through organizations such as the Young Fabians and the Fabian Women’s Network. While the rhetoric has evolved with the times, the underlying strategy has remained remarkably consistent: achieve profound political and social change not through dramatic revolution, but through the steady, often unnoticed, transformation of institutions.The Fabians Conquered Great Britain a Long Time AgoThe Fabian Society is no longer important because of the number of its members. It is important because its strategy succeeded. The organization no longer needs to command the political battlefield because the battlefield itself has been reshaped.The original Fabians rejected revolution. They believed that socialism would never gain lasting acceptance if it arrived through barricades and bloodshed. Instead, their brilliant strategy advocated a slow march through society’s institutions, replacing old assumptions with new ones over decades rather than months. Their goal was not simply to elect politicians. It was to educate teachers, influence journalists, train civil servants, shape judges, advise bureaucrats, and eventually redefine what the public considered normal.Measured against that objective, the Fabians won. One remarkable fact is how completely the Fabian Society achieved its long game.  It has spent nearly a century and a half shaping the intellectual direction of the Labour Party.Every Labour prime minister, from Clement Attlee to Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown,Keir Starmer, and now Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, has been associated with the Fabian Society. This is not a hidden conspiracy. The Society proudly advertises the fact. The Fabian Society is the principal policy incubator for Britain's left-wing governing class. Its success was never measured by fiery speeches or barricades in the streets, but by something far more enduring: the steady occupation of the institutions that write policy, train civil servants, influence universities, and ultimately produce the people who govern the nation.Britain today bears little resemblance to the nation that existed when Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and Graham Wallas founded the Society in 1884. The modern British state reaches into nearly every aspect of economic and social life. Healthcare, education, welfare, housing, taxation, energy policy, industrial policy, environmental regulation, and increasingly even speech are influenced by an administrative state that would have been almost unimaginable in Victorian England.This transformation did not happen through revolution. It happened one committee, one regulation, one university department, one government agency, and one generation at a time.That same philosophy can now be seen well beyond Britain.The language has changed, but the method remains remarkably familiar. Today’s political battles are increasingly fought through ESG standards, DEI mandates, sustainability metrics, corporate governance rules, accreditation bodies, professional licensing boards, international organizations, and regulatory agencies. These mechanisms rarely require voters to approve sweeping ideological change. Instead, they alter the incentives that govern institutions, which in turn reshape the behavior of individuals.Whether one supports these initiatives or opposes them is almost beside the point. They reflect a distinctly Fabian approach to political change. Rather than persuading citizens to embrace an entirely new social contract, institutions gradually redefine the rules under which citizens live and work. Over time, what once would have provoked fierce political debate simply becomes accepted practice.Perhaps the Society’s greatest achievement was making itself appear unnecessary. Today, relatively few people identify as Fabians, yet countless politicians, academics, journalists, corporate executives, and bureaucrats employ methods that would have been immediately recognizable to Sidney Webb, one of the original founders. The tortoise reached the finish line so quietly that most people never realized it was a race.The Fabians understood that whoever controls the institutions eventually controls the politics. Elections come and go. Governments rise and fall. Institutions endure.Their vision unfolded over more than a century, and it followed a remarkably consistent path.First came the argument that government should become more rational and less political.Next: If society was becoming more complex, then experts should increasingly replace politicians in making important decisions.As government expanded, so did the administrative state.Independent commissions and regulatory agencies accumulated authority that once belonged to elected legislatures.National bureaucracies increasingly coordinated with international organizations.Public policy became harmonized across borders.Corporate governance evolved alongside government regulation, producing concepts such as ESG and DEI that increasingly shaped behavior without requiring legislation.Financial governance moved toward central bank digital currencies.Artificial intelligence is now being positioned as the next generation of expert-assisted governance.This is the story of the administrative state gradually replacing democratic accountability as the preferred mechanism of governance. The economy may remain capitalist. Elections may continue to be held. But increasingly, the decisions that shape daily life are made by regulators, standards boards, international organizations, corporate governance committees, central banks, and technical experts rather than by representatives directly accountable to voters.That was the Fabian insight from the very beginning. Change the institutions, and eventually the politics will follow.From Westminster to the United NationsThe Fabian Society did not simply change British politics. Its influence spread first through the British colonies and then throughout the English-speaking world. Eventually, it extended into many of the international institutions created after the Second World War.This should not be surprising. The Fabians never viewed the nation-state as the final destination. Their objective was rational administration by trained experts globally. Political questions, in their view, should increasingly become technical questions to be managed by professionals rather than decided by ordinary citizens. The larger the institution, the greater the opportunity to implement “uniform standards” across society.Many of the architects of Britain’s postwar welfare state also participated in building the international order that emerged after 1945. Fabian ideas helped shape economic planning, social welfare, labor policy, public health, education, and international development.Organizations such as the United Nations and its specialized agencies became natural homes for this style of governance. Decisions once made by elected legislatures increasingly became recommendations, standards, frameworks, or best practices issued by international bureaucracies and then adopted by national governments.The intellectual overlap is not accidental. Both Fabianism and the postwar international system placed extraordinary faith in expertise, centralized planning, and the belief that complex societies could be managed more effectively by specialists than by the rough and often unpredictable process of democratic politics.The first Director-General of UNESCO, Sir Julian Huxley, provides an excellent example. Huxley openly advocated what he called “evolutionary humanism” and envisioned UNESCO as an institution capable of gradually fostering a common world culture. His writings described education not merely as the transmission of knowledge but as an instrument for reshaping civilization itself. Anyone who has read UNESCO’s founding philosophy will recognize themes that would have been entirely familiar to the Fabian founders: gradualism, expert administration, social engineering, centralized planning, and confidence that enlightened institutions should guide public opinion rather than merely reflect it.From Britain to America: Exporting an IdeaThe Fabian Society never expected to transform the world through elections alone. Ideas travel farther than political parties, and institutions often outlive governments. From the beginning, the Fabians understood that if they could shape the education of future leaders, civil servants, economists, and policymakers, their philosophy would spread far beyond Britain itself.One of their greatest achievements was the founding of the London School of Economics in 1895. Established by the leading Fabians of the time, the school was intended to be far more than another university. It was designed to educate the administrators of a modern state. Rather than training philosophers or political theorists, it emphasized economics, public administration, statistics, and the practical management of government. Over the next century, the London School of Economics became one of the world’s premier institutions for educating economists, diplomats, senior civil servants, and political leaders from every continent.Its influence extended well beyond Britain. During the Progressive Era, many American scholars and reformers looked to British municipal government as a model for managing rapidly growing industrial cities. They admired Britain’s increasingly professional civil service, its expanding public health system, and its reliance on trained experts to solve social problems. The question was no longer simply who should govern. Increasingly, it became who possessed the expertise to govern well.Few Americans expressed this philosophy more clearly than Woodrow Wilson. Long before entering the White House, Wilson argued that public administration should become a professional discipline, insulated as much as possible from ordinary politics. Although he was never a Fabian, as that was a British organization, his writings reflected many of the same assumptions: that modern government required trained administrators, specialized knowledge, and institutions capable of operating beyond the turbulence of electoral politics.These ideas continued to evolve throughout the twentieth century. Universities established schools of public administration and public policy. Independent research organizations and policy institutes emerged to advise governments on increasingly complex economic, military, and social problems. Institutions such as the Brookings Institution, the RAND Corporation, and countless university-affiliated policy centers reflected a growing confidence that expertise, data, and professional analysis could produce better governance than partisan politics alone.The result was a profound change in the mission of higher education. Universities no longer existed simply to educate citizens or cultivate statesmen. Increasingly, they trained administrators, regulators, economists, planners, policy analysts, and technical experts who would move between government, academia, foundations, corporations, and international organizations. Whether consciously influenced by Fabian writings or not, many of these institutions embraced the same underlying premise: that the management of society should increasingly rest in the hands of credentialed professionals rather than elected representatives.By the middle of the twentieth century, Fabianism had become something larger than a British political society. Its most enduring legacy was not a political party, but a way of thinking about governance that has spread throughout much of the Western world.Fabianism Comes to AmericaThe United States never developed a mass Fabian Party. It did not need one.American political culture has always been skeptical of socialism when presented openly, that is, until recently. But Americans have historically been far more receptive to progressive reforms framed as efficiency, expertise, modernization, scientific management, or good government.Rather than advancing through an explicitly socialist movement, Fabian-style thinking entered the United States through elite universities, philanthropic foundations, professional associations, civil service reform, and the expanding federal bureaucracy during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. The emphasis was not on class struggle. It was on replacing local decision-making with “credentialed expertise,” trained in institutions, whose approach reflected many of the same assumptions about expert administration, credentialed authority, and centralized governance that the Fabians had been advocating for decades.If you educate the teachers, train the civil servants, influence the economists, and shape the universities, you don’t need to seize power. Over time, the people graduating from those institutions become the administrators, judges, journalists, policy analysts, and politicians who govern society. The result is not revolution, but a gradual shift in how government thinks about itself. The arena of political change moves from the ballot box to the bureaucracy, from legislatures to regulatory agencies, and from public debate to expert administration.The modern administrative state reflects precisely these assumptions. Congress increasingly delegates its legislative authority to agencies that issue thousands of regulations carrying the force of law. Courts often defer to specialized expertise rather than elected representatives. Universities train successive generations of policymakers who rotate between government, multinational corporations, NGOs, foundations, and international organizations. Increasingly, those same institutions establish the standards governing finance, environmental policy, public health, education, employment, and corporate behavior. Elections still matter, but much of modern governance now occurs beyond the ballot box.The Fabian method has always favored incremental institutional change over direct political confrontation. In that sense, its greatest American success may not be any single law or political party. It is the widespread acceptance that experts, regulators, and large institutions should increasingly shape public life while elected representatives ratify decisions that have largely already been made.From Economic Socialism to Social JusticeBy the end of the twentieth century, something remarkable had happened. The old economic debate had largely been settled. Central planning had repeatedly failed wherever it had been fully implemented. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic stagnation of Eastern Europe, and the market reforms adopted even by communist China made it increasingly difficult to argue that government ownership of the means of production represented the future of prosperous societies.Author James Lindsay has argued that much of the modern “Social Justice” movement represents precisely this adaptation. Rather than organizing politics primarily around economic class, contemporary activists increasingly organize society around identity groups defined by race, sex, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other characteristics. Economic redistribution is replaced by the redistribution of power, status, opportunity, representation, and cultural influence. Lindsay argues that the language of communism changed, but the underlying revolutionary framework remained remarkably familiar. The Fabians now use social justice as the primary justification for socialism or communism, having failed on the economic front.The focus of political conflict has steadily shifted from ownership of factories to governance of institutions. Universities, accreditation bodies, professional associations, corporations, media organizations, public health agencies, financial institutions, and international organizations increasingly became the arena in which political objectives were pursued. Rather than nationalizing industries, modern movements often seek to redefine the rules under which those industries operate.Viewed through the Fabian lens, this evolution is not especially surprising. The Fabians never insisted that socialism required the immediate abolition of markets. Their strategy was always incremental. Change the assumptions taught in universities. Change the standards governing professions. Change the regulations that shape corporations. Change the bureaucracies that administer public life. Over time, political outcomes would follow naturally.This is why the modern debate increasingly revolves around ESG, DEI, sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, public-private partnerships, pandemic preparedness, and global governance rather than nationalization of steel mills or collective farms. The battlefield shifted from ownership to administration. The question is no longer simply who owns the economy. It is who writes the rules under which the economy operates.Winning the UniversitiesThe Fabians understood something that revolutionaries often overlooked. Political victories are temporary. Educational victories can last for generations.Governments come and go. Professors remain. Politicians write today’s laws. Professors educate the people who will write tomorrow’s.The early Fabians understood that they did not need to win every election. They needed to influence the people who educated the next generation of economists, teachers, journalists, lawyers, judges, and civil servants. Institutions are self-replicating. Professors train professors. Teachers train teachers. Civil servants recruit civil servants. Once the assumptions become embedded in the institutions, the institutions perpetuate themselves.That was one reason the Fabians founded the London School of Economics in 1895. It was not intended to be simply another university. It was designed to educate the administrators of the modern state. Economics, statistics, public administration, labor policy, and social planning became disciplines through which government itself could increasingly be viewed as a scientific enterprise rather than merely a political one.Oxford and Cambridge were already educating Britain’s governing class. The Fabians did not need to capture either institution. They needed enough respected scholars, economists, historians, and political theorists who shared their assumptions to gradually become accepted scholarship. Universities rarely change overnight. One generation simply teaches the next. Intellectual fashions become intellectual orthodoxy.The London School of Economics complemented those older universities by producing economists, planners, civil servants, and policy specialists. Fabian Summer Schools, the Workers’ Educational Association, and adult education programs carried many of the same ideas far beyond the campus into local government, labor organizations, and public life. At the same time, Britain’s expanding civil service increasingly rewarded technical expertise. Government ceased to be viewed primarily as a political responsibility and increasingly became a technical profession.For those interested in the distorted and weaponized disease modeling that underpinned the global COVID response,the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the academic home of the modeling group in question, are both constituent colleges of the University of London and maintain a formal academic partnership.  Specifically, the two institutions offer a joint master’s program in Health Policy, Planning and Financing.The same philosophy crossed the Atlantic during the Progressive Era of 1890 to 1920. American reformers admired Britain’s professional civil service and increasingly organized universities around schools of public administration, public policy, education, and social work. Their graduates moved easily between government, universities, foundations, corporations, and international organizations, carrying with them a common belief that complex societies were best managed by credentialed experts.Education itself became an object of scientific management. John Dewey argued that schools should shape citizens, not merely transmit knowledge. Columbia Teachers College became one of the most influential teacher-training institutions in America, exporting mostly educational socialist philosophy through thousands of graduates who would educate millions of children. After the Second World War, UNESCO extended similar ideas globally. Its first Director-General, Sir Julian Huxley, viewed education not simply as preserving civilization but as an instrument for guiding social change and fostering a common world culture.None of this required a conspiracy, nor did it require every university to become Fabian. Ideas spread because universities educate the people who eventually govern. Once enough institutions embraced the same assumptions, those assumptions became self-reinforcing. Graduates staffed government agencies, wrote regulations, trained future teachers, advised corporations, and educated the next generation.The Fabians did not need to control every university. They simply needed enough universities to educate enough teachers, economists, lawyers, journalists, and civil servants that their assumptions became the default assumptions of public life. Once those assumptions became orthodoxy, the Society itself became almost irrelevant. The graduates carried the philosophy forward whether they had ever heard the name Sidney Webb or not.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public, so feel free to cross-post, republish with author attribution, or share it on social media or by email.ShareFabianism and the New World OrderThe Fabians do not envision a dramatic seizure of power. They envision something far more durable: a world increasingly governed by experts, administrators, commissions, international organizations, and bureaucracies that would operate above the turbulence of electoral politics. Their objective was not merely to elect socialists. It was to change how societies are governed.Viewed through that lens, many of the defining institutions of the postwar era begin to look less like isolated developments and more like pieces of a broader intellectual trend. International organizations, transnational regulatory bodies, global public-private partnerships, multinational financial institutions, and increasingly harmonized regulatory frameworks all rest upon a common assumption: that many of humanity’s greatest challenges are best managed by centralized expertise operating across national boundaries.This philosophy has become known by many names. Internationalism. Stakeholder capitalism. Sustainable development. Global governance. More recently, ESG, DEI, and the language of “whole-of-society” solutions. The vocabulary changes every decade. The underlying premise changes very little.This was thegreat post-Cold War consensus, which has been rebranded again and is now known as “democratic socialism.”National sovereignty, local autonomy, and democratic accountability inevitably become secondary when decisions are increasingly made by institutions that are insulated from direct electoral control. Rules become standards. Standards become regulations. Regulations become expectations. Eventually, expectations become accepted reality, often without a single national referendum or meaningful public debate.Advocates contend that global issues demand global institutions. They argue that financial instability, cybercrime, terrorism, and international trade cannot be effectively handled by individual nations alone. Yet global programs have also been exploited for financial gain and dominance. Examples like climate change and the pandemic show how these institutions are often manipulated for power as well as commercial interests and control. The question is not whether cooperation is necessary. The question is where cooperation ends, and governance begins.When international organizations coordinate sovereign governments, they serve democracy. When they begin to shape national policy without direct democratic accountability, the balance shifts. Citizens increasingly find themselves governed by frameworks they never voted for, implemented by officials they cannot remove, and justified by experts they cannot question.  If you want to see a leading example of how this works (or doesn’t), look no further than the European Union, and specifically the European Council.Whether one calls this globalism, stakeholder governance, or simply modern administration, the method is unmistakably familiar. The governance becomes institutional rather than electoral. Incremental rather than dramatic. It does not seek to overthrow existing systems overnight. It seeks to redefine them until the old assumptions quietly disappear.The wolf no longer wears the sheep’s clothing emblazoned on the Fabian Society’s original crest. In truth, it no longer needs the disguise. After more than a century of gradual institutional change, many of the assumptions that animated the early Fabians have become so deeply embedded in political, academic, corporate, and international institutions that we are no longer even aware of them.Perhaps that is the Fabians' greatest achievement. The victory was not simply that the Fabians conquered Britain or influenced the West. Their real triumph was changing how modern bureaucracies think about governance itself. More than a century after the Society was founded in London, much of the Western world now accepts as perfectly normal the idea that experts, regulators, international institutions, and administrative bodies should increasingly shape public policy while elected governments ratify decisions already made elsewhere. Rewiring institutions changes civilizations. That was the Fabian strategy from the beginning, and history suggests it has been remarkably successful.End.By: JGMIf you’ve made it this far, thank you.One of the themes running through this essay is that institutions matter. They shape what gets taught, what gets researched, what gets published, and ultimately what the public comes to accept as common sense. That is precisely why independent institutions matter just as much.Malone News has never been backed by a political party, a foundation, a pharmaceutical company, or a government grant. We answer to our readers and no one else. That independence allows us to pursue uncomfortable questions, spend days researching subjects that others ignore, and publish essays like this one without asking anyone’s permission.Free subscriptions help us reach more people. Paid subscriptions make the work possible.They fund the research, the document requests, the travel, the interviews, the fact-checking, and the time required to dig beneath the headlines. More importantly, they help preserve something increasingly rare: independent analysis that is not written to satisfy advertisers, corporate sponsors, or political gatekeepers.Subscribe nowIf you believe these conversations matter, we hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. In an age when institutions increasingly shape public opinion, supporting independent voices may be one of the most important investments any of us can make.

Summary: conquering the free world


Merck’s Lipfendra (Enlicitide): The First Oral PCSK9 Inhibitor Arrives

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHIt has been several years since the introduction of a new oral drug to lower cholesterol.  However, the injectable market has become crowded with more choices for those needing cholesterol-lowering.  Merck’s new drug will almost certainly be disruptive in the marketplace.💊 Merck’s Lipfendra: The First Oral PCSK9 Inhibitor Arrives — Mixed News for Statin HatersThe FDA dropped a bombshell on July 17, 2026, approvingLipfendra (enlicitide)— Merck’s once-daily oral PCSK9 inhibitor. This isn’t just another cholesterol drug. It’s the firstpillcapable of doing what previously required a needle, and it slashes LDL-C by56–59%on top of maximally tolerated statins. For millions of Americans who’ve been waged war on generic statins, this changes the calculus entirely.🔬 Side Effects: Lipfendra vs. Statins — No ContestLet’s be blunt about what statins actually do to people. In ~15% of people, there are well-documented muscle pain, weakness—the problem is that 100% of the general public has these complaints as well.Now look at Lipfendra’s side effect profile from the two pivotal trials across 3,207 patients:In the larger ASCVD trial, adverse reactions weresimilar between Lipfendra and placebo— meaning the drug was essentially indistinguishable from a sugar pill in side effect burden. The HeFH trial showed mild upticks in diarrhea and dizziness, but nothing approaching the metabolic and muscular devastation statins routinely inflict.The fasting requirement — eight hours overnight, take it 30 minutes before breakfast — is annoying, but Merck appears to have dosed at 20 mg to build in a compliance buffer. Compared to waking up every morning feeling like you got hit by a truck on atorvastatin, an empty stomach is a trivial inconvenience.Subscribe nowRead more

Summary: Mixed news for statin-intolerant and health freedom community of statin haters


NEW STUDY: Aggressive Cancer Patients Had 82% Less Bifidobacterium in Their Gut Compared With Healthy Adults

byNicolas Hulscher, MPHAnew metagenomic studyled by Dr. Sabine Hazan analyzed stool samples from 60 adults, including 25 patients with aggressive cancer, 15 with non-aggressive cancer, and 20 controls without cancer.The cancer cases included breast, lymphoma, colon, ovarian, lung, bladder, thyroid, prostate, and several other malignancies. Dr. Hazan’s team used next-generation sequencing to compare the relative abundance of key bacterial genera across the three groups.The most dramatic finding involvedBifidobacterium, a beneficial group of bacteria associated with immune regulation, intestinal-barrier integrity, and antitumor immune activity.Aggressive cancer patients had an average Bifidobacterium abundance of just1.20%, compared with6.53%in controls (82% less).They also had76% less Collinsella,36% less Faecalibacterium, and88% more Bacteroides, with all four differences reaching statistical significance.This pattern is notable because Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium, and Collinsella have been associated with healthier immune function and better responses to certain cancer therapies. Some Bacteroides strains, by contrast, have been linked to tumor-promoting activity.The differences were less pronounced in patients with non-aggressive cancer. Their Bifidobacterium levels were also lower than those of controls, but the result narrowly missed conventional statistical significance.The findings suggest that more aggressive cancer may be associated with a more severely disrupted gut microbiome. The magnitude of the differences—especially the82% lower Bifidobacterium abundance—supports larger prospective studies to determine whether these microbial patterns could eventually help identify aggressive cancer or become targets for microbiome-based cancer interventions.Nicolas Hulscher, MPHEpidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough FoundationSupport our mission:mcculloughfnd.orgPlease consider following both theMcCullough Foundationandmy personal accountonX(formerly Twitter) for further content.Subscribe now

Summary: Aggressive cancer was associated with a major disruption of beneficial gut bacteria involved in immune regulation and intestinal-barrier function.


Ralph Baric Just Blew Up the Official COVID Origins Narrative

Audio Version:Executive SummaryOver the past day, we have worked our way through the thousands of pages of documents Senator Rand Paul recently released in hisCOVID-19 Reading Room, including the transcribed interview with Dr. Ralph Baric released today. Using AI to analyze this enormous collection of congressional testimony, emails, and Slack messages, we uncovered a series of remarkable revelations that fundamentally change our understanding of how the origins of COVID-19 were discussed behind closed doors.For more than five years, the American public was told that the science was settled. The laboratory-origin hypothesis was dismissed as implausible,The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2became the definitive scientific narrative, and those who questioned it were censored, ridiculed, and marginalized.The newly released documents in Senator Rand Paul’s COVID-19 Reading Room tell a very different story.Congressional testimony from Dr. Ralph Baric and thousands of pages of private Slack messages reveal that the scientists closest to the evidence privately debated laboratory scenarios, acknowledged uncertainty, discussed gain-of-function research, and questioned many of the very assumptions that were presented to the public as settled science.Baric himself confirms that DARPA’s proposed coronavirus experiments were gain-of-function research, acknowledges conducting gain-of-function unpublished experiments that undermined a central argument ofProximal Origin, and describes years of coronavirus work involving many of the same investigators and institutions that later became central to the origins debate.Meanwhile, the Slack discussions show that the paper’s authors continued privately exploring laboratory-related mechanisms both before and long after their paper had become the foundation for government messaging and censorship.These documents prove that the public was never given the full scientific debate. They expose serious questions about scientific transparency, government involvement, funding disclosures, oversight of gain-of-function research, and the extraordinary effort to present uncertainty as certainty during one of the most consequential public health crises in modern history.Share1. DARPA explicitly solicited gain-of-function researchBaric testified that the DARPA PREEMPT program required gain-of-function experiments to answer the scientific question it posed.His exact words:“That’s a gain-of-function experiment. There’s no other way to think about it.”This undercuts years of semantic arguments that the proposed work somehow wasn’t GOF.2. DEFUSE proposed inserting a furin cleavage siteBaric confirmed that under the DEFUSE proposal,his laboratorywould have performed the furin cleavage site insertion.The furin cleavage site became one of the central scientific features that fueled lab-origin scrutiny.During his congressional testimony, Baric acknowledged that the DARPA DEFUSE proposal called for inserting a furin cleavage site into SARS-like bat coronaviruses and confirmed that his laboratory at UNC would have been responsible for engineering those viruses. He further acknowledged that inserting a furin cleavage site to determine whether it changes viral phenotype constitutes gain-of-function research, and he described DARPA's PREEMPT solicitation as asking for "a gain-of-function experiment" with "no other way to think about it."At the same time, Baric testified that DARPA rejected the DEFUSE proposal and that the specific experiments outlined in that proposal were therefore never performed.But then, Baric also acknowledged conducting other furin cleavage site insertion experiments in coronaviruses as part of his broader research program, demonstrating both the technical capability and the scientific interest in precisely the type of work described in DEFUSE.The unresolved question is whether substantially similar experiments ultimately proceeded under other federally funded projects.We know that NIH later funded coronavirus research involving many of the same investigators and institutions associated with DEFUSE - in fact there is evidence that NIH funded almost that exact same grant, but the documents released to date do not, by themselves, establish that the specific furin cleavage site insertion experiments proposed to DARPA were subsequently carried out under an NIH grant. Although that scenario is highly likely.That question remains one of the central issues for investigators examining the documentary record.Below is a chart comparing the DEFUSE proposal and the NIH-funded research.Were the furin cleavage site and related gain-of-function experiments proposed in DEFUSE later carried out under the NIH-funded grants or contracts, either in whole or in part? If so, where are the protocols, progress reports, sequence data, laboratory notebooks, and oversight reviews?To be sure, Senator Paul’s research team is all over that question.3. Baric had unpublished data that weakened a major argument inProximal OriginPublished inNature Medicineon March 17, 2020,"The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2"became the most influential scientific paper arguing that SARS-CoV-2 was not a laboratory construct and that "any type of laboratory-based scenario" was not considered plausible. Since publication, prominent scientists and scientific organizations have submitted formal petitions and open letters calling for the paper to be corrected, withdrawn, or retracted in light of subsequently released evidence and congressional investigations.Nature Medicinehas acknowledged receiving these requests but has refused to retract the paper, issue an Editorial Expression of Concern, or otherwise alter the scientific record.Baric testified he had previously demonstrated that maximizing ACE2 binding is not necessarily advantageous.Stronger receptor binding can actually reduce viral spread.He says he informed NIH and destroyed the experimental materials.That directly weakens one of the principal arguments used inProximal Originagainst deliberate engineering.4. The “Proximal Origin” authors did not believe their own story about a natural origin for the virus.Slack messages show Kristian Andersen did not have confidence in the natural origin theory by the time the paper was published.He writes that he is moving “much more toward the middle.”Elsewhere he indicates that, given what he knows, both origin scenarios are plausible (From the Slack archive in Rand’s reading room).5. The scientists spent months privately debating tissue-culture scenariosThe Slack discussions repeatedly focus on:tissue culture,furin cleavage sites,cell adaptation,host-range experiments,Wuhan Institute work.Those are precisely the mechanisms central to laboratory-accident hypotheses, showing the issue remained an active scientific discussion rather than a settled question.6. Baric confirms he attended the secret February 1,  2020 origins callOn February 1, 2020, Sir Jeremy Farrar, then Director of the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's most influential biomedical research foundations, organized a confidential teleconference bringing together Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, Andrew Rambaut, Edward (Eddie) Holmes, Michael Farzan, Ron Fouchier, Christian Drosten, Marion Koopmans, and several other leading virologists to discuss whether SARS-CoV-2 had emerged naturally or from a laboratory accident.Farrar later revealed in his memoirSpikethat the discussions were considered so sensitive he used a disposable ("burner") phone for the communications surrounding the call.Five participants in that call: Kristian Andersen, Robert Garry, Andrew Rambaut, and Edward Holmes would go on to author the highly influentialThe Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2paper, while Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were actively involved in discussions surrounding its development. Farrar now serves as Assistant Director-General at the World Health Organization.Baric acknowledges being on the call with Fauci, Collins, Farrar, Andersen, Garry, Holmes, and others.He cannot explain how he was invited.He says he cannot find any record showing why he was included.Some participants reportedly did not know he was present.He gives somewhat inconsistent accounts about whether he spoke during the meeting.Whether Baric was intentionally withholding information cannot be determined from the testimony. What the testimony clearly shows is that his explanations regarding his invitation and participation are incomplete and, at points, internally inconsistent.Those inconsistencies warrant further scrutiny by Senator Paul’s committee.7. NIH apparently requested records it supposedly had already reviewedDuring the February 2020 discussions, NIH officials reportedly asked Baric for research records that NIH had allegedly reviewed years earlier under its oversight process.This raises questions about NIH’s recordkeeping and oversight of research involving enhanced pathogens.8. Baric sent his taxpayer-funded ACE2 mouse model to WuhanHe confirmed sending the mouse model to Shi Zhengli’s laboratory.Later, when a Chinese company attempted to commercialize that model, Baric described the situation as unethical:“What kind of crap is this?”He also stated that sharing the model was effectively required under research-sharing norms and suggested Congress should change the rules if policymakers objected.Baric also confirmed that he provided his NIH-funded human ACE2 transgenic mouse model to Shi Zhengli's laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although the transfer of the mice was not itself gain-of-function research, the human ACE2 mouse was specifically designed as an experimental platform for studies involving SARS-like coronaviruses that cannot efficiently infect conventional laboratory mice.The model enabled researchers to evaluate viruses produced through reverse genetics, measure the effects of engineered mutations such as insertion of a furin cleavage site, serially passage viruses to select for increased adaptation or pathogenicity, and determine whether genetically modified viruses exhibited enhanced infectivity, tissue tropism, virulence, or transmissibility.Many of these experimental approaches constitute gain-of-function research and involve the same experimental techniques that are plausible laboratory pathways for the creation of SARS-CoV-2.9. The USAID-Funded Pipeline Behind the Wuhan Coronavirus ResearchAlthough PREDICT was presented as a surveillance program, it created the scientific pipeline for coronavirus gain-of-function research. The full extent of USAID's role in building that pipeline only became apparent years later through congressional investigations and the release of internal communications.USAID’s PREDICT program, led by the One Health Institute at the University of California, Davis, operated from 2009 through 2020 to identify potentially dangerous viruses before they spilled over into humans. In practice, it funded the discovery, collection, sequencing, cataloging, and international sharing of thousands of SARS-like bat coronaviruses through collaborators that included EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Those viruses and their genetic sequences became the foundation for subsequent laboratory research involving reverse genetics, chimeric viruses, human ACE2 mouse models, and other experimental approaches that overlap with, or constitute, gain-of-function research. While PREDICT itself was not established to engineer viruses, it built the scientific infrastructure and international collaborations that made those experiments possible.Internal emails also revealed that Peter Daszak requested that USAID’s PREDICT program be acknowledged as a funding source for the landmark 2015 Baric-Shi paper. That acknowledgment reportedly did not appear until 2020, five years after publication, raising additional questions about the transparency of funding disclosures for coronavirus research involving the Wuhan Institute of Virology.Emails showed Peter Daszak asking that USAID’s PREDICT program be acknowledged.The acknowledgment was reportedly added only in 2020.The delay raises questions about transparency surrounding funding sources for work involving Wuhan collaborators.10. The Slack archive shows genuine scientific disagreement: not a unified frontKristian Andersen, PhD, is a professor at Scripps Research and Director of Infectious Disease Genomics at the Scripps Research Translational Institute. An internationally recognized evolutionary biologist, he was the lead author of the influential March 2020Nature Medicinepaper,The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2, which argued that SARS-CoV-2 was not the product of laboratory engineering and dismissed a laboratory-based origin as implausible. In the years that followed, Andersen became one of the most aggressive public defenders of the natural-origin hypothesis. For years, he used his scientific authority and large social media platform to portray the laboratory-origin hypothesis as unsupported, repeatedly mocking critics and dismissing questions about a possible man-made origin, even as internal emails released later showed that he initially considered aspects of the virus concerning enough to merit serious discussion.Edward “Eddie” Holmes is one of the world's foremost evolutionary virologists, whose decades of research on bat coronaviruses made him uniquely qualified to assess the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. A professor at the University of Sydney and a principal author of the influential March 2020Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2paper, Holmes also participated in the pivotal February 1, 2020 teleconference with Anthony Fauci, Francis Collins, Jeremy Farrar, Kristian Andersen, Ralph Baric, and others that shaped the early scientific response to the origins question.Rather than revealing a scientific consensus, the private discussions show Holmes continually pressing for rigorous evidence while other participants privately acknowledged growing uncertainty, offering a far more nuanced picture than the certainty projected in public and written up in their proximal origins paper.Eddie Holmes repeatedly challenges stronger lab-origin claims and asks for additional evidence.The discussions reveal ongoing internal debate rather than unanimous agreement.That makes the later shifts in Andersen’s position that the virus was of natural origin duplicitious, because they occurred despite his active scientific skepticism privately.11. The scientists privately continued exploring laboratory-related mechanisms well after theProximal Origin paperThe Slack archive includes detailed discussions of:template switching,recombination,furin cleavage site generation,co-infection scenarios,alternative evolutionary pathways.These conversations indicate the scientific inquiry continued after publication rather than ending with the paper.The biggest takeawayAfter reviewing thousands of pages of congressional testimony, private Slack messages, emails, and internal documents, one conclusion is unavoidable: the public was never given the full story.These documents show that gain-of-function coronavirus experiments were not imaginary. They were openly discussed, proposed, and, in Dr. Ralph Baric’s own words, explicitly solicited under DARPA’s PREEMPT program. Baric himself acknowledged performing and proposing experiments that he scientifically characterizes as gain-of-function. His defense is not that such work never occurred. His defense is that it was lawful under the regulatory framework that existed at the time because it had been reviewed, exempted, or fell outside the government’s evolving oversight policies.The documents also expose something equally troubling. The scientific assumptions that underpinnedThe Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2paper were far less certain than the public was led to believe. During and after publication, the paper’s own authors privately debated tissue culture, furin cleavage sites, laboratory adaptation, host-range experiments, and other mechanisms central to a potential laboratory origin. The scientific discussion never ended. Only the public discussion did.That raises profound questions about transparency, scientific integrity, federal oversight, funding disclosures, recordkeeping at NIH, and the role government officials played in shaping what became the accepted public narrative.For more than five years, Americans were told that questioning the origins of SARS-CoV-2 was the province of conspiracy theorists. We were assured the science was settled. We were toldProximal Originhad closed the case and that a laboratory origin was implausible.The newly released testimony from Dr. Ralph Baric and the private communications among the authors are important because they reveal that many of the scientists closest to the evidence privately entertained doubts, debated laboratory scenarios, and questioned key assumptions while presenting a far more confident story to the public.They purposefully tried to change the history of COVID-19 itself. The question remains, to what end?It begins with Ralph Baric.There may be no scientist on Earth better positioned to discuss coronavirus gain-of-function research than Ralph Baric.For more than three decades, Baric has been one of the world’s foremost coronavirus researchers. He pioneered reverse genetics systems for coronaviruses, developed the human ACE2 mouse model, collaborated extensively with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and helped develop many of the experimental techniques that later became central to the debate over the origins of COVID-19.His congressional testimony is remarkable because it dismantles, piece by piece, many of the simplistic arguments that were used for years to dismiss the possibility of a laboratory origin.One of the most important moments came when Baric was asked about DARPA’s PREEMPT proposal. His answer was unequivocal.“That’s a gain-of-function experiment. There’s no other way to think about it.”For years, the public was subjected to endless semantic gymnastics over whether gain-of-function research was even being proposed or conducted. Baric swept aside that debate in a single sentence. In his scientific judgment, the proposed experiments were gain-of-function.Why does this matter? Because COVID-19 changed the world.The virus claimed millions of lives. Governments responded with lockdowns that devastated economies, disrupted education, deepened poverty, fueled food insecurity, and inflicted lasting social and psychological harm. Children lost years of normal development. Businesses disappeared. Families were separated. Public trust in science and public health institutions was profoundly damaged. The pandemic accelerated one of the greatest transfers of wealth and economic power in modern American history, from small businesses to multinational corporations, from wage earners to owners of financial assets, and from Main Street to Wall Street. The vaccines also became the subject of unprecedented controversy over safety, mandates, and adverse events that are still being investigated.Baric’s testimony establishes one important fact: gain-of-function coronavirus research was real and probably caused one of the biggest pandemics that the world has ever known.  We now need to know:which experiments were actually performed, who funded them, where were they conducted, what oversight existed, and which of that research contributed, directly or indirectly, to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2?Those are no longer fringe questions. They are the central scientific and public policy questions of our time.Senator Rand Paul’s team has had roadblock after road block thrown at them; they have been stymied by government officials and agencies. But they are managing to break through the floor and find missing documents.  We know, because Robert has played a small part by using advanced systems to track down missing data that have now been shared with Senator Paul.Then comes perhaps the biggest surprise.Then comes perhaps the most remarkable revelation in Baric's testimony. One of the central arguments of theProximal Originpaper was that if SARS-CoV-2 had been engineered, scientists would have optimized its binding to the human ACE2 receptor. Baric told Congress he had already performed unpublished experiments demonstrating that this assumption was flawed. According to his testimony, stronger ACE2 binding does not necessarily produce a more successful virus. In fact, excessive receptor affinity can reduce viral fitness and transmission.He testified that he informed NIH of these findings, destroyed the experimental viruses, and chose not to publish the work because of “biosecurity concerns.” Although Baric did not characterize these experiments as gain-of-function research during this exchange, the testimony raises obvious questions about the nature of the experiments, whether they were supported by NIH funding, and why results that undercut one of the central scientific arguments inProximal Originwere never published.The Slack messages reveal the lies.For years, the American public was told thatThe Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2represented settled science. Government officials repeatedly pointed to the paper as proof that COVID-19 could not have come from a laboratory. Social media companies, under duress by the Biden administration, used it to justify censorship. Journalists cited it as the definitive scientific consensus. Scientists, physicians, and ordinary citizens who questioned that narrative found themselves labeled conspiracy theorists, censored, deplatformed, and, in some cases, professionally ostracized.The private discussions tell a very different story. Kristian Andersen, the paper’s lead author, did not become more certain over time. He became less certain. In fact, by the time of publication, he was privately arguing that the virus was man-made.After months of discussions about tissue culture, furin cleavage sites, coronavirus experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and newly emerging evidence, Andersen acknowledged that although he had initially leaned strongly toward a natural origin, he was no longer convinced. By the summer of 2020, he wrote that he was “moving much more toward the middle.”Later, he went further still, stating that, based on what he had learned, he regardedbotha natural spillover and a laboratory origin as plausible explanations.That is extraordinary.This was not a scientist reconsidering his conclusions years later after new discoveries. This was the lead author of the paper that shaped global opinion, questioning its central conclusion while the paper was still only just being published, and yet already being treated as the definitive account of COVID-19’s origins.  At a time when the authors could have easily corrected the paper's original conclusions.The Slack archive makes clear that the authors were privately debating precisely the issues the public was assured had already been settled: tissue culture adaptation, furin cleavage sites, laboratory selection, BSL-2 coronavirus research, host-range experiments, EcoHealth Alliance grants, and work conducted at Shi Zhengli’s laboratory in Wuhan. The discussions were technical, candid, and often vigorous. They do not reflect a group of scientists who had unanimously ruled out a laboratory origin.Which raises the obvious question:Why wasProximal Originwritten with such certainty?Congressional records show that Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were actively engaged with the authors during the paper’s development.Those same records also show that shortly after publication, Andersen received a substantial NIH grant.This raises legitimate questions about Fauci's role in shaping the scientific narrative that would dominate public discourse for years.Legitimate questions remain about Fauci's role in asserting that the “science was settled” in favor of a natural origin story by the publication of this paper, which shaped public discourse for years. Examining emails, internal memos, and phone call records from Fauci during this period may uncover whether a quid pro quo was involved.Perhaps most striking of all, even as Andersen’s private confidence in a purely natural origin appeared to erode, his public rhetoric became increasingly absolute. On social media and in interviews, he repeatedly dismissed, ridiculed, and attacked scientists, journalists, and members of the public who questioned the natural-origin narrative, often portraying the laboratory-origin hypothesis as scientifically indefensible despite privately acknowledging that both scenarios remained plausible.The Wuhan Institute itself also comes under much closer scrutiny.One Slack discussion draws an important distinction between Ralph Baric’s reverse genetics experiments and the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s tissue-culture work.According to Kristian Andersen, researchers in Wuhan had spent years growing SARS-like bat coronaviruses in different animal cell lines to determine what mutations allowed those viruses to infect human cells more efficiently. That type of research is precisely the sort of laboratory adaptation work that has become central to the debate over COVID-19’s origins. These experiments constitute gain-of-function research.At the time, and still today, no international treaty specifically prohibited gain-of-function research conducted for peaceful scientific purposes, and similar work was and is being performed in laboratories around the world.If research of this type were to produce a pathogen capable of causing a global pandemic, the consequences could rival those of a weapon of mass destruction, raising the obvious point that international oversight has not kept pace with modern biotechnology.Baric acknowledged that the Wuhan experiments closely paralleled research proposed in EcoHealth Alliance grant applications but distinguished them from his own reverse genetics studies, noting they were being conducted under different biosafety conditions. Whether Baric’s experiments ultimately contributed to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 remains unknown. What is no longer in dispute is that scientists were actively exploring how bat coronaviruses adapt to human hosts through laboratory experimentation and that this virus was almost certainly man-made.If Baric’s experiments produced a virus capable of causing a global pandemic, the consequences would extend far beyond an academic debate over gain-of-function research.  If the Wuhan Lab and the CCP were ultimately responsible, that raises another set of questions about culpability and liability.  Questions that the world leaders clearly do not want to address.The truth is that such research with the potential to create pathogens of catastrophic consequence should never have been conducted in the first place.Where does that leave us?The question is no longer whether a laboratory origin was “implausible.” After reading these documents, a more fundamental question emerges:was the natural-origin narrative ever as convincing as the public was led to believe?The scientists who authoredProximal Originprivately wrestled with laboratory scenarios, debated furin cleavage sites, tissue culture, reverse genetics, and Wuhan’s coronavirus research. Yet publicly, they projected certainty. As their private confidence in a purely natural origin eroded, their public certainty only grew. Scientists who questioned the narrative were ridiculed. Journalists were dismissed. Citizens were censored. That is not how science is supposed to work. It is how narratives are protected.These newly released documents do not prove 100% that SARS-CoV-2 came from a laboratory. But they do prove something equally important: the public was never given the full scientific debate. Instead, it was presented with a manufactured consensus that collapsed the moment private emails, Slack messages, and sworn congressional testimony saw the light of day.Perhaps the greatest irony is that this reckoning is not being led by the institutions that spent years insisting they had already settled the matter. It is not being driven by the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Justice, or the vast machinery of the administrative state. Instead, much of the documentary record now reshaping this debate has emerged becauseSenator Rand Paul of Kentuckyrefused to stop asking questions.COVID-19 killed millions of people. It upended the global economy, transformed governments, accelerated one of the largest transfers of wealth in modern history, deprived children of years of normal development, and fractured public trust in medicine, science, and government. If research contributed in any way to that catastrophe, then the world deserves a complete accounting—not to assign political blame, but to ensure it never happens again.Science advances by questioning assumptions, following evidence wherever it leads, and correcting mistakes. These documents suggest that, for far too long, protecting the narrative became more important than pursuing the truth. History will ultimately judge which mattered more.JGM/RWMOne final thought.Much of what you’ve just read wasn’t uncovered by the legacy media, government investigators, or billion-dollar news organizations. It came from painstaking review of thousands of pages of testimony, emails, Slack messages, and congressional records. That kind of work takes time, expertise, and resources. Our paid subscribers make it possible. They receive deeper investigations, exclusive analysis, and early access to the stories that matter most.Subscribe nowIf you value independent journalism that follows the evidence rather than the narrative, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It allows us to keep digging where others won’t.

Summary: and other true stories


The War is Not Meant to Be Won

The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.-George Orwell, 1984Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the patent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.-James Madison, Political Observations,1795.WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”― Smedley Butler,War Is a RacketWe must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.-President Dwight Eisenhower,Farewell Address, 1961This morning I compiled a list of the known US military interventions abroad. I writeknownbecause many acts of US government agency violence are covert and never published.China (1945–1949): U.S. Marines and forces assisted Nationalist authorities in disarming Japanese troops, controlling key infrastructure, and protecting/evacuating Americans amid the Chinese Civil War against Communists.Korea (post-WWII occupation into early conflict): Occupation of the South and responses to insurgency.1950sKorean War (1950–1953): Full-scale U.S.-led UN intervention against North Korean invasion of South Korea; later Chinese intervention. Peak U.S. forces exceeded 300,000; over 36,000 U.S. killed in action.Taiwan Strait crises (1950s, notably 1954–1955 and 1958): Naval deployments (Seventh Fleet) and evacuations to deter People’s Republic of China attacks on Taiwan/Formosa and offshore islands.Lebanon (1958): Marines and troops landed at the request of the Lebanese government to counter internal unrest with external support.1960s–1970s (Vietnam era and related)Vietnam War (advisors from mid-1950s; major escalation 1964–1973; related operations into 1975): Large-scale combat against North Vietnam and Viet Cong in South Vietnam; peak U.S. forces ~543,000. Included extensive bombing of North Vietnam (e.g., Rolling Thunder, Linebacker), the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and secret campaigns.Laos (1960s–1975): Covert and overt support, bombing, and operations against Communist forces (“Secret War”).Cambodia (bombing from late 1960s; ground incursion 1970; Mayaguez incident 1975): Campaigns against Communist sanctuaries; 1970 U.S./South Vietnamese ground operation; 1975 rescue of the SSMayaguezinvolving combat with Khmer Rouge forces.Dominican Republic (1965): Operation Power Pack—thousands of U.S. troops intervened during a revolt amid concerns over Communist influence.Smaller support actions (e.g., airlift/logistics in Congo/Zaire in the 1960s).1980sIran (1980): Operation Eagle Claw—failed special forces attempt to rescue U.S. embassy hostages.Libya (1981 Gulf of Sidra; 1986 Operation El Dorado Canyon): Aerial engagements (Libyan jets shot down) and airstrikes on military/terrorist-related targets in response to attacks and terrorism.Lebanon (1982–1984): Marines as part of a multinational force; naval bombardment of positions during the civil war and after the Beirut barracks bombing.Grenada (1983): Operation Urgent Fury—invasion to oust a Marxist government and protect U.S. citizens.Persian Gulf / Iran (1987–1988): Operations Earnest Will, Praying Mantis, and related actions—naval escort of tankers, combat with Iranian forces/mines/platforms during the Iran-Iraq War.Panama (1989): Operation Just Cause—invasion to remove Manuel Noriega; largest U.S. combat operation since Vietnam up to that point.1990sPersian Gulf War / Iraq (1990–1991): Operation Desert Shield/Storm—massive coalition campaign to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait; followed by no-fly zones and enforcement actions against Iraq through the 1990s (including Operation Desert Fox in 1998).Somalia (1992–1994): U.S.-led intervention (UNITAF/UNOSOM) during civil war; included the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu.Haiti (1994): Operation Uphold Democracy—intervention to restore elected President Aristide.Bosnia (mid-1990s) and Kosovo/Yugoslavia (1999): NATO airstrikes (e.g., Deliberate Force, Allied Force) against Bosnian Serb and Serbian/Yugoslav forces.Afghanistan and Sudan (1998): Operation Infinite Reach—cruise missile strikes on al-Qaeda-related targets after embassy bombings.2000s–2010sAfghanistan (2001–2021): Operation Enduring Freedom and follow-ons—invasion and long war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda after 9/11; included special operations, airstrikes, and ground combat until withdrawal.Iraq (2003–2011): Operation Iraqi Freedom—invasion to topple Saddam Hussein; occupation and counterinsurgency. Later operations against ISIS (from 2014).Counterterrorism operations (ongoing from early 2000s): Drone strikes, special forces raids, and support in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Philippines, and elsewhere against al-Qaeda, affiliates, and later ISIS/al-Shabaab.Libya (2011): Operation Odyssey Dawn / NATO intervention—airstrikes enforcing a no-fly zone and supporting rebels against the Gaddafi regime.Iraq and Syria against ISIS (2014–present, Operation Inherent Resolve): Airstrikes, special operations, and advisory support. Additional strikes against Iranian-backed militias.2020: Drone strike killing Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.2020s (selected)Continued operations against ISIS remnants, al-Shabaab, and other groups in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere.Yemen (notably from 2024 onward in response to Houthi attacks on shipping): Airstrikes and related actions against Houthi targets (often coordinated with partners).Iran: February 28, 2026 to present.Can anyone provide a plausible account of how any of these military actions have done anything for the vast majority of American people—that is, people who do NOT receive substantial income from the military-industrial-complex?Note how the astonishingrecord of failureto achieve constructive political outcomes has done NOTHING to dampen Washington’s appetite to continue attacking and killing people abroad.The people who support President Trump’s infernally stupid war against Iran either don’t understand or don’t care about the true interests of “We the People” of the United States of America.I frequently receive emails from friends trying to persuade that I am wrong about this, but they have no plausible explanation for how the Iran war serves “We the People” of the US, nor do they demonstrate much understanding of history or military affairs or the cost of America’s forever wars.Instead of demonstrating understanding, they proffer me crude propaganda talking points. I am confident that none of them would risk their own lives or the lives of their children to subdue Iran.Indeed, were it not for the delusions generated by debt financing and air power, they would see the Iran War for what it is—a preposterously ruinous and criminal enterprise waged by a senescent President who has no coherent strategy, and who is too beholden to his ego and his billionaire cronies to serve the interests of We the People.The last time the American homeland was threatened was in 1814 when British forces occupied and burned much of Washington D.C.. Since then, the enemy hasn’t been at the gates; he’s been in our heads.The greatest threats to national security and public health and safety are not external. They are produced by the plundering racketeers and manipulators on Capitol Hill who profit from fear and division.As I show in Chapter 3 (“War, the Father of All Mind Viruses”) of my new book, the archaic fear that we are being threatened by a mortal enemy is the cause of most of mankind’s self-inflicted disasters.Please order your copy ofMind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions.Reading it will immunize your minds against the evil nonsense that our racketeering ruling class is constantly inflicting on us.To learn more about the book and the topics that it covers, please visit theWEBSITE.Subscribe nowShare

Summary: Reflections on America's "Forever Wars"