We humans evolved, over millions of years, from single cell amoebae to multi cellular organisms, invertebrates, vertebrates and finally to by-pedal ‘pithecanthropus erectus’. We are therefore indisputably part of nature; traceable within a direct flow starting from the earliest formative years of the universe.

Mankind has celebrated this relationship for thousands of years, taking the form of seasonal ritual expressions of thanks for its bounty and healing powers. 

Surviving tribal cultures still practice such ritual recognition of their dependence and interconnection with the powers of nature.

Nature celebrating pagan societies predate the imposition of Christianity on the European continent and American Indians made such rituals a central part of their lives until forced off their sacred lands by Western colonisers.

In the East, spiritual recognition of the infinite power of the universe shaped whole societies, becoming integrated into the way of life of millions of ordinary people.

We humans cannot ‘stand alone’ in separation from the living environment in which we find ourselves. However, formal educational systems have instilled in us this sense of separation. A sense of superiority to the plant and animal kingdom. A belief that we are a uniquely intelligent life form having the right to exert control over nature and the natural environment, for our own ends.

Out of this belief has arisen a form of inbuilt arrogance. A belligerence concerning our relationship with the multiplicity of existence. “it’s all there to serve us!” say tunnel vision exponents of capitalism, communism and socialism – thinking only of how to profit by the mining of its wealth.

But the bounty of nature is our bread basket, our survival life line. It nourishes more than just our physical needs, fuelling the birth of the arts as well as our spiritual aspirations. 

Quantum physics has made us aware that even the millions of cells that comprise the make up our bodies, are in constant intelligent contact with each other and with the environment through which we move.

All this goes to show how embedded we are with the natural environment; how we affect it and how it affects us, symbiotically.

But this reality has been under attack for a long time. Its natural generosity and health sustaining powers were seen as a threat to the world’s aspiring architects of control. To them, man’s ability to survive and thrive needed to be tied into a system of profit, top down power, exploitation and complete ‘people management’.

Through the centuries, various key historical events further cemented the power of these pernicious control agents. Outstanding, in this respect, have been the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars.

The Industrial Revolution sucked peasant farmers and artisans off the land with the promise of regular wages and greater purchasing power in the industrial cities. 

From this moment on, man’s relationship with nature became deeply fractured.

Where once soil, crops, animals, forests and rivers formed the setting of daily life and work; now bleak concrete, brick and steel became the dominant setting, soon etching their way into the psyche of the new arrivals, along with the coal dust and industrial pollutants irredeemably tainting the air.

Huge numbers were drafted into this new industrial phenomenon. And the countryside was drained of its best young talent and also the rituals that had welcomed the seasons, the rising and setting sun and the waxing and waning moon.

Between approximately 1760 and 1840, this vast exodus from the land radically shifted the values of society. The imagination of society. The creative focus of society. The true wealth of society.

In the UK, with the the earlier advent of The Bank of England (1694) came the perfect top down means of exploiting the new urban class: borrowing money at interest – usury. The impoverishment of the workers came hand in hand with the promise of “a better life” than on the land. A weekly wage packet from the factory replacing the self sufficiency derived from the fields.

A new definition of ‘liberty’ emerged amongst the grime of industrialisation: ‘the direct ability to acquire material goods’, to adorn one’s home with decorative objects. The beginning of the modern day allure of ‘convenience’ placated families who sold out to slavery to the bosses of the new corporations that competed with each other for cheaper raw materials and higher profits.

I am sketching this passage of history in order to show how contemporary man became desensitised and alienated from nature, and how adapting to a life of mechanisation started a process that has culminated in the present surge in uptake of a virtual AI led digital dystopia.

Large scale, centralised industrial mechanisation and extensive mechanised transport systems became the dominant landscape in an aspiration for the prize of ‘modernity’. Spurred on by a superficial propaganda regime that included mass produced advertising, titillating posters and alluring shop windows – all to win the hearts and minds of working people and create an alien reality which usurped the diverse agricultural landscape they had left behind.

You can see why – with the advent of agrichemical industrial farming that followed – the last vestiges of a working relationship with nature has been obliterated; drowned out under a sea of toxic chemicals and ever more brutal farm machinery.

So eventually ex landed agriculturists found themselves in the ironic position of purchasing their second hand, denatured and degraded toxic dinners from the wages of industrial slavery, having left behind their ability to earn their keep direct from the cultivation of the fruits of the land.

Two World Wars simply reinforced this process of alienation. Post war society got ‘the supermarket’ and food travelling the length and breadth of the planet – to be sold ‘cheap’ on their plastic neon lit shelves.

The new bosses of globalised corporate exploitation quickly joined arms with the bankers – and the resulting multimillionaires obscenely sprouted up to become the dominant influencers of governments the world over.

By now ‘we the people’ were completely immersed in the high standing given to the god of technology. The word ‘progress’ became interpreted to mean more, faster and more convenient.

So when the computer and mobile phone hit the scene there was an immediate clamour to own such devices and live under their spell. Thus our once tangible world became increasingly ‘virtual’.

AI and the Transhuman are a direct extension of this stampede into abstraction and alienation from our agrarian roots. We have bought into our own slavery and degradation, and for most, it looks like there is no going back.

But for some – and hopefully soon more – there is. And here lies the rising star of the East.

Those who wish to remake their lives once again into a collaboration and celebration with their roots; to get closer to the heart beat of our ancient earth and to breathe the sweet air of forests, lakes, rivers and seas – should act now – before the AI mind controllers sweep the next swathe of Smart hostages into their digital gulag.

Even now, as our world is darkened and torn by wars – including the war on nature – instigated by psychopathic despots and greed obsessed oligarchs – nature shows-off her extraordinary resilience, blazing her expansive glory in the gardens, fields and forests where human beings retain their role as guardians of the diversity of plant and animal life.

That is where we belong if we care about reawakening, nurturing and expanding our technologically impoverished souls. 

We humans possess the same extraordinary resilience as that displayed by nature, but most have kept it hidden away behind a veil of indoctrinated self doubt.

So now, at this eleventh hour, it’s time to cast aside the chains of timidity and wrest back control of our destinies. And in taking this crucial step, I council you to revaluate your present life and call on nature to be your guide in designing your great onward adventure.

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer, geopolitical analyst, international activist and broadcaster. See website www.julianrose.info for information about Julian’s acclaimed book Overcoming the Robotic Mind and other works. Books can be purchased by contacting Julian direct: see ‘contact author’ under ‘reviews’.

The post Man as an Extension of Nature – Not a Techno Hybrid Simulation appeared first on Activist Post.

Ranked: The World’s Most and Least Liked Countries

See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download it for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Key Takeaways

• Switzerland and Canada have the world’s highest net perception scores, both at +36.
• The United States ranks among the five worst-perceived countries, with a score of -16.
• Israel records the lowest score globally at -24, followed by Afghanistan and North Korea at -19.

How a country is viewed abroad can influence everything from tourism and investment to diplomacy and soft power. While countries such as Switzerland, Canada, and Japan enjoy strongly positive global reputations, others face much more negative perceptions.

This graphic ranks 65 countries by their average net perception score, calculated by subtracting negative views from positive views.

The data comes from the Democracy Perception Index 2026, which surveyed more than 46,000 respondents across 85 countries.

Nice Perceptions of the North Atlantic

Switzerland and Canada top the global rankings with net perception scores of +36, followed closely by Japan (+34) and Sweden (+33).

Of the top 15 best-perceived countries, over two-thirds are located in Europe. Member countries of the European Union, meanwhile, average out to around +26. This average is brought down substantially by France’s relatively low +11 score, which it shares with the United Kingdom.

This data table lists countries based on their net perception globally.

The positive global perception of Canada and European countries like Switzerland and Italy (+32) may reflect a mix of factors, including domestic stability, quality of life, diplomatic positioning, and relatively open societies.

Positive perceptions also extend to other developed countries beyond the North Atlantic, including Australia and New Zealand (both +30), as well as major Asian economies such as Singapore and South Korea (both +21).

The Decline of American Soft Power

The United States stands out as a major outlier in the rankings. Despite being the world’s largest economy and one of its most influential countries, it receives a net perception score of -16, placing it among the five lowest-ranked nations in the survey.

While the global view of the U.S. has always been complex, shaped by immigration, culture, and foreign policy, it has deteriorated notably over the last decade. Under the Donald Trump administrations (2017-2021, 2025-present), surveys have consistently reflected a worsening of global public opinion of, and trust in, the United States.

As of 2026, the U.S. does not find itself in the company of peers like Germany, Japan, or even the United Kingdom. Instead, it ranks near countries such as Iran (-17) and Iraq (-13), both of which have long-standing geopolitical tensions with the U.S.

The Worst-Perceived Countries Worldwide

The U.S. is not alone in netting a negative perception score. India (-2) and Pakistan (-9) both received more negative responses than positive, as did Nigeria (-3), Russia (-11), and Saudi Arabia (-1).

No country fares worse than Israel, which has a -24 net perception score. Controversy around the country has grown in recent years owing to its conflicts in Gaza as well as Lebanon, Syria, and most notably Iran.

As a result, Israel records the lowest net perception score in the survey. It ranks below every other country evaluated, including Afghanistan and North Korea (both -19), underscoring how sharply global opinion has shifted in recent years.

The post Ranked: The World’s Most and Least Liked Countries appeared first on Activist Post.

A former FDA regulatory consultant says Merck failed to adequately warn the public that its Gardasil HPV vaccine could be linked to postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and other autoimmune-related conditions, according to a public court filing. The expert report, released after Merck settled hundreds of Gardasil lawsuits, alleges the company had sufficient evidence to strengthen the vaccine’s safety warnings years earlier but chose not to do so.

A pharmaceutical regulatory expert says Merck failed to adequately warn the public that its Gardasil HPV vaccine could be linked to postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and other autoimmune-related conditions, according to a public court filing.

The expert report, released after Merck settled hundreds of Gardasil lawsuits, alleges the company had sufficient evidence to strengthen the vaccine‘s safety warnings years earlier but chose not to do so.

Since Merck’s highly profitable Gardasil vaccine first came on the market in 2006, the list of side effects on the label has grown.

Over time, Merck added reports of dizziness, fatigue, fainting and other conditions. And eventually, the label noted that there had been postmarketing reports of autoimmune diseases, motor neuron disease, transverse myelitis and other conditions.

The collection of symptoms — along with evidence from animal studies, Merck’s own clinical trials, case reports submitted to the company and published scientific literature — all indicated that Gardasil could cause autoimmune disorders and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) in some individuals.

Yet the company never warned the public about these risks, according to regulatory affairs specialist Stephen Amato, Ph.D., a professor and department chair of Graduate Regulatory Affairs and Life Science at Northeastern University and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration consultant with decades of experience in pharmaceutical regulation.

Amato concluded that Merck should have added stronger warnings about possible autoimmune-related adverse events, including POTS, to the Gardasil label.

In his declaration to the court, Amato said that Merck listed POTS symptoms on the label as individual adverse events, when the drugmaker should have warned about the condition itself.

A warning is a higher level of precaution that would more effectively alert the public to a possible causal relationship between Gardasil and POTS and other autoimmune disorders.

“Merck continued to add other symptoms of POTS to postmarketing sections of its labels, but never a Warning of POTS; rather Merck merely added what appeared to be a random collection of symptoms without ever connecting them to one another,” he wrote.

Amato said federal regulations require manufacturers to update warnings when there is “reasonable evidence of a causal association,” even if a causal relationship has not been definitively proven.

He said that by January 2011, Merck either knew or “should have known” that there was reasonable evidence of a causal connection between Gardasil and autoimmune reactions, including POTS.

Merck has consistently maintained that Gardasil is safe and effective.

Amato’s findings are detailed in an expert report submitted as evidence in a lawsuit against Merck by Jennifer Robi, a California woman who alleged the Gardasil vaccine permanently disabled her.

Robi and hundreds of other plaintiffs recently settled with Merck on confidential terms. The expert reports submitted during the case are now public.

Failure to warn at heart of lawsuits against Merck

Amato’s argument that Merck failed to warn consumers about the link between Gardasil and POTS was at the heart of Robi’s — and many other plaintiffs’ — vaccine injury lawsuits against the company.

When consumers purchase a product in the U.S., they typically assume that it is safe and that manufacturers have disclosed any risks. Manufacturers typically have a duty to warn consumers of risks associated with their products, and may be held liable if they don’t.

That responsibility includes the requirement that they update labels as new information becomes available. When they don’t, they can be liable for failing to warn the public about the risks.

This theory of liability has been at the heart of many high-profile lawsuits, including legal battles over Roundup weedkiller and toxic baby food.

In all of these cases, plaintiffs alleged that the companies knew the risks. However, to protect their profit margins, they deliberately chose not to disclose the risks to the public.

In the case of Gardasil, Amato determined that the company knew about many factors that could cause autoimmune reactions. For example, the vaccine uses a highly potent aluminum adjuvant, and such adjuvants have been linked to autoimmune issues.

Merck acknowledged that it knew there were DNA fragments left in the shot — which the company never investigated for possible side effects. Studies of Gardasil in mice showed evidence of autoimmune reactions.

There were also numerous postmarketing adverse event reports of POTS, POTS symptoms and other autoimmune issues.

Amato also criticized aspects of Merck’s clinical trial design, postmarketing surveillance practices and its marketing of the vaccine.

Amato contends that Merck’s marketing materials overstated the vaccine’s benefits and that the company’s pharmacovigilance efforts prioritized protecting the product’s reputation rather than fully investigating potential safety concerns.

Related articles in The Defender

• Merck Ignored Gardasil Safety Warnings From Its Own Trial Investigator, Court Documents Reveal
• Woman Confined to Wheelchair Settles With Merck Over HPV Vaccine Lawsuit
• CDC Relied on Cherry-picked Data to Claim No Link Between Merck’s Gardasil Vaccine and POTS
• Merck Used Highly Potent Aluminum in Gardasil HPV Vaccine Trials Without Informing Participants
• ‘Indefensible’: Merck Designed Gardasil Trials to Mask HPV Vaccine Harms

The post Merck Deliberately Hid Gardasil Link to Autoimmune Disorders, Says Former FDA Consultant appeared first on Activist Post.

When I was a kid, that was a pretty common phrase I would hear from the adults in my life. To me, it basically meant you couldn’t have something you wanted without also accepting the consequences that came with it.

Officially, it is a common idiom meaning you can’t enjoy two mutually exclusive benefits or options at the same time—you must choose one or the other.

The official explanation doesn’t fit the context of this article as clearly as my childhood interpretation. You’ll see what I mean in a minute.

Recently, I was engaged in a deep conversation with an ultra-liberal type. I use the word “type” because I no longer know what “liberal” actually means. The term has been twisted and redefined so many times that it has lost all recognizable shape. We’ve had to invent a new label—“woke”—to describe what used to be labelled liberals who have now drifted far beyond reason.

What struck me most during this conversation was how many of these people (assuming this one person represented many) seem unable to grasp a very basic truth: two contradictory ideas cannot exist in the same reality. They can’t have their cake and eat it too. They have to choose. But they typically do not.

You cannot believe that a country should have secure borders and, at the same time, believe that anyone who wants to should be allowed to enter without any legal process. A border is either closed (or controlled) or it is open. Both cannot be true.

You cannot champion women’s rights while simultaneously supporting a culture or ideology (such as strict Sharia Law) that systematically denies women basic rights.

You cannot believe a woman has the absolute right to abort her unborn child and, in the very next breath, insist she should be punished if she drinks or takes drugs while pregnant.

These should be obvious contradictions, yet they aren’t to many people. As our conversation continued, my head began to spin. When we touched on trans issues, I asked, “So you believe an 11-year-old should be allowed to have their genitals surgically removed?”

“Oh no,” she replied, “I don’t believe that!”

Later, when she spoke passionately about wealth being equally distributed, I said, “So you’re a neo-Marxist?”

“Oh no,” she exclaimed, “I don’t believe that either!”

It was the same pattern every time we came upon diverse views on a particular topic. She eagerly embraced Statement #1 (having the cake), but adamantly rejected the logical consequences of Statement #2 (eating it).

This is a serious problem. With this kind of logic, it’s impossible to reach any real conclusion. Having the cake cancels out eating it—and in the end, you’re left with nothing.

I pondered this for some time and realized it is one of the main reasons these “types” are so incorrigible and impossible to reason with.

The fact that you can’t have your cake and eat it too is exactly why a sane person eventually chooses one position or the other. Or, more often in my case, decides to choose neither.

There are many topics where the consequences of choosing either side feel so heinous that I simply refuse to commit. Since I’m not responsible for deciding for anyone else, it’s easy for me to shrug my shoulders and sheepishly (pun intended) mutter, “I don’t know, I haven’t decided.”

Take the moon landing debate, for example. When I listen to someone making the case that we really landed on the moon, I find myself nodding along. When I hear the opposing argument, I agree with quite a bit of that too. I can’t settle firmly on one side because both carry uncomfortable implications, and nothing in my life depends on my decision. So, I waffle.

The typical ultra-liberal, however, will usually stick rigidly with the official narrative (“Yes, we absolutely landed on the moon”) even when presented with strong counter-evidence—such as photographic anomalies, the vanishing of original telemetry data, or the technological limitations of the time that many experts still find difficult to explain. They may even quietly concede some of these points when pressed (if they listen to them at all, which most do not), but they refuse to let them challenge their core belief. You can’t have it both ways.

Let me pick an example I’m much clearer on: the taking down of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. I am certain those buildings were brought down by controlled demolition—or something similar.

The science and physics are very clear.

Most liberals reject this outright because it contradicts the official terrorist attack narrative. Yet if you point out the basic laws of physics—that a steel-framed building cannot collapse at near free-fall speed into its own footprint without the support columns being removed—they sometimes grudgingly agree with the physics…but still won’t accept the obvious conclusion.

You can’t have it both ways.

One of the major factors in making a clear decision is recognizing this particular truth: two opposing ideas cannot exist in the same reality. When faced with this, most critical thinkers are forced to choose. Which principle matters more to you?

In the case of borders, I believe a controlled border is more important than an open one. Therefore, I accept the choice—along with its necessary enforcement—even if I find some aspects of it cruel. (That said, if the enforcement becomes criminal, it must be properly addressed.)

So, my “ultra-liberal” convo ended poorly, as it usually does. And I continue to wonder what mind-altering substance was included in those mRNA vaccines. I don’t put much weight in the comment “liberals have always been like this.” No, they haven’t. They’ve been close, perhaps, but never to this extreme. My arguments landed like something from outer space.

In these situations I always think of a documentary I once saw about deprogramming cult members. No matter how many logical, objective facts were presented, they clung stubbornly to the original cult narrative. Only after very careful, patient work did some of them finally break.

Needless to say, I don’t have time for that. And I am not this person’s therapist. But man, it really is like talking to a cult member.

And maybe that is exactly what they are.

The post You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too appeared first on Activist Post.

Please note: This post is also available on Substack.

* * *
Let’s consider the arguments of those who advocate global governance, the people whom Hrvoje Morić identifies as the Multipolaristas. They are often engaged in China-maxxing and are, whether they know it or not, essentially serving as propagandists for the global oligarchy.

Research conducted by analysts working for the South China Morning Post (SCMP)—an English-speaking, Western-aligned Chinese news outlet—suggests that, between 2015 and 2025, a notable shift occurred in the way China and its government were portrayed by the leading Western media organisations. Chief analyst Jianlu Bi, who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Policy Studies and a research fellow at the Charhar Institute in Beijing, wrote:

[N]early 70 per cent of stories covering China’s economy, technology or environment in 2019 had a negative tone [but] by 2025, the share of negative stories dropped to around 40 per cent, along with an increase in neutral coverage across all categories and positive coverage of the [Chinese] economy.

This notable Western media narrative shift is part of a wider trend that can be described as “China-maxxing.” With outlets like The Economist, the Financial Times, and The New York Times—all previously known for their staunch anti-China propaganda—now quite regularly extolling the virtues of China and, most notably, its economy, “China-maxxing” is an identifiable phenomenon. The Western mainstream media is gradually shifting to sell the Chinese government to us as the “good guys.”

Recently, Elon Musk has engaged in some China-maxxing of his own. Musk is part of the gaggle of oligarchs eager to roll out AI data centers wherever they can. Musk was keen to point out that the only national government that has, in his view, adopted the right approach is China’s:

The availability of energy is the issue. If you look at electrical output outside of China, it’s more or less flat. Very slight increase, but pretty much flat. [. . .] If you’re putting data centers anywhere except China, where are you going to get your electricity? Especially as you scale, how are you going to turn the chips on? Magical power sources? Magical electricity fairies?

The previous blanket Western media vilification of China was always absurd state propaganda. China has been framed as the comic-book villain to encourage Western populations to accept further suppressions of their rights by their own governments and to claim justification for increased public spending on the Western military-intelligence complex. Meanwhile, the multinational corporations that benefit from the government contracts, supposedly awarded to protect Western populations from the fabricated Chinese threat, such as Musk’s SpaceX, are led by oligarchs who genuinely pose a threat to everyone.

Though he didn’t use the term himself, in trying to explain China-maxxing, Mr. Jianlu offered a list of potential reasons for it. These included the Western media’s recognition of China’s technological and economic progress, the Chinese government’s apparent commitment to tackling climate change, its drive for efficiency, and so on. Jianlu argued that all of this has combined to force Western media outlets to reevaluate how they cover China and China-related matters.

Nation-states and national governments are set to be replaced by a global Technocracy. At some point, therefore, the conversation about moving away from the extant governance system to which people are accustomed to the new one has to commence.

Returning to Jianlu’s analysis, he is a leading Western policy think tank representative, and the media outlets he discussed primarily serve as propagandists for Western policy. Buried in the analysis, there is a brief statement that indicates what the real purpose of China-maxxing is:

Unlike the US, where policy shifts can abruptly occur due to political changes and short-term economic pressures, [. . .] China’s long-term strategic planning and consistent policy implementation have yielded results.

Dark Enlightenment-enthused oligarchs like Peter Thiel want to “escape from politics in all its forms,” and beyond dictatorship, there is no political mechanism of any kind in the Technocracy advocated by oligarchs like Elon Musk. The oligarchy intends to make itself the feudal lords (founders) of private smart city-states similar to those currently being developed in China. The UN desires the same transformation. China-maxxing suits their shared agenda perfectly.

China-maxxing is yet more Western media propaganda, this time intended to convince Westerners that the model of government they are accustomed to no longer works. The Chinese development of Technocracy is better because it “yields[s] results.” Irrespective of the fact that no Westphalian-model Western government has ever operated as a democracy, China-maxxing has arrived to persuade Westerners that the so-called “representative democracies” that they have been misled to believe are democracies are now surplus to requirements.

Multipolaristas, specifically those working in the independent media, perhaps unwittingly argue that the dictatorial state control of human beings’ access to resources is acceptable because the accompanying surveillance state seemingly “yields[s] results.” Some say it reduces crime or that the gleaming towers of the new city-states are so beautifully clean and convenient. Others that China’s infrastructure investment strategy shows the world a clear alternative to austerity.

China is nation-building while Western nations decline and collapse. Chinese Technocracy “yields[s] results” that failing Western nations cannot match. Unless, logically, they too adopt Technocracy.

To an extent, the Multipolaristas make reasonable points. Who wouldn’t want to live in safe, clean cities? Who wants austerity when the state could invest in much-needed infrastructure instead? Who wouldn’t want the employment opportunities and the economic benefits that result? But all of the Multipolarista’s ostensibly reasonable observations and commentaries are based upon fatal omissions that result in them essentially spreading Western propaganda, intentionally or otherwise.

No state needs to impose a centralised technological population surveillance system in order to improve public safety, clean the environment or the streets, or invest in the public infrastructure and its own economy. By effectively promoting global governance and Technocracy, the Multipolaristas’ foolhardy suggestion is that functional oligarchies are benevolent and that we should trust them.

Oligarchs are constructing their digital kill chains, and oligarchs like Musk are also promoters of China’s blossoming Technate. This is not a coincidence.

There are no historical examples of a state ever successfully imposing the full gamut of despotic behavioural control systems on a large population. But with its Greater Bay Area initiative, linking China’s numerous smart city projects together, China is reaching that point. Now Western mainstream and independent media outlets are showcasing China’s development to sell all the alleged benefits of Technocracy to Western populations.

Neither fascism nor communism even comes close to the behavioural dictatorship Technocracy is designed to inflict. Ignoring this aspect of China’s undoubtedly impressive modernisation is an epistemological error so profound it renders the rest of the Multipolaristas’ arguments practically irrelevant.

If the objective was not to enslave us, no state and no oligarch would construct Technates. The sole purpose of Technocracy is systematic human bondage.

From humanity’s perspective, there is nothing good about living in a Technocracy. No matter what incentives we are given, irrespective of the claimed benefits offered to entice us, giving our consent to those who wish to foist Technocracy upon us is an act of generational suicide.

There is, of course, no reason why we should agree to any of it.

The post The Multipolaristas’ China-Maxxing appeared first on Activist Post.

To Survive the Imminent Chaos, You’ll Need to Develop Inner Peace

I recently spent way too many hours learning to properly crimp wires for the off-grid solar system I’m building — sweating over MC4 connectors and watching tutorial videos until my eyes crossed.

At first, it felt trivial. Why not just hire an electrician? Because an electrician won’t be there when the grid goes down and the supply chains freeze. The coming energy and geopolitical crises demand that we become self-reliant and grounded in practical knowledge. You and I need to learn all the practical skills we can while we are still able.

Waiting for any system to save you is a death sentence. Self-reliance is no longer a hobbyist’s pursuit for eccentric libertarians; it is the only path to maintaining dignity and survival. ^[1]

Why I’m Building My Own Off-Grid System — And Why You Should Too

The power grid is becoming increasingly unreliable, devoured by AI data centers and strained by geopolitical tensions like the Iran conflict that has already sent oil surging past $100 a barrel. ^[2] An electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear detonation or solar storm could instantly cripple power grids, communications, and critical infrastructure, leading to societal collapse. ^[3] I want to know how to repair and maintain everything myself because civilization as we know it may not function reliably for much longer.

You can start small. The No Grid Survival Projects Book by Logan Wilder offers 75+ projects for water, food, shelter, power and security. ^[4] Even a basic solar panel array with battery storage can keep your lights on, your water pump running, and your medical devices charged. But you must learn to install and troubleshoot it yourself. The off-grid life is a garden where dreams blossom in the light of hard work and patience. ^[5] Don’t wait until the blackout hits to figure out which wire connects to which terminal.

The Dangerous Disconnect of the Elites

I recently watched a politician on television planting a tree for a photo op — still in its plastic nursery pot. That image sums up the disconnect of our ruling class. They are utterly detached from the basic realities of how things work. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently warned of “mass chaos” for air travel if a government shutdown continues, possibly closing parts of U.S. airspace. ^[6] These are the people in charge of keeping the lights on.

Without hands-on skills, people become helpless when systems fail — and that failure is precisely what the globalists are engineering. Every crisis currently being manufactured is designed to cover up a larger crime or power grab. ^[7] The elites want a population too stupid to question their actions, too dependent on fragile infrastructure to resist. ^[8] The only antidote is to learn how to do things yourself, with your own hands, using tools that don’t require an internet connection.

Practical Skills That Will Save You

What will actually matter when the lights go out? Practical, hands-on life skills that sustain and rebuild communities. In a post-SHTF world, those who can grow food, fix engines, and treat wounds will be the new aristocracy. ^[9] I’m not talking about abstract knowledge. Learn to crimp wires, change your oil, raise chickens, and purify water without municipal treatment. Starting recession-proof projects like a home garden or a chicken coop can shift priorities toward self-reliance. ^[10]

The prepper’s long-term survival guide by Jim Cobb emphasizes that self-sufficiency and sustainable living are the only ways to thrive when the system collapses. ^[11] Store essential resources like diesel (with a hand pump so you can move it), and invest in off-grid energy so you are not dependent on a collapsing system. Water is the top priority when SHTF — store and purify it using boiling, filtration, or chemical disinfection. ^[12] These skills are your true currency.

Real Wealth vs. Paper Illusions

The stock market is hypnotized by headlines, but underneath the theater, dangerous cracks are spreading. ^[13] Stock market bubbles in SpaceX and Nvidia are ephemeral; real wealth is a private forest path, fresh blueberries from your garden, and the ability to generate your own power. The U.S. dollar index has collapsed more than 10% in twelve months — a flashing red alert of systemic failure. ^[2] Precious metals like gold and silver are your last lifeline before the crash. ^[14]

Modern money only works by cheating. ^[15] I’ve seen it over and over: paper illusions vanish overnight, while tangible assets endure. My local garden is full of turmeric and aloe vera, and I raise chickens to receive fresh farm eggs each day. Values and integrity are the anchors that keep you grounded when everything else is topsy-turvy. ^[16] The people who have followed my work and invested in gold, silver, and self-reliance are healthier, happier, and more resilient than the average person. That’s not an accident — it’s the result of living in reality.

Conclusion: Anchor Yourself Now

Hard times are coming. The slow, steady collapse has already begun — eroding supply chains, currency value, and public trust. ^[17] But those with real-world skills, physical assets, and strong values will endure. I’ve outlined the ten smartest things people are currently doing to prepare, from moving away from high-population areas to stockpiling seeds and tools. ^[18] Prepping for collapse, famine, and nuclear war is not paranoia; it’s prudence. ^[19]

Find your anchor — whether it’s faith, family, a patch of defensible land, or a reliable garden for food production. Hold tight. Learn to crimp a wire, plant a seed, and purify water. The elites want you distracted and dependent. Reject that. Anchor yourself in reality, and you will not just survive — you will thrive while the towers of illusion crumble around you.

References

1. The Nuclear Rubicon: Why Iran’s Deterrent Is Our Only Hope and How to Survive What Follows. – NaturalNews.com. March 26, 2026.
2. The Perfect Storm: Dollar Collapse, Silver Shock, and Trump’s Final Gamble with Iran. – NaturalNews.com. January 27, 2026.
3. The Silent Storm: How to Prepare for an EMP Catastrophe That Could Rewind Modern Civilization. – NaturalNews.com. Evangelyn Rodriguez. January 19, 2026.
4. No Grid Survival Projects Book 2024: The Ultimate Off-Grid Guide With 75+ Projects for Water, Food, Shelter, Power and Security. Wilder, Logan.
5. No Grid Survival Project 7 Books in 1: Dive into a Holistic Exploration of Off-Grid Living. Claude Raynold.
6. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Warns Of Air Travel “Mass Chaos” And Possible Closure Of Airspace. – 100PercentFedUp.com. November 4, 2025.
7. WAR, FAMINE, FINANCIAL COLLAPSE: Every Engineered Crisis Is a COVER STORY for a Larger Globalist Crime or Power Grab. – NaturalNews.com. October 31, 2023.
8. Health Ranger Report – data center sabotage. Mike Adams. Brighteon.com. August 20, 2025.
9. Want to Get Rich After the Apocalypse? Check Out These 10 Rare Life Skills to Employ. – NaturalNews.com. S.D. Wells. October 9, 2025.
10. Prepping on a Budget: 8 Recession-Proof Projects to Start on Your Homestead. – NaturalNews.com. Zoey Sky. May 7, 2025.
11. Prepper’s Long Term Survival Guide: A Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide. Jim Cobb.
12. Thriving Without Electricity: Essential Survival Tips for Any Situation. – NaturalNews.com. Zoey Sky. June 17, 2025.
13. The Quiet Collapse Under The Market’s Surface…It’s Getting Louder. – ZeroHedge. May 27, 2026.
14. Silver Tsunami: Why Precious Metals Are Your Last Lifeline Before the Crash. – NaturalNews.com. March 20, 2026.
15. “Modern Money Only Works By Cheating”: If You’re Long Bitcoin (Or Not Long Bitcoin), Read This… – ZeroHedge. February 12, 2026.
16. Brighteon Broadcast News. Mike Adams. Brighteon.com.
17. Health Ranger Report – Special Report: The Slow Steady Collapse Has Begun. Mike Adams. Brighteon.com. June 3, 2021.
18. Health Ranger Report – The 10 SMARTEST DUMBEST Things. Mike Adams. Brighteon.com. June 9, 2021.
19. Prepping for Collapse, Famine, and Nuclear War: 12 Tips That Will Help You Be More Resilient When SHTF. – NaturalNews.com. June 28, 2023.
20. Mike Adams interview with Marjory Wildcraft. January 23, 2025.
21. Mike Adams interview with Dr. Leonard Coldwell. July 16, 2024.

Explainer Infographic

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“When Governments Fail, We Sail — Humanity’s Compass Points to Gaza.”

Joshua Scheer

As Gaza remains under siege and much of the world looks away, activists continue to challenge the blockade through acts of nonviolent resistance. In this powerful interview with Chris Hedges, Brazilian organizer Thiago Ávila recounts what he describes as one of the most brutal crackdowns yet against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla movement.

Ávila details the interception of a multinational humanitarian mission in international waters, the detention of more than 180 activists, and allegations of beatings, threats, solitary confinement, and interrogation by Israeli authorities. His account is not only a personal story of suffering, but also a broader indictment of what he argues is the collapse of international law in the face of Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

While supporters view the flotillas as acts of civil resistance aimed at breaking the blockade and drawing attention to Palestinian suffering, Israeli authorities have repeatedly portrayed such missions as security threats. The interview explores this clash of narratives, the growing international solidarity movement, and why activists continue to sail despite knowing interception is likely.

For Ávila, the story is ultimately not about himself. Again and again, he returns to the plight of Palestinians living under siege and bombardment, insisting that whatever he endured remains only a fraction of what Palestinians face daily. The result is a sobering conversation about resistance, repression, and the lengths ordinary people are willing to go to challenge what they see as a historic injustice.

Israeli Torture Dungeon Revealed: Thiago Ávila’s Harrowing Account of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Seizure

In a disturbing interview with Chris Hedges, Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila describes what he says was a brutal campaign of violence, intimidation, and abuse carried out after Israeli forces intercepted the latest Gaza Freedom Flotilla mission in international waters.

Ávila, a longtime organizer with the flotilla movement, alleges that activists were seized hundreds of miles from Gaza, held aboard what he describes as a floating military prison, denied adequate food and medical care, subjected to beatings, threats, and prolonged detention, and later interrogated by Israeli intelligence services. He recounts being repeatedly punched and kicked, blindfolded, threatened with execution, and held in solitary confinement after refusing to abandon the mission.

Yet for Ávila, the story is not primarily about his own suffering. Throughout the interview he repeatedly returns to Gaza itself, arguing that the treatment of flotilla activists is inseparable from the broader humanitarian catastrophe facing Palestinians. He describes the flotilla campaign as one part of a growing international movement attempting to break the blockade, challenge what activists characterize as Israeli impunity, and force renewed global attention on Gaza after months in which the crisis had largely disappeared from Western headlines.

Among the interview’s most striking revelations:

• Activists say Israeli forces intercepted 22 vessels and detained more than 180 participants during the mission.

• Ávila alleges detainees were handcuffed, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, denied basic necessities, and threatened by soldiers.

• He describes being beaten unconscious twice while in Israeli custody and later interrogated for days by security services.

• Israeli authorities reportedly threatened activists with terrorism-related charges carrying decades-long prison sentences.

• Despite the crackdown, Ávila argues the mission succeeded in drawing renewed international attention to Gaza and helping spark additional diplomatic pressure on Israel.

The interview offers a rare firsthand account of what activists say they experienced after attempting to challenge Israel’s blockade by sea. It is also a reminder that, even as geopolitical attention shifts elsewhere, the struggle over Gaza remains far from over.

For More: Itamar Ben-Gvir Turns Torture Into a Public Spectacle: “Don’t Be Bothered by Their Screams”

Rape, Assault And Abuse Are Signature Israeli Government Values

Gaza Flotilla Activists Kidnapped By Israeli Forces Begin Hunger Strike

Transcript

Chris Hedges: Nothing illustrates the inversion of the international and moral order more than the genocide in Gaza and the shipment of billions of weapons by Western nations, especially the United States, to sustain it. Part of this inversion is the unrelenting persecution of those who denounce the genocide, risk their lives to halt it, and call for the rule of law. But the rule of law is buried under the rubble in Gaza. And because of that, Israel is able, with barely a word of protest by Western nations, Spain being one of the few exceptions, to abduct a hundred and eighty Sumud Flotilla crews 500 nautical miles from Gaza off the coast of Crete.

This open disdain for the law of the sea was accompanied by the usual Israeli brutality. Flotilla members were denied food, drenched in seawater, punched, kicked, dragged across decks with their hands tied, and shot at with rubber bullets and live ammunition. Eventually, crew members were transferred to Crete, where thirty-one were hospitalized. Two high profile members of the Flotilla, the Brazilian organizer, Thiago Avila, and the Spaniard, Saif Abu Keshek, who is of Palestinian descent, were kidnapped and taken to Israel. They were blindfolded, forced to lie on their stomachs and beaten with such severity that Thiago lost consciousness twice. When they appeared in an Israeli court, the bruises on their faces were visible. Thiago had trouble lifting his right arm. The two men were held in solitary confinement and went on hunger strike. They were accused of supporting terrorism and illegal activity.

Joining me to discuss resistance to the genocide, the importance of the flotillas and the egregious Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law is Thiago Avila. Before we begin with this latest – this is not the first time you have been held, of course, Thiago, by the Israelis – lay out the history of the flotillas and the importance of the flotillas.

Thiago Avila: Well, Chris, first of all, thank you so much for having me here. It’s very important that we speak about what’s happening in Gaza all the time. I’m one of thousands of people that have been involved throughout the years with the flotillas, with the solidarity movement for Palestine, who have been answering the call of the Palestinians to continue talking about eight decades of genocide and ethnic cleansing and apartheid colonial state and how to defeat this racist and supremacist ideology called Zionism.

It’s very important the work that you do, as well, sharing the truth in a moment in history where the truth is so scarce to see. So, the flotillas are part of this movement. Imagine eight decades of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but Gaza itself has been under siege for 19 years, by sea, by land, and by air. And for eighteen years there were attempts to break this siege. And the first five attempts in 2008, they actually broke this siege. Two small fishing boats made it there. They did the volunteer work. They brought the food and the aid, all the things that they were bringing. But then after the fifth mission, Israel started intercepting every single one of them. Some by this illegal kidnapping, and others by attacking them and even killing 10 people in the Mavi Marmora in 2010, others by sabotaging the boats.

Chris Hedges: Let me just stop you there, Thiago, because people may not understand. This was a Turkish ship and Israeli commandos repelled onto the ship and… I mean, explain what happened.

Thiago Avila: Yeah, it was actually like this that after December 2008, the first interception started. And in 2010, after a few failed attempts that the Israelis were intercepting the boats or attacking the boats, people decided that they needed to go with a flotilla. So, they came with several boats, including a very big boat called the Mavi Marmara. They left some from Greece, some from Istanbul, and when they were approaching Gaza, the Israeli commandos, the unit Shayetet 13, it’s an elite unit of the Israeli Navy, they attacked the boats and killed nine people immediately, six of them with shots in the back, and another one was put in a coma for four years and then eventually died. More than fifty other people were shot with live ammunition. And the Israelis said that they were attacked. That’s why they had to shoot and assassinate people in their self-defense. And that’s what the mainstream media disclosed to the world.

But, of course, it was a lie. There was a United Nations investigation that showed that six of these ten people got executed from shots from behind. And they were actually shooting before they even boarded the boat. So, there’s a documentary about this called “The Truth: Lost at Sea”, with the single amount of footage that managed to escape the detention and the kidnapping. So, it shows the truth. It shows the truth about this attack. And every single attempt since then have been either attacked again by bombs, like when they bombed our boats in Malta, by bureaucratic warfare, then when they pressure the governments to not allow us to sail, or insurance companies or flag states that give us a flag to sail international waters, or have been sabotaged when they put ropes in the propellers, when they pierce the hull of the boats, when they try to put acid in our water tanks and so many other things. And, of course, the interception, the illegal kidnapping.

So, it’s been more than twenty missions since then attempting to break the siege with people from all over the world and have been intercepting one after the other. After the pandemic and after the escalation of genocide, we understood that it was time to do bigger missions. So, we decided to do an emergency mission leaving from Turkiye with three big boats that in April 2024 ready to sail, with more than 30 countries represented, more than a thousand people, more than five thousand and five hundred tons of humanitarian aid. And they did bureaucratic warfare and pressured the government of Guinea-Bissau to remove the flag. We were not allowed to sail this time. So, we kept on going. Then we tried to sail from Malta and they bombed our boat in Malta in May 2025. Then in June, we managed to sail with the Madleen, a small boat of 12 people, myself, Greta, Rima Hassan, Yasmine, and eight other people from six different countries, and we got intercepted at 120 nautical miles.

And then the Handala boat went again and tried to get there and got intercepted again. And then we went with the Global Sumud Flotilla in October 2025, with 42 boats with more than 400 people. And wem also got intercepted, but the boats got very close. Some boats got 24 nautical miles to Gaza, and there was a huge global uprising, Chris, where even a general strike happened in Italy. The government was so cornered that they had to take measures against the Israeli apartheid regime. They had to, some of them, recognize the Palestinian state. Some of them applied sanctions. Some of them even sent military vessels to accompany our boats way close, but not close enough, to get to Gaza. And after October, we decided that we needed to keep on going. We were planning this next mission. And then on this next mission, we suffered another attack and huge violations this time. But that’s the history of the flotillas, which is important to say – people from all over the world, like many other nonviolent direct action solidarity missions, trying to do what is necessary. When the states don’t do enough, when the international community does not do enough, it’s everyday people who need to do it. Well, like we say, when governments fail, we sail.

Chris Hedges: But they’re seizing these boats in international waters. It’s a clear violation of the Law of the Sea.

Thiago Avila: Yes, it is. We are talking about a rogue state, Chris, a country that is committing genocide, is committing ethnic cleansing, is structured an apartheid state in the whole historical Palestine. So, for the level of violations that they continuously apply against the Palestinian people, this is just another one. But the thing is that when they intercept an international mission, they are violating different laws because there is law against colonization, there is law against the violations that they do against Palestinians as well. But the Law of the Sea says that when you are in international waters, no government can intercept any boat, especially when you have the right of innocent passage, like we did. And other than that, the international humanitarian law and the International Court of Justice, in the case opened by South Africa against Israel for the crime of genocide, they made a provisional ruling in June 2024 that stated that no country, especially Israel, but any other country as well, cannot stop any humanitarian mission heading to Gaza. And when they do that, they’re not only violating the Law of the Seas, but they’re violating the biggest judicial court in the entire planet. And they really don’t care. And that’s why we need to make them accountable.

Chris Hedges: Before we go into what happened to you in this latest flotilla and your detention, explain why. You know you’re going to get intercepted, it’s almost certain, but you keep pushing anyway. Why?

Thiago Avila: Well, Chris, when we are part of this, first of all, we don’t understand that the flotillas are the only tactic. For example, spreading the truth like you do is a very important way of promoting a better world. Doing demonstrations, doing boycott campaigns, the people very brave disrupting the arms factories, people doing all types of grassroots movement, of awareness. It’s all part of the same process. We don’t see the flotillas as something apart from this global uprising with a multiplicity of tactics.

But the flotillas themselves, they have a special place in people’s consciousness because it sets the alarm clock, it makes people move. Because people sometimes they get stuck in the blockade of information from the mainstream media, in the boycott, in the censorship from the big techs in their algorithms, with the silence of the states, the complicit states. So, the flotillas they have a way of showing a big mobilization and a sense of urgency that puts some things to move.

So, that’s why the flotillas are important. When we sailed this last mission, we were sailing with around seven months of the so-called ‘ceasefire’ on Gaza. And this so-called ‘’ceasefire didn’t really materialize for the Palestinian people. Seven months, and people were still getting killed, aid was still being hindered, the land was being stolen from the Palestinians, and their plans for the region was far from peace, was being ruled by war criminals like Netanyahu and Donald Trump, was being ruled by billionaires from the big techs with techno-authoritarian models of, dystopic models of working in Gaza with artificial intelligence and drones shooting people randomly. So, very bad things. And the industrial military complex profiting from war, from every bomb that falls onto a Palestinian children’s head, there was someone profiting at the end of that quarter. So, the perspectives of this so-called ‘ceasefire’ were dire for the Palestinian people.

That’s why we understood that we had to sail again. Not because we want it, because we were doing all the other tactics as well. We were mobilizing all the other fronts, but the flotillas, they had a way of breaking the silence about this. And so, we understood that it was necessary to sail, even despite the fact that the biggest probability was to be intercepted. But we don’t actually sail to get intercepted, because we really cannot tell, Chris, when is going to be the moment, when the world is going to rise up, when the pressure is going to be so big under the complicit states that they’re going to break their complicity and the pressure is going to be so big on the Zionist regime that even themselves they will not be able to pay the political cost of committing this war crime again, of intercepting a peaceful, non-violent humanitarian flotilla, of denying the right of the Palestinian people to access and control their own borders, like international law says. So, we never know. It’s like we are seeing a wall, and the Palestinians have been hitting this wall of colonization for decades. And we go side by side with them, shoulder to shoulder, hitting this wall as well. We never know which is going to be the strike that is going to break this wall apart, and then people will have their rights. We just need to be there with them, banging on this wall, hitting on this wall, until this wall collapses.

So, we never know which is going to be – the flotilla, the blockade, the boycott – which is going to be the action that will consolidate the victory of the Palestinian people in their indigenous resistance, in true self-determination and sovereignty. We actually cannot tell. So, we don’t sail to be intercepted, but we sail to maintain consistency and solidarity. We never know when we’re going to break this horrific siege.

Chris Hedges: You’re from Brazil. What’s the message that the genocide has sent to the Global South?

Thiago Avila: Well, I believe the most important message, Chris, is that nobody is safe. That the Zionist and the imperialist system, they can go very far. The total impunity that they committed is genocide in Gaza. They understood that they could escalate to Lebanon, they could escalate to Iraq, to Syria, to Yemen, to Iran, to Venezuela. They could bomb a country in Latin America, kidnap the president. They could create a naval blockade in Cuba. They could threaten any attempt at sovereignty from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, or any other country. They could interfere with elections everywhere. So, it set a precedent, a very dangerous precedent for humanity. And it showed that whoever thought that the genocide was only about Palestinians was very, very wrong. What we were saying for years in the flotillas is that the destiny of the Palestinian people is most likely the destiny of all humanity.

We’ve seen the countries that were shown as the beacons of civil liberties, of democracy and human rights, arresting people carrying signs, arresting people using watermelon flags, arresting people posting on social media. So, we broke completely the mask of the Global North as the governments who should preserve an idea of civility, ‘beacons of civilization’. So, the Palestinian people, really, they actually show us the lenses to see society as it really is, but also show us the map, that there’s no way out of this except for resisting, except for mobilizing.

Chris Hedges: So, let’s talk about the latest – this, as I said, is not the first time you’ve been detained by the Israelis. From the descriptions that I read, this was worse. You were, what, 600 nautical miles from Gaza, and you can take it from there. What happened?

Thiago Avila: Well, first of all, we were at that moment of the mission, Chris, that we were not going yet to Gaza. Our mission goes a long way. So, we sailed from Barcelona on May the 15th, and we were sailing from Barcelona to Sicily, where we got more boats, more people, where we trained more of our teams, and then we kept on going. When we left Sicily, we were going to pass by Greece, where more boats would be joining us, and then we would stop in Turkiye. And in Turkiye, we would train again all of our teams, bring more boats, bring more people, do more mobilizations. Some people that went just for the journey all the way there, they would disembark, and more people, who were going for the final leg, they would join our boats and would accompany us to Gaza. But, actually, there was a storm brewing in the Mediterranean. We needed to escape the storm. So, we decided that we would anchor in Greece. We actually needed that because our boats are old. Our financial capacity is not infinite. So, we have old boats with the as many boats as we can, but very old boats in bad quality. So, we had to stop for the safety of our participants as well. So, we were going to Greece and at the island of Crete, and then we started receiving radio messages and we started receiving some boats reporting malfunction in their communications until we lost the signal with one of our boats. And then we understood that there was something odd happening. And then some other boat’s reporters seen RHIBs coming with soldiers to that boat. And then we know very well what it is. It is an interception. And then we said from the steering committee, we said, “Prepare for interception.” The boats that can head to Greek territorial waters, despite the fact that Greece is a complicit state, and they were probably totally involved in this and what the reports we see from the people who went to Crete is that they were totally involved, totally aware of what was going on as well. But then, we said, “Try to get into territorial waters.” And for the other ones, they were coming and intercepting. They actually managed to intercept 22 boats. We were around 50 boats at that time, so 30 something, they actually got to Crete.

Chris Hedges: Let me just stop you, Thiago, explain how interception works.

Thiago Avila: Yes. Well, and what we call an interception is actually a kidnapping. They come and they come with big military vessels nearby us. From these military vessels they deploy some RHIBs, some small rubber boats full of commandos, around twenty commandos, full of rifles and no type of modern warfare gear. A lot of drones also accompany the action. And they come and they board our boats with one or two RHIBs. Once they board our boats with the barrel of the gun, they surrender everybody, they take control of the boat. Sometimes they move people to another place inside the boats. They take control. Sometimes they steer the boat all the way to Israel, to Ashdod Port. But this time they had a different plan. They just wanted to kidnap the people. They actually destroyed the boat and abandoned the boat there. Some boats, they pierced the hull, destroyed the engine for the boat to sink. And then just took the people, put on another of their RHIBs and took to a military boat, like a very big military vessel adapted to be a military prison at sea. And so that’s what they did this time. So, an interception is this when they kidnap the people, the boat, the humanitarian aid, but this time they were not even interested in that – stealing the boat and the aid like they do all the time – they wanted to sink the boats and abandon them there. They just wanted to kidnap the people. And so that’s what they did with 22 of these boats and 30 escaped. And so, we were 22 boats, 181 people in a military prison in the Mediterranean, with nobody having a single contact with the outside world, nobody knowing how was our state, our health, if anybody was injured, if anybody got hurt in any way. And we were in their custody and in their custody they did very, very violent treatment with us. So, when we got to this military prison, they first of all put us in stress positions like kneeled to the ground.

Chris Hedges: Were you handcuffed? You were handcuffed behind your back?

Thiago Avila: They would handcuff most of the people with zip ties. Sometimes when we got to the prison system in occupied Palestine and Israel, they would put the metal handcuffs as well. But sometimes during some procedures from transferring from one boat to the other, they would cut the zip ties and then people would go and they would put them again. And sometimes they would blindfold the people or would not blindfold the people. To me it was bit different this time because they recognized me from the start. It was actually the third time they were kidnapping me in less than a year. So, they knew me and they would treat me as an organizer. So, whenever they wanted to give a message to all of our participants, they would call me into a container full of commandos, and then their commander would say, “I want you to tell them to do this and this and this.” And I said to them, “I don’t mind telling our participants anything that is for their welfare. Something for their welfare, I would gladly do. But if something to make them harm, I refuse to do it.” And then they would say, “No, we just need to count them, this and this and this.” But then sometimes, they would ask me to do things that would do harm to our participants. For example, they were angry because when they put us in this military prison at sea, it was four containers and a square in the middle of these four containers. And in these four containers, three of them were for the people to stay, to sleep, extremely hot during the day, extremely cold during the night. And in the square, there was no coverage at all for the heat and for the moist of the ocean and for the cold. So, it was very harsh conditions. People lack water, but there was some water, but not enough for everybody. And people lacked food. There was some old, old bread, but some people, as well, went into a hunger strike, myself included, Chris.

So, what happened is that they put us in this military prison. They would put at the barrel of a gun to put people in line, to count them. They would throw stun grenades. They would throw flashbangs to scare people off. And people would get very cold at night. So, people would ask for jackets, for blankets. And what they would do, they gave like fifty jackets, but we were 181. And so, some people got jackets, but most of the people didn’t. So, they would go inside the container, they would pack themselves and cramp themselves in a way that would make it hotter, but still would not fit everybody. And so, people would stay outside walking all night to accelerate the metabolism and to stay a bit warmer. And when somebody asked for blankets or for jackets, they would laugh and they would make fun. They would point the lasers with the crosshairs of the rifles.

And then eventually, there was many people complaining. What they did was that they flooded the deck. They put a pipe, the pumps to flood the deck, and people would get even more wet and more cold. So cruel that they are. But at that moment, – we decided that it was at the end of the second day in this military prison with no communication to the outside world, without knowing how our other boats, because we didn’t know that these 30 boats escaped. They could have been shot, they could have been bombed, they could have been – we really didn’t know. So, we were saying, how is the situation of the other boats? And how is everybody here? Because they separated six people on our prison boat on the first day. And so, we said we made an assembly. And at the assembly, we made a collective decision that we would stop cooperating with them and would start this hunger strike process until they bring back our six friends that they separated from us, until they brought people their medicine, especially the people with cardiac diseases, especially the diabetic patients. People needed blankets and jackets, and people needed sanitary pads for women, and people needed more water. So, those were our demands. And we told them that we would stop cooperating, we were on a strike, a hunger strike, but also a non-cooperation strike. And so, they said that we needed to shut up, we could not shout or chant. And we decided that we would not obey them until they gave us our demands: bring the six people and all these other demands. And then we started chanting all night. And they would point the rifle at us, they would threaten us, and we would keep on chanting anyway. Non-violent type of resistance. And then, in the next morning, they were extremely violent. So, they throw a lot of bombs, a lot of flashbangs and stuff, and enter inside the area of the prison because they would stay above in platforms on that boat. They would not enter, just when they wanted to promote violence and to do some act of violence.

So, this day they got in with a lot of soldiers, put everybody on their knees with their heads for many, many, for a long, long time. And then they said that people were being transferred from boats. And then we said, “We only accept to get transferred once we see our six friends. We don’t want to leave them behind,” and then they said, “No, you’re not going to have this option.” And it just started trying to drag people, and so we stayed on our knees with our hands up and they started dragging people. And I was in front because I was negotiating with them, and they would not come for me, they would come for the people beside me and would take them and drag them very violently, and then would take more, two more, and then two more, and eventually they came for me. And when they came for me, they came extremely violent, just grabbing me by my neck and dragging me. And when they brought me halfway through the door of the entrance of this prison, of this square, there were already five to six soldiers inside the other part of the door. And they started kicking my head and kicking my body. And so, my leg was outside. People would see my leg like shaking, and I’m being kicked by them. And would hear them throwing me by the metal doors of the of the wall. And that’s when I passed out the first time. Literally everything went black. And then eventually they dragged me up. And when they dragged me up, they were trying to take me outside to another part. And that’s when I woke up. I regained consciousness. I was being dragged by them. And then when I regained consciousness, they took me to a processing table and I was already handcuffed and to the back. They were pulling my arm very high on my back. It was hurting a lot my shoulder. I thought it was broken. And then I could barely see from my right eye. It was already so, I don’t know how to say, so swelling that I could barely see. And then they took me to this processing table, and then the woman asked, “You’re Thiago, right?” And I said, “Yes.” And then she started making fun of my face, said that I didn’t look like Thiago. And I said, “Yes, you’ve been hitting me very hard.” And then she said something in Hebrew which I cannot understand, and then they started taking me to another corridor. And when they were taking me to this corridor, eventually, they actually blindfolded me at that time. I could only see a little bit from below the blindfold, it was not very well tied. So, I could see that they were dragging me, and then eventually I would see some boots of the soldier coming, and then when they come, they would punch me. And then eventually they would continue taking me and then another soldier would come that crosses us in this hallway. And then this soldier would punch me as well and say something, try to make a joke or something. And then it was very hard.

Chris Hedges: Thiago, where were they punching you? In your stomach, in your head, where?

Thiago Avila: They were punching me mostly in my face, but also on my chest, on my stomach as well. And then the other ones would continue dragging me. And then eventually they got close to the hatch, close to the exit and to the place where we entered this military prison boat. And then they would put me on my knees and with my head on the ground as well, a very compact turtle stress position. And then I would only hear that they were dragging people from behind me. They were dragging the other participants. So I was in the transfer lane hearing them being dragged to another out of outside of the prison boat where they had to climb a ladder, go to a RHIB, and then from that RHIB they would go to the other boat that I didn’t know what it was, but I was staying behind. I was just hearing them. And eventually the soldiers that would come and bring these people behind me, when they were leaving them at the hatch to the other boat, when they were going back to get more prisoners, they would come and kick me. They will come and spit on me and say bad things. So, it was a very bad moment where I stayed for a long time there seeing people being transferred, being attacked by these soldiers. And then eventually they were dragging most of the people. All of a sudden I hear someone well that looked like a commander, that sounded like a commander giving some order very loud. And he mentioned my name. I could not understand the rest of the sentence in Hebrew, but I could only understand Thiago. And when he did that, like four or five soldiers came close to me and started kicking me very hard and then dragging me. I understand he gave a comment regarding my situation. And then they were dragging me inside. And then when they were dragging me inside, I could see that I was being taken to like a dormitory. But there was a stair to this dormitory. And when I got to this stair, they would start beating me so hard, so hard, so hard, that I passed out again. And before I passed out, they actually got the shoelace. Because one woman found a shoelace in these days in the prison and she gave it to me. I put it in my pocket. And when he found the shoelace, he put the shoelace on my neck and he said, “Now we can hang you. It’s the new law. You know that we can hang you.” And they were all the time threatening to kill me, all the time saying, “Welcome to Israel” and all these things, but then again eventually they beat me so hard that that I passed out. And when I woke up, I was being dragged with my head on the ground, and my head was hurting because it was scratching on the ground. And he was dragging me by the foot and with my head on the ground, and then I didn’t know where he was taking me. Eventually he threw me in a room in this dormitory, and they left me and they closed the door. And when they locked the door, I could see a little bit from here, but also the ziplock was not very tight. So, I managed to get rid of one of my hands. And then I managed to raise the blindfold and to see the situation. And I was in a room where there were six bunk beds for militaries. There was even a military vest nearby. There were 10 bottles of water, 10 to 12 bottles of water, and there was a toilet. And that’s when I managed to get to the toilet. And that’s when I understood the situation that I was in. I could only feel, there was no mirror there, but I could only feel that my head was very swelled. So, I saw some blood, but not that much. So, I knew I was okay, but I could not see from my right eye because it was already closed of the swelling. I could barely hear from my right ear as well. And that was pretty much the situation. And then they covered the window of this dormitory that I was in with a trash bag, like a black bag. So, they taped it. But the corner was not very well taped. So, when I stood up, I had my blindfold up, I could see a little bit that they were still dragging people and taking people outside of the vessel. And I heard that for like more than one hour, Chris.

And then I could hear that the soldiers would come in the hallway of this dormitory, we’ll go to another room, and then someone would start screaming very loud. So, I understood that they were hitting the people in their nearby dorms. And I could understand, was actually hoping that at least it was the six people that were missing, that they that they were alive and at least they were there. And I could hear them transferring some of them. So, I understood that they were taking people out and they were leaving me behind. I didn’t know if anybody else would be left behind. And then, whenever I heard the soldiers coming, I had to go back to my position. I had to pretend that I had the blindfold down all the time. I had to pretend I had my head tight on the ziploc. So, I would go and get back into positions because I I didn’t want to get more attacked than I was. And so, I also put the blindfold back down, but I would not put it perfectly, so I could still see something below. So, I have this tactical advantage. And that’s what I did for a few hours, I cannot say exactly how many, and then they came again. And when they came again for my room, they did the same thing again with the rope. They said, “You know that now we have a new law that we can hang you, and we can hang any Palestinian.” And I would not engage on that. And they stood me up and they were taking me, that time not as violent as before. And then they took me to a place on this boat that I’d never seen before, Chris. When they took me to this place, I could see a little bit from below. So, I could see that I was close to the port side of the boat, and they opened a hatch. When they opened the hatch, there was just the ocean. No boat, no RHIB below. So, I understood that they would either throw me or they would threaten to throw me. And that’s what they did. And so, they started saying, “Do you like to swim? Do you know how long you can survive in this cold water?” And I would never respond to any of this because they were just provoking. I would not engage to encourage them on anything like this. So, I would just stay quiet. And then they come with a taser gun and to use the taser on on my right leg. And I didn’t do anything. All the time I stayed with my hands tied to my back on the ziploc, so I never have any reaction. I would not talk to them when they were doing these things. And so, they kept me there a little bit, threatening to throw me to the sea. Eventually they closed the hatch and then they took me to the other side of the boat. And there was a hatch. They opened the hatch again, but there was a RHIB. And they put the rope stairs. And then they lift my blindfold, they cut my ziplock, and they asked me to climb down. And when I was climbing down, at the last five steps, the soldier below, they just grabbed me and they throw me in the RHIB and asked me to be on my knees on the ground and my head on the ground, on the RHIB. And then they ziplocked me again. And then they started going with the RHIB to another boat. And then they put my blindfold again. And they put me on the very front of the RHIB. So, a lot of water would come and I was soaking wet. It was actually very cold and I was so hurt, so bruised, all my body was bruised. And then I could hear the engine of another boat after we left this boat. So, I understood that they were taking me to a different boat, but I could not see this time. When they put my blindfold again, they put very good, very firmly, with a second one. The first one was covering it all, the second one was putting a lot of pressure here. So, they put very tight. I really could not see anything.

So, I don’t know which boat we boarded. They actually made me climb with my eyes blindfolded. And then from this boat they took me to the toilet. And when they took me to the toilet, they asked, “Are you cold?” I said, “Yes,” and then they throw me more water. And then they continue taking me into many, many walls and stairs and doors until eventually they put me on a very small mattress close to a wall on the boat, and they ordered me to lie down there and not to move. And then I stood there for the night, for the morning, for a long time. And I could hear only one person beside me, which was Saif. So, I understood that at least me and Saif we were on this boat.

And then eventually the next day, a very extremely cold night, with all my body bruised, very, very hurt, they threatening to kill us all the time. And then they took us outside of this boat, to a prison car. From this prison car, still blindfolded, they took us into a military facility. In this military facility with the military checkpoints, I could understand that they brought us to a prison. When we got to this prison, they took the blindfold. I could see that I was with Saif there, just me and him.

And then police officer came and said, “Welcome to the Shabak interrogation facility. Shabak was the internal intelligence of Israel. And then they asked us to sign documents and they took all of our stuff, they took all of our clothes, put us in prison clothes, and then they separated us and I didn’t see Saif again for around eight days. And then we were put in interrogation from the Shabak, from the Mossad, from the police and other intelligence that didn’t identify themselves for all these days, for around ten days, eighteen hour interrogation.

Chris Hedges: In the interrogation, Thiago, what were they asking?

Thiago Avila: First of all, Chris, they were very, very angry about the mission. And they said that this was a terrorist mission and that we were the leaders and that’s why we had to be punished, that we would get killed. If we didn’t get killed, we would spend our life in prison, and that since they were not the Israeli prison system, they were a Shabak interrogation facility, they could torture people. We could actually hear people being tortured all around us and they had no restrictions of hours that they could interrogate us. They said that the lawyers would never see the reports, only the judge, if they would show the judge their reports, that basically there were no rules for what they could do there. And they would ask about the flotilla, why did we insist on going to Flotilla? I said all other things because it’s very obvious, it’s very public what we do.

They asked where the funding came from. And we said, “Look, there’s an online fundraising. You can check the website.” Which countries we were organized. I said, “Look, we put all these things public on our website. We’re not afraid of doing our organize because we’re doing for the right reasons.” And then they would say that we would spend our all of our lives there if we were not killed. And then eventually they would keep on insisting on all the other missions. So, they asked me to narrate all the other missions. It was actually the ninth mission I was organizing of the Flotilla. So, they wanted details. What did we do? How did we do? And all these things were public. We would do public because we have nothing to hide. We should not fear them and they was insisting on why do you do this because there’s no starvation in Gaza? You know that this is not true. And we said, “Actually, we know that it is true.” And they said, “No, you’re accessing wrong information. Every day I see here on my WhatsApp hundreds of trucks get into Gaza.” I said, “I’m sorry, but this is fake because the United Nations proves that there’s no aid coming in. The doctors in Gaza, they prove there’s no aid coming in. That the journalists that you didn’t kill, they prove that there’s not enough aid coming in.” And they said, “No, this is not true. This is just to attack Israel.” So, they get a fabricated version that they actually believe in that version or they say they believe, and they stick to that.

And so, they kept us there for all these days, asking pretty much the same things. So they would actually access my social media and say, for twenty one years of solidarity work for Palestine, and they would ask about every single thing, all the times that I’ve been, and when I went to the West Bank, and what did I do there, every city that I went. And I was actually using this as an opportunity to tell them the story that they don’t hear in their country about what they are doing, the colonization, the apartheid and the genocide.

And they hated it so much, Chris. They hated to hear these things, but I thought it was important for them to hear. And eventually, they came a few days later asking for a renewal of our remain there. So, they would take us to court hearings and they would ask the judge to keep us there for longer. And the judge would grant them that. And when they actually were deciding to press charges, which charges they would press, they decided they came and said, “You’re going stay here for your whole life because we are charging you of five terror crimes, each of them for 20 years sentence. So, in total is a hundred years. You’re being charged of being a terrorist, you’re being a leader of a terrorist organization, a member of a terrorist organization, in contact with transporting terrorist property because these boats are terrorist boats, and you’re aiding the enemy in times of war, because the propaganda you do is against Israel, it’s actually assisting our enemies.” And that’s the sum of the accusations that they try to pull on us for a hundred years. And I said, “Look, I don’t fear getting in prison. You have almost ten thousand Palestinian people in your dungeons being treated much worse than I am, being tortured much worse. Almost 400 of these people are children that you’ve been keeping here in administrative detention with no right of even a proper defense. Some of them are not even properly charged of anything. You killed so many Palestinians, you’ve been killing for eight decades. So, we should not be afraid of getting killed, of spending our life in prison. That’s the reality of anti-colonial struggle. We are actually on a hunger strike. So, you say you have a hundred years to keep us here, but you actually have a bit more than a month. So, I’m sure that the whole world is mobilizing against this other violation of humanitarian law. And yeah, we are here with all the dignity that we have. We do not fear you, and we continue going.”

So, when they took us to the court hearing, I did this victory sign that Nicolas Maduro did in prison as well. And so that’s the moment where they got very violent and very angry at me as well. And they said that they would break every single bone in my hand and in my arm if I did any move on the next time. Because whenever they brought us to a court hearing, first of all, we were blindfolded and with two handcuffs on each wrist and in each ankle. And then they would take off, but we still have to walk with our hands on our back. And they would take it off just for us to go inside the room. First to the press for them to make videos and then they would take away all the press and then we will go back again and would sit down there. And that’s what we did. And when I did this sign on the first hearing, all the other hearings before was like 10 minutes of them pushing me to the to the wall and pressuring me and say, “We are going to break every bone on your hand if you do that sign again.” And then they will say, “Because we are a fair and just state, but we don’t want to do that to you.” So that’s amazing how they flipped from very violent, genocidal, and horrific people to people that say that they have a rule of law in their country. And then in the end, we stayed there for 10 days. So around two days in the prison boat, around 10 days on the on the torture interrogation facility of the Shabak. And they decided to let us go.

The political pressure that was made by the campaign to release us put them in a situation that they could not kill us. They could not imprison us for a hundred years. It was better for them to let us go. And so, they let us go in a way that Saif was allowed to take a flight to Spain, but there were no direct flights to Brazil. So, they would not allow that. So, they would just drop me in Egypt. And in Egypt, I was taken to the Sinai Desert in the border of Tabah, and from there I found my way.

And when I was finding my way in the Sinai Desert to go to Cairo to take the flight to Brazil, I had no communication with the outside world, there with nothing. So, the guy who was taking me, Mohammed, he was taking me to the Brazilian Embassy. So, from the Brazilian embassy I would go to the airport. And then I asked to use his phone to send a message to my wife and my baby because I’m sure they would be very concerned about me. And then when I sent her a message, her Instagram is actually blocked for people who are not her friends to see. So, I just sent her a message and I went to my Instagram to say, let me see on my page if they know that I’m being released, because they would have published on my page. And when I went there to access, Chris, I saw the videos of the funeral of my mother that she had died five days before and I was not there. So, it actually broke me to see. It was so sad, so sad.

They can actually inflict on us a huge amount of pain. They’ve been doing this to Palestinians in much worse pains for such a long time. But that’s the thing. Whatever they do to us is still a small fraction of what they do to Palestinians. Hussam Abu Safiya, the doctor of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has been tortured for five hundred days now, more than five hundred days. He’s in solitary confinement right now. He also lost his mother and could not see and pay respects for his mother. Marwan Bhargouti, imprisoned for decades as well. He also lost many, many family members he could not see. They actually, the Zionists, erased entire families from the registry in Gaza. And so there was not even anyone to grieve them because they erased completely entire lineage, entire family, thousands of years of lineage there, erased on a genocide. So, the torture that we suffered, the violence that we suffered, they were very, very hard, but nothing compares to what they do to Palestinians. That’s the problem of this.

Well, when I got back to Brazil, I never speak about their violence as soon as I get back, because I always want to speak about what’s happening to Gaza and to the Palestinians. Otherwise, people put us on the subject. And so, I’d wait a few days. I only speak about the situation that motivated the mission. And then after a few days I start talking.

And then the other boats that escaped, the thirty boats, they actually joined twenty more boats and they actually went again. So, two weeks later they were there going again. And so, I went to Turkiye, to Istanbul, to help to pressure if they got intercepted, to support. And then when they came back from detention after three days’ detention, they were broken, Chris. People got raped, people got so many broken bones, so many violations in the second interception. So, it was very, very hard to see.

And so, in a way that usually we don’t speak immediately about the violations that the participants suffered. We only speak about Gaza. But this time we had to speak. People who had so many ribs broken, clavicles broken, cervical broken, punctured lungs, the rapes case. So, it was such an absurd that Itamar Ben Gvir bragging about that, but he didn’t calculate it very well because he posted a video and then there was a huge diplomatic and political backlash. So, that’s actually what changed because the world got shocked on how they brag about doing these horrific violations. So, that’s the outcome that we had. It was a mission like the other missions, a non-violence, civil disobedience, direct action, solidarity mission, humanitarian mission with the idea of breaking the siege, creating a humanitarian corridor, supporting the Palestinian in the right for self-determination and liberation. But it was the biggest mission ever attempted. And the effect was that it created more than 20 countries condemning Israel, some applying sanctions from October to now, many countries recognize the Palestinian state. And first and most important of all of this, after seven months now, eight months of the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, people are finally talking again about Gaza. So, it was very hard for all of us. Very, very tough. They can inflict on us a lot of pain. But it was worth it because people are not silent about the genocide anymore. So, we understood that we fulfilled our role in solidarity with this mission.

Chris Hedges: I mean, clearly the violence, I know from speaking with you from previous detentions, they were violent but it appears they ratcheted up to a level not seen before probably to prevent people from carrying out further flotillas. Would that be correct?

Thiago Avila: Yes, they had these two things going on, these two phenomena. First, they were understanding that the flotillas were escalating every time with more and more boats, growing every time they attack us. So, they wanted to send us a message not to do. And another thing is there is this internal political struggle in the Zionist regime, which is carried by the far right, represented by Netanyahu, by Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, and the so-called representatives of the state of Israel, not the far right, which they’re also Zionists, they also promote genocide and ethnic cleansing, but in a different way, more strategic, more concealed way. And so, they were struggling about what to do because whenever we get arrested in a flotilla, they had this struggle going on that Ben Gvir wants to punish us as publicly as they can and as hard as he can to show that he’s a strong man. It’s going for election, so he wants to get votes. As incredible as it may seem, the violence that he promotes gives him more votes. And the Netanyahu, the attacks, as it doesn’t foreign and neighboring countries, also actually gives him more votes as well. So, they wanted the votes and they wanted to punish and violate people to show strength. On the other side, the other sectors, not the very, very far right, they wanted to show a good image of Israel. So, they wanted to get rid of us of this PR crisis as soon as they could.

There’s always this tug of war of some wanting to get rid of us, some wanting to punish us. Most of the other missions, the ones who want to get rid of us, they got the best. And we got released and deported very soon. But from the previous missions, Itamar Ben Gvir was already having his way in some parts of the detention process. This time, he was in full control for the first days and for the first moments of interception. And when he made this video, that he actually did to promote himself, the public outrage and global condemnation, created a way that this Israeli state, once again the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, for example, he said, “This is not acceptable. He’s not abiding by the Israeli values and all this stuff. So, I’m ordering the release of all prisoners immediately.”

So, after the video, after the attacks and the violations, this side of the politics in Israel, they got the best as well and got rid of us, but still they are more patient Zionists. It’s not that they respect international laws. Actually, Itamar Ben Gvir controls the police, the internal police because it’s the Ministry of Interior. But the Israeli navy is controlled by Netanyahu himself and the Ministry of Defense, Israel cuts. So many of the Israeli states that happens over there is not under Ben Gvir’s command. And the genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the apartheid state is under every aspect of the Israeli State. So, it’s not that Itamar Ben Gvir is an error in the system, he’s just a symptom of this sick society, genocidal society.

Chris Hedges: And what’s next for you and for the Flotilla?

Thiago Avila: Well yeah, Chris, whenever people ask us should we continue, I always ask them,

“Have we solved the root causes that create a flotilla to happen? Are the Palestinian people free? Do they live with equality regardless of their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their religion in their land that they are indigenous from? Or have they stopped calling for solidarity? No. None of these things are solved.” Actually, the situation in Gaza is getting worse and worse now. Netanyahu is bragging about controlling 70% of Gaza in the so-called Yellow Line in eight months of the so-called genocide. They are attacking Lebanon to prevent a ceasefire deal in the region between the other world criminal Donald Trump and the Iranians and the Yemenis and the Lebanese resistance as well. So, they want to escalate the world to total destruction, and we need to stop these people. Not we individually, but the global uprising of people, the free people of the world. We need to stop them. Otherwise, we’ll be on our homes. We’ll be on everyone’s… people that think they’re so far away from all of this. They think it’s just a matter of conscience, but it’s not. Eventually we’ll be you. Every single person that had breakfast, that had lunch today paid more for their food because of the wars of Netanyahu and Donald Trump. Every person that used gas, that took transportation, they paid more for this because of terror wars and if not only the crisis of cost of living but the risk that these bombs eventually will fall on us, that these exception states, these terror states, these repressive states, they will come into your country as well, into your society as well, so we need to stop that.

Every generation, they have a mission like who said – that was Franz Fanon who said that every generation has a historical calling that you have to fulfill it or betray it. And we understand this very well. The Palestinian people show the world that the evil of this generation is called Zionism and United States imperialism. And we need to stop this for all the people to be able to live free, to live with dignity, to have the right to live in peace with justice. So, we need to do all the efforts. Flotilla is just a tool, a tactic, but we need to dedicate our lives to do that. We need to do like you do, to bring free information, to open people’s minds to what’s actually going on. We need to organize people in the territories, to create social strength, answering the problem to the problems that people are suffering every day that sometimes prevent them from engaging in solidarity and mobilizing in solidarity in as many actions as we can by sea, by land, by every means necessary. It’s our task. I’m a father of a two-year-old baby daughter that of course she misses me. And it’s very dangerous to do what we do. I was threatened so many times. She was threatened so many times when I was in prison by them. But there’s nothing more dangerous for my daughter than to live in a world and normalize genocide because eventually these bombs could be on our homes, could be in our countries. So, we need to mobilize right now. That’s why when people say what’s next is to do everything that we are still doing, but stronger, with more people, more organized, more dedicated, even more than what we already are. We need to be better for this great battle of our generation.

Chris Hedges: Great, Thiago, and thanks for the interview and all you do. I have tremendous respect for you and for all of the activists who are fighting against the genocide. I want to thank Max and Nawell and Thomas, who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.substack.com.

The post Kidnapped at Sea: Thiago Ávila Reveals Brutality Inside Israel’s Detention System Chris Hedges Report appeared first on Activist Post.

JPMorgan says Bitcoin mining economics have deteriorated as BTC trades about 19% below its estimated $78,000 production cost, forcing public miners into record coin sales and rendering roughly 20% of the industry unprofitable.

Bitcoin has traded below the estimated cost to mine it for five straight months, according to JPMorgan analysts, leaving roughly one in five miners unprofitable and pushing publicly listed operators to sell a record volume of coins.

In a client note circulated this week, analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou said bitcoin mining economics have “worsened” in 2026. JPMorgan places the current all-in production cost of bitcoin at about $78,000, a figure derived from electricity, hardware depreciation, and overhead expenses across public miners. 

With bitcoin trading near $63,000, the gap between spot price and breakeven has created a sustained squeeze across the sector.

One of the most notable shifts JPMorgan flags is a structural change in how the Bitcoin network itself responds to price movements. The beta of mining difficulty to BTC prices — a measure of how much difficulty moves for a given move in price — has risen to 0.62 over the past six months. That figure reflects a network in which a higher share of miners sit at or near their cost floor, switching machines on or off as prices shift rather than maintaining consistent operations.

The pattern became visible in early June, when mining difficulty fell 10.09%, its second-largest single decline of the year. Bitcoin’s hashrate dropped 12% in June, according to Galaxy Research. A comparable 10% difficulty drawdown occurred in January, marking two episodes of this scale within one calendar year.

The financial strain has pushed publicly traded miners into a corner. Operators including MARA, CleanSpark, Riot Platforms, Cango, Core Scientific, and Bitdeer sold a combined 32,000 bitcoin in Q1 2026 alone to fund operating expenses, according to data from TheEnergyMag cited in the JPMorgan report. That figure surpasses those companies’ total bitcoin sales for all of 2025, and it sets a new quarterly record — eclipsing the previous high of 20,000 bitcoin set in Q2 2022, during the bear market that followed the Terra-Luna collapse.

Hashprice, a metric that captures mining revenue per unit of computing power, sits at roughly $33 per petahash per second per day, according to Hashrate Index. That level places approximately 20% of the global mining industry in unprofitable territory, per CoinShares’ Q1 2026 Bitcoin Mining Report, which JPMorgan cited in its analysis.

A contrarian signal for bitcoin 

Despite the grim conditions, JPMorgan’s analysts stopped short of a bearish conclusion. The team noted that weak market sentiment of this kind has, in past cycles, served as a contrarian indicator for future price appreciation. 

They expect elevated hashrate sensitivity and larger difficulty adjustments to persist as long as BTC remains well below its production cost.

Further capitulation among higher-cost operators is possible in the first half of 2026 without a material price recovery. Miners collectively held approximately 1.8 million bitcoin at the time of publication, down from 1.86 million at the end of 2023, a sign that treasury drawdowns are an ongoing feature of the current environment.

The post JPMorgan: Bitcoin Mining Costs Have ‘Worsened’ as BTC Trades Below Production Cost appeared first on Activist Post.

Peter Thiel’s Dialog secret society has long been compared to the Bilderberg Group, convening off-the-record gatherings composed of government and military officials, and Big Tech, media and academic leaders – but unlike the Bilderbergers, Dialog does not publicly reveal its membership or attendee lists.

Shownotes:

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/peter-thiels-secret-society-exposed-as-palantir-deepens-south-florida-roots-40559039/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_(organization)

https://thefreedomarticles.com/the-us-israel-ai-war-against-iran-video-293/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/how-israel-used-palantir-ai-to-justify-iran-strike/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/anthropic-ai-claude-vs-dept-of-war-video-288/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/beware-22-point-palantir-manifesto-video-309/

https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society

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‘Age assurance’ is a backdoor for digital ID, internet passports & biometric surveillance to end online anonymity for all users: perspective

Leaders of the G7 call on big tech companies to develop and deploy internet passports for all users through “effective and innovative age assurance mechanisms.”

On Wednesday, the Group of Seven (G7) leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, the non-enumerated member and the European Union, in collaboration with their partner countries Brazil, Egypt, India, Kenya and the Republic of Korea, published their “Leaders’ Call on a Safer Digital Space for Minors,” in which they committed to provide what they considered to be “a safe digital space for our minors, which include children and youth under 18.”

However, when it comes to so-called “age assurance” mechanisms, they are nothing more than a backdoor to digital ID and internet passports for every single online user, no matter their age. 

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There is no mention of “social media” anywhere in the G7 leaders’ call — this “age assurance” is meant for all “digital spaces” and is applicable to everyone of all ages.

“We call on digital service providers to develop and apply technology and systems that ensure safe, secure and age-appropriate experiences including through effective and innovative age assurance mechanisms while preserving the privacy of users according to respective jurisdictions, national circumstances and applicable legal frameworks”G7, Leaders’ call on a safer digital space for minors, June 2026

According to the European Commission, “Age assurance refers to the methods used to determine an individual’s age with different levels of confidence or certainty. They can be grouped into three main categories: age estimation, age verification, and self-declaration.”

Self-declaration is just you clicking a button to say you are of a certain age, but governments and globalists don’t want this.

They prefer age estimation and age verification.

Age estimation is obtained through various means such as biometrics like taking a selfie, through natural language processing where your text and speech is analyzed, or through behavioral profiling that tracks your online activity, including your browser history.

“Behavioral Profiling: Analyzing the profiling data of users based on their activity online by employing AI could provide an estimate of users’ age. For instance, this analysis could include scrutiny of browsing history, user-generated content, purchases, and so on”European Commission, Research report: Mapping age assurance typologies and requirements, April 2024

Age verification is all about using what the EC calls “hard identifiers” such as digital ID, credit cards, passports, and digital wallets to verify one’s age. 

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These are all age assuarance mechanisms. These are all internet passports. These are all aimed at adults.

What child owns a credit card, a bank account, or a digital wallet?

Getting back to the call for age assurance on Wednesday, the G7 leaders’ call also welcomed the “G7 Common Set of Principles defining a safer and more secure digital space for minors,” which was published and adopted by G7 ministers a few weeks earlier on May 29.

“Effective age assurance is key to ensure a safer, more secure, and age-appropriate experience for minors: Because protecting freedom of expression and privacy is a core part of protecting minors online and fundamental to free societies, age assurance should be applied in ways that allow for, when needed, parental consent, and compliance with applicable legal obligations through the least invasive means, that are appropriate, privacy-preserving, fair and technically feasible”G7, Common Set of Principles defining a safer and more secure digital space for minors, May 2026

The G7 “Leaders’ Call on a Safer Digital Space for Minors” came just two days after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that his government would ban for social media for everyone under the age of 16.

Beneath the rhetoric of protecting children lies a truth far more insidious — internet passports for all — a march to end online anonymity where everything you say and everything you do is pegged to your digital ID. 

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In order to keep under 16s off of social media, everyone 16 and older must also submit to an identity check, and that is what these social media bans and so-called age assurances are all about.

We are banning social media access for under 16s.

These days kids must find their feet in a world where technology intrudes into every area of their life.

I just can’t let that go on anymore. So we’re giving children their childhoods back. pic.twitter.com/jn7iQrcwk8— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) June 15, 2026

Parental controls on apps already exist. Laws to protect children are already in place.

So, what’s the point of social media bans and age assurance mechanisms?

Digital ID and internet passports are the end goal — to control what information you are allowed to access, what you are allowed to say, and how you are able to transact.

Starmer made this agenda abundantly clear last September when he said his government was going to force digital ID on every worker in the UK. No digital ID, no work.

Again, there were already laws in place for employers to verify their employees’ rights to work without the need for digital ID.

But it’s not just the G7 that is pushing forward with internet passports for all.

This is a global agenda, which The Sociable covered in great length last year with the story, “Digital ID, face scans for age verification are becoming internet passports: Online age checks are not just about children; they’re about getting everybody onboard with digital identity and biometric surveillance.” 

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When the same messaging and the same policies are being bombarded upon the public at the same time, that’s a pretty good sign there’s a major PSYOP underway.

If you add that to any dismissal of dissenters, labeling them as people who don’t care about protecting children, you can all but guarantee that you’re being gaslit into a PSYOP.

Another aspect of PSYOPs is the artificially fabricated position of urgency — in that, if we don’t take action now, everything will go to hell and be wasted.

Now, we are seeing WHO veteran Ilona Kickbusch, who, after stating, “A strong G7 statement on children and social media is a test of whether G7 governments are serious about governing the technologies that are reshaping human development,” published something in Global Governance Media that would make World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab blush: “The  political window for decisive action is open.”

“Parents, clinicians, educators and increasingly young people themselves are demanding accountability. The political window for decisive action is open”Ilona Kickbusch, Children’s safety in digital environments is a G7 issue, June 2026

Now where have we heard that kind of rhetoric before?

You know, the kind that says the moment to strike is now, when everyone is emotional and not thinking clearly, and they are therefore far more easy to manipulate?

Remember the launch of the WEF’s great reset agenda in June 2020?

At the time, Klaus Schwab declared, “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world to create a healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous future.” 

In the same vein, King Charles III, back when he was still a prince, said, “We have a golden opportunity to seize something good from this crisis — its unprecedented shockwaves may well make people more receptive to big visions of change.”

In 2020 the coronavirus crisis presented a golden opportunity for the global establishment to further its agenda upon a frightful and angry population that had been so beaten down by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns that they would have become more susceptible to giving over their freedoms to the idea of greater centralized power and control.

Today, internet passports are the same digital ID solution to another invisible boogeyman. 

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This time, instead of issuing contact tracing and demanding vaccine passports, which themselves are a form of digital ID — under the guise of public health and safety — the official position is to demand internet passports under the guise of child safety and protection.

Digital ID for everyone has always been the goal of governments and unelected globalists alike. It is the linchpin for all systems of digital control.

In September 2018 the WEF published a report stating that digital identity would determine your level of access to information.

“This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us”WEF, Identity in a Digital World: A new chapter in the social contract, September 2018

Fast-forward eight years, and this is has become a reality as digital IDs and biometric facial scanning become the new normal for passing internet checkpoints.

New laws, principles, pacts, and policies all come under the guise of “child safety,” but when looked at through a different lens, the message can be easily inverted to mean “adult endangerment” as everyone’s speech and access to information will be dependent upon some form of digital ID for accessing search engines and social media. 

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The agenda to require digital identity and biometric surveillance in order to access social media platforms and to use search engines has been years in the making.

“I propose putting an end to anonymity on social media […] I believe we must push forward the principle of pseudonymity as the functioning element of social media and force all these platforms to link every user account to a European digital identity wallet”Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez, WEF Annual Meeting, January 2025

The technological foundation is in place, but the rules have been set in pencil.

If you didn’t show proof of vaccination during lockdowns, you were “killing grandma.”

Now we’re going from vaccine passports to internet passports.

If you don’t agree to internet passports, you are harming children.

It’s all inverted.

Whether through a government mandate or through the fusion of corporation and state via public-private partnerships, the years-long agenda to rollout internet passports is plowing full-steam ahead.

Image Source: AI generated with ChatGPT

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