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THE VACCINE SAFETY PROJECT

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | November 26, 2020

Del presents the facts about Vaccine Safety and Policy in America- giving you the facts you need to make the right choice for you or your child. This is the Vaccine Safety Project.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

“Youth Climate Case” could see courts forcing policy on nation-states

Landmark legal case would seek to make EU nations “do what scientists say is necessary”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 1, 2020

The European Court of Human Rights is prepping to hear a civil case brought against the governments of 33 European nations by six teenage “climate activists.”

The six youth activists are allegedly crowd-funding the campaign, but also have the backing of the Global Legal Action Network NGO. Though the six teenagers are all Portuguese, the case is being brought against thirty-three different nations simultaneously – all 27 EU members, the UK, Russia, Norway, Turkey, Ukraine and Switzerland.

To defend themselves the 33 countries will be asked to explain how their “lack of action” on climate change doesn’t equate to a violation of the human rights of their citizens. If they lose, the countries in question will be legally forced to “take greater action” on climate, or face penalties for missing lower carbon emissions goals etc.

One of the kids, 12-year-old André Oliveira, is quoted in The Guardian as saying [our emphasis]:

It gives me lots of hope to know that the judges in the European court of human rights recognise the urgency of our case. But what I’d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary to protect our future. Until they do this, we will keep on fighting with more determination than ever.”

The story itself is nonsense of course. Twelve-year-olds do not talk like that. Plus the case originated over 3 years ago, when young André was only nine.

Nine-year-old boys do not see footage of forest fires on the news and decide to sue the European Union. Even if the thought did occur to them, they wouldn’t have the resources, knowledge or wherewithal to actually do anything about it. Not without some pretty all-encompassing adult supervision.

This whole story has the Greta-like whiff of adults using children to mask their agenda. It’s unsavoury, but that’s not really the worst part. The worst part is what this case is aiming to achieve.

Consider the precedents being set here. As the Guardian rightly points out, the ECHR is a standard-setting body, even if the final judgment in this particular case is largely ignored, or considered simply symbolic, it will still sit on the books as a precedent in several ways.

Firstly, there’s the precedent of over-ruling democracy. The governments of these 33 nations were all elected, they (notionally) answer to their electorate, not the EHRC. It’s one thing to prosecute a nation or head of state for actually committing a crime, but bringing a civil case to dictate policy is quite another.

Secondly, there’s the question of state sovereignty. All of the plaintiffs are Portuguese, yet the case is seeking to alter the policy of 32 other nation-states as well. Neither these six Portuguese children, their British lawyers or the Strasbourg-based courts have the right to tell Hungary or Norway or Turkey how to run their country, certainly not when it involves going against the democratic will of the people.

Finally, there’s the tell-tale quote from young André – bolded above.

what I’d like the most would be for European governments to immediately do what the scientists say is necessary”

Granted these are just the words of a child, but he almost certainly was reading something an adult had written. And it’s definitely the aim of the exercise. A government which has policy dictated by what scientists say is necessary.

NOT what is democratically mandated. NOT what is legally permitted. Not even what is morally correct.

What the scientists say is necessary.

Anybody paying attention to the way the world is being run in the wake of the Covid19 “pandemic” should find those words at least a little chilling.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The Russian Brexit Plot That Wasn’t

By Paul Robinson | Irrussianality | November 26, 2020

Russian Disinformation. Russian Disinformation. Russian Disinformation. How many time have you heard that over the past four years?

But what about British disinformation?

Much of the current Russia paranoia began with the claims that Donald Trump was recruited by Russian intelligence years ago as a sleeper agent, and then given a leg-up into the presidency of the United States with the help of the GRU. The claims of ‘collusion’ were repeated over and over, and yet at the end of the day none of them could be substantiated. And where did it all start? In the now notorious dossier assembled by former British spook Christopher Steele.

Steele, it has now been revealed, got his information from a guy called Igor Danchenko. He in his turn got a lot of it from a former classmate, Olga Galkina, described as an alcoholic ‘disgruntled PR executive living in Cyprus’, and as such obviously a well-informed source with intimate knowledge of the Kremlin’s innermost secrets.

In short, the Steele dossier was a load of hokum, commissioned by a British Black PR operative and then fabricated by some random Russian émigrés with no access to anything of value. And yet, millions believed it.

And then, we have the story of Brexit. Ever since the 2016 referendum which resulted in Britain leaving the European Union, we have been repeatedly told that the victory of the Leave campaign was made possible by ‘Russian interference’. Most significantly, it was claimed that the Russian government illicitly funded the Leave campaign by funneling money through the campaign’s most significant financial backer, businessman Arron Banks.

Leading the charge against Russia and Banks was journalist Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer (as the Sunday version of The Guardian is known). ‘We know that the Russian government offered money to Arron Banks’, she said. ‘I am not even going to go into the lies that Arron Banks has told about his covert relationship with the Russian government’, she added, ‘I say he lied about his contact with the Russian government. Because he did.’

But it turns out that it was Cadwalladr who had a tricky relationship with the truth. Angered by her assertions, Arron Banks sued her for libel. Three weeks ago, she publicly backed down from one of her accusations. ‘On 22 Oct 2020,’ she said, ‘I tweeted that Arron had been found to have broken the law. I accept he has not. I regret making this false statement, which I have deleted. I undertake not to repeat it. I apologise to Arron for the upset and distress caused.’

This week Cadwalladr went further. The judge in the libel trial ruled that the meaning of her statement that Banks had lied about his relationship with the Russians was that he had lied about taking money from Russia, and that she had intended this as a statement of fact, not a call for further investigation. In the face of this judgement, Cadwalladr withdrew her ‘truth’ defence and has been ordered to pay Banks’ costs relating to this aspect of the case. In this way she in effect conceded that she was not willing to defend as fact the proposition that Russia financed Leave via Banks. While Cadwalladr continues to fight the case using a ‘public interest’ defence, the withdrawal of the truth argument is a dramatic concession.

The Banks story is not the only problematic aspect of Cadwalladr’s reporting. The journalist earned international plaudits and a prestigious Orwell prize for her report on how the British firm Cambridge Analytica supposedly used big data dredged up out of Facebook to help both the Leave campaign and Donald Trump win victories in 2016. This too had a Russian connection. In a 2018 article for The Observer Cadwalladr described how, ‘Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic who orchestrated the harvesting of Facebook data, had previously unreported ties a Russian university. … Cambridge Analytica, the data firm he worked with … also attracted interest from a key Russian firm with links to the Kremlin.’

Others jumped on the Russia-Cambridge connection. ‘The Facebook data farmed by Cambridge Analytica was accessed from Russia’, claimed British MP Damien Collins, head of the House of Commons Select Committee for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. In this capacity, he then published a report outlining allegations of Russian propaganda and meddling in British affairs, including unsubstantiated insinuations that Russian money had influenced the Brexit campaign via Mr Banks.

And yet, all this was false too. The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) spent over two years investigating Cambridge Analytica, including its alleged role in the Brexit referendum, the 2016 US presidential election, and its supposed ties to Russian government influence operations. Having completed its investigation, the ICO reported that apart from a single Russian IP address in data connected to Cambridge Analytica, it had found no evidence of Russian involvement with the company. Moreover, it concluded that claims of the company’s enormous influence were ‘hype’, unjustified by the facts.

In other words, just like the Steele dossier, the whole story about Russia influencing the outcome of the Brexit referendum was made-up nonsense.

And yet, it has had an enormous influence. The allegations that Russia ‘interfered’ in Brexit have been repeated again and again – in parliamentary reports, newspaper articles, scholarly journals, books, social media, and so on. Despite their falsehood, they have enjoyed a spread and influence that Russian ‘meddlers’ could only dream of.

Will the peddlers of British disinformation repent? Will they now pen scores of articles admitting that they were wrong? Will they give evidence to parliament denouncing the scourge of false stories about Russia emanating from the British media and MPs?

Of course not. Ms Cadwalladr’s humiliation will get a few lines buried somewhere deep in some newspapers’ inner pages, and will then be forgotten. Meanwhile, the original claims will remain uncorrected in the many documents that repeat them, and the myth of Russian interference in Brexit will trundle on as a basis for denouncing the threat emanating from the East. The damage has been done. Ms Cadwalladr has been discredited, but someone else will soon be found to pick up the torch.

Paul Robinson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history, and military ethics.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

We Have Immune Systems, New York Times Reveals

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | November 29, 2020

Scrub and spray everything with chemicals, bathe in Purell, mask up, stand no nearer to anyone else than six feet, stay away from crowds, douse yourself with alcohol, wash your hands and face raw, protect yourself from germs at all costs.

Some nations are closed completely. No one in or out.

We panic about “cases” even when they say nothing about severe consequences. Avoidance and finally suppression are the watchwords of the day, for a virus that is relatively mild by any historical standard, as Holman Jenkins just explained:

U.S. government scientists now estimate that 40% of cases are asymptomatic and 80% of symptomatic cases are mild—in short, 88% of subjects don’t know they are infected or have no great incentive to find out if they are suffering from Covid or some more familiar bug.

We could also mention the 99.9% survival rate, and that doesn’t consider the wildly disproportionate risk between the sick and healthy.

Is this an experiment? Yes, and likely a deadly one.

What precisely are we doing to ourselves? What are we doing to children?

Early in the pandemic, doctors went on the national stage to frame it up clearly: we are wrecking our immune systems and making ourselves vulnerable to more serious pathogens later.

The great discovery that viruses must be owned to be controlled was an achievement of 20th century cell biology. It’s the Godfather rule: keep your friends close but your enemies closer. It’s counterintuitive, which is precisely why it took thousands of years to discover, and a century to educate people about the problem of the conduct of public health.

But this year, starting soon after lockdowns, this wisdom strangely seemed to have vanished from the public mind. Did we just succumb to a strange anti-science hysteria?

Who knows, but if you read the New York Times carefully, and look past the insufferable political bias, what you find is something that will shock many people.

The article in question is Quarantine May Negatively Affect Kids’ Immune Systems. It’s by By Donna L. Farber and Thomas Connors and Columbia University.

Let’s just quote a few salient passages here.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is unwittingly conducting what amounts to the largest immunological experiment in history on our own children. We have been keeping children inside, relentlessly sanitizing their living spaces and their hands and largely isolating them. In doing so, we have prevented large numbers of them from becoming infected or transmitting the virus. But in the course of social distancing to mitigate the spread, we may also be unintentionally inhibiting the proper development of children’s immune systems….Immunological memory and tolerance learned during childhood serves as the basis for immunity and health throughout adulthood.

Just so we are clear, we are doing something to children that will affect their immune systems for the rest of their lives? That’s what these scholars say.

The article then continues and actually invokes the great taboo word of our age: exposure. It’s good. Exposure is good. It is necessary. It is needed. Not bad. Good.

However, for memory T cells to become functionally mature, multiple exposures may be necessary, particularly for cells residing in tissues such as the lung and intestines, where we encounter numerous pathogens. These exposures typically and naturally occur during the everyday experiences of childhood — such as interactions with friends, teachers, trips to the playground, sports — all of which have been curtailed or shut down entirely during efforts to mitigate viral spread. As a result, we are altering the frequency, breadth and degree of exposures that are crucial for immune memory development.

Okay, now it is time for the writer to invoke a bit of memorable scientific knowledge. It’s a beautiful paragraph with a stunning opening sentence.

Failing to train our immune systems properly can have serious consequences. When laboratory mice raised in nearly sterile conditions were housed together in the same cage with pet mice raised in standard conditions, some of the laboratory mice succumbed to pathogens that the pet mice were able to fight off. Additional studies of the microbiome — the bacteria that normally inhabit our intestines and other sites — have shown that mice raised in germ-free conditions or in the presence of antibiotics had reduced and altered immune responses to many types of pathogens. These studies suggest that for establishing a healthy immune system, the more diverse and frequent the encounters with antigens, the better.

Remember that absolutely public hysteria about alleged peanut allergies to the point that if we ate one on a plane people could die? Check this out:

Introduction of peanuts to infants resulted in reduced incidence of peanut allergy, while avoidance had the opposite effect of promoting unwanted, severe allergic immune responses to peanuts.

The article concludes with a perfunctory endorsement of masking (poor kids!), else it wouldn’t have been published, but ends with this riposte:

The sooner we can safely restore the normal experiences of childhood, interacting with other children and — paradoxically — with pathogens and diverse microorganisms, the better we can ensure their ability to thrive as adults in this changing world.

Really, all this is something my mother knows. She taught it to me. Her mother taught it to her. They were all taught it in school. The knowledge has not been deprecated. It just strangely evaporated. Or perhaps censored. I don’t know. I do know this article is a welcome relief from the poppycock of mysophobia that has taken over the public square.

Imagine wrecking the immune systems of children for a lifetime for a disease that poses almost zero risk to their lives. I call that immoral. Deeply so. People will be suffering for many decades due to this bout of anti-science hysteria.

It takes one’s breath away to contemplate the scale of the destruction these lockdowns and quarantines have caused, particularly among the most vulnerable. It’s not just depression, poverty, and demoralization of living in the midst of near-universal violations of human rights. As it turns out, we could be biologically dooming a whole generation too.

Get those kids out there! You get out there too! Sooner the better.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Johns Hopkins study explodes COVID death hoax; it’s re-labeling on a grand scale

By Jon Rappoport | November 30, 2020

“This patient who died had an ordinary heart attack.”

“Not anymore. We’re repackaging it as COVID.”

Don’t blink. Johns Hopkins may delete or retract their analysis at any moment. Their author’s study is devastating. Too hot to handle.

UPDATE: Yes, I wrote that opener a few hours before Johns Hopkins stepped in and DID retract the article. Boom. [1] [2] [3] [4]

Hopkins claims the article has been used to spread misinformation about the pandemic, and contains factual errors. CDC is cited as one correct source of facts. Hmm.

Regardless, here is my article, finished before the Johns Hopkins retraction. Since then, I’ve only polished it a bit in several places, for clarity:

Months ago, I told you this, in a number of articles: The overwhelming percentage of people who are “dying from the virus” are actually dying from traditional diseases.

These people have been relabeled and repackaged as “COVID-19.”

It has nothing to do with “the virus.”

A new analysis from Johns Hopkins confirms this in spades.

The Johns Hopkins News-Letter article, in a student publication, is headlined, “A closer look at US deaths due to COVID-19.” It lays out the case made by “Genevieve Briand, assistant program director of the Applied Economics master’s degree program at Hopkins.”

As you keep reading, keep this in mind: If the so-called increase in mortality from COVID is offset, almost exactly, by a decrease in deaths from all other major diseases…

Indicating that the so-called COVID deaths are nothing more than an exercise in re-labeling, then…

You can say there is a new coronavirus, but it’s even less harmful than flu, because virtually everybody recovers…

Or you can say the whole story of a new coronavirus is a fake narrative. There is no new virus.

My readers know I’ve been offering much evidence for the latter conclusion.

Here are key quotes from the Johns Hopkins News-Letter article:

“These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, it has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States.”

“This comes as a shock to many people. How is it that the data lie so far from our perception?”

“When Briand looked at the 2020 data during that seasonal period, COVID-19-related deaths exceeded deaths from heart diseases. This was highly unusual since heart disease has always prevailed as the leading cause of deaths. However, when taking a closer look at the death numbers, she noted something strange. As Briand compared the number of deaths per cause during that period in 2020 to [deaths per cause in] 2018, she noticed that instead of the expected drastic increase across all causes, there was a significant decrease in deaths due to heart disease. Even more surprising, as seen in the graph below, this sudden decline in deaths is observed for all other causes.”

“This trend is completely contrary to the pattern observed in all previous years. Interestingly, as depicted in the table below, the total decrease in deaths by other causes almost exactly equals the increase in deaths by COVID-19. This suggests, according to Briand, that the COVID-19 death toll is misleading. Briand believes that deaths due to heart diseases, respiratory diseases, influenza and pneumonia may instead be [may have been] recategorized as being due to COVID-19.”

“The CDC classified all deaths that are related to COVID-19 simply as COVID-19 deaths. Even patients dying from other underlying diseases but are infected with COVID-19 count as COVID-19 deaths. This is likely the main explanation as to why COVID-19 deaths drastically increased while deaths by all other diseases experienced a significant decrease.”

“’All of this points to no evidence that COVID-19 created any excess deaths. Total death numbers are not above normal death numbers. We found no evidence to the contrary,’ Briand concluded.”

“’If [the COVID-19 death toll] was not misleading at all, what we should have observed is an increased number of heart attacks and increased COVID-19 numbers. But a decreased number of heart attacks and all the other death causes doesn’t give us a choice but to point to some misclassification [re-labeling],’ Briand replied.”

“In other words, the effect of COVID-19 on deaths in the U.S. is considered problematic only when it increases the total number of deaths or the true death burden by a significant amount in addition to the expected deaths by other causes. Since the crude number of total deaths by all causes before and after COVID-19 [was first announced] has stayed the same, one can hardly say, in Briand’s view, that COVID-19 deaths are concerning.”

Of course, there is some mealy-mouthed backtracking in the article. The virus is deadly and the pandemic is real, etc. But the data are the data.

The whole COVID operation is a hoax.

If I thought other honest researchers would investigate and re-calculate the Hopkins analysis, I would say, let’s see what they come up with. But based on my experience, there will be, at best, a brief flurry of articles in the press about this extraordinary finding, and then the scientific and press denizens will move on, as if nothing happened. That is their way. They briefly expose a scandal and then they slither off to cover up the scandal.

The other possibility is: Hopkins will retract the analysis, claiming it was flawed. That is the other strategy the low-crawling creatures sometimes deploy.

So there you have it.

Hoax. Con. Fake.

As I keep reporting, the virus (never proven to exist) is the cover story for the true phase-one goal: destruction of the economy.

If the virus were real, if it were attacking people left and right, the all-cause mortality numbers would be through the roof.

But they aren’t.

“I have a great idea, Bill. Let’s declare a fake pandemic. We’ll report all sorts of high death numbers. But really, we’ll just be subtracting numbers from other traditional diseases that cause deaths, and we’ll add those numbers to our fake pandemic.”

“Sounds great, Tony. Can you pull it off? I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Sure, we can pull it off. And if some journalist with a mainstream reputation or an institution suddenly develops a brief infection of ETHICS, we’ll call their work a mistake or a lapse in judgment.”

“You mean an institution like the World Health Organization or Johns Hopkins?”

“Right. We’ll say the institution didn’t issue the study, it was just one of their people, a lone researcher. And if necessary, the institution, under pressure, will back off. But that’s assuming anyone noticed the study in the first place. Normally, these ‘revelations’ surface for a moment and then sink like a stone. No one cares. A pandemic is a money waterfall. The beneficiaries won’t sacrifice their bottom lines, or their reputations…”

Of course, people can rise up and raise holy hell.

SOURCES:

[1] https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20201126163323/https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/11/a-closer-look-at-u-s-deaths-due-to-covid-19

[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO0K75EZAF8dkNDkDmM3L4zNNY0X-Xw5/view

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKJN61aflI

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

‘Weapon used in nuclear scientist’s assassination made in Israel’

Press TV – November 30, 2020

The remains of the weapon used in the Friday assassination of senior nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh show that it was made in Israel, an informed source has told Press TV.

The source made the revelation on Monday, saying the weapon collected from the site of the terrorist act bears the logo and specifications of the Israeli military industry.

Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence also said it had obtained “new leads” on the identity of the perpetrators and that the information “will be publicized very soon.”

A former head of the Defense Ministry’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, Fakhrizadeh was targeted in an attack involving at least one explosion and machinegun fire in the town of Absard near Tehran.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Sunday that the assassination bears all the hallmarks of the Israeli regime.

The history of Tel Aviv’s sabotage targeting Iran’s nuclear energy program is as old as the program itself.

Many observers believe Israel is not able to carry out such dangerous operations without the prior information and support of the United States which left a landmark nuclear deal with Iran in 2015.

Israel possesses the Middle East’s sole nuclear arsenal estimated to contain at least 200 warheads. The occupying regime maintains a policy of ambiguity concerning its nuclear weapons, neither confirming nor denying publicly that it has the capability.

Unlike Iran, it also refuses to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not allow any international inspection of its nuclear weapons program.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

Emerging sanctions-driven EU alliance with Navalny reeks of Western neo-colonial moves which helped destroy Russia in 1990s

By Glenn Diesen | RT | November 30, 2020

The West’s favorite Russian opposition figure has called for the EU to sanction pro-Kremlin ‘oligarchs’. Alexey Navalny doesn’t appear to be against all ‘oligarchs’ though, just those he feels are supportive of Vladimir Putin.

In a European Parliament hearing last week, the activist argued that the Russian people would welcome punishing the ‘kleptocracy’ that he says has thrived under Putin.

The anti-corruption campaigner was speaking to members of the EU’s Committee of Foreign Affairs during an “exchange of views with representatives of the Russian political opposition.” Despite the title, no members of Russia’s largest opposition parties – the nationalist LDPR, communist KPRF or leftist Fair Russia – were present at the virtual discussion. Instead only pro-Western figures, with almost uniformly similar liberal views, were involved in the event.

They included Vladimir Kara Murza Jr., a lobbyist at the US-government funded Free Russia Foundation, set up to “inform” American policy makers on the country; Vladimir Milov, a former deputy minister of energy, now closely allied to Navalny; and Ilya Yashin, a municipal deputy of the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow. Yashin is the only one of the four who actually holds an elected position.

To be clear, the issue of how many Russian billionaires acquired and spent their wealth is one worth debating, yet this attempt to place Navalny on the side of the Russian people and Putin among a criminal class is simply absurd, given the history.

Putin and the oligarchs

The rise of the 1990s oligarchs is commonly referred to as a “criminal revolution” in Russia. The US-sponsored shock therapy in the post-Soviet period produced disaster privatization where the huge natural resources wealth of Russia ended up in the pockets of a handful of incredibly rich men.

The US was motivated to ensure the legacy of the Soviet Union was permanently dismantled. But the great irony is that extreme socio-economic disparity was the main reason for the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

The oligarchs seized control over the economy and incrementally asserted dominance over the media and the political system. Capital flight became an immense problem as the oligarchs transferred the wealth to their new residencies in the West rather than investing the money at home. Soon, this became a national security threat as the oligarchs were courted by the US and UK, which meant that Russia was heading toward a quasi-colonial status.

When Putin came to power, he announced that the primary task was to eliminate the oligarchic class. However, seizing all their assets and redistributing it was deemed too revolutionary, extreme and destabilizing. Instead, Putin argued the oligarchs would be held accountable for their crimes in the 1990s if they did not rescind their influence over politics.

Subsequently, oligarchs supporting the elected government were left alone, while the oligarchs seeking to become an alternative pole of political power were held accountable for their crimes in the 1990s. Russia’s richest oligarch with political aspirations, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested in 2003 before he could sell a major share of his oil empire to ExxonMobil and Chevron-Texaco. Western powers dutifully provided eventual exile and protection for defiant oligarchs such as Berezovsky and Gusinsky who were valued for their anti-Kremlin stance.

The US and UK were outraged that “their” Russian oligarchs were pushed out of politics, while a large portion of the Russian people was upset that all oligarchs had not been held accountable, given Russia continues to have a great wealth disparity.

Poverty reduced by half during Putin’s first term alone and a large middle class emerged. Credited for bringing Russia up from its knees and escaping external control, Putin has ever since enjoyed approval ratings that other world leaders can only dream about. However, the West never acknowledged that Putin had prevented Russia’s collapse and instead began demonizing the Russian president as an enemy of the Russian people.

Supporting the Russian people?

The notion that Navalny and the EU will collectively support the Russian people is very flawed. In 1917, Germany brought Lenin into Russia to install a more favorable government that would pull the Russians out of the First World War. Germany’s top army commander reported to its Foreign Office that: “Lenin’s entry into Russia was a success. He is working according to your wishes.”

Indeed, the effort to “liberate” another people from their political leadership has remained the modus operandi for almost every disastrous war in the post-Cold War era.

In Russia, the regime change endeavour is an even more absurd proposition as Putin is extremely popular, while the main opposition is the communists, led by Gennady Zyuganov, and behind them the radically nationalist LDPR, under Vladimir Zhirinovsky, another veteran. Navalny is polling at between one and three percent in Russia, while in the West he is hailed as the face of Russia’s opposition.

Former CIA Director John Brennan wrote in October 2020: “Imagine prospects for world peace, prosperity, & security if Joe Biden were President of the United States & Alexei Navalny the President of Russia. We’ll soon be halfway there.” The eagerness to present Navalny as an “opposition leader,” rather than an activist, suggests he is expected to play the same role as the oligarchs that were courted in the 1990s to advance Western interests.

Sanctions?

Sanctions against Russian billionaires in Europe could be beneficial to Russia by reversing some of the capital flight and having their money invested back home. Indeed, the West should have worked with the Russian government to clean up the disastrous privatization process of the 1990s instead of courting proxies.

However, the collective interest of Navalny and the EU is to reinvent their role as supporting the Russian people, while recasting Putin as the protector of the oligarchs. However, the enduring economic sanctions against Russia have only cemented the view of the EU as a belligerent power. Navalny’s reliance on backing from hostile foreign powers, in the absence of significant domestic support, is not a winning strategy.

Furthermore, after it was revealed that the Magnitsky sanctions were based on fallacies and after the Russiagate conspiracy theory collapsed, it would be foolish to advance more sanctions under the preposterous narrative of Navalny’s poisoning.

The West does not have a Putin problem, but a Russia problem

The West tends to promote and anticipate the downfall of Putin with great optimism due to the expectation of a more “pro-Western” alternative akin to Yeltsin. However, the 1990s were a horrific period in Russian history. The much-neglected reality is that the main opposition parties, the communists and the nationalists, advocate much more hawkish policies toward the West than Putin.

Over twenty years ago, Yeltsin tasked Putin with reforming the state’s foreign policy because the entire “pro-Western” platform collapsed when the West decided to create a new Europe without Russia, and cooperation between the West and Russia was recast in a teacher-student format. So what segment of Russian society is the EU reaching out to and does “pro-Western” imply capitulation?

Which demographic of Russians support the containment policies, NATO and EU expansionism toward Russian borders, and again being relegated to a plaything of the West?

Without an answer to these questions, the efforts by the EU to elevate new “opposition leaders” in Russia will be dismissed by most Russians as an effort to weaken Russia and return their nation to the Western vassal it was in the 1990s.

Glenn Diesen is an Associate Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Follow him on Twitter @glenndiesen

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Pardons Flynn… It’s a Good Start!

By Ron Paul | November 30, 2020

Last week President Trump granted a “full pardon” to Gen. Michael Flynn, his first National Security Advisor. In a White House statement announcing the pardon, the Administration pointed out that the relentless pursuit of Flynn was a partisan effort to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

The pursuit of Flynn was spearheaded by people who refused to accept the results of the 2016 election and worked to undermine the peaceful transfer of power, said the White House. These same people are the ones accusing Trump of undermining the election by challenging what appears to be serious voting irregularities in the 2020 presidential election.

That is called “projection.”

The White House statement also cites partisans in politics, the media, and the Deep State which sought to prevent Trump from being elected, to prevent him from taking office once elected, and to remove him on false pretenses once in office.

In order to push the false narrative that Trump was somehow elected due to the intervention of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the coup-masters had to make it appear that a high-ranking official was involved in monkey business with the Russians. Flynn was the unlucky victim of their smear machine, accused of “Russia collusion” over an innocent telephone call with the then-Russian Ambassador in Washington during the transition to a Trump Administration.

Yet when Joe Biden’s transition people bragged recently that Biden was connecting with foreign officials before inaugurated, the media praised it as a welcome return of the “experts” to foreign policy.

While it is very good news that President Trump is in the mood to pardon those victims of the warmongering Deep State, I very much hope that he is only warming up. It would be a great tragedy if other Deep State victims are left to suffer for their non-crimes.

Tweeting about her legislation that calls for charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange to be dropped and the Espionage Act reformed, US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard told President Trump, “since you’re giving pardons to people, please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state.”

My good friend Rep. Thomas Massie, a Ron Paul Institute Board Member, is a co-sponsor of Rep. Gabbard’s legislation, making it a real bipartisan effort to restore the rule of law in the United States and to rein in the Beltway warmongers.

Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are not criminals. They are heroes for telling us the truth about what criminals in government were doing in our name and with our money.

The fact is we were lied into war over and over again. While those wars were profitable for the military-industrial-Congressional-media complex, they snuffed out the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people overseas and robbed our own children and grandchildren of trillions of dollars wasted on neocon lies. And meanwhile, as Ed Snowden showed us, the intelligence community declared us the enemy and set up an elaborate internal spy network that would make the East German Stasi green with envy.

President Trump: you have the incredible opportunity to right the terrible wrongs perpetrated by the Obama/Biden Administration. History will smile kindly upon you if you also grant full pardon to Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – and any other truth-teller who faces persecution for exposing the Deep State warmongers.

Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute.

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | | 7 Comments

Informal British-Turkish-Ukrainian alliance is emerging in the Black Sea

By Paul Antonopoulos | November 30, 2020

Trade agreements between the UK and Turkey are “very close,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said during a visit to Britain in July. London’s endeavour to secure post-Brexit trade agreements reflects on the status of its economic relations with Turkey. A UK-Turkey trade agreement is important for both countries, not only commercially, but also geopolitically as it can extend into the Ukraine against Russia, particularly in the Black Sea.

The trade agreement is crucial because the EU’s relationship with Turkey and the UK have deteriorated. Brussels and Ankara clash over the erosion of democratic controls and balances in Turkey, and also because of its increasingly dynamic foreign policy in Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean against Greece and Cyprus. Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. has also intensified, especially since Ankara bought the Russian S-400 missile defense system despite opposition from Washington and NATO. With it appearing imminent that Joe Biden will become the next U.S. President, relations between Washington and Ankara are set to deteriorate further.

This makes the UK one of Turkey’s few remaining friends in the West, and for Ankara a trade deal would signal a close economic and political relationship with a major European power that still wields international influence. For its part, the UK was willing to cultivate a good relationship with Ankara in the context of a “Global Britain” that it wants to build after Brexit.

When it was still a member of the EU, the UK was one of the leading supporters of Turkey’s membership into the bloc. London has also taken a much more discreet stance than other European capitals in condemning President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for the deteriorating domestic situation. When Turkey launched a military operation in Syria in 2019, the UK was initially reluctant to condemn Ankara unlike other NATO members, just like what happened when Turkey intervened in Libya.

It was always inevitable that a post-Brexit UK would have strengthened relations with Turkey, especially as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson often boasts that his paternal great-grandfather, Ali Kemal, was a former Ottoman Minister of the Interior.

Johnson describes the Gülen movement, once allied to Erdoğan but now considered a terrorist organization by Ankara, as a “cult.” He also supports Turkey’s post-coup purges that resulted in the detainment of over half a million Turkish citizens, not only from the military, but also from education, media, politics and many other sectors.

It appears that Johnson’s post-Brexit “Global Britain” has Turkey as a lynchpin for its renewed international engagement with the world, and this poses immense security risks for Russia, especially in the Black Sea.

Erdoğan was outraged when Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspended arms shipments to Turkey because of its involvement in Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia. This was a major blow to the TB2 Bayraktar drones that are highly valued by Erdoğan as he uses them in his military adventures in not only Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, but also in the Aegean in espionage acts against so-called NATO ally Greece. He has even set up a drone base in occupied northern Cyprus to oversee the Eastern Mediterranean.

The so-called “domestically produced” Bayraktar drones have been exposed for using parts from nine foreign companies, including a Canadian one. Although Erdoğan was outraged by Trudeau’s decision, he found a British company to replace Canadian parts. Britain’s decision to be involved in the Bayraktar drone program is all the more controversial considering five of the nine foreign companies involved have withdrawn their support because of Turkey’s role in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Although the growing unofficial alliance for now appears to be in the fields of economics and military technology, alarming reports are emerging that British troops will be stationed in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Port on the Black Sea.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the BBC that if British troops “land there and stay, we will not mind either. From the first day of the Russian aggression, Britain has been close and provided practical support, and not only militarily.”

Post-Brexit Britain will not weaken its maximum pressure against Russia, and rather it appears to be increasing its campaign. Britain, as a non-Arctic country, is attempting to bully its way into Arctic geopolitics by undermining Russian dominance in the region. However, Britain’s campaign of maximum pressure creates instability on Russia’s vast frontiers, including in Ukraine and the Black Sea.

With this we can see an informal tripartite alliance emerge between the UK, Turkey and Ukraine.

Kiev has formed a venture with Ankara to produce 48 Turkish Bayraktar drones in Ukraine. This also comes as Ukraine’s Ukrspetsexport and Turkey’s Baykar Makina established the Black Sea Shield in 2019 to develop drones, engine technologies, and guided munitions. In fact, Turkey will allow Ukraine to sell Bayraktar drones it produces, which will now contain British parts after several foreign companies withdrew from the drone program. It is not known whether Bayraktar drones can currently be produced because of the mass withdrawal of foreign companies, but we can expect Ukrainian and British companies to eventually fill the voids left behind.

Both Turkey and Ukraine cannot challenge Russian dominance in the Black Sea alone, and it is in their hope that by closely aligning and cooperating that they can tip the balance in their favor, especially if Britain will have a military presence in Mykolaiv Port. Ukraine still does not recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Britain maintains sanctions against Moscow because of the reunification, and Turkey continually alleges that Russia mistreats the Crimean Tatars.

Erdoğan uses Turkish minorities, whether they be in Syria, Greece or Cyprus, to justify interventions and/or involvement in other countries internal affairs. Erdoğan is now using the Tatar minority to force himself into the Crimean issue while simultaneously helping Ukraine arm itself militarily. With Turkish diplomatic and technological support, alongside British diplomatic, technological and perhaps limited military support, Ukraine might be emboldened to engage in a campaign against  Crimea or disrupt Russian trade in the Black Sea.

It certainly appears that an informal tripartite alliance is emerging between the UK, Turkey and Ukraine, and it is aimed against Russia in the Black Sea to end the status quo and insert their own security structure in the region on their own terms.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst. 

November 30, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment