Biden Instructs Intelligence Agencies to Study Reports of ‘Russian Hackers’, US Soldier Bounties
By Asya Geydarova – Sputnik – 21.01.2021
The inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden took place on January 20 and marks the start of the four-year term of Biden as the 46th president of the United States and Kamala Harris as vice president. Since being inaugurated, Biden has already signed a series of executive orders to undo US President Donald Trump’s legacy.
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters that President Joe Biden has tasked the US intelligence agencies with preparing a thorough review of alleged activities undertaken by Russia.
According to Psaki, these include reports of “Russian hackers” concerning the recent cyber attack against IT company SolarWinds, the alleged poisoning of opposition figure and blogger Alexey Navalny, and allegations of bounties on the US soldiers in Afghanistan.
“Even as we work with Russia to advance US interests, so we work to hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions. And to this end, the president is also issuing a tasking to the intelligence community for its full assessment of the SolarWinds cyber beach, Russian interference in the 2020 election, its use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexey Navalny and the alleged bounties on the US soldiers in Afghanistan,” Psaki said.
The cyberattack against SolarWinds exposed private data from companies and government agencies, including thousands of emails from the US Department of Justice (DoJ).
Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov told Sputnik the United States is using the media to spread different versions of what caused the SolarWinds cyberattack, but it never showed any proof that Russia was complicit in it.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also denied the allegations: “This talk [of cyberattacks] has nothing to do with us, because Russia is not involved in such attacks generally, including this one specifically. We state this officially and decisively. Any accusations of Russia’s involvement are absolutely unfounded and are a continuation of the kind of blind Russophobia that is resorted to following any incident,” Peskov said in a briefing last month, Sputnik reported.
Bounties Allegations
In June, the New York Times reported that US intelligence officials had informed President Donald Trump about suspected Russia effort to place bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump dismissed the claims as a “hoax” and several senior US military officials said that the intelligence was unconvincing. Russian officials, in turn, have issued multiple denials of the claims, calling them “blatant lies” designed to keep US forces in Afghanistan forever.
US media outlets reported in late December that the president was also briefed of alleged findings that China offered bounties to non-state actors in Afghanistan.
A senior US official told the Politico portal that the allegations lacked “hard evidence,” and Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the claims were “nothing but fake news” published with the aim of smearing China. The Taliban has called the bounty allegations “propaganda,” suggesting they may have been put forward for political reasons.
“Of course, countries are competing among themselves. It is possible that accusations against Russia of such cooperation are also for political purposes and so China has been accused of doing the same thing,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said last week.Navalny Case
Navalny returned to Russia on Sunday after receiving treatment in Germany following suspected poisoning. He was detained at a Moscow airport over multiple violations of probation.
On 20 August, Navalny fell ill while aboard a domestic flight. He was initially treated in the Siberian city of Omsk, where the plane had to urgently land. Local doctors suggested metabolic malfunctions as main diagnosis and said there were no traces of poison in his system. Two days later, he was flown to the Charite hospital in Berlin for further treatment.
Berlin claims that German doctors found evidence of poisoning with a nerve agent from the Novichok group in Navalny’s body, which is refuted by Moscow. Navalny returned to Russia on Sunday after receiving treatment in Germany following a suspected poisoning in Siberia. Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport upon arrival over multiple violations of probation.
Moscow insists that Berlin present the biological materials to corroborate the chemical poisoning, so that it could open a criminal case. According to Russian authorities, they have already sent several requests for legal assistance to Berlin, but to no avail.
Nurses in Coffey County refuse to give COVID-19 vaccine
AP Wire Fox4 Topeka
Excerpts:
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Four nurses at a rural health department in Kansas are refusing to administer any COVID-19 vaccines, citing the fast development and production of the shots.
Coffey County Public Health Administrator Lindsay Payer said the nurses made their own decisions and expressed their concerns one by one. She called the vaccine documents concerning.
“I strongly feel that if people want this vaccine, they should receive it. Absolutely,” Payer said. “But just like it’s their choice to receive it or not, I feel like it should also be my choice to give it or not.”
None of the nurses, including Payer, feel “comfortable” administering a vaccine that has gone through a speedy testing process with new technology, the Kansas City Star reported.
“Vaccination of Kansans is critical to reach the end of this pandemic,” Kristi Zears, a spokeswoman with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, said in an email. “We are not aware of any other health departments who have expressed concerns regarding the vaccine and would point them to the safety data.”
Read the full article at Fox4 Topeka.
Comments by Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | January 21, 2021:
We commend these brave nurses who obviously have nothing to gain from such a decision other than a clear conscious, and much to lose, including their jobs.
As for Kristi Zears’ comments, I guess she missed this health department’s concerns in California:
See Also:
Doctors Around the World Issue Dire WARNING: DO NOT GET THE COVID VACCINE!!
Halfway through this winter of Covid, overall mortality is around normal for this time of year. Something doesn’t add up
By Peter Andrews | RT | January 21, 2021
Although the numbers of deaths attributed to the virus in the UK are higher than they’ve ever been, in total, not many more people are dying than in any other cold season. Is the mainstream media finally waking up to this?
A recent article in the Telegraph is one of the first in a mainstream outlet to even suggest a challenge to the official coronavirus narrative. These days, that narrative claims that the ‘second wave’ is actually deadlier than the first. (Recently, some Branch Covidians have been claiming a ‘third wave’, but there is not yet a united front on that.)
The basic reasoning of the article is sound, even if it is long overdue. It laments how every day, the media solemnly reports the latest figures on Covid deaths. Presenting this figure in isolation results in graphs such as this one, which does indeed seem to show that we are at the height of a second, worse phase of a pandemic. But, like any statistics, daily death numbers are meaningless without context, which the media rarely provides.
They do not provide context because, if they did, the public might see a graph such as this one, from the Telegraph article. It quite clearly shows the spring spike in overall mortality, which was caused by Covid (plus lockdowns). After that ends in summer, we see… nothing. Overall mortality ever since, even through this winter, hovers at around the five-year average. And overall mortality, as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is the only true way to know whether you are in a pandemic or not – all other figures can easily be fiddled.
Out of whack
So, why are the excess death data and the Covid deaths data so out of whack? And why isn’t Covid killing lots and lots of people this winter, as it did in spring? Even if you ascribe all excess deaths to Covid and none to lockdown, there really does not seem to be anything out of the normal variation in total deaths from year to year. And surely, by now, the toll of unnecessary deaths caused by untreated cancer, heart disease, depression and so on, has at least begun to register.
One reason coronavirus might not be slaying all around it this winter is because, well, this is not its first winter. Remember: it is called Covid-19, as in 2019. Of course, the official version of history states that the virus never reached Western civilisation until the spring of 2020, but evidence for this assertion is based on dodgy polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and a profound rejection of common sense. (By the way, how many people do you know who had a severe bout of pneumonia-like symptoms last winter?)
But the main reason for the disparity is obvious: mass PCR testing. Under the current regime (science is the wrong word), a ‘Covid death’ is someone who dies having tested positive for Covid within the previous 28 days. When you test all hospital patients, as the UK does, then some of them will turn out to be positive – how many depends largely on the way you do the tests. And the more tests you do, the more ‘Covid deaths’ you will generate. It is that simple. Dr Mike Yeadon has written extensively on this, which he calls the PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic.
Too little, too late
In another time, it might have been shocking that it took so long for the science editor of a broadsheet newspaper to wonder why, in the midst of a killer pandemic the world’s not seen for a century or so, the number of people dying in the country is ordinary. Better late than never I suppose, but do not take this as a sign that the reinforcements are coming. Even this article makes absolutely certain to pledge allegiance to Covid orthodoxy, stating without evidence that “severe restrictions were … clearly essential to control the growing pandemic’’.
Most people do not get their information by sifting through government-issued statistics on websites designed to hinder you. But there used to be a word for someone who got paid to do exactly that and then tell the public, in plain English, what they found. Oh, that’s right – we used to call those people ‘journalists’. There don’t seem to be many of them about these days, not even at the Telegraph.
Peter Andrews is an Irish science journalist and writer based in London. He has a background in the life sciences, and graduated from the University of Glasgow with a degree in genetics.
MICHAEL MCFAUL’S COUNTERPRODUCTIVE POLICY PROPOSALS
Irrussianality | January 22, 2021
War, said the great Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, is an “interaction.” It is “not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass, but always the collision of two living forces.” One might say the same thing about international politics. Whatever you do always involves others, who have a will of their own and who act in ways which impede the fulfilment of your plans.
The good strategist doesn’t assume that others will simply comply with his demands. Rather he considers their likely response, and if it is probable that they will respond in a way that harms his own interests, he jettisons his plan and looks for another.
Joe Biden’s victory against Donald Trump in the recent US presidential election has led to a slew of articles suggesting the policies that the new administration should pursue towards Russia. All too often, instead of considering how Russia will respond, they treat it as a “lifeless mass” which can be pushed in the desired direction by pressing the correct buttons. Experience, however, suggests that this is not the case, and the Russian reaction to the proposed policies is not likely to be what the United States desires.
An example is an article by the former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul, published this week in the magazine Foreign Affairs. Full of suggestions for ramping up the pressure on Russia, it fails to take into consideration how Moscow is likely to respond to such pressure. Consequently, it ends up proposing a line that if put into practice would probably be entirely counterproductive.
McFaul accuses Russian president Vladimir Putin of leading an “assault on democracy, liberalism, and multilateral institutions,” with the objective of “the destruction” of the international order. From this McFaul concludes that the United States “must deter and contain Putin’s Russia for the long haul.” He then makes several suggestions as to what this policy should involve.
First, he suggests that NATO build up its armed forces on Russia’s border, “especially on its vulnerable southern flank”. Why precisely this is “vulnerable” McFaul doesn’t say, but he does tell us that NATO “needs new weapons systems, including frigates with antisubmarine technologies, nuclear and conventionally powered submarines, and patrol aircraft.”
Second, he argues that America must increase its support to Ukraine. “A successful, democratic Ukraine will inspire new democratic possibilities in Russia,” he says, as if a “successful, democratic Ukraine” is something that can simply be wished into existence. But McFaul wants to do more than just help Ukraine; he also wants to punish Russia. “As long as Putin continues to occupy Ukrainian territory, sanctions should continue to ratchet up,” he says.
Third, McFaul wants the US to get more deeply involved in other countries on Russia’s borders. “Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, and Uzbekistan all deserve diplomatic upgrades,” he suggests. He also recommends that Joe Biden, “should meet with Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya”.
Fourth, McFaul wishes to venture into the world of censorship. America and other Western democracies, “should develop a common set of laws and protocols for regulating Russian government controlled-media,” he says. To this end, he argues that Biden should get social media to “downgrade the information Russia distributes through its propaganda channels.” If a search engine produces a link to RT, “a BBC story should pop up next to it,” he says.
Finally, McFaul says that the United States should bypass the Russian government to forge contacts with the Russian people, so as to “undermine Putin’s anti-American propaganda.” The USA should also train Russian journalists as part of an effort to “support independent journalism and anticorruption efforts in Russia.”
Strategy, as Clausewitz, pointed out, is about using tactics to achieve the political aim. But it is almost impossible to see how the tactics McFaul proposes could help the United States achieve any useful objective. The simple reason is that Russia is hardly likely to react to them in a positive fashion.
Let us look at them from a Russian point of view. How will the Russian government see them?
Sanctions are to “ratchet up” in perpetuity (as they must if they are connected to Russia’s possession of Crimea, which no Russian government will ever surrender); NATO will deploy more and more forces on Russia’s frontier; America will interfere ever more in Russian internal affairs, building up what will undoubtedly be considered a “fifth column” of US-trained journalists and opposition activists; the USA will intensify efforts to detach Russia from its allies and build up a ring up of hostile states around it; and finally, America will launch all-out information warfare to bend the international media to its will.
What does McFaul imagine Russia will do when it sees all this? Put up its hands and surrender? If he does, then it’s clear that in a lifetime studying Russia, he’s managed to learn nothing.
In reality, the response would probably be not at all to his liking. The growing sense of external and internal threat would lead to an increase in repressive measures at home, undermining the very democracy and liberty McFaul claims to be supporting. In addition, we would most probably see Russia increasing its own military forces on its national frontiers; doubling down on its support for the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Eastern Ukraine; and pressing further with its own activities in the information domain.
In short, the Russian response would involve Russia doing all the things that McFaul dislikes, but even more so. It is hard to see how his strategy could be deemed to be a sensible one.
If it was just McFaul, it would probably not matter too much. But he is far from the only person saying these things. The general theme among supporters of the new Biden administration is that Trump was too soft on Russia, and that America needs to take a more robust line. This does not bode well for the next few years.
“Know your enemy and know yourself,” said another great strategist, Sun Tzu. Unfortunately, Americans seem to have forgotten this advice. They would do well to heed it.
Alexei Navalny & Russia Baiting: Biden Brings Back Business as Usual
Only 48 hours in power, and already the team behind The Maidan is looking to start a colour revolution in Moscow.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | January 22, 2021
Joe Biden enters the White House with an entourage of faces very familiar to OffGuardian, and many of those readers who have been with us since the beginning.
Glassy-eyed Jen Psaki is once again taking the White House press briefings. Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland is going to be secretary of state, and Samantha Power is hoisted back onto a platform from which she can berate the rest of the world for not following America’s “moral example” by bombing Syria back to the stone age.
It was the machinations of these people – along with Biden as VP, John Kerry as Secretary of State and of course Barack Obama leading the charge – that lead to the coup in Ukraine, the war in Donbass and – indirectly – the creation of this website. For it was our comments on the Guardian telling this truth that got everyone here banned, multiple times.
So, for us, pointing out cold-war style propaganda is like slipping back into a comfy pair of shoes.
A good thing too, because with this coterie of neocon-style warmongers comes another familiar friend: the propaganda war on Putin’s Russia. Throughout the media and on every front, all within hours of Biden’s inauguration.
Now, anti-Russia nonsense didn’t go away while Trump was President – if anything it became deranged to the point of literal insanity in many quarters – but it definitely quietened down in the last 12 months, with the outbreak of the “pandemic”.
No more! Now we’re back to good old-fashioned cold-war craziness. The media tell us that Russia was a “spectre that loomed over Trump’s presidency”, that one of the Capitol Hill rioters intended to “sell Nancy Pelosi’s laptop to Russia” and other such brazen hysteria.
Of course underneath the standard pot-stirring propaganda to keep the “new cold war” on the boil, there is the Navalny narrative. An incredibly contrived piece of political theatre that may even evolve into a full-on attempt at regime change in Moscow.
For starters, three days before Biden’s inauguration, Alexei Navalny (having supposedly only just survived the poison the FSB placed “in his underpants”), returned to Russia. Where he was promptly arrested for violating the terms of his bail.
He knew he would be arrested if he returned to Russia, so his doing so was pure theatre. That fact is only underlined by the media’s reaction to his 30 day jail sentence.
Yes, that’s thirty DAYS, not years. He’ll be out before spring. Even if he’s convicted of the numerous charges of embezzlement and fraud, he faces only 3 years in prison.
Nevertheless, already the familiar Russia-baiters in the media are comparing him to Nelson Mandela.
On the same day as Biden’s inauguration, the European Parliament announced that Russia should be punished for arresting Navalny, by having the Nordstream 2 pipeline project closed down. (Closing this pipeline down would open up the European market to buy US gas, instead of Russia. This is a complete coincidence).
And then, the day after Biden’s inauguration, the European Court of Human Rights announced they had found Russia guilty of war crimes during the 5-day war in South Ossetia in 2008. The report was subject to a gleeful (and terrible) write-up by (who else?) Luke Harding. (Why they waited 13 years to make this announcement remains a mystery)
It doesn’t stop there, already Western pundits and Russian “celebrities” are trying to encourage street protests in support of Alexei Navalny. An anonymous Guardian editorial states Navalny’s “bravery needs backing”, whatever that means.
All of this could mean Biden is “forced” to “change his mind” and pull out of the re-signing of the anti-nuclear weapons treaty. Ooops.
But are there bigger aims behind this as well? Do they hope they can create another Maidan… but this time in Moscow? That would be insane, but you can’t rule it out.
One thing is for sure, though; they work fast. Less than two days in office, and we’ve already got a new colour revolution kicking off. Speedy work.
FBI laments that deplatforming of ‘extremists’ makes it harder to spy on Americans
RT | January 22, 2021
Law enforcement is complaining about social media platforms’ full-frontal assault on American political dissidents’ freedom of speech, crying that removing so-called ‘extremists’ from the internet makes it harder to spy on them.
A former FBI profiler recently took to NBC to complain that while Big Tech restricting Americans’ ability to freely communicate was all well and good, it was making it harder for the US intelligence apparatus to properly snoop on every aspect of these people’s lives.
FBI alum Clint Van Zandt complained that a 70-year-old man involved in the raid on the Capitol earlier this month was totally unknown to the bureau, showing up with a truck full of Molotov cocktails, a rifle, and some “improvised grenades” unheralded by any sort of presence on social media.
Leaving aside the laughable image of the US’ deep-pocketed intelligence apparatus being thwarted by a 70-year-old man from Alabama – who, it’s worth pointing out, is not known to have even entered the Capitol building (!) – FBI agents like Van Zandt and their local counterparts in small-town sheriffs’ offices are really worried that if social media keeps purging Trump supporters and other undesirables, these platforms will create an unstoppable army of Lonnie Coffmans.
Lonnie Coffman, the man in question, had no criminal record or ties to any extremist groups, but “was struggling financially and fixated on right-wing views,” Van Zandt explained, adding – in all seriousness – that the senior citizen was the sort of threat that keeps FBI agents “up at night.”
“The purging of people with radical views from popular social platforms, which has escalated in recent weeks, deprives investigators of a crucial tool in tracking people who might move along the continuum of ideation to action,” the former agent said.
In plain English, the profiler lamented that mass deplatforming prevents FBI agents from both spying on the majority of Americans whom it considers to be potential domestic terrorism threats and entrapping wannabe criminals by posing as terrorists, militia members, and other law-breakers.
Indeed, given that nearly all high-profile FBI cases involve the bureau entrapping suspects, and that this work is increasingly done online, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become crucial tools in what the FBI describes as its fight against domestic extremism. Ordinary Americans might describe the agency’s work, however, as an unjustifiable effort to lure ordinary people into committing crimes in order to make the FBI and the rest of the US’ sprawling intelligence apparatus seem indispensable.
So please, Twitter and Facebook, the next time you highlight a bunch of users whose views fall outside the ever-more-stifling claustrophobia of the mainstream media and prepare to hit ‘delete’, think of the FBI.
Now that – according to such free-speech-loathing figures as former CIA director John Brennan and House intel committee chair Adam Schiff – the War on Terror is coming home, the FBI is going to need all the help it can get to manufacture the terror statistics that could possibly justify criminalizing political dissent in a nation whose Bill of Rights includes an ironclad guarantee to protect the individual right to free speech. The bureau certainly isn’t going to get that if it hasn’t been cultivating a pool of bored young men with no economic future across multiple platforms, stringing them along with promises of things that go boom.
Blacks Committed 73% of Mass Shootings In 2020. Many Cases Remain Unsolved. Where Is the FBI?
By Eric Striker – National Justice – January 21, 2021
As the media, FBI and Anti-Defamation League declare “white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism” the gravest threats to public safety in America, neither played any role in the outbreak of violence in 2020 — one of the deadliest years in American history.
Disingenuous political actors often point to the Charleston Church Shooting in 2015, the Tree of Life Synagogue incident of 2018, or the El Paso Wal Mart killings in 2019 to demonstrate the proclivity of white men to engage in indiscriminate killings. The latest figures on the approximately 603 mass shootings last year paint a radically different picture.
According to demographic data compiled by researchers at Mass-Shootings.info, black men committed 73% of mass shootings in 2020, in contrast whites were only 13% of known culprits.
Mass Shootings Go Unpunished
What is more galling is that while the revanchist FBI has been utilizing high tech resources to track down every protester who may have entered the Capitol, the perpetrators of some of the deadliest and most brutal mass shootings of 2020 remain at large.
For example, in June, police in Alabama investigated a house fire and found that it was set to cover up the executions of seven people, including a 17-year-old girl. The FBI violent crimes unit is aiding in the investigation, but there are no suspects.
Last September, seven people at a marijuana farm were shot and killed in Riverside, California. The police and the FBI have no arrests or suspects.
In August, three men opened fire on a crowd of women and children having a block party the middle of Washington DC. 21 people were injured in the attack, with one dying and another hospitalized in critical condition. The gunmen are still at large and the DC police do not have any suspects or leads.
There are countless unsolved mass shooting cases like the aforementioned. America is the only first world nation where people can open fire on random people in a major city’s crowded street and never get caught.
As for individual shootings, the numbers in 2020 are equally stark. 70% of shootings in New York City last year remain unsolved. Murder clearance rates have plummeted across major urban areas in the country even as homicides have skyrocketed.
The FBI’s Prioritizes Punishing Dissent Over Murder
The murder rate in 2020 jumped an average of 37% in 57 cities at the closing of last year, yet the FBI’s announced priorities for 2021 do not reflect the gravity of this national emergency.
According to the Bureau’s budget request for the new year, which is available on the Department of Justice’s website, they will be receiving close to $4 billion for their “counter-terrorism” operations, while their criminal division will be getting $3.4 billion.
A 2013 examination of the FBI’s corrupt “counter-terrorism” strategy found that only 1% of the people they entrap and arrest have any connection to actual terrorists. With the FBI’s new emphasis on right-wing white men, the number is likely much lower. Usually the criminal element introduced into religious or political communities engaging in First Amendment protected activity are inserted by the FBI itself.
The FBI’s revival as an instrument for suppressing views critical of the government is not lost on its agents. In 2018, the FBI Agents Union put out a statement demanding Congress pass a new “domestic terrorism law,” as many of their political targets are not committing any actionable criminal offenses.
Senator Dick Durbin and some Republicans are working on granting them their wish by re-submitting a “domestic terrorism” bill that would allow them to utilize already freely abused Patriot Act powers on law-abiding US citizens.
The outcome is as predicted. America is now a crime-ridden and corrupt third world country that suddenly becomes techno-dystopian when a citizen dares to question the increasingly absurd whims of the status quo.