What REALLY Got Gina Carano Cancelled
Don’t believe the lies about “racism”, the actress and former athlete has been found guilty of wrongthink. Nothing more.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | February 11, 2021
We don’t comment on pop-culture much, but as the incredibly fine line between politics and entertainment begins to fade totally out of existence the overlap becomes harder and harder to ignore.
Plus, sometimes something is just so unfair you have to take a moment to correct the record.
Actress and former MMA fighter Gina Carano has lost her role in Disney’s hit Star Wars spin-off “The Mandalorian”, lost out on her own spin-off series and been dropped by her agent.
All this is the result of a series of social media posts described as “abhorrent” in a press release from LucasFilm:
Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
But what did Carano actually say?
Well, the post is deleted but there are screencaps available. Here’s the “abhorrent” text:
Because history is edited, most people today don’t realise that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbours hate them simply for being Jews.
How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
Is this “abhorrent”? Is this “denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities”?
Obviously not. It’s an entirely historically accurate statement, making a broader point about the dangers of dehumanising large groups of people.
It’s not racist. It’s not racist to compare modern society to Nazi Germany. It’s not racist to warn against what you perceive as burgeoning fascism.
It’s. Not. Racist.
More than that, it’s actually anti-racist.
But if “go home in peace and love” can become “inciting violence”, or spending Passover with the “wrong kind of Jews” can be “Antisemitism”, than I guess “hey you shouldn’t hate people for being different” can be racist.
As I wrote yesterday, reality itself is under a prolonged assault, and we have to struggle to stick up for what words mean. For what is real.
But, if Carano didn’t say anything racist, why has she actually been fired?
Well, this is not the first time she has courted controversy on social media. She has made many posts critical of enforced mask-wearing, questioning the Covid vaccine, suggesting the 2020 election may have been rigged, and just generally not buying into pandemic hysteria. (Just yesterday, she was posting that Epstein didn’t kill himself. Which he obviously didn’t).
According to The Hollywood Reporter, LucasFilm have been “looking for a reason to get rid of her for months”. Which is even stronger evidence that this has nothing to do with any supposed “racism”, and everything to do with rigidly enforcing a consensus.
Gina Carano didn’t say anything racist and she was not fired for saying anything racist. She was fired for being just a bit of an outsider. For thinking for herself, a little, and expressing those thoughts.
It’s another example of the real purpose of identity politics, and its weaponisation as “cancel culture”. It’s all about stifling actual honest discussion. Slamming the Overton window shut. Branding everything even passingly controversial “offensive”, no matter how illogical, nonsensical or backwards it may seem. About making people afraid to honestly express themselves, for fear of the mob.
To finish, let’s pay one last visit to Gina Carano’s “abhorrent” social media, and quote something she shared on Instagram several months ago. Another example of the type of thinking that is the true target of “cancellation”:
If you go to the southwest desert and catch 100 red fire ants, as well as 100 large black ants, t can catch about 100 red fire ants that live in the southwestern desert and also about 100 of those large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen.
However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other.
The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa when, in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar.
This is exactly what’s happening in society today:
Liberal vs Conservative
Black vs White
Mask vs Anti Mask
The real question we should be asking ourselves is who is shaking the jar and why?
Guardian writer insists cancel culture doesn’t exist, gets whacked by Big Israel
By Helen Buyniski | RT | February 11, 2021
The meaning of ‘free speech’ is devolving rapidly, with an ever-widening swathe of journalistic content deemed deplatform-worthy, but one writer’s run-in with the Israeli lobby should remind us where “cancel culture” began.
Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson, a columnist for the Guardian, tripped over Tel Aviv’s time-honored third rail back in December. He was incensed – as any sane American might be – by the truly preposterous piles of money that were being bundled off to Israel as part of what was supposed to be an omnibus spending bill combined with Covid-19 stimulus passed by Congress as a life-raft for a desperately needy American populace. So he sent out a tweet.
Robinson’s tweet – which wryly suggested “it’s the law” that “the US Congress is not actually allowed to authorize any new spending unless a portion of it is directed toward buying weapons for Israel” – was a joke that took a moment to recognize as a joke, given its resemblance to reality, as the best satire often is. But, at some point, he seemed to get cold feet, following up the tweet with a qualifier noting while it wasn’t really the law, it was “at least so customary as to be functionally identical” to it.
Apparently smelling weakness (and finding satire a wholly inappropriate pastime for a Guardian columnist), the Guardian’s US editor ordered him to delete the tweets, declaring they were not “helpful to public discourse.” One might ask how 95 percent of what’s printed in the Guardian is helpful to public discourse, but one would probably not receive a reply. The email also included what seemed to be a forwarded message from some humorless individual who denounced the tweets as “clearly anti-Semitic,” arguing they were “saying that the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world” and were liable to “inform murderous hatred.”
“Delete this and apologise,” the nameless critic demanded.
Robinson at this point was going to get fired no matter what. He could have stood his ground, explaining to his editor that only the unsigned letter-writer had claimed “the only Jewish state controls the most powerful country in the world,” a conclusion which was nowhere to be found in Robinson’s tweets. He could have pointed out that deeming criticism of Israel “anti-Semitic” was itself anti-Semitic, because plenty of Jews disapprove of the sociopathic actions of the Israeli government and don’t appreciate being used as human shields for those actions. Or he could have just said “no.”
Instead, he went the route traveled by so many journalists desperate to save their jobs, deleting the tweets, groveling at the feet of his editor, and even asking for guidance from the Guardian on what was off-limits – only to be told there was no such code, just an “unwritten one.” Thus was Robinson sucked into the apology vortex that has destroyed so many upwardly-mobile political and media figures – including UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – who’ve dared to oppose the “war crimes” of a foreign country.
After weeks of emails going unreturned, Robinson was informed his services would no longer be needed.
His fate certainly had a ring of poetic justice – his last column published by the Guardian denied the existence of “cancel culture,” gloating that “bigots like Jordan Peterson” aren’t owed a platform after some employees at the publisher who’d already inked a deal with Peterson complained.
However, the Israeli lobby has been bullying journalists since long before “cancel culture” had a name, as Robinson himself documented in a typically long-winded piece posted to his website after he discovered his groveling had been for naught. Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” practitioners most likely learned their craft from observing the craven sneak-attacks practiced by the Lobby that dare not speak its name.
Like the Israeli lobby’s defenders, cancel culture practitioners pile on their targets without regard for logic, fact, or common sense. They hammer away at not only their victim, but their victim’s employer until it becomes easier to just give them what they want, even if the “offensive” statement that started the controversy was utterly unimpeachable.
Robinson’s criticism of the US dumping billions of taxpayer dollars at the feet of Israel while millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet was accurate, as most job-killing jabs at Israel are. Because there is no way of justifying the expenditure of $3.8 billion per year on a country that deliberately antagonizes its neighbors in order to justify the purchase of more American weaponry, Israel’s defenders merely lob the same “anti-Semitism accusation” grenade, again and again. As former Israeli minister Shulamit Aloni has freely admitted, “it’s a trick, we always use it.”
“The ties between Israel and the American Jewish establishment are very strong.”
It doesn’t matter if the critic of Israel is himself or herself Jewish, either: The list of Jewish critics of the Israeli government’s heinous crimes, all dismissed as “self-hating Jews,” could fill a book (whose publication would no doubt be censored). The Israeli government does not represent the Jewish people, no matter how hard it pretends to, and to suggest it does is itself anti-Semitic.
Unfortunately, the American establishment is utterly unwilling to stand up to these bullies for fear of being smeared as anti-Semitic itself, leading to the spectacle satirized so well in a New York Times cartoon from two years ago – one which also got its creator fired.
It’s a trick they will keep using until someone in the media establishment grows a backbone. As more and more self-styled aggrieved groups pick up on how ‘cancel culture’ works, eventually journalists will be unable to speak at all.
Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Responds to being Kicked off Instagram
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | February 11, 2021
Earlier, I wrote about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the founder and chairman of Children’s Health Defense being kicked off Facebook-owned social media website Instagram on Thursday, purportedly because he posted misinformation related to coronavirus vaccines.
Here is an update: Kennedy has written a strong response to the removal, discussing the nature of his posts at Instagram, relating the debate stifling effect of Instagram’s action, and pointing to the fact that both he and Informed Consent Action Network founder Del Bigtree were removed from Instagram just 15 minutes before they were to air a webinar featuring doctors and other individuals discussing matters related to coronavirus vaccines.
In his statement Kennedy writes:
Every statement I put on Instagram was sourced from a government database, from peer-reviewed publications and from carefully confirmed news stories. None of my posts were false. Facebook, the pharmaceutical industry and its captive regulators use the term ‘vaccine misinformation’ as a euphemism for any factual assertion that departs from official pronouncements about vaccine health and safety, whether true or not.
Further, states Kennedy, “the mainstream media and social media giants are imposing a totalitarian censorship to prevent public health advocates, like myself, from voicing concerns and from engaging in civil informed debate in the public square.” That assessment is in line with my take in my earlier article.
Regarding the timing of Kennedy and Bigtree’s removal from Instagram, Kennedy writes:
Instagram deplatformed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and HighWire host, Del Bigtree, just 15 minutes before they were to air the webinar, ‘COVID Vaccine on Trial, If You Only Knew’ highlighting COVID concerns, injuries, mechanisms and other facts from four MDs, several Ph.D.s and leaders from the vaccine-injured community. COVID-19 vaccines use novel technology never before used in a human population. With that comes great unknown risks. The people of the world deserve to have this crucial information to protect their health and that of their children.
Read Kennedy’s complete statement here.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.
Iraq’s Muqtada Al-Sadr warns of looming normalisation with Israel
MEMO | February 11, 2021
Leader of the Iraqi Sadrist Movement and prominent Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr said yesterday that his movement will not allow normalisation between Iraq and Israel, even if the price is “blood”.
“Normalisation is at the door, and the parliament must prevent this. We will not allow normalisation at all, even if it costs us blood,” Al-Sadr told reporters in the southern city of Najaf.
Al-Sadr did not provide further details, however, in January a new movement named October 25 was formed under the leadership of Secretary-General Talal Hariri who called to have good relations with Israel.
The Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, has not issued a clear position on the movement’s demand.
Iraq does not officially recognise Israel, and there are no relations between the two sides.
In October 2017, the Iraqi Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting raising the Israeli flag and punishing violators with imprisonment.
Last year, the UAE, Bahrain , Sudan and Morocco signed normalisation deals with Israel. At the time of the first announcements, Iraq declared that its laws prohibited it from normalising relations with the occupation state.
Arranging The Middle East Narrative To Push The Agenda Forward
South Front | February 11, 2021
The United States is returning to a level of activity in the Middle East unseen in nearly 4 years. This development has become obvious over the weeks since Joe Biden became US President, firstly with a large deployment into Syria, and subsequently with smaller ones.
On February 9th, the Pentagon said that it was no longer in Syria to protect and exploit oil fields.
It is now back to hunting ISIS. Back to the square one of 2014 and the Obama era. ISIS somehow obliged by ramping up their activities throughout Syria.
It is a mystery that they were able to make such a sharp and sudden resurgence. It should also be noted that the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces allegedly have about 10,000 ISIS terrorists imprisoned.
This statement of intent denotes a massive shift in posture for the US. When defending the oil fields the US troops were mostly static, when hunting ISIS they can, once again, roam around and carry out various operations.
It appears likely that Idlib is now also in focus – US combat drones were observed surveying Greater Idlib. Idlib is a mixed bag – it has Turkish troops, Russians, the Syrian Arab Army along with terrorists and the moderate opposition, although confusing these two groups can be forgiven. The newest, future, US ally is there – the soon-to-be-rebranded Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham.
An indication of expected escalations and attacks are the Russian and Syrian military drills being carried out near Aleppo during effective wartime. Russia, separately, carried out a naval drill near Tartus.
And, as if by design, long-range missiles attempted to strike Russia’s forces at the Hmeimim Air Base. Drones occasionally attempt to infiltrate its airspace, but missiles are a rare sight.
Meanwhile in Western Daraa, the rebel leaders submitted to Damascus, likely fearing the upcoming chaos and wanting to choose a side.
Finally, the Biden administration is also working to secure Israeli support. The State Department said it doesn’t endorse Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, but doesn’t oppose it. It also provided a $9bn weapon sale as consolation. Tel Aviv is likely to use these weapons to counter its nemesis – Iran. It does so by targeting alleged Iranian interests in Syria.
Syria remains the lynchpin of US Middle East policy but the US posture in Iraq and Afghanistan has also changed. Withdrawing from the region is now out of the question – ISIS is making a resurgence, and there are other groups targeting American forces and convoys.
In Afghanistan, specifically, if the withdrawal does not move forward, the Taliban are also likely to begin targeting the US again.
The democrats are back in control and back to spreading democracy in the Middle East.
Why Victoria Nuland Is Dangerous and Should Not be Confirmed
By Rick Sterling | Global Research | February 11, 2021
Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability. It is a bad sign that [proclaimed] President Joe Biden has nominated Victoria Nuland for the third highest position at the State Department, Under Secretary for Political Affairs.
As a top-level appointee, Victoria Nuland must be confirmed by the US Senate. There is a campaign to Stop her confirmation. The following review of her work shows why Victoria Nuland is incompetent, highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.
Afghanistan and Iraq
From 2000 to 2003, Nuland was US permanent representative to NATO as the Bush administration attacked then invaded Afghanistan. The Afghan government offered to work with the US remove Al Qaeda, but this was rejected. After Al Qaeda was defeated, the US could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, split the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.
From 2003 to 2005 Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney who “helped plan and manage the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, including making Bush administration’s case for preemptive military actions based on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.” The foreign policy establishment, with Nuland on the far right, believed that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a US “ally” would be simple.
The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a cost of 2 to 6 TRILLION dollars.
From 2005 to 2008 Victoria Nuland was US Ambassador to NATO where her role was to “strengthen Allied support” for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
On the 10th anniversary of the invasion, when asked about the lessons learned Nuland responded “Compared to where we were in the Saddam era, we now have a bilateral security agreement … We have deep economic interests and ties. We have a security relationship. We have a political relationship.” Nuland is oblivious to the costs. Nuland’s loyalties are to the elite who have benefitted from the tragedy. According to online google, “One of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services corporation, Halliburton. Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in ‘federal contracts related to the Iraq war.’ Nuland’s boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was the former the CEO of Halliburton.
In January 2020, seventeen years after the US invasion, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding the US troops and contractors leave. Now, over one year later, they still have not left.
Libya
In spring 2011, Victoria Nuland became State Department spokesperson under Hillary Clinton as she ramped up the “regime change” assault on Moammar Ghaddafi of Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized a “No Fly Zone” for the protection of civilians but NOT an air assault on Libyan government forces.
That summer, as US and others bombed and attacked Libyan forces, she dismissed the option of a peaceful transition in Libya and falsely suggested the UN Security Council required the removal of Ghaddafi.
The campaign led to the toppling of the Libyan government and killing of Ghadaffy. Commenting on the murder and bayonet sodomizing of Ghaddafi, Nuland’s boss Hillary Clinton chortled “We came, we saw, he died.”
Before the overthrow, Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Since the US led assault, Libya has become a failed state with competing warlords, huge inflation, huge unemployment, and exploding extremism and violence that has spread to neighboring countries. Most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, or drowned trying to, are coming from Libya. By any measure, the goal of “protecting” Libyan civilians has failed spectacularly.
Syria
One reason that Clinton and hawks such as Nuland wanted to overthrow Ghaddafi was to get access to the Libyan military arsenal. That way they could funnel arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. This was confirmed in secret DOD documents which state: “During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria”
In January 2012, Nuland claimed the US is “on the side of those wanting peaceful change in Syria.” While saying this, the US was supplying sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenades, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzer missiles to the “peaceful” protestors.
The US “regime change” strategy for Syria followed the pattern of Libya. First, claim that the protestors are peaceful. Then claim the government response is disproportionate. Put pressure on the target government to paralyze it, while increasing support to proxy protesters and terrorists. As documented, there were violent Syrian protesters from the start. During the first days of protest in Deraa in mid-March 2011, seven police were killed. As spokesperson for the State Department, Nuland was a major figure promoting the false narrative to justify the “regime change” campaign.
Ukraine
In September 2013 Victoria Nuland was appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The uprising in the central plaza known as the Maidan began soon after her arrival. To underscore the US support for the protests, Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to the crowd.
Protests continued into January 2014. The immediate issue was whether to accept a loan from the International Monetary Fund which was going to require a 40% increase in natural gas bills or to accept a loan from Russia with the inclusion of cheap oil and gas. The opposition wanted the Yanukovych government to take the EU/IMF loan. The opposition was comprised of different factions, including the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector.
In early February 2014, an audio recording of Victoria Nuland talking the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The 4-minute conversation was a media sensation because it included Victoria Nuland saying, “Fuck the EU.”.
But Nuland’s cursing was a distraction from what was truly significant. The recording showed that Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukraine affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders, and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would and would not be in the post-coup government! She says, “I don’t think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government…… I think Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy… “
The reason she wanted to “Fuck the EU” was because she did not approve the EU negotiations and compromise. Nuland and Pyatt wanted to “midwife” and “glue” the toppling of the Yanukovych government despite it being in power after an election that was observed and substantially approved by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).
Over the next few weeks, the protests escalated. The President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev, Bernard Casey, described what happened next. “On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protestors and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protestors and the police were all shot with the same weapons.”
The Estonian Foreign Minister later said the same thing: “behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new (opposition) coalition”.
President of the American Chamber of Commerce President for Ukraine, Bernard Casey, continues: “On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protestors, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protestors, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”
The coup was finalized over the coming days. Yanukovych fled to for his life and Yatsenyuk became President after the coup as planned.
One of the first acts of the coup leadership was to remove Russian as an official state language, even though it is the first language of millions of Ukrainians, especially in the south and east. Over the coming period, the “birth” of the coup government, violence by ultranationalists and neo-Nazis was prevalent. In Odessa, they attacked people peacefully protesting the coup. This video shows the sequence of events with the initial attack followed by fire-bombing the building where protestors had retreated. Fire trucks were prevented from reaching the building to put out the fire and rescue citizens inside. Forty-two people died and a 100 were injured.
A bus convoy heading back to Crimea was attacked with the anti-coup passengers beaten and some killed.
In the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, protests against the coup were met by deadly force.
Victoria Nuland claims to be a “victim” because her conversation was leaked publicly. The real victims are the many thousands of Ukrainians who have died and hundreds of thousands who have become refugees because of Nuland’s crusade to bring Ukraine into NATO.
The audio recording confirms that Nuland was managing the protests at a top level and the results (Yats is the guy) was as planned. Thus, it is probable that Nuland approved the decision to 1) deploy snipers to escalate the crisis and 2) overturn the EU mediated agreement which would have led to elections in just 3 months.
Why were snipers deployed on February 18? Probably because time was running out. The Russian leadership was distracted with the Sochi Olympic Games ending on February 23. Perhaps the coup managers were in a hurry to “glue” it in advance.
Russia
During the 1990’s, Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related issues including a stint as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. The US meddled in Russian internal affairs in myriad ways. Time magazine proudly proclaimed “Yanks to the rescue: the secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win.” The Yeltsin leadership and policies pushed by the US had disastrous consequences. Between 1991 and 1999, Russian Gross Domestic Product decreased by nearly 50% as the social safety net was removed. The Russian economy collapsed, oligarchs and lawlessness arose. Nuland was part of the US group meddling in Russia, deploying economic “shock therapy” and causing widespread social despair.
Meanwhile, the U.S. reneged on promises to Soviet leader Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. Instead, NATO became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia and more.
Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored order and started rebuilding the economy. Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes and start investing in productive enterprises. The economy and confidence were restored. Over seven years, GDP went from $1300 billion (US dollars) to $2300 billion. That is why Putin’s public approval rating has been consistently high, ranging between 85% and a “low” approval rating of 60%.
Most Americans are unaware of these facts. Instead, Putin and Russia are persistently demonized. This has been convenient for the Democratic Party establishment which needed a distraction for their dirty tricks against Bernie Sanders and subsequent loss to Donald Trump. The demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the military industrial media complex.
Victoria Nuland boosted the “Steele Dossier” which alleged collaboration between Russia and Trump and other salacious claims. The allegations filled the media and poisoned attitudes to Russia. Belatedly, the truth about the “Steele Dossier” is coming out. Last summer the Wall Street Journal reported “the bureau (FBI) knew the Russia info was phony in 2017” and that “There was no factual basis to the dossier’s claims”.
While promoting disinformation, Victoria Nuland is pushing for a more aggressive US foreign policy. In an article titled “Pinning Down Putin”, she says “Russia’s threat to the liberal world has grown”, that Washington should “deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin” and “rebuff Russian encroachments in hot spots around the world.”
The major “hot spots” are the conflicts which Victoria Nuland and other Washington neocons promoted, especially Syria and Ukraine. In Syria, the US and allies have spent hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars promoting the overthrow of the Assad government. So far, they have failed but have not given up. The facts are clear: US troops and military bases in Syria do not have the authorization of the Syrian government. They are actively stealing the precious oil resources of the Syrian state. It is the US not Russia that is “encroaching”. The dangerous behavior is by Washington not Moscow.
Conclusion
Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention through coups, proxy wars, aggression, and ongoing occupations. The policy has been implemented with bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.
With consummate hypocrisy she accuses Russia of spreading misinformation in the US, while she openly seeks to put “stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens.” She wants to “establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises.”
Victoria Nuland is the queen of chicken hawks, the Lady Macbeth of perpetual war. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has promoted. Yet she has not received a scratch. On the contrary, Victoria Nuland probably has profited from a stock portfolio filled with military contractors.
Now Victoria Nuland wants to provoke, threaten and “rollback” Russia. A quick look at a map of US military bases shows who is threatening whom.
Victoria Nuland is dangerous and should not be confirmed.
*
Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist in the SF Bay Area. He can be reached at rsterling1@protonmail.com.
Hundreds of Scientists Write To Biden To Stop Dirty Biomass Industry
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | February 11, 2021
I have been covering the scandal of burning forests for power, only made possible by obscene subsidies and EU rules that class it as “zero carbon”.
I am pleased to see that several hundred scientists have now written to Biden, von der Leyen and others, objecting to the practice on scientific rather than environmental grounds.
Their basic argument is that the new biomass industry is not sustained by offcuttings, as claimed, but by wholly new harvesting. As I have been arguing, it could take decades for the carbon dioxide released from burning to be offset by regrowth. And that assumes that these forests will be replaced, an unlikely scenario.
In the meantime of course, more trees will be chopped down for burning, leaving a permanent “carbon debt”. As they point out, burning wood for power is far more carbon intensive than coal or gas, as it has a lower energy content.
Worse still, more than half of the wood is lost in harvesting and processing, long before it reaches the power station, adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere without even replacing fossil fuels. (They might also have mentioned the emissions resulting from processing and shipping).
And if that’s not bad enough, there are concerns that palm oil will be used in biomass plants. As we know, carbon dense tropical forests have been cleared already for palm oil plantations. Demand for more palm oil will be a catastrophic consequence of biomass policy.
Unfortunately biomass is now big business, not only in Europe but also in the US and Japan. Companies like Drax will fight tooth and nail to protect their generous subsidies.
Meanwhile governments will continue to turn a blind eye to this dirty industry, as without it they would find it impossible to achieve their climate targets.
US Research Doctors Stole Liver Tissue From Sick Veterans, Special Council Report Reveals
By Jason Dunn – Sputnik – 10.02.2021
A Veterans Affairs study, headed by Dr. Samuel Ho from 2013 to 2016, involved liver tissue, blood, stool, and urine samples collected from patients with alcoholism and liver disease without their consent.
Sick US veterans had liver tissue harvested by doctors involved in a military research operation, in breach of department regulations and putting patients “at serious risk”, according to a report from the government’s whistleblower watchdog service to the White House.
In a document issued to US President Joe Biden this week, the Office of Special Counsel announced that its investigation into the Veterans Affairs (VA) research project revealed a conversation within the VA as to whether liver biopsies are considered standard care.
The project claimed that the operations were valid, but admitted that they sometimes conducted the procedure without the consent of the patient.
According to the special counsel in a memo to President Joe Biden on Tuesday, whistleblowers who revealed the information had made serious arguments that the VA is incorrect about their degree of care being misreported and veterans could be harmed and possibly killed as a result of unnecessary operations.
“The overall picture of alleged malfeasance painted by the whistleblowers is compelling”, said Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner in the communication to Biden. “The whistleblowers also provided extensive information to support their assertion that patients were, in fact, harmed by their participation in this study”.
In the final report, Kerner said that he appreciated the enthusiasm by the VA to conduct another investigation, but noted that the VA’s conclusions in its own evaluation were not consistent with whistleblower testimony.
He highlighted “several egregious flaws” in research protocols, and questioned the “integrity” of the VA self-review.
Despite claims by the VA that the research was vindicated as valid, it was reportedly unable to explain how the biopsies took place prior to the initiation of the study.
“The agency’s determination that the standard of care was met, in light of the whistleblowers’ evidence, remains unconvincing, as do the agency’s continued assertions regarding the meaning of ‘archival tissue'”, Kerner said.
He said that the VA should carry out another analysis and urged researchers to reconsider their standards of care for veterans that undergo the procedures.
A 2019 VA letter stated that doctors involved in the project had taken samples for research “without effectively verifying whether this was approved by the Institutional Review Board”, the Washington Times reported.
The project later said, following a review of the procedures, that a re-review had ruled that the operations in question – known as a transjugular biopsy – were justified.
Whistleblowers said there was one doctor in the VA San Diego Healthcare System who claimed that the surgery had been done to veterans who were “seriously ill”.
The OSC began looking into the project in 2017 following concerns raised by whistleblowers about the practices taking place in San Diego – one of seven sites where the research was being conducted.
The VA research began in 2013.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Banned From Instagram Days After Outlining Bill Gates’ Global Domination Efforts
By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 11, 2021
Lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Robert F. Kennedy and the nephew of former U.S. president John F. Kennedy, has been banned from Facebook owned Instagram just days after he penned a comprehensive account of Bill Gates’ attempt to monopolise and dominate global food production and public health programs.
Kennedy had 800,000 subscribers on the platform, which has said that he was banned for “repeatedly sharing debunked claims about the #coronavirus or #vaccines.”
It also emerged that just hours before the account was taken down, The Washington Post lobbied Facebook to take action against Kennedy, after he posted a section of a video from the “Planet Lockdown” movie.
The film was made by Catherine Austin Fitts, and seeks to expose connections between Big Tech and the federal government and how they are engineering a system of planetary control.
Sections of the movie present arguments that the COVID vaccination push is being controlled by an elite cabal, and that the vaccines are part of a push toward synthetic biology, which can be patented, and has been claimed to cause infertility.
Kennedy has been outspoken on his opinions regarding vaccines for some time.
While Kennedy still remains on Facebook and Twitter, both have pledged to crack down on information relating to claims about vaccines that do not align with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other governmental health authorities’.