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Kickbacks, Corruption & Scandal: The History of the CDC

By Michael Bryant | OffGuardian | April 29, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was founded in 1946 as a backwater quasi-governmental agency with a negligible budget and a handful of employees tasked with a simple mission: “prevent malaria from spreading across the nation.”

Seventy-five years later it has metastasized into a multi-billion dollar bureaucratic behemoth that oversees and controls virtually all aspects of public health programs, policies and practices across the United States.

The CDC is the primary US national public health agency tasked with “protecting America from health, safety and security threats” and advertises that it will “increase the health security of our nation.”

Guidelines and recommendations by the CDC set the standards for mainstream medicine in America and are considered the de facto rules by which public health departments and most institutions throughout the country must operate.

The CDC’s pledge to the American people vows that it will:

“be a diligent steward of the funds entrusted to our agency, base all public health decisions on the highest quality scientific data that is derived openly and objectively and place the benefits to society above the benefits to our institution.”

This high-minded mission statement gives the impression that the CDC will, above all else, work diligently and honestly to protect the health of all Americans. A careful review of the CDC’s history and current mode of operation indicate a stark contrast between these noble words and how the CDC actually functions.

OZ HAS SPOKEN

“The CDC has enormous credibility among physicians, in no small part because the agency is generally thought to be free of industry bias. Financial dealings with bio-pharmaceutical companies threaten that reputation.”
Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine

In the mainstream media vortex, questioning the state religion of CDC decrees and guidelines lands one firmly in the camp of the “conspiracy-minded,” accused of practicing sorcery or some manner of medieval medical quackery.

In the minds of many Americans the CDC represents the final word on “all matters health-related.” To question this omnipotent bureaucratic agency is to challenge sacred health commandments and cast doubt on the medical establishment itself.

The widely accepted belief about the CDC holds that it is a governmental agency which functions outside of health industry relationships and consequently operates free from the monied interests of the health management sector. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Despite this reputation, further scrutiny reveals that the CDC falls far short of its stated purpose. As the scope and budget of this agency has ballooned over the years, including a war chest of corporate contributions, we have to ask ourselves, “Does the CDC fulfill its mission statement of protecting public health or is it now just another bloated quasi-governmental agency that works on behalf of its donors?”

Contrary to its disclaimer that “the CDC does not accept commercial support”, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) reported, in 2015, that “the CDC does receive millions of dollars in industry gifts and funding, both directly and indirectly.”

A petition filed in 2019 by several watchdog groups contends that the CDC’s assertion that it is free from influence peddling and has “no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products” are “indisputably false.”

The petition goes a step further asserting that the CDC, “knows the claims are false, because it has procedures to address from whom and under what circumstances it accepts millions of dollars from contributors, including manufacturers of commercial products.”

This allegation is supported by multiple examples from the CDC’s own Active Program’s Report.

For instance, Pfizer Inc. contributed $3.435 million since 2016 to the CDC Foundation for a program on the prevention of Cryptococcal disease.

Programs like these became commonplace as early as 1983 largely due to Congressional authorization which allowed the CDC to accept “external” gifts:

made unconditionally… for the benefit of the [Public Health] Service or for the carrying out of any of its functions.”

Despite the caveat that these donations must be geared towards public health, the reality is these contributions come with strings attached. As noted earlier in the BMJ report, Pharma funds given to the CDC for specific projects return to Pharma pockets via marketing and sales.

The spigot of funding initiated through Congressional permission would open full blast a decade later, with the creation of the CDC Foundation.

THE CDC FOUNDATION

The CDC Foundation was created by Congress in 1992 and incorporated two years later to “mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources.”

Once established, the CDC Foundation became the primary pass-through mechanism utilized by a cornucopia of corporate interests to exert influence over various aspects of the CDC. Large pharmaceutical companies contributed millions of dollars each year to the “separate, philanthropic CDC Foundation.“

The CDC Foundation would then “donate philanthropically” Big Pharma contributions to the CDC itself. This sleight of hand ensured the CDC could maintain they never accepted money directly from Big Pharma.

A decade after its inception the Foundation had quickly raised $100 million in private funds “to enhance the CDC’s work.”

Some have argued that once this avalanche of monied interests was unleashed, the agency itself was transformed into the primary marketing arm of the Pharmaceutical Industry creating a hornet’s nest of ethics violations, outright corruption and opened up a slew of questions as to who the CDC actually works for.

Was the CDC Foundation truly established as a philanthropic enterprise or as a way to conceal conflicts of interest?

Did this massive influx of corporate cash cede control of the CDC to the medical and pharmaceutical industry and their financiers, allowing them to control the direction of “public” health policy?

Would business oriented, for-profit medical programs, using the CDC’s imprimatur, come to dominate public health policy?

Those questions seemed to have their answer in the CDC Foundation’s donor list which reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of pandemic profiteers and philanthropic mercenaries.

Major sources of cash for the Foundation include the GAVI Alliance, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust, Microsoft Corporation, Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University, Google, Facebook, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Johnson & Johnson Foundation and the omnipresent ‘do-gooders’ at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

INTERNAL PROBLEMS

In 2016 a group of concerned senior scientists from within the CDC wrote a letter to then CDC Chief of Staff Carmen Villar alleging that the CDC “is being influenced and shaped by outside parties… [and this] is becoming the norm and not the rare exception.”

The transgressions cited in that letter include: “questionable and unethical practices,” “cover up of inaccurate screening data” and “definitions changed and data cooked to make the results look better than they were.”

The scientists went on to note that the CDC, “essentially suppressed [findings] so media and/or Congressional staff would not become aware of the problems” and “CDC staff [went] out of their way to delay FOIAs and obstruct any inquiry.”

The indictment also claimed that CDC representatives had “irregular relationships” with corporate entities that suggested direct conflicts of interest.

While criticisms of the CDC have increased in recent years, a look back at their history reveals a long list of misconduct and questionable practices.

SCANDALS ‘R’ US

As far back as 1976 the CDC was creating mass medical terror campaigns in order to procure increased funding and justify mass vaccination programs. The infamous 1976 swine flu scandal sought to inoculate 213 million Americans for a pandemic that didn’t exist. By the time the program collapsed in late 1976, 46 million Americans were needlessly injected– despite the knowledge that neurological disorders were associated with the vaccines. This resulted in thousands of adverse events including hundreds of incidents of Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

This deception was meticulously exposed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes.

At the onset of the mass vaccination program, Dr. David Sencer – then head of the CDC – when pushed on national TV, admitted there had only been “several [swine flu] cases reported worldwide and none confirmed.” When asked if he had encountered “any other outbreaks of swine flu anywhere in the world”, he bluntly answered, “No.”

The program moved forward.

In contrast to the CDC’s publicly stated position as “protector of public health,” this type of misconduct would become standard operating procedure and serve as the template for future invented pandemics.

A growing rap sheet of scandals would come to define the CDC’s existence.

  • In 1999 the CDC was accused of misspending $22.7 million appropriated for chronic fatigue syndrome. Government auditors said they could not determine what happened to $4.1 million of that money and the CDC could not explain where the money went.
  • In 2000, the agency essentially lied to Congress about how it spent $7.5 million that had been appropriated for research on the hantavirus. Instead the CDC diverted much of that money into other programs. “One official said the total diverted is almost impossible to trace because of CDC bookkeeping practices, but he estimated the diversions involved several million dollars.”
  • In 2009, in the midst of the now infamous H1N1 swine flu hoax the CDC was forced to recall 800,000 doses of swine flu vaccine for children for a pandemic that never materialized.
  • In 2010 Congress discovered that the CDC “knowingly endangered DC residents regarding lead in the drinking water.” A Congressional report found that the CDC did not properly warn residents of high levels of lead in the DC drinking water and “left the public health community with the dangerous and wrong impression that lead-contaminated water is safe for children to drink.”
  • In 2016 The Hill reported on two scandals at the CDC. One involved the “cover up” of “the poor performance of a women’s health program called WISEWOMAN.” The allegations asserted that within the program, “definitions were changed and data ‘cooked’ to make the results look better than they were” and the CDC actively suppressed this information.
  • The other scandal involved ties between Coca-Cola and two ‘high-ranking’ CDC officials. The two scientists were accused of manipulating studies about the safety of sugar laden soft drinks. Two days after these connections were revealed one of the accused CDC scientists retired.

These scandals were brought to light by the CDC Scientists Preserving Integrity, Diligence and Ethics in Research, or CDC SPIDER.

As part of their statement these scientists remarked:

our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests…. What concerns us most, is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception.”

Their complaints were filed anonymously “for fear of retribution.”

Another dodgy, yet textbook, example of the incestuous nature of Big Pharma’s Revolving Door was the case of former CDC commander Julie Gerberding. As director of the CDC from 2002 to 2009 Gerberding, “shepherded Merck’s highly controversial and highly profitable Gardasil vaccine through the regulatory maze.”

From there she moved on to a cozy and highly profitable position as Merck’s vaccine division president and curiously lucky enough to cash in her Merck stock holdings at opportune times.

Another in a series of collusion scandals hit the CDC in 2018 when director Brenda Fitzgerald was forced to resign as she was caught buying stock in cigarette and junk food companies, the very companies the CDC regulates.

THE CDC AND THE VACCINE INDUSTRY

Although the CDC does not regulate the pharmaceutical industry, the agency’s policies and recommendations have profound implications for drug makers. Nowhere is this more apparent than national vaccination policy- in particular the CDC Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule.

Despite pushing the world’s most aggressive vaccination campaign the facts on the ground show a decidedly different reality than CDC advertisements would lead us to believe on the efficacy of this campaign.

With the expanded vaccine schedule no demonstrable positive returns in children’s health outcomes have accompanied the windfalls to the pharmaceutical industry. Chronic disease in American children has skyrocketed from 6% to 54% in the past 40 years and the United States holds the lamentable distinction of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world.

Some point out that the CDC currently operates as chief vaccine sales and marketing agent for Big Pharma buying, selling and distributing vaccines even as the agency has direct conflicts of interest by holding multiple patents on vaccines and various aspects of vaccine technologies. Compounding this deceptive state of affairs, the CDC poses as a neutral scientific body that assesses vaccine safety while mandating increased vaccine doses to the American people.

While the CDC does not sell vaccines directly, it does receive royalties from companies who acquire licenses to their technologies.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) plays a major role in this scheme. The 12 member ACIP Committee has extraordinary influence on the health of virtually all US citizens as it is the body tasked with “adding to and/or altering the national vaccine schedule.”

The CDC and various members of this committee, in what can charitably be called ‘conflicts of interest’, currently own and have profited from an array of vaccine patents. These include vaccine patents for Flu, Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Anthrax, West Nile virus, SARS, Rift Valley Fever, and several other diseases of note.

Other patents held by the CDC encompass various applications of vaccine technologies including Nucleic acid vaccines for prevention of flavivirus infection, aerosol delivery systems for vaccines, adjuvants, various vaccination testing methods, vaccine quality control and numerous other vaccine accessories.

THE CDC AND COVID: THE ROAD TO COVID HELL IS PAVED WITH CDC OBFUSCATIONS

Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect. – Jonathan Swift

As the central organization commissioned with “protecting America from health, safety and security threats,” the CDC was presented its most significant assignment in its controversial history when the Covid Crisis of 2020 spread to the shores of the United States.

The CDC would shift into hyperdrive offering up all manner of advice, guidelines, regulations, decrees and laws impacting virtually every aspect of life across the country. Most of these decrees represented radical departures from past epidemiological principles.

During this existential ‘crisis’ the CDC would initiate an extraordinary campaign of rolling and shifting regulations. This onslaught of new “guidelines” included face coverings, social distancing, contact tracing, quarantines and isolation, Covid testing, travel regulations, school closures, business procedures– little of everyday life did not come under the influence and control of the CDC machinery.

No stone was left un-micromanaged— even the mundane task of washing hands was transformed into a 4 page baroque ritual, video included, via CDC guidelines. It seemed the only thing notably omitted from CDC “expert guidelines” during this teachable moment was nutrition and exercise.

CHANGE WITH THE CHANGING SCIENCE™

This onslaught of edicts and definitions shifted on a weekly basis creating a climate of confusion and chaos. When questioned, the CDC would sternly proclaim “the science is settled.”

When politically expedient they reconfigured their protocols artfully asserting “the science evolved.”

Standard definitions became fungible when convenient.

While the most visible and contentious dissembling concerned the efficacy of masks – dozens of comparative studies clearly illustrated their ineffectiveness and harms – there were far more profound and disturbing manipulations emanating from the ever-shifting sands at CDC headquarters.

One of the more egregious examples of CDC duplicity occurred on March 24,2020 when the CDC changed well established protocols on ‘how cause of death’ would now be reported on death certificates, exclusively for COVID-19.

This seemingly benign modification became a watershed moment launching a process by which many deaths would be erroneously coded as U07.1 COVID-19. This led to massive COVID-19 death misattribution, was used to ramp up the fear and used as justification for the assemblage of draconian Covid policies.

Critics have called for a full audit of the CDC noting that, “These changes in data definition, collection, and analysis were made only for Covid” in violation of Federal guidelines. In a statement to Reuters, the CDC said:

it made adjustments to its COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 because its algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”

Two years after the problematic change in certification, the CDC would commence the process of removing tens of thousands from its “Covid death” toll.

THE COVID VACCINE

As the Covid crisis unfolded, all of the long and winding roads ended up in the same place: experimental mRNA gene therapies which were sold as ‘vaccines’ and advertised as a panacea to extricate the world from this ‘crisis.’ The CDC, as trusted go-to government body and chief marketing representative, was tasked with leading the country to safer shores and peddling Pharma’s latest cash cow to the American public.

To sell these experimental injections the CDC relied on the ever handy marketing mantra of “safe and effective”. Consistent with past maneuverings, CDC communiques on the mRNA injections were chaotic when not outright duplicitous.

Certain problems cropped up almost immediately as it was discovered that this sales pitch was dependent on flawed study designs and data that was clearly massaged and manipulated.

The very same CDC that originally touted Covid injections as being able to “stop transmission” took an abrupt U-Turn admitting they couldn’t.

Once the “vaccine” rollout was in full swing the CDC, true to form, ignored all warning signs.

As early as January 2021 safety signals pointed towards potential dangers of these controversial injections. Adverse reactions were either downplayed or completely ignored. Risk-benefit analysis was also kept off the table even as the data painted a not-so-rosy portrayal of “safe and effective.”

The CDC’s reputation took another hit when it was reported that large swaths of Covid data had been hidden from public scrutiny and independent analysis. This added to the pile of pandemic policy scandals and further tarnished the CDC’s veneer as a reliable public health agency.

POSTSCRIPT

The story of CDC kleptocracy parallels the story of contemporary US government institutions. From its humble beginnings as an agency with a mission to manage the swamp, it has degenerated into a bloated bureaucracy that has become a full fledged member of the swamp.

That the CDC isn’t telling the truth to Americans on important matters of public health is in plain sight. It is no surprise that polls show public confidence in the CDC plummeting and, in the mind’s of many, the agency’s once honorable bubble has burst.

Accusations of CDC corruption no longer exist exclusively in the skeptical minds of government critics; they have become commonplace denunciations backed by mountains of easy-to-access evidence. No conspiracy is needed as a litany of scandals have come to characterize ‘business as usual’ at the CDC.

“Can we trust the CDC?”

To find the answer ask a different question.

“Who owns the CDC?”

Michael Bryant is a freelance journalist/activist and researcher who presently focuses primarily on issues surrounding health freedom. His work has appeared on HealthFreedomDefense.org

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vaccine Rollout Correlates With 25% Spike in Cardiac Arrest Emergency Calls for Young Adults, Study Finds

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 29, 2022

Emergency calls for cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome in young people in Israel were significantly associated with the vaccine rollout, both first and second doses, spiking 25% higher than in earlier years, but not with COVID-19 prevalence, a study in the Nature journal Scientific Reports has found.

Using data from the Israel National Emergency Medical Services (EMS) from 2019 to 2021, the study looked at the volume of cardiac arrest and acute coronary syndrome EMS calls in the 16-39 year-old population. It found an increase of over 25% in both call types during January-May 2021, compared with 2019-2020, but no significant increase in calls correlating with COVID-19 infection rates.

The main finding of this study concerns with increases of over 25% in both the number of CA [cardiac arrest] calls and ACS [acute coronary syndrome] calls of people in the 16-39 age group during the COVID-19 vaccination rollout in Israel (January-May, 2021), compared with the same period of time in prior years (2019 and 2020). Moreover, there is a robust and statistically significant association between the weekly CA and ACS call counts, and the rates of first and second vaccine doses administered to this age group. At the same time there is no observed statistically significant association between COVID-19 infection rates and the CA and ACS call counts. This result is aligned with previous findings which show increases in overall CA incidence were not always associated with higher COVID-19 infections rates at a population level, as well as the stability of hospitalisation rates related to myocardial infarction throughout the initial COVID-19 wave compared to pre-pandemic baselines in Israel. These results also are mirrored by a report of increased emergency department visits with cardiovascular complaints during the vaccination rollout in Germany as well as increased EMS calls for cardiac incidents in Scotland.

While several studies have found severe myocarditis to be a rare adverse effect of the vaccines, the study authors note that myocarditis is often missed, and in fact has been found to be likely responsible for 12-20% of unexpected deaths in adults under 40 in normal times.

Myocarditis is a particularly insidious disease with multiple reported manifestations. There is vast literature that highlights asymptomatic cases of myocarditis, which are often underdiagnosed, as well as cases in which myocarditis can possibly be misdiagnosed as acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Moreover, several comprehensive studies demonstrate that myocarditis is a major cause of sudden, unexpected deaths in adults less than 40 years of age, and assess that it is responsible for 12-20% of these deaths. Thus, it is a plausible concern that increased rates of myocarditis among young people could lead to an increase in other severe cardiovascular adverse events, such as cardiac arrest (CA) and ACS. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this might not be only a theoretical concern.

The results, shown visually in the following graphs, are unmistakable, with clear corresponding spikes in vaccination numbers and emergency calls.

The study does not look at death rates in the age group, but data elsewhere show a clear spike in deaths during the period.

SPR/CBS

Surely it’s well past time these experimental vaccines (in Israel’s case, Pfizer), rushed to market in record time, are withdrawn for younger people.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian strike on Donetsk market was a terrorist act

© Eva Bartlett
By Eva Bartlett | Samizdat | April 30, 2022

If the Donetsk marketplace that was hit by rocket artillery on Thursday had been in a city controlled by Kiev, the names and faces of the five civilians killed would be on all major news sites. But because it was another Ukrainian attack on civilians in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the deaths and 23 additional civilians injured will almost certainly go unreported, as has the been the norm during the regime’s eight years of the Donbass and Western media’s eight years of ignoring the attacks.

According to the DPR’s Healthcare Ministry, “The strike at the Tekstilschik neighbourhood in the Kirovsky district killed four people on the spot. One patient died in an ambulance during the transportation.”

With another journalist, I went in a taxi to the bombed markets. Two of the dead still lay at the site when we arrived, splayed on the ground. The other bodies had already been removed, but traces of their blood remained on the ground, doors nearby were riddled with shrapnel holes and debris from the strike was all around.

Presumably, rescue workers dealt with the injured first and didn’t prioritize retrieving all the dead as further Ukrainian strikes were possible. I saw this during my experience in Gaza, where Israeli’s waited for people to come to the scene of their attack, then bombed again.

According to Gennady Andreevich, a local employee of the district’s safety commission, at 11:40 am Grad missiles struck two different nearby markets: the vegetable and clothing market where the bodies lay, and a household chemicals and building materials market across and down the street. The latter was far more damaged, stalls completely burnt out, but no one was killed there.

Gennady walked with us to the vegetable market, speaking about previous Ukrainian attacks–which have been happening since 2014. More recent shellings hit near a gas station outside the market, at a residential building beyond the market, and in his own market administrative building, killing two colleagues.

He noted that at this time of day the market would have been filled with people, and that Ukraine knows very well what it is firing at.

“They know there is a market here and that from 10am to 1pm there are many people here,” Gennady said as we walked past shops.

This is a completely civilian area, no military installations.

Who else attacks markets and public spaces?

Striking crowded markets and streets at a busy time of the day is something terrorists in Syria did for years, to the silence of Western media. It is something Israel has also done for a long time, hitting residential and public areas of Gaza–one of the most densely inhabited places on earth.

During the 2009 war on Gaza, Israel bombed crowded mosques, hospitals, and buildings housing displaced Palestinians. One of the more notable incidents was when Tel Aviv targeted a UN-run school in Jabaliya sheltering nearly 1,500 people. At least 40 were killed. Another horrific attack on a crowded place was in the Zeitoun district, after Israeli soldiers forced at gunpoint nearly 100 of the extended Samouni family into one home and later bombed it, killing 48 members of the clan.

During the war, I accompanied medics in their ambulances, documenting Israel’s war crimes. A medic (Arafa abd al-Dayem) I had accompanied was killed one day when the Israeli army fired a prohibited flechette (dart) shell directly at him and the ambulance he stood beside. The following day, Israel struck the crowded mourning tents, also with flechettes, killing six and injuring 25 of the relatives and friends who had gathered in one small space to mourn Arafa’s death.

Damascus’ old city is a maze of twisting lanes, overlapping houses, churches, mosques, schools, crowded outdoor eateries, and markets. Terrorist factions occupying eastern Ghouta shelled most frequently when children would be going to or from school, people to markets.

Having spent a lot of time in the East Gate and Thomas Gate areas of the old city, I experienced the shelling and, unfortunately, acquired many accounts of the terrorists shelling crowded places.

Even today, walking around Old Damascus, you’ll find the imprint of mortar blasts. And if you do walk those lanes, you’ll see how crowded they usually are, meaning many people would have been injured and killed per single mortar blast.

In mid April 2014, for example, they hit an elementary school and a kindergarten, killing one child and injuring 65 more, just some of the countless children killed and injured by shelling over the years.

Incidentally, I later wrote about how the BBC were present at the same hospital where I saw these injured children, and were told explicitly that terrorists were mortaring the city every single day. The BBC article that later followed included the line: “the government is also accused of launching them into neighborhoods under its control.”

I also wrote about terrorist bombings of Aleppo, citing one day in November 2016 when I was in the city, which by the end of the day killed 18 and injured more than 200 civilians. These were some of the nearly 11,000 civilians killed in Aleppo alone by terrorist attacks on homes and public places.

I could continue citing such acts of terrorism in Syria, in Palestine, elsewhere, but I’ve made my point: when Ukraine bombs a crowded market, it is an intentional act of terrorism. As is Ukraine’s relentless bombing of homes in the Donbass republics these past eight years.

Western Media won’t report on this; Western politicians won’t condemn this; virtue signallers won’t speak about this. And when you actually go and document it, they will silence you relentlessly.

© Eva Bartlett

My initial tweet about the market attack was predictably trolled, with comments claiming the bodies were fakes, the bombing never occurred, “prove it” sort of remarks.

Since my observations and photos, as well as Gennady’s testimony, will still not be proof enough, in my video I also included footage taken by a local who was in the market when it was bombed and filmed the immediate aftermath. Gennady himself showed photos on his phone of firefighters dousing the flames, and scenes of the wounded and dead, clearly surrounded by new bomb debris.

But this is what we’ve come to today: Ukraine, often using weapons acquired from the West, can continue to bomb busy civilian areas of the Donbass republics, killing still more civilians, and not only do the hypocrites of the West so keen to accuse Russia of war crimes (which they can never prove and often contradict themselves over), but media and troll farms work in lockstep to gaslight the public and whitewash Ukraine’s war crimes.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

New bill aims to dissolve Biden administration’s Disinformation Governance Board

Defund the Department of Homeland Security

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 30, 2022

Rep. Lauren Boebert is leading the way in introducing a bill to defund the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board, under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

We obtained a draft copy of the bill for you here.

“This kind of stuff is terrifying. We in Congress have the power of the purse. It is our duty to shut down this department immediately,” Boebert told Fox. “I’m calling on leadership in the Republican Party – Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and others — to join me in calling for this department to be shut down and defunded.”

The new board will focus on Russian propaganda and “misinformation” spread by and about human traffickers at the border.

The head of the board, Nina Jankowicz has previously been accused of spreading misinformation. She called the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation. The authenticity of the laptop has since been proven.

“No tax dollars should go to where Biden can use the power of the federal government to silence truthful stories like Big Tech did with the Hunter Biden story,” Boebert said.

Boebert compared the formation of the new board to the draconian world in George Orwell’s book “1984.”

“Democrats took that [book] not as a warning, but as a guide,” she added.

Boebert is looking for cosponsors for the bill, which she is expected to introduce next week.

“This really is a department of propaganda,” Boebert said. “To say that the federal department has a say in what’s right and what’s wrong. What’s truth and what is not. This is a very dangerous place that we’ve come to.”

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Syria grants amnesty for terrorist crimes

Samizdat | April 30, 2022

Syrian President Bashar Assad issued a decree on Saturday granting amnesty to Syrians for terrorist crimes up to the end of April, except those leading to death. Assad has extended similar olive branches to deserters, criminals and opposition fighters before, often to the displeasure of the US.

Assad’s decree, first reported by Syrian state media on Saturday, “grants a general amnesty for terrorist crimes committed by Syrians before [Saturday], except for those that led to the death of a person.”

While the pardon frees terrorists from criminal prosecution, it does not exempt them from civil lawsuits brought by those they may have harmed.

Those pardoned would have been prosecuted under a 2012 anti-terrorism law and a 1949 provision of Syria’s legal code, and as such will affect the various terrorist groups fighting in Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011. Assad, with the help of Russian forces, has broadly succeeded in maintaining control of Syria against a collection of opposition militias and terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and Al-Nusra Front.

Throughout more than a decade of war, Assad has periodically offered pardons to his opponents. Military deserters who didn’t take up arms with terrorists were given amnesty in 2018 and allowed to return to Syria, while a general amnesty for misdemeanors and juvenile crimes was granted in 2021.

However, at the outset of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Assad attempted to offer opposition fighters amnesty in exchange for surrender. This offer was rejected by the United States, with State Department official Victoria Nuland advising the opposition to ignore Assad’s offer and continue fighting.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry at the time accused Washington of “inciting sedition” with this advice and “supporting acts of killing and terrorism.” The war would continue, and Nuland would go on to oversee the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014, and is currently shaping US policy on Ukraine as President Biden’s under secretary of state for political affairs.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Iran: Politicization of Syria’s chemical-weapons file harms OPCW credibility

Press TV – April 30, 2022

Iran’s deputy permanent representative to the UN has decried the politicization of the Syrian chemical-weapons file by certain countries, stressing that the move will endanger the credibility and authority of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical watchdog.

Zahra Ershadi made the remarks in an address to the UN Security Council session titled “The situation in the Middle East: (Syria – Chemical)” on Friday, during which she strongly condemned the use of chemical weapons anywhere, by anyone, and under any circumstances.

Ershadi stressed the implementation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and said the treaty aims to protect humanity from the devastating repercussions and scourge of the use of chemical weapons.

“We reiterate our call for the full, effective, non-political, and non-discriminatory implementation of the CWC, and preserving the OPCW’s authority as well. We believe that politicizing the implementation of the Convention and exploiting the OPCW for politically motivated agendas endangers the Convention’s credibility and also the Organization’s authority,” the Iranian envoy to the UN said.

“We also emphasize that any investigation into the use of chemical weapons must be impartial, professional, credible, and objective in order to establish the facts and reach evidence-based conclusions, and in doing so it must strictly adhere to the provisions and procedures within the framework of the Convention; no deviation from the Convention shall be permitted,” she added.

Underlining Syria’s strenuous efforts to meet its CWC obligations, she said the country has shown its willingness to collaborate with the OPCW.

“However, it is disappointing that certain States Parties have politicized the Syrian chemical weapons file, preventing the OPCW from confirming Syria’s compliance with its obligations, which could have resulted in constructive dialogue and cooperation with Syria,” Ershadi said.

“We recognize the critical importance of the Syrian government’s efforts to fulfill its obligations under the Convention,” she further added.

Ershadi also expressed Iran’s support for the approach taken by OPCW and Syria to hold a high-level dialogue and hoped that the initiative would yield positive results.

OPCW, CWC ‘politically biased’

Ershadi’s remarks came after the US accused Syria of flouting the CWC and obstructing the OPCW’s inspectors on Friday, which marked the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the landmark treaty.

Responding to the US accusations, Syrian ambassador Bassam Sabbagh said the inspectors had been denied access because of a “lack of objectivity and professionalism.”

Sabbagh also accused the OPCW and the CWC of political bias.

Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said the convention had become a “punitive” instrument wielded in the interests of a “narrow group of countries” against Syria.

“At its 25th anniversary, the OPCW has very serious systemic problems and a tarnished reputation,” Nebenzya noted. “Russia unconditionally supports the CWC and is committed to its letter and spirit. What gives rise to question to us is how its provisions are being implemented by the OPCW.”

Moscow and Damascus have on many occasions said members of the so-called White Helmets civil defense group stage gas attacks in a bid to falsely incriminate Syrian government forces and fabricate pretexts for military strikes by the US-led military coalition.

The group, which claims to be a humanitarian NGO, has long been accused of collaborating with anti-Damascus militants.

On April 14, 2018, the US, Britain, and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma, located about 10 kilometres northeast of the capital Damascus.

Washington and its allies blamed Damascus for the Douma attack, a charge the Syrian government rejected.

According to concealed OPCW documents that were revealed later, the investigators of the Douma incident had found “no evidence” of a chemical weapons attack.

However, the organization censored the findings under pressure from the US and its allies to conceal evidence undermining the pretext of the ensuing US-led bombing of Syria.

Syria surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United States and the OPCW, which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry.

The Arab country has consistently denied the use of chemical weapons despite Western rhetoric.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

HOW COULD THE U.S. HELP TO BRING PEACE TO UKRAINE?

BY NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES | BLACKLISTED NEWS | APRIL 28, 2022

On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretaries Blinken and Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion.

The top priority of Russian airstrikes in Ukraine has been to destroy as many of these weapons as possible before they reach the front lines of the war, so it is not clear how militarily effective these massive arms shipments really are. The other leg of U.S. “support” for Ukraine is its economic and financial sanctions against Russia, whose effectiveness is also highly uncertain.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting Moscow and Kyiv to try to kick start negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Since hopes for earlier peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey have been washed away in a tide of military escalation, hostile rhetoric and politicized war crimes accusations, Secretary General Guterres’ mission may now be the best hope for peace in Ukraine.

This pattern of early hopes for a diplomatic resolution that are quickly dashed by a war psychosis is not unusual. Data on how wars end from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) make it clear that the first month of a war offers the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement. That window has now passed for Ukraine.

An analysis of the UCDP data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that 44% of wars that end within a month end in a ceasefire and peace agreement rather than the decisive defeat of either side, while that decreases to 24% in wars that last between a month and a year. Once wars rage on into a second year, they become even more intractable and usually last more than ten years.

CSIS fellow Benjamin Jensen, who analyzed the UCDP data, concluded, “The time for diplomacy is now. The longer a war lasts absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict… In addition to punishment, Russian officials need a viable diplomatic off-ramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.”

To be successful, diplomacy leading to a peace agreement must meet five basic conditions:

First, all sides must gain benefits from the peace agreement that outweigh what they think they can gain by war.

U.S. and allied officials are waging an information war to promote the idea that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia, even as some officials admit that that could take several years.

In reality, neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into.

In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a peace agreement already exist. They are: withdrawal of Russian forces; Ukrainian neutrality between NATO and Russia; self-determination for all Ukrainians (including in Crimea and Donbas); and a regional security agreement that protects everyone and prevents new wars.

Both sides are essentially fighting to strengthen their hand in an eventual agreement along those lines. So how many people must die before the details can be worked out across a negotiating table instead of over the rubble of Ukrainian towns and cities?

Second, mediators must be impartial and trusted by both sides.

The United States has monopolized the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for decades, even as it openly backs and arms one side and abuses its UN veto to prevent international action. This has been a transparent model for endless war.

Turkey has so far acted as the principal mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but it is a NATO member that has supplied drones, weapons and military training to Ukraine. Both sides have accepted Turkey’s mediation, but can Turkey really be an honest broker?

The UN could play a legitimate role, as it is doing in Yemen, where the two sides are finally observing a two-month ceasefire. But even with the UN’s best efforts, it has taken years to negotiate this fragile pause in the war.

Third, the agreement must address the main concerns of all parties to the war.

In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup and the massacre of anti-coup protesters in Odessa led to declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The first Minsk Protocol agreement in September 2014 failed to end the ensuing civil war in Eastern Ukraine. A critical difference in the Minsk II agreement in February 2015 was that DPR and LPR representatives were included in the negotiations, and it succeeded in ending the worst fighting and preventing a major new outbreak of war for 7 years.

There is another party that was largely absent from the negotiations in Belarus and Turkey, people who make up half the population of Russia and Ukraine: the women of both countries. While some of them are fighting, many more can speak as victims, civilian casualties and refugees from a war unleashed mainly by men. The voices of women at the table would be a constant reminder of the human costs of war and the lives of women and children that are at stake.

Even when one side militarily wins a war, the grievances of the losers and unresolved political and strategic issues often sow the seeds of new outbreaks of war in the future. As Benjamin Jensen of CSIS suggested, the desires of U.S. and Western politicians to punish and gain strategic advantage over Russia must not be allowed to prevent a comprehensive resolution that addresses the concerns of all sides and ensures a lasting peace.

Fourth, there must be a step-by-step roadmap to a stable and lasting peace that all sides are committed to.

The Minsk II agreement led to a fragile ceasefire and established a roadmap to a political solution. But the Ukrainian government and parliament, under Presidents Poroshenko and then Zelensky, failed to take the next steps that Poroshenko agreed to in Minsk in 2015: to pass laws and constitutional changes to permit independent, internationally-supervised elections in the DPR and LPR, and to grant them autonomy within a federalized Ukrainian state.

Now that these failures have led to Russian recognition of the DPR and LPR’s independence, a new peace agreement must revisit and resolve their status, and that of Crimea, in ways that all sides will be committed to, whether that is through the autonomy promised in Minsk II or formal, recognized independence from Ukraine.

A sticking point in the peace negotiations in Turkey was Ukraine’s need for solid security guarantees to ensure that Russia won’t invade it again. The UN Charter formally protects all countries from international aggression, but it has repeatedly failed to do so when the aggressor, usually the United States, wields a Security Council veto. So how can a neutral Ukraine be reassured that it will be safe from attack in the future? And how can all parties be sure that the others will stick to the agreement this time?

Fifth, outside powers must not undermine the negotiation or implementation of a peace agreement.

Although the United States and its NATO allies are not active warring parties in Ukraine, their role in provoking this crisis through NATO expansion and the 2014 coup, then supporting Kyiv’s abandonment of the Minsk II agreement and flooding Ukraine with weapons, make them an “elephant in the room” that will cast a long shadow over the negotiating table, wherever that is.

In April 2012, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan drew up a six-point plan for a UN-monitored ceasefire and political transition in Syria. But at the very moment that the Annan plan took effect and UN ceasefire monitors were in place, the United States, NATO and their Arab monarchist allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pledged virtually unlimited financial and military aid to the Al Qaeda-linked rebels they were backing to overthrow the Syrian government. This encouraged the rebels to ignore the ceasefire, and led to another decade of war for the people of Syria.

The fragile nature of peace negotiations over Ukraine make success highly vulnerable to such powerful external influences. The United States backed Ukraine in a confrontational approach to the civil war in Donbas instead of supporting the terms of the Minsk II agreement, and this has led to war with Russia. Now Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavosoglu, has told CNN Turk that unnamed NATO members “want the war to continue,” in order to keep weakening Russia.

Conclusion  

How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine and their neighbors.

If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations, and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.

Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the Annan plan in Syria in 2012.

One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.

So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.

NICOLAS J. S. DAVIES IS AN INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST AND THE AUTHOR OF BLOOD ON OUR HANDS: THE AMERICAN INVASION AND DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow says when ‘frozen’ dialogue with US may be resumed

Samizdat | April 30, 2022

The dialogue on strategic stability between Russia and the US may only resume after all the goals of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine are achieved, a high-ranking Russian diplomat has said.

“As of today, there’s no use talking about any prospects for negotiations on strategic stability with the US,” Vladimir Yermakov, who heads the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at Russia’s Foreign Ministry, pointed out on Saturday.

“This dialogue is formally ‘frozen’ by the American side,” he said, adding that Washington’s moves concerning the matter “are being pointed in the complete opposite direction” than those of Moscow.

The sides will likely be able to return to “a substantive conversation about the prospects of resuming a full-fledged Russian-American negotiation process on the strategic agenda only after the implementation of all the tasks of the special military operation in Ukraine,” Yermakov added.

The US actively supports Ukraine in the conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with funds and weapons to continue fighting.

Washington has committed $4.3 billion to Kiev’s military since 2021, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday, also revealing that the US has begun training Ukrainian troops in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.

Earlier this week, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin openly acknowledged that, by helping Ukraine, Washinton was trying to see “Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Moscow and Washington last discussed strategic stability in Europe, which includes nuclear nonproliferation, during talks in Geneva in mid-January, just over a month before the breakout of the Ukrainian conflict.

According to sources, the Russian delegation “’spoon-fed’ its proposals for a stable continent” to the Americans to avoid any misunderstandings, with the key point being curbing NATO’s eastward expansion. However, the negotiations brought no results.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join NATO. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The Aggressors Accuse Russia of ‘Blackmail’ for Defending its Currency, Energy Wealth, and Even Its Existential Security

Strategic Culture Foundation | April 29, 2022

The United States and its NATO and European Union allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia that amount to economic warfare. This warfare has been going on, discernibly, since the CIA-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 on the back of allegations of Russian wrongdoing, for example, the alleged annexation of Crimea. It’s the logic of a poacher posing as the gamekeeper.

For eight years, the U.S.-led economic war against Russia has been pursued without relent. The self-professed “exceptional nation” presumes the privileged, exclusive use of economic terrorism against others who do not bend the knee. In hock to its Washington master, the European Union has imposed round after round of restrictions on trade with Russia in full compliance with American orders. The European compliance to self-inflict damage is astounding especially given that the U.S. economy is not as reliant on Russia as the EU’s and therefore has not been impacted as badly, at least not directly. But the presumed American “free lunch” is beginning to change, as our columnist Declan Hayes cogently surveyed this week.

Now that the proxy war against Russia has escalated into “Total War” – the historically sinister phrase used by France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire – the full nefarious scope of the Western objective has become even more explicit. The U.S. and its NATO partners want to achieve the complete collapse of the Russian economy leading to regime change in Moscow. The eruption of violence in Ukraine following Russia’s military intervention on February 24 is but the opportunity to ramp up the U.S.-led war campaign against Russia.

The explicitly stated objective of cutting off Russia’s vital energy trade and the theft of the country’s foreign monetary reserves can only be interpreted as part of a wider imperial plan to crush the Russian nation, subjugate it and conquer its vast natural wealth.

Eight years of NATO-backed military aggression by the Neo-fascist Kiev regime against Russian-speaking populations has gone hand-in-hand with the installation of U.S. strategic weapons across Europe, including Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles in Germany and biological weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine. The military threat to Russia has been in tandem with the relentless economic warfare from sanctions. In addition, there is the intransigence by the U.S. and its NATO partners to engage with Moscow in resolving security concerns through diplomacy. All of this culminated in the present war in Ukraine. The concerted and rapid imposition of further draconian sanctions on the Russian economy from the blockade on virtually its entire banking system as well as the extreme censorship of Russian international media – all of that indicates that the U.S. and its partners were already on a war footing and ready to escalate hostilities.

In this context, ominously, Ukraine is resembling Bosnia-Herzegovina and the pre-World War One assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as a fatal flashpoint.

The reckless flooding of weapons into Ukraine over recent weeks by the United States, NATO, and the European Union is also proof of a premeditated pent-up war agenda. This week, U.S. President Joe Biden is calling for his Congress to release $33 billion in “emergency aid” for Ukraine to “defend against Russian aggression”. This represents a tenfold increase in the record military support that the Biden administration has already plowed into the Kiev regime. This is tantamount to stoking a powder-keg.

The ludicrous, bitter laugh about this is that when Russia seeks to defend itself and Russian-speaking people, then Moscow is accused of “aggression”.

The latest twist in this Western duplicity and rank hypocrisy comes with the accusations that Russia is using “blackmail” by warning it will cut off its prodigious gas supplies to Europe. Moscow has simply and reasonably demanded that all European importers must henceforth pay for their gas supplies in the Russian currency, the ruble, as opposed to dollars or euros. The move was prompted in part because the Western countries had seized Russia’s foreign reserves and have banned most Russian banks from the international payment system. In other words, it is they who have politicized their currencies as weapons. So what is Russia supposed to do? Give away its vast natural gas wealth for free? To countries that are waging an economic war and increasingly a military proxy war against it?

This week, Russia’s state-owned energy industry Gazprom announced it was suspending the supply of gas to Poland and Bulgaria. The two EU and NATO member states had bluntly refused to pay for their vital energy needs in Russian currency. In that case, Russia has the right to withhold the selling of its commodity.

The move to mandate payment for gas in ruble was an essential counter-measure that has succeeded in defending the Russian currency and economy from collapse. That collapse was being deliberately orchestrated by Western sanctions aimed at strangling Russia. And yet when Russia acts to defend its vital existential interests it is accused of using “blackmail”. One of the shrill voices was that of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The former German defense minister is a rabid Russophobe. Her logic of accusing Russia of wrongdoing is like a Third Reich minister lambasting the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an insolent insurrection.

Von der Leyen and her elite, unelected Brussels bureaucracy are calling for all EU members to refuse payments to Russia. They are effectively endorsing the theft of Russia’s wealth. Their arrogance is not surprising. But that arrogance is leading to rebellion across Europe from the economic damage and unbearable cost-of-living crisis hitting the majority of the EU’s 500 million population. Bulgarian and Polish workers are demanding their governments resume trade with Russia to prevent a crash to their livelihoods.

A further mockery in this absurd scenario is that anti-Russia hawks in the United States and Europe have been vociferously jeering for all energy and other trade with Russia to be cancelled. Of course, this mania is all about propping up U.S. capitalism, hegemony over Europe, the weapons industry, and the transatlantic feeding trough for effete European lackeys.

Then, when Russia cuts off the energy supplies because of non-payment, there is an uproar about Moscow “weaponizing trade”.

The Western accusations of economic blackmail are analogous to perverse claims of military blackmail. The criminally reckless aggression that the United States and its NATO partners have pursued against Russia has escalated into war in Ukraine. As a British government minister demonstrated this week, the NATO powers are now directing their proxy Kiev regime to launch attacks on Russian territory. Yet when Russia warns of the dangerous risks of world war veering into a nuclear conflagration, the Western powers and their dutiful media turn around and accuse Russia of using “nuclear blackmail”.

America and Europe’s dubious political “leadership” is exposing itself as delusional, duplicitous, and criminally insane. They are insanely willing to push the world into a catastrophic war. And when Russia stands up to their madness, it is accused of being a reprobate.

In a funny sort of way, such farcical Western leadership is good. For it only further exposes how utterly unhinged and corrupt the Western elite rulers are in the eyes of their increasingly restive, angry populations.

It is Western callous, sociopathic leaders who are the ones blackmailing their own citizens and indeed the rest of the world. Their ultimatum is: destroy Russia or we will destroy everything. This is the mindset of totalitarianism.

The Western public’s enemy is not Russia, and it’s not China nor Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, or some other designated foreign foe. All our enemy is the Western system of U.S.-led imperialism, its capitalist elite, and their political flunkies like Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

FDA Approved Remdesivir for 28 day old babies

By Meryl Nass, MD | April 30, 2022

Remdesivir is an IV drug. Therefore, for the past 2 years it was almost exclusively used in hospitalized patients, not outpatients.

Royalties go to Gilead, but a portion go the the NIAID, Tony Fauci’s agency and to the US Army, which assisted with its development.

Remdesivir received an early EUA (May 1, 2020) and then a very early license (October 22, 2020) despite a paucity of evidence that it actually was helpful in the hospital setting.  A variety of problems can arise secondary its use, including liver inflammation, renal insufficiency and renal failure. Here is a list of articles revealing its kidney toxicity:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33340409/

WHO recommended against the drug on November 20, 2020.

Few if any other countries used it for COVID apart from the US. A large European trial in adults found no benefit. The investigators felt 3 deaths were due to remdesivir (0.7% of subjects who received it.)

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00485-0/fulltext

However, on April 22, 2022 the WHO recommended the drug for a new use: early outpatient therapy in patients at high risk of a poor COVID outcome:

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-recommends-against-the-use-of-remdesivir-in-covid-19-patients

Monoclonal antibodies are only effective at the beginning of illness, as they fight the virus. After about ten days, there is no more live virus and then a later phase of the disease occurs, due to an overactive immune response. Antiviral drugs do not work during the second stage, but immune modulators do. Steroids and ivermectin are effective therapies at this stage.

Outpatient infusion centers were set up to provide monoclonal antibodies to patients at the start of COVID to those who were at high risk of a bad outcome. But now the centers are shuttered as none of them work against current COVID variants. Outpatient infusions will now be available for remdesivir, which is an antiviral drug, as a replacement.

So a new way to use remdesivir has been developed: early, when it might actually work. WHO says it does. Was WHO bought off or will it actually have a positive impact? Who knows yet?

The vast majority of COVID patients are not hospitalized until they are in the second stage of illness, which is when remdesivir, HCQ and other antivirals are not very effective, since there is no more live virus. (HCQ has some immunomodulatory actions which may explain its mild benefit at this late stage.)

The US government, which has made a series of ineffective and harmful recommendations regarding the response to COVID, has just added another harmful recommendation to the list.

The FDA just licensed Remdesivir for children as young as one month old. Both hospitalized children and outpatients may receive it. The drug might work in outpatients, but the vast majority of children have a very low risk of dying from COVID. If 7 deaths per thousand result from the drug, as the European investigators thought in the study of adults cited above, it is possible it will harm or kill more children than it saves.

Shouldn’t the FDA have waited longer to see what early outpatient treatment did for older ages? Very little has been published on children and remdesivir. FDA said very little about the approval.

When we look at the press release issued by Gilead, we learn the approval was based on an open label, single arm trial in 53 children, 3 of whom died (6% of these children died). 72% had an adverse event, and 21% had a serious adverse event. 

https://investors.gilead.com/news-releases/news-release-details/vekluryr-remdesivir-first-and-only-approved-treatment-pediatric

I heard that some nurses refer to the drug as “Run, death is near.”

Based on the paucity of information FDA released with its Remdesivir approval, it appears that FDA knows very little about the drug’s benefit in children, and our children will be the guinea pigs. If we let them.

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

King Woodrow’s Wilsonian Armenia

Tales of the American Empire | April 28, 2022

Woodrow Wilson was America’s most imperial President. He believed in American superiority and using military force to unite the world under a League of Nations based in New York. From 1913 to 1920, Wilson dispatched American troops to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Russia, and France. President Wilson saw an opportunity for another American crusade. He asked the United States Congress for the authority to establish a Mandate for Armenia on May 24, 1920 that would fund a huge American military expedition to Turkey.

__________________________________

Related Tale: “The Genocide Called World War I”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psXYM…

Related Tale: “The American Invasion of Russia in 1918”; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMtLk…

“American Military Mission to Armenia”: Major General James Harbord, U.S Army; Washington GPO; April 13, 1920; http://www.armenianhouse.org/harbord/…

April 30, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

US weapons supply to Ukraine prepped in January

©  Congress.gov/screenshot
Samizdat | April 29, 2022

A scheme to send US weapons to Ukraine, using the “lend-lease” formula pioneered during WWII to skirt neutrality laws, was officially approved by Congress this week. However, it was put together all the way back in January – more than a month before Moscow recognized the Donbass republics as independent and sent troops into Ukraine.

Republican Senator John Cornyn introduced the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, also known as S.3522, on January 19, 2022. This is according to the official Congress.gov page for the bill. On the same date, it was co-sponsored by senators Benjamin Cardin, Jeanne Shaheen and Roger Wicker.

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Lindsey Graham endorsed it the very next day, January 20. Other endorsements trickled in over the following weeks, with a total of 14 senators on board by February 9, again according to Congress.gov.

Russia did not recognize the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk until February 21. The “special military operation” to demilitarize Ukraine began on what was already February 24 in Washington.

Oddly enough, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee only took up Cornyn’s proposal on April 6. It was approved unanimously, proposed on the floor by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and adopted by voice vote – whereupon it sat in limbo for weeks while the Democrat-dominated House was on vacation. On Thursday, after an hour of pro-forma debate, the House approved it in a 417-10 vote. Every single Democrat voted in favor, while all 10 dissenters were Republicans.

Supporters and critics alike have made much of the proposal, named after a WWII-era scheme to bypass neutrality laws limiting US arms exports. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt concocted lend-lease in March 1941, months before the US entered WWII, to send billions of dollars worth of weapons to Britain, and later the Soviet Union and other countries.

Cornyn’s bill, by contrast, suspends two existing US laws to make it easier for the White House to ship all sorts of weapons to Ukraine. It eliminates the five-year limitation on the program duration, suggesting the US hopes the conflict goes on for a long time – but also conditions the aid on Ukraine eventually repaying the “lease” or returning the gear if in working condition.

Cornyn has so far not revealed what might have motivated him to introduce the scheme to “protect civilian populations in Ukraine from Russian military invasion” before any military operations began.

The motivations of his first co-sponsor, Cardin, are more obvious. He is the architect of a series of anti-Russian laws, starting with the 2012 Magnitsky Act, the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act, and the 2017 CAATSA law, which tied the hands of the Trump administration in dealing with Russia.

In January 2018, at the height of the “Russiagate” craze, Cardin published a report he commissioned from the Democratic staff on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, accusing Russia of an “assault” on “democratic and transatlantic institutions and alliances,” using “disinformation, cyberattacks, military invasions, alleged political assassinations, threats to energy security, election interference, and other subversive tactics.”

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

April 29, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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