Americans ‘underestimate gravity of situation,’ Russia warns after European security talks
Key security issues ‘still pending,’ Moscow’s envoy says after Geneva discussions
RT | January 10, 2022
While the US delegation came to Europe to “seriously” discuss Moscow’s security proposals, on Monday, they have not shown an understanding of how the key issues need to be resolved, Russia’s top negotiator said afterwards.
The Americans “underestimate the gravity of the situation,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told reporters after bilateral with his US counterparts in Geneva. Russia has laid all of its cards on the table in the proposals made public last month, and those represent “demands that we cannot retreat from,” he added.
Ryabkov described the Geneva talks as useful because they discussed the matters previously considered off the table, and said he did not think the situation was hopeless. The greatest difference of views between the US and Russia was on the further expansion of Washington’s NATO military bloc.
“For us, it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never ever becomes a member of NATO,” Ryabkov said, and Moscow is insisting that the institution amend its policies to reflect this reality.
“We are fed up with loose talk, half-promises, misinterpretations of what happened in different negotiations behind closed doors,” he said, referring to the State Department’s claims in recent days that NATO and the US never promised Moscow that NATO would not expand to the east.
“We do not trust the other side, so to speak,” Ryabkov said. “It’s over, enough is enough.”
Following Monday’s talks in Geneva, Ryabkov will meet with NATO representatives on Wednesday, and with the OSCE on January 13, after which Moscow will make a decision whether to continue the negotiations further.
What War With Russia Would Look Like
By Scott Ritter | Consortium News | January 10, 2022
If ever a critical diplomatic negotiation was doomed to fail from the start, the discussions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine and Russian security guarantees is it.
The two sides can’t even agree on an agenda.
From the Russian perspective, the situation is clear: “The Russian side came here [to Geneva] with a clear position that contains a number of elements that, to my mind, are understandable and have been so clearly formulated—including at a high level—that deviating from our approaches simply is not possible,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the press after a pre-meeting dinner on Sunday hosted by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who is leading the U.S. delegation.
Ryabkov was referring Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to U.S. President Joe Biden in early December regarding Russian security guarantees, which were then laid out by Moscow in detail in the form of two draft treaties, one a Russian-U.S. security treaty, the other a security agreement between Russia and NATO.
The latter would bar Ukraine from joining NATO and rule out any eastward expansion by the trans-Atlantic military alliance. At the time, Ryabkov tersely noted that the U.S. should immediately begin to address the proposed drafts with an eye to finalizing something when the two sides meet. Now, with the meeting beginning on Monday, it doesn’t appear as if the U.S. has done any such thing.
“[T]he talks are going to be difficult,” Ryabkov told reporters after the dinner meeting. “They cannot be easy. They will be business-like. I think we won’t waste our time tomorrow.” When asked if Russia was ready to compromise, Ryabkov tersely responded, “The Americans should get ready to reach a compromise.”
All the U.S. has been willing to do, it seems, is to remind Russia of so-called “serious consequences” should Russia invade Ukraine, something the U.S. and NATO fear is imminent, given the scope and scale of recent Russian military exercises in the region involving tens of thousands of troops. This threat was made by Biden to Putin on several occasions, including a phone call initiated by Putin last week to help frame the upcoming talks.
Yet on the eve of the Ryabkov-Sherman meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken simply reiterated these threats, declaring that Russia would face “massive consequences” if it invaded Ukraine.
“It’s clear that we’ve offered him two paths forward,” Blinken said, speaking of Putin. “One is through diplomacy and dialogue; the other is through deterrence and massive consequences for Russia if it renews its aggression against Ukraine. And we’re about to test the proposition of which path President Putin wants to take this week.”
It is as if both Biden and Blinken are deaf, dumb, and blind when it comes to reading Russia.
Ryabkov has alluded to a fact already made clear by the Russians—there will be no compromise when it comes to Russia’s legitimate national security interests. And if the U.S. cannot understand how the accumulation of military power encompassed in a military alliance which views Russia as a singular, existential threat to its members’ security is seen by Russia as threatening, then there is no comprehension of how the events of June 22, 1941 have shaped the present -day Russian psyche, why Russia will never again allow such a situation to occur, and why the talks are doomed before they even begin.
As for the American threats, Russia has given its response—any effort to sanction Russia would result, as Putin told Biden last month, in a “complete rupture of relations” between Russia and those countries attempting sanctions. One need not be a student of history to comprehend that the next logical step following a “complete rupture of relations” between two parties that are at loggerheads over matters pertaining to existential threats to the national security of one or both is not the peaceful resumption of relations, but war.
There is no mealy-mouthed posturing by Foggy Bottom peacocks taking place in Moscow, but rather a cold, hard, statement of fact—ignore Russia’s demands at you own peril. The U.S., it seems, believes that the worst-case scenario is one where Russia invades Ukraine, only to wilt under the sustained pressure of economic sanctions and military threats.
Russia’s worse-case scenario is one where it engages in armed conflict with NATO.
Generally speaking, the side that is most prepared for the reality of armed conflict will prevail.
Russia has been preparing for this possibility for more than a year. It has repeatedly shown a capability to rapidly mobilize 100,000-plus combat-ready forces in short order. NATO has shown an ability to mobilize 30,000 after six-to-nine-months of extensive preparations.
What would a conflict between Russia and NATO look like? In short, not like anything NATO has prepared for. Time is the friend of NATO in any such conflict—time to let sanctions weaken the Russian economy, and time to allow NATO to build up sufficient military power to be able to match Russia’s conventional military strength.
Russia knows this, and as such, any Russian move will be designed to be both swift and decisive.
First and foremost, if it comes to it, when Russia decides to move on Ukraine, it will do so with a plan of action that has been well-thought out and which sufficient resources have been allocated for its successful completion. Russia will not get involved in a military misadventure in Ukraine that has the potential of dragging on and on, like the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia has studied an earlier U.S. military campaign—Operation Desert Storm, of Gulf War I—and has taken to heart the lessons of that conflict.
One does not need to occupy the territory of a foe in order to destroy it. A strategic air campaign designed to nullify specific aspects of a nations’ capability, whether it be economic, political, military, or all the above, coupled with a focused ground campaign designed to destroy an enemy’s army as opposed to occupy its territory, is the likely course of action.
Given the overwhelming supremacy Russia has both in terms of the ability to project air power backed by precision missile attacks, a strategic air campaign against Ukraine would accomplish in days what the U.S. took more than a month to do against Iraq in 1991.
On the ground, the destruction of Ukraine’s Army is all but guaranteed. Simply put, the Ukrainian military is neither equipped nor trained to engage in large-scale ground combat. It would be destroyed piecemeal, and the Russians would more than likely spend more time processing Ukrainian prisoners of war than killing Ukrainian defenders.
For any Russian military campaign against Ukraine to be effective in a larger conflict with NATO, however, two things must occur—Ukraine must cease to exist as a modern nation state, and the defeat of the Ukrainian military must be massively one-sided and quick. If Russia is able to accomplish these two objectives, then it is well positioned to move on to the next phase of its overall strategic posturing vis-à-vis NATO—intimidation.
While the U.S., NATO, the EU, and the G7 have all promised “unprecedented sanctions,” sanctions only matter if the other side cares. Russia, by rupturing relations with the West, no longer would care about sanctions. Moreover, it is a simple acknowledgement of reality that Russia can survive being blocked from SWIFT transactions longer than Europe can survive without Russian energy. Any rupturing of relations between Russia and the West will result in the complete embargoing of Russian gas and oil to European customers.
There is no European Plan B. Europe will suffer, and because Europe is composed of erstwhile democracies, politicians will pay the price. All those politicians who followed the U.S. blindly into a confrontation with Russia will now have to answer to their respective constituents why they committed economic suicide on behalf of a Nazi-worshipping, thoroughly corrupt nation (Ukraine) which has nothing in common with the rest of Europe. It will be a short conversation.
If the U.S. tries to build up NATO forces on Russia’s western frontiers in the aftermath of any Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia will then present Europe with a fait accompli in the form of what would now be known as the “Ukrainian model.” In short, Russia will guarantee that the Ukrainian treatment will be applied to the Baltics, Poland, and even Finland, should it be foolish enough to pursue NATO membership.
Russia won’t wait until the U.S. has had time to accumulate sufficient military power, either. Russia will simply destroy the offending party through the combination of an air campaign designed to degrade the economic function of the targeted nation, and a ground campaign designed to annihilate the ability to wage war. Russia does not need to occupy the territory of NATO for any lengthy period—just enough to destroy whatever military power has been accumulated by NATO near its borders.
And—here’s the kicker—short of employing nuclear weapons, there’s nothing NATO can do to prevent this outcome. Militarily, NATO is but a shadow of its former self. The once great armies of Europe have had to cannibalize their combat formations to assemble battalion-sized “combat groups” in the Baltics and Poland. Russia, on the other hand, has reconstituted two army-size formations—the 1st Guards Tank Army and the 20th Combined Arms Army—from the Cold War-era which specialize in deep offensive military action.
Even Vegas wouldn’t offer odds on this one.
Sherman will face off against Ryabkov in Geneva, with the fate of Europe in her hands. The sad thing is, she doesn’t see it that way. Thanks to Biden, Blinken and the host of Russophobes who populate the U.S. national security state today, Sherman thinks she is there to simply communicate the consequences of diplomatic failure to Russia. To threaten. With mere words.
What Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have yet to comprehend is that Russia has already weighed the consequences and is apparently willing to accept them. And respond. With action.
One wonders if Sherman, Biden, Blinken, and the others have thought this through. Odds are, they have not, and the consequences for Europe will be dire.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.
Last Chance Saloon: best chance to ease East-West tensions cannot be missed
By Tony Kevin | Pearls and Irritations | January 7, 2022
We are at a crunch point now in Russia-US relations. Their high-level talks starting next week will be closely observed by China, Russia’s de facto strategic ally. The coming days and weeks will determine the shape of world security for decades to come.
On Monday, January 10, vital Russia-US talks will start in Geneva. Russia’s delegation will be headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and the US by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
These are ‘precursor’ negotiations – ‘talks about talks’, in the old strategic arms limitation treaties (SALT) terminology. Russia is driving the pace. The US is in reactive mode, trying unsuccessfully to slow things down, to trim Russia’s sails. So far they are not succeeding.
Russia’s best-case scenario for Monday is this. Successful precursor talks will be followed soon after by substantive detailed Foreign Minister level negotiations, led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with participation of top military brass from both sides. Russia will seek to secure detailed US-Russia agreements on mutual security guarantees in Europe.
Unusually, Russian drafts of these agreements were handed over by Russia to the US and at the same time made public on December 17. Russia will want to achieve these solemn written mutual commitments, as well-summarised by Patrick Lawrence in Consortium News on December 28.
- NATO will cease all efforts to expand eastward, notably into Ukraine and Georgia.
- NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missile batteries in nations bordering Russia.
- An end to NATO military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.
- The effective restoration of the treaty covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The US abandoned the INF pact in August 2019.
- An ongoing East-West security dialogue.
These desired agreements would be backed up by early NATO-Russia negotiations to achieve corresponding agreements at that level. Finally, the two presidents would formally seal the deal.
Russia’s worst-case scenario: that if the US fails to negotiate towards this complete package – if the US tries in its usual way to equivocate, delay, or cherry-pick Russia’s proposed deal – Russia will terminate the talks.
Russia-US and Russia-NATO relations would then enter the deepest of deep freezes since the worst years of Cold War One. Russia would focus its economic and diplomatic resources entirely on relations with the East and South – backstopped by the Belt and Road Initiative of its reliable friend China. Russia would effectively stop trying to dialogue with US and NATO Europe and call the US bluff on enhanced sanctions. On the now highly militarised Russia-NATO frontier, armies, navies and tactical intermediate range missile forces (sufficient to destroy most of Europe and European Russia) would confront each other. Risks of East-West war by provocation or accident would be far greater than in the years 1989-2014, before the sharp deterioration in East-West relations brought about by the illegal 2014 Ukraine coup.
These present talks instigated by Russia are thus really the Last Chance Saloon: the last opportunity maybe for decades to pursue relaxation of East-West tensions – ‘détente’, in the old nearly — forgotten word of late Cold War One. Russia has had enough of years of creeping security deterioration and has drawn its red lines. These are not in my view ‘ultimatums’ though they do demand major military pullbacks by the US and NATO not matched by Russia, because almost all Russian forces are within Russian territory. In my view these proposed written agreements would enhance European and global security if achieved.
In 2021, Russia decided that it has had enough of decades of Western duplicity and creeping aggression, as persuasively analysed by Marshall Auerback in The Scrum, December 1, 2021.
Russia has seen how under successive US presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden, a strategically destructive pattern of US and NATO behaviour had emerged since 1999, when President Bill Clinton welshed on the solemn though unwritten 1989-91 agreements between Reagan and George H.W. Bush with Gorbachev, that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe following the reunification of Germany.
As the West offered soothing words and prevarications, NATO expanded, first with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in 1999. There were further large expansions in 2004 and 2009, bringing NATO right up against Russia’s Western frontiers. Provocatively, NATO then listed Ukraine and Georgia as candidates for NATO membership. The West successfully engineered an anti-Russia ‘colour revolution’ in Ukraine in 2014 and nearly succeeded in doing so in Belarus in 2020. It continued even to try to subvert Russia itself through lavish funding of anti-government human rights NGOs. Military and naval manouevres and build-ups continued on Russia’s Western approaches.
An angry Russia saw every expansion and interference as Western betrayals and as violations of its sovereignty and strategic depth. Russia was initially too weak to do anything about it. As Putin rebuilt Russian strength and morale, Russia began to fight back: first in Georgia in 2008, then in Crimea and East Ukraine in 2014, and in Belarus since 2020.
World events have now decisively turned in Russia’s favour. The global strategic balance is shifting. China firmly has Russia’s back, as seen in recent statements by President Xi Jinping and China’s Foreign Minister. China has repelled Western regime-change pressures in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and around Taiwan. Iran has joined the Belt and Road initiative. The West was expelled from Afghanistan. Syria has somewhat stabilised.
Russia and China see now that they are stronger against their common Western adversary if they stand together. Important non-Western powers and groupings such as India, Japan, South Korea and ASEAN are quietly adjusting their diplomacy to suit. The Quad is dead in the water, and AUKUS is a diplomatic joke.
In publishing these draft treaty texts, Russia is appealing to the world outside the Atlantic alliance to see that its cause is just, and in accordance with the five principles of peaceful coexistence proposed by China to the non-aligned world in 1954.
These five principles as articulated by Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai first appeared in the Sino–Indian Agreement signed in April 1954, and subsequently at the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations, which Indonesia hosted one year later. These principles are mutual respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in the internal affairs of others, equality for shared benefit, and peaceful coexistence. These are very much the stated principles of current Russian foreign policy.
Quite suddenly, the West is on the diplomatic defensive. Its years of salami-slice aggression against Russia and China are now coming to an end.
For years since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West used the vital consensus agreed by Reagan and Gorbachev, that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, as cover for creeping aggression in Eastern Europe, violating and weakening Russia’s sphere of security.
Now, with the Russian initiative last week for the UN Security Council P5 to reaffirm the Reagan-Gorbachev doctrine, with which the Western nuclear powers had perforce to agree, the tables have been turned.
Putin is in effect telling the West now: we all agree that none of us can allow military conflict between us to escalate to nuclear war. But we and China are strong enough now to defeat you in non-nuclear conflicts close to our borders, if you should be foolish enough to instigate such conflicts. These are the military facts of the matter: Russia could easily occupy Ukraine and China could easily occupy Taiwan. And you, the US and NATO, could not stop this without risking nuclear war.
Putin has no wish to invade Ukraine but he is determined to stop now the erosion of Russia’s security. The new harder and more confident tone in Russian diplomatic language is unmistakable. A confused West has not yet worked out how to respond. Urgent talks have taken place between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and between the US and NATO. One hopes that Biden has been preparing the ground for a prudent Western accommodation. A wise old owl, he can smell the coffee.
Putin is now holding the strongest negotiating cards. My betting — indeed my hope — is that Russia will achieve its demanded mutual security guarantees in Europe in coming weeks.
International security – Australia’s security — will be greatly strengthened if he succeeds.
Much could still go wrong. There are troublemakers in the Western bloc whose careers depend on maintaining East-West tensions at just below the level of war. They will try hard to subvert and derail Russia’s goals.
In Australia there is almost complete public ignorance of this subject matter. Be prepared for massive disinformation in coming weeks from the US-fed think tanks like ASPI and our mainstream media, and a hysterical whipping-up of alleged threats of imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. This propaganda offensive is already under way.
Australia sadly no longer has the intellectual resources for an informed and balanced public discussion of these momentous developments. Ignorance and groundless fears of Russia prevail. Dissenting voices such as mine have been marginalised and almost silenced.
One might hope there is more reality-based knowledge in our national security community. But if there is, they are not telling the public. I fear that there too, ignorance and prejudice have taken hold. We are leaving the strategic thinking on Russia to our Big Brother.
I expect this article to be either mocked or ignored. But let us see how events develop in coming weeks.
Tony Kevin is a former Australian senior diplomat, having served as ambassador to Cambodia and Poland, as well as being posted to Australia’s embassy in Moscow. He is the author of six published books on public policy and international relations.
A BBC Complaint
By Toby Young | The Daily Sceptic | January 9, 2022
A reader has shared with us the complaint he submitted yesterday to the BBC about the way in which Radio 4 presented the news that Britain’s Covid death toll has reached 150,000 – a figure which is also on the front of most of today’s papers:
The 1800 News on Radio 4, Saturday January 8th 2022 began with this headline:
“More than 150,000 people now have died of Covid in the UK since the start of the pandemic two years ago.”
This clearly stated that the deaths of 150,000 people had been as a result of contracting Covid. This is at best misleading, at worst a falsehood. The truth is stated on the BBC website, which said, correctly, “More than 150,000 people in the UK have now died within 28 days of a positive Covid test since the pandemic began.”
This isn’t a question of semantics. It’s a really important point and a crucial distinction between accurate news reporting and ‘number theatre’ (as Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter calls it). I can include two of my neighbours who died ‘with Covid’ and went down in the Covid total, even though one in fact died from the leukaemia that had kept him in hospital (where he caught Covid) for two years as he deteriorated, and another from liver cancer, also catching asymptomatic Covid in hospital.
On the 1800 News the Health Correspondent Katherine da Costa made no attempt to contextualise the figure of 150,000 in terms of annual normal deaths in the UK (this might in fact have strengthened her piece), interviewed a family member of a victim without clarifying the actual cause of death, and ignored the much larger number of people who have died of other causes.
Although Ms Da Costa did not repeat the inaccurate headline, she did not qualify her reference to the number of deaths by making it clear, as the news website did, that these were of people who had died within 28 days of testing positive. It was also quite evident that the interviewee had no framework of reference for the 150,000.
There is a stark contrast here with the coverage by Nick Triggle which always contextualises the figures and makes it clear what they actually are, without seeking to sensationalise as the inaccurate headline in the 1800 did.
Early treatment book is now available on Amazon
By Steve Kirsch | January 9, 2022
COVID is a very treatable disease if it is treated early using an early treatment protocol. There are lots of such protocols that are highly successful. This new book documents one such protocol.
Since March of 2020, Brian Tyson and George Fareed, two physicians with impeccable credentials, have been treating COVID patients of all ages in Imperial Valley, CA using early treatment protocols.
Their track record is extraordinary. If you started treatment within 7 days of first symptoms, only 2 people were briefly hospitalized and there were no deaths. The earlier you start treatment, the better the results and the faster you recover.
Their book is now available at Amazon (if you buy it now on Kindle for $5.95, it will be delivered Jan 24). It is a #1 best seller as you can see below.
The entire pandemic response was unnecessary: COVID is very treatable if treated early
This book shows that we’ve known about effective treatments since March 2020.
Had the CDC publicized such treatments, it would have made the entire pandemic response completely unnecessary: lockdowns, vaccines, mandates, masking, business closures, etc. Everyone would have gotten natural immunity and the pandemic would have ended with virtually no deaths.
Tyson and Freed tried contacting the FDA, CDC, and NIH, but nobody would talk to them or return their calls. The same is true today. They are just “too busy” to talk to them. Keeping patients out of the hospital and morgue is not a priority for them.
The same is true of the mainstream media. The NY Times refused to run op-eds about early treatments and CNN said that they were too busy covering the vaccines and people dying from COVID that they didn’t have the resources to talk about early treatment protocols that would have prevented everything.
Instead of promoting early treatment using repurposed drugs, the CDC instructed people to just stay home and do nothing until they were so sick that they had to go to the hospital. Even after drugs in the Tyson/Fareed protocol like ivermectin and fluvoxamine have been proven time and time again to work in clinical trials and, in the case of ivermectin, published in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the NIH still fails to acknowledge them rating them NEUTRAL. This means that most doctors will not use them.
On May 24, 2021, I offered $2M to anyone who could show that the NIH made the proper decision on these two drugs, but nobody came forward.
In short, nobody in the world thought they made the right decision (or at least could justify it). But they are the authorities and we cannot question their judgement, ever.
The CDC doesn’t want you to share this post with anyone
The CDC would like you to know the following:
- You need to follow our advice. Do not think. Do not ask questions. Just do as you’re told. We are the CDC and we always know best.
- Trust us: early treatments don’t work. Ignore all the data from these physicians. Even though we’ve never even talked to them or looked at their data, we know they are wrong. We don’t even have to look at their data to know that they are wrong. The data does not matter. It is our opinion that matters. Got it?
- Do not share this post with anyone, especially your doctor, anyone in mainstream media, or Congress. Do not to do anything to disrupt Big Pharma’s profits.
- Even if you did share it, nobody would believe you anyway; they will think you are crazy. We have totally brainwashed pretty much everyone except for a relatively small number of people.
- Don’t read the book. This book will destroy our credibility as well as that of the NIH and FDA. You may not be able to deal with the cognitive dissonance. Just do what we say. Don’t worry, be happy.
- If you feel you must read the book, ask your doctor to prescribe Versed and take it as directed before you read the book. That way, after you are done reading it, you won’t remember anything.
- If the public finds out about this book, a lot of people are going to be very upset about how they’ve been fooled. You wouldn’t want that to happen now, would you?
DOJ will not withdraw controversial memo on targeting school parents
BY SHARYL ATTKISSON – JANUARY 9, 2022
Nearly three months after the controversy over the FBI targeting school parents as possible domestic terrorists, Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have gotten a reply from the Dept. of Justice.
They say the response falls far short of what’s necessary.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced this week that he received a reply. He stated the following:
“[I]n December we asked why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was getting involved in parents expressing their concerns at school board meetings. Now, just to be crystal clear, there’s no excuse for real threats or acts of violence at school board meetings, but if there are such threats, these should be handled at the local level and the Attorney General should withdraw his memo that started this whole thing.
“Well, a couple days before Christmas, the Justice Department responded to us with just a one-page letter.
“In that letter, DOJ had nothing to say about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division was involved in local school-board matters. DOJ just said, ‘We’re not going to withdraw the memo.’ So, the Feds may be keeping track of school board meetings—even if it creates a horrible chilling effect. And, of course the FBI looking over your shoulder would have a chilling effect. Next week the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on domestic terrorism. I hope we’re going to be focusing on the serious threats facing our country—and I hope no one thinks the focus is on our nation’s parents.”
Grassley then made a public statement on the matter:
The Department of Justice owes the American people a better answer than just a one-page letter that says nothing about why the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division is involved in local school-board matters. Now more than ever, parents should be their kids’ strongest and best advocates. They have the God-given right to do so. And the Justice Department ought to be doing everything it can to protect that right, not scare them out of exercising that right. Attorney General Garland should withdraw his memo. And he should take Congress’s oversight, and concern for the rights of parents, more seriously.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)
By way of background, on Monday, October 4, US Attorney General Merrick Garland sent out a memorandum directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the US Attorneys’ Offices to meet in the next 30 days with federal, state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement leaders to discuss strategies for addressing the disturbing trend in the nation’s public schools.
Garland cited an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools. And, as evidence, he quoted a letter of concern from the National School Boards Association.
But once the controversy became public, it was revealed that Biden administration officials solicited the letter of concern from the School Board group and then pretended to have received it organically. Later, officials from the National School Boards Association indicated they felt the letter, which was not authorized by the entire group, was inappropriate.
In response to Garland’s memo, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and all Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on October 7, demanding the agency not interfere with local school board meetings or threaten the use of federal law enforcement to dissuade parents’ free speech.
“We are concerned about the appearance of the Department of Justice policing the speech of citizens and concerned parents. We urge you to make very clear to the American public that the Department of Justice will not interfere with the rights of parents to come before school boards and speak with educators about their concerns, whether regarding coronavirus-related measures, the teaching of critical race theory in schools, sexually explicit books in schools, or any other topic”
“To be clear, violence and true threats of violence are not protected speech and have no place in the public discourse of a democracy… However, the FBI should not be involved in quashing and criminalizing discourse that is well beneath violent acts… It is not appropriate to use the awesome powers of the federal government – including the PATRIOT Act, a statute designed to thwart international terrorism – to quash those who question local school boards.”
Republican Senators of Senate Judiciary Committee
After the letter was sent to the Justice Department, Republican Senators were alerted to information from an FBI whistleblower, showing an internal DOJ email illustrating that the FBI’s Counterterrorism and Criminal Divisions had created a threat tag titled “EDUOFFICIALS” as a means to track “instances of related threats” about school administrators, school board members, teachers, and staff.
In light of this new revelation, the senators drafted another letter to Attorney General Garland demanding he withdraw the October 4 memorandum and explicitly state that concerned parents will not be treated as domestic terrorists and will not be targeted for exercising their First Amendment Rights.
In their follow-up letter dated December 6, Republican Senate Judiciary Members wrote:
“Parents and other citizens who get impassioned at school-board meetings are not domestic terrorists. You may believe that, but too many people involved in this issue seem to think harsh words can be criminalized. Getting the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division involved in the matter only makes this worse—dramatically worse.”
Republican Senators of Senate Judiciary Committee
Links to all letters and remarks below:
Attorney General’s Oct 4 memorandum
Senate Judiciary Oct 7 letter
Senate Judiciary Dec 6 letter
The Global Disinformation Campaign Against Ivermectin in COVID-19 (Part I)
By Pierre Kory | January 6, 2022
Ivermectin, a decades-old, off-patent drug costing pennies to make, with an unparalleled safety profile and numerous manufacturers across the world, actually sits atop one of the largest and strongest clinical trials evidence base in history. The existing, massive amount of clinical trials data shows immense efficacy against COVID-19 in all its phases; prevention, early and late treatment, and long-haul syndrome (no actual trials in long-haul but rather extensive positive clinical experiences). Despite this inarguable (yes, inarguable) supportive evidence, no major Western or international health agency has recommended its use in COVID-19. Conversely, ivermectin has been officially adopted for early treatment in all or part of 23 “less developed” countries (39 if you include non-government medical organizations), and which include about 25% of the world’s population.
Now, before we delve deeper into the workings of the most heinous disinformation campaign ever waged by the pharmaceutical industry in history (and also it’s most successful so far as 75% of the earth’s inhabitants still have not been recommended to use it to treat COVID), I will ask you not to just “take my word for it” but instead take you on a brief, guided tour of the insanely positive evidence base supporting the use of ivermectin in COVID-19.
Let’s go. First, the below “Forest Plot” was compiled by the anonymous expert research group at c19early.com (not enough can be said of the impact their meticulous work has had on COVID clinicians and scientists across the globe). Please visit their site, it is mind-blowingly impressive. The compounds listed in the rows represent the medicines with the most clinical trials evidence as of today, either by size or by number and are listed in order of potency against COVID.
Here is how to read and understand a Forest Plot: there is a thin grey line in the center, on either side of which are plotted squares which represent an estimate of the true size of the “treatment effect,” derived from an average of the treatment effects measured from all the trials performed of that medicine. If the box is squarely on the vertical line it means it is a treatment whose benefits have been found equal to its harms. In the above list, (with the exception of one) medicines with “positive” treatment effects are listed, meaning the benefits of treatment with these agents outweigh any potential or actual harms. No medicine on the list above, besides convalescent plasma (CP), indicates it is inferior to placebo (note that CP was the initial favored therapy of every single academic medical center in the U.S despite the fact CP has only ever been shown to be effective in hematogenous infections). In cases, such as with CP, due to the fact it’s harms outweigh it’s benefits, the box is plotted on the right side of the line and shaded in red. Conversely, the farther to the left of the vertical line that a box is plotted, the larger the measured impact on the clinical outcome tested. Green boxes indicate the effect estimate is based on at least 4 trials. Grey boxes and greyed out medicine names mean the estimate for that medicine is based on fewer than 4 trials. The thin horizontal line through each little box indicates the degree of precision, i.e. how confident we can be in the estimate of the treatment effect – narrow horizontal lines through the boxes mean the data in support is large and consistently positive and is “statistically significant” in favor of the medicine. The wider the line, the less consistent, or less amount of data can be relied upon to make the estimate. When the horizontal line through a box extends across the vertical gray line, this indicates that it is statistically possible that the true estimate may actually be in favor of placebo!
With ivermectin, what sets it apart from all the other compounds tested, is the sheer number of randomized and observational controlled trials that have been performed to date. It is #1 among the “green box” compounds given it has been tested in 73 controlled trials which include an unheard-of 56,804 patients. Why unheard of? Because never in history has a medicine been so thoroughly tested, with such consistent positive results, yet led to a situation where governmental agencies in highly developed countries call for even more placebo-controlled trials to be done… and then slow walk to doing them. The ethics of giving a covid patient a placebo given this amount of supportive data are too miserable to contemplate this early in the article (fun fact – I was personally asked to try to help recruit patients for the ongoing University of Minnesota placebo controlled RCT. I got off the phone as fast as I could). Another not-so-fun fact: penicillin was mass deployed to great effect to all our troops for their battlefield injuries in World War II… based on a case series of 157 patients where their bacterial infections overtly resolved without signs of toxicity during treatment. Not one RCT was done before this decision was made by military and medical leaders.
The only other medicine with a larger supportive evidence base is hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), especially when only the early treatment trials of HCQ are considered as that collection of trials results in an equally impressive position on the Forest plot (not shown). A tired topic I will explore later is the much parroted (and highly favored by Pharma) notion that “retrospective, observational controlled trials (OCT)” cannot be trusted as they are inferior to “proper, large, double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled trials (RCT).” This notion is not evidence based. Even the captured (I know, sorry) Cochrane Library knows this. They themselves have shown that, on average, over thousands of clinical trials, over decades of research, OCT’s and RCT’s reach the same conclusions. So stop with the false dichotomy. Pharma wants you to only trust in “large RCT’s”… because they are the only ones with the cash to do them. That way, they can control the only medicines that get “proven” and thus adopted into guidelines.
Two absurdities (crimes) must be highlighted in the above diagram – one is the sheer number of medicines with demonstrated efficacy, most costing under $5 a dose (and almost all with unparalleled safety profiles and/or “over the counter” status) that are still not recommended by any U.S or “western” health agency (with the exception of the state of Florida since the hire of Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo who has put together a terrific public health campaign supporting the use of a combination early treatment protocol which includes another FLCCC adopted drug, fluvoxamine).
Meanwhile our federal governmental health agencies, which I have argued repeatedly (and will for years until it stops) are so completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry that they have not advocated for any one of these “repurposed” compounds, even as a “precautionary principle” (meaning that even if the purported benefits may not be realized to the extent estimated, the risks are so small it is more likely best for all we employ them now in early treatment given the world is cratering). Their most unforgivable and absurd inaction is the deliberate ignoring of the critical role of Vitamin D in protecting against the worst outcomes of COVID, despite knowing full well significant portions of the U.S population is Vitamin D deficient. Even Anthony Fauci recommends to himself that he take Vitamin D… regularly. The data below was given to me by a Dr. Henele and is from work he published in 2016. Note the percent of the U.S population that is critically deficient in Vitamin D.
The second absurdity is found when looking at the plot with only the medicines recommended in the NIH’s COVID protocol circled. Note that the NIH protocol is adhered to by almost the entirety of the country’s hospitals (largely due to large add-on bonuses paid to hospitals when the protocol elements are used – I am not making this up). A “theme” should begin to emerge as you look at the circled, “recommended” medicines vs the non-circled, “non-recommended” medicines – every single one is massively expensive. Every single one. Note not one inexpensive drug is circled. How much more evidence do you need to prove that our agencies have been completely captured by the pharmaceutical industry?
Fun fact now that you are en expert in reading Forest Plot’s: Merck’s mutagenic new drug molnupiravir, after the highly positive results from their study’s “interim analysis,” published in a press release, instead found that, in the 2nd half of its one study, the data favored… placebo. Thus if the 2nd half was a stand-alone study (which it arguably could have been) it’s box would be firmly on the right side of the line. FDA still approved… while feigning concern. Unsurprising really.
Now, beyond the above 73 controlled trials supporting ivermectin, there are, in addition, numerous health ministries from around the world that deployed ivermectin in either the prevention or early treatment of COVID, among often very large populations. Each program’s report found that ivermectin use led to massive reductions in the need for hospitalization and/or death (Mexico City, Uttar Pradesh, Brazil, Misiones, La Pampas, Peru, Phillipines, and Japan – I will do a deeper dive on these in a later post). The program in the city of Itajai, Brazil is both the largest study of ivermectin in the world (data from nearly 200,000 patients was carefully collected over a 6 month period) and most impressive. They found that, despite the fact that the 120,000 patients who agreed to take ivermectin every 15 days were older, fatter, and sicker than the approximately 37,000 that did not… they went to hospital 67% less frequently, and died 70% less frequently… from all causes, not just COVID. The issue with ivermectin as a therapeutic in COVID… has NOTHING to do with the science.
The issue with ivermectin is simply it’s price – it costs less than a $1 and represents the biggest threat to the immense and future profits of the pharmaceutical industry’s novel oral anti-viral drugs… as well as their vaccines.
The previous title holder of the largest threat to Pharma profits in COVID was the highly effective (and also anti-viral) drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). However, it lost that title after the 2020 war on HCQ was essentially won by Pharma (for now?), using tactics so sinister as to be unimaginable, and which I will not review here as that macabre war has already been expertly reviewed in incredible and highly referenced detail in the book “The Real Anthony Fauci” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His book, in my opinion, is a must read for all the globe’s citizens, as without it, no coherent understanding of the innumerable non-scientific actions and policies across the entirety of the developed (and majority of the undeveloped) world can be gained.
I must emphasize that ivermectin is just the latest drug under attack during Pharma’s long-standing (and highly successful) war on off-patent, “no-longer-obscenely-profitable” medicines. Books have been written about the numerous, and often criminal actions that Big Pharma has employed to replace older off-patent medicines with newer, highly profitable, and often poorly tested drugs with either prospectively known dangers or quickly discovered dangers which they then criminally suppress or distort to preserve profits. When science supporting older, off-patent, often “repurposed” medicines (particularly in the lucrative environment of a global pandemic) becomes “inconvenient” to the financial promise of newer agents, the industry employs what are called “Disinformation” tactics, first invented and perfected by the Tobacco Industry, and now used to great effect by the Pharmaceutical (and many other) industries. These tactics are brilliantly and succinctly summarized in an article called The Disinformation Playbook written by The Union for Concerned Scientists. I encourage all to read. The 5 main “plays” from the playbook are listed below. If you are at all versed in the ivermectin in COVID saga (many FLCCC followers are), it should be easy to quickly come up with numerous examples of each nefarious tactic. I give some hints below…
1) The “Fake”: Conduct counterfeit science and try to pass it off as legitimate research (Dr. Andrew Hill)
2) The “Blitz”: Harass scientists who speak out with results or views inconvenient for industry (attacks on FLCCC founders)
3) The “Diversion”: Manufacture uncertainty about science where little or none exists (Dr. Andrew Hill/captured high-impact journals)
4) The “Screen”: Buy credibility through alliances with academia or professional societies (i.e. high impact medical journal influences)
5) The “Fix”: Manipulate government officials or processes to inappropriately influence policy (i.e. capture the health agencies by creating “revolving doors” between Pharma and government to ensure total synchrony in objectives amongst their leaders)
Given the Disinformation Playbook was last updated in 2018, it does not include newer, more nefarious tactics that industries have been able to deploy since the historic consolidation of financial power by just 3 multi-trillion dollar investment funds (Black Rock, State Street, and Vanguard). These three corporations have now acquired influential or outright controlling investment stakes in nearly every major corporation in nearly every industry. These investment managers power, particularly the power held synchronously over media companies, social media companies, and the near entirety of the pharmaceutical industry, has allowed even more fearsome tactics to be used in the near-global suppression of the efficacy of ivermectin (and HCQ) as they now:
1) CENSOR any mentions of supportive evidence in corporate, (a.k.a. “legacy”) media. Note that, besides the influence of these investment manager overlords, the global censoring ability of media was greatly helped by the “Trusted News Initiative (TNI),” an obscene (and either naively misguided or completely corrupt) effort by the most powerful journalism organizations in the world to band together to try to control the spread of “mis-information”. Yes, professional journalists decided they needed to control information in a pandemic. I am not making this up. Would an appropriate analogy be that a bunch of physician leaders decided they needed to spread disease in a pandemic?
2) CENSOR any mentions or discussions of efficacy on almost all social media – see explicit youtube “community” policy below as the most unsubtle example:
YOUTUBE COMMUNITY GUIDELINES
3) RETRACT positive papers from impactful medical journals (3 fully peer-reviewed and highly supportive scientific reviews of ivermectin have been retracted, either immediately prior to or post-publication (I was the lead author on the first one with my FLCCC colleagues)
4) BLOCK review and publication of positive trials of ivermectin in major medical journals (in my now global network of ivermectin-expert and/or ivermectin study investigator colleagues, all lament how their positive clinical trials or papers were rejected for review from all the high-impact (captured) journals, with Dr. Eli Schwartz’s highly sophisticated, expertly conducted, and immensely positive study from Israel being one of the most illustrative examples
5) PUBLISH numerous “hit pieces” within high profile print media outlets discrediting the science and/or the scientists who support the medicine. This is actually an example of the already described “Blitz” tactic, but in 2021, during COVID, using total media control, it was deployed by a division of Howitzers. A more recent and relatable example of “the Diversion” tactic was when the NFL used media hit pieces to go after the scientists (and their inconvenient science) after they began publishing and disseminating data about the high rates and disastrous impacts of chronic traumatic encephalopathy in retired NFL players.
What I have found fascinating, is that for every planted hit piece article discrediting the mountain of evidence supporting ivermectin as a therapeutic, the FLCCC is actually rarely mentioned. But why? I think it is because the FLCCC is a sizeable group of highly published physicians and researchers (Professor Paul Marik is actually the most published practicing ICU physician in the history of the specialty). Thus, it’s hard (but not impossible) to call us “fringe.” The last thing they want to do is call attention to our high degree of credibility. Instead they seem to be trying to destroy it using separate hit pieces (among other tactics) which has led to the recent loss of employment for three founding FLCCC members (Drs. Marik, Meduri, and yours truly have been forced to leave jobs or had their exemplary clinical and research careers ended (Drs. Marik and Meduri). An article on ivermectin that does not mention our organization does so purposefully so as not to give attention to credible support for its use given we are considered the foremost clinical experts on the clinical use of ivermectin in COVID in the world.
6) employ a coordinated media-government agency PROPAGANDA campaign;
August 26th, 2021: Pharma used their CDC to send out a “health advisory” to all 50 state Departments of Health, which they then sent to all the physicians licensed in their respective states (a terrifying example of the immense destructive power of a federal agency captured by pharmaceutical industry interests). The bulletin both;
1) depicted ivermectin as a dangerous drug by deliberately exaggerating reports of calls to poison control centers
2) cited the meaningless fact that it “is not FDA approved for COVID” as a reason it should not be used, hoping doctors may not realize that “off-label” prescribing is both legal and encouraged… by the FDA.
Next, a quickly debunked (not quickly enough) planted media article in Rolling Stone appeared with an impressively click-bait-able headline describing emergency rooms so overflowing with ivermectin overdoses that our nation’s gunshot victims couldn’t get (obviously) needed care (even I clicked on it). The article then went viral across the world (thousands of media mentions) before the hospital could put out a statement saying it was 100% false. Gee, do you think Pharma hired a professional PR firm to pull that one off or did they just benefit from a serendipitous and lamentably lazy journalist’s error?
Then, in another terrifying example of the control of major corporate media… for week after week every news broadcaster, pundit, and late-night talk show host prefaced the word ivermectin with the descriptor “horse de-wormer.” Over and over and over again (totally pissing off Joe Rogan who recovered from COVID with ivermectin as part of his combination protocol- hah!)
Then finally, in a coup de grace, in comes Pharma’s FDA proudly using twitter to associate ivermectin with, you guessed it, horses. Janet Woodcock, the acting Commissioner of the FDA, even sent out a congratulatory email to her team about the success of the tweet.
Was this a coordinated attack led by an expert team of brazen PR professionals who have a fondness for horses… or did it arise organically via a series of disconnected events?
If you are still not convinced of the former, I need to point out that this “series of disconnected events” had an uncanny sense of when to “roll-out.” The CDC’s Health Advisory was issued on August 26th. Look at the below chart and see if you can find any reason why it would start then? Recall that the advisory was ostensibly in reaction to false “reports of calls to poison control centers”. The below chart shows instead what was really going on at the time – hundreds, if not thousands of licensed medical professionals across the country were prescribing ivermectin like mad during the terrible, and deadly summer surge of the Delta variant. Was someone getting nervous that a “dirty little secret” was being rapidly discovered by American citizens and physicians? The answer is a definitive yes – thus triggering Pharma to nefariously try to “stuff the genie back in the bottle” by unleashing their terrifying disinformation propaganda campaign.
NUMBER OF IVERMECTIN PRESCRIPTIONS DISPENSED IN THE U.S OVER TIME
But check this out… the good ole’ FLCCC, my little band of brothers and sisters, is somehow making a opening in the wall of information suppression and distortion as shown in the chart below (compiled by our data analyst and ivermectin expert, Juan Chamie). I say this makes us “the Bad News Bears” in the repurposed drug war.
I am going to stop here… and call it PART I. Please subscribe below so you can be sure to get Part II where I will continue to detail the numerous and wide-ranging corrupt actions taken to suppress the knowledge of efficacy and restrict the use of ivermectin… across the world. There is way way more to this story.
Also, please be aware of the following events:
World-wide Rally for Freedom Day
Join us for a march in DC on defeating the mandate and to march in support of our international colleagues- who are also rallying on this day: Sunday January 23rd.
United we stand, in peace we watch. Bring friends and jackets.
Go to https://defeatthemandatesdc.com/ for details
Finally, I am honored to have been invited by Dr. Chris Martenson and Peak Prosperity to their Annual Seminar as part of a speaker panel including some powerhouse thought leaders. Don’t miss it folks. Register using this link: http://peak22.events/kory
Kazakhstan turns into graveyard for US diplomacy
A Pentagon-funded bio-lab near Almaty, Kazakhstan, has become focus of attention for its research on “dangerous pathogens”
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JANUARY 9, 2022
The Kazakh Ministry of Health issued an innocuous disclaimer today denying social media reports about the seizure of a “military biological lab near Almaty by unidentified people.”
According to Tass news agency, the social media had speculated that specialists in chemical protection suits were working near the lab as “a leak of dangerous pathogens” occurred.
The carefully worded press release by the Kazakh ministry clarifies: “This is not true. The facility is being protected.” Period.
The intriguing report highlights the tip of an iceberg which has implications for public health and holds serious geopolitical ramifications.
Since the late 1990s, when it came to be known that the US was steadily establishing and building up partnerships in biological research with several ex-Soviet republics, Moscow has repeatedly alleged that such cooperation posed a threat to Russia.
These biological research facilities were originally envisaged as part of the so-called Nunn-Lugar Biological Threat Reduction Program to prevent the proliferation of expertise, materials, equipment and technologies that could contribute to the development of biological weapons.
But Moscow suspected that the exact opposite was happening — in reality, the Pentagon has been sponsoring, lavishly financing and providing technical assistance to these laboratories where “under the guise of peaceful research, the US is building up its “military-biological potential.”
In a sensational statement in October 2018, Major General Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops went to the extent of disclosing a discernible pattern of the network of Pentagon labs being located near the borders of Russia and China.
The US-Kazakh partnership in this field dates back to 2003. Kazakhstan has been an interesting “hotspot” for infectious disease occurrence and surveillance due in part to its history, geography, and its diversity of host species. Kazakhstan has long maintained an infrastructure and tiered network for infectious disease surveillance since the time of the Tsars.
The US-funded research projects centred on studies involving select agents including zoonoses: anthrax, plague, tularemia, highly pathogenic avian influenza, brucellosis, etc. These projects funded researchers in Kazakhstan, while project collaborators in the US and UK mentored and guided these researchers to develop and test their hypotheses.
It has been a “win-win” arrangement. The Kazakh institute staff got trained in modern diagnostic and data management techniques, and did research work with lavish external funding, while the Pentagon obtained through such labs valuable inputs for US covert biological weapons programs with military application specifically directed against ethnic groups in Russia and China.
The unassumingly-named Central Reference Laboratory (CRL) in Almaty figuring in the Tass report was originally planned in 2013 with the US investing $102 million in a biosecurity lab to study some of the most deadly pathogens that could potentially be used in bioterrorism attacks.
Rather than locating the new facility in some obsecure tract of land in Nevada, the Pentagon deliberately chose a site near Almaty to securely store and study the highest-risk diseases such as plague, anthrax and cholera.
The rationale was that the lab would provide gainful employment to talented Kazakh researchers and get them off the streets, so to speak — that is, discourage them from selling their scientific expertise and services to terrorist groups who may have use for biological weapons!
But the CRL, now operational, is anchored on institutional cooperation between Kazakh government and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency under the the Pentagon, which is tasked with protecting “US National Security interests in a rapidly evolving, globalised threat environment to enable a greater understanding of our adversaries and provide solutions to WMD threats in an era of Great Power Competition.”
By the way, Germany also has a similar arrangement under the rubric German-Kazakh Network for Biosafety and Biosecurity, which is co-managed by the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology (a military research facility of the German Armed Forces for Medical Biological Defence.)
Why is Kazakhstan a sought-after partner? Simply put, the country provides unique access to ethnic Russian and Chinese groups as “specimen” for conducting field research involving highly pathogenic, potential biological warfare agents. Kazakhstan has 13,364 km of borders with its neighbouring countries Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.
Is China indifferent to all this? Far from it. Beijing Review featured a report sourced from BBC Monitoring in 2020 conveying China’s concerns in the matter. As recently as in November last year, a Russian commentator wrote that these bio-labs are virtual Pentagon bases and demanded an international inquiry. He highlighted that the Kazakh ministry of education and science “now works mainly on Pentagon research programmes.”
How could Kazakhstan, a CSTO member country, have got away with such conduct? This needs some explaining.
Paradoxically, these biological labs are living examples of something sinister that has been going on which everyone knew and no one wanted to talk about — namely, the extensive penetration of the decadent Kazakh ruling elites by the US intelligence.
This penetration has been going on for years but significantly deepened as the 81-year old former president Nurusultan Nazarbayev’s “hands-on” leadership began to loosen and his family members and cronies increasingly began moonlighting (under the patriarch’s benevolent gaze, of course) — something akin to Yeltsin years in Russia.
Sadly, it is a familiar story. The Kazakh elites are notoriously corrupt even by Central Asian standards and the parasitic elites have preferred to keep their loot in safe havens in the western world . Unsurprisingly, they are hopelessly compromised to the US intelligence. It’s as simple as that.
Most certainly, Moscow sensed that popular disaffection was building up and the ground beneath the feet of Nazarbayev, a close friend of Putin, was shifting. But it did not — or more likely, would not — interfere since the US was operating through powerful comprador elements who happened to be the ageing patriarch’s family members and associates.
Given the clan affiliations in that part of the world, Moscow probably felt it prudent to keep its counsel to itself. An added factor would have been the fear that the US might manipulate the ultra-nationalist forces (as happened in Ukraine) to inflict harm on the vulnerable 3.5 million ethnic Russian minority (18% of the population.)
Above all, the fact of the matter is that Nazarbayev cronies held the levers of state power, especially over the security apparatus, which gave Washington a decisive edge.
But things have dramatically changed this past week. Nazarbayev may still have some residual influence but not good enough to rescue the elite who subserved US interests. President Tokayev, a low-profile career diplomat by profession, is finally coming on his own.
Two of Tokayev’s decisive moves have been the replacement of Nazarbayev as the head of the National Security Council and the dismissal of the country’s powerful intelligence chief Karim Masimov (who has since been arrested along with other unidentified suspects as part of a probe into “high treason.”)
Indeed, Washington has much to worry about because, at the end of the day, Kazakhstan remains an unfinished business unless and until a colour revolution can bring about regime change and install a pro-West ruler in power, as in Ukraine. The current turbulence signified an abortive attempt at colour revolution, which boomeranged.
Unlike in Afghanistan, the CIA and Pentagon are not in a position to “evacuate” their collaborators. And the torrential flow of events has shocked the Washington establishment. Kazakhstan is a large country (two-thirds the size of India) and sparsely populated (18 million), and the CSTO forces who moved in are well-equipped and led by a tough seasoned general who crushed the US-backed insurgency in Chechnya.
The Russian forces have taken with them the advanced Leer-3 electronic warfare system, which includes specially configured Orlan-10 drones, jamming devices, etc. Borders have been sealed.
The mandate for Russian forces is to protect “strategic assets”. Presumably, such assets include the Pentagon-funded labs in Kazakhstan.
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Neocon Max Boot: Legal and illegal aliens need to enlist in the US army and die for Israel
By Jonas E. Alexis | Veterans Today | October 16, 2107
In 1973 Irving Kristol, the godfather of the Neoconservative movement, made a stunning statement which is still relevant to understanding the Israeli influence in US foreign policy. Kristol said:
“Senator McGovern is very sincere when he says that he will try to cut the military budget by 30%. And this is to drive a knife in the heart of Israel… Jews don’t like big military budgets. But it is now an interest of the Jews to have a large and powerful military establishment in the United States…
“American Jews who care about the survival of the state of Israel have to say, no, we don’t want to cut the military budget, it is important to keep that military budget big, so that we can defend Israel.”
Read the statement again very carefully. A big military budget, said Kristol, is only good for Israel, not America or much of the Western World. In other words, precious American soldiers who go to the Middle East to fight so-called terrorism are just working for Israel, not for America.
So, whenever the Neocons use words such as “democracy” or “freedom,” they are essentially conning decent Americans to support Israel’s perpetual wars. … continue
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