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Washington’s Crocodile Tears Over Ukraine’s Destruction

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 25, 2022

As of this writing, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is hunkered down in his bunker somewhere in Kiev, as the sound of the encroaching war gets closer and closer. A grim scene, to be sure.

All the US and EU kisses and roses leading up to this end have turned to dust and barbed wire, as a no-doubt deeply bitter Zelensky has nothing left but to cry out in anger: “Who is ready to fight with us? I do not see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.”

The chips are down, as much of the US-equipped and backed Ukrainian military appears to have turned and ran as Russian forces approached. That is not to say that there has not been death and destruction on both sides. The battle for Kherson was brutal, with plenty of Russian losses. But nevertheless, as of this writing, it has fallen to Russian control.

Kiev in the main may well fall within the next 12-24 hours. Russian troops are already in the city. And Zelensky is in his bunker with fewer and fewer to take his calls. The cavalry he believed was promised him will not be coming to rescue him. Ukraine will be de-militarized and Ukraine will be neutral. Once held up as a great ally of Washington and Brussels, Zelensky is alone.

It brings to mind that great quote I often recycle from RPI academic advisor John Laughland, written as the early US-backed color revolutions rampaged through the former Soviet world in the early 2000s:

It is better to be an enemy of the Americans than their friend. If you are their enemy, they might try to buy you; but if you are their friend they will definitely sell you.

Zelensky has now learned the bitter truth, which previously favored foreign leaders also learned. Most of their lessons have been even harder than Zelensky’s (at least to this point).

The bitter truth is that Washington’s foreign policy establishment never actually considered Zelensky – or his predecessor Poroshenko – to be allies or partners of the United States. Overflowing with a toxic mix of ignorance, arrogance, and extreme cynicism, Washington’s elites have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to “regime-change” a Russia that, after its post-Yeltsin recovery, would no longer take its direction from them.

The false gods of American exceptionalism are jealous ones indeed.

The American foreign policy establishment wanted a perpetual “Yanks to the Rescue” Russia, whereby US “consultants” and spooks would ensure that the most obsequious candidate would continue to win and rule. A string of Russian presidents who would, à la Shevardnadze and a whole string of other post-Soviet leaders, run the country like a family business: lots of biznis deals for family members…and maybe 10 percent for the “big guy.”

Americans are victims (willing or not) of a mass media system as propagandistic as any that existed during Soviet Communism. The “party line” is established and it is unwaveringly followed whether the favored flavor is Fox or MSNBC. When it became obvious that Yeltsin’s one-time understudy, Vladimir Putin, wasn’t going to play that way, the party line came down that he must be demonized.

Not carefully studied and where appropriate opposed (on the basis of actual US interests), but rather Putin had to be demonized and, ultimately, “regime-changed.”

Discourse in the US is so infantile that just writing this objective truth will no doubt land this author in the “Putin’s puppet” purgatory. Not for the first time.

Most Americans will not have heard – and those who have likely do not care – that twice when the Ukrainian people elected a president who was in favor of maintaining good relations with its Russian neighbor the US intervened and overthrew the government. First time in the 2004-5 “Orange Revolution” and then the fateful 2014 “Maidan” revolt, which was explicitly and overtly supported by senior US government officials on the ground in Kiev including Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland and the late neocon warmonger Sen. John McCain.

In the meantime tens of millions of dollars flow from the US taxpayer to favored think tanks, civic organizations, and media outlets via the National Endowment for Democracy (sic) and numerous US-funded related organizations. The goal is the same: manipulate Ukraine so that it remains on Washington’s preferred path (toward conflict with Russia).

It is fashionable – particularly over the past two days – for even antiwar and “restraint”-promoting scribblers and jaw-boners to fall into tune with the warmongers’ songbook of “Russian aggression” as the sole cause of recent bloodshed and destruction.

While anyone with an ounce of decency deeply regrets and opposes the use of such massive military force as we have seen recently in Ukraine, if there is one lesson to be learned from this entire miserable chapter (and by “chapter” I mean the entirety of post-Cold War US foreign policy) it is this: There are consequences that come with the belief that the key to peace and prosperity is to remake the world in your own image through the use of overt and covert, violent and non-violent means. That lesson should have been learned with the fall of Soviet communism itself, but the “victors” were too full of hubris to pause for a moment of humility.

Wishing reality was one thing and accepting that it is another are two very different things. The distinction must be made or the mass mental illness of “American exceptionalism” can never be cured. Otherwise the consequences next time the tectonic plates shift may be far closer to home.

Whether America and the EU like it or not, the era of ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality” is well and truly over. Its end is not to be mourned but to be celebrated. The only pro-America foreign policy is non-intervention in the affairs of others.

Ukrainian President Zelensky is unlikely to survive his turn being America’s cat’s paw to wrong-foot Russia. While he sits in his bunker contemplating his fate, he may well be visited by the ghosts of Saddam and Gaddafi and all those who preceded him in this position. God help him.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 7 Comments

A short history of laboratory leaks and gain-of-function studies

By Professor Paul R. Goddard | GM Watch | February 19, 2022

Two myths have hindered investigations into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus: one, that viruses seldom escape from laboratories; and two, that most pandemics are zoonotic, caused by a natural spillover of a virus from animals to humans.

Promoters of the first myth include the World Health Organization (WHO). At a press conference in Wuhan, China, in February 2021, Peter Ben Embarek, the head of the WHO inspection team tasked with looking into the origins of the virus, said it was “extremely unlikely” that it had leaked from a lab and as a result the lab escape hypothesis would no longer form part of the WHO’s continuing investigations.[1]

Dr Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, has promoted both myths. As long ago as 2012, Dr Daszak co-authored a paper in The Lancet claiming that “Most pandemics – e.g. HIV/AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, pandemic influenza – originate in animals”.[2]  Since the start of the pandemic, he has claimed that “lab accidents are extremely rare”, and that they “have never led to large scale [disease] outbreaks”. He also said that suggestions that SARS-CoV-2 might have come out of a lab are “preposterous”, “baseless”, “crackpot”, “conspiracy theories”, and “pure baloney”.[3]

In September 2020 Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and his co-author wrote in a paper about COVID’s origins, “Infectious diseases prevalent in humans and animals are caused by pathogens that once emerged from other animal hosts.”[4] Fauci has tried to quash the notion that SARS-CoV-2 could have come from a lab. In May 2020 he said that the virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated” and in October 2020 that year that the lab leak theory was “molecularly impossible”.[5]

But emails uncovered this year by a Freedom of Information request in the US reveal a wide gap between what Fauci was being told by experts about the virus’s origins and what he was saying publicly. In January 2020, a group of four virologists led by Kristian G. Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute told Fauci that they all “find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory”[6] – in other words, it likely didn’t come from nature and could have come from a lab.

Fauci hastily convened a teleconference with the virologists on 1 February 2020.[7] As the New York Post reported, “Something remarkable happened at the conference, because within three days, Andersen was singing a different tune. In a Feb. 4, 2020, email, he derided ideas about a lab leak as ‘crackpot theories’ that ‘relate to this virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case’.”[8]

Andersen and his colleagues then published an article on 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine that declared, “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”[9] The article was highly influential in persuading the mainstream press not to investigate lab leak theories.[10]

While the emails do not prove a conspiracy to mislead the public, they certainly make it more plausible. Just one day after the teleconference at which his experts explained why they thought the virus seemed manipulated, Francis Collins, then-director of the NIH, complained about the damage such an idea might cause.

“The voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony,” he wrote on 2 February 2020, according to the emails.[11]

But there is another reason why Fauci and Collins might not want the lab leak idea to take hold. Dr Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance had channelled funding from the NIH’s NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, for dangerous gain-of-function (GoF) research on bat coronaviruses. So money from organisations headed by Fauci, Collins, and Daszak funded research that could have led to the lab leak that some believe caused the pandemic.[12]

While it should have been clear from the beginning that Drs Fauci and Daszak have strong vested interests in denying the lab leak theory, until recently their assertions were taken as objective fact by most science writers and media.

But a brief look at the history of lab leaks and the origins of pandemics confirms that their claims are highly misleading. Research shows that the escape of viruses from laboratories and supposedly contained experiments, such as vaccine research and programmes, is a common occurrence. In addition, many pandemics have arisen from lab escapes and almost all have not been directly zoonotic. Even when viruses do ultimately originate in animals and make the jump into humans, they mostly fester in a separated community of human beings for many years – centuries or millennia – before spreading during abnormal movements of people due to wars and famines.

What is GoF research?

In its broadest definition, GoF research provides a virus or other microbe with a new function, such as making it more virulent or transmissible, or widening its host range (the types of hosts that the organism can infect).[13] Through GoF, researchers can create new diseases in the laboratory.

GoF can be achieved by any selection process that results in changes in the genes of the organism and as a result, its characteristics. One example of such a process is passing a virus through different animal cells, which can result in a loss of function (weakening it) or a gain of function (making it more able to replicate in a new host species). The researcher can then select the altered organism, depending on the purpose of the research.

In the last decade, GoF researchers have used genetic engineering to directly intervene in the genome of viruses to enhance a desired function.

But long before GoF studies involving deliberate genetic alteration, researchers had started to experiment with widening the host range of certain viruses, in order to develop vaccines. Often these experiments had unintended outcomes, including causing outbreaks of the disease being targeted.

Smallpox

An example is the development of the smallpox vaccine. Most of us are aware of how Edward Jenner in 1796 put cowpox to work in a new way, to infect humans. This led to the successful vaccination programme that eventually eliminated smallpox from the world.

But what many people do not know is that the experiments of 1796 were not his first attempts at using an animal pox in humans. His first subject was his baby son, who had been born in 1789. He inoculated the lad with swinepox and later tested the inoculation’s effectiveness with smallpox. As Greer Williams pointed out in the book Virus Hunters, “The best we can say for this experiment is that it muddied the water… whether the experimental infections had anything to do with [the son’s] mental retardation it is impossible to say.”[14]

Vaccination does not give immunity from smallpox for life: A booster is required every few years. The last person to die from smallpox was Janet Parker, a photographer who worked on the floor above a lab in Birmingham, UK, where research on the virus was being conducted. She had been vaccinated against smallpox in 1966 but contracted the disease in 1978 when the virus escaped from the lab by an unknown route. She died some days later (see Table 1).

Introducing a virus or other microbe to a new host has historically been associated with problems. Before Jenner, inoculation with variola minor (smallpox from a sufferer with minor disease), had been used as a preventive measure in China as early as the tenth century.[15] Variolation, as it was termed, was introduced to the UK in 1717, but is reported to have killed 1 in 25. So Jenner’s experiments have to be viewed in the light of the contemporary practice, which was killing 4% of those inoculated.

What is more, as Greer Williams noted, variolation was an “excellent way of spreading the disease and starting new epidemics”.[16]

Yellow fever

In 1900 the French had given up on building the Panama Canal due to yellow fever decimating the workers. Eventually the disease was conquered in the region by a mosquito eradication programme based on the experiments of the US Army surgeon Major Walter Reed.[17] This success was crucial to the completion of the project in 1914.

But what is often forgotten is that a series of doctors and laboratory workers died trying to combat yellow fever. In 1900 Dr Jesse W. Lazear was the first researcher to die from yellow fever after he apparently allowed himself to be bitten by an infected mosquito as part of his experiments.[18] Between 1927 and 1930, yellow fever caused 32 laboratory infections, killing five people.[19]

As the research into viruses continued, so did the infection rate amongst the researchers and the death toll of researchers and those inoculated against diseases rose. I do not doubt that the final outcome was to the good of mankind, but occasionally a “vaccine” would go spectacularly wrong.

Polio

In the 1930s, 40s and 50s the infection that seemed to most frighten Western society was poliomyelitis. Perhaps it was because unlike with most infectious diseases, cleanliness did not seem to be a protection and exercising could be positively harmful. In fact polio struck those who were healthy and wealthy and was worse if the person was fit and active. Much effort was put into finding a vaccine and among the first to succeed was Dr Jonas Salk. There had been abortive attempts in the 1930s but the 1935 vaccination programme had actually killed people.

Salk was a meticulous researcher and his technique was excellent. Unfortunately this was not the case with all of the laboratories that prepared the vaccine for public use. In particular, the Cutter Laboratories failed to kill the virus and poliomyelitis was spread by their version of the Salk vaccine, paralysing and killing the recipients. Eventually the proper controls permitted the successful rollout of the killed vaccine. It was later replaced by an attenuated polio virus vaccine, which has nearly eliminated polio from the world. It will not, however, succeed in completely eliminating the disease, as the attenuated virus can revert to a wild form. Thus the final push may require the use, once again, of the killed virus polio vaccine.

The infection of laboratory workers with the microbes they were working on was so common that steps were introduced in the 1940s to prevent escape of the organisms. According to Wikipedia, the first prototype Class III (maximum containment) biosafety cabinet was fashioned in 1943 by Hubert Kaempf Jr., then a US Army soldier.[20] The regulations were enhanced and the escape of dangerous organisms decreased, but has never disappeared. This is clearly demonstrated in Table 1, which lists some, but by no means all, of the known lab leaks since the 1960s.

Escapes from bioweapons facilities

Whilst all of the incidents in the table are of interest, some are more worrying than others. In 1971 and 1979 there were outbreaks of smallpox and anthrax in the Soviet Union, caused by escapes of weaponised smallpox and weaponised anthrax from their own bioweapons facilities. In 1977 it is believed that a laboratory somewhere on the border of China and Russia put the H1N1 virus back together and it escaped and caused at least two pandemics. SARS1, which erupted first in 2003, later escaped from laboratories six times, four of which were in China, plus Singapore and Taiwan.[21]

The more you look at the table, the more you wonder if there is any virus that has not at some time escaped from a laboratory. Laboratory workers have told me that it is common for technicians to become infected with the organisms they are working with and their usual response in the past has been to take multivitamins and hydroxychloroquine.

Serious leaks of viruses from laboratories

Table 1: Some serious leaks of viruses from laboratories[22]k

The recent history of gain-of-function studies

Since 2010, GoF studies have increasingly focused on finding out whether non-pathogenic strains of viruses could be made infective and harmful to human beings.[23] This was supposedly in order to know whether or not the microbe was likely to be hazardous to human beings and then, if it was, devise vaccines and drugs against it.

In my opinion, such work simply increases the sum total of different pathogens that can affect human beings. When medical doctors are made aware of this type of research, they are usually speechless at the stupidity that anybody would contemplate doing such work. I now call such studies Make Another Disease (MAD) research.

This type of MAD research dramatically increased in laboratories in the USA between 2012 and 2014. The resulting accidents in which small outbreaks of novel viral diseases occurred led to three hundred scientists writing to the Obama administration asking for GoF to be stopped. The US Government responded by announcing a pause on the research in 2014 because of the inherent dangers.[24]

In the same year Dr Fauci, whose recorded belief was that the studies were worth the risk,[25] gave money from the NIH to Dr Daszak of Ecohealth Alliance to continue GoF research on coronaviruses.[26] This was carried out at the Wuhan Institute of Virology using genetically engineered humanized mice, culminating in reports in 2017 and 2018 that the researchers had successfully made harmless coronaviruses pathogenic to humans.[27]

In the autumn of 2019 the Covid-19 pandemic of SARS-2 started in Wuhan and, to date, over five million people across the world have died from the virus.

Are pandemics ever zoonotic?

In addition to stating erroneously that viruses only rarely escape from laboratories and/or that SARS-Cov-2 was unlikely to have done so, Drs Daszak and Fauci hold that most pandemics are zoonotic in origin. They say that pandemics start from a disease spreading from an animal but they do not state the time period involved. I would suggest that pandemics never occur from the immediate spread from an animal. In order for a pandemic to occur, a reservoir of the infection, adapted to human beings, must develop. This usually takes many years. Moreover the spread usually occurs due to the unnaturally large movement of people that occurs due to wars and famines.

I will give just a couple of well known examples.

When the Europeans invaded the Americas, 90% or more of the indigenous people of America died from the introduced diseases, which included measles, smallpox and mumps. In return, syphilis spread to Europe. Yes, the diseases had all arisen from animals initially, but the adaptation to make them pathogenic enough to cause a pandemic must have occurred over a period of the several thousand years during which the populations of Europe and America were separated.

AIDS was discovered in the early 1980s and it was soon clear that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus had arisen from the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus. However, studies have concluded that the first transmission of SIV to HIV in humans took place around 1920 in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo),[28] so that it had at least 40–50 years of sporadic infection of human beings before it started to spread round the world as a pandemic. During that time there were many local wars in Africa and, of course, the 2nd World War.

In my book PANDEMIC, I document the world’s worst pandemics and conclude that it is only malaria that seems to be indifferent to wars, killing people whether or not there are hostilities. All other historical pandemics have at least some connection with war and occur when isolated groups with an endemic disease meet another group without the disease.

Conclusion

Thus historically we come to an impasse with SARS-CoV-2. This arose in a city many miles away from an animal population that might have harboured a similar virus, at a time when the supposed original host was dormant (late autumn), near a laboratory known to be working on the viruses. It then spread from person to person at an alarming rate and was seen to be totally adapted to human beings, to the extent that it was unable to even infect the bat it was supposed to have arisen from.

As a person who has studied the history of pandemics and lab leaks, imagine my surprise when authorities, not only in China but also in the USA and UK, stated categorically that the virus was obviously zoonotic and we were conspiracy theorists if we proposed the opposite. I had to conclude that they were misguided or purposely lying.

References

1. Matthews J (2021). WHO investigation descends into farce in rush to rule out a lab leak. GMWatch. 10 Feb. https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2021-articles2/19691
2. Morse SS et al (2012). Prediction and prevention of the next pandemic zoonosis. The Lancet 1-7 Dec; 380(9857):1956–1965. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3712877/
3. Matthews J (2020). Why are the lab escape denialists telling such brazen lies? GMWatch. 17 Jun. https://gmwatch.org/en/news/archive/2020-articles/19437
4. Morens DM, Fauci AS (2020). Emerging pandemic diseases: How we got to COVID-19. Cell 182. 3 Dec. https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)31012-6.pdf
5. Chaffetz J (2022). Fauci, Feds tried to quash COVID lab leak origin theory – protecting Chinese interests over American lives. Fox News. 27 Jan. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/fauci-covid-lab-leak-origin-theory-china-jason-chaffetz
6. Wade N (2022). Emails reveal scientists suspected COVID leaked from Wuhan lab – then quickly censored themselves. New York Post. 17 Feb. https://nypost.com/2022/01/24/emails-reveal-suspected-covid-leaked-from-a-wuhan-lab-then-censored-themselves/
7. Carlson J, Mahncke H (2021). Behind the scenes of the natural origin narrative. Epoch Times. 30 Sep. https://www.theepochtimes.com/behind-the-scenes-of-the-natural-origin-narrative_4023181.html
8. Wade N (2022). As above.
9. Andersen KG et al (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine 26:450–452. 17 Mar. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
10. Wade N (2022). As above.
11. Wade N (2022). As above.
12. Lerner S, Hvistendahl M, Hibbett M (2021). NIH documents provide new evidence US funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan. The Intercept. 10 Sep. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/09/covid-origins-gain-of-function-research/
13. Board on Life Sciences et al (2015). Gain-of-function research: Background and alternatives. In: Potential Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Research: Summary of a Workshop. National Academies Press (US). Apr 13. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK285579/
14. Williams G (1959). Virus Hunters. Knopf.
15. Goddard PR (2020). PANDEMIC: Plagues, Pestilence and War: A Personalised History. Clinical Press. https://www.amazon.co.uk/PANDEMIC-Paul-Goddard-MD-FRCR/dp/1854570994
16. Williams G (1959). Virus Hunters. As above.
17. Feng P (undated). Yellow fever. National Museum of the United States Army. https://armyhistory.org/major-walter-reed-and-the-eradication-of-yellow-fever/
18. College of Physicians of Philadelphia (undated). Jesse Lazear. https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/jesse-lazear
19. Berry GP and Kitchen SF (1931). Yellow fever accidentally contracted in the laboratory: A study of seven cases. The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene s1–11(6):365–434. https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/s1-11/6/article-p365.xml
20. Wikipedia (undated). Biosafety level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#:~:text=The%20first%20prototype%20Class%20III,Laboratories%2C%20Camp%20Detrick%2C%20Maryland.
21. Mihm S (2021). The history of lab leaks has lots of entries. Bloomberg. 27 May. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-27/covid-19-and-lab-leak-history-smallpox-h1n1-sars
22. Sources:
* 1967 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/marburg-virus-disease
* 1966 and 1978 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_smallpox_outbreak_in_the_United_Kingdom
* 1971 Aral smallpox incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Aral_smallpox_incident; 1973 https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1973/apr/12/smallpox
* 1977, 1979 The history of lab leaks has lots of entries: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-05-27/covid-19-and-lab-leak-history-smallpox-h1n1-sars
* 2003-2017 Breaches of safety regulations are probable cause of recent SARS outbreak, WHO says BMJ. 2004 May 22; 328(7450): 1222 and The Origin of the Virus (Clinical Press, Bristol) 2021;
* 2007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_Kingdom_foot-and-mouth_outbreak
* 2015 US military accidentally ships live anthrax to labs. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature.2015.17653
23. Herfst S et al (2012). Airborne transmission of influenza A/H5N1 virus between ferrets. Science 336(6088):1534-41. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22723413/
24. The White House (2014). Doing diligence to assess the risks and benefits of life sciences gain-of-function research. 17 Oct. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/10/17/doing-diligence-assess-risks-and-benefits-life-sciences-gain-function-research
25. Fonrouge G (2021). Fauci once argued for risky viral experiments – even if they can lead to pandemic. New York Post. 28 May. https://nypost.com/2021/05/28/fauci-once-argued-viral-experiments-worth-the-risk-of-pandemic/ ; Barnard P, Quay S, Dalgleish A (2021). The Origin of the Virus. Clinical Press.
26. NIH (2014). Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence. Project Number 1R01AI110964-01. https://reporter.nih.gov/search/-bvPCvB7zkyvb1AjAgW5Yg/project-details/8674931
27. Barnard P, Quay S, Dalgleish A (2021). The Origin of the Virus. Clinical Press.
28. Avert (2019). Origin of HIV and AIDS. https://www.avert.org/professionals/history-hiv-aids/origin

About the author: Professor Paul R Goddard BSc, MBBS, MD, DMRD, FRCR, FBIR, FHEA is Emeritus Professor, University of the West of England, Bristol; retired consultant radiologist; and former president of the Radiology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He is the author of PANDEMIC, A Personalised History of Plagues, Pestilence and War, Clinical Press Ltd, August 2020, and PANDEMIC, 2nd Edition 2021, Clinical Press, Bristol, available from Gazelle Book Services Ltd and good bookshops, ISBN 978-1-85-457105-2. On a similar theme, see The Origin of the Virus, Clinical Press 2021.

The above article is adapted from material that was first presented as the Long Fox lecture to The Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Society and Bristol University (2017) and to the British Society for the History of Medicine Biennial Congress (September 2021).

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Pfizer Steps Up Advertising for Its ‘Blockbuster’ Drug to Treat Heart Conditions…

… Including Those Caused by COVID Vaccines

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 24, 2022

Two major pharmaceutical companies chose February, the month of love — or hearts — to launch an advertising campaign urging people experiencing heart issues for the first time to visit their doctors.

Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) this month revived the “No Time to Wait” ad campaign, spending $1.28 million on TV ads alone.

The campaign warns anyone experiencing palpitations and shortness of breath that they may be at increased risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), other types of blood clots and strokes — the same types of cardiovascular ailments found among people who have received COVID-19 vaccines.

The campaign urges viewers to seek early medical attention in order to reduce the risk of these serious complications.

“Early medical attention” could include prescription drugs — including Eliquis, developed and marketed by none other than Pfizer and BMS.

According to industry publication Fierce Pharma :

“The aim is to get patients back into their doctors’ offices — and of course, if needed, be diagnosed with any relevant condition that may require them to take a blood thinner, such as Eliquis.”

Eliquis, described as a “blockbuster blood thinner and atrial fibrillation (AF) drug,” is a major revenue generator for the Pfizer-BMS alliance, delivering more than $9 billion in annual revenue — far more than competing drugs such as Xarelto (produced by Bayer in conjunction with Johnson & Johnson), and Pradaxa, produced by Boehringer Ingelheim.

Pfizer and BMS relaunched the “No Time to Wait” campaign in conjunction with several advocacy organizations and medical societies, including World Thrombosis Day, which expressed support for the Pfizer-BMS initiative as a means of “educating” the public.

Characterized as a “surround-sound campaign,” Pfizer-BMS use television, radio and social media to deliver the “No Time to Wait” message to the public.

As part of the campaign, a DVT and pulmonary embolism (PE) television advertisement debuted on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. The ad showed two patients describing how they “didn’t wait” to speak to their doctors about the AF, DVT and PE symptoms they had begun to experience while performing everyday activities.

Speaking to the camera, the two actors describe symptoms, such as shortness of breath and a racing heart, which are potential indicators of AF, DVT and PE.

Official campaign literature urges the public to take action:

“Right now, people may be weighing a decision to visit a healthcare provider. However, symptoms like swelling, pain, tenderness or redness in the leg, thigh or pelvis can possibly be related to a potentially serious condition such as deep vein thrombosis (DVT). It’s critical to not brush off these symptoms.”

BMS, via its spokesperson, described the reasons for relaunching the campaign:

“We received so much positive feedback from patients and advocates on the impact this campaign had on patients, we knew it was our responsibility to continue to evolve the program and further get the message out.

“In the middle of 2021, we decided to evolve the campaign, with new insight that symptomatic people at risk for AFib or DVT/PE can often dismiss their symptoms or misattribute [emphasis added] them to other health and lifestyle factors.”

Could “misattribute,” in this instance, actually refer to cases where those who had recently received a COVID vaccine experienced the onset of heart-related conditions, in some cases leading to their deaths?

Is Pfizer benefitting from vaccine-induced ailments?

Could the relaunching of the “No Time to Wait” campaign represent an effort by Pfizer to engage in damage control from the increase in vaccine-induced heart conditions — while benefiting from the sale of a drug used to address those same ailments?

There are several objectives Pfizer and BMS could accomplish with the campaign.

First, by launching an advertising campaign warning people they may be at risk of certain heart conditions, Pfizer and BMS are in a sense “naturalizing” heart ailments in young and/or healthy individuals.

Second, by “naturalizing” the prevalence and likelihood of such heart conditions, these companies may deflect blame for these conditions from COVID vaccines, including the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Third, by referring patients to their doctors, the Pfizer-BMS alliance may directly benefit financially from the increased prevalence of heart ailments and conditions in the vaccinated public — as doctors prescribe more Eliquis, the top-selling blood thinner and AF drug, to treat their symptoms.

‘Normalizing’ heart conditions in young and healthy

According to Pfizer and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even “the healthiest athletes” are now at risk for blood clots, as stated in an urgent warning issued this month.

The media and health authorities in recent months have proffered multiple explanations for why healthy people are developing blood clotting and heart conditions, blaming everything from weather and energy bills to cannabis use — but not COVID vaccines.

Here are some examples:

  • September 2021: The Times of India ran a story on a “doctors’ reminder” that “nobody is too young for a heart attack.”
  • September 2021: A study indicated that cannabis use doubled the risk of heart attacks in young adults.
  • October 2021: The New York Post reported on “[t]he little-known heart attack that’s striking ‘fit and healthy’ women as young as 22.”
  • November 2021: British tabloid The Sun reported on “[t]he ways cold weather can affect your body — from winter vagina to blood clots.”
  • November 2021: A Times of India report asked why heart attacks are “becoming common in ‘seemingly’ fit people.”
  • November 2021: Healthline reported e-cigarettes can raise the risk of heart disease and stroke.
  • December 2021: Another British tabloid, Express, warned about the “healthy” diet that “may ‘increase’ your risk of having a heart attack.”
  • January 2022: Norton Health informed us that “[p]reventing heart disease in children is becoming more urgent as more kids develop heart disease.”
  • January 2022: A report is published warning that “sports can break your heart in more ways than one.”
  • January 2022: A report by CT (Connecticut) Insider indicated more people were suffering from heart disease and strokes “after COVID.”
  • January 2022: The Daily Mail warned the “[r]isk of heart problems could be increased even if you drink less than NHS weekly units,” referring to recommendations made by the UK’s National Health Service.
  • January 2022: The Sun ran a report claiming weather can “harm” one’s health, leading to heart attacks, stroke or gout.
  • January 2022: Another report by The Sun warned 300,000 Brits were “living with [a] stealth disease that could kill within 5 years.” The “stealth disease” in question is aortic valve stenosis, a condition where the heart’s aortic valve narrows.
  • February 2022: Nature magazine reported the risk of heart disease “soars after COVID — even with a mild case.”
  • February 2022: A doctor interviewed on the UK’s ITV warned an increase in energy bill amounts may cause heart attacks and strokes.

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media, culture and communication at New York University and founder of News from Underground compiled a list of reports like those listed above.

In looking at incidents and reports during the week of Feb. 8-14 alone, Crispin told readers:

“Before we note all those whose ‘sudden deaths’ made news just this past week — ‘unexpected deaths’ with no reported cause, or due to heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, cardiac arrest or swift, aggressive cancers (all known to be ‘adverse events’ post-‘vaccination’) — let’s review how this unprecedented global spike in sudden death has been deliberately obscured by ‘our free press.’”

Miller highlighted an ABC News report, “‘Broken heart’ cases surge during COVID, especially among women.”

In another example, Science magazine reported geneticists found the answer to “sudden unexplained child deaths.”

Downplaying of the connection between the COVID vaccines and serious heart conditions often has involved high-profile athletes.

For instance, 33-year-old soccer star Sergio Aguero of FC Barcelona was forced to announce his retirement in December 2021, after suffering chest pains and dizziness during a match in October 2021. He never played again.

According to Aguero’s cardiologist, the vaccine was not the reason for his ailment and retirement.

However, Aguero himself, in a Twitter question-and-answer session earlier this month, did not reject this possibility, stating: “I don’t know if Covid or [the] vaccine caused my retirement.”

Media, however, continue to promote the narrative that vaccines have nothing to do with the surge in sudden illnesses or deaths among athletes.

For example, Miller cited a Feb. 1 Washington Post article describing stories of athletes dying due to COVID vaccination as a “falsehood.”

Miller then compared what he described as the “disgraceful” Washington Post report with a documented timeline of athletes who suffered from heart failure between March 2021 and January 2022.

This string of incidents is further illustrated and detailed by the Real Science blog, which found 707 such incidents as of this writing and demonstrated in graphical form the sharp increase in heart failure incidents involving athletes over the course of 2021 and into 2022, as COVID vaccination uptake increased.

Nevertheless, Politifact, in December 2021, assured the public “[t]here’s no proof athletes collapsed with heart issues because of COVID-19 vaccination,” while in November 2021, U.S. News & World Report warned “COVID may trigger [a] heart condition in young athletes.”

As reports of vaccine-induced heart ailments rise, studies confirm link

Multiple studies and reports have confirmed a link between COVID vaccines and heart ailments.

These reports include:

  • September 2021: A report found adolescent boys are at higher risk of hospitalization from the Pfizer vaccine than from COVID.
  • November 2021: Renowned cardiologist Dr. Steven Gundry warned the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines “dramatically increase” the risk of heart attacks.
  • January 2022: Data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicates myocarditis tops the list of COVID vaccine injuries for 12- to 17-year olds.

Meanwhile, reports continue to grow of previously healthy people who develop heart conditions following COVID vaccines.

Here are just a few examples:

  • June 2021: A 13-year-old Michigan boy died three days after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.
  • June 2021: An athlete who received the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine developed myocarditis, triggered by the vaccine.
  • August 2021: A 14-year-old boy developed myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
  • October 2021: A 17-year-old developed multisystem inflammatory syndrome and myocarditis after receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
  • December 2021: A 26-year-old’s death from heart inflammation was found to have “probably” been caused by the Pfizer vaccine.
  • January 2022: An autopsy found the death of another 26-year-old from myocarditis was the direct result of receiving the Pfizer vaccine.
  • February 2022: A six-year-old developed vaccine-induced myocarditis, leaving him unable to walk.
  • February 2022: Autopsies showed that the deaths of two teenage boys who died soon after receiving the Pfizer vaccine were directly caused by the vaccine.

Reports and studies like those listed above have led to increasing calls for the vaccination of minors to be reassessed or outright halted, including:

  • January 2022: More than 30 experts called on UK regulators to reassess COVID vaccination for 12- to 15-year olds.
  • January 2022: Data revealed reports of heart disease following COVID vaccines had increased 15,600% in young people under the age of 30, compared to the previous 31 years of heart injuries reported following receipt of FDA-approved vaccines.

They’ve also triggered calls for further scrutiny on the part of health authorities, which appear to have had some effect, at least in certain instances.

For example:

  • October 2021: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration delayed a decision on green-lighting the administration of the Moderna vaccine to adolescents, citing heart problems (however, the Pfizer vaccine was nevertheless approved for the same age group).
  • October 2021: Health authorities in Denmark and Sweden paused administration of the COVID vaccine to younger age groups, citing reports of myocarditis.
  • December 2021: The CDC was monitoring eight cases of heart inflammation reported in 5- to 11-year-olds who received the Pfizer vaccine.

Nevertheless, in January 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)  refused to investigate the case of a 13-year-old who died of myocarditis days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine, while in August 2021, doctors “downplayed” the connection between the onset of myocarditis in a 25-year-old, and receipt of the Moderna vaccine.

‘No Time to Wait’ campaign spending indicative of broader Big Pharma marketing expenditures

Big-dollar ad spending is par for the course for Big Pharma companies such as Pfizer, as previously reported by The Defender.

For instance, a 2019 Forbes article reported Pfizer spent twice as much on marketing/selling as it spent on research.

Pfizer’s heavy advertising is also evident in its most recent quarterly report, for the fourth quarter of 2021. The report indicates a 10% increase — a total of $12.7 billion — in 2021 “SI&A expenses,” which include marketing and advertising, as compared to 2020, when there was no COVID vaccine available.

The report also projects Pfizer’s SI&A expenses will range between $12.5 and $13.5 billion in 2022.

BMS, in turn, spent $990 million in advertising and marketing in both 2020 and 2021 — after spending $633 million in 2019.

In sum, pharmaceutical ad spending totaled $6.58 billion in 2020, and was expected to surpass $11 billion by the end of 2021 — including $3.9 billion in spending on television advertisements alone.

In addition to “traditional” advertising and marketing campaigns, pharmaceutical companies adopted some more creative ways to promote their products — and perhaps purchase further goodwill on the part of media outlets.

In an October 2021 article, The Defender highlighted several examples of Pfizer sponsoring television news programs and segments, ranging from “Good Morning America” to “Anderson Cooper 360°” to “CBS HealthWatch.”

For example, an Oct. 4, 2021 tweet posted on CNBC’s official Twitter account portrayed Pfizer in glowing terms, accompanied by the text: “paid post for Pfizer.”

And a March 15, 2021 tweet by Pfizer expressed pride in the release of a National Geographic documentary, “Mission Possible: The Race for a Vaccine.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 3 Comments

Financial conflicts within government advisory groups

JCVI – don’t bite the hand…

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | February 25, 2022

There’s a well known expression “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” It can be taken literally – if an animal bites the hand that feeds it, it won’t get fed. In the business or academic world, it means don’t upset your funder. It’s obvious really – if you do, they won’t fund you anymore. The bigger the amount received, the less of a good idea it is to upset the funder.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) “advises UK health departments on immunisation.”[i] The JCVI has a sub-committee specifically to advise on COVID-19 vaccines. The chair of the JCVI, Professor Andrew Pollard, recused himself from all JCVI COVID-19 meetings because he is involved in the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine at Oxford University – where he works. This was done to avoid any “perceived conflict of interest.”  

Professor Lim Wei Shen was appointed chair of the JCVI sub-committee on COVID-19 vaccines. In August 2021, he stated categorically that 12-15 year olds would not be offered COVID-19 vaccines.[ii] Barely 6 weeks after that statement, 12-15 year olds were offered jabs.[iii] Barely 6 months later, on February 16th, 2022, the sub-committee issued a statement saying that, although 5-11 year olds are “generally at very low risk of serious illness from the virus”, they would be offered 2 doses of the Pfizer mRNA jab.[iv] This recommendation occurred despite the trials in children not being due for completion until May 2026.[v] We have previously noted that Professor Lim has a substantial conflict of interest: he has direct responsibility for material levels of funding received by his department from Pfizer.

At the time of writing, the most recent minutes for the sub-committee meetings are from May 2021. The sub-committee and main JCVI minutes report “Declarations of Interest” for the committee members. The Code of Practice describes the JCVI as “an independent Departmental Expert Committee and a statutory body.”[vi] Independent being the word of interest. One would expect this to mean “free from conflicts of interest”, but a closer look revealed that this was not the case.

The COVID-19 sub-committee of the JCVI has 15 core members (1 lay member). None of the members of this sub-committee declared conflicts of interests. Five of the 14 non-lay members provided additional information in their ‘non-declaration’ that revealed conflicts of interest. One, for example, declared funding from “the National Institute for Health Research, the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation”, but didn’t consider any of that vaccine funding as a conflict of interest. A cursory search on the remaining nine members revealed that six had conflicts of interest – from running a COVID-19 vaccine trial to being their organisation’s representative for Pfizer. One member failed to declare that he leads the Pfizer Vaccine Centre of Excellence in Bristol.

The members work for organisations, which collectively have received approximately $1,000,000,000 – one billion dollars – from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation aims to “accelerate the development and commercialization of novel vaccines and the sustainable manufacture of existing vaccines.”[vii] No doubt the Gates Foundation would have welcomed the sub-committee’s decision.

The majority of the COVID-19 JCVI sub-committee members have conflicts of interest. These members don’t seem to realise that their research or institution receiving huge sums of money from pharmaceutical companies and/or the Gates Foundation is a conflict of interest.

Has this committee truly been able to provide an independent assessment of the risk and reward of the main products of interest of the Gates Foundation? Or has it made a decision to not bite the hand that feeds it?

Read full article here:

  • [i] https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vaccination-and-immunisation#conflict-of-interests
  • [ii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RS1v7jN94w
  • [iii] https://www.england.nhs.uk/2021/09/nhs-rolls-out-covid-19-jab-to-children-aged-12-to-15/
  • [iv] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-updates-advice-on-vaccinations-for-5-to-11-age-group
  • [v] https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04816643
  • [vi] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/224864/JCVI_Code_of_Practice_revision_2013_-_final.pdf
  • [vii] https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-health/vaccine-development-and-surveillance

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Iraq, Russia, Syria and Iran discuss counter-terrorism

MEMO | February 25, 2022

Iraqi National Security Adviser, Qassem Al-Araji, yesterday met the ambassadors of Russia, Syria and Iran as part of the Quartet Centre for Information Exchange in Iraq’s capital city, Baghdad, to discuss counter-terrorism.

Local media reported that the meeting had discussed recent developments along the Iraqi-Syrian border, as well as the latest security developments in the region.

Al-Araji said that cooperation and joint action with the three countries had led to “strong and deterrent blows to terrorism and its leaders,” adding that the Centre was playing a “role in informing and resolving many issues.”

He pointed out that his country would not allow the presence of terrorist groups along its borders, stressing that Baghdad would only deal with “legitimate, sovereign states and governments.”

He reiterated that the Centre was strengthening the “close relationship between the countries that participated in this Centre in difficult and sensitive circumstances, and Iraq will respect those who stood by it during the difficult days.”

“There is a concern that there is a plan for the return of terrorists and their spread in the region, which could lead to instability,” he said.

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 2 Comments

Twitter Says It Will Consider Censoring “Emerging Narratives” About Ukraine War

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 25, 2022

Twitter announced that it was monitoring “emerging narratives” about the Ukraine war that will be censored if they represent a violation of the company’s policies.

The announcement was made in response to Twitter deleting tweets and suspending accounts that had posted videos of Russian tank divisions and helicopters heading to Ukraine.

After users complained, Twitter acknowledged that it had targeted the accounts in “error” and they were later restored.

However, a statement by a Twitter spokesperson is likely to cause alarm amongst free speech advocates.

“We took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error,” the statement said, adding, “We’ve been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies.”

The use of the term “emerging narratives” suggests that Twitter will begin censoring certain perspectives on the conflict in the context of their policy on “misinformation.”

These problematic “narratives” are almost certainly likely to be ones that question narratives being put out by the Biden White House and NATO sources.

Similar rules were applied to skepticism expressed towards COVID vaccines as well as the lab leak theory, which was once deemed to be ‘harmful misinformation’ but is now widely accepted as the most likely explanation for the pandemic.

The potential for the Russian attack on Ukraine to be exploited to push for further censorship and blacklisting of free speech in the west is a clear danger.

For weeks, leftists have been trying to smear Tucker Carlson as being guilty of “treason” over him accusing the Biden administration of exploiting tensions between Russia and Ukraine to distract from the president’s dreadful handling of domestic issues.

The word “traitor” also trended on Twitter yesterday in response to Nigel Farage suggesting that NATO should share some blame for Putin’s actions.

In a related story, the official Twitter Ukrainian government also lobbied Twitter to ban the official Russian government Twitter account.

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 4 Comments

Ukraine’s hybrid war is mutating

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 25, 2022

The first signs of the dual track in Russia’s hybrid war in Ukraine have surfaced. By Thursday evening, the Kremlin held out an olive branch to the Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Succinctly put, President Vladimir Putin expressed his preparedness to engage in discussions with his Ukrainian counterpart with a focus on obtaining a guarantee of neutral status for Ukraine and the promise of no offensive weapons on its territory. 

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said without elaborating, “The president formulated his vision of what we would expect from Ukraine in order for the so-called ‘red-line’ problems to be resolved. This is neutral status, and this is a refusal to deploy weapons.” 

Putin had made it clear in a nation-wide address Thursday morning announcing the launch of the military operation that the Russian objective narrowed down to “demilitarisation” and “denazification” of Ukraine. The latter refers to the ascendant neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine who have been acting as a state within the state and perpetrated atrocities against the ethnic Russian population. 

The Kremlin offer didn’t come out of the blue. A group of Ukrainian MPs also came out yesterday with an appeal calling on Zelensky, in an open letter, to start negotiations with Moscow. Interestingly, the group is led by Vadim Novinsky – a Ukrainian billionaire and one of the co-leaders of the Opposition Bloc, an association of over dozen political parties. The group also proposed direct consultations between the parliaments of the two countries. 

But what lends enchantment to the view is that Zelensky on his own also requested French President Emmanuel Macron to convey a message to Putin directly. Macron has since disclosed that he has had “a quick, direct and frank conversation on a request from President Zelensky.”

Macron said the aim of the conversation was a request from Kiev “to end hostilities as soon as possible.” The Kremlin confirms that Putin held a “frank” conversation with Macron. 

Macron’s role is important, since it was he who first floated with Putin the idea, in the course of a conversation recently, that one way out of the impasse could be that Kiev unilaterally gave up any intention to join the NATO. Subsequently, in an interaction with the Russian media at the Kremlin on Tuesday, Putin also mentioned this idea. 

Zelensky himself said (after Macron’s conversation with Putin) in an emotional video address to the nation after midnight Thursday, “We have been left alone to defend our state. Who is ready to fight alongside us? I don’t see anyone. Who is ready to give Ukraine a guarantee of NATO membership? Everyone is afraid.” He went on to disclose that he had heard from Moscow that ”they want to talk about Ukraine’s neutral status.” 

Quite obviously, Zelensky realises by now that the cavalry is not coming from Washington or Brussels to salvage his government. In fact, Zelensky’s request to Macron followed the repeated categorical affirmations by US President Biden that there is no question of American intervention in Ukraine or of US troops engaging Russian military. 

Meanwhile, Russian Defence Ministry highlighted on Thursday that Moscow’s strategy will be to hit military targets and avoid civilian casualty. Ukraine’s air defence system has been rendered non-functional. Moscow is encouraging Ukrainian soldiers to surrender or simply return to their families, the intention being to minimise any fighting. 

All this suggests that a political track is on standby. The Russian game plan is to force Zelensky to see the writing on the wall. Ukraine’s capitulation is a matter of days only. This hybrid war would have the following elements: 

  • Russia will no doubt systematically vanquish the neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine (especially within the military such as the Azov Brigade) who have Russian blood on their hands. These elements so far acted with impunity because of covert western support for their anti-Russian disposition.
  • Russia estimates, rightly so, that any crackdown on the neo-Nazi elements will only strengthen Zelensky’s hands. Lacking a power base of his own, he has been a hostage of extreme nationalists. 
  • On the other hand, Western powers have retrenched in panic from Kiev, and an embittered Zelensky is left to fend for himself. But, paradoxically, this also makes Zelensky a reasonable interlocutor, liberated from the US’ vice-like grip.
  • Zelensky has been acting under immense external pressure and fear of extreme nationalists who enjoy “street power.”(The coup in February 2014, scuttling an orderly constitutional transition from President Viktor Yanukovich, was organised by the ultra-nationalists with overt US support.) 
  • Zelensky’s massive mandate (over 73% of votes) in the 2019 election was largely due to whole-hearted support from Russian voters who were attracted to his platform of dialogue with Russia and the promise of a negotiated settlement in Donbass with Moscow’s help. But in the event, he became a captive of extreme nationalists and a victim of western manipulation. 
  • Nevertheless, Zelensky has been sporadically signalling to Moscow his desire for an exit route, sensing he was on a road to nowhere. Lately, he voiced dissatisfaction over the war hysteria in Washington. At least during one telephone conversation with Biden recently, they had a heated exchange, according to the CNN. 

Russia’s tentative offer appears to be that Ukraine could opt for a status of neutrality on the lines of Austria and Finland with a self-imposed ban on its NATO membership. Conceivably, Zelensky would be open to such an idea. Now, what is there in it for him? 

First, Russia will forthwith call off or at least suspend the military operation. That will strengthen Zelensky’s standing. Second, Russia’s direct involvement holds the key to easing of tensions in the Donbass. Moscow had been dodging such a role.

Third, Zelensky could resume his links with the pro-Russian constituency in Ukraine, which was his mainstay of support in the 2019 election. This would have implications for his bid for a second term in the 2023 election. 

Fourth, Russia enjoys extensive networking within Ukraine, which has a chaotic political environment driven by corruption and venality, oligarchs and mafia and so on. Russia still wields influence with the power brokers who have at one time or another enjoyed Moscow’s patronage. Thus, Zelensky would see that Russian help can also heal Ukraine’s fragmented political economy.

As for Russia, out of the conditions for security guarantee that it had projected to the US in mid-December, where Moscow drew a blank, Putin may succeed in reaching his objectives at least partially if Ukraine were to turn its back on NATO membership and terminate western military deployments on its soil. 

Given the profound civilisational links between Russia and Ukraine, enduring people-to-people relations and family kinships, there is a reservoir of opinion in Ukraine favouring improvement of relations with Russia. Ukraine’s economy is also closely aligned with Russia — even today, Russia is Ukraine’s number one export market. Russia has been a generous donor too. The transit fee for transportation of pipeline gas to Europe alone exceeded 1 billion dollars annually! 

Russia’s main gain will be that in geopolitical terms, Ukraine regains its sovereignty and ceases to be a de facto American colony. Russia calculates that a neutral Ukraine will de facto take the Ukraine matrix to its priori history before the 2014 coup. 

What is of crucial importance will be that Zelensky is somehow enabled to navigate his path toward dialogue with Putin. The good part is that Russian military operations will throw radical nationalists into disarray, and, secondly, it is improbable that Biden is raring to resume the shenanigans in Ukraine. American politics is increasingly riveted on the mid-term in November and public disfavours Washington taking sides between Ukraine and Russia. 

Will the US acquiesce with the nascent processes? There is hope that  Macron can mediate. Conceivably, he is in touch with Biden. 

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Counter-sanctions against West to hit its ‘weak spots’– Moscow

RT | February 25, 2022

Moscow will respond to sanctions imposed by the US and its allies over Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the head of the Russian Senate, Valentina Matviyenko, told journalists during her visit to Tajikistan on Friday.

“As for the reciprocal sanctions … they are ready,” Matviyenko said, adding that Russia’s response would not mirror the restrictions imposed by Washington and its allies but would instead hit the western nations where it hurts.

“We are well aware of the West’s weak spots and we have drafted an entire package … a series of potential sanctions to be used against those nations that announced sanctions against Russia,” the Senate head has said, adding that “the West has many soft spots.”

The official has not elaborated on any details of the drafted sanction proposals. She only said that the measures would be designed so as not to hurt Russia itself. The Russian government has taken “all the threats stemming from sanctions” into account and developed “safety mechanisms.”

Matviyenko has also said that Russia will remain a reliable gas supplier for Europe despite measures taken by the US and Germany against the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. Berlin decided to put an immediate halt to the certification of the project even before Russia launched its operation in Ukraine. The decision was taken following the official recognition by Moscow of the two breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Republics earlier this week.

The Russian Senate head’s words also come after US President Joe Biden imposed “long-term impact” sanctions against Russia over its military operation in Ukraine on Thursday. The measures targeted Russia’s banking sector, as well as the nation’s ability to do business in dollars, pounds, or yen. The restrictions did not involve cutting Russia off from the SWIFT system, though.

Later on Thursday, the EU followed suit by also targeting “70% of the Russian banking market, but also key state-owned companies, including the field of defense,” as the EU Commission head, Ursula von der Leyen, put in her statement.

February 25, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment