Professor faces government action for questioning Ukraine narrative
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
University of Edinburgh professor Tim Hayward is being hammered in the media for sharing an article suggesting the bombing of a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol may have been staged by Ukrainian nationalists. Hayward’s skepticism has already led Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi to promise a “crackdown” on such wrongthink.
Hayward shared an article on Sunday from the Grayzone, a left-wing news outlet. Citing eyewitnesses in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, the article claims that Ukrainian ‘Azov’ fighters – once described by western outlets and lawmakers as “neo-Nazis” – sheltered behind civilians in a theater in Mariupol, before blowing the building up as Russian forces entered the Ukrainian city.
Azov forces and journalists linked to the extremist unit accused Russia of bombing the building, and used the incident to call for western intervention against Russia. US President Joe Biden declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in response, and American politicians from both parties and from Europe renewed their calls for military aid – including fighter jets – for Ukraine.
However, no video exists showing the theater being bombed and Russia denies attacking the building, stating that it had “never been considered as a strike target.” Conflicting reports of the weapons supposedly used and the civilian casualties or lack thereof only muddy the picture further.
Yet Hayward was condemned by his colleagues for raising the issue. In a Times article on Tuesday accusing him of “spreading propaganda,” Dr. Aliaksandr Herasimenka, a ‘misinformation’ researcher at Oxford University, said that “we must be very careful” when reading reports critical of the official narrative in Ukraine, and that outlets like the Grayzone “are currently engaged in a massive disinformation campaign.” He did not provide any evidence that would support such allegations against the media outlet.
Hayward has been singled out by the Scottish government too. Having shared articles questioning the alleged bombing of a maternity hospital in Mariupol and claiming that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad did not gas his own citizens as Western sources insist, the professor was accused in Westminster last week by Tory MP Robert Halfon as being a “useful idiot for President Putin’s atrocities.”
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi said that academics like Hayward were already being investigated, and that their universities would be contacted.
“Putin and his cronies are a malign influence on anyone in this country buying their false narrative, and I have to repeat it is a false and dangerous narrative, and we will crack down on it hard,” Zahawi said, without elaborating on how.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Hayward said that he is concerned about restrictions to free speech, and considers hearing both points of view important in wartime.
“In war, miscalculations can have terrible consequences. We also know that misinformation can sometimes even slip through on our own side, as when the UK went to war in Iraq, mistakenly believing it had weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “As for the people of Ukraine, their need is for peace – not to become the epicenter of World War III,” he added, referring to the widely-held belief that were Western powers to intervene in Ukraine, the consequence would be a third world war.
Striking truckers reject Spain’s half-billion euro offer
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
Striking truckers have rejected Madrid’s offer of a hefty subsidy to offset rising diesel prices, which the government had hoped would shut down a work stoppage that has snarled traffic across the country.
Transport Minister Raquel Sanchez pledged to introduce a $551.35 million (€500 million) subsidy in direct aid to the industry on Tuesday after meeting with the National Road Transport Committee.
However, while Sanchez pointed out the measure was similar to moves taken by France, Portugal, and Italy to shore up their own industries in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices, there will be no reduction in the value-added tax (VAT) on fuel, and strike organizers the Platform for the Defense of Transport did not attend the meeting, calling the government’s announcement “insufficient.”
Three Spanish truckers’ unions opted to join the Platform’s strike on Tuesday, potentially aggravating a food shortage across the country as trucks are already having difficulty making deliveries on time. The unions denounced the plan, scheduled to be approved March 29, in a joint statement, pointing out that it “doesn’t specify what it will comprise, how it will work, and, more importantly, how much aid each trucker would get.”
Drivers loosely allied under the banner of the Platform stopped work last Monday, faced with a surge in diesel prices, demanding the government lower taxes and roll back regulations. “Until we negotiate the real problems faced by small truck drivers, there will be no suspension [of the strike],” Platform president Manuel Hernandez told Reuters on Monday, saying drivers must be protected from taking on losses or else they faced “total bankruptcy”.
Finance Minister Nadia Calvino, however, told reporters that the truckers should not reject the offer and that those who would “are clearly showing they do not defend the interests of this sector.”
The government’s plan was offered up following a European Commission meeting on a draft proposal for temporary crisis aid aimed at propping up the continent’s ailing economy as inflation and fuel prices soar, in part due to the sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its ongoing military offensive in Ukraine.
While the EU receives more than 40% of its natural gas supply from Russia, the alliance is reportedly considering an embargo on oil from the country as part of the latest round of sanctions aimed at economically crippling the country. More than half of Russia’s oil exports are sent to Europe. However, several European countries, including Germany and Bulgaria, have suggested a total ban on Russian fuel is a bridge too far.
Madrid has dismissed the truckers, branding them as unorganized and attempting to link them to far-right extremists. Spain has mobilized a reported 23,000 police in an effort to crush the strike.
UK Caught Continuing to Enforce Covid Rules on Businesses Via Health and Safety ‘Guidance’
By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | March 22, 2022
A reader was disturbed this week by a visit from an official from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). What the official said appears to bode ill for the idea that the U.K. is ‘living with Covid’ insofar as that means moving away from all the Covid theatre and regulations of the past two years.
I work in a London hospitality business. This week an official from the HSE came in to do a Covid compliance spot check. Despite the Government making noises about Covid regulations being binned, the HSE person informed us that from April businesses with more than five employees will still be required to adhere to general ‘Covid safe’ practices, under the threat of enforcement proceedings (and fines) by the HSE.
Overhearing what the HSE official told the General Manager, it sounded to me as though it will involve keeping a Covid risk management plan in place and ensuring ventilation, access to sanitiser for customers and so on.
Most of it was asking questions about Covid management actions we have taken and are still taking. It implied that, so far as the HSE is concerned, Covid is a now a ‘standard’ risk which needs to continue to be managed alongside others.
So briefly, it appears:
– they are doing Covid spot checks insofar as they apply to employees;
– they will be increasing spot checks from April.
This suggests the perpetuation of Covid regulations will be enforced under the guise of general health and safety law. Not as advertised by the Government at all if so, and hardly reflects ‘living with Covid’ like we live with other mostly mild respiratory viruses.
Runs counter to the official narrative of a bonfire of Covid restrictions.
If the Government is serious about moving on from the pandemic then it needs to rein in the HSE and withdraw its guidance that treats COVID-19 as a special threat.
Message to Sky News: London Is No Freer Than Moscow
By Dr Vernon Coleman | 21st Century Wire | March 22, 2022
Sky News has just run a story which includes this paragraph about people living in Moscow:
‘Now it is the police who people are scared of, and the pervasive Orwellian fear of speaking out against the official line.’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
If a reporter or an editor at Sky News would pop their heads out into the real world they would know that Moscow is no more oppressive, repressive and suppressive than London, Paris, New York and every other city in the West. They’d also know that fear of the police is now common in the UK and elsewhere.
Doesn’t anyone at Sky News actually look at the news?
I’m sure there are restrictions in Moscow.
But there is NO freedom of speech in the UK.
Hundreds of doctors and other truth-tellers have been banned, ostracised and demonised by the mainstream media.
Many have, like me, been demonised on Wikipedia, suppressed and de-ranked by search engines like Google, or outright banned by YouTube – simply for telling the truth and sharing facts.
In the last two years I have been attacked and/or lied about by: Sky News, BBC, Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and most other parts of the mainstream media.
My crime?
Telling the truth about the Covid fraud – and spreading solid facts in a world dominated by the deliberate dissemination of misinformation.
I’ve spent my life working for the media, but I am now banned from all mainstream media.
I have had four books banned in the last two years.
I have been banned from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all other social media platforms. I am even banned from accessing YouTube. YouTube removed my channel, with over 100 videos. It had acquired well over 200,000 subscribers in just a couple of months in 2020.
I was expelled from the Royal Society of Arts for the crime of telling the truth.
And so on, and so on.
I became a ‘conspiracy theorist’ overnight – for daring to share the truth.
I have repeatedly challenged Whitty and Vallance to a live TV debate. But they have ignored the challenge.
If any producer at Sky TV had the guts to give me five minutes of live airtime, I could broadcast the evidence which would destroy the whole Covid fraud. The proof that Covid was the rebranded flu. The proof that government scientists admitted that Covid was no more deadly than the flu. The proof that mortality rates in 2020 and 2021 were much the same as previous years. And so on and so on.
But they won’t dare let me anywhere near a studio.
I believe that is because the mainstream media in the UK does what it’s told to do.
So, report what is happening in Moscow. That’s important.
But Sky, and others, need also to report how the truth is being suppressed in Western cities.
Because the suppression of the truth is dangerous wherever it is happening.
***
Vernon Coleman’s book Endgame explains what has happened, what is happening and what will happen next. Endgame is available as a hardback, paperback and eBook.
What About Pentagon and CIA Aggression Against Cuba?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 22, 2022
While the mainstream media and American statists remain transfixed on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s difficult not to notice their moral blindness with respect to the evil and hypocrisy of the Pentagon and the CIA, which have spent years ginning up this deadly and destructive crisis as part of their political gamesmanship against Russia.
After all, let’s face it: When it was the Pentagon and the CIA invading Iraq and Afghanistan, the reaction of the mainstream media and American statists was totally opposite to how they have responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During those deadly and destructive invasions, there was hardly ever any sympathy for the victims and instead accolades, praise, and glorification of the invaders. Don’t forget the daily mantra that everyone was exhorted to recite, “Support the troops!”
But let’s leave Iraq and Afghanistan aside and let’s go back to the early 1960s, when the CIA and the Pentagon were doing everything they could, including committing fraud, to induce President Kennedy to invade Cuba, which is every bit as sovereign and independent as Ukraine.
Let’s begin with a recent statement by U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price, who was expressing the official position of the Pentagon and the CIA. Price stated that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to violate “core principles,” including “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
Price was referring to Ukraine’s “right” to join NATO, the corrupt bureaucratic dinosaur that should have gone out of existence at the ostensible end of the Cold War. Price’s statement confirms, of course, the point I have long been making — that the war in Ukraine is not about freedom, it’s about NATO.
Keep Price’s statement in mind as we go back to the height of the Cold War and see how the Pentagon and the CIA were hell-bent on doing to Cuba what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
That’s what the CIA’s invasion of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba was all about — an effort to invade the island for the sake of ousting the Castro regime from power and replacing it with another corrupt and brutal U.S. puppet dictatorship, such as that of Fulgencio Batista, the brutal pro-U.S. dictatorial puppet that the Cuban revolution succeeded in ousting from power.
But that’s not all there is to the Bay of Pigs story. As I detail in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, the Pentagon and the CIA were engaged in political gamesmanship against President Kennedy, who the CIA considered to be a neophyte president who could easily be manipulated into ordering an invasion of Cuba, one that would have been no different from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The CIA told Kennedy that its invasion would succeed without direct U.S. military air and ground support. It was a lie — a deliberate, knowing, intentional lie. The CIA was just playing and maneuvering what they considered was an easily manipulable president. The CIA figured that once the invasion began faltering, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in air support, followed by a full-scale military invasion of Cuba. The Pentagon played its part in the fraudulent scheme by falsely telling Kennedy that the invasion had a high chance of success, when, in fact, the Pentagon knew otherwise.
In other words, the Pentagon and the CIA, who are both pontificating in righteous tones about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, were manipulating a U.S. president into doing to Cuba precisely what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
Kennedy refused to fall for the scheme and the CIA’s invasion went down to ignominious defeat at the hands of the communists, which is one big reason why the Pentagon and the CIA still maintain their brutal economic embargo against the Cuban people to this day. They’ve never forgotten or forgiven their defeat at the hands of the Cuban Reds.
Unfortunately, that was not the end of the story. After the CIA’s fraudulent fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, the Pentagon began exhorting Kennedy to undertake a full-scale military invasion of Cuba — yes, the same type of military invasion that Russia has undertaken against Ukraine.
This was when the Pentagon presented Kennedy with one of the most infamous plans in U.S. history, one based on falsehoods and fraud. It was called Operation Northwoods. The Pentagon succeeded in keeping it secret from the American people for some 30 years. It was uncovered in the 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board, the entity that was charged with securing the release of JFK-assassination related records from the military, the CIA, the Secret Service, and the FBI, which had succeeded in encasing the assassination in “national security” rubric.
Operation Northwoods called for real terrorist attacks against American citizens, in which Americans would die. The attacks (and murders) would be carried out by Pentagon agents secretly posing as Cuban communists. The president would then use those attacks as a pretext for invading Cuba — an invasion no different from what Russia is now doing to Ukraine.
To his everlasting credit, and to the ire and rage of the military establishment, Kennedy rejected Operation Northwoods.
His relationship with the military did not improve when he walked out of a meeting in which the military was endorsing a plan to initiate a surprise full-scale nuclear attack on Russia, similar to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but with carpet bombing using nuclear bombs. That was when JFK stated in disgust as he left the meeting, “And we call ourselves the human race.’’
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Pentagon was doing everything it could to pressure Kennedy into ordering a full-scale bombing and military invasion of Cuba to retaliate for Cuba’s installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Pentagon and the CIA took the position that Cuba didn’t have the “right” to do that.
Let’s revisit State Department spokesman Ned Price’s pontifical words with respect to Ukraine: “the principle that each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
Whoops! Well, except for Cuba! To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he refused to succumb to the Pentagon’s pressure to invade Cuba. In fact, by this time he held the military-intelligence establishment in deep disdain, and, of course, the feeling was mutual. To the rage of the Pentagon and the CIA, Kennedy struck a deal with Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev in which he vowed that there would be no more U.S. invasions of Cuba by either the Pentagon or the CIA.
Adding insult to injury, in a secret codicil to the agreement, Kennedy promised to remove the Pentagon’s nuclear missiles in Turkey that were aimed at the Soviet Union. Yes, you read that right: The Pentagon and the CIA claimed that Cuba had no “right” to install nuclear missiles in Cuba while maintaining that the Pentagon and the CIA had the “right” to install nuclear missiles in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union.
That’s one reason why the Pentagon and the CIA knew that Russia would invade Ukraine when NATO threatened to absorb Ukraine. The absorption would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install their nuclear missiles on Russia’s border. The Pentagon and the CIA knew that Russia’s reaction to that possibility would be no different from the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s reaction to the installation of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Needless to say, neither the Pentagon nor the CIA has ever apologized for their Cold War machinations against both Kennedy and Cuba. That, of course, is not surprising. The reaction of their Operation Mockingbird assets in the mainstream press is also not surprising.
What is disappointing, however, is how so many Americans refuse to acknowledge, criticize, and condemn this manifest evil and rank hypocrisy within their own country. As I point out in my book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, that’s because all too many Americans, unfortunately, have come to view the national-security establishment as their god.
Russia settles another dollar debt
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
Russia’s coupon payment on a sovereign bond maturing in 2029 has been processed by correspondent bank JPMorgan Chase, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources. The country was due to make a $66 million payment to bondholders on Monday on the bond.
According to a source familiar with the situation, JPMorgan worked on Monday with the US Treasury Department on necessary approvals. The payment reportedly moved on to the next stage before the money is handed over to bondholders.
Last week, JPMorgan, as a correspondent bank, processed Russia’s payment on two sovereign bonds, handing the funds to payment agent Citigroup. The latter distributed the funds to the bondholders.
Making this payment means Russia has avoided a widely expected external bond default. There was speculation in the media that the nation could default for the first time in a century, as much of its foreign currency holdings have been frozen by the US, EU, and a number of other countries.
Moscow has used money from frozen accounts to pay its external debt, daring Western countries to try to block the payments. Russia has accused the US and its allies of trying to engineer an artificial default in the country by not allowing it access to its estimated $300 billion in foreign reserves held abroad.
Russia has 15 international bonds outstanding with a face value of around $40 billion. Prior to the Ukraine crisis, roughly $20 billion was held by investment funds and money managers outside Russia.
The country now has to make a $102 million payment on March 28, followed by a $447 million payment that must be made in dollars on March 31. The biggest payment of the year of $2 billion is due on April 4.
Russia Cuts Refinery Output As Diesel Shortage Worsens
By Tsvetana Paraskova | Oilprice.com | March 22, 2022
Europe’s diesel shortage is becoming worse as Russian oil refiners have started to cut back on refinery throughput, according to the chief executive of one of the world’s largest independent commodities trading houses, Gunvor.
“This is a global problem but for Europe it’s very hard because Europe is so short” of diesel, Gunvor CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist said at the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit as carried by Bloomberg.
Trade with Russian diesel is becoming scarcer because of buyers in Europe steering clear of Russian shipments, awaiting further sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, or simply declining to purchase Russian energy to finance Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The “self-sanctioning” of the buyers has already started to force Russian refiners to reduce production, according to Gunvor’s Tornqvist.
“What does that mean? It means more crude oil will need to be exported instead of the products, and we believe that is not possible and will lead to cutbacks in Russian production,” he said, as carried by Bloomberg.
Diesel stocks globally were already low even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to estimates from Reuters’ John Kemp, diesel fuel stocks in Europe are at their lowest since 2008, and 8 percent—or 35 million barrels—lower than the five-year average for this time of the year.
In the United States, the situation is graver still. There, diesel fuel inventories are 21 percent lower than the pre-pandemic five-year seasonal average, which translates into 30 million barrels.
In Singapore, a global energy trade hub, diesel fuel inventories are 4 million barrels below the seasonal five-year average from before the pandemic.
On top of exacerbating a global diesel supply crunch, the sanctions against Russia are also likely to force Russian firms to shut in some crude oil production, analysts say. Russia will have to shut in some of its oil production as it will not be able to sell all the volumes displaced from European markets to other regions, with Russian crude production falling and staying depressed for at least the next three years, Standard Chartered said earlier this month.
‘US to send Soviet missiles to Ukraine’
Samizdat | March 22, 2022
The US is planning to deliver to Ukraine medium anti-aircraft systems taken from its own stockpile of Soviet military hardware, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing unnamed US officials.
The anti-aircraft systems were obtained through a clandestine program to study them and teach American troops how to counter them. Ukrainian forces are trained in the use of these systems, which they have operated for decades.
At least some of the supplies will be withdrawn from the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, officials told the newspaper, adding that C-17 Globemaster cargo planes recently flew to a nearby airfield in Huntsville.
Washington “is hoping that the provision of additional air defenses will enable Ukraine to create a de facto no-fly zone,” the newspaper said. NATO members have repeatedly rebuffed Kiev’s call to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, stating that it would draw them directly into the hostilities and could lead to a world war.
The list of equipment slated for delivery does not include the S-300 long-range missiles, the report said. The US reportedly purchased at least one such battery from Belarus in the 1990s in a clandestine operation. But Washington plans to supply shorter-range 9K33 Osa systems, according to WSJ sources.
Last Wednesday, CNN’s Jim Sciutto reported that the US and NATO allies were going to send to Ukraine an array of Soviet air defense systems with capabilities better than the shoulder-launched Stinger missiles delivered in the hundreds in the weeks before the Russian attack.
He was referring to a potential deal with Slovakia, which later confirmed it was willing to share its own S-300 systems with Ukraine. Slovakia’s defense minister, Jaroslav Nad, told a news conference on Thursday that he discussed the plan with his visiting US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, and that his country wanted to receive “a proper replacement” first.
The Russian military reported destroying multiple Ukrainian S-300 batteries over the nearly month-long attack. One of the stated goals of the Russian incursion is to demilitarize Ukraine and ensure that it will not pose any threat to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which Moscow recognized as independent states prior to the attack.
Moscow has warned that it will consider convoys delivering arms to Ukraine as legitimate targets for its armed forces. The WSJ didn’t explain the proposed logistics of the delivery of the US-owned anti-aircraft systems.