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Tribute to John Lauritsen, Author of ‘Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story’

By Celia Farber | The Defender | April 26, 2022

John Lauritsen — author, scholar, gay historian and critic of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s HIV/AIDS empire — has passed away. He is believed to have died on his birthday, March 5, at his home in Dorchester, Massachusetts at the age of 83.

He was in good health, and his death was unexpected.

Here’s a recent tribute video made by Jamie Dlux, just weeks before Lauritsen’s death:

“In my time I’ve been an antiwar activist, a gay liberationist, an AIDS dissident, a publisher, and an all-around freethinker,” Lauritsen wrote at Pagan Press, the publishing imprint he founded in 1982.

“I’ve spoken out when people with common sense kept their mouth shut. I’ve exposed fraud, punctured group fantasies and blasphemed against the prevailing superstitions.”

Though he wrote books on a wide range of esoteric subjects, Lauritsen was best known for his works that demolished the AIDS drug azidothymidine (AZT), including “Poison By Prescription.”

Links to several of John’s AZT articles and documents can be found here.

A Harvard-educated market research executive and analyst and member of Mensa, Lauritsen grew up in Nebraska. His father, an attorney, instilled in him a deep aversion to fraud that would run counter to the HIV/AIDS narrative, about which no questions were to be asked.

Lauritsen said about his HIV/AIDS books:

“I want them to stand for the record, so that no one, when the truth finally prevails, can pretend that there were no AIDS critics, or that we didn’t speak out.

“The terrible suffering, loss of life, propaganda, censorship, rumors, hysteria, profiteering, espionage and sabotage …. I maintain that AIDS reporters should be regarded as war correspondents … and that the salient characteristics of war coverage are also those of AIDS coverage.”

Lauritsen devoted his scholarship to aspects of gay history, but never went along with the revolutionary dictates ushered in by Larry Kramer’s ACT UP in the 1980s — beginning with Kramer’s demand that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approve a drug to treat AIDS fast, with no concern for safety or efficacy studies.

Lauritsen documented, meticulously and in a wry, distinctive voice, the bedrock of fraud that gave rise to AZT’s meteoric rise in the late 1980s. He did not mince words.

“I don’t think ‘murder ‘is too strong a word to use when you have a drug like AZT, approved on the basis of fraudulent research,” he said in an interview.

About Kramer’s ACT UP, he said simply: “The group as a whole was a shill for Big Pharma.”

Lauritsen’s searing exposés on HIV/AIDS and AZT appeared frequently as cover stories in The New York Native, a biweekly gay periodical founded by Charles Ortleb in 1980 that went on to publish more than 50 of his articles.

The New York Native was the first periodical anywhere in the world to report on the then-new disease called AIDS, in 1981 — months before The New York Times.

It was also the first to publish an interview (by Lauritsen) of University of California, Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., as early as July of 1987 — the same year Duesberg’s seminal and controversial paper came out in Cancer Research dispatching HIV as the cause of AIDS, and retroviruses as causes of cancer.

The New York Native also was the first to publish Larry Kramer’s historic 1983 tirade, 1,112 and Counting, at the same time as Lauritsen published his first warnings to the gay community about the potentially lethal toxicities of amyl nitrites, or “poppers.”

Lauritsen compellingly documented the key role poppers played in the etiology of Kaposi sarcoma and immune collapse among gay men, and the nefarious role Fauci played in downplaying this association.

The principal manufacturer of poppers was AZT distributor Burroughs Wellcome, the company that, with Fauci’s help, became a primary beneficiary of the AIDS crisis.

Lauritsen and Kramer would stake out diametrically opposed positions on the post-AIDS gay political map.

Lauritsen was far better equipped to analyze and assess the growing, utterly dysfunctional field of HIV research and therapeutics, yet Kramer was the one who, despite his extreme temper, grew an immense and iconic reputation, leading to the formation of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and ACT UP.

The mainstream, red-ribbon and AZT-adherent dominant gay community grew increasingly furious with The New York Native, especially over Lauritsen’s “HIV denial” and AZT criticism.

They urged a community-wide boycott of the paper, which led to its demise on Jan. 13, 1997.

The AZT crusade thus became the hill Ortleb, Lauritsen and The New York Native died on, many years before it was called “cancel culture.”

“‘Cancel culture’ is too mild a term,” Lauritsen said in an interview. “These sanctimonious savages are culture destroyers.”

The tragic irony is this: In everything Lauritsen wrote about AZT, he was vindicated and proven correct, as documented in “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

It is estimated some 300,000 gay men perished directly from exposure to high-dose AZT at the initial high doses given — anywhere between 1200 mg and 1800 mg.

In an interview with Tony Brown on PBS, Lauritsen said:

“What these drugs do — ACT and DDI and d4T — is very terrible. They take what’s called DNA synthesis, which is a process the body goes through whenever a new cell forms or when cells grow.

“It’s basically the life process. And these drugs terminate it. In other words, they believe that by stopping the life process they will stop HIV from replicating. And in fact, HIV is not replicating, no. So the theory behind it is crazy and the toxicities are deadly.”

AIDS itself he referred to as a “phony construct” and he despaired of the use of the word “queer” to describe gay men.

“John was funny, coolly intelligent, detached and yet passionate, a brilliant writer and journalist who saw through the illusions spun around the ‘AIDS epidemic’ right from the start,” Neville Hodgkinson, former science editor of the Sunday Times of London and veteran critic of HIV science, told The Defender.

It is impossible today to describe what an act of sustained courage and nerves of steel it took for Lauritsen to publish such stark critiques of AZT during those feverish years when it was billed as, and understood as, a life-saving drug — one that conferred sainthood upon ACT UP and the role it played in the lightning-fast FDA approval.

The U.K. documentary team Meditel, under the auspices of Joan Shenton, interviewed Lauritsen many times over the years, in several countries. Those interviews can be seen at Immunity Resource Foundation.

Lauritsen recently reflected, on Facebook, on history repeating itself:

“Re-reading ‘The AIDS War’s’ digital proof, I was struck by the horrors of the AIDS era that we’ve lived through — the ruthlessness and dishonesty of the AIDS Establishment — the comparisons with the COVID-19 horrors that we are going through now. May Truth finally prevail!”

Celia Farber is an investigative reporter who chronicled Anthony Fauci and Dark Pharma’s war on science and biology for various magazines since the late 80s, bringing wrath upon her name.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment

China calls out US war crimes

Samizdat | April 26, 2022

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin has lashed out at the EU and US for criticizing its domestic and foreign policies. Wang singled out the US, accusing Washington of war crimes in the Middle East, economic coercion, betraying its allies and spreading disinformation.

“The US purports to maintain the centrality of the UN Charter, but it is clear to anyone that the US is doing quite the opposite,” Wang told reporters at a press conference on Monday. Citing the US’ military interventions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, Wang stated that Washington “brushed the UN aside and waged wars on sovereign states in wanton interference.”

“The US claims to respect human rights, but the wars of aggression launched by the US and its allies … killed over 300,000 civilians and made over 26 million people refugees,” he continued. “Yet, no one is held accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US even announced sanctions on the International Criminal Court who would investigate the war crimes of the US military.”

In addition to sanctioning a number of top International Criminal Court officials in 2020, the US maintains the ‘Hague Invasion Act’, giving its military permission to invade the Netherlands to free any American held at the court.

Wang then accused the US of using its economic might to coerce countries “whether they are big or small, faraway or nearby, friend or foe,” citing five decades of US sanctions on Cuba and four decades of such measures on Iran.

“When it comes to stabbing its allies such as the EU and Japan in the back, the US has never hesitated, as we have seen repeatedly,” he added, likely referring foremost to the US’ recent decision to undermine a nuclear submarine deal between France and Australia to further its ‘AUKUS’ alliance with the UK and Australia. China has repeatedly condemned this alliance as an American effort to build an “Asia-Pacific version of NATO.”

“Facts have proven that the US is the biggest spreader of disinformation, culprit of coercive diplomacy and saboteur of world peace and stability,” Wang declared. “From the US-EU dialogue to the AUKUS trilateral security partnership, the Quad and the Five Eyes Alliance, the US is using democracy, human rights, rules and order as a pretext to cover up its shady activities of creating division [and] stoking confrontation.”

Wang’s accusations, while incendiary, were not made out of the blue. Last week, US and EU officials held their third ‘Dialogue on China’, after which they issued a joint press release accusing Beijing of “repeated information manipulation” regarding the conflict in Ukraine, “recent incidents of economic coercion,” and alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur people in Xinjiang, all of which China denies.

The statement also called on China to peacefully resolve its disputes with Taiwan in accordance with the UN charter, and not to circumvent the US and EU sanctions on Russia. That’s despite the fact that those restrictions were imposed by the West unilaterally and have nothing to do with UN mechanisms put in place for such measures, leading Moscow to brand the move “illegal.”

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | 8 Comments

New Zealand Used Selective Science and Force to Drive High Vaccination Rates

By J.R. Bruning | Brownstone Institute | April 26, 2022

We expect that knowledge produced and applied in a health emergency will produce information that is protective of health. But it is increasingly apparent that over the last two years New Zealand’s Ardern government has designed policy, regulation, and information to coercively steward citizens to accept a drug under provisional consent.

Strict lockdowns were promised to end when 90% of the population was vaccinated. This was unprecedented: policy endpoints required population-level uptake of novel technology, no matter whether the individual was at risk or not.

In addition, data production was contracted by the department intent on a 90% vaccination rate. For decades governments have promoted ‘evidence-based science’ as the gold standard for public reasoning and risk deliberation. What we saw was internally produced and contracted science that focused on case rates, while (inconvenient) information in the published scientific literature on vaccine risk, waning and breakthrough was ignored.

This produced a tightly controlled scope of knowledge production that then failed to adhere to long-established democratic and public health principles. Responsible risk governance requires that governments must be responsive to data that indicates a technology is not as effective or is possibly more harmful than estimated, – for a democratic government’s primary role is the protection and safety of all citizens. Technology must not be valorized, and uncertainty set aside, in order to achieve policy ends.

Universal Vaccination Assumed from April 2021

New Zealand’s Unite Against Covid-19 ‘elimination’ strategy was confirmed in the first quarter of 2020. Policy, propaganda and legislation predominantly centred around the case, or infection rate, rather than the fatality rate as the measure of risk.

Even though the clinical trials did not demonstrate that the vaccine prevented transmission and infection, the Government promoted ‘the jab’ as a way to protect families in the Unite Against Covid-19 campaign. Persistent reporting of case rates fostered a perpetual state of fear and uncertainty among the population, who perceived infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus to be something more like Ebola.

The Ardern government’s intention for the entire population to get the mRNA vaccine was declared through the signing of a supply agreement. This intention was then embedded in policy and regulation via the Traffic Light system, designed to nudge the population over 12 into compliance.

It was known by July 2021 that the vaccine waned and was leaky. Breakthrough infections were relatively common and for many. The clinical trials remain incomplete, lacking long-term safety data. The trials did not demonstrate that the vaccine prevented hospitalization and death.

However, in April 2022 in New Zealand, mandatory vaccinations remain compulsory for border workers, and workers in health and disability; corrections; defence; Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) and Police. These professions must be vaccinated and have received a booster vaccination against COVID-19.

At ‘Traffic Light Orange’ Kiwis ‘must wear a face mask’ in retail businesses, on shared and public transport, in government facilities and when visiting a healthcare service. This is despite the fact that Omicron ripped through New Zealand in February.

In the first week back at school and university after the summer holidays –the obedient mask-wearing young friends of my kids, including my son, from Otago and Canterbury down on the South Island up to the capital Wellington and Auckland – were locked down with Omicron in their first weeks back at university. No evaluation of Omicron and mask efficacy has been provided by the state.

The Risk Modellers

Government policy processes have persistently excluded uncomfortable knowledge that suggested uncertainty or risk. First, the policy accompanying and justifying Covid-19 legislation and Orders, and modelling by the contracted institution Te Pūnaha Matatini (TPM) contained narrow reasoning central to the state’s claims, locking in the narrative that infection was the predicator of risk, modelling wave after wave of infection.

Second, policy supporting the legislation excluded consideration of age-stratified risk and failed to address common principles of infectious disease management embedded in the New Zealand Health Act. Third, reviews of the scientific literature that could publicly identify and communicate risk relating to vaccine-related harm and issues relating to efficacy simply never occurred.

The gaps are considerable. The Government’s Covid-19 Unite campaign failed to communicate age-stratified risk of hospitalization and death as the pandemic evolved. New evidence on infection fatality rates were not reported to the public. In modelling papers, TPM used old infection fatality rate statistics that overestimated death rates.

The potential for the vaccine to wane or for breakthrough infection to occur was ignored in a major policy paper focussed on elimination and by the modellers at TPM. The role of natural infection in producing a broader, and protective structural response, assisting populations to shift to herd immunity status was downplayed. While herd immunity was recognized, testing and data modelling was undertaken to identify naturally derived herd immunity in the population. Later modelling exclusively associated herd immunity with vaccination.

Perhaps the problems addressed here are not surprising, when most modelling was undertaken outside of New Zealand’s public health institutions. Instead, number-crunching was carried out by data analysts, mathematicians affiliated with TPM, with scarce few infectious disease epidemiologists trained in public health ethics participating. And of course, the science and data modelling were directly funded by the government departments and Ministries dedicated to over 90% vaccine compliance.

Global vaccination policies ignored the fact that infection-related risk always centered on the aged and infirm and those with complex multimorbid conditions. Disconcertingly, the clinical trial data had conceded that vaccine efficacy remained uncertain for the most at-risk of harm from Covid-19 – the immunocompromised, autoimmune and people who were frail, and those with inflammatory conditions (see p.115). In addition, as coronaviruses readily mutate, it was highly probable the vaccine would have a short shelf life.

Early Treatments Sidelined

Governments are entrusted with an overarching obligation to protect health – this includes putting populations directly at risk through bad policy. There was always a role for safe, established drugs with a long history of safe use that had undergone complete testing before launching onto the market.

Early treatments could have been integrated as a major tool to prevent hospitalisation and death. Early treatments avoid the dilemma of mutating variants while acting to protect at-risk groups whose immune systems might not be as responsive to a vaccine.

Conventionally doctors are at liberty to repurpose drugs for their patients, such as antivirals with a long history of safe use. However, in July 2021, the government locked in approved drugs for treatment.

From at least October, New Zealand doctors were instructed to ‘not use any other antiviral outside of a clinical trial’ while Medsafe warned against use of the safe antiviral Ivermectin for a respiratory virus. Yet the clinical guidelines were intended as last resort medicine for the hospitalized, rather than designed as protective nor preventative at home therapies.

These directives have fractured the practice of informed consent, which forms the basis of trust in the doctor-patient relationships. Even the New Zealand Medical Council, the organisation that grants licences to practice medicine, declared that there was ‘no place for anti-vaccination messages in professional practice.’ These actions may unwittingly undermine trust in vaccines and the doctor-patient relationship for years to come.

The implications of silencing doctors, some who have had their medical licenses suspended, when observed alongside the above-mentioned data gaps, are extraordinary.

Ethical questions continue to be sidelined. The principle of proportionality, embedded in the 1956 Health Act, has been effectively dropped. Proportionality, which allows for individual risk, is a core consideration in public health. Medicine is a technology, and the space where biology meets technology – including medicine – is never constant, and requires value-based judgement. Risk management of a medical intervention for a pregnant woman, young person or child requires significantly different deliberation to a 75-year-old.

Democratically Unaccountable Legislation

Since January 2020, a tsunami of rights-limiting has been rolled out purposefully and consistently. There was scant citizen consultation with public input limited to a few short days in most cases. The unprecedented barrage of rules and orders released by the Ardern government entrenched requirements for almost everybody to get the mRNA vaccine.

By mid-2021 – before most mandates – the scientific literature was revealing that the vaccine waned; that breakthrough infection occurred and that there was extensive evidence that it produced a wide range of side effects, and even death. This knowledge should have invalidated any workforce vaccine mandate, but instead by October, the state doubled down and locked in mandates and regulations that would legally and socially coerce most of the population over 12 into accepting the shot.

It’s probable that the mountain of legislation produced over the last two years never fulfilled democratic norms of accountability and transparency. For science in a pandemic to be harnessed to serve the public interest, the institutions that set those terms of reference must be guided by principles that protect health.

The failure of government agencies to draw on peer-reviewed scientific literature while prioritizing internal modelling is clear from tracking the literature stored online with the relevant agencies. Most compellingly, it is documented in the policy supplied in support of the unprecedented quantity of law-making.

It appears that from late 2019, institutional interests anticipated that there would be hesitancy around vaccine safety. Yet there was no public forum. Instead, groups who sought to question the safety of the novel mRNA vaccine remained outside ‘accredited’ media, possibly due to the chilling effect of unprecedented Covid-19 funding and advertising boosts which effectively captured mainstream media.

That the New Zealand state mandated not-at-risk people accept a novel technology, creating rules (as nudge policies) that limited economic and social life for the non-vaccinated when there was early evidence the vaccine was leaky and potentially harmful, will take years to unpick. As mandates continue, injured groups continue to face barriers to justice following vaccine injury and death.

Ultimately, practices such as this raise nagging doubts concerning the state’s capacity to honor broader obligations to protect health and the public interest in future emergency situations. New Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic serves as a case study – a precedent, for future health emergencies.

A deeper dive on this discussion can be found in the paper, Covid-19 Emergency Powers and on Rumble. The paper is offered to assist academic and legal experts, citizens and communities to consider use of policy and science by the Ardern Government from 2020-2022. I question the potential for the New Zealand state to navigate future pandemics, and future techno-controversies, in the public interest.

J.R. Bruning is a consultant sociologist (B.Bus.Agribusiness; MA Sociology) based in New Zealand. Her work explores governance cultures, policy and the production of scientific and technical knowledge. Her Master’s thesis explored the ways science policy creates barriers to funding, stymying scientists’ efforts to explore upstream drivers of harm. Bruning is a trustee of Physicians & Scientists for Global Responsibility (PSGR.org.nz). Papers and writing can be found at TalkingRisk.NZ and at JRBruning.Substack.com and at Talking Risk on Rumble.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Sanitation, Nutrition Better Than Vaccines at Protecting Children From Disease, Study Shows

The Defender | April 26, 2022

In the 19th century, improvements in quality-of-life fundamentals such as drinking water, sanitation, housing and nutrition helped launch the public health profession.

The revolution in sanitation was one of the critical milestones that enabled Victorian-era Britain to dramatically reduce rates of sickness and death.

And in the 20th-century U.S., rising standards of living, including improvements in nutrition and sanitation, deserve the lion’s share of the credit for health improvements — not vaccination or other medical interventions.

The significant decline in mortality from illnesses such as measles, pertussis and influenza — today dubbed “vaccine-preventable” despite ample evidence of vaccine failure — occurred well before the development of any vaccines for those diseases.

U.S. data also reveal comparable declines in mortality for other conditions for which there was never a vaccine program.

Ignoring this unambiguous historical record, officials nonetheless turned vaccination into the centerpiece of U.S. (and global) public health policy, cementing the formation of a relentless medical-pharmaceutical-government juggernaut that — thanks to compromised legislators, regulators, scientists and private-sector players — brooks no questioning.

Now, in a rare departure from vaccine-centric public health dogma, a study published in The BMJ reminds us that old-fashioned public health interventions not only matter but can make a difference in a very short time frame.

Using data from India, researchers from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) modestly propose that sanitation improvements “may play a role in strengthening [young] children’s immune response” and reducing their disease burden.

Reading between the lines, the study’s results also suggest vaccination programs, for all their professed benefits, cannot come close to making the same claims.

Putting sanitation back on the map

Intrigued by the relationship between sanitation and childhood illness, the UCI team looked at the incidence in Indian children of four “vaccine-preventable” diseases (VPDs) — measles, diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus — before and after the government’s implementation of an ambitious program to achieve universal sanitation coverage.

India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or “Clean India Campaign” in 2014, to tackle the problem of open defecation (the depositing of human stool in open spaces and waterways).

The “world’s largest toilet-building initiative” included the construction of more than 100 million toilets.

Although India is the world’s fifth-largest economy and has achieved impressive reductions in poverty, it accounts for 60% of the global population practicing open defecation. Within the country, this translates to somewhere between 26% and 48% of Indians.

Open defecation is a major cause of diarrheal disease in children. Even without diarrhea, fecal-oral contamination can also set in motion environmental enteropathy and a cascade of negative effects, including intestinal inflammation, malnutrition due to “significantly deranged” intestinal absorption, immune dysfunction and altered gut bacteria.

Standout results for measles

The UCI researchers admitted it would have made sense to evaluate the impact of sanitation improvements on the occurrence of the conditions that account for the majority of diarrheal disease episodes in India: cholera, salmonella, hepatitis A and rotavirus.

Surprisingly, however, there are no “nationally representative, publicly available data sets” that would permit such analyses.

The researchers’ rationale for punting to the four above-listed VPDs has to do with the high incidence of those conditions — relative to other countries — in Indian children under age 5.

For example:

  • Average measles incidence in that age group is estimated at 32.8 cases per 100,000, placing India among the top 10 countries worldwide. Global measles incidence as of 2019 was 12 per 100,000.
  • The estimated incidence of pertussis for India’s children under 5 (31.1 per 100,000) is 10 to 15 times higher than in other large countries such as Brazil, even in the context of rising incidence globally.
  • Similar patterns hold true for diphtheria and tetanus, with India’s incidence outpacing the global average.

What did the UCI team find when it examined disease incidence pre- and post-SBM?

“Rapid improvements in ambient sanitation through increased toilet availability correspond with a reduction in the annual incidence of measles” in children under 5.

Their findings also pinpointed the role of nutritional variables, such as vitamin A supplementation (long recognized as beneficial for reducing measles morbidity and mortality) and improved nutrition measured through the proxy of decreased childhood stunting.

Although they detected no impact of sanitation on the other three VPDs, they suggest this could be accounted for by underdiagnosis and underreporting due to a more ambiguous symptom profile.

‘Low vaccine effectiveness’

India has one of the largest vaccination programs in the world. Even in 2013 — the study’s baseline year — coverage for measles and diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT) vaccination for children under age 1 was already around 80%.

Fond of big-splash public health campaigns, the government of India declared, one year previously in 2012, a “year of intensification of routine immunization,” announcing several additions to its childhood vaccine schedule, and its intent to aggressively pursue “full immunization coverage … particularly in remote, backward and inaccessible areas and urban slums.”

Typically, Indian children receive one measles shot around 9 to 12 months of age, followed by a second dose at 16 to 24 months, as well as five DPT doses, in the form of problematic DPT-containing combination vaccines and DPT boosters.

Additionally, the National Immunization Schedule promotes not one but two tetanus shots for women during pregnancy.

Against this backdrop, the UCI authors argue, “India’s abysmal global [VPD] ranking raises questions about low vaccine effectiveness.”

To explain vaccine “underperformance,” the UCI researchers cite literature suggesting environmental enteropathy and related gut dysfunction and undernutrition interfere with vaccine effectiveness — even though those findings largely pertain to orally administered rather than injected vaccines.

Other features of India’s childhood vaccination program might also have something to do with the higher-than-average under-5 mortality blamed on VPDs.

Consider the following:

  • India has been at the forefront of the global rollout of five-in-one and six-in-one combination vaccines, the latter of which contain components for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenzae type b and polio.Studies and manufacturer data link these potent concoctions to infant deaths. (Vaxelis, a six-in-one vaccine containing a “double whammy” of untested aluminum adjuvant, is now being given to American infants.)
  • India’s children receive multiple doses of oral polio vaccine (OPV) — so-called “pulse polio” vaccination — and inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), either alone or in combination vaccines. In 2018, Indian researchers linked OPV pulsing to hundreds of thousands of cases of pediatric paralysis, also noting the paralyzed children died at twice the rate compared to mortality caused by wild polio.
  • India’s national vaccination program requires children in about 25% of the country’s districts to receive two doses of Japanese encephalitis (JE) vaccine in their first two years of life. Case reports and manufacturer inserts associate JE injections with sudden death, fatal myocarditis and life-threatening allergic reactions in children and young adults.

Public health myopia

For the most part, timeless and unglamorous basics such as sanitation, when mentioned at all, are disparagingly referred to as “old public health.”

The UCI study shows the memory-holing of such measures is short-sighted.

Other researchers agree that water, sanitation, hygiene and nutrition interventions constitute a public health “blind spot.”

Even UNICEF, hardly a neutral party in pushing vaccines as “the world’s safest method to protect children from life-threatening diseases,” concedes the “sanitation-nutrition nexus” deserves “far greater attention by policy-makers, practitioners and researchers.”

In 2015, Indian researchers questioned their country’s rigid JE vaccination policy, calling for an urgent reappraisal and telling policymakers to “tread with caution!”

Noting that JE accounts for a minority of India’s brain-swelling cases, they described enteroviruses — illnesses associated with polio and meningitis and linked to lax conditions of sanitation — as “coming in a big way as far as the encephalitis group of illnesses. . . is concerned.”

Their conclusion: “Public health efforts should not focus on vaccination alone.”

These types of observations, together with the UCI results, are reminders that it’s past time to reorient public health toward interventions that, unlike vaccines, not only do no harm but make a lasting difference.

© 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.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | 1 Comment

They just won’t let go of masks

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | April 26, 2022

The writer is in New Zealand

AS the pandemic fades, should we meekly accept new restrictions or seek new freedoms?

An article in the New Zealand autumn 2022 AA Directions magazine advises that ‘masks are going to be part of our day-to-day lives for the foreseeable future’, and teaches us how to recognise whether someone is smiling behind their mask.

Yesterday in Stuff, science columnist Dr Siouxsie Wiles finally gets around to admitting that ‘you can’t rely on mRNA vaccines’. Her answer? Be stricter about mask wearing.

Dr Wiles, a British microbiologist who received the 2021 New Zealander of the Year Award for pandemic science communication, cites a new study which she says supports continuing use of masks at gatherings. Click on the link (most people don’t) and you arrive at a study that involves theoretical modelling rather than verified effects.

Mask studies (of which there are many) have not demonstrated large reductions in Covid transmission. They tend to be very technical in nature and focus on the comparative viral loads found in nasal and mask swabs. These measurements can be connected to Covid transmission only via theoretical modelling.

Back in the real world, the near universal combination of vaccination and mask wearing to date in New Zealand has not stopped Omicron transmission.

A study published in ClinMed entitled ‘Adverse Effects of Prolonged Mask Use among Healthcare Professionals during Covid-19’surveyed 343 healthcare professionals in New York City hospitals obliged to wear masks throughout most of their working day. They reported: headaches (71 per cent), skin breakdown (50 per cent), and impaired cognition (24 per cent). Yes, you did read that right, one quarter of medical professionals wearing masks suffer decreased intellectual capacity.

Even costly N95 masks do not stop the passage of air around them essentially negating their purpose and prompting the observation that it is like trying to stop mosquitos with chicken wire. Surgical masks or their equivalent are mainly required in hospitals and dirty environments such as sawmills or building sites to protect the wearer from inhaling human tissue or large particulates.

So will Dr Wiles advise us next week to wear a full deep-sea diving suit? In the crazy world of the new subnormal apparently nothing absurd can be ruled out.

Hiding the truth from the public has become a medical imperative

There is a certain hysteria surrounding the realisation that mRNA vaccines don’t actually work and may be harmful. When my kids were growing up we used to read an amusing book to them, Lies My Mother Told Me. How many lies have we been told? Too many.

For example, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is:

·         95 per cent effective

·         Completely safe

·         Mostly stays in the upper arm muscle, as most traditional vaccines do

This last is interesting because Pfizer knew before they released the mRNA vaccine that it didn’t stay in the upper arm. They had completed an animal study which suggested that most of the mRNA vaccine spread throughout the body instead of staying at the injection site. The lipid nanoparticles (LNP), which encase the mRNA and help to breach cell walls are highly mobile and ensure that the mRNA spreads rapidly to all the organ systems in the body. If you want the full story see this article by clinical immunologist Dr Byram Bridle.

If we had known this, we would have realised early on that adverse reactions such as liver and kidney damage, strokes, cardiac events, neurological conditions and sudden-onset cancers were not unrelated to vaccination, as many victims were assured at the time by the NZ Ministry of Health, GPs and hospital staff.

Medical professionals assessing the causal connections between mRNA vaccination and subsequent adverse events were relying upon their prior knowledge about traditional vaccines. They thought they knew that vaccine ingredients mostly stayed at the injection site and eventually appeared in lymph nodes as they were cleaned up by the immune system. Pfizer neglected to tell them this was not the case. In fact Pfizer didn’t seem to inform anybody: the damning data was hidden in an obscure study buried in the requirements of the various national regulatory processes supposedly scrutinising safety. Anyone sounding the alarm seemed to be cancelled by the media and relegated to the ranks of conspiracy theorists.

Now that we have some hard NZ data showing that the protective effect of mRNA vaccination is a myth, there appears to be a rush on the part of seasoned and highly decorated Covid science communicators like Dr Siouxsie Wiles, member of the NZ Order of Merit, to throw us a lifeline. We may not actually choose to be saved. We might instead get on with our own lives and make the best of what opportunities we can discover for ourselves. At least we will be rowing our own boat, not sinking in the good ship misinformation.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

Biden Cynically Uses Ukraine to Cover Food Sabotage

By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern outlook -26.04.2022

It’s beginning to look like some bad actors are deliberately taking steps to guarantee a coming global food crisis. Every measure that the Biden Administration strategists have been making to “control energy inflation” is damaging the supply or inflating the price of natural gas, oil and coal to the global economy. This is having a huge impact on fertilizer prices and food production. That began well before Ukraine. Now reports are circulating that Biden’s people have intervened to block the freight rail shipping of fertilizer at the most critical time for spring planting. By this autumn the effects will be explosive.

With the crucial time for USA spring planting at its critical phase, CF Industries of Deerfield, Illinois, the largest US supplier of nitrogen fertilizers as well as a vital diesel engine additive, issued a press release stating that, “On Friday, April 8, 2022, Union Pacific informed CF Industries without advance notice that it was mandating certain shippers to reduce the volume of private cars on its railroad effective immediately.” Union Pacific is one of only four major rail companies that together carry some 80% of all US agriculture rail freight. The CF company CEO, Tony Will stated, “The timing of this action by Union Pacific could not come at a worse time for farmers. Not only will fertilizer be delayed by these shipping restrictions, but additional fertilizer needed to complete spring applications may be unable to reach farmers at all. By placing this arbitrary restriction on just a handful of shippers, Union Pacific is jeopardizing farmers’ harvests and increasing the cost of food for consumers.” CF has made urgent appeals to the Biden Administration for remedy, so far with no positive action.

Direct sabotage

CF Industries noted that they were one of only thirty companies subject to the severe measure, which is indefinite. They ship via Union Pacific rail lines primarily from its Donaldsonville Complex in Louisiana and its Port Neal Complex in Iowa, to serve key farm states including Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, Texas and California. The ban will affect nitrogen fertilizers such as urea and urea ammonium nitrate (UAN), as well as diesel exhaust fluid, DEF (called AdBlue in Europe). DEF is an emissions control product required for diesel trucks today. Without it engines cannot run. It is made from urea. CF Industries is the largest producer of urea, UAN and DEF in North America, and its Donaldsonville Complex is the largest single production facility for the products in North America.

At the same time, the Biden gang has announced a fake remedy for record high gasoline pump prices. Washington announced the EPA will allow a 50% increase in corn-based biodiesel and ethanol fuel mix for the summer. On April 12 the Secretary of Agriculture announced a “bold” initiative by the US Administration to increase the use of domestically-grown corn-ethanol biofuels. Secretary Tom Vilsack claimed the measure would “reduce energy prices and tackle rising consumer prices caused by Putin’s Price Hike (sic) by tapping into a strong and bright future for the biofuel industry, in cars and trucks and the rail, marine, and aviation sectors and supporting use of E15 fuel this summer.”

Only the capitalized “Putin Price Hike” is not a result of Russian actions, but of Washington Green Energy decisions to phase out oil and gas. The energy price inflation is also about to go vastly higher in coming months owing to US and EU economic sanctions on export of Russian oil and likely gas. However the central point is that every acre of US farmland dedicated to growing corn for biofuels removes that food production from the food chain, to burn it as fuel. Since passage of the 2007 US Renewable Fuel Standards Act, which mandated annually rising targets for production of corn for ethanol fuel blends, biofuels have captured a huge part of total corn acreage, more than 40% in 2015. That shift, mandated by law, to burning corn as fuel had added a major price inflation for food well before the covid inflation crisis began. The USA is by far world’s largest corn producer and exporter. Now to mandate a significant increase in corn ethanol for fuel at a time of astronomical fertilizer prices, and fertilizer rail shipping are being blocked reportedly by White House orders, will send corn prices through the roof. Washington knows this very well. It is deliberate.

No wonder the price of US corn reached a 10-year high in mid-April, as exports from Russia and Ukraine, major sources, are now blocked by sanction and war. Aside from the energy-inefficient use of US corn for biodiesel supply, the latest Biden ethanol initiative will add to the growing food crisis while doing nothing to lower US gasoline prices. A major use for US feed corn is as animal feed for cattle, pigs and poultry as well as for human diets. This cynical biofuel order is not about US “energy independence.” Biden ended that in his first days in office by a series of bans on oil and gas drilling and pipelines as part of his Zero Carbon agenda.

In what is clearly becoming a US Administration war on food, the situation is being dramatically aggravated by USDA demands for chicken farmers to kill off millions of chickens in now 27 states, allegedly for signs of Bird Flu infection. The H5N1 Bird Flu “virus” was exposed in 2015 as a complete hoax. The tests used by the US government inspectors to determine bird flu now are the same unreliable PCR tests used for COVID in humans. The test is worthless for that. US Government officials estimate that since first cases were “tested” positive in February, at least 23 million chickens and turkeys have been culled to allegedly contain the spread of a disease whose cause could be the incredibly unsanitary cage confinement of mass industrial chicken CAFOs. The upshot is sharp rises in prices of egg by some 300% since November and severe loss of chicken protein sources for American consumers at a time when overall cost of living inflation is at a 40-year high.

To make matters worse, California and Oregon are again declaring water emergency amid a multi-year drought and are sharply reducing irrigation water to farmers in California, who produce the major share of US fresh vegetables and fruits. That drought has since spread to cover most agriculture land west of the Mississippi River, meaning much of US farmland.

US food security is under threat as never before since the 1930s Dust Bowl, and the Biden Administration “Green Agenda” is doing everything to make the impact worse for its citizens.

In recent comments US President Biden remarked without elaborating that the US food shortages are “going to be real.” His administration also is deaf to pleas of farmer organizations to allow cultivation of some 4 million acres of farmland ordered left out of cultivation for “environmental reasons. However this is not the only part of the world where crisis in food is developing.

Global Disaster

These deliberate Washington actions are taking place at a time a global series of food disasters create the worst food supply situation in decades, perhaps since the World War II end.

In the EU, which is significantly dependent on Russia, Belarus and Ukraine for feed grains, fertilizers and energy, sanctions are making the covid-induced food shortages dramatically worse. The EU uses its foolish Green Agenda as an excuse to forbid the Italian government from ignoring EU rules limiting state aid to farmers. In Germany, the new Green Party Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, who wants to phase out traditional agriculture allegedly for its “greenhouse gas” emissions, has given farmers who want to grow more food a cold response. The EU faces many of the same disastrous threats to food security as the USA and even more dependence on Russian energy which is about to be suicidally sanctioned by the EU.

The major food producing countries in South America, especially Argentina and Paraguay, are in the midst of a severe drought attributed to a periodic La Niña Pacific anomaly that has crippled crops there. Sanctions on Belarus and Russia fertilizers are threatening Brazil crops, aggravated with bottlenecks in ocean transport.

China just announced that owing to severe rains in 2021, this year’s winter wheat crop could be the worst in its history. The CCP also has instituted severe measures to get farmers to expand cultivation to non-farm lands with little reported effect. According to a report by China watcher Erik Mertz, “In China’s Jilin, Heilongjiang, and Liaoning provinces, officials have reported one in three farmers lack sufficient seed and fertilizer supplies to begin planting for the optimum spring window… According to sources within these areas, they are stuck waiting on seed and fertilizer which have been imported to China from overseas – and which are stuck in the cargo ships sitting off the coast of Shanghai.” Shanghai, the world’s largest container port, has been under a bizarre “Zero Covid” total quarantine for more than four weeks with no end in sight. In a desperate bid by the CCP “ordering” increased food production, local CP officials throughout China have begun transforming basketball courts and even roads into cropland. The food situation in China is forcing the country to import far more at a time of global shortages, driving world grain and food prices even higher.

Africa is also severely impacted by the US-imposed sanctions and war ending food and fertilizer exports from Russia and Ukraine. Thirty five African countries get food from Russia and Ukraine. Twenty two African countries import fertilizer from there. Alternatives are seriously lacking as prices soar and supply collapses. Famine is predicted.

David M. Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program, declared recently on the global food outlook, “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”

Notably, it was the Biden Treasury Department that drew up a list of the most comprehensive economic sanctions against Russia and Belarus, pressuring a compliant EU to dutifully follow, sanctions whose impact on global grain and fertilizer and energy supply and prices was entirely predictable. It was in effect a sanction on the US and global economy.

These are but the latest examples of deliberate US Government sabotage of the food chain as part of the Biden Green Agenda, of Davos WEF, Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation, as part of their dystopian Great Reset eugenics agenda. Traditional agriculture is to be replaced by a synthetic lab grown diet of fake meats and protein from grasshoppers and worms, worldwide. All for the supposed glory of controlling global climate. This is truly mad.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

The NATO Lie

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 26, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the forefront the NATO treaty to which the United States is a party. President Biden and the Pentagon have steadfastly maintained that a Russian attack on any NATO member automatically obligates the United States to go to war against Russia. That, of course, would necessarily mean the virtual certainly of all-out nuclear war between Russia and the United States, a war that would, needless to say, end up destroying both countries and killing hundreds of millions of people in the process. 

There is one big problem with the Biden/Pentagon position: It’s a lie. In fact, the NATO treaty does not obligate the United States to automatically come to the defense of any NATO member in the event Russia attacks that particular country. That’s because the NATO treaty does not operate to amend the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution is the document that the American people used to call the federal government into existence. The Constitution established a federal government of limited powers. The government was divided into three branches — executive, legislative, and judicial — with enumerated powers being delegated to each branch of government. 

With respect to war, the Framers delegated the power to declare war to Congress and the power to wage war to the president. What that meant was that the president is prohibited from waging war against another nation without first securing a declaration of war from Congress. 

When the U.S. government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II, a fourth branch was effectively added to the federal government: the national-security branch, consisting of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

While it has been said that these entities are actually part of the executive branch, as Michael Glennon has pointed out in his excellent book National Security and Double Government (which I cannot recommend too highly), the national-security section of the federal government, owing to its overwhelming power, is actually the part that is running the show, with the other parts of the federal government operating deferentially in support. 

The Constitution provides for the specific ways to amend the Constitution. Quoting whitehouse.gov: “An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.”

Notice something important: The Constitution does not provide that it can be amended by treaty. The Framers did not want federal officials to have the power to amend the Constitution by simply entering into treaties with other nations that changed the terms and conditions of the Constitution.

Therefore, the NATO treaty cannot operate to amend the constitutional provision that requires a congressional declaration of war before the president can legally wage war. Thus, if Russia attacks, say, NATO member Poland, the Constitution requires the president to secure a declaration of war from Congress against Russia before the president, the Pentagon, and the CIA can wage war against Russia.

Now, take a look at an article entitled “The NATO Treaty Does Not Give Congress a Bye on World War III” by Michael Glennon, who I mentioned above. It’s posted at a website entitled lawfareblog.com. This is one of the most important articles that you will read in your lifetime. I cannot emphasize too highly why you should read this article and, equally important, share it with everyone you know and, equally important, ask them to share it with everyone they know. 

Glennon is professor of international law at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. From 1977-1980, he served as counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You can read more about his credentials on Wikipedia by clicking here. 

Glennon’s article makes the scholarly but easily readable case that the NATO treaty does not — and cannot — automatically obligate the United States to go to war in the event Russia (or any other nation) attacks a NATO member. 

Of course, there is a much more fundamental question that Americans must confront: Why is the United States in NATO at all? NATO was established after World War II to ostensibly protect Western Europe from an attack by the Soviet Union, notwithstanding the fact that there was never any real likelihood that the Soviet Union, which was totally devastated in World War II, had any interest in going to war with Western Europe (and a nuclear-armed United States).

Regardless of whether NATO was necessary or whether it was just part of the Cold War racket, one thing is crystal clear: Once the Soviet Union dismantled, NATO’s mission became moot. At that point, this Cold War dinosaur should have been dismantled and sent into extinction. 

Instead, what the NATO bureaucrats did was keep this dinosauric entity in existence and, even worse, began using it to absorb former members of the Soviet Union, which enabled the Pentagon to establish its nuclear missiles ever closer to Russia’s borders. It was when the Pentagon, operating through NATO, announced an intention to absorb Ukraine that Russia decided to invade Ukraine, as the Pentagon knew it would, in order to prevent the Pentagon from establishing its nuclear missiles (and military bases, troops, tanks, and other weaponry) on Russia’s border. 

Thus, one of the keys to getting America back on the right track — toward liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world — is to immediately withdraw from NATO, which would bring the immediate dissolution of this Cold War dinosauric entity, as well as bring U.S. troops home from Europe (and everywhere else). It is U.S. foreign interventionism that is a root cause of the loss of liberty and prosperity in America as well as America’s disharmony with the people of the world.

In the meantime, it is in the interest of every American to understand the nature of the NATO lie, a lie that holds that the NATO treaty automatically obligates the U.S. government to go to war against Russia in the event of an attack by Russia on another member of NATO. That’s why, again, I highly recommend reading Michael Glennon’s article and sharing it with everyone you know and asking them to share it with everyone they know.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

US Diplomacy Continues to be Invisible

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 26, 2022

Remember the Beatles’ song that went like this: “I read the news today, oh boy!”? To be sure there has not been much good news to savor recently, though notably, under the cover provided by the war in Ukraine’s domination of the news cycle, the Israel Lobby in the United States has been working harder than ever to promote the interests of the country that is most dear to its heart. It’s associated media arm has been ignoring the regular killing of Palestinians by Israeli security forces while also dismissing the ultra-violent incursion by the Jewish state’s police at one of Islam’s holiest sites, the al-Aqsa Mosque complex, during Ramadan prayers.

Recently, the Zionist focus has been most intense on one area: to kill the stalled negotiations over the renewal of US participation in the currently ineffective multiparty Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement with Iran to monitor its nuclear program and prevent its development of a weapon. Ironically, Israel, unlike Iran, already has an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal that is even protected from exposure by US officials, who are not allowed to mention it in spite of the fact that its existence is widely acknowledged. Recently, Sam Husseini, a critic of the US pandering to Israeli interests, tweeted how “I recently contacted the offices of @IlhanMN, @AOC, @CoriBush, @RashidaTlaib, @SenSanders and 10 others asking if they would acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons. None would do so.” Not one of the fifteen, mostly describable as progressives, would even confirm that the Israelis possess such weapons, so terrified were they of even mentioning what the entire world knows to be true.

To be sure, the issue of what to do about Iran is certainly the number one foreign policy problem for Israel as it is the only regional opponent of the Jewish state that could reasonably be described as militarily formidable. For something like thirty years successive Israeli governments have been seeking to convince a number of gullible American presidents to treat the Islamic Republic as a serious international threat, which is ridiculous as Iran has neither the necessary resources nor a history of seeking to dominate even its own region. This Israeli persuasion has included manipulation of a bought and paid for Congress and media which support a steady flow of propaganda seeking to depict Iran in the most negative terms, intended to appeal to the American desire to frame its foreign policy in terms of “good versus evil” with the US/Israel always being good no matter what wartime atrocities they might commit.

One might reasonably observe that the pattern of “good versus evil” is also playing out with regard to Russia in Ukraine. Given such a faux ethically based worldview, the US rarely acts in terms of genuine national interests, witness the relationship with Jerusalem more generally speaking. Israel’s security service Mossad has as its motto “By Way of Deception Thou Shalt Do War.” With that in mind it has been hard at work fabricating “intelligence” that the Iranian leadership has initiated a secret nuclear proliferation program. A laptop that surfaced in 2004 through the dissident Iranian group MEK allegedly contained information regarding covert plans for an Iranian nuclear bomb. It was, however, revealed to be a clever Mossad forgery.

Israel has never quite convinced the White House to take the final step and make war directly against the Iranians, though it came close when a gullible Donald Trump ordered the assassination of senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, who was in Baghdad for peace talks in January 2020. But Israel has nevertheless managed to obtain what is apparently considerable covert CIA collaboration in its own semi-secret program to kill scientists and technicians that might be involved in nuclear research, while also hacking into and sabotaging Iranian computer systems and other infrastructure. Under Trump, CIA Director Mike Pompeo focused particularly on Iran, setting up a “special action group” to counter its presence and claimed “malign activities” in the Middle East. That task force presumably still exists under the current Director William Burns appointed by Joe Biden.

The Joe Biden Administration has long been dancing around re-joining the JCPOA, which was entered into under President Barack Obama in 2015. President Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018, convinced by his neocon and hardline advisers that it would only provide Iran cover to ramp up its secret program and produce a nuclear weapon. Trump’s associates argued that JCPOA would actually make eventual Iranian acquisition of a nuke inevitable.

As of right now, the discussions on JCPOA in Vienna are at a standstill and appear about to break down completely, though some reports alternatively claim that a new agreement is within reach. The Iranians believe that the US is not negotiating in good faith and is failing to take even relatively minor steps that could lead to a reasonable understanding without compromising the vital interests of any of the parties involved. Those steps could include removing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Force from the US terrorist list and releasing some frozen Iranian assets, while also cutting back on sanctions. It appears that Biden would actually like to renew the agreement, but his own associates at the State Department, whose top three officials are Zionists, as well as the powerful Israel Lobby are pushing against such a course of action.

In reality the JCPOA is in the interest of the United States, pledged as it is to stop nuclear proliferation, since it permits unannounced inspection of virtually all Iranian research facilities by UN officials. It would make attempted proliferation by Iran extremely difficult, even if an elaborate deception operation were attempted. Nevertheless, a number of the usual journalists and self-proclaimed “experts” continue to push the Trumpean neocon derived argument that the agreement would actually accelerate an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Think tanks like the Foundation of Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have been lobbying Congress and the White House assiduously, as have some conventionally conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation, which argues that reviving JCPOA would be a “dangerous mistake.” In a recent paper it maintains that “Reviving the deeply flawed Iran nuclear deal would reward and empower a hostile dictatorship by lifting sanctions and squandering US bargaining leverage. Iran never fully complied with the JCPOA and is currently in violation of it on several accounts. A much more restrictive agreement is necessary. A new agreement should include Iran’s ballistic missile program, disclosure of its past nuclear weapons efforts, and better protection for Israel and Arab allies.”

The Heritage paper is, of course, more speculative than fact-based and false in several respects, particularly the claim that Iran never fully complied with the agreement. Iran opened up to UN inspectors and it was the United States that continued with sanctions contrary to the intent of the original deal. If Iran were to abandon its missile program and provide “better protection” for Israel and select Arab states it would be basically surrendering its sovereignty in the area of national defense.

Another recent effort to attack JCPOA comes from an article written by two Israelis featured in The Atlantic magazine entitled “A Case Against the Iran Deal: Reviving the JCPOA will ensure either the emergence of a nuclear Iran or a desperate war to stop it.” One of the two authors is Michael Oren, until recently the Israeli Ambassador to the United States. The article’s title is self-explanatory and the argument it makes, largely based on what passes for Israeli “intelligence,” is that Iran has a secret weapons program and already has enough of enriched uranium to begin construction of a weapon within a few months. If its clandestine activities are in a sense shielded by a revived JCPOA, they will no doubt do just that, according to the authors.

Against the Israeli argument which, by implication, calls for war to disarm the Iranians, a sustainable inspection routine run by the UN would seem to be a preferable option but a number of Democratic Party Congressmen apparently do not agree and are pressuring President Biden to rethink his acceptance of the desirability of something like a rapprochement with Iran. Eighteen Democratic Congressmen, led by Josh Gottheimer and Elaine Luria, both of whom are Jewish, are pushing back against the Biden efforts, arguing that the agreement is flawed. Gottheimer added that “We need a longer and stronger deal, not one that is shorter and weaker. It’s time to stand strong against terrorists, protect American values and our allies.” Note the emphasis on protecting “our allies,” though one need not point out that there is only one ally in the region that matters to Washington politicians, particularly to folks like Gottheimer.

Republicans are also on board. They are expressing particular concerned because Russia is a signatory to the agreement and would be a guarantor of it, or at least that is what they are arguing to block any Biden effort to reengage. Pennsylvania Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, remarked that he was very concerned about a new deal because “Russia should not be at any table with us right now. They’re committing egregious acts of terrorism and murder in a free democracy in Ukraine, in Europe right now.” That Fitzpatrick, on the Foreign Affairs Committee, should be so ignorant of actual US interests as well as regarding the nuances of the Russia-Ukraine conflict illustrates better than anything the abysmal level of ignorance that prevails in the federal government, leading to a collapse of what used to be called Diplomacy 101.

Finally, nothing better illustrates the disarray in US foreign and national security policy than a brief exchange that took place more than three weeks ago in Israel, where US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually re-enter the JCPOA. Israel of, course, strongly opposes that option, particularly if it involves any concessions to Iran, while Blinken’s State Department persists in repeating the Israeli line that Iran is the “world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism” while also asserting that “this administration’s commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” So, what did an obviously between a rock and a hard place Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be arranged in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. When the US senior-most representative involved in crafting foreign policy feels compelled to ask the agenda-driven head of a rogue foreign government to tell him what to do, there is something very wrong in Washington.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , | 1 Comment

Germany to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry

Samizdat | April 26, 2022

The German government has given the green light for the delivery of self-propelled anti-aircraft guns to Ukraine, the country’s Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Tuesday.

Speaking at US-hosted defense talks at the American airbase Ramstein in Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate state, Lambrecht said that the leadership in Berlin made the decision on Monday. She emphasized that Germany was “determined to help the Ukrainian people with unified resolve in this existential emergency.”

The minister explained that “Ukraine will order” hardware from German manufacturers and “Germany will pay.” Berlin would earmark some 2 billion euros to that end, Lambrecht added.

The armored vehicles in question are Gepard self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, which were decommissioned by the German military back in 2010. Designed to take out cruise missiles and aircraft, Gepards can also be used against targets on the ground. As many as 50 heavy vehicles could reportedly be delivered to Ukraine. Defense firm Krauss-Maffei Wegmann will now refurbish the equipment before transferring it on to Kiev, Germany’s dpa news agency reported. It is, however, not known when exactly Ukraine can expect delivery of the anti-aircraft systems.

Lambrecht also announced that Berlin “has initiated a swap scheme with our partners in eastern Europe” that is ensuring that “Ukraine is quickly obtaining heavy weaponry that doesn’t require lengthy training.” But, according to the minister, Germany could do a lot more in this respect.

On top of that, Berlin will be cooperating with the US and the Netherlands when it comes to providing training to Ukrainian troops on German soil in the use of various artillery systems.

Lambrecht made the announcements during a meeting of defense ministers from 40 countries hosted by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday.

Earlier this month, several German outlets reported that Germany’s Rheinmetall arms manufacturer was prepared to sell 88 decommissioned Leopard tanks, as well as ammunition, spare parts and tools to repair the hardware. Training on the equipment would also be provided to Ukrainian troops. The company was awaiting the German government’s approval, the media said at the time.

Moscow has repeatedly condemned NATO arms supplies to Kiev, saying they only destabilize the situation on the ground and hamper the prospect for peace. It also warned that any equipment deliveries will be considered a legitimate military target for the Russian forces once they cross into Ukrainian territory.

“NATO is essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy and arming that proxy. War means war,” Russia’s Foreign Minister said on Monday.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 3 Comments

Kiev says ready to attack Crimean Bridge at first opportunity

By Lucas Leiroz | April 25, 2022

The Ukrainian government seems to be willing to further increase its military actions just to continue a conflict in which it has no chance of winning. On April 21, a Kiev official announced that they are about to bomb and destroy the Crimean Bridge.

In a recent speech, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, revealed that Kiev’s armed forces are ready to attack the bridge at any time, having plans to act at the first possible opportunity. His words during an interview with Radio NV leave no doubt about the Ukrainian intentions: “If we had the ability to do it, we would have already done it. If there is an opportunity to do it, we will definitely do it”. Danilov also commented on the reasons behind the plan, mentioning the strategic value of the bridge, which destruction would largely obstruct the movement of Russian troops.

There are many problems with Danilov’s statement. In fact, it is possible to speak of a “strategic value” in its destruction of the Crimean Bridge, but this is far from implying any justification. Many anti-humanitarian measures have “strategic value” but should be avoided simply because they are legally and ethically wrong procedures. For example, it is precisely to avoid unreasonable civilian casualties and damage to historical heritage that Moscow refrains from excessive use of air force during the special military operation in Ukraine. No doubt there would also be strategic value in escalating the use of air force.

Carefully measuring one’s own acts to avoid mass victims should be the attitude of any side during a conflict. And this is what should be expected of Kiev, considering that the destruction of the bridge would cause civilian casualties, since non-military people still circulate in the region and would completely obstruct the flow of goods between Crimea and the rest of the Russian territory, which could lead to large supply deficits and social crises.

But, apart from the humanitarian and ethical argument, the main factor is another: Kiev is announcing military attacks on the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation. Both Kerch and Taman, cities connected by the bridge, are part of Russia, so the attack would hit a non-border Russian zone and its respective marine territory, generating a serious provocation. The risk of escalating the conflict into Russia’s sovereign territory may be too high for the Ukrainian side.

The words of Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, confirm this prediction of reaction in the event of an attack: “I hope he [Oleksiy Danilov] understands what Russia would target in retaliation”. Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had already announced that Moscow would interpret a bombing of the bridge as a terrorist attack and announced that Moscow is already acting to prevent any Ukrainian action in this regard: “Such a statement [about the potential bombing of the Crimean Bridge] is nothing but an announcement of a possible terrorist act; this is unacceptable (…) All the necessary security measures and precautions by the relevant service are being taken around the bridge and all strategic facilities”.

Still, it is necessary to emphasize the omission of Western countries and international organizations in this case. Kiev announces that it is organizing terrorist-like attitudes and Moscow condemns it, but with no statement of the rest of international society. Ignoring Kiev’s threats seems to have become standard, commonplace action in recent years while, on the other hand, actions of the Russian army are automatically condemned.

Finally, Kiev is on the verge of an escalation of the conflict in which it will not be able to deal with the consequences. If there’s really a plan going on to destroy the bridge, the best thing to do is to abort it.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 3 Comments

Dutch Party Asks Zelensky to Account for $850 Mln Personal Wealth

By Ilya Tsukanov | Samizdat | April 26, 2022

Last year, a Pandora Papers leak revealed that Mr Zelensky, who campaigned on promises to “break the system” of oligarchic control and corruption in Ukraine, set up a spider web of offshore companies in 2012. Zelensky’s office justified the move by saying they were a form of “protection” against former President Viktor Yanukovych.

A Dutch political party has taken an interest in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s personal finances.

“Zelensky has a fortune: various estimates put his wealth at around $850 million. He amassed most of it after taking office as president. Where does the money come from? And more importantly, where is it going?” the Forum for Democracy asked in posts on its Twitter and Telegram accounts on Monday.

The Dutch national conservative and hardline Eurosceptic party boycotted Zelensky’s speech to the Dutch parliament last month, denouncing it as a violation of nearly two centuries of democratic tradition, which forbid foreign heads of state from speaking before the House of Representatives.

The party also expressed concerns about Zelensky’s ban of political parties, including the main opposition party, and the shuttering of TV channels critical of his regime.

The Forum for Democracy did not specify where it got its $850 million estimate.

Ilya Kiva, a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker who was stripped of his mandate last month, alleges that “hundreds of millions of dollars” are being wired to accounts controlled by the president’s office, where they are being plundered, not just by Zelensky and his staff, but by “Western politicians who get kickbacks for their [countries’] assistance”. Kiva has suggested that Zelensky’s earnings have recently jumped to about “$100 million a month”.

Before becoming president in 2019, Zelensky co-owned the Kvartal 95 television entertainment company, which he co-founded in 2003. Last week, Volodymyr Landa, deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes Ukraine, said that the company earns about $20-$30 million per year, with Zelensky owning a 25 percent stake.

Before the 2019 election, Zelensky’s family also earned a 25 percent stake in the Maltex Multicapital Corp, a tax shelter in the British Virgin Islands, through a separate Belize-registered shell company, Film Heritage, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Zelensky insisted after the election that he had dropped his share in the company, and has not mentioned the company in any of his tax declarations since 2018.

However, in October 2021, the OCCRP reported that the president, his family, and members of his inner circle have held on to Maltex, and operate an entire network of shady offshore companies, at least two of them used to buy property in London near the famous 221B Baker Street and the Houses of Parliament.

Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch who heavily sponsored Zelensky’s campaign in 2019, has himself been accused of stealing $5.5 billion from PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest commercial lender, and funnelling it offshore.

Pressed by media over the offshore-related revelations late last year, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff, assured that the president had been forced to create the offshores to “protect” income from the “aggressive actions” of the “corrupt” government of President Viktor Yanukovych. “Journalists have de facto confirmed the president’s absolute respect for the standards of anti-corruption legislation”, Podoliak said.

Yanukovych was ousted in a Western-backed coup in 2014, giving rise to the Ukraine crisis which continues to this day.

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Corruption | | 5 Comments

Ukraine wants $2bn per month from US

Samizdat | April 26, 2022

Ukraine’s finance minister, Sergey Marchenko, has solicited at least $2 billion per month in emergency economic aid from the Biden administration. The official also revealed that Kiev hopes to raise an additional $3 billion per month from other sources.

Speaking to the Washington Post, Marchenko said that Ukraine needs “to cover this gap right now to attract the necessary finance and win this war.”

During his visit to Washington, DC last week, Marchenko met with a number of senior US officials, warning them that absent the requested financial support, Ukraine would likely not be able to cope with the humanitarian crisis brought on by Russia’s military offensive. A total of $5 billion per month is needed to cover Ukraine’s immediate needs in April, May, and June, the minister explained. In addition to that, Kiev is expected to request another tranche down the road to help Ukraine recover from all the damage incurred.

Last Thursday, the minister also reportedly attended a private dinner hosted by Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo, which included representatives from top US firms such as Goldman Sachs, and the Business Roundtable lobbyist association. Moreover, Marchenko met with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during the G20 summit in Washington last Wednesday.

Since the start of Russia’s military offensive in Ukraine in late February, the US has already shelled out approximately $1 billion in economic aid for Kiev. An additional $500 million was cleared by the Biden administration last week, on top of the generous military aid.

Yellen told reporters last Thursday that America has to “find ways to meet Ukraine’s needs.” She added that this “will involve going back to Congress with a supplemental request.” Her comments came shortly after President Joe Biden made it clear that he would ask Congress to give the green light to more financial assistance for Ukraine – something an anonymous US official described to the Washington Post as one of the administration’s top priorities.

Several members of Congress and senior Ukrainian officials alike have repeatedly suggested handing frozen assets belonging to Russia’s central bank over to Ukraine. However, the Biden administration has stopped short of making any promises so far. Yellen described this potential handover as something she “wouldn’t want to do so lightly,” telling reporters that “it’s something that I think our coalition and partners would need to feel comfortable with and be supportive of.”

The Ukrainian finance minister told the Washington Post that his country needs the money to provide care to millions of internally displaced Ukrainians, as well as paying pensions to retirees and salaries to medical and education professionals.

Marchenko concluded by saying that Washington has become “more cooperative” over time, adding that support from the US is “becoming greater and greater.”

April 26, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 14 Comments

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