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Le Pen promises to pull France out of NATO

By Uriel Araujo | April 15, 2022

NATO now has become one of the most important issue in Europe, with the new developments in Sweden and Finland, and electoral impacts in France. French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen (who heads for the second round to be held on April 24) has vowed to pull France out of NATO’s military command. It would not be unprecedented, as the country did it in 1966. Le Pen claims the alliance structure “perpetuates the anachronistic and aggressive logic of the Cold War bloc”.

France was one of the Alliance’s founding members in 1949 and even hosted it for 15 years. This was a major event in French history. To help French ordinary citizens to accept the presence of foreign troops on their territory in times of peace, films like À votre service were shown in movie theaters, as part of a NATO PR campaign, so to speak. France’s relationship with the Anglo-Saxon structure (which is hegemonic within NATO), and with the alliance itself has always been complex, and Le Pen’s promise should be understood in this context and not necessarily as mere “extremism”.

In doing so, if elected, Le Pen would be in fact following the steps of general Charles de Gaulle (who ruled the country 1940-46 and 1958-1969). The conservative French leader wanted a truly independent nuclear France who would engage with Washington on more equal terms, becoming perhaps a kind of third force in the then Cold War’s bipolar world and even possibly reaching a détent with the USSR. The British-American “special relationship” was seen by him as detrimental to Europe.

Moreover, the US veto power regarding nuclear weapons also prevented Paris from pursuing its own atomic goals. Unable to place France in the tripartite directorate he proposed in his 1958 memorandum to US President Dwight Eisenhower and UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, de Gaulle refused to sign the 1963 agreement against nuclear testing – and, by 1969, France was already a fully fledged nuclear power. He also vetoed British entry into the European Union in the same year and, in 1964, told West Germany it should cease to follow a policy subordinated to Washington and adopt one for European independence (albeit not hostility). Of course, no NATO country followed his lead.

Isolated, France went on to withdraw from the Alliance’s so-called integrated military structure in 1966 (although not completely leaving the Treaty) and expelled all of its headquarters and units on French territory. It was  President Nicolas Sarkozy who finally ended Paris “estrangement” from the organization in 2009 – so it took 43 years for Paris to change its course.

Even though Paris still hosted some NATO meetings and civilian structures, the spirit of Gaullism still shaped to some degree French strategic thinking during the Cold War, and the NATO-France relationship alternated between phases of rapprochement and tension. It was President Miterrand who started to bring France back into the Alliance’s integrated military command. And even so, it has been a kind of “flexible membership” (as it is often described).

Charles de Gaulle was one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century and even so, France remained relatively isolated in the European continent pertaining to its stance on NATO during the time of his leadership. He also faced several challenges, as the European countries acted in concert to try to neutralize many of his efforts. One cannot really tell whether Le Pen would be up to such a task, and estranging from NATO in any case is obviously not so simple, but the current situation on the other hand is also full of contradictions from a French and European perspective.

Meanwhile, on April 13 both Finland and Sweden took a major step towards joining NATO. In their joint press conference, the Prime Ministers Sanna Marin (Finland) and Magdalena Andersson (Sweden) both claimed that the security landscape in the continent has changed. Marin stated that Finland which shares a border with Russia will decide within weeks whether to join the Alliance. While a tight majority in Sweden now are in favor of joining the Atlantic Alliance, according to a recent poll, about 70% of Finnish people back it and this figure has more than doubled since the current Russian-Ukrainian war started.

Currently, both Nordic countries are NATO partners, since they abandoned their previous neutral stance by joining the European Union in 1995 and thus take part in military exercises and intelligence exchange, but they are not full-fledged members. Both countries were publicly assured by NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg that their applications would indeed be welcome, and they also received public support from Germany, France, and the UK. Joining or leaving the Alliance is not so simple – an application to join it  must be accepted by all 30 member states, and this should take a minimum of four months and probably at least a whole year to be processed. In any case, it will be seen by Moscow as yet another provocation, amid a situation of escalating tensions.

Experts such as University of Chicago political scientist  John Mearsheimer have been warning since 2014 that the ongoing Ukrainian war was mainly the West’s fault and Mearsheimer maintains it remains the West’s fault to this day. NATO’s constant expansion breaking the 1990 promises that were made during the fall of the Soviet Union as well as Washington’s policy of “encircling” and “containing” Moscow have cornered it to its limits. As Russian President Vladimir Putin said in December 2021: “What would Americans do if we went to the border between Canada and the U.S. or to the border with Mexico and deploy our missiles there?” Mearsheimer also warns that should tensions escalate, there is a real risk of a nuclear war.

Today the world faces the risks of a global food crisis and hunger, as well as on-going international energy crises, and a migration crisis in Europe. It is up for responsible Western leaders to open communication and dialogue channels with the Kremlin. Further provoking Moscow at this point is simply irresponsible and not in Europe’s best interests. France could thus play a key role in the continent. The EU in fact now faces the hard choice between being a self-dependent Europe or an Atlantic Europe.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia comments on outcome of Sweden and Finland joining NATO

Samizdat | April 15, 2022

Sweden and Finland will lose part of their sovereignty while compromising their security if they join NATO, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned on Friday, referring to the two nations’ expected requests for formal membership in the US-led military bloc.

Sweden and Finland have long been close to the organization but have maintained formal nonalignment with NATO since the Cold War. Both may soon apply for membership amid the ongoing security crisis in Ukraine. The Russian ministry warned that Sweden and Finland would not gain anything by moving forward with the plan.

NATO membership “is unlikely to help build Sweden’s and Finland’s international prestige,” spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a comment released by the Russian ministry. She said the two nations will lose the opportunity to act as “conveyors of many constructive, unifying initiatives” as they did in the past.

“Naturally the choice belongs to the authorities of Sweden and Finland. But they should realize the consequences of such a move to our bilateral relations and the European security architecture, which currently is in a state of crisis,” she added.

The official argued that the two nations would become platforms used by NATO to threaten Russia and that neither they, nor the region of northern Europe as a whole, would benefit from it. She added that NATO membership “implies de facto surrender of a part of sovereignty in making decisions on defense, and also on foreign policy.”

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and prime minister, who is currently deputy chairman of the country’s Security Council, implied earlier this week that, if the two nations joined the trans-Atlantic bloc Russia, would deploy nuclear weapons in the Baltic region.

Finland and Russia have a 1,340-km-long land border. Finland used to be part of the Russian Empire before making a successful bid for independence when Russia was torn apart by the revolutions of 1917. The USSR and Finland fought a bloody war in 1939-1940 in the build-up to World War II that resulted in some territorial concessions on Helsinki’s part.

Sweden was Russia’s primary rival in northern Europe for several centuries, with the two powers fighting multiple wars for dominance. The conflict of 1808-1809 ended with the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden relinquished to Russia as the Grand Duchy of Finland.

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

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

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Should We Commit to Fight Russia — for Finland?

BY PAT BUCHANAN • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 15, 2022

The prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, Magdalena Andersson and Sanna Marin, both signaled Wednesday that they will likely be applying for membership in NATO.

The “prospect” is most “welcome,” says The Washington Post: “Finland and Sweden Should Join NATO.”

The editorial was titled “A Way to Punish Putin.”

Before joining the rejoicing in NATO capitals, we might inspect what NATO membership for these two Nordic nations would mean for the United States.

Finland is a nation the size of Germany, but with a population only 4% of that of Russia and a border with Russia that is 830 miles long.

Should Finland join NATO, the United States, under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, would be obligated to go to war with the world’s largest nuclear power to retrieve Finnish lands that an enraged Russia might grab.

Moscow has already indicated that, should Sweden and Finland join NATO, Russia will introduce new nuclear weapons into the Baltic region.

Why is it wise for us to formally agree, in perpetuity, as NATO is a permanent alliance, to go to war with Russia, for Finland?

Given the war in Ukraine and concomitant crisis in Eastern Europe, it is understandable why Stockholm and Helsinki would seek greater security beneath the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

But why would we voluntarily agree to give Sweden and Finland these war guarantees? Why would we commit to go to war with Putin’s Russia, a war that could, and likely would, escalate to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially if Russia were losing?

Finland was neutral during the Cold War. Sweden has been neutral since the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.

How did we suffer from their neutrality?

In Helsinki and Stockholm, the benefit of a U.S.-NATO commitment to go to war for Finland or Sweden is understandable.

But how does it benefit our country, the USA, to be obligated to go to war with a nation that commands the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons — over some quarrel in the Baltic Sea or Gulf of Finland that does not affect us?

Asked for his view on Sweden and Finland’s campaign to join NATO, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had a note of warning:

“We have repeatedly said that the (NATO) alliance remains a tool geared towards confrontation and its further expansion will not bring stability to the European continent.”

Should Putin’s Russia clash with Finland or Sweden today, the U.S. is free to respond, or not to respond, as it sees fit, depending on our own assessment of risks and rewards.

Why not keep it that way? Why surrender our freedom of action in some future collision involving our main adversary?

History holds lessons for us here.

In March 1939, six months after Munich, when Czechoslovakia disintegrated into its ethnic components, Britain issued an unsolicited war guarantee to Poland, then negotiating with Germany over the port city of Danzig taken from Germany by the victorious Allies after World War I.

When Germany, on Sept. 1, 1939, invaded Poland, Britain was obligated to declare war on Germany over a matter that was not a vital interest of Great Britain or its worldwide empire.

Lest we forget, it was the Bucharest Declaration of 2008, opening the door to membership in NATO for Ukraine and Georgia, that led to the recent crises in Eastern Europe and the current war.

The Russia-Georgia War of August 2008, the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and Putin’s annexation of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine all proceeded from NATO’s decision in 2008 to open the door to membership for Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine today is partly due to the U.S. and Ukraine’s refusal to rule out NATO membership for Kyiv.

No NATO nation today has a border with Russia nearly as long as that of Finland. If Finland joins NATO, will we put U.S. boots on the ground along that 830-mile border with Russia? Will U.S. warplanes fly in and out of Finnish airfields and air bases up to the border of Russia?

Collective security is said to be a good idea.

But the core of NATO security is provided by U.S. war guarantees, while most of the collecting is done by our 29 NATO allies, which could become 31 by summer’s end.

Otto von Bismarck predicted that the Great War, when it came, would be ignited by “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.”

And World War I was indeed triggered by the assassination of the Austrian archduke in Sarajevo in June 1914. The Germans came in in part because the kaiser had given Austria a “blank check” for war.

What enabled America to stay out of both world wars for years after they began was our freedom of “entangling alliances” when they began.

But today we not only lead an alliance of 30 nations, but we are adding two more members, one of which has a border of 830 miles with Russia.

How long does our luck last?

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

The West doesn’t want peace in Ukraine

By Timur Fomenko | Samizdat | April 15, 2022

Late Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defence confirmed that the Russian Black Sea flagship the Moskva had sunk after a fire was triggered by an unconfirmed cause. There is no independent confirmation of what happened amidst the sea of Ukrainian propaganda, which was quick to claim Kiev’s forces had struck the vessel with a Neptune missile. Meanwhile, the United States had also confirmed a new $800 million package of military aid to Kiev, including new heavier weapons, while EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had recently affirmed a commitment for Kiev to win on the ‘battlefield’. As Moscow gears up for a new offensive to secure the Donbass region, it should be abundantly clear that the Western powers are not seeking to resolve the conflict or secure peace, but to escalate it and transform it into a fully-fledged proxy war against Russia.

Apart from its own invasions, bombings, coups, and regime change attempts imposed on countries around the world, one of America’s preferred methods of confronting its adversaries is to ‘wage war by proxy’ against them, that is, to support the war of a group or country against them without militarily engaging themselves. The history of the Cold War is littered with such examples, such as America’s backing of the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, its backing of Saddam Hussein against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, or, on a more contemporary note, its failed attempt to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad via the local rebels. Proxy wars allow the US to minimize its own losses by having someone else die for them while also procuring geopolitical gain for themselves by undermining rival states, at the same time maximizing profits for the military-industrial complex by keeping the arms flowing.

After spending the first month of the Russia-Ukraine conflict calling for Russia to withdraw, it is now increasingly apparent that the US and its allies have changed course and are set on an ambition to drag out the conflict to impose as much damage on Russia as possible, in particular by intensifying weapon supplies, and providing training and intelligence for the Ukrainian Army. Although it was, of course, Moscow that made the choice to initiate the conflict in the first place, it has always been abundantly clear that the US viewed the situation in absolutist terms. Washington opposed any kind of prior compromise between Russia and Ukraine that may have helped avoid hostilities, which encouraged Zelensky’s overconfidence in refusing to negotiate. The same situation is panning out now. Washington does not want the war to end in a swift settlement whereby Ukraine makes concessions to Russia, because the ideal outcome is to ensure Moscow takes as much damage as possible, which means that a war of increasing escalation is in fact in the US’ interests.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, Russia’s tactical withdrawal from the north of Ukraine and a renewed focus on Donbass appears to give confidence to the West they can succeed in undermining Putin’s ‘core war goals’. Secondly, intensifying the conflict and escalation gives the West the political space to continue to impose more sanctions on Moscow and allows the US to impose more ‘unity’ on its European allies. Washington has also calculated that the broader context of this conflict will allow it to push harder for China’s isolation, force countries to take sides and expand military blocs. It has been reported recently that the US is seeking for Japan to join the AUKUS alliance and to expand the military containment of China. Recent comments by Janet Yellen also demanded Beijing oppose the Russian offensive in Ukraine or risk “losing standing” in the world. In other words, the more the US can prolong this, the more geopolitical outcomes it can get in its favour.

This escalation scenario for Russia, however, risks turning the Ukraine crisis into a new ‘great patriotic war’ – that is, a conflict in which the survival of the nation itself is at stake. Why so? The United States and its allies have made it no secret that they want the war to end in failure for Russia. Some of them would like nothing more than for a military failure to precipitate the downfall of President Putin and the government – even if the only straight-up regime change call was ostensibly a slip of the tongue by US President Joe Biden. This confirms the Kremlin’s long-held suspicions about the true intentions of the West and the goals behind the expansion of NATO.

In conclusion, this means we’re now going into very dangerous territory. The US and its allies could not be clearer that they never wanted peace or compromise and are escalating the situation in Ukraine as a bid to affirm their own geopolitical hegemony over the world, be it against Russia, India, or China. For Russia, this becomes an ever-growing struggle against the Western bid to dominate, coerce, and subjugate their country, with Ukraine as the sacrificial pawn.

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

America’s Exceptional Amnesia (About Those War Criminals…)

By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | April 13, 2022

The top-ranking U.S. diplomat, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, recently denounced Russian president Vladimir Putin as a war criminal, which has resulted in a marked uptick in the usage of that term throughout the media. Putin decided to invade Ukraine in February 2022 and has killed people in the process. That’s what happens when leaders decide to address conflict through the application of military force: people die. The U.S. government has needless to say killed many people in its military interventions abroad, most recently in the Middle East and Africa. Yet Americans are often hesitant to apply the label war criminal even to figures such as George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, whose Global War on Terror has sowed massive destruction, death, and misery, adversely affecting millions of persons for more than twenty years.

Nor do people generally regard affable Barack Obama as a war criminal, despite the considerable harm to civilians unleashed by his ill-advised war on Libya. “Drone warrior” Obama also undertook a concerted campaign to kill rather than capture terrorist suspects in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen, with which the United States was not at war, and he armed radical Islamist rebel forces in Syria, which exacerbated the conflict already underway, resulting in the deaths of even more civilians. Obama’s material and logistical support for the Saudi war against the Houthis in Yemen gave rise to a full-fledged humanitarian crisis, with disease and starvation ravaging the population.

Moving a bit farther back in time, U.S. citizens and their sympathizers abroad typically do not affix the label war criminal to Bill Clinton either, despite the fact that his 1999 bombing of Kosovo appears to have been motivated in part to distract attention from his domestic scandal at the time. The moment Clinton began dropping bombs on Kosovo, the press, in a show of patriotic solidarity, abruptly switched its attention from the notorious “blue dress” to the war in progress. Throughout his presidency, Clinton not only bombed but also imposed severe sanctions on Iraq, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of civilians died of preventable diseases.

Despite knowing about at least some of the atrocities committed in their name by the U.S. government (torture, summary execution, maiming, the provision of weapons to murderers, sanctions preventing access to medication and food, etc.), many Americans have no difficulty identifying Vladimir Putin as a war criminal while simultaneously withholding that label from their own leaders. Viewed from a broader historical perspective, none of this may seem new. During wartime, much of the populace dutifully parrots pundits and politicians in denouncing the foreign leaders with whom they disagree as criminals, while supporting the military initiatives of their own leaders, no matter what they do. Is the use of the term of derogation war criminal, then, no more than a reflection of the tribe to which one subscribes?

All wars result in avoidable harms to innocent, nonthreatening people: death and maiming, the destruction of property, impoverishment, psychological trauma, and diminished quality of life for those lucky enough to survive. Given these harsh realities, some critics maintain that all war is immoral. But morality and legality are not one and the same, for crimes violate written laws. In the practical world of international politics, what counts as a criminal war has been delineated since 1945 by the Charter of the United Nations, which Putin defied in undertaking military action against Ukraine.

According to the U.N. Charter, to which Russia is a party, any national leader who wishes to initiate a war against another nation must first air his concerns at the United Nations in the form of a war resolution. The only exception admitted by the U.N. Charter is when an armed attack has occurred on the leader’s territory, in which case the people may defend themselves, on analogy to an individual who may defend himself against violent attack by another individual in a legitimate act of self defense. Barring that “self-defense” exception, the instigation of a war by a nation must garner the support of the U.N. Security Council, the permanent members of which have veto power over any substantive resolution. Putin knew, of course, that the United States would veto any Russian resolution for war against Ukraine and so did not bother to go to the United Nations at all.

Among the vociferous critics of Putin has been none other than President Joe Biden, who not only supported but in fact rallied for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was equally illegal, by the very same criterion which makes Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a criminal war, and by extension, Putin a war criminal. Indeed, Putin arguably followed the U.S. precedent and longstanding practice in “going it alone.” For the very same reason (the likely veto of any possible resolution) President Clinton decided to “go it alone” in choosing to bomb Kosovo in 1999, as did President George W. Bush when he ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003. President Barack Obama took a slightly different tack in 2011, for he deceptively secured support at the United Nations for a no-fly zone in Libya but then proceeded to carry out a full-on aerial assault in that country over a period of several months, which culminated in the removal of Muammar Gaddafi from power and ultimately his murder by an angry mob.

We know that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was illegal according to the letter of the law not only because former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan plainly stated that it was, but also because the U.S. government drafted a war resolution only to withdraw it when it emerged that they did not have enough support to secure the needed U.N. approval. If U.S. leaders had believed that the invasion was completely legitimate according to the terms of the U.N. Charter, then they would have felt no need to draft a resolution in justifying it. Ex post facto, when it emerged that the alleged WMD serving as one of the primary pretexts for the war were nowhere to be found, the U.S. government claimed that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was simply a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War (which had received the support of the United Nations), or was justified because Saddam Hussein allegedly tried to assassinate George H.W. Bush in 1993, or because previous U.N. resolutions relating to the disarmament of Iraq and the elimination of its biological and chemical warfare capacity implied that military force would be permissible in the event of Saddam Hussein’s noncompliance. On the propaganda front, the administration also pumped through the media pretexts such as that the people of Iraq needed to be liberated from their ruthless dictator, and it was high time to allow democracy to flourish throughout the land.

People have been writing about war crimes for millennia, long before the establishment of the United Nations and the ICC (International Criminal Court). The framework proffered in the 1945 U.N. Charter derives from the classical just war tradition. By definition, a war criminal is someone who commits war crimes, but according to just war theory, there are two ways to become an unjust warrior: one is to wage an unjust war; the other is to conduct a war unjustly. These two forms of injustice are outlined in the jus ad bellum and jus in bello requirements on a just war, the interpretive fluidity of which has often been seized upon by political leaders intent on waging war. Such leaders use just war theory opportunistically as a template in developing pro-war propaganda. The aim of the drafters of the U.N. Charter was to rein in such bellicose tendencies and thereby avert tragic and massively destructive conflicts such as World Wars I and II, by requiring explicit and intersubjective agreement among nations before a war could be waged.

In the modern world, where communication between government administrators is always an alternative to the use of military force, the jus ad bellum requirement of “last resort” has become especially problematic, if not impossible to satisfy, much to the chagrin of war marketers. Some leaders flagrantly refuse to negotiate, as did President George H.W. Bush before launching Operation Desert Storm in 1991. By informing Saddam Hussein (in a letter) that “Nor will there by any negotiation. Principle cannot be compromised,” Bush Senior effectively proclaimed to the world that war had become the last resort. But this was only because the U.S. president himself refused to consider any nonmilitary means to resolve the conflict. Even more dramatically than all of the war criminals to follow in his footsteps, George H.W. Bush demonstrated that modern leaders decide to wage war and then, if pressed, with the aid of their public relations staff and media pundit propagandists, they interpret the tenets of just war theory so as to support their military intervention.

In drumming up support for the first U.S. war on Iraq, the Bush Senior administration deployed a variety of deceptive techniques, including a heartwrenching story about Kuwaiti babies being ripped from their incubators by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. Despite being an utter fabrication, that story was instrumental in garnering international support for Bush Senior’s coveted military campaign. Given the mendacious means by which approval for the 1991 Gulf War was granted by the United Nations, it should come as no surprise that the war was also conducted criminally. Among other atrocities, Iraqi soldiers attempting to retreat were buried alive, and civilian structures such as water treatment facilities were destroyed. Strikingly, even the claims of U.S. soldiers themselves to have been severely harmed by exposure to chemical agents released into the atmosphere during the bombing of factories were denied for years by the very officials who sent them to fight.

Deception is a form of coercion, which implies that a leader who offers false pretexts to secure the approval of the U.N. Security Council, as did George H.W. Bush in 1991, is no less a criminal than a leader whose war abjectly violates the written letter of the law, as in the case of his son George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Indeed, in predicting how leaders will conduct themselves during the prosecution of a war, there may be no more dependable indicator than how they went about garnering support for it. By now it is common knowledge that all of the proffered pretexts for the 2003 invasion of Iraq were bogus, from the nonexistent WMDs to the alleged collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Given the many lies used to persuade politicians and pundits to support the invasion, no one should have been surprised when those who waged a criminal war proceeded to render and torture suspects, kill civilians at checkpoints, deploy white phosphorus and depleted uranium-tipped missiles, raze entire cities, and terrorize civilians with lethal drones.

Fast forward to 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military under Vladimir Putin. President Putin, like everyone, including all warmakers, has his own perspective on what he is doing. Following the example of all recent U.S. presidents in promoting their use of military force, Putin offered a “moral” pretext for his invasion of Ukraine. Among other things, he claimed to be protecting a portion of the Ukrainian people from Nazis. Comparing the various “humanitarian” pretexts offered by the U.S. government for its military interventions over the past three decades, the 1999 bombing of Kosovo probably comes closest to the template brandished by Putin in 2022.

In 1999, Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was painted by propagandists as “the new Hitler,” said to be slaughtering the ethnic Muslim population of Kosovars. The bombing campaign was rationalized by the need to stop Milosevic and protect civilians. Because Milosevic was on friendly terms with Russia, which held veto power at the U.N. Security Council, the Clinton administration waged its war, through NATO, without seeking the support of the United Nations. The crisis was depicted as a dire emergency situation requiring immediate action. The manner in which the intervention was conducted, however, with pilots flying high above the ground to avoid being shot down, thereby risking increased civilian casualties, belied those aims. More civilians were killed in the period after the bombing commenced than before, as Serbian soldiers were provoked to fight even more viciously in response to the aerial assault.

Putin’s anti-Nazi rhetoric notwithstanding, it is plausible that the Russian president’s primary concerns are geopolitical. Clearly troubled by the expansion of NATO to the east, right up to Russia’s border, Putin appears to want to secure his territory from any threats from the West. Given the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which was supported if not fully instigated by the U.S. government, Putin is no doubt concerned about the persistent hostility of NATO toward Russia, despite the fact that the U.S.S.R. no longer exists, and Russia is now a capitalist country. The conflict in Ukraine, as portrayed to television viewers, has offered nonstop confirmation of the prevailing picture of Putin as a ruthless dictator, which has been embraced by Western political elites since the 2016 presidential election, and was aggressively promoted by media outlets throughout the years of Russiagate during the Trump administration.

Putin is relentlessly denounced as a war criminal and the evil enemy by warmongers in the United States, even while knowing, as any rational person does, that the war must ultimately end at the negotiation table, given the reality of Russia’s arsenal of nuclear arms. When President Joe Biden angrily pronounced, “For God’s sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power,” he endangered not only Ukrainians but the very future of humanity by inching the conflict ever closer to a catastrophic nuclear confrontation. Arguably nothing could have been more reckless than for President Biden to announce to the world that the U.S. government’s intention was to depose Putin. Why? Because Putin has already seen, in recent history, what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. If the Russian leader’s removal from power, indeed his very death, is in fact the foreign policy objective of the U.S. government, then Putin has no reason not to use nuclear weapons and take down as many people with him as possible.

While speaking to troops in Poland (a member of NATO), President Biden effectively informed them that they were being deployed to Ukraine, though earlier he had stated that the United States would not be entering into the conflict, because Ukraine was not a member of NATO and not a U.S. interest. Was Libya a member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? Of course not. But that did not stop President Obama from using NATO to wage a full-scale, regime-change military campaign in 2011. Biden’s staff immediately clarified that in fact U.S. soldiers were not being sent to Ukraine, thus sending a mixed and extremely confusing message about what the U.S. policy actually was.

To the dismay of the world community, Biden blundered yet again by setting up the operational equivalent to a red-line scenario, asserting that the U.S. military would retaliate “in kind,” should Putin opt to use chemical weapons. To some this may seem less like a red line than a potential tit-for-tat, but either way it is extremely dangerous. Under the ordinary understanding of what those words mean, Biden was stating that a chemical attack by Russia would be countered by a chemical attack by the United States. The hypothetical scenario limned by Biden was doubly dangerous, for it opened up the possibility for false flag attacks to be carried out by parties interested in drawing the United States into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. That sort of provocation strategy has been seen in many contexts throughout history, including both Kosovo and Syria.

We already know from what happened recently in Syria, and many other places since 1945, that the provision of more weapons to a war zone exacerbates violent conflict. Whatever those who furnish military aid may intend, the weapons eventually find their way into the arms of persons willing to use them, for whatever their reasons happen to be. The more savage the war between Russia and Ukraine becomes, and the more civilian casualties reported by the media, the more likely it becomes that the conflict will escalate, drawing in other parties, including neighboring nations. Were NATO to get involved, that would be operationally equivalent to the United States’ overt entry into the war, given that NATO is dominated by the superpower.

When President Biden was asked to clarify all of his troubling remarks—that Putin had to be deposed, that U.S. soldiers were headed to Ukraine, and that the use of chemical weapons would be retaliated against (in kind!), Biden oscillated between reaffirming his statements and denying that he ever made them, leaving the entire world in the uncomfortable position of having to pin their hopes for a rational resolution to the conflict on Vladimir Putin himself, despite his having been relentlessly portrayed as the evil Manichean enemy, a ruthless dictator who is supposedly beyond the reach of reason. In reality, every military conflict ultimately ends, sooner or later, at the negotiating table. Refusal to negotiate belies an utter insouciance toward the plight of people living under bombing and, in this case, given the danger of a nuclear war, the future of humanity itself.

The question now for U.S. government officials such as Secretary of State Blinken, who has shunned negotiation for months, is this: Why allow the destruction of any more human lives and property in Ukraine before agreeing to sit down and talk? Blinken may believe that dead Ukrainians are a small price to pay for U.S. foreign policy objectives, but the victims would surely disagree, as should the rest of the international community. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that so-called diplomats now regard politics as war by other means, having fully inverted the Clausewitzian formula. Nothing could be more obvious than that the longer the conflict is allowed to drag on, and prolonged through the injection of yet more weapons into the region, the more people, including Ukrainian civilians, will be killed. In other words, through postponing negotiation and sending tons of weapons to Ukraine, the U.S. government is using civilian victims as the means to its own foreign policy aims. Such a tactic is no less criminal than is punishing innocent people for the crimes of the guilty, the inevitable effect of economic sanctions against entire countries run by leaders who, in virtue of their position of power, retain privileged access to whatever they might need.

Biden’s debilitated mental state and inability to keep his story straight is the perfect metaphor for the attitude of Americans toward war criminals. They blithely ignore or brush aside the crimes committed by their own leaders while supporting policies which will intensify rather than resolve conflicts abroad. The term war criminal is at this point used as a rhetorical soundbite (à la just war ), bandied about as a way of distracting attention from the speakers, who delusively imply that because they can identify war criminals, the label could not possibly apply to themselves.

Laurie Calhoun is the author of We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, You Can Leave, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique.

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

US not planning to return seized Russian assets – Jake Sullivan

Samizdat | April 14, 2022

Washington is not planning to return the assets confiscated from Russian businessmen as part of the latest sanctions imposed on Moscow over the military operation in Ukraine, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Thursday.

“Our goal is not to give them back,” Sullivan said at the Economic Club of Washington, adding that the US authorities would use the seized assets “in a better way.”

“There are authorities we have, and there are further authorities that maybe we could develop, and that’s something we’re actively looking at,” the official added.

The White House has introduced several rounds of sanctions against Moscow since February 24, when Russia’s military operation in Ukraine began. As part of the penalties, the US authorities arrested Russian foreign assets along with those belonging to the country’s businesses and high-profile individuals.

Several US congressmen have already called for the sale or liquidation of Russian assets caught up in the sanctions campaign, stating that the proceeds should be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow has no plans to nationalize foreign assets in Russia in response. “Unlike Western countries, we will respect property rights,” he said.

Stephen Lendman:

According to the International Criminal Court:

“(D)estroying or seizing the enemy’s property unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.

This rule is included in military manuals.

It’s applicable to armed conflicts.

Its violation is an offense, according to laws of many nation states on what’s permitted or not in armed conflicts.

And this resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in February 1946.

It’s not binding international law like Security Council resolutions but significant nonetheless. … Read full article

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Face Mask Cult

The Daily Sceptic | April 13, 2022 

There follows a post by Hector Drummond, a former academic who worked in risk, who says when he came to research his new book The Face Mask Cult on the effectiveness of masks against COVID-19 the evidence was threadbare.

In 2021 I decided to write an FAQ on all aspects of Covid, lockdowns and non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). I started with face masks, as they seemed to be the easiest issue to deal with, thinking that the whole mask situation could be summed up in five to six pages. After a few days work I had twenty pages of text, and another twenty pages of reminder notes on further aspects of face masks that I needed to consider and research. Those notes ballooned out in the next few weeks, and I realised that the use of face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 was a far bigger topic than I had appreciated, and would require substantial amounts of writing, and months of research and literature-reading.

It took until the next year before I decided I’d written enough on the topic. I had read an enormous number of scientific papers and other articles on masks, and gone through some of them with a fine-tooth comb (see Part 3 of the book, for instance). I had spent considerable time analysing, synthesising and rewriting, and my short FAQ article had become a comprehensive 400-page book that tackled all aspects of the issue, as well as a unique resource with its extensive scientific literature review section.

In all my researches I failed to come across very much in the way of convincing evidence that masks work. The papers that were supposed to show that they did all turned out to be poor pieces of science. None were randomly-controlled peer-reviewed trials. Some were observational studies, with inadequate controls for dealing with the possibility of faulty or biased recollection. Some were ‘modelling’ studies, in which a computer program was used to ‘model’ the effect of face masks on disease spread. Modelling studies are generally hopeless at providing any confirming evidence for the effectiveness of face masks as they require the modellers to make assumptions about how effective the masks are when writing their programs. Some were mannequin studies, in which a dummy in a lab with artificial breathing functions, rather than a real person in the real world, was used. Some were simply tests of the porosity of various materials in regard to salt aerosols.

Most studies ignored the issue of face mask gaps, despite it being well-known in the field that gaps around the sides of masks will let such large amounts of virions in and out that any effect that the masks do have will be completely negated. (This is why medical institutions require ‘fit tests’ for masks – not that fit tests are very reliable, as I explain in the book.)

Even these dubious studies that claimed to show an effect for masks didn’t show much of an effect. The less wild ones would typically claim that the cloth masks would stop 5% to 15% of virions, but they never presented any reason to believe the further claim that was often made that this would cause a 5% to 15% reduction in cases, or a 5% to 15% reduction in deaths. The closest such studies got to doing so was when an author would occasionally speculate, in an airy fashion, that if the disease in question’s R0 rate happened to be close to 1.0, then maybe widespread mask use (assuming masks had some small effect) would be enough to push the R0 rate below 1.0, in which case the disease would die out, although of course even if all their assumptions were true and masks did push the disease’s R0 rate below 1.0 it doesn’t follow that the disease would die out anytime soon. It could well be that the disease’s R0 rate would quickly come back over 1.0 again as soon as we stop masking, and so in order to stop the disease spreading again we would have to wear masks for years on end, or even indefinitely.

But what about all those government reports written by distinguished scientists assuring us that there were now truckloads of research proving that masks work? This is perhaps the most shocking part of the whole face mask con. The 2020 DELVE report and its updates, the 2020 Royal Society report, and the 2022 Department for Education’s Evidence Summary were disgraceful pieces of misinformation, as I show in detail in the book. Even more shocking, perhaps, is the fact that there have been so many acts of wrongdoing in the last two years that the scientific butchery committed in these reports is completely unknown to the general public. The fact, for instance, that the Royal Society’s report relied heavily upon a low-grade Chinese study, written in Chinese only, and published in an obscure Chinese journal, which reported fantastically unrealistic results, is never even going to briefly flit through the mind of the average person, because the average person will never come across any reference to this shameful affair in the mainstream media.

I felt vindicated as I put the finishing touches to the book when several prominent advocates of masks, such as Trish Greenhalgh, Jeremy Howard and many others, started to admit that cloth masks were useless. Not that they wanted us to stop wearing masks – they now wanted us to move onto medical-grade respirator masks, like N95s and FFP2s, as Germany required. Needless to say, these mask fanatics didn’t bother to mention that Germany’s stringent mask policy has been a complete failure.

The book I finished up with is a serious corrective to the endless propaganda we have been fed about masks. It lays out the case against masks in detail, considers the harms done by mask-wearing (harms which are usually ignored by scientists and governments), closely examines many claims made about masks by both sides, and backs it all up with an enormous number of references to the scientific literature. Whenever anyone who wants you to wear a mask says, “Follow the Science”, just show them this book and say, “I already did”.

You can buy the book here in paperback and on Kindle.

April 15, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

What’s Keeping China From Buying More Russian Crude?

By Tsvetana Paraskova | Oilprice.com | April 13, 2022

Outbound shipments of Russian oil have yet to show signs of a major decline, as many analysts feared last month. In fact, Russia’s shipments of crude oil rebounded in the first full week of April to the highest level so far this year, Bloomberg News’ tracker of crude leaving Russian ports showed on Monday. Yet, a “buyers’ strike” in Europe with many majors refusing to deal with Russian spot cargoes is forcing Russian crude to make much longer and complicated voyages to reach willing buyers in Asia. While China and India are not shying away from Russian crude—which sells at hefty discounts attracting price-sensitive buyers—the logistics of shipping oil from Russia’s Black Sea and Baltic ports to Asia and the scarce tanker availability, bank guarantees, and insurance for Russian cargoes would limit the amount of oil that Asia could take and compensate for lost barrels that are no longer going to Europe, analysts say.

Due to major shifts in global trade routes to accommodate more Russian oil going to Asia, the world’s top-importing crude region will not be able to accommodate all the oil Europe is shunning.

Shifts in trade routes are already happening.

Some volumes previously bound for the West will be replaced by Asia, but not all, analysts say. That’s because of the two-month-long trip to Asia (and a four-month round trip) which will necessitate many supertankers that are not readily available on the global tanker market, says Zoltan Pozsar, Global Head of Short-?Term Interest Rate Strategy at Credit Suisse.

Before the war, 1.3 million bpd of Russian oil was shipped from the Baltic ports of Primorsk and Ust Luga to Europe on Aframax carriers, and these journeys to Hamburg or Rotterdam take a week or two to complete, Pozsar wrote in a market commentary on March 31.

“If Russia now needs to move the same amount of oil not to Europe but China, the first logistical problem it faces is that it can’t load Urals onto VLCCs in Primorsk or Ust Luga because those ports aren’t deep enough to dock VLCCs. Russia will first have to sail Aframax vessels to a port for STS crude transfer (ship -to -ship crude transfer) onto VLCCs,” Pozsar says.

The STS transfer takes weeks, and after the transfer is done, the VLCC will sail two months east, discharge, and go back to the Baltics, which is another two months.

“Conservatively, Russian crude traveled about a week or two before it fueled economic activity (the time it took to sail smaller Aframax carriers from Primorsk to Hamburg) and now will have to travel at least four months before it fuels economic activity,” Credit Suisse’s Pozsar notes.

“Worse, it’s not just the time to market that’s getting worse, but we also end up with a ship shortage and a corresponding surge in shipping freight rates,” he added.

According to OPEC’s analysis in its latest Monthly Oil Market Report published this week, “Tanker markets are being broadly impacted by uncertainties related to the conflict in Eastern Europe, which is expected to affect trade patterns.”

“Aframax spot freight rates around the Mediterranean are up more than 70% in March from January levels, while spot Suezmax rates in the Atlantic basin are some 50% higher over the same period. The strength filtered up to VLCCs, improving overall sentiment,” OPEC said.

The reshuffling of the Russian barrels is very attractive for buyers such as China and India due to the hefty discounts on Urals. But refiners in China and India face challenges in taking up too much Russian crude in the short term because of contractual obligations with Middle Eastern producers, according to Wood Mackenzie.

In addition, China hasn’t shown yet too much appetite for Russian crude because of several factors, WoodMac said. These include expensive freight for Russian cargoes due to the sanctions, challenges with payments and tanker insurance, the fact that a Urals voyage takes double the time compared to Middle Eastern grades going to China, and Chinese refiners’ long-term contracts with oil exporters from the Middle East.

Russia may still have willing buyers for its oil in developing Asia, and those buyers may not care about the ethics of buying Russian crude, but they will certainly care about tanker rates and availability and much longer voyages.

April 14, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Leave a comment

Google limits what publishers can say about the Ukraine war if they want to stay monetized

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | April 14, 2022

Google’s Adsense this week sent an email to publishers reminding them of the new policy about monetization of content related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Google will not allow publishers to show ads on content that condones the war.

“Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war,” the email read.

“This pause includes, but is not limited to, claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”

The email was a reminder of a previous policy that stated: “Due to the war in Ukraine, we will pause monetization of content that exploits, dismisses, or condones the war.”

If a publisher insists on posting content that condones the war, Google ads will be removed from such pages, and Google has a monopoly on website advertising infrastructure.

“Google helps to enable a free and open web by helping publishers monetize their content and advertisers reach prospective customers with useful, relevant products and services,” the policy states. “Maintaining trust in the ads ecosystem requires setting limits on what we will monetize.”

Failure to comply with the policy could result in a publisher’s monetization being terminated.

“Failure to comply with these policies may result in Google blocking ads from appearing against your content, or suspending or terminating your account,” the policy says.

April 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

NATO pins nuclear plans on F-35

Samizdat | April 15, 2022

NATO planners are updating the US “nuclear sharing” program to account for most European allies planning to buy F-35 joint strike fighter jets, the alliance’s director of nuclear policy said this week. Lockheed Martin’s fifth-generation fighter has been embraced by multiple US allies, including most recently Germany, despite the Pentagon’s own misgivings about the program.

“We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and into our exercising and things like that as those capabilities come online,” Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels, said on Wednesday, adding that “By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned” to the F-35.,

Cox spoke during an online discussion hosted by the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center (ANWA DC), a US think tank, according to Defense News.

Her remarks come a month after Berlin said Germany would replace its aging Tornado jets with F-35s, committing to buy up to three dozen and specifically citing the nuclear sharing mission as factoring in the decision.

Cox said that other NATO allies currently operating the F-35, such as Poland, Denmark or Norway, might be asked to support nuclear sharing missions in the future, adding that NATO “will also have some operational advantages with the F-35 since there will be opportunities for enhanced networking and integration across the force.”

In addition to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey are currently hosting an estimated 150 US nuclear weapons – mainly B-61 gravity bombs, intended to be carried by smaller fighter-bombers like the Tornado or the F-16 – according to estimates by the British think tank Chatham House.

Finland and Sweden have recently voiced a desire to join NATO, and Helsinki already announced it would buy some 60 F-35s in early February. Russia has responded by saying it would reposition some of its troops and nuclear deterrent accordingly.

The US first deployed some of its nuclear bombs in Europe in the 1960s. Ending this program was high on the list of security demands Moscow presented to the US and NATO in December 2021, which were rejected in January – a month before the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine.

The F-35 was originally proposed as a cost-effective modular design that could replace multiple older models in service with the US Air Force, Navy and the Marines. In reality, it turned into three distinct designs with a lifetime project cost of over $1.7 trillion, the most expensive weapons program in US history.

In addition to the price tag, the fifth-generation stealth fighter has also been plagued with performance issues, to the point where the new USAF chief of staff requested a study into a different aircraft in February 2021.

General Charles Q. Brown Jr. compared the F-35 to a “high end” sports car, a Ferrari one drives on Sundays only, and sought proposals for a “clean sheet design” of a “5th-gen minus” workhorse jet instead. Multiple US outlets characterized his proposal as a “tacit admission” that the F-35 program had failed.

Russia launched its military offensive in Ukraine on February 24, following Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the 2014 German and French-brokered Minsk Protocols, designed to give the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. Moscow has now recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc.

April 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

The question MSM should be asking about Partygate

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 14, 2022

Partygate, as the name suggests, concerns parties and in particular parties in Downing Street during lockdowns. For those who don’t know no. 10 Downing Street is where the current Prime Minister works and resides, in this case, Boris Johnson. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, lives and works next door at number 11. Number 10 may look small from the outside but actually comprises of more than 100 rooms.

From March 2020, the UK had a number of lockdowns and until recently some form of restrictions in place. As with most countries, many of these restrictions included who you could and couldn’t visit or numbers of people allowed indoors or outdoors.

It has since transpired that whilst authoring and implementing all of these draconian rules, along with the harsh penalties if the rules were broken, Boris, his wife Carrie, Rishi and other staff at Downing Street had at least 12 parties. At least 50 penalty notices are being handed out to Boris, Carrie, Rishi and others.

The MSM is focussing on Boris breaking the rules and lying when asked if he had broken them. However, the question they should be asking is:

Why was the government desperately trying to scare the public about Covid when they themselves weren’t scared in the slightest?

Were they so stressed and tired of it all that they were happy to risk their lives just to have a few parties or did they know, the whole time, that Covid would mainly kill the elderly and vulnerable so they themselves were perfectly safe. Or perhaps they knew of the potential dangers a lab made virus could pose but had access to an already prepared inhibitor which targeted the spike protein?

If the correct answer is that they knew Covid was not as deadly as being made out, then the MSM should be investigating why they continued to scare the public. Where did the idea come from? Why was it pushed so hard if they knew it was rubbish? Why was no cost/benefit analysis undertaken and if it was why did they continue to destroy the economy?

Another anomaly, which verges into conspiracy theory territory, is why was Boris Johnson partying after he came out of intensive care less than a month previously? Surely you would take it easy for a while after such a big scare? Even if Boris wasn’t bothered, staff would have been shell shocked and scared for their own safety? Politicians and Journalists voiced rumours at the time but they were quickly retracted.

Come on MSM, step up and ask the correct questions.

April 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Smiling US health chief shrugs off her Covid blunders

By James Rogers | TCW Defending Freedom | April 14, 2022

Dr Rochelle Walensky is director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national public health agency of the United States.

Just over a year ago, on March 29, 2021, Dr Walensky publicly stated: ‘Vaccinated people do not carry the virus . . . and do not get sick.’ 

She also claimed that the Pfizer jab was 95 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19. Last month Dr Walensky answered questions at Washington University, St Louis, during which she admitted that her claim of 95 per cent Pfizer jab-effectiveness came from CNN, which based its report on a press release from Pfizer.

Walensky also claimed she was unaware the shots might lose effectiveness over time. Yet she’s a highly qualified public health official, and even 15-year-old science students know that cold/flu viruses are prone to mutations, which go a long way to altering a vaccine’s effectiveness. It was quite galling to hear her talk about ‘waning jab efficacy’, then casually smile, shrug her shoulders and say: ‘Science is not black and white, it’s not immediate . . . science is grey’ i.e. that nobody could be certain.

Contrary to Dr Walensky’s position in spring 2022, throughout 2021, the US authorities (and elsewhere) were so certain of jab efficacy that they insisted that everyone had to get jabbed. Never mind the psychological pressure and moral blackmail, they threatened serious consequences: fines, imprisonment, ‘no jab, no job’ and ‘no jab, no school’ mandates. They were so certain about jab efficacy that they threatened peoples’ livelihoods, careers, businesses and education. They were certain enough to foment severe discord in society, creating disputes and anxiety that damaged, fractured and destroyed marriages, families and friendships.

They pushed the jabs this hard, but they had no real idea how well they worked. Now we know that they don’t work at all; we also strongly suspect that the jabs actually make infection levels and illnesses worse, and this does not include jab-related deaths, conditions and illnesses that should result in the total withdrawal of these chemicals.

The Walenskys of this world were so certain, yet it in reality they were so wrong, so her airy dismissal of these errors in her interview was absolutely breath-taking.

A few questions also spring to mind:

Dr Walensky has a BA in biochemistry and molecular biology and a masters in public health from Harvard. She is a scientist. How is it possible that someone with such qualifications, and holding a position of such responsibility, doesn’t know that cold/flu viruses mutate?

Dr Walensky is also a MD. Has she forgotten the ethics and principles of informed consent? We’ll return to this point.

Why was the director the CDC accepting information about a new drug from its manufacturer (Pfizer) via CNN? Should the CDC accept the manufacturer’s own assessment and then tell the whole population with certainty that it is ‘safe and effective’? Shouldn’t they be doing their own thorough investigations and evaluations? Especially since mRNA technology was so new and untested.

Did it not occur to Dr Walensky that if the new, ‘safe and effective’ mRNA-based jab was not ‘effective’, it might not be all that ‘safe’ either? Did the possibility that the drug’s emergency authorisation ought to be withdrawn not occur to her? If it didn’t, her competence must be questioned. If it did, and she discussed it, we need to know a lot more details. If it did, and she dismissed it, she ought to be asked a lot more questions.

The US-based Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) pressure group has obtained data revealing that 70 per cent of the CDC staff who got Covid from August last year onwards were fully vaccinated. This raises other questions:

With such evidence in front of Dr Walensky, why didn’t the CDC withdraw support for government mandates?

Why didn’t Dr Walensky tell President Biden that he might think again before dishonourably discharging members of the armed services for declining a jab?

Why didn’t the CDC inform the American public that claims about jab efficacy were completely and utterly unreliable? Had they known that being jabbed didn’t stop people getting C-19 or passing it on, then many people may well have decided to decline consent to be jabbed – at least to their second and third shots – and thereby avoid post-jab effects, serious medical problems or even death.

Was it not completely unethical for Dr Walensky to withhold this important information? Was she not expressly bound to inform the public that there are risks involved in accepting an untested synthetic compound – and that it did not work as intended anyway? Did she wilfully deprive them of information that would have facilitated ‘informed consent’?

Dr Walensky has also publicly discredited the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-administered by the FDA and the CDC. Does she not know that VAERS has revealed that the Covid jabs are the most damaging ever created? How can she pooh-pooh these VAERS figures when they are supported by WHO statistics: 2,457,386 reports of adverse reaction to C-19 jabs 2020-21, against 6,891 adverse reactions after smallpox jabs 1968-2021. Of course, smallpox is/was a much bigger threat than C-19.

How can Dr Walensky not know these numbers? Why has she not halted the jab roll-out? No matter how well she is supported by the American authorities and the MSM – who insist that criticism is ‘misinformation’ – this isn’t going to go away, especially if they insist that more jabs are needed every year or every six months.

People have stopped believing and are recovering belief in their own judgement, hopefully in sufficient numbers that dissuades them from jabbing their kids.

Surely Rochelle Walensky must resign. Given the damage that has been done to the physical, emotional and economic health of tens of millions, it’s not good enough to shrug one’s shoulders and say, ‘We weren’t sure’.

April 14, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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