Details emerge about ‘explosive device’ at Russian media site in Germany
Samizdat | May 7, 2022
An improvised explosive device (IED) discovered late on Friday on the grounds of a Berlin compound that houses journalists from Russia’s RIA Novosti and Sputnik Germany media outlets, had been stuffed into a remote basement ventilation shaft, Sergey Feoktistov, editor-in-chief of Sputnik Germany, has said.
According to the journalist, the device had been found by sheer accident when the Russian journalists and their family members had been clearing dirt and removing glass shards after a window at the compound had been smashed by a bottle in another suspected attack.
The center’s residents and Russian media office staff at first thought it was a mock-up device designed to just scare them, the editor-in-chief admitted, adding that the device even appeared to be somewhat “comic” at first.
“What put us on alert was that it was hidden,” Feoktistov explained. The IED was found at a relatively “remote” area not frequented by staff members, he said, adding that people at the compound usually do not check the basement ventilation shafts.
Now, after the police have confirmed to him it was a real IED, Feoktistov believes it could have caused some serious damage to the area. “Should it have gone off, there would have been a major blaze,” the editor-in-chief said, adding that it “was planted not to just intimidate us.”
The bomb, which appeared to be a jerry can wrapped in duct tape with visible wires protruding out of it and filled with a “mixture of petrol and oil,” had been placed in such a way that all that flammable liquid would get into the basement in case of an explosion, Feoktistov explained.
The police are also treating the incident seriously, he said, adding that large police forces, including sappers, regional and federal criminal police, had been deployed to the scene. According to Feoktistov, the officers called it an improvised “incendiary bomb” during a conversation with him. Police have not made any official statements relating to the incident so far.
According to Feoktistov, it is not the first instance in which the compound for Russian journalists and their families has been attacked. The residence has been pelted with bottles and eggs and its walls have been sprayed with offensive graffiti in Russian, the editor-in-chief has said, adding that the compound residents have filed between five and seven complaints with the police over such incidents.
No suspects have so far been identified in this case, Feoktistov has said, adding that, according to him, it could be almost “anyone.” The Berlin police has remained tight-lipped on the incident, only telling local media that the officers had carried out an “investigation” at the site.
American progressives join the War Party
Some leftist commentators can barely conceal their enthusiasm for American involvement in the Ukraine war
US representative Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez is among the Democratic Party members to vote in favor of a Republican sponsored Ukraine war bill
By James W Carden | Asia Times | May 6, 2022
Russia’s war on Ukraine has, among many other things, highlighted a consequential, indeed historic, shift taking place in American politics with regard to foreign policy.
A recent vote in the House of Representatives helps tell the tale. On April 28, Congress voted by an overwhelming majority of 417-10 to pass Republican Senator John Cornyn’s bill that would revive Lend Lease and apply it to Ukraine.
As is well known, Lend Lease was the brainchild of Franklin D Roosevelt as a way to get around the series of Neutrality Acts passed by Congress in the 1930s, in order to help supply the British war effort against Nazi Germany.
One might be forgiven for wondering if such legislation is really necessary today; after all, according to numbers released by the State Department, the US has provided more than $6.4 billion in “security assistance” to Ukraine since 2014. And last week President Joe Biden put forward a request for another $20.4 billion in “additional security and military assistance” as part of a $33 billion aid package to Ukraine.
So what was the actual point of reviving Lend Lease? Well, it was in part, as is the case with many things that happen on Capitol Hill, performative: a way to signal to US arms manufacturers that constitute much of the political donor class that the money spigot will remain wide open for the foreseeable future.
But the Cornyn bill also tells us that the center of gravity of the anti-war movement is shifting away from its traditional home on the progressive left.
In the century since the US embarked on its journey to global hegemony with the Spanish-American War of choice in 1898, it was most often progressive Democrats who rallied under the banner of peace.
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, the first woman elected to Congress, was one of 50 dissenting votes against American entering the First World War. Progressive magazines such as The Nation were a thorn in the side of proud American imperialists like Henry Cabot Lodge, Brooks Adams and Theodore Roosevelt.
The historian Barbara Tuchman noted that Roosevelt in particular “confused the desire for peace with physical cowardice.” Roosevelt took delight in targeting papers and magazines like the Evening Post and The Nation, which he wrote, “in all of whom there exists absolute physical dread of danger and hardship and who therefore tend to hysterical denunciation and fear of war.”
The Vietnam era marked perhaps the high point of progressive dissent against the American war machine. The anti-war movement was certainly well represented (especially by today’s standards) in the US Senate, where J William Fulbright, William Proxmire, Wayne Morse, Robert F Kennedy, George McGovern, Eugene McCarthy and Frank Church opposed president Lyndon B Johnson’s war.
Perhaps the most recent example of exemplary progressive bravery on Capitol Hill is that of Representative Barbara Lee, who cast the sole vote in the House against granting the George W Bush administration practically unrestricted power to wage war (via the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF) in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Now, it seems we have entered a new era.
The House’s overwhelming passage of the Cornyn bill will in effect cement Washington’s status as a co-belligerent in a war against a nuclear-armed and increasingly unpredictable Russia.
A look at the roll-call vote in the House shows that only 10 members voted against Cornyn’s bill, all of whom were Republicans.
Not a single Democratic progressive voted against the legislation. All the leaders of the progressive left in Congress, including Ro Khanna (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Pramila Jaypal (D-MI), voted for Lend Lease – as did every member of the so-called “Squad,” including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Cori Bush (D-MO).
But perhaps most important of all was the vote cast by Representative Barbara Lee.
Not only did Lee vote for the Cornyn bill, she accompanied Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the House’s leading Russia hawk Adam Schiff on a trip to Kiev last weekend, where they paid homage to the Ukrainian president and promised US support “until victory is won.”
Lee’s vote takes on additional significance since she chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, which oversees foreign-aid programs such as those funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.
Still worse, progressive activists, journalists and thought leaders have likewise joined the American War Party. A longtime progressive hero and anti-poverty activist, the Reverend Dr William J Barber II, recently released a statement that attempted to leverage the tragedy of the war to drum up support for his grassroots campaign of poor people’s marches.
In a fundraising letter, Barber writes that “Russia’s assault on Ukraine has produced scenes that demand action from people who want to hold on to our humanity.”
“If Russia’s atrocities in Ukraine demand action,” said Barber, “then so too does the failure of the US Senate to pass Build Back Better’s provisions for affordable housing, green jobs, living wages for care workers, and a child tax credit that will immediately lift 4 million children out of poverty.”
After reading the statement, a Chicago-based labor activist wrote to me in disgust. “This [expletive] happens all the time in the left-wing non-profit industrial complex,” he wrote. “They have a really, really bad sense of history, and specious moral claims and comparisons like these are made all the time – usually done to raise money.”
The darling of the progressive foreign policy community, Bernie Sanders’ foreign-policy adviser Matt Duss, recently defended the policy that arguably brought us to this point, NATO expansion.
Brooklyn lefties were once so besotted by Duss that he landed on the cover of the The Nation magazine. His recent comments will no doubt keep him high in their esteem because, with few exceptions, progressive writers and activists have abandoned their commitment to peace: We are all Ukrainians now, or so we are told.
Some progressive commentators can barely conceal their enthusiasm for American involvement. Here is the chickenhawk founding editor of the progressive magazine American Prospect, Robert Kuttner:
“It is appalling that the West keeps lionizing Zelensky, giving him standing ovations after he addresses national parliaments, but denying him what he needs to save his country.
“What does he need? He needs warplanes.
“Sooner or later, NATO will have to give Ukraine planes powerful enough to annihilate Russia’s invading armies. It might as well be sooner.”
Quincy Institute non-resident fellow Joe Cirincione, a longtime nuclear-arms-control expert, has, like Kuttner, embraced his inner chickenhawk. He recently praised the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization for supplying more arms to Ukraine, and hence prolonging the war in blithe disregard of the possible consequences, including Russia resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, writing:
“Supplying Ukraine with artillery that can out-range Russian artillery can be a dramatic shift in the war. It may save cities now threatened by brutal Russian bombardment. Smart move by US/NATO.”
In the end, the unanimous Democratic support for the Ukrainian Lend Lease bill and the calls for more and more weapons by leading progressives shows they have abandoned their traditional and long-held opposition to American wars of choice.
What a shame.
James W Carden is a former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the US Department of State. His articles and essays have appeared in a wide variety of publications including The Nation, The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, The Spectator, UnHerd, The National Interest, Quartz, the Los Angeles Times and American Affairs.
Kiev Plans False Flag Missile Strikes on Mass Gatherings in Western Ukraine on 8 May – MoD
By Tim Corso | Samizdat | May 7, 2022
The Russian Defence Ministry has stated that Ukrainian forces are planning a false flag operation involving missile strikes at gatherings of civilians in the Lvov and Volyn regions in Ukraine’s west. The ministry said that the goal of this operation is to falsely accuse Russia of causing civilian deaths.
“The Kiev regime plans to carry out yet another sophisticated provocation involving the death of civilians in the western regions of the country on May 8 during the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation celebrated in Ukraine instead of the Victory Day […] It will be carried out in order to accuse the Russian Armed Forces of indiscriminate missile strikes”, the ministry said.
The ministry elaborated that Ukrainian forces will be using Tochka-U missiles for this purpose. Kiev has repeatedly accused Moscow of firing these missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets, but Moscow strongly denied these accusations, noting that the Russian Armed Forces stopped using Tochka-U missiles a long time ago, unlike its Ukrainian counterpart.
Russia has repeatedly stressed that its forces are only targeting military installations in Ukraine as they carry out the special military operation. Moscow accused Kiev’s forces of hitting civilian infrastructure to delay Russian forces’ advance and later accuse them of damaging these targets.
Meddling with modelling
Divisive and false claims that the unvaccinated are a danger
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | May 6, 2022
This paper, published in the “peer-reviewed” Canadian Medical Association Journal, quite simply represents an amoral, unethical and utterly transparent attempt to use pseudoscientific modelling to fabricate a false narrative. The apparent objective seems to be sowing divisions in society by marginalising and vilifying the unvaccinated.
The paper describes a “study” which is nothing of the sort. It actually describes a model which the authors have constructed. This is an unnecessarily complex model — and suspiciously so. The model itself has been very expertly taken apart by Jessica Rose here and Drs Rancourt and Hickey for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association here.
The authors appear to have tested their model to death to find the optimal combination of inputs which results in the “narrative” they wish to promote.
The logical flaws in this approach have been brilliantly analysed by Dr Byram Bridle, including a critique of the assumptions made for the various input parameters. Among the more egregious examples are:
(1) the model assumes 80% effectiveness against infection for the Covid injections vs omicron, whereas real-world data suggests zero — at best.
(2) the model assumes very little pre-pandemic immunity present within the community (they assume just 20% when for some time the evidence has suggested much higher levels, especially against severe illness).
(3) the model assumes no waning of efficacy at all over time, a claim not even made by the most ardent promoters of the covid vaccines.
Many news outlets — including Forbes — appear to have been taken in by this sham science and are reporting it as a bone fide “study” with no critical analysis whatsoever, this being their key message:
“The findings counter the common argument that the decision to get vaccinated is a personal one, the researchers said, as the unvaccinated are ”likely to affect the health and safety of vaccinated people in a manner disproportionate to the fraction of unvaccinated people in the population.”
One commentator on Twitter acerbically — though rather accurately — summed up the Forbes article thus:
It is quite clear that the model and the entire article has been constructed to push a political agenda, namely to neutralise the growing realisation by the population that the story they were told in relation to the Covid 19 injections is entirely false. Contrary to the authorities’ official narrative, in the context of Omicron the injections don’t reduce infections or transmission, and actually probably even increase them. Far from being a selfish act, it was in fact entirely rational — and beneficial to one’s fellow man — to decline the injection.
To use Dr Bridle’s words, the paper is actually “Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred”.
We support and join the many voices calling for this paper to be retracted.
Postscript: When Denis Rancourt, one of the authors of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association’s statement, tweeted the essence of their complaint with it, the paper’s author — David Fisman — didn’t respond by way of any form of scientific justification — he threatened legal action.
Pfizer and FDA reveal Paxlovid fails clinical trial, as FDA tries to evade its responsibility
FDA emphasizes the drug is not approved, not even for COVID
By Meryl Nass, MD | May 2, 2022
Suddenly Pfizer’s website and the FDA want to emphasize all the problems with Paxlovid. So in the case of this drug, these two co-conspirators apparently think that disclosures will save them from something.
Just look at this language! Compare to the lack of disclosure of adverse effects long known to be due to the COVID vaccines. Have you EVER heard FDA refer to the vaccines for children as unapproved?
U.S. FDA Emergency Use Authorization Statement
PAXLOVID has not been approved, but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA under an EUA, for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kg) with positive results of direct SARS CoV-2 viral testing, and who are at high-risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death.
The emergency use of PAXLOVID is only authorized for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of the emergency use of drugs and biological products during the COVID-19 pandemic under Section 564(b)(1) of the Act, 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(b)(1), unless the declaration is terminated or authorization revoked sooner.
AUTHORIZED USE
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the emergency use of the unapproved product PAXLOVID for the treatment of mild-to-moderate coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in adults and pediatric patients (12 years of age and older weighing at least 40 kg) with positive results of direct severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral testing, and who are at high risk for progression to severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death.
LIMITATIONS OF AUTHORIZED USE
• PAXLOVID is not authorized for initiation of treatment in patients requiring hospitalization due to severe or critical COVID-19
• PAXLOVID is not authorized for use as pre-exposure or post-exposure prophylaxis for prevention of COVID-19
• PAXLOVID is not authorized for use for longer than 5 consecutive daysPAXLOVID may only be prescribed for an individual patient by physicians, advanced practice registered nurses, and physician assistants that are licensed or authorized under state law to prescribe drugs in the therapeutic class to which PAXLOVID belongs (i.e., anti-infectives).
PAXLOVID is not approved for any use, including for use for the treatment of COVID-19.
PAXLOVID is authorized only for the duration of the declaration that circumstances exist justifying the authorization of the emergency use of PAXLOVID under 564(b)(1) of the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act unless the authorization is terminated or revoked sooner.
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION … continue
US ‘directly’ involved in Ukraine conflict – Moscow
Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin
Samizdat | May 7, 2022
Washington should be added to a “list of war criminals” as it is now directly participating in “hostilities” in Ukraine, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin claimed on Saturday, citing media reports about alleged US intelligence-sharing with Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden has told senior intelligence officials that “counterproductive” leaks about data sharing with Ukraine should stop, NBC reported on Friday.
Though there was no official reaction to the report from the US authorities, Volodin took to Telegram to comment on it. “The United States is taking part in hostilities in Ukraine. US President Biden, demanding to stop leaks about the exchange of intelligence information with Ukraine, admitted that Washington had been exposed,” he wrote.
Volodin said that the Ukrainian government, which he described as the “Kiev Nazi regime,” not only relies on weapons from the West, but also on the “assistance of American intelligence forces.”
The Duma chairman wrote that Washington “essentially coordinates and develops military operations” in Ukraine, and is therefore directly participating in the “hostilities” against Russian forces.
“For the crimes committed in Ukraine by the Kiev Nazi regime, the US leadership should also be held accountable, adding to the list of war criminals,” Volodin concluded.
However, the Pentagon earlier dismissed some of the media reports and specifically denied that the US had provided data allowing Ukrainian forces to strike Russia’s Black Sea flagship ‘Moskva’ off the coast of Odessa last month.
“The Ukrainians have their own intelligence capabilities to track and target Russian naval vessels, as they did in this case,” said US military spokesman John Kirby.
Russia insists that its missile cruiser wasn’t attacked, but sank on April 14 after a fire that had broken out on board caused ammunition to explode.
The White House National Security Council has admitted, however, that the US is “regularly providing detailed, timely intelligence to the Ukrainians on the battlefield to help them defend their country against Russian aggression and will continue to do so.”
This statement apparently did not come as a surprise to Moscow. On May 5, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists that the Russian authorities know the US, the UK and NATO “on a permanent basis” transmit intelligence and other data to Kiev but this would not “hinder the achievement of the goals set during the special military operation.”
Russia attacked its neighboring state following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered Minsk Protocol was 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 NATO. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
Beaten & Denied Safe Exit: French Journalist Presents Eyewitness Accounts of Azov Crimes in Mariupol
By Oleg Burunov | Samizdat | May 7, 2022
Late last month, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Mariupol had been liberated from Ukrainian forces, and that order can now be restored in the city. Shoigu, however, stressed that the “remaining radicals” were still under siege at the Azovstal steel plant.
French independent journalist Anne-Laure Bonnel has presented eyewitness accounts of the crimes of neo-Nazis from the Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol at an informal UN Security Council meeting.
Bonnel, in particular, showed a video of an interview with an unnamed male resident of Mariupol, in which he explained that he had managed to flee the city by secretly making his way along the coast of the Sea of Azov.
According to him, Azov Battalion members “occupy residential houses, beat people and don’t let them leave their homes”.
“I know for sure that people are not allowed out of their houses, they are hit with buttstocks and forced to stay at home. The Azov Battalion won’t let anyone either walk through nor leave by car. I personally know a person who was simply not allowed to leave,” he claimed.
Another resident of Mariupol named Anna said that she had not heard anything about humanitarian corridors, arguing that the Ukrainian military deployed military hardware, including armoured personnel carrier, in the courtyards of residential areas.
She was echoed by one more Mariupol resident, Ilya Klochko, who said that Azov Battalion members “deployed howitzers to residential areas and shot from there”, adding that he’d heard nothing about humanitarian corridors.
The eyewitnesses spoke as Russian troops continue to block the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, with humanitarian corridors operating throughout Saturday. According to Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) officials, a total of 176 civilians had already been evacuated from the territory of the Azovstal plant, where the remaining Ukrainian forces have been hiding since the takeover of the port city by the Russian troops.
Liberation of Mariupol
In late April, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin that Mariupol “was liberated by the Russian armed forces and the People’s Militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR)” and that “the remnants of the nationalist formations took refuge in the industrial zone of Azovstal”.
Putin, in turn, called the assault on Azovstal pointless and ordered it to be cancelled. He explained that it is necessary to think about saving the lives of Russian soldiers and officers, ordering the Azovstal zone to be blocked.
At the time the DPR declared its independence from Kiev in 2014, Mariupol was the second-largest city of the Donbass republic after Donetsk. It was taken by Kiev’s forces back that same year. Since the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation on 24 February, the Russian troops and Donbass militias have been pushing Ukrainian forces from the city. During the liberation of Mariupol, witnesses reported numerous crimes committed by the Ukrainian militants in the city, including taking hostages and using civilians as human shields.