India, Germany cogitate on Ukraine
Germany to send fifty Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MAY 3, 2022
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s short visit to Germany pegged on the Indian-German Intergovernmental Commission meeting in Berlin on Monday inevitably came to focus on the Ukraine crisis. The western media would have loved to grill Modi on India’s reluctance to criticise Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. But German hosts thoughtfully skipped the customary Q&A after the joint appearance of Modi and Chancellor Olaf Scholz before the press.
India’s prudence is self-evident as much as Germany’s zealousness to flaunt its condemnation of Russia. Modi and Scholz are sailing in different boats. Modi draws flak for being a “strongman” who views the Ukraine crisis through the prism of India’s interests, while also taking a principled stance, whereas, Scholz carries the burden of vacuous moralising.
Scholz must prove constantly that he is indeed a loyal ally of President Biden and is by no means a “pacifist.” (To get a hang of Scholz’s predicament, read Spiegel’s maddening interview with him, here — alternatively annoying, infuriating, taunting, affronting and goading.)
Modi can afford to be nonchalant because he is clearheaded about where Indian interests lie — its strategic autonomy in a highly unpredictable international environment. But Scholz is nervous as a mouse because German interests are caught up betwixt the crosscurrents of European politics and the NATO’s epochal struggle to bring Russia down on its knees.
Modi is well ensconced in power while Scholz heads a precarious coalition of disparate partners. Modi could witness Scholz and his foreign minister Annalena Baerbock speaking in two different voices on Russia. Baerbock insisted that Russian forces should vacate Ukrainian soil before Western sanctions can be lifted, but Scholz toned down saying that the lifting of Western sanctions is linked to Russia and Ukraine reaching an agreement.
Germany is a divided house when it comes to Russia ties. On the contrary, aside the clutch of noisy American lobbyists operating in India, the Indian public at large recognises the centrality of India’s friendly relations with Russia.
India gets the space to manoeuvre, as Russia is excessively indulgent towards Delhi’ stance, which is, quintessentially, neither to support nor to oppose Moscow’s intervention — something like Professor Godbole in the EM Forster novel A Passage to India, a Brahman Hindu who is very spiritual and reluctant to become involved in human affairs.
Scholz who is new to international diplomacy could have learnt a thing or two from UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s recent visit to India. Johnson put Ukraine on the back burner and focused on the agenda of “Global Britain” to create his country’s post-Brexit pathway in India’s vast market.
That said, Scholz has done remarkably well in getting the US off his back over sanctions against gas supplies from Russia. Germany’s dependence on Russian supplies of oil and gas (and coal) has been heavy and the Americans accept it as a reality. The point is, Germany and Russia have had a dense relationship and the Ukraine crisis comes in handy for Washington to try to redefine the parameters within which German-Russian relations will work in future.
In India’s case, if Washington dared to bully the Modi government, it was largely because in the post-Cold War era, under successive Congress governments, India’s relations with Russia got atrophied to such an extent that Americans convinced themselves that it was a conscious Indian policy direction dictated by the compulsions of the “Washington Consensus,” which has been a beacon light for India’s past leaderships. Unsurprisingly, the Biden Administration misjudged that Modi too must be fair game.
But the core difference between the German and Indian predicament is that while German industry is a stakeholder in the relationship with Russia, India’s corporate houses, for reasons best known to them, sidestep the Russian turf in deference to the US wish. Thus, Washington has powerful Indian lobbyists and, therefore, the Modi government’s audacity to pursue an independent policy toward Russia becomes commendable.
The chances are that Germany may pick up the threads of its relationship with Russia once the Ukraine conflict ends. In the chronicle of the “German Question” in European history, Russia had the role of a balancer, mostly. But there is a deep economic and political crisis waiting to erupt in Germany and how it pans out is crucial.
The rising inflation and the dramatic fall in living standards is souring the German mood, as the debris from Ukraine falls on it. So far, an estimated 5 million Ukrainian refugees have entered Europe. This figure is expected to double in a near future.
Meanwhile, the looming food crisis will also put tens of millions of people in Africa or the Middle East on the verge of starvation fuelling in turn large scale migration to Europe. Such migration will inevitably bring the dregs of Ukrainian society into Germany, which means that organised crime, human trafficking, illegal drug distribution and transnational crime, etc. will increase. Make no mistake that the Ukrainian mafia will introduce a new vicious culture of crime as it begins to dominate the European streets.
All in all, a fine balance has been struck during Modi’s visit. The joint statement conceded the host country’s prerogative to reiterate its “strong condemnation of the unlawful and unprovoked aggression against Ukraine by Russian Forces.” But it formed a “stand alone” statement of a solitary sentence, which helps signal India’s distancing from it. Germany joined India’s call for an “immediate cessation of hostilities,” although Berlin just announced a major transfer of offensive weaponry to Ukraine as part of the US-led “coalition of the willing” and implicitly acquiesces with the Biden administration’s aggressive agenda of “weakening Russia” militarily.
Significantly, the sombre mood in Germany got reflected in the joint statement. The Indo-German economic relations are far below potential and will remain so. CNN carried a grim report in the weekend that not only is German economy heading into a recession but it may suffer “structural damage” that will make recovery a drawn-out process.
Clearly, behind the German rhetoric today, the fact remains that Berlin’s intelligence apparatus played a dubious role in Ukraine by navigating the ascendancy of the neo-Nazi forces to usurp power in Kiev in the coup in February 2014. This controversial past is now further complicated by Berlin fuelling the conflict by despatching tanks into Ukraine, which was after all the invasion route of Nazi Germany.
When it comes to Ukraine, Germany doesn’t make good company for India. We have a transparent record and with great honesty and integrity, Modi could forewarn , with Scholz listening, that “there will be no winning party in this war, everyone will suffer.”
PayPal seizes alternative media site’s money
Samizdat | May 3, 2022
Payment processor PayPal has frozen alternative media powerhouse Consortium News’ (CN) donation page without warning, confiscating the site’s $9,348.14 balance with no explanation beyond the claim that “an investigation and review” of the site’s “history” found “some potential risk associated with this account.”
CN was informed via email on Sunday that it couldn’t use PayPal anymore and told “we noticed activity in your account that’s inconsistent with our User Agreement and we [can] no longer offer you PayPal services.” Absent any further explanation beyond the desire to limit “potential risk exposure,” the site was informed that the nearly $10,000 sitting in its account would be effectively confiscated for “up to 180 days,” after which point, “if applicable, we’ll email you with information on how to withdraw any remaining money.”
The seizure came at a particularly damaging time for the reader-funded site, which had just begun a spring fundraising drive. Contacted by CN employees, a PayPal customer service representative confirmed on Sunday that no specific reason had been given by the “back office” for “permanently limiting” the account other than the aforementioned “potential risk.”
“I don’t see any existing case” of a complaint having been filed by “any agency, government or private, or any individual,” they told CN, promising to ask PayPal’s back office to explain its behavior to the website.
More ominously, the PayPal representative informed CN that “if there was a violation,” it was “possible” the $9,348.14 balance in its account would be kept by PayPal as “damages.” According to PayPal’s own documentation, violations include providing “false, inaccurate or misleading information” to PayPal, its customers, or “third parties.”
In a blog post discussing the suspension, CN editor-in-chief Joe Lauria suggested the site had been targeted due to its coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, noting that MintPress News – another well-known alt-media website with similar political views regarding the US and NATO’s foreign adventures – had its own account frozen by PayPal last week. PayPal’s definition of “violations,” Lauria implied, could easily be stretched to include the Orwellian crime du jour of “fake news,” an especially egregious offense during wartime.
Last week, former RT America correspondent Caleb Maupin also had his PayPal account frozen without warning or explanation, as did MintPress employees Alan MacLeod and Mnar Adley. Many on social media have speculated that the payment processor is deliberately targeting those with dissident views on the conflict in Ukraine and US foreign policy in general – “thoughtcrimes” hundreds of other prominent commentators have been deplatformed for in the past.
Consortium News was founded in 1995 by the late journalist Robert Parry, whose claims to fame included exposing the Iran-Contra scandal, in opposition to what the site’s own biography describes as “a crisis building in the US news media.”
Skewering the “pattern of groupthink on issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information because it didn’t fit with what all the Important People knew to be true.”
By redefining UNRWA, Washington destroys the foundation for a Just peace in Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 3, 2022
Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.
Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of 11 December, 1948.
“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.
In a stern warning on 24 April, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.
Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.
Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”
The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. With an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.
Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organisation that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.
In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.
This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 per cent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.
Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.
By entering into an agreement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.
Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.
Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.
Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.
Though the Palestinian Authority, various poltical factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.
If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.
Russia doubles down on Hitler remarks, says Israel supports neo-Nazis
Press TV – May 3, 2022
Russia says Israel is supporting “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev”, raising the stakes in its tensions with Tel Aviv over the raging war in Ukraine.
The spat began after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking to Italian outlet Mediaset’s Rete 4 channel in an interview released Sunday, said that Adolf Hitler had Jewish origins.
Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid on Monday accused Lavrov of making an “unforgivable and outrageous statement as well as a terrible historical error” and summoned Moscow’s ambassador for “clarifications”.
“We have paid attention to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s anti-historical remarks, which largely explain the current government’s decision to support the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev,” said the Russian foreign ministry in a statement on Tuesday.
“History unfortunately knows tragic examples of cooperation between Jews and Nazis,” it said.
In his interview, Lavrov said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “puts forward an argument of what kind of Nazism can they have if he himself is Jewish”.
Lavrov, according to a transcript posted on the Russian foreign ministry website, then added: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood”.
Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett characterized Lavrov’s remarks as “lies” that he said effectively “accuse the Jews themselves of the most awful crimes in history”, perpetrated against themselves.
On Tuesday, the Russian foreign ministry said “the Jewish origins of the president (Zelensky) is not a guarantee of protection against rampant neo-Nazism in the country”.
“Ukraine, may it be said in passing, is not the only one in this case,” the ministry said, citing Latvian President Egils Levits who “has also Jewish roots and he also gives cover… to the rehabilitation of the Waffen SS in his country”.
Israel has expressed solidarity with Ukraine but unlike its Western allies, it has refrained from enforcing formal sanctions on Russia over its military operation in the neighboring country.
Last month, Lapid accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine. Moscow hit back, accusing Israel of using Ukraine to “distract” the world from its ongoing aggression against Palestinians.
Biden’s ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ is another propaganda tool
By Ian Miles Cheong | Samizdat | May 3, 2022
US President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security announced last week that it had formed a “Disinformation Governance Board” to fight the spread of so-called disinformation on the Internet. While White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki didn’t elaborate on how the bureau would operate, she suggested that it would monitor disinformation on topics like COVID-19 and elections.
Conservatives have often half-joked about George Orwell’s “1984” becoming a reality, but it appears that the Biden administration has decided to literally take a page from the book and create a “Ministry of Truth”.
The board’s aim is to target “disinformation,” but what constitutes disinformation? Many times over the years we have seen complete censorship from government officials and Big Tech social media companies, most infamously during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, which saw major tech platforms and politicians painting it as “Russian propaganda.”
Allowing the government to dictate what “the truth” is sets a dangerous precedent, as it instead promotes desired narratives to bolster poll numbers, ratings, or nudging the citizenry into following government edicts – all on the basis of “trust us, we know what’s best for you.”
Facts be damned. Just do as you’re told. This was seen multiple times during the pandemic era, when both Dr. Anthony Fauci and then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams hummed and harred over mask-wearing and social distancing – first instructing the public not to wear masks, and then much later calling it a necessity.
Gatekeeping discourse is a surefire way to control the narrative, controlling what people see, what they say, and ultimately – what they believe. It’s also an effective means to silence dissent, and quash those who might speak out against the regime’s approved narrative – or even the regime itself.
The new Ministry of Truth is a tool, and there is no reality in which this tool will not be used for bad intent – and it’ll claim to be doing it all in the name of the greater good.
Unsurprisingly, the Ministry of Truth was rushed into creation seemingly as a reaction to “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media platform, Twitter, the de facto town square of political discourse and public narratives.
With the relinquishment of Twitter to Musk, those who control mainstream narratives fear they will lose out on an important resource, and will no longer be able to promote narratives and fix algorithms to sway public opinion – at least not with ease. There will be pushback, and their positions are not ones they are willing to defend, hence why the creation of this new tool is necessary. It keeps the plebeians in check.
Free speech, which in Musk’s belief is “essential to a functioning democracy,” flies directly in the face of the Biden administration’s attempts to crack down on viewpoints that contradict the regime’s official narrative. And who better to head the Disinformation Governance Board than Nina Jankowicz, who herself perpetuated several regime-approved falsehoods?
Jankowicz, who previously advised the Ukrainian government on disinformation and strategic communications under the auspices of a Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship, voiced her support for Christopher Steele, whose infamous “Steele dossier” on Russian election interference during Donald Trump’s 2016 election dogged the presidency for years. Despite Steele’s loss of credibility, Jankowicz hyped up the former spy in August 2020 as being able to offer “some great historical context about the evolution of disinfo” when he spoke on a podcast about the topic.
It’s worth noting that the infamous dossier, which included the unverifiable claim that Russia had “kompromat” on Trump in the form of a sex tape, has since been entirely discredited. Steele’s main source, Igor Danchenko, was later charged with five counts of making false statements to the FBI. Jankowicz also repeated the unproven theory that Hunter Biden’s laptop was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign, spread by members of the Trump campaign.
“Back on the ‘laptop from hell,’ apparently—Biden notes 50 former natsec officials and 5 former CIA heads that believe the laptop is a Russian influence op,” Jankowicz said on Twitter. “Trump says ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’”
She attempted to distance herself from her remarks with the claim that she was simply livetweeting Trump’s first presidential debate with Biden. However, when solicited by the Associated Press in October 2020 for her thoughts on the laptop, Jankowicz told the publication that “We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” dismissing the fact that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.
As detailed by Newsweek, Jankowicz continued to perpetuate doubt against the story, tweeting on October 22, 2020 that “The emails don’t need to be altered to be part of an influence campaign. Voters deserve that context, not a [fairy] tale about a laptop repair shop.”
In a consolidated effort to disqualify the New York Post’s original report on Hunter Biden’s laptop as “disinformation”, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms banned the New York Post and prevented its users from sharing the story weeks ahead of the 2020 US presidential election. The original report on the laptop has since been validated by a comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings, published by the New York Times.
Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey later admitted to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that censoring the report was a “total mistake,” and chalked up the decision to a “process error.”
Both Twitter and Facebook heads were grilled over their companies’ perceived anti-conservative bias and penchant for censoring so-called “disinformation,” with the censorship usually aimed at conservatives. It’s worth pointing out again that the now-discredited “Steele dossier” had no problem gaining traction when it first ran on BuzzFeed.
Nina Jankowicz had no problem spreading actual disinformation while helping to silence the truth under the auspices of “combating disinformation.” Given her predilection towards perpetuating anti-Russian narratives, one might ask if contradictory evidence to the “Snake Island” and “Ghost of Kiev” hoaxes constitute forms of “disinformation” in her book. After all, the mainstream media is chiefly responsible for promoting these heroic war stories, both of which were almost immediately discredited by the Russian media – and later by western experts. Even Ukraine’s own propagandists were forced to instruct the public to stop promoting disinformation about the conflict. Would the Ministry of Truth move to silence such attacks on its credibility?
Those concerned with the truth must do everything in their power to resist the Biden administration’s efforts to police the truth. To that end, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is one of the few American leaders who has stepped up and vowed to fight back against the Orwellian disinformation bureau.
“They want to be able to put out false narratives without people being able to speak out and fight back,” DeSantis said. “But we’re not going to let Biden get away with this one, so we will be fighting back.” Referring to the regime as a “decaying and discredited ruling elite in this country,” DeSantis said: “We believe it’s essential that individual Floridians and Americans are able to speak out against the false narratives trying to be jammed down our throats by this regime.”
Yes, TCW is being censored
TCW Defending Freedom | May 3, 2022
AFTER many reports over the weekend that the site was not working for some users, we have established that we are being blocked by the adult content filter on the Internet Service Provider (ISP) Three.
Affected users get the message above, which does not make it clear that the site is being censored, but gives an erroneous message about the SSL certificate. This makes it look like a misconfiguration on our part, but this is not the case.
We have contacted Three to enquire exactly why TCW has been added to their adult content filter.
Three use the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) guidelines, which you can find here.
TCW can appeal to BBFC to be unblocked by Three, and you can be sure that we are following this process. We have also registered the censorship with the Open Rights Group’s Blocked! website.
In the meantime, Three users may wish to reconsider their choice of ISP. Customers of Three can request that the adult filter be turned off by contacting customer services. A non-censoring ISP would be a good idea too – we can recommend Andrews and Arnold. A good VPN (Virtual Private Network) might be an idea too, if you would prefer that your ISP does not control the content you are able to access online. IVPN are great.
We will be tweeting @ThreeUKsupport and @ThreeUK to see what they have to say. It would be helpful if some of our readers could do this too.
If this can happen to TCW, it can happen to any site on the internet. Resist online censorship, for that is what this is.
Reminder: Respiratory viruses infect huge numbers of people all the time, and nobody cared about this until 2020
Perspective from a 2018 New York study that tested a bunch of healthy adults for common respiratory viruses. Over 6% tested positive.
eugyppius | May 2, 2022
The ever-sharp Zacki on Twitter points to this intriguing 2018 study out of New York. The authors administered PCR tests to 2,685 people at a tourist attraction in New York City, between the months of January and July. Over 6% tested positive for one of seven common human respiratory viruses. In the winter, human coronaviruses were the most common; in the summer, rhinoviruses took the lead. By design, the study targeted healthy populations, and so we must imagine that it substantially understates the true rate of virus infection.
The authors don’t find a significant difference in the overall prevalence of positivity between winter and summer. In their small sample, it’s only the mix of viruses that changes. This is another piece of evidence in favour of my crazy theory, that a great part – perhaps a majority – of spring and summer allergies are in fact persistent low-grade rhinovirus infections.
Other studies, particularly on rhinovirus, find even larger incidences of infection. There is this paper, which looks at rhinovirus in infants and finds that 20% of their sample are asymptomatic positives; or this case-control study of all ages, which finds rhinovirus in 17% of their asymptomatic controls.
For perspective: At the height of the alpha wave in the United Kingdom, only about 0.3% of the population was testing positive for SARS-2 every day. School antigen testing in Germany, which is done multiple times a week and finds nearly every detectable infection in school-age children, found Delta 7-day incidences of around 1%, and Omicron 7-day incidences peaking in February at near 4% in specific age cohorts (see the the graph on p. 5). The allegedly hypercontagious SARS-2 looks like it was doing substantially worse, in other words, than garden-variety human coronaviruses in the same month in the New York study.
Respiratory viruses are extremely pervasive; they’re everywhere and this is totally normal. What isn’t pervasive, is virus testing. We’ve only ever tested widely for a single virus. So much of Corona mythology depends upon presenting data in isolation from what we know about the behaviour of all the other pathogens we’ve lived with for centuries. Our governments have spent two years hyperventilating about incidences of infection that turn out to be minuscule, or at worst normal, when compared to the other pathogens that infect us. This should also make you very, very sceptical of uncontrolled studies cataloguing alleged Long-Covid symptoms. If we tested this widely for rhinovirus, imagine all the totally unrelated symptoms we’d find in our vast pool of positive results.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov interview with Xinhua News Agency
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs | April 30, 2022
Question: What do you think is at the root of the Ukrainian crisis? What can the international community do to solve this problem?
Sergey Lavrov: When we talk about the Ukrainian crisis, first of all we need to look at the destructive policy of the Western states conducted over many years and led by the United States, which set a course to knock together a unipolar world order after the end of the Cold War. NATO’s reckless expansion to the East was a key component of those actions, despite the political obligations to the Soviet leadership on the non-expansion of the Alliance. As you know, those promises were just empty words. All these years, NATO infrastructure has been moving closer and closer to the Russian borders.
The West was never concerned about the fact that their actions grossly violated their international obligations not to strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others. In particular, Washington and Brussels arrogantly rejected the initiatives put forward by Russia in December 2021 to ensure our country’s security guarantees in the west: to stop the expansion of NATO, not to deploy armaments that pose a threat to Russia in Ukraine and to return the Alliance’s military infrastructure to the 1997 configuration, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.
It is well-known that the United States and NATO member states have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to contain Russia. Over the years, they have actively fuelled anti-Russia sentiments there, forcing Kiev to make an artificial and false choice: to be either with the West or with Moscow.
It was the collective West that first provoked and then supported the anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014. Nationalists came to power in Ukraine and immediately unleashed a bloody massacre in Donbass, and set the course on the destruction of everything Russian in the rest of the country. Let me remind you that it was precisely because of this threat that the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for the reunification with Russia in 2014.
Over these past years, the United States and its allies have done nothing to stop the intra-Ukrainian conflict. Instead of encouraging Kiev to settle it politically based on the Minsk Complex of Measures, they sent weapons, trained and armed the Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions, and generally carried out the military-political development of Ukraine’s territory. They encouraged the aggressive anti-Russia course pursued by the Kiev authorities. In fact, they pushed the Ukrainian nationalists to undermine the negotiating process and resolve the Donbass issue by force.
We were deeply concerned about the undeclared biological programmes implemented in Ukraine with Pentagon’s support in close proximity to the Russian borders. And, of course, we could not disregard the Kiev leadership’s undisguised intentions to acquire a military nuclear potential, which would create an unacceptable threat to Russia’s national security.
In these conditions, we had no other choice but to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and launch the special military operation. Its aim is to protect people from genocide by the neo-Nazis, as well as to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. I would like to stress that Russia is acting to fulfil its obligations under bilateral agreements on cooperation and mutual assistance with the DPR and LPR, at the official request of Donetsk and Lugansk under Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defence.
The special military operation launched on February 24 is progressing strictly in accordance with the plan. All its goals will be achieved in spite of our opponents’ counteractions. At the moment we are witnessing a classic case of double standards and hypocrisy of the Western establishment. By publicly supporting the Kiev regime, NATO member states are doing everything in their power to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements. Various weapons are flowing endlessly into Ukraine through Poland and other NATO countries. All of this is being done under the pretext of “fighting the invasion”, but in fact the United States and the European Union intend to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They do not care at all about the fate of Ukraine as an independent subject of international relations.
The West is ready to jeopardise the energy and food security of entire regions of the globe to satisfy its own geopolitical ambitions. What other explanation is there for the unrestrained flywheel of anti-Russian sanctions launched by the West with the start of the operation and which they aren’t thinking of stopping?
If the United States and NATO are truly interested in settling the Ukrainian crisis, then, first, they must come to their senses and stop supplying weapons and ammunition to Kiev. The Ukrainian people do not need Stingers and Javelins; what they need is a solution to urgent humanitarian issues. Russia has been doing this since 2014. During this time, tens of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian cargo have been delivered to Donbass, and about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid have already arrived in the part of Ukraine liberated from the Kiev regime, the DPR and the LPR, since the launch of the special military operation.
Second, it is essential that the Kiev regime stops cynical provocations, including in the information space. Ukrainian armed formations are barbarically shelling cities using civilians as living shields. We saw examples of this in Donetsk and Kramatorsk. Captured Russian servicemen are being abused with animal cruelty, and these atrocities are being posted online. At the same time, they use their Western patrons and global media controlled by the West to accuse the Russian army of war crimes. As they say, laying the blame at somebody else’s door.
It is high time for the West to stop unconditionally whitewashing and covering up for Kiev. Otherwise, Washington, Brussels and other Western capitals should consider their responsibility for complicity in the bloody crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists.
Question: What measures has Russia taken to protect the lives and property of civilians? What efforts has it made to establish humanitarian corridors?
Sergey Lavrov: As I mentioned earlier, the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support.
Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen. During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.
Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.
Question: Since the special military operation was launched in Ukraine, Western counties have adopted a large number of unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. How do you think these sanctions will affect Russia? What are the main countermeasures taken by Russia? Some say that a new Cold War has begun. How would you comment on that?
Sergey Lavrov: It is true that the special military operation was used by the collective West as a pretext to unleash numerous restrictions against Russia, as well as its legal entities and individuals. The United States, Great Britain, Canada and EU countries do not conceal that their goal is to strangle our economy by undermining its competitiveness and blocking Russia’s progressive development. At the same time, the Western ruling circles are not embarrassed by the fact that anti-Russian sanctions are already beginning to harm ordinary people in their own countries. I mean the declining economic trends in the United States and many European countries, including growing inflation and unemployment.
It is clear that there can be no excuse for this anti-Russian line and it has no future. As President Vladimir Putin said, Russia has withstood this unprecedented pressure. Now the situation is stabilising, though, of course, not all risks are behind us.
In any case, they will not succeed in weakening us. I am confident that we will restructure the economy and protect ourselves from our opponents’ possible illegitimate and hostile actions in the future. We will continue to give a fitting and adequate response to the imposed restrictions, guided by the goal of maintaining the stability of the Russian economy and its financial system, as well as the interests of domestic businesses and the entire nation. We will focus our efforts on de-dollarisation, de-offshorisation, import substitution, and promotion of technological independence. We will continue to adapt to external challenges and step up development programmes for promising and competitive industries.
During the period of turbulence, our retaliatory special economic measures needed to ensure the normal functioning of the Russian economy will be continued and expanded. As a responsible player on the international market, Russia intends to continue scrupulously fulfilling its obligations under international contracts on export deliveries of agricultural products, fertilisers, energy carriers and other critical products. We are deeply concerned about a possible food crisis provoked by the anti-Russian sanctions, and we are well aware how important the deliveries of essential goods, such as food, are for the socioeconomic development of Asian, African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.
I will be brief as regards the second part of your question. Today we are not talking about a new “cold war,” but, as I said earlier, about the persistent desire to impose a US-centric model of the world order coming from Washington and its satellites, who imagine themselves to be “arbiters of humankind’s fate.” It has reached the point where the Western minority is trying to replace the UN-centric architecture and international law formed after World War II with their own “rule-based order.” These rules are written by Washington and its allies and then imposed on the international community as binding.
We must realise that the United States has been carrying out this destructive policy for several decades now. It is enough to recall NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, attacks on Iraq and Libya, attempts to destroy Syria, as well as the colour revolutions that Western capitals staged in a number of countries, including Ukraine. All of this came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and resulted in chaos in various regions of the planet.
The West tries to crudely suppress those who carry out an independent course in their domestic and foreign policy. Not just Russia. We can see how bloc thinking is being imposed in the Asian-Pacific Region. We can recall the Indo-Pacific strategy promoted by the United States, which has a pronounced anti-China tendency. The US seeks to dictate the standards according to which Latin America should live, in the spirit of the outdated Monroe Doctrine. This explains many years of the illegal trade embargo on Cuba, sanctions against Venezuela, as well as attempts to undermine stability in Nicaragua and other countries. The pressure on Belarus continues in the same context. This list can go on.
It is clear that the collective West’s efforts to oppose the natural course of history and solve its problems at the expense of others are doomed. Today the world has several decision-making centres; it is multipolar. We can see how quickly Asian, African, and Latin American countries are developing. Everyone is getting a real freedom of choice, including where it comes to choosing their development models and participation in integration projects. Our special military operation in Ukraine also contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression heavily mixed with racism and a complex of exceptionalism.
The faster the West accepts the new geopolitical situation, the better it will be for the West itself and for the entire international community.
As President Xi Jinping said at the Boao Forum for Asia, “We need to uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”
Question: Russian-Ukrainian talks have attracted close attention of the international community. What are the main obstacles to the talks today? How do you regard the prospects of a peace treaty between the two parties? What kind of bilateral relations does Russia intend to have with Ukraine in the future?
Sergey Lavrov: At present the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are holding discussions on the possible draft almost daily, via videoconference. This document should contain such elements of the post-conflict situation as permanent neutrality, the non-nuclear, non-bloc and demilitarised status of Ukraine, as well as guarantees of its security. The agenda of the talks also includes denazification, recognition of the new geopolitical reality, the lifting of sanctions and the status of the Russian language, among other things. Settling the situation in Ukraine will make a significant contribution to the de-escalation of the military and political tensions in Europe and the world in general. The establishment of an institution of guarantor states is envisaged as a possible option. First of all, they will be the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and China. We share information on the progress in the talks with Chinese diplomats. We are grateful to Beijing and other BRICS partners for their balanced position on the Ukrainian issue.
We are in favour of continuing the talks, although the process is difficult.
You are right to ask about the obstacles. For example, they include the militant rhetoric and incendiary actions of Kiev’s Western patrons. They are actually encouraging Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” pumping the country with weapons and sending mercenaries there. Let me note that the Ukrainian security services staged a crude bloody provocation in Bucha with the help of the West, to complicate the negotiation process among other things.
I am confident that agreements can only be reached when Kiev starts to be guided by the interests of the Ukrainian people, and not the advisors from far away.
Speaking about Russian-Ukrainian relations, Russia is interested in a peaceful, free, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine. Despite the current administration’s anti-Russian course, we remember the many centuries of all-embracing cultural, spiritual, economic and family ties between Russians and Ukrainians. We will definitely restore these ties.
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Is Israel to blame for the Iraq War?
American Goy | March 10, 2008
I am so tired of this old canard that “Israel had nothing to do with USA’s war with Iraq – in fact, it officially advised America against it”.
Bullshit. … continue
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