Ghost Shot: Pfizer quietly admits it will never manufacture original FDA approved COVID vaccines
Company claims it is manufacturing Comirnaty product with new formula
By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | June 3, 2022
The August 23, 2021 FDA approval of Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine was a cause for celebration. Marked as a turning point in the battle against COVID19, the announcement was highly publicized by the Biden Administration with the clear intention to extinguish “vaccine hesitancy” and boost uptake.
It was celebrated as a cause for national relief, and many Americans arrived at their local pharmacies under the impression, via government and pharmaceutical propaganda, that they were receiving an FDA-approved COVID vaccine. Yet that legally distinct product, as we know it, never existed. And now we know, via Pfizer, that it will never exist.
For the uninitiated:
Comirnaty is a legally distinct product from the emergency use authorization (EUA) shots, and It has never made its way to market. For months on end, no such vaccine has ever become available. Those who received the “Pfizer shot(s)” have been injected with the emergency use authorization (EUA) version of the shots. See my piece in The Dossier for more info:
Shell Game? There remains no FDA approved COVID vaccine in the United States
The information operation succeeded. There was indeed an FDA approved vaccine, at least on paper, but you couldn’t get it.
When originally confronted with this ordeal, Pfizer labeled this issue an inventory question that had nothing to do with the legal distinction between an experimental EUA product and an FDA-approved vaccine. Up until just weeks ago, this was the statement up on the CDC website via Pfizer:
“Pfizer received FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename.
At present, Pfizer does not plan to produce any product with these new NDCs and labels over the next few months while EUA authorized product is still available and being made available for U.S. distribution. As such, the CDC, AMA, and drug compendia may not publish these new codes until Pfizer has determined when the product will be produced with the BLA labels.”
In May, Pfizer updated its statement to mention a December 2021 licensed Comirnaty product, which was granted a license four months after the highly-publicized August FDA press release.
And just last week, Pfizer finally acknowledged that its original licensed product will never be distributed. In an unreported update on the CDC website, Pfizer told the agency:
“Pfizer received initial FDA BLA license on 8/23/2021 for its COVID-19 vaccine for use in individuals 16 and older (COMIRNATY). At that time, the FDA published a BLA package insert that included the approved new COVID-19 vaccine tradename COMIRNATY and listed 2 new NDCs (0069-1000-03, 0069-1000-02) and images of labels with the new tradename. These NDCs will not be manufactured. Only NDCs for the subsequently BLA approved tris-sucrose formulation will be produced.”
The key distinction between the originally approved formulation and the tris-sucrose formulation is that — according to manufacturers — the latter can be held for a much longer period of time outside of an ultra cold freezer. These freezers cost over $10,000 a piece and each unit uses as much energy per day as an average American household. Improper storage can render the mRNA unstable.
Notably, the clinical trials for the Pfizer shot were conducted without the modified tris-sucrose ingredient. Given the partisan nature of Pfizer, the corporate media, government health bureaucracies, and your correspondent’s lack of expertise in this area, it is unclear whether this is significant.
Another notable thing to look out for in the coming days and weeks is the possibility that the subsequently FDA approved product finally becomes available in the United States. In recent days, the CDC removed the language of “not orderable at this time” above the description of both Comirnaty and Moderna’s Spikevax.
Additionally, as reported by Uncover DC, the Defense Department appears to be in the early stages of ordering what it has interpreted as a legally required minimum of Comirnaty in order to continue its mRNA mandate of American service members.
Fauci’s COVID origins coverup spook has resurfaced to misdirect us about the origin of money pox
By Meryl Nass, MD | June 7, 2022
Andrew Rambaut (pronounced Rambo—and like Rambo, he is still in the ring, fighting for the globalists, when he should have taken his toys and slunk away long ago—after being beaten up as one of the stooges who produced the fake Nature Medicine paper on COVID’s origins) has long been associated with a group of virology spooks in Tony Fauci and Jeremy Farrar’s network. The field of evolutionary biology is supposed to tell you where new viruses have come from. But of course, it has been kidnapped to provide specious explanations when the biowarriors need to try and explain their concoctions as having natural origins.
Rambaut was also used to dispute the origins of HIV (as described in my friend Ed Hooper’s book The River ) while teamed up with Eddie Holmes, another Fauci flunkie, more than 20 years ago.
Republican members of Congress want to know what Fauci and his henchmen were up to when they concocted a fake natural origin for COVID, as revealed in the Fauci emails.
Rambaut was one of the 5 authors of that paper, and the paper was highly effective for a bit over one year at keeping a lid on COVID’s lab origin. As the members of Congress wrote:
Andersen and three other doctors on this teleconference [including Rambaut] later published a paper titled “the proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 in Nature Medicine on March 17, 2020. This paper was highly influential in shaping our nation’s response to the pandemic. In the paper, the doctors concluded that “…we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”[11]
… The Andersen paper led the narrative away from COVID-19’s potential lab origins. As Americans, we are deeply concerned by the appearance of discrepancies that largely influenced our understanding and approach to this virus. As Representatives of the American people, we owe it to them to seek and expose the truth about this virus’ origins wherever those efforts may lead.
Now Rambaut has popped up again, like a jack-in-the-box, to explain how the unexplainable 50 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP mutations) could have happened naturally. He has another bold theory! There was an evolutionary jump!
And Rambaut proffered yet another theory: the virus has been spreading in humans for years; we just didn’t notice it.
Below is a paper published by Portuguese researchers discusing the newly discovered mutations in money pox. They mention Rambaut’s theory, and Rambaut himself provides the first comment below the paper.
Spooks like Dr. Rambaut don’t do this dirty work for nothing. Just last month, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society.
From Wikipedia:
Science reported on 11 January 2020 that Rambaut was the first to publish the genome of the COVID-19 coronavirus after it was sent to him by Edward C. Holmes.[11][12] Holmes has said that it “took 52 minutes from receiving the code [from his Chinese colleague Professor Yong-Zhen Zhang] to publishing” on Virological.[13][14] The BBC Horizon episode The Vaccine stated: “When Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of a mystery new virus on January 10th 2020, vaccine scientists around the world immediately sprang into action”.[15]
Rambaut was one of the authors of the scientific paper The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,[16] which concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus”.
Rambaut is an attendee of the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).[17]
Perhaps someone else can look up his recent research grants. Were they from NIH or Wellcome? Being rewarded royally with other peoples’ money is another characteristic of the virology spook group.
How can this government of deceivers protect our ‘safety’?
By Suzie Halewood | TCW Defending Fredom | June 7, 2022
HOW can a government that locked us down, collapsed our businesses, imposed a useless mask compliance regime, misled us about the severity of Covid while stifling information about safe, effective treatments in order to force through emergency use approval for ‘vaccines’ and nudge us towards experimental treatments that not only failed to prevent transmission, but caused irreversible damage and death, be in any position to decide what constitutes ‘harm’?
Yet here comes the Online Safety Bill, threatening not only hefty fines from free-press-suppressing Ofcom, but also prison time for anybody judged to have caused psychological harm leading to ‘serious distress’. Harmful content could include online bullying and abuse, advocacy of self-harm and the spreading of misinformation (defined as information that is false, but not created with the intention of causing harm) disinformation (information that is false and created to harm a person, social group, organisation or country) and malinformation (information that is based on reality, used to inflict harm on a person, organisation or country).
Section 53 (c) of the Online Safety Bill determines offending content to be anything that ‘presents a material risk of significant harm to an appreciable number of children in the United Kingdom’.
Like a vaccine then, or masks, or not seeing your friends, or not being able to go out, or attend school and with the added fear that by being ‘selfish’ and not taking a vaccine you didn’t need, you could kill your granny, mum, dad and teacher. Little wonder 374,646 children and young people contacted mental health services last month. The number of adults contacting mental health services in the same period was 1,054,003.
Harms with a less clear legal definition include ‘Coercive Behaviour’ (a government speciality), ‘Disinformation’ (Gates-funded MSM, WHO and all those ‘fact-checkers’ sponsored by the usual suspects), ‘Intimidation’ (jabs for jobs) and ‘Advocacy of Self-Harm’ (‘vaccines’).
The Bill, which also ‘protects’ adults – in case, God forbid, we might have the temerity to think for ourselves – empowers Ofcom to block users, control, moderate and take down content. Criminal sanctions currently in ‘reserve’ could be imposed on tech giants if they fail to clean up their acts or do not ‘allow Ofcom access to their algorithms’ – algorithms that show ‘how easily, quickly and widely content may be disseminated by means of the service’. In other words, Ofcom has been given free rein to make any significant change to a risk profile and make their own assessment as to the level of risk of harm to adults and how quickly such perceived-to-be-harmful content can be spread. So if Ofcom decides – as with YouTube’s Covid-19 Misinformation Policy (slight conflict of interests since Google Ventures invested in the AZ ‘vaccine’) which defines medical misinformation as any content that ‘contradicts guidance from the WHO or local health authorities’ – that ivermectin can cause harm, they can take down any mention of ivermectin (even if the only damage caused by ivermectin is to the profits of the pharma criminals) regardless of the fact Ofcom does not employ immunologists, epidemiologists or virologists.
As for ‘hate speech’, defined as ‘all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance on the grounds of . . . belief . . . or opinion’, would Piers Morgan’s ‘Anti-vaxxers really are a bunch of spineless pussies’ tweet, or Noam Chomsky’s insistence that the unvaccinated be segregated and that getting food was ‘their problem’, qualify as hate speech? Of course not. Their views are in line with The Agenda.
Adults don’t need Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes deciding for them what they can or can’t watch (I use a VPN for Russia Today, Melanie) any more than they need Bill Gates telling them what they can eat (synthetic burgers) or Nadine Dorries pushing through the government’s idea of what constitutes harm or safety. Offence is taken, not given. If I wish to be offended, that’s my choice.
If the government genuinely cared about harm, they’d have carried out risk assessments to weigh up the pros (none) and cons (it was) of locking down the country. They wouldn’t have wilfully terrified the public when they knew full well Covid wasn’t a risk, as they themselves were partying like it was 1984.
Had Nadine ‘I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here’ Dorries cared about ‘harm’ she’d have voluntarily answered one of the 50 letters and emails sent to her by one of her own vaccine-injured constituents instead of having to be pressured into a response by a lobbying group taking up the cause of the vaccine-injured.
If the government cared one iota for the electorate, the vaccine rollout would surely have been halted following a September 2021 meeting in which Tess Lawrie, Dolores Cahill, Mike Yeadon and other doctors and scientists presented damning evidence to Sir Graham Brady of the 1922 Committee which illustrated how a mass rollout of the Covid-19 ‘vaccines’ for children would lead to children being maimed, killed and sterilised.
Such disregard for the electorate runs throughout government. There was a full house for Zelensky’s Churchill-plagiarising extravaganza compared with a paltry five MPs for the reading of Sir Christopher Chope’s Private Member’s Bill aimed at reforming the government’s Vaccine Damages Payment Scheme (VDPS).
Despite more than 2,000 deaths and approaching a million and half injuries (including blindness, strokes and paralysis) reported to MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme (set up following the thalidomide scandal) no compensation has yet been paid. As the VDPS doesn’t consider death as a qualifier for the 60 per cent disability requirement needed to pay out the paltry £120,000 to cover a lifetime of injury, clearly they’re already trying to wriggle out of it.
Before the Online Harms Bill goes any further, it might be a good idea to decide who is the best legal arbiter to rule on what unequivocally constitutes mis-, dis- or mal-information and who in the government (if anyone) has the moral authority or psychological capacity to judge what represents psychological ‘harm’ either to a child or an adult.
If the Online Safety Bill does pass, first in the dock should be the government.
WHO prepares for climate change emergencies
The Counter Signal | June 7, 2022
Speaking on behalf of the World Health Organization (WHO), International Council of Nurses CEO Howard Catton claimed that climate change is the ”grandmother of all health threats.”
“I talk to nurses around the world every week who tell me about how they see the impacts of climate change on the health of people they care for every single day in their practice,” Catton said. “There are 45 million-plus healthcare professionals who are witnesses to the health emergency that is unfolding in plain sight.”
“Their voice must be heard and acted on.”
He continues, conflating the damage caused by poor air quality and pollution — likely in places like China and India, not the developed countries of the West — with the supposed damage caused by minute rising temperatures. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom, of course, agrees with this radical climate change position.
“They see and work with young people struggling and old people struggling with respiratory disorders caused or exacerbated by poor air quality and pollution. People who can’t go out, who are struggling with their tasks of daily living, who are losing function, whose independence undermined,” Catton said.
“They support people who are not coping with extreme temperature changes from heat stroke and exhaustion to hypothermia. Many of these people are [the] most vulnerable, with underlying conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, which is made worse.”
According to Climate.gov, the global average temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius over the last 40 years… This is the “extreme temperature” change that Catton speaks of, without going into the fact weather trends fluctuate and we, in the broader scheme of things, just came out of a little ice age, which probably should just be labelled a light cooling period between 1500-1850 AD (starting before the Industrial Revolution and ending as it was kicking off).
Catton continues, blaming the 1-degree Celsius change in global temperatures for natural occurrences like flooding and forest fires, which he says perpetuates the spread of disease.
For these reasons, Catton says that climate change is one of the greatest risks to global health and that health needs “to be at the centre of all our policies: energy, transport, agriculture, water, and food.”
Electric transport miracle fail: Wiesbaden reintroduces diesel buses
Free West Media | June 6, 2022
In Wiesbaden, Germany, the electric bus era is already over before it really began. The city is now buying conventional buses again. There were just too many problems with electric transport, they say.
The city had initially bought 56 battery buses. The Federal Environment Ministry added 45 million euros of taxpayers’ money. The then Minister Schulze declared: “Wiesbaden is setting a good example and showing how environmentally friendly and attractive public transport is possible.” For the Lord Mayor, the first buses marked the beginning of the “official battery bus age”. A total of 220 new electric buses were to be procured according to original plans.
In practical terms, the climate miracle – the electric bus – sadly failed to deliver. Again and again buses broke down, they had to be recalled by the manufacturer and the municipal transport company ESWE had to ask for understanding from passengers. And because of the hilly terrain in the capital of the state of Hesse, the electric buses did not even manage half the range of the diesel-powered buses.
A battery charge is said to last only 150 kilometres, and in icy temperatures and with a full bus even up to 100 kilometres less. A diesel-powered public bus travels 300 to 400 kilometres a day – uphill and downhill and also costs up to three times less than an e-bus.
The photovoltaic system installed on the roof of the station has also had to be dismantled “due to update fire-protection regulations”.
In the end, plans for a separate power station at the depot so that the many limping electric buses could be charged, were scrapped and further expensive green transport expenditures are off the table. With the e-buses in disrepair, the power station has become superfluous. For the time being, the transport authority is looking for a cheap place to park all the electric buses that are no longer in use.
Ireland prepares for fuel crisis and work-from-home mandates
By Thomas Lambert | The Counter Signal | June 7, 2022
Government officials in Ireland recently wargamed a fuel crisis scenario wherein fuel had to be rationed, and companies were told to enforce mandatory work-from-home orders to reduce consumption.
According to an exclusive exposé from the Irish Independent, participants convened in a confidential meeting on May 27 at the National Emergency Co-ordination Centre to participate in a hypothetical “Oil Emergency Exercise” wherein Ireland faced 20 per cent diesel supply deficits in September and a 35 per cent supply drop in December.
“The third and most extreme scenario proposed for February 2023 is where gas and oil supplies cannot meet the demand for electricity generation or farmers [are] preparing to cut silage,” reports the Irish Independent.
In such a situation, participants of the wargame agreed the following measures would need to be taken:
- The government would impose a work-from-home mandate for “non-essential” workers.
- The government would impose travel bans on “non-essential car travel.”
- Speed limits would be imposed on various roads
- Fuel rationing would begin, with a firm limit set on individual purchases — likely irrespective of automobile or necessity.
- And a curious “emergency scheme” would be implemented to see people with odd-numbered license plates alternating refuelling days with people with even-numbered plates.
Participants of the exercise included the Department of the Environment, Climate, and Communications (DECC), the National Oil Reserves Agency (NORA), Fuels for Ireland (FFI), and the Department of Transport and National Emergency Coordination Group (NECG).
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Fuels for Ireland CEO Kevin McPartlan said, “While it remains highly unlikely that we will experience a reduced supply of fuel, it is prudent that we and Government engage in emergency planning.”
“As things stand, despite the invasion of Ukraine and the announcement of sanctions prohibiting the importation of Russian fuel into the EU, our stock levels are very healthy, and we see no cause for concern in our supply pipeline.”
Despite there being some prospects for oil extraction off the coast of Ireland, in 2021, Ireland shot itself in the proverbial foot, with the government banning all licenses for new oil and natural gas exploration as part of a plan to hit the mythical net-zero carbon emissions mark.
As per a government announcement, Climate Change minister Eamon Ryan said, “The decision we have made today to legislate for a ban on new oil exploration and extraction will send a powerful message, within Ireland and internationally, that Ireland is moving away from fossil fuels towards a renewable future. By keeping fossil fuels in the ground, we will incentivize the transition to renewable energy and put ourselves on a pathway to net-zero by 2050.”
Indeed, despite global trends all pointing towards the need to ramp up oil production and refinement, Ireland, along with other countries, has committed itself to hamper its very means of survival in the wake of mass inflation and shortages.
Israeli regime openly calls on IAEA to censure Iran
Press TV – June 7, 2022
The Israeli regime is openly putting pressure on the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog to censure Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program.
“We expect the IAEA (the International Atomic Energy Agency’s) Board of Governors to place a clear warning light in front of the regime in Tehran, and make it clear that if it continues in its defiant nuclear policy, it will pay a heavy price,” the regime’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday, addressing the Knesset (Israeli parliament), The Times of Israel reported.
The comments came a day after the board started a five-day meeting in Vienna.
The event is set to adopt an anti-Iran resolution, drafted by Britain, France, Germany, and the United States to accuse the Islamic Republic of withholding cooperation with the agency.
Various media reports and official sources have warned about the existence of the Israeli regime’s footprints across the process that has led to the emergence of the draft resolution.
Raising even more suspicion was a Friday flying visit to the occupied territories by the IAEA’s Secretary-General Rafael Grossi, and his meeting there with Bennett, with some reports even sounding the alarm about the watchdog and Tel Aviv’s “collusion” against Iran.
“He (Grossi) arrived for a snap visit in Israel, and I made Israel’s stance clear — that we are operating and will continue to maintain our freedom of action to act against Iran’s nuclear program as long as necessary… nothing ties our hands,” Bennet said.
The Israeli regime has, over years, conducted several sabotage operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinated at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists.
The regime’s vicious anti-Iran campaign comes while Tel Aviv, itself, continues to be the sole possessor of nuclear arms in the Middle East region, with a stockpile of hundreds of atomic warheads. Due to the cover provided by the US and Europeans, however, the regime has refused to open up its nuclear sites to the IAEA’s inspectors and join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“When it comes to nuclear weapons, we live in a world of double standards,” Frank N. von Hippel, an American physicist, who is a professor and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, told Press TV.
“This unequal situation cannot persist indefinitely: Either we get rid of nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons will get rid of us,” he added.
Iran and IAEA relations on tenterhooks
Press TV – June 7, 2022
The Vienna based International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, is supposed to monitor compliance with the 1968 nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, NPT, which has been described as the centerpiece of global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to achieve the ultimate goal of global nuclear disarmament.
The IAEA is supposed to engage upon technical, unbiased and professional cooperation with NPT signatories and to be free of politics or political considerations.
The IAEA has had a high profile role regarding Iran’s nuclear energy programme. In 2015, when Iran and the P 5+ 1 struck a deal known as a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The IAEA was subsequently tasked with monitoring Iran’s compliance with the terms of the agreement.
In many of its reports over the years, the agency has said that it has found no evidence of any diversion in Iran’s nuclear programme.
As the fate of the faltering 2015 deal remains increasingly unclear, the technical role and supposed independence of the atomic watchdog are being tested.
In a recent report, the IAEA said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium had grown to more than 80 times the limit allowed in the 2015 agreement.
The agency also said Iran has failed to answer its remaining questions.
Tehran described the latest IAEA statements as one sided pointing out that it fails to reflect Iran’s extensive cooperation with the agency.
“The International Atomic Energy Agency seems to be succumbing to the same sort of takeover that the United States and the Anglo Zionist Empire has been doing to so many other international organizations such as, for example, in athletics, for example, in economics with the World Economic Forum, for example, all these organizations; they seem to want to control them.” – Tony Gosling, Investigative Journalist
Meanwhile, reports say Western countries lobbied by Israel are planning to push the International Atomic Energy Agency to criticize Iran at its upcoming meeting of the Board of Governors.
In March Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran. The IAEA and Iran announced at the end of the visit that they had agreed on an approach for resolving remaining bilateral issues.
The visit came as representatives from Iran and the P 4+1 were trying to find a way to move forward in their negotiations which were aimed at reviving the 2015 deal. The talks are currently stalled with Iran saying the United States is failing to make necessary political decisions.
At this point, any stance by the IAEA could have an important effect on the stalled talks. This week Iran’s top diplomat said the agreement between Tehran and the agency in March was mutually satisfactory. He warned that political interference in the technical affairs of the agency is totally unconstructive.
The comments by Amir-Abdollahian came ahead of a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors scheduled for June the sixth. With days left to the meeting the IAEA chief has arrived in Israel as Tel Aviv released documents alleging Iran spied on the IAEA.
Iran says Israel, which has refused to join the NPT and is believed to possess hundreds of nuclear warheads, hates the JCPOA and wants to derail the effort to revive it.
The problem with much of what the International Atomic Energy Agency has been doing is that it is trying to find excuses to, I suppose, make out that the Iranian nuclear programme is a military programme.
One of the problems with the IAEA is they’re not looking anywhere near as closely at the Israelis, who do have nuclear weapons.
“They tried to keep it secret, but Mordechai Vanunu blew the whistle in the Sunday Times here in Britain back in the 1980s and did a massive jail term for his, when he was kidnapped actually, for his trouble, that they do have many nuclear weapons, probably something like 200 …” – Tony Gosling, Investigative Journalist
Reports say the United States and its Western allies, pushed by Israel, plan to pile pressure on Iran at the upcoming IAEA meeting.
Tehran has warned that it would respond firmly and appropriately to any such move, because Iran has been cooperating based on the agreement reached in March.
The fate of months of negotiations between Iran and the P 4+1 seems to be at stake as a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors draws close.
One wonders who would benefit from a possible collapse of the talks.
Biden Rocks the Middle East
Partitioning Syria may be on the way
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 7, 2022
That dwindling band of observers that continues to express concern over the catastrophe that constitutes United States foreign policy under President Joe Biden have come to realize how the Ukraine situation is being used as cover for interventions and other similar mischief in other parts of the world. Recent reporting, for example, reveals that the Biden Administration has decided “to reestablish a persistent US military presence in Somalia to enable a more effective fight against al-Shabaab” in spite of the fact that “there is absolutely no constitutional authority for President Biden to send troops into Somalia or drop bombs on Somalia.” Nor does al-Shabaab represent a threat to Americans or American interests.
To be sure, the emphasis on Ukraine has a certain cogency as it is particularly dangerous and could lead to nuclear devastation in a situation where intervention by the United States was not only unwarranted but also unresponsive to any actual national interest of threat. And escalate it will if the White House continues on its current path. Ukrainian government sources are now stating that the United States is preparing to destroy the Russian Black Sea fleet to end the blockade of Ukraine’s ports. The commander of US forces in Europe General Christopher Cavoli seems to be confirming that report when he refers to the preparation of “military options” to help export Ukrainian grain.
One might suggest that such a move could just be enough to start World War III and World War III would almost certainly turn nuclear very quickly. Some might consider that taking a deliberate step that would inevitably escalate into destruction of the entire planet as we know it just might be a foreign policy mistake on the part of the President Joe Biden Administration but I’m sure the chairborne warriors down at Foggy Bottom would disagree, pointing out that nothing would make old Vladimir Putin run and hide faster than a barrage of harpoon missiles imbibed with his breakfast tea.
And, of course, there’s more. There’s always more. The focus on Ukraine in the US and international media combined with a stream of befuddling malapropisms coming out of the White House has obscured what is going on in other corners in the world, where Washington is also flexing its biceps in full knowledge that a manageable war or two will surely help one’s favorability rating come elections in November.
And there is always Israel. The Israeli army and police have recently been shooting dead Palestinian teenagers on a nearly daily basis, and that comes on top of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh a month ago. Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz was in Washington two weeks ago to meet and greet and one might suspect that he just might have been in town inter alia to express some apology for his army’s assassination of Abu Akleh, but that would be to misunderstand the bilateral relationship. In reality, when Israel shouts “jump” the Biden Administration responds “how high, sir?”
Also in the Middle East and also related to Israel, the US State Department has gone into a hissy fit over the May 26th Iraqi parliament’s unanimous vote to make illegal all “normalization” ties with Israel. State was quick to react, in contrast to its torpor dealing with most issues, but it was Israel involved, not just “most issues.” A statement was issued saying “The United States is deeply disturbed by the Iraqi Parliament’s passage of legislation that criminalizes normalization of relations with Israel [while also] jeopardizing freedom of expression and promoting an environment of antisemitism…” Ah yes, the old anti-semitism canard surfaces yet again!
There are also several interesting stories relating to Syria, which continues to be a hotspot because Israel wants to maintain its ability to freely bomb targets that it describes as “terroristic” or connected to arch enemy Iran. The bombing has continued regularly since the Ukraine situation started and has hardly ever been reported in the US media. And, yet again, there is more to the story in terms of US involvement. First of all, Russia reacted to the lukewarm Israeli support for its invasion of Ukraine. An Israeli attack on targets in Syria last week was met by a S-300 missile fired by Russian army manned air defenses. Up until now, Moscow has refrained from attempting to shoot down Israeli warplanes, but the missile was clearly a warning of what might be coming if Israel persists in its attacks.
Also relating to Syria, it is ironic that the US has accused Russia of war crimes over its intervention in Ukraine while at the same time continuing its own illegal occupation of Syria. And it has its own war crimes record. Last week the Pentagon announced that it had completed its investigation into an attack in Syria on March 18, 2019 that killed some presumed ISIS guerrillas as well as four civilians while wounding fifteen others. The Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the Defense Department had determined that that the airstrike “did not violate the laws of warfare or the rules of engagement. Neither the ground forces commander nor anyone involved in carrying out the airstrike ‘acted inappropriately or acted with malicious intent’ or ‘deliberately wanted to and sought out to kill civilians.’” In an earlier investigation concluded last December, the Pentagon said “it would not hold anyone accountable for a drone strike also in Syria in late-August that killed 10 civilians, including seven children. A review of the strike concluded it was a ‘tragic mistake’ that was the result of ‘execution errors.’”
And there are also credible reports that the United States is preparing to de facto partition Syria, to create a separate state run by its Kurdish allies in the country’s northeast that would be under Washington’s protection and would include a garrison of American troops. Such a move would, of course, be completely illegal and is in fact eerily reminiscent of the alleged “war crimes” that the US is claiming regarding Russia for its attempted partition of Ukraine. Interestingly, the planning has not been reported in the mainstream media, yet another instance of the Ukraine crisis serving as cover to drown out all background noise and provide the US with opportunities to increase its meddling in places like the Middle East on behalf of feckless allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Ironically, when the United States initially intervened in Syria, it claimed to do so to fight the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria (ISIS). Subsequently, it cooperated with an al-Qaeda affiliate while close ally Israel had a similar arrangement with ISIS itself. The Kurds and both ISIS and al-Qaeda are all believed to be involved in the theft and sale of Syrian oil. Now the US, which also has been stealing the oil, is seeking something like a permanent presence to solidify its control over Syrian resources.
Interestingly, the planning by Washington to create a sub-state or autonomous region in the north east of Syria was revealed by no less than State Department number three Victoria Nuland at a recent conference held in Morocco. Nuland, who was the driving force behind regime change in Ukraine in 2014, described the Syria development as a “stabilization” activity. The new entity would include Syria’s major oil producing region, which is currently being exploited by Washington and its “allies,” as well as much of the country’s arable land.
Washington has already applied unprecedented punitive sanctions on the parts of Syria controlled by the Russians and President Bashar al-Assad, to include the so-called Caesar Syrian Civil Protection Act’s secondary sanctions that punish anyone trying to avoid the restrictions placed by Washington. Former US Ambassador to Syria James Jeffrey put it this way “And of course, we’ve ratcheted up the isolation and sanctions pressure on Assad, we’ve held the line on no reconstruction assistance, and the country’s desperate for it. You see what’s happened to the Syrian pound, you see what’s happened to the entire economy. So, it’s been a very effective strategy….” He also added “My job is to make it a quagmire for the Russians.”
To circumvent the existing sanctions, the new mini-state would therefore be granted economic viability by making it sanction free as an inducement for foreign investment and development of settlements largely inhabited by Kurds associated with the United States. A “general license” will be issued to facilitate investment and other economic activity. The US will commit $350 million to the project, which is being carried out with the cooperation of the Turkish authorities controlling their own militias along the border. By securing the north east of Syria, Washington would also be able to maintain and protect the illegal US Al-Tanf military base in the south-east of the country bordering Jordan. Al-Tanf blocks the creation of a contiguous “Resistance Axis” from Iran to Lebanon and ultimately to Palestine, thereby maintaining “Israeli security” in the region. As is all too frequently the case, Israeli interests always come first in the minds of Washington politicians.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.