Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Why the COVID Jab Should Be Banned for Pregnant Women

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 30, 2022

Since the rollout of the experimental COVID shots, U.S. health officials have adamantly claimed the shots are safe for pregnant women, and have been urging all pregnant women to get the jab “to protect themselves and their babies.” To this day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the COVID shot for:1

“… people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future.”

The CDC further recommends:2

“People who are pregnant should stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines, including getting a COVID-19 booster when it’s time to get one.”

And claims:3

“Evidence continues to build showing that:

  • COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy is safe and effective.
  • There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.”

All the while, they’ve had Pfizer data showing the shots cause shocking rates of miscarriage which, adding insult to injury, have been blatantly miscategorized as a “recovered/resolved” adverse effect.4 Who in their right mind would consider DEATH a resolved side effect unless they had a depopulation agenda in mind all along?

I don’t see how this could be described as anything but a criminal cover-up. The only reason we know any of this is because U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to release Pfizer documents at a rate of 55,000 pages per month. The FDA and Pfizer had asked to release the documents at a pace of 500 pages per month, which meant it would take 75 years to disclose them all.5

Criminal Cover-Up

Dr. Naomi Wolf recently reported that an analysis of Pfizer data revealed 44% of the women in the trial suffered miscarriages.6 That statistic turns out to have been the result of a miscalculation,7 as Pfizer listed the miscarriages in two separate columns, resulting in them being counted twice.

We’ve repeatedly found Pfizer’s data collection and reporting to be all over the place, and seemingly on purpose, to make hazards more difficult to ascertain. Wolf admitted the error and took down the original report. However, while fact checkers are gloating over the perceived victory, there’s plenty of other evidence in the Pfizer material to demonstrate these shots should be banned for all time.

In an August 20, 2022, Substack article, Dr. Pierre Kory addressed other, “absolutely horrifying,” findings on miscarriages found in the Pfizer data dumps:8

“… let’s do a dive on just one page of the many thousands. See below, Section 5.3.6, Page 12 of the document called ‘Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.’

Looking at the first bullet under the header: Pregnancy cases: 274 cases including:

In this paragraph, at first read, it is just a list of adverse events and numbers, detailed in a way that is confusing at best, and obfuscating at worst. I think it is the latter because, if you do some simple arithmetic trying to parse that paragraph, you end up with this:

270 pregnancies were reported in vaccinated women during the first 12 weeks of the vaccine campaign. In 238 of them, ‘no outcome was provided.’ So, they only knew the outcome of 32 pregnancies reported. What happened in those 32 pregnancies they followed up on?

My hands are literally trembling as I write this, but here goes. In these 32 pregnancies, there were:

23 spontaneous abortions

2 spontaneous abortions with intra-uterine death

So, 25 of the 32 pregnancies with known outcomes resulted in a miscarriage, a rate of 78%. Note that miscarriage normally occurs in only 12-15% of pregnancies

2 premature births with neonatal death

1 spontaneous abortion with neonatal death

1 normal outcome

Note that this only adds up to 29 known outcomes, but then they note that ‘two different outcomes were reported for each twin’ and then they talk about ‘fetus/baby cases as separate from mother cases.’ I have no idea how to interpret this explanation of outcomes, so it may have been one or two less (or more) deaths then.

So, of the 32 pregnancies they knew the outcome of, 87.5% resulted in the death of the fetus or neonate. Burying this data in the way and not alerting the world to what they found, is criminal activity …”

To be perfectly clear, the failure to record and report the outcomes of 238 out of 274 pregnancies during a drug trial is simply unheard of. It’s shockingly unethical. And the fact that both the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC accepted this, and claim there’s “no evidence” of harm to pregnant women and their babies is proof positive of reprehensible maleficence.

There’s no fixing what’s gone wrong at the FDA and CDC. Their credibility with the public is ruined beyond any possible recovery. The CDC can review and reorganize itself all it wants, but it changes nothing. They are, to this day, urging pregnant women to take a shot that they KNOW will cause babies to die. Calling it a dystopia of epic proportions is a profoundly serious understatement.

CDC-Sponsored Study Also Tried to Hide Data

Need more evidence? How about the fact that the CDC-sponsored study9 published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in April 2021 — which was widely used to support the U.S. recommendation for pregnant women to get injected — also obfuscated data to hide a shockingly elevated miscarriage rate.

According to this paper, the miscarriage rate within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy was 12.5%, which is only slightly above the normal average of 10%. (Looking at statistical data, the risk of miscarriage drops from an overall, average risk rate of 21.3% for the duration of the pregnancy as a whole, to just 5% between Weeks 6 and 7, all the way down to 1% between Weeks 14 and 20.10)

However, there’s a distinct problem with this calculation, as highlighted by Drs. Ira Bernstein, Sanja Jovanovic and Deann McLeod, HBSc, of Toronto. In a May 28, 2021, letter to the editor, they pointed out that:11

“In table 4, the authors report a rate of spontaneous abortions <20 weeks (SA) of 12.5% (104 abortions/827 completed pregnancies). However, this rate should be based on the number of women who were at risk of an SA due to vaccine receipt and should exclude the 700 women who were vaccinated in their third-trimester (104/127 = 82%).”

In other words, when you exclude women who got the shot in their third trimester (since the third trimester is after week 20 and therefore should not be counted when determining miscarriage rate among those injected before week 20), the miscarriage rate is 82%. (The errors in that NEJM article were also reviewed in a Science, Public Health Policy and the Law paper12 published in November 2021.)

Of those 104 miscarriages, 96 of them occurred before 13 weeks of gestation, which strongly suggests that getting a COVID shot during the first trimester is an absolute recipe for disaster. So, here was yet another attempt to hide the fact that more than 8 in 10 pregnancies may be terminated as a result of the jab.

As of August 12, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database listed 4,941 miscarriages post-COVID jab.13 For comparison, the fetal death reports for all other vaccines reported to VAERS in the last 30 years is 2,239.14

Birth Rates Are Suddenly Plummeting Worldwide

In addition to miscarriages, we’re also looking at abruptly plummeting birth rates, suggesting the COVID jabs are having an adverse impact on future fertility as well.

“They are large drops, and they are occurring, almost like clockwork, approximately 9 months after pregnant women around the world started to be vaccinated,” Kory notes.15

For example, Germany recently released data showing a 10% decline in birth rate during the first quarter of 2022.16

The live birth rate graph for Sweden looks much the same, with a 14% drop:17,18 According to Gunnar Anderson, a Swedish professor in demographics at Stockholm University, “We have never seen anything like this before, that the bottom just falls out in just one quarter.”19

Between January and April 2022, Switzerland’s birth rate was 15% lower than expected, the U.K.’s was down by 10% and Taiwan’s was down 23%.20,21,22 In Hungary, MP Dúró Dóra has expressed concern about a 20% drop in birth rate during January 2022, compared to January 2021.23

The U.S. is also showing signs of a drop in live births. Provisional data from North Dakota show a 10% decline in February 2022, 13% reduction in March and an 11% reduction in April, compared to the corresponding months in 2021.24

In a July 5, 2022, Counter Signal article, Mike Campbell reported that in the five countries with the highest COVID jab uptake, fertility has dropped by an average of 15.2%, whereas the five countries with the lowest COVID jab uptake have seen an average reduction of just 4.66%. Below is a chart from Birth Gauge25 on Twitter comparing live birth data for 2021 and 2022 in a large number of countries.

Many Women Report Menstrual Irregularities Post-Jab

High rates of menstrual irregularities post-jab are also a warning sign that reproductive capacity may be impacted. As of August 12, 2022, there were 31,443 VAERS reports of menstrual disorders.26

Changes include heavier and more painful periods27 and changes in menses length, as well as unexpected breakthrough bleeding or spotting among women on long-acting contraception or those who are postmenopausal and haven’t had a period in years or even decades.28

Health officials have tried to brush off the reports, but a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology — funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health — confirmed an association between menstrual cycle length and COVID-19 shots.29

According to the authors, it’s possible that the immune response created by the mRNA shots affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, which plays a well-known role in the timing of a woman’s cycle:30

“Our findings for individuals who received two doses in a single cycle supports this hypothesis. Given the dosing schedule of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in the United States (21 days for Pfizer and 28 days for Moderna), an individual receiving two doses in a single cycle would have received the first dose in the early follicular phase.

Cycle length variability results from events leading to the recruitment and maturation of the dominant follicle during the follicular phase …”

Other Disturbing Evidence

A Japanese biodistribution study for Pfizer’s jab also showed the COVID spike protein from the shots accumulate in female ovaries and male testes,31,32 and there’s credible concern that the COVID jabs will cross-react with syncytin (a retroviral envelope protein) and reproductive genes in sperm, ova and placenta in ways that may impair fertility and reproductive outcomes.

A Pfizer-BioNTech rat study33 revealed the injection more than doubled the incidence of preimplantation loss (i.e., the risk of infertility), and led to mouth/jaw malformations, gastroschisis (a birth defect of the abdominal wall) and abnormalities in the right-sided aortic arch and cervical vertebrae.34,35 As noted by The Exposé :

“With this being the case, how on earth have medicine regulators around the world managed to state in their official guidance that ‘Animal studies do not indicate direct or indirect harmful effects with respect to pregnancy’? And how have they managed to state ‘It is unknown whether the Pfizer vaccine has an impact on fertility’?

The truth of the matter is that they actively chose to cover it up. We know this thanks to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request36 made to the Australian Government Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).”

You can read more about that in The Exposé’s July 19, 2022, article, “FOIA Reveals Pfizer & Medicine Regulators Hid Dangers of COVID Vaccination During Pregnancy After Study Found It Increases Risk of Birth Defects & Infertility.”37

We’re also seeing a sudden uptick in infant mortality. The Exposé 38 highlighted data from Scotland, showing neonatal deaths were 119% higher above the annual norm in March 2022.

COVID Jab Affects Male Fertility Too

Video Link

Male fertility is also under attack by these bioweapons. Israeli research39,40 published in the journal Andrology found the Pfizer COVID jab temporarily but significantly impairs male fertility, dropping sperm concentration by 15.4% and total motile count by 22.1%, compared to baseline pre-jab.

Both eventually recovered, some three months after the last jab, but if you destroy a man’s sperm for three months every time he gets a COVID shot, you’re significantly reducing the probability of him fathering a child for a good part of any given year and the stats reviewed above support this.

Remember, the mRNA shots are recommended at three-month intervals for the original series, and boosters are now being recommended at varying intervals thereafter. In the video above, Amy Kelly, project director for the Daily Clout’s Pfizer document analysis team, reviews this study and other post-jab male fertility concerns.41

End the COVID Shots Now, Before It’s Too Late to Recover

In October 2021, when the FDA was voting on whether to authorize the COVID jab for children aged 5 through 11, Dr. Eric Rubin, an FDA advisory panel member, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of the NEJM, stated:42

“We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes … And I do think we should vote to approve it.”

So, in this and other instances, they’ve openly admitted that anyone who takes the jab is part of an experiment. Yet at the same time, the FDA and CDC have insisted that the jabs are perfectly safe — all while in possession of data showing they’re anything but! In conclusion, I agree with Kory, who writes:43

“… when a new medicine or device is introduced, you must first assume any adverse effects or deaths reported to be related to the intervention until proven otherwise. That is what I am doing here.

We must assume the vaccines are impacting fertility unless some other provable or credible explanations for a sudden drop in month to month birth rates. So stop the shots until you can prove they are not …

Too many young people dying,44 too many becoming disabled, too many pregnancies resulting in fetal or neonatal death as above, and now we find out that if we continue with this vaccine obsession, they will not be replaced. This is a humanitarian catastrophe heaped atop the one caused by dangerous gain-of-function research.

When will the world wake up to this rapidly unfolding horror? For those of us who know what is going on, it is hard not to feel helpless as we are forced to watch increasingly apparent and widespread needless death. But we will continue to try to get these truths out despite the massive censorship and propaganda overwhelming the globe.

We have a moral and ethical obligation and take that responsibility seriously no matter what befalls us. Stop the vaccines, now. And if we can’t stop them, we must try to convince everyone we know to no longer agree to get vaccinated. Their lives and our future depend on it.”

Sources and References

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

UK Agency Says No COVID Shot for Pregnant Women

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 29, 2022

United Kingdom vaccine regulatory administrators quietly removed pregnant and breastfeeding women from its recommendations for the COVID-19 shots — almost two weeks ago. Yet, at the same time, a different arm of the U.K. government, National Health Service, is still promoting the shots as safe “at any stage of pregnancy.”

So which is it?

In a blog, Norman Fenton, professor of risk information management in London, points out the contradictions. Below are excerpts from the Gov.UK website of the “Summary of the Public Assessment Report for COVID-19 Vaccine and Pfizer/BioNTech,” dated August 16, 2022, which contradicts the NHS:

“ … It is considered that sufficient reassurance of safe use of the vaccine in pregnant women cannot be provided at the present time … Women who are breastfeeding should also not be vaccinated.”

With women of childbearing “potential,” the agency says “health care professionals are advised to rule out known or suspected pregnancy prior to vaccination.”

NHS UK:

It’s safe to have the vaccine during any stage of pregnancy, from the first few weeks up to your expected due date. You do not need to delay vaccination until after you have given birth.

Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 reduces the risk of having a stillbirth.

There’s no evidence COVID-19 vaccination increases the risk of having a miscarriage, pre-term birth or other complications in your pregnancy.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

White House deems Trump supporters ‘extremist threat’

Samizdat | August 31, 2022

Republicans who support the Donald Trump campaign’s “Make America Great Again” slogan pose an existential threat to American democracy, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday.

“The president thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy,” Jean-Pierre began, arguing US President Joe Biden had been “as clear as he can be on that particular piece.”

Implying her words had come directly from Biden, she explained, “The way that he sees it is the MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party … This is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.”

While she did not elaborate on the president’s plans to address that threat, she cautioned that “violence or threats of violence have absolutely no place in our society” no matter “which side of the aisle that you’re sitting on.”

It wasn’t the first time the Biden administration has characterized supporters of the former president as an existential threat to the American way. Biden previously bashed “MAGA Republicans” at a donor event last week, likening their “philosophy” to “semi-fascism” and insisting they “don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security” but “refuse to accept the will of the people” and “embrace … political violence,” posing a “threat to our very democracy.”

“It’s not hyperbole, now you need to vote to literally save democracy again,” he urged his supporters.

Jean-Pierre subsequently defended the controversial remarks, urging doubters to “look at the definition of fascism” and “think about what [MAGA Republicans are] doing in attacking our democracy, what they are doing in taking away our freedoms … our voting rights.” However, she denied it was an attack on all Trump voters, insisting the president was referring only to “the extreme ultra wing of Republicans.”

Critics claim Biden has made demonizing the opposition party a centerpiece of his reelection campaign, marking a hard shift from the start of his presidency. The Democrat career politician had initially pleaded for unity among a deeply-divided electorate as accusations of election fraud and the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot cast a long shadow over his inauguration.

The tactic has reminded many of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s infamous denunciation of half of Trump’s voters as a “basket of deplorables” riddled with racism, sexism, and other unwholesome attributes. Despite what she seemed to believe was a certain win, Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, having failed to win over the “other” half of his supporters.

Trump received over 74 million votes in 2020 and 63 million in 2016, according to official figures.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 6 Comments

Public Health Agency of Canada is hiring security guards for ‘quarantine facilities’

The Counter Signal | August 31, 2022

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) has listed openings for security guards for its “quarantine facilities” in Toronto, York and Halton, Ontario.

The posting requires “risk management and security services for Designated Quarantine Facilities in Ontario.”

The job posting was published last week and will close on September 9 at 2 p.m. EST.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of Canada created “Designated Quarantine Facilities” for Canadians unable to quarantine at home after international travel due to proximity with family members. The public became aware of these facilities following reports of Canadians taken from the airport in unmarked vehicles and forcibly placed in a government facility.

In most cases, the facility was a modified hotel. Travellers were typically required to stay in the room for three nights or until they received a negative COVID test.

Quarantine facilities were manned by hotel staff and security guards.

According to the Government of Canada website, “Travellers arriving in Canada who do not have a suitable place to quarantine or isolate may be referred to a designated quarantine facility, upon the direction of a quarantine officer.”

During a stay, travellers are “required to remain in your room until you receive permission and a specific time to leave from a Quarantine Officer at the facility.”

Horror stories frequently emerged from those who stayed at the facilities. Those in forced quarantine were given little to eat and were not allowed to order food. Complaints arose that facilities didn’t comply with specific dietary concerns.

In Quebec, one woman was sexually assaulted during her stay at a facility.

Later in the pandemic, the government required anyone entering Canada by air travel to quarantine at a Designated Quarantine Facilities, costing travellers around $300 per night. Canadians who crossed the border by land were largely exempt from this policy.

The job posting comes as most Canadians have received two doses of a Health Canada-approved COVID-19 vaccine. Federal and provincial governments have dangled COVID-19 vaccination status as a means to return to normal.

Yet, even Canadians with two doses of the vaccine were not exempt from the government’s stringent travel measures during the pandemic, including a stay at a government hotel.

In August, Ottawa announced funding for a “safe voluntary isolation site” in the Windsor-Essex region in Ontario. The government said the isolation site will be used to accommodate foreign agri-workers who can’t find a place to isolate when they enter Canada.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Presidential Record Racketeering

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | August 30, 2022

Former President Donald Trump is supposedly one of the biggest scoundrels in American history for allegedly retaining documents from his presidency at his Mar-a-Lago home. Trump denies wrongdoing but the Justice Department is targeting him for violating the Espionage Act and other laws. DOJ is refusing to reveal the affidavit and the specific charges that the feds claimed justified a massive, heavily-armed raid on Trump’s Florida base.

Much of the media commentary on the raid castigates Trump for conspiring to block Americans’ access to official records. But the federal government has done thousands of times more damage on that score than Trump.

Trump is suspected of violating the Presidential Records Act, a law Congress enacted in 1978 after former President Richard Nixon claimed his secret Oval Office tapes and other records were his personal property. The law asserts, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records…The Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records.”

The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero declared earlier this year. But the statue is a pseudo-disclosure law that keeps far more secrets than it exposes.

All records from former presidents are kept secret for at least five years, and presidents can also slap a 12-year automatic delay on other records. After that deadline, people can file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to see specific records. But as Politico reported in March, “At many presidential libraries, the queues for processing FOIAs stretch for years,” and requests “involving classified information can take more than a decade.”

The disclosure of Barack Obama’s records could be delayed practically indefinitely because his lawyers concocted a new legal doctrine, “White House equities,” to justify vetoing FOIA requests that could tarnish the image of the Obama presidency. At the end of the Obama administration, a congressional committee report aptly titled “FOIA is Broken” noted that journalists had completely abandoned “the FOIA request as a tool because delays and redactions made the request process wholly useless for reporting.”

Federal disclosure logjams are increasingly the topic of ridicule on social media. When Pfizer submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration for a new COVID vaccine in 2020, the FDA approved it in 108 days. But when a group of scientists and professors filed a FOIA to see the application and the data on injury from the vaccine, FDA told them it would take 75 years to fully release the data. A federal judge smashed FDA and is requiring them to complete disclosure a hundred times faster than they planned—releasing 55,000 pages a month instead of 500 pages. But unless people can afford to pay massive legal fees to fight the feds in court, FOIA is mostly a mirage.

As soon as presidents leave office they can collect king’s ransom advances for writing a memoir. Former president Bill Clinton received a $15 million advance for his memoir; George W. Bush received a $10 million advance; and Barack Obama and his wife Michelle received $60 million for a two-book memoir deal. Presidents can practically use any information they please—including info that no one else can use—to write their memoirs with expedited clearance of classified information.

The rigging of presidential records enables politicians to profit massively from lying about their time in office. When George W. Bush was president, he vehemently denied that he ever authorized torture, which is considered a war crime under U.S. and international law. But in his 2010 memoir Decision Points, Bush bragged about ordering torture. Bush wrote that when he was requested to approve the CIA’s waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he responded, “Damn right.” Six months before his memoir was released, in a speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he told the audience, “Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I’d do it again to save lives.” But there is no evidence that torture saved any Americans’ lives. Actually, torture helped send 4000+ Americans to their death in Iraq, since the Bush administration relied on false confessions gained via torture to justify toppling Saddam Hussein. The United States had classified waterboarding as torture since the Spanish-American War, and the U.S. government had classified waterboarding as a war crime since 1947.

If all of the Bush administration’s records were made public, Bush and plenty of his subordinates might be indicted for war crimes. But Bush doesn’t need to worry because the U.S. government blindfolds Americans from learning of their rulers’ crimes.

Sham transparency is “close enough for government work.” At the end of the Obama administration, 30 million pages of his records were trucked to a warehouse near Chicago. The Obama Foundation promised to pay to have those records scanned and made accessible online but that never happened. The Obama Foundation says that 95% of the non-classified Obama records now held by the Archives are already digitized. The Archives could push a few buttons and make them accessible, but that would put a lot of bureaucrats and lawyers out of work. Instead, each document needs to be “reviewed” by bureaucrats before release—assuring that the vast majority will not see the light of day until long after Obama collects tens of millions of dollars in additional speaking fees.

In a 2017 Politico article headlined, “Presidential Libraries are a Scam,” author and former congressional staffer Anthony Clark observed, “Presidential libraries are perfect examples of just how far presidents will go to control their own legacies. Since the first one was created in 1941, what were intended to be serious research centers have grown into flashy, partisan temples touting huckster history.” Unfortunately, most politicians prefer “huckster history” to the real thing. Clark notes that the National Archives and Records Administration “has increasingly become reliant, for ongoing financial support and political cover, on the private foundations presidents create to build the libraries. Which means that [the Archives] cozies up to these organizations, working side by side to help fulfill the foundations’ legacy-polishing ambitions.” The result is the Archives putting its stamp of approval on policies and exhibits that are as deceptive as the typical White House press conference.

If honesty is the goal, then separating state and history is necessary. Presidential records should be automatically and speedily accessible to Americans on the day a former president signs a lucrative contract to write his memoirs. Former presidents should be stripped of any prerogative to limit or delay the disclosure of 99.99%+ of the non-classified records from their administration.

It remains unclear what, if any, legal violations that Trump may have committed with the records seized by the FBI. But there is enough on the table to know that the Presidential Records Act is an ongoing crime against self-government. Federal judge Amy Berman Jackson declared in 2019, “If people don’t have the facts, democracy doesn’t work.” But our current system of government is designed to blindfold Americans on the vast majority of federal crimes. If democracy depends on transparency, and government transparency is an illusion, then what is U.S. democracy?

Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. 

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Macron Reportedly Asks Iran to Mediate in Ukraine War

Al-Manar | August 31, 2022

An Iranian news source on Wednesday reported that French President Emmanuel Macron wants Iran to mediate in Ukraine’s crisis.

Mohammad Jamshidi, the director of the Iranian president’s office for political affairs, early Wednesday in a tweet announced that one of the senior leaders of Western Europe had requested the Iranian President to help mediate the war in Europe.

After a series of consultations, a peace initiative was sent to Moscow along with an important message by the Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, Jamshidi added.

After Jamshidi posted the tweet, ISNA News Agency reported that the senior European official who requested the mediation of the President of Iran is Emmanuel Macron, the President of France.

Amir-Abdollahian, who left for Moscow on Tuesday night to meet with Lavrov, held a meeting with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.

Iranian Foreign Minister before his departure to Moscow said that trying to solve the crisis in Ukraine is the main purpose of his visit.

The main purpose of the trip to Moscow is to try to solve the crisis in Ukraine based on the request made from the Islamic Republic of Iran, he said, adding that some Western parties want Tehran to play an active role in this regard.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | 1 Comment

California Asks Residents Not to Charge Electric Vehicles, Days After Announcing Gas Car Ban

Samizdat | August 31, 2022

California’s power grid operator warned residents of the Sunshine State that it will issue voluntary calls for power conservation in the coming days, as a heatwave threatens to interrupt the supply of electricity.

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), which manages the state’s power grid, said on Tuesday that it will issue a series of ‘Flex Alerts’ during the upcoming days, the Sacramento Bee reported. These alerts call for residents of the state to keep their thermostats above 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25.5 Celsius), avoid using large appliances, and turn off all unnecessary lights.

Among a litany of power-saving tips, the ISO also urges Californians not to charge electric vehicles during the daytime.

Heatwaves increase the risk of blackouts, as households are forced to crank up their air conditioners. This risk is greatest during the early evening, when solar panels no longer function, but homes still need cooling and lighting. With temperatures set to reach 10-20 degrees above normal from Wednesday through to next Tuesday, peak demand is set to be reached on Monday, or Labor Day.

The ISO’s warning came less than a week after the California Air Resources Board voted to approve a plan by Governor Gavin Newsom to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California by 2035. While Newsom claimed that the ban would cut “915 million oil barrels worth of emissions” out of the air, the San Francisco Chronicle noted that it would require California to expand the capacity of its power grid by 30%.

An analysis by CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization, found that Newsom’s plan could also put almost 32,000 mechanics out of business.

Newsom has urged state lawmakers to give up to $1.4 billion to power company PG&E Corp to keep California’s last remaining nuclear plant open for another 10 years to avert the consequences of his own ban.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | 1 Comment

Russia has enough gas for at least 100 years – Gazprom

Samizdat | August 31, 2022

Russia has huge natural gas reserves that could last for more than a century, the head of state-owned Gazprom, Alexey Miller, said on Wednesday at the International Business Congress.

“Our consumers, Russian citizens, will have access to [this] cheap, reliable energy resource. It is especially important to note that they could be optimistic about the country’s gas future. Why? Because we are provided with reserves for 100 years ahead,” Miller said, noting that some of Gazprom’s fields will still be providing gas even in 2120.

The energy giant’s chief executive attributed such an optimistic forecast to the development of the vast resources in Russia’s northern Yamal Peninsula, adding that Gazprom is currently preparing to launch the Kharasavey gas field and has also started developing the deep deposits of the Bovanenkovo field.

Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, estimated at 48 trillion cubic meters.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Washington doubles down on Iranian drone delivery claim

Samizdat – August 31, 2022

Iran has delivered two types of combat drones to Russia this month, the White House said on Tuesday. Moscow had previously dismissed such reports.

“What we’re assessing is that Russia has received both Mohajer-6 and Shahed-series UAVs from Iran over the course of several days in August,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

“Russian aircraft loaded the UAV equipment at an airfield in Iran and subsequently flew from Iran to Russia,” Jean-Pierre added.

The statement came after the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed US officials and intelligence, that the first drone shipment from Iran to Russia was carried out earlier this month. The Kremlin insisted that the report was false.

It was not the first time US officials warned that Moscow might receive battle UAVs from Tehran to boost its forces amid the military operation in Ukraine.

In July, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan claimed that Washington has evidence that Iran was preparing to deliver “several hundred” drones to Russia.

However, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby clarified later that month that the authorities had “seen no indications” of the delivery or purchase of Iranian UAVs by Russia.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry accused Sullivan of “distorting the truth.”

Both Mohajer-6 and Shahed drones can be used for surveillance and carrying out airstrikes.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 5 Comments

Latvian president Levits takes aim at Russian minority

By Ahmed Adel | August 31, 2022

Ethnic Russians residing permanently in Latvia should be “isolated” if they are deemed not to be loyal to the state, Latvian President Egils Levits said. Such a move demonstrates that the liberal experiment in the Baltics has failed and is quickly descending into fascism.

“We see that some of the Russian community is disloyal to our country… Our task is to deal with them, to isolate them… They should simply be isolated,” he said on Latvijas Radio. 

The majority of Latvians, according to Levits, have become “more nationalist and patriotic” as a result of the war in Ukraine, which he believed was a positive thing.

The Latvian president’s statement is an expression of open and unacceptable discrimination without precedent, effectively a new type of fascism. When viewed in the context of Latvia openly glorifying and supporting Nazism by removing monuments to Soviet martyrs, as well as being ardent supporters of the fascist regime in Kiev, the non-condemnation from the European Union highlights that liberalism will always descend into fascism when non-Western powers challenge their hegemony.

During World War II, Latvians fought on the side of Hitler and served as guards at concentration camps. Just like what happened in Ukraine since 2014, Nazi collaborators are now being elevated as heroes in Latvia. Although defenders of anti-Russia policies point out that Levits could not be a fascist as he is Jewish, they also ignore Volodymyr Zelensky, also of Jewish heritage, is a gatekeeper of Far-Right ideology in Ukraine and describes the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Right Sector as heroes and patriots. In addition, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish energy oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the Azov Battalion and other Far-Right extremist militias. 

21st century fascism is motivated by Russophobia rather than antisemitism, as was the case in the previous century. As pointed out by Toward Freedom: “In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, U.S. media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky […] For a U.S. media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.” Therefore, dismissing Levits’ anti-Russia racism because of his Jewish heritage does not hold and is a lazy effort to dismiss the emerging fascism in Latvia. 

Since the three Baltic countries – Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – achieved independence in the early 1990’s, they have worked towards a homogenisation that does not respect minorities. It is recalled that an “Estonianization” was carried out in Estonia in the 1930s, which forced Poles, Russians, Germans and Jews to adopt Estonian surnames. This is similar to the Ukraianization that was forced on Russian-speakers in Ukraine, as well as the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian minorities, since 2014.

It cannot be discounted that Russian people, supposedly living in liberal Europe, will find their language, culture and identity attacked, with individuals targeted for being proud of their ethnicity. Latvian authorities could take away the Russian minorities citizenship or even expel them from the country, with little to no recourse from Brussels.

Emboldened by the lack of condemnation from the West, Latvia’s actions could force Moscow to take its own retaliatory measures, such as terminating diplomatic relations and the transit of goods through these countries, from which they earn fees. Although initial reactions in the West might be celebratory, just as happened in Ukraine, it is remembered that Kiev is now the biggest loser as it is not earning full transit fees for the transportation of Russian energy.

Latvia recently declared Russia a sponsor of terrorism and suspended the issuance of tourist visas to Russian citizens. In addition, the Baltic countries are actively fighting against their Soviet legacy, among other things, by demolishing monuments to Soviet martyrs and soldiers who defeated Nazism in World War II.

Two million people live in Latvia, of which more than 220,000 are so-called non-citizens. These are permanent residents of the country, whose ancestors arrived after 1940 when Latvia became a part of the Soviet Union. Non-citizens, despite being in Latvia for multiple generations, have limited rights and cannot participate in elections and referendums. To obtain Latvian citizenship, they need to go through the naturalization procedure by passing an exam in Latvian language and history. 

This procedure itself is a demonstration of fascist policies in supposedly liberal Europe. 

None-the-less, calling for the “isolation” of Russians in Latvia is an othering resembling the policies of Nazi Germany against its Jewish and Roma citizens. Yet, as Russophobia has become a mainstream and acceptable form of racism and fascism in the liberal West, it will continue to receive little condemnation.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Most Germans want talks with Russia – poll

Samizdat – August 31, 2022

The majority of Germans want the West to take concrete steps to initiate talks with Russia to end the Ukraine conflict, a recent survey has indicated.

Published on Wednesday, the poll commissioned by Germany’s RTL/ntv-Trendbarometer was conducted from August 26 through August 29, with 1,011 people taking part.

According to the survey, some 77% of Germans believe that the West should make concrete efforts to try to launch negotiations with Russia, which could help bring an end to the conflict in Ukraine. Only 17% would oppose such talks. When asked whether it is the right thing for Western leaders to keep phoning Russian President Vladimir Putin, 87% of the respondents replied in the affirmative, with 11% against.

Regarding the extent of German aid to Ukraine, 43% said they are content with the current state of assistance, while 26% want Berlin to do more and a quarter believe the country is already doing too much in this respect.

The latter sentiment is particularly prevalent in eastern Germany and among supporters of the Alternative for Germany party, the researchers noted.

Although some politicians from the ruling ‘traffic-light’ coalition are calling for continued deliveries of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, even at the expense of Germany’s own military, 62% of the respondents expressed skepticism about whether this would be a prudent move, while only 32% would welcome such deliveries.

August 31, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | | 2 Comments