West behind Kosovo escalation – Russian envoy
Samizdat | August 2, 2022
The smoldering conflict between Serbia and the breakaway republic of Kosovo is beneficial for the West, Russia’s envoy in Belgrade Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko proclaimed on Tuesday.
Appearing on Russian TV, the ambassador suggested that Pristina was behind the recent escalation between Serbia and Kosovo but insisted that the incident was ultimately orchestrated by the US and the EU, who aim to stage a provocation in Kosovo that would put Serbia “on its knees” and pressure it into supporting anti-Russia sanctions.
“In this case, the EU, just like it was in the case of Ukraine and in the case of anti-Russian sanctions, is following instructions from Washington, contrary to its own interests. Washington benefits from a smoldering conflict. It benefits from keeping the situation on the brink of collapse,” said Botsan-Kharchenko.
The Russian ambassador’s comments come after tensions flared over the weekend on the border between Serbia and its breakaway province, officially called the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija in the Serbian constitution, which received recognition by several Western powers in 2008.
The government in Kosovo planned to ban the use of Serbian-issued license plates and ID papers starting from August 1, and was to use its police force to enforce the measure. On Sunday, Serbs in the north of the breakaway province set up roadblocks and rang alarm bells as heavily armed special police took control over two administrative crossings with Serbia, preparing to implement the order by Pristina.
The situation received a temporary resolution after Washington called on Kosovo officials to postpone the implementation of the controversial law until September 1. Pristina agreed, on condition that Serbia remove barricades from the de facto border.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said that he hopes for tensions to ease and promised that Belgrade would do everything within its power to preserve the peace through compromise.
NATO occupied Kosovo in 1999, after a 78-day air war against what was then Yugoslavia. The province declared independence in 2008, with Western support. While the US and most of its allies have recognized it, Serbia, Russia, China and the UN states in general have not.
The Old Dogs Need Some New Tricks

By Eamon McKinney | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 1, 2022
The Globalists’ agenda has progressed steadily over the years, it’s evil intent has brought us to the lamentable condition that the world finds itself in today. It is no exaggeration to say that the Cabal are attempting to implement a mass extinction event upon humanity. Bill gates and the rest of the NWO Davos crowd have been enthusiastically talking up the need for “De-population” for years. There are according to them, too many “useless eaters”. The genocidal Covid atrocity that was imposed on the world more than two years ago served that agenda, to a point. The full extent of the fatalities from what was a criminal live human trial are as yet unknown, it may be years before the long term effects are fully understood. Yet, the obvious fact that the wave of deaths and injuries apparently confounding the Mainstream media are concentrated exclusively among those that trusted their Governments and took, reluctantly or not, the experimental jab. Athletes and the young are dropping dead at alarming rates yet the MSM can find no correlation between that and the jab, is climate change the cause they wonder? The onslaught of propaganda that enabled the Covid lie was possible only with the complicity of the MSM. Using every tool of disinformation at their disposal they silenced any contrary opinion, even those coming from some of the World’s leading experts in the field. Dr. Robert Malone the inventor of the MRNA technology, Cary Mullis the creator of the PCR test, and many other esteemed scientists were silenced. And of course, the dissenters, the “anti-vaxxers” were ridiculed as “conspiracy theorists.” A term created by the CIA to discredit and marginalise those who questioned the assassination of J.F.K. nearly 60 years ago. Without gloating over the tragedy there is now some vindication, the group at the lowest risk from Covid? the “conspiracy theorists” who knew enough not the trust the pharmaceutical industry, their governments or the MSM.
The same MSM are equally complicit in all of the Western atrocities of recent years. 9/11, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, Syria and most recently the Ukraine crisis. The MSM, be they supposed liberal or conservative, have all served as enthusiastic cheerleaders for every conflict America and NATO have perpetrated. Without them enabling and promoting the agenda, implementing it would not have been possible. When the time for reckoning arrives, and it will, they will have much to answer for. If there is a “silver lining” among the horror of current events it is that this particular tool of population control is rapidly losing its ability to influence the people. So absurd and egregious has it become that few believe in it anymore. In America recent polls show that trust in TV news is in single figure percentage points, print media figures are marginally higher but still pitifully low. Similar statistics are to be found around the world. Throughout Covid most media channels were supported by government funding to adhere strictly to the Covid narrative, without government money most would already be rightfully out of business. With less and less people watching it and even less believing, this is no longer an effective means of control. This is understood, a major topic at the recent WEF meeting was the lack of trust shown in the globalists and the MSM, and they wonder why? Censoring the alternative, non corporate media seems to be the only thing they have left, “if they don’t believe the lie, we can at least block the truth”. Aided and abetted by Big Tech this has only partially worked, some truths are just too obvious to ignore and there has been a mass exodus away from the MSM as people are shunning it in record numbers.
The World changed forever after the events of 9/11. It was the casus belli to justify the fabricated war on terror and the invasion and destruction of ancient civilisations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. None of which had anything to do with terror threats, just more corporate wars to enrich a greedy minority of powerful men. And when the Western Governments spoke of ’weapons of mass destruction“, it was again the MSM who unquestioningly repeated the lies. But like the failing MSM, “false flags”, a long favoured tool to justify whatever atrocity is planned next are now well recognised. The Gulf of Tonkin was fabricated to justify the Vietnam war, the 7/7 bombings in London was Britain’s 9/11 to bring it line with the war on terror. But these false flags are also no longer effective. Attempts to frame Syria for a chemical weapons attack on its own people was quickly exposed as such. Many anticipate that another such event will be used in the Ukraine to reinvigorate the rapidly failing narrative there. Few will be fooled next time, but the MSM will doubtless unquestionably promote the narrative anyway.
“Colour revolutions” have been used to remove and replace non-compliant Governments for years. Usually backed by George Soros through his funding of NGOs such as the National Endowment of Democracy. It worked in the Ukraine in 2014 with the “Maidan” overthrow of the democratically elected Government. Which was then replaced with a Nazi-supported oligarchy. This is when the Ukraine conflict actually started, not 5 months ago as the MSM would have us believe. It worked in Libya to remove Gaddafi and block his plans for the gold-backed dinar for the African nations. Yet, they failed in China in 1989 with Tiananmen Square, and Hong Kong in 2020. They have failed in Syria to overthrow the Assad government, and most recently failed spectacularly in Kazakhstan due to swift and decisive action by the CSTO States led by Russia. We can hope that the reviled Soros lives long enough to witness the failure of his life’s work. If he has more tricks up his sleeve, now would be the time, because his old playbook is obsolete.
While the world slides towards a chaotic future the MSM remains wilfully oblivious to the suffering it has enabled. There has been little to no honest coverage of the global uprising of protesters demonstrating against the starvation agenda, the Great Reset, Covid, vaccine passports and rapidly increasing totalitarianism. Yet much enthusiasm for the prospect of a diet of bugs to save the environment. Britain’s BBC is a leading offender, no room for dissenting voices but always time for some disgruntled member of the LBGTB (whatever) community complaining about being mis-gendered or some other “woke” absurdity. Without any sense of shame the MSM are always keen to display their sickening “virtue signalling” so that may preserve their presumed monopoly on piety. Yet they appear to remain largely oblivious to the fact that for most distrust has turned to disgust and journalists are among the least admired professions. Rightfully so.
The tools of oppression have run their course, false flags, colour revolutions and the unprincipled charlatans that pretend to be journalists no longer further the Globalist cause effectively. If the latter think that somehow their complicity has bought them a place in whatever Utopian future the Globalist have planned for themselves, they are sadly mistaken. They were just pawns in the game and when they have outlived their usefulness, they will find themselves just “useless eaters” like the rest of us.
Force and violence are the only tools left to the Globalists to control an increasingly angry populace. It has been witnessed to widespread disgust in once assumed free countries like Australia and Canada, among others. Unnecessarily heavy-handed police tactics have been used to suppress otherwise peaceful protests. The use of provocateurs among the protestors to incite violence and discredit them have been recognised and called out by the demonstrators. George Orwell famously said, “if you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever” We have almost arrived at that future, a future where that is all they have to control the people, fear and violence. Yet this future is not set. All governments grant themselves a monopoly on force and violence, and they have the police and when required the military to enforce it. The hope is that the same police and military will realise that they and their families have also been poisoned by the enforced jabs, and that yes, they are just useless eaters too. We can hope that enough of them will decide that they are defending the indefensible and side with the people.
Policing the World Is a Full-Time Job
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • AUGUST 2, 2022
Every leader and top official now in power in the so-called Western World seems to have forgotten that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in 1949 as an alliance that was ostensibly defensive in nature, intended to counter the expansion of Soviet style communism in Europe. That role continued to be the raison d’etre of the organization until communist governments themselves collapsed in both Russia and in the Eastern European states that collectively made up the Warsaw Pact during the 1990s. After that point, NATO no longer had any reason to exist at all as the alleged military threat posed by the Kremlin and its allies vanished virtually overnight.
But clever politicians were quick to put the alliance on life support instead of simply dismantling it. Lacking the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact, NATO was forced to come up with other reasons to maintain military forces at levels that could quickly be enhanced and placed on a wartime footing. Washington and London took the lead in this, citing the now shopworn defense of a “rules based international order” as well as of “democracy” and “freedom.” And fortunately for the national defense industries and the generals, it soon proved possible to find new enemies that provided justification for additional military spending. The first major engagement outside the obligations defined by the original treaty took place in Europe to be sure, but it was in the Balkans where of NATO during the 1995 Operation Deliberate Force. The war ended after the signing of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Paris on December 14th 1995. Peace negotiations were finalized a week later but fighting resumed between Kosovo and Serbia in the following year, which led to another NATO intervention that eventually ended with the restoration of Kosovo’s autonomy and the deployment of NATO forces, which bombed the Serbs to compel their compliance with a draft cease fire agreement.
NATO also played a role improbably enough in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which was justified by claiming that an Afghanistan free to set its own course would become a hotbed of terrorism which would inevitably impact on the United States and Europe. It was a paper-thin argument, but it was the best they could come up with at the time and it also eventually involved soldiers from additional friendly countries like Australia. As we have subsequently seen, however, it was all an argument without merit as Afghanistan became a money pit and a graveyard for thousands of locals and foreign soldiers. It is now again in the hands of the Taliban after a bungled withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the puppet government in Kabul that Washington had installed.
Turn the clock forward to the present. As everyone but President Joe Biden has recognized, the United States and NATO are currently engaged in a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which many observers already believe has some of the attributes of World War III. As Russia neither threatened nor attacked any NATO member state, the argument that the response in arming and training Ukraine was defensive was rendered irrelevant. Nor can it be credibly claimed that Russia is a haven for terrorists, quite the contrary. Nevertheless, Biden has stated that the US will be in the fight on behalf of Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” Does he mean years, and all done without a declaration of war by Congress as required by the US Constitution?
And more appears to be coming. Joe Biden, during last week’s trip to Israel, made clear that the United States is “prepared to use all elements of its national power” to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and has signed a pledge with the Israeli government to commit itself to do so. If Biden presses the argument that Iran is an international threat due to its impending development of nuclear weapons, will he appeal to NATO to support a joint military option to disarm it? I believe he just might do that. And he might just want to consider how the entire set-up and framing of the issue by Israel is somewhat of a trap. Israel considers Iran’s current nuclear program to be intended to create a weapon, which “they continue to develop,” and there are plenty in the US Congress who would agree with that.
So, if Iran is clearly creating a thermonuclear device, the time to strike is now, isn’t it? And bear in mind how the US/Israeli campaign to condemn is multifaceted. Shortly before the meetings held by Biden and his crew with the Israelis, US government sources set the stage for what was to come by going on the offensive regarding reports that Iran may be selling highly capable offensive drones to Russia for use in Ukraine as well as subsequent claims coming out of Washington that the Iranians are seeking to assassinate senior US officials in revenge for the killing of Revolutionary Guards General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. One wonders why they waited so long and why the White House has chosen to publicize these stories at this point.
And the US and NATO are also getting involved with China’s geopolitical policies, on a path that Beijing is warning is extremely hypocritical and which might lead to armed conflict. The signs that the Chinese might be targeted by NATO, possibly over the Taiwan independence issue, came following a stark warning by US Secretary of State Tony Blinken delivered at the NATO summit in Madrid at the end of June. Blinken accused China of “seeking to undermine the rules-based international order,” the same type of critique recently leveled against Russia and Iran. Blinken’s comment was elaborated on by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who observed how “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation.”
Stoltenberg’s indictment of China was followed by a NATO issued “strategic concept” document last that declared for the first time that China poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance, alongside a primary “threat” coming from Russia. The document copied Blinken’s language, citing “The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests.”
Finally, the US and British governments collaborated to condemn China as the “biggest long-term threat to our economic and national security.” The declaration came in a July 6th joint news conference in London, where Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, and Ken McCallum, director general of Britain’s MI5, accused China, like Russia, of interfering in US and UK elections. Wray also warned the business leaders in the audience that the Chinese government has been “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian initially responded a few days after the NATO summit, observing that the “so-called rules-based international order is actually a family rule made by a handful of countries to serve the US self-interest,” adding that “[Washington]observes international rules only as it sees fit.” Addressing the issue of the role of NATO specifically, Zhao accused Blinken of using NATO to “hype up competition with China and stoke group confrontation.” He added that “The history of NATO is one about creating conflicts and waging wars… arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians, even to this day. Facts have proven that it isn’t China that poses a systemic challenge to NATO, and instead it is NATO that brings a looming systemic challenge to world peace and security. Thirty years after the end of the Cold War, [NATO] has not yet abandoned its thinking and practice of creating ‘enemies’ … It is NATO that is creating problems around the world.”
China has a point. What NATO is threatening is war, as it is a military alliance. The Chinese appear to understand that NATO is the world’s largest military bureaucracy which has developed since 1991 an overriding institutional commitment to ensuring its permanent existence, if not expansion, even after it has clearly outlived its own usefulness. So Beijing might justifiably wonder, how does China – on the other side of the globe – fit into NATO’s historic “defensive” mission? How are Chinese troops or missiles now threatening Europe or the US in ways they weren’t before? How are the Americans and Europeans suddenly under military threat coming from China?
The Chinese appear to understand that if there is no threat to “defend” against, then a threat must be manufactured, and that is precisely what we are seeing vis-à-vis Russia, China, Iran and even Venezuela. Washington has become addicted to war and NATO is the chosen tool to give those wars the patina of legitimacy. To launch those conflicts requires either inventing an imaginary threat, or, as in the case of Russia, provoking the very threat the “defensive” bureaucracy was designed to deter or thwart. All indications are that NATO – now embracing 30 countries – is doing both and the results could easily be disastrous for all parties involved. Former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard particularly abhors the cynical recklessness of the Biden Administration driving the process, explaining how “The reality is, President Biden, members of Congress, leaders in our country, the wealthy, they will have a safe place to be in the event of a nuclear war that they are behind causing while the rest of us in America and Russia, people around the world, will be decimated from this event.”
Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has also defined the unthinkable that is at stake, and it is past time for Americans and Europeans to take note and stop the madness. Hedges opines that “The massive expansion of NATO, not only in Eastern and Central Europe but the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, presages endless war and a potential nuclear holocaust.” One might also note that New Yorkers are now being informed about what to do if there is a nuclear attack. Yes, that is precisely the problem – we have an administration in Washington that should be protecting the people living in this country, not setting up scenarios that might lead to their slaughter. Will someone please point that out to Joe Biden?
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.
China to speed up Taiwan reunification process with comprehensive action

By Yang Sheng | Global Times | August 2, 2022
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive on the island of Taiwan on Tuesday night according to foreign media reports, with rising concerns and opposition over her trip within the island and increasing military activities by the Chinese mainland, the Taiwan authorities and the US military in the region. Analysts from both sides of the Taiwan Straits said this risky move will totally change the situation in the region, while the mainland will more actively dominate and speed up the reunification process with comprehensive measures including military and political actions, and these actions will let the US and the secessionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities feel the pain.
There are many options on the table for China to speed up the reunification process. These could include striking Taiwan military targets, just as the PLA did in the previous Taiwan Straits crisis, pushing new legislation for national reunification, sending military aircraft and vessels to enter the island’s “airspace” and “water areas” controlled by the Taiwan authorities and ending the tacit cease-fire with the Taiwan military.
Whether Pelosi can make her trip to Taiwan happen or not, there is no reason for China to be nervous, because such a political show will not change the overwhelming advantages, especially the military one, held by the mainland against the Taiwan authorities and the US in the region. Nor will the trip provide any possibility of “Taiwan independence,” and it cannot change the unshakable hard fact that Taiwan is part of China, said experts, noting that what China needs to do is to use this incident to maximize its advantage and keep pushing the reunification process.
Hua Chunying, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday that “it was the US who takes the provocative action first and has caused the escalation of Taiwan Straits tension. The US should and must take full responsibility for this.”
Military preparations
Both aircraft carriers of the PLA Navy have reportedly moved out from their homeports respectively amid Pelosi’s possible visit to the island of Taiwan, which media reported could happen on Tuesday evening.
The aircraft carrier Liaoning on Sunday embarked on a voyage from its homeport in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong Province, and the aircraft carrier Shandong on Monday set out from its homeport in Sanya, South China’s Hainan Province, accompanied by a Type 075 amphibious assault ship, media on the island of Taiwan reported on Tuesday.
Foreign commercial satellite imageries obtained by the Global Times on Tuesday also show that the aircraft carrier Liaoning was not in its homeport on Sunday, a Type 075 amphibious assault ship was sailing in the South China Sea on Sunday, and the aircraft carrier Shandong was sailing in the South China Sea on Monday.
Some analysts said that as Pelosi’s aircraft may enter Taiwan’s self-claimed “air defense identification zone” along the east coast of Taiwan after departing Malaysia, the Chinese mainland vessels appeared earlier to get into position and are closely monitoring Pelosi’s route.
A military expert who asked for anonymity told the Global Times that with the participation of the aircraft carriers, the PLA could conduct more effective intercept operations, because it will take longer for fighter jets to be launched from airports in the mainland to arrive in the areas to the east or south of Taiwan island, while the shipboard aircraft will be more flexible as long as the fleets have arrived in the relevant region.
Citing an anonymous source, Reuters reported on Tuesday that several PLA aircraft flew close to the “median line” of the Taiwan Straits on Tuesday morning, and Taiwan-based outlets said two Chinese mainland guided-missile frigates and a survey ship sailed from north to south through Yonaguni Island waters, heading east of Taiwan island.
As of Tuesday noon, flights at airports in several cities in Fujian Province, including Xiamen, Fuzhou and Quanzhou, have been partially canceled, according to Xiamen Airlines, citing air traffic control.
US military forces are also taking actions. Four US warships, including an aircraft carrier, were positioned in waters east of the island on “routine” deployments, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Aircraft carrier the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and big deck amphibious ship USS Tripoli (LHA-7), with Marine F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighters embarked, are operating in the vicinity of Taiwan, on the edge of the South China Sea, according to the August 1 edition of the USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker.
A Pentagon spokesperson told USNI News on Monday that the ships were operating normally in the region and would not detail force protection measures for the visit of the third-highest ranking US official to the region.
Concerns within the island
But there is still a possibility that Pelosi could eventually land on the island due to complicated reasons, as Taiwan media also reported that due to security concerns, the DPP authorities once withdrew the “invitation” to Pelosi, but due to Pelosi’s pressure, the authorities eventually compromised and make arrangement for her trip.
Many Taiwan web users complained how Pelosi could be so arrogant and bossy, to force Taiwan to play in a show with her. “After the show you will go back to the US, but what about the mess you leave here in Taiwan?” said a web user.
Hung Hsiu-chu, former chairwoman of the KMT, the major opposition party within the island, said there are two different views on Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan – one group do not want Pelosi to come and do not know why she would come as this could only add conflicts for the Chinese mainland, the US and Taiwan. Another group think that if Pelosi wants to support Taiwan secessionism, she could let the House pass an act to recognize “Taiwan independence,” so why would she come to the island to create such a big mess?
Some also consider that the US is tolerating Pelosi’s risky move to test the bottom-line set by the Chinese mainland, Hung said, noting that “God bless, hopefully nothing bad will happen.”
Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport received a threatening letter on Tuesday morning which claimed that “three explosive devices have been placed at the airport to stop the US House Speaker’s visit to Taiwan,” media reported. The New Party, a pro-reunification political party in the island, and some civil society groups plan to protest at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Taipei where it is believed Pelosi will stay if she visits the island, according to media reports.
The DPP authorities and the many senior politicians are keeping silent without any high-profile preparation for welcoming Pelosi, as analysts said this reflects the high concerns within the island. Pelosi’s visit is creating great troubles but due to the weak position of the DPP authorities in front of the US, the island must cooperate and has no room to make independent decisions.
What the mainland can do
Chinese analysts said the struggle between China and the US at this point is about dignity and concrete strategic interests, but the latter is much more important, so China will not merely focus on playing a game of chicken and hawk with Pelosi, as changing the whole situation of the region is much more significant and valuable.
The Chinese mainland really knows the importance of “strategic patience,” just like when many people expected that China would crack down on the Hong Kong turmoil in 2019 with force when rioters attacked the central government’s liaison office, but the facts prove that China did not act in that way but eventually realized a land-slide victory to reinforce its governance in Hong Kong. “So this time, China will teach the US a lesson again, as it will use US mistakes to comprehensively change the Taiwan Straits situation, just as it did in Hong Kong in recent years,” said a Beijing-based senior expert on international relations who asked for anonymity.
Wang Jiangyu, a professor of law at the City University in Hong Kong, said China will use this incident to strengthen its sovereignty claim over Taiwan. “For instance, sending squadrons of military aircraft to enter the ‘airspace’ of Taiwan, or sending military vessels to enter the ‘water areas’ controlled by the Taiwan military,” he said.
These are unprecedented acts of declaring sovereignty over Taiwan, and if China can send its signal of determination to effectively contain the provocations made by the US and other Western countries, the situation will be in favor of the Chinese side in the future, Wang said.
Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that China’s reaction will not be just a momentary action but will consider the whole security mechanism of Taiwan.
“The Chinese mainland could exercise its sovereignty and rights of control over the airspace on the island and adjacent sea areas around the island, to make sure there will not be another case like ‘Pelosi’s visit’ that could happen again, and to better safeguard national sovereignty,” he said.
Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, said based on the experience of the previous Taiwan Straits crisis, the PLA will strike Taiwan military targets but will not directly fire at US targets, so it is possible that the PLA will strike some Taiwan military targets this time as well, and the mainland could also consider speeding up legislation for a national reunification law and even publish a timetable for reunification which will impose real pressure on the US and Taiwan authorities.
Western experts urge US to start talks with Russia before “it’s too late”
By Ahmed Adel | August 2, 2022
With the war in Ukraine waging since February 24 and no immediate end in sight, Western commentators and experts have begun urging the US and its allies to start talks with Russia over the situation in Ukraine before its “too late.”
Samuel Charap, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations, urged in an opinion piece published in the New York Times for the West to continue providing material support for the Ukrainian military, but in close consultation with Kiev to “begin opening channels of communication with Russia” as “an eventual cease-fire should be the goal, even as the path to it remains uncertain.”
With the US having pledged about $24 billion in military aid to Ukraine, more than four times Ukraine’s 2021 defence budget, in addition to other countries pledging another $12 billion, the authors claim that although the West are committed to helping Ukraine, they do not want to escalate the conflict into a major power war.
“For as long as both Russia and the West are determined to prevail over the other in Ukraine and prepared to devote their deep reserves of weapons to achieve that goal, further escalation seems almost preordained,” the experts wrote.
They stress that discussions are absolutely necessary, despite being politically risky, as the war in Ukraine has the potential to bring Russia and NATO into direct conflict. An argument can be made that Russia and NATO are already in direct conflict as the Atlantic bloc already provides weapons and training to the Ukrainian military and encourages former soldiers and volunteers to fight against Russian forces. This is in addition to espionage and surveillance assistance, diplomatic and political support, and medical aid.
According to the authors, Russia has red lines, which although are not exactly known in their entirety, they can be assumed. The experts give the example that if the Ukrainians are given particular systems or capabilities that could directly target Russian territory, it is likely that Moscow will consider that as a red line being crossed. It is for this reason that when US President Joe Biden recently announced that Ukraine would be supplied with multiple-launch rocket systems, the longest-range munitions that could strike Russia were withheld.
“The premise of the decision was that Moscow will escalate — i.e. launch an attack against NATO — only if certain types of weapons are provided or if they are used to target Russian territory,” they claimed. “The goal is to be careful to stop short of that line while giving the Ukrainians what they need to ‘defend their territory from Russian advances,’ as Mr. Biden said in a statement in June.”
To the experts, this creates a conundrum as for now the West is unwilling to send their military forces directly to Ukraine, but a Russian victory is unacceptable. At the same time, if Ukraine somehow succeeded in halting Russia’s advance thanks to the help of Western weapons, that would constitute an unacceptable defeat for Moscow, which could compel the Russian military to “double down” in its operation.
Charap and Shapiro stress that “The determination of both the West and Russia to do whatever it takes to prevail in Ukraine is the main driver of escalation” and that only through talks can a de-escalation begin. As they say, “The best way to prevent that dynamic from getting out of control is to start talking before it’s too late.”
Although the pair are undoubtedly correct in their analysis that talks are the best way to resolve the conflict, what they do omit is the complete unwillingness from the Ukrainian side since 2014 to discuss issues, as well as the encouragement Kiev receives from Washington and London to not engage in negotiations with Moscow. The very crisis in Ukraine today is because of Kiev’s refusal to negotiate and discuss, whilst committing towards a path of ultra-nationalism, militarisation and even nuclearization.
The two analysts in this way do not necessarily say anything profound as discussions were always the way to resolve the issues between Moscow and Kiev, even before the events of 2014. The problem is that they do not highlight that Kiev, with encouragement from Washington, is completely unwilling to engage in discussions despite Moscow’s willingness.
There may be some gaps in their analysis, but more importantly, having experts from RAND and the European Council on Foreign Relations urging in the New York Times for discussions to begin to end the war in Ukraine is a major narrative shift from the encouragement for prolonged fighting usually found in influential Western think tanks and media outlets, including by these three aforementioned institutions.
With the special military operation continuing for half a year and with no end in sight, Western analysts grossly underestimated Russia’s determination, overestimated Ukraine’s capabilities and miscalculated the effectiveness of sanctions. Now there is a growing acceptance in the academic and media sphere that Russia is in full control of the situation in Ukraine and it alone decides when its military operation will conclude. Because of this reality, it may be in the best interest of the West to open serious negotiations as it could be the only way to have any influence over the outcome of the conflict. The political classes of the West are yet to accept this reality though.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Almost no Americans see Russia as problem – poll
Samizdat | August 2, 2022
Americans view soaring inflation, poor governance and the state of the economy as their country’s biggest problems, with just 1% mentioning Russia, according to a poll released by Gallup on Monday.
Despite the Ukraine conflict remaining a major news story in the US, the share of respondents concerned by Russia’s actions has fallen sharply after hitting 9% in March, the month that followed Moscow’s offensive, the polling agency said. The latest data was compiled on July 5-26.
Abortion has become a prominent issue for Americans, with 8% mentioning it as the most serious problem in the country. The level was the highest since 1984, when the agency started tracking it.
The spike in concern over abortion rights follows the US Supreme Court ruling in June that overturned Roe v Wade— the 1973 landmark decision that guaranteed the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
Democrats and blue-leaning independents drove the metric up, with 13% of such respondents mentioning it, as opposed to 4% of Republicans and red-leaning independents.
Abortion issues trailed behind three problems that the US public perceives as more pressing. Inflation and dysfunction in the US government each accounted for 17%, while the general state of the economy concerned 12% of those polled. Overall, the state of the economy was named as the biggest problem for the US, with 35% flagging the issue, modestly down from June, Gallup said.
Russia is not the only story being closely covered by the American media that the public is turning away from, according to the poll. Others included the Covid-19 pandemic, extreme weather, climate change, and the House Select Committee hearings on the January 6 2021 Capitol riots.
Biden signs off on more weapons for Ukraine
Samizdat | August 1, 2022
US President Joe Biden has ordered an additional $550 million in weapons shipments to Ukraine, largely to restock ammunition for the HIMARS rocket launchers that Kiev has touted as a “game-changer” in its conflict with Russia.
The latest round of weaponry for Ukraine was approved under Biden’s so-called “drawdown authority” on Friday, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters in a White House briefing. The new aid package will include rounds for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers and 155-millimeter artillery shells.
Top Biden administration officials – including Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – spoke with their Ukrainian counterparts earlier on Friday to inform them of the latest aid approval, Kirby said.
Since the Russian military offensive against Ukraine began in February, Biden has authorized 17 aid packages for Kiev under his drawdown authority. Those approvals account for more than $8 billion of weapons shipments. Congress approved $40 billion in overall new aid to Ukraine in May after previously providing $13.6 billion.
Russian officials have accused Washington of pumping HIMARS launchers and other weaponry into Ukraine to draw out the bloody conflict in the former Soviet republic as long as possible. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov has claimed that the US-made rocket launchers have made a huge difference on the battlefield, but Russian forces have continued to make gains in the Donbass region.
Russian Aerospace Forces last week destroyed more than 100 HIMARS rockets in a strike on an ammunition depot in the Dnepropetrovsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday. Moscow previously claimed to have taken out four of the 16 HIMARS launchers that the US had sent to Ukraine. Each rocket for the system reportedly costs about $150,000.
CDC changes its messaging after I caught them out on their moneypox vaccine lies
By Meryl Nass, MD | August 1, 2022
Here are a few of the lies they have backed off:
1. As of July 28, CDC has ceased claiming the monkeypox vaccine(s) is 85% effective. It now admits it does not know its effectiveness.
2. CDC has stopped recommending the OFF LABEL use of moneypox vaccine post-exposure (even up to 14 days post-exposure was the recommendation earlier). They are now telling the truth, which is that the vaccine is only approved as a two dose series and it is licensed as effective only 2 weeks after the second dose, which is 6 weeks after starting the series. There is no data to support post-exposure prophylaxis, which is OFF LABEL use.
3. CDC finally admits that everyone getting vaccinated is a guinea pig in a big experiment.
4. However, CDC still OMITS what it knows about the dangers of these vaccines, information it provided to its advisory committee a mere month ago. ACAM 2000 vaccine causes myocarditis in one in every 175 recipients. And Jynneos seems to cause myocarditis too, as well as making HIV worse, according to the FDA review issued when the vaccines was licensed in 2019. We just don’t have the Jynneos statistics to say how often these problems occur, but in one study more than one in 6 subjects had elevation of cardiac enzymes, which requires some heart muscles cells to die.
Below is the new CDC messaging.
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/considerations-for-monkeypox-vaccination.html
- Two vaccines may be used for the prevention of Monkeypox virus infection:
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- JYNNEOS (also known as Imvamune or Imvanex), licensed (or approved) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the prevention of Monkeypox virus infection, and
- ACAM2000, licensed (or approved) by FDA for use against smallpox and made available for use against monkeypox under an Expanded Access Investigational New Drug application.
- In the United States, there is currently a limited supply of JYNNEOS, although more is expected in the coming weeks and months.
- There is a larger supply of ACAM2000, but this vaccine should not be used in people who have certain health conditions, such as a weakened immune system, skin conditions like eczema or other exfoliative skin conditions, or pregnancy.
- No data are available yet on the effectiveness of these vaccines in the current outbreak.
- The immune response takes 14 days after the second dose of JYNNEOS and 4 weeks after the ACAM2000 dose for maximal development. People who get vaccinated should continue to take steps to protect themselves from infection by avoiding close, skin-to-skin contact, including intimate contact, with someone who has monkeypox.
- To better understand the protective benefits of these vaccines in the current outbreak, CDC will collect data about adverse events and vaccine effectiveness, including whether the vaccine protects a person differently depending on how they were infected with Monkeypox virus.
Chief Medical Officer of Health was paid record cash bonus during height of lockdowns

By Thomas Lambert | The Counter Signal | August 1, 2022
During the height of lockdowns and mandates, when Albertans were fed daily fear propaganda, Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Alberta Deena Hinshaw received hundreds of thousands of dollars as a cash bonus.
Last year, Hinshaw reportedly received $227,911 in “cash benefits,” nearly as much as her base salary of $363,634. This brings Hinshaw’s total annual earnings to over half a million at $591,545.
“The scale of the response to this unprecedented public health emergency required an extraordinary amount of additional work from the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, the Vaccine Task force, the Pandemic Response Team and others, which is reflected in the recent disclosure,” explained Ministry of Health spokesperson Mark Feldbusch in an email.
As previously reported by The Counter Signal, earlier this year, Hinshaw admitted that Alberta Health Services (AHS) reported non-ICU patients as ICU patients throughout the pandemic.
“As we have been doing continual quality assurance work with our data, it was identified over time some units in some hospitals have shifted back and forth between being available for use as an ICU unit or a non-ICU unit,” Hinshaw said.
“In some of our historical data, patients admitted for COVID treatment were categorized as being in ICU when the unit they were on, in fact, had been changed back to a non-ICU unit at that time.”
In other words, the figures were wrong. The entire time that ICU numbers were used as a key point to justify lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and vaccine passports in Alberta, the government intentionally or unintentionally utilized eschewed data, if not outright manipulated data.
Now, it looks like misreporting figures used in a fearmongering campaign apparently made Hinshaw worthy of a taxpayer-funded bonus.
New Evidence: Fauci Imposed a Vaccine Delay that Cost Trump the Election
By Toby Rogers | July 31, 2022
I. Fauci fires Trump
Think back to July 2020. Trump and Fauci were at war with each other. Key leaders within the Trump administration, including Peter Navarro, wanted to fire Fauci. There were riots in the streets as people protested the murder of George Floyd. And new evidence shows that behind the scenes, Fauci was working to torpedo Trump’s chances for re-election.
We already knew that Fauci, the FDA, CDC, and the pharmaceutical industry went to great lengths to block safe and effective treatments including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in order to prolong the pandemic and create the market for Covid-19 vaccines. But a new book reveals that Fauci also forced Moderna to delay their clinical trial by three weeks — which pushed the release of their preliminary results until after the presidential election.
This key piece of information comes from The Messenger: Moderna, the Vaccine, and the Business Gamble That Changed the World published last week by Harvard Business Review Press. The author, Peter Loftus, is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and they published his essay about the book in their Review section on Saturday. What’s astonishing is that Loftus does not even realize the enormity of the story he just stumbled upon. Cultural capture and too many shots apparently prevent one from connecting the dots, so I will do it for him.
Most people already know the broad brush strokes of the Moderna story — they had never successfully brought a product to market before Operation Warp Speed. They were grifters — they took $25 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2013 to develop mRNA products that never worked and another $125 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) in 2015 for a vaccine for Zika that also failed. But Fauci really liked these grifters and so when the pandemic began in 2020, BARDA directed $483 million to Moderna for Covid-19 vaccine development — and Moderna cut NIH in on the patents. That gave NIH and especially Fauci control over what came next.
The key paragraphs from Loftus’ WSJ essay are here:
Dr. Zaks [Chief Medical Officer for Moderna] had wanted to use a private contract research organization to run the whole trial, but NIAID officials wanted their clinical-trial network involved. Eventually, Dr. Zaks backed off, and both entities participated. “I realized we were at an impasse, and I was the embodiment of the impasse,” Dr. Zaks said.
Next, when Moderna’s 30,000-person study began enrolling volunteers in July 2020, the subjects weren’t racially diverse enough. Moncef Slaoui, who led Warp Speed’s vaccine efforts, and Dr. Fauci began holding Saturday Zoom calls with Mr. Bancel and other Moderna leaders to “help coax and advise Moderna how to get the percentage of minorities up to a reasonable level,” Dr. Fauci recalled.
Drs. Fauci and Slaoui wanted Moderna to slow down overall enrollment, to give time to find more people of color. Moderna executives resisted at first. “That was very tense,” Dr. Slaoui said. “Voices went up, and emotions were very high.” Moderna ultimately agreed, and the effort worked, but it cost the trial about an extra three weeks. Later, Mr. Bancel called the decision to slow enrollment “one of the hardest decisions I made this year.”
The claim that Fauci cared about racial diversity in the clinical trial is a lie. How do we know this? Later “clinical trials” for Pfizer and Moderna in kids looked at antibodies in the blood, not actual health outcomes, in only about 300 study participants. The number of people of color enrolled in those undersized trials were in the single digits (literally two or three Black participants total) — so those results were not statistically significant. Yet this did not stop authorization. It appears that Fauci’s delay tactics were designed to accomplish a different goal.
Let’s do the math:
Moderna released their preliminary results — claiming 94.5% effectiveness — on November 16, 2020.
The presidential election was less than two weeks earlier — on November 3, 2020.
Trump lost by less than 1% of the vote in 4 key swing states.
Fauci’s demand to slow down enrollment in July 2020 cost Moderna 3 weeks.
If Moderna had released their results 3 weeks earlier — on October 25, 2020, Trump would have scored a major win in the final week of the campaign and won the election.
It does not matter how one feels about Trump or Biden. A massive political win in the week before the election would have convinced enough voters of Trump’s competence and thus pushed Trump’s vote total over the top.
What about Pfizer? They also could have published their preliminary results prior to the election which would have secured Trump’s re-election. According to Loftus, Pfizer “opted out of Operation Warp Speed for fear it would slow the company down.” Pfizer still took $2 billion off of the Trump administration for advance purchase orders. But Scott Gottlieb and Pfizer clearly preferred Biden and so they held their preliminary results until November 9, 2020 — just 6 days after the election. The Biden administration returned the favor by giving Pfizer a blank check and authorizing shots for additional age groups based on the worst “clinical trial” results anyone has ever seen.
The important thing to understand in all of this is that Fauci, the FDA, NIH, and CDC are political functionaries pretending to be scientists. Pandemics, vaccines, and public health are a way for the Democratic Party machine to direct billions of dollars to their base and reward large donors to the party. These companies and their bureaucratic enablers were happy to take money off of Trump. But they knew that they could get an even better deal from Biden.
As you know, the results of this criminal scheme are gruesome. The Covid-19 shots authorized right after the 2020 election have made no discernible impact on the course of the pandemic. Far more people have died of Covid-19 since the introduction of the shots under Biden than during the Trump administration when no Covid-19 shots existed. The Covid-19 shots have negative efficacy and even quadruple-dosed Biden and quadruple-dosed Fauci have contracted Covid-19, twice. These are the deadliest and most toxic shots in the history of the world.
So what started out as a grift turned into mass murder and a crime against humanity.
And now it’s happening again…
II. Pfizer and Moderna move up the release date for reformulated Covid-19 shots in the effort to help Democrats win the midterm elections
On Thursday of last week, the White House and the FDA told their favorite stenographers at the NY Times that Moderna and Pfizer are going to release their reformulated Covid-19 shots, that will completely skip clinical trials, in mid-September.
As readers of my Substack will recall, back on June 28, Pfizer said that the fastest the reformulated shots could be released was October; Moderna said “late October or November” — provided they could skip clinical trials (which of course the FDA granted because they work for Pharma). Did Pfizer and Moderna not understand their own production capabilities? How did Pfizer and Moderna suddenly speed up their production schedule by 6 weeks?
It appears that once again, the public health gatekeepers are doing politics not science. If shots go into bodies in the last two weeks of September, Democrats will claim progress against Covid during October right before the midterm elections on November 8. It’s basically the political win that these same actors denied to Trump (it’s not a public health win, as I will show below).
What’s likely driving this is that Fauci, Pfizer, Moderna, the FDA, CDC, and NIH all want Democrats to retain the House and Senate in order to prevent hearings into their bungling of the Covid-19 response. Of course they also want to keep the Covid-19 vaccine gravy train going as long as possible.
But, you’re surely saying to yourself, we know that these 5th dose reformulated shots are likely to cause catastrophic harms. We’re already seeing a 5% to 15% increase in all-cause mortality across the most heavily vaccinated countries as a result of non-specific effects from these shots. There are 29,790 VAERS reports of death following these shots and this is likely an underestimate by a factor of 41 (so actual death toll = 1,221,390). These reformulated shots are going to use a form of mRNA never tried before and skip clinical trials altogether, so the harms could be even worse. There also seem to be cumulative harms from these shots — the more doses, the more messed up the immune system, the more vulnerable one is to Covid and all sorts of other diseases including cancer.
So how exactly do they plan to get away with this, especially right before an election?
The same way they always get away with it — they own the media. Pfizer and Moderna will rush out press releases claiming that these reformulated shots are a miracle. The CDC’s in-house newsletter, MMWR, will rush out articles and janky studies claiming that these reformulated shots are a miracle. The mainstream media will dutifully report that these reformulated shots are a miracle. Meanwhile, people you know and love — coworkers, friends, neighbors, and family — will be getting injured and killed by these shots. Yet all of the stories in the news will be hosannas about the genius of Tony Fauci, Peter Marks, and the FDA. Billions of dollars of dark money from Pharma will flow into Democratic Congressional campaign coffers. If Democrats can retain the House and Senate they will reward Pfizer and Moderna by blocking any inquiry into the failed Covid-19 response. Win, win, win for Pharma. Everyone else loses.
Which brings me to my last point….
III. Republicans, you have to step up and fight for us or you will lose
Republicans thought that they could take back the House and Senate simply by not being Democrats. Most Republicans did not really fight for us, they just sat back and let Dems destroy themselves. That plan was working until the Supreme Court overturned Roe. Now the Republican advantage in the generic Congressional ballot (‘which party do you prefer’) has evaporated. Pelosi has passed a range of popular bills. Manchin has fallen in line so Biden will likely get some late legislative wins. Gas prices have declined somewhat. And now it appears that Democrats, who were left for dead just weeks ago, will retain the Senate and may retain the House.
IF REPUBLICANS WANT TO WIN THE MIDTERM ELECTIONS THEY HAVE TO MAKE IT ABOUT DEMOCRATS’ FAILED RESPONSE TO COVID!
No more sitting back. No more making warrior mamas do all of the emotional labor for our country. If Republicans want to win they have to make it clear that they will fire, arrest, and prosecute Fauci (and all of his lieutenants) as soon at Republicans take power. Fauci funded the creation of the chimera virus, blocked access to safe and effective treatments, and inflicted deadly toxic vaccines on the entire population. Over 2 million Americans are dead as a direct result of Fauci’s corruption (1 million dead from/with Covid, over 1 million dead from the shots). If Republicans cannot be bothered to sink this two-foot putt then they don’t deserve to win. If Republicans want the votes of the 18 million single-issue medical freedom voters who decide every national election these days — that’s what they have to run on: #ArrestFauci!
Israel demands disbanding of UN committee investigating attacks on Gaza
MEMO | August 1, 2022
Israel demanded on Sunday the disbanding of the UN committee investigating crimes committed during the occupation state’s military offensive against Gaza in May last year. It is alleged that remarks made by one member of the committee were “anti-Semitic”.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid made the demand in a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in which he referred to the statements by Miloon Kothari, a member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry, in a media interview.
“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by, whether it is the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” Kothari said on a Mondoweiss podcast on 25 July. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”
Israel boycotted the investigation and prevented the commission’s investigators from entering the apartheid state. It claimed that the commission’s partial findings in June were “the latest in a series of biased reports.”
In his letter to Guterres, Lapid claimed that, “The fight against anti-Semitism cannot be waged with words alone, it requires action. This is the time for action; it is time to disband the Commission. This Commission does not just endorse antisemitism — it fuels it.”
The UN spokesman did not respond immediately to requests for comment, but Mondoweiss published a message from the committee’s chair, Navi Pillay, in which she said that Kothari’s comments were intentionally taken out of context.
The US and other Western countries, including Germany, Britain and Austria, denounced — very predictably — Kothari’s comments as “anti-Semitic”.
The US representative to the UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador Michele Taylor, tweeted, “We are outraged by recent anti-Semitic, anti-Israel comments made by a member of the Israel COI. These unacceptable remarks sadly exacerbate our deep concerns about the open-ended nature & overly broad scope of the COI and the HRC’s disproportionate & biased treatment of Israel.”
Although the commission was set up to investigate the Israeli attack on Gaza, which lasted 11 days in May last year, its mandate includes human rights violations before and after that, in addition to investigating the root causes of the tension.
At least 250 Palestinians as well as 13 people in Israel were killed during the Israeli aggression, which saw severe Israeli attacks and raids that exacerbated the destruction caused by the 2014 military offensive. Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip fired several thousand rockets in response to Israel’s ongoing brutal military occupation and siege.

