Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

“Experts” now admit you will NEVER be “fully vaccinated”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 22, 2022

We at OffG – and many of our fellow alt media sites – have been reporting for over a year now that the Covid “vaccination” campaign will never end.

In short, you will NEVER be “fully vaccinated”.

That much was obvious once health institutions around the world started “updating” their definition of the term.

Israel. America. Britain. New Zealand. Australia… they all did it, and it came as no surprise.

From the beginning, the “pandemic” has been created, policed, enforced and perpetuated through nothing but rhetorical tricks and manipulative language. New names for old things. New definitions for old words.

“Covid” has always been nothing but a pandemic of terminology. The fluid nature of “fully vaccinated” is just another example.

It has already ballooned from “double-jabbed” to “boosted” and “double-boosted”, and with new “vaccines” expected for all the variants, it doesn’t look like any end is on the horizon.

As I said, you’ll never really be “fully vaccinated”… and now they’re admitting it.

In yet another attempt at control through language manipulation, there’s a push on to completely scrub the term “fully vaccinated” from the Covid discourse.

Yesterday NBC News ran this piece, which headlines:

It’s time to stop saying ‘fully vaccinated’ for Covid, experts say—here’s why

Before going on to claim:

If you still say “fully vaccinated” for Covid, it’s time to stop. With new boosters on the market and an ever-evolving virus, experts say the term no longer means being the most protected you can be. They point to two, far more appropriate alternatives to use in this current phase of the pandemic

They also recommend “adjusting your vocabulary” with their suggested new alternative: “up to date”, a frank admission that the Covid boosters will keep on coming, potentially forever.

Essentially, having spent 18 months convincing millions of people to get “fully vaccinated”, they’re now messing with language again to reverse course and strip that designation away.

Meaning all those people who dutifully took their clot shots are not only no longer considered “fully vaccinated”, but never will be, and are now not even allowed to use that phrase because it creates a false impression.

The good news is that vaccine uptake is slowing – it has been for months – and this transparent effort to lay the ground for future booster campaigns will likely fall flat on its face.

And finally, to all the (formerly) “fully vaccinated” out there, we are sorry… but we did try to tell you this would happen.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

New Study Blames COVID on NIH, University of North Carolina — Finds Fauci and Baric’s Fingerprints on Pandemic Bug

By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., J. Jay Couey, Ph.D., and Charles Rixey | The Defender | October 21, 2022

Critics have long questioned why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would fund experiments by University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill (UNC) professor Ralph Baric to develop a technique for hiding evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created super viruses.

Aided by some $220.5 million in National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) funding, Baric developed a so-called “Seamless Ligation” technique, which he boasted could perfectly conceal all evidence of human tampering in laboratory-created viruses. Baric nicknamed his invention the “no-see’m” method.

Now a new study, “Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV2,” published on the preprint server bioRxiv, shows that — apparently unbeknownst to Baric — the “seamless ligation” concealment gimmick leaves its own minute but legible signature.

Most momentously, these same researchers have discovered that damning signature in the genome of the virus that causes COVID-19.

Baric’s technique has long been controversial. “It’s the artist that doesn’t sign his name to the painting; the virologist that doesn’t put his signature into the virus to let us know whether or not it is emerging naturally or whether it is produced in a laboratory,” said Jeffrey Sachs, chair of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission, a task force that investigated the origins of COVID-19.

“All of it says, my God, there was really a big, very risky research agenda underway.”

This month, Sachs published the results of his 22-month investigation in The Lancet, including the damaging conclusion that COVID-19 was probably laboratory-generated and that the technology probably came from NIH-funded science.

Referring to Baric’s seamless ligation methodology, evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein observed:

“It’s the exact opposite of what you would do if your interest was public health. Public health scientists would be marking their enhancements with red flags — not devising ways to hide them. The only reason you would want a concealer is to advance a sinister purpose — such as illegal bioweapons development — some mischief that the scientist didn’t want traceable back to his lab.”

Baric taught his “no-see’m” method to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s (WIV) “Bat Lady” Shi Zhengli in 2016. In return, Baric received Chinese coronaviruses collected by Shi from bats in Yunnan province. (Scientists have linked the COVID-19 genome’s pedigree to closely related bats.)

Shi and her colleagues at the Wuhan Institute subsequently demonstrated their mastery of Baric’s high-risk technique in a series of published — and highly controversial — gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan lab. It has been even more puzzling to his critics that Baric, again with NIAID funding, chose to share this dangerous technique for weaponizing pathogens with Chinese scientists who have clear links to the Chinese military.

Experts say that the implications of this new study could be far-reaching. By pointing the finger at Baric, the study raises the possibility of potentially devastating liability for the NIAID and the University of North Carolina and other parties.

Scientists, including those close to Dr. Anthony Fauci, have repeatedly pointed out that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, has genomic sequences that appear inconsistent with natural evolution: The COVID-19 virus is no longer infectious in bats, and its spiked protein feature — which is unknown in this family of coronavirus — includes numerous mutations that make it ideally infectious in humans.

The closest known coronavirus relative — a coronavirus from the Wuhan lab — is 96.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2. The peculiar spike accounts almost completely for the entire 3.8% difference. Oddly, there are multiple novel mutations in the spike and almost none in the rest of the genome.

Natural evolution would be expected to leave mutations distributed evenly across the genome. The fact that virtually all the mutations occur on the spike led these scientists to suspect that that particular Wuhan lab coronavirus collected by Shi Zhengli is the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 and that its new spike was implanted through engineering.

However, the unmistakable fingerprints of lab engineering were absent — leaving many experts wondering whether Baric’s technique was used to assemble a novel coronavirus with the engineered spike while removing the evidence of lab generation.

This new study connects the biological breadcrumbs that link federally funded research to a global pandemic. That trail leads directly to UNC and NIAID.

The authors of the study — a team of researchers from Duke University, University Clinics of Würzburg and an industry group — identified a characteristic signature in the amino acid code. That indelible artifact could only have emerged from Baric’s “no-see’m” methodology.

In an interview last spring, Baric himself confessed, that at the time the pandemic began, only two or three labs in the world were using his protocol – including his UNC lab and the WIV.

The study’s authors’ conclusions rest on the presence of unique sites in the COVID-19 virus. These sites allow special enzymes called “restriction enzymes” to cut the DNA into building blocks of unique size that then can be “stitched together in the correct order of the viral genome,” according to the study’s authors.

Essentially, Baric’s technique leaves behind unique spellings in the “genetic vocabulary.” The new words include “odd spelling choices” subtly distinguishing them from typical viral vocabulary.

The magic of Baric’s “no-see’m” technique is to invisibly weave these telltale “spelling” changes into the viral sequence between relevant genes without altering the viral protein. This is like changing the “spelling” of the word without changing its meaning; the casual listener will never notice the difference.

The research team used forensic tools to drill down on minute “spelling differences” in the SARS-CoV2 genome that betray laboratory tampering using the “no-see’m” technique.

Consider how a Brit would spell “colour,” “manoeuvre” or “paediatric.” The choice to spell a word in a certain way can reveal your nation of origin. Similarly, these nearly imperceptible changes in the viral sequence give away the laboratory origins of this virus.

In sharing his seamless ligation technique with Shi Zhengli, Baric assured that the WIV possessed all the required elements of the assembly process. EcoHealth Alliance’s infamous DEFUSE proposal describes the same techniques in detail. (submitted to The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, in 2018).

The world now has proof positive that SARS-CoV2 is an engineered laboratory creation generated with technology developed by Ralph Baric with U.S. government funding.

Prosecutors and private attorneys representing clients injured by the COVID-19 pandemic now have a smoking gun. The gun points at humanity. Forensic scientists have now successfully lifted faint but precise fingerprints from the lethal pistol’s grip and trigger. Those fingerprints belong to the NIAID and the University of North Carolina.

Baric is Fauci’s favorite gain-of-function scientist. The cascade of NIAID funding to Baric and his UNC lab has financed 152 studies approaching a quarter-billion dollars.

Those federal grants have made Baric the global kingpin of gain-of-function science. In conformance with standard practice, it is probable that UNC pockets one-quarter to one-half of NIH’s financial felicities to Baric for “administrative costs.”

These monumental payments have probably incentivized UNC to turn a blind eye to Baric’s reckless experiments and to his controversial decision to transfer his dangerous technologies to a Chinese military laboratory known to suffer from deficient safety protocols and shoddy construction that make it, in the words of Congressional investigators, less secure than a “dentist’s office.”

UNC’s role in enabling the questionable conduct may have precipitated a global pandemic that could easily give rise to liability for negligence.

UNC and NIAID’s liability is now clear. But do we have positive proof that the Wuhan lab created the monstrosity that caused COVID-19?

The cumulative evidence strongly suggests that the Wuhan lab used Baric’s methodologies to cobble together the chimeric virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. But a few missing puzzle pieces still prevent us from definitively proving that this dangerous construction project occurred at the Wuhan lab.

As The Lancet Commission report concluded, the released emails show that NIH’s Dr. Francis Collins, NIAID’s Fauci and EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak, and others are continuing to collaborate with Shi Zhengli and Chinese officials to suppress the public release of information that would allow us to complete this picture. Stay tuned!

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Yemeni army carries out ‘warning’ operation against Greek tanker

The Cradle | October 22, 2022

Yemen’s Armed Forces announced on 21 October they carried out a “warning” drone strike on Al-Dabba port of Hadhramaut in order to prevent a Greek tanker, the Nissos Kea, from looting oil from the facility.

This was the first attack carried out by Yemen’s forces since the expiration of the UN-brokered truce agreement on 2 October.

The country’s official military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a statement that “the oil ship violated the decision issued by the competent authorities to ban the transportation and export of Yemen’s sovereign oil derivatives.”

“The warning message came after addressing the authorities of that ship, and informing them of the decision based on Yemeni laws … The ship was dealt with through cautionary measures, through which we were keen to preserve the safety of its crew and the security of Yemen’s infrastructure,” Saree added.

According to Hadhramaut’s governor in the Saudi-backed Presidential Council, Mabkhout ibn Madi, the ship was meant to arrive at Al-Dabba port a week ago, but remained stationed outside of Yemeni waters due to threats issued against the Greek Ministry of Transport.

“Greece transmitted these threats to us, and to the Ministry of Oil,” Ibn Madi said. Following the ship’s entry into Al-Dabba port, however, its crew ignored the warning issued earlier this month by Yemen’s Supreme Economic Committee and proceeded to attempt an oil looting operation.

According to exclusive sources, the drone strike targeted the area between the Greek ship and the port buoy, sending a “clear military message,” but not compromising the safety of the tanker’s crew, as planned. This is not the first time a Greek vessel is involved in the looting of Yemen’s natural resources.

“The American envoy has been communicating for two weeks with mediators in Sanaa to allow the tanker to ship oil from Al-Dabba port,” the sources added.

As Washington and its allies face a severe energy crisis of their own making, the US is in desperate need of immediate sources of energy, a likely reason that its envoy pressured Sanaa to allow the Greek tanker to make off with the oil. As a result of this energy crisis, US forces have stepped up their oil looting operations in Syria.

The Yemeni operation comes as a renewal of the several warnings issued by the Armed Forces and the Ansarallah resistance movement against the international oil companies operating in the country, and against the Saudi-led coalition, who have consistently plundered Yemen’s oil.

The Saudi-backed government, however, has claimed to have intercepted the operation.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | Leave a comment

WHEN IT COMES TO UKRAINE, THE CIA IS A CLOWN SHOW

By Larry Johnson | A Son Of The New American Revolution | October 21, 2022

The CIA, thanks to Hollywood and fanboys, enjoys an undeserved reputation for competence in carrying out espionage and covert actions. I am fascinated by the delusional punditry offered by former CIA officers, such as Douglas London and Steven Hall. Full disclosure, Hall was a young 20 something in my Career Trainee class (we entered on duty in September 1985). He is emblematic, in my opinion, of the problems that have plagued the CIA over the last thirty years–he was a legacy, i.e. got into the agency in part because his Daddy preceded him. Steve, if you recall, was one of the liars who signed a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop had all the earmarks of Russian disinformation. Attaching himself to such a libelous letter (he was impugning the character of John Paul Mac Isaac) highlights his tendency to follow the herd and eschew critical thinking.

But I want to focus on Douglas London. He is popping up all over media, especially CNN and the Wall Street Journal, and offering analysis that ranges from the banal to the delusional. Consider this snippet, published in the Wall Street Journal, in March:

I spent 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, and watching Vladimir Putin’s brutal war in Ukraine from the sidelines fills me with both sadness and a sense of opportunity. Espionage is a predatory business, and there’s blood in the water. Mr. Putin’s self-inflicted damage has done more to turn his own people against him than anything the West could have done. . . .

Russian mystique is gone. Mr. Putin has proved his country is the declining power that the best-informed Russia watchers claimed it was. Fewer pundits will wax poetic over Mr. Putin’s cunning and strategic brilliance. He might have been a capable operations officer during his KGB career, but he clearly missed the classes on self-awareness and counterintelligence. The more he tightens the security screws and covers Russia’s window to the world, the more likely those he depends on will turn against him.

Got that? Russia, whose economy is clicking along nicely in contrast to the implosion underway in Europe, is a declining power in Mr. London’s fanciful world. Since the start of the Special Military Operation last February, Putin has frustrated Western attempts to paint him as Hitler reincarnated and has forged closer ties with China, India, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Oh, did I mention he enjoys popular support among the Russian people:

The proportion of Russian citizens’ confidence in President Vladimir Putin stood at over 80%, according to the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center that published the results of a survey conducted from October 3 to 9 among 1,600 respondents aged over 18, reports TASS.

“When asked about trust in Putin, 80.9% of respondents answered positively (-0.2% over the week), the approval rate of the Russian president’s work was 75.6% (-1.3 % over the week),” the pollsters noted.

https://www.daily-sun.com/post/650584/Poll-reveals-level-of-Russian-public%E2%80%99s-confidence-in-Putin

I want to remind you of the desperation of the West to portray Putin as a loser bereft of popular support. Five years ago, Statista claimed that Putin was losing popular support:

According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, Russians still have a high level of confidence in President Putin’s ability to do the right thing regarding world affairs. Despite his high overall approval rating, however, Putin is actually losing public support on many key issues. Support for his handling of relations with Ukraine and the EU have dropped 20 and 15 percentage points respectively since 2015. Russians are also increasingly dissatisfied with the way their president is handing relations with the United States.

If you thought that an experienced spook like London would take the time to actually gather some facts and compare them to history, think again. Sure looks like Mr. London is not about to let facts get in his way. London believes that his ability to speak Russian grants him special insight into the mind of Vladimir Putin. Here is his keen analysis from a recent column in Just Security :

Policymakers would do well to remember three fundamentals that guide Putin’s decision-making: 1) he is the product of the 1970’s and 1980’s KGB and stood witness in then-East Germany in 1991, when the world as he knew it ceased to exist; 2) ego, survival, greed, and ambition direct his moral compass; and 3) he has come to believe his own propaganda.

Unlike all other political leaders, Putin is driven by “ego, survival, greed, and ambition.” Excuse me, but good grief!! Thank God that neither Bill Clinton nor Barack Obama nor Boris Johnson were motivated to run for office because of “ego, survival, greed, and ambition.” Any further question why I deride London as banal. Hell, Mr. London does not even understand himself, i.e., what motivates him. Apart from Jesus Christ, I have not had the privilege of knowing any political leader of substance that was free of ego, self-preservation, greed and ambition. This kind of superficial, shallow thinking is part of the reason that officers like London wormed their way up the ranks of the CIA bureaucracy. As long as you mouth platitudes and do not rock the boat of established thinking, you get a great Personal Appraisal Report (aka PAR), and are promoted in accordance with the Peter Principle.

The London Express asked Mr. London about Putin’s decision to name General Surovikin as Supreme Commander of the Military Operation in Ukraine:

Douglas London, . . . believes Vladimir Putin did not appoint Surovikin on merit but because the Russian Air Force Commander lacks the connections within the military to launch a coup. Putin installed Surovikin, nicknamed “General Armageddon,” to oversee Russian operations in Ukraine this month after a run of heavy defeats at the hands of Ukrainian forces in Kherson and Kharkiv. . . .

General Surovikin previously headed up Russian operations during the Syrian Civil War when Moscow propped up the regime of Bashir Al-Assad against Islamist rebel forces.

He was credited with masterminding the recapture of large swathes of Syria from rebel hands, the use of overwhelming firepower, and scant regard for collateral damage.

Surovikin’s appointment as the top Russian commander in Ukraine coincided with the use of widespread suicide drones to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Got that? Surovikin is without “merit”, yet he is credited with capturing large portions of Syria from Islamic rebels. If Douglas London really had any analytical talent at all–along with some intellectual honesty–he could have at least acknowledged that Putin’s choice of Surovikin was in fact grounded in merit. Putin was not looking for some boot licking toady to kiss his ass and tell him what a wonderful dictator he is. Putin selected a General with experience in running a combined arms operation with a clear track record of success. I don’t know if London is just stupid and ignorant or if he sincerely believes the nonsense he is spouting. Could it be that his own experience as a boot licker is clouding his judgment?

U.S. policymakers, when it comes to Russia, are an ignorant lot with little appreciation for history. They are blinded by ideology and tend to view present day Russia through the expired constructs of the Cold War. Putin and Russia are inept. They are bumbling. They are backward. Etc.,etc. etc.

None take into account the remarkable transformation of life in Russia under Putin during the last 22 years. Russia was a genuine shit hole in 1999. Rather than spend Russian tax dollars on disastrous foreign policy expeditions like Iraq and Afghanistan, under Putin’s leadership the creaky, rotten infrastructure left by the Soviet regime was renovated and modernized. Russia’s military services also were upgraded dramatically and its technological skills, particularly in the realm of space exploration, surpassed that of the West. The vast majority of people in the United States fail to appreciate the implications of Russia’s role in providing the rockets and space craft that ferried U.S. astronauts to the Space Station.

Back in 2004, President Bush announced that NASA’s aging space shuttle program would be retired in 2010 and — eventually — replaced by a plan to return to the moon. At the time, NASA realized there would be a four-year gap between the space-shuttle retirement and when the new manned space transport system would be in place.

But at that point, it didn’t seem like a big problem for NASA to ask Russia to transport US astronauts to and from the space station in the interim. Relations between the two countries were friendly — Bush was telling reporters that he’d looked into Putin’s eyes and “got a sense of his soul.” What’s more, NASA had relied on Russian transport for 29 months after the Columbia disaster in 2003, when the shuttle program was put on hold.

Development of NASA’s replacement vessels, however, has taken much longer than anticipated — the agency won’t have a replacement for the shuttle until 2017. There are a few reasons for that. Bush’s moon program was cancelled by Obama in 2010 and replaced with a plan for private companies to shuttle astronauts. Meanwhile, NASA’s budget requests to pay for the new program were repeatedly underfunded by Congress.

https://www.vox.com/2014/5/5/5674744/how-nasa-became-utterly-dependent-on-russia-for-space-travel

Just to be clear. The incompetent, inept, backward, technologically unsophisticated Russians have been the Uber driver for the United States, carrying U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station. But when it comes to running military operations in Ukraine, the Russians supposedly cannot pour piss out of a boot. I offer this as the clearest example of the delusion that blinds the minds of supposed super spies like Douglas London and Steve Hall and others. Instead of acknowledging that Russia, notwithstanding its relatively small population compared to other countries, is a certified leader in sophisticated, complex technology, Western intelligence officials and politicians only see the bad old days of the Soviet Union and the craven party politics that sundered the Soviet empire. The West fails to understand that there is a new kid on the block who is not going to buckle or cower in the face of belligerent threats from the cretins in the West. A failure to know one’s opponent (or enemy) is a recipe for disaster. Sadly, I fear the West is consumed by that recipe and will continue to fight a figment of their collective imagination that no longer exists.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | 2 Comments

10 MINUTES COVID MADNESS. #NEVERFORGET

Credit: Professor Freedom

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 1 Comment

Has the Biden regime ‘disappeared’ a potential whistleblower?

An ABC News investigative journalist disappeared six months ago. He seems to have known a lot about US aims in Ukraine.

FILE PHOTO. James Gordon Meek, an ABC News investigative journalist. ©  Michael Le Brecht/ABC via Getty Images
By Felix Livshitz | Samizdat | October 22, 2022

On 27 April, ABC News reporter James Meek tweeted a single word – “facts” – above another Twitter post from a retired CIA officer, who stated that the 2014-2022 Ukrainian civil war was an eight-year “lab experiment” on Russia’s military “tactics, techniques, and procedures.” It added that US intelligence and “unconventional warfare” experts had “learned a shit ton.”

It was the last time, to date, Meek posted on the social network. In fact, it seems it was the last time he did anything in public at all, both online and in-real-life. Rolling Stone has published an investigation into the veteran journalist’s vanishing act in the months since, revealing how just hours after that tweet was posted, a number of menacing vehicles blocked off roads around Meek’s apartment in Arlington, Virginia, then proceeded to raid the premises.

Neighbors interviewed by the magazine recall a collection of police cruisers, official-looking cars with blacked-out windows, and even armored tactical vehicles frequently used by the FBI, which resemble tanks. Quick as a flash, their occupants exited and rushed into Meek’s apartment complex, “at least 10” of them being “heavily armed.”

The raid was reportedly over very quickly, and Meek apparently didn’t leave the scene with the authorities. To this day, there is no indication of what if anything was seized or why it was conducted, and all records related to the case remain sealed, including the search warrant approved a day prior. While no charges have officially been filed, Meek has dropped off the face of the Earth, and his apartment has remained vacant ever since.

At precisely this time, Meek is said to have resigned “very abruptly” from his ABC News post without warning or explanation, with even close coworkers unaware of the reasons for his departure.

He is also said to have telephoned Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret, with whom he was collaborating on an almost completed book, “Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan,” to tell him he needed to withdraw from the project due to “serious personal issues.” Meek was apparently “really distraught” during the call.

Almost immediately, Meek’s name was scrubbed from the work’s entry on US publishing giant Simon & Schuster’s website, and its cover on various e-commerce sites listing it for pre-order. Several tweets from Meek promoting his involvement in the project have also been deleted.

Tell no tales

It’s remarkable that it has taken six months for anyone to publicly raise the alarm over Meek’s disappearance, and raise questions as to his whereabouts. One might think that a relatively high-profile veteran mainstream US journalist suddenly going missing would stoke concerns among his employers, if not fellow reporters, particularly given Meek’s history of reporting on contentious topics.

He has previously broken stories on foiled terrorist attacks, and military cover-ups surrounding the fatal ambush of four Green Berets by ISIS in 2017, and the accidental death by friendly fire of US private James Sherrett II in 2008. The latter exposure resulted in Meek meeting personally with President Barack Obama.

To source such scoops would have necessitated maintaining close high-level contacts within Washington’s national security apparatus – and there are clear indications Meek could himself have experience in that very sphere. As a 2013 ABC press release announcing the creation of a new investigative unit stated, since 2011 he’d “served as Senior Counterterrorism Advisor and Investigator for the House Committee on Homeland Security, grappling with some of the top threats to our country, including the bombing at the Boston Marathon.”

What this grappling entailed isn’t explained, although Rolling Stone interviews with his ABC peers indicate that despite his background being “shrouded in mystery,” Meek was in close quarters at various times with military and intelligence professionals. One of his coworkers mentioned a photo in his office taken in a desert, featuring Meek posing with a number of people who had had their faces retrospectively blacked out.

These nuggets might suggest not only that Meek had a background in military and/or intelligence work, but that these professional exploits could have overlapped with his journalism career, perhaps up to the present day.

This interpretation is greatly reinforced by an underexplored disclosure in Rolling Stone’s article. It is noted that unnamed sources had said “federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid.” One of Meek’s ABC coworkers further told the magazine: “it would be highly unusual for a reporter or producer to keep any classified information on a computer.” Which is true – but was he simply a “reporter or producer,” or something else too?

Even stranger, Rolling Stone fails to put two and two together when discussing how it would be unusual and unprecedented for the FBI to seize a reporter’s documents, as US laws make it illegal for journalistic material to be captured by federal prosecutors without special prior authorization from the US Attorney General’s office, and there is no evidence in the public domain that such an agreement was officially reached.

Again though, such restrictions only apply to documents held by journalists – not regular citizens, or individuals involved in national security work. As such, Meek’s final tweet – despite being posted after a warrant to search his home was secured – might be a highly incisive clue as to the rationale for the mysterious and completely unpublicized FBI raid.

Meek’s tweeting about the situation in Ukraine since 24 February was fairly sparse, but on 4 March, he revealed that America’s Germany-based 10th Special Forces Group had “spent a decade training Ukraine’s special operations forces in unconventional warfare, almost exclusively. They are seeing those tactics being used very effectively against the Russian Bear.”

In exposing this secret schooling, Meek was notably ahead of the curve – it is only since late September that Western news outlets have acknowledged the decade-long 10th Special Forces Group training provided to Kiev. This indicates he knew something the rest of the media didn’t, or maybe wasn’t allowed to mention at the time.

Meek’s other posts on Ukraine suggest that while far from a Russian apologist, he was very critical of US policy in the region, particularly plans to ship endless weapons to Ukraine, believing it would be difficult for the cargo to reach the frontline, let alone be used very effectively by local troops. Both obvious outcomes have been subsequently admitted, leading to online backlash, and official denials.

The ABC journalist’s knowledge of that covert training, and the US intelligence community exploiting the post-Maidan regime’s brutal war on the Donbass civilian population as a petri dish for prepping war with Russia, strongly suggests insider access. Combined with public skepticism over Washington’s war effort, could it be that Meek planned an expose of inconvenient hidden truths about the Western proxy war in Ukraine, or alternatively knew too much, and was dangerously well-positioned to publicize it?

Declassified documents reveal that the rule change protecting a journalist’s possessions from seizure contain massive loopholes. If the FBI is trying to identify an individual who leaked documents to a reporter, or attempting to surveil someone they believe to be an intelligence operative, those protections evaporate, and the bureau can monitor privileged private communications without the Attorney General office’s approval.

Were it the case that Meek was both a journalist and intelligence professional, by receiving sensitive briefings on US involvement in the war in Ukraine, he could have walked into a series of traps of his dual career’s own making, with no legal protections, and no need for official sign-off on a massive spying and raid operation targeting him.

It is unknown quite what information he could have possessed that the US government wanted to suppress, although the White House is so desperate to maintain official narratives on the Russia/Ukraine conflict that it’s giving direct briefings to Tik-Tok stars on the subject.

Of course, it’s entirely conceivable that someone who could blow the whistle on how Russia’s intervention was provoked, or what the US is trying to get out of prolonging the fighting, would need to be silenced as a matter of urgency.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 3 Comments

Reports about Putin’s threat are false – Scholz

Samizdat | October 22, 2022

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

When asked about the issue during an interview with Die Welt newspaper on Saturday, Scholz said the media had been too loose in its interpretation of official reports from Berlin on its discussions with Moscow.

“For good reasons, I don’t speak about the negotiations that I have with the Russian president. But here’s what I can say: The reports that I read about the alleged threats during these negotiations are false,” the chancellor said.

The Russian and German leaders last talked on the phone in mid-September. According to Berlin, Scholz urged Putin to find a diplomatic solution for the conflict in Ukraine based on a ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Russian troops during their 90-minute conversation. He also “emphasized that any further Russian annexation steps would not go unanswered and would not be recognized under any circumstances.”

According to the Kremlin, Putin told Scholz about the incessant shelling of cities in Donbass by Ukraine, which had led to civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure. The Russian leader called it a “gross violation of humanitarian law” by Kiev.

A few weeks after that, referendums on joining Russia were held in Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and in the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the territories being officially incorporated into the Russian state in early October.

Earlier this week, Scholz told Deutschlandfunk outlet that the tone of his conversations with Putin “is always friendly, even if we have very different views on the matter.”

“I think it’s important that we have this conversation,” the chancellor said, but added that one shouldn’t “harbor any illusions” about those contacts bringing swift results.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Hungary criticizes ‘pro-war’ EU

Samizdat – October 22, 2022

The Hungarian Foreign Ministry has rejected EU calls for Russia to be defeated in Ukraine, saying the bloc needed peace, not a prolonged conflict.

EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson made several statements on the hostilities this week, stressing the bloc’s “determination, resolve and unity to stand by Ukraine as long as it takes.” She also insisted that “to end this crisis, first, Putin must lose.”

Responding on Friday, Tamas Menczer, State Secretary at Hungary’s Foreign Ministry, accused Johansson of making “a very dangerous statement because it links the end of a crisis with a military event, about which we don’t know when will it happen or if it happens at all.”

“This pro-war stance of Brussels extends the conflict and suffering. This is extremely dangerous and unacceptable,” he insisted.

Menczer reiterated the position of the Hungarian government, which is that “we need immediate peace instead of a longer war. Peace requires an immediate ceasefire and dialogue.”

Hungary has remained relatively neutral since the outbreak of fighting in Ukraine in late February. It has refused to send arms to Kiev unlike many fellow EU members and consistently criticized the sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow. Budapest, which is heavily dependent on Russian fuel, was also able to negotiate an exemption for itself from the bloc-wide ban on Russian oil.

Moscow, which has repeatedly invited Kiev to come to the negotiating table, has blamed the Ukrainian side for undermining any potential for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed a declaration that officially made it “impossible” to hold any negotiations with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The move followed the inclusion of the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, and the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, into Russia as result of referendums in those territories. Kiev and its Western backers have labeled September’s votes a “sham” and continue to view the areas as parts of Ukraine.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

White House dismisses scathing UN report against ‘unfairly targeted’ Israel

The Cradle | October 21, 2022

US State Department spokesman Ned Price alleged on 20 October that Israel is “unfairly targeted in the UN,” in the wake of a scathing report released by the ongoing UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) investigating human rights abuses committed by Tel Aviv during the 74-year occupation of Palestine.

“Israel is consistently unfairly targeted in the UN system, including in the course of this commission of inquiry,” Price told reporters during a news conference on Thursday.

“No country, the record of no country, should be immune from scrutiny, but no country should also be targeted unfairly. And that’s the principle that we seek to uphold,” he claimed.

In their report, the COI determined that “the occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli government’s de facto annexation policies.”

The COI report also refers to numerous statements made by the UN secretary general and UN member states concerning the Russia-Ukraine war, in which officials reaffirmed that the “unilateral annexation of a State’s territory by another State is a violation of international law and is null and void.”

Speaking to reporters, COI chair Navi Pillay stressed that just last week, “143 member States including Israel … voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution reaffirming this.”

“Unless universally applied, including to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, this core principle of the United Nations Charter will become meaningless,” she added.

In a second report also released on Thursday – and set to be presented to the UN General Assembly on 27 October – the COI requested an urgent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “on the legal consequences of the continued refusal on the part of Israel to end its occupation.”

“Actions by Israel constituting de facto annexation include expropriating land and natural resources, establishing settlements and outposts, maintaining a restrictive and discriminatory planning and building regime for Palestinians and extending Israeli law extraterritorially to Israeli settlers in the West Bank,” the UN officials conclude in their report.

Since the start of this year, at least 105 Palestinians – including 26 children – have been killed by Israeli troops, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006 for Palestinians residing in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

On top of this, Tel Aviv currently holds 4,500 Palestinians in prison, 730 of whom are held without charge and mainly on the basis of ‘secret evidence.’

Children as young as 12 are subjected to arbitrary arrests and detention measures by the occupation government. Just last month, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy fell to his death after being chased by Israeli soldiers.

But despite the countless deaths and wanton destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip and violent raids across the West Bank, Israeli authorities maintain a policy of “not apologizing” for their war crimes, under the full support of the US.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , | 2 Comments

Israeli regime brings in strict rules on West Bank visitors amid international criticism

Press TV – October 21, 2022

The Israeli regime has implemented strict rules on all foreigners or Palestinians holding dual nationality who intend to come to the Occupied Palestinian territories, where it limits their ability to enter and stay in the occupied West Bank.

A 90-page authoritative order came into effect on Thursday despite international criticism, as reported by The Guardian, which will create complications for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families who hold dual nationality and are already having a hard time maneuvering a complicated permit system.

COGAT, the Israeli body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs issued the rules, which are to be allegedly implemented over a two-year pilot period. The strict rules are expected to suffocate the Palestinian economy and academia and the work of aid agencies, where all foreign internationals coming to volunteer, study or work in the West Bank will be granted a single-entry visa valid for only three months.

There are no guarantees they will be granted a visa again, and they will have to leave and wait between visas in some cases for more than one year before they are able to reapply for entry. In most cases, residency is limited to a 12- to 27-month period, making family life and long-term employment almost impossible.

Palestinian academics, business leaders and rights groups expressed outrage over the policy when it was first outlined in February.

“This is going to cause major issues. Some of our board members come here frequently and they need to be able to see their investments. They are destroying Palestinian businesses,” said Bassem Khouri, chief executive of a pharmaceutical company in the West Bank, adding, “Who can live and work here is supposed to be a Palestinian decision. This is designed to isolate us.”

Meanwhile, Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked, an Israeli human rights group that has challenged the rules in court slammed the ordinance, saying, “The Israeli military is proposing new restrictions in order to isolate Palestinian society from the outside world and keep Palestinian families from living together.”

In a move that controls the lives of foreigners and Palestinians as well, the rules stipulate that only 150 foreign students a year may register at Palestinian colleges and universities. The major they chose to study must be pre-approved, and there is a quota of 100 foreign “distinguished” lecturers that will be determined by the Israeli occupation regime.

Also, Palestinians holding dual citizenship will have to hand the Israeli apartheid regime a list of names and ID numbers of family and friends they plan to visit beforehand, even before they travel.

Students, teachers, journalists working for Palestinian media outlets, tourists, and Palestinian family members including siblings, grandparents or grandchildren will all have to undergo these new rules.

The rules also read that if a foreigner starts a relationship with a Palestinian, “the appointed COGAT official must be informed as part of their request to renew or extend the existing visa.”

According to Montell, none of the rules have any legal ground. “Under international law, the Israeli military is only allowed to work for the interests of the occupied population, or its own security needs. These restrictions obviously advance neither.”

The new procedures apply only to Palestinians, and not Israeli settlers living across the area in violation of international law. Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

Russia’s homage to Nord Stream pipelines

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 22, 2022

David Brinkley, the legendary American newscaster with a career that spanned an amazing fifty-four years from World War II once said that a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. How many American statesmen ever practised this noble thought inherited from Jesus Christ remains doubtful. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stunning proposal to Turkish President Recep Erdogan to build a gas pipeline to Turkiye to create an international hub from which Russian gas can be supplied to Europe breathes fresh life into this very “Gandhian” thought.  

Putin discussed the idea with Erdogan at their meeting in Astana on October 13 and since spoke about it at the Russian Energy Week forum last week where he proposed creating the largest gas hub in Europe in Turkey and redirecting the volume of gas, the transit of which is no longer possible through the Nord Stream, to this hub.

Putin said it may imply building another gas pipeline system to feed the hub in Turkiye, through which gas will be supplied to third countries, primarily European ones, “if they are interested.” 

Prima facie, Putin does not expect any positive response from Berlin to his standing proposal to use the string of the Nord Stream 2, which remained undamaged, to supply 27.5 billion cu. metres of gas through the winter months. Germany’s deafening silence is understandable. Chancellor Off Scholz is terrified about President Biden’s wrath. 

Berlin says it knows who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines but won’t reveal it as it affects Germany’s national security! Sweden too pleads that the matter is far too sensitive for it to share the evidence it has collected with any country, including Germany! Biden has put the fear of God into the minds of these timid European “allies” who have been left in no doubt what is good for them! The western media too is ordered to play down Nord Steam saga so that with the passage of time, public memory will fade away. 

However, Russia has done its homework that Europe cannot do without Russia gas, the present bravado of self-denial notwithstanding. Simply put, the European industries depend on cheap, reliable supplies of Russian gas for their products to remain competitive in the world market. 

Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi said last week that he cannot envisage a future where “zero Russian gas” flows to Europe. He noted acerbically, “ If that’s the case, then I think the problem is going to be huge and for a very long time. You just don’t have enough volume to bring (in) to replace that (Russian) gas for the long term, unless you’re saying ‘I’m going to be building huge nuclear (plants), I’m going to allow coal, I’m going to burn fuel oils.’” 

Quintessentially, Russia plans to replace its gas hub in Haidach in Austria (which Austrians seized in July.) Conceivably, the hub in Turkiye has a ready market in Southern Europe, including Greece and Italy. But there is more to it than meets the eye. 

Succinctly put, Putin has made a strategic move in the geopolitics of gas. His initiative rubbishes the hare-brained idea of the Russophobic European Commission bureaucrats in Brussels, headed by Ursula von der Leyen, to impose a price cap on gas purchases. It makes nonsense of the US’ and EU’s plans to put down Russia’s profile as a gas superpower. 

Logically, the next step for Russia should be to align with Qatar, the world’s second biggest gas exporter. Qatar is a close ally of Turkey, too. At Astana recently, on the sidelines of the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), Putin held a closed-door meeting with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. They agreed to follow up with another meeting soon in Russia. 

Russia already has a framework of  cooperation with Iran in a number of joint projects in the oil and gas industry. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak recently disclosed plans to conclude an oil and gas swap deal with Iran by the end of the year. He said that “technical details are being worked out – issues of transport, logistics, price, and tariff formation.” 

Now, Russia, Qatar and Iran together account for more than half of the world’s entire proven gas reserves. Time is approaching for them to intensify cooperation and coordination on the pattern of the OPEC Plus. All three countries are represented in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). 

Putin’s proposal appeals to Turkiye’s longstanding dream to become an energy hub at the doorstep of Europe. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan instinctively warmed up to Putin’s proposal. Addressing the ruling party members in the Turkish parliament this week, Erdogan said, “In Europe they are now dealing with the question of how to stay warm in the coming winter. We don’t have such a problem. We have agreed with Vladimir Putin to create a gas hub in our country, through which natural gas, as he says, can be delivered to Europe. Thus, Europe will order gas from Turkey.” 

Apart from strengthening its own energy security, Turkiye also can contribute to Europe’s. No doubt, Turkiye’s importance will take a quantum leap in the EU foreign policy calculus, while also strengthening its strategic autonomy in regional politics. This is a huge step forward in Erdogan’s geo-strategy — the geographic direction of Turkish foreign policy under his watch.  

From the Russian viewpoint, of course, Turkiye’s strategic autonomy and its grit to pursue independent foreign policies works splendidly for Moscow in the present conditions of western sanctions. Conceivably, Russian companies will start viewing Turkiye as a production base where western technologies become accessible. Turkiye has a customs union agreement with the EU, which completely removes customs duties on all industrial goods of Turkish origin. (See my blog Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions, Aug 9, 2022)

In geopolitical terms, Moscow is comfortable with Turkiye’s NATO membership. Clearly, the proposed gas hub brings much additional income to Turkiye and will impart greater stability and predictability to the Russia-Turkey relations. Indeed, the strategic links that tie the two countries together are steadily lengthening — the S-400 ABM deal, cooperation in Syria, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Turk-stream gas pipeline, to name a few. 

The two countries candidly admit that they have differences of opinion, but the way Putin and Erdogan through constructive diplomacy keep turning adverse circumstances into windows of opportunity for “win-win” cooperation is simply amazing. 

It does need ingenuity to get the US’ European allies to source Russian gas without any coercion or boorishness even after Washington buried the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the depths of the Baltic Sea. There is dramatic irony that a NATO power is partnering Russia in this direction. 

The US foreign policy elite drawn from East European stock are rendered speechless by the sheer sophistication of the Russian ingenuity to bypass without any trace of rancour the shabby way the US and its allies — Germany and Sweden, in particular — slammed the door shut on Moscow to even take a look at the damaged multi-billion dollar pipelines that it had built in good faith in the depths of the Baltic Sea at the insistance of two German chancellors, Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel. 

The current German leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks very foolish and cowardly – and provincial. The European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen gets a huge rebuff in all this which will ultimately define her tragic legacy in Brussels as a flag carrier for American interests. This becomes probably the first case study for historians on how multipolarity will work in the world order.  

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , | 6 Comments