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U.S. Lawyers Claim Ivermectin was never prohibited for treating COVID-19. FDA merely recommended not using it.

No legal prohibition authorized or justified hospitals to withhold the drug from dying patients. Let the lawsuits begin.

FDA tweet against using ivermectin. Not a prohibition, merely a recommendation.
By Dr. McCullough & John Leake · Courageous Discourse · November 22, 2022

The Epoch Times recently reported an astonishing statement by a U.S. government lawyer in a federal court in Texas, where the FDA is being sued by Dr. Paul Marik of Virginia, Dr. Mary Bowden of Texas, and Dr. Robert Apter of Arizona. The three plaintiffs claim the FDA illegally prohibited them from prescribing the drug to their patients. At a November 1 hearing, U.S. lawyer Isaac Belfer argued for the defendant:

The cited statements were not directives. They were not mandatory. They were recommendations. They said what parties should do. They said, for example, why you should not take ivermectin to treat COVID-19. They did not say you may not do it, you must not do it. They did not say it’s prohibited or it’s unlawful. They also did not say that doctors may not prescribe ivermectin.”

If Belfer’s assertion is true, it raises a very urgent question: On what legal grounds did hospitals all over the United States refuse to administer ivermectin to severely ill COVID-19 patients, even when patients and their family members begged for the drug to be administered?

If ivermectin was not prohibited by the FDA or any other U.S. medical authority for treating COVID-19, why did Dr. Paul Marik’s hospital prohibit him from administering the drug to his dying patients? Why was Dr. Mary Bowden reported to the Texas Medical Board for disciplinary action when she prescribed it? Why did many pharmacists fear losing their licenses if they filled ivermectin prescriptions for treating COVID-19?

In our book, The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Dr. McCullough and I document numerous instances of hospitals flatly refusing to grant the wishes of dying patients and their family members for ivermectin.

All these patients asked for was to be allowed to try the drug (FDA-approved for River Blindness, Elephantiasis, and Scabies) for COVID-19. The patients and their kin gladly indemnified the hospitals and arranged to have their independent primary care doctors deliver and administer the drug. Nevertheless:

  • Hospital administrators absolutely refused to grant this wish.
  • Hospital attorneys fought tooth and nail against using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, doing everything in their power to challenge patient lawsuits and appeal court orders to administer the drug.
  • Even when hospital doctors acknowledged that the patients were dying, they insisted it was better to let the disease take its natural course rather than allow patients to try ivermectin.
  • Even when patients’ families succeeded in getting a court orders to administer the drug, many hospitals still refused, even at the risk of being held in contempt of court.

Several readers have told us that our chapters covering this shameful scandal— Chapters 38: Begging for the Wonder Drug and Chapter 40: Graduating into Eternity—are horrifying beyond belief.

Now we hear U.S. government lawyers arguing in court that the FDA never prohibited using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients, but merely recommended not using it. This indicates that hospitals had no legal grounds for denying sick patients a drug that could have helped them. How is withholding medicine from a sick man any different from withholding a life ring from a man who has fallen overboard in high seas?

For families who watched their loved ones slip away after being denied the right to try ivermectin, U.S. attorney Isaac Belfer’s statement may be interpreted as declaring open season for lawsuits against hospital administrators and doctors.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | 2 Comments

Israel pushes US on military action against Iran

RT | November 23, 2022

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi has called on the United States to develop new “operational plans” to take on the Iranian military, urging top US defense and intelligence officials to “accelerate” joint efforts to counter the Islamic Republic.

Kochavi held a series of meetings with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and CIA Director William Burns, the IDF said in a press release on Tuesday, noting that he discussed the “Iranian threat” with each of the officials he spoke with since landing in the US on Sunday morning.

“We are at a critical point in time which requires the acceleration of the operational plans and the cooperation against Iran and its proxies in the region,” Kochavi said after the meetings. “On the one hand, Iran is under many economic, military and internal pressures, and on the other hand continues to advance the nuclear project.”

During his sit-down with General Milley, the two officials discussed “strengthening cooperation between the [US and Israeli] armies against threats in the region, chief among them the Iranian nuclear threat,” according to the IDF. Sullivan, too, said the White House would carry out its pledge to “prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

While Israel has offered little evidence supporting the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, officials have claimed for decades that Tehran is on the cusp of developing its own bomb. The Islamic Republic has denied any plans to build nuclear weapons – with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issuing a fatwa (religious decree) against all weapons of mass destruction in 2003 – and passed numerous inspections by the UN’s nuclear watchdog under a major deal signed with world powers in 2015.

However, after Washington unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal under President Donald Trump, Tehran has steadily scaled back its compliance, boosting its enrichment of uranium and building new advanced centrifuges while demanding an end to US sanctions. Iran has nonetheless insisted that such steps do not indicate it is seeking a nuclear weapon, despite continued allegations from the United States and Israel.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | 31 Comments

The New Abnormal: A Review

BY GREG COOK | CATHOLIC EXCHANGE | NOVEMBER 16, 2022

How do we move ahead in a post-pandemic era? And what are the lessons to be learned from our challenging recent history? Catholic psychiatrist and bioethicist Aaron Kheriaty has thought a great deal about these questions and his answers are found in his just-released book The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State (Regnery Publishing, 2022). The result is a brilliant mix of scientific observations, personal experiences, philosophical reflections, prudent policy prescriptions, and even a few speculative hints about dystopian possibilities of the near future.

Kheriaty, who lost his previous job as clinical psychiatrist and teacher at UC-Irvine in a dispute over mandated vaccines and natural immunity, begins the book in an unexpected time and place: 1947 Nuremberg. He does this to provide historical context for threats to freedom in our time. He briefly surveys the eugenics movement and its appropriation by the Nazi regime. Germany’s medical professionals were well-trained and as good as any in the world, but they lost their way. “Instead of seeing the sick as individuals in need of compassionate medical care, German doctors became willing agents of a sociopolitical program driven by a cold utilitarian ethos,” writes Kheriaty (xvii). After the war the revulsion at the perversion of medicine led to the Nuremberg Code, which emphasized informed consent as a cornerstone of ethical medical treatment.

That code and other ethical agreements remained as part of the medical-bioethical landscape… until 2020. Kheriaty asserts that “[d]uring the covid pandemic, the public health and medical establishment once again abandoned the principle of free and informed consent to advance a supposed greater good” (xxi). Having laid the groundwork for his argument and narrative, he sums up by issuing this frightening declaration: “The unholy alliance of (1) public health, (2) digital technologies of surveillance and control, and (3) the police powers of the state—what I call the Biomedical Security State—has arrived” (xxii). While this probably seems like a heavy meal to digest, the reader can be assured that Kheriaty writes clearly and is grounded in scientific medicine and a solid ethical worldview. His story, while alarming, is neither conspiracy theory nor exercise in despair.

After the Nuremberg prologue, Dr. Kheriaty continues with four long chapters and an epilogue: “Locked Up: The Biomedical Security State”; “Locked Down & Locked Out: A New Societal Paradigm”; “Locked In: The Coming Technocratic Dystopia”; “Reclaiming Freedom: Human Flourishing in a More Rooted Future”; and, “Seattle, 2030.” Sprinkled throughout what could be a gloomy read, we encounter stories of solidarity and resilience. The author makes sure to show us that human interaction cannot — must not — be stymied by government interference in our lives and the functioning of society. “Consider the human goods we sacrificed to preserve bare biological life at all costs: friendships, holidays with family, work, visiting the sick and dying, worshipping God, and burying the dead” (14). But to resist or even question, we must know as much of a situation’s history as possible. Kheriaty lays out the pieces of the puzzle: states of emergency, agency capture of regulators by the regulated, loosening bonds of social cohesion, and the religion of scientism.

Scientism is distinct from science and scientific inquiry, Kheriaty points out. “The characteristic feature of science is warranted uncertainty, which leads to intellectual humility. The characteristic feature of scientism is unwarranted certainty, which leads to intellectual hubris” (54). In other words, scientism upholds so-called science as the only proper form of knowledge and rejects any questioning or skepticism. It is prone to misuse as a political tool and typically accompanies a materialistic worldview. That heavy-handed framework clashes with how science and medicine have long operated through trial and error, experimentation, imaginative solutions, and, most of all, respect for individual humans as made in the image and likeness of God.

Kheriaty’s own story makes for a fascinating sub-plot. As a doctor, ethicist, and teacher he was closely involved with figuring out how to respond to covid and help patients. As the lockdowns unfolded he encountered staggering amounts of fear, worry, and depression. His grasp of bioethics and knowledge of history led him to speak out against new methods of trying to control spread of the covid virus, especially when they superseded societal freedom and individual liberty. “Freedom of movement, of association, of domicile in one’s country of origin, and access to public spaces and public events—these quickly went from basic rights to special privileges conferred by governments as rewards for good behavior” (68). His medical training also led him to critique the development and imposition of a new and mostly untested vaccine. In his own case, he fought against a mandatory vaccination because of a prior covid infection. His argument at the time did not prevent him from being fired. He also touches on the devastating impact of restrictions on work and supply chains.

Indeed, that is one of the constant themes of this book: technology and safety should never eclipse the humanity of our lives. For instance, “[t]here is clearly no such thing as a medication—or a vaccine—that’s always good for everyone in every circumstance all the time” (137). Technology and cultural immersion endanger our sense of ourselves and nudge us to trade autonomy and dignity for convenience. “Today, routine biometric verification for things from mobile phones to lunch lines gets young people used to the idea that their bodies are tools used in transactions” (155). Connected to abuse of genetic and biometric data is the ominous specter of transhumanism, which Kheriaty characterizes as “clearly a religion—a particular type of neo-Gnostic religion” (167). To all these dehumanizing trends the author counsels resistance, but emphatically “nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience” (184).

The book’s final chapter lays out policy proposals for steering clear of dystopia. I found this chapter to be only somewhat persuasive. Kheriaty’s suggestions are certainly prudent and logical; however, they mostly deal with changing the political and medical climate. But bureaucracy and institutional entropy are like the invasive Japanese Knotweed in my back yard, which is to say impossible to eradicate. On other points Kheriaty is spot-on. “The first and most necessary step is to overcome our fear,” he writes (191). And [t]he enemy is not pain or illness. The enemy is fear. The enemy is hatred or indifference toward our fellow human beings” (192). Fear of death was manifest during the pandemic. As Catholics, we are taught to not fear death, but rather to spend our lives preparing for it and to live in a state of grace. During a pandemic or even “normal” times we can bear witness to Christ by living with courage and fighting fear. We can also resist mask mandates that dehumanize us and separate us from others, covering up our God-created uniqueness. Of importance to religious believers, we can engage with our faith authorities to make sure no one is abandoned again because “too many religious leaders and clergy unfortunately showed themselves during the pandemic to be willing chaplains to the new technocracy” (204).

Readers should not skip the epilogue, in which Kheriaty (a native of the Pacific Northwest) posits a dystopian Seattle in 2030. In this uncomfortable scenario, we are asked to consider what life might be like if current trends in pharmaceuticals and their marketing are joined with further developments in social control to create a two-tiered society reminiscent of many well-known alternative futures in literature and movies. Thankfully, Dr. Kheriaty lightens a somber story with some wry humor.

While The New Abnormal is not an explicitly Catholic book, Aaron Kheriaty founds it in Catholic principles of justice, humanity, clear philosophical first principles, subsidiarity, solidarity, and important spiritual goods. He brings in examples from classical and contemporary philosophy, C.S. Lewis, and George Orwell. The prose is clear but some of the concepts can be a little heady at times. This is a valuable piece of work from a man with unique qualifications. His is a prophetic voice calling us to understand and take action while never forgetting the God Who made us.

Greg Cook is a writer living in New York’s North Country with his wife. He graduated from Plattsburgh State College and The Evergreen State College. He is the author of two self-published books of poetry, Against the Alchemists and A Verse Companion to Romano Guardini’s ‘Sacred Signs’.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Should Individualism be Medicated Away to be Replaced by “Welfarism?”

By Igor Chudov | November 21, 2022

Medical ethics is a large field of study. The Covid pandemic certainly brought many medical ethics issues to the forefront and produced rather amazing “ethicist” gems, such as this:

Be aware that “bioethics” has moved on to proposals that might seem crazy to you but are considered seriously and published in Bill Gates-funded publications and scientific journals. Important studies on this subject are conducted under the auspices of the World Economic Forum.

Forcibly giving people collectivism-promoting “Morality Pills” (archive link) is a popular suggestion among bioethicists. It was published in Bill Gates-funded The Conversation and is discussed widely in scientific literature. (The Conversation received 7 million dollars from Bill Gates but pretends to be an independent journalism publication)

What are these morality pills? You might think that morality, to them, means being a good husband or wife, an honest businessperson, fulfilling promises, and so on. Why not enhance that? What’s the problem?

The problem is that this is NOT how they define morality! To them, morality is a collectivist mindset, lack of critical thinking, and compliance. The article explains that some people lack “moral qualities” and refuse to wear masks or take Covid vaccines, or even deny climate change:

My research in bioethics focuses on questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good. To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior. Could a psychoactive pill be the solution to the pandemic?

They propose giving people pills to enhance “morality” and explain the climate change angle relevance:

But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change. That’s why we should be thinking of it now.

The proposed solution to give people morality pills is more than idle thinking. Several candidate psychoactive substances are identified and considered seriously: psilocybin and oxytocin, for example.

You Would not Take Morality Pills? Administer them Secretly!

The obvious objection to all this morality pill talk is that skeptics would not take them! I would not take such a pill to enhance my collectivist mindset. At the risk of being presumptuous, I would say that you, my dear subscriber, would refuse them also. Right?

The ethicists have a solution: administer collectivist morality pills by force or surreptitiously.

As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply. These actions require weighing other values. Does the good of covertly dosing the public with a drug that would change people’s behavior outweigh individuals’ autonomy to choose whether to participate? Does the good associated with wearing a mask outweigh an individual’s autonomy to not wear one?

Serious articles discuss how to do it:

A covert psychoactive substance administration to the masses must not be discussed publicly before its implementation, right? So the ethicists desire to bypass any democratic process or prior public discussion and scrutiny. These ethicists refuse to see an ethical problem with that!

World Economic Forum Sponsored Research into “Collectivist Bioenhancement”

Some of you, my dear readers, might think this is so batshit crazy that it is simply useless musings of fringe philosophers, not worth discussing.

Quite to the contrary, the famous and influential organization called the World Economic Forum sponsors such bioenhancement research.

Linda Fried, mentioned above, is the aunt of Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam stole billions of dollars from crypto-investors (in my opinion) and used that money to become the second largest Democratic party donor. So, Linda Fried is not exactly a nobody languishing in obscurity. By the way, a friend of this blog El Gato wrote a great post discussing Sam — check it out.

Linda explains in her article that her goal is “collective welfarism,” and she is part of the group convened by the World Economic Forum:

A stronger ethical approach, though, would be to abide by the principle, termed ‘collective easy rescue’, whereby small individual losses are justified in the name of collective well-being. Mass vaccination is a well-documented example of collective easy rescue.

Human “enhancement” to force mass vaccination? Sounds familiar?

Self Absorbed Do-Gooders

Those “medical ethicists,” “world changers,” and “disinformation fighters” are so self-absorbed and self-righteous that they think their way of thinking is the only right way. They consider any deviation from their mindset to be antisocial, divisive, and subversive.

To them, freedom is dangerous. Truth is misinformation. Pursuing personal happiness and liberty instead of welfarism is selfish and immoral and needs to be dealt with through covert bioenhancement pills. Their opponents need to be silenced as “disinformation agents” or influenced via secretly applied substances to enhance compliance and lower critical thinking.

This is NOT a Conspiracy Theory!

My post, discussing outlandish agenda developed under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, may sound like the perfect conspiracy theory. If someone approached me and told me that the WEF is sponsoring “bioenhancement research,” whose goal is to develop substances to impose “collective welfarism” and achieve compliance with mass vaccination, I would not take that person seriously!

Such is the problem with describing many WEF proposals. Some of their ideas are so crazy that they are difficult to accept as genuine when retold. Official papers, proposals, peer-reviewed studies, and agenda articles describe plans that are extremely strange to the uninitiated — and yet are pursued seriously. Other authors, such as Tessa Lena, also mentioned how difficult it is to describe these tendencies.

I have explained my difficulties with describing crazy but real proposals by world-leading unelected organizations such as the WEF.

I Do Not Spread Conspiracy Theories – I Report on Actual News

Their proposals, when understood properly, are highly disturbing and seem unreal — except that they are very serious.

WEF Uses CODED LANGUAGE to Communicate Unthinkable Plans

The difficulty with their plans is that regular people cannot believe they are real. That happens for a good reason: nobody would expect such insanity to be seriously promulgated by important men and women. Even I have difficulty reconciling the plain text and the simple meaning of their anti-human theories with my idea of what our leaders should act like.

And yet, here we are — the welfarist pills are promulgated under the auspices of the WEF by no one but Linda Fried, the aunt of the second-largest Democrat donor and crypto thief (in my opinion) Sam Bankman-Fried.

In the future, you may need to be careful with your drinking water or the compulsory mystery “health enhancement pill” you must take for an unexplained reason!

Would you take such a welfarism bioenhancement pill?

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

European parliament severs ties with Iran over sanctions against EU

The Cradle | November 22, 2022

The EU parliament announced on 21 November its decision to sever ties with Iran. The announcement comes in response to the Islamic Republic’s recent decision to place sanctions on the European governing body, which has been slapping its own sanctions against Tehran throughout the ongoing unrest in the country.

“We will not look away from those who look to us from the streets of Iran. Iran must stop its oppression of legitimate protests. In response to Iran’s [sanctions] on members of the European Parliament, [it] will no longer engage with Iranian authorities,” President of the EU parliament, Roberta Metsola, said in a statement via Twitter with the popular Iranian protest slogan “Women, life, freedom” written in Persian at the end of the tweet.

At the opening of its November plenary session on the same day, Metsola said that there would be “no direct contact” between the parliament and Iranian officials “until further notice.”

As Iran continues to face large waves of violent riots – which have resulted in the deaths of several members of the security forces and the destruction of public property – western media has framed the response by authorities as nothing more than a brutal crackdown on peaceful protestors.

In addition to the propagation of misinformation by mainstream, western European media, the EU has repeatedly placed several rounds of sanctions against Iran.

Accusing European states of interventionist policies and “supporting terrorism and violence” on Iranian soil, Tehran on 26 October announced the implementation of its own sanctions against several individuals and institutions associated with the EU.

Earlier that month, the Islamic Republic had sent several letters to European diplomats warning them that the aggressive EU sanction policy against Tehran could result in a “rupture” of relations between them.

As European, Saudi, British, and US media outlets lead the misinformation campaign against Tehran, violent attacks against the country’s security personnel are on the rise, and internationally-backed armed separatists continue to push for the illegal overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

Iran retaliates against UN nuclear resolution – media

RT | November 22, 2022

Tehran has for the first time started enriching uranium to 60% fissile purity at the Fordow facility, Iranian media reported on Tuesday. Such a move would be seen as a response to a critical resolution adopted by the UN’s nuclear watchdog last week.

Iran is already enriching uranium at Natanz, its other major production site, to below weapons-grade 90% enrichment, but well above the 3.67% limit specified in the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, or JCPOA. The US abandoned the deal with Tehran during the administration of Donald Trump, leading to its erosion and effective collapse.

Other reported moves by Iran include upgrading cascade lines with more advanced gas centrifuges to boost production capacity at Fordow, as well as firing up additional chains at Natanz.

Tehran’s action was described as retaliation for a resolution passed last Thursday by the Board of Directors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The document, which was drafted by the US, Britain, France and Germany, decried “insufficient substantive cooperation by Iran” on the issue of uranium traces found in 2019 by inspectors at three undeclared sites. It demanded “credible explanations” and full cooperation from Tehran.

The four sponsoring nations are also signatories of the JCPOA. China and Russia, two other participants of the landmark deal, reportedly voted against the draft document during the closed-door session last week.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry rejected the resolution, calling it a form of political pressure by the US and its allies. Spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Monday that the country had taken “initial measures” in response to it on Sunday night.

“The implementation of these measures was realized today in the presence of IAEA inspectors in the Natanz and Fordo enrichment complexes,” the diplomat added, without specifying what had happened.

The JCPOA was meant to exchange an Iranian commitment to limit its nuclear program for relief of economic sanctions imposed on the country. The goal was to prolong the time Tehran would need to create a nuclear weapon, an ambition that Iran officially denies fostering in the first place.

The Trump administration unilaterally pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Deal as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran. President Joe Biden has been negotiating a possible revival of the JCPOA, but no breakthrough has been achieved so far.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

IAEA primary instrument of pre-aggression, sets scene for US, Israeli unilateral actions: Analyst

Press TV – November 22, 2022

works before a news conference attended by IAEA Director Rafael Grossi during an IAEA Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, Austria, September 13, 2021. (Photo by Reuters)
A political analyst has described the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a primary “instrument of pre-aggression” which paves the way for Israel and the US to take unilateral actions against Iran.

“The IAEA has become a primary instrument of pre-aggression. In other words, they create a scenario, they make the false charges, they do not prove the charges, and then they use the false unproven charges, to stoke the fires of aggression against you,” John Bosnitch told Press TV on Monday while commenting on recent tensions between Iran and the IAEA following a resolution passed by the UN nuclear body’s Board of Governors.

The politically motivated draft resolution, ratified on Thursday, has criticized Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation with the agency. It was put forward by the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, in continuation of their political pressures on Iran.

Bosnitch added that the “trend” that has been going on for years against Iran is rooted in the Israeli lobby and its influence on the US government and American personnel inside the IAEA.

“It looks like yet another provocation to create false grounds for aggressive action against Iran,” he said.

The political analyst further pointed to the “invented” excuses and provocations against Iran, saying that the US uses the IAEA as a tool “to make it a little bit more believable to those naive people around the world who still hold trust in such institutions.”

Once the fires of aggression are lit, Bosnitch said, Israel and the US can act unilaterally and illegally based on the so-called reports by the IAEA.

“And that is the formula for aggression. And I have to say that Iran, as I’ve said, through all discussions on this topic, must be ready for the worst,” he cautioned.

‘IAEA a spying organization’

Bosnitch also called the IAEA a “spying organization” that only spies on enemies of the United States and Israel.

In order to ease concerns about its nuclear program, Iran has agreed to install surveillance cameras in its nuclear facilities and has provided the IAEA with physical monitoring and satellite images. According to Bosnitch, however, “nothing works because the lies perpetrated by the lying mainstream media are bigger to the common person’s eye than the truth.”

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami said on Sunday that the Islamic Republic will give a “firm response” to the IAEA Board of Governors’ anti-Iran resolution.

“The nuclear programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran are moving forward according to the strategic action plan of the parliament, and the issuance of multiple resolutions against Iran will not cause any disruption in the progress of these programs,” the AEOI chief added.

According to a report published on Tuesday, Iran has started enriching uranium to the purity level of 60% at its Fordow nuclear facility. The country has also installed two new IR2M and IR4 cascades at the Natanz and Fordow facilities.

The report added that Iran has fitted and launched new centrifuges at two empty halls in Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites and replaced IR1 centrifuges at Fordow with IR6 which will increase enrichment at the site by 10 times.

Tehran informed the IAEA of that decision via a letter. It described the move as a strong message to the recent anti-Iran resolution passed by the IAEA’s Board of Governors.

‘US provoking protests in Iran’

Elsewhere in his remarks, Bosnitch mentioned the recent violent riots across Iran, warning that US agents are working inside Iran “right now” to provoke protests.

“Whatever grievance there might have been, it has been amplified by the US State Department and by the CIA inside your country already.”

He added that the US is not only attacking Iran on the IAEA side but also organizing protest expansion inside the country.

“They definitely try new tactics, and the only protection against American militarism and unilateralism is to tie up with other countries that are threatened by the same thing,” he concluded.

Riots have broken out in Iran since 22-year-old woman Mahsa Amini died in hospital on September 16, three days after she collapsed in a police station. An investigation has attributed Amini’s death to her medical condition, dismissing allegations that she was beaten by police forces.

In the last two months, using the protests as a cover, rioters, and thugs — many of whom were later found to have links with foreign parties — went on a rampage, engaging in savage attacks on security officers, vandalism, desecration of sanctities, and false-flag killings of civilians to incriminate the Iranian police.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | 2 Comments

A Very Different Global State of Affairs Takes Hold

By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 21, 2022

How the world appears all depends on whether your gaze is firmly focussed on the hub of the wheel, or alternatively, were you to watch the wheel’s rotation around the hub – and the bearing it follows – you would see the world differently.

Looked at from a DC-centric perspective, all is still: Nothing (as it were), is moving geo-politically. Was there an election in the U.S.? Well, certainly there is no longer an ‘Election Day’ event as the new mechanics of ballots vs in-person voting, commencing up to 50 days earlier, and ploughing on, weeks after, has become far removed from the old notion of having ‘an election’, and an aggregate macro outcome.

From this ‘centric’ viewpoint, the Midterms change nothing – stasis.

So many of Biden’s policies were already in stone anyway – and beyond the ability of any Congress to change in the short run.

New legislation, if there were any, could be vetoed. And should the election ‘month’ end with the House controlled by Republicans and the Senate controlled by Democrats, there might not be any legislation at all, because of partisanship and an inability to compromise.

More to the point, Biden anyway can rule for the next 2 years through Executive Order and bureaucratic inertia – and not need the Congress at all. In other words, the composition of Congress may not matter that much.

But now, turn your gaze to the rotation around the ‘hub’, and what do you see? The rim spinning wildly. It seizes more and more traction on the ground and has clear directionality.

The biggest pivot around the hub? Well probably, President Xi of China travelling to Riyadh to meet Mohammad bin Salman (MbS). The wheel rim here digs deep for a firm grip on bedrock, as Saudi Arabia makes its pivot toward the BRICS. Xi likely is going to Riyadh to seal the details of Saudi’s accession to the BRICS and the terms of China’s future ‘Oil Accord’ with Saudi Arabia. And that may be the beginning to the end to the petrodollar system – as whatever is agreed in terms of the Chinese mode of payment for oil will mesh with Russo-Chinese plans eventually to move Eurasia onto a new trading currency (far away from the dollar).

Saudi Arabia gravitating BRICS-wards means other Gulf and Mid East – states such as Egypt – leaning BRICS-wards also.

Another pivot: The Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said after this week’s explosion in Istanbul: “We do not accept the condolence message of the U.S. Embassy. We understand the message that was given to us, we received the message that was given to us”. Soylu then dismissed the U.S. condolence as akin to “a killer being first to show up at a crime scene”.

Let’s be clear: The minister just told the U.S. to go sc**w itself. This unleashing of raw anger comes just as Turkey has agreed to join with Russia to establish a new gas hub in Turkey and is participating with Russia in a massive oil and gas investment and co-operation deal with Iran. Turkey too, is veering BRICS-wards.

And, as Turkey veers away from one ‘hub’, much of the Turkic sphere will take Turkey’s lead.

These two events – from Xi’s meeting with MbS’ thumbing his nose at the U.S., to Turkey’s fury at the terrorism in Istanbul – clearly dovetail together to mark a strategic Middle East pivot – both in terms of energy and monetary frameworks, towards the unfolding Eurasian free trade sphere.

Then comes the news from last Thursday: Iran says that it has developed a high-precision hypersonic missile. General Hajizadeh said the Iranian hypersonic ballistic missile can reach more than five times the speed of sound and, as such, it will be able to breach all present systems of anti-missile defence.

Simply put: Iran essentially already is a nuclear threshold state (but not a nuclear weapons state). The remarkable technical achievement of producing a hypersonic high-precision missile (which still eludes the U.S.), is a paradigm-changer.

Strategic nukes make no sense in a highly mix-populated, small Middle East – and now, there is no need for Iran to move towards becoming a weapons state. So, what would be the point to a complicated containment strategy (i.e. the JCPOA), oriented towards hindering an outcome that has become overtaken by new technology? A hypersonic ballistic missile capacity makes tactical nukes redundant. And hypersonic missiles are more effective; more easily deployed.

The problem for the U.S. and Israel is that Iran has done it – it has leaped beyond the JCPOA containment cage.

On top of that, a few days earlier, Iran also announced that it had launched a ballistic missile, carrying a satellite into space. If so, Iran now has ballistic missiles capable of reaching, not only Israel, but Europe too. Furthermore, Iran is reported to soon receive 60 SU-35 aircraft, as just one part to its rapidly evolving relationship with Russia, sealed last week with Nikolai Patrushev (Russia’s Security Council Secretary) in Tehran.

Again, to be clear, Russia has just acquired a highly potent kinetic force multiplier; access to Iran’s sanctions-busting rolodex of contacts and strategies, and a full partner to Moscow’s big play of Eurasia becoming a commodities super-oligopoly.

Simply put, as Iran enlists as a force multiplier to the Russia-China axis, so too will Iraq, Syria, Hizbullah and the Houthis slip along a somewhat similar trajectory.

Whilst the European ‘security architecture’ remains still frozen in a tight NATO, anti-Russian grip, West Asia’s security architecture is dissolving away from the old U.S. and Israeli-led hard polarisation of a Sunni sphere vs Shi’i Iran (i.e. the so-called Abraham Accords), and is re-forming around a new security architecture being shaped by Russia and China.

This makes sense. Turkey prizes its Turkic civilisational heritage. Iran clearly is a civilisational state, and MbS plainly wants his kingdom to be widely accepted as one, too (and not as just a U.S. dependency). The point of the SCO format is that it is ‘pro-autonomy’ and is opposed to any singularity of ideology. In fact, by being civilisational in concept, it becomes anti-ideological and opposed to tight binary (with us, or against us) alliances. Membership does not require endorsement of each other partner’s particular policies, provided they do not impinge on others’ sovereignty.

In effect, the whole of West Asia – to one degree or another – is being lifted up into this evolving Eurasian economic and security paradigm.

And, simply said, since Africa is already enlisted into the China camp, the African component to MENA is trending strongly Eurasia-wards, as well. The Global South’s affiliation too, largely can be taken for granted.

Where does this leave the old ‘hub’? It has Europe fully in its control. For now, yes…

However research published by France’s École de Guerre Economique suggests that whilst Europe has, since WW2, “lived in a state of the unspoken” in respect to its full-spectrum dependency on Washington, as Russia sanctions take their catastrophic effect on Europe, “a very different state of affairs takes hold”. Consequently, politicians, and the public alike, struggle to identify “who truly is their enemy”.

Well, the collective view, based on interviews with French intelligence experts (i.e. the French Deep State) is very clear: 97% percent consider the U.S. to be the foreign power that “most threatens” the “economic interests” of France. And they see it as a problem that must be resolved.

Of course, the U.S. will not easily let Europe go. Nonetheless, if parts of the Establishment can speak thus, then something is moving and afoot, beneath the surface. The report underlines naturally that the EU might have a trade surplus of 150 billion euros with the U.S., but the latter would never willingly allow this to translate into ‘strategic autonomy’. And any gain in autonomy is achieved against the constant backdrop of – and more than offset by – “strong geopolitical and military pressure” from the U.S. at all times.

Could the Nord Stream sabotage have been the straw that broke the camel’s back? In part, it was a trigger, but Europe hides its diverse old hatreds and long-nursed vindictiveness under ‘a Brussels lid of easy money’. But this pertains only so long as the EU remains a glorified ATM – states insert their debit-cards and withdraw cash. The concealed animosities are repressed, and monetarily lubricated into quiescence.

The ATM however, is in trouble (economic contraction, de-industrialisation and austerity cometh!); and as the ATM withdrawals’ window winnows down, so too the lid holding down the old animosities and tribal feelings will not hold for long. Indeed, the demons are rising – and are readily visible even now.

And finally, will the Washington ‘hub’ hold? Does it retain the resources to manage so many stress-test events – financial, systemic and political – all arriving synchronistically? We must wait to see.

In retrospect, the ‘Hub’ is not ‘on the move’. It has moved already. It is just that so many are stuck seeing an ‘empty space’ that once was occupied by something past, but which somehow still somehow lingers on, in visual memory, as a ‘shade’ of its earlier solidity.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Ukraine to hike transit fees for Russian oil to EU

RT | November 22, 2022

Ukraine has announced plans to raise transit fees for Russian oil running through the Druzhba pipeline to the EU, due to higher costs resulting from Russian air and missile strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrtransnafta, the operator of Ukraine’s oil pipeline network, is expected to increase tariffs for transporting crude to Hungary and Slovakia by €2.10 per ton to €13.60 ($13.90) starting on January 1, according to a letter from the company seen by Bloomberg. Its Russian counterpart Transneft confirmed to RIA Novosti that it has received a letter and is studying it.

“We are studying these proposals, preparing relevant reports to the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the Energy Ministry,” Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told the agency.

The Ukrainian company has attributed the price hike to the “continued destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure” which has resulted in “a significant shortage of electricity, an increase in its costs, a shortage of fuel, spare parts.”

Ukrainian oil transit fees have already been raised twice this year. The last hike in April reportedly brought the total increase on an annualized basis to 51%.

Druzhba, one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia threatens to cut gas exports due to Ukraine’s theft

RT | November 22, 2022

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom said on Tuesday that Ukraine was diverting natural gas supplies transiting to Moldova, and the company has threatened to curtail deliveries through a key pipeline in response.

“The volume of gas supplied by Gazprom to the ‘Sudzha’ gas measuring station (GMS) for transit to Moldova via Ukraine exceeds the physical volume transmitted at the border of Ukraine with Moldova,” Gazprom’s statement read.

Moldova paid for some November gas supplies on Monday, according to Gazprom, which said that Kiev had kept 52.52 million cubic meters of gas meant for Moldova on its territory.

The Russian energy company further warned that if the transit imbalance persists then it would begin slashing gas supply to the Sudzha GMS for transit via Ukraine from 10 am (7am GMT) on November 28, “in the amount of the daily underderlivery.”

The Sudzha transit line through Ukraine remains the only route to supply Russian gas to western and central European countries after the Nord Stream network was damaged by a suspicious explosion in September.

Meanwhile, land-locked Moldova, which has been suffering massive blackouts lately, has called for international assistance as soaring energy costs and skyrocketing inflation are set to put a huge strain on consumers in one of Europe’s poorest countries.

According to the French Foreign Ministry, support is all the more important as Moldova is facing an unprecedented energy crisis as winter approaches.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Putting an End to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Follies

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 22, 2022

One week ago, the Ukrainian government may have deliberately attacked neighbor Poland in an attempt to draw the NATO alliance into its war with Russia. The incident involved a missile that hit a grain processing site inside Poland and killed two farmers. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky immediately blamed Russia for the incident even though he surely must have known that the missile had been fired from Ukraine, meaning that he may have been using a so-called “false flag” to create a false narrative of what had occurred. He also immediately called upon NATO to intervene, citing Article 5 of the NATO treaty which requires all members of the alliance to come to the aid of any individual member that is attacked. An attack on one is an attack on all. Poland is a NATO member and it currently hosts a permanent US military base.

The US mainstream media, most particularly the Associated Press and NBC News, immediately repeated the tale being told by Zelensky, but the “blame the Russians” narrative began to unravel. The remains of the missile revealed that it was of a type used for air defense that is in the Ukrainian arsenal, but not currently used by the Russians, and both Moscow and Washington surely had access to satellite imagery that would demonstrate the actual flight path of the missile that struck Poland.

Those in government and the media who wanted to be supportive of Zelensky began to suggest that the Ukrainian missile must have somehow malfunctioned to land in Poland, making it an unfortunate accident. But others more familiar with the performance characteristics of the weapon were skeptical, seeing something possibly more sinister in the tale.

By last Thursday the story had effectively disappeared in much of the mainstream media as it no longer conformed to the acceptable narrative that it was a Russian-launched missile, which Zelensky has since continued to insist to be the case. President Joe Biden, who was at the G-20 Summit conference in Indonesia at the time, to his credit, responded to the news by stating that there was no intelligence to confirm that the missile had come from Russia and that its apparent trajectory did not support that view. Ironically, Biden had authorized an additional $37 billion in aid for Ukraine the day before the incident in Poland took place.

Biden’s message seeking to deescalate the potential crisis was repeated by Pentagon and intelligence personnel during the day, though Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin emphasized that the US would continue to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes.” He also added that even though the missile was Ukrainian, the incident was Russia’s fault. He did not explain why that was so. NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg also promoted the same line as Austin, commenting that the incident was “likely caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile fired to defend Ukrainian territory… This is not Ukraine’s fault. Russia bears responsibility for what happened in Poland yesterday because this is a direct result of the ongoing war.”

Given the fact that Zelensky has been saying and doing everything possible to draw the US and NATO into fighting Russia on his behalf, I believe that the missile strike was quite plausibly a deliberate “false flag” attempt to start a much broader war. That such a war could easily turn nuclear reveals just how reckless Zelensky can be. One NATO country foreign diplomat based in Kiev told the Financial Times that “This is getting ridiculous. The Ukrainians are destroying [our] confidence in them. Nobody is blaming Ukraine and they are openly lying. This is more destructive than the missile.”

To be sure, Zelensky is capable of anything and no lie is too mendacious for the former comedy actor who is now basking in the glow of his celebrity. Hollywood personalities like Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are increasingly making the pilgrimage to Kiev to shake hands, embrace and do photo ops. And Zelensky’s calendar is also featuring some trips to the United States. On November 30th, he will reportedly be in New York City at a “live event” hosted by the New York Times with Sam Bankman-Fried, Larry Fink (CEO of Blackrock), and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as the main speakers.

Yes, Zelensky will be side-by-side with THAT Sam Bankman-Fried, if he shows up, who has also been much in the news lately for his having pulled off the largest currency fraud in history, creating losses for investors totaling multi-billions of dollars as a consequence of the collapse of his exchange-trading company FTX! And it just might be that Zelensky and Bankman-Fried already know each other. Bankman-Fried has been a major financial supporter of Democratic Party politicians, having donated $40 million for “get out the vote” projects in the recently completed election cycle. He is second only to George Soros as a Democratic Party funder, and also has separated donated to causes like unconditionally supporting Ukraine that the Democrats overwhelmingly favor. In April he hosted a conference at his $40 million home in the Bahamas which featured appearances by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and he has also been a generous supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

There has been considerable speculation that the unregulated and unmonitored flow of billions of dollars of US taxpayer provided money through Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt government provided a perfect mechanism for large scale money laundering. Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has been following the FTX-Ukraine story closely and observes that “The financial collapse of FTX… is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX [Sam Bankman-Fried]. Once the US dollars were credited to Ukraine’s account, President Zelensky and his partners diverted some of the proceeds to purchase crypto currency from FTX. FTX, in turn, sent some of those funds back to the cooperating members of Congress and the Democrat National Committee.”

Other reporting reveals that Bankman-Fried had established a crypto donation “partnership” with the Ukrainian government which provided an estimated $60 million in “assistance” to Zelensky. The Ukrainian government website that reported some details of the arrangement mysteriously was “disappeared” two days before the FTX disaster was made public. The FTX tale, if it turns out to be largely verifiable, underlines just how corrupt a “money pit” called Ukraine is. Hunter Biden gets a well-paid sinecure place on a company board to get to his father and now Ukraine may be directly involved in a massive financial fraud. And Joe Biden obligingly is sending billions of dollars more to that crook Zelensky.

But the real issue is the war. Even assuming that the Ukrainian missile strike on Poland was due to some malfunction, Zelensky comes out of the process smelling really bad as he has worked assiduously at blaming Russia, which clearly is not true. He is using his contrived narrative to dramatically expand the war by creating a situation which would bring NATO directly into the conflict and which could easily go nuclear. Indeed, he is attempting to compel NATO participation. But potentially far worse, if it was a deliberate “false flag” provocation to bring about that end, his tactics should be harshly condemned by all the parties that are currently supporting Ukraine. Beyond that, the US and NATO, burdened with such an “ally,” should take immediate steps to disengage from supporting the fighting and call for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Joe Biden, if he has any integrity left, and whoever is pulling his strings should not hesitate to take that step.

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.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | 8 Comments

Russian Embassy in Washington Condemns US Reaction to Murder of Russian POWs by Ukrainians

Samizdat – 22.11.2022

MOSCOW – The Russian Embassy in Washington on Tuesday condemned the US reaction to the video believed to be showing a massacre of Russian prisoners of war by the Ukrainian military, saying that the US authorities enable a growing sense of impunity of neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said that the US was monitoring reports of the shooting of Russian prisoners of war in Donbass. She urged all parties to respect international law.

“We noted the statements of Ambassador-at-Large on International Criminal Justice Beth van Shack on the murder of captured Russian military personnel by Ukrainian neo-Nazis. The official refused to directly condemn the massacre of our unarmed soldiers, despite the confirmation of the authenticity of the relevant video materials by American journalists, who did not hush up the tragedy,” the Russian embassy said in a statement.

The US is nurturing an increased sense of permissiveness and impunity of neo-Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine by turning a blind eye to the violence of that kind.

“We have repeatedly stated that by supplying weapons to Kiev, by teaching criminals and mercenaries the art of war, by transferring intelligence the United States are becoming a side of the conflict. Russian-U.S. relations are thusly driven into a dead end,” the statement read.

Last week, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that the Ukrainian military deliberately killed 10 captured Russian soldiers.

On November 17, a video was circulated on the internet showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting surrendered Russians lying heads down. The Russian Human Rights Council said it would send the video to the OHCHR, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, and other international human rights organizations.

On November 18, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal investigation into the execution of Russian POWs by the Ukrainian military.

On November 19, UN Spokesperson Farhan Haq said that the United Nations was calling for a full investigation of all reported human rights violations related to the execution of Russian POWs by Ukrainians.

November 22, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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