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Witness Forced to Walk Back Accusations That Led Maine Medical Board to Suspend Dr. Meryl Nass’ License

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 1, 2023

The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine on Tuesday held its third hearing on the suspension of Dr. Meryl Nass related to her treatment recommendations for patients with COVID-19.

As it did on day two of the hearings, held on Oct. 27, 2022, the board focused on Nass’ alleged “sloppy” record-keeping for three patients she treated and on her prescribing of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for those patients.

The board suspended Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board, on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing.

The board initially accused Nass of “unprofessional” and “disruptive” behavior, spreading “misinformation” and prescribing hydroxychloroquine and a “deworming medication” (ivermectin) to patients.

However, the board withdrew the accusations of “misinformation” on Sept. 26, 2022, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.

The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.

Two witnesses hired by the board — Dr. Thomas Courtney of the Maine Medical Center and Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts and instructor at Harvard Medical School — testified during Tuesday’s proceedings, and Nass’ attorney, Gene Libby, cross-examined Courtney.

Cross-examination pokes holes in ‘expert witness’ testimony

Throughout his testimony, Courtney repeated his assertion that Nass did not follow an adequate standard of care in prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to three patients, alleged improprieties in her communication and remote (telemedicine) consultations with the patients, and claimed Nass’ record-keeping was lacking.

But Courtney was obliged to walk back significant portions of his earlier testimony under his cross-examination by Libby.

For instance, Courtney claimed Nass did not adhere to an appropriate standard of care because she failed to advise two of her patients who didn’t recover as expected to seek care at an emergency room.

But under cross-examination, he acknowledged Nass had, in fact, advised the patients to go to the ER.

Courtney also criticized Nass for not prescribing monoclonal antibodies to her patients, one of whom was pregnant.

However, when cross-examined, Courtney admitted that, unlike hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibodies were not recommended for pregnant women and most monoclonal antibodies available at the time Nass was advising her patients were known to be ineffective against the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the dominant strain of the virus at that time.

Libby pointed out that the pregnant patient fully recovered eight days after the onset of her illness and had a normal birth, during which she was administered hydroxychloroquine and monoclonal antibodies.

Because evidence shows monoclonal antibodies are ineffective for pregnant women, the patient’s full recovery was credited to hydroxychloroquine.

Courtney also criticized Nass for making decisions about a patient’s care, including which medications to prescribe, on the basis of incomplete medical records.

He later walked back those claims after Libby demonstrated that Nass had received extensive documentation about the condition of one of the patients from his spouse, who provided Nass with vital signs, including the patient’s blood oxygen level.

Libby noted the three patients had specifically requested not to be treated with remdesivir, had asked to be prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — and were fully within their rights as patients to request such treatment. Courtney was obliged to concur.

Libby also pointed out that off-label prescriptions of medications such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, even for uses other than their primary purpose, are well within the generally accepted standard of care for physicians, and that federal agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health do not issue binding requirements in this regard.

Courtney confirmed these statements.

In another characteristic exchange, Courtney, who had previously been critical of alleged gaps in Nass’s record keeping, was forced to concede that he did not “personally have a strong opinion on it.”

Referring to Courtney’s testimony, Nass wrote on her blog that despite his “opining that I lacked the fitness to practice medicine, he was unable to identify a single thing I had done wrong in my records.”

“I sent 2 patients to the ER when they did not recover as expected, although one of the board’s initial charges against me was that I failed to do so,” Nass wrote.

She likened the board’s accusations against her to “simply throwing lots of spaghetti on the wall to try and overwhelm me with charges so I would wilt and surrender my license.”

Referring to the medical claims Courtney made, Nass wrote:

“Courtney did not know the difference between an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] product and a licensed drug. He incorrectly repeated a false claim made only once by FDA that the EUA for HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] was withdrawn because you would need to administer a toxic dose to get benefit. He had clearly failed to give that assertion any thought. Nor had he evaluated the U.S. government literature showing it to be false.

“He thought I should have treated 2 outpatients with monoclonal antibodies, but eventually agreed that cases in December 2021 were a mix of Omicron and Delta when the patients were ill, that none of their variants had been sequenced so we did not know which variant they had, and the monoclonals would not have worked against Omicron variants, which were likely to have been present then.”

“Doctor Courtney doesn’t read journal articles,” Nass wrote. “He sticks by the recommendations of government agencies and his specialty organization, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).”

Nass noted that the IDSA was sued by the State of Connecticut “for denying the existence of chronic Lyme disease.”

In the brief time that was available for Faust to begin his testimony, he focused on attacking the credibility of Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist at the Yale University School of Public Health, for a journal article he wrote finding that treatments such as hydroxychloroquine were effective against COVID-19.

Nass had relied in part on Risch’s findings in dispensing hydroxychloroquine to her patients. During his testimony, Faust claimed, “There’s no disagreement here among the most prestigious experts in this area” with regard to the purported lack of effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients.

Nass wrote:

“Faust was the Board’s epidemiology expert. He got some of the epidemiology right and he got a lot wrong. His arrogance when he was not sure of the answer was off-putting. He insulted Yale epidemiology professor Harvey Risch. He insulted my ability to read a journal article and he had a novel theory that this was sufficient disqualification to justify revoking my license.

“No one mentioned that Dr. Courtney could not cite journal articles used for forming his opinions on COVID treatment, having solely relied on pronouncements from government agencies.

“Should his license be revoked for that? Of course not.”

Nass also pointed out that Faust is a proponent of pregnant women receiving multiple mRNA injections. For instance, he was the lead author of “Pregnancy should be a condition eligible for additional doses of COVID-19 messenger RNA vaccines,” published in November 2022 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology MFM.

Nass also wrote that Faust “publicly melted down when the mask mandate on planes was lifted,” accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of “killing babies.”

Next hearing set for March 2

The Maine board has scheduled two more hearings, the next one for March 2.

However, according to Nass, “The questioning of Dr. Faust is likely to take half a day more. Then I have 8 witnesses to go, including 3 patients who are at issue.”

About 140,000 people tuned in to Tuesday’s live broadcast of the proceedings, according to Nass.

Children’s Health Defense is providing support for Nass’ legal team.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

California to Ditch Plans to Mandate COVID Vaccines for Schoolchildren

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 2, 2023

California will end plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren when the state ends its COVID-19 state of emergency on Feb. 28, California Department of Public Health officials told EdSource, which reported the news on Wednesday.

Commenting on the news, Michael Kane, national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and founder of NY Teachers For Choice, told The Defender :

“We [in the movement] have some really good momentum right now, and what just happened in California is indicative of that.

“People are done with this. They’re done with the most extreme portions of this COVID agenda, the idea of this shot in kids is a no-starter for anybody.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October 2021, that California would be the first state to require COVID-19 vaccinations for children to attend school. It was also the first to mandate masking and staff vaccination measures.

At the time, state Sen. Richard Pan proposed legislation to strengthen the vaccine requirement even further by eliminating personal and religious exemptions. The legislation didn’t pass.

The vaccine requirement for children was originally set to kick in on July 1, 2022, when it was expected the vaccines, still under Emergency Use Authorization at the time, would be fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

But in April 2022, California announced it would delay the mandate to July 1, 2023.

The FDA still has not fully approved the COVID-19 vaccines for anyone under age 12. The CDC recommends the vaccines and the bivalent boosters for children ages 6 months and older.

The bivalent boosters were authorized for emergency use without any human clinical trials.

In California, 67% of 12- to 17-year-olds and 38% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine primary series. Less than 42% of 12- to 17-year-olds and less than 30% of 5- to 11-year-olds have been boosted.

Those numbers are higher than national averages. Only 58% of children ages 12 to 17 and 32% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the vaccine.

“The booster uptake is a complete failure, so this idea of routinizing a COVID shot for school every year, which is what they wanted, is failing in all the states they thought it was a guarantee in,” Kane said.

California ended the school mask mandate in March 2022, and ended the vaccine mandate for teachers and school staff in October 2022.

‘This kind of coercion never should have been normalized’

In the last two years, while state lawmakers debated California’s school vaccine mandate, school districts across the state proposed and passed their own COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Alex Gutentag, former Oakland public school teacher and political analyst, told The Defender :

“Newsom has referred to California as ‘the true freedom state,’ but he more than any other U.S. governor has tried to undermine the medical freedom of kids and their families when it comes to COVID-19.

“It is definitely a positive development that California is ending its plan for a school mandate, but it’s important to remember that many kids have already been coerced into vaccination through the threat of both statewide and local mandates.

“Several California cities, including Los Angeles, told families that COVID vaccines would be required to attend school in person, but eventually had to scrap and delay these plans. It was a clear effort to increase vaccine uptake, and was a major abuse of power. This kind of coercion never should have been normalized.”

The pressure to scrap mandate plans came in part from attorneys and citizen advocacy groups who brought three major lawsuits against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the Piedmont Unified School District and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD).

Children’s Health Defense-California Chapter (CHD-CA) and Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK), a California-based child advocacy group, used state laws to rule out local policies and pause vaccine mandates in the LAUSD and the Piedmont school district.

They sued the LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the U.S., alleging the district lacked the legal authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students ages 12 and older.

The mandate would have excluded 32,000 students from in-person classes.

After Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff ruled the case could go forward in April 2022, the LAUSD announced it would delay the COVID-19 vaccine requirement until July 1, when the state mandate kicked in.

Piedmont also voted to repeal its mandate after a judge granted CHD-CA and PERK’s Application for an Alternative Writ of Mandate and ordered the district to show why its policy could not be struck down.

In San Diego, a group called Let Them Choose filed a lawsuit contesting the SDUSD’s vaccine mandate for school children ages 16 and up. The court ruled, and in December 2022, an appellate court affirmed, that the district’s mandate violated state guidelines.

According to Rita Barnett-Rose, legal director of CHD-CA, the San Diego ruling established that individual school districts cannot institute COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the district level, because there is a statewide statutory scheme in place to set mandates.

That means the end of the California COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children at the state level will effectively end all school mandates in California.

Political will for mandates faltering across the country

Rita Barnett-Rose underscored that California health officials have not yet made the news about ending the mandate for the state’s schools official. However, she said, “Right now it looks like positive news.”

However, Barnett-Rose said, “The question still remains, are they [state legislature] going to try to put something on the legislative agenda this year?”

Gutentag also noted the lack of an official announcement:

“I also think it’s notable that officials only said they were not going to implement the mandate after EdSource pressed them for answers. State leaders probably knew that there were too many legal and logistical challenges, but did not want to admit this in order to save face.

“All Californians should be concerned that our state government is not honest and direct with us about major policy decisions.”

This shift in California’s school mandate decision is the latest in a string of developments calling into question the COVID-19 vaccines and marking a shift in public consensus on vaccines.

“I’m not surprised at all that California is admitting that it’s not politically possible to force a shot that’s unnecessary and dangerous on children to attend school,” Kane said, adding:

“It makes perfect sense to me, given what I am seeing in New York that this same type of pressure is in California.

“The entire thing is political. The whole thing is what can we politically do? They can’t politically force the shot on kids. The fallout is too much. They just can’t risk it, you know.”

Barnett-Rose told The Defender she thinks that when Newsom announced the mandate he thought a lot of other states would follow suit.

“I’m hoping this signifies that the political will to force these mandates on kids is really declining significantly.”

CDC adds COVID shots to child immunization schedule

California reversed its vaccine mandate decision despite the fact that in October 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended adding COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old to the new Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule, which will be rolled out this month.

The revised recommendations include the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 6 months and the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 12 years.

All COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the U.S. to people under 18 are still Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) products.

The FDA did grant full approval to Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for ages 12 and older. However, the Comirnaty vaccine is not available in the U.S. — which means all children who get the Pfizer vaccine are getting an EUA product.

The FDA also informed a congressional committee in May 2022 that the COVID-19 vaccines for children under 6 would not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain EUA.

COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.

“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

Last week, The Epoch Times reported that recently released emails revealed top officials, including Marks, rushed approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to enable vaccine mandates, despite concern by others in the agency that the rush compromised the integrity of the approval process.

On Dec. 9, 2022, the CDC expanded the use of updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 6 months through 5 years. They made that decision despite the fact that the bivalent shots were approved for adults without any clinical data and have yet to show efficacy.

In an amicus brief for a lawsuit challenging the vaccine mandate for school children in the state of Louisiana, CHD wrote:

“Simply put, the COVID vaccines have not been shown to be either effective or safe for children. The benefits to children are minuscule, while the risks — including the risk of potentially fatal heart damage — are ‘known’ and ‘serious,’ as the [FDA] itself has acknowledged.”

The Louisiana Department of Health rescinded the mandate.

Legal struggles continue over age of consent for vaccines

Legal battles over vaccines for children in California and elsewhere are ongoing.

In California, Maribel Duarte is suing the LAUSD and Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy alleging they vaccinated her 13-year-old son without her consent.

A vaccine clinic was set up in his school — Barack Obama Global Prep Academy — and he was allegedly bribed with a pizza to get vaccinated without parental consent.

One of the adults at the clinic requested the teen provide a parent-signed consent form, which he did not have. The child was then told to sign his mother’s name and not tell anyone.

Currently, Sen. Cheryl Kagen of Maryland is proposing Senate Bill 378, which would allow children 14 and up to consent to vaccination themselves and prevent parents from accessing medical records.

California attempted to pass a similar bill, SB 866, for children ages 12 and up.

The District of Columbia also attempted to pass a similar law, for children 11 and older, but a preliminary injunction issued in March 2022 temporarily blocked the district from implementing the law.

CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation sued the district and are seeking to declare the D.C. act unconstitutional.

The D.C. school district still plans to mandate children be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school starting in the 2023-2024 school year, just not without their parents’ consent.

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.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

NYT: Covid Vaccine Makers and Bill Gates’ GAVI Screwed Everyone

US Government and Other Governments are Holding The Bag

By Igor Chudov | February 1, 2023

This New York Times story from today is very illustrative of the current times.

Vaccine Makers Kept $1.4 Billion in Prepayments for Canceled Covid Shots for the World’s Poor

Separately, Johnson & Johnson is demanding additional payment for unwanted shots, confidential documents show.

It turns out that makers of Covid vaccines expertly screwed their customers, keeping a large part of the prepayment money advanced to them without shipping vaccine doses that no longer find any demand.

As global demand for Covid-19 vaccines dries up, the program responsible for vaccinating the world’s poor has been urgently negotiating to try to get out of its deals with pharmaceutical companies for shots it no longer needs.

Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times.

The worst example is J&J, manufacturer of the Janssen vaccine, which was pulled from use worldwide due to blood clots. Despite that, J&J demands that more money be given to it “because of existing contracts.”

If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more.

Gavi and Johnson & Johnson are locked in a bitter dispute over payment for shots that Gavi told the company months ago it would not need, but which the company produced anyway. Johnson & Johnson is now demanding that Gavi pay an additional, undisclosed amount for them.

New York Times is lamenting this situation and highlights appeals to the conscience of vaccine makers:

Covid vaccine manufacturers “have a special responsibility” because their products are a societal good and most were developed with public funding, said Thomas Frieden, the chief executive of the global health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives and a former director of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Who is Thomas Frieden? He is a former director of the CDC and also a convicted sex offender, in my opinion.

Vaccine makers resist Frieden’s appeals to their conscience because they do not have any.

Pfizer’s Strangely Special Case

Bill Gates’ GAVI is not asking Pfizer for refunds: Pfizer was paid directly by the US government. Did Bill Gates pull strings to have the US government hold the financial bag in the case of Pfizer?

If so, Bill certainly had personal financial reasons for this!

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invested 55 million into Pfizer’s vaccine maker BioNTech in Sep 2019.

This investment was made when BioNTech was an obscure company with no vaccines in the pipeline. That “unexpectedly” changed mere months later when BioNTech was selected to become the largest producer of Covid vaccines. Such lucky timing for Bill!

So, Bill Gates, having a financial interest in BioNTech, did not want his own GAVI to pay for BioNTech vaccines that eventually found no buyer; instead, the US government paid Pfizer directly. Pfizer will keep the funds, giving the US government an “option” to buy vaccines that nobody wants anymore.

Under the revised deal, a total of 600 million Pfizer doses will be made available to the US by the end of the year, giving the administration more time to find countries who want them. Pfizer had originally agreed to sell a billion shots at cost by this month.

Bill Gates-funded GAVI seems to have screwed its donors innovatively: the donors gave money towards Covid vaccinations, which fizzled. Hence, GAVI received back 1.6 billion out of 2.3 donated billions it gave Covid vaccine makers. Gavi, however, will not refund 1.6 billion to the donors and will use the money it recovered for other purposes, inflating its budget:

Had some vaccine manufacturers not been willing to renegotiate their contracts with Gavi, the costs to the organization could have been much higher. Gavi would have been on the hook for $2.3 billion for the doses it wanted to cancel, the documents show, but it saved $1.6 billion by exiting those contracts.

…

Donations for Covid shots substantially inflated Gavi’s budget, and the lost prepayments for canceled Covid vaccines do not threaten its regular childhood-vaccination work.

Such is the current state of the pandemic. The money is gone; vaccines do not work; people are dying suddenly; the government and Big Pharma do not want the public to pay attention.

If you, my reader, are in the United States, remember that the US government’s money is your money. Say bye-bye to it.

Will there be any real investigations?

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | 5 Comments

Federal government is accused of using antiterrorism tech to target vaccine dissent

Using it against its own citizens

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2023

The US federal government is adopting military-grade AI that was used to crack down on ISIS to censor dissent by US citizens on issues like election fraud and vaccine hesitancy, according to the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz.

Private firms and universities have received millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency, to develop tools similar to those developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program in 2011.

SMISC’s tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” in the Middle East. In a report, Mike Benz detailed how the NSF and other organizations are using this technology to censor the speech of Americans.

“One of the most disturbing aspects of the Convergence Accelerator Track F domestic censorship projects is how similar they are to military-grade social media network censorship and monitoring tools developed by the Pentagon for the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism contexts abroad,” reads the report.

Speaking to Just the News, he said: “DARPA’s been funding an AI network using the science of social media mapping dating back to at least 2011-2012, during the Arab Spring abroad and during the Occupy Wall Street movement here at home. They then bolstered it during the time of ISIS to identify homegrown ISIS threats in 2014-2015.”

According to Benz, the NSF has adopted DARPA’s technology to target two groups of Americans: those skeptical of recent election results and those who claim COVID-19 vaccines could be harmful.

“The terrifying thing is, as all of this played out, it was redirected inward during 2016 — domestic populism was treated as a foreign national security threat,” Benz said.

“What you’ve seen is a grafting on of these concepts of mis- and disinformation that were escalated to such high-intensity levels in the news over the past several years being converted into a tangible, formal government program to fund and accelerate the science of censorship,” he said.

“You had this project at the National Science Foundation called the Convergence Accelerator,” Benz recounted, “which was created by the Trump administration to tackle grand challenges like quantum technology. When the Biden administration came to power, they basically took this infrastructure for multidisciplinary science work to converge on a common science problem and took the problem of what people say on social media as being on the level of, say, quantum technology.

“And so they created a new track called the track F program … and it’s for ‘trust and authenticity,’ but what that means is, and what it’s a code word for is, if trust in the government or trust in the media cannot be earned, it must be installed. And so they are funding , censorship capacities, to censor people who distrust government or media.”

Benz noted how mainstream media and fact-checkers have become arbiters of truth, determining what is acceptable and unacceptable to post online, and how the pandemic has normalized “censorship in the name of public health.”

“What’s happened now is the government says, ‘Okay, we’ve established this normative foothold in it being okay to [censor political speech], now we’re going to supercharge you guys with all sorts of DARPA military grade censorship, weaponry, so that you can now take what you’ve achieved in the censorship space and scale it to the level of a U.S. counterinsurgency operation,’” Benz explained.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

George Soros is either prophetic or pulls a lot of strings

By Tony Cox | RT | February 2, 2023

George Soros is either stunningly prescient or frighteningly influential when it comes to determining who will need to do all the bleeding and dying that he deems necessary to bring about a desirable “new world order.”

Consider the Hungarian-born billionaire’s essay on the future of NATO: “The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder.”

Soros deserves credit for neatly describing the US and NATO strategy for bringing about and exploiting the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The Ukrainians are providing the manpower – in other words, the cannon fodder – and the Western puppeteers can endeavor to weaken Russia and enforce their vision of a favorable world order. They also can do this without having to make the case to their citizens that this is a fight for which it is worth tolerating body bags coming home from the front.

Additionally, by sharing the burden of providing military and economic aid to Kiev, the Western powers achieve the dual benefits of prolonging their proxy war and creating the impression that the whole world is steadfastly standing with the blue and yellow. That helps underpin the narrative frame that there is no moral basis for criticizing Ukraine policy and anyone who does so is probably a Kremlin agent.

The thing is, Soros didn’t write his take on the situation this week, this month or even in the past year. He didn’t even write it back in 2014, when he was allegedly backing the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected government and might have reasonably anticipated a coming conflict with Russia. No, Soros wrote this assessment in 1993, nearly 30 years ago.

Back then, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Soros wanted to prevent former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact nations from becoming nationalist countries that would be governed according to their own interests and oppose the global order that he was promoting.

Western leaders had made assurances that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward, but Soros saw the military bloc as “the basis of a new world order.” He conceded that the group would need “some profound new thinking,” given that its original mission was “obsolete,” and he insisted that the alliance must be free to invite any country to join.

In fact, he saw a great opportunity for NATO to take advantage of the security void created by the Soviet collapse if it could act quickly. “If NATO has any mission at all, it is to project its power and influence into the region, and the mission is best defined in terms of open and closed societies.”

“The countries of Central Europe are clamoring for full membership of NATO as soon as possible, preferably before Russia recovers. Russia objects, not because it harbors any designs on its former empire but because it sees no advantage in consenting. Its national pride has been hurt and it is sick and tired of making concessions without corresponding benefits.”

Soros saw NATO as both a viable platform to develop into the anti-Russia enforcer for his new world order and the bright and shiny object to lure Europe’s former Eastern Bloc states into the fold. “NATO has a unified command structure which brings together the United States and Western Europe,” he said.

“There are great advantages in having such a strong Western pillar: It leads to a lopsided structure firmly rooted in the West. This is as it should be, since the goal is to reinforce and gratify the desire of the region for joining the open society of the West.”

The goal became reality. For example, Soros noted that there was nothing to prevent countries such as Poland, Czechia and Hungary from joining NATO. The three nations became the first wave of NATO’s post-Cold War expansion, joining the bloc in 1999. In fact, the bloc has since nearly doubled in size, adding 14 members by 2020 and teeing up Ukraine and Georgia as future prospects.

NATO moved right along the Russian frontier, placing strategic weapons and security guarantees on Moscow’s doorstep and helping to trigger the current crisis. As Soros acknowledged in 1993, Russia had no desire to restore the empire of Peter the Great – contrary to a popular CNN talking point. However, as the Kremlin warned repeatedly in the years leading up to the current conflict, Moscow couldn’t stand idly by while its national security interests were trampled.

It’s easy to see why Soros was and is so worried about nationalism: His vision could never sell with a government that served the interests of its own people.

NATO’s expansion binge didn’t make anyone safer. We know the little brothers, like the people of Ukraine, aren’t better off. They have the privilege of bleeding and dying as they provide the “manpower” for NATO’s proxy fight with Russia. As for the big brothers, they undermine their own security. Americans and Western Europeans are suffering the economic effects of the US-NATO sanctions war against Russia, and their governments are pushing them ever closer to a planet-ending nuclear Armageddon.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced last week that its Doomsday Clock had advanced to within 90 seconds of midnight, the latest ever, indicating that humanity stands at “a time of unprecedented danger.” The group cited the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has “challenged the nuclear order – the system of agreements and understandings that have been constructed over six decades to limit the dangers of nuclear weapons.”

Not to worry if you’re George Soros, 92 years old, and watching your geopolitical dreams come true. He and others like him can keep marching onward to perfect their world order as they see fit.

If we wonder whether NATO works on behalf of that order, we need look only at what has transpired and the framing of the current conflict. When Russian forces began their offensive against Ukraine last February, Western leaders and pundits condemned President Vladimir Putin for undermining the “rules-based international order.”

So NATO has emerged as the enforcer of the rules-based international order – the new world order, if you will – just as Soros called for three decades ago. The results of that “profound new thinking” are much the same as the political activist envisioned in 1993. He also called for expanding NATO to Asia, which hasn’t yet happened, but the bloc’s 2022 summit was enlarged to include representatives from Asia-Pacific “sentinel states” – Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Was Soros so much of a visionary that the hedge-fund investor could foresee how geopolitics would play out several decades ahead of time, or does his accuracy reflect the fact that he and his allies tend to get their way? Rather than prescience, is this situation more like the cook being a good predictor of what we’re going to have for dinner?

Soros himself offered a hint on that theory in his essay: “We have to act without full knowledge of the facts because the facts are created by our decisions.”

Anyone who suggests that Soros calls a lot of the policy shots is immediately condemned by the Western media as anti-Semitic because, after all, he has Jewish heritage. Never mind that he’s an avowed atheist who has been accused of undermining Israel’s democratically elected government and funding groups that defame the Jewish state.

So when Moldovan President Maia Sandu returns from a recent trip to Davos and promptly starts hinting about joining NATO – in violation of her country’s constitutional commitment to neutrality – we shouldn’t point out that she met with Alexander Soros, son of George Soros, during the summit. Revealing or trying to connect such dots would be anti-Semitic, according to the Western media.

It couldn’t be that George Soros wields an inordinate amount of influence over world affairs. It couldn’t be that some of his critics have legitimate and unbigoted disagreements with his ideas. It couldn’t be that his immunity to criticism is further evidence of his power.

And shut your eyes when a US watchdog group reveals that Soros has financial ties to at least 253 media organizations worldwide and funding links to 54 prominent media figures, including such names as Christiane Amanpour of CNN, Lester Holt of NBC News and Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee.

So Soros gets to wield his influence with impunity, apparently achieving what he wants in many cases. He gets to serve the interests of billionaires, defense contractors, power-mongering politicians and social engineers. But what about the rest of us, the other 8 billion people in the world? What about those who just want to be able to support our families, pursue happiness and live in peace – without worrying that iodine pills are sold out and there might not be time to build a nuclear fallout shelter?

Soros himself might prescribe us more bread and circuses, to keep the masses distracted – as well as tribalism, to keep the people divided – at least until we’re needed to serve as “manpower” for the cause.

Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | 3 Comments

Iran points finger after drone strike

RT | February 2, 2023

The Iranian government suspects that Israel was responsible for last Saturday night’s attack on a military facility in the central city of Isfahan, news outlet ISNA reported on Thursday, citing a senior diplomat.

Amir Saeid Iravani, Tehran’s envoy to the UN, made the accusation in correspondence with senior officials at the organization, according to ISNA. In his letter, he reportedly stated that a preliminary investigation had pointed to Israel’s responsibility for the drone attack.

He condemned the incident and referred to statements by senior Israeli officials, including an interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on CNN earlier this week, in which he declined to confirm or deny Israel’s involvement in the Isfahan attack.

“Every time some explosion takes place in the Middle East, Israel is blamed or given responsibility – sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not,” the prime minister told the US news network.

In his letter, Iravani emphasized that Iran had a right to “decisively respond” to the threat posed by Israel with whatever means it deems necessary.

The Iranian diplomat also condemned a Ukrainian official for their remarks about the attack. Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to President Vladimir Zelensky, framed the incident as retaliation for what Kiev claims to be assistance provided by Iran to Russia in the conflict with Ukraine.

“War logic is inexorable and murderous. It bills the authors and accomplices strictly,” Podoliak said, adding that Ukraine “did warn you.”

Iravani reiterated that Iran was not involved in the Ukraine crisis and said any statements condoning attacks on Iranian infrastructure were “irresponsible.”

According to ISNA, Iranian specialists analyzed the debris of drones used in the attack and identified the producer. They reportedly found clues after comparing the aircrafts’ body, engines, power supply and navigation system to samples at their disposal.

The Iranian military will use the new information to improve security at its installations, the outlet said, citing a source close to the national security council.

The attack reportedly involved three small drones carrying explosives, which were launched from a nearby location. Iran said they were intercepted and caused only minor damage to the roof of the building that was targeted.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Large-scale Russian combat actions in Ukraine expected in February

By Lucas Leiroz | February 2, 2023

A new wave of activity is expected for the Russian special military operation during February. The recent changes in the command of the operation appear to have been carefully planned in order to elevate the combat to a new level and several of Moscow’s strategic objectives may soon be achieved, radically changing the course of the conflict.

According to information provided by Russian military, a major offensive is being prepared for the period between February and early March. The informants say that the objectives will be:

1. Reaching the borders of the regions recently reintegrated into the Russian Federation, pacifying the new oblasts;

2. capturing Nikolaev, Odessa, as well as the entire Black Sea coast, reaching Transnistria;

3. seizing Kiev, forcing a political capitulation of the neo-Nazi regime until early March.

The territory of Belarus will become the main springboard for the upcoming strike. Mobilized Russian servicemen are being trained in training camps in Belarus, where heavy military equipment and combat aircraft are concentrated. A large bombardment force is in readiness for action. Also, Russian forces in Belarus have been collecting strategic information on the location of Ukrainian units, mainly about Kiev’s air defense, gathering intelligence data that will be used to plan the attacks.

In parallel to Belarus, Zaporozhye and Lugansk are also key zones for the Russian strategy. It is expected that massive attacks will come from these regions during the offensive, destroying enemy units in a short period of time which will allow a rapid Russian advance on the battlefield, reaching the zones listed in the above-mentioned objectives.

Sources also report that for the offensive to be successful Russian forces will focus on blocking all enemy’s supply lines. The main route of arrival of supplies to Ukraine is the border with Poland, where there is the transit of NATO’s ammunition and military equipment.

In fact, the battlefield conditions seem favorable for these objectives to be achieved. The Ukrainian forces are currently exhausted and weak. On the other hand, the mobilized Russian soldiers are fully prepared to engage in high-intensity combats. In addition, Russian artillery positions in Belarus and in the liberated territories have a privileged location, which significantly increases the chances of victory in the coming offensive.

Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, was promoted to the position of Commander of the Joint Forces of the Russian Federation in the Special Military Operation Zone. Gerasimov’s arrival to power seems to have been a move towards the final stage of the special military operation.

His predecessor, General Surovikin played an important role while in command. A veteran of Chechnya and Syria and having extensive experience in counterterrorism, Surovikin was appointed to the post at a time when Ukrainian terrorist actions were on the rise. He fulfilled the goal of neutralizing the enemy’s offensive potential with his strong actions on the Ukrainian critical infrastructure, at the same time that he saved thousands of Russian lives with his policy of avoiding trench warfare and prioritizing long-distance bombing. Now, however, the special military operation needs a new direction.

And this was the main reason for the appointment of Valery Gerasimov. As Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, he is undoubtedly the most prestigious Russian officer and therefore the right man to lead the operation’s most decisive moves. The objective now is no longer to break the enemy’s offensive potential, but to force Kiev’s neo-Nazi regime into capitulation through a huge offensive.

After so many Russian attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution, with the Ukrainian government ignoring them and insisting on an irresponsible military campaign, now there seems to be no other possible end to the conflict than a Russian offensive strong enough to liberate the entire Ukrainian coastline and capture Kiev.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Peru’s Congress Refuses Early Elections, Heightening Tensions as Protests Rage

By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 02.02.2023

Peruvian legislators shot down any remaining chance of a peaceful resolution to protests that have already seen around 60 demonstrators killed by security forces.

The Congress of Peru voted down a proposal to move up presidential and legislative elections to 2023, complicating efforts to end the deadly crisis that has gripped Peru since ousted President Pedro Castillo was forced from power and jailed by security forces nearly two months ago.

With just 53 legislators in support, lawmakers fell far short of the 87 votes needed to advance the initiative after five hours of debate.

Legislators from elite-dominated parties reportedly insisted that early elections were “unconstitutional” and complained that members of Peru’s notoriously-unpopular Congress should be allowed to finish their term.

Demonstrators have been calling for the liberation of Castillo, a new constitution, and for Congress to be dissolved.

The lawmakers’ refusal to budge on the issue of early elections means demonstrators have little incentive to leave the streets. After seven weeks of daily protests, participants have so far shown little intention of packing up and leaving.

“There is no truce,” one Peruvian journalist wrote following the proposal’s rejection.

“The demonstrations against the government of Dina Boluarte continue in #Lima the same day that Congress denied the possibility of an advance of general elections.”

Widespread pushback against the newly-formed Peruvian regime of Dina Boluarte began on December 7, after Castillo was charged with rebellion over accusations that he attempted to “illegally” dissolve Congress, which holds an abysmal approval rating of just 7% per latest polls.

Boluarte herself isn’t faring much better. The most recent survey available shows just 21% of Peruvians approve of her performance and 63% want the unelected head of the regime to resign immediately.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Scholtz failed to secure support for Ukraine on his tour of South America

By Ahmed Adel | February 2, 2023

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to Argentina, Brazil and Chile was with the aim of involving them in the Ukraine conflict and to create a regional counterweight to China’s growing influence. These are similar actions already made by the US in South America and one that we can also expect from other European powers.

Scholz’s visit is an attempt to restore influence in a region that has been empowered by China and Russia to forge an independent path that is not under the umbrella of the “Monroe Doctrine.” It is not a coincidence that the German Chancellor visited the region just days after the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), at which member states sought to strengthen regional integration in the context of Western powers attempting to prevent Latin America from strengthening relations with Russia and China.

Behind Scholz’s visit was the fact that China has become very close to Latin America. Therefore, it is in Berlin’s interest to note this competition between the Great Powers in South America and follow the trends that are emerging in the region rather than just behave as Washington’s representative.

It cannot be overlooked that South America, especially Chile, has large lithium reserves. Scholz’s visit is a form of US and European effort to effectively make the Chilean economy work in their own interest, as was the case when the US installed Augusto Pinochet as dictator in 1973.

The West’s imperial attitude of previous centuries remains the same, but, now with China’s thirst for resources, South American countries are finding a way out from the grasp of US hegemony. It is reminded, for example, that Chile’s main copper export partner today is China and not the US.

Both Washington and Berlin want major Latin American countries, like Chile, to ratify commercial, diplomatic, and political relations with the West so that they are not absorbed into China’s sphere of influence. This is an endeavour that will take many years to undergo because China is already entrenched in the region, something that is problematic for Germany as they need immediate solutions to the self-imposed energy crisis caused by sanctions on Russia.

Germany’s own self-destructive policies made it show an interest in a region that it never traditionally did. If the war in Ukraine was not occurring, it is more than likely that Berlin would not be in a hurry to forge new relationships for alternative energy sources. The issue is that Germany wants to impose its own liberal ideology over Latin America as a condition for trade, which means a cut in trade and relations with China and Russia.

South America is not only an important source of resources, but is a major region that refuses to cut trade and diplomatic relations with Russia. Whatever anticipation or expectation Scholz had on his trip were quickly dashed as he did not find the response he was expecting from his Latin American counterparts. The positions of the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Chile reflects the fact that these governments know how to distinguish economic cooperation from political dependence.

Involving Latin America in the Ukraine conflict is something that will face widespread rejection. For example, although new Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “emphatically deplored Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and annexation of parts of its territory as flagrant violations of international law” in a joint statement released with Scholtz on January 30, his government’s policies towards Russia have not deviated far from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

However, Lula also confirmed that Brazil would not provide ammunition to Ukraine for German-made Gepard anti-aircraft guns, as reportedly requested by Berlin, and insinuated that Ukraine was not seeking peace. Effectively, Lula is happy to pay lip service to the West but will not take any concrete action in matters related to the war in Ukraine.

In the same light, Argentina and Chile’s leaders also ended any German hope that they might lend support for Ukraine despite the fact that they were happy to condemn Russia’s military operation as an “invasion”. On his Latin America tour, Scholz wanted to demonstrate that international unity against Russia extends beyond the Western World, but only managed to secure some statements that are unlikely to damage relations with Moscow.

For his part, Lula said Brazil will work with other countries to help achieve peace in Ukraine as his country has not taken sides – something objectively true despite some damning rhetoric. In fact, likely to the annoyance of the German Chancellor, Lula said that China has an important role to play in peace talks, which he said he will discuss on a planned visit to Beijing in March.

It can be said that although Scholz’s trip can serve as a foundation for German-South American relations, his main goals – to secure support for Ukraine and to make advances in the resource industry only found limited success. Although he secured some rhetoric against Russia, he could not secure any material support for Ukraine. At the same time, although Germany has pitched its entry into the resource market, there is no guarantee that it will come to fruition or even challenge China’s dominance in the region.

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

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Why there is no ‘climate crisis’

The real climate crisis is sinister ideology

By Ben Pile | Climate Debate | January 27, 2023

It is easy to get bogged down in the technical detail of the climate debate. But science can distract us from the fact that before climate change, environmentalists made exactly the same kind of predictions that now drive arguments for draconian climate policies. The gloomy predictions of civilisation’s imminent collapse made by environmentalists in the 1970s came to nothing – the world population grew larger, wealthier, healthier and safer. This should alert us to the fact that, whether or not ‘climate change is real’, environmentalism is a radical political ideology, bent on reorganising the world, whatever the facts are. It is not merely a response to scientific discovery about our relationship with the natural world.

We should not forget this historical context of the climate debate and motivation for the climate policy agenda, because ideology is insidious, and far more powerful than scientific rationalism. Today’s radical greens, from world leaders to street-blocking narcissists, have learned not to make the mistake of their predecessors. Rather than making predictions that fail to materialise, their new trick is to claim that the ‘climate crisis’ is ‘happening now’: people are starving, diseases are rampant, storms, floods, wildfires and heatwaves kill thousands by the day, forcing millions from their homes and into poverty, all underpinned by dramatic images on TV news stories to cement the narrative without any journalistic incredulity towards official stories.

But the ‘climate crisis’ simply isn’t happening at all. Just as the world defied green predictions half a century ago, all metrics of human welfare make the opposite case: humanity is thriving like never before. And just as in the 1970s, it is ideology, not fact, which drives the green narrative. In our new film,  we at Climate Debate UK attempt to show how this regressive ideology has been transmitted, using the idea of a ‘climate crisis’, from the top strata of global society, through governments and the media, to very young children, where it poisons their view of the world and their futures.

It is ideology, not mere scientific error, that has blinded people to the fact that abundant, affordable and reliable energy has made the world a much better place. Worse, it is ideology that has clouded the moral judgement of people who have wilfully turned extremely young children into instruments of the political agenda, to prevent them driving this development onward. ‘Science’ is just a fig leaf.

February 2, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment