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US giving cold feet to countries willing to normalize with Syria

Press TV – February 3, 2023

The United States is actively working to discourage countries willing to normalize relations with Syria, according to a report.

The report, based on the summary of a recent UN Security Council meeting on Syria seen by al-Akhbar, shows that Washington has tried to draw “red lines” for countries seeking to normalize with Syria, return the Syrian refugees to their homeland, or help find a permanent solution to the crisis in the Arab country.

Regarding the return of refugees, the report said instead of encouraging a repatriation process, the United States is urging the host countries to “double their support” for refugee programs, despite the heavy social and economic burden the refugee crisis puts on some of these countries, most notably Lebanon.

Al-Akhbar said the European representatives present in the meeting conditioned their support for the reconstruction of Syria and the repatriation of refugees on Damascus accepting a “credible and comprehensive political process” – which is considered by many to mean a political process dictated by Washington.

The report said that the summary of the meeting, which was held on January 25, shows the US-led camp continues to block a rapprochement – facilitated by Russia and Iran – between Syria and Turkey.

Ankara resumed diplomatic contacts with Damascus in late December, following a decade of severed ties in the wake of the crisis in Syria.

Turkey has now announced its willingness for a meeting between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.

A number of Arab countries have also resumed contact with Syria, including Oman and the United Arab Emirates.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 1 Comment

Attempts by France & Germany to Negotiate With Russia Should Be Prevented, Bolton Tells Pranksters

By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 02.02.2023

John Bolton shared his thoughts on topics such as the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the West and the prospects of Ukraine’s NATO membership with Vovan and Lexus.

Former US presidential advisor John Bolton has made some rather frank admissions during a phone conversation with whom he thought was the ex-president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko.

Alas, his interlocutor turned out to be the well-known Russian prankster duo known as Vovan and Lexus, who promptly spilled the beans online.

During the chat, Bolton apparently insisted that all attempts by Germany or France to hold negotiations with Russia amid the current crisis in Ukraine should be disrupted, and claimed that the sooner Ukraine and Georgia become members of NATO, the better.

Regarding the sanctions imposed by western powers against Russia, Bolton complained that they weren’t enough and that Moscow continues to bypass these punitive measures.

He also commented on the promise made over three decades ago by former US Secretary of State James Baker to the former leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev regarding NATO not expanding to the east, claiming that Baker merely “launched into arguments and looked for ways to avoid confrontation,” as the pranksters put it.

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

‘Türkiye and UAE told to cut trade ties with Russia’

RT | February 3, 2023

US officials have warned Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates against maintaining economic and financial ties with Russia because trade is undermining sanctions, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The warnings were reportedly voiced by the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Treasury, Brian Nelson, during meetings with Turkish officials on Thursday and Friday.

Nelson’s visit to Türkiye comes as part of a regional tour that included the UAE earlier this week, and is said to be aimed at discussing Washington’s concerns over rising exports to Russia that include US goods.

US officials have called on the two countries to clamp down on the flow of goods to Russia, the sources told the news agency, adding that millions of dollars’ worth of export-controlled items were reaching the sanctions-hit country, and could be used by the defense industry to extend the conflict in Ukraine.

Scores of Turkish exporters shipped over $800 million worth of goods to Russia, including $300 million in machinery and another $80 million in electronics in the eight months through October 2022, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Other areas of concern reportedly include Russian vessels either sanctioned or subject to export controls making port calls in Turkey.

Meanwhile, the UAE has maintained ties with both Ukraine and Russia. The Gulf state’s ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, traveled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in October amid the continuing conflict in Ukraine. The leaders expressed Moscow and Abu Dhabi’s willingness to develop cooperation on all levels.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | 2 Comments

‘Nobody can tell us how to live’: Hungary slams US envoy for meddlesome remarks

“We welcome non-governors and non-regents”

Press TV – February 3 2023

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has lashed out at the US ambassador to Budapest for meddling in the country’s internal affairs over its support for Russia, saying, “Nobody can tell us from the outside how to live.”

Szijjarto issued the scathing rebuke on Thursday after David Pressman, who has represented Washington in Budapest since September last year, censured Hungary’s push for the continuation of policies endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s opposition to Western-led anti-Russia sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.

“Nobody can tell us from the outside how to live, so it is of no interest what a citizen of another country – be it an ambassador – thinks about the domestic political processes in Hungary,” Szijjarto said at a press conference. “We ask for more respect for the Hungarians, even from the ambassador.”

Stressing that it is not Pressman’s “job to interfere in the internal affairs of Hungary,” the Hungarian foreign minister said, “If he wants to use his stay in Hungary to qualify the activities of the government elected by the Hungarian people with a fairly clear majority… then he will have a very difficult time.”

Szijjarto said when Hungary receives foreign ambassadors, it expects them to behave appropriately and work to improve bilateral relations, emphasizing that the era of foreign envoys telling Hungarians how to live in their own country “is over.”

Hungary has on numerous occasions voiced opposition to Western sanctions against Moscow in response to Russia’s protracted military operation in Ukraine, arguing that the restrictions have wreaked havoc on the EU economy.

Last month, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban also slammed Germany’s decision to support Ukraine by supplying 14 Leopard 2 tanks, warning that such steps would make Western countries active participants in the conflict. Orban stressed that, instead of arming Kiev, the West should pursue “a ceasefire and peace talks” in Ukraine.

Russia launched what it calls a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, over the perceived threat of the ex-Soviet republic joining NATO and to “de-Nazify” Kiev. Since then, the United States and Ukraine’s other allies have sent Kiev tens of billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, including rocket systems, drones, armored vehicles, tanks, and communication systems.

Western countries have also imposed a slew of economic sanctions on Moscow. The Kremlin has said the sanctions and the Western military assistance will only prolong the war.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Russia ramps up global food exports

RT | February 3, 2023

Russia’s food exports jumped by 12% in monetary terms last year to more than 70 million tons, despite difficulties caused by Western sanctions, the country’s Ministry of Agriculture reported on Thursday.

The ministry highlighted that domestic agricultural products had been supplied to 150 countries, emphasizing that Russia’s contribution to world food security is constantly growing.

According to the latest report, exports of oil and fat products soared by 26%, meat and dairy products rose by 16%, and grain exports increased by 14%.

The ministry also noted good results in its work on reorienting export flows, building new logistics chains, and financial transactions, as well as facilitating conditions for providing state support. “This will help to further increase exports to priority markets,” it concluded on its Telegram channel.

Western sanctions imposed on Russia have been disrupting the country’s food supplies to the world market, threatening to exacerbate the global food crisis.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that, despite the obstacles, Russia remains ready to help poor nations battle hunger, providing them with the “necessary assistance.”

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Economics | | 1 Comment

Latest IMF data shows Russia outperforming Germany and UK

By Drago Bosnic | February 3, 2023

After the US-led political West imposed the most comprehensive sanctions in recorded history in an attempt to destroy the Russian economy, the most sanctioned country on the planet was expected to be isolated, economically devastated, with no access to high technologies of any kind and, most preferably, with an extremely angry populace, potentially causing protests and eventually a coup that would bring down the Russian government and bring about the “free and democratic” (i.e. compliant) Yeltsin-style puppet regime. And yet, despite nearly a year of this unprecedented economic siege, the Russian economy isn’t only still standing, but it’s even growing.

Russia’s trade exchange with the world is surging (by dozens of times in some cases) and, according to the latest data by the International Monetary Fund, it’s now expected to outperform both the United Kingdom and Germany, two of the leading European economies. The goal of making the Russian people quite angry was accomplished however – the Russians are furious at the political West and stand united in a way not seen since the Second World War, making the idea of a pro-Western coup in Moscow a perpetual pipe dream of the political elites in Washington DC and Brussels. Worse yet, if a coup ever happens, it would only bring more anti-Western political parties to power.

At first, the effects indeed seemed catastrophic for the Russian economy, with the ruble apparently in free fall and the stock market effectively shut down. However, after initially losing over 40% of its value, the embattled Russian currency didn’t just rebound, but also gained momentum and reached values higher than those before the start of Russia’s counteroffensive. And now, the latest IMF forecast predicts that Russian economic growth will outperform that of Germany, while the UK will go through a recession, as its economy was at its worst in over 300 years and is expected to perform even worse this year.

The prediction would have been nearly impossible to imagine less than a year ago and would have surely caused a roar of laughter in the mainstream media. In early March last year, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen boasted that “the Russian economy will be devastated.” The Russian government itself also expected a dramatic GDP contraction, with the finance ministry reportedly gearing up for at least a 10% decline. Even in December, many leading economists expected the GDP fall in 2023 to be 2.5%. And yet, the Russian economy fell by 2.2% in 2022 and is expected to grow at least 0.3% this year and 2.1% in 2024. The numbers indicate that the UK is in a recession and is expected to have a 0.6% GDP fall, while Germany will barely stay afloat with a 0.1% growth.

The sanctions were designed to cut off Russia from the international financial system by essentially stealing hundreds of billions of dollars of its foreign exchange assets, making it virtually impossible for Moscow to do business with basically anyone. Or so it seemed. However, what eventually happened was nearly a complete dedollarization of Russia’s trade exchange, as the Eurasian giant simply switched to trading in the domestic currencies of its international partners, including China and India. This made it possible for Russia’s industry to not only maintain its existing production level in the first 10 months of last year (officially it was down by a paltry 0.1%), but to even start growing in November and December. It’s expected to grow even more in 2023.

Additionally, Russia is home to many of the world’s most essential commodities, such as oil and natural gas. Moscow continues to hold dominant positions in global markets, including being the leading exporter of fertilizer and food. The world simply cannot afford to ignore Russia and there’s no indicator that it even wants to, despite the political West’s frenzied attempts to portray Moscow as the supposed “international pariah”. More than 80% of the planet not only continues to work with Russia, but is actively expanding its cooperation with the superpower. And while the political West is effectively trying to impose an oil and gas embargo on itself by sanctioning Moscow, giants such as China and India are increasing their Russian energy imports.

According to Bloomberg, India was importing 1.2 million barrels of Russian oil per day in 2022, an increase of 33 times in comparison to 2021. This is also expected to grow in 2023. Turkey, one of NATO’s leading members, also continues to expand its trade relations with Russia. In December, it imported 213,000 barrels of Russian diesel per day, a record amount in the last 7 years. Ankara also used the opportunity that many Western companies were forced by their governments to leave, so its export to Russia doubled, surpassing $1.3 billion. Imports from China increased substantially as their companies also filled the gaps left by their Western counterparts.

Despite all of its Russophobic posturing, the European Union also spent more than $150 billion on buying Russian fossil fuels in 2022. The EU’s suicidal anti-Russian sanctions caused a surge in energy costs, which hit both Germany and the UK, causing an exponential increase in inflation and severely undermining the purchasing power of hundreds of millions of regular Europeans. The latest data shows that retail sales in Germany fell sharply in the last two months of 2022, despite expectations of a slight increase due to Christmas and New Year. While economists expected sales to increase by at least 0.2%, what actually happened was a dramatic 5.3% fall.

The UK has been hit the hardest as inflation, mostly fueled by food and energy price spikes, has a detrimental effect on the cost of living. This also caused unprecedented political instability in London, with two prime ministers resigning in mere months, all with starkly different economic and fiscal policies, resulting in near complete chaos in the UK markets.

In contrast to this, Russia not only withstood the hammer of the political West’s sanctions war, but it’s now hitting back and Western economies are certainly feeling the bite. All the while, the Eurasian giant also continues to conduct its counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe and is now in the midst of preparations for a final push that could end the Ukraine crisis.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

February 3, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | 1 Comment

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

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