Broken Trust
Can the relationship with state healthcare ever be repaired?
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 21, 2023
For many people, the words ‘trust the experts’ now invoke a sort of pavlovian horror response. This trope serves as a visceral reminder of 3 years’ constant gaslighting for daring to question the narrative, the relentless stream of celebrity medics repeating the ‘safe and effective’ mantra and the bullying and coercion to take a ‘vaccine’ that millions of people didn’t feel they needed or wanted. It had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Core medical ethical principles were destroyed, the weaknesses of protocolised top-down healthcare delivery were exposed and of course there was direct harm to individuals. Is it any wonder that a great many of the British public never want to hear the words ‘our NHS’ ever again, cringing as they remember the weekly clapping ritual.
An inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater is now a strong instinct for many who feel completely let down. If the relationship with state healthcare stands any chance of being repaired, harms enacted in recent years need to be properly acknowledged and people’s concerns carefully listened to. The uncomfortable question as to whether the NHS can function in its current incarnation should be aired. For a lot of people a ‘great reset’ of the medical profession would be a necessary condition of return. Indeed, many medics wonder if they can remain in a system that is clearly failing those it is supposed to serve.
As one doctor with decades of experience laments:
“If I continue to practise conveyor belt and recipe book medicine under the current system, the benefit is only to the Medical Business Model; hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic centres and the pharmaceutical industry all benefit in a model designed to keep the patient sick.”
Another consultant doctor reflecting on the past few years, had the following comments:
“The most odious revelation to me was when early on the directive came forth forbidding doctors, on pain of GMC punishment, to use their own initiative to treat a Covid patient with any other substance, drug, or agent whatsoever than that which was approved officially (of course at this point there was nothing in that category), save only for using it in an officially approved Clinical Trial. I felt utterly betrayed as a doctor. The whole essence of the doctor-patient relationship was abruptly abolished. We were now in the CMO-patient relationship. My role was merely to be a minor minion box-ticking algorithm slave. No clinical discretion. No discussion along the principles of best interest of the patient with informed consent. Oh no, that’s old hat! I saw the moral authority and overshadowing support of the entire medical establishment wither up like Jonah’s gourd.”
Multiple articles are now appearing reporting that morale for those working within the NHS is at an all-time low.1,2,3 One can only imagine that bearing witness to some of the most inhumane policies in NHS history for 3 years straight has not helped. Add to this the long hours on low pay, with increasingly limited time to spend with patients due to unmanageable waiting lists, and you have a perfect recipe for abysmal job satisfaction. Do we really want those in charge of our healthcare decisions to be forced to work under these conditions?
So now to the question of trusting medical advice that has been co-opted, protocolised and politicised, not to mention censored and distorted by financial interests. The UKHSA is supposed to be the government gatekeeper that is ‘responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases’. Just yesterday the agency was still urging people on Twitter to go and get their first and second covid vaccine. This is now so ludicrously at odds with the available evidence that any sane member of the public should conclude that the regulatory system in the UK is officially broken. It is worth taking the time to read the comments under the tweet to see that the public’s natural survival instincts seem to have well and truly kicked in. This random selection suggests the UKHSA may need to read the room:
If you tuned in to the Twitter Space on Sunday ‘Are mRNA injections causing cancers?’ hosted by Dr Kat Lindley and Neil Oliver, you would have heard a heated exchange between consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmad Malik and London-based oncology professor, Angus Dalgleish. Dr Malik wanted to get to the bottom of why Professor Dalgleish felt moved to write an article advocating for young people to take the covid vaccine in July 2021 entitled:
What every young person who fears the jab MUST be told: Vaccine expert ANGUS DALGLEISH dismantles beliefs that have seen rates stall among the 18-30s
Well that seems like a pretty clear message. Get the damned vaccine.
Given his background in vaccine research, Prof Dalgleish would have been very clear that long-term safety data is not an optional extra when injecting young people or pregnant women. When questioned, Prof Dalgleish revealed that he did not actually write the article himself. There was a phone interview with a Daily Mail journalist, which he described as ‘bullying’ and the article was an entirely perverted representation of that call. Nonetheless, his name appears alongside the article with the effect that the message therein appears to come from a distinguished professor of medicine.
Professor Dalgleish dramatically revised his position on covid injections after his son suffered acute myocarditis following the shots. Whilst it is obviously a good thing that he was courageous and open-minded enough to change his stance, it is very worrying that he is still an outlier. One can count on one hand the working medics willing to speak out on this issue. And it begs the question, what if Professor Dalgleish’s son hadn’t been injured? Would there have been more advertorials in the Daily Mail with his name alongside? Why are journalists ‘bullying’ through a particular narrative on medical matters? This rather suggests they have a particular agenda. As one Dr Roger Hodkinson, an eminent Cambridge educated pathologist says, “when politics plays medicine, that’s a very dangerous game.” Notably Dr Hodkinson is now only available to view on Bitchute, having been deplatformed from the more mainstream channels such as YouTube. More media censorship of highly qualified counter-narrative voices.
Working for a monopoly such as the NHS, with a mortgage and a family to feed, one might well find medical ethics end up somewhere below personal financial obligations. This is regrettable but understandable. Medics are human beings. Perhaps it is the fault of an increasingly secular society that somehow medics have been elevated to demi-gods and as a result their word is often deemed infallible. However, many more people now realise that this is simply not the case. If this disordered power dynamic is to be realigned, certain conditions need to be met:
- A genuine admission that mistakes were made. Not that ‘The Science™’ changed. It did not change and millions of people who resisted the military grade psy-op are fully aware of this;
- An overhaul of medical training so that clinicians do not feel afraid to speak out when they see something is wrong, and in fact should be encouraged to do so;
- The gaslighting must stop altogether. Those who have suffered injury or trauma need to be given proper air time and have their concerns addressed. They also need to be properly and fairly compensated.
- Open and unfettered discussions need to take place, allowing medics to speak freely about what has happened during the past 3 years, identifying with honesty and integrity what must not be repeated.
Taxpayers spend in excess of £220 billion per annum on the NHS. Weekly excess deaths are presently consistently way above average, whereas after a period of high mortality in the frail and elderly it should be well below normal levels. The public (and indeed the staff) deserve better. If this is impossible, perhaps the entire system needs to be completely reimagined.
Footnotes
Tennessee Says ‘No’ to Vaccinating Children Without Parental Consent
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 21 , 2023
The Tennessee Legislature on Thursday passed a law that prevents healthcare providers in the state from vaccinating minors without parental consent. The bill is now awaiting Gov. Bill Lee’s signature.
The “Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act,” passed in the Senate last week and in the House Thursday, requires healthcare providers to obtain informed consent from a parent or legal guardian before vaccinating a minor.
During its COVID-19 vaccination campaign in 2021, the Tennessee Department of Health (DOH) invoked the “‘mature minor’ doctrine” — which says children of different ages have different maturities and capacities to consent to medical treatment.
The DOH used this doctrine to justify allowing minors ages 14 and older to consent to vaccination without informing their parents, as long as the child is deemed “mature” by their physician.
But Rolf Hazlehurst, senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), said the DOH’s vaccination policy was based on a “dangerous oversimplification” of the mature minor doctrine.
Many Tennessee lawmakers agreed. During an April 10 subcommittee meeting, bill sponsor Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) said the new law, then a bill, clarified the mature minor doctrine, which he said, “has been misinterpreted and shall we say, abused somewhat.”
Ragan added that by passing this law, legislators would be “giving parents back their rights to make medical decisions for their children.”
Hazelhurst told The Defender the law is “extremely important because it closes a legal loophole, which endangered parents, children and healthcare providers.”
In a Feb. 21 hearing of the Tennessee House Health Subcommittee, Hazelhurst testified that the law’s importance goes beyond Tennessee, because “nationwide, people are still relying upon Tennessee’s misinterpretation of the mature minor doctrine” to vaccinate children without parental consent.
Hazlehurst was the senior attorney in a lawsuit brought by CHD against the District of Columbia, seeking an injunction to block enforcement of a law passed in 2020 allowing children 11 and older to consent to vaccination.
In that case, Hazlehurst said, the district based the arguments in its briefs in part on the Tennessee DOH’s interpretation of the mature minor doctrine as legal precedent for its law.
The federal judge in the district case sided with the plaintiffs and issued an injunction against the law in March 2022.
The “mature minor” doctrine
The “mature minor” doctrine invoked by DOH is based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court case, Cardwell v. Bechtol, where the court ruled in favor of a doctor accused of medical malpractice for treating a 17-year-old girl for a herniated disk.
In that case, the court said the common law “Rule of Sevens” established that children have different capacities to consent to different medical treatments as they grow up, differentiating among children under the age of 7, ages 7 to 14 and over 14.
The Tennessee DOH summarized the “mature minor” doctrine in a memo on its website, interpreting it to mean that children under age 7 cannot consent to treatment. For children between the ages of 7 and 14, “a physician generally should get parental consent before treating.”
And for children ages 14 to 17, “The physician may treat without parental consent unless the physician believes that the minor is not sufficiently mature to make his or her own health care decisions,” it says.
In all cases, there are certain statutory exemptions where physicians can treat children without parental consent, including in situations involving emergencies, drug abuse, and contraception and prenatal care.
Based on this summary of the doctrine, the DOH concluded that county health departments follow Tennessee law and “provide medical treatment and vaccinations to patients as young as 14 without parental consent if the individual provider determines that the patient meets the definition of a ‘mature minor.’”
But the DOH’s summary of the doctrine “omit[s] critical elements of the mature minor doctrine,” CHD argued in a letter sent in August 2021 to Ragan and Sen. Kerry Roberts.
The Cardwell v. Becthol ruling explicitly stated that the “adoption of the mature minor exception to the common law rule [used in the ruling] is by no means a general license to treat minors without parental consent.”
Rather, the application of the mature minor doctrine is dependent “on the facts of each case,” to be determined by a jury. In other words, the DOH was taking a jury instruction in a medical malpractice case and stating it was a statewide standard for vaccination, contrary to the spirit of the ruling, the CHD letter said.
“We do not, however, alter the general rule requiring parental consent for the medical treatment of minors,” the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling states.
History of the controversy
The Tennessee DOH fired Dr. Michelle Fiscus, medical director of Tennessee’s Vaccine-Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program, in the summer of 2021, in part in response to an email she sent on May 12, 2021.
Fiscus sent the email to COVID-19 vaccine providers across Tennessee informing them that according to Tennessee’s “mature minor” doctrine, they could provide vaccinations to minors as young as 14 without parental consent if they deemed that patient to be a “mature minor.”
The email stated: “There is no federal, legal requirement for parent or caregiver consent for COVID-19, or any other, vaccine.”
Fiscus sent the email the same day the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend the use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 12 and up, a decision she references in the email.
A few weeks after the letter went out, in the Tennessee General Assembly’s Joint Government Operations Committee meeting on June 16, 2021, Dr. Lisa Piercey, health commissioner and Fiscus’ boss, came under fire by Republican legislators for the email and the DOH’s targeting of children more generally.
Piercey confirmed in her testimony that based on the “mature minor” doctrine, the state of Tennessee treated 14-year-old children as capable of making decisions themselves as to whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine that was under Emergency Use Authorization.
Sen. Mark Pody responded, “I don’t know the terms that I could use to express my extreme disappointment, that in the state of Tennessee, where the majority of adults said no, to think that a 14-year-old child could say yes.”
At that time, only 37-39% of Tennessee residents were vaccinated, according to Piercey.
At the June 16, 2021, meeting, Rolf testified that the memo was clearly written by a lawyer — which Fiscus later confirmed in defending the email — in order to set a statewide locality rule that children 14 and up could be vaccinated without their parents’ consent.
“If a parent brings a lawsuit based on lack of consent, I have no doubt whatsoever that that letter will be attached as an exhibit in the motion to dismiss and the motion for summary judgment,” he said, adding, “I can’t stress enough that this letter has tremendous legal effect.”
The DOH fired Fiscus on July 12, 2021.
The Mature Minor Doctrine Clarification Act, which clarifies the rules about minor consent with respect to vaccination, was filed in the Tennessee General Assembly on Jan. 31.
‘Minor consent’ laws failing across the country
In March 2022, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the mayor of the District of Columbia, the D.C. Department of Health and D.C. public schools from enforcing the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020 (D.C. Minor Consent Act), The Defender reported.
That law allowed a minor, 11 or older, to receive a vaccine, “if the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard” and the vaccine is recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and provided according to the childhood immunization schedule.
The injunction stemmed from two lawsuits filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act.
CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation filed one lawsuit, and the Informed Consent Action Network filed the other.
During oral arguments in the case, Hazlehurst argued the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it contains multiple provisions that strip away the meager protections guaranteed to parents under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.
The preliminary injunction, which the defendants did not appeal within the required 30-day period and therefore remains in place, reverted the district to the standard age of consent of 18, at least until the conclusion of the case.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
Facebook Should Keep Removing COVID ‘Misinformation,’ Oversight Board Says
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 21, 2023
The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on Thursday recommended the social media giant “maintain its current policy” of removing COVID-19 “misinformation” from its platform until the World Health Organization declares an end to the global pandemic.
The board made the recommendation despite widespread outcry about social media censorship after the Twitter Files and several ongoing lawsuits revealed collusion between state actors and social media companies to censor dissenting opinions and factual information that contradict official narratives, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recommendation came in response to a request by Meta in July that the oversight board — an independent panel of tech and legal experts selected by Meta to weigh in on content policy issues — assess whether “a less restrictive approach” to censoring misinformation might “better align with its values and human rights responsibilities.”
Meta’s current misinformation policy sets different categories of harm content might cause, making that content subject to removal. Content is censored if the platform deems that it contributes to the “risk of imminent physical harm,” could cause “interference” with the functioning of political processes or contains “certain highly deceptive manipulated media.”
But the board didn’t find inconsistency between Meta’s “misinformation policy” and its “values and human rights responsibilities.” Instead, it said Meta’s current “exceptional measures” of eliminating disinformation are “justified.”
The board also urged Meta to “begin a process” to reassess which “misleading claims” it removes, to be more transparent about government requests for information, to consider making its “misinformation” policies more localized and to investigate how the architecture of the platform facilitates the spread of misinformation.
Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations within 60 days.
Suzanne Nossel, a board member and CEO of PEN America, told The Washington Post that the board’s recommendations are not just relevant to COVID-19, but could shape Meta’s approach to anticipated future global health emergencies.
“The decision is less perhaps about the COVID pandemic per se or exclusively than about … how Meta should handle its responsibilities in the context of a fast-moving public health emergency,” she said.
How Facebook and Instagram censor COVID ‘misinformation’
The recommendation specifically assessed Meta’s “misinformation about health during public emergencies” policy, under which it removes 80 distinct “COVID-19 misinformation claims” posted on its platforms, such as claiming masking or social distancing lack efficacy or that the vaccines can have serious side effects.
Between March 2020 and July 2022, Facebook and Instagram, also owned by Meta, removed 27 million instances of COVID-19 “misinformation,” 1.3 million of which were restored on appeal.
The social media giant also designates a second type of COVID-19 “misinformation,” which does not reach the standard of removal, but is still subject to manipulation by the platform.
For example, information in that category is “fact-checked” where it is labeled as “false” or “missing context,” and then linked to a fact-checking article. That content is then also demoted so that it appears less frequently and prominently in users’ feeds.
Meta also treated other information with what it calls “neutral labels,” where it labeled posts with statements such as “some unapproved COVID-19 treatments may cause serious harm” and then directed people to Meta’s COVID-19 information center, which provides approved information from public health authorities.
Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to “trustworthy information” through the portal. But it decided to stop using the neutral labels in December 2022, to ensure they would remain effective in other health emergencies, according to the oversight board’s report.
The basis for determining what is misinformation is whether the information conforms to what public health authorities deem to be true, according to the board’s recommendation and the Facebook policy page.
But throughout the pandemic, public health authorities have had to concede they were wrong about things — and that they lied about things — they had previously pronounced to be science-backed facts.
These “facts” include, for example, flip-flopping on masks, the lab-leak hypothesis, the effectiveness of natural immunity and numerous claims about vaccine efficacy, including that it stops transmission.
That means the platforms eliminated and demoted facts and information that were true. Even CNN conceded that “the company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.”
‘This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us’
The board recommendations don’t mention the events that led Meta to consider changing its policies — controversy over recent revelations about how government officials coerced social media companies into toeing the government line.
In 2021, President Biden directly criticized Facebook and other platforms, saying they allowed “vaccine misinformation” to spread and they contributed to deaths from COVID-19.
He said they were “killing people” and that the pandemic was only “among the unvaccinated.”
Biden’s accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory action from from high-ranking members of the administration — including White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — if the social media companies did not comply.
Psaki said government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what — and in some cases whom — to censor, Jenin Younes reported.
DHS even created a video in 2021, since removed from youtube, encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for ‘disinformation’ if they challenge U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.
Writing in Tablet Magazine this month, civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes recounted the story of a Facebook support group for people who experienced adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines being shut down for spreading harmful “misinformation.”
Last month, in the Twitter Files release about Stanford University’s Virality project, Matt Taiibbi revealed that Stanford, with the backing of several government agencies, had created a cross-platform digital ticketing system that was processing censorship requests for all of the social media platforms, including Meta’s.
The Virality Project claimed its objective “is to detect, analyze, and respond to incidents of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines across online ecosystems.”
Taibbi said the Virality Project was “defining true things as disinformation or misinformation or malformation,” which he said signifies “a new evolution of the disinformation process away from trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not and just going directly to political narrative.”
That reflects Meta’s policy to censor statements that don’t conform to official public health authority doctrine as “misinformation.”
Meta’s policies do not mention the tips and directions it receives from government agencies about misinformation.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday published an op-ed in The Hill calling for an end to censorship practices, pointing out that statements about COVID-19 made on platforms like Facebook that are now supported by evidence were flagged as disinformation.
”Statements including my own, that our government once labeled as ‘disinformation,’ such as the efficacy of masks, naturally acquired immunity, and the origins of COVID-19, are now supported by evidence,” he said.
“In reality, the most significant source of disinformation during the pandemic, with the most influence and greatest impact on people’s lives, was the U.S. government,” he added.
Rand pointed to critiques of DHS’s “abusive practices” by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and highlighted a Brennan Center for Justice report published last month that found at least 12 DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online.
“This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us regardless of which side of the aisle you are on,” he said.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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.
The Tower for Twitter? UK Minister Calls for Jailing Social Media Bosses Who Do Not Censor Speech
By Jonathan Turley | April 21, 2023
As previously discussed, after Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans. The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.
Donelan is seeking speech arrests under the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a draconian censorship bill that would effectively ban end-to-end encryption for private internet users.
The bill uses Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism. So the government can censor anyone who it views as promoting or justifying hatred against virtually any group. Those who do not censor can now be rounded up by Donelan and her minions.
According to a report by The Telegraph, companies will also face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue should they dare to ignore Britain’s demands to preemptively delete or obscure posts violating its coming censorship regime.
The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”
Recently we discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech.
Donelan is only the latest voice of a rising generation of censors. These officials proudly parade their intent to silence or jail those with dissenting views. Yet, they do so in the name of tolerance. This is why free speech is in a free fall in Europe and why we must remain vigilant in this country to resist figures like Clinton who want to bring European censorship to our shores.
‘Growing Frustration’ At FBI Over Failure to Charge Hunter Biden – Report
© AFP 2023 / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
By Wyatt Reed – Sputnik – 22.04.2023
There’s “growing frustration” among the FBI as US President Joe Biden’s unruly son Hunter has yet to be charged in multiple felonies and misdemeanor investigations over a year after agents concluded the bulk of their research, US media is reporting.
Investigators in the FBI “finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago,” according to NBC News, which noted that “a senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago” as well.
Per the outlet, “the possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge,” which is “also a potential felony.”
The revelation comes just two days after a lawyer representing an anonymous IRS employee wrote in a letter to Congress that his client, a “career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high profile, controversial subject since early 2020,” is seeking to testify before the legislators as a protected whistleblower.
According to the lawyer, the IRS Special Agent, who’s reportedly spent over a decade on the job, is seeking to provide information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” “clear conflicts of interest” in the case, and specific instances of “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols.”
It’s unclear whether authorities are still considering charging the younger Biden with money laundering and failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as well. But over the past several years, the Justice Department has seriously ramped up prosecutions of alleged FARA violations – though so far they’ve largely focused on those politically opposed to the Biden family.
In 2018, Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced to 60 months in prison for supposed FARA violations relating to work carried out in Ukraine. He was hit with a further 30 months for other charges as well.
This week, several Black socialists in Florida were indicted for allegedly failing to register under FARA by prosecutors who accuse them of not telling US officials they received funds from someone supposedly acting on behalf of the Russian government, further fueling suspicions that the Biden administration’s prosecutions are politically motivated.
Here’s Why The US Is Trying To Pin The Blame For Sudan’s “Deep State” War On Russia
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 21, 2023
Debunking The Latest Fake News Narrative
CNN published an exclusive piece on Thursday alleging that “Evidence emerges of Russia’s Wagner arming militia leader battling Sudan’s army”. They claim that satellite imagery shows increased Russian military transport activity between Libya and Syria in the run-up to Sudan’s “deep state” war. According to CNN, this confirms rumors that General Haftar is supplying Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hamedti”) with surface-to-air missiles (SAM) on behalf of Wagner.
The Wall Street Journal published their own exclusive piece the day prior on Wednesday alleging that “Libyan Militia and Egypt’s Military Back Opposite Sides in Sudan Conflict”, so these two stories complement one another. Both Hamedti and Wagner have denied these claims, however. The Sudanese Ambassador to Russia also confirmed that “Russia is a friendly country to us so we have been in direct contact with [the] Russian Foreign Ministry since the very beginning of those events last Saturday.”
That diplomat’s reaffirmation of Sudan’s close ties with Russia is especially important since he represents the government that’s internationally recognized as being led by Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who commands the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and is one of the two figures vying for power. At present, Khartoum therefore doesn’t extend credence to the emerging US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) narrative that Russia is arming the RSF via Haftar-Wagner, but that could soon change.
Preconditioning The Public For Another Proxy War
Unless the present three-day Eid ceasefire holds and leads to the start of peace talks that ultimately end this “deep state” war, which is unlikely since both sides made clear their intent to completely destroy the other, then this conflict is expected to resume in the near future. Should the SAF fail to defeat the RSF and possibly even be placed on the backfoot, then Burhan might gamble that it’s in his best interests to parrot the MSM’s anti-Russian accusations in an attempt to receive direct Western military support.
That scenario isn’t all that far-fetched either considering that the Associated Press and Politico both cited unnamed officials on Thursday to report that the US is assembling additional troops in nearby Djibouti to prepare for the possible evacuation of Americans from Sudan. This pretext could easily be exploited to arm the SAF and/or attack the RSF, especially if the Pentagon claims that the latter tried stopping its operation by building upon last week’s claim that its forces shot at an armored US diplomatic vehicle.
In the event that Burhan repeats the MSM’s emerging anti-Russian narrative and promises to rubbish Sudan’s naval base deal with Moscow upon defeating the RSF, then the Biden Administration can “justify” its military intervention on the basis of “defending Sudanese democracy from a Kremlin coup”. The public would then be told that the latest conflict was sparked by Russia’s support for the “insurgent” RSF, which the MSM would attribute to its interests in defending Wagner’s mining operations there.
American Meddling In Russian-Egyptian Relations
This would predictably precede an unprecedented but preplanned information warfare campaign painting Russia as a “destabilizing” force in Africa, which would be aimed at counteracting its hitherto highly successful efforts at presenting itself as a force of stability in support of legitimate governments. The purpose of this aforesaid operation would be to erode Russia’s newfound “Democratic Security” appeal across the continent with a view towards reversing the decline of Western influence there.
Furthermore, Burhan’s potentially opportunistic piggybacking on the earlier described emerging anti-Russian narrative could have serous implications for Moscow’s ties with Cairo due to the perception of them backing opposite sides in Sudan’s “deep state” war. Russian-Egyptian relations have recently been beset by scandal upon the latest Pentagon leaks alleging that Cairo abandoned its supposedly secret plan to supply rockets to Moscow under pressure from Washington and agreed to arm Kiev instead.
Considering this context, the scenario of Egyptian-backed Burhan blaming Russia for sparking the latest conflict could therefore lead to the rapid deterioration of Russian-Egyptian ties, especially if Cairo decides to indirectly retaliate against Moscow by curtailing its investment rights in Port Said. Those two signed an additional agreement on this industrial zone last month, which was first approved in 2018 and is supposed to help Russia expand its economic engagement with the broader region.
Punishing The Emirates For Its Close Relations With Russia
That goal could be jeopardized if Egypt decides to punish Russia through these means in response to Burhan opportunistically piggybacking on the MSM narrative in an attempt to obtain direct Western military support against the RSF. Furthermore, the UAE’s ties with Egypt and the US could also become much more complicated in that event too since Abu Dhabi is accused of backing reportedly RSF-allied Haftar, being favorable disposed to that armed Sudanese group, and secretly allying with Russia.
The last-mentioned accusation was brought to the public’s attentions as a result of the previously mentioned Pentagon leaks, which were denied by the UAE but coincided with the weakening of its ties with Washington that are partially over that Gulf country’s growing ones with Moscow. There are more factors at play than just the Russian-Emirati relationship, but the point is that the UAE’s problems with the US could be amplified by the MSM if Burhan accuses Russia of arming the RSF via Haftar-Wagner.
It also deserves mentioning that America’s other ulterior interest in its incipient propaganda campaign against Russia in Sudan is to complicate its geopolitical opponent’s logistical connections with the Central African Republic (CAR), which owes its continued existence as a state to Moscow’s military support. The Kremlin largely relies on transit across Sudan in order to supply its forces and its ally’s there, but this could be cut off if Burhan jumps on the anti-Russian bandwagon and revokes Moscow’s privileges.
The Chadian Connection
Lastly, another strategic factor behind this latest information warfare offensive against Russia is that it could ruin that country’s surprisingly solid relations with regional military heavyweight Chad. As explained in this recent analysis here, N’Djamena ended up expelling the German Ambassador earlier this month for meddling instead of the Russian one despite the US telling its counterparts in late February that Moscow is using Wagner in the CAR and Libya to arm anti-government rebels against it.
The Associated Press cited an African analyst from a Western risk assessment firm in their article on Thursday about 320 SAF troops fleeing to Chad to claim that this development could prompt N’Djamena into taking those forces’ side in Sudan’s “deep state” war. According to Benjamin Hunter, “N’Djamena is likely to oppose (Dagalo) due to fears that RSF dominance in Darfur could empower Chadian Arabs to unseat the (president’s) regime. Many within (Dagalo’s) Rizeigat tribe live across the border in Chad.”
If Chad becomes embroiled in Sudan’s “deep state” war on Burhan’s side, then it might be susceptible to Western suggestions that jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon like he would have already done in this scenario could lead to them suspending their regime change campaign against N’Djamena. Should that happen, then this regional military heavyweight might also support any potentially forthcoming rebel/terrorist offensive that its historical French partner could soon plot against Russia in the CAR.
Concluding Thoughts
Putting everything together, the US plans to achieve the following strategic objectives by introducing the narrative that Russia is arming the RSF:
1. Entice Burhan to extend credence to these claims in exchange for US military support;
2. Demand that he also rescinds Russia’s naval base rights and cuts off its overflight access to the CAR;
3. Consider direct support to the SAF on the pretext of commencing an “evacuation operation” in Sudan;
4. Discredit Russia and the UAE’s African engagement policies by framing both as “destabilizing forces”;
5. Attempt to provoke a crisis in Russia’s relations with Sudan’s Chadian and Egyptian neighbors;
6. Exploit the above scenario to assemble a regional coalition for pushing back against Russia in Africa;
7. Encourage Chad to support a French-backed rebel/terrorist offensive in the Russian-allied CAR;
8. Plot a copycat proxy war in Russian-allied Mali in order to crush the Kremlin’s influence in the Sahel;
9. Perfect this new Hybrid War method prior to employing it all across the continent;
10. And thus turn Africa into the top proxy war battleground of the New Cold War.
The US therefore has many reasons to push this fake news campaign, though it’s unclear whether it’ll ultimately achieve any of its envisaged objectives or not.
Iran Praises Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Admitting US is the ‘Godfather of Daesh’
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 21.04.2023
Iran has spent years accusing the US of helping to create and nurture Daesh. In 2018, Revolutionary Guards Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani urged Iranian diplomats to go to the UN and “slap” the West “in the face” with evidence of US collusion with the terrorist group. Soleimani was later killed [assassinated] in a US missile strike in Baghdad in 2020.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani waded into the US presidential politics on Friday, offering praise for Democratic hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for confirming Tehran’s long-stated view that the Daesh/ISIS terror group was created by Washington.
“There was no doubt the US is the creator of #ISIS, but for those who deliberately closed their eyes to the truth, the statement of Robert F. Kennedy, the nephew of John F. Kennedy saying ‘WE created ISIS’ reaffirms the fact that the American regime is the godfather of Daesh/ISIS,” Kanaani tweeted.
The spokesman followed up the message with a Farsi-language tweet featuring a video excerpt from RFK Jr.’s speech in Boston, Massachusetts on Wednesday in which the politician pointed out how US intelligence agencies have repeatedly lied Americans into pointless foreign wars, destroyed nations and given rise to terrorism, including Daesh.
“My uncle came into office, two months later he was fighting his intelligence apparatus and his military because they wanted to invade – they wanted to do the Bay of Pigs. He was totally against it [but] he let them roll over them. And in the middle of the Bay of Pigs he realized they were lying to them and he realized that the function of the intelligence agencies had become to provide the military-industrial complex with a constant pipeline of war. And he came out during the middle of the night during the Bay of Pigs catastrophe and he said ‘I wanna take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds’,” RFK Jr. said.
“And George W. Bush had the same problem. George W. Bush says the worst mistake he made as president was listening to CIA director George Tenet telling him it was a ‘slam dunk’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And so the neocons and the CIA got to go into Iraq and… do regime change. Now we’ve spent $8 trillion and what did we get for that $8 trillion? Nothing. Worse than nothing. Iraq is now much worse off than it was when we went in there. We killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did. We may have killed a million Iraqis, nobody knows the number… We created ISIS. We drove two million refugees up into Europe, they destabilized democracy for a generation in Europe, they caused Brexit. This is the cost of the Iraq War,” the politician said.
RFK Jr. is not the first candidate for president to accuse the United States of “creating” the terrorist group. In 2016, then-Republican candidate Donald Trump repeatedly called then-President Barack Obama literally the “founder of ISIS,” and dubbed former Secretary of State “‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton” the “cofounder.”
Iran has spent years blaming the United States for creating the regional instability which gave rise to Daesh, and has accused Washington of using its battle against the Sufi jihadist group as an excuse to justify its illegal occupation of Iraq and Syria. Some Iranian officials have gone further, accusing the US military of providing Daesh with weapons and funding and even facilitating the transportation of jihadist leaders aboard US military helicopters. Iran’s Syrian allies have made similar allegations. Pentagon officials have vociferously denied these claims.
Will The Republic Of Korea Dispatch Lethal Aid To Ukraine?
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 22, 2023
Republic of Korea (ROK) President Yoon Suk-yeol told Reuters on Wednesday that his country was considering the dispatch of lethal aid to Ukraine if the humanitarian situation descends into a deeper crisis as a result of alleged Russian war crimes. In his words, “If there is a situation the international community cannot condone, such as any large-scale attack on civilians, massacre or serious violation of the laws of war, it might be difficult for us to insist only on humanitarian or financial support.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that “any weapons supplies would imply a certain involvement in this conflict.” That same day, former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev wrote the following on social media: “I wonder what the residents of this nation would say when they see the newest example of Russian weapons in possession of their closest neighbors, our partners from the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]?”
The ROK’s Yonhap News Agency then cited an unnamed senior presidential official on Thursday to report that “Decision on lethal aid to Ukraine depends on Russia’s actions”. According to their source, “The reason we are not taking such action voluntarily is because we want to simultaneously and in a balanced manner fulfill the task of stably maintaining and managing South Korea-Russia relations while actively joining the ranks of the international community in defending the freedom of the Ukrainian people.”
The larger context within which the latest ROK-Russian spat is playing out concerns President Yoon’s upcoming trip to the US next week, during which time it’s expected that US President Joe Biden will request that his country participate in some sort of arrangement for dispatching lethal aid to Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared in mid-February that his US-led military bloc is in a so-called “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia in Ukraine, and it’ll struggle to win without help.
Its members have already depleted a considerable amount of their stockpiles over the past 14 months, yet the conflict still continues raging on. Without maintaining the pace, scale, and scope of their lethal aid to Ukraine, that country might soon be at a major disadvantage vis-à-vis Russia, which could further delay its planned NATO-backed counteroffensive and possibly create the conditions for a ceasefire if Moscow is able to then consolidate its on-the-ground gains in the territories that Kiev claims as its own.
This explains the urgency with which the US is searching across the world for additional ammunition to arm Ukraine. Considering the ROK’s enormous shell stockpile that it’s built up over the decades in preparation of possibly fighting the DPRK once again, it makes sense why the US is approaching it. Nevertheless, Seoul’s compliance with Washington’s request could lead to Moscow arming Pyongyang with “the newest example of Russian weapons” exactly as Medvedev warned on social media.
For that reason, ROK officials remain divided on this ultra-sensitive issue as proven by the latest Pentagon leaks, yet they’ll ultimately have to do something since the resultant dilemma is unsustainable. President Yoon will probably be forced to make a choice during his upcoming trip to the US. On the one hand, directly arming Ukraine per the US’ wishes could prompt Russia to arm the DPRK, yet declining to dispatch lethal aid to that Eastern European country could lead to Seoul falling out of Washington’s favor.
Objectively speaking, the second scenario is much more aligned with the ROK’s national interests than the first, though President Yoon might end up trying to reach a so-called “compromise” under heavy US pressure. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposed precisely that in an interview with the New York Times earlier this month where he suggested that Biden convince his ROK counterpart to indirectly supply Ukraine with much-needed artillery shells via Poland.
Poland and the ROK signed a $5.8 billion artillery and tank deal last summer, and the latter’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration’s (DAPA) technology control bureau already approved a license for the export of partially ROK-built Krab howitzers to Ukraine last year according Kim Hyoung-cheol. He’s the director of the Europe-Asia division of the International Cooperation Bureau and confirmed this fact when talking to Reuters last month.
The precedent is therefore established at least in principle for the ROK to ship shells to Poland prior to their re-export to Ukraine under US supervision, but the relevant license would obviously first have to be approved, which will likely be discussed during President Yoon’s upcoming meeting with Biden. If that happens, however, then Russia might react furiously and even possibly arm the DPRK because these shell shipments would be much more strategically significant in the present context than the Krabs were.
It was certainly an unfriendly move for the ROK to approve the export of those systems that it partially built, but that development’s importance in shaping the dynamics of the present conflict pales in comparison to what could occur if it facilitates the massive re-export of artillery shells at this time. Doing so would enable Ukraine to remain in the so-called “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” with Russia, while declining to participate in this scheme could create the conditions for a ceasefire with time.
Assessed from this perspective, it can therefore be concluded that President Yoon’s decision could be a game-changer since his country can either contribute to perpetuating this conflict by keeping Ukraine in its aforesaid military-industrial competition with Russia or play a decisive role in drawing it to a close. He’s clearly under immense pressure from the US to do the first-mentioned so it would be an impressive display of strategic autonomy if the ROK ends up doing the second by refusing to send shells to Ukraine.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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