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Utah Woman Is First to Sue Merck Alleging Gardasil HPV Vaccine Caused Cervical Cancer

The Defender | April 26, 2023

A lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court alleges Merck’s Gardasil human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine caused a young Utah woman to develop cervical cancer and other injuries.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Caroline Cantera, 25, by Wisner Baum (formerly Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman), is the first lawsuit to allege Gardasil can cause cervical cancer — the very cancer Merck asserts Gardasil prevents.

Cantera alleges New Jersey-based Merck & Co., Inc., and subsidiary Merck Sharp & Dohme oversold Gardasil as a “cervical cancer vaccine” and downplayed known health risks to enhance sales.

Cantera’s attorneys filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina as part of the Gardasil multidistrict litigation (MDL). Dozens of federal Gardasil injury cases filed throughout the country have been consolidated in North Carolina.

According to the complaint, Merck never studied whether Gardasil prevents cervical cancer. Instead, the drugmaker tested Gardasil to determine if it could prevent the development of certain lesions, some of which are considered related to cancer — even though a majority of such lesions, even the most serious, regress on their own.

Public health officials have long recommended the Pap test as the most effective frontline public health response to prevent cervical cancer. Long before Gardasil was introduced to the market in 2006, cervical cancer rates had been plummeting by up to 80% with the implementation of routine Pap testing.

For those who are diagnosed with precancerous lesions or worse, cervical cancer is largely treatable if caught early.

Nonetheless, Merck sought “Fast Track” U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of Gardasil. Once approved, Merck engaged in a relentless marketing campaign falsely proclaiming that Gardasil was a “cervical cancer vaccine” and that any young girl vaccinated with Gardasil would become “one less” woman with cervical cancer, the lawsuit claims.

Cantera alleges Gardasil can actually increase the risk of cervical cancer. The Gardasil vaccine label specifically states, “Gardasil has not been evaluated for potential to cause carcinogenicity or genotoxicity.”

Studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest the suppression of the HPV strains targeted by Gardasil (there are more than 200 HPV strains and Gardasil targets between four and nine strains) may actually open an ecological niche for replacement by more virulent strains, thus increasing the risk of cervical cancer.

Merck’s own studies show that for those previously exposed to HPV (a huge percentage of the population) when vaccinated, there is an up to 44.6% increased risk of developing advanced abnormal pre-cancer cells or worse.

The complaint also cites rapidly climbing cervical cancer rates among young women in countries where Gardasil has seen a high uptake. Studies also show young women who received the Gardasil vaccine are foregoing routine Pap screening due to a false sense of security that the HPV vaccine will protect them from cervical cancer.

Bijan Esfandiari, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the Gardasil MDL, said:

“Merck has heavily promoted Gardasil as a cancer prevention vaccine even though the studies weren’t designed to answer that question, and its marketing has effectively resulted in young women foregoing Pap screening, the most reliable and proven method of preventing cervical cancer.

“Merck also hasn’t studied whether Gardasil can cause cancer, but we now have evidence it can increase the risk of cancer. Given Merck makes over $6 billion a year on Gardasil, it has little incentive to stop the deception.

“Through our litigation, we hope to expose the truth and hold Merck accountable for the harm it has done to Caroline and others.”

Cantera ‘had to face the painful fact that I will never be able to have children of my own’

Cantera was 19 years old when she received her first of three Gardasil shots. She said she agreed to receive Gardasil after being convinced by Merck’s prolific marketing that the vaccine is very safe and prevents cervical cancer.

Before receiving the HPV vaccine, Cantera was healthy and never had to go to the doctor for anything other than regular checkups and physical exams for sports. She received routine Pap tests, all of which were negative prior to Gardasil.

In high school, she played tennis, regularly went backpacking and loved spending time outdoors. She lived a happy, carefree life filled with friends and activities.

After her Gardasil injections, Cantera experienced unexpected fatigue, intense stomach aches and overall weakness throughout her body. The fatigue and occasional abdominal pain continued until she noticed that her period had lasted over four weeks.

After what she thought was an initial visit to a gynecologist, her life suddenly took a drastic and unexpected turn.

Cantera was diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer. She received multiple biopsies, CT scans and MRIs, had six rounds of chemotherapy, 30 radiation treatments, three brachytherapy treatments and saw countless doctors.

She was unable to go back to university for her final semester and struggled to finish the classwork necessary to receive her undergraduate degree.

Because most of her treatment was directed at her cervix, her ovaries were also affected, putting her into menopause in her 20s. She will never be able to have children of her own because her eggs are no longer viable due to the cancer treatment.

Cantera said:

“Every day since my diagnosis has been a battle. My body is still recovering from the toll of such intense treatments to fight cancer, and I live in constant fear that my cancer could come back at any time.

“On top of all that, I also had to face the painful fact that I will never be able to have children of my own. If Merck knew this vaccine can cause so much harm, why didn’t they warn people?”

In September 2022, Wisner Baum and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense, filed their first wrongful death suit against Merck, alleging the drugmaker’s Gardasil HPV vaccine caused the death of 13-year-old Noah Tate Foley.

Wisner Baum and Kennedy have filed numerous lawsuits against Merck alleging the company knowingly conceals the adverse events associated with its Gardasil vaccine. These include:

While each case is unique, all of the plaintiffs agree that if Merck had told the truth about the known dangers associated with Gardasil, they never would have consented to the HPV vaccine.

If you or your child suffered harm after receiving the Gardasil HPV vaccine, you may have a legal claim. Visit Wisner Baum for a free case evaluation or call 855-948-5098.

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.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Philip Zelikow’s Covid Coverup 

By Richard Hugus | April 27, 2023

Last November Philip Zelikow and “the Covid Crisis Group” published a 352 page book, Lessons from a Covid War, An Investigative Report. The book went on sale April 23, 2023 and was launched April 24 in a five hour presentation at the National Academy of Medicine in Washington, DC. The launch of the book has lately gotten attention in the news. By its emphasis on war, the book inadvertently confirms recent evidence uncovered by Sasha Latypova snd Katherine Watt that the Covid psy-op was not a supposed public health emergency but a type of 5th generation warfare carried out by the US Department of Defense against US citizens, and much of the rest of the world, in collusion with many other governments.

Who is Philip Zelikow? He was the director of the so-called 9-11 Commission appointed by the G.W. Bush Administration in 2002. He was the editor of the resulting 9-11 Commission Report. He was and still is a University of Virginia history professor said to specialize in public myths and the effect of “catastrophic terrorism” in making abrupt changes in of the course of human history. As we know, both myth and terror were in full play in the 9-11 and the covid operations. Zelikow was among the neocons of the Project for a New American Century which said in its “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” September 2000, that it would take “a new Pearl Harbor” to motivate the American public to support the militarily aggressive US global hegemony that the Project called for. Exactly a year later, 9-11 provided the neocon-controlled US government with a pretext for just such aggression against a list of Arab and Muslim countries that did not threaten US hegemony, but did happened to be enemies of the state of Israel, which the neocons happen to adamantly support. So many coincidences!

Twenty years later, Zelikow was called in for another coverup, this time unofficially. Under Zelikow’s guidance 9-11 was painted as a series of tragic failures by the US government, the Pentagon, NORAD, and US intelligence agencies to either predict or prevent the hijacking of four passenger airliners by 19 nefarious hijackers. Using the same formula again, Zelikow assembled a group of 34 academic, medical, and government apologists — the “Covid Crisis Group” — to write the authoritative report on the US handling of the “Covid 19 pandemic.” Once again. the entire US government was totally blindsided. It was found  woefully inept, incompetent, and completely unprepared to deal with this terrible out-of-nowhere attack.

Zelikow and his hand-picked authors leave no stone unturned in pointing out the failures of almost all the measures a helpless Uncle Sam took to deal with the “pandemic.” The problems listed by Zelikow’s mainstream mouthpieces were: “operational challenges,” lack of preparedness, “policy failures,” ignorance of the source of SARS CoV-2, the failure of Trump’s leadership in “Operation Warp Speed,” a ”fragmented health care system,” and “poor communication” which led to poor “vaccine uptake” and a failure to prevent people being led astray by “misinformation.” The solution offered by the Crisis Group: organize from the top down, globally, with a single authority, for the next predicted “pandemic,” much like what we’re hearing from the World Heath Organization. This is not new thinking. It’s a copy and paste of the globalist agenda.

The strategy for covering up an attack by the US government on US citizens is to make it look like the government was a victim of the attack, not the perpetrator. That lie is facilitated by what sounds like a tough critique of government incompetence, crafted by the same people who were involved in the crime. This is like letting a murderer off the hook by hearing nothing but his apology for serious and reprehensible failures in stopping the murder, and forgetting that he committed the murder.

Of course, Zelikow’s exhaustive report passed over the pre-planning, the trail of predictive pharma patents, the economic devastation, the gigantic upward transfer of wealth, the government corruption, the psychological harm, the extensive injury to human health, the thousands of deaths caused by the US “response” to C-19 — all of it deliberate. The report starts with the premise that a never-before-seen virus attacked us all at once and nobody knew what to do about it. This is more or less how Zelikow and his previous stable of authors said 9-11 happened: our innocent nation was attacked from out of the blue; we were caught totally unaware.  It is interesting to see how the public myth and the “catastrophic event” intertwine. Zelikow is not  just an academic observing that catastrophic terror changes history. He is an advisor to people who want to change history by creating catastrophic terror. He almost certainly advises on how to do it. Not only has he nicely tied his two academic theses together, he has won handsome rewards and respectability, AND completed the major deception of being the one to write the official history of the operations his handlers planned. Zelikow is the consummate insider. Had he not appeared with this coverup masquerading as an earnest critique, we might have missed seeing that the neocons had to be involved in the covid operation just as they were in 9-11. The Project for a New American Century was not a plan for a robust American empire. Just the opposite. It was a plan to use the US and its people as pawns in what was really the Project for a New World Order. America’s contribution to that was to let itself be robbed physically, morally, and spiritually by a parasite class whose goals for control of the world can’t even be understood as human. Indeed, transhumanism is a stated goal of these people.

Zelikow has tipped his hat with this monstrosity of establishment lies. He has announced that he is involved, despite no one asking, and we can infer from this that the neocons were also involved. “The wicked run when no one is chasing them,” says the proverb. With all the power the neocons wield, most notable today in the Nuland- and Blinken-led attack on Russia, the neocons must of course be connected with the would-be masters at Davos. How clever this clique must think they are to have fooled the whole world. With such arrogance, how hard the fall.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Owners of OxyContin Maker Gave $19 Million to Institute That Shaped Federal Opioid Policy

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 25, 2023

As the opioid crisis in the U.S. grew, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, an advisory group that helped shape the federal government’s response to the crisis, accepted millions of dollars in donations from the Sackler family — owners of Purdue Pharma, the producers of OxyContin.

The donations occurred despite ongoing legal battles — and a number of settlements — involving Purdue Pharma in recent years, and as other public health entities, including the World Health Organization (WHO), severed ties to the drugmaker, The New York Times reported.

The new revelations come as questions emerge about the lack of transparency regarding how money from several opioid-related settlements has been used by state governments, and the federal government’s lack of oversight in connection to this issue.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 564,000 Americans died as a result of opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2020. The opioid epidemic costs the U.S. economy approximately $78.5 billion each year, according to the CDC.

Strong ties between the National Academies and the Sacklers

Several members of the Sackler family, including Dr. Raymond Sackler and his wife, Beverly Sackler, the couple’s foundation, and Dame Jillian Sackler and her husband Arthur, contributed about $19 million to the National Academies since 2000, according to the Times.

The National Academies’ treasurer report for 2021 stated that these funds were invested and had grown to more than $31 million.

The donations, however, appeared to remain under the radar for members of the National Academies — and the general public — until recently.

According to the Times, the Sackler donations emerged as “an internal issue for the advisory group in 2019, when members of the governing council were briefed about the money” and were reportedly “outraged.”

After internal meetings, the National Academies “quietly removed the Sackler name” from conferences and awards the family had sponsored.

Also in 2019, an article in The BMJ stated that the National Academies had “not disclosed that one of its presidents, and members of a panel it convened to advise on prescribing opioids, had recent links to the drug industry.”

Potential conflicts of interest between Purdue Pharma and public health organizations are not limited to the National Academies. The WHO, for instance, was accused of such a conflict of interest and as a result, in 2019, retracted two opioid policy reports.

However, the Times reported that, unlike the WHO, “the National Academies has not conducted a public review to determine if the Sackler donations influenced its policymaking, despite issuing two major reports that influenced national opioid policy.”

One of those reports, issued in 2011, continues to be used by federal public health agencies as the basis for opioid policy decisions — even though, according to the Times, the report is “now largely discredited.”

According to the Times, the report “described chronic pain that limited function and cost the nation billions of dollars in lost salary and wages.” Later estimates from the CDC, “defined chronic pain by different categories of severity, saying the condition affects 7% to 21% of Americans.”

“Regulatory, legal, educational and cultural barriers inhibit the medically appropriate use of opioid analgesics,” the report argued.

The report claimed that approximately 100 million Americans suffered from chronic pain, “an estimate that proved to be highly inflated,” the Times stated.

However, this report helped influence aggressive opioid sales campaigns on the part of drugmakers and influenced the approval of “at least one highly potent opioid” by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The 2011 report was issued even as the White House stated that the U.S. was facing an opioid addiction crisis.

In the years preceding the publication of the report, Purdue Pharma lobbied for legislation — which passed in 2010 — that would recognize pain as a significant public health problem. Purdue also called for the National Academies to issue similar recognition. Meetings between Purdue Pharma lobbyists and members of the academies followed.

A 2014 investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today found that within three years of working on the report, nine of the 19 people on the panel that produced it had financial connections to makers of narcotic painkillers.

According to the Times, the report did not disclose any conflicts of interest involving its author — nor did a 2014 article published by the National Academies in the JAMA journal, explaining how the committee arrived at the “100 million Americans” figure.

Several members of the committee that produced the 2011 report directly or indirectly received money from Purdue Pharma — including Dr. Richard Payne, then-president of the American Pain Society, who received more than $900,000, and Myra Christopher, whose nonprofit received $934,770.

Separately, in 2016 — months after the National Academies received a $10 million donation from members of the Sackler family and with opioid-related deaths on the rise — the FDA, under pressure from Congress, called on the Academies to “form a committee to issue new recommendations on opioids,” according to the Times.

Dr. Robert Califf, FDA deputy commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco in 2016 (now FDA commissioner), turned to the National Academies for guidance. Notably, Califf was elected to the National Academy of Medicine later that year.

According to the Times, Califf cited the “100 million” figure in an article he and other FDA officials published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which stated that the National Academies bring “an unbiased and highly respected perspective on these issues that can help us revise our framework.”

Members of the committee subsequently formed had multiple conflicts of interest, which were first identified by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in a 2016 letter to Dr. Victor Dzau, president of the National Academy of Medicine. The BMJ also examined those conflicts of interest, in a 2018 article.

One member of the committee, for instance, who had received funding from Purdue, characterized opioid addiction using the term “pseudoaddiction.”

Ultimately, four members of the committee were replaced, but the final document produced by the committee remains a cornerstone of the opioid policy currently pursued by the FDA and Califf.

The “100 million” figure was previously invoked by then-FDA commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg in 2014, upon the agency’s approval of a “controversial and potent opioid called Zohydro,” according to the Times. Zohydro was later pulled from the market.

And in 2012, Purdue’s lawyers used the “100 million” figure as part of a Senate inquiry, citing it as evidence that pain was “untreated or under-treated,” the Times reported.

According to the Times, this is not the only instance in which the National Academies have “come under criticism for lapses over disclosing conflicts of interest,” citing similar instances involving reports on biotechnology, genetically engineered crops and pharmaceutical pricing.

Similarly, donations that were provided by the Sacklers to other institutions drew scrutiny — and in several instances, action on the part of those entities.

For instance, Tufts University released a review of possible conflicts of interest pertaining to pain research funded by Purdue Pharma, as part of a broader relationship with the institution which included Purdue executives delivering lectures to Tufts students.

According to the Times, Tufts and other academic institutions, such as Brown University, have redirected financial donations received from the Sacklers, now using them “to address the prevention or treatment of addiction.”

Billions of dollars in settlements from opioid producers

Multiple pharmaceutical companies and drug store chains have reached settlements stemming from their production and marketing of opioids and painkillers — and their subsequent contribution to the opioid addiction crisis.

Information provided by OpioidSettlementTracker.com reveals that these settlements involve companies such as Johnson & Johnson ($26 billion), the “big three” drugstore chains — CVS, Walgreens and Walmart ($13.8 billion), Teva ($4.25 billion), Allergan, now part of AbbVie ($2.37 billion), Mallinckrodt ($1.7 billion) and Endo ($450 million).

According to the Times, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine “continued to accept funds from some members of the Sackler family, including those involved with Purdue Pharma,” even as the opioid crisis raged on and its impacts on American society became increasingly apparent.

The donations totaled approximately $19 million — but the National Academies “have kept quiet” about their decision to accept these funds, the Times reported, adding that they have “largely avoided such scrutiny” and continue to advise the federal government on opioids and painkillers.

This is despite the fact that Purdue Pharma has twice pled guilty to federal criminal charges connected to its marketing of OxyContin, in 2007 and 2020, and has faced a spate of lawsuits. While none of those lawsuits has gone to trial, many of those cases have been settled out of court.

Purdue Pharma continued to promote OxyContin to doctors as recently as 2018. By then, the Sackler family had amassed an estimated $10.7 billion from sales of the drug. However, the family has repeatedly denied any responsibility for the nation’s opioid crisis.

The National Academy of Medicine — formerly known as the Institute of Medicine — is a nongovernmental institution chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to independently advise the nation on issues related to science and medicine, according to the Times. New members are elected each year.

Despite the nongovernmental status of the National Academies, the White House and Congress rely on its advice to help shape the federal response to the opioid crisis. This advice is delivered via policy recommendations, the drafting of reports and the organizing of expert panels, the Times reports.

Moreover, according to the Times, the National Academies “receives 70 percent of its budget from federal funding.” Some of the remaining 30%, however, comes from prescription drug makers like Purdue Pharma.

In October 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a $225 million settlement with Purdue Pharma regarding a program through which Purdue representatives “intensified their marketing of OxyContin to extreme, high-volume prescribers … causing healthcare providers to prescribe opioids for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary, and that often led to abuse and diversion.”

However, other lawsuits against Purdue Pharma regarding OxyContin have taken a circuitous route through the courts. The same October 2020 DOJ statement also announced an $8.3 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma for its role in perpetuating the opioid epidemic.

At the time, the Times noted “it is unlikely the company will end up paying anything close to the $8 billion negotiated in the settlement deal” because “it is in bankruptcy court and the federal government will have to take its place in a long line of creditors.”

This prediction appears to have been confirmed by later developments in the case.

A Sept. 1, 2021, settlement would have required members of the Sackler family to pay $4.5 billion over nine years to resolve civil lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, but did not require the family to admit any responsibility for the crisis. It also included a compensation fund that would pay victims of the opioid epidemic between $3,500 and $48,000.

Immunity would extend to members of the family and to hundreds of foundations, trusts, business partners, attorneys, lobbyists, Purdue subsidiaries and other entities. Purdue would be dissolved and re-established as a public benefit corporation, with profits from sales of OxyContin and other products used to fund addiction treatment and prevention programs.

As part of that settlement, Dr. Richard Sackler, the longtime president and board member of Purdue Pharma, was deposed — in what may be the only instance where he or other family members have testified under oath in relation to the opioid crisis.

Throughout the eight-hour deposition, Sackler denied any wrongdoing on the part of his company or his family.

In December 2021, a federal court threw out this settlement on the basis that the bankruptcy court hearing the case lacked the authority to grant the Sacklers future legal immunity.

In March 2022, the Purdue settlement amount increased to $6 billion after nine state attorneys general agreed to drop their objection to an immunity deal, with the additional funds to be directed to programs designed to tackle the opioid crisis. However, the immunity provided to the Sacklers would remain in place for civil cases.

The federal government would still be able to pursue criminal charges against members of the Sackler family if it wished, NPR reported.

However, some plaintiffs challenged his settlement. They included Canadian local governments and First Nations; two mothers of sons who died of opioid overdoses; and the U.S. Trustee Program, an arm of the DOJ responsible for overseeing the administration of bankruptcy cases and private trustees.

In April 2022, the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held a hearing connected to these appeals. Few developments have followed since. The case is still pending and may ultimately end up before the Supreme Court.

The $225 million settlement reached in 2020 with the DOJ remains in place. Separately, the Sackler family contributed $75 million to Oklahoma in 2019 as part of a settlement, and reached a $24 million settlement with Kentucky in 2015.

Questions over how opioid settlement funds are being allocated

Despite settlements totaling many billions of dollars, questions remain over how these funds are actually being allocated — and about the federal government’s lack of oversight on this matter.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the Biden administration “promised to play a key role in ensuring opioid settlement funds went toward tackling the nation’s addiction crisis,” including a plan to appoint an “opioid crisis accountability coordinator.”

However, according to the KFF, “as billions of dollars actually start to flow and state and local leaders make crucial decisions on how to spend the more than $50 billion windfall to tackle this entrenched public health crisis, the federal government has gone mostly quiet.”

For instance, no opioid crisis accountability coordinator has been hired. KFF also notes that “The Office of National Drug Control Policy has not released public statements about the settlements in over a year” and “the settlement funds are mentioned just twice in a 150-page national strategy to reduce drug trafficking and overdose deaths.”

Even though, according to KFF, “the federal government is not legally obligated to engage in the discussion,” as lawsuits against opioid makers have been filed by states, “there is an expectation that the federal government, including the nation’s leading agencies on mental health and addiction, should play a role.”

Parallels are drawn with previous settlements with Big Tobacco. According to KFF, tobacco companies agreed in 1998 “to pay states billions annually for as long as they continued selling cigarettes.”

However, no restrictions were placed on how the funds would be used, “and much of it went to plugging state budget gaps, filling potholes, and even subsidizing tobacco farmers.” KFF notes: “Today, less than 3% of the annual payouts support anti-smoking programs.”

Questions about transparency at the state level are also raised by KFF, which states that “governments are required to report only on the 15% of the money that can be used for things unrelated to the epidemic, like offsetting budget shortfalls or fixing old roads,” and noting that as of March 28, “only three states and counties had filed such reports.”

The same KFF report, citing OpioidSettlementTracker.com, notes that “only 12 states have committed to detailed public reporting of all their spending.”

Even though the opioid settlements, unlike previous settlements with tobacco companies, contain a provision that at least 85% of the money states will receive must be spent on “opioid-related expenses,” defining such expenses has proven to be vague and confusing.

For example, KFF states, citing real-world examples, that “defining those concepts depends on stakeholders’ views — and state politics. To some, it might mean opening more treatment sites. To others, buying police cruisers.”

Moreover, “enforcement of the 85% standard is, oddly, left to the companies that paid out the money,” KFF stated, adding that “They are unlikely to be vigilant,” according to legal experts.

It also remains unclear whether the federal government will still attempt to claim repayment for Medicaid expenses that have been linked to opioid addiction, according to KFF. In 2019, these expenses were estimated to total $23 billion.

That same year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services attempted to recoup part of Oklahoma’s $270 million settlement with Purdue Pharma. However, it remains unclear if there will be a broader push on the part of the federal government for such repayments.

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.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Survey shows Poles reject cashless society, ban on combustion engines, and restrictions on meat and clothing

NIEDZIELA.PL | April 26, 2023

Poles are opposed to the EU’s policy of banning combustion engine vehicles and to ideas circulating in the EU on forests, meat, clothes and a cashless economy, according to a poll carried out by the European Policy Research Center (CBPE)

The poll reports that 67 percent of respondents are opposed to an EU rule that will ban Europeans from registering combustion engine vehicles starting in 2035. The idea of the EU ban is supported by only 28 percent of Poles.

The opposition to the EU ban on such vehicles is seen across a broad spectrum of Polish society, including urban and rural inhabitants, as well as both those with higher degrees and those who have only finished high school.

The CPBE survey also asked respondents their views on the idea of transferring the power over forests to the EU, away from the member states. Over half of the respondents, 57 percent, opposed such an idea. Only 34 percent supported it. Once again, the opposition to the idea is similar across all age and socio-economic groups.

Another idea being discussed in the EU is limiting the consumption of meat to 16 kilograms per person, per year, as well as limiting the sale of clothes to eight new items per person.

Only 21 percent backed the meat consumption reduction target, with 76 percent opposed. The results were similar with regard to the purchase of new clothes, with 23 percent supporting it and 73 percent against.

Poles are also against a cashless economy. The European Parliament recently recommended that a digital euro be researched but not yet launched. Privacy advocates warn that a cashless society could have grave consequences for personal freedom, with authorities able to track in all transactions in real time. This may be a prerequisite to imposing strict limits on what people can buy, including clothing items and meat products. Digital currencies may also be tied to social credit scores relating to political opinions and social behavior, as they are in China.

Advocates for a cashless society within Brussels argue that digital currencies would limit the black market. However, 81 percent of Poles oppose getting rid of cash, with only 17 percent in favor.

Similar opposition to a cashless society can be seen in nations such as Austria, Switzerland and Germany. Last year, over 500,000 Austrians signed a petition calling for the right to use cash to be enshrined in the Austrian constitution. As a result, a referendum on the issue will be launched within the country. With a population of 8.9 million, the massive show of support for the right to pay with cash demonstrates the growing movement against digital money, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

As Remix News previously reported, globalist institutions like the World Economic Forum have long lobbied for a cashless society and have routinely run articles such as “Why we should try to make cash obsolete,” “The benefits of a cashless society” and “Should cash be abolished?” Back in 2017, economist Joseph Stiglitz called for banning all paper currency in the United States, a position the WEF also positively reported on. Central banks across the world are also currently “leading the way” in the race to institute digital currencies. Although digital and physical currencies are expected to run in tandem for many, numerous globalist think tanks and economists are pushing for a complete phase-out of cash after an adjustment period.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Leading German Politician Warns Proposed Climate Policies Could Lead To “Uprisings” And “Riots”

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | April 26, 2023

The mood in Germany has become outright ugly as citizens reel from high inflation and fear government policy initiatives that would bankrupt many if enacted. Business sentiment among small to medium companies is souring rapidly.

Among these initiatives is the current green-socialist government’s plan to force citizens and businesses to wean themselves off oil and gas heating beginning already next year. All the despair now risks morphing into anger and civil unrest, warns one opposition leader.

Uprisings among the poplulation

According to the new, rapidly emerging Austrian alternative media news site AUF 1, Saxony’s Minister President Michael Kretschmer of the CDU Christian Democrats warns of potential unrest and vehemently criticized the government’s current climate policy.

Saxony’s Kretschmer even explicitly warned of “uprisings among the population” and that “the government’s new plans would lead to ‘deindustrialisation and riots’,” AUF 1 reports. “His criticism was aimed above all at the Building Energy Act pushed by the Green Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck.”

Currently Habeck is sharply under attack for cronyism as his ministry funnels funds and influential positions to friends and family, many of whom are professionally unqualified for the positions.

“Ecological madness”

AUF 1 reminds that the proposed government‘s green policies “will force ruinous retrofitting on millions of homeowners.” and that many citizens would simply not be able to afford the required renovation of their house or apartments. Homeowners would face renovation costs of at least tens of thousands of euros.”

Kretschmer called the Greens’ policy “ecological madness”.

The Austrian AUF 1 calls the governments policies “completely misguided” and that they will lead to “massive relocations of companies away from Germany.”

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | | Leave a comment

Russian fuel exports surge despite sanctions – Bloomberg

RT | April 27, 2023

Russia is on course to record its highest seasonal export rate of petroleum products in seven years despite Western oil sanctions that took effect in February, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing tanker tracking data from Vortexa.

According to the report, shipments of clean petroleum products, including diesel-type fuel, amounted to 1.9 million barrels a day during the first three weeks of April. If that rate continues for the remainder of the month, it will be the highest for this time of the year since at least 2016, calculations show.

The new data follows multi-year highs reached in March, when shipments were at their highest since the start of 2016.

Russian diesel-type fuel exports were targeted by an EU embargo on seaborne petroleum products that came into force in early February, along with a G7 price cap on the same products. In response, Moscow announced it will cut output by 500,000 barrels a day between March and December.

Despite the sanctions, data shows that Russia has successfully redirected fuel shipments. Most of the country’s petroleum products in April have been shipped to Türkiye as well as North African countries, including Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya.

Russia has also boosted exports to South American countries, most notably Brazil. According to a recent report by Reuters, Russia’s share of Brazilian diesel fuel imports is set to reach 53% in April, compared to just 0.2% a year ago.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , | 1 Comment

Democrats Attack Ukraine Audit Resolution as ‘Divisive and Ill-Advised’

By Kyle Anzalone | Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2023

Legislation introduced by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) which calls on the White House to release documents related to the war in Ukraine passed a voice vote on Wednesday. With debate on the resolution divided along party lines, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to vote on the measure on Friday.

The bill, H.Res.300, would urge President Joe Biden to grant lawmakers access to “all documents indicating any plans for current or future military assistance to Ukraine,“ as well as any material “indicating whether any United States Armed Forces, including special operations forces, are currently deployed in Ukraine.”

Since Russia invaded its neighbor 14 months ago, Congress has authorized over $100 billion in aid for Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Washington has provided $80 billion in military and financial aid throughout the conflict.

Though support for the resolution was limited to Republicans, it passed a voice vote and is set for a full committee vote on Friday. Several Democrats attacked the legislation during Wednesday’s debate.

Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) blasted the measure as “divisive and ill-advised,” claiming “It is a partisan political ploy, and the height of legislative irresponsibility that jeopardizes the national security of the United States, of our Europe allies and partners as well as the courageous Ukrainian people.”

Manning took issue with the resolution because it threatened a consensus in Congress that support for Kiev must be unwavering and indefinite. “The entire Congress has remained resolutely bipartisan for Ukraine as it fights against Russian aggression,” the lawmaker continued, adding “Measures like this put bipartisanship in jeopardy.”

She also asserted that the bill amplified Russian propaganda and claimed that reporting on legislation “favorably“ would be “irresponsible.”

“It plays directly into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hands by seeking to force the disclosures of all present and future military plans,” Manning said. “Passage of this measure would represent a gift to Putin and his Kremlin cronies and provide visibility into the plans our military and intelligence leaders strive to protect at all costs.”

However, she failed to explain how increased congressional oversight for US military policy in Ukraine could actually help the Russians on the battlefield. Congressman Daryl Issa (R-CA) said any documents provided to the House would not be made public, and that “every bit of the information requested could be and would be held at the Select Intelligence Committee.”

Further, dozens of documents detailing weak points in Ukraine’s defenses were alleged to have been leaked by a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman over the course of several months on Discord.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said that it was not an appropriate time for transparency regarding the billions in US tax dollars pouring into Ukraine. “Timing matters when this committee actions,” he argued. “There will be a time in insisting [on oversight], but now is not that time.”

Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) argued in favor of the resolution, saying it could prevent “mission creep,” referring to a phenomenon in which military or policy objectives gradually shift over time, often becoming vague, ill-defined or impossible to achieve. The concept was frequently used to describe the US occupation of Afghanistan, which began as a counterterrorism operation and later expanded into a sprawling, poorly supervised nation-building project.

Mills went on to say that the bill is not about preventing support for Ukraine or empowering Putin, but merely better oversight.

When Gaetz introduced H.Res.300 earlier this month, he emphasized transparency. “The Biden Administration and other allied countries have been misleading the world on the state of the war in Ukraine,” he said, calling for “total transparency from this administration to the American people when they are gambling war with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.”

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Republicans Push Biden to Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2023

Two leading GOP congressmen renewed calls for the White House to send cluster bombs to Ukraine. Representative Mike Rogers (R-MS) claimed the US has 3 million rounds of the controversial munitions in stock that will have to be destroyed if they are not sent to Kiev.

Rogers, head of the House Armed Services Committee, issued the demand during a committee hearing on Wednesday. “The administration [is] not giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to win. Chief among them is cluster munitions,“ he said.

Typically intended for use against personnel and light vehicles, cluster bombs carry smaller explosive submunitions which are released in flight and scattered across a target area. However, the bomblets often fail to detonate and remain on the ground as ‘duds,’ causing countless civilian deaths in former warzones, sometimes even decades into the future. After the Vietnam War, as many as 20 million bomblets remained unexploded in Laos. Thousands of children have been killed and injured when stumbling upon the live submunitions.

The United States has a large inventory of 155-millimeter Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM) left over from the Cold War, with many entering service in the 1970s and 80s. While the aging cluster weapons are no longer used by US forces, Pentagon officials have claimed they could still serve a purpose in the hands of Ukrainian troops.

“It’s very effective against mixed targets, of personnel and equipment, especially when those targets are gathered into dense formations,“ Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander for US operations in Europe, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “It is happening in Bakhmut and it happens on most battlefields when one force goes into the offense. As a strictly military matter, it is a useful and very effective munition.“

More than 120 nations have agreed to ban such weapons under the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty which Washington, Moscow and Kiev have each refused to sign. Though a 2009 US law prohibited exports of cluster bombs with a ‘dud’ rate of more than 1% – which applies to most of the US stockpile – President Joe Biden can waive that restriction at any time.

Kiev has made several requests for US cluster munitions since Moscow’s invasion last year, and both Ukraine and Russia are reported to have deployed the bombs throughout the conflict. According to Foreign Policy, Turkey supplied some of its own US-designed DPICMs to the Ukrainian military last November, after Washington denied Kiev’s initial calls for the weapon.

Rogers went on to argue that providing cluster bombs to Ukraine could actually be a cost-saving measure for the government and a way to dispose of the Cold War-era explosives. “The US military has over 3 million cluster munitions that can be fired by 155mm Howitzers in Ukraine’s possession,“ he said. “We are going to spend millions of dollars destroying them if we don’t use them and Russia is using them right now against the Ukrainians.“

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) backed Rogers’ proposal. “Those should be provided,“ he argued, voicing hopes that “every effort will be made to look into providing the cluster bombs. We have 2 million available right now, it’s inconceivable that we don’t do more.“

Wilson is also preparing to introduce a bipartisan resolution which “affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders,“ which would include the Russian-occupied Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as well as Crimea. Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen is set to co-sponsor the measure.

The comments from Rogers and Wilson come amid a greater push in Congress to provide Kiev with cluster weapons. Last month, Rogers signed a letter with Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which called on the White House to send Ukraine cluster bombs, including DPICMs.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

“Political Engineering” From Abroad Is Responsible For The Sudanese Crisis

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 27, 2023

Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Anna Yevstigneyeva shared her thoughts earlier this week about the root cause of the Sudanese Crisis. According to her:

“We must state that the current Sudanese crisis was largely caused by an external interference in Sudanese sovereign affairs, attempts at forced political engineering in the country and imposing democratic recipes on it.

Security sector reform in the country was among the most complicated issues that required elevated attention and a thorough negotiations process. At the same time, we saw that many external actors tried to enforce the transfer of authority to civil powers artificially, and imposed a number of decisions that were not supported among broader population.

Some states widely promoted the political framework of 5 December 2022, but it failed to become an inclusive platform for various Sudanese forces. This format left behind some of Sudan’s political heavyweights. Such an approach could hardly help to promote a comprehensive settlement.”

The present piece will now elaborate more on why she’s right, which is important to understand since such “political engineering” from abroad can result in more crises elsewhere in the coming future.

Former Sudanese President Bashir was a long-time foe of the US, which supported his ouster in early 2019 after a military coup took advantage of an incipient Color Revolution. Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”) of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) cooperated to this end but then fell out with one another afterwards. Their resultant feud greatly complicated Sudan’s post-coup political transition to civilian rule.

The US diplomatically intervened in this process on the pretext of “protecting democracy”, which enabled it to unprecedentedly deepen its influence in Sudan. With this inside view into that country’s most sensitive political affairs, it learned just how serious the divisions were between Burhan and Hemedti as well as between the military and the population. This insight would have informed its policymakers that meddling in Sudan’s transition posed a very real risk of provoking conflict.

That cynically seems to be precisely what the US was hoping for in hindsight so as to artificially manufacture a crisis that could subsequently be exploited to push back against Russian influence there exactly as was explained at length in this recent analysis here. To that end, it pressured Sudan to accelerate its security sector reform on the grounds that this would speed up its democratic transition, but which was intended all along to force Burhan into making a power play against Hemedti.

Had there been no such reform in the first place or if it was decoupled from the transition to civilian rule, then those two influential figures might have peacefully worked out their differences or at least agreed not to interfere in the other’s economic and security affairs. In that scenario, however, the US would have feared that the continued existence of Hemedti’s independent power center within the armed forces could be taken advantage of by Russia/Wagner to pose a latent threat to its influence in Sudan.

That’s not to suggest that Russia/Wagner had any such intentions, but just to point out the fears that influenced US policymakers to plunge Sudan into crisis by pressuring it to accelerate security sector reform with the intent of provoking a “deep state” war. Burhan was assessed by them as being much more reliable than Hemedti, especially since the former is considered an Egyptian proxy while the latter admitted that he used to have “a good relationship” with Wagner prior to them being sanctioned.

The US didn’t expect Hemedti to put up such an impressive fight, having likely calculated prior to the outbreak of this artificially manufactured crisis that the RSF would either be swiftly subordinated to the SAF or dissolved. That outcome would have much more smoothly expanded the US’ influence in Sudan, but the conflict that Burhan’s power play against Hemedti sparked can also be exploited by it to this end too, albeit at a reduced pace and with the risk of weakening US influence.

If the US-backed SAF are defeated or enter into some sort of peace deal with the RSF that preserves the second’s independent power center, then this “deep state” war that the US artificially manufactured wouldn’t advance its strategic interests. The former scenario would be counterproductive to the aforesaid while the latter would restore the status quo ante bellum and thus leave open the possibility of Russia/Wagner working through the RSF to curtail the expansion of US influence in Sudan.

Nevertheless, the US would prefer the second scenario if forced by circumstances to choose between them, which could explain why it’s urgently calling for a ceasefire after the SAF underperformed and didn’t come anywhere close to meeting policymakers’ expectations. They might calculate that it’s better to have a lull in fighting that safeguards US influence in Sudan and possibly creates the opportunity for the SAF to subvert the RSF through non-kinetic means under the cover of the democratic transition.

In any case, it’s unlikely that the US will leave the RSF alone since its policymakers have already arguably concluded – whether rightly or wrongly – that it’s the greatest threat to their country’s influence in Sudan. This assessment suggests that it’ll continue working against that group’s interests one way or another, which it’s already begun doing through its information warfare campaign fearmongering about the RSF’s ties with Russia/Wagner.

Accusations of war crimes might soon follow, after which sanctions could be imposed too. It also can’t be ruled out that the US would support a more direct Egyptian role in the conflict if Burhan appears on the brink of defeat and Hemedti refuses to cut a power-sharing deal with him. A direct US intervention is also possible under the “humanitarian intervention”/“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) pretext. Observers should therefore closely monitor this “deep state” war for any signs of these scenarios unfolding.

Returning to Yevstigneyeva’s analysis of this conflict’s origins, which was elaborated throughout the present piece, the importance lies in the fact that the meddling model that she described can be applied against other countries too. US pressure on them to implement security reform, especially in those countries undergoing democratic transitions from military rule, could spark similar crises as Sudan’s. Upon becoming aware of such demands, one can likely predict the next New Cold War battleground.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Russia cannot lose its UNSC seat despite Western and Ukrainian attempts

By Ahmed Adel | April 27, 2023

The US has a strong ambition to add its allies to the United Nations Security Council to weaken Russia’s influence across the world, or if this fails, to render the organisation useless, akin to the old League of Nations. However, even more dangerous than the US seeking more allies in the UNSC are the initiatives to abolish Russia’s right of veto and take away its status as a permanent member. Kiev raises this suggestion at almost every session of the UN General Assembly.

In this sense, new challenges are being created, especially as UN Secretary General António Guterres stated that the majority of UN member states see the need for reforming the UNSC. Such suggestions must be treated with suspicion though as the US wants to take advantage and weaken not only Russian influence, but also Chinese.

Guterres and the US are clearly trying to push their closest allies, such as Germany, Australia, and Japan, where unsurprisingly American military bases are located, into the UNSC. There are also other countries, such as Turkey, which regularly raise the issue of UNSC reform and complain that the fate of humanity should not depend on five countries – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US.

However, Turkey’s suggestion is problematic as the UNSC would be inundated with permanent membership requests from dozens of middle powers who have equal or greater power than Turkey, such as Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Realistically, at this current junction, an expanded permanent UNSC could only include Brazil and India, the former because it is the most important country in Latin America and the latter because it is on a rapid path towards Great Power status.

None-the-less, Moscow, just like Washington, is in favour of reforming the UNSC, but with significantly different views. While the US and its allies are pushing reforms as a possible way to limit Russian influence, Moscow believes that the Security Council should to be expanded, but to achieve a more equitable world and to not empower Western aggression.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that the composition of the UNSC should be strengthened by Asian, African, and Latin American countries, which are not represented in the UNSC, with the exception of China in regards to Asia. Therefore, in Moscow’s view, the UNSC should not be expanded only so that the West and its closest allies, such as Japan, can get additional seats. Moscow wants to balance the UNSC because the West has three of five permanent seats despite comprising only a minority of humanity.

It is clear that Lavrov has strategically put the West in a difficult position because if they veto the expansion initiative, it will lead to a backlash from countries like India which believe they have earned a right to a permanent seat in the UNSC. At the same time, Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart must be cautious on expansion so that the UNSC does not transform into a political branch of NATO.

The UN Charter does not provide for a reform procedure, and this especially applies to the UNSC, which is the most important body of the organisation. By recklessly expanding the body, the contradictions and conflicts of interest, which already hinder the UNSC in its current format, would elevate.

Therefore, in the current geopolitical situation, it will be very difficult to reform the UNSC in such a way as to objectively consider the interests of all participants in the process. A permanent UNSC membership is a privilege and not something to lightly contemplate expanding upon.

There is also no legal basis to exclude Russia from the UNSC, limit its status and deprive it of veto rights. The entire architecture of the UN was originally built on the fact that the five great powers, the winners of the Second World War, assumed the role of guarding the global world order. The founding states cannot exclude each other because if one or two pillars are thrown out, the UN would collapse.

If Russia was somehow excluded, it would mark the destruction of the entire system based on international law, on the UN Charter, and would call into question the existence of the UN itself. Russia, however, is a permanent member of the Security Council and has veto power. This practically means that Russia, if the Charter is applied, can only be expelled if it does not exercise its veto power. Therefore, it is impossible to deprive Russia of that right, despite constant Ukrainian attempts.

Hypothetically, there are two scenarios in which Russia could lose its seat in the UNSC – first, if it excludes itself and second, if the UN ceases to exist as an organisation. It is recalled that the Soviet Union was foolishly excluded from the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN, but that organisation ceased to exist. The same fate would befall the UN if Russia was expelled.

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

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO Could Send Troops to Western Ukraine if Kiev’s Spring Offensive Fails – Here’s Why

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.04.2023

Mainstream reporting related to the so-called “Pentagon leaks” about the DoD’s sobering assessment of the real state of the NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine has brought the “do or die” pressure facing Kiev into focus. Without a decisive victory, Kiev may be pushed into ceasefire talks, says international affairs expert Mark Sleboda.

Anonymous Biden administration officials told US media this week that the White House is “quietly preparing” for the contingency of Ukrainian forces failing to gain any significant ground against Russia during Kiev’s much-hyped spring offensive, and for the reputational blow this might have for Washington via-a-vis other allies and clients. Administration officials reportedly also fear that a failed or stalled offensive could result in attacks on the White House at home both by hawks pushing for even more aid to Kiev, and doves arguing that the Ukrainian Army’s failure would prove that Russia can’t be ejected from Crimea, Donbass, and its new territories.

Officials are reportedly mulling pushing Zelensky into a “ceasefire” to enable Kiev to retool and reequip for a resumption of the conflict at a later date, with measures meant to prod the Zelensky government into accepting including “NATO-like security guarantees,” EU economic support, and more military aid.

“I think this is actually one in a series of articles that have come out in the last few weeks, including the so-called ‘Pentagon Leaks’ which I think most Russian analysts believe are just another narrative management tool,” Mark Sleboda said, speaking to Radio Sputnik’s The Final Countdown radio show on Tuesday.

The latest piece in the MSM hyping the prospects of a possible Ukrainian defeat isn’t the first, Sleboda recalled, pointing to another recent legacy media piece from last week warning that a “breakthrough” in the conflict may not come at all in 2023, and that observers should lower their expectations of Ukraine advancing more than 30 km.

“So [there’s a] lowering [of] expectations, lowering the bar for success. Now we have twin articles coming out of Politico, but also The New York Times coming out within 24 hours of each other. And the Times tells us that ‘Ukraine’s spring offensive comes with immense stakes for future of the war’ and that without a decisive victory, Western support for Ukraine could weaken and Kiev could come under increasing pressure to enter serious peace talks to end or freeze the conflict,” the observer noted.

Characterizing the expected Ukrainian offensive as “the most telegraphed offensive in history,” Sleboda said that naturally, reality “cannot possibly” live up to the hype as far as objectives are concerned.

“And again, the mainstream media, The Washington Post, The New York Times have done features about how Russia has been, for the last half year, building up extensive layered trench networks, fortified concrete fortifications, pillboxes, tank obstacles like dragon teeth, etc., and very extensive minefields laid out in advance… We have seen the Kiev regime go on the offensive before against Russian troops that weren’t even half as well dug-in in Kherson. And it’s now acknowledged that Russian forces withdrew, but without taking any significant casualties. They withdrew tactically to avoid being enveloped, but they inflicted crippling casualties because the Ukrainian forces were charging across open steppe into superior artillery, rocket systems, and air dominance,” the analyst said.

Russia could afford to give up territory in the past because they’re “fighting a different type of conflict,” according to Sleboda, prioritizing force preservation and attrition warfare meant to “grind down the Kiev regime’s military and now effectively NATO as well, because NATO is 100% supplying the regime at this point.”

‘Talking Smack About Crimea’

Among Kiev’s formal priorities is a long-promised attack on Crimea. That’s a fantasy, Sleboda believes, since even without a Kherson-Zaporozhye “land bridge” linking Crimea to the Russian mainland, the peninsula is just too tough a nut to crack.

“Of course, they talk a lot of smack about Crimea, which is ridiculous, because Crimea is a peninsula, geographically a very difficult target to attack, very heavily defended with a 95% pro-Russian population. It’s ridiculous,” the observer stressed. The reality, he added, is that even officials like Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley have recognized that Kiev has no chance of “retaking” the peninsula.

“It’s perfectly obvious from the articles being put out today that now they don’t believe they could even get to that administrative border, nowhere close to it. I don’t believe so either. They may push Russian forces back a bit. But they talked about it in The New York Times back in December even, that the Biden administration, speaking through their stenographers anonymously, said ‘we don’t think that they can take Crimea, but we need to have the Russians believe Crimea is under threat to improve the Kiev regime’s negotiating position in future negotiations.’ They think they can get Russia to withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye and be satisfied with just the Donbass and Crimea. That’s their thinking. That’s why they don’t consider Bakhmut strategic, unlike Zelensky, who is trying to hold on to it all, because the US has written the Donbass off. They know that it’s an overwhelmingly pro-Russian area, that Russia has invested an enormous amount of political capital with the referendums there, but they think they can still get them to give up on Kherson and Zaporozhye, which also held referendums, by the way,” Sleboda said.

Sleboda pointed to the Times’ admission that the 12 new Ukrainian combat brigades of 4,000 troops apiece formed for the spring offensive – which are expected to be ready by the end of the month, are “raw recruits with a small core of experienced veteran soldiers,” and that they are equipped with handfuls of more modern NATO tanks and armored vehicles accompanied by much older equipment, and facing a big disadvantage in artillery and control of airspace.

Even the debate over deliveries of the much-vaunted F-16 fighters to Kiev is “all political,” according to the observer, because it takes years to train to use them, and Washington may prefer to save them, along with the ATACMS missiles long demanded by Kiev, for a possible war against China in the Pacific.

‘New Domino Theory’ and Danger of WWIII

Pointing to the “new domino theory” that’s being pushed by neocons and neoliberals in Washington on the need to prop up Kiev at all costs, or face Taiwan “falling” to China, Sleboda fears that if push comes to shove and Kiev suffers a major defeat on the battlefield, NATO may be tempted to intervene directly in the crisis to prevent its global defeat.

“I believe that if the Kiev regime suffers a catastrophic defeat and NATO can’t filter more weapons useful to them through them, they might consider what I’ve talked about for maybe half a year now – sending US and Polish troops, maybe Romanians, the Baltics, the Brits – a new ‘coalition of the willing’ as ‘peacekeepers’ into western Ukraine. To tell you the truth Russia would probably yell and scream, but they don’t really want to occupy West Ukraine because unlike East Ukraine, they really do hate Russia over there. It would be very hostile guerilla territory. That’s the part of Ukraine that sided with Nazi Germany in World War II and is resurrecting all of that type of anti-Russian, Banderite fascist glorification today,” Sleboda said.

Ultimately, the main issue of concern for the analyst is Odessa – the strategic, majority Russian-speaking seaport. “If the Kiev regime loses that, then they’re a landlocked little rump state, and the US [has] got the 101st Airborne just across the border in Romania exactly to step across as a tripwire force into Odessa. And that’s the scenario that keeps me up at night. That’s the World War III scenario, as far as I’m concerned [it] is a possible direct NATO-Russia fight over Odessa because I do not believe for a second that Russia would allow Odessa to become a US naval base,” Sleboda summed up.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

British radioactive weapons arrive in Ukraine

By Lucas Leiroz | April 27, 2023

Ignoring all Russian advice, the British government confirmed on April 26th that its depleted uranium weapons are already on Ukrainian soil. Moscow’s officials, anti-war activists and experts have repeatedly warned that such an escalation in the conflict should be avoided, but London has not observed the advice and has further violated a red line by sending radioactive weapons to the Kiev regime. It remains to be seen what the consequences of this dangerous measure will be.

The confirmation of the delivery of weapons was made by the Minister of Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, James Heappey, during a speech to the British Parliament. According to Heappey, depleted uranium ammunition was sent to Ukraine along with other projectiles suitable for use in Challenger 2 tanks. The minister also added that British officials will not try to track where these weapons will be used.

“We have sent thousands of rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition to Ukraine, including depleted uranium armour-piercing rounds (…) [These weapons] are now under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) (…) [UK’s Ministry of Defense] does not monitor the locations from where DU rounds are fired by the AFU in Ukraine”, the Minsiter said during the statement.

When asked by some parliamentarians about the health dangers posed by these weapons, Heappey claimed that this threat would be “low”. Interestingly, he even mentioned that the risk assessment is based on monitoring UK veterans who have already used them on the battlefield. In fact, the minister seems to completely ignore that a series of recent studies point to the opposite, showing serious health problems both in the soldiers who manipulated this equipment and in the victims of the ammunition. The problems include several risks commonly attributed to radioactive substances, such as cancer, fetal deformity, deficiency of fertility, among others.

Commenting on the case with journalists, Doug Weir, an expert linked to the Conflict and Environment Observatory, stated that when DU penetrators strike a target “they fragment and burn, generating chemically toxic and radioactive DU particulate that poses an inhalational risk to people”. Several other scientists have expressed similar views after analyzing the results of these munitions in Iraq and other countries where NATO troops have used them. However, London and Washington continue to deny evidence of these dangers.

It must be remembered that Moscow has repeatedly asked London to reconsider its plan to send these munitions to Kiev. In a recent statement, spokespersons for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia stated that the British measure would be an absolute “imprudence, irresponsibility”. Furthermore, in March, the Russian Ministry of Defense warned that the use of such projectiles could “cause irreparable harm” to the health of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians as well as inflict “tremendous economic damage to the agro-industrial complex” in the region, citing the weapon’s impact during the previous experience in Iraq.

However, despite the warnings, the shipment of these weapons was already expected. In March, US and British troops held a training program with Ukrainian soldiers to teach them how to properly handle depleted uranium munitions. The plan was very well prepared and echoes NATO’s interest in taking the proxy war with Russia to the most dangerous levels of military escalation, ignoring any humanitarian, environmental or social concerns.

Legally, depleted uranium weapons are a complex issue. There is no international convention banning them as there is no consensus among specialists on how to define these weapons. These munitions are really radioactive, which is why some experts believe they should be considered nuclear weapons under the legal principle of analogy. However, its radiation is lower than that of natural uranium, which leads other specialists to reject this classification.

Some other experts believe that a viable solution to the problem of these projectiles would be to consider them chemical weapons, since they contain toxic substances, regardless of the level of radioactivity. But this creates a problem for the western powers that have them, since the US and the UK are signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would oblige them to destroy their depleted uranium stocks. Not by chance, both countries reject any initiative in this sense and prefer that these weapons remain without specific legislation, so that they can continue using them with impunity.

Indeed, given the absence of specific regulation, Moscow could consider the use of depleted uranium against its troops as a true nuclear attack, which would allow the Russians to react with their arsenal of mass destruction. This is unlikely to happen, as Moscow has repeatedly shown its interest in seeking the most peaceful and humanitarian solutions possible to the conflict, sometimes even ignoring violations against red lines just to avoid escalation.

However, regardless of what the Russian response will be, it is certain that damage to Ukrainian soldiers and the civilian population in the combat zone are inevitable. And the responsibility for that lies with NATO.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist is a researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

April 27, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

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