Many are those who predict a World War. Indeed, some groups are preparing for it. But the States are reasonable and, in fact, consider rather an amicable separation, a division of the world into two different worlds, one unipolar and the other multipolar. Perhaps we are actually witnessing a third scenario: the “American Empire” is not struggling in the trap of Thucydides; it is collapsing like its former Soviet rival died.
The American “Straussians,” the Ukrainian “integral nationalists,” the Israeli “revisionist Zionists” and the Japanese “militarists” are calling for a generalized war. They are alone and they are not mass movements. No state has yet committed itself to this course.
Germany with 100 billion euros and Poland with much less money are rearming massively. But neither of them seems eager to take on Russia.
Australia and Japan are also investing in armaments, but neither of them has an autonomous army.
The United States is no longer able to replenish its military and is no longer able to create new weapons. They are content to reproduce the weapons of the 1980s in an assembly line fashion. However, they maintain their nuclear weapons.
Russia has already modernized its armies and is organizing itself to renew the ammunition it uses in Ukraine and to mass produce its new weapons, which no one can compete with. China, for its part, is rearming to control the Far East and, in the long term, to protect its trade routes. India thinks of itself as a maritime power.
It is therefore difficult to see who would and could start a World War.
Contrary to their speeches, French leaders are not at all preparing for a high-intensity war [1]. The military programming law, established for ten years, plans to build a nuclear aircraft carrier, but reduces the size of the army. It is a question of giving ourselves the means of projection, but not of defending our territory. Paris continues to reason as a colonial power while the world is becoming multipolar. It is a classic: the generals prepare for the previous war and ignore the reality of tomorrow.
The European Union is implementing its “Strategic Compass”. The Commission coordinates the military investments of its member states. In practice, they all play the game, but pursue different goals. The Commission, on the other hand, is trying to take control of decisions on the financing of armies, which until now have depended on their national parliaments. This would make it possible to build an empire, but not to declare a generalized war.
Clearly everyone is playing a game, but apart from Russia and China, none is preparing for a high-intensity war. Rather, we are witnessing a redistribution of the cards. This month, Washington is sending Liz Rosenberg and Brian Nelson, two specialists in unilateral coercive measures [2], to Europe with the mission of forcing the Allies to comply. In the words of former President George Bush Jr. during the war “against terrorism”: “Whoever is not with us is against us”.
Liz Rosenberg is efficient and unscrupulous. She is the one who brought the Syrian economy to its knees, condemning millions of people to poverty because they dared to resist and defeat the Empire’s surrogates.
The Hollywood western discourse a la George Bush Jr. of good guys and bad guys has failed with Türkiye, which has already experienced the 2016 coup attempt and the 2023 earthquake. Ankara knows that it has nothing good to expect from Washington and is already looking to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Yet the same discourse should succeed with the Europeans, who remain fascinated by the power of the United States. Of course this power is in decline, but so are the Europeans. No one has learned any lessons from the sabotage of the Russian-German-French-Dutch gas pipelines, North Stream. Not only did the victims take the blame without saying anything, but they are about to receive further punishment for crimes they did not commit.
The world should therefore be divided into two blocs, on the one hand the US hyperpower and its vassals, on the other the multipolar world. In terms of the number of states, this should be half and half, but in terms of population, only 13% for the Western bloc against 87% for the multipolar world.
The international institutions can no longer function. They should either fall into lethargy or be dissolved. The first examples that come to mind are the effective exit of Russia from the Council of Europe and the empty seats of Western Europeans in the Arctic Council during the year of the Russian presidency. Other institutions are no longer relevant, such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which was supposed to organize East-West dialogue. Only the attachment of Russia and China to the United Nations should preserve them in the short term, as the United States is already thinking of transforming the Organization into a structure reserved exclusively for the Allied Nations.
The Western bloc should also reorganize itself. Until now, the European continent was dominated economically by Germany. In order to be certain that Germany would never get closer to Russia, the United States wanted Berlin to be content with the western part of the continent and leave the center in the hands of Warsaw. So Germany and Poland armed themselves to impose themselves in their respective zones of influence, but when the American star faded, they would fight against each other.
When the Soviet Empire fell, it abandoned its allies and vassals. Having seen its inability to solve the problems, the USSR first stopped supporting Cuba economically, then dropped its vassals of the Warsaw Pact, and finally collapsed on itself. The same process is beginning today.
The first U.S. Gulf War, the 9/11 attacks and their host of wars in the broader Middle East, the expansion of Nato and the Ukrainian conflict will have offered only three decades of survival to the American Empire. It was backed by its former Soviet rival. It has lost its raison d’être with its dissolution. It is time for it to disappear too.
Thierry Meyssan
Translation: Roger Lagassé
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | China, France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Nations, United States |
Leave a comment
WASHINGTON- The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and lack of strategic planning with regard to Ukraine have caused a growing rift between the White House and the US intelligence community, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in a new article on Wednesday, citing an intelligence official.
“There is a total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community,” the intelligence official was quoted by Hersh as saying.
The alleged rift dates back to the covert operation last fall to blow up Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines, a move that was purportedly ordered by President Joe Biden.
“Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official said.
Another issue dividing the Biden administration and the intelligence community is the lack of planning on Ukraine. The official highlighted Biden’s decision to deploy two brigades a few miles from the Ukrainian border in response to Russia’s special military operation.
The actual manpower of the 101st and 82nd airborne divisions could total more than 20,000, but there is still “no evidence that any senior official in the White House really knows what’s going on in” the brigades, the intelligence officials told Hersh.
“Are they there as part of a NATO exercise or to serve with NATO combat units if the West decides to engage Russians units inside Ukraine? Are they there to train or to be a trigger? The rules of engagement say they can’t attack Russians unless our boys are getting attacked,” the official said.
The official said that while the White House lacks clarity on its policy in Ukraine, the Pentagon is somewhat optimistically preparing for an end to the conflict. Two months ago, the US Joint Chiefs tasked members of the staff with drafting an end-of-war treaty to present to the Russians “after their defeat on the Ukraine battlefield,” Hersh said, citing a source.
But it remains unclear what will happen if the Pentagon’s scenario goes wrong and Ukrainian forces fail on the battlefield: Will the two American brigades deployed close to the war zone “join forces with NATO troops and face off with the Russian army inside Ukraine?” Hersh asks.
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, War Crimes | Joe Biden, United States |
Leave a comment
Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin has accused The Times of “caving in” to outside forces after it removed an interview with the diplomat from its website. Kelin warned that the move does not bode well for the newspaper’s readers.
The story in question was published last Sunday, but as of Thursday it was no longer available on The Times’ web page. Instead, readers receive a notice that the article “has been removed.” An online service that records the content of popular internet links dates Tuesday morning as the latest snapshot of the article.
The Russian Embassy released a statement from Kelin on Thursday condemning the removal of the interview. The message, which was addressed to Times Chief Editor Tony Gallagher, described the decision as “deeply revealing” and suggested that the newspaper had taken the step after “[coming] under fire from the influential local anti-Russian troupe.”
“Your newspaper has sadly caved in to outside pressure or, highly likely, instructions from the authorities,” Kelin argued.
“Hardly the hallmark of a courageous independent editorial policy. And bad news for your readers, who have been deprived of a balanced hearing of viewpoints and, consequently, the ability to make their own judgment about the crisis in Ukraine.”
The original article in The Times, titled ‘Russia is ready for ceasefire but not defeat, says ambassador to UK’, explained Moscow’s stance on the conflict with Ukraine, as well as the possibility of peace talks.
The ambassador commented on Ukrainian domestic issues, such as the poor economic situation and the crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by President Vladimir Zelensky. The discussion also covered Russia’s relations with China.
The Russian Embassy has published a copy of the article in full, in protest against its removal by the newspaper.
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance | Russia, UK |
Leave a comment
According to a Washington Post exclusive on the origins of the U.S. military leaks now roiling official Washington and its allies and partners today, there may be an untold number of classified documents still out there, yet to be reported.
The Post talked with two of the members of a Discord (online gaming) group who say the “leader” of their tight knit channel had been sharing with them top secret information gleaned from the secure facility/military base from which he presumably worked for some time, but photographs of those documents started coming “beginning late last year.”
The leader of the group — called “OG” — had been literally writing out and annotating classified documents he had access to in his day job up until then, but then began photographing and posting them “several times a week.” Many were quite recent, including, according to the Washington Post, “eye-level” images of the recent Chinese spy balloon incident in early February.
The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server. ….
The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine.
The Post ascertained that “the transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see.”
The photographs eventually made their way onto other online channels beginning in February. The New York Times first reported this on April 6. Most of the first batch of top secret missives were purportedly from the daily briefings that were sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. The Post, however, reported last night a previously unreported document, allegedly an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, that surmises that even if the Ukrainians make significant gains in any upcoming counteroffensive against the Russians, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios.”
The original tranche of 53 documents is clearly not the last.
The New York Times today is reporting on “new additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set” that came to attention last week. In their own exclusive, they describe intelligence documents that show infighting between Russia’s defense ministry and intelligence services over a number of issues, including Russian battlefield casualty counts. They also reflect intelligence about supposed willingness of China to transfer weapons to Russia, and the tensions between Wagner Group head Yevgeny V. Prigozhin and the Russian military. According to the NYT :
The new documents were shared in photos, and some are missing pages. Those shown in full include material from the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Staff intelligence directorate.
The Washington Post deep dive on the Discord channel does not even guess how many of these photographs or emails with highly sensitive information may have hopped from the original group to the wider online world. As the DoD and Justice Department scramble to find “OG,” the damage is clearly already done, and we could be in for many more revelations to come.
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | United States |
Leave a comment
By Ahmed Adel |April 13, 2023
The Washington Post, citing leaked US intelligence documents, created a frenzy in the media by suggesting that Egypt was planning to secretly send up to 40,000 missiles to Russia. This claim could be separate from the other leaked US intelligence documents as the report was not only denied by Cairo and Moscow, but White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said he had no information about this.
Russian Presidential Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that what appeared to be an Egyptian plan to “secretly” supply thousands of missiles to Russia were like other fake news related to the state of the Russian military and the war in Ukraine.
In fact, the claims are ridiculous considering that Russia does not need missile supplies, whether from Egypt or any other country, because as far as Russia’s own military-technological development is concerned, it does not need assistance and help. Rather, the disinformation spread by the Washington Post is a clear example of demagogy to try and cause greater problems.
The broadcasting of such news aims to drag Egypt into global conflicts and incite hostility without reason. This could be because Cairo has announced its intentions to join BRICS, something which deeply concerns Washington. In this way, the Washington Post is conjuring disinformation in a vain attempt to deter Cairo from deepening its ties with Moscow.
For their part, a senior Egyptian official denied supplying Russia with 40,000 rockets for use against Ukraine and described the Washington Post report as “informational tampering that has no basis in truth.” He added that Egypt follows a balanced foreign policy determined by peace, stability, and development.
Kirby told reporters on April 11 that Washington has “seen no indication that Egypt is providing lethal weaponry capabilities to Russia”, adding that the Arab counrty is a “significant security partner” and that the relationship between the two goes back decades.
With official denials from Cairo and Moscow, with Washington indicating that it has no information, it appears that this is likely a fake news story by the Washington Post, perhaps in an attempt to create doubts over the authenticity of the leak reports. The supposed document that discusses Egypt is being reported as part of a trove of leaked Pentagon reports. However, there is no evidence for this.
The batch of recently leaked documents have been circulating on social media channels for weeks, possibly months, even if it was only exposed days ago. Many of the leaked documents included secret information on the war in Ukraine, such as scepticism on the success of the expected Ukrainian spring offensive, while other documents appear to show sensitive analyses of US allies, including Israel and South Korea.
Pentagon spokesman Chris Meagher said on April 10 that the documents could pose “a very serious risk to national security” and lead to the spread of disinformation. It appears that the spread of disinformation already began with the claim that Cairo is supplying 40,000 missiles to Russia.
The Washington Post reported that, according to leaked US intelligence documents, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi approved of the production but ordered officials to keep it a secret “to avoid problems with the West”. Yet, no other media agency or social media account has seen the documents, and thus all this information comes from this single dubious source.
Although Egypt has avoided taking sides in the war, Cairo and Moscow have a long and fruitful relationship expanding many decades, including in economy, energy, and security.
In one example, Egypt became the world’s largest importer of wheat in 2021 after imports reached $4.53 billion, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity. Egypt mostly imported its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, but since the war, Cairo is also turning to India to secure alternative supplies. None-the-less, Russia is still one of its most important suppliers.
It is recalled that Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said on January 31 that wheat imports are a cornerstone in Cairo-Moscow relations, adding that trade between the two countries hit $6 billion in 2022.
More importantly, the Russian Central Bank added the Egyptian pound to its official exchange rate list in January. According to Cairo-based economist Hanan Ramses: “Using the ruble for settlement away from US currency will help ease pressure on demand for the greenback in Egypt. This is better for Egypt’s international trade.” She added that “Egypt may become Russia’s gateway to African markets in the long run.”
Given that Egypt is an African entry point for Russia, in addition to Russia being an important source of wheat for Egypt, it is very evident that the Washington Post is attempting to disrupt this relationship. What is surprising though is that Kirby expressed his lack of knowledge on the claim, suggesting that even this disinformation campaign is one step too far for the State Department as they attempt to woo Egypt away from Russia.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Egypt, United States, Washington Post |
Leave a comment
Buy How is This a Thing Mugs here: https://teespring.com/stores/computing-forever-store
Support my work on Subscribe Star: https://www.subscribestar.com/dave-cullen
Support my work via crypto: https://computingforever.com/donate/
Follow me on Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/hybM74uIHJKg/
Source video: Living in This Pod Will Cost You $1,000 a Month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXB5ivW6PbE
A 3D animated short film about not too distant but a dystopian future. It speculates on the potential consequences of the infamous Great Reset, medical tyranny, woke culture, and green agenda. Everything, that World Economic Forum (WEF) is planning for us. If you’d like to buy me a beer, here is my PayPal address: oleg@3depix.com
Spoiler: you will get to see an animated Klaus Schwab.
My Rumble channel: https://rumble.com/c/c-750647
If you’d like to support my work, you can become my Patron at https://patreon.com/3depix
All Rights Reserved 3D Epix 2023 ©
April 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Video | California, United States |
Leave a comment
Speech regulation
In an interview with CNBC, FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf said that online misinformation was harming the life expectancy of people, there is a need for “better regulation” on how to handle health misinformation and that “specific authorities at FDA, FTC, and other areas are going to be needed.”
“We know more and more about misinformation. It relates back to this life expectancy,” Califf said. Why aren’t we using knowledge of diet? It’s not that people don’t know about it. Why aren’t we using medical products as effectively and efficiently as our peer countries? A lot of it has to do with choices that people make because of the things that influence their thinking. The COVID vaccines and the antivirals give us an easy way to talk about it, but this is not limited to those areas. In heart disease, so many people don’t take their medicines, even though they’re now generic and very low-cost, often [they’re] deluded into taking things that are sold over the Internet that aren’t effective.”
According to the FDA commissioner, one of the solutions is telling the “truth is a louder volume.”
“In the good old days, when I was a practicing cardiologist, for the most part, people developed products, they got through the FDA, the label determined what was talked about, the Internet didn’t exist, you advertised in medical meetings and journals. There was sort of a hierarchy of information that went through the prescriber or the implanter in the case of devices to the patient. Of course, the problem in that system is it left a lot of people out. We now know about that. Now, everyone’s included because everyone’s connected to the Internet. But we can put out a statement about what we’ve determined based on the highest level of evidence, within ten minutes, someone who’s thought ten minutes about it can reach a billion people. And there’s nothing that restricts them from telling things that are not true. This has always existed. … But they couldn’t reach so many people,” he explained.
He added that there isn’t enough regulation on health information and that is “impacting our health in very detrimental ways.” As such, he thinks “there is a real need for better regulation of how to deal with this complex information.”
Califf noted that the FDA already has regulatory authority over advertisements content on tech platforms. But he feels the agency could do it better.
“And there are so many avenues now by which that information goes around that we have to think hard about what the right regulation is,” he added.
Using COVID-19 vaccination to explain his point, he said: “I’m highly aware that, in our society, people don’t want the government to have too much power, but I think specific authorities at FDA, FTC, other areas are going to be needed. I’m not saying what they are, because I don’t really know, but I do believe we’re going to need to, when we see people being harmed — like, let’s look at vaccination again, very few people are dying from COVID who are up to date on their vaccination. And if – beyond that, even if they get infected, almost no one is dying if they’ve been vaccinated up to date and they’ve gotten an antiviral that’s approved by or cleared by the FDA. So, why is this not happening? We need to work on this.”
Reiterating that misinformation should be countered with truthful information, he said that those who are succumbing to COVID “are the people that are not up to date on their vaccination and don’t encounter clinicians who are up-to-date on the advantages of antivirals. But they’re also people who have been heavily influenced by people on the Internet telling untruthful things about the vaccination. And I’m not arguing here that we should suppress free speech, that’s not — the First Amendment is the First Amendment. But we have to counter that information with truthful information and reach many, many more people.”
April 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | FDA, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
The U.S. government will spend $5 billion on a program to accelerate the development of new coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics, White House officials announced this week in an interview with The Washington Post.
Dubbed “Project NextGen,” the new initiative will serve as the successor to the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” launched in March 2020 to expedite the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
Similar to Operation Warp Speed, Project NextGen — with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation — will encourage public-private partnerships.
According to Reuters, the project will be managed out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will coordinate across various government agencies and private-sector actors, covering “all phases of development from lab research and clinical trials to delivery.”
“Scientists, public heath [sic] experts and politicians have called for the initiative, warning that existing therapies have steadily lost their effectiveness and that new ones are needed,” the Post reported.
The new initiative is based on a “roadmap” for the development of new coronavirus vaccines, formulated by the University of Minnesota and led by a former Biden administration official.
A ‘roadmap’ for ‘better’ coronavirus vaccines
Operation Warp Speed invested approximately $30 billion in the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, according to USA Today, with six drugmakers each receiving more than $1 billion, along with a promise of a “guaranteed market” if they successfully developed a vaccine.
Project NextGen was originally to be named “Project COVID Shield,” after some Republican lawmakers called for the launch of an “Operation Warp Speed 2.0” to build on the Trump administration’s legacy.
However, “White House officials wanted some distance from the Trump effort as well as from COVID-focused branding, when much of the country had moved on from the pandemic,” the Post reported, quoting two anonymous Biden administration officials.
The new initiative also will be “more modest,” and have a “more open-ended mission,” unlike Operation Warp Speed, which focused exclusively on COVID-19.
According to USA Today, the initial $5 billion in funding “will be financed through money saved from contracts costing less than originally estimated.”
Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus coordinator, said the new initiative has three primary goals: creating longer-lasting vaccines, accelerating the development of nasal vaccines and bolstering efforts to create “broader” pan-coronavirus vaccines.
The project also includes funding for more durable monoclonal antibodies.
The name “Project NextGen,” made more sense, Jha said, as it is “a different time” with “a different set of goals.” The new name “much more accurately captures what it is that we are trying to do,” he said.
Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, is helping lead the effort.
In February, CIDRAP developed a “roadmap” for the development of “better” coronavirus vaccines. This “roadmap” serves as the basis for Project NextGen.
Osterholm was a member of the COVID-19 advisory board convened by then-president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team. The board was dissolved when Biden took office in January 2021.
Jha told the Post, “It’s been very clear to us that the market on this is moving very slowly. There’s a lot that government can do, the administration can do, to speed up those tools … for the American people.”
Previously, during a July 2022 White House coronavirus vaccine summit, Jha said:
“We need vaccines that are more durable. Vaccines that offer broader and longer-lasting protection. Vaccines that can stand up to multiple variants. Vaccines that can handle whatever Mother Nature throws at us.”
Osterholm characterized existing COVID-19 vaccines as “really good” but “not great.”
“There is a substantial amount of work [to be done] to take these good vaccines and hopefully achieve better vaccines,” Osterholm said.
Osterholm noted that SARS-CoV-2 is the third new coronavirus to appear in the past two decades — Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) were the other two. According to Osterholm, it would be “great” to be prepared for a fourth new coronavirus when and if it appears.
Reuters quoted an unnamed HHS spokesperson, who stated:
“While our vaccines are still very effective at preventing serious illness and death, they are less capable of reducing infections and transmission over time. New variants and loss of immunity over time could continue to challenge our healthcare systems in the coming years.
“Project NextGen will accelerate and streamline the rapid development of the next generation of vaccines and treatments through public-private collaborations. The infusion of a $5 billion investment, at minimum, will help catalyze scientific advancement in areas that have large public health benefits for the American people, with the goal of developing safe and effective tools for the American people.”
The Post noted, however, that while the outbreak of new coronaviruses in recent decades has “spurred worries about the potential for future health crises,” it might take years to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, noting that such efforts have been unsuccessful for influenza despite decades of efforts.
Speaking to USA Today, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, expressed skepticism about Project NextGen’s goals, noting that similar efforts to develop flu and HIV vaccines have been in progress for more than 40 years, without result.
Offit said that the effectiveness of nasal vaccines remains unclear, as they remain in the clinical trial stage at this time. Dr. John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, expressed a similar view, saying “it’s seriously naïve to believe that it will be easy to make [a nasal vaccine].”
He added that the emphasis on improving existing COVID-19 vaccines, which he described as “amazing,” would likely undermine public trust in those vaccines.
Moore told USA Today that “an initiative like this is much needed and should have been put in place much sooner,” adding that “Anyone familiar with vaccine development knows that translation into a practical product is a much harder and more expensive process” than the creation of a basic vaccine.
“A lot of designs that look good in the early stages fizzle out because they cannot be manufactured efficiently under the conditions required for human trials,” Moore said.
According to Jha though, the new project and its investment in a new generation of coronavirus vaccines “will have very large benefits for other respiratory pathogens we deal with all the time, like flu and RSV.”
Gates, Rockefeller Foundations behind Project NextGen
On Feb. 21, CIDRAP published its “roadmap for advancing better coronavirus vaccines” — with $1 million in support from the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, “To help jump-start the search for better vaccines [and] develop broadly protective vaccines.”
According to the project description, the funding was used to assemble “an international collaboration of 50 scientists who mapped out a strategy to make the new vaccines a reality.”
Osterholm stated at the time, “If we wait for the next event to happen before we act, it will be too late.”
Bruce Gellin, M.D., M.P.H., chief of Global Public Health Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation, said that there is an “urgency” to take the next steps, calling for an “equivalent” to Operation Warp Speed.
According to CIDRAP, Gellin “has led several federal vaccine initiatives and has been a technical advisor for groups including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, COVAX, and the World Health Organization.”
The Gates Foundation is a partner of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, which, in turn, closely collaborates with the ID2020 Alliance, which promoted the development of digital ID. Microsoft is a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance, as well as Gavi, the BMGF, the World Bank, Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation.
CIDRAP received the $1 million grant in April 2022, and by October 2022, had developed a draft version of its “roadmap.” According to Osterholm, it draws on a similar “roadmap strategy” employed by CIDRAP for previous projects, including the improvement of seasonal flu vaccines and the development of a universal flu vaccine.
For the new “roadmap,” these efforts culminated in a 92-page report, and accompanying summary, published in Vaccine journal. The project is divided into five core areas: virology, immunology, vaccinology, animal and human models for vaccine research, and policy and funding.
In an accompanying commentary published in the same issue of Vaccine, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, a former FDA commissioner who is co-president of the InterAcademy Partnership, and Dr. Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, said that COVID-19 vaccines have been effective in preventing serious disease.
Hamburg was a participant in the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) monkeypox pandemic simulation in March 2021, based on a remarkably prescient “fictional” monkeypox outbreak in May 2022. She is a board member of the Nature Conservancy and vice president of NTI’s Global Biological Policy and Programs and is on the board of Gavi.
However, according to Hamburg and Poland, there are some problems with the current vaccines, including “notable reactogenicity” in certain individuals, a short duration of protection, and technical requirements that make them difficult to store and administer in remote locations and areas with low resources.
They said the next-generation vaccines may offer additional benefits such as “new methods of delivery — transdermal patches, oral or intranasal vaccines — which are easy to distribute and apply, stimulate mucosal immunity, and potentially block transmission,” adding that this is superior to the current strategy of “chasing” new variants and developing boosters.
Hamburg and Poland said that a universal coronavirus would be easy to stockpile, but the road to the development of such a vaccine could take a “tiered approach,” starting with the creation of a “variant-proof” COVID-19 vaccine, followed by developing vaccines that offer broader protection against various coronavirus families.
Members of CIDRAP said in February that funding would be a challenge for the initiatives set forth in their “roadmap,” due to “shrinking support for large-scale vaccine investments, now that the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has mainly passed.”
The federal funding earmarked for Project NextGen would, however, appear to address this issue.
Other challenges the CIDRAP team identified included the “lack of corporate incentives, uncertainty around public demand for a broadly protective vaccine, and the feasibility of expanding vaccine production capacity.”
Gellin, however, said in a Feb. 21 University of Minnesota press release that: “Time and time again, we have seen that investment in science brings solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic galvanized the research community and advanced vaccine R&D efficiently and through broad collaborations,” essentially previewing Project NextGen.
On April 20, CIDRAP will hold a one-hour “scientific webinar,” open to the public, presenting their “roadmap.”
Republican lawmakers, Fauci pressed for ‘Warp Speed 2.0’
Political wrangling delayed the funding of Project NextGen, according to the Post, which reported that Republicans insisted that funds were left over from prior COVID-19 aid packages.
Ultimately, HHS “shifted funds intended for coronavirus testing and other priorities” into the new initiative.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was one of the voices who “spent months pressing Congress for billions of dollars that could be used to develop next-generation vaccines and treatments,” the Post reported, adding that these arguments “largely fell flat” in the face of Republican opposition.
However, according to the Post, “Even some of the Republicans who blocked the White House’s coronavirus funding requests last year said they wanted a ‘Warp Speed 2.0’ to rush updated vaccines and treatments that would better fight the virus.”
In August 2022, former Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote to President Biden, stating “Operation Warp Speed was the most successful public health program since small pox. It saved millions of lives, and it should be resurrected as soon as possible.”
Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS, told the Post that the Biden administration learned lessons from Operation Warp Speed, including how to speed up vaccine development, and that these lessons would be applied to Project NextGen.
“We’ve learned a lot in these three years,” O’Connell said. She added that some of the lab work related to Project NextGen has begun, and that the government has launched efforts to identify potential partners in the private sector.
“We’ve begun surveying the landscape out there — assessing what vaccine candidates are available, [and] moving through what exciting technologies are there,” she said.
According to the Post, O’Connell and her team informed companies working on the development of monoclonal antibodies that the government may soon make new investments in the technology.
Jha, however, refused to set a timetable for when new products developed under the aegis of Project NextGen would be available to the public, the Post reported.
“The timelines are really going to be predicated on how quickly the scientific advancements continue, and how quickly we can study and measure the efficacy and safety of these products,” Jha said.
Project NextGen is also still without a leader, with the White House “still considering candidates,” according to the Post, which noted that the process is slowed down by “Democrats’ desire to avoid questions of conflicts of interest that dogged Operation Warp Speed, after Trump officials selected Moncef Slaoui, a pharmaceutical industry executive with significant stock holdings, to lead that program.”
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 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science | Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, United States |
Leave a comment
Elon Musk has accused a BBC reporter of lying about hate speech on Twitter. An audio excerpt from a Twitter Spaces discussion showed US-based tech journalist James Clayton struggling to justify his own questions on the alleged rise of offensive content on the social media platform.
At one point in the interview, Clayton asked Musk to respond to claims that hate speech had become more prevalent on Twitter, and that there was not enough moderation staff after Musk admitted to laying off over 80% of the company’s workforce since his takeover last October.
After Musk asked the reporter to clarify the allegations, Clayton claimed that he had personally seen more “hateful content” in his ‘For You’ feed since the billionaire took over the company.
The Twitter CEO then asked the journalist to define what he meant by “hateful content” and to provide at least one example of an offensive post he had seen.
Clayton replied that he views “hateful content” as “slightly racist” and “slightly sexist,” but struggled to provide any examples, admitting that hadn’t actually used the feed for several weeks.
“Then, I say, sir, that you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Musk interjected.
“You can’t provide a single example of hateful content, not even one Tweet. And yet, you claimed that hateful content was high. That is false. You just lied.”
The BBC reporter insisted that there are “many organizations” that have noted a rise in offensive content on the platform. Musk dismissed that notion, stating that “people say all sorts of nonsense,” which prompted Clayton to move on to the next topic.
The journalist then asked Musk about Twitter changing its Covid misinformation rules. The billionaire replied that “Covid is no longer an issue” and argued that the BBC itself could be accused of spreading misinformation about the virus and failing to report on the side-effects of vaccinations.
“And what about the fact that the BBC was put under pressure by the British government to change their editorial policy?” Musk asked.
Clayton deflected by saying the interview “wasn’t about the BBC.”
The British broadcaster later aired parts of the interview and simply ran with the headline: ‘Elon Musk speaks to the BBC’.
Despite his criticism of the broadcaster, Musk said during the interview that Twitter will change the BBC’s recently added “government-funded organization” label on the social media platform to say that it is “publicly-funded” instead.
April 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | BBC |
Leave a comment
Alvin Bragg, the New York City district attorney who made a name for himself by arresting Donald Trump, waxed triumphantly about his effort to take down the former president. You see, the Manhattan prosecutor said, no one is above the law in the “business capital of the world.”
“We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law,” Bragg told reporters last week, following Trump’s arraignment on 34 criminal charges. “No amount of money and no amount of power changes that enduring American principle.”
So as Bragg tells it, the patriotic decision to prosecute Trump was all about equal justice under the law. Never mind that Bragg campaigned for office by pledging to prosecute the locally hated ex-president in a county where Joe Biden won 86.8% of votes in the 2020 presidential election. And never mind that Bragg’s 2021 campaign for the Manhattan DA job was bankrolled largely by billionaire activist George Soros, the biggest donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes.
That’s right, Bragg says his case is legally and ethically righteous. However, a closer look at the indictment reveals that the charges he filed are so legally dubious that only a Manhattan jury of Trump haters might buy his story. He’s prosecuting Trump for allegedly falsifying business records six years ago, and he’s bypassing the two-year statute of limitations on such misdemeanors by elevating the charges to felonies. To make that possible under New York’s criminal code, he’s claiming the offenses were committed to cover up violations of election laws when Trump was running for president in 2016.
Those alleged violations stemmed from a supposed hush-money payment to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. The payment wasn’t illegal on its face, but if it was proven to have been made solely for the purpose of helping Trump win the election, it would exceed the legal limit for a political contribution. Both the Federal Election Commission and the US Department of Justice looked into the matter at the time and found no cause to pursue a case against Trump.
Even if you give Bragg the benefit of the considerable doubt regarding his motives for going after Trump – just as the 2024 election is approaching, with the former president polling as the top Republican candidate – it would be tough to argue that he’s driven by the interests of justice. For one thing, Bragg shows no interest in investigating the leaks of information about Trump’s prosecution to the media, which is itself a felony under New York law.
For another, his approach to justice is making the city increasingly more lawless. Bragg used his first memo after taking office as DA in January 2022 to direct prosecutors to quit sending so many criminals to prison and downgrade charges for such crimes as armed robbery and drug dealing. He also ordered his underlings to make sentencing recommendations that address racial disparities in incarceration – meaning the criminal’s punishment should depend at least partly on his or her skin color.
During Bragg’s first year as DA, 52% of the felony cases referred to his office were downgraded to misdemeanors (the opposite of the Trump charges being upgraded to felonies). Nearly half of the felony cases Bragg’s office did take on ended in defeat for the prosecution.
With many laws being enforced lightly, if at all, crime has surged in America’s largest city and the business capital of the world. Car thefts are at a 16-year high. There were more than 2,000 felony assaults committed in January alone, up 15% from a year earlier, according to police figures.
If there’s one thing on which Bragg appears to be really cracking down – other than Republican presidential candidates – it’s self-defense. Consider the case of Manhattan parking-garage attendant Moussa Diarra, who woke up in a hospital earlier this month to find himself handcuffed to his bed. The 57-year-old had been shot twice by a suspected car burglar. The suspect also was shot, during a tussle for his gun as the garage attendant fought for his life.
Weeping at his predicament, Diarra reportedly told his boss, “I got bullets in me, and I’m chained to a hospital bed, but I didn’t do anything wrong.” He was charged with attempted murder and illegal possession of a gun – the same gun that the suspected burglar, a career criminal with over 20 arrests on his rap sheet, used to shoot him.
The charges against Diarra were later dropped, “pending further investigation,” amid public outrage over the case. Diarra had to hire a lawyer, who suggested that his client was initially charged because the authorities hadn’t had time to sort out how the two men wound up shot. But police claimed the DA’s office directed the arrest and charging of the garage worker.
This might be viewed as an aberration, or merely an unfortunate circumstance for Diarra. Perhaps he was handcuffed to his hospital bed because police couldn’t immediately discern that he was a hero, rather than a perpetrator, so it was just a placeholder to charge him. That might be believable if not for Bragg’s pattern of trying to punish people who defend themselves.
Before Diarra, there was Jose Alba, a 61-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was attacked behind the counter of his Harlem store by a 35-year-old black ex-con last July. After sitting passively and pleading with the assailant, reportedly saying “Papa, I don’t want a problem,” Alba fought for his life as the attack escalated, stabbing the younger man to death. Surveillance video of the incident shows Alba being stabbed by the attacker’s girlfriend as he fights the man off.
Alba was arrested for murder and incarcerated at the notorious Rikers Island jail, where he reportedly didn’t even receive proper treatment for his stab wounds. His bail was initially set at $250,000. Bragg finally dropped the charge weeks later, but only after public outcry, including statements by Mayor Eric Adams and New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton that Alba clearly acted in self-defense. The DA didn’t charge the girlfriend who stabbed Alba.
In another case, Bragg broke a campaign promise to drop the charges against Tracy McCarter, a nurse who fatally stabbed her abusive husband, allegedly in self-defense. In other cases, he has downgraded charges against serial criminals, such as a man who had nearly 90 arrests on his record and had his bail set at just $1 after being busted last month for two alleged robberies on the same day.
In rationalizing his policies against enforcing some laws, Bragg has claimed that limited resources must be freed up to focus on violent crime. Yet, on his watch, violent criminals – at least those who weren’t acting in self-defense – have been set free without bail while awaiting trial. The DA cut a sweet plea-bargain deal for a man arrested for raping a teenager, requiring him to serve only 30 days in jail, but while out on bail and awaiting sentencing, he sexually assaulted five more people.
Nevertheless, with resources stretched thin and a poll showing that 40% of New York City office workers are considering leaving the city because of crime concerns, Bragg has found time to prosecute a political enemy. He’s doing so in a case stemming from seven-year-old allegations that the more relevant authorities – those who police federal elections – found unworthy of pursuing.
Whatever is going on with law enforcement in Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, it’s not about equal justice under the law – or any kind of true justice at all. This sort of unjust legal activism isn’t limited to New York, either. Soros has reportedly helped stake about 70 lawyers to victory in district attorney elections around the US. These social justice warriors have made their cities less safe and more racist, calibrating their prosecutorial policies to essentially legalize certain types of crime and favor certain categories of criminals.
MSNBC political analyst Peter Beinart recently offered a leftist’s perspective on what’s driving the prosecution of Trump, arguing that a coalition of groups that are historically victims of discrimination – black people, Jews and “LGBT folks” – have “come together to push back against the white Christian nationalist assault on American democracy.”
Yes, the aggrieved victim classes are so concerned about protecting democracy that they’re banding together to take down the leading Republican presidential candidate, potentially taking him off the 2024 election menu if they’re successful. They would love to dictate the candidates from which voters can choose because, you know, democracy.
The first arrest of a former US head of state is a clown show, which some foreign leaders have been honest enough to point out. For instance, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said, “Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted, but just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate. The United States’ ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
April 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Human rights, New York City, United States |
Leave a comment
Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart has quietly resigned after a month-long absence amid an inquiry into whether he faked data in multiple studies to inflate the prevalence of racism in the US, the Florida Standard reported last week.
A fellow of the American Society of Criminology, Stewart was first publicly accused of falsifying data in 2019 by the co-author of one of his studies, University of Albany criminology professor Justin Pickett, who claimed Stewart had made several misleading changes to the numbers in their 2011 paper ‘Ethnic threat and social control: Examining public support for judicial use of ethnicity in punishment’ immediately before publication.
The published study claimed that public desire for harsher sentences for black and Hispanic offenders increased in proportion with the size of the minority populations in a community. However, the study data showed no such relationship existed, and that the opposite might even be true. Pickett revealed that his colleague had doubled the sample size while leaving out nearly three quarters of the counties polled, mangling the data to the point of incoherence, and said Stewart refused to turn over the raw data so that Pickett could re-run the calculations himself.
That study and four more were subsequently retracted, but when Pickett tried to bring the matter to the university’s attention, he claims he was met with four months of stonewalling. When the school did eventually mount an inquiry, the three-person panel in charge included two people who had co-authored studies with Stewart, violating Florida State’s conflict of interest policy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that inquiry claimed it had not found enough evidence for fraud and advised against continuing the investigation.
Pickett told the Florida Standard that coverups by colleagues are common in the field, explaining “there’s a huge monetary incentive to falsify data and there’s no accountability. If you do this, the probability you’ll get caught is so, so low.”
Stewart, who is black, complained to the university that Pickett – who is white – had “essentially lynched [him] and [his] academic career.”
In 2020, a sixth paper authored by Stewart was retracted – though not before being cited by 186 other papers. Another investigation found enough merit in the fraud claims to pursue them, apparently imperiling Stewart’s $190,000 per year position. Florida State declined to discuss the matter with the Florida Standard, and Stewart’s profile is still live on the university’s website.
April 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
Leave a comment
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his senior officials are skimming American taxpayer dollars by the hundreds of millions, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Wednesday. The alleged grift even includes schemes involving trade with Russia itself.
Zelensky and his entourage embezzled at least $400 million from US funds meant for diesel procurement last year, Hersh claimed in a new article on Substack, citing a CIA estimate.
Meanwhile, Kiev has allegedly been buying diesel fuel, which is essential for the war effort, from Russia itself – and in the process skimming large sums of US funds earmarked for diesel payments.
Reports had earlier surfaced about how oil products originating in Russia had made their way to Ukraine through Bulgaria and Latvia. The scheme involving the Baltic state, which was reported in detail by the Latvian television program Neka Personiga, may have violated the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions.
An expert cited by Hersh compared the level of corruption in Ukrainian procurement to what was seen in Afghanistan, when a US-backed government was in charge in Kabul. According to his sources, ministries in Kiev compete to set up front firms in order to export weapons and ammunition, with the relevant officials profiting from kickbacks. The US government , meanwhile, has stated that it has seen no evidence of Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine being diverted elsewhere.
Hersh cited an intelligence source who referred to the January meeting between Zelensky and CIA Director William Burns. The US official allegedly presented a list of 35 generals and ministers known to the CIA to be corrupt. Senior Ukrainian officials also complained that Zelensky “was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals,” the source explained, comparing the meeting to a scene from a 1950s mob movie.
Hersh contends that the Ukrainian leader’s response was to fire staff from the Cabinet of Ministers, regional administrations, and other parts of the Ukrainian government. Kiev claimed the move was part of its anti-corruption strategy. Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, who became mired in a scandal over purchases of overpriced food for troops, was widely expected to be sacked at the time, but he survived the purge.
Hersh’s sources blamed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan for the ongoing crisis in the US government, which allegedly suffers from discord between the White House and intelligence community. The two top foreign policy officials have shown “strident ideology and lack of political skill” over the Ukraine conflict, according to the sources.
April 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception | Ukraine, United States |
Leave a comment
Aletho News 