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Iran unveils domestically-made hypersonic missile

The Cradle | June 6, 2023

On 6 June, the Aerospace Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) unveiled its first domestically-made hypersonic ballistic missile capable of traveling at 15 times the speed of sound with a range of 1,400 kilometers.

Named Fattah, or ‘Conqueror’ in Farsi, officials described the missile as “a generational leap.”

“Fattah can bypass the most advanced anti-ballistic missile systems of the United States and the Zionist regime, including Israel’s Iron Dome,” Iran’s state TV reported.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Chief Commander of the IRGC Major General Hossein Salami, and the Commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, attended the unveiling ceremony.

“Some may ask ‘what is the purpose of manufacturing missiles?’ They are for deterrence, for defense,” the Iranian president noted.

“We build missiles so that we do not suffer from aggression by the enemies and so that we have the power that the enemies would not even think of an act of aggression against the Islamic Republic,” Raisi said, adding that “Defense and missile industries have become indigenous in Iran. As Iran does not import its defense weapons, therefore nothing can threaten to marginalize this advanced industry.”

General Hajizadeh highlighted that Iran is now among only four countries that have the technology to manufacture hypersonic missiles, with the other three being Russia, China, and North Korea.

The US is also developing hypersonic missiles, but their program has trailed behind the others due to a lack of planning, technological gaps, and a belief in Washington that ballistic missiles are a better and cost-effective bet against an adversary.

“Our activities in this field do not end with the manufacturing of this missile. We will continue this path so that no enemy even imagines attacking Iran,” the IRGC commander asserted.

In November, Hajizadeh said Iran’s new hypersonic missile could reach Israel in 400 seconds.

Hypersonic weapons fly at speeds in excess of Mach 5, are capable of striking targets thousands of miles away in 15-30 minutes, and pose crucial challenges to missile defense systems because of their speed and maneuverability.

While a traditional ballistic missile travels into the atmosphere and then returns to earth on top of the target, a hypersonic missile travels much closer to the earth, eliminating the arch into the atmosphere and allowing for it to switch targets on the fly.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | 1 Comment

France Is Reportedly Making A Principled Stand Against NATO’s Expansion To Asia

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 6, 2023

The Financial Times cited eight unnamed sources who revealed that France is reportedly preventing the planned opening of NATO’s liaison office in Japan. According to them, Macron believes that this move violates the alliance’s charter, which limits its geographic reach to the North Atlantic. He’s also supposedly against anything that can contribute to NATO-Chinese tensions. The spanner that the French leader unexpectedly threw into the bloc’s Asian expansion plans comes after his trip to China in early April.

He visited the People’s Republic along with European Commissioner Von Der Leyen around two weeks after President Xi traveled to Moscow. Upon returning home, Macron revived his prior rhetoric about Europe’s strategic autonomy in the New Cold War, specifically saying that the continent should resist American pressure to take its side over Taiwan. Later that month, China’s Ambassador to the EU said that his country’s cooperation with the continent is as unlimited as its cooperation with Russia.

This sequence of events suggests that Macron’s rhetoric was sincere despite many in the Alt-Media Community suspecting that he was just trying to strategically disarm Russia with his words. About that alleged end goal, Kremlin spokesman Peskov confirmed in early June that Moscow doesn’t regard Paris as a suitable mediator in the NATO-Russian proxy war due to its direct involvement in it. Nevertheless, there’s also no denying that France’s reported stand against NATO’s Asian expansion is commendable.

That said, Macron’s position isn’t driven by the desire to do any favors for President Xi, but is predicated on his assessment of France’s national interests. In his mind, the bloc’s growing involvement on the other side of Eurasia needlessly provokes the People’s Republic, which is the EU’s top trade partner. Moreover, it could also make it more difficult for NATO to contain Russia in Europe if its members end up dividing their focus between that front and the Asia-Pacific.

Simply put, France has yet to fully abandon the notion of national interests like most of its liberal–globalist European peers have already done, which explains Macron’s reported resistance to NATO’s plans. His country’s different approach to International Relations is likely attributable to its neo-colonial empire in Africa, which is crumbling as a result of Russia’s “Democratic Security” inroads there over the past few years but still exists in some form.

No other NATO member has anything comparable, which is why the majority of them are predisposed to complying with the demands of this bloc’s US leader even at the expense of their own interests in pursuit of what Washington claims is the “greater good”. France might ultimately be pressured by the US and its vassals to such an extent that it’s forced to relent on its reported opposition to the bloc’s Asian expansion plans, but for now Macron is holding his ground in defense of his country’s national interests.

This observation proves that NATO’s internecine rifts are naturally occurring, just like the ones that the bloc has with Hungary and Turkiye, and not the result of foreign meddling like the Mainstream Media misleading implies is the case. While it’s true that the US exploited its proxy war with Russia to successfully reassert its unipolar hegemony over Europe, it failed to do so completely, and that’s why France still has a modicum of sovereignty left to resist NATO’s Asian expansion plans (at least for now).

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Is a Change of Course at State Department Coming?

Some senior officers are retiring but who and what will replace them?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 6, 2023

There are a lot of anonymous bureaucrats that man the offices in the nation’s capital. If one were to mention the name Wendy Sherman at a Washington DC cocktail gathering it is likely that few in the room will have ever heard of her, but she has long been one of the most important players in Democratic Party administrations when it comes to foreign policy in key parts of the world. Sherman, the Deputy Secretary of State, will be retiring this summer after more than thirty years with the Foreign Service. She has been a fixture in often controversial top level policy making since Bill Clinton was in the White House, where she served as a top adviser to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, also taking on the role of lead negotiator in the ultimately unsuccessful talks to stop North Korea’s ballistic missile program in the late 1990s. With a return to power of the Democrats in 2008, she served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Obama. To her credit, she was a lead negotiator with Iran on the 2015 nuclear agreement (JCPOA), which Donald Trump acting on bad advice subsequently withdrew from.

More recently, Sherman has been a key part of the Biden administration’s efforts to develop strategies to confront China in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere whenever Beijing has sought to develop trade relationships with key suppliers of essential raw materials. This has included putting pressure on allies like Australia and New Zealand in the Pacific to reject Chinese commercial initiatives, elevating what began as competitive trade policies into a perception that China was becoming a threat to American national security. Sherman also played a significant role in encouraging international diplomatic and military support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion.

Sherman’s current position as State Department number two was bestowed on her by President Joe Biden. Her comments relating to her retirement reveal something of her own philosophy as well as the views of the current administration. She said “The arc of history will only bend toward justice if people of conscience steer it in the right direction. That it is our job to have courage, to collaborate with others and seek out common ground, to persist against the odds, to use our voice and our power for good—to keep faith with the promise of our democracy and to never, ever lose hope. Diplomacy is not for the faint of heart…”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken not surprisingly praised Sherman’s career, saying that “President Biden asked Wendy to serve in this role because he knew he could count on her to help revitalize America’s alliances and partnerships and manage our complex relationships with competitors.” Blinken described Sherman’s lengthy career as a diplomat in a statement after her resignation was announced, saying she has “helped lead our engagement in the Indo-Pacific, the region where the history of the 21st century will be written. She has deepened our bonds with our friends around the world, especially with the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the European Union. She has overseen our efforts to strengthen the Department’s capabilities to manage our relationship with the People’s Republic of China, and built greater convergence with allies and partners… Her remarkable career – which spans more than three decades, three presidents, and five secretaries of state – addressed some of the toughest foreign policy challenges of our time. Our nation is safer and more secure, and our partnerships more robust, due to her leadership.”

One can expect kind words wrapped around positive government-speak both from Blinken and from Sherman herself after her admittedly long years of service, but there is something manifestly false about the euphoria over a US foreign policy that has during the Biden time in office eschewed diplomacy in favor of military threats and thousands of punitive Treasury Department sanctions. If anything, contradicting Blinken, the United States is in no way “safer and more secure” thanks to his and Wendy Sherman’s efforts, quite the contrary. It has, inter alia, converted major powers Russia and China, who were actively seeking normalized relations, into de facto enemies with all that implies, a result that, even if it does not turn into World War 3, might well mean the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency as the world moves towards increased financial and banking system multipolarity.

If Sherman and Blinken, acting on behalf of Joe Biden, have had a success it would consist of getting the allegedly defensive alliance NATO on board the China-phobia train, with Beijing joining Russia as one of the two great autocratic “threats to democracy.” At the end of June 2022, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, declared that China does represent “serious challenges” to the alliance, which, for the first time agreed to include “threats posed by Beijing” into plans for its “future strategy” concept (PDF), joining Russia as a threat to “NATO’s interests, security and values.” Stoltenberg explained how “We now face an era of strategic competition … China is substantially building up its forces, including in nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, including Taiwan. China is not [yet] our adversary but we must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents.”

Antony Blinken also climbed on to the horse that Stoltenberg was riding, commenting in familiar terms how “One of the things that [China’s] doing is seeking to undermine the rules-based international order that we adhere to, that we believe in, that we helped build. And if China’s challenging it in one way or another, we will stand up to that.” That the rules-based order is little more than a contrivance to maintain political and military dominance by Washington and its friends is by now clear to everyone except the people sitting in and around the White House, most particularly to include Blinken and Sherman.

So what comes next as the featured act post Wendy Sherman? It should be noted that the State Department top level is completely staffed by Jewish Americans who are politically-speaking neocons with close ties to Israel who also believe that the maintenance of total military dominance by the United State is good both for them and good for the Jewish state. All of them are Russo-phobes for various reasons often related to the history of Jews in Russia. Sherman recently participated in discussions in Washington with her Israeli counterpart intended to “…further deepen and expand the US-Israel relationship.” Someone should tell her that it is already far deeper than it should be if one were to go by American interests.

The current third in line at State is the notorious Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland who started the problems in Eastern Europe when she worked with her colleagues to overthrow and replace the existing government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland, who recently spilled the beans about direct US involvement in the Ukraine war, is married to leading neocon Robert Kagan. It has often been observed that neocon foreign policy, which originated with the Republican Party and is based on maintaining a US government monopoly on forms of international violence, has now come to dominate both parties.

If Biden chooses to pull a rabbit out of his hat and comes up with a replacement for Wendy Sherman who is actually in favor of active diplomacy as a mechanism to avoid war, I and many others will be pleasantly surprised and even astonished. More likely it will be Nuland or a Nuland clone or possibly someone having all the Democratic Party boxes checked, i.e. black, Jewish and a transexual who uses the right pronouns and pretends to be a woman. The fundamental problem is that the United States government is no longer run by people capable of acting in rational self-interest, which would mean doing things for the good of the country. The system is in reality broken and it is now clear that something has gone terribly wrong. The sad truth is that the United States is in decline, wallowing in debt and corruption, and Joe Biden and company have lost control, lying and misrepresenting nearly everything. So good bye Wendy! It was great having you at State where you and your friends turned competitors into enemies. It will be interesting to see what happens next!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | 1 Comment

Choked to death by hospital guards, for wearing a Covid mask too low

By Paul Stevens | TCW Defending Freedom | June 6, 2023

May 27, 2023 marked three years since the death of Stephanie Warriner. A coroner’s report records that this was the result of brain injuries consistent with ‘restraint asphyxia following struggle and exertion’, suffered more than two weeks earlier whilst a patient at Toronto General Hospital (TGH), Ontario. Stephanie’s alleged crime was failing to wear a Covid face mask properly. I recommend pausing to take that in.

Stephanie, 43, was a slight figure, 5ft 5in and 120lb. Having experienced long-term mental illness, including bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the mother of five was admitted to TGH on May 10 with what a civil suit filed by her family describes as a ‘productive cough’. A Covid test had been negative. Having gone in search of a sandwich in the early hours of May 11, she was confronted aggressively by five personnel, four of them security guards, about her improper use of a face mask, which they said was worn too low.

As recorded in the civil suit document, after being ‘berated’ and ‘demeaned’ by guards, Stephanie was forced towards a wall, thrown to the ground and restrained, with weight applied to her back. During this time she was forced into handcuffs. Once the guards removed their weight from her back, she was seen to be ‘limp and lifeless’ but they did not attempt resuscitation or call for help. Instead, they placed her in a wheelchair and removed her from the view of security cameras and witnesses.

About ten minutes later the guards, moving her body into an elevator bay, attempted to resuscitate her but, as the coroner’s report noted, because of the ‘downtime’ between the damage being incurred and measures being taken, she developed a brain injury from which she never recovered.

The majority of the incident was captured on CCTV and may be viewed here. (You will notice that during recording, the CCTV camera appears to be moved. More about this later.) As a result of the restraint, Stephanie went into cardiac arrest, but did not die immediately. In fact, she lived for another 16 days, being first intubated and placed in intensive care and then transferred to Toronto Western Hospital on May 15. No attempt was made to contact her family until May 22, a full 11 days after the incident.

In July, two of the guards were dismissed and two were the subject of unspecified ‘internal disciplinary action’. According to a media report, at this time Toronto police said investigators were ‘awaiting the results of a full autopsy and that the case was in its early stages’. Five months later Stephanie’s sister, Denise, was still awaiting information from the police. Finally, in early December 2020, two guards were each charged with two counts of criminal negligence causing death and one count of manslaughter.

In November, 2022, two and a half years after Stephanie’s death, an Ontario judge quashed the case against the two guards, due to come before a jury last month, saying there was ‘a lack of admissible evidence to support the findings necessary for making a placement order on both counts’. Subsequently, the Federal government declined to pursue further criminal action. This despite the coroner’s report and other evidence, such as the CCTV video and court documents submitted by the Crown for an earlier preliminary hearing which contain evidence that one of the guards lied in his deposition, having initially claimed that Stephanie had ‘delivered several overhand and underhand punches to [Guard A’s] face and was kicking her feet’, but then ‘later on, [Guard B] began sobbing and admitted he had not been truthful in the report, saying: “I’m sorry. I would have never said the things I said in there if I knew there was a video”.’

Speaking of the CCTV footage, over two minutes of it has never been seen – and never will be. During Stephanie’s interrogation and restraint the camera was intentionally moved to point elsewhere. The guard monitoring the CCTV from the security office claimed that he ‘suffers from anxiety’ and moved the camera because he was ‘anxious and concerned about the altercation and use of force between [Guard A] and Stephanie’. In their civil suit, her family make it clear that they believe the camera was moved to ‘shield the other defendant guards from any potential criminal liability’.

This tragedy was the direct result of the febrile atmosphere and enforcement of unevidenced, irrational and petty Covid mask rules. Contrast Stephanie’s case with that of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody that same month in Minneapolis. Protests were everywhere across the US and the entire world. Movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) sprang up. People were ‘taking the knee’ and filling their social media profiles with BLM images. There were calls for police forces to be defunded. Floyd himself achieved something close to beatification, with statues and wall paintings appearing widely. His police attackers received hefty prison sentences.

Stephanie Warriner? Nothing. Not a squeak. Because of a police and judicial embargo, it was barely a month ago that the public could even see the video and read about her death. Those who were implicated have walked free. And the health network which owns Toronto General and Toronto Western hospitals still tells us on its website that ‘in 2019, Toronto General was named among the world’s Top 10 Hospitals by Newsweek magazine’. It insists that its priorities include being ‘compassionate and caring’ with a focus on ‘quality and safety’.

Stephanie Warriner died, at the age of 43, for wearing a Covid face mask improperly. This in the very same city of Toronto where nurses unions’ had twice – in 2015 and 2018 – won cases against hospitals seeking to mask them at work over influenza, with the evidence in favour of masking ruled ‘insufficient, inadequate and completely unpersuasive’. As with so much harm which has been done to so many people in the name of ‘safety’ these past three years, it appears no one in authority questions this, much less cares.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

The COVID-19 Pass is Dead, Long Live the Global Digital Health Certification Network

It was never going away

NAKED EMPEROR | JUNE 6, 2023

You didn’t really think the Covid Pass had disappeared did you? Knowing my readers, I’m guessing you didn’t.

Yesterday, it was announced that the World Health Organization (WHO) has entered into an agreement with the European Union (EU) to use their digital COVID-19 certification system. This will be in order to establish a global system to “help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats, including pandemics”.

Going by the last few years, “global mobility” most likely means restricting the mobility of the unvaccinated and “protecting citizens” means only allowing vaccinated passengers to travel together.

The WHO says this is just the first building block in their Global Digital Health Certification Network (GDHCN). WHO Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wants to offer all WHO Member States access to this digital health tool, which is based on “the principles of equity, innovation, transparency and data protection and privacy”.

Equity is an immediate red flag word, whilst transparency probably means telling everyone whether you are vaccinated or not.

Since the EU Covid Pass was launched it has issued more than 2.3 billion certificates. The certificates don’t only cover vaccination but also include tests and recovery. The EU claim it facilitated safe travel for citizens and supported Europe’s hard-hit tourism industry. It says that the passes allowed the coordinated lifting of restrictions from the moment it was possible.

The EU Digital COVID Certificate Regulation was set to expire at the end of June but never one to let a good crisis go to waste, the WHO has jumped in and will takeover the system this month. It then aims to progressively develop the system in the coming months.

Some might think that this will only be used for more regular vaccines. Think again. One of the first things the WHO will do with the new system is to converge digital COVID-19 certificates. This will mean all certificates will meet EU standards, validating digital signatures to prevent fraud.

The WHO says it won’t have any access to underlying personal data but national governments will.

Commenting on the latest news, Christine Anderson MEP said “During COVID, we have all been made into “potential threats” whose individual freedoms and rights must be curtailed to “protect society”!

Rob Roos MEP said “The #Coronapas is a discriminatory instrument that has only created a false sense of safety.”

and George Orwell said “Bloody hell, guys. It’s worse than I thought”.

Dear World – Writers Write
This was never going away was it. The amount of money spent on it was one thing but the temptation to retain such a huge piece of bio-control over the population was another.

We wondered why the unvaccinated ICD-10 codes had been implemented. Another conspiracy theory come true.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

FDA’s ‘Rumor Control’ Hub Encourages Public to ‘Snitch’ on ‘Misinformation Spreaders’

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 6, 2023

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an updated “Rumor Control” hub aimed at enlisting the public to help stop the spread of “misinformation.”

The updated webpage, first launched in August 2022, includes a new video that defines misinformation as information that is “false, inaccurate, or misleading … spreading intentionally and unintentionally.”

The agency said its Rumor Control hub provides the public with tools to identify and report on “misinformation.”

“Some individuals and organizations promote opinions online disguised as fact,” the FDA site says, adding that misinformation spreads “six times faster than facts.”

The video warns that people may be misled by headlines or out-of-context statements, particularly when they are shared by a trusted person.

But, according to the video, people can determine whether something is actually true by getting the information from three types of “authoritative” sources that can be trusted to provide real facts: medical journals, a nonprofit “fact checker” or a government website.

“The FDA is concerned ‘health misinformation’ is negatively impacting the public’s health,” the agency said. The FDA tweeted the video to promote the hub.

The Rumor Control site includes links for reporting misinformation on all major social media sites. By following the links, users can find instructions to mark posts as “false news,” “false information” or “inappropriate content,” depending on the website.

“Bernie’s Tweets” on Twitter called the website the FDA’s “‘snitch’ page.”

https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1664917637455855617

“The federal government continues to try and fool the public into thinking misinformation is a dire problem and a crime,” Dr. Meryl Nass wrote on her Substack. “Misinformation is whatever the government does not want you to know.”

Nass added, “Clearly, the feds are getting nervous that their cons on the people are being recognized.”

The hub provides a poster that explains what misinformation is and how to address it “in language even a third grader can understand,” Nass wrote.

It explains that trusted authorities’ recommendations may change because science changes, but people should always “trust science.”

The site includes FDA-approved facts about COVID-19, sunscreen and supplements.

FDA’s project to ‘save lives’ by policing online content

Since FDA Commissioner Robert Califf began his second tenure as the agency’s head in February 2022, he has made combating “misinformation” one of his top priorities, arguing it is “a leading cause of preventable death in America now” — though “this cannot be proved,” he said.

In an Aug. 22, 2022, article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Califf wrote that “the global information environment has been contaminated by misinformation and disinformation.” He added:

“The FDA must be more proactive in preempting and countering misinformation [but there is a need for] collaboration across sectors to create an information environment in which decisions [by] consumers, patients, and clinicians are more likely to be informed by reliable information based on high-quality evidence from trustworthy sources.”

The Rumor Control initiative is one of several such initiatives launched during Califf’s tenure.

For example, the FDA also created a series of fact-checking YouTube videos — “Just a Minute” — that features Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, addressing COVID-19 “myths.”

The FDA also uses Twitter to tweet about misinformation, and Instagram to post memes encouraging vaccination.

Califf said that he believes “in the power of social media being used for good,” Fierce Pharma reported.

According to The Associated Press (AP), the FDA also can use a tactic known as “prebunking,” by which the agency defines something as “misinformation” before readers have an opportunity to encounter it elsewhere as possibly true.

The FDA has the ability to do this because Google “prioritizes credible websites” like the FDA’s in its searches.

Rumor Control works as a prebunking strategy that “debunks a long list of false claims about vaccines” and presents them first in people’s Google searches, according to the AP.

Califf previously worked at Verily, a life sciences company owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc.

Fact-checking the FDA

The most current version of the FDA’s fact check on COVID-19, linked from the Rumor Control hub, assures readers, for example, that vaccination does not make people more susceptible to the latest variants of COVID-19 and that the vaccine is safe for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

But just last week, the Cleveland Clinic published a peer-reviewed study that found the more doses of COVID-19 vaccines a person receives, the higher the risk of getting the virus.

A number of recent studies revealed striking risks to pregnant women who get the COVID-19 vaccine and identified serious flaws in the methods government agencies used to conclude they are safe.

Government health officials knew about several of those studies, including Pfizer’s own clinical trial studies, before they recommended the shots for pregnant women.

The FDA also came under fire for granting Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 12-15 despite having identified that “safety signals” existed for myocarditis in young males following COVID-19 jabs.

The FDA, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, withheld this information from the public.

In the last two years, the FDA also was widely criticized for granting approval to an unproven Alzheimer’s drug, for its delayed response to a contaminated baby formula plant and for approving the respiratory syncytial virus vaccine for pregnant women despite concerns about premature births identified in clinical trials, among many other issues.

Nass wrote that in 1992, Congress passed the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which allowed the FDA to charge manufacturers to regulate their products, compromising its integrity to such an extent that the FDA has become “a rogue agency for hire.”

Most funding the FDA uses to evaluate whether drugs are safe and effective comes from industry, she wrote, and most drugs seeking approval get fast-tracked and evaluated in just six months.

Manufacturers of drugs that are dangerous can often avoid liability by working with the FDA to write the label in such a way that meets disclosure requirements.

“So if you are looking to avoid misinformation, the FDA is the last place you might go to for truth, honesty, ethics and consideration of the public’s welfare,” Nass wrote.

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Rule by Decree: The Emergency State’s Plot to Override the Constitution

By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | June 6, 2023

We have become a nation in a permanent state of emergency.

Power-hungry and lawless, the government has weaponized one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security.

COVID-19, for example, served as the driving force behind what Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch characterized as “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”

In a statement attached to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Arizona v. Mayorkas, a case that challenged whether the government could continue to use it pandemic powers even after declaring the public health emergency over, Gorsuch provided a catalog of the many ways in which the government used COVID-19 to massively overreach its authority and suppress civil liberties.

Yet while the government’s (federal and state) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic delivered a knockout blow to our civil liberties, empowering the police state to flex its powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., it was merely one crisis in a long series of crises that the government has shamelessly exploited in order to justify its power grabs and acclimate the citizenry to a state of martial law disguised as emergency powers.

These attempts to use various crises to override the Constitution are still happening.

It doesn’t even matter what the nature of the crisis might be: civil unrest, the national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

They have all become fair game to a government that continues to quietly assemble, test and deploy emergency powers a long laundry list of terrifying powers that override the Constitution and can be activated at a moment’s notice.

We’re talking about lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level): the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die.

While these are powers the police state has been working to make permanent, they barely scratch the surface of the far-reaching powers the government has unilaterally claimed for itself without any pretense of being reined in or restricted in its power grabs by Congress, the courts or the citizenry.

As David C. Unger, observes in The Emergency State: America’s Pursuit of Absolute Security at All Costs, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have given way to permanent crisis management.”

The seeds of this ongoing madness were sown several decades ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.“

Comprising the country’s Continuity of Government (COG) plan, these directives (National Security Presidential Directive 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20), which do not need congressional approval, provide a skeletal outline of the actions the president will take in the event of a “national emergency.”

Just what sort of actions the president will take once he declares a national emergency can barely be discerned from the barebones directives. However, one thing is clear: in the event of a national emergency, the COG directives give unchecked executive, legislative and judicial power to the president.

The country would then be subjected to martial law by default, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be suspended.

Essentially, the president would become a dictator for life.

It has happened already.

As we have witnessed in recent years, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president.

The emergency powers that we know about which presidents might claim during such states of emergency are vast, ranging from imposing martial law and suspending habeas corpus to shutting down all forms of communications, including implementing an internet kill switch, and restricting travel.

Yet according to documents obtained by the Brennan Center, there may be many more secret powers that presidents may institute in times of so-called crisis without oversight from Congress, the courts, or the public.

Remember, these powers do not expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

So, too, every action taken by the current occupant of the White House and his predecessors to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the executive branch of government makes us that much more vulnerable to those who would abuse those powers in the future.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

This is what you might call a stealthy, creeping, silent, slow-motion coup d’état.

If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.

We must recalibrate the balance of power.

For starters, Congress should put an end to the use of presidential executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements as a means of getting around Congress and the courts.

At a minimum, as The Washington Post suggests, “all emergency declarations [s]hould expire automatically after three or six months, whereupon Congress would need to vote upon any proposed extension.”

We’ve got to start making both the president and the police state play by the rules of the Constitution.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it must start with “we the people.”

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org.

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute.

Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Western journalists face huge censorship in Ukraine – media

RT | June 6, 2023

The Ukrainian government imposes severe restrictions on Western reporters, forcing them to show only what the military wants them to see and stripping the credentials of those who tell uncomfortable truths, the news site Semafor reported on Monday.

Journalists from NBC News, the New York Times, CNN, and The New Yorker have all clashed with the Ukrainian government after they strayed outside the strict limits imposed on their work by Kiev, Semafor reported.

“The authorities only allow press tours with press officers, where they show off in front of the camera and are afraid to show the real situation,” Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk wrote on Instagram in May after Ukrainian authorities threatened to strip his press accreditation. Dondyuk had taken pictures of the dire conditions in Ukrainian trenches for a New Yorker article.

New York Times journalist Thomas Gibbons-Neff has had his credentials revoked on several occasions, including after he reported that Ukrainian forces were using banned cluster munitions. Magnum photographer Antoine d’Agata had his access denied after documenting the psychological suffering of Ukrainian soldiers in a mental health facility. An NBC News crew had their press passes revoked after they traveled to Crimea and interviewed locals who were happy to live in Russia and supported the Russian military.

Journalists working in Ukraine have to sign a document stating that they will follow rules set by the military, and can only interview approved officials and visit approved areas. Furthermore, three journalists working in Kiev told Semafor that reporters have been asked “to take lie detector tests to prove they aren’t Russian agents.”

Reporters have no choice but to comply, or be left out of work. One anonymous journalist said that Ukrainian authorities “might snatch my press credential” if they found out he complained about the situation to Semafor. Others have been more eager to accept the bargain, with Semafor noting that “most Western news outlets treat Ukrainian soldiers as, at some level, ‘our boys’.”

Some Ukrainian reporters, however, feel that the restrictions are counterproductive. Dondyuk said that they inevitably lead to “only stupid propaganda” making it out of Ukraine, while Nastya Stanko, a correspondent for Ukrainian news site Hromadske, said: “It’s more important to have journalists who can honestly show what happens on the front lines, and I’m not sure it’s clear to everyone in the army.”

Aside from losing accreditation, journalists who anger the Ukrainian government can face more serious consequences. After reporting from Crimea, NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons found his name published on the ‘Mirotvorets’ (Peacemaker) blacklist for “crimes” against the country. Linked to the Ukrainian state, Mirotvorets posts the names and personal details of Ukraine’s “enemies,” some of whom have been murdered after their inclusion in the database. When someone on the list is killed or dies in other circumstances, text reading “liquidated” is imposed over the individual’s photograph on the site.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Ukraine blew up Kakhovka dam as revenge for failed offensive – Kremlin

RT | June 6, 2023

Ukrainian forces sabotaged the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in Russia’s Kherson Region in a bid to deprive Crimea of drinking water and distract from its faltering counteroffensive, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Tuesday.

The dam was partially destroyed early on Tuesday morning, sending torrents of water downstream and flooding towns and villages along the path of the Dnieper River.

“We are talking about a deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side,” Peskov told reporters. “This sabotage could potentially lead to very serious consequences for several tens of thousands of inhabitants of the region, environmental consequences and consequences of a different nature, which have yet to be established.”

Peskov claimed that one of the key goals of the attack was to deprive Crimea of water. Crimea’s 2 million residents largely receive their water from the North Crimean Canal, which is fed from the reservoir above the Kakhovka dam.

“This sabotage is also connected with the fact that, having launched large-scale offensive operations two days ago, the Ukrainian armed forces are not achieving their goals,” Peskov continued. Russia’s Defense Ministry has said it repelled several large-scale attacks in the southern sector of the front in recent days. These “offensive actions are choking,” Peskov stated.

Ukrainian officials and their European backers have accused Russia of blowing up the dam, with European Council President Charles Michel calling the attack “a war crime.” Moscow “strongly rejects” the accusation, Peskov said.

While the flooding now makes it difficult for Ukrainian forces to cross the Dnieper and attack Russia’s defensive lines, the destruction of the dam also appears to aid a number of Ukraine’s key objectives. The flooding mostly threatens the eastern bank of the river, where Russian troops withdrew to last year amid concerns that the Ukrainian military would blow up the dam.

With the dam destroyed, the level of the Dnieper has fallen further upstream, including at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant. Ukrainian troops made several attempts to cross the river to recapture the plant from Russian forces last year, and lowering the water level would remove a major obstacle to future attempts. Additionally, the Soviet-era plant depends on water from the Dnieper to cool its reactors and its spent fuel rods.

The Ukrainian military conducted a test strike on the dam using an American-supplied HIMARS launcher last year, Ukrainian General Andrey Kovalchuk told the Washington Post in December.

Two months earlier, Russia’s envoy to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, warned the UN Security Council that Kiev’s forces were considering a “reckless” attack on the dam with sea mines or missiles. “The authorities in Kiev and their Western backers will bear full responsibility for all the consequences of such a devastating scenario,” Nebenzia cautioned.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , | 2 Comments

Don’t Forget WaPo’s Report From December About Kiev’s Plans To Blow Up The Kakhovka Dam

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 6, 2023

The partial destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on early Tuesday morning saw Kiev and Moscow exchange accusations about who’s to blame, but a report from the Washington Post (WaPo) in late December extends credence to the Kremlin’s version of events. Titled “Inside the Ukrainian counteroffensive that shocked Putin and reshaped the war”, its journalists quoted former commander of November’s Kherson Counteroffensive Major General Andrey Kovalchuk who shockingly admitted to planning this war crime:

“Kovalchuk considered flooding the river. The Ukrainians, he said, even conducted a test strike with a HIMARS launcher on one of the floodgates at the Nova Kakhovka dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the Dnieper’s water could be raised enough to stymie Russian crossings but not flood nearby villages. The test was a success, Kovalchuk said, but the step remained a last resort. He held off.”

His remark about how “the step remained a last resort” is pertinent to recall at present considering that the first phase of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive completely failed on Monday according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Just like Ukraine launched its proxy invasion of Russia in late May to distract from its loss in the Battle of Artyomovsk, so too it seems it might have gone through with Kovalchuk’s planned war crime to distract from this most recent embarrassment as well.

The above-mentioned explanation isn’t as far-fetched as some might initially think either. After all, one of complexity theory’s precepts is that initial conditions at the onset of non-linear processes can disproportionately shape the outcome. In this context, the first failed phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive risked ruining the entire campaign, which could have prompted its planners to employ Kovalchuk’s “last resort” in order to introduce an unexpected variable into the equation that might improve their odds.

Russia had over 15 months to entrench itself in Ukraine’s former eastern and southern regions that Kiev still claims as its own through the construction of various defensive structures and associated contingency planning so as to maintain its control over those territories. It therefore follows that even the most properly supplied and thought-out counteroffensive wasn’t going to be a walk in the park contrary to the Western public’s expectations, thus explaining why the first phase just failed.

This reality check shattered whatever wishful thinking expectations Kiev might have had since it showed that the original plan of swarming the Line of Contact (LOC) entails considerable costs that reduce the chances of it succeeding unless something serious happens behind the front lines to distract the Russian defenders. Therein lies the strategic reason behind partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam on Tuesday morning exactly as Kovalchuk proved late last year is possible to pull off per his own admission to WaPo.

The first of Kiev’s goals that this terrorist attack served was to prompt global concern about the safety of the Russian-controlled Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which relies on water from the now-rapidly-depleting Kakhovka Reservoir for cooling. The International Atomic Energy Agency said that there’s “no immediate nuclear safety risk”, but a latent one can’t be ruled out. Should a crisis transpire, then it could throw Russia’s defenses in northern Zaporozhye Region into chaos.

The second goal is that the downstream areas of Kherson Region, which are divided between Kiev and Moscow, have now been flooded. Although the water might eventually recede after some time, this could complicate Russia’s defensive plans along the left bank of the Dnieper River. Taken together with the consequences connected to the first scenario, this means that a significant part of the riparian front behind the LOC could soon soften up to facilitate the next phase of Kiev’s counteroffensive.

In fact, the geographic scope of Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” might even expand to Crimea due to the threat that Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack could pose to the peninsula’s water supply via its eponymous canal. The regional governor said that sufficient supplies remain for now but that the coming days will reveal the level of risk. While Crimea still managed to survive Kiev’s blockade of the canal for eight years, there’s no doubt that this development is disadvantageous for Russia.

The fourth strategic goal builds upon the three that were already discussed and concerns the psychological warfare component of this attack. On the foreign front, Kiev’s gaslighting that Moscow is guilty of “ecocide” was amplified by the Mainstream Media in spite of Kovalchuk’s damning admission to WaPo last December in order to maximize global pressure on Russia, while the domestic front is aimed at sowing panic in Ukraine’s former regions with the intent of further softening Russia’s defenses there.

And finally, the last strategic goal that was served by partially destroying the Kakhovka Dam is that Russia might soon be thrown into a dilemma. Kiev’s “unconventional softening operation” along the Kherson-Zaporozhye LOC could divide the Kremlin’s focus from the Belgorod-Kharkov and Donbass fronts, which could weaken one of those three and thus risk a breakthrough. The defensive situation could become even more difficult for Russia if Kiev expands the conflict by attacking Belarus and/or Moldova too.

To be absolutely clear, the military-strategic dynamics of the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine still favor Russia for the time being, though that’s precisely why Kiev carried out Tuesday morning’s terrorist attack in a desperate attempt to reshape them in its favor. This assessment is based on the observation that Russia’s victory in the Battle of Artyomovsk shows that it’s able to hold its own against NATO in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition” that the bloc’s chief declared in mid-February.

Furthermore, even the New York Times admitted that the West’s sanctions failed to collapse Russia’s economy and isolate it, while some of its top influencers also admitted that it’s impossible to deny the proliferation of multipolar processes in the 15 months since the special operation began. These include German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, former US National Security Council member Fiona Hill, and Goldman Sachs’ President of Global Affairs Jared Cohen.

The military-strategic dynamics described in the preceding two paragraphs will inevitably doom the West to defeat in the New Cold War’s largest proxy conflict thus far unless something major unexpectedly happens to change them, which is exactly what Kiev was trying to achieve via its latest terrorist attack. The reason why few foresaw this is because Kovalchuk admitted to WaPo last December that his side had previously planned to blow up part of the Kakhovka Dam as part of its Kherson Counteroffensive.

It therefore seemed unthinkable that Kiev would ultimately do just that over half a year later and then gaslight that Moscow was to blame when the Mainstream Media itself earlier reported the existence of Ukraine’s terrorist plans after quoting the same Major General who bragged about them at the time. Awareness of this fact doesn’t change what happened, but it can have a powerful impact on the Western public’s perceptions of this conflict, which is why WaPo’s report should be brought to their attention.

June 6, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | | Leave a comment

THE CIRCUMCISION DECISION

Candace Owens | May 26, 2023

In the United States, 70-80% of all males are circumcised at birth. We’ve been led to believe that circumcision is sanitary, but as Candace shows, the evidence might not support this. She also reveals the ugly truth about the ways in which hospitals are raking in money from selling infant foreskins to the beauty industry for use in skin creams.

It’s time for a black exit. Buy my book “Blackout” to read why: https://utm.io/ueSdT

LIKE & SUBSCRIBE for new videos. https://www.youtube.com/c/Candaceshow

Sources:
Boston Children’s Hospital on Hemorrhagic Disease of the Newborn
https://www.childrenshospital.org/conditions/hemorrhagic-disease-newborn\

NIH – Risk factors, presentations and outcome of the haemorrhagic disease of newborn
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19486577/

World Population Review – Circumcision Stats
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/circumcision-by-country

NIH – Decline in male circumcision in South Korea
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3526493/

CDC – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s): Vitamin K and the Vitamin K Shot Given at Birth
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/vitamink/faqs.html

American Cancer Society – Can Penile Cancer Be Prevented?
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/penile-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/prevention.html

Haematological Basis of 8th Day Male Child Circumcision in The Holy Bible
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321462229_Haematological_Basis_of_8th_Day_Male_Child_Circumcision_in_The_Holy_Bible

Babble – Weird but True: Uses for the Foreskins of Circumcised Babies
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/tagged/health/parenting/weird-but-true-uses-for-the-foreskins-of-circumcised-babies-2408432.html

Crutchfield Dermatology – What Do Hospitals Do With Circumcised Foreskin?
https://www.crutchfielddermatology.com/blog/what-do-hopitals-do-with-circ..

June 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 1 Comment