Walensky Warns Public to Beware of ‘Misinformation’ and ‘Politicized Science’
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 5, 2023
As she ended her tenure last week as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned the American public to be on guard against “misinformation” and the “politicization of science.”
Walensky told The Wall Street Journal she hopes Americans will make health decisions based on “their own risk assessment and their own personal risks, but not through politics,” emphasizing that public health recommendations also shouldn’t be politicized.
“Ironically, this comes after two-and-a-half years of Walensky misinforming the public and politicising the science,” investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., wrote on her Substack.
Demasi and many others took to Twitter to remind people of Walensky’s false statements and politicized decision-making.
Walensky last week published a farewell op-ed in The New York Times, in which she wrote that public health is critically important in the U.S., and yet she “fear[s] the despair from the pandemic is fading too quickly from our memories.”
She complained that “the agency [CDC] has been sidelined, chastened by early missteps with Covid and battered by persistent scrutiny.”
She also told the WSJ that public health shouldn’t fall along partisan lines.
Yet stark political partisanship defined her time at the CDC. The WSJ reported that a recent KFF poll showed political affiliation was the strongest demographic predictor of COVID-19 vaccination. And about one-quarter of Americans don’t trust the CDC’s health recommendations, according to a 2022 survey published in the journal Health Affairs.
Walensky acknowledged “missteps in communicating” by the CDC, which, she said, “could have done a better job” making it clear to the public that the agency’s message could change during the pandemic.
But, she told the WSJ, the CDC has a plan to regain public trust in the future — by working directly with media organizations to discuss how to best shape public opinion prior to releasing scientific information to the public.
She said the CDC plans to use a method called “prebunking,” where they will communicate directly with media organizations before they release information to let the media know which details about public health might be “misconstrued.”
According to The Associated Press (AP) “prebunking” by public health agencies allows the agencies to define something as “misinformation” before readers have an opportunity to encounter it elsewhere as possibly true.
Then search engines such as Google prioritize “credible websites” like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) or the CDC’s in its searches.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, the Virality Project and Google are among those who have promoted prebunking as a way to combat misinformation.
Journalist Kim Iversen proposed a different approach Walensky might take to restoring public trust in the CDC.
She said:
“Well, the way to do it is to apologize, to own up to your lies, to own up to the mistakes that you made and to discuss why you did that, why the agency followed such political partisanship when they should have been following science, why they ignored the science that was right in front of them.”
CDC broadcast a long list of ‘misinformation’ during Walensky’s tenure
Throughout her tenure at the CDC, which began when Biden took office in January 2021, Walensky made a series of public statements that have proven to be false.
Evidence has since emerged that Walensky knew many of these statements were false when she made them.
In March 2021, Walensky famously told Rachel Maddow, that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
The CDC was forced to walk back her statements a few days later. But that message was the basis for vaccine mandates imposed later that year by the Biden administration, businesses, universities and public venues throughout the country.
In a mid-June congressional hearing, Walensky defended her March statements, claiming they were true at the time.
But the Washington Examiner reported on June 20 that emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request showed Walensky and Dr. Francis Collins were aware of and discussed “breakthrough cases” of COVID-19 in January 2021 — just before the vaccines became widely available — and yet continued to tell the public the vaccines would prevent transmission.
In that same congressional testimony, Walensky also defended the mask mandates, saying that the summary of Cochrane’s review — which found wearing masks in the community “probably makes little to no difference” in preventing viral transmission — had been “retracted.”
But it was neither retracted nor had the authors of the review changed the language in the summary, Demasi reported.
In June 2021, Walensky told “Good Morning America” that the risk of myocarditis was extremely rare, and there was overwhelming data the vaccines were safe for children — even after hundreds of cases of myocarditis had been reported and the CDC had been aware of a safety signal since February.
Under Walensky, the CDC also gave false information on vaccine safety monitoring, added the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood vaccine schedule despite known harms, withheld data on boosters from the agency’s own advisers and told pregnant women the vaccine was safe — just days after Pfizer reportedly finalized a report demonstrating it wasn’t.
In a March study by Krohnert and others, researchers compiled instances of errors in data presented by the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic in publications, press releases, interviews and Twitter. The authors reported 25 instances where the agency under Walensky promoted demonstrably false numbers.
In most (80%) cases, the CDC exaggerated the severity of the pandemic. For example, Walensky gave a briefing on June 23, 2022, during which she claimed COVID-19 was a “top 5 cause of death” in children, which was untrue.
Most recently, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic gave Walensky until July 12 to turn over phone records involving American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten. The House is investigating potential political interference on the part of AFT with the CDC’s school reopening recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Defender reported.
Walensky warns of ‘future threats’
Walensky warned at the end of her Times op-ed:
“I want to remind America: The question is not if there will be another public health threat, but when. The C.D.C. needs public and congressional support if it is going to be prepared to protect you from future threats.”
To take on these “future threats” the Biden administration nominated Dr. Mandy Cohen, an internal medicine physician and former state health secretary of North Carolina, to replace Walensky.
But critics warn Cohen is “a public health COVID authoritarian” who is “fully entrenched in the ‘bio-pharmaceutical complex.’”
Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohen failed to recognize therapeutics and natural immunity, and supported lockdowns, vaccine mandates and masking.
Cohen comes to the CDC from the private sector, where she is executive vice president of Aledade and CEO of Aledade Care Solutions, whose executive leadership and board of directors includes people with connections to the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Walensky congratulated Cohen on her nomination, describing her as “a respected public health leader who helped North Carolina successfully navigate” COVID-19, and whose “unique experience and accomplished tenure in North Carolina … make her perfectly suited to lead CDC as it moves forward by building on the lessons learned from COVID-19 to create an organization poised to meet public health challenges of the future.”
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.
Dr. Paul Offit Lets Us Know ‘the Experts’ Have Officially Lost Their Minds
By Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | July 5, 2023
I don’t have a big presence on Twitter. I don’t find the platform suitable for exploring and critiquing interesting ideas. You can say only so much in 280 characters. It’s great for inciting someone or dropping a witty comeback or link without much context.
At least that’s what I thought. Then I stumbled upon a tweet from Dr. Paul Offit. He’s taught me that you can convey a lot in a few short sentences.
Who is Dr. Paul Offit?
Offit is a big name in vaccines. Beyond what is listed below, he also sat on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is presently a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
He’s had a say in the approval and/or authorization of many biologics, including the COVID-19 mRNA products.
Briefly, Offit is:
- Director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
- Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
- An internationally recognized expert in the fields of virology and immunology.
- A founding advisory board member of the Autism Science Foundation and the Foundation for Vaccine Research.
- A member of the Institute of Medicine and co-editor of the foremost vaccine text, “Vaccines.”
- The author or co-author of more than 150 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety.
- The co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq®, recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC.
- A recipient of the Charles Mérieux Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.
His list of accomplishments goes on.
I don’t pretend to know more about vaccines than he does. I’m just an anesthesiologist and engineer. He must be a very smart person. Which is why this tweet is so baffling:
Why is Offit tweeting about placebos and saltwater right now?
It has to do with a truth bomb Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped at a town hall event last week.
According to Kennedy, chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense, he and attorney Aaron Siri sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after HHS refused to meet their demand to produce at least one study comparing the safety of a vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule with a true placebo.
In a written response received more than a year later, the HHS did not cite a single such study, instead claiming:
“Inert placebo controls are not required to understand the safety profile of a new vaccine, and are thus not required.”
This stupefying claim made by Melinda Wharton, M.D., MPH, acting director of the National Vaccine Program Office, should be attacked on podcasts and publications everywhere.
How do you know that a new vaccine is safe if it isn’t tested against an inert placebo, Dr. Wharton?
If you are someone who is willing to abandon basic logic and trust every single word spewed by our public health agencies, ask yourself, why then does the FDA demand that medicines be tested against a placebo to ensure safety prior to licensure?
Twitter lit up around this pivotal topic. The tweet from one of the foremost vaccine experts in the world (Offit) was in response to Siri, who, according to Offit, asserted that virtually all vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule, including RotaTeq (Offit’s brainchild), were not licensed by the FDA based on a placebo-controlled clinical trial.
Let’s break down Offit’s attack on Siri. Offit states: “The purpose of placebos, which are immunologically inert, is to determine the effect of the vaccine.”
Yes, Dr. Offit, one purpose of a placebo is to determine the effect of the vaccine. In order to prove that it works, it must do better than an immunologically inert substance. In other words, it must exceed the so-called placebo effect.
But that’s not the only purpose placebos serve. With regard to safety, a new vaccine has to be compared to something that has the least possible chance of causing deleterious effects.
To be clear, those who eschew a vaccine do not get in line for a shot of an “immunologically inert substance.” They stay away from the vaccine clinic altogether and take their chances.
This is why the placebo must be a true placebo. The best we can possibly do is use saline, a saltwater solution that reasonably matches the sodium concentration in our plasma. It is what is used to dilute medications and replenish blood volume. It’s what you use to store your contact lenses.
Offit then adds this:
“[Aaron Siri] believes that only water or salt water are placebos because they ‘have no effect on living beings.’ That’s absurd. Drink enough water, and you can cause a seizure. Salt can also be toxic.”
Offit is saying that by drinking a large amount of water the plasma sodium concentration in a person can abruptly decrease which, in fact, can lower the seizure threshold. He’s not wrong, it does happen in pathological conditions, especially in the critically ill.
Can salt be toxic? Yes. Ingestion of a large amount of salt will stimulate properly functioning kidneys to increase the absorption of free water, thus mitigating the effect of the salt load. This can cause volume overload and put a person at risk for heart failure and pulmonary edema.
So what — if not 0.2 ml of saline — should we use for a placebo, Dr. Offit? A tiny aliquot of adjuvants (that can include elements like aluminum)? Pro-inflammatory lipid nanoparticles? Viral or toxin deactivators like formaldehyde? Preservatives like thimerosal that contain mercury, one of the most potent neurotoxins known (yes, mercury in this form is still in some flu vaccines according to the CDC)?
All of these substances are “immunologically inert.”
But why would you consider using them as a placebo control if not to mask the potential harm of the vaccine in question?
Is that how inventors of vaccines for our children view placebos? Is that how advisory committee members on the FDA view them? What about the other advisory board members of the Autism Science Foundation? Why would anyone trust any vaccine on the childhood immunization schedule after such comments?
You don’t have to be Maurice R. Hilleman Chair of Vaccinology at the Perelman School of Medicine to see that your comments here are misleading, disingenuous and purposefully inciting.
Moreover, they don’t make any sense.
What would other recipients of your long list of awards have to say about your comments on placebos? I don’t think they would approve, sir.
Your public statements also sully the excellent reputation of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and those who were lucky to train there, like me.
Dr. Setty has been a board certified anesthesiologist since 2002 and has held various leadership positions in his clinical practice.
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.
GOP Pushes Back on White House Effort to Renew Intel Agencies’ Spying Tool
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 5, 2023
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly in the GOP, are pushing back against the renewal of a law authorizing a tool used by US spy agencies, in the post 9/11 era, to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets and Americans with whom they may be interacting.
The New York Times has excoriated these conservatives for no longer being staunch supporters of the mass surveillance state.
Congressional leaders in both parties have warned the White House that the law which legalizes this unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens, Section 702, will not be renewed absent significant changes. For instance, such reforms would prohibit federal agents from obtaining phone, email, and other electronic communications records of Americans interfacing with targeted foreign individuals.
“There’s no way we’re going to be for reauthorizing that in its current form — no possible way,” declared Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), adding “we’re concerned about surveillance, period.”
Congress ostensibly granted the spy agencies this authority by creating Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act in 2008. Since then, it has been renewed twice with strong GOP backing. But for years, this law has faced opposition from Democrats over similar contemporary conservative concerns that it grossly violates Americans’ civil liberties.
The expiration date on the law is coming up in December, but growing animosity toward the spy bureaucracies’ abuse of power has led to a surge of resistance on the Republican side as well.
“You couldn’t waterboard me into voting to reauthorize 702,” insisted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who supported the program’s reauthorization five years ago. The Congressman cited instances of the spy powers being used to infringe on the rights of political dissidents on both the left and right. “These 702 authorities were abused against people in Washington on January 6 and they were abused against people who were affiliated with the BLM movement, and I’m equally aggrieved by both of those things,” Gaetz said.
Even after nominal reforms in the past, the 2018 renewal enhanced the ability of the intelligence agencies to carry out its massive surveillance of Americans. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains,
The bill that was most recently passed, S. 139, endorses nearly all warrantless searches of databases containing Americans’ communications collected under Section 702. It allows for the restarting of “about” collection, an invasive type of surveillance that the [National Security Agency] ended in 2017 after being criticized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for privacy violations. And it includes a six-year sunset, delaying Congress’ best opportunity to debate the limits [of] NSA surveillance.
Supporters of the sweeping powers to spy on Americans speaking with foreigners in the spy agencies’ crosshairs are hoping to shift the conversation to China in order to gain the favor of Republicans who favor a more bellicose policy against Beijing.
In the Asia-Pacific, more than a decade ago, Barack Obama’s administration launched the largest military buildup since the Second World War eyeing a future war with Beijing. While Donald Trump substantially expanded the encirclement of China during his term, Joe Biden and his government have been vastly more aggressive than their predecessors.
This White House has doubled down on preparations for conflict and concurrently ramped up its economic war against China. However, many Republicans see Biden as weak and agitate for a more confrontational posture. With this in mind, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has implored this surveillance capability is “crucial” to counter China, as well as other supposed national security threats like Russia. The Biden team is busy making this case with lawmakers.
This strategy may not be successful, according to the Times, the Republicans in the opposition camp have “seized on official determinations that federal agents botched a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser and more recent disclosures that FBI analysts improperly used Section 702 to search for information about hundreds of Americans who came under scrutiny in connection with the Jan. 6 attack and the Black Lives Matter protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer.”
Even some typically jingoist Democrats in the House are reluctant to go along with the administration. “We’ve been very clear with the administration that there is not going to be a clean reauthorization — there’s no path to that,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO). The ardent Russia hawk elaborated that there should be requirements for warrants in some situations and there must be limits on when agents query their databases for information regarding American citizens.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) says some GOP members may accept the reauthorization if there are “deep reforms,” although he said emphatically that “[there will] still be a number who are just never going to authorize this.”
“Orwellian Ministry Of Truth” Busted – Judge Bars Biden Officials, Agencies From Contacting Social Media Companies
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | July 5, 2023
In an order fittingly issued on Independence Day, a federal judge in Louisiana has forbidden multiple federal agencies and named officials from having any contact with social media companies with the intent to moderate content.
The preliminary injunction arises from a suit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with individuals that include two leading critics of the Covid-19 lockdown regime — Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya — and Jim Hoft, who owns the right-wing website Gateway Pundit.
“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote US District Judge Terry A. Doughty. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”
The dozens of people and agencies bound by the injunction include President Biden, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, the Treasury Department, State Department, the US Election Assistance Commission, the FBI and entire Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, who are among the originators of the Great Barrington Declaration that denounced the lockdown regime, have been victims of social media censorship. For example, the pair says their censorship-triggering statements included assertions that “thinking everyone must be vaccinated is scientifically flawed,” questioning the value of masks, and stating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine immunity.
While the case is dominated by Covid-19 censorship, it also encompasses the Justice Department’s efforts to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” in the run-up to the 2020 election. Doughty gave credence to that accusation.
The injunction represents a major validation of accusations that government officials have colluded with social media platforms to suppress speech that counters official narratives, with the restraints falling almost exclusively on conservative viewpoints.
“The evidence thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” wrote Doughty in a 155-page ruling. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’.”
“The White House defendants made it very clear to social-media companies what they wanted suppressed and what they wanted amplified,” wrote Doughty. “Faced with unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world, the social-media companies apparently complied.”
Doughty quoted communications from administration officials to social media company employees, saying they represent “examples of coercion exercised by the White House defendants.” Here’s a small sampling:
- “Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately.”
- To Facebook: “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
- “This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH”
- “Hey folks, wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed. ASAP”
The judge noted that the badgering came simultaneous with threats of changing the social media regulation scheme, and that those threats had extra credibility since they came as the Democrats controlled the White House and Congress.
The accusation that the social media platforms and government were acting in concert is substantiated by the communication and bureaucracy that surrounded the endeavor. “Many emails between the White House and social-media companies referred to themselves as ‘partners.’ Twitter even sent the White House a ‘Partner Support Portal’ for expedited review of the White House’s requests,” wrote Doughty, a 2017 Trump nominee.
A long list of agencies and people are now barred from contacting social media platforms with “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
“If there is a bedrock principal underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” wrote Doughty.
IAEA issues results of probe into Kiev’s claim mines were laid at nuclear plant
RT | July 5, 2023
Specialists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have found no signs of any mines at Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), the UN agency said in a statement on Wednesday, following an inspection carried out by its staff at the site.
The experts checked some parts of the facility, including “sections of the perimeter of the large cooling pond,” over the past days and weeks, the statement said, adding that they also “conducted regular walkdowns across the site.”
So far, no “visible indications of mines or explosives” have been observed, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in the statement. The agency’s team requested additional access to certain parts of the facility, including the rooftops of reactor units 3 and 4, as well as turbine halls and cooling system facilities, he added.
“Their independent and objective reporting would help clarify the current situation at the site,” he said, pointing to some “unconfirmed allegations” indicating some potential security risks at the site. The director general also confirmed that the team stationed at ZNPP had not reported any recent shelling or explosions near the site.
The facility, which is Europe’s largest, returned to the spotlight in recent weeks after senior officials in Kiev claimed that Russia was planning a nuclear incident at the facility. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky alleged that Moscow wanted to cause a “radiation leak” at the plant. A key aide to Vladimir Zelensky, Mikhail Podoliak, also accused the Russian military of laying mines at the plant’s cooling pond.
Moscow has rejected these claims as “yet another lie.” The UN nuclear watchdog previously denied the claims about mines in the cooling pond as well.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin warned about a “high threat of sabotage” at the plant in Kiev. Such an action could lead to “catastrophic” results, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, adding that the situation around ZNPP remains “tense.”
On Tuesday, Renat Karchaa, a senior official at Russia’s nuclear power plant operator Rosenergoatom, warned that the Ukrainian military might strike the facility with long-range, high-precision weapons or kamikaze drones. He also claimed that Kiev might target the plant with a Soviet-made ballistic missile loaded with radioactive waste.
Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling the Zaporozhye plant throughout their conflict. The facility has been under Russian control since March 2022.
Mike Pence, Other Prominent Hawks Back Regime Change in Iran at MEK Rally in Paris
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 3, 2023
Former Vice President Mike Pence participated in a rally outside Paris led by the exiled Iranian terrorist cult, the Marxist-Islamist Mujahideen-e-Khalq headed by Maryam Rajavi, and their political front the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), over the weekend.
Pence, a current GOP presidential hopeful, along with a host of other prominent hawks, including British ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss as well as former CIA director and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, made calls for regime change in Tehran and railed against engagement with the Islamic Republic. Pence said “One of the biggest lies the ruling regime has sold to the world is that there is no alternative.” He added “no oppressive regime can last forever.”
Truss declared “[authoritarian] regimes have been emboldened as the free world has not done enough. I will never give up hope for a free and democratic Iran… Democracy is under threat around the world. Now is the time to turn our backs on accommodation and appeasement.”
Pompeo chimed in via video link, proclaiming any deal with Iran over its nuclear energy program would be a “calamity for the Iranian people and the world.” Per the NCRI, also in attendance at the event were former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark and erstwhile US Senator Joseph Lieberman.
These condemnations of diplomacy come as the White House is reportedly making some efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran in an attempt to secure an interim nuclear deal. The new “understanding” could see Iran cap its enrichment of uranium at 60% purity in exchange for some limited sanctions relief.
Tehran has previously pledged not to enrich beyond this upper limit, which is still well below the 90% required for weapons-grade uranium. Iran took this step, for leverage at the negotiating table, after Israel attacked its Natanz uranium enrichment facility in April 2021 causing an explosion, damaging centrifuges, and power outages.
A Western official recently told Reuters that Washington is seeking this alternative agreement because Israel may launch a military assault against Iran, a potential escalation which the Joe Biden administration until now had repeatedly green-lighted.
In May, The Intercept reported that – according to the Discord Leaks – even the CIA is unsure whether Israel is truly preparing to unilaterally launch a war against Iran. Such a conflict would spread violently across the region and quickly draw in the United States.
During previous years, Israel and the MEK cult, who are trained, funded, and armed by the Mossad, have collaborated on the extrajudicial executions of several Iranian nuclear scientists. By likely working with the terrorist group, Tel Aviv assassinated the Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, outside of Tehran in November 2020.
Both Israel and the MEK were suspected in the May 2022 murder of a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei. Later, a US official confirmed to CNN that Israel was behind the hit. The latter killing touched off an unprecedented wave of assassinations in the country which targeted members of the IRGC and Iran’s aerospace industry.
Moreover, investigative journalist Gareth Porter has reported extensively on how the MEK and Mossad forged documents used to cultivate the propaganda narrative behind the phantom Iranian nuclear weapons program which Israel alleges was once headed by Fakhrizadeh.
The MEK lacks any support inside Iran, particularly after having murdered dozens of Iranian officials and allied with Saddam Hussein’s forces during the Iran-Iraq war. Nevertheless, Pence once dubbed the group a “perfectly qualified and popularly supported alternative” to the Islamic Republic.
Similarly, in 2017, ultra-hawk John Bolton told an MEK rally “There is a viable opposition to the rule of the ayatollahs, and that opposition is centered in this room today… The behavior and objectives of the regime are not going to change, and therefore the only solution is to change the regime itself.”
Bolton among other US political figures like Rudy Giuliani are paid handsomely for speaking at the terrorist cult’s events. “Estimates are in the range of $30,000 to $50,000 per speech. Bolton is estimated to have received upwards of $180,000 to speak at multiple events for [MEK]. His recent financial disclosure shows that he was paid $40,000 for one speech at an [MEK] event last year,” The Guardian reported in 2018.
As foreign policy analyst and Antiwar.com contributing editor Daniel Larison has written, “This is a group that has American blood on its hands, and it routinely abuses its own members. It is an oppressive and fanatical organization, and it would be a nightmare if it ever managed to gain power over a larger population. There is a reason it has sometimes been likened to the Khmer Rouge.”
The group’s base headquarters in Albania was recently raided by security police for unsanctioned activity being carried out at the camp in contravention of a US-mediated deal. The agreement had allowed the MEK to relocate to the Balkan country as they were no longer welcome in Iraq once Hussein was removed from power after the US invasion.
However, according to Responsible Statecraft, the cult was reportedly using “their presence in Albania as a base for political activities, including, at the very least, cyber-attacks directed against third countries (presumably Iran) and mass online trolling and harassment of the group’s many opponents.” The outlet also notes that, post Saudi-Iran rapprochement, Rajavi’s funding may be drying up as well. As Riyadh was long suspected of being one of the MEK’s major benefactors.
German Parliament Approves Purchase of 60 Chinook Helicopters From US’ Boeing
Sputnik – 05.07.2023
BERLIN – The defense committee of the German parliament approved the purchase of 60 CH-47F Chinook heavy military transport helicopters from US company Boeing, a German daily reported on Wednesday.
The purchase is estimated at 7.2 billion euros ($7.8 billion) and adapting infrastructure for helicopter operation is expected to require about 750 million euros on top of that.
The first helicopters will reportedly be delivered in 2027.
In January, media reported, citing a document obtained, that the price of helicopters will almost double from 6 billion to 12 billion euros as some components have not even been designed yet and become more expensive due to inflation.
Asian NATO: another failed plan by Washington
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 05.07.2023
There are increasing reports in the world media that the US-led NATO military alliance is planning to expand into the Asia-Pacific region. The idea was originally introduced by US President Joe Biden at the East Asia Summit on October 27, 2021, where he said: “We envision an Indo-Pacific region that is open, interconnected, prosperous, resilient and secure – and we are ready to work together with each of you to achieve this.” The White House later issued a report titled “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States” on February 11, 2022, outlining President Joe Biden’s strategy to reestablish “American leadership in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Among the remarks in the so-called “newsletter” that stood out was the declared necessity for the US to strengthen ties with Asian countries in order to tackle the “urgent” task of “competing with China.” But, according to its authors, NATO, which was formed to defend Europe against a fabricated Soviet threat, is allegedly a peace-loving alliance. In reality, it has evolved into a militarily aggressive bloc with a dominant presence in the North Atlantic region. This “peace-loving” coalition has militarized the continent to the point where war has broken out in Europe for the first time since World War II.
The question arises, do the countries of the Asia-Pacific region want to see their region also heavily militarized under the strict “guardianship” not only of the United States, but also of European “peace-loving” NATO? Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of this “peace-loving” bloc, insists on increasing the military alliance’s activities in Asia, as he stated publicly earlier this year during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The “peacemaker” from Europe said: “What happens in Asia matters for Europe and what happens in Europe matters for Asia, and therefore it is even more important that NATO Allies are strengthening our partnership with our Indo Pacific partners.”
According to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper, NATO will establish a liaison office in Tokyo in 2024 and use it as a center for cooperation with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Geographically, these four countries are close to China and other states in the region. It should be emphasized that they are all strategically placed in the Asia-Pacific region and have common interests with the US and NATO, or serve them faithfully.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their target in this situation is China. Speaking at a May 26 press briefing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson rightly noted that NATO’s attempt to intervene in the Asia-Pacific region eastward would inevitably undermine regional peace and stability. For example, Japan intends to attend the upcoming NATO summit in Lithuania in July, where discussions on the development of the military bloc’s liaison office are expected to continue. Apparently, the Japanese leadership has already forgotten the tragic consequences of their country’s participation in World War II and the terrible consequences it had for the Japanese people.
The United States’ plan to establish a military alliance in the Asia-Pacific area, similar to NATO, will have disastrous effects. That is why this insidious scheme does not have the support of many Asian countries, which see all these maneuvers of the United States and NATO as aimed at limiting their freedom and security. In the past, the US tried to create a replica of NATO in the Persian Gulf, but failed in that endeavor. The countries of the region soon realized the instability that results from such a move and are now instead working together to bring security back to their own region. The desire of many Gulf countries to join the BRICS and build a new world without conflicts and wars at least testifies to this.
This is why the replica of NATO in Asia is also likely to fail, because no matter how much the Joe Biden administration insists on pursuing it, the idea lacks the support of many countries in the region. Asian states strongly oppose actions aimed at creating military blocs in the region and fomenting discord and conflict. “The majority of Asia-Pacific countries don’t welcome NATO’s outreach in Asia and certainly will not allow any Cold War or hot war to happen,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated earlier in May.
The position of most countries in the region is very clear. They oppose the emergence of military blocs in the region, do not welcome NATO expansion in Asia, do not want a repeat of bloc confrontation in Asia, and certainly will not allow a repeat of cold or hot war in Asia. If a NATO-like, US-led alliance were formed in Asia, it would put the region at risk of insecurity and possible conflict, as countries would be divided into alliances and military blocs.
But another stumbling block to the American move to create an Asian NATO is France. President Emmanuel Macron opposed the creation of the first NATO office in Asia, calling the move a “big mistake.” Macron recently made an official trip to China to strengthen bilateral ties and afterwards began to make the same argument as Beijing. Incidentally, US-led NATO activities have a clause in their charter that clearly limits the scope of the bloc to the North Atlantic. Expanding NATO beyond the North Atlantic would require the consent of all members of the alliance, and France could technically veto such a move.
Many, even members of NATO, understand why such a plan could lead to a serious escalation, with devastating economic and security consequences that would be felt negatively around the world, including Europe, a continent that has long been in deep crisis because of the United States.
Asia is famously one of the most economically developing regions in the world. This, in fact, is what the US is deathly afraid of – a new economically developed giant that poses a threat to limit US military and economic expansion. “Thinking” heads in Washington are unable to realize that China, becoming the world’s number one economy and a leading expert in technology and other major sectors, has no intention of competing with or challenging the US on a global scale.
This is where the paranoia of today’s American politicians and their unstable psyche, little adapted to the realities of the modern world, come into play. Washington and its masters are struggling to hold on to what few fragments remain of their once global hegemony, now going like the Titanic to the bottom of world politics. The US ruling elites no longer pursue their own country’s interests, bearing in mind that China is one of America’s largest trading partners, bringing them enormous benefits in various trade and industry. China’s rise as a superpower and its peaceful view of the world have had a dramatically negative impact on Washington, which has watched with apprehension as more and more countries have sought to strengthen ties with Beijing and join the BRICS.
On the security front, the world has witnessed US military adventurism and its disastrous consequences. And this at a time when China has one military mission outside its borders, and it is part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Africa. In essence, China maintains peace in an unstable part of the world, while the US provokes conflicts in crises it itself created, trying, as the proverb says, to fish in troubled waters of misfortunes and troubles of the peoples of the world.
On the technology front, more and more countries are buying from China as it quickly becomes a technological superpower. This has reduced US profits and caused Washington to bully the world against China over issues such as Huawei, Tiktok and semiconductors. In fact, this is all part of a broader US attempt to limit Chinese exports. But the world is different now than it was after World War II. The influence of the US has weakened dramatically, and many states prefer to build a new world on terms that are agreeable to them, put forward by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There is also some danger here as US hegemony wanes and in a desperate attempt to maintain its influence it plays dangerous games around the world. It unleashed the crisis in Ukraine and pitted Ukrainians against Russians, and now it seeks to create similar crises in other countries, such as China and North Korea, instead of following the diplomatic path and coming to realize a multipolar world. But this would be asking too much of the current American leadership, too difficult for their heads and limited thinking, accustomed to think and act only in terms of war.
Kiev attacks Russian airport with possible Western help
By Lucas Leiroz | July 5, 2023
Kiev continues to promote terrorist maneuvers against civilian targets in the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation. On July 4, Moscow was the target of a new Ukrainian incursion with military drones hitting a major local airport. Russian forces were able to neutralize the terrorist threat in time to avoid disaster, however, there is evidence that Kiev received Western support to carry out the operation, which seriously increases the chances of escalation in the conflict.
On July 4, Ukraine launched an attack with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) against Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow. Five Ukrainian drones reached the area of the airport but were neutralized without causing damage. Four UAVs were shot down by Russian anti-aircraft defense and one was diverted by techniques of electronic warfare.
The airport’s activities were suspended for a few hours in the morning due to security restrictions, but they were quickly resumed after the destruction of enemy UAVs, having virtually no impact in the flights’ schedule. It was reported by the authorities that the downed drones would have dropped in the regions of Kubinka, Valuyevo and Krivosheevo.
The raid was considered a terrorist action by Russian officials. Spokesmen for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also pointed out that the complex nature of the operation makes clear the existence of Western aid. The US and other NATO members have not only provided Kiev with UAVs, but also extensive training in the use of these equipment, as well as intelligence information about the targets of the attacks and satellite images, which have facilitated the regime’s terrorist plans. For this reason, Russia considered NATO “complicit” in the July 4 attack.
Kiev, however, denied having any role in the incident. Indeed, denying responsibility in terrorist attacks has already become a common practice of the regime. Kiev’s modus operandi is to deny involvement immediately after cases and sometime later to make public statements that suggest responsibility. This was what happened, for example, in the case of the murder of Daria Dugina, in August 2022. At the time, Kiev denied involvement in the death, but months later the Ukrainian military intelligence chief General Kirill Budanov stated that his units would “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world”, suggesting that Kiev was behind cases like the one of Daria.
This strategy of “postponing” and “suggesting without confirming” responsibility for the attacks helps the Kiev regime to maintain its image among Western public opinion. The mainstream media also play an important role in this game, as they work in strong disinformation campaigns, accusing Moscow of launching “false flags” to blame Ukraine. As citizens of western countries do not have access to Russian and pro-Russian media due to censorship, the tendency is for them to believe what is said by the big outlets, which leads them to endorse the support that their countries give to Ukraine.
However, the recent history of Kiev’s terrorist operations makes it very clear that there is Ukrainian responsibility for these assaults. The July 4 drones were just the latest in a huge wave of Ukrainian terrorist incursions into the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation. In recent months, neo-Nazi forces have launched several strikes against demilitarized civilian areas both in border oblasts and in the capital Moscow.
The most serious cases of these incursions in Moscow were the assassination attempt on President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in May, and the attack on residential buildings in the city later in the same month. Both incidents made clear the terrorist nature of the maneuvers that Kiev has been promoting in its alleged “counteroffensive”.
In fact, given their absolute inability to reverse the military scenario of the conflict, the Ukrainian forces have been betting on terrorism as a combat tool to keep active their propaganda that a “counteroffensive” is taking place. The regime has not enough strength to promote a large mobilization of troops on the ground and expel Russian soldiers from the liberated zones. Then, attacks are made against demilitarized areas and Russian civilian infrastructure.
Terrorism, from a technical point of view in military sciences, is the most primitive and poorest form of combat, used by armies in severe crisis and organizations without great military potential. Ukraine has become exactly that: an exhausted army, with no real fighting strength, but which is also forced to keep fighting in order to attend the interests of its Western sponsors. With no chance of victory in the regular war, it adopts terrorism as a combat method.
The Moscow airport attack shows how the so-called Ukrainian “counteroffensive” has been just a prolonged wave of terrorist attacks. This tends to lead to an escalation in the conflict, since the Russian State already has enough arguments to consider the Ukrainian State a terrorist organization and all NATO countries as state sponsors of terror.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Russia is jamming HIMARS rockets – Ukraine’s defense chief
RT | July 5, 2023
Russia has found a way to interfere with GPS-guided artillery rounds, including munitions for US-made HIMARS multiple rocket launchers, Defense Minister of Ukraine Aleksey Reznikov has claimed.
When those systems first arrived on Ukrainian battlefields last year they were “highly accurate,” Reznikov recalled, in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday.
However, Russia, which has strong radio-electronic systems, eventually found a way to jam GPS-guided artillery and HIMARS projectiles, he acknowledged.
“It’s like a constant pendulum. This is a war of technology,” the minister said, describing the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
“The Russians come up with a countermeasure, we inform our partners and they make a new countermeasure against this countermeasure,” he explained.
Reznikov reiterated Kiev’s earlier claim that “for the military industry of the world, you can’t invent a better testing ground” than Ukraine.
Kiev’s Western backers “can actually see if their weapons work, how efficiently they work and if they need to be upgraded”, he said.
Ukraine has been supplied with several dozen High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), which have a range of 85 kilometers (53 miles), by its foreign backer since June last year. Western outlets described the system as a game-changer in the conflict.
In May, CNN reported, citing five sources from the US, Britain and Ukraine, that the US-designed multiple rocket launchers had been rendered “increasingly less effective” from the intensive blocking by the Russian forces. The electronic jammers throw off the GPS-guided targeting system of HIMARS rockets to cause them to miss their targets, the channel said.
Throughout the conflict, the Russian Defense Ministry reported destroying dozens of HIMARS systems through the use of kamikaze drones and artillery fire. However, these claims have been disputed by Kiev and Washington.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies could cross its ‘red lines’ and lead to a major escalation of hostilities. According to the Russian side, the supply of arms, intelligence sharing and training to Kiev’s troops already means that Western nations are de facto parties to the conflict.
Kiev regime forces under increased pressure to step up counteroffensive days ahead of NATO summit
By Drago Bosnic | July 5, 2023
As if the situation for the Kiev regime forces wasn’t bad already, the political West has now increased its already massive pressure on Kiev to “perform better” during the much-touted counteroffensive against the Russian military. Considering the disastrous losses and no actual gains, this will be a virtually impossible task for the already battered Neo-Nazi junta troops. The political “leadership” (aka NATO puppets) in Kiev, including its frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, are now publicly showing signs of desperation and pleading with the Kiev regime forces to “show results” mere days ahead of the major NATO summit that is due to start in Lithuania on July 11.
The pressure comes amid stepped-up blackmail by Washington DC which is now threatening that it will slow down or even cut so-called “military aid” to the Neo-Nazi junta in case its forces don’t demonstrate they’re capable of advancing, taking and holding Russian positions. Zelensky held talks with several journalists and mainstream propaganda machine outlets over the weekend in an attempt to “quell rumors about the failure of the counteroffensive”. Indeed, even Western propaganda couldn’t ignore the disastrous way these counteroffensive operations have been conducted, as ample evidence of horrendous losses on alternative platforms (particularly Telegram) simply cannot be ignored.
Still, Zelensky effectively accused the mainstream propaganda machine (the same one that has been lionizing him for about a year and a half now) of spreading “Russian disinformation” about the results of the counteroffensive. Yet, it’s not really clear where the supposed “disinformation” comes from, considering the actual state of the Kiev regime forces, particularly in the past several days. Indeed, numerous headlines in nearly all countries of the political West have relayed the increasingly gloomy prospects of the counteroffensive, with many now “suggesting it might be failing”. This is a major hurdle for the Neo-Nazi junta’s attempts to hide its massive losses.
As the political West’s favorite puppets are trying to keep their unsustainable narrative alive, Zelensky is doing anything he can to help with this increasingly futile effort. He now even claims that “torrential rains had slowed down some processes quite a bit”, but admits that “the reality still is that every kilometer of liberated territory and gains costs lives”. Despite close to $170 billion in so-called “aid”, Zelensky also urged NATO and the political West as a whole to send ever more weapons. He also blamed the losses specifically on the lack of or the late arrival of artillery systems and munitions, claiming that “the lost battles would have been won had there been more of both”.
“We stopped because we couldn’t advance. Advancing meant losing people and we had no artillery. We are very cautious in this aspect. Fast things are not always safe,” Zelensky complained in one of the press briefings. He then emphasized that “[he has] a duty to his troops” and to “not take risks that are unnecessary” (although that’s exactly what they’ve been doing for over a year now). “If they tell me that two months will pass and thousands of people will die, or three months and fewer people will die, of course, I will choose the latter. Between time and people, the most important thing is people,” Zelensky said with a straight face.
In regards to the growing urgency of constant (and, if possible, increased) flow of military supplies from NATO members, particularly the US, Zelensky specifically took aim at the Republican-dominated Congress, which lately had many calls for audits on the massive amount of funds earmarked for the Kiev regime. Worse yet, this comes amid “rumors and concerns over the waning enthusiasm for the war effort in Washington DC” and the political West as a whole that might be demonstrated more openly at the “sensitive moment” of NATO’s annual summit. In other words, the deeply corrupt Neo-Nazi junta henchmen are extremely concerned that the constant flow of billions of dollars will suddenly be cut.
While Kiev regime’s top generals parroted their usual complaints about the sore lack of air support for their counteroffensive operations, specifically mentioning the much-touted F-16 fighter jets that are now being delayed to late 2023 or even the next year, Zelensky didn’t miss the opportunity to criticize the “dangerous messages coming from some Republicans” (probably referring to the aforementioned audits). Still, he praised the sudden June 29th visit by former Trump administration Vice President Mike Pence, stressing that “maintaining bipartisan support is the most important thing for Ukraine, regardless of who wins the 2024 US presidential election”.
“Mike Pence has visited us, and he supports Ukraine. First of all, as an American, and then as a Republican. We have bipartisan support. However, there are different messages in their circles regarding support for Ukraine. There are messages coming from some Republicans, sometimes dangerous messages, that there may be less support,” Zelensky insisted.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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