Now that government COVID malfeasance is exposed, what will the GOP do about it?
By Daniel Horowitz – conservative review – July 6, 2023
We are now 2+ years into consuming reams of information showing the vaccines were devastating to humanity. What will Republicans do about it other than whine about censorship? Refusing to focus on vaccine injury and the perfidy of the government-vaccine complex is an act of self-censorship.
There is a bizarre dynamic unfolding as it relates to GOP sentiment toward the vaccine. All Republicans recognize and decry the growing evidence of the government’s collaboration with big tech to censor all information about vaccine injury. Yet they seem to be more upset about the censorship of the information than about the information itself. Why is there no push from Republicans to defund the vaccines and fix the regulatory and legal structures that allowed Operation Warp Speed to occur and that continue to gaslight the next iteration of rushed, dangerous vaccines?
In an extraordinary ruling on Independence Day itself, Louisiana federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a broad injunction against all government agencies on working with social media companies to censor politically unfavored speech. Citing “substantial evidence” of government’s “dystopian” violations of the First Amendment, Judge Doughty prohibited the federal government from “encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” The injunction not only includes the HHS agencies censoring COVID information, but also the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, the DOJ, and the White House censoring all forms of protected speech.
This ruling comes a week after the House Judiciary committee produced a preliminary report showing DHS’ CISA was behind the censorship enterprise. It turns out that CISA funded a nonprofit group to work with social media on a process, known as “switchboarding,” which would “trigger content moderation” to “ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”
Republicans seem united in combating this censorship and plan to include provisions in the relevant appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024 to block funding for these surveillance and censorship programs. However, where is the same degree of outrage about the dangers of the vaccines themselves?
We now have over two years of information showing ubiquitous injury stemming from damage to all parts of the body, particularly cardiac and neurological. Whether it’s VAERS, European data, countless independent studies, epidemiological data, excess deaths and “died suddenly” mysteries correlating with the take-up of the vaccines, health insurance data, life insurance data, or disability data – we have enough evidence to convict this shot for murder if it were a human standing for trial. Yet not only have these vaccines not been defunded, the same framework that rushed their approval has already been used for countless other new vaccines.
The government’s new shell game is to concede the existence of these problems, but play semantics with the term “rare” when describing their risk. Science Insider published a piece acknowledging the “rare link between coronavirus vaccines and Long Covid–like illness,” including blood clotting, heart inflammation, and neurological disorders. Even Peter Marks, the man at the center of Operation Warp Speed, admitted, “We can’t rule out rare cases.”
“If a provider has somebody in front of them, they may want to take seriously the concept [of] a vaccine side effect,” admits the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, two years after emails show he ignored concerns of rushing the vaccine amidst a pileup of adverse event reporting.
However, what is rare? The CDC’s own pharmacovigilance program showed a 7.7% rate of clinical-level injury. Coupled with the underreporting rate in VAERS, there were likely millions of severe and long-term injuries, including several hundred thousand deaths in the U.S. So yes, we can suggest that 92% of people didn’t experience clinical levels of injury and 98%-99% didn’t experience long-term and deadly injuries. In that sense, I guess you can say it’s rare. But how many people are we talking about when 5.5 billion people were given at least one dose? Potentially, millions of deaths and hundreds of millions of injuries! Just consider the fact that 25% of injuries reported to VAERS and about a third reported by the European Medicines Agency are considered serious, well beyond the standard of 15%.
House Republicans can no longer ignore the problem with the vaccines. They must also stop ignoring the endless approvals of monkeypox and RSV shots based on dubious data and the same rushed framework. To that end, Speaker McCarthy should take the following actions.
- Defund all COVID shots in the HHS, DOD, and FDA funding bills.
- Create a commission of members of Congress to examine the rationale, safety, and efficacy data of all vaccines, beginning with the new ones recently approved and in the pipeline.
- Refuse to sign off on the Senate version of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act unless major reforms are enacted curtailing pandemic authorities.
- Bar any involvement in a WHO pandemic treaty or expansion of the International Health Regulations.
- Repeal immunity for vaccine manufacturers, including the provision in the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 that extends the immunity to vaccines offered to pregnant women.
To this day, we still can’t get Republicans to shake their support for the V-word even in red states. Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, the consummate COVID fascist governor, used his line-item veto to strike a provision from the budget ending vaccine mandates in colleges. “University and college dormitories and student housing are congregate settings where such policy may be of great importance to ensure resident safety,” said DeWine of vaccine mandates in his veto message. It takes a new level of cognitive dissonance to support mandates on those who don’t want the shot out of fear of harming those who did supposedly get the protection that evidently fails to protect unless the other person gets it!
Republicans all agree that our government engaged in an unprecedented operation to cover up the truth about vaccines. How come their curiosity stops at the degree of exposing the cover-up with no interest in delving into what exactly they are trying to cover up? After all, this is the only product that automatically goes into every arm of every baby multiple times after birth with a set schedule mandated by schools. Certainly the COVID shots are proven to be poison, but is there no interest in uncovering the broader truth?
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Lancet Study on Covid Vaccine Autopsies Finds 74% Were Caused by Vaccine – Journal Removes Study Within 24 Hours
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JULY 6, 2023
A Lancet review of 325 autopsies after Covid vaccination found that 74% of the deaths were caused by the vaccine – but the journal removed the study within 24 hours.
The study, a pre-print that was awaiting peer-review, is written by leading cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch and their colleagues at the Wellness Company and was published online on Wednesday on the pre-print site of the prestigious medical journal.
However, less than 24 hours later, the study was removed and a note appeared stating: “This preprint has been removed by Preprints with the Lancet because the study’s conclusions are not supported by the study methodology.” While the study had not undergone any part of the peer-review process, the note implies it fell foul of “screening criteria”.
The original study abstract can be found in the Internet Archive. It reads (with my emphasis added):
Background: The rapid development and widespread deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, combined with a high number of adverse event reports, have led to concerns over possible mechanisms of injury including systemic lipid nanoparticle (LNP) and mRNA distribution, spike protein-associated tissue damage, thrombogenicity, immune system dysfunction and carcinogenicity. The aim of this systematic review is to investigate possible causal links between COVID-19 vaccine administration and death using autopsies and post-mortem analysis.
Methods: We searched for all published autopsy and necropsy reports relating to COVID-19 vaccination up until May 18th, 2023. We initially identified 678 studies and, after screening for our inclusion criteria, included 44 papers that contained 325 autopsy cases and one necropsy case. Three physicians independently reviewed all deaths and determined whether COVID-19 vaccination was the direct cause or contributed significantly to death.
Findings: The most implicated organ system in COVID-19 vaccine-associated death was the cardiovascular system (53%), followed by the hematological system (17%), the respiratory system (8%) and multiple organ systems (7%). Three or more organ systems were affected in 21 cases. The mean time from vaccination to death was 14.3 days. Most deaths occurred within a week from last vaccine administration. A total of 240 deaths (73.9%) were independently adjudicated as directly due to or significantly contributed to by COVID-19 vaccination.
Interpretation: The consistency seen among cases in this review with known COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, their mechanisms and related excess death, coupled with autopsy confirmation and physician-led death adjudication, suggests there is a high likelihood of a causal link between COVID-19 vaccines and death in most cases. Further urgent investigation is required for the purpose of clarifying our findings.
The full study does not appear to have been saved in the Internet Archive, but can be read here.
Without further detail from the Lancet staff who removed the paper it is hard to know what substance the claim that the conclusions are not supported by the methodology really has. A number of the authors of the paper are at the top of their fields so it is hard to imagine that the methodology of their review was really so poor that it warranted removal at initial screening rather than being subject to full critical appraisal. It smacks instead of raw censorship of a paper that failed to toe the official line. Keep in mind that the CDC has not yet acknowledged a single death being caused by the Covid vaccines. Autopsy evidence demonstrating otherwise is clearly not what the U.S. public health establishment wants to hear.
Dr. Clare Craig, a pathologist and co-Chair of the HART pandemic advisory group, says that in her view the approach taken in the study is sound. She told the Daily Sceptic:
The VAERS system [of vaccine adverse event reporting] is designed to alert to potential harms without necessarily being the best way of measuring the extent of those harms.
Quantifying the impact of deaths can be done by looking at overall mortality rates in a country.
However, this is imperfect as a deficit of deaths would be expected after a period of excess deaths, making the accuracy of any baseline dubious.
An alternative approach of auditing such deaths through autopsy is sound.
There may be a bias [in the study] towards reporting the autopsies of deaths where there was evidence of causation and the likelihood of causation might be exaggerated by that bias. For example, 19 of the 325 deaths were due to vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (VITT) but these reports may be overrepresented because of the regulators’ willingness to acknowledge such deaths.
Nevertheless, it is important that attempts are made to quantify the risk of harm and censorship of these attempts, rather than open scientific critique, does nothing to help reassure people.
Majority of US Voters Believe Biden Involved in Son Hunter’s Foreign Business Deals – Poll
Sputnik – 06.07.2023
WASHINGTON – A majority of likely voters in the United States believe that US President Joe Biden was involved in his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which are under investigation by US House lawmakers, a Rasmussen Reports poll revealed on Thursday.
More than half of respondents, 58%, said that it was likely that Biden was involved in his son’s foreign business deals, with 44% believing it “very likely,” the poll said.
One-third of respondents said it was unlikely Biden was involved in the foreign business deals, and 10% are unsure.
The poll comes amid an investigation by the US House Oversight Committee into alleged criminal acts committed by the Biden family, including corruption and influence peddling. Earlier this month, panel chairman James Comer characterized the alleged actions as “organized crime.”
The committee’s probe is partially based on accusations from a confidential FBI informant, who alleges that Joe and Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy company. Lawmakers are also investigating deals tied to China.
However, Biden has denied ever speaking to his son about his business deals, contradicting testimony from an IRS whistleblower involved in matters related to Hunter Biden.
The survey polled 1,054 likely US voters on June 28-29 and July 2. The poll maintains a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points with a 95% confidence level.
Palestine urges US to retract from building embassy in Jerusalem
MEMO | July 6, 2023
The Palestinian Presidency urged the US, on Thursday, to retract plans to build its embassy in Jerusalem because it will be built on Palestinian “private property”, Anadolu Agency reports.
The statement was in response to Israeli approval plans submitted by the US to build the embassy on lands the statement said were confiscated from Palestinian owners by Israel in 1948.
It described the move as “illegal” and “a violation of international law” because it will be built “on private property confiscated in 1948 from Palestinian owners, some of whom are holders of US citizenship”.
The Presidency said moving ahead with building the embassy “gives legitimacy to racist Israeli laws such as the absentee property law designed to legitimise the theft of Palestinian property”.
It added that the move is a “joint American-Israeli blow to any remaining hopes for a two-state solution.”
Former President, Donald Trump announced the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The US moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May the following year.
Jerusalem remains at the heart of the decades-long Mideast conflict, with Palestinians insisting that East Jerusalem — illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 — should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
Burning of the Quran and the counter-offensive: Why the West is panicking
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 6, 2023
Desecrating, then burning the Holy Quran in Sweden has, once again, raised a political storm of condemnation, but also of justification, if not outright approval.
Such acts are protected by law, top Swedish and EU officials have declared.
But why are the rights of those who oppose western agendas, colonialism, imperialism, Zionism and military interventions not equally protected by law?
The Palestine boycott movement, BDS, for example, is constantly fighting in western societies and institutions for the right to use certain language or merely challenge, though non-violently, Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Iranian media offices were shut down in some western countries, and various western-operated satellites removed Iranian Press TV, Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV and other anti-Israel occupation media outlets from their line-ups.
Thousands of Palestinian activists have been banned or censored on western social media platforms for daring to criticise Israeli war crimes in Palestine. The writer of this article is one of many others.
As soon as the Russia-Ukraine war began, western governments were asked to completely block Russia Today and other Russian media channels from operating in western capitals, leading to the shutting down of offices, social media channels, removal from YouTube, Google and other search engines and so on.
In February 2022, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU”.
For some odd reason, all this censorship is, somehow, morally and legally defensible from the viewpoint of the West.
But why is the right to insult Muslims so cherished, so sacred in the view of western governments and laws? And why burn the Quran now?
It is ‘sacred’ simply because Islamophobia exists at the highest levels of governments throughout the West.
Western lawmakers and politicians may argue that the law protects the rights of individuals to burn the Quran but, deep down – sometimes right on the surface – Europe’s ruling elites share the view of those who burn the Quran or desecrate Islamic symbols. Such hate is often blamed on the far right by many of us, but that is only part of the story.
Expectedly, once again, Muslims react by protesting en masse, storm western embassies and burn western countries’ flags. And when this happens, the very western political and intellectual circles that permitted or encouraged hate speech in the first place, take to the stage, juxtaposing, with unmistakable triumph, the West’s democracy and tolerance with Islam’s intolerance and authoritarianism.
How about the timing?
Notice how the Quran is often burned, Islam insulted, or Islamic symbols desecrated whenever the West is undergoing a crisis and is desperate to either ignite an anti-Muslim public frenzy or distract from its own failures.
This has happened numerous times throughout history, ancient and modern.
In the past, whenever Christendom descended into chaos, civil wars and revolutions, European kings, with the support of the Church, would mount one crusade after another in the name of ‘freeing the captive Holy Land from the hordes of the heathens and the Mohammedans’.
More recently, when the US invaded Iraq, or wanted to distract from its splendid failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else in the Muslim world, western provocateurs would rush to the streets to burn the Quran or would insult and ridicule Prophet Mohammed in their newspapers and magazines.
But what crisis is the West now trying to distract from? Ukraine, and the global paradigm shift underway.
NATO is failing to push back or even weaken Russia. The much-touted Ukrainian counter-offensive, featuring the most modern weapons the West has to offer, is a flop at best, a complete disaster at worst.
Moreover, the cracks of division among NATO and western countries are bigger than ever and are widening by the day.
The Wagner mutiny in Rostov which ignited hope among western governments and elites that Russia’s President, Vladmir Putin, can be taken down from within, has completely failed. In fact, it has backfired as the mercenary group has been exiled to Belarus and is now stationed at NATO’s own doorsteps.
Worse, Arabs, Muslims, and countries from across the Global South are moving even closer to Moscow and Beijing. Algeria has recently signed a major cooperation agreement with Russia – thus strengthening their influence over the gas markets – and a host of nations are lining up to join BRICS.
In the face of this strategic failure and the complete moral, political and military collapse of the West, a supposed lunatic appears before a mosque in Stockholm, with the made-up altruistic mission of burning the Holy Book of 1.8 billion Muslims. A Western media fanfare immediately follows.
But this individual, and others like him, have little interest in defending freedom of speech. His is a diversionary strategy and, at some level, the actual orchestrators are not lunatics, but clever men, with high paying jobs and political agendas.
Indeed, these blasphemous acts are part and parcel of a larger western agenda, the gist of which is that the West is democratic, tolerant and essentially good, and the rest are undemocratic, barbaric and essentially wicked.
This false maxim is just another take on the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, when he said, last November, that “Europe is a garden,” while “most of the rest of the world is a jungle.”
The fact that Russia has recently passed laws criminalising the burning of the Quran, indicates that Moscow, like others, also understands that the issue is purely political – because it is.
Europe Says No to China Decoupling
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – 06.07.2023
Following active US diplomacy over the past few years, Europe seems to have now decided to say no to the US geopolitics of “decoupling” from China. This is nothing short of a major diplomatic blow for the US, although this blow has not received as much attention in the mainstream Western media due to its overt focus on events related to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The recent visit of Chinese Premier Li Qiang to Europe, where Li not only met the German Chancellor but also addressed a conference on development financing organised by French President Macron. More than that, the fact that two of the European Union’s most powerful states received and interacted with China’s number two became possible, first and foremost, because of the available space for continuing trade partnership with China. That is one key reason why the EU now favours the politics of “de-risking” rather than “de-coupling”.
While the idea of “de-risking” would literally mean reducing dependence on China – which some might see as a good sign – “de-risking” mainly means better management of trade and economic ties with China. After all, the EU sees China as an economic competitor. Therefore, devising new strategies to manage this competition makes perfect sense not only for the EU but also for China. As a leading US media outlet said in one of its reports, the EU has basically decided not to “piss China off.”
The real question is: Why is the EU, despite China’s overall pro-Russia position on Ukraine, devising a strategy that does not involve the kind of “decoupling” that the EU has effected vis-à-vis Russia in terms of energy supplies? There are several crucial reasons for the ongoing strategic rethinking in the EU vis-à-vis China.
First of all, the EU leaders tend to believe that China itself is eager to maintain stable economic ties with the EU. As opposed to Beijing’s estranged ties with the US, China intends to maintain a healthy, although competitive, environment with the EU. Doing this is very much possible since the EU is not as deeply entangled with China in geopolitical flashpoints, such as Taiwan and the South China Sea, as the US is. For the EU, therefore, continuing trade ties with China present an opportunity that should be exploited to the best possible extent, even if this continuation does not fit very well with the nature of the US-China ties.
Secondly, the EU is a 27-member bloc, which can be – in fact, it is – internally very diverse, with many EU countries following or favouring alternative policy positions. This internal divergence makes it extremely difficult for any given actor within the EU to impose its position on the bloc. This internal divergence also means that finding consensus on minimum common ground is equally difficult.
We have seen that German and French leaders have visited China in the recent past, but we have also repeatedly seen President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen taking a tougher position on China, showing how the three key EU leaders are not necessarily unanimous, making it extremely difficult for a) the US to make the bloc follow a single set of policies of “decoupling”, and b) the EU to devise its best China policy that stresses “de-coupling” over “de-risking”.
Even though some countries advocate a tougher position, the declaration of the latest EU summit in Brussels said that “Despite their different political and economic systems, the European Union and China have a shared interest in pursuing constructive and stable relations, anchored in respect for the rules-based international order, balanced engagement and reciprocity,” adding that Europe “does not intend to decouple or to turn inwards” or adopt policies “to harm China, nor to thwart China’s economic progress and development.”
Thirdly, the EU does not see the kind of interest that “decoupling” would yield for the bloc, as a potential “decoupling” would supposedly serve the US and harm the EU. Unlike the US, the EU, as it stands, is not trying to preserve its own hegemony by engaging China in a conflict.
Therefore, the EU’s stance – and the language it has been expressed in – is markedly different from the language the US officials normally used to report on their interaction with China. For instance, after Blinken met Chinese officials in June, he said he “warned” China about its foreign policies. Earlier in February, Blinken had sent yet another warning to China about its support for Russia.
But the EU, as is evident from the latest declaration, has a position that stresses cooperation over warnings and conflict. Although the EU disagrees with various policies of China, including its Ukraine stance, there is no desire within the bloc, on the whole, to pick a conflict with Beijing and deliver yet another economic blow to the continent, which is still not fully recovered from the effects of “decoupling” from Russia. “Decoupling” from China, therefore, will “kill”, to quote Hungary’s foreign minister, “Europe’s economy.” Various assessments prove this scenario.
For instance, the Seeheimer Circle, an official think tank inside the party of the German Chancellor, released a paper last April on Germany’s relationship with China calling for a “multi-dimensional” – that is, open – policy towards the Asian giant. An “abrupt end to trade relations with China” would be “an economic disaster,” the paper argued, rejecting an “anti-China strategy.”
Therefore, while a potential “decoupling” from China might help the US regain its position of economic and financial dominance at the global level, the EU sees no glory. The EU leadership is cognizant of this fact, which is why key EU leaders are not in line with the US. Instead, various EU pronouncements show an ongoing struggle within the bloc with regard to developing a strictly European strategic vision vis-à-vis China.
Is China’s export control a precise counterattack against US, Japan and the Netherlands?
Global Times | July 6, 2023
The measures taken by China in recent years to safeguard national security and interests have often been subjected to excessive interpretation and reaction from the US and Western countries. The recent decision by China to implement export controls on gallium and germanium-related items is no exception. Although Chinese authorities have said this is a common international practice and not targeted at any specific country, certain countries have felt “targeted,” leading to a series of doubts, questions, and even accusations.
There are mainly two points that these people are criticizing about. First, they believe that China is indeed targeting specific countries by precisely counterattacking the semiconductor equipment export controls imposed by the US, Japan and the Netherlands. Does this contradict China’s consistent opposition to the abuse of export controls? Second, they claim China’s actions may violate regulations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and are detrimental to the stability of the semiconductor supply chain. Both of these points are baseless.
Whether it is a precise counterattack against the discriminatory policies of the US, Japan, and the Netherlands toward China can be left for them to ponder. It is nothing wrong to make those who have done bad things to China feel uneasy and unsettled. Gallium and germanium are key raw materials used in the production of semiconductors, missile systems, solar cells, and other high-tech products. If China exports them to these countries, but they prohibit the export of high-tech products made from these materials to China, this is clearly unfair in terms of trade. If the US uses them to produce high-end military equipment, it may even pose a threat to China’s national security. China’s export control is justifiable in terms of reason and law. It needs to be emphasized that this is entirely different from the US’ abuse of export controls.
China’s export control measures have always adhered to the principles of fairness, reasonableness, and non-discrimination, and are committed to maintaining the security and stability of the global production and supply chains. As for whether these measures violate WTO regulations this time, it is more of a technical issue. China is recognized as an exemplary member of the WTO, in sharp contrast with the US, who has trampled on WTO rules and principles. Despite having larger reserves of germanium than China, the US has protected germanium as a defense reserve resource since 1984 and has hardly conducted any mining activities. In a sense, China’s implementation of export controls on gallium and germanium may have come a bit late. China has no reason to excessively deplete its strategic resources to meet the demands of unfriendly countries.
Currently, there is an abnormal phenomenon in the international community. The US has engaged in too many acts of undermining international rules and seems to be unconcerned about the accumulating “debts.” It is a bit taken for granted. On the other hand, China’s legitimate actions are often magnified and exaggerated by external forces. What’s even more despicable is that the US often takes the lead in pointing fingers at China, without any sense of guilt or shame. The US, which seriously lacks a moral bottom line in the international arena, enjoys morally blackmailing China, which is truly absurd. Dealing with such a US, China also needs to adapt.
To contain and suppress China, the US has imposed various export restrictions on China to an unprecedented extent, and these restrictions are escalating and expanding. There are currently no signs of any easing or cessation. It is reported that the Biden administration is considering a new round of high-tech investment bans on China. When the US treats China in this way, it should not expect China to remain silent and not fight back; that is impossible. However, China will not be as unscrupulous and rule-breaking as the US. Nevertheless, we do have a considerable toolbox to retaliate and make countries that harm China’s interests pay a price.
The US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen is about to visit China. Is China announcing the export control measures at this time to give Yellen a warning? This is overthinking. China doesn’t need to do this, but it will not postpone or cancel planned measures just because a senior US official is coming to create a favorable atmosphere. That’s how things stand. The people who are most dramatic about China’s every move are often the ones with the strongest malicious intent toward China. Their interpretations are bound to be distorted, so it is necessary to make them feel uncomfortable.
Leading US think tank admits Russia unlikely to ever run out of missiles
By Drago Bosnic | July 6, 2023
For approximately a year and a half, we have been listening to tall tales about Russia running out of munitions of various kinds due to its supposed “inability” to produce advanced weapons, particularly long-range missiles and other sorts of PGMs (precision-guided munitions). According to mainstream propaganda, Moscow is allegedly “so desperate” that it had to “arm” its soldiers with shovels and resort to the expropriation of washing machines, smartphones, laptops and other devices that contain microchips in order to maintain production. Such ludicrous claims would never be accepted by anyone remotely familiar with how advanced military technologies work.
However, they are an important segment of the rabidly Russophobic infowar that aims to present the Eurasian giant as supposedly “technologically backward”. And yet, after Moscow’s long-range and tactical aviation, as well as naval and ground-based units, spent the entire special military operation (SMO) launching high-precision strikes by using advanced PGMs that quite literally nobody else has (the United States included), the mainstream propaganda machine simply had to admit something was seriously off with their assessment of Russia’s technological and industrial capacity. The latter should have been destroyed by Western sanctions close to a year and a half ago.
And yet, it’s still standing. The answer as to why this is the case was recently given by CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), a Washington DC-based think tank that is among the most prominent ones in the US. According to their assessment, Moscow is extremely unlikely to run out of PGMs and other long-range high-precision weapons, either for itself or its numerous export customers. Somewhat surprisingly, with no ambiguity or sugarcoating, Ian Williams, a Fellow of the International Security Program and Deputy Director of the Missile Defense Project at CSIS, has made it perfectly clear that it would be “unrealistic to expect Russia to ever run out of missiles”.
The author further notes that Moscow will be able to continue building long-range PGMs, which will enable it to sustain constant long-range strike capability, “despite sanctions and export restrictions”. And while the CSIS report parroted the usual propaganda narratives about Russia, such as that its military supposedly “regularly attacked a range of military and civilian targets throughout Ukraine with costly, long-range missiles”, its findings should certainly not be dismissed. It admitted that numerous weapons experts found conclusive evidence of recently manufactured Russian cruise missiles and other PGMs that have been used in the SMO.
Still, once again, the US think tank obviously didn’t want to let another opportunity to fight the infowar go to waste, so it claims that this supposedly “indicates that Russia’s arsenal has become so depleted that weapons are being used in the conflict just a few months after manufacturing”. And while most US and other Western high-ranking officials insisted that “rebuilding the Russian stockpile will be a lot harder” due to sanctions, particularly when it comes to acquiring microchips, the latest CSIS report disproves such claims, with the author complaining that export restrictions didn’t have the desired effect on Russian missile production.
“There is no one-off fix for this problem. At most, sanctions and export controls can limit the quantity and quality of strike assets Russia can acquire,” the report admits while simultaneously parroting the regular propaganda narrative. The author then continues with the mental gymnastics by trying to “rationalize” the said propaganda narrative in line with the actual situation on the battlefield, claiming that “it’s likely Russia swiftly used up the portion of the long-range missiles that it had originally designated for the SMO”. However, he admits that “despite this, Russia continued to launch missiles against Ukraine, perhaps by withdrawing munitions from other theaters of operation”, without specifying which ones.
The report concedes that Russia continued to produce missiles during the SMO and that the evidence suggests that the majority (or maybe even all) of cruise missiles in its current arsenal were made after the SMO started. Still, the author once again insists that the supposed “depletion” of pre-SMO stocks “has altered the composition of modern Russian strike salvos” and that “Russian missile attacks have shifted from high-end missile systems like cruise missiles towards less effective, less expensive low-end systems like ‘Shahed-136/Geranium 2’ kamikaze drones”.
However, the author fails to accept the fact that these systems are simply much more cost-effective, which is why they’re being used in the first place. The report admits that despite export restrictions, particularly on crucial microelectronic components, Russia has continued manufacturing advanced long-range missiles and PGMs. Still, the author insists this is because Russia is supposedly “acquiring these Western-produced components via friendly third parties”. According to the report, the result is that “Russia will continue having the capacity to build missiles and drones and will continue to use them” and that “this reality will not change until the war ends”.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Biden Administration Files Notice of Appeal Against Social Media Censorship Collusion Ban
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 5, 2023
The US Justice Department has formally filed a notice of appeal against a court ruling that prohibits federal agencies and officials from engaging in discussions with social media companies to censor speech on their platforms.
The ruling in favor of free speech, justified by First Amendment rights, has been met with consternation by the Biden Administration, which says it poses a restriction on their efforts to counter the dissemination of what it says is “misinformation.”
The appeal was submitted to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans this past Wednesday, in response to an injunction imposed by US District Judge Terry Doughty, alongside a lengthy opinion on the case.
Judge Doughty asserted in his detailed ruling that the manner in which federal officials communicated with technology giants such as Twitter and Facebook about the removal or restriction of content – specifically pertaining to Covid the 2020 election likely constituted a violation of First Amendment protections for US citizens.
Information, whether truthful or not, is not supposed to be in the purview of the government to police. Though, the Biden administration has attempted to defend its engagement with social media companies as a necessary approach to protecting public health and safety.
Conversely, the plaintiffs, who include the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, contend that the federal government’s communication with these companies amounted to a state-sanctioned censorship campaign.
In the initial ruling, Judge Doughty issued an injunction preventing a wide range of federal entities from engaging in communication with any social media company to urge, encourage, pressure, or induce the removal or suppression of speech.
However, the ruling does provide for certain exceptions. Notably, it permits government engagement with social media companies in instances involving criminal activity (including that which is election-related), national security concerns, or other threats to public security.
The appeal by the Justice Department marks a significant development in an ongoing legal matter that has far-reaching implications for the relationship between the government and social media platforms and the ability of the government to suppress speech.