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Vaccines Grown in Lettuce? Rep. Massie Asks House to Bar FDA, USDA From Funding Transgenic Edible Vaccines

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 27, 2023

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed an amendment that would prohibit funding for transgenic edible vaccines — vaccines grown in genetically engineered plants for consumption by humans or animals.

The amendment, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) to the agricultural appropriations bill H.R. 4368, would bar the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from funding the vaccines for fiscal year 2024.

A vote on the full bill in the House is still pending as of this writing.

In an interview with The Defender, Massie said he introduced the amendment after learning about a recent project in California, funded by a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, that involves growing lettuce and trying to get the lettuce to produce mRNA vaccines that are intended to be consumed by humans who eat the lettuces.

Massie said he is concerned “that plants cross-pollinate and pollen from these modified plants, food-producing plants, could carry in the wind to other fields and contaminate them. And we could really contaminate a lot of our food supply with unknown doses of vaccines that would deliver unknown dosages.”

“Plants release pollen and it can go anywhere with the wind or with insects, and I just think it’s a bad idea,” he added.

“Rep. Massie is right to be concerned,” Claire Robinson, managing editor of GMWatch, told The Defender. “Genetically engineering a potent immunogen into food plants is irresponsible in the extreme.” She added:

“All the usual risks of GM [genetically modified] plants — the DNA-damaging effects of the GM transformation process leads to changes in gene expression and biochemistry of the plant, which can include the production of toxins or allergens — apply to these vaccine-producing plants, with additional risks on top.

“In the case of vaccine-producing plants, you are intentionally engineering a plant to elicit an immune reaction. This increases the level of risk exponentially.”

‘Either they don’t work, or they are not safe, or both’

According to a 2013 scientific paper, transgenic edible vaccines “are prepared by introducing selected desired genes into plants and inducing these genetically modified plants to manufacture the encoded proteins.”

Such vaccines offer “several potential advantages” to conventional vaccine production techniques according to the paper, including a potentially lower cost of production that would be suitable for developing countries.

Efforts to develop transgenic edible vaccines are not new — scientific literature on the topic dates back to at least 1999.

What is new with some current attempts to develop transgenic edible vaccines is that they would be geared to deliver mRNA vaccines orally.

“These are all genetically modified crops,” Massie said. “They’ve been injected with mRNA or spliced with DNA, with the intent of creating copies of that RNA or DNA. The plants are pretty effective at that.”

Robinson said this approach is not new. “Scientists have been trying to produce edible vaccines in plants for many years and some testing has occurred in animals and humans.”

However, she added, “Thus far, not one plant-produced vaccine has been approved anywhere, as far as I know. What does that tell us? Either they don’t work, or they are not safe, or both,” Robinson said.

California project is ‘utter madness’

The California lettuce project that drew Massie’s attention, conducted by scientists at University of California (UC), Riverside, is described as an effort to develop “The future of vaccines,” which “may look more like eating a salad than getting a shot in the arm” via turning “edible plants like lettuce into mRNA vaccine factories.”

“The project’s goals … are threefold,” according to UC Riverside. “Showing that DNA containing the mRNA vaccines can be successfully delivered into the part of plant cells where it will replicate, demonstrating the plants can produce enough mRNA to rival a traditional shot, and finally, determining the right dosage.”

This may help overcome challenges currently facing mRNA vaccine technology, namely, “that it must be kept cold to maintain stability during transport and storage.”

Plant-based mRNA vaccines “could overcome this challenge with the ability to be stored at room temperature,” university researchers said.

Juan Pablo Giraldo, Ph.D., an associate professor at UC Riverside’s Botany and Plant Sciences Department, is leading this research project alongside scientists from UC San Diego and Carnegie Mellon University. He said, “Ideally, a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person.”

“We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens,” he added. “Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it.”

Robinson called such efforts “utter madness,” telling The Defender :

“Scientists are talking about people growing vaccine-containing plants in their gardens and farmers growing them in their fields. It is utter madness to propose to release such plants into uncontrolled conditions in this way.

“Vaccines are medicines, and their use and dosage must be carefully controlled. With any medicine, only the target patient should be treated, with their informed consent. How will these safeguards be in place if people are growing vaccines in food crops in their gardens and open fields?”

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert and professor of international law at the University of Illinois who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said that such research may also violate international law and globally recognized ethical standards.

“The deployment of these transgenic edible vaccines would involve a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code on Medical Experimentation, and thus constitute a crime against humanity,” he said. “Their release into the environment would violate the Precautionary Principle of customary international environmental law. They would also be subject to the same human health objections to GMO foods that are too numerous for me to list.”

“What about cross-pollination and cross-contamination?” Robinson questioned. “People will ingest immunogens without their consent or knowledge.”

Risk of prion diseases, ‘dangerous immune reactions’

Robinson said there may also be several other unintended consequences for human health from the use of transgenic edible vaccines.

She said:

“Plant-produced vaccines will have what is known as post-translational modifications to the intended protein product. You will not end up with just the desired protein product as it exists in its native form in the pathogen. These post-translational modifications will be specific to the plant, and in humans or other animals they will produce dangerous immune reactions.

“Even the responses to the desired protein product — the ‘vaccine’ — will vary from person to person because people respond differently to different proteins. Also, you can end up with proteins that are toxic or that are not folded properly, with the latter property meaning that they could cause prion diseases.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prion diseases “are progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect both humans and animals,” and include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker disease, fatal familial insomnia, kuru and, in animals, chronic wasting disease.

“In addition, it’s possible that the novel proteins will sensitize people to other things, such as foods,” Robinson said. “In an age where food allergies are increasing rapidly, do we really want to risk worsening that trend?”

Massie said there are other ways in which the human food supply could be contaminated by plant-based vaccines, noting that animals could eat plants and “that could eventually contaminate food that humans eat.”

“How do you control the dosage when you put it in food?” Massie asked. “I think it’s just a really bad idea. Even if you’re not against vaccines in general, I just think this is a really bad way to deliver vaccines to people or animals,” he said.

He added:

“I think we should have learned our lesson. If we believe that COVID-19 was a lab escape and the result of human experiments, which I do and most Americans do, then I think you should be concerned about these outdoor labs … Here we’re talking about greenhouses or open fields.”

Along similar lines, Boyle said, “We know that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines have produced a massive number of deaths and adverse events that have been thoroughly documented in the professional literature.”

“These transgenic edible vaccines would likewise be more dangerous than useless, so I wholeheartedly support Massie’s amendment,” he added.

In drawing another parallel with COVID-19, Massie likened the UC Riverside study to “science fiction.”

“Unlike some of the other research that’s been done for vaccines for animals to be grown in plants, this project in California is intended to develop vaccines for humans … I have no idea what they’re doing with this stuff. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie,” he said.

He added:

“I think we learned from the COVID virus that you’ve got to be careful with this stuff. When you start playing God and you start modifying genes and merging DNA that’s never been merged before, you can get some unintended results. And if those escape, you can have some really bad implications or consequences.”

Similar experiments went awry

According to Massie, similar experiments with transgenic edible vaccines were conducted in the past, sometimes with government funding and support — including a project to develop transgenic alfalfa plants for edible vaccine production.

That five-year project, launched in 2016 by Fort Valley State University in Georgia, sought to “develop transgenic alfalfa plants expressing the CTB gene, which can be used in plant-based edible vaccination systems.”

The project was supported by an unspecified level of funding from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and resulted in the publication of at least one scientific paper.

“And then there’s another instance where things went very bad,” Massie said. “About 20 years ago, they were trying to grow a vaccine to prevent diarrhea in pigs and they were using corn to grow this vaccine. The field the next year was used to grow soybeans, but the corn sprouted again.”

According to Massie, “There were some leftover kernels … and the corn was mixed with the soybeans, and it contaminated 500 bushels of soybeans that were then mixed with 500,000 bushels. And so, they had to destroy all of those soybeans.”

The New York Times reported in December 2002 that ProdiGene, the biotechnology company that developed the corn crop, agreed to pay the U.S. government a $3 million fine “to settle charges that it did not take proper steps to prevent corn that was genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals from entering the food supply.”

While it is unclear whether this particular project was granted U.S. government funding, an archived version of the website from 2007 of Texas A&M University’s Food Protein R&D Center, which hosted the research, said the center “collaborate[d] contractually with … state and federal research laboratories” and was “partially funded by the Texas Food and Fibers Commission.”

In November 2000, ProdiGene received an unspecified grant amount from the National Institutes of Health for the development of a transgenic edible vaccine intended to “develop genetically enhanced corn that could serve as an oral delivery system for an AIDS vaccine.”

In October 2000, ProdiGene received a U.S. government patent (#6,136,320) for the development of pharmaceutical products in plants for human and animal consumption. The company appears to be defunct since the mid-2000s, not having issued press releases since 2004, while its website became inactive in February 2006.

More action needed to stop government funding

Massie told The Defender he’s not passing a law that would prevent private organizations from doing this research, “but I’m using the appropriations process this week to try to defund the use of taxpayer dollars to develop these things.”

He said the amendment is in the form of a limitation agreement. “It doesn’t institute a law,” he said. “It will only prohibit government funding from being spent on this. So even if it’s successful, it will only last for the term of the appropriations bill, which is one year.”

“If we’re successful in stopping this through the appropriations process, we would have to do this every year,” Massie said, adding that “this amendment … only constrain[s] the FDA and USDA from doing this research. It wouldn’t actually constrain the NSF.”

For that to happen, Massie said “We’ll have to have another amendment on a different appropriations bill to keep that agency from funding this research.”

Massie pledged to introduce similar amendments if this happens.

“If that appropriations bill comes to the floor, I will offer an amendment to limit the funding for this type of research on it as well,” he said. “If the appropriations bill that funds the NSF should make it to the floor, I’ll offer this identical amendment to keep them from funding it.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

Where TCW leads the BMJ follows

By Roger Watson | TCW Defending Freedom | September 29, 2023

We have been questioning the long Covid narrative on these pages since early in 2022. We have questioned its existence, its use to lever the next round of Covid vaccine rollout, the possibility that the syndrome is being confused with Covid vaccine side effects and we have called for some common sense.

It has taken some time for the medical establishment to catch up, but at last they seem to have done just that. A recent article in the queue for publication at the peer reviewed journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine has arrived at the same conclusion as we have.

The study, published under the ‘Analysis’ column of the journal with international authorship from the US, Denmark and London, makes some awkward reading for those who adhere to the long Covid narrative. All the points we have made in the past are there, including the very broad definition of long Covid which means that almost any symptom that anyone suffers following a bout of Covid is ascribed to long Covid. We have seen how the list, initially in double figures, was honed down to fewer than ten only to grow again into double figures. On that basis, if we put our minds to it, we could all have long Covid. The fact that there are also very different definitions of long Covid existing across organisations such as the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) is included.

A key point made in the article is the ‘striking absence of control groups’. Put simply, if someone who has had Covid claims that they have long Covid, they are believed without comparing the number of people who have never had Covid reporting the same symptoms. Where rigorous designs have been used, including properly matched controls, the results have been described as ‘reassuring’; in other words, reassuring in the sense that the extent of long Covid may well be exaggerated. Not included in the article is the report that half the people who report having long Covid have never had Covid, something we have referred to several times.

Of key importance is what the authors refer to as the ‘unintended consequences’ of exaggerating the issue of long Covid which include ‘increased societal anxiety and healthcare spending, a failure to diagnose other treatable conditions misdiagnosed as long Covid and diversion of funds and attention from those who truly suffer from chronic condition’. In the wake of Covid measures which led to the near-closure of the NHS, waiting lists which continue to grow and the increase in undiagnosed and untreated cancer and cardiovascular disease, the long Covid narrative is simply adding to our problems.

It becomes increasingly clear that long Covid exists because people want it to exist. The kind of people who fell for the Covid narrative hook, line and surgical face mask, simply cannot let go of their addiction to catastrophe (which is a real thing). The public health fascists who stock our university health faculties and the higher echelons of the NHS need some excuse to maintain the culture of fear. All of this plays into the pockets of Big Pharma who have warehouses full of vaccines to sell.

It is unlikely that the BMJ article will turn things around and get us off the long Covid bandwagon, but it does offer a glimpse of hope.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Care homes – The evidence of harms

If you have a weak stomach don’t read this

By Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson | Trust the Evidence | September 30, 2023

We’ve written a lot about the systemic failings in government policy regarding care homes (see here, here and here).

However, a recent study on the transitions between hospitals and care homes caught our eye. The sort of study that bypasses the media: Two care home providers with 20 to 40 care homes each in the South West and the North East of England participated, and 70 participants were interviewed.

The study exemplifies the impact hospital discharge policies had: “… hospitals just wanted patients out, regardless of COVID status. To be brutally honest, they weren’t interested; they just wanted people out. In those early days, you know, it was very traumatic.”

And how hospitals desperately enacted a policy to clear the decks:    “… we had a phone call from a nurse from the hospital to say that … this lady was lying beside somebody, less than two meters, who was COVID-positive.” 

These instances highlight how thoughtless and reckless the government policies were. Driven by error-strewn modelling along with a chronic lack of capacity in the NHS, panic set in: hospitals would be quickly overwhelmed. Something had to be done to free up capacity – an easy target was found: the elderly and the most vulnerable and brutally the least able to stand up for themselves.

Hospital discharge service requirements were first published on 19 March,. On 2 April, the guidance said, “Some of these patients [admitted from a hospital or a home setting] may have COVID-19, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. All of these patients can be safely cared for in a care home if this guidance is followed.

This policy, which saw discharges to care homes without testing, has been ruled unlawful by the High Court. In Gardner & Anor, R, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Garnham found that government policy was “irrational” because it failed to consider the risk to elderly and vulnerable residents from asymptomatic transmission.

It took until 15 April to recommend testing and 14 days of isolation for admissions to care homes. Before this, negative tests were not required prior to transfers/admissions into the care home.

The study interviews show that care homes became no-go zones: “GPs or other healthcare professionals or multidisciplinary, like, podiatrists, everyone has difficulty coming to see the residents as of high demand or they can’t come for whatever reason, so COVID-19. They used to come, now they are no longer able to.”

The study also emphasises the inhumane practice of isolating vulnerable people  ‘Strong feeling that isolating care home residents went against usual practice and, for some, was very hard to endure, especially when they needed human contact and emotional support from family and friends following a period of hospitalisation.’

We’ve written about “Confinement Disease”, which is likely more harmful than covid in care homes. ‘Among long-term care residents in the Southern Ile-de-France region, more than 24 covid deaths among 140 residents occurred in 5 days. None were due to acute respiratory distress syndrome, and death was mainly due to hypovolemic shock as residents were confined to their rooms for several days without assistance with eating and drinking.’

Confinement leads to feelings of being in prison: “… rather than keeping them in hospital we would send them [to the COVID-19 unit], and then once they’re 14 days clear, I know it’s 10 now, but it was 14, then they would go back to their original care home. But it’s just been carnage, to say the least.”

The study interviews also showed how degrading and impersonal confinement practices were  “… so they couldn’t have their belongings until it had been left in a certain place and washed at a certain heat and 72 hours before you can have them back. You go in your room, and you can’t see anybody, and when you do, they’ve got masks and visors, and you cannot hear them, and you’ve got all of that.”

Socially distancing and isolating the most vulnerable comes with costs. The practice of rapidly discharging patients is unlawful, yet is anyone  interested at a government level in how to better look after those in care?

Patients were discharged from high-resourced hospital settings – where some had time to do Tik-Tok dances – to low-resourced care homes, which worsened as staff went off in their droves—the opposite of what you need, as less care equates to more deaths. Then you isolate vulnerable people who can’t care for themselves – again, the polar opposite of what these people need, preventing much-needed personal care that can be life-saving. Even worse, at the end of life, were the restrictions on who could share that moment, hold a person’s hand as they drew their last breath, and prevent compassionate care at one of the most important times.

The potential for harm is exceptionally high in care homes; with quarantining, physical and mental deterioration occurs rapidly, and renal failure occurs swiftly in the face of dehydration – the ultimate price to be paid is a lonely death.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Nobel Winner Highlighted “Non-Trivial” Side Effects of mRNA Vaccines Including Auto-Immunity and Blood Clotting Risks

BY ROBERT KOGON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 2, 2023

In what seems like an inevitable development, scientists Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their role in developing the mRNA technology underlying the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, which were rolled out in late 2020.

But in a paper published as recently as 2018 and which is extensively quoted in an article at MedPageToday, none other than Drew Weissman warned that prior clinical trials of mRNA vaccines had produced results which were “more modest in humans than was expected based on animal models… and the side effects were not trivial”, including “moderate and in rare cases severe injection site or systemic reactions”.

Further summarising the paper by Weissman and three colleagues in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, MedPageToday notes:

Their chief safety concerns, which they said should be closely watched in future trials, were about local and systemic inflammation, as well as keeping tabs on the “expressed immunogen” and on any auto-reactive antibodies.

“A possible concern could be that some mRNA-based vaccine platforms induce potent type I interferon responses, which have been associated not only with inflammation but also potentially with autoimmunity,” they wrote. “Thus, identification of individuals at an increased risk of autoimmune reactions before mRNA vaccination may allow reasonable precautions to be taken.”

The authors also noted that extracellular RNA could contribute to edema, and cited a study that showed it “promoted blood coagulation and pathological thrombus formation.”

The MedPageToday article is titled ‘Want to Know More About mRNA Before Your Covid Jab?‘ How many readers actually went ahead and got it after they knew?

Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Online Censorship: Canada Continues Crackdown

Most media services must now “register for regulation”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 2, 2023

On Friday the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission published new guidelines requiring media outlets to register with the service so their content can be “regulated”.

Under the new regulations all streaming services, social media companies and platforms that host podcasts would be [emphasis added]:

required to provide the CRTC with information related to their content and subscribership

This is the culmination of a “public consultation” launched back in May. For those unfamiliar with “public consultation”, it is a process by which government agencies use members of the public to tell them what they want to hear.

CRTC’s press release couches the move in faux-liberal talking points, referring to it as “modernising Canada’s broadcasting framework” and “ensuring online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content”, but that is clearly camouflage for an obvious power-grab.

It’s noteworthy that podcasting services are made a specific focus.

After all, these days anyone with a microphone and internet connection can start broadcasting whatever they want to whoever they want, with little to no “regulation” of their content. That’s a no-no for a burgeoning global dictatorship fixated on the world’s subjugation through the control of information.

Don’t be surprised if the Canadian government starts “reviewing content” from podcast services and saying things like…

“Podcast X is broadcasting hate speech/propaganda/misinformation about subject Y, you cannot stream any podcasts in Canada until X is removed from your service.”

That’s supposition, but hardly a stretch given the huge surge in censorship of all kinds from governments all around the world since the “pandemic”.

In fact, you can almost see this as a direct response to some of the propaganda failures of the mainstream media during the “pandemic”.

The alternative media was able to win a lot of battles during the Covid roll-out, and a push to “regulate” podcasts is a quasi-admission of this. As are the words of CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides:

We are developing a modern broadcasting framework that can adapt to changing circumstances.

“Adapting to changing circumstances”… deliciously vague, but also fairly clear. They don’t have the power they need to regulate the growing voice of non-mainstream sources given rise by the internet.

The three measures announced on Friday are unlikely to be the last, the end goal is a fully “modernized” Broadcasting Act to be passed in late 2024.

What will that include? Who knows.

But considering the Canadian government has already blocked all news-sharing on social media, unpersoned and unbanked peaceful protesters, enforced “vaccines” and given a standing ovation to a literal member of the SS, you’d be forgiven for fearing the worst.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces injure Palestinian school children in West Bank raid

Press TV | October 2, 2023

The Palestinian Ministry of Education has suspended classes in the village of Burqa due to the injury of a child in a raid by Israeli forces into a school.

Ghassan Daghlas, acting governor of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, said on Monday the decision to close the school was to maintain the safety of students.

Local media reported that Israeli forces also directly fired stun grenades and tear gas canisters toward the Palestinian students inside the school during the raid a day earlier. Dozens of children also suffered from smoke inhalation.

Israeli forces also denied teachers of 27 schools access to classes in Masafer Yatta area, located south of the city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The regime forces placed barriers to block the roads leading to the education centers.

In recent months, Israeli forces have also demolished a number of schools across the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education in an earlier statement said the demolition of schools was “a heinous crime.”

“These practices have become a flagrant violation of students’ right to safe and free education.”

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

What’s behind the sudden US good will towards Iran?

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | October 2, 2023

In what proved to be a domestically controversial move, the US government approved the release of five prisoners held in Iran in return for releasing five Iranian detainees and billions of previously frozen assets. However, in the aftermath of the agreement between Tehran and Washington, the White House’s primary focus seems to be centered around securing a Saudi-Israeli deal rather than working on reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

As revealed by the anonymous diplomatic sources of The Cradle, in addition to other tidbits released in US media, the US-Iran prisoner swap appears to have been much more than meets the eye. The informal agreement, according to these anonymous sources, encompassed freezing Iranian uranium enrichment at 60% and permitting the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to install cameras at several nuclear sites. On the other hand, the US’ concessions included disregarding Iranian oil sales – in essence, refraining from enforcing sanctions – and allowing all Iranian assets to be released, reportedly amounting to roughly $20 billion. This is well over the widely reported $6 billion touted in the international press.

What makes this agreement so intriguing is that it was non-formal, including no known signed documents, and was contrived over several months and under the auspices of Qatar and Oman as intermediaries. From leaked information, citing unnamed sources, what we can gather – regardless of what claims are true or false – is that the prisoner swap was more than a simple exchange of prisoners and $6 billion in frozen assets. According to a report released in May by Axios, secret indirect talks between the US and Iran had been conducted in Oman, which three sources close to the news outlet claimed Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kan, was part of. Later, in June, the New York Times released a report claiming that secret negotiations were going on, aimed at concluding an informal agreement to replace the need to revive the 2015 nuclear deal.

To begin with, if we are to assume that the official US narrative on the agreement is correct, despite Iranian officials having contradicted it, then the most apparent objective in mind from Washington’s perspective would be to cause a thaw in America’s relationship with the Islamic Republic. As various analysts have suggested, this could have also signaled hope for a revival of the nuclear deal, which fell apart after the administration of former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from it in 2018. Hope had largely faded that the administration of President Joe Biden could bring the deal back to life after Biden was revealed to have said that it was officially “dead” in November of 2022.

However, given the information we have at hand, what is most likely here is that this represents a massive de-escalation following ship seizures and the beefing up of America’s troop presence in the Persian Gulf back in August. Why a de-escalation now? Is it to revive nuclear deal talks? This appears highly unlikely. Instead, the prisoner exchange agreement comes simultaneously with, and is somewhat overshadowed by, developments in the ongoing discussions to reach an American-brokered normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The two nations, both powerful partners of the US in the Middle East, have never had formal diplomatic relations with each other. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel as a sovereign country and has been at loggerheads with it over its treatment of Arabs in Palestine, which Riyadh ostensibly wants to see as an independent nation. Negotiations to finally normalize diplomatic relations have been ongoing for months now, with the US being a highly invested middleman, given that achieving such a deal would help consolidate its power base in the region. As for Iran, while Israel sees it as an existential enemy, Saudi Arabia has had a complicated relationship with it, only having re-established diplomatic ties earlier this year in a deal brokered by China.

When Biden met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)’s 78th session, they publicly discussed the high hopes of concluding Saudi-Israeli normalization. This was followed by two Fox News interviews, one with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and the other with the Israeli PM, during which both said that the deal grows closer by the day. At Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UNGA, he spoke at length on Iran; however, there was no mention of the recent US-Iranian prisoner exchange.

In fact, Israel has remained silent on the informal deal. This is especially interesting, considering that Tel Aviv routinely attacks the prospect of any agreement with Iran, let alone one that allows for tens of billions in funds to be transferred back into the hands of Tehran. In June, Netanyahu spoke over the phone with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during which he discussed Iran at length and proclaimed that he opposes and will not be bound by any agreement struck between Washington and Tehran.

On September 5, Antony Blinken spoke with the Israeli premier again, allegedly discussing Iran as the primary subject of the call. While the precise details of the calls are impossible to apprehend, there had to be a good chance that the prisoner swap agreement was mentioned, as reports had publicly been leaked to the press regarding Iran-US talks. With so much focus placed upon Iran by Israel, it makes no sense that Tel Aviv would remain silent on the prisoner exchange, especially given the release of Iran’s formerly frozen funds.

Not silent on the unfreezing of Tehran’s billions were Republican politicians in the US Congress. If the Biden administration were to have accepted a renewal of the 2015 nuclear deal, one of its major hurdles would have been passing the deal in Congress, including the deeply opposed Republican-led House of Representatives. In fact, any attempt to try and pass a deal, at this point, could reflect negatively on the Biden White House, which matters more now as we head towards the 2024 presidential election.

Therefore, by striking an informal agreement with Tehran, the US de-escalates and addresses some of its worries surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. More importantly, however, the US government could be trying to create a fertile environment for the conclusion of an Israeli-Saudi normalization agreement, both by calming Iran down to de-escalate regional tensions and, possibly, leveraging concessions to ease Tehran’s pushback against the normalization directly. Whether this strategy will work or not is yet to be seen. Still, it is clear that the key foreign policy goal for Joe Biden is securing the normalization agreement, which is why it makes sense that the most powerful nation that opposes it – Iran – should be addressed and taken seriously.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 1 Comment

British Defense Sec ‘Mad’ to Suggest ‘Catastrophic’ Military Mission to Ukraine

By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 02.10.2023

The UK’s newly-appointed defense secretary was “mad” to suggest sending troops and ships to Ukraine, a military expert has said.

British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps told a newspaper over the weekend that UK soldiers could be sent to Ukraine to train conscripts to Volodymyr Zelenksy’s depleted army.

The defense secretary even hinted that Royal Navy ships could be sent to the Black Sea to escort Ukrainian merchant vessels following the breakdown of the grain export deal with Russia — in spite of Turkiye’s ban on military vessels of any other nation transiting the Bosphorpus straits to enter the land-bound sea.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak quickly slapped down Shapps in a TV interview on Sunday on the eve of his Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester, saying: “There are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict.”

Since 2022, the British Army has put tens of thousands of Ukrainian recruits through three-week crash courses on training grounds in the UK before they are sent to the frontlines.

Similarly, documents leaked from the US Department of Defense in April this year estimated that there were up to 50 SAS special forces operating covertly in Ukraine, but did not indicate what their mission might be.

Former British MP Matthew Gordon-Banks, a senior research fellow at the Armed Forces Defense Academy in Oxfordshire and Conservative partymate of Shapps, said Shapps’ comments to the media were a “complete PR disaster.”

“Shapps gave an interview, possibly over-stating his intentions as a new defense secretary ahead of a speech to the Conservative Party conference. The Telegraph wrote it up as a certainty,” Gordon-Banks told Sputnik. “I suspect it horrified the prime minister, security and intelligence sources and the wider government.”

The military expert said Shapps’ suggestion of sending British troops into the warzone was simply unthinkable.

“His idea was absolutely mad. Only this week, Russian leaders like [State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav] Volodin, [Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov and [Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry] Medvedev have made it clear about how the conflict in Ukraine will end and what they would see as unnecessary escalation by NATO,” Gordon-Banks said.

He noted that the article had quickly been taken down from the newspaper’s website — possibly at the insistence of the intelligence services.

“Such a deployment would be catastrophic in both diplomatic and military terms,” Gordon-Banks warned.

In an article in the same newspaper on Sunday, Shapps’ predecessor at the Ministry of Defense Ben Wallace claimed Ukraine was winning its summer offensive — already written off by some US generals and even British state broadcaster the BBC — despite only capturing a handful of villages after four months of fighting.

He also urged Kiev to begin conscripting teenage boys into its army in an attempt to stop Russia from bringing overwhelming force to bear.

“The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40,” Wallace wrote. “I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but the fact is that Russia is mobilizing the whole country by stealth,” he claimed.

The defense analyst said Kiev was already press-ganging youths to make up for the terrible casualties its army has suffered over the past year and a half.

“Ukraine has already lost three armies,” Gordon-Banks stressed. “They are now pulling 16- to 18-year-olds off the streets. 500,000 Ukrainians have already died fighting a senseless, unnecessary war and it is time for the West to move more quickly to end this conflict.”

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Losing a Plane? Try Losing a Nuke

By Kym Robinson | The Libertarian Institute | October 2, 2023

Recently, the U.S. Marine Corps lost (and later found) an F-35 aircraft. The circumstances are mostly undisclosed or rumor based, though that is to be expected in regards to such a sensitive matter. While it has become a comical example of incompetence, it’s not the worst thing that the U.S. military has lost.

They’ve also lost nuclear weapons… on a few occasions.

The U.S. term for it is “Broken Arrow.” There have officially been 32 reported incidents involving Broken Arrows. Lost ‘nukes’ outside of the United States are unknown, given that not all national governments are as open with information. The U.S. has admitted that six nuclear weapons remain lost. During the reign of the Soviet Union, it is possible that such weapons also went missing, especially in the chaotic years following the break up when ownership and security of the strategic arms repeatedly changed hands or remained in limbo.

Another concerning reality is that Soviet era “suitcase sized” nukes may also be unaccounted for. Retired Russian General Alexander Lebed has claimed that as many as one hundred such devices are likely missing. These one kiloton ‘mini nukes’ assigned to Spetznaz special forces are not only the perfect weapon of terror, but are small enough that they could be misplaced in a storage facility somewhere slowly “cooking” until the moment of accidental detonation. That is the real concern for all of the missing nukes. If the safety mechanisms on them fail or erode, they may someday detonate with random carnage. Given that all seem lost in remote locations, there is still a risk of harming the innocent, not to mention the environmental impact such an event would cause.

The first Broken Arrow occurred in February 1950, when a B-36 bomber, while experiencing mechanical issues, dropped an atomic bomb over the Pacific Ocean near Princess Royal Island. The Mark 4, 30-kiloton (Fat Man) bomb is still missing to this day. Four more accidents in 1950 occurred with U.S. bombers carrying nuclear weapons over American soil. Thankfully none of the accidents resulted in nuclear detonation.

In March 1956, a B-47 bomber crashed in the Mediterranean sea with two nuclear cores onboard. The bomber, its crew, and their nuclear devices remain missing. During a training mission in February 1958 another USAF B-47 bomber carrying a Mk 15 atomic bomb collided with an F-86 Sabre fighter jet. The bomb was dropped over Wassaw Sound before the crew could attempt an emergency landing. The crew survived, though that bomb remains missing also.

Such accidents and the potential for further Broken Arrows increased during Operation Chrome Dome, an ambitious readiness routine that kept U.S. nuclear bombers airborne 24hrs a day. Armed and constantly flying, at least a dozen strategic bombers remained capable of hitting the Soviet Union in response to any attack around the clock. In 1961, early into Chrome Dome, a B-52 crashed shortly after take off in North Carolina. One of its 24-megaton nuclear bombs remains missing. Another bomb from this incident that was recovered showed that three out of the four arming mechanisms had been activated; fortunately, there was no nuclear explosion from this mishap. The other missing bomb’s safety mechanism status remains unknown, along with its whereabouts.

It was not only the Strategic Air Command that lost nukes. The U.S. Navy had a Broken Arrow in December 1965, when an A-4 Skyhawk armed with a one-megaton thermonuclear bomb fell off the flight deck of the aircraft carrier, USS Ticonderoga. The Skyhawk, its aviator, and bomb remain missing around 500-miles from land beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean. In the spring of 1968 the USS Scorpion sank 400 miles southwest of the Azores Islands, taking with it the lives of 99 crew members and a pair of nuclear tipped weapons. These nuclear weapons and their radioactive material remain deep under the ocean, and only time will tell what long term damage such weapons will cause.

An incident that was considered one of the worst nuclear accidents of its day occurred in January 1966 when a nuclear weapon splashed under the waves close to Spanish fishermen near the Alboran Sea, meanwhile three thermonuclear bombs crashed into the countryside outside the village of Palomares, spreading radioactive plutonium. The U.S. government conducted an extensive clean up, shipping thousands of tons of contaminated Spanish soil back to the United States. The area remains contaminated still to this day, and the missing bomb is somewhere under the water.

Other Broken Arrows are as follows: two bomber accidents in 1956, three in 1957, six in 1958, four in 1959, one in 1960, three in 1961, another in 1963, three more in 1964, up to three in 1965, another in 1966, three for 1968, one for 1969, one in 1975 and one in 1980. A further seven more accidents occurred up until 2000.

Each of these incidents involved American or Russian aircraft or submarines and some ended with a loss of life, but with the potential to cause a catastrophic mass death event. That’s not to mention the environmental damage that is likely being felt to this day. The safety protocols on these devices have been proven to be life saving, and clean up operations have been thorough or at least as best able to manage. That is when a clean up occurred at all or when any recovery was possible.

It is unknown what other nuclear armed governments have experienced and whether their weapons have undergone accidents and losses. Given the sheer number and regular movement of their arsenals, it stands to reason that the United States and Soviets would experience more accidents than other, smaller powers. We can assume these governments have better safety standards and training in regards to such weapons. It’s hard to imagine that Pakistan, North Korea, or even China would have the level of training and practice when it comes to handling such weapons compared to the United States. Then again, by having far less of them available, it stands to reason that they may be a little less reckless with the deployment of such weapons. Future accidents and losses involving nuclear weapons remains likely.

We are sliding into a world of frightened global environmental awareness, notably under the blanket of “climate action.” Governments across the planet are taking it upon themselves to tax and grow in the name of green policies. The truth of the matter is that government is not only wasteful and destructive (even when well meaning), but it’s also often incompetent and reckless. The placard of environmental protection is the fixture for future policies based on altruistic sloganeering. ‘Save the planet’ has become a mantra for public servants to spit out while they consume resources, blow the planet to pieces, and steer society into a path that in the years to come will be as dangerous to nature as current policies.

There was a time when the wider public and most conscientious activists were concerned by nuclear war and the catastrophic effects of just one bomb detonating, let alone numerous. It seems that with the climb into yet another cold war and the irrational desire for jingoism that the potential for nuclear Armageddon has been forgotten, or is at best a distant nightmare of a prior generation. The energy to save the planet is alive and well, but it has become hijacked by awareness advocates and big government careerists who wish to just paint the status quo green. Heightened tensions between powers capable of destroying the planet with nuclear weapons is dangerous, for both the obvious, direct implications of war but also because we may see a return to the Broken Arrows of the past. Losing an F-35 shows that there could again be the loss of a cheaper nuclear tipped system that may fall from or be lost with another aircraft. We know it’s possible because it’s already happened.

To imagine that the biggest government in the world has time and time again not only poisoned the planet with chemical defoliants, plumes of death from burn pits, scattered bombs over civilians, sprayed herbicides in the hopes of curbing drug production, pumped depleted uranium into each war zone it’s created, dropped mega litres of jet fuel into the ocean, ruined sea life with naval activities, and dropped numerous atom bombs all over the place… but as it turns out, has lost some too.

While it’s unlikely a third party will find them first, those unaccounted weapons of mass destruction linger as a potential danger that in time may leak or explode with catastrophe. No amount of benevolent prayers for a big government solution will every fix the culture of government itself.

Humanity and our planet deserve better than to be constantly left in the hands of central planners who rule with both cynicism and incompetence. Even well meaning reformers drown in such a work place. If another world war is not a bad enough prospect, losing the weapons intended to wage it certainly won’t save the world.

The missing F-35 was found after a few days. The nukes, if anyone in the government is even still looking, may turn up when we least expect it. Life on Earth is too precious to constantly be put at risk with such contemporary and political stupidity. How many of these regimes and administrations can the planet survive? The only green government is the one that does not exist. If you want to fix the planet then we need to get out of its way and let nature heal. And there is no tax for that; for the destroyers of the world, that’s precisely the problem.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Environmentalism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

American Meddling Failed To Prevent Robert Fico’s Victory In The Latest Slovak Elections

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | OCTOBER 1, 2023

The “Direction-Social Democracy” (SMER) party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico emerged victorious after Slovakia’s latest elections on Saturday in spite of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) warning before the vote that the US will go to any lengths to prevent that outcome. Nobody should have been surprised by that since CNN’s reporting made it obvious that Washington wanted him to lose. Here are three of their articles fearmongering about his democratically driven return to office:

* “A NATO country could soon have a pro-Russian leader”

* “With Kremlin apologist leading the polls, Slovakia vote threatens country’s support for Ukraine”

* “Pro-Russian politician wins Slovakia’s parliamentary election”

The reason why America meddled in this election is because it fears both the substance and symbolism of a hitherto stalwart NATO vassal defecting from the bloc’s anti-Russian proxy war coalition. Fico previously condemned the West’s role in provoking and perpetuating this conflict exactly as neighboring Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has done since the get-go. Just like him, Fico is also against arming Ukraine and could prevent others’ weapons from transiting across his country as well.

He’ll still need to form a governing coalition in order to make good on his promises, but few doubt that he’ll be able to. Assuming that’ll happen, then Slovakia will join Hungary in creating a center of anti-war gravity in the heart of both the EU and NATO, which complements Poland’s newly cautious stance towards this proxy conflict brought about by its dispute with Ukraine. These three could then form an influential force if the latter’s ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party wins re-election on 15 October.

Poland remains much more committed to this conflict than Hungary and post-election Slovakia, but there’s also no denying that the Polish people are incredibly offended at Ukraine’s ungratefulness. A critical mass of them might therefore vote for the anti-establishment Confederation party to protest PiS’ prior appeasement of Kiev up until recently despite that regime’s glorification of those who genocided Poles. If enough do so, then PiS might be compelled to form a coalition government with Confederation.

In that case, Poland might move closer towards Hungary and Slovakia’s position, which could inspire average Europeans to follow these countries’ lead during their own upcoming elections. The demonstration effect that was set into motion by Slovakia and which might soon manifest itself in Poland is therefore regarded by the US as a strategic challenge for good reason. That doesn’t justify its failed meddling in the latest Slovak elections, but simply places its motives into the appropriate context.

The fact that the CIA still failed to prevent Fico’s re-election dispels three popular myths, first and foremost that agency’s omnipotence. The second is foreign voters’ alleged inability to defy the American government’s will, the false perception of which has been exploited to suppress anti-establishment turnout. And finally, the Ukrainian Conflict is truly unpopular in some countries despite the media’s claims to the contrary and its crazed efforts to artificially manufacture support for this proxy war there.

With these symbolic outcomes in mind as well as the substantive changes to Slovak policy that are likely to follow its latest election, not to mention their possible impact on Poland in the coming future and the rest of Europe after that, the failure of America’s meddling campaign is a major development. It’s premature to describe it as a game-changer, but it still suggests a potentially impending inflection point in the Ukrainian Conflict, provided of course that the CIA doesn’t successfully sabotage related trends.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , | 1 Comment

Georgia Awaits USAID’s Explanations on Funds for Training in Organizing Unrest

Sputnik – 02.10.2023

TBILISI – Georgia is waiting for clarifications from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) regarding information about the funding of training in organizing unrest in the country, Georgian parliamentary speaker Shalva Papuashvili stated on Monday.

Earlier in the day, the State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) said on social media that three Serbian citizens from the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), allegedly funded by USAID, arrived at the end of September in Georgia to teach tactics for overthrowing the government to young people and members of influential non-governmental organizations. According to the SSSG, the coup was planned for October-December, just when the European Commission is set to publish its decision on Georgia’s EU membership application.

“It was a dark day in the history of American aid to Georgia… We see that money of the American nation is used for planning revolutionary processes, to deliberately train people to riot and incite violence. That is why it is important to receive a corresponding explanation on behalf of the USAID, which has been involved in such a scandal for the second time already,” Papuashvili told reporters.

Georgia’s former deputy interior minister, Giorgi Lortkipanidze, and the commander of Georgian Legion in Ukraine. Mamuka Mamulashvili, who used to be a bodyguard of Georgia’s jailed ex-President Mikhail Saakashvili, were accused of plotting the coup.

An independent online news platform reported that this is at least the seventh time since the ruling Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012 that officials have accused various entities of plotting a coup against the government.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | 1 Comment

IS THE COVID VACCINE CAUSING TURBO CANCERS?

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | September 22, 2023

Oncologist and cancer researcher, Dr William Makis, is sounding the alarm on the sudden rise in “turbo cancers”, a recent term coined for the incredibly fast growing cancers found in COVID vaccinated individuals. Hear what the early data is showing in the causal relationship with the vaccine and the struggles doctors are having treating these patients.

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment