In June 2021, Dr. Sam White, a general practitioner, released a video calling out harmful covid policy. From a scientific perspective every word he said was entirely defensible. Moreover it is clear that he was speaking from an ethical position of wanting to protect his patients from harm. He pulled no punches in addressing the most prominent issues that were causing harm – lack of treatment for the frail, inappropriate gene therapies and masking. In interviews, in 2022, he called the situation a war between good and evil. In doing so he unleashed a torrent of anger among those in a position of power over him, which, three years on, continues to harm him.
He had already resigned from his GP partnership in protest at their vaccination policy in February 2021. His conscience had been keeping him awake at night because he did not want to be a part of the vaccine rollout. Consequently, after resigning he was signed off with stress rather than having to work his notice. NHS England still saw fit to suspend him with an emergency order in June. Dr White managed to record a conversation with an NHS senior clinical adviser who implied that he was mentally unwell. Dr White believes that possession of that recording led the NHS to revoke their suspension. However, by then the NHS had referred him for a GMC investigation and an automatic GMC suspension.
The GMC overturned the suspension in August 2021 but imposed restrictions on him including a ban on mentioning covid on social media and requiring the removal of his previous posts. The legal position is that doctors have a right to free speech but if the GMC could prove Dr White’s speech was a threat to the health of the public or undermined trust in the profession then he could be sanctioned.
Dr White looked to his indemnity provider for support to fund his legal case but they washed their hands of him saying it was a “conduct issue”. With the help of crowd funding support, Dr White took the case to the High Court in November 2021. The verdict was published in December 2021, overruling the GMC and saying they had not followed due process in their actions. The High Court documentation was removed from the judiciary’s website in September 2022 such that other doctors in a similar position will be unable to refer to it in their defence. It is available on the Wayback Machine.
Dr White has asked to be removed from the register, as he is no longer practising conventional medicine, but the GMC have refused and are continuing to persecute him. Every interview he has undertaken has been transcribed and put forward as evidence that he is undermining public health policy and causing the public to lose trust in the profession. The next tribunal hearing is scheduled to last three weeks in August and September 2024. This ongoing investigation, three years later, indicates a relentless effort to discredit and punish Dr. White for his dissenting views.
If that sounds bad, wait until you hear about the NHS’s role.
The same day as the High Court hearing, unbeknown to Dr White or his lawyers, NHSE had a meeting where they decided to refer Dr White for a health assessment, despite the fact he no longer worked in the NHS. This was an opportunity to reopen the investigation into him. They have repeatedly asked if he had returned to NHS work and said he must tell them if he did. What was their intent here? Were they planning to ask any future employer to suspend him all over again?
NHS England has a list of “approved providers”. Any doctor not on their list cannot work for the primary employer of doctors in the country. In 2023, NHS England removed Dr White from their list, effectively barring him from practising within the NHS. He had already shifted his practice to private healthcare with a holistic focus, but this further punishment leaves him with no other options.
The GMC is far from perfect but at least it has due process and a system of appeal for where there might be an injustice. NHS England can unilaterally destroy a career, with no legal recourse.
In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of the whole affair was revealed in the communications between the GMC and NHS England. Firstly, the derogatory terms used about the doctor to justify their behaviour are shocking and reveal a lack of professionalism and intolerance for differing opinions within the medical establishment. Moreover, this language served as a means to rationalise their harsh and unjust actions towards him. Secondly, they appeared to be acting in cahoots. The GMC’s apparent open and fair processes have been bypassed by direct communication with NHS England, stripping Dr White of a right to employment.
Dr. Sam White’s case is a stark example of systemic injustice and the erosion of professional rights within the NHS and the GMC. His ongoing persecution for voicing dissenting views underscores a troubling intolerance for ethical and scientific debate, reminiscent of a Kafkaesque nightmare where rationality and justice are subordinated to bureaucratic oppression.
Several medical credentialing boards instituted COVID-19 Misinformation Policies in September of 2021 and have used them to censor and retaliate against academics and practicing physicians who performed research, clinical care, and presented their findings on the early treatment of acute COVID-19 and vaccine safety. The boards’ position is that they and the government agencies they agree with, hold agency over the truth. By establishing that power dynamic, members who disagree with them are spreading misinformation and can be convicted in closed panel meetings without the member being allowed to present their views based upon the data and evidence at hand.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons sued three medical specialty boards for their threatened actions against the board certifications of physicians because of speaking out on medical controversies. Physicians earned and need these board certifications in order to hold professorships, practice medicine in most hospitals, and remain in most insurance networks.
Defendants are the American Board of Internal Medicine (“ABIM”), the American Board of Family Medicine (“ABFM”), and the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (“ABOG”). In addition, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, is a defendant due to alleged government interference with freedom of speech.
The Fifth Circuit also invalidated Galveston Local Rule 6, by which that federal district court has infringed on plaintiffs’ right to amend their lawsuits. The Fifth Circuit agreed with AAPS that this district court rule is contrary to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and thus must be voided.
“AAPS can now pursue its claim against censorship by the Biden Administration,” AAPS Executive Director Jane Orient, M.D., stated.
Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho agreed with the panel majority on the key issues and wrote separately to decry attempts by some today to impose censorship on others. “In America, we don’t fear disagreement—we embrace it. We persuade—we don’t punish. We engage in conversation—not cancellation,” Judge Ho wrote.
“We know how to disagree with one another without destroying one another. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work,” Judge Ho added as he sided fully with this lawsuit against censorship.
The precedent-setting ruling in favor of the First Amendment was issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. This influential Court established the right to object in court to censorship of physicians’ speech on topics ranging from government Covid policies to abortion. AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly should be congratulated for this stalwart effort in defense of our civil liberties.
Israel’s embattled prime minister has dropped hints that he doesn’t feel he has enough on his plate with the faltering war in Gaza and protests inside his own country demanding his resignation, threatening to expand the Gaza conflict into Lebanon against Hezbollah. A leading Lebanese political observer tells Sputnik why that’s a very bad idea.
Israel is “prepared for an extremely powerful action in the north” against Hezbollah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday, citing the recent dramatic escalation of cross-border skirmishes, which have included Hezbollah drone attacks inside Israel and the shootdown of a heavy Israeli drone over Lebanese airspace last week.
“Anyone who thinks that they can harm us and that we will sit on our hands is sorely mistaken,” Netanyahu warned, speaking to media in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona, which has been evacuated of most of its civilian population amid the fighting.
“Iran is trying to choke us and encircle us and we are fighting back directly and with its proxies. We can’t accept the continuation of the situation in the north, it won’t continue. We will return the residents to their homes and bring back security,” Netanyahu assured, referencing the Iran-led Axis of Resistance alliance, which includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria, Iraqi Shia militias, and Yemen’s Houthi fighters.
Israeli Army Radio reported this week that the government had approved the call-up of an additional 50,000 reservists in preparation of a possible escalation with Hezbollah. US and Middle Eastern media have braced for a full-scale all-out conflict between Israel and the Lebanese militia.
But whatever superficial similarities may appear to exist between Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has managed to bog down Israel’s army using a Spartan combination of rifles, man-portable anti-tank missiles and simple rockets assembled in underground garages, political and military observers the world over agree that the Lebanese group is far, far stronger.
Hardened by years of running battles against the Israeli military and with US-sponsored terrorist proxies in Syria beginning in 2012, Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, also has access to an array of sophisticated missiles and rockets, which observers in Washington estimate to number up to 200,000 – enough to overwhelm Israel’s powerful air and missile defense network.
“Israel has threatened to start a military operation on the border with Lebanon because Hezbollah has been demonstrating growing sophistication and surprising capacities, driving Israel increasingly at unease and confusion about expectations on the northern front,” Dr. Imad Salamey, an associate professor of political science and international affairs at the Lebanese American University, told Sputnik, commenting on the rising tensions between Israel and the militia.
Israel can attack many Hezbollah targets at once and cause significant damage, but cannot remove or even dramatically reduce the militia’s capabilities, “which are widespread and mobile,” the observer noted.
“If Israel aims to seriously undermine Hezbollah, it would involve many years of operations to destroy infrastructure and weapons, push fighters out of the south, and cut off supply routes from Syria. Israel will not be able to achieve this fully,” Salamey stressed.
On top of that, the academic warned that “the threat of spillover is quite high, potentially implicating much of the Quds Brigade in Syria and Iraq, resulting in Israel fighting on multiple and wide fronts.”
That’s not the outcome Tel Aviv would hope for, according to Salamey, with Israeli officials and military leaders typically looking “for a quick military achievement with ambitious goals,” which, if that fails, prompts the IDF to resort to “collective punishment targeting civilians, which is the most likely scenario in this case.”
“The potential conflict will result in major losses on both sides without a decisive victory. However, Iran will likely emerge as a major winner, asserting its regional role in any future political settlements,” Dr. Salamey believes.
Hezbollah and Israel fought their last major war in July-August 2006, during which the IDF leveled much of Beirut’s infrastructure and caused up to $5 billion in direct war damage and lost output and income. Hezbollah emerged largely unscathed, however, with about 1,000 of its fighters facing off against between 10,000-30,000 Israeli troops in southern Lebanon, losing about 250 men while killing 121 Israeli servicemen and injuring over 1,200 others.
That conflict has been described even by Western mainstream observers as a loss for Israel, with Israel’s armed forces said to have been given a “bloody nose” and suffering reputational costs which Tel Aviv has proven unable to recover from to this day.
Whether it is Joe Biden, the current incumbent of the White House, or those preceding him, like 44th president Barack Obama, manipulative militaristic rhetoric results in senseless wars waged and paid for by the US, a US Navy veteran told Sputnik, recalling his own rueful experience.
Joe Biden slipped into his default mode of manipulating historical facts and crowd emotions in his D-Day anniversary remarks on Friday.
Russia was typically presented as ‘the enemy’, while the US on the ‘right side of history’ as it continues to fuel the Ukraine proxy conflict.
Biden had no qualms about drawing a cynical comparison: if we do not help Ukraine against Russia, we will betray the memory of our grandfathers who fought the Nazis.
“We will not walk away. Because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there. Ukraine’s neighbors will be threatened, all of Europe will be threatened,” claimed Biden. The Democrat added that to “surrender” would mean “forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches. Make no mistake, we will not bow down. We will not forget.”
At the same ceremony, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was more blunt, saying that, “if the troops of the world’s democracies could risk their lives for freedom then surely the citizens of the world’s democracy can risk our comfort for freedom now.”
Austin is an old hand at dissimulating when it comes to Washington’s true goals in pursuing the Ukraine ‘project.’ Testifying in front of the House Armed services Committee, he claimed the long-term strategy for propping up the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev was to make sure Ukraine remains “a democratic, independent, sovereign country.” He served up the batch of outright lies without batting an eye.
With his recent rhetoric, Biden may as well have taken a page from the pretentious and meaningless language used by former president Barack Obama in his speech at West Point Military Academy in May 2010. Obama explained why it was necessary to send 30,000 more US troops to Afghanistan without any clear strategy.
“We toppled the Taliban regime, now we must break the momentum of a Taliban insurgency and train Afghan security forces. We have supported the election of a sovereign government, now we must strengthen its capacities,” he said. We know only too well when and how the Afghan debacle ended for the US, with America’s humiliating withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021.
The US launched its invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the time, Washington justified the move on the basis that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the attacks, and that the Taliban had offered sanctuary to members of al-Qaeda. The US invasion and occupation claimed the lives of thousands of US soldiers, and more than 100,000 Afghan troops, police, and civilians.
Before entering the White House, then-Senator Obama had campaigned on a vow to give the US military a new mission: ending the war in Iraq.
The US-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 without a UN mandate, falsely accusing then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein of possessing weapons of mass destruction. That war cost the lives of over 4,700 US and allied servicemen, and hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of Iraqis.
One of those who fell for Obama’s campaign rhetoric has regretted it for the rest of his life.
Mike James, a navy veteran and a Mass Communication Specialist Petty Officer who served in Iraq in 2008, told Sputnik he was “inspired by all of Obama’s rhetoric” to join the military.
“I was 25 years old when I joined the military. So I was a little bit older than most of my peers,” he recalled.
“Leading up to that time was the end of the Bush presidency, and Obama was campaigning as the president who was going to end the wars, … on drawing down the war [in Iraq],” James said. “So I thought that it would be a good time to join the military. And I was inspired by all of Obama’s rhetoric. I joined the military.”
The gullible young man who set off to boot camp in 2008 was in for a rude awakening. He ended up witnessing both of the “pointless, genocidal wars.”
“I thought, man, both of these wars that I participated in were stupid and pointless,” James said. “And all the Iraqis and all the Afghans that I met were nice people, gracious people, hospitable people. And for me to show up as an Imperial stormtrooper was wholly inappropriate and, frankly, genocidal.”
While he “never fired a shot in combat,” instead using his camera to document what was going on around him, the former naval officer said he felt “complacent,” an “actor in these imperial genocidal projects.”
“I fundamentally regret it. It’s embarrassing. I don’t brag that I’m a veteran. I don’t talk to people about my veteran status unless they ask,” said James.
‘Complacent actor’ in US’ ‘imperial genocidal projects’
To this day, Navy veteran Mike James regrets ending up being complacent in senseless wars waged by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Turning to Washington’s current belligerent stance amid the ongoing NATO proxy war in Ukraine, James speculated that the “age of the American military hegemony is over”. Furthermore, he noted that from what he could see around him, the Western economy, “built on its ability to inflict violence anywhere in the world at any given time” was on a cliff edge.
“Everything is propped up on that… I mean, there’s very little industry around me of all the people I know. I don’t see factory workers like I don’t see people going out and getting jobs and doing well,” James noted. “Everybody I know, everybody I see is, is just barely hanging on in this economy. Everybody’s piled on with debt with loans and car bills and just trying to get by.”
“The true believers within the Pentagon and the military brass and the contractors, all these fascistic private contractors that are ruling the world right now, once they realize… that it’s over, I can just see the bottom dropping out on this thing and the economy really changing for the worse,” he concluded.
Hamburg MP Olga Petersen has sought refuge in Russia, telling Bild that she feared having her children taken by the German state over her perceived support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Petersen left Hamburg with her children last month, prompting widespread speculation about her whereabouts. Several weeks before her disappearance, her party – the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) – expelled her from its Hamburg faction for traveling to Russia as an election observer in March and declaring the vote “open, democratic, and free.”
Alexander Brod, a member of the Russian Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, told TASS last week that Petersen had settled in Russia with three of her four kids.
Petersen broke her silence on Friday. “I have indeed taken my children out of the country,” she told Bild. “I want to know that my children are safe and that they remain in my care. Without my children, I would no longer see any meaning in life.”
According to Brod’s account, social workers had begun proceedings to take the three children – all of whom are in elementary school – into state care. Petersen offered no further details on the alleged efforts to take her children, and Bild questioned these claims, stating that the kids had been reported to youth welfare workers over behavioral problems.
Expressions of support for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine are illegal in Hamburg, with a court in the city sentencing a man to three years in prison last May for sharing “pro-Russian ideas” and using the ‘Z’ symbol – painted on some Russian military vehicles operating in the conflict – on his Telegram channel.
While there were no criminal proceedings being taken against Petersen, any kind of prison term would have resulted in her losing custody of her children. German courts can also strip a parent of their custody rights if they are deemed abusive, violent, or negligent.
Although Petersen has been expelled from the AfD’s faction in Hamburg, she remains a member of the region’s parliament and will appear on ballot papers as an independent in Hamburg’s district election on Sunday.
“I will remain a member of the Hamburg Parliament and will fulfill my obligations to the best of my knowledge and belief,” she told Bild, adding that she will ensure her children’s safety before deciding whether she is “fit for political action again.”
The concepts of hegemony and global dominance, which the Collective West clings to, have no place in the multipolar world order – which is already becoming a reality, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Saturday.
Speaking at a panel discussion on new norms of international relations at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Zakharova slammed Western governments for resisting the structural changes which have already started with regard to the self-organization of nations and their interactions with other states.
“We are talking about polycentrism, a departure from previous norms, and we see the desperate resistance of the Collective West… They see the norm differently – as their own dominance, as a world order based on one rule – that they must dominate as before, and everyone must do only what the dominant allows them to do,” she stated, adding that the drive for dominance has only ever “led humanity to monstrous tragedies,” including colonialism and Nazism.
“Today it is hegemonism, an obsession with domination, a painful pseudo-messianic idea of [the West’s] global mission… But neither people nor states can declare themselves as missionaries, only history can prove whether their mission was good or based on unhealthy ideas,” Zakharova said.
She added that the ideas of global dominance, of the exceptionalism of some nations amid the destruction of ethnic and cultural identities of others have repeatedly been expressed by Western leaders. She went on to say that these ideas are not shared by the global majority, which has already embraced the concept of multipolarity.
“We should not forget, they are a minority – the Collective West… their worldview is shared by no one except for them,” she said, citing memorandums adopted by multinational blocs as the Russian-led BRICS group, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, African Union, and others, in which member states commit to forming a multipolar world order.
“The SCO… covers 3 billion people – half of humanity… BRICS covers over 30% of the Earth’s land mass, 45% of the world population – some 3.5 billion people, and 33% of global GDP… 3% more than the GDP of the G7,” she stated.
Zakharova noted that even in the West, some analysts claim that “the US has not been a world hegemon for a long time,” while “its actions in the international arena have led to the destabilization of world politics.” However, until there are significant changes in policy and ideology, Russia and its global allies have “a long struggle ahead” to form a truly polycentric world order, she said.
“While our cause is not simple, it is worthy and noble. And we will walk this path as a global majority. We don’t call it a mission, though, we call it our goal and objective.”
The EU-funded International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for several high-profile Russian media figures and officials, including former President Dmitry Medvedev and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, over alleged “hate speech.”
In a statement on Thursday, the IFHR called on the ICC to investigate what it called six “Russian propagandists,” including Medvedev, Simonyan, Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, TV host Vladimir Solovyov, TV presenter Sergey Mardan, and Alexey Gromov, who serves as First Deputy to the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.
Like the US, Russia does not recognize the authority of the ICC, dismissing its rulings as “null and void.”
In its communication to the ICC, the IFHR alleged that Medvedev, Simonyan, Kiselyov, Solovyov, and Mardan “played a leading role in the dissemination of discriminatory hate speech targeting Ukrainians on the basis of their political views.”
The organization, which filed the document together with the Kharkov Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), and an undisclosed Russian NGO, also accused Gromov of “personally shap[ing] core propaganda narratives.”
The IFHR has also claimed that the targeted figures were “spreading false and distorted narratives,” including “portraying Ukrainians as Nazis” and claiming that Ukrainian “state ideology is hatred for everything Russian.”
Moscow has for years voiced concerns about a resurgence of Nazi ideology in its neighbor, pointing in particular to ample evidence of the Nazi symbolism being used by Ukrainian nationalists.
It has also repeatedly denounced what it terms a long-running campaign to eradicate the Russian language from all spheres of life in Ukraine as well as a crackdown on Russian and Soviet cultural heritage. Officials in Moscow have named the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of the main goals of the military campaign against Kiev.
The IFHR is mostly funded by grants and donations. In 2022, its sponsors included the French Development Agency ($6.6 million), the European Commission ($6.4 million), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency ($3.6 million), and the Open Society Foundations ($1.1 million). The latter was founded by activist billionaire George Soros.
Last year, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly participating in “unlawful” deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow has said that the children were evacuated from the combat zone to ensure their safety, stressing that they could be returned to their parents or legal guardians upon request.
Commenting on the IFHR’s request, Medvedev called it an “acknowledgment of the effectiveness of our combined effort against the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.” He also said that such NGOs have essentially become accomplices of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian civilians.
In the opening days of this year’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum, there were a number of signs that the Kremlin is taking a much tougher line in its relations with the West than hitherto in response to the war mongering rhetoric that has come out of Western Europe in the past week. France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States had publicly stated that the weapons they have supplied to Ukraine can be used as the Kievan authorities see fit, meaning that attacks on the Russian heartland with long range missiles coming from their factories and programmed by their specialists are permitted.
Meanwhile, in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing commemorative activities in France yesterday, Emanuel Macron had done his very best to enrage the Kremlin by excluding Russians from the ceremonies and instead by warmly embracing the defender of the Bandera Nazi collaborators, President of Ukraine Zelensky. Macron compounded the insult to Russia by announcing that he will send Mirage 2005 all-purpose fighter jets to Ukraine before year’s end and that Ukrainian pilots are now in training in France.
The new hard line from Russia was evident already at the start of the week when deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was allowed to speak his piece to the press, condemning the entry of West European powers into what is essentially co-belligerent status in the conflict. Ryabkov, you will remember, was the hard liner from the Ministry back in December 2021 demanding a voluntary roll back of NATO to its 1994 borders through negotiations over a draft document to that effect, lest Russia be compelled to push them back by force.
Then the tough condemnation by Ryabkov was repeated to the press by his boss, Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov.
At his meeting with representatives of the leading news agencies from 16 countries on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin sounded a tough note when he said that Russia’s response to a possible attack on critical Russian infrastructure in its heartland using the long-distance missiles supplied by the West would be met by an asymmetrical response, namely by Russia’s supplying similarly advanced weapons to armed forces that are in confrontation with the United States and are in a position to inflict significant damage on them if properly equipped. This sounded very much like a plan to arm the Houthis of Yemen, who could take good advantage of Russia’s hypersonic ship killing missiles to take revenge on the U.S. aircraft carrier force in their region. Or to give an assistance to Iraqi and Syrian militias who have been attacking U.S. military bases that are being maintained in their territories illegally.
Of lesser importance, but still valuable as indication of which way the wind is blowing in Moscow, at that meeting with the press Vladimir Putin allowed himself to use some vulgar terms that are out of character. These came in his answer to the Reuters journalist who asked about Russia’s possibly using tactical nuclear weapons against the West. Aside from saying that Western talk about Russia’s supposed plans to attack them were as dense as the wood of the desk before him, he called this all ‘bullshit’ (бред or чушь собачья). We also know that in the last day or two for the first time ever Putin alluded to the United States as an ‘enemy’ rather than using the now conventional term ‘unfriendly country.’
Then came the news yesterday, that Russia is dispatching the Admiral Gorshkov warship and task force to the Caribbean for exercises. The Gorshkov is not just any ship in the Russian fleet. It has been fitted with the latest Zircon nuclear capable hypersonic missiles. I imagine that from waters near Cuba its missiles could reach Washington, D.C. in five or ten minutes.
This looks as though the Kremlin is deliberately setting up a Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0, but basing its missiles in ships operating freely in international waters as is their right.
Apparently, the Biden administration has responded with feigned nonchalance to this development, saying that Russian exercises in the Caribbean are an innocent affair that take place periodically. Such is what Reuters reports.
However, I very much doubt that Pentagon officials are in fact so laid back.
All of the foregoing was the warm up. Today, at the Plenary Session of the St Petersburg Forum we saw that the hard line – soft line debates are still raging in the Kremlin. This was clear in the very odd decision to designate the political scientist Sergei Karaganov as moderator, pitching questions to Vladimir Putin and to the two honored guests on the podium with him, the presidents of Bolivia and Zimbabwe. Still more peculiar were the, shall we say, very unfriendly questions that Karaganov put to Putin, all of which hinted at a power struggle in Moscow over how best to respond to the West. This will be the subject of the segment below.
*****
In the past, before the start of the Special Military Operation, moderators for the Plenary Sessions of the St Petersburg Forum were uniformly chosen from among well-known American journalists. Usually these were people who knew little or nothing about Russia and were reading to Putin questions prepared for them by their editors. A perfect case in point was CNN anchor, pretty woman Megyn Kelly who held the position at the 2017 Forum. Her list of questions was repetitive to the point of hectoring. But she added glamor and could draw a Western audience. When relations already were becoming quite strained, the organizers of the Forum slotted in the Vesti journalist, anchor of the widely watched Saturday evening news Sergei Brilyov. Brilyov could be said to be a half-way compromise, because he was deeply embedded in the West, with his family residing in the U.K. while he was a dual national with British passport.
As late as a day before the opening of this year’s Forum, there was speculation that the moderator would be Tucker Carlson. In one sense, his taking that role would ensure a vast audience for the proceedings. On the other hand, his very American persona would be in contradiction with the dominant anti-Western current that I now see.
Instead, what we got was Sergei Karaganov, a political scientist whose name many in the West will find familiar because of the shocking call he made in June 2023 for Russia to put an end to Western provocations in and over Ukraine by striking one or another of its enemies in the West using tactical nuclear arms and forcing capitulation.
The article is worth re-reading because many of the points critical of Russian foreign and military policy that Karaganov made there, all indirectly deeply critical of Vladimir Putin’s softly-softly approach to managing international relations, were repeated face to face in his exchange with Putin on stage this afternoon. The key point he made is that Russia must quickly climb the escalatory ladder and win by its own ‘shock and awe’ behavior; that this, in the end, will save millions of lives by disrupting the present gradual ascent towards all-out nuclear war between the superpowers.
Whereas Putin had allowed himself to be subjected to unfriendly questioning from Western journalists on stage at previous Forums, this is the first time I have seen him subjected to unfriendly questioning by a leading member of Russia’s own foreign policy establishment.
The tension was visible in Putin’s face as he argued that so far Russia’s sovereignty and existence has not been threatened, so there is no reason to speak of using nuclear weapons in this conflict. Moreover, the Russian armed forces are daily pushing back the front line, gaining new territory and decimating the enemy’s manpower. Ukraine is losing 50,000 men a month and even the most drastic mobilization plans now being foisted on Kiev by Washington will, at best, only fill in the losses, not strengthen the Ukrainian positions for a counter-offensive.
Karaganov also probed Putin’s mentioning to the world press Russia’s planned ‘asymmetrical’ response to any attacks on its territory. Would Russia be sending hypersonic battleship killing missiles to the ‘enemies of our enemies’ in the Middle East, he asked. Putin demurred, saying that nothing has yet been shipped, and that every future move would be taken only after thorough study.
*****
Putin’s speech to the Plenary Session about the 9 structural reforms that Russia will be implementing in the period to 2030 was itself an odd address for an audience consisting of not only Russians but of businessmen and government representatives from a great many foreign states. The speech was almost entirely about economic development of the country and improvement of living standards.
Before getting to his questions about Russian foreign and military policy, Karaganov had put questions to Putin from the economic domain. However, his dry manner, utterly lacking in charm, could not have warmed the hearts of the audience. And even in this domain, the questions he put to Putin were unfriendly.
Karaganov spoke as a true son of the alienated Russian intelligentsia when he asked his President whether in the ongoing recentralization of economic management there would not be reexamination of the whole privatization process of the 1990s which was directed in a criminal manner.
Without wishing to plead the case of the oligarchs, Putin put the blame not on criminal intentions but on mistaken economic assumptions of those managing the economic transformation at the time, namely that they had assumed that whatever the business under examination may be it would be in better hands if privately owned than to remain as state property. As it turned out, said Putin, we have found that the state is entirely capable of managing businesses and its role is essential for industries requiring heavy capital investment.
No doubt there were many Russians in the audience who enjoyed the sparring on the dais. But there surely were others who shared my concern that there is a battle going on in the Kremlin for the direction of Russian foreign and military policy.
What we saw in the discussion on stage today was an indication of who will take the reins of power in Russia if Vladimir Vladimirovich is overthrown or assassinated, as the United States so fervently hopes: it will very likely be people thinking like Sergei Karaganov, like Vladimir Solovyov, like Dmitry Medvedev, who will have fewer qualms about taking risks, including dropping Russia’s 70 kiloton tactical nuclear weapons here and there to vanquish the West and their Ukraine proxy. By the way, each of these ‘tactical’ as opposed to strategic bombs is four times as powerful as those dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The US government-affiliated Ukrainian web publication “Data Journalism Agency” (TEXTY) has just released a report attacking hundreds of prominent American individuals and organizations as enemies for not supporting sending more US money and weapons to Ukraine.
The report, titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it,” intends to smear American politicians, journalists, and social media influencers as tools of Russia, writing:
Most of the people in our study do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists. However, the arguments they use to urge authorities to distance themselves from Ukraine echo key messages of Russian propaganda aimed at depriving Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves with Western weapons and funds. (emphasis added)
Although the “enemies list” purports to correct disinformation about Ukraine spread by those on its list, the report itself is full of crude disinformation. For example this bit:
Even long-debunked myths continue to surface, such as claims of Nazi dominance and American Biolabs in Ukraine and the portrayal of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity as a coup.
The organization’s assertion that these claims are “long-debunked” may be wishful thinking, but back on planet reality even mainstream, pro-Ukraine media sites in the US wring their hands over the disturbing, extremist images coming out of the country. For example, NBC News wrote that, “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.” Newsweek wondered, “Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine’s Cause?” Even before the current conflict, mainstream pro-Ukraine publications such as Reuters worried in 2918 about “Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem.”
As to the biolabs, none other than Mother of the Maidan Victoria Nuland admitted in a US Senate hearing that there were biolabs in Ukraine. Ah, but one may counter that these were not “American biolabs.” In fact with the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop now absolutely confirmed during his trial, a report by the New York Post two years ago based on the laptop also must be considered accurate. According to the article, “Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was ‘financing . . . biological laboratories in Ukraine’ was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.”
And on whether the Maidan events of 2014 were a “Revolution of Dignity” or a coup, we again only need turn to Victoria Nuland’s infamous phone call with US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, for all the evidence needed that the US was micromanaging the removal of an elected leader and replacing him with hand-picked US puppets.
The report also includes such prominent American politicians and journalists as Sen. JD Vance, Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Jim Jordan, and Col. Douglas Macgregor.
Even our friends at Antiwar.com… and your own correspondent (!) find ourselves appearing on the Ukrainian “enemies list”:
As the report states:
There are 391 individuals and 76 organizations in our list. These include politicians, political movements and groups, media and journalists, experts, and think tanks (some individuals appear in multiple categories).
Perhaps what is most shocking about this attack on American citizens is the fact that the Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) has a long affiliation with the US Government itself! In fact, the founder of the publication Anatoly Bondarenko appears prominently on a US Government website as a participant in the US State Department’s “TechCamp” project.
The Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) is listed as an “Implementing Partner” of the US Agency for International Development’s Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/ TAPAS Project.
The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their “enemies.” One of their most notorious of these is the infamous “kill list” put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
One wonders how, for example, former US President Donald Trump and dozens of members of the US Congress will react when they hear that US tax dollars are being sent to Ukraine for US-backed Ukrainian organizations to make “hate lists” and “kill lists” of patriotic Americans like themselves.
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
At least 22 civilians have been killed in Ukrainian shelling targeting the village of Sadovoe in Russia’s Kherson Region, Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Friday. A nine-year-old child is among the victims, he added.
The attack hit a small shop in a residential area, Saldo said. When locals rushed to aid the victims of the first strike, a second one followed, striking the same area, he said. A total of 17 civilians were killed in the shop and near it and four more people living in the nearby houses lost their lives as well, according to the governor.
At least 15 people were also injured in the strike, Saldo said, adding that five of them are currently in “critical condition.” The shop was full of customers at the time and was destroyed, he stated, branding the attack a “bloody crime” and a “heinous murder.”
According to Saldo, Ukrainian forces first used a guided bomb to strike the shop before hitting the same area with a US-made M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) multiple rocket launcher. Kiev’s Western backers have supplied Ukraine with dozens of such systems, which have been extensively used by its troops throughout the conflict with Russia.
Ukraine has long touted HIMARS systems as high-precision weapons used to strike high-value assets. Russian officials have said they recovered debris from HIMARS munitions after strikes on purely civilian targets on multiple occasions.
Kiev’s troops have been actively targeting civilians in Russian regions throughout the conflict. In mid-May, one person was killed and “many” others injured in another Ukrainian attack in Kherson Region. On that occasion, Kiev’s forces struck a minibus carrying civilians with a drone.
The Russian city of Belgorod, located not far from the Ukrainian border, has become one of the main targets of Kiev’s attacks. Ukrainian forces bombarded it on New Year’s Eve, killing 25 civilians at a festive event.
The continued strikes targeting the civilian population in Russian border regions prompted Moscow to launch an offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region in an effort to create a buffer zone to curb cross-border attacks.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if Ukraine continues to “shell residential areas in border territories,” then Russia “will be forced to create a security zone” to deprive it of the ability to make such strikes.
The WHO’s Pandemic Treaty missed its deadline, but their amendments to the International Health Regulations have passed enshrining new pandemic rules for the legally binding contract for 196 countries.
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administration’s coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt the U.S. is making the “same mistakes” with bird flu that it made with COVID-19, which she said spread because there wasn’t enough testing for asymptomatic infection.
Birx is now calling for every cow to be tested for bird flu weekly and for regular pooled tests for dairy workers. She also said it’s likely that undetected cases are circulating in humans.
“We have the technology,” Birx said. “The great thing about America is we’re incredibly innovative and we have the ability to have these breakthroughs.”
The technology Birx referenced is polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing — the same diagnostic tool that came under fire during the COVID-19 pandemic for producing inaccurate results, including false positives.
Speaking out on X (formerly Twitter), critics like Simon Goddek, Ph.D., pushed back, accusing Birx of “deliberately using the same strategy to fabricate another fake health emergency.”
On Wednesday, the day after Birx’s interview, JAMA published its own article advocating for more widespread bird flu testing.
“No animal or public health expert thinks that we are doing enough surveillance,” Keith Poulsen, DVM, Ph.D., director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told JAMA.
Andrew Pekosz, Ph.D., from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told JAMA that more testing should be conducted to find asymptomatic and mild infections. Workers at infected farms should be tested twice weekly, he said, and cows should be tested once a week.
Inventor: PCR test never intended for use as diagnostic tool
PCR testing works by starting with tiny fragments of DNA or RNA called nucleotides and replicating them until they become large enough to identify. The nucleotides are replicated in cycles, and each cycle doubles the amount of genetic material in the sample. The number of cycles required to create an identifiable sample is the “cycle threshold” (Ct).
PCR tests became a household name during the COVID-19 pandemic because they were treated as the “gold standard” for identifying positive cases, especially among asymptomatic people.
However, as early as December 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that using a high-cycle threshold would lead to false-positive results. The agency encouraged healthcare providers to consider the test in concert with other factors — namely the presence of symptoms — when diagnosing patients.
The WHO also cautioned those using the tests to read the instructions carefully to determine whether the cycle threshold ought to be changed to account for any background noise that could lead to a high-cycle threshold being mistaken for a false positive.
“When specimens return a high Ct value,” the press release said, “it means that many cycles were required to detect virus. In some circumstances, the distinction between background noise and actual presence of the target virus is difficult to ascertain.”
Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR test, said it was inappropriate to use the test as a diagnostic tool to detect a viral infection.
Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted during the pandemic that a high cycle — which was used often — detected only “dead nucleotides,” not a viral infection.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) did not immediately respond to The Defender’s inquiry about which cycle thresholds are used to test animals for bird flu.
Mass testing ‘will only serve to raise a false case count’
As of Tuesday, the latest circulating bird flu virus has reportedly infected 81 herds of dairy cattle in nine states and poultry farms in 48 states. The virus can be fatal for poultry but does not generally cause serious illness in cattle.
In the latest wave of bird flu, only three people in the U.S. have tested positive for the virus after close exposure to an infected cow. All three experienced mild symptoms — two experienced eye irritation and one also had a cough and sore throat. All recovered without incident.
The WHO reported Wednesday that a resident of Mexico died from a bird flu infection, but WHO officials also maintain the virus’ threat to the general population is low.
Mainstream media outlets like Scientific American warned that the bird flu isn’t a pandemic “yet,” but it could evolve to become one if people do things like continue to drink raw milk. And The New York Times warned yesterday that the virus “may not be done” adapting.
The CDC reported on Tuesday that it monitors genetic changes in the virus and “few genetic changes of public health concern have been identified.”
Nevertheless, the U.S. government is building up its national stockpile of existing vaccines produced by CSL Seqirus and is nearing contracts with Moderna and possibly Pfizer to fund the development of an mRNA vaccine for the virus.
On Tuesday, Finland announced it will begin offering the vaccine to selected groups of people.
“We did not have a bad outbreak for over a century, and there is every likelihood that we won’t again,” Bell said. “We are using technology to pretend that new threats are occurring because we can now detect them.”
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough said last month that mass testing of healthy animals — as Birx is suggesting — will only serve to “raise a false case count.”
Feds using PCR testing on animals, wastewater, farmworkers, meat and milk
The federal government last month announced a new round of funding to reduce the impact of bird flu. The plan appropriated $93 million for the CDC to do virus genomic sequencing, increase monitoring of farmworkers, and improve and expand testing on a national scale for bird flu in animals, wastewater, farmworkers and meat.
The FDA also appropriated an additional $8 million to surveil and test the commercial milk supply.
Lactating dairy cows must be tested for bird flu before they can cross state lines, per an April 24 Federal Order issued by the USDA.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) also encourages farmers to voluntarily test cattle and herds with suspected infection, showing symptoms like reduced milk production or respiratory issues. APHIS covers the cost of the tests if conducted at an approved laboratory and if the farmers agree to have the tested cattle and premises tracked.
The approved laboratories conduct PCR tests for several different flu strains that could be bird flu markers, including “FluA matrix, H5 and optionally H5N1 2.3.4.4b,” to determine whether the cattle are infected.
All laboratories, whether or not on the USDA’s approved list, must report all positive influenza A test results to the USDA weekly by 5 p.m. on Mondays. Farms with positive cases are quarantined.
KFF Health News reported that additional testing of farmworkers would make it possible for researchers to “track infections.” The problem is that “people generally get tested when they seek treatment for illnesses,” but farmworkers don’t tend to go to doctors unless they are very ill.
Farmworkers have been actively monitored for symptoms since the first case was detected but not PCR-tested. In response, federal authorities announced in May they would pay farmworkers to get tested for the virus as part of a program that also offers incentives to farmers to allow their dairy herds to get tested.
Workers are paid $75 for giving the CDC a blood sample and nasal swab.
That wastewater testing is done by organizations including WastewaterSCAN, an infectious disease monitoring program based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory University and funded through philanthropy, including the Sergey Brin Family Foundation created by the founder of Google.
The organization has most recently detected bird flu in San Francisco, although it is unclear whether it comes “from animal waste, milk, people or a combination of sources, according to the Los Angeles Times. WastewaterSCAN on June 3 began publicly reporting H5 data from its 190 sampling sites across the country in its online dashboard.
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service is also testing meat from condemned cows. Late last month the agency announced that 95 of 96 culled cows tested negative for viral particles and that none of their meat entered the food supply.
It also reported that ground beef from retail facilities in states with cows that have tested positive for bird flu was all PCR-negative for the virus.
The agency also experimented with inoculating meat with high levels of the virus and then cooking it and testing for the virus. The virus was not detected in the meat patties cooked to medium or well-done, and it was “substantially inactivated” in the rare patties.
The FDA also tested retail dairy products in 17 states. The agency noted that PCR-positive results “do not necessarily represent live virus that may be a risk to consumers,” so when they found PCR-positive samples, they further tested them through a process called “egg inoculation.”
The agency found many samples with positive PCR tests, but none tested positive for the live virus.
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
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