Threat to Arrest Russian Journalists Signals Growing Political Persecution in West
By John Miles – Sputnik – 04.06.2024
Western governments are increasingly turning towards overt methods of repression as they lose their grip on control of the masses.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice (CFJ) has been forced to disavow comments by a legal director with the organization calling for the arrest of Russian journalists after intense backlash.
Anna Neistat, who leads the foundation’s The Docket project, claimed Thursday that her team is urging international authorities to prosecute Russian reporters.
“We want them to travel to other countries and be arrested there,” said Neistat, revealing that she is pressuring the European Union and International Criminal Court to pursue the matter. Neistat made the comments during an interview with the US state-backed propaganda outlet Voice of America.
The organization has since backpedaled on the provocative claim with a statement asserting that “someone in our foundation misspoke,” but observers see the proposal as yet another sign of the West’s growing authoritarianism and intolerance of dissenting voices.
Author and political analyst Caleb Maupin joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Monday to discuss the incident.
“There’s a lot of things to keep in mind in reaction to this news story,” said the author and reporter. “The first of which is that the European Union has basically already outlawed all Russian media within the EU space, right? You can’t watch RT. Websites are suppressed, blocked, and it’s pretty hard to look at Russian media in the EU.”
“RT France has been shut down. You can’t watch RT in Belgium, you can’t watch RT in EU countries,” he continued. “What is a little bit different, though, about this is that this was specifically aimed at journalists who would report in Russian, for Russian audiences, but would do so from EU countries. And the idea was that they would be charged, and what’s interesting also is that the warrants for their arrest would be secret.”
“They would be arrested upon arrival and it would be a way to basically just kidnap these reporters and journalists and hold them hostage. And, if you look at it, it’s a particularly nasty proposal. And that’s probably why I noticed that George Clooney is now backing away from it and saying, ‘oh, people from our foundation misspoke, we didn’t mean this,’ etcetera.”
European countries have made increasingly aggressive attempts in recent years to restrict media and control the flow of information across the continent. The EU has outright banned Russian media outlets from broadcasting within the 27-nation bloc, but measures have been taken against third-party platforms, as well. The video sharing website Rumble was forced to block French users from accessing the platform after refusing to comply with government demands to block Russian content.
Politicians in the UK have also explored blocking the website, and the country recently detained journalist Kit Klarenberg at an airport in London, questioning him for five hours about his political views.
Across the Atlantic, the United States has famously condemned journalist Julian Assange to 12 years of effective confinement after the Wikileaks founder published leaked material revealing US war crimes in Iraq. Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made plans to kidnap and murder the firebrand transparency activist, it was recently revealed.
The uproar over the CFJ’s comments comes as Sputnik contributor Scott Ritter was denied travel to speak at a conference in Russia Monday, having his passport confiscated by authorities on apparent orders from the US State Department. Free speech concerns have also been raised over police crackdowns on campus pro-Palestine encampments, a move demanded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I will say, though, that the Ukrainians have been saying this from the beginning,” said Maupin of the calls to arrest Russian journalists. “I mean, they have this list of ‘information terrorists’ – which I’m proudly on, by the way, I’m listed by the Ukrainian government as an ‘information terrorist’ – and they have been calling for the assassination and murder of journalists, and they’ve done it since the war has begun.”
“This is not a change for Ukraine. What’s changed here is that the Clooney Foundation made such a statement and wanted to enlist EU governments in carrying it out.”
Western governments are usually more subtle in their attempts to control information, noted Maupin, typically relying more on efforts to influence popular narratives rather than outright censorship. The move towards more overt repression may be seen as a response to the increased transparency allowed by the Internet, or perhaps another sign of the West’s loss of power as a multipolar world order comes into view.
“They like subtly bringing up points they like,” Maupin noted. “Finding people who say things that they agree with and boosting them rather than saying it themselves. This is how the intelligence world works, and a huge amount of what the American intelligence apparatus does is construct media narratives and insert ideas into media discourse.”
“A lot of what the intelligence apparatus does is just boost certain messages and try to control the conversation in a subtle way to advance US foreign policy goals.”
The Kremlin may rest easy: Europe is a paper tiger
By Gilbert Doctorow | June 4, 2024
Having committed to an outlay of 60 euros for a social club luncheon which was to be addressed by the Belgian minister of defense, Admiral Michel Hofman, speaking on how the ministry is preparing for what it calls ‘geopolitical evolution,’ meaning World War III, I was more than a little disappointed to learn, as we were standing by our seats awaiting our ‘at ease’ orders, that our speaker would be a no-show. Apparently he was called away to confer with colleagues in the government, and since this government has only one week to enjoy its perquisites before it is swept away by the June 9th parliamentary elections, the minister’s priorities are understandable if unforgivable from our perspective as paying guests.
Happily, however, at the initiative of the club’s president and of some attendees who have military standing, a chap from the ministry who is responsible for human resources was rushed in, had a quick bite to eat now that we all had advanced to the main course while awaiting his arrival, and then provided us all with what I am about to present below.
For obvious reasons, HR is in the spotlight now that the number one question facing this and other member states of NATO and of the EU is whether they can and will rise to the challenge of a Russian ‘imperialist menace’ and do the right thing, namely impose mandatory military service on the young and swell the ranks of their military forces. At my table, there was already a lively discussion of the socializing benefits of national service for the young, as if this issue were entirely separate from its context of a coming war that will utterly destroy the Continent.
If I may telegraph my punches, the key learning from the talk of our stand-in speaker is that there is no money to pay for masses of conscripts. Indeed, the Ministry is already struggling to cope with personnel costs that eat up between 80 and 85% of the defense budget. Belgium may have just 18,000 men in the services, but it would appear that keeping them in clothes, food and pensions is already a great burden. Moreover, given the professionalization of the armed forces in recent decades, it is estimated that it takes 18 months to bring a new recruit up to speed on the equipment he is supposed to be using on the missions of his units. Six months or even a year in uniform will not do much to make the recruits net contributors to the nation’s defense.
Yes, the Belgian military is tiny. Our admiral has under him a total of 5 mine sweepers, 2 frigates and 2 patrol boats (source: Wikipedia). For that reason the principal concern is the first from among what our speaker called the three ‘coups’ of war making – solidarity with fellow NATO members, self-defense, and facilitating the ‘arrival of the cavalry’ which means giving logistical support through the port of Antwerp to arriving forces and equipment from North America.
After all, in Belgium the second ‘coup,’ defending itself, comes down to air defense, for which it is today utterly unprepared, like all other EU member states, as we know not just from the hints of today’s speaker but from full-blown articles these past several days in The Financial Times. And as for the ‘cavalry,’ it seems that this ministry does not count on the reliability of Washington any longer.
There you have it in a nutshell: Belgium cannot and will not increase its armed forces; and Belgium is wholly committed to solidarity with its NATO confrères for the simple reason that it has no independent military capabilities. Indeed, as our speaker noted, one of the most positive consequences of the Ukraine-Russia war has been to drive solidarity among NATO members to new heights. This can only be to Belgium’s benefit.
Or can it?
Usually in luncheons like this, we have a fairly generous time allotted to Q&A, but today we were running late by the time we reached desert and the microphone was given to only one person. By the luck of being seated close to the dais and of being quickest to raise my hand, that person was me.
And so I posed my question: is solidarity really so fine when the policy of NATO is to issue ever more provocations to the Russians, to pose what they consider to be existential threats, including the shipment of F16s to Ukraine and the latest decision to ‘free the hands of Kiev’ to use the long range missiles being provided to it by the US, by the UK, by France to strike deep into the Russian heartland. If NATO member states are not prepared today physically and morally to enter into a direct, frontal war with Russia then why are we doing this?
Dear readers, you will not be surprised to hear that I got no answer to my question worth repeating.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
Belgium wants to silence Hungary’s anti-war voice, Hungarian FM Szijjártó claims
BY DÉNES ALBERT | REMIX NEWS | JUNE 4, 2024
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib is taking the initiative to exclude Hungary from EU decision-making processes, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó has claimed.
Speaking in Budapest on Monday, the senior Hungarian government minister accused Eurocrats of wanting to suppress the pro-peace forces and remove the last obstacle to war by silencing and excluding Hungary from strategic talks.
The minister was reacting to a recent statement by his Belgian counterpart who called for the Article 7 rule of law procedure against Hungary to be stepped up, thus depriving Hungary of its voting rights in the Council of the European Union.
He said that those who may have doubted the importance of this week’s European Parliament elections may now be convinced that such a decision has perhaps never been before the Hungarian people, as the war frenzy in Brussels has taken hold and those who are for peace are being silenced.
“There is a lockdown panic, six days to go until the European elections, six days to go before people pull the emergency brake on the pro-war train, which is currently hurtling towards its final destination, a third world war, in a seemingly unstoppable way,” Szijjártó warned.
“On June 9, the European people can pull the emergency brake, but it is clear that in the remaining days, Brussels will continue to do everything in its power to silence all those who speak for peace and against war,” he said.
“The Belgian Foreign Minister is taking the initiative to exclude Hungary so that we Hungarians should not be able to represent our position, that we Hungarians should not be able to express our opinion on what we think about the consequences of our common decisions, that we Hungarians should not be able to say that we do not want to go to war, but that we want peace, that we Hungarians should not be able to say what kind of war madness is going on in Europe today, and that we Hungarians should not be able to say that the threat of a third world war is getting closer,” he said.
“So the importance of June 9 has also increased. We need very strong support, a big victory, to be able to resist the pressure in the weeks and months to come, to be able to speak out strongly for peace, to be able to stand up against the preparations for a third world war here in Europe,” he added.
The move comes just weeks before Hungary is scheduled to take over the rolling EU presidency on July 1 for six months.
Will the Gaza Genocide be the Beginning of The End of Israel & Zionism? (Miko Peled)
Afshin Rattansi | June 2, 2024
On this episode, we speak to Miko Peled, grandson of one of the signatories of Israel’s 1948 Declaration of Independence and Founder of the Palestine House of Freedom. He discusses the purpose of Palestine House of Freedom and the goal of shifting the pro-Zionist narratives in Washington, the effect of the mass student protests taking in the US against the genocide in Gaza, the Biden Administration’s continued arming and enabling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, why the conversation must be shifted to ending Israeli apartheid and demanding a Free Palestine, whether the Gaza genocide marks the beginning of the end of Israel and Zionism, why the two-state solution is realistically impossible and morally wrong, the genocidal state of Israeli society and the political future of Benjamin Netanyahu, why the goal of Israel is the extermination of as many Palestinians as possible and not the defeat of the Palestinian resistance, the absurdity of the ICJ giving Israel time to end the genocide, and much more.
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FDA Approves Moderna’s mRNA RSV Vaccine — With No Input From Independent Advisers
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 3, 2024
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week approved Moderna’s mRNA respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine for adults age 60 and older.
The FDA approved the drug without input from the agency’s independent vaccine advisory committee, which typically makes recommendations about such drugs, because the FDA didn’t see any “concerns or controversial issues” that would make input necessary to the approval process, the agency said in its approval letter.
Moderna is running at least 11 clinical trials for its new mRNA RSV drug on several other demographic groups, including young children, adolescents and healthy adults.
The vaccine, marketed under the name mResvia, is Moderna’s second-ever FDA-approved drug. It uses the same mRNA platform as its COVID-19 Spikevax vaccine.
“The FDA approval of our second product, mRESVIA, builds on the strength and versatility of our mRNA platform,” said Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must recommend the drug before it can be used. The CDC’s advisory committee will discuss and vote on the vaccine at its meeting next month.
If approved, the vaccine will provide a second revenue stream for Moderna, whose first-quarter sales fell 91% compared with same-quarter sales in 2023.
The company said it expects to launch the vaccine in time for the 2024 fall vaccination season.
The FDA’s approval of Moderna’s mRNA RSV vaccine comes a year after the agency approved GSK’s Arexvy and Pfizer’s Abrysvo RSV vaccines for the same age group.
Abrysvo also is approved for pregnant women. Pfizer is seeking approval for its drug for adults ages 18 and older and is testing it on children and teens. GSK is seeking approval for Arexvy for people 50 and above and expects a response this month.
Bancel said Moderna’s shot has an advantage over the RSV vaccines now on the market because it comes in a pre-filled syringe, making it faster to administer and cutting the risk of administration errors.
Moderna said it hopes to capture part of what it predicts will be a $10 billion market for RSV vaccines, especially given its post-pandemic plummet in profits.
The company also announced last week that it is in talks with the U.S. government to fund late-stage trials of its mRNA bird flu vaccine.
Experts say efficacy exaggerated and safety concerns ignored
Moderna’s approval was based on findings from a Phase 3 study published in December 2023 of more than 35,000 adults across 22 countries that claimed the vaccine was 83.7% effective at preventing at least two symptoms of RSV, such as cough and fever, nearly four months post-vaccination.
Follow-up analysis by the FDA identified other cases and reduced the efficacy to 79%, the company said. That efficacy rate is in line with Arexvy, which currently dominates the RSV vaccine market, Reuters reported.
Cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough wrote on his Substack that the efficacy claims were misleading.
“The absolute risk reduction for significant outcomes was far below 1%, meaning this product will not have a significant clinical impact,” he wrote.
Absolute risk reduction refers to the actual difference in risk between the treated group versus the control group.
Relative risk reduction, which is how the company presented its trial data, is a proportional measure of how much a treatment reduced the risk of a bad outcome relative to the control group. It tends to lead to overestimations of how effective a treatment is.
Data presented in February also showed Moderna’s shot has faster efficacy declines compared to the GSK and Pfizer shots, Reuters reported.
Moderna said there were no serious safety concerns identified in the trial. Adverse reactions reported in the clinical trial included injection-site pain (55.9%), fatigue (30.8%), headache (26.7%), muscle pain (25.6%), joint pain (21.7%), underarm swelling or tenderness (15.2%) and chills (11.6%).
There were also two cases of acute pericarditis, which occurred after 42 days. The investigator considered those cases to be unrelated to the shot.
There were no reported cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, which both Pfizer and GSK identified in their clinical trials and has subsequently proven to be “more common than expected,” with the other RSV shots, according to the CDC.
However, McCullough said that for all mRNA shots, there are concerns about myocarditis, auto-immunity, genomic integration and oncogenicity. The rapid approval process does not allow the necessary time to identify a lot of these issues.
He wrote:
“Our great concern was that mRNA COVID-19 vaccines ushered in the context of an emergency would set a new precedent for more genetic vaccines that depart from all safety standards set forth previously by the US FDA. …
“[The approval] was done without the full dossier of safety information required for a routine approval including 2-3 years of observation for standard vaccines, and at least 5 to 15 years of observation for genetic transfer technology.”
Because the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee didn’t discuss the data, there was no publicly accessible discussion of the vaccine’s efficacy and risk or space for public comment, which typically happens at such meetings.
The committee held meetings before the approval of both Arexvy and Abrysvo.
The FDA did not immediately respond to The Defender’s inquiry about the lack of an advisory committee meeting or possible concerns with vaccine safety.
RSV is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild cold-like symptoms, but in some cases can lead to hospitalization and death in infants and the elderly.
The number of people who get RSV is unknown because the virus is rarely diagnosed unless one comes to a hospital and is tested.
Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist, told The Defender that among older people typically only those who are already ill or have very severe immune deficiency could benefit from an RSV vaccine.
“That benefit,” she said, “must be weighed against all the harms, including those from the lipid nanoparticle as well as the mRNA and any DNA plasmids or other extraneous production materials.”
She said that mRNA vaccines are typically expensive and the amount of spending that would be necessary to save one life could take away from other essential health spending.
McCullough said, “Rare illnesses which are mild should not be the target for mass vaccination.”
“In the case of respiratory syncytial virus, the illness is so mild and easily treatable with albuterol and budesonide nebulizers, it is hard to make the case for mass vaccination with a novel mRNA platform,” he added.
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender that approval of this vaccine “is an absolute disaster in the making.”
“The clinical trial was too short (average 112 days) to ascertain any long-term sequelae to the vaccine. Even with that, the rate of serious adverse events was 2.8% or 1 in 36 vaccine recipients,” he said. “We can only expect the actual degree of damage will be much worse.”
Moderna conducting testing on pregnant women and their infants
A search of the federal clinical trials database also revealed that Moderna is testing its mRNA RSV vaccine on pregnant women and their infants, despite concerns raised among this group with other RSV vaccines.
The ongoing Phase 2 trial in pregnant women will consist of 360 participants between 28 and 36 weeks of gestation at the time of vaccination. The trial is designed to determine dosing and potential adverse events associated with the vaccine.
GSK halted the development of its RSV vaccine for pregnant women when it found a safety signal for preterm births among vaccinated women. In that study, for every 54 infants born to women who received the vaccine, one additional preterm birth occurred.
Neonatal deaths — the death of an infant in the first 28 days of life — also were higher in the GSK vaccine group, occurring in 0.4% of the infants in the vaccine group (13 of 3,494) and 0.2% in the placebo group (3 of 1,739), which they also noted was not statistically significant.
The FDA approved Pfizer’s Abrysvo for pregnant women in August 2023.
Pfizer’s own clinical trial data for Abrysvo, which is very similar to GSK’s vaccine, also showed elevated rates of preterm birth among vaccinated women, but the higher rates were not statistically significant, Pfizer said.
Still, the FDA limited approval of the vaccine for women in weeks 32-36 of their pregnancy to reduce risk and mandated post-market follow-up studies for both preterm birth and eclampsia.
The agency also labeled preterm birth as a potential risk associated with the vaccine.
Some members of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee said they had serious safety concerns based on the clinical trial data, and four members voted against approving the drug.
And a recent preprint study shows a statistically significant safety signal for preterm birth associated with Abrysvo.
Clinical trials for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines did not include pregnant women.
However, subsequent research found the mRNA administered to lactating mothers spread systemically from the injection site to breast milk. Other post-marketing studies of the COVID-19 vaccine found mRNA in umbilical cord blood and in the placenta.
Moderna also has several other active clinical trials for the drug, including among people who are not at risk from RSV-related illness, including children and adults, children ages 2-18, and healthy adults, among others.
It is also testing the drug among children ages 5-24 months.
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.
The Trump Trial and our Injustice System
By Ron Paul | June 3, 2024
I’ve long criticized our current US justice system – on all levels – as becoming much more about political justice than blind justice. The bizarre trial and conviction of former President Donald Trump last week on 34 felonies only reinforces my concerns.
The New York District Attorney, Soros-backed Alvin Bragg, has been notorious for downgrading felony charges against others to misdemeanor charges. According to a recent article in the Daily Mail, Bragg had downgraded 60 percent of felony cases to lesser charges, resulting in violent criminals being released on the streets and a crime wave across New York City.
But when it came to Donald Trump, Bragg lurched in the other direction, upgrading what normally would have been misdemeanor charges against anyone else to 34 felony charges against the former president. How can this sudden “about-face” be explained other than politics?
Jonathan Turley, who is no fan of Donald Trump, has been covering the trial closely and has found more than a little disturbing the exuberant celebrations of Trump’s conviction among the mainstream media and his political opponents. Recently, he wrote:
“The conviction of former President Donald Trump in Manhattan of 34 felonies produced citywide celebrations [which] extended to the media, where former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that it was ‘majestic day’ and ‘a day to celebrate.’ When I left the courthouse after watching the verdict come in, I was floored by the celebrations outside by both the public and some of the media.”
Regardless of one’s view of Donald Trump, it is a disturbing development in our society when justice is treated more like a football game where you root for your “team” rather than a way of preserving our freedom and liberty in an equal way for all.
The real goal of the trial was political. None other than George Soros’ son Alex let the cat out of the bag recently when he advised fellow Trump-haters how to take advantage of the trial result. He posted on Twitter after the verdict, “Democrats should refer to Trump as a convicted felon at every opportunity. Repetition is the key to a successful message and we want people to wrestle with the notion of hiring a convicted felon for the most important job in the country!”
It was not about justice in any way. It was all about being able to call the likely Republican presidential nominee a “felon” so as to undermine his support among voters. In other words, election interference.
The market has a way of prevailing, however. The repeated attempts at using “lawfare” to remove Trump from the political scene have all backfired and actually have served to make the former president even more popular among voters. Immediately after Trump’s conviction on the 34 charges he began sending out fundraising appeals based on his “persecution” by the state of New York. As of this writing, he has, according to press reports, raised over $200 million for his campaign.
The politicization of justice is not limited to the Democratic Party. The wind sown by political opponents of Donald Trump may well become the whirlwind they reap when their own political opponents are in positions of power. When that is the case, we all lose.
Copyright © 2024 The Ron Paul Institute
Got Titers? New Test Makes It Easy, Inexpensive to Find Out if You’re Immune to 11 Infectious Diseases
By Brian Hooker, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 30, 2024
There are many situations for which it’s necessary to know your immune status against an infectious agent.
In May 2023, I reported on the ImmunoProfile® technology as a relatively inexpensive, in-home method of determining antibody “titers” for adults.
Now, this test is available for children as young as age 4. This allows ImmunoProfile titer testing to be used for proof of immunity for children for school attendance — especially for states like California, where exemptions are rarely granted.
ImmunoProfile testing for children can now also be used for daycare, summer camps and sports teams that may require vaccines for participation, but may allow the substitution of titers testing in some cases.
An antibody titer is a medical laboratory test that determines the amount of antibodies specific to an infectious agent in the bloodstream. The antibody level in the blood reflects the body’s past experience or exposure to an antigen or something the body doesn’t recognize as “self.”
In the past, an antibody titer required a physician-written laboratory order, a blood draw from a registered phlebotomist and multiple laboratory tests for each disease where vaccination is required — all of which may not be covered by insurance.
Each test may cost as much as $400, and multiple tests may be required to determine the full range of vaccines required.
In contrast, the ImmunoProfile test panel simultaneously measures antibody titers for 11 infectious diseases, requires no lab order or blood draw and costs $229 plus tax. This cost includes the physician’s prescription, 11 antibody titer tests, shipping and the confidential test report result. The result report has been updated to include date of birth, age and sex assigned at birth.
The 11 antibody titer tests include: diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae B, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, pertussis (whooping cough), polio, rubella, tetanus and varicella zoster (chicken pox).
I and my family have previously used the ImmunoProfile test with great success. We found the entire process to be easy and straightforward. All the steps for collecting the blood were clearly and graphically laid out in the instructions insert that came in the kit and in the instruction video.
Within two weeks, we had our results. Read here for more details about our experience including my test results.
The test is completed by a CLIA/CAP-approved (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments/College of American Pathologists) laboratory. Antibody levels are measured using proprietary equipment, cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and used globally for more than 20 years by multiple medical diagnostics companies, research facilities and academic institutions.
Measured titers are compared to standards for immunity as set by the World Health Organization.
All information is kept private. ImmunoProfile doesn’t sell your information or test results and all blood samples are destroyed 30 days after testing. ImmunoProfile performs no other tests, genetic or otherwise, on your blood spot samples.
ImmunoProfile provides a secure web portal for obtaining results after testing is complete. Test results are completely private and require two-factor authentication to access. Login requires a username and password, plus a passcode sent to your email address.
Each child must have their own email account for privacy reasons and to comply with parental consent on the website.
Only authorized laboratory personnel have access to patient information, which consists only of antibody test results.
Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., is chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense and professor emeritus of biology at Simpson University in Redding, California.
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.
US seizes Scott Ritter’s passport
Scott Ritter. © David McNew/Getty Images
RT | June 3, 2024
The US State Department has seized the passport of former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, he told RT on Monday.
Ritter was on his way to Russia for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) when he was pulled off the plane and had his documents confiscated.
“I was boarding the flight. Three [police] officers pulled me aside. They took my passport. When asked why, they said ‘orders of the State Department’. They had no further information for me,” Ritter told RT. “They pulled my bags off the plane, then escorted me out of the airport. They kept my passport.”
Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, who later served as the US and UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He is also a RT contributor, writing about international security, military affairs, Russia, and the Middle East, as well as arms control and nonproliferation.
He most recently visited Russia in January, spending time in Chechnya, Moscow and St. Petersburg, among other places.
The most recent post on Ritter’s Telegram channel put the Clooney Foundation for Justice on notice for its alleged crusade against “Russian propagandists.”
“Here I am. In your face. If telling the truth about Russia makes me a propagandist in your book, then I accept the title,” he wrote. “Bring it on. I’ll school you on the First Amendment.”
“You have zero concept of what free speech is. Try and arrest me and you’ll find out. In spades. It’s war,” he added.
The Maldives bans Israelis in solidarity with Palestine
Maldives, little island resorts © Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images
RT | June 3, 2024
The Maldives announced on Sunday that Israeli passport holders will be banned from visiting the small Muslim-majority island nation due to the war in Gaza. The country is one of the destinations of holidaymakers from the Jewish states.
“President Dr Mohamed Muizzu, following a recommendation from the Cabinet, has resolved to impose a ban on Israeli passports,” the president’s office said in a statement on its website. “The Cabinet decision includes amending necessary laws to prevent Israeli passport holders from entering the Maldives and establishing a Cabinet subcommittee to oversee these efforts.”
Muizzu’s office added that the president has decided to “appoint a special envoy to assess Palestinian needs,” launch a fundraising campaign, and hold a nationwide rally in support for Palestine.
The Indian Ocean archipelago, known for its white sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, and luxury resorts, is a popular destination among Israelis. Nearly 11,000 tourists from Israel visited the islands last year, which amounts to 0.6% of total arrivals. This year, however, the number dropped by more than 80%.
Following the announcement, Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued an advisory, recommending Israeli citizens to avoid traveling to the Maldives and urging those staying there to depart.
“For Israeli citizens already in the country, it is recommended to consider leaving, because if they find themselves in distress for any reason, it will be difficult for us to assist,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
The diplomatic relations between Israel and the Maldives have been suspended since 1974. Israeli tourists were allowed to visit the archipelago after the Maldives lifted the previous travel ban in the 1990s. The two countries moved to restore the diplomatic ties in 2010, but the normalization effort was abandoned two years later, following the toppling of President Mohamed Nasheed.
Several Muslim-majority countries, including Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, have banned Israeli travelers since the fighting between Israel and the Palestinian armed group Hamas broke out on October 7. More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed during Israel’s operation in Gaza, which was triggered by a surprise Hamas raid into southern Israeli cities.
Zelensky Says US Hegemony Will End If He Loses, But That Already Happened
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 03.06.2024
In an interview with UK media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made the claim that if former US President Trump gets reelected and cuts off aid to his country, he will become a “loser president” responsible for the US losing its spot as the World’s leader, but that has already happened and it was the US support of Ukraine that hastened it.
Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, the United States and NATO bet hundreds of billions of dollars that they could propel the Kiev regime to victory by outfitting it with some of the best weapons in NATO’s arsenal.
Despite Russia’s larger economy, population size and military, Ukraine could win, the thinking went, by using the vastly superior NATO weaponry and training. Of course, the US and NATO didn’t hand over their very best weapons right away, but it would surely be enough to defeat the Russian army that was portrayed as ill-equipped and untrained in Western media outlets.
When that didn’t work, NATO and the US upped the stakes, giving newer and ostensibly even more invincible weapons to Ukraine, they too failed.
Now, armed with the best weapons NATO could afford to give away, and full permission to strike inside Russia despite the risk of escalation, Ukraine is still being defeated on the battlefield. The whole world has seen for itself that NATO weapons are not equipped with force fields; they can be destroyed and are being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Last year, Trump claimed that he would end the conflict in Ukraine “within 24 hours” though he did not specify how he intended to accomplish that. When asked who he wants to win, Trump would only say that he wants “everyone to stop dying.”
In his interview with the Guardian, Zelensky admitted that he had not developed a strategy to deal with Trump should he become elected, and seemingly admitted that his country would collapse without US support.
“Ukraine, barehanded, without weapons, will not be able to fight a multimillion army,” he said.
“Does he [Trump] want to become a loser President? Do you understand what can happen?” he added, then saying that if Ukraine loses, it means the US will lose its power in the world as well.
“This is not about him as a person, but about the institutions of the United States. They will become very weak. The US will not be the leader of the world anymore. Yes, it will be powerful, first of all, in the domestic economy because it has a powerful economy without a doubt. But in terms of international influence it will be equal to zero,” the Ukrainian President who has utilized Martial Law to stay in office past his term said.
Of course, the opposite is true. The longer NATO and the US remain involved in Ukraine, the more thoroughly the veneer of NATO invincibility will be shattered. If they continue to increase their involvement and escalate things against Russia, it will only expedite the fall of Western hegemony.
“This is a decisive defeat of NATO, the European Union and the United States” former UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s Fault Lines last month. “It’s as decisive as you can get without them being directly involved, and they can’t become directly involved because that is a suicide pill.”
Over the last few weeks, NATO nations started giving the Kiev regime permission to strike inside Russia, culminating in the United States agreeing to it last week, but that too has failed to result in any meaningful change of the battle lines.
“But [Kremlin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov pointed out, you start using long-range missiles against Russia, we’re just going to have to take more of Ukraine [to build a bufferzone]. That’s what he said and he specifically mentioned Kiev,” international relations and security expert Mark Sleboda told Fault Lines.
Peskov also told reporters that the United States is already involved in targeting and aiming their weapons at Russia. “[The weapons] are directly controlled by military personnel of NATO countries,” adding that constituted not just military assistance but “participation in a war against us.”
While Ukraine is not the only factor eating away at Western hegemony, it has played a large role, along with the US support of Israel and general economic trends.
“The world is changing indeed, not only because of the war on Russia in Ukraine but also the war in Gaza… the development of BRICS countries [and] the increase of the Shanghai Cooperation,” explained war correspondent Elijah Magnier on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “All these indicators lead to one reality, the beginning of the end of US hegemony.”
While Russia has shown that NATO’s weapons are not superior, it’s the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, who proved they are ill-equipped for modern war.
“The US and UK are failing in front of non-state actors in the Red Sea… So how can we understand that the Americans are ready to start a war against Russia and then against China?” Magnier added.
Still, with no other hopes or lifelines, Zelensky wants the US to embarrass themselves further by continuing to fund his government, saying that the US losing will encourage other countries to act aggressively. However, Russia and Ukraine were close to signing a peace deal in Istanbul at the start of the conflict. According to Ukrainian officials close to the negotiations, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was sent to Ukraine to sabotage the deal at the behest of the United States.
Ironically, Zelensky says he recently asked Johnson to speak to Trump on his behalf.
Zelensky said he wanted to bring Trump to Ukraine to “see the results of what he brought to Ukraine.” Although Zelensky was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin “he”, it would have been more accurate if he were referring to US President Joe Biden and/or Johnson, who really brought that destruction to Ukraine and Western hegemony.
“Fifty nations gathered to defeat Russia and they failed… Ukraine has been defeated and Europe is defeated,” Magnier concluded.
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From the Archives
Is Israel to blame for the Iraq War?
American Goy | March 10, 2008
I am so tired of this old canard that “Israel had nothing to do with USA’s war with Iraq – in fact, it officially advised America against it”.
Bullshit. … continue
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