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Zelensky a ‘maniac’ to demand NATO nuclear weapons – Moscow

RT | February 5, 2025

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s statements on obtaining nuclear weapons are cause for serious concern, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. In a social media post on Wednesday, she branded Zelensky a “maniac [gripped by] sick delusions” who could seek a ‘dirty bomb’.

Zelensky reiterated his nuclear aspirations in an interview with British television host Piers Morgan on Tuesday, in which he lamented that Kiev traded Soviet-era deterrence “for nothing” in the 1990s.

“Will we be given nuclear weapons? Then let them give us nuclear weapons,” Zelensky told Morgan. “What missiles can stop Russia’s nuclear missiles? That is a rhetorical question.”

He called on NATO to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine as a stopgap measure while Kiev awaits accession to the US-led military bloc.

Responding on Wednesday, Zakharova wrote: “Zelensky’s latest statements that he wants to possess a nuclear capability expose him as a maniac, who considers the planet as an object for his sick delusions. They also prove that for him nuclear power stations are not a source of peaceful energy, but a dirty weapon that the Kiev regime needs for blackmail.”

Ukrainian nuclear rhetoric predates the outbreak of hostilities with Russia. Zelensky suggested that Kiev could build atomic weapons in a speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, days before the escalation of the conflict.

Russian officials have expressed concern over Ukraine potentially developing a dirty bomb amid its battlefield setbacks. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, has reported no diversion of declared radioactive materials in the country.

Ukraine inherited a well-developed civilian nuclear industry from the USSR, and currently operates three nuclear power plants and two research reactors.

Contrary to Zelensky’s assertion, independent Ukraine lacked a true nuclear deterrent as it did not possess the unilateral capability to launch Soviet weapons deployed on its soil in response to an attack. The disarmament of Ukraine, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, was part of a broader nuclear reduction initiative in the 1990s. Western nations incentivized the host nations with aid programs.

February 5, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

Kremlin comments on talks with ‘illegitimate’ Zelensky

RT | February 5, 2025

Moscow is ready for talks with Kiev even though Vladimir Zelensky currently has no legal right to lead Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

On Tuesday, Zelensky told British journalist Piers Morgan that he could hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The comments marked a significant shift from Zelensky’s stance adopted in the autumn of 2022, when he signed a decree banning any negotiations with the Russian leadership.

“If that is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people, definitely we will go for this setup, for this meeting,” Zelensky told Morgan.

Asked to comment on Zelensky’s remarks on Wednesday, Peskov said there is “no place for emotions” when it comes to the settlement of the Ukraine conflict. “What is needed here is legal analysis and absolute pragmatism… Zelensky has significant de jure legitimacy issues within his own country,” the spokesman pointed out.

Peskov referred to the Ukrainian leader’s refusal to hold a presidential election and the fact that his term expired last May. Moscow maintains that the legitimate power in Ukraine now lies with the parliament and its speaker.

“Despite this, the Russian side remains open to negotiations,” Peskov stressed, arguing that Moscow’s successes on the battlefield “clearly suggest that Kiev should be the one to demonstrate openness and interest in such negotiations.”

Peskov also weighed in on Zelensky’s suggestion that the West could give Ukraine nuclear weapons as a substitute for NATO membership to guarantee its protection.

“In general, such statements are borderline madness. There is a nuclear non-proliferation regime,” the spokesman said. Peskov suggested that EU politicians, despite their flaws, should understand the “absurdity and potential danger of discussing such a topic.”

Ukraine agreed to relinquish its nuclear arsenal inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US, and the UK as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Moscow of violating the deal after Crimea voted to join Russia following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. Russia has argued that the deal was fundamentally undermined by NATO’s expansion towards its borders.

Putin has said that Russia would not allow Kiev to create or obtain nuclear weapons “under any circumstances.”

February 5, 2025 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

US pulls out of UN human rights council, cancels funding to UNRWA

Press TV – February 4, 2025

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order withdrawing Washington from the UN Human Rights Council and UNRWA, the refugee agency that works primarily with the Palestinians being oppressed by the Israeli regime.

Trump signed the order in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday ahead of his meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who had carried out a 15-month genocidal war against the people of Palestine in Gaza in which more than 47,300 people were killed, mostly women and children.

The ceasefire between the Palestinian resistance group Hamas and Israel was reached after the regime failed to realize any of its wartime objectives, including freeing the captives, “eliminating” the Gazan resistance, and causing forced displacement of Gaza’s entire population to neighboring Egypt.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning to the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Trump’s aide introduced the measures, saying, “Next up, in light of numerous actions taken by a number of bodies of the United Nations which exhibited deep anti-American bias, we have an executive order prepared for your attention that would withdraw the United States from the U.N. Human Rights Council.”

“I would withdraw the United States from the UNRWA, which is a refugee organization, and would also review American involvement in UNESCO, which also exhibited anti-American bias,” he added.

“More generally, the executive order calls for a review of American involvement and funding in the UN in light of the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries that, as you’ve expressed previously, is deeply unfair to the United States,” the aide concluded before giving the order to Trump to sign.

Following the signing of the executive order, Trump said, “So I’ve always felt that the UN has tremendous potential. It’s not living up to that potential right now. It really isn’t and has been for a long time. It has– there are great hopes for it, but it’s not being well run, to be honest, and not doing the job. A lot of these conflicts that we’re working on should be settled, or at least we should have some help in settling them.”

“But we never seem to get help. That should be the primary purpose of the UN and the United Nations. And again, it’s got great potential. And based on the potential, we’ll continue to go along with it. But they’ve got to get their act together,” he added.

“What would they need to do to get their act together?” a reporter asked Trump.

“Well, they’ve got to be fair to countries that deserve fairness. They have some countries, as you know, that are outliers that are very bad, and they’re being almost preferred as countries to those that do their job and are doing a good job. And they have to really they’re going to end up losing a lot of countries and end up losing their credibility like other organizations,” Trump replied.

Trump also said Palestinians would “love” to leave their embattled homeland in Gaza and live elsewhere if given an option.

They would “love to leave Gaza,” he told reporters at the White House. “I would think that they would be thrilled.”

Last week, Trump suggested cleaning out the Palestinian land and relocating the war-stricken people there to neighboring Arab countries, namely Egypt and Jordan.

“You’re talking about probably a million and half people … I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” he said. “[W]e just clean out that whole thing,” he said.

In the meantime, the Palestinian leaders and people in Gaza condemned any attempt to relocate them, saying such a move is reminiscent of a dark page in Palestine’s modern history known as the “Nakba” or catastrophe – when millions of Palestinians were forcibly displaced to create room for Israel’s illegal creation.

Member of Hamas’s political bureau, Bassem Naim, said that Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades.”

February 5, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Seek them out and destroy them where they live”

Remembering Merck’s Australian doctor hit list

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | February 3, 2025

This evening I pondered the news of Caroline Kennedy’s hit letter against her cousin, RFK, Jr., and the fact that she was the Biden Administration’s Ambassador to Australia, and the fact that she has served as a powerful ambassador for Merck’s Gardasil vaccine.

The association of Australia and Merck reminded me of the company’s “seek out and destroy” campaign against Australian doctors who expressed concern that the company’s blockbuster Vioxx seemed to be causing heart attacks and strokes. As was reported by CBS in May 2009:

Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them.

According to The Australian, Merck emails from 1999 showed company execs complaining about doctors who disliked using Vioxx. One email said:

“We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live …”

During this same period in the United States, Merck was accused of concealing negative results of clinical Vioxx trials from the FDA and paying reputable doctors to put their names on research they did not conduct or write up. The company also published a fake journal, paying Elsevier to create a phony publication to serve as a marketing tool titled the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.

Ultimately the company was found guilty of knowingly concealing data about the elevated risk of stroke and heart attack from Vioxx and agreed to pay a class action settlement to stroke and heart attack victims totaling $4.85 billion.

I wonder if the nice folks at Merck would ever yield to the temptation to overstate the benefits of the HPV vaccine and downplay its risks, as some plaintiffs have alleged. I also wonder if the company’s PR department might yield to the temptation to smear RFK, Jr. during his Senate confirmation process.

Or am I just being cynical?

February 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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