Democrats Attack Ukraine Audit Resolution as ‘Divisive and Ill-Advised’
By Kyle Anzalone | Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2023
Legislation introduced by Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) which calls on the White House to release documents related to the war in Ukraine passed a voice vote on Wednesday. With debate on the resolution divided along party lines, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to vote on the measure on Friday.
The bill, H.Res.300, would urge President Joe Biden to grant lawmakers access to “all documents indicating any plans for current or future military assistance to Ukraine,“ as well as any material “indicating whether any United States Armed Forces, including special operations forces, are currently deployed in Ukraine.”
Since Russia invaded its neighbor 14 months ago, Congress has authorized over $100 billion in aid for Ukraine. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Washington has provided $80 billion in military and financial aid throughout the conflict.
Though support for the resolution was limited to Republicans, it passed a voice vote and is set for a full committee vote on Friday. Several Democrats attacked the legislation during Wednesday’s debate.
Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC) blasted the measure as “divisive and ill-advised,” claiming “It is a partisan political ploy, and the height of legislative irresponsibility that jeopardizes the national security of the United States, of our Europe allies and partners as well as the courageous Ukrainian people.”
Manning took issue with the resolution because it threatened a consensus in Congress that support for Kiev must be unwavering and indefinite. “The entire Congress has remained resolutely bipartisan for Ukraine as it fights against Russian aggression,” the lawmaker continued, adding “Measures like this put bipartisanship in jeopardy.”
She also asserted that the bill amplified Russian propaganda and claimed that reporting on legislation “favorably“ would be “irresponsible.”
“It plays directly into [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s hands by seeking to force the disclosures of all present and future military plans,” Manning said. “Passage of this measure would represent a gift to Putin and his Kremlin cronies and provide visibility into the plans our military and intelligence leaders strive to protect at all costs.”
However, she failed to explain how increased congressional oversight for US military policy in Ukraine could actually help the Russians on the battlefield. Congressman Daryl Issa (R-CA) said any documents provided to the House would not be made public, and that “every bit of the information requested could be and would be held at the Select Intelligence Committee.”
Further, dozens of documents detailing weak points in Ukraine’s defenses were alleged to have been leaked by a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman over the course of several months on Discord.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said that it was not an appropriate time for transparency regarding the billions in US tax dollars pouring into Ukraine. “Timing matters when this committee actions,” he argued. “There will be a time in insisting [on oversight], but now is not that time.”
Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) argued in favor of the resolution, saying it could prevent “mission creep,” referring to a phenomenon in which military or policy objectives gradually shift over time, often becoming vague, ill-defined or impossible to achieve. The concept was frequently used to describe the US occupation of Afghanistan, which began as a counterterrorism operation and later expanded into a sprawling, poorly supervised nation-building project.
Mills went on to say that the bill is not about preventing support for Ukraine or empowering Putin, but merely better oversight.
When Gaetz introduced H.Res.300 earlier this month, he emphasized transparency. “The Biden Administration and other allied countries have been misleading the world on the state of the war in Ukraine,” he said, calling for “total transparency from this administration to the American people when they are gambling war with a nuclear adversary by having special forces operating in Ukraine.”
Republicans Push Biden to Send Cluster Bombs to Ukraine
By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter | Libertarian Institute | April 26, 2023
Two leading GOP congressmen renewed calls for the White House to send cluster bombs to Ukraine. Representative Mike Rogers (R-MS) claimed the US has 3 million rounds of the controversial munitions in stock that will have to be destroyed if they are not sent to Kiev.
Rogers, head of the House Armed Services Committee, issued the demand during a committee hearing on Wednesday. “The administration [is] not giving Ukraine the weapons it needs to win. Chief among them is cluster munitions,“ he said.
Typically intended for use against personnel and light vehicles, cluster bombs carry smaller explosive submunitions which are released in flight and scattered across a target area. However, the bomblets often fail to detonate and remain on the ground as ‘duds,’ causing countless civilian deaths in former warzones, sometimes even decades into the future. After the Vietnam War, as many as 20 million bomblets remained unexploded in Laos. Thousands of children have been killed and injured when stumbling upon the live submunitions.
The United States has a large inventory of 155-millimeter Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions (DPICM) left over from the Cold War, with many entering service in the 1970s and 80s. While the aging cluster weapons are no longer used by US forces, Pentagon officials have claimed they could still serve a purpose in the hands of Ukrainian troops.
“It’s very effective against mixed targets, of personnel and equipment, especially when those targets are gathered into dense formations,“ Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander for US operations in Europe, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “It is happening in Bakhmut and it happens on most battlefields when one force goes into the offense. As a strictly military matter, it is a useful and very effective munition.“
More than 120 nations have agreed to ban such weapons under the international Convention on Cluster Munitions, a treaty which Washington, Moscow and Kiev have each refused to sign. Though a 2009 US law prohibited exports of cluster bombs with a ‘dud’ rate of more than 1% – which applies to most of the US stockpile – President Joe Biden can waive that restriction at any time.
Kiev has made several requests for US cluster munitions since Moscow’s invasion last year, and both Ukraine and Russia are reported to have deployed the bombs throughout the conflict. According to Foreign Policy, Turkey supplied some of its own US-designed DPICMs to the Ukrainian military last November, after Washington denied Kiev’s initial calls for the weapon.
Rogers went on to argue that providing cluster bombs to Ukraine could actually be a cost-saving measure for the government and a way to dispose of the Cold War-era explosives. “The US military has over 3 million cluster munitions that can be fired by 155mm Howitzers in Ukraine’s possession,“ he said. “We are going to spend millions of dollars destroying them if we don’t use them and Russia is using them right now against the Ukrainians.“
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) backed Rogers’ proposal. “Those should be provided,“ he argued, voicing hopes that “every effort will be made to look into providing the cluster bombs. We have 2 million available right now, it’s inconceivable that we don’t do more.“
Wilson is also preparing to introduce a bipartisan resolution which “affirms that it is the policy of the United States to see Ukraine victorious against the invasion and restored to its internationally recognized 1991 borders,“ which would include the Russian-occupied Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions as well as Crimea. Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen is set to co-sponsor the measure.
The comments from Rogers and Wilson come amid a greater push in Congress to provide Kiev with cluster weapons. Last month, Rogers signed a letter with Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which called on the White House to send Ukraine cluster bombs, including DPICMs.
“Political Engineering” From Abroad Is Responsible For The Sudanese Crisis
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 27, 2023
Russian Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Anna Yevstigneyeva shared her thoughts earlier this week about the root cause of the Sudanese Crisis. According to her:
“We must state that the current Sudanese crisis was largely caused by an external interference in Sudanese sovereign affairs, attempts at forced political engineering in the country and imposing democratic recipes on it.
Security sector reform in the country was among the most complicated issues that required elevated attention and a thorough negotiations process. At the same time, we saw that many external actors tried to enforce the transfer of authority to civil powers artificially, and imposed a number of decisions that were not supported among broader population.
Some states widely promoted the political framework of 5 December 2022, but it failed to become an inclusive platform for various Sudanese forces. This format left behind some of Sudan’s political heavyweights. Such an approach could hardly help to promote a comprehensive settlement.”
The present piece will now elaborate more on why she’s right, which is important to understand since such “political engineering” from abroad can result in more crises elsewhere in the coming future.
Former Sudanese President Bashir was a long-time foe of the US, which supported his ouster in early 2019 after a military coup took advantage of an incipient Color Revolution. Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”) of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) cooperated to this end but then fell out with one another afterwards. Their resultant feud greatly complicated Sudan’s post-coup political transition to civilian rule.
The US diplomatically intervened in this process on the pretext of “protecting democracy”, which enabled it to unprecedentedly deepen its influence in Sudan. With this inside view into that country’s most sensitive political affairs, it learned just how serious the divisions were between Burhan and Hemedti as well as between the military and the population. This insight would have informed its policymakers that meddling in Sudan’s transition posed a very real risk of provoking conflict.
That cynically seems to be precisely what the US was hoping for in hindsight so as to artificially manufacture a crisis that could subsequently be exploited to push back against Russian influence there exactly as was explained at length in this recent analysis here. To that end, it pressured Sudan to accelerate its security sector reform on the grounds that this would speed up its democratic transition, but which was intended all along to force Burhan into making a power play against Hemedti.
Had there been no such reform in the first place or if it was decoupled from the transition to civilian rule, then those two influential figures might have peacefully worked out their differences or at least agreed not to interfere in the other’s economic and security affairs. In that scenario, however, the US would have feared that the continued existence of Hemedti’s independent power center within the armed forces could be taken advantage of by Russia/Wagner to pose a latent threat to its influence in Sudan.
That’s not to suggest that Russia/Wagner had any such intentions, but just to point out the fears that influenced US policymakers to plunge Sudan into crisis by pressuring it to accelerate security sector reform with the intent of provoking a “deep state” war. Burhan was assessed by them as being much more reliable than Hemedti, especially since the former is considered an Egyptian proxy while the latter admitted that he used to have “a good relationship” with Wagner prior to them being sanctioned.
The US didn’t expect Hemedti to put up such an impressive fight, having likely calculated prior to the outbreak of this artificially manufactured crisis that the RSF would either be swiftly subordinated to the SAF or dissolved. That outcome would have much more smoothly expanded the US’ influence in Sudan, but the conflict that Burhan’s power play against Hemedti sparked can also be exploited by it to this end too, albeit at a reduced pace and with the risk of weakening US influence.
If the US-backed SAF are defeated or enter into some sort of peace deal with the RSF that preserves the second’s independent power center, then this “deep state” war that the US artificially manufactured wouldn’t advance its strategic interests. The former scenario would be counterproductive to the aforesaid while the latter would restore the status quo ante bellum and thus leave open the possibility of Russia/Wagner working through the RSF to curtail the expansion of US influence in Sudan.
Nevertheless, the US would prefer the second scenario if forced by circumstances to choose between them, which could explain why it’s urgently calling for a ceasefire after the SAF underperformed and didn’t come anywhere close to meeting policymakers’ expectations. They might calculate that it’s better to have a lull in fighting that safeguards US influence in Sudan and possibly creates the opportunity for the SAF to subvert the RSF through non-kinetic means under the cover of the democratic transition.
In any case, it’s unlikely that the US will leave the RSF alone since its policymakers have already arguably concluded – whether rightly or wrongly – that it’s the greatest threat to their country’s influence in Sudan. This assessment suggests that it’ll continue working against that group’s interests one way or another, which it’s already begun doing through its information warfare campaign fearmongering about the RSF’s ties with Russia/Wagner.
Accusations of war crimes might soon follow, after which sanctions could be imposed too. It also can’t be ruled out that the US would support a more direct Egyptian role in the conflict if Burhan appears on the brink of defeat and Hemedti refuses to cut a power-sharing deal with him. A direct US intervention is also possible under the “humanitarian intervention”/“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) pretext. Observers should therefore closely monitor this “deep state” war for any signs of these scenarios unfolding.
Returning to Yevstigneyeva’s analysis of this conflict’s origins, which was elaborated throughout the present piece, the importance lies in the fact that the meddling model that she described can be applied against other countries too. US pressure on them to implement security reform, especially in those countries undergoing democratic transitions from military rule, could spark similar crises as Sudan’s. Upon becoming aware of such demands, one can likely predict the next New Cold War battleground.
Russia cannot lose its UNSC seat despite Western and Ukrainian attempts
By Ahmed Adel | April 27, 2023
The US has a strong ambition to add its allies to the United Nations Security Council to weaken Russia’s influence across the world, or if this fails, to render the organisation useless, akin to the old League of Nations. However, even more dangerous than the US seeking more allies in the UNSC are the initiatives to abolish Russia’s right of veto and take away its status as a permanent member. Kiev raises this suggestion at almost every session of the UN General Assembly.
In this sense, new challenges are being created, especially as UN Secretary General António Guterres stated that the majority of UN member states see the need for reforming the UNSC. Such suggestions must be treated with suspicion though as the US wants to take advantage and weaken not only Russian influence, but also Chinese.
Guterres and the US are clearly trying to push their closest allies, such as Germany, Australia, and Japan, where unsurprisingly American military bases are located, into the UNSC. There are also other countries, such as Turkey, which regularly raise the issue of UNSC reform and complain that the fate of humanity should not depend on five countries – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US.
However, Turkey’s suggestion is problematic as the UNSC would be inundated with permanent membership requests from dozens of middle powers who have equal or greater power than Turkey, such as Egypt, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Realistically, at this current junction, an expanded permanent UNSC could only include Brazil and India, the former because it is the most important country in Latin America and the latter because it is on a rapid path towards Great Power status.
None-the-less, Moscow, just like Washington, is in favour of reforming the UNSC, but with significantly different views. While the US and its allies are pushing reforms as a possible way to limit Russian influence, Moscow believes that the Security Council should to be expanded, but to achieve a more equitable world and to not empower Western aggression.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that the composition of the UNSC should be strengthened by Asian, African, and Latin American countries, which are not represented in the UNSC, with the exception of China in regards to Asia. Therefore, in Moscow’s view, the UNSC should not be expanded only so that the West and its closest allies, such as Japan, can get additional seats. Moscow wants to balance the UNSC because the West has three of five permanent seats despite comprising only a minority of humanity.
It is clear that Lavrov has strategically put the West in a difficult position because if they veto the expansion initiative, it will lead to a backlash from countries like India which believe they have earned a right to a permanent seat in the UNSC. At the same time, Lavrov and his Chinese counterpart must be cautious on expansion so that the UNSC does not transform into a political branch of NATO.
The UN Charter does not provide for a reform procedure, and this especially applies to the UNSC, which is the most important body of the organisation. By recklessly expanding the body, the contradictions and conflicts of interest, which already hinder the UNSC in its current format, would elevate.
Therefore, in the current geopolitical situation, it will be very difficult to reform the UNSC in such a way as to objectively consider the interests of all participants in the process. A permanent UNSC membership is a privilege and not something to lightly contemplate expanding upon.
There is also no legal basis to exclude Russia from the UNSC, limit its status and deprive it of veto rights. The entire architecture of the UN was originally built on the fact that the five great powers, the winners of the Second World War, assumed the role of guarding the global world order. The founding states cannot exclude each other because if one or two pillars are thrown out, the UN would collapse.
If Russia was somehow excluded, it would mark the destruction of the entire system based on international law, on the UN Charter, and would call into question the existence of the UN itself. Russia, however, is a permanent member of the Security Council and has veto power. This practically means that Russia, if the Charter is applied, can only be expelled if it does not exercise its veto power. Therefore, it is impossible to deprive Russia of that right, despite constant Ukrainian attempts.
Hypothetically, there are two scenarios in which Russia could lose its seat in the UNSC – first, if it excludes itself and second, if the UN ceases to exist as an organisation. It is recalled that the Soviet Union was foolishly excluded from the League of Nations, the forerunner of the UN, but that organisation ceased to exist. The same fate would befall the UN if Russia was expelled.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
NATO Could Send Troops to Western Ukraine if Kiev’s Spring Offensive Fails – Here’s Why
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 26.04.2023
Mainstream reporting related to the so-called “Pentagon leaks” about the DoD’s sobering assessment of the real state of the NATO-Russia proxy conflict in Ukraine has brought the “do or die” pressure facing Kiev into focus. Without a decisive victory, Kiev may be pushed into ceasefire talks, says international affairs expert Mark Sleboda.
Anonymous Biden administration officials told US media this week that the White House is “quietly preparing” for the contingency of Ukrainian forces failing to gain any significant ground against Russia during Kiev’s much-hyped spring offensive, and for the reputational blow this might have for Washington via-a-vis other allies and clients. Administration officials reportedly also fear that a failed or stalled offensive could result in attacks on the White House at home both by hawks pushing for even more aid to Kiev, and doves arguing that the Ukrainian Army’s failure would prove that Russia can’t be ejected from Crimea, Donbass, and its new territories.
Officials are reportedly mulling pushing Zelensky into a “ceasefire” to enable Kiev to retool and reequip for a resumption of the conflict at a later date, with measures meant to prod the Zelensky government into accepting including “NATO-like security guarantees,” EU economic support, and more military aid.
“I think this is actually one in a series of articles that have come out in the last few weeks, including the so-called ‘Pentagon Leaks’ which I think most Russian analysts believe are just another narrative management tool,” Mark Sleboda said, speaking to Radio Sputnik’s The Final Countdown radio show on Tuesday.
The latest piece in the MSM hyping the prospects of a possible Ukrainian defeat isn’t the first, Sleboda recalled, pointing to another recent legacy media piece from last week warning that a “breakthrough” in the conflict may not come at all in 2023, and that observers should lower their expectations of Ukraine advancing more than 30 km.
“So [there’s a] lowering [of] expectations, lowering the bar for success. Now we have twin articles coming out of Politico, but also The New York Times coming out within 24 hours of each other. And the Times tells us that ‘Ukraine’s spring offensive comes with immense stakes for future of the war’ and that without a decisive victory, Western support for Ukraine could weaken and Kiev could come under increasing pressure to enter serious peace talks to end or freeze the conflict,” the observer noted.
Characterizing the expected Ukrainian offensive as “the most telegraphed offensive in history,” Sleboda said that naturally, reality “cannot possibly” live up to the hype as far as objectives are concerned.
“And again, the mainstream media, The Washington Post, The New York Times have done features about how Russia has been, for the last half year, building up extensive layered trench networks, fortified concrete fortifications, pillboxes, tank obstacles like dragon teeth, etc., and very extensive minefields laid out in advance… We have seen the Kiev regime go on the offensive before against Russian troops that weren’t even half as well dug-in in Kherson. And it’s now acknowledged that Russian forces withdrew, but without taking any significant casualties. They withdrew tactically to avoid being enveloped, but they inflicted crippling casualties because the Ukrainian forces were charging across open steppe into superior artillery, rocket systems, and air dominance,” the analyst said.
Russia could afford to give up territory in the past because they’re “fighting a different type of conflict,” according to Sleboda, prioritizing force preservation and attrition warfare meant to “grind down the Kiev regime’s military and now effectively NATO as well, because NATO is 100% supplying the regime at this point.”
‘Talking Smack About Crimea’
Among Kiev’s formal priorities is a long-promised attack on Crimea. That’s a fantasy, Sleboda believes, since even without a Kherson-Zaporozhye “land bridge” linking Crimea to the Russian mainland, the peninsula is just too tough a nut to crack.
“Of course, they talk a lot of smack about Crimea, which is ridiculous, because Crimea is a peninsula, geographically a very difficult target to attack, very heavily defended with a 95% pro-Russian population. It’s ridiculous,” the observer stressed. The reality, he added, is that even officials like Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley have recognized that Kiev has no chance of “retaking” the peninsula.
“It’s perfectly obvious from the articles being put out today that now they don’t believe they could even get to that administrative border, nowhere close to it. I don’t believe so either. They may push Russian forces back a bit. But they talked about it in The New York Times back in December even, that the Biden administration, speaking through their stenographers anonymously, said ‘we don’t think that they can take Crimea, but we need to have the Russians believe Crimea is under threat to improve the Kiev regime’s negotiating position in future negotiations.’ They think they can get Russia to withdraw from Kherson and Zaporozhye and be satisfied with just the Donbass and Crimea. That’s their thinking. That’s why they don’t consider Bakhmut strategic, unlike Zelensky, who is trying to hold on to it all, because the US has written the Donbass off. They know that it’s an overwhelmingly pro-Russian area, that Russia has invested an enormous amount of political capital with the referendums there, but they think they can still get them to give up on Kherson and Zaporozhye, which also held referendums, by the way,” Sleboda said.
Sleboda pointed to the Times’ admission that the 12 new Ukrainian combat brigades of 4,000 troops apiece formed for the spring offensive – which are expected to be ready by the end of the month, are “raw recruits with a small core of experienced veteran soldiers,” and that they are equipped with handfuls of more modern NATO tanks and armored vehicles accompanied by much older equipment, and facing a big disadvantage in artillery and control of airspace.
Even the debate over deliveries of the much-vaunted F-16 fighters to Kiev is “all political,” according to the observer, because it takes years to train to use them, and Washington may prefer to save them, along with the ATACMS missiles long demanded by Kiev, for a possible war against China in the Pacific.
‘New Domino Theory’ and Danger of WWIII
Pointing to the “new domino theory” that’s being pushed by neocons and neoliberals in Washington on the need to prop up Kiev at all costs, or face Taiwan “falling” to China, Sleboda fears that if push comes to shove and Kiev suffers a major defeat on the battlefield, NATO may be tempted to intervene directly in the crisis to prevent its global defeat.
“I believe that if the Kiev regime suffers a catastrophic defeat and NATO can’t filter more weapons useful to them through them, they might consider what I’ve talked about for maybe half a year now – sending US and Polish troops, maybe Romanians, the Baltics, the Brits – a new ‘coalition of the willing’ as ‘peacekeepers’ into western Ukraine. To tell you the truth Russia would probably yell and scream, but they don’t really want to occupy West Ukraine because unlike East Ukraine, they really do hate Russia over there. It would be very hostile guerilla territory. That’s the part of Ukraine that sided with Nazi Germany in World War II and is resurrecting all of that type of anti-Russian, Banderite fascist glorification today,” Sleboda said.
Ultimately, the main issue of concern for the analyst is Odessa – the strategic, majority Russian-speaking seaport. “If the Kiev regime loses that, then they’re a landlocked little rump state, and the US [has] got the 101st Airborne just across the border in Romania exactly to step across as a tripwire force into Odessa. And that’s the scenario that keeps me up at night. That’s the World War III scenario, as far as I’m concerned [it] is a possible direct NATO-Russia fight over Odessa because I do not believe for a second that Russia would allow Odessa to become a US naval base,” Sleboda summed up.
Event 201 Webpage Goes Missing
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 26, 2023
Event 201 – A high-level pandemic exercise held by The Johns Hopkins Center for Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The exercise began on 18 October 2019, months before the Covid pandemic started and the very same day the World Military Games began in Wuhan.
The website for the event has been available to view all the way through the pandemic but for some reason it has now been taken down. If you click on the web address, all you get is this:
But you can always view the archived version here.
South Korean Leader’s US Visit Sets Stage for New Cold War in Pacific
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 26.04.2023
The election of right-wing South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has once again frozen relations with the north. Greg Elich, Korea Policy Institute board member and a contributor to the collection Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-Economic Strategy, said Seoul had taken Washington’s side in the broader new Cold War.
The South Korean presidential state visit to the US is intended to cement agreement on ratcheting up the “new Cold War” with China, North Korea and Russia, says a regional expert.
Yoon Suk-yeol arrived in Washington DC on Tuesday for talks with US President Joe Biden.
Officials said the focus of the discussions was North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile programmes, now back in motion after a deal brokered by former US leader Donald Trump collapsed after the US resumed its twice-yearly joint military exercises with the south.
Greg Elich told Sputnik that Yoon’s visit was “about overt military aggression, alliance building and threat signalling,” not the “stalking horse” of Pyongyang’s missile tests.
Yoon “repeatedly made it clear that he wants to subordinate South Korea’s foreign policy to the US Indo-Pacific strategy,” Elich said. “Basically, he’s adopted the role of vassal state. There’s no critical examination of the US role in the Asia Pacific. He just wants to strengthen that alliance.”
The Asia expert pointed out that Yoon had recently angered Beijing by weighing in on Taiwan’s claim to independence, describing it as “a global issue that goes beyond the regional level.”
“Taiwan is basically an internal Chinese affair. It’s the one-China policy that most of the nations in the world, including the United States, recognize that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China,” Elich said. “This is Yoon’s way of going along with US policy lately of trying to internationalize and make Taiwan a global issue rather than internal affairs.”
At a recent meeting between Asian governments and NATO officials, the South Korean deputy foreign minister said he welcomed the US-led military bloc’s “leadership” in the pacific, adding that “We hope to work more closely with NATO.”
“The US wants South Korea to provide direct military assistance to Ukraine, including howitzers and military shells,” Elich noted, pointing to Seoul’s agreement to supply the US with half a million artillery shells on credit — ostensibly on the basis that they will not be re-exported to Ukraine. “This is about South Korea saying that it’s not adhering to its policy of not becoming directly involved with a war in Ukraine while actually doing so.”
Turning to the tensions between the Republic of Korea (RoK) and the northern Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the commentator did not believe the US would back Yoon’s recent threat to develop his own nuclear weapons.
“But one of the key things that they will be discussing this week is the US nuclear umbrella over South Korea and what circumstances the US would deploy nuclear weapons against North Korea,” Elich said. “Both the US and and Yoon want to take a more aggressive stance against North Korea. They’re doing everything to ramp up tensions.”
The DPRK’s moratorium on nuclear weapon and missile tests was dependent on Trump’s pledge to halt bi-annual US-South Korean military exercises along the Demilitarised Zone border that partitions the Korean peninsula.
“There’s been a tremendous ramp-up in both the size and frequency of military exercises in South Korea, and not just in South Korea,” Elich siad, also mentioning the Cobra Gold wargames in Thailand. “That was directed to basically China because it was all about, quote, keeping the Indo-Pacific free and open. The standard coded language for the China campaign.”
“But on the Korean Peninsula as well, the US has flown this year in nuclear capable bombers,” he added. “this is the largest exercises in several years, basically trying to keep tensions ramped up against North Korea.”
Pfizer Gave Millions to ‘Independent’ Groups to Push COVID Vaccine Mandates
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 26, 2023
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in 2021 made numerous grants to medical associations, consumer groups and civil rights organizations for the purpose of creating the appearance of widespread support for COVID-19 vaccine mandates, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported.
As the vaccine mandates rolled out in 2021, Pfizer stayed quiet on the question of mandates — but public health groups, patient advocacy groups, doctors’ associations, community groups and others, along with the Biden administration, actively advocated for vaccine mandates as a key measure to protect public health.
New disclosures from Pfizer, posted by Fang on his Substack, show that many of these same groups were taking money from Pfizer while they promoted the idea that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were “safe and effective,” despite a lack of scientific data to back those claims.
Prominent groups on the extensive list of those who took Pfizer funding while pushing the mandates included the Chicago Urban League, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the National Consumers League, The Immunization Partnership, the American Pharmacists Association, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy, the American Society for Clinical Pathology and the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Many groups did not disclose their ties to Pfizer.
“[These groups] set the nature of the debate,” Fang told comedian and political commentator Russell Brand on a recent episode of “Stay Free.” “They appear in the news media, they create events and they create a discourse that looks authentic, that looks organic, but it benefits the bottom line of their benefactors, of companies like Pfizer.”
Fang said many of these organizations, particularly civil rights organizations like the Chicago Urban League or the National Consumers League — which actually has a Pfizer lobbyist on its board — have powerful influence precisely because of their independent status.
When these groups speak out, Fang said:
“It affects how regulators see these issues and how the public sees them. When they see these third-party groups that have some credibility — these are famous organizations that are known for standing up for the public interest.
“When they say ‘hey these mandates are a good idea for the American public,’ it seems genuine.
“But they aren’t disclosing the Pfizer money, which is a relevant factor when you are talking about a policy that compels Americans to take this product.”
After the COVID-19 vaccines became widely available in early 2021, vaccine mandates followed in different forms across the country.
At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Defense mandated vaccines for military personnel, and the Biden administration mandated vaccines for federal contractors and for all employers with 100 employees or more — the latter was struck down in federal court.
Universities mandated vaccination for students and staff, and many public and private employers across the country mandated vaccination for their employees.
Several school districts across the country planned to mandate vaccination for children to attend school, but most of those plans have since been rolled back.
Those who instituted mandates justified them by asserting that mass vaccination — and only mass vaccination — would “stop the spread” of COVID-19.
But it has since been revealed that in March 2021, when Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky publicly and unequivocally stated on MSNBC that vaccinated people would not get sick, there was no evidence to support her statement.
In fact, the CDC had to walk back the statement a few days later.
Biden also falsely claimed that the vaccinated would not get infected — in July 2021, just before COVID-19 vaccine mandates went into effect.
The vaccine makers have since acknowledged they never tested whether the vaccines would stop transmission, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that vaccinated people in both Pfizer and Moderna’s clinical trials contracted the virus.
Big Pharma’s big reach
Pfizer isn’t the only actor in Big Pharma that quietly funds third parties to do its work.
Fang told The Defender that “Many pharmaceutical firms covertly shape public opinion and regulations through the use of front groups and financial relationships with community organizations.”
For example, Purdue Pharma covertly funded third-party advocacy groups to encourage looser criteria for prescribing its highly addictive opioid painkillers, he reported.
As for Pfizer, Fang said, third-party funding is just one of the many strategies the drugmaker deployed to drive COVID-19 policymaking.
“Pfizer flexed its lobbying muscles around many COVID-19 policies, including efforts to curb drug-pricing initiatives and a bid to prevent the creation of generic COVID medications,” he said, adding, “The vaccine mandate debate is yet another example of Pfizer’s reach into public policy.”
Big Pharma — along with the Biden administration and its intermediaries — also lobbied to suppress those who questioned the vaccine program.
Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna pressured Twitter and other social media platforms to set moderation rules that would flag purported COVID-19-related “misinformation,” as part of the effort to drive the national conversation about the COVID-19 vaccines, Fang reported as part of the “Twitter files.”
“Pharma is unique in the raw amount of money they spend to control the entire public sector on regulatory, on policy, on everything in terms of how it affects medicine as it is practiced in the United States,” Fang said.
The pharmaceutical and health products lobby is one of the biggest industry lobbies. According to OpenSecrets.org, last year alone the industry spent $372 million lobbying Congress and federal agencies, outspending every other industry — and each year it increases its spending.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla is on the board of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the top individual lobbying spender in the industry, which spent $29.2 million last year. Pfizer itself spent more than any other drug company.
The industry also spends massive amounts of money on advertising. Pfizer alone spent nearly $2.8 billion on advertising for all of its products in 2022.
The COVID-19 vaccines netted $37.8 billion for Pfizer in 2022, up from $36.7 billion in 2021. The company’s overall earnings hit a record $100 billion.
Big Pharma and the CDC did similar work to promote mandates and vaccination
There is a “revolving door” between pharma industry lobbyists and the government — nearly 65% of lobbyists formerly worked for the government.
And the strategies used to build support for Big Pharma’s products are some of the same strategies used by federal government agencies like the CDC.
Since 2021 — the same time Pfizer started funding community groups — the CDC has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for the creation of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for training “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in every state across the country.
For those grants, the CDC sought out community organizations that would communicate the CDC’s message without the CDC’s trademark, so the messages would appear to come organically from within local communities rather than from the government, particularly among communities of color.
In another case, the CDC hired a public relations firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people — with a focus on Spanish speakers — to get vaccinated.
Both Pfizer and the CDC used their funding to target black and Latino communities that had lower vaccination rates. In one case, they both funded the same organization — the National Hispanic Medical Association (NHMA).
According to Fang, the organization worked with a public relations firm called Culture ONE World to distribute “press releases and media placements” that “called on employers of essential workers to mandate COVID-19 vaccines.”
Fang also wrote that the NHMA also signed joint statements lobbying in favor of Biden’s vaccine mandate and that “it received $30,000 from BIO [Biotechnology Innovation Organization], a vaccine industry lobby group that represents Pfizer and Moderna, IRS filings show.”
The Defender found that NHMA received $2,070,000 in two annual grants so far for their “Vacunas! Si Se Puede, Immunization Campaign for Hispanics” program, which later became “We Can Do This,” to create culturally tailored content to be circulated throughout Latino communities.
American Academy of Pediatrics received multiple grants from Pfizer in 2021
The AAP also appeared on Fang’s list of notable organizations that received direct Pfizer funding.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics was one of the most visible organizations working to build public support for vaccine mandates. The organization received multiple, specialized grants from Pfizer in 2021.
“Pfizer also provided grants to individual state chapters of the AAP earmarked for lobbying on vaccine policy. The Ohio AAP chapter, for instance, lobbied the Ohio legislature against bills to curb coercive COVID-19 vaccine policies, while receiving an ‘immunization legislation’ advocacy grant from Pfizer.”
Beyond its COVID-19 vaccine mandate work, the organization also was a public advocate for COVID-19 vaccines for children. Its then-president, UCLA professor Moira Szilagyi, M.D., Ph.D., publicly advocated, on media outlets such as CNN, for vaccinating children.
The organization, “dedicated to the health of all children,” previously issued policy guidance to its members stating that it is an “acceptable option to pediatric care clinicians to dismiss families who refuse vaccines.”
And in June 2022, the AAP issued a press release applauding the CDC’s recommendation of “safe, effective COVID-19 vaccines” for babies as young as 6 months old, despite concerns raised — by the FDA vaccine advisory commission, among many others — regarding a lack of clinical data for the vaccines in children.
In addition to the Pfizer funding, the AAP receives much of its funding directly from the CDC, raising questions about the organization’s ability to act independently, particularly with respect to vaccine recommendations, BMJ editor Peter Doshi wrote in 2017.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a 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.
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.
FDA chief spruiks misinformation while vowing to fight misinformation
BY MARYANNE DEMASI, PHD | APRIL 25, 2023
Robert Califf, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is hell bent on ridding the internet of misinformation.
In a series of public appearances, Califf has claimed that “misinformation is now our leading cause of death.”
When I asked the FDA for evidence to support his claim, the agency drew a blank, admitting that Califf’s statement “cannot be proven.”
Califf has since made attempts to tweak his public statement.
This week, CBS News reporter Alexander Tin pressed him for an explanation, to which Califf replied, “I want to modify my statement. And I’ll keep working on this, to try to get it right. I would say I actually believe it is the leading cause of premature death…”
Jessica Adams, an expert in drug regulatory affairs said, “It’s ironic. Califf is spreading misinformation about the leading cause of premature death in the US, while promoting the need to counter misinformation.”
“It’s unbelievable for him to make these assertions with no scientific backing,” she added.
Adams said it’s not the FDA’s job to police medical misinformation online.
“The FDA should be assessing drug approvals, overseeing post-marketing studies and ensuring product labels are up to date – not promoting vaccines and antivirals as if it’s the marketing arm of the drug industry,” said Adams.
The FDA sent me its website providing Califf’s reasoning for why he believes misinformation is the leading cause of premature death. It states:
“Most of the COVID-19 deaths since vaccines and antivirals became available were preventable if people had gotten updated on their vaccination status and, if high risk and infected, had they been treated with an authorized antiviral.”
“He’s failed to cite any sources to substantiate his claims and Califf keeps saying that it is just his ‘belief’…Are we supposed to just accept that?” said Adams, criticising his “obsession” over the boosters.
“It’s as if the FDA thinks that people don’t want the vaccines because they are misinformed, when it might just be that they are not persuaded by the data,” she added.
Adams also said the FDA is misinforming the public by “over-inflating” the benefit of the more recent bivalent vaccines.
“They’re now promoting the bivalent boosters which are based on much less data than the original [monovalent] vaccines and authorised on the basis of antibodies, which is not a fully validated correlate of protection,” said Adams.
This is not the first time the FDA has made misleading scientific claims to the public.
In August 2021, the FDA attempted to dissuade people from using ivermectin as an off-label, early treatment for COVID-19 by suggesting it was a livestock drug. The agency tweeted “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
But critics were quick to condemn the misinformation by pointing out that ivermectin is not only a medicine used to deworm livestock, it is also FDA-approved for parasitic treatment in humans.
Califf also spread misinformation in a Nov 2022 tweet which stated, “preliminary epidemiological findings point to the distinct possibility of the bivalent vaccines and antivirals reducing risk of long Covid.”
Vinay Prasad, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and a practicing Haematologist Oncologist at San Francisco General Hospital wrote a scathing criticism of the tweet.
“For bivalent vaccines, he’s making things up. There are no relevant clinical data in human beings for bivalent vaccines, certainly not for the end points of long covid symptoms. Ergo that claim is 100% false; essentially a lie,” wrote Prasad.
“For antivirals, such as Paxlovid, this endpoint has not been assessed in randomized control trials. There are some poorly done observational studies that conflate ICD-10 codes with long covid symptoms and make bold, unsupported claims, but there is no robust evidence,” he added.
Traditionally, the FDA has regulated health misinformation to protect consumers from misbranded and adulterated products, but this new proposed “misinformation oversight” seems to extend to overseeing any online health-related issue.
“The FDA has always maintained that it does not want to regulate the practice of medicine, but lately it’s behaving as if it’s the Surgeon General – America’s doctor – making drug recommendations and promoting vaccines,” said Adams.
If the FDA wants to curb the spread of misinformation, it should start by looking at its own behaviour.
Despite the criticism, Califf remains defiant. Recently, he boasted to a crowd of journalists that he is “relatively impervious to critique.”
Perhaps, that’s where he is going wrong.
RFK JR: “there is no time in history where the people censoring speech were the good guys”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 26, 2023
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the censorship of speech arguing that, “there is no time in history where the people censoring speech were the good guys.”
In an interview with Breitbart News host Joel Pollak, Kennedy discussed censorship of alleged “misinformation.” Kennedy has experienced censorship first-hand for questioning measures taken during the pandemic.
“I’m wondering if you can make a pitch to our audience about a common cause that you, running as a Democrat, may have with many conservatives who feel that they’ve been canceled or otherwise censored or marginalized in public discourse,” Pollak asked.
“It’s more than a personal aggrievement. It’s really just a direct assault on our democracy,” Kennedy said.
According to Kennedy, when the founding fathers drafted the Bill of Rights, they “put the right to free expression in the First Amendment because all the other rights depended on it—because the government that has the power to silence its critics has license for any kind of atrocity.”
“They also understood just theoretically that the whole basis for democracy was the free flow of information,” he continued, adding that one great benefit of democracy over dictatorship is that “through the free flow of information, the best policies can triumph in the marketplace of ideas.”
“We’re now in this situation where without free speech, democracy just withers and dies. Free speech is the fertilizer; it’s the sunlight; it’s the water for democracy,” he added. “There is no time in history where the people who were censoring speech were the good guys. They’re always the bad guys because, of course, that is the first and last step of totalitarianism: silencing critics.”
Kennedy further noted that misinformation and falsehoods are protected speech.
“There are certain kinds of speech that are not protected. But, you know, those things are.
“What we really ought to be looking at is why? What is the cause of this blizzard and tsunami of misinformation that everybody is worried about? And if you look at why this is happening, it’s clear that it’s happening because people don’t trust the government anymore, and they don’t trust it because the government lies, and the media lies.
“Twenty-two percent of Americans now trust the government, and about 22 percent trust media. That’s the lowest level in our history. And the reason they don’t—there’s a very good reason—is that the government and the media, the mainstream media, the corporate-owned media, they are now lying just as a matter of course. And because of that, people are looking for other sources of information. And when those other sources challenge government orthodoxies, the government’s response is to censor them or to label them as misinformation and say that they’re dangerous.”
Listen to the full interview here.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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