RT | March 11, 2023
More than $250 billion in Covid-19 relief funds were lost to “fraud” and “waste,” the directors of three US government agencies testified before the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee on Thursday.
Compounding what Deputy Inspector General Sheldon Shoemaker of the Small Business Administration (SBA) called “the biggest fraud in a generation,” the officials stressed that the figures they gave represented an extremely conservative estimate of the total amount lost as they did not include the amount defrauded from the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.
According to a statement submitted by Shoemaker ahead of the hearing, the SBA has already uncovered $190.7 billion in potential fraud across relief programs under its jurisdiction. Specifically, it expects to find upwards of $100 billion within the scandal-plagued Paycheck Protection Program. Acting Treasury Inspector General Richard Delmar admitted to just $2.6 billion in dubious charges confirmed at his agency, pleading that ongoing audits precluded making an estimate of the full cost.
Larry Turner, inspector general of the Department of Labor, blamed the massive losses on a lack of preparation, insufficient oversight, and even the government’s generosity, making a “highly conservative” estimate of $76 billion in fraudulent spending. With no functioning system in place to verify applicants’ qualifying details in a reasonable time frame, the “unprecedented infusion of federal funds” into the program made it irresistible to fraudsters, he told the subcommittee.
Rep. Keith Mfume (D-Maryland) expressed shock that no one had predicted that requiring only “self-certification” to access such a prodigious cash hoard would lead to “a lot of hanky-panky,” while Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Florida) pointed out that the agencies did not even use existing checks and balances to vet applicants, and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Florida) highlighted that state unemployment systems were hopelessly outdated even before the pandemic placed them under unprecedented stress. Of $45.6 billion in potential fraud lent out in association with one Labor Department program, Turner acknowledged upon questioning that $267 million had gone to dead people.
Asked about the possibility of recovering the money, Turner said that hunting down the perpetrators was financially unrewarding, as “once money goes out the door, it is hard to get it back.” Even in cases where the government has been able to track down Covid-19 benefit fraudsters and claw back some of the funds, the inspectors general were unable to tell subcommittee members what had become of some of the money.
More than $5 trillion in pandemic relief funds have been distributed since 2020. By some estimates, as much as $400 billion was stolen from the unemployment relief program alone.
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 11, 2023
The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.
The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to the noble initiative of President Xi Jinping.” The dramatic beginning goes on to state that Saudi Arabia and Iran have expressed their “appreciation and gratitude” to Xi Jinping and the Chinese government “for hosting and sponsoring the talks, and the efforts it placed towards its success.”
The joint communique also mentioned Iraq and Oman for fostering the Saudi-Iranian dialogue during 2021-2022. But the salience is that the United States, which has been traditionally the dominant power in West Asian politics for close to eight decades, is nowhere in the picture.
Yet, this is about the reconciliation between the two biggest regional powers in the Persian Gulf region. The US retrenchment denotes a colossal breakdown of American diplomacy. It will remain a black mark in President Biden’s foreign policy legacy.
But Biden must take the blame for it. Such a cataclysmic failure is largely to be traced to his fervour to impose his neoconservative dogmas as an adjunct of America’s military might and Biden’s own frequent insistence that the fate of humankind hinges on the outcome of a cosmic struggle between democracy and autocracy.
China has shown that Biden’s hyperbole is delusional and it grates against realities. If Biden’s moralistic, ill-considered rhetoric alienated Saudi Arabia, his attempts to suppress Iran met with stubborn resistance from Tehran. And, in the final analysis, Biden literally drove both Riyadh and Tehran to search for countervailing forces that would help them to push back his oppressive, overbearing attitude.
The US’ humiliating exclusion from the centre stage of West Asian politics constitutes a “Suez moment” for the superpower, comparable to the crisis experienced by the UK in 1956, which obliged the British to sense that their imperial project had reached a dead end and the old way of doing things—whipping weaker nations into line as ostensible obligations of global leadership —was no longer going to work and would only lead to disastrous reckoning.
The stunning part here is the sheer brain power and intellectual resources and ‘soft power’ that China has brought into play to outwit the US. The US has at least 30 military bases in West Asia — five in Saudi Arabia alone — but it has lost the mantle of leadership. Come to think of it, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China made their landmark announcement on the very same day Xi Jinping got elected for a third term as president.
What we are seeing is a new China under the leadership of Xi Jinping trotting over the high knoll. Yet, it is adopting a self-effacing posture claiming no laurels for itself. There is no sign of the ‘Middle Kingdom syndrome,’ which the US propagandists had warned against.
On the contrary, for the world audience — especially countries like India or Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil or South Africa — China has presented a salutary example of how a democratised multipolar world can work in future — how it is possible to anchor big power diplomacy on consensual, conciliatory politics, trade and interdependence and advance a ‘win-win’ outcome.
Implicit in this is another huge message here: China as a factor of global balance and stability. It is not only Asia-Pacific and West Asia who are watching. The audience also includes Africa and Latin America — in fact, the entire non-Western world that forms the big majority of world community who are known as the Global South.
What the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis have brought to the surface is the latent geopolitical reality that the Global South rejects the policies of neo-mercantalism pursued by the West in the garb of ‘liberal internationalism.’
The West is pursuing a hierarchical international order. None other than the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell blurted this out in an unguarded moment recently with a touch of racist overtone when he said from a public platform that ‘Europe Is a garden. The rest of the world Is a jungle, and the jungle could Invade the garden.’
Tomorrow, China could as well be challenging the US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. The recent paper by the Chinese Foreign Ministry titled ‘US Hegemony and Its Perils’ tells us that Beijing will no longer be on the defensive.
Meanwhile, a realignment of forces on the world stage is taking place with China and Russia on one side and the US on the other. Doesn’t it convey a big message that on the very eve of the historic announcement in Beijing on Friday, the Saudi Arabian foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud landed suddenly in Moscow on a ‘working visit’ and went into a huddle with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who was visibly delighted? (here, here and here )
Of course, we will never know what role Moscow would have played behind the scenes in coordination with Beijing to build bridges between Riyadh and Tehran. All we know is that Russia and China actively coordinate their foreign policy moves. Interestingly, on March 6, President Putin had a telephone conversation with Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.
Audacity of hope
To be sure, the geopolitics of West Asia will never be the same again. Realistically, the first sparrow of spring has appeared but the ice was melted for only three or four rods from the shore. Nonetheless, the sun’s rays give hope, signalling warmer days to come.
Conceivably, Riyadh won’t have any truck further with the diabolical plots hatched in Washington and Tel Aviv to resuscitate an anti-Iran alliance in West Asia. Nor is it in the realms of possibility that Saudi Arabia will be party to any US-Israeli attacks on Iran.
This badly isolates Israel in the region and renders the US toothless. In substantive terms, it scatters the Biden administration’s feverish efforts lately to cajole Riyadh to join Abraham Accords.
However, significantly, a commentary in Global Times noted somewhat audaciously that the Saudi-Iranian deal “set a positive example for other regional hotspot issues, such as the easing and settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And in the future, China could play an important role in building a bridge for countries to solve long-standing thorny issues in the Middle East just as what it did this time.”
Indeed, the joint communique issued in Beijing says, “The three countries [Saudi Arabia, Iran and China] expressed their keenness to exert all efforts towards enhancing regional and international peace and security.” Can China pull a rabit out of the hat? Time will tell.
For the present, though, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will certainly have positive fallouts on the efforts toward a negotiated settlement in Yemen and Syria as well as on the political instability in Lebanon.
Besides, the joint communique emphasises that Saudi Arabia and Iran intend to revive the 1998 General Agreement for Cooperation in the Fields of Economy, Trade, Investment, Technology, Science, Culture, Sports, and Youth. All in all, the Biden administration’s maximum pressure strategy toward Iran has crashed and the West’s sanctions against Iran are being rendered ineffectual. The US’ policy options on Iran have shrunk. Put differently, Iran gains strategic depth to negotiate with the US.
The cutting edge of the US sanctions lies in the restrictions on Iran’s oil trade and access to western banks. It is entirely conceivable that a backlash is about to begin as Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia — three top oil/gas producing countries start accelerating their search for payment mechanisms bypassing the American dollar.
China is already discussing such an arrangement with Saudi Arabia and Iran. China-Russia trade and economic transactions no longer use American dollar for payments. It is well understood that any significant erosion in the status of the dollar as ‘world currency’ will not only spell doom for the American economy but will cripple the US’ capacity to wage ‘forever wars’ abroad and impose its global hegemony.
The bottom line is that the reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran is also a precursor to their induction as BRICS members in a near future. To be sure, there is a Russian-Chinese understanding already on this score. The BRICS membership for Saudi Arabia and Iran will radically reset the power dynamic in the international system.
Press TV – March 11, 2023
The US Department of Defense has planned to seek a huge budget to replenish the arms and munitions the Pentagon sent to Ukraine, where Moscow says it’s fighting a proxy war against Russia.
The Pentagon seeks more than $300 billion from the US government for weapons procurement and R & D (research and development) in the upcoming 2024 fiscal year, Bloomberg reported on Saturday citing confidential documents.
The requested budget will reportedly be allocated to replacing arms and munitions sent to the Kiev forces to fight Russia, as well as to enhance the ability of the American force to fight China.
According to an internal budget document reviewed by Bloomberg, to purchase new arms the Pentagon is requesting $76.8 billion for the Navy and Marines, $61 billion for the Air and Space Force, $15.7 billion for the Army, and $16.5 billion for other US military forces, in total $170 billion.
The Pentagon also requested $400 million to acquire a new version of the Stinger air defense system, $199 million to purchase 541 Javelin anti-armor missiles, and $179 million to procure 28 additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, Bloomberg reported.
In addition, the Pentagon also reportedly requested $145 billion for research and development projects. This includes $46 billion that would be earmarked for the Air Force, $27 billion for the Navy and $15.7 billion for the Army. The documents are scheduled to be released on Monday, according to Bloomberg.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden unveiled the 2024 fiscal year starting in October, allocating one-fourth to the Pentagon.
The proposed budget shows an increase in military spending to a record $842 billion.
In the meantime, Russia has repeatedly warned Ukraine’s weapons suppliers that arming Kiev would only delay the restoration of peace in the region while turning those providing weapons providers to Kiev complicit in the Ukraine war.
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 11.03.2023
The French island of Corsica has for many years been trying to achieve autonomy, seeking legislative powers in economic and social fields, as well as recognition of the Corsican language as the official lingua franca.
Public outrage has been triggered by a “shameful” court decision in France’s Corsica to ban use of the Corsican language in its local parliament, according to reports from the capital, Ajaccio.
A verdict issued on 9 March in the Corsican city of Bastia ruled that French is the only language allowed to be used in official communications on the Mediterranean’s fourth-largest island which is a “territorial collectivity” of France. Furthermore, use of the Corsican language in debates – something that had been commonly practiced by the Assembly (unicameral legislative body of Corsica) – was pronounced as being against the French constitution.
Referred to as Corsu, or Lingua Corsa, the Corsican language is closely related to the type of Italian spoken in Tuscany. The language is spoken and written not only on the French island of Corsica, but also in northern Sardinia – an Italian island. The language has been classified as “definitely endangered” by UNESCO.
Also deemed a violation of the constitution by the court were local rules in support of “the existence of a Corsican people”.
The present ruling has come in the wake of a lawsuit introduced by Amaury de Saint-Quentin, the prefect of Corsica, according to reports. De Saint-Quentin is the highest-ranking official on the island and is appointed by the central French government.
The court ruling prompted an immediate backlash from pro-autonomy politicians on Corsica, with the pro-Corsican independence party Core in Fronte going on Twitter to lambaste the “shameful” verdict.
“This decision amounts to stripping Corsican parliament members of the right to speak their language during debates. Accepting this state of affairs is unthinkable for us,” a joint statement by the island’s executive council president Gilles Simeoni, and Corsican Assembly president Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis said.
Emphasizing that the Corsican language needed to be granted official status alongside French if it were to have any chance to “survive and develop”, they vowed to lodge an appeal against the verdict.
Jean-Christophe Angelini, leader of the Party of the Corsican Nation, tweeted to say the court ruling was “an injustice and a disgrace”, and “sounds to us like an insult”.
Corsica has for years been seeking autonomy from France, and – as well as a whole slew of issues – recognition of the Corsican language as official has always been top of the agenda.
In February 2018, during his first visit to the island, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke out against granting Corsica special status or recognizing its language as official, insisting that Corsica was an integral part of the French Republic.
However, this February Macron reportedly told members of parliament that he had neither red lines nor a predetermined decision regarding Corsica when it comes to the draft constitutional reform, which he hopes to carry out after the summer and put up for debates in 2023-24. However, the option for Corsica to secede from France is off the table, according to the report.
Strategic Culture Foundation | March 10, 2023
The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.
Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.
Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.
In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.
The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.
Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.
One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.
The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.
Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.
The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.
The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.
Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.
The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.
There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.
Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?
Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.
The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.
By Viktor Medvedchuk – Sputnik – 11.03.2023
The Zelensky regime has once again demonstrated that it holds nothing sacred, this time in the literal sense. Today, the authorities have begun a gangster-style takeover of the main shrine of Orthodoxy – the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
On March 10, the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received an ultimatum, being informed that the National Preserve is breaking its lease agreement for the Lower Lavra of the Holy Assumption Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and requiring monks to vacate the territory before March 29, 2023.
We remember from history that even during the Nazi occupation, the parishes of the canonical Orthodox Church were not closed by the Nazis. But today, their ideological heirs are taking away from the people of Ukraine that which gives them their spiritual core, strengthens them in trying times, consoles them in their grief and unites them in the joy of Easter.
The Ukrainian people have been robbed of their tongue, both Russian and Ukrainian. Russian, native to millions of Ukrainians, was declared the language of invaders and traitors. Ukrainian has been perverted to such an extent that it has lost its roots, musicality and meaning.
The Ukrainian people had their rights and freedoms taken from them, with deceitful, thieving and criminal authorities placed above all laws, with the people given over into the hands of demented Nazi bandits, spawning informers and extremists. Today, a Ukrainian not only has no right to have an opinion that differs from that of the authorities, but is obliged to support this government at any opportunity, since even silence is considered a crime.
The Ukrainian people have been robbed of peace and prosperity, since the Zelensky government does not want to admit its mistakes and its lies to voters. They preferred to lead their people to the slaughter, receiving unlimited finances and NATO weaponry. The current government does not hide that it is going to fight a long and bloody conflict. It is not interested in the lives of ordinary Ukrainians.
Today, the people are being robbed of the last thing they’ve got – their faith. Orthodoxy is the basis of the culture and spiritual life of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has called the people to peace, unity and conscientiousness. But peaceful, God-fearing and conscientious people have been declared enemies by the Zelensky government.
Ukrainians are being robbed of their souls, their language, their hearts, their minds and their conscience. The Ukrainian state has turned into a man-made Frankenstein, a monster that hates everything living and natural, that wants to destroy peace in the world. But the authorities in Kiev will not succeed in turning Ukraine into a corpse, a dangerous zombie. Ukrainians are a living, spiritual, righteous people.
Ukrainians aren’t zombies. There is Another Ukraine – the genuine, true, Slavic, Orthodox one, which will not allow Satanism and lawlessness to be imposed upon it. And today the traitors of the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian faith hear our voice, and understand that their sinister, black core is becoming more and more obvious each day. Everyone will receive their just deserts. The attempt to destroy the true Orthodox faith only strengthens the people. The Orthodox faith, like the people, cannot be destroyed!
Viktor Medvedchuk is a former Ukrainian opposition leader.
RT | March 11, 2023
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the ethnic Albanian authorities in the breakaway province of Kosovo of attempting to provoke a war in which NATO would once again take their side.
“They want to drag Serbia into a conflict with NATO. Kurti wants to be like [Vladimir] Zelensky, and I would be some kind of [Vladimir] Putin,” Vucic said on Friday, referring to Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
“It’s what they’re after, what they’ve been doing all along. And in this, they have the support of a significant part of the international community, because [Kosovo] is their child,” he added.
Vucic was commenting on the recent arrest of an ethnic Serb on charges of “war crimes” dating back to the 1998-99 conflict, which ended with NATO bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. The provisional government in Pristina declared independence in 2008, with Western support, which Belgrade has refused to recognize.
“They don’t want normalization, they want to humiliate Serbia,” argued Vucic. “But I’m telling you, that won’t happen. There will be no humiliation, no capitulation.”
The proposal for “normalization of relations” between Pristina and Belgrade, made public last month by the EU, amounts to a de facto recognition of the breakaway province, which would have the right to join NATO, the EU, and the UN. Vucic insists he did not sign anything and will never agree to those terms.
“We are preparing for talks on Monday or Tuesday,” he said, referring to the EU-sponsored talks in neighboring North Macedonia. “But it’s not clear to me why. They said they wouldn’t agree to a deal. Well, why are you coming then? For us to recognize Kosovo?”
Vucic insists that before anything else can happen, the EU needs to enforce the 2013 Brussels Agreement, which among other things envisioned political autonomy for ethnic Serbs in the province. The ethnic Albanian authorities have refused to implement that part of the deal for ten years now, insisting it clashes with the ‘constitution’ of Kosovo. Neither the EU nor the US has done anything to influence Pristina to change its mind, Vucic noted.
Instead, the EU has just granted Kosovo visa-free travel to the bloc, while threatening an economic boycott against Serbia unless it joins the Western sanctions against Russia.
By Andrew Korybko | March 11, 2023
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked that the US hypocritically wants regime change in comparatively neutral Georgia while opposing it in Western-aligned Moldova, after which his spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that it supports Bosnia’s territorial integrity but violates Serbia’s. Calling that declining unipolar hegemon out for its double standards towards these two pairs of countries in similar situations is meant to raise wider awareness of the US’ self-interested policies.
Its infamous “rules-based order” has nothing to do with the UN Charter like its proponents falsely claim and everything to do with the arbitrary implementation of selective standards designed to advance the US’ zero-sum interests. In the first pair of Georgia and Moldova, both are experiencing very intense protests at the moment, but the former are Western-backed and designed to pressure Russia while the second are purely indigenous and designed to restore this country’s neutrality in the New Cold War.
As for the second pair of Bosnia and Serbia, the US has feigned worry that the former’s Serb region might separate from the federation that it was forced into in 1994 while doing everything in its power to support the separatist claims of the latter’s Autonomous Province of Kosovo & Metohija. In this example, the double standards are applied because retaining Bosnian “unity” is integral to upholding Western hegemony in the Balkans, the outcome of which is further advanced by splitting Serbia.
Pointing out the US’ hypocritical approach towards each pair of countries, which is objectively existing and easily verifiable, discredits its soft power by exposing just how unprincipled its foreign policy truly is. The only constant is that it always aims to advance US zero-sum interests as was previously explained, to which end it’ll employ whichever double standards are necessary. Morals, ethics, international law, and principles will never stand in the way of the US maximizing its power.
Awareness of this “politically incorrect” reality in turn extends credence to what Russia has always claimed since the onset of its special operation last year, namely that it was forced to resort to military means for defending its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them. For whatever the most gung-ho Western readers might think about the preceding explanation, there’s no denying that the Kremlin has retained narrative consistency over the years compared to the US.
Moscow began warning about NATO’s eastward expansion earlier this century, most famously during President Putin’s keynote speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. By contrast, Washington gaslit by claiming that there’s no credible reason for that country to be concerned by this, yet at the same time also alleging that Russia’s military presence in the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Moldova that was agreed to per deals for ending their civil wars destabilizes their respective regions.
It was always the US and not Russia that obstructed peace efforts in those two countries unlike what the Mainstream Media claimed, all with a view towards indefinitely perpetuating their “frozen conflicts” in order to more effectively divide-and-rule them. Instead of encouraging their Western-aligned authorities to pragmatically compromise with their ethnic rebels, Washington fully supported their absolutist demands that made a political solution impossible.
The same modus operandi was at play when it came to the Minsk Accords that were agreed to for ending the then-Ukrainian Civil War. It’s now known from former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s own admission as well as that of her French and Ukrainian counterparts that these were just a ruse for duping President Putin so as to buy time ahead of a final NATO-backed offensive against Donbass. The US’ track record is thus indisputably one of double standards, warmongering, and dividing-and-ruling.
Observers therefore shouldn’t be surprised that it’s applying the exact same approach towards Georgia-Moldova and Bosnia-Serbia with regards to their protests and separatist problems respectively. The US will always promulgate the policy that stands the greatest chance of most effectively advancing its zero-sum interests irrespective of whatever stance it previously practiced towards a prior analogous situation. The pursuit of power, not political consistency, is the only constant in US policymaking.
By Guy Gin | Making (Covid) Waves in Japan | March 6, 2023
Now that they’ve stopped telling the public to constantly cover their mouths, Japan’s government and media have moved on to telling the public to put bugs into them. And who better to advocate for people to put insects down their throats than the man who advocated most actively for people to put mRNA injections into their veins, former Vaccine Minister and current Digital Minister Taro Kono?
Here’s a better look at the “delicious” crickets Mr Kono pulled his mask down to taste.
But since about 90% of Japanese are resistant to the idea of eating bugs, Japan’s politicians and propaganda apparatus will have to work harder at pushing crickets than they did pushing Covid jabs. Reworking some of its greatest hits from the Covid era, the media has declared “neophobia” to be the new “vaccine-hesitancy”.
So are the neophobes selfishly preventing the creation of a “sustainable” society with their anti-cricket stance? Or do they have a point in sticking to foods humans have actually evolved to consume? Let’s ask the science.
In an 2018 article entitled “Novel foods: a risk profile for the house cricket”, Jannson et al. conducted a literature review to present a risk profile of house crickets as food. They found four potential concerns.
(1) high total aerobic bacterial counts; (2) survival of spore-forming bacteria following thermal processing; (3) allergenicity of insects and insect-derived products; and (4) the bioaccumulation of heavy metals (e.g. cadmium).
How appetising! In case the risk of spore-forming bacteria doesn’t put you off, Gałęcki et al. produced a paper with the tasty title of “A parasitological evaluation of edible insects and their role in the transmission of parasitic diseases to humans and animals”. Here’s what they did and found.
The aim of this study was to identify and evaluate the developmental forms of parasites colonizing edible insects in household farms and pet stores in Central Europe and to determine the potential risk of parasitic infections for humans and animals. The experimental material comprised samples of live insects (imagines) from 300 household farms and pet stores, including 75 mealworm farms, 75 house cricket farms, 75 Madagascar hissing cockroach farms and 75 migrating locust farms. Parasites were detected in 244 (81.33%) out of 300 (100%) examined insect farms. In 206 (68.67%) of the cases, the identified parasites were pathogenic for insects only; in 106 (35.33%) cases, parasites were potentially parasitic for animals; and in 91 (30.33%) cases, parasites were potentially pathogenic for humans. Edible insects are an underestimated reservoir of human and animal parasites.
Among the various parasites potentially pathogenic for humans found in cricket samples were the following.
Isospora spp. [found in 2.67% of samples from cricket farms] are cosmopolitan protozoa of the subclass Coccidia which cause an intestinal disease known as isosporiasis. These parasites pose a threat for both humans (in particular immunosuppressed individuals) and animals. The host becomes infected by ingesting oocytes, and the infection presents mainly with gastrointestinal symptoms (watery diarrhea).
Physaloptera spp. [found in 1.33% of samples from cricket farms] form cysts in the host’s hemocoel approximately 27 days after ingestion.
Although both above-mentioned papers point to various potential issues, they admit there isn’t enough evidence yet to draw conclusions about the health effects of mass-production and mass-consumption of crickets. And I’d say we’re better off keeping it that way, no matter what names the globalist overlords call us.
BY ADAM CROSS | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 10, 2023
On February 1st this year, the World Health Organisation released the first draft of its much heralded pandemic response treaty. The draft treaty, snappily titled the ‘Convention or Agreement on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response’, is proposed as a solution to what the WHO calls the “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity” during the “coronavirus pandemic”.
A supposed lack of solidarity amongst national governments will not be the “catastrophic failure” uppermost of many readers’ minds when thinking back on Government health policy over the last three years. Despite this, the WHO’s draft treaty proposes preventing a recurrence of this alleged failure by substantially enhancing the powers of the WHO relative to those of national health authorities.
It does this despite initially affirming “the principle of sovereignty of States Parties in addressing public health matters” in its opening recital, and despite recognising the principle of state sovereignty as one of the guiding principles of the treaty in article 4. Yet notwithstanding these reassuring nods to the notion of state sovereignty, the WHO’s real attitude towards state autonomy can be gauged by a quick glance at the rest of the recitals and provisions in the agreement.
In setting out the WHO’s interpretation of the factual background to this draft agreement, many of the other recitals focus on the purported practical inability of individual sovereign states to respond adequately to the unique health challenges of the modern world. Hence other recitals note that “a pandemic situation is extraordinary in nature, requiring States Parties to prioritise effective and enhanced cooperation”; that “the international spread of disease is a global threat with serious consequences… that calls for the widest possible international cooperation”; and that “the threat of pandemics is a reality and that pandemics have catastrophic health, social, economic and political consequences”. These recitals strongly imply that state sovereignty can be of limited importance in the face of such extraordinarily grave threats.
Similarly, while recognition of state sovereignty is given as one of the guiding principles of the agreement, it is somewhat overshadowed by the raft of other guiding principles, which include abstract things like “equity”, “solidarity” and the “right to health”. Indeed, article 4 goes on to ominously assert that “previous pandemics have demonstrated that no one is safe until everyone is safe”, strongly suggesting that adherence to the principle of national sovereignty during a pandemic is not just an outdated approach to take, but a positively selfish one.
The draft agreement therefore goes on to assign considerable power to the WHO to influence and shape the responses of national health authorities to any future pandemic. The breadth of ambition of the agreement is made clear in article 5, which applies the agreement in a far-reaching way to “pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery at national, regional and international levels”.
Subsequent articles go on to prescribe the policies to be followed by States Parties to the agreement in each of these areas. As examples of what is intended, articles 6 and 7 set out steps to be followed to improve logistics and the workings of the global supply chain for quicker dispersal of what are euphemistically termed “pandemic-related products” (read pharmaceuticals), after which article 8 of the agreement addresses “regulatory strengthening”. Sadly, the regulatory strengthening envisaged in this agreement is not the strengthening of the accountability of national health regulators to the public, but rather the strengthening of those regulators’ accountability to the inter-governmental blob. Article 8 therefore requires signatory states to “strengthen the capacity and performance of national regulatory authorities and increase the harmonisation of regulatory requirements at the international and regional level”. In layman’s terms, more funding and powers for the regulators, yet concurrently less independent decision-making from them as well.
Subsequent articles further limit the discretion of national health authorities in responding to future WHO designated pandemics. Article 11 requires signatory states to “adopt policies and strategies… consistent with… the International Health Regulations” (themselves the target of amendment by the WHO), while article 15 stresses “the need to coordinate, collaborate and cooperate, in the spirit of international solidarity” with the various bodies active in the international healthcare space in the formulation of policies and guidelines. There are references to “establishing appropriate governance arrangements”, presumably well away from potentially meddlesome interference by elected representatives. These governance arrangements are to be complete with “mechanisms that ensure global, regional and national policy decisions are science and evidence-based”. Think blanket mask and vaccine mandates.
Signatory states will also have to take part in “multi-country or regional tabletop exercises every two years” to prepare them for the next pandemic, presumably to ensure that all health authorities remain fully briefed on the acceptable line to take in the event of any such new pandemic being declared, and to deter any of the signatory states from being tempted to go off-script as Sweden did in 2020.
Last but not least, a plethora of comfortable sinecures will be created for the international administrative class, by way of the creation of a governing body for the agreement under article 20, a consultative body for input into decision making by amorphous inter-governmental stakeholders under article 21, and a secretariat under article 24.
Conspicuously lacking in the agreement is any reference to democracy, elected legislatures, or the necessity of regulators and health authorities being accountable to national electorates. Instead, the treaty represents a brazen attempt to further move health policy away from regional or national governments and into the hands of a rarefied class of globalist administrators.
It should be stressed that the current text is only a draft, and that it may be subject to amendments following discussion between the WHO and member states. Further, even if the U.K. does sign this agreement, it will likely require ratification by Parliament under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, and will also require implementation via domestic legislation before it will have any domestic legal effect in the U.K. Sustained pressure now on ministers and MPs might just influence any U.K. Government proposals to amend the treaty at draft stage, or alternatively such pressure might conceivably prevent the U.K. Government from signing an unacceptably worded agreement in the first place. Either way, now is the time for action to prevent the crystallisation at international level of the very policies and approaches many of us have railed against at national level for the last three years.
Adam Cross (a pseudonym) is a U.K. qualified barrister specialising in international trade law, with both public and private sector experience.
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Hearings “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” Hit Tip of Iceberg
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | March 10, 2023
On November 19, 2020 I testified as the lead witness in the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs led by Senator Ron Johnson. I used the term “academic fraud” in a series of sharp exchanges with now White House Coronavirus Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. I was told by colleagues that the term fraud was too strident and I should tone down my comments for the media.
Over two years later the US House of Representatives Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic held hearings on “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” and has hit the tip of an iceberg of academic fraud with a trail of peer-reviewed manuscripts as evidence for the creation of the SARS-CoV-2 chimeric virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology Biosecurity Annex Level 4 laboratory (WIV). This lab had been conducting experiments designed by UNC researcher Dr. Ralph Baric for years and publishing their progress on creation of a coronavirus that could invade human respiratory cells via the ACE2 receptor. They were also developing countermeasures including monoclonal antibodies and killed virus vaccines.
The House Committee found through emails that multiple researchers including Dr. Kristian Andersen and Dr. Edward Holmes messaged Dr. Anthony Fauci in January with their conclusions that SARS-CoV-2 could not have arisen from nature. These and other doctors were summoned to a teleconference with Fauci, Dr. Francis Collins, and Welcome Trust Director (now WHO Scientific Director) Jeremy Farrar and four days later the messaging from all the individuals made a 180 degree turn consistently stating the virus did not come from the WIV.
In April, 2020, an opinion paper led by Andersen and coordinated by Farrar appeared in Nature Medicine which completely ignored the work by Baric in the WIV and concluded the virus could not have come from the lab.
In September, 2021, Holmes continues the false narrative in the journal Cell this time citing Baric’s work (Menachery et al) but completely ignoring the chimeric creation in 2015 with homology to the ancestral WIV SARS-CoV-2.
These no doubt are just a few of the individuals and the manuscripts that will memorialize an academic crime that advanced a false worldwide narrative on the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Many have speculated that NIH funding was the motive to get in line with Fauci and Collins. The author list however, tells us this was a global act of fraud.
Why did so many scientists want their names on papers that intentionally misled readers away from WIV? What was the motivation for NIH NIAID UNC WIV to design SARS-CoV-2 as a lethal infection with potential to kill millions? Was this for the advancement of science or where there intentions darker? Did all of these doctors really think it could all be covered up? When I said “fraud” on the Senate record (National Archives) in 2020 I had no idea the extent would be this deep and nefarious. The work of investigative reporters has just begun.
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By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 15.09.2024
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
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