BRITISH “WATCHDOG” JOURNALISTS UNMASKED AS LAP DOGS FOR THE SECURITY STATE
By Jonathan Cook | MintPress News | June 21, 2022
Events of the past few days suggest British journalism – the so-called Fourth Estate – is not what it purports to be: a watchdog monitoring the centers of state power. It is quite the opposite.
The pretensions of the establishment media took a severe battering this month as the defamation trial of Guardian columnist Carole Cadwalladr reached its conclusion and the hacked emails of Paul Mason, a long-time stalwart of the BBC, Channel 4 and the Guardian, were published online.
Both of these celebrated journalists have found themselves outed as recruits – in their differing ways – to a covert information war being waged by Western intelligence agencies.
Had they been honest about it, that collusion might not matter so much. After all, few journalists are as neutral or as dispassionate as the profession likes to pretend. But as have many of their colleagues, Cadwalladr and Mason have broken what should be a core principle of journalism: transparency.
The role of serious journalists is to bring matters of import into the public space for debate and scrutiny. Journalists thinking critically aspire to hold those who wield power – primarily state agencies – to account on the principle that, without scrutiny, power quickly corrupts.
The purpose of real journalism – as opposed to the gossip, entertainment and national-security stenography that usually passes for journalism – is to hit up, not down.
And yet, each of these journalists, we now know, was actively colluding, or seeking to collude, with state actors who prefer to operate in the shadows, out of sight. Both journalists were coopted to advance the aims of the intelligence services.
And worse, each of them either sought to become a conduit for, or actively assist in, covert smear campaigns run by Western intelligence services against other journalists.
What they were doing – along with so many other establishment journalists – is the very antithesis of journalism. They were helping to conceal the operation of power to make it harder to scrutinize. And not only that. In the process, they were trying to weaken already marginalized journalists fighting to hold state power to account.
RUSSIAN COLLUSION?
Cadwalladr’s cooperation with the intelligence services has been highlighted only because of a court case. She was sued for defamation by Arron Banks, a businessman and major donor to the successful Brexit campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.
In a kind of transatlantic extension of the Russiagate hysteria in the United States following Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, Cadwalladr accused Banks of lying about his ties to the Russian state. According to the court, she also suggested he broke election funding laws by receiving Russian money in the run-up to the Brexit vote, also in 2016.
That year serves as a kind of ground zero for liberals fearful about the future of “Western democracy” – supposedly under threat from modern “barbarians at the gate,” such as Russia and China – and the ability of Western states to defend their primacy through neo-colonial wars of aggression around the globe.
The implication is Russia masterminded a double subversion in 2016: on one side of the Atlantic, Trump was elected U.S. president; and, on the other, Britons were gulled into shooting themselves in the foot – and undermining Europe – by voting to leave the EU.
Faced with the court case, Cadwalladr could not support her allegations against Banks as true. Nonetheless, the judge ruled against Banks’ libel action – on the basis that the claims had not sufficiently harmed his reputation.
The judge also decided, perversely in a British defamation action, that Cadwalladr had “reasonable grounds” to publish claims that Banks received “sweetheart deals” from Russia, even though “she had seen no evidence he had entered into any such deals.” An investigation by the National Crime Agency ultimately found no evidence either.
So given those circumstances, what was the basis for her accusations against Banks?
Cadwalladr’s journalistic modus operandi, in her long-running efforts to suggest widespread Russian meddling in British politics, is highlighted in her witness statement to the court.
In it, she refers to another of her Russiagate-style stories: one from 2017 that tried to connect the Kremlin with Nigel Farage, a former pro-Brexit politician with the UKIP Party and close associate of Banks, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been a political prisoner in the U.K. for more than a decade.
At that time, Assange was confined to a single room in the Ecuadorian Embassy after its government offered him political asylum. He had sought sanctuary there, fearing he would be extradited to the U.S. following publication by WikiLeaks of revelations that the U.S. and U.K. had committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
WikiLeaks had also deeply embarrassed the CIA by following up with the publication of leaked documents, known as Vault 7, exposing the agency’s own crimes.
Last week the U.K.’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, approved the very extradition to the U.S. that Assange feared and that drove him into the Ecuadorian embassy. Once in the U.S., he faces up to 175 years in complete isolation in a supermax jail.
ASSASSINATION PLOT
We now know, courtesy of a Yahoo News investigation, that through 2017 the CIA hatched various schemes to either assassinate Assange or kidnap him in one of its illegal “extraordinary rendition” operations, so he could be permanently locked up in the U.S., out of public view.
We can surmise that the CIA also believed it needed to prepare the ground for such a rogue operation by bringing the public on board. According to Yahoo’s investigation, the CIA believed Assange’s seizure might require a gun battle on the streets of London.
It was at this point, it seems, that Cadwalladr and the Guardian were encouraged to add their own weight to the cause of further turning public opinion against Assange.
According to her witness statement, “a confidential source in [the] U.S.” suggested – at the very time the CIA was mulling over these various plots – that she write about a supposed visit by Farage to Assange in the embassy. The story ran in the Guardian under the headline “When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange.”
In the article, Cadwalladr offers a strong hint as to who had been treating her as a confidant: the one source mentioned in the piece is “a highly placed contact with links to U.S. intelligence.” In other words, the CIA almost certainly fed her the agency’s angle on the story.
In the piece, Cadwalladr threads together her and the CIA’s claims of “a political alignment between WikiLeaks’ ideology, UKIP’s ideology and Trump’s ideology.” Behind the scenes, she suggests, was the hidden hand of the Kremlin, guiding them all in a malign plot to fatally undermine British democracy.
She quotes her “highly placed contact” claiming that Farage and Assange’s alleged face-to-face meeting was necessary to pass information of their nefarious plot “in ways and places that cannot be monitored.”
Except of course, as her “highly placed contact” knew – and as we now know, thanks to exposes by the Grayzone website – that was a lie. In tandem with its plot to kill or kidnap Assange, the CIA illegally installed cameras inside, as well as outside, the embassy. His every move in the embassy was monitored – even in the toilet block.
The reality was that the CIA was bugging and videoing Assange’s every conversation in the embassy, even the face-to-face ones. If the CIA actually had a recording of Assange and Farage meeting and discussing a Kremlin-inspired plot, it would have found a way to make it public by now.
Far more plausible is what Farage and WikiLeaks say: that such a meeting never happened. Farage visited the embassy to try to interview Assange for his LBC radio show but was denied access. That can be easily confirmed because by then the Ecuadorian embassy was allying with the U.S. and refusing Assange any contact with visitors apart from his lawyers.
Nonetheless, Cadwalladr concludes: “In the perfect storm of fake news, disinformation and social media in which we now live, WikiLeaks is, in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything.”
‘SWIRLING VORTEX’
The Farage-Assange meeting story shows how the CIA and Cadwalladr’s agendas perfectly coincided in their very own “swirling vortex” of fake news and disinformation.
She wanted to tie the Brexit campaign to Russia and suggest that anyone who wished to challenge the liberal pieties that provide cover for the crimes committed by Western states must necessarily belong to a network of conspirators, on the left and the right, masterminded from Moscow.
The CIA and other Western intelligence agencies, meanwhile, wanted to deepen the public’s impression that Assange was a Kremlin agent – and that WikiLeaks’ exposure of the crimes committed by those same agencies was not in the public interest but actually an assault on Western democracy.
Assange’s character assassination had already been largely achieved with the American public in the Russiagate campaign in the U.S. The intelligence services, along with the Democratic Party leadership, had crafted a narrative designed to obscure WikiLeaks’ revelations of election-fixing by Hillary Clinton’s camp in 2016 to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the party’s presidential nomination. Instead they refocused the public’s attention on evidence-free claims that Russia had “hacked” the emails.
For Cadwalladr and the CIA, the fake-news story of Farage meeting Assange could be spun as further proof that both the “far left” and “far right” were colluding with Russia. Their message was clear: only centrists – and the national security state – could be trusted to defend democracy.
FABRICATED STORY
Cadwalladr’s smear of Assange is entirely of a piece with the vilification campaign of WikiLeaks led by liberal media outlets to which she belongs. Her paper, the Guardian, has had Assange in its sights since its falling out with him over their joint publication of the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs in 2010.
A year after Cadwalladr’s smear piece, the Guardian would continue its cooperation with the intelligence services’ demonization of Assange by running an equally fabricated story – this time about a senior aide of Trump’s, Paul Manafort, and various unidentified “Russians” secretly meeting Assange in the embassy.
The story was so improbable it was ridiculed even at the time of publication. Again, the CIA’s illegal spying operation inside and outside the embassy meant there was no way Manafort or any “Russians” could have secretly visited Assange without those meetings being recorded. Nonetheless, the Guardian has never retracted the smear.
One of the authors of the article, Luke Harding, has been at the forefront of both the Guardian’s Russiagate claims and its efforts to defame Assange. In doing so, he appears to have relied heavily on Western intelligence services for his stories and has proven incapable of defending them when challenged.
Harding, like the Guardian, has an added investment in discrediting Assange. He and a Guardian colleague, David Leigh, published a Guardian-imprint book that included a secret password to a WikiLeaks’ cache of leaked documents, thereby providing security services around the world with access to the material.
The CIA’s claim that the release of those documents endangered its informants – a claim that even U.S. officials have been forced to concede is not true – has been laid at Assange’s door to vilify him and justify his imprisonment. But if anyone is to blame, it is not Assange but Harding, Leigh and the Guardian.
EFFORT TO DEPLATFORM
The case of Paul Mason, who worked for many years as a senior BBC journalist, is even more revealing. Emails passed to the Grayzone website show the veteran, self-described “left-wing” journalist secretly conspiring with figures aligned with British intelligence services to build a network of journalists and academics to smear and censor independent media outlets that challenge the narratives of the Western intelligence agencies.
Mason’s concerns about left-wing influence on public opinion have intensified the more he has faced criticism from the left over his demands for fervent, uncritical support of NATO and as he has lobbied for greater Western interference in Ukraine. Both are aims he shares with Western intelligence services.
Along with the establishment media, Mason has called for sending advanced weaponry to Kyiv, likely to raise the death toll on both sides of the war and risk a nuclear confrontation between the West and Russia.
In the published emails, Mason suggests the harming and “relentless deplatforming” of independent investigative media sites – such as the Grayzone, Consortium News and Mint Press – that host non-establishment journalists. He and his correspondents also debate whether to include Declassified UK and OpenDemocracy. One of his co-conspirators suggests a “full nuclear legal to squeeze them financially.”
Mason himself proposes starving these websites of income by secretly pressuring Paypal to stop readers from being able to make donations to support their work.
It should be noted that, in the wake of Mason’s correspondence, PayPal did indeed launch just such a crackdown, including against Consortium News and MintPress, after earlier targeting WikiLeaks.
Mason’s email correspondents include two figures intimately tied to British intelligence: Amil Khan is described by the Grayzone as “a shadowy intelligence contractor” with ties to the U.K.’s National Security Council. He founded Valent Projects, establishing his credentials in a dirty propaganda war in support of head-chopping jihadist groups trying to bring down the Russian-supported Syrian government.
CLANDESTINE ‘CLUSTERS’
The other intelligence operative is someone Mason refers to as a “friend”: Andy Pryce, the head of the Foreign Office’s shadowy Counter Disinformation and Media Development (CDMD) unit, founded in 2016 to “counter-strike against Russian propaganda.” Mason and Pryce spend much of their correspondence discussing when to meet up in London pubs for a drink, according to the Grayzone.
The Foreign Office managed to keep the CDMD unit’s existence secret for two years. The U.K. government has refused to disclose basic information about the CDMD on grounds of national security, although it is now known that it is overseen by the National Security Council.
The CDMD’s existence came to light because of leaks about another covert information warfare operation, the Integrity Initiative.
Notably, the Integrity Initiative was run on the basis of clandestine “clusters,” in North America and Europe, of journalists, academics, politicians and security officials advancing narratives shared with Western intelligence agencies to discredit Russia, China, Julian Assange, and Jeremy Corbyn, the former, left-wing leader of the Labor Party.
Cadwalladr was named in the British cluster, along with other prominent journalists: David Aaronovitch and Dominic Kennedy of the Times; the Guardian’s Natalie Nougayrede and Paul Canning; Jonathan Marcus of the BBC; the Financial Times’ Neil Buckley; the Economist’s Edward Lucas; and Sky News’ Deborah Haynes.
In his emails, Mason appears to want to renew this type of work but to direct its energies more specifically at damaging independent, dissident media – with his number one target the Grayzone, which played a critical role in exposing the Integrity Initiative.
Mason’s “friend” – the CDMD’s head, Andy Pryce – “featured prominently” in documents relating to the Integrity Initiative, the Grayzone observes.
This background is not lost on Mason. He notes in his correspondence the danger that his plot to “deplatform” independent media could “end up with the same problem as Statecraft” – a reference to the Institute of Statecraft, the Integrity Initiative’s parent charity, which the Grayzone and others exposed. He cautions: “The opposition are not stupid, they can spot an info op – so the more this is designed to be organic the better.”
Pryce and Mason discuss creating an astroturf civil-society organization that would lead their “information war” as part of an operation they brand the “International Information Brigade”.
Mason suggests the suspension of the libel laws for what he calls “foreign agents” – presumably meaning that the Information Brigade would be able to defame independent journalists as Russian agents, echoing the establishment media’s treatment of Assange, without fear of legal action that would show these were evidence-free smears.
‘PUTIN INFOSPHERE’
Another correspondent, Emma Briant, an academic who claims to specialize in Russian disinformation, offers an insight into how she defines the presumed enemy within: those “close to WikiLeaks,” anyone “trolling Carole [Cadwalladr],” and outlets “discouraging people from reading the Guardian.”
Mason himself produces an eye-popping, self-drawn, spider’s web chart of the supposedly “pro-Putin infosphere” in the U.K., embracing much of the left, including Corbyn, the Stop the War movement, as well as the Black and Muslim communities. Several media sites are mentioned, including Mint Press and Novara Media, an independent British website sympathetic to Corbyn.
Khan and Mason consider how they can help trigger a British government investigation of independent outlets so that they can be labeled as “Russian-state affiliated media” to further remove them from visibility on social media.
Mason states that the goal is to prevent the emergence of a “left anti-imperialist identity,” which, he fears, “will be attractive because liberalism doesn’t know how to counter it” – a telling admission that he believes genuine left-wing critiques of Western foreign policy cannot be dealt with through public refutation but only through secret disinformation campaigns.
He urges efforts to crack down not only on independent media and “rogue” academics but on left-wing political activism. He identifies as a particular threat Corbyn, who was earlier harmed through a series of disinformation campaigns, including entirely evidence-free claims that the Labour Party during his tenure became a hotbed of antisemitism. Mason fears Corbyn might set up a new, independent left-wing party. It is important, Mason notes, to “quarantine” and “stigmatize” any such ideology.
In short, rather than use journalism to win the argument and the battle for public opinion, Mason wishes to use the dark arts of the security state to damage independent media, as well as dissident academics and left-wing political activism. He wants no influences on the public that are not tightly aligned with the core foreign policy goals of the national security state.
Mason’s correspondence hints at the reality behind Cadwalladr’s claim that Assange was the “swirling vortex at the centre of everything.” Assange symbolizes that “swirling vortex” to intelligence-aligned establishment journalists only because WikiLeaks has published plenty of insider information that exposes Western claims to global moral leadership as a complete charade – and the journalists who amplify those claims as utter charlatans.
In part two, we will examine why journalists like Mason and Cadwalladr prosper in the establishment media; the long history of collusion between Western intelligence agencies and the establishment media; and how that mutually beneficial collusion is becoming ever more important to each of them.
@diedsuddenly Dies Suddenly
By Andrew Anglin | Daily Stormer | June 24, 2022
Twitter’s @diedsuddenly has suddenly died. Without warning, I woke up and it was dead for no reason.
All this account was doing was reposting news articles about people who have suddenly died for no reason. As far as I saw, he was not even saying “the vaccine” at all, he was just documenting this developing issue of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS). The phenomenon is also called “Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome,” as it relates to a cardiac event. The word “arrhythmia” means what it sounds like – lacking in a rhythm, and is typically used in connection to cardiac phenomena involving an irregular heart beat. I don’t think the term is appropriate, as we are usually talking about cardiac arrest or a heart attack in someone without any form of heart disease. A better name would be “Spontaneous Unexplained Deadly Heart Failure Syndrome” (SUDHFDS), but Sudden Adult Death Syndrome is fine. They seem to be using “Arrhythmic” interchangeably with “Adult” for the purposes of confusing the issue, but it does show that these deaths are believed to be related to heart failure.
It’s not a conspiracy theory or tabloid hysteria that SADS is happening. The fact-checkers themselves are admitting it is happening at an increasing rate and simply claiming without evidence that it is not related to the vaccine. Snopes’ argument was simply that young people have been recorded as having had spontaneous unexplained heart failure before the vaccine was distributed, so it can’t be the vaccine.
Snopes does not address the massive increase in these deaths. We are talking about many orders of magnitude. We don’t know how many orders of magnitude, because like with deaths admittedly caused by the vaccine, both the government and media are refusing to keep track. But we see it in the news, because it is happening to famous people or their loved ones. I am not aware of a single case of a celebrity dying in their sleep for no reason. I’ve also never seen this in my personal life, ever. The closest thing to this that I’ve heard of was a hapa friend in Southeast Asia 15 years ago whose healthy 40-year-old mother got sick with dizziness and went to the hospital and died less than 48 hours later. It was extremely bizarre, but it was believed to be from a mosquito-borne virus that causes brain swelling. The Philippines also does not have great emergency care. (For the record, she was in the middle of divorcing her husband, who was a kindly old American guy in his 70s who was himself sick and on the way out. I just sort of assumed it was the wrath of God.) Regardless, there is a very, very big difference between having symptoms of serious illness and then dying than just dying completely randomly in your sleep.
Aside from fact checkers, it is getting relatively little coverage for some reason. One would think that a new disease that is just randomly killing healthy young people would be a pretty major story of interest. This could of course be caused by anything, technically. It could be caused by some unidentified radiation in the atmosphere, it could be caused by 5G, it could be caused by solar activity, it could be related to Havana Syndrome, which the US claims is the result of some kind of sonic beam weapon. There are all kinds of different possible reasons you could come up with that would cause this. But the thing that has changed in the last two years is that people took a vaccine that is confirmed to cause heart complications, including causing life-long heart conditions.
Another point of interest is the fact that so far, everyone who has suffered from this new wave of SADS has received the coronavirus vaccine. For example, the Democrat Congressman whose healthy 17-year-old daughter died in her sleep from SADS bragged about how he was forcing his children to be vaccinated.
There are others we can’t confirm got the vaccine definitively, but they are in positions where they would have been required to, or they are leftists. We’ve yet to see anyone from QAnon get hit with SADS.
Another data point is again: the media is not talking about it. They are not denying that it is happening and that it is unexplained, they are just not bothering to mention it, except to claim without evidence that it’s not the mRNA vaccine. If it wasn’t the vaccine, they would be talking about it.
Now, you have Twitter banning someone simply for compiling the deaths. That means you are banned from talking about SADS, presumably under Twitter’s policy against questioning the vaccine. By banning an account that did nothing but keep a record of SADS, Twitter is tacitly implying that they themselves believe it is caused by the vaccine.
As far as I’m able to tell, the only other possible reason that the media would refuse to proportionally address SADS or that Twitter would ban you from talking about SADS is that they don’t believe it is the vaccine, but they believe it is very easy for someone who doesn’t trust the science to mistake this phenomenon as being a result of the vaccine. That would be a pretty convoluted explanation.
We should really be pressing this issue. I have been trying to think of ways for the vaxed to start openly expressing regret, and anger at being lied to about the deadliness of the virus or the efficacy and safety of the vax. Most people probably just completely shut off if you tell them the vaccine almost certainly took decades off of their lives, and at any point, they could be feeling fine and go to bed and not wake up.
Unlike with the companies that manufactured asbestos (and really every other company of any kind), vaccine manufacturers are totally legally protected from any form of liability, so a class action lawsuit is off the table. But what I’ve been thinking is that people should start demanding that the government do an “Operation Warp Speed Part II,” where they try to find a solution to the damages caused by the vax. If people think they have hope, they are less likely to shut down and not be able to think about it. I don’t really think they have any hope, unless they happened to get shots from a placebo batch (there were a lot of placebo batches, or at least batches with something else in them – there is no other way to explain why the deaths all came from the same batches, while others had none, something that was confirmed in a VAERS database analysis).
The right-wing should be pushing the SADS issue and then demanding that the government research it and find a cure for this and other injuries and deaths happening as a result of Coronavirus Vaccine Syndrome.
Twitter hires ‘alarming number’ of ex-spies – investigation
Samizdat | June 24, 2022
Twitter is hiring “an alarming number” of ex-FBI agents and other former “feds and spies,” independent outlet MintPress News is reporting, after conducting an analysis of employment and recruitment websites.
According to the research, in recent years the company employed “dozens of individuals from the national security state to work in the fields of security, trust, safety and content.”
“Chief amongst these is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI is generally known as a domestic security and intelligence force. However, it has recently expanded its remit into cyberspace,” MintPress wrote.
It provides several examples of such appointments. FBI veteran Karen Walsh who, according to her Twitter profile, served as a special agent for 21 years, has become a director of corporate resilience at the Silicon Valley-based company. Mark Jaroszewski, Twitter director of corporate security and risk, joined the Twitter team after 20+ years at the FBI.
Central Intelligence Agency and NATO think-tank Atlantic Council have also been named by MintPress as key incubators of personnel for Twitter.
“Twitter also directly employs active army officers. In 2019, Gordon Macmillan, the head of editorial for the entire Europe, Middle East and Africa region was revealed to be an officer in the British Army’s notorious 77th Brigade – a unit dedicated to online warfare and psychological operations. This bombshell news was steadfastly ignored across the media,” the outlet stressed.
RT has checked open-access social media accounts of Twitter’s top managers and also discovered some former employees of the security services among them – in addition to the ones mentioned in the MintPress investigation.
MintPress News stresses that while Twitter’s HR policy might appear logical – the company hires specialists in the areas it needs – it creates some serious problems, not only for the company, but also for the security agencies and organizations. According to former FBI agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley, who is quoted by MintPress, many agents have one eye on post-retirement jobs.
“The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to make money after retirement,” Rowley said.
MintPress claimed that the fact that Twitter recruits largely from the US national security organizations undermines the company’s claims about its neutrality, as the US government “is the source of some of the largest and most extensive influence operations in the world.”
Another risk is that “the company will start to view every problem in the same manner as the U.S. government does – and act accordingly,” the outlet states. To prove this claim, the website analyzed a list – compiled by Twitter – of the countries allegedly conducting disinformation campaigns.
“One cannot help noticing that this list correlates quite closely to a hit list of U.S. government adversaries. All countries carry out disinfo campaigns to a certain extent. But these ‘former’ spooks and feds are unlikely to point the finger at their former colleagues or sister organizations or investigate their operations,” MintPress explained.
Twitter adds warning messages to the tweets and accounts of the state-affiliated media of Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, thus mirroring “US hostility” towards these countries, but does not add any warnings to the pages of state-affiliated media of US and its allies, the outlet highlighted.
Ultimately, MintPress found that Twitter is not the only social media platform that’s “cultivating such an intimate relationship with the FBI and other groups belonging to the secret state.”
“Facebook, for example, has entered into a formal partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, whereby the latter holds significant influence over 2.9 billion users’ news feeds, helping to decide what content to promote and what content to suppress,” it said, adding that the company has also employed former NATO Press Secretary Ben Nimmo as its head of intelligence.
TikTok, according to the outlet, has been “filling its organization with alumni of the Atlantic Council, NATO, the CIA and the State Department.”
Reddit and various media, including Thomson Reuters and multiple US TV channels have also been actively employing former spies, MintPress News claims.
“One of media’s primary functions is to serve as a fourth estate; a force that works to hold the government and its agencies to account. Yet instead of doing that, increasingly it is collaborating with them. Such are these increasing interlocking connections that it is becoming increasingly difficult to see where big government ends and big media begins,” it pointed out.
Colombia elects 1st leftist president in its history: A great supporter of Palestine
By Eman Abusidu | MEMO | June 24, 2022
In Colombia, where some 13,000 Palestinians reside, the leftist candidate Gustavo Petro has won the presidential election after he defeated his far-right rival Rodolfo Hernandez. The 62-year-old’s victory represents a major revival for Colombia’s progressive left in Latin America as it joined left-wing parties in Chile, Peru, Mexico and Argentina for the first time. According to figures published by Colombia´s electoral authority, Petro won 50.44 per cent of the votes compared to the 47.31 per cent achieved by his opponent.
“Today is a day of celebration for the people. Let them celebrate the first popular victory. May so much suffering be cushioned in the joy that floods the heart of our country today,” Petro said on Twitter.
Petro was a legislator and a member of the M-19 guerrilla group, which was originally set up during Colombia’s 1970 elections. He later moved into politics and served as a senator and the mayor of Colombia’s capital, Bogota. He was finally victorious in his third attempt in the presidential race, promising to address inequality in a country where nearly half the population lives in poverty and unemployment.
The president-elect is known to be a supporter of the Palestinian cause and defender of human rights, which are being continuously violated in the Occupied Territories. More than once, Petro has described the struggle of the Palestinian people as an “historical struggle of a people for freedom and independence.” He has also posted the Palestinian flag on his Facebook account.
“I raise my voice against the murder of Palestinians. People are not to be massacred, they are to be respected as a culture, as a right to exist under the skies of the planet. Jesus was Palestinian and asked that human beings love one another,” Petro said in a tweet, accusing Israel forces of carrying out a “massacre” against Gazans during the Great March of Return in May 2018.
Colombia had been the only South American nation that had not recognised Palestine as a sovereign state until it finally took the decision in 2018. The announcement was made public through a letter sent to Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki. The letter was written in August 2018 and signed by Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin Cuellar. “I would like to inform you that in the name of the government of Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos has decided to recognise Palestine as a free, independent and sovereign state,” the letter said.
Petro’s outspoken criticism of Israel’s policies and violations against Palestinians mean Colombia’s ties with Tel Aviv will take a different direction under his leadership. “The State of Israel is one thing and the Jewish religion is another, just as the Colombian State is one thing and the Catholic religion another,” Petro tweeted in 2019. “Confusing state and religion is typical of the archaic mentality. The State of Israel discriminates against Palestinians like the Nazis discriminated against Jews.”
Despite this, Israel’s Foreign Ministry rushed to congratulate Petro, tweeting: “We congratulate the People of Colombia and President Elect @petrogustavo on a successful democratic election and look forward to further strengthening the relations between Israel and Colombia and between our two peoples.”
Petro’s victory has also been described as a “big defeat for the USA”. Over the past two centuries, all Colombian presidents descended from right-wing aristocratic families, known for their loyalty to the US and its policies. This has contributed to making Colombia one of the most important nations in Latin America.
Expectations are rising that Petro’s electoral victory will lead to a deeper change in the political field in Latin America, and to the reconfiguration of Colombia’s relations with the US. With Petro’s victory, Colombia became the third largest country in Latin America to shift to the left. Chile, Peru and Honduras elected leftist presidents in 2021, while in Brazil former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is leading in the polls for this year’s presidential election.
These new Latin American governments will constitute a real threat to American hegemony over the region. Perhaps this explains Joe Biden’s rush to hold the Summit of the Americas in an attempt to test and identify his allies in Latin America.
Iran Dismisses ‘Ridiculous’ Allegations of Planned Attacks on Israelis in Turkey
Al-Manar – June 24, 2022
Iran dismissed Israeli accusations that it is allegedly plotting to target Israelis in Turkey as “ridiculous” on Friday.
In a tweet from Iran’s Foreign Ministry, spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh said that Lapid’s “baseless accusations” about such Iranian activity are “ridiculous” and part of a “pre-designed scenario to destroy relations between the two Muslim countries.”
“It is expected from Turkey not to remain silent in the face of these divisive allegations,” he said.
Khatibzadeh also stressed that Iran would respond forcefully to “assassinations and acts of sabotage by the Zionist regime” but “without threatening the security of civilians and the security of other countries.”
Russian forces encircle thousands as Ukrainian troops begin surrender
Samizdat – June 24, 2022
Up to 2,000 Ukrainian troops, nationalists and foreign fighters have been surrounded by the Russian forces and the Donbass militias, Moscow revealed on Friday. The forces were encircled in two neighboring towns in the Lugansk People’s Republic.
Four Ukrainian battalions. as well as an artillery unit are among those trapped, Russia’s Defense Ministry announced. The encircled forces also include around 120 fighters from the notorious Ukrainian ‘Right Sector,’ a neo-Nazi group of up to 80 foreign fighters, according to the ministry.
The troops have been surrounded in the towns of Gorskoye and Zolotoye, located south of the major cities of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk, which have recently become one of the major targets for both sides amid the continued fighting for the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The Russian military has also claimed that the surrounded units have lost over 60% of their strength. According to the defense ministry, 41 Ukrainian soldiers encircled in the area have surrendered. The Defense Ministry has also published a video supposedly showing the surrendered soldiers.
The head of the Ukrainian Gorskoye military administration, Aleksey Babchenko, confirmed to the Ukrainian media on Friday that the town has been fully seized by the Russian forces and the Donbass militias.
Sergey Gaidai, who Ukraine calls the head of the “Lugansk Oblast,” has also said on Telegram that the Ukrainian forces might soon retreat from Lisichansk since their defensive positions had been destroyed by the Russian forces and there is “little sense” in staying.
The Russian Air Force has also successfully hit a Ukrainian artillery battery equipped with the US-made M777 howitzers in the Kharkov region. Earlier, Washington vowed to supply 90 such artillery pieces to Kiev, according to a May report by the New York Times.
The news comes just days after the Russian military claimed to have killed hundreds of Ukrainian troops in a strike on a shipbuilding plant in the Ukrainian port of Nikolaev. Last week, the defense ministry also claimed to have killed scores of Ukrainian officers after striking a compound where a meeting of commanders of several Ukrainian units was taking place.
The UK is Doing Its Best to Stir a Food Crisis While Pinning the Blame on Russia
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – 24.06.2022
Russia’s special operation in Ukraine may cause a two-year global food crisis even if the standoff ends tomorrow, The Telegraph claims, citing Western officials. They insist that exporting grain “trapped” in Ukraine is the remedy, while remaining mute about West’s sanctions paralyzing larger food exports from Russia to third-world countries.
“We are very clear that this grain crisis is urgent, that it needs to be solved within the next month otherwise we could see devastating consequences,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the press on June 23.
The ongoing conflict has disrupted production, “causing global food prices to soar to record levels,” claims The Telegraph. In particular, wheat prices increased to an average of 56.2% in May, 2022 above their value last year, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The newspaper’s source says that the British officials see current efforts to move Ukrainian grain over land and road as “far below” what is needed. They insist that the commodity needs to be exported by sea, accusing Russia of blocking Ukraine’s food supplies from leaving Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. According to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Moscow was trying to hold the world “ransom.”
The newspaper also cites “newly declassified US intelligence” claiming that the Russian navy “has been given orders to lay mines” in Odessa and Ochakov and “mined” the Dnieper River “as part of its blockade of Ukrainian grain exports.” According to BoJo, the UK is helping Ukraine “at a technical level to help demine Odessa.”
Western Press Remain Mute About Russia’s Black Sea Corridors
Russia denounced the US and the UK claims, stressing that the Ukrainian military mined their own ports during the retreat. Furthermore, Ukraine continues to stampede Russo-Turkish efforts to demine the area and ensure the safe passage of ships from the country’s territorial waters.
On June 2, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya made it clear that Russia is ready to provide safe corridors for Ukrainian ships carrying 20 million tons of grain if Kiev demines the water area surrounding its ports.
In late May, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the Russian Navy had created safe zones in the Black and Azov Seas for ships leaving Ukraine along humanitarian corridors. The corridors with a length of 139 miles and 3 miles wide are operating daily from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm (GMT+3) in the Black Sea for vessels stationed in the ports of Kherson, Nikolaev, Chernomorsk, Ochakov, Odessa and Yuzhny.
Nevertheless, the Kiev authorities “continue to do everything possible to evade interaction with representatives of foreign states and ship-owning companies in resolving the issue of ensuring the safe exit of blocked ships,” according to the MoD.
Turkey, which has worked with Russia in demining the Black Sea and providing safe passage to vessels, echoes Moscow’s concerns. Turkish Foreign Minister Cavusoglu told Anadolu Agency last month that the two major obstacles hindering grain exports are mines placed by the Ukrainian military in the Odessa water area as well as Western sanctions slapped on Russian ships in terms of insurance and the provision of services at international ports.
Ukraine’s Role in Food Crisis Largely Overestimated
The Western press is shying away from discussing how anti-Russian sanctions, imposed on the country’s trade, finance, transportation and crucial agricultural commodities have backfired on the global food market sending prices high.
Senegalese President and African Union chief Macky Sall raised the alarm earlier this month over Western restrictions preventing Russia’s grain and fertilizers exports to Africa.
“Sanctions against Russia have aggravated the situation with the supply of grains and fertilizers to African countries. We no longer have access to them, and this poses a serious threat to food security on the continent,” Sall warned on 3 June during an official visit to Russia.
Together Ukraine and Russia produce about a third of the wheat traded in global markets, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Still, Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, providing more than 17% of all wheat sold in the global market while Ukraine’s share amounts to roughly 10%.
For comparison’s sake, Russia exported 44.64 million tons of wheat in 2018, while Ukraine provided the global market with 16.91 tons of the commodity the same year, according to FAO.
Ukraine’s role as a food commodity exporter is deliberately overestimated by the West, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a June interview with Rossiya-1.
“The world produces about 800 million tons of grain and wheat per year. Now we are told that Ukraine is ready to export 20 million tons. 20 million tons compared to the 800 million tons the world makes is 2.5% of that figure. But if we proceed from the fact that wheat makes up only 20% of the total food supply (and this is the reality, these are not our figures but those of the UN) this means that these 20 million tons of Ukrainian wheat make up 0.5 percent,” the Russian president told the broadcaster.
Putin dismissed claims that Russia was supposedly trying to block the export of Ukrainian grain, calling the allegations a “bluff.” The Russian president stressed there were no obstacles to the export of grain from Ukraine. He stressed that ships carrying wheat could enter the Black Sea any time if Kiev clears ports of mines. World wheat prices have fallen by 10% after Putin signaled Russia’s readiness to ensure the transport of grain from Ukrainian ports.
G7 & NATO to Double Down on Further Isolating Russia
While the British government continues to castigate Russia’s special operation for the unfolding global food crisis, the British prime minister is calling for Europe to step up military aid to Ukraine.
In particular, BoJo came up with a new plan offering Ukraine a training campaign for its military personnel and urging Western leaders to provide “constant funding and technical help” to Ukraine to ensure Kiev’s longstanding resistance to Russia.
BoJo is expected to push France and Germany to strengthen their support for Ukraine during the G7 summit next week, “as he fears that [Ukrainian President] Volodymyr Zelensky could be bounced into agreeing a ‘s***y’ peace deal [with Russia],” according to the Telegraph.
For its part, Reuters projects that next week G7 and NATO leaders will work to “increase pressure” on Russia over its special operation in Ukraine, while seeking to further isolate the country from the global economy.
Argentina Requests BRICS Membership
Samizdat – 24.06.2022
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández requested BRICS membership for his country during the 14th summit of the international organization, which the Argentinian leader attended among other high-ranking guests.
“We aspire to be a full member of this group of nations that already represents 42% of the world’s population and 24% of the global gross product”, the president said.
Fernández noted that his country could supplement the union of five countries as a reliable supplier of food, as well as a recognized player in the field of biotechnology and logistics. He further stressed Argentina’s ability to train specialists in various fields, as well as provide various services on the international scale.
The president expressed an eagerness for his country to join the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) during its 14th summit, which is taking place in a videoconference format this year. It formally kicked off on June 22 and has continued through June 24.
Its members meet to discuss acute political and economic trends and mildly coordinate their own political and economic policies. They also discussed how to jointly navigate the currents of global trade and exercise their considerable influence (24% of global GDP) to change them.
Media, health officials should ‘just tell the truth’ about COVID shots for kids, says Vinay Prasad, M.D.
By Susan C. Olmstead | The Defender | June 23, 2022
Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH, this week addressed misleading information about kids and COVID-19 vaccines coming from four sources: The New York Times, former Biden COVID-19 response advisor Andy Slavitt, head of COVID-19 response Dr. Ashish Jha, and the Brown University School of Public Health.
Prasad made the comments in his videotaped response to news coverage of the June 15 decision to recommend Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for infants and young children.
Prasad had a message for the “experts” hoping to convince parents to have their young children vaccinated against COVID-19: “You’re not persuading anybody.”
“You’re laying it on a little thick and you’re not being honest about it, and in the process you’re discrediting yourself,” Prasad said.
Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, has been critical of COVID-19 vaccines — and especially their use in children — since the vaccines’ introduction.
He cited a New York Times article that stated:
“Some parents may be uninterested [in the vaccines] because their children were among the 75 percent thought to have already been infected.
“But vaccination provides more powerful and consistent protection even if a child has already been infected, [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] scientists noted on Saturday.”
“The truth is … they don’t know that to be true,” Prasad said. “If a child has already had COVID, [and] recovered from COVID, we do not know that they have a further reduction in MIS-C [Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children], death, hospitalization, etc., from a potential reinfection.”
“It’s a lie,” he added. “The best they could say is that although some people speculate that to be the case, we currently have no large-scale randomized evidence to support that claim. We don’t even have observational data to support that claim in this age group.”
Prasad then addressed a tweet from Slavitt:
Now polls say only 20% of parents will vaccinate their < 5 year olds.
I will address that in a second, but the most important point for parents is that anyone who wants to can do it. And that is a game changer.
We know it protects against serious illness & long COVID. 9/
“Well, actually, you don’t know that, Andy,” said Prasad, addressing Slavitt’s claim that the vaccine protects against serious illness and “long COVID.”
In fact, “People should report this to Twitter for misinformation,” he said.
Vaccine trials in young children were too small to lead to any comment about serious illness, he said.
“Severe disease is [so] infrequent that no one can say anything about that, and you certainly don’t know about long COVID — that wasn’t even a measured endpoint in these studies.”
“And … what’s even the definition of long COVID in kids?” he asked. “We’ll have to sort that out first.”
“It’s a lie, it’s an exaggeration, it’s trying to get somebody to do something but it’s not being perfectly honest.”
Prasad also examined a statement Jha made Monday on “Good Morning America”: “The evidence is really clear that vaccinations prevent hospitalizations and serious illness, including in kids.”
This was in response to host George Stephanopoulos asking if a child younger than 5 who has already had COVID-19 and recovered should get a COVID-19 vaccine.
This answer is factually incorrect and an exaggeration to achieve a policy goal, said Prasad. “The real answer is we don’t know.”
“We do not have any evidence that would support that claim,” he said. “We do not have evidence that vaccination improves any health outcome for [children], and we certainly don’t have the evidence that it prevents hospitalization serious illness in those kids.”
Prasad then tackled a Brown University School of Public Health “tip sheet” titled “Talking About Covid-19 Vaccines for Children Six Months to Four Years Old.”
The tip sheet was produced “in an effort to provide timely knowledge and evidence-based talking points for public health professionals, healthcare workers and others” on COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months.
Prasad called the tip sheet “the opinions of a few people who are self-anointed experts masquerading as evidence.”
The authors of the sheet claim: “We know from vaccinations in 5- 17-year-olds that hospitalization, critical illness and deaths are all more common among kids and teens who are not vaccinated than kids and teens who are vaccinated and boosted.”
Prasad disagreed. Due to poor study design, he said, “We really don’t know, especially in kids 5 to 11, if [vaccination] actually lowers hospitalization or MIS-C.”
“I haven’t yet seen a good study to persuade me, particularly in kids who’ve had COVID,” he said.
The tip sheet also says that in studies conducted by Pfizer and Moderna, vaccines “reduced the rate of ANY infection by between 37-80%. Although the overall number of cases were low, both vaccines are expected to decrease hospitalizations and ICU stays, as well.”
Prasad responded, “You may expect that to be the case, but some of us want data, not expectations by people who have a certain point of view.”
“That claim that these vaccines have been found to be 37% to 80% effective is a lie. It’s untrue,” he added.
Prasad summed up the treatment of people with concerns about the vaccine with a tweet from Eric Weinstein:
I was listening to NPR just the other day. It was phrased in something like the following way as I remember it: “Good news for parents, the long wait for vaccines for their young children is finally over.”
Completely dissing parents with concerns about vaccinating low risk kids.
The way I hear it: we assume the argument that all good parents agree:
“COVID vaccines = Clear Pure Good. Slam dunk. Costless & Riskless. No Brainer. Science.”
“Vaccine concerns = Right Wing / AltRight, anti-science mental illness. Fox Newsesque. MAGA Adjacent. Anti-American.”
“I think Eric Weinstein is right,” said Prasad. “Nobody likes the feeling of somebody selling you something. Everyone can tell the evidence is sparse.”
“People are just proselytizing and exaggerating on TV and there’s not really a dialogue about what’s known or not known.”
If health experts had just presented the public with both known and unknown information about the vaccines, he said — if they had admitted that most likely, both the risks and the benefits of the vaccine are “probably pretty low” — we would have more trust in their guidance.
“Just tell the truth,” Prasad urged.
Instead, health authorities “are exaggerating and lying and distorting the truth.”
Susan C. Olmstead is the assistant editor of The Defender.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
Pfizer Classified Almost All Severe Adverse Events During COVID Vaccine Trials ‘Not Related to Shots’
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 22, 2022
The latest release by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine documents reveals numerous instances of participants who sustained severe adverse events during Phase 3 trials. Some of these participants withdrew from the trials, some were dropped and some died.
The 80,000-page document cache includes an extensive set of Case Report Forms (CRFs) from Pfizer Phase 3 trials conducted at various locations in the U.S., in addition to other documentation pertaining to participants in Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine trials in the U.S. and worldwide.
The FDA on June 1 released the documents, which pertain to the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the vaccine, as part of a court-ordered disclosure schedule stemming from an expedited Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021.
Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), a group of doctors and public health professionals, submitted the FOIA request.
CRFs show deaths, severe reactions to the vaccines during Phase 3 trials
The CRFs included in this month’s documents contain often vague explanations of the specific symptoms experienced by the trial participants.
They also reveal a trend of classifying almost all adverse events — and in particular severe adverse events (SAEs) — as being “not related” to the vaccine.
For example:
- A female in her early 50s (randomization number 86545) who participated in the trial at the Sterling Research Group in Cincinnati, Ohio, died of an apparent myocardial infarction on Nov. 4, 2020. She had received two doses of the vaccine, on Sept. 10 and Sept. 29, 2020.
The patient had a medical history of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, hypothyroidism, osteoarthritis of the knees and attention deficit disorder. Her death was listed as “not related” to the vaccine, and was instead attributed to “hypertensive cardiovascular disease.”
- A female in her late 50s (randomization number 220496), who participated in the trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, died of cardiac arrest on Oct. 21, 2020. Her death, however, was indicated as “not related” to her vaccinations (which occurred on July 30, 2020, and Aug. 20, 2020) as it “occurred 2 months after last receipt of study agent,” according to her CRF.
The participant’s medical history included obesity, placement of a gastric sleeve, gastroesophageal reflux, sleep apnea, supraventricular tachycardia, hypothyroidism, depression and asthma.
- A male in his mid-60s (randomization number 221076) who participated in the trial operated by the Texas-based Ventavia Research Group died of an apparent myocardial infarction on Nov. 28, 2020. He had received the two doses of the vaccine on July 31, 2020, and Aug. 19, 2020.
The participant had a medical history that included a previous myocardial infarction, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, anxiety, bilateral hip pain, type 2 diabetes, fluid retention, angina (intermittent), restless leg syndrome, Vitamin D deficiency, tobacco dependency and the placement of a coronary arterial stent in 2017.
According to the CRF, he sustained the myocardial infarction on Oct. 27, 2020, and was diagnosed with pneumonia the following day. While both diagnoses were classified as “serious” in his CRF, they were both listed as “not related” to the vaccination, with his myocardial infection attributed to a “failed cardiac stent” and the pneumonia simply attributed to “infection.”
- A female in her teens (randomization number 104650) was diagnosed with right lower extremity deep vein thrombosis on Nov. 15, 2020, which was still ongoing as of Mar. 29, 2021, the date of the CRF. She was hospitalized and her condition was classified as “serious,” but it was indicated as “not related” to the vaccine, instead attributed to a “fracture” occurring prior to her vaccination on Sept. 11, 2020.
The patient had a medical history including asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease and obesity.
- A male in his mid-70s (randomization number 227629) participating in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc. (operating in Florida and Tennessee) sustained a series of adverse events following his vaccinations on Aug. 13 and Oct. 7, 2020.
He was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Aug. 30, 2020, which coincided with several other diagnoses classified as “serious,” including abdominal adhesions (Aug. 29, 2020), altered mental status (Aug. 29, 2020, lasting through Sept. 16, 2020), and acute hypoxic respiratory failure (Aug. 30, 2020). These diagnoses required his hospitalization.
He was also listed as having suffered from congestive heart failure on Aug. 30, 2020, but this diagnosis was listed as “not serious” and as “not related” to the vaccine, but to “prior surgery,” with no further details given. Similarly, his other serious adverse events were listed as being related to “prior” or “previous” surgery, or to “concomitant non-drug treatment.”
Other “non-serious” adverse events listed in this patient’s CRF include hypokalemia, anemia, acute renal failure, sepsis, hyponatremia, leukopenia, small bowel obstruction, aspiration pneumonia, mild concentric left ventricular hypertrophy (symptoms of which were still ongoing as of the CRF date of Mar. 29, 2021) and urinary tract infection.
The patient had a medical history encompassing ongoing hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, constipation, hiatal hernia and previous diagnoses of small bowel resection, small bowel perforation, inguinal hernia, osteoarthritis in both knees and knee replacement (both knees).
- A male in his mid-70s (randomization number 266982) participating in the trial at Boston Medical Center suffered a series of adverse events following vaccination, including pneumonia and peripheral edema. He had received two doses of the vaccine, on Oct. 2, 2020, and Oct. 27, 2020.
The patient was hospitalized for pneumonia on Jan. 20, 2021, in an event classified as “serious” but also as “not related” to the vaccine. However, the cause of his pneumonia was listed in the CRF simply as “un-related to vaccine,” while his peripheral edema diagnosis was attributed to “existing neuropathy.”
During his hospitalization with pneumonia, his blood pressure was measured as high as 179/72, with a heart rate reaching 105 beats per minute and an oxygen saturation level that fell to 92.0. In total, he had three emergency room visits during the observation period.
The patient had a medical history that included type 2 diabetes, alcoholic cirrhosis, hypothyroidism, asthma, sleep apnea, hypertension, diabetic neuropathy, congestive heart failure, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, insomnia, excessive urination, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and HIV-positive status.
A protocol deviation also occurred involving this patient, as his diary was not activated following administration of the first dose of the vaccine.
- A male in his early 40s (randomization number 68489) who participated in the trial at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center sustained chronic myelogenous leukemia on Sept. 24, 2020, with the condition ongoing as of the date of the CRF on Mar. 29, 2021.
This was classified as a “serious” and “life-threatening” adverse event, albeit one that did not require hospitalization, but it was listed as “not related” to the vaccination but instead to a “genetic change in stem cells.”
The patient had been vaccinated on Aug. 26, 2020, and Sept. 17, 2020, and had a medical history of asthma and seasonal allergies. Other “non-serious” adverse events he sustained included leukocytosis and thrombocytosis.
- A female in her mid-40s (randomization number 49018) who participated in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc. was diagnosed with kidney stones on Jan. 4, 2021.
This was classified as a “serious” adverse event that required hospitalization, but was listed as “not related” to the vaccine, instead being related, again, to “kidney stone” (sic). She had received the two doses of the vaccine on Aug. 17, 2020, and Sept. 8, 2020.
The patient was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Jan. 27, 2021. Her prior medical history included migraine headaches, hypercholesterolemia and a Tarlov cyst.
- A female approximately 30 years old (randomization number 53307) participating in the trial at Boston Medical Center, with nothing to report in her medical history, sustained a shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA) on Sept. 9, 2020, with symptoms continuing until Feb. 8, 2021.
This injury was listed as being related to the second dose of the vaccine, which she received on Sept. 9, 2020 (she had previously received her first dose on Aug. 17, 2020).
- A female in her late 50s (randomization number 260125) participating in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc., suffered from acute exacerbation of asthma. The symptoms appeared in mid-December 2020, following her vaccination on Sept. 16, 2020, and Oct. 5, 2020.
Her symptoms were classified as serious but not life-threatening, and she was hospitalized. However, her asthma symptoms were listed as “not related” to the vaccine, instead being related to “asthma” with no further explanation provided. On Jan. 12, 2021, her blood pressure was recorded as 183/130, with a heart rate of 98 beats per minute.
Other less serious adverse events sustained by the patient included injection site pain, body pain, chills and a low-grade fever.
Her medical history included cholecystitis (and a cholecystectomy), herniated disc, total abdominal hysterectomy, bilateral oophorectomy, bilateral salpingectomy, endometriosis, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, rheumatoid arthritis in remission, asthma, seasonal allergies, irritable bowel syndrome and obesity.
- A male in his late 20s (randomization number 48413) who participated in the trial at Clinical Neuroscience Solutions Inc., sustained a bilateral pulmonary embolism on Dec. 14, 2020, with symptoms still ongoing as of the CRF date of Mar. 29, 2021.
This was listed as a “serious” adverse event that required hospitalization, but was attributed to the patient’s habit of vaping and his “sedentary lifestyle.” He had received the two doses of the vaccine on Aug. 13, 2020, and Sept. 2, 2020.
Other post-vaccination symptoms listed for the patient included fever, fatigue, headache, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, new/worsened muscle pain, new/worsened joint pain and swelling.
The patient had a medical history that included elevated triglycerides, genital herpes and seasonal allergies, in addition to a vaping habit.
The many serious adverse events – and several deaths – recorded during the Phase 3 trials are also apparent in a separate, massive document, exceeding 2,500 pages, cataloging such adverse events.
This document lists a wide range of adverse events suffered by trial participants classified as toxicity level 4 — the highest and most serious such level.
However, not one of the level 4 (most severe) adverse events listed in this particular document is classified as being related to the vaccination.
Level 4 adverse events listed in the document include but are not limited to the following, many of which occurred in multiple patients:
- Acute cholecystitis
- Acute respiratory failure
- Adrenal carcinoma
- Anaphylactic shock
- Aortic valve incompetence
- Appendicitis
- Arrhythmia, supraventricular
- Arteriosclerosis
- Brain abscess
- Cardiac arrest
- Chronic myeloid leukemia
- Complicated appendicitis/acute appendicitis with necrosis
- Congenital heart disease/heart anomaly
- Coronary artery occlusion
- COVID-19 illness
- Deep vein thrombosis
- Diverticulitis
- Hemiplegic migraine
- Hemorrhagic stroke
- Interstitial lung disease
- Myocardial infarction
- Orthostatic hypotension/possible postural hypotension
- Osteoarthritis
- Pericolic abscess
- Peritoneal abscess
- Renal colic
- Ruptured diverticulum
- Small bowel obstruction/small intestinal obstruction
- Spontaneous coronary artery dissection
- Subarachnoid hemorrhage
- Suicidal ideation (and suicidal ideation with attempt)
- Syncope
- Type 2 diabetes
- Worsening of abdominal pain
- An “unevaluable event/“unknown of unknown origin”
Similarly, only a small number of toxicity level 3 adverse events were indicated as having been “related” to vaccination. Such adverse events included but are not limited to the following, some of which occurred in multiple trial participants:
- Arthralgia
- Blood glucose increase/glucose spike
- Deafness/hearing loss
- Dyspepsia
- Hypotension
- Lymph node pain
- Lymphadenopathy/lymph node swelling
- Musculoskeletal chest pain (non-cardiac)
- Neutropenia
- Pain in fingers/bilateral hands
- Pruritus
- Pyrexia/febrile syndrome
- Severe headache
- Shoulder injury related to vaccine administration
- Sleep disorder/sleep disturbance
- Tachycardia
- Urticaria
- Ventricular arrhythmia
- Vertigo
Page 2,525 of the document in question also lists six trial participant deaths, with causes of death including arteriosclerosis, cardiac arrest, hemorrhagic stroke and myocardial infarction.
The small number of adverse events listed as being connected to the vaccine follows a trend noted in the previous tranche of Pfizer-BioNTech documents, released in May.
An additional document released in this month’s tranche catalogs patients who discontinued their participation in the Phase 3 trial, or whose participation was discontinued by physicians or other medical professionals.
While many patients were discontinued because they could not be located, because of a physician’s orders, because they moved to another region or for other personal reasons, numerous patients ended their participation due to adverse events, including but not limited to the following symptoms:
- Acute myocardial infarction
- Amnesia
- Anorexia
- Atrial fibrillation
- Cerebral infarction
- Congestive cardiac failure
- Coronary artery disease
- Deafness (unilateral)
- Depression
- Diabetic foot
- Diverticular perforation
- Exposure during pregnancy
- Eye pain
- Gait instability
- Gastric adenocarcinoma
- Gastrointestinal hemorrhage
- Hypertension
- Irregular heart rate
- Loss of taste and smell
- Myalgia
- Paraparesis
- Parkinsonism
- Presyncope
- Pulmonary embolism
- Pyrexia
- Swelling face
- Tachycardia
- Transient ischaemic attack
- Urticaria
- Vaccine allergy
- Vertigo
In other instances, subjects withdrew because of fears connected to safety concerns related to the vaccine, or discomfort in receiving the second dose.
Clinical review document glosses over adverse events during trials
Also included in June’s FDA document dump was a 334-page “clinical review” document, which appears to have been approved by the FDA on Apr. 30, 2021, and which presents “pivotal data” from Phase 1/2/3 Study C4591001, conducted in the U.S., along with “supporting” Phase 1/2 data from Study BNT162-01, performed in Germany.
This document refers to both Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which received an EUA from the FDA, and the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine, which received full FDA approval but is reportedly almost impossible to find at vaccination locations in the U.S.
As previously reported by The Defender, a federal judge found the Pfizer-BioNTech and Pfizer Comirnaty vaccines are legally distinct.
The clinical review document states:
“BNT162b2 has received temporary authorizations for emergency supply in 28 countries and conditional marketing authorizations in 39 countries globally.
“The name of the product supplied under emergency/temporary use authorization for all applicable regions is Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.
“The name of the product supplied under conditional marketing authorization for all applicable regions is COMIRNATY [COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine (nucleoside modified)].”
The document states that trial participants were administered one of two candidate vaccines, labeled BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 (the latter of which ultimately received an EUA from the FDA), or a placebo. A variety of dosage levels were also tested, ranging from 10 μg to 100 μg for BNT162b1, and 10 μg to 30 μg for BNT162b2.
In Phase 1 of Study BNT162-01, the clinical review reports that “40% to 45% of participants who received BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 across age groups and across dose levels reported one or more AEs [adverse events] from Dose 1 through 28 days (i.e., 1 month) after Dose 2.”
In what will turn out to be a general pattern throughout the clinical review, we are told that “most AEs were considered by the investigator as not related to study intervention and mild to moderate in severity, and all AEs were reported as resolved.”
Some specific adverse events highlighted in this part of the clinical review include:
“Among BNT162b1 recipients, 1 younger participant in the 10 μg group discontinued the study due to a moderate AE of malaise (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1 and 1 younger participant in the 60 μg group discontinued due to a dose-limiting toxicity of pyrexia after Dose 1.
“One older participant in the 20 μg group had an SAE of severe syncope (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1 and study treatment was withdrawn.
“Among BNT162b2 recipients, 1 younger participant in the 10 μg group discontinued the study due to a moderate AE of nasopharyngitis (considered as not related to study intervention) after Dose 1.
“One older participant in the 20 μg group had an SAE of ankle fracture (considered as not related to study intervention) after receiving both doses, was listed as recovering, and remains in follow-up.”
The clinical review also states “no deaths occurred in the Phase 1 part of Study BNT162-01.”
The review adds that “from Dose 1 of BNT162b2 30 μg to the unblinding date, 6 (50.0%) participants in the younger age group and 3 (25.0%) participants in the older age group reported at least 1 AE.”
Specifically, in this portion of the study, “two (16.7%) participants in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group and 1 (8.3%) participant in the BNT162b2 30 μg older age group reported at least 1 severe AE,” and “in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group, 3 (25.0%) participants reported at least 1 related AE and 1 (8.3%) participant reported 1 severe SAE.”
These specific adverse events, according to the review, were reported in “the system organ class (SOC) of nervous system disorders (3 [25.0%] participants in the younger age group and 1 [8.3%] participant in the older age group), followed by musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders (1 [8.3%] participant in each age group). All AEs by preferred term (PT) were reported by no more than 1 participant.”
The review adds, “from Dose 1 to the unblinding date, 1 participant in the BNT162b2 30 μg younger age group reported a severe SAE (neuritis) that was assessed by the investigator as not related to study intervention,” and “there were no Phase 1 participants randomized to BNT162b2 30 μg or corresponding placebo who died through the data cutoff date of 13 March 2021.”
Review of results from Study C4591001
While “incidences in the BNT162b2 and placebo were similar within the age groups for younger (9.1% vs 11.1%) and older (4.3% vs 8.9%) participants, among those who received BNT162b2 instead of the placebo, “two severe events of myalgia and gastric adenocarcinoma (which was also an SAE) were reported for 2 participants in the … younger age group, both assessed by the investigator as not related to study intervention.”
It is further mentioned that “the only discontinuation due to an AE during this time was the participant in the BNT162b2 younger age group who reported an SAE of gastric adenocarcinoma (discontinued from the study on Day 23 after Dose 1 of BNT162b2).”
Ultimately, from dose 1 to 1 month after dose 2 for participants during the blinded safety follow-up of study C4591001, “the numbers of overall participants who reported at least 1 AE and at least 1 related AE were higher in the BNT162b2 group (30.2% and 23.9%, respectively) as compared with the placebo group (13.9% and 6.0%, respectively).”
Specifically, “severe AEs were reported by 1.2% and 0.7% in in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups respectively, and life-threatening AEs were similar (0.1% in both groups),” and “SAEs and “AEs leading to withdrawal were reported by ≤0.6% and ≤0.2%, respectively, in both groups,” while “discontinuations due to related AEs were reported in 13 participants in the BNT162b2 group and 11 participants in the placebo group (0.1% in both groups).”
Overall, as reported for this part of the study, “in the younger age group, the number of participants who reported at least 1 AE from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2 was 4233 (32.6%) and 1871 (14.4%) in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups, respectively. In the older age group, the number of participants who reported at least 1 AE from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2 was 2384 (26.7%) and 1177 (13.2%) in the BNT162b2 and placebo groups, respectively.”
The review specifies that “the most frequently reported AEs in the BNT162b2 group … were injection site pain (2915 [13.3%]), pyrexia (1517 [6.9%]), fatigue (1463 [6.7%]), chills (1365 [6.2%]), headache (1339 [6.1%]), and myalgia (1239 [5.7%]),” however, some more serious adverse events that were reported during this stage of the trial included facial paralysis, cardiac disorders, hepatic cirrhosis, cholecystitis/cholecystitis acute, biliary colic, bile duct stone, biliary dyskinesia, lymphadenopathy, appendicitis, optic neuritis and hypersensitivity/anaphylaxis.
Overall, according to the review, “from Dose 1 to 1 month after Dose 2, severe AEs reported during the blinded follow-up period were low in frequency, reported in 1.2% of BNT162b2 recipients and 0.7% of placebo recipients.”
During the “open-label follow-up period,” referring to the period when the initial trial has been completed but participants are invited to continue taking the study drug for an additional period, the review states “three participants originally randomized to BNT162b2 died during open-label follow-up.”
While one of these deaths was reportedly due to a road accident, the other two were attributed to lung metastases and myocardial infarction. However, none of these deaths “were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
Furthermore, according to the report, during this period “there were 12,006 participants who had at least 6 months of follow-up. Among these, 3,454 participants (28.8%) reported at least 1 AE and 2245 participants (18.7%) reported at least 1 related AE. Severe AEs and SAEs were reported by 2.1% and 1.6%, respectively.”
The review provides data for participants from dose 3 (first dose of BNT162b2) to the data cutoff date. The severe adverse event incidence rate (IR) was 6.0 per 100 PY (patient-years), with specific conditions reported including pulmonary embolisms, thrombosis, urticaria, a cerebrovascular accident and COVID-19 pneumonia.
Here, the review adds that the IR for original placebo participants who had at least 1 life-threatening AE from Dose 3 to the data cutoff date was 0.5 per 100 PY. Only one such life-threatening event, an instance of anaphylactoid reaction, was considered to be related to the vaccination. Other life-threatening, serious adverse events included cardio-respiratory arrest, gastrointestinal necrosis, deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism.
The report also notes, “There were 15 deaths in the BNT162b2 group and 14 deaths in the placebo group from Dose 1 to the unblinding date during the blinded placebo-controlled follow-up period.”
However, the report does not appear to go into detail about the causes of death for either group, other than to state, “None of these deaths were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
In the “Blinded Follow-Up Period from Dose 1 Through 1 Month After Dose 2,” in the BNT162b2 group, “SAE [serious adverse events] was similar in the BNT162b2 group (0.6%) and in the placebo group (0.5%),” with three SAEs in the non-placebo group deemed to be related to the vaccine. These included ventricular arrhythmia, lymphadenopathy and SIRVA.
During the “open-label follow-up period” for “original BNT162b2 participants,” the report states “one younger participant with no past medical history had a life-threatening SAE of myocardial infarction 71 days after Dose 2 that was assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
However, despite its life-threatening nature, this condition “lasted 1 day and resolved the same day.”
Overall, “from Dose 1 to 6 months after Dose 2, during the blinded and open-label follow-up periods, 190 (1.6%) participants in the BNT162b2 group reported at least 1 SAE,” and “the number of participants who reported at least 1 SAE was 73 (1.1%) and 117 (2.2%) in the younger and older age groups, respectively.”
These SAEs were categorized as neoplasms, infections and infestations, gastrointestinal disorders, hepatobiliary disorders, respiratory/thoracic/mediastinal disorders and injury/poisoning/procedural complications.
An original placebo participant who received BNT162b2 for Dose 3 experienced a severe adverse event that “was assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention; specifically, “an anaphylactoid reaction 2 days post Dose 3” leading to the participant’s withdrawal from the study, despite a reported resolution.
A separate subsection in the report specifically addressed cases of Bell’s palsy and facial paralysis among trial participants. Specifically, “during the blinded placebo-controlled follow-up period, 6 participants developed one-sided facial paralysis (Bell’s palsy): 4 were randomized to BNT162b2 (all male) and 2 were randomized to placebo (1 male; 1 female),” according to the review.
Regarding the four vaccinated trial participants, their ages ranged from 40 to 70, with symptoms appearing three to 48 days after their last dose. Their symptoms were recorded as “mild to moderate in severity,” with duration ranging “from 3 to 68 days,” and with two of these cases “considered by the investigator to be related to study intervention.”
Moreover, “during the open-label follow-up period, 3 participants who received BNT162b2 as Dose 3 or Dose 4 (after originally being randomized to placebo) experienced facial paralysis,” according to the review. These patients were all female, with an age range between 19 and 34. Events were recorded as beginning two to eight days after administration of the third dose, and “were mild to severe.” One case had a duration of 12 days, while the other two cases were ongoing as of the cutoff date of the trial.
Notably, according to the review, “all these events of facial paralysis were considered by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
The review adds, “during the open-label follow-up period for participants originally randomized to BNT162b2, a male participant 51 years of age developed Bell’s Palsy 154 days after receiving Dose 2.” No indication is given as to whether this was deemed to be related to the vaccination or not.
From dose 1 to the unblinding date, heart-related adverse events included “6 acute myocardial infarctions, 4 myocardial infarctions group, and 1 acute coronary syndrome” in the BNT162b2 group.
According to the review, “most of these events had onset distant (ie, >30 days following) to receipt of vaccine or placebo. None of these events were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention.”
Moreover, “there was 1 participant in the older BNT162b2 age group with pericarditis. The event had an onset of 28 days after Dose 2, was ongoing at the data cutoff date, and was assessed by the investigator as not related to the study intervention.”
Additionally, “there were 8 cases of pulmonary embolism in the BNT162b2 group,” in addition to four hemorrhagic strokes and “2 ischemic strokes, 4 cerebral vascular accidents, 2 transient ischemic attacks” in this group, plus “1 case of thrombocytopenia and 1 case of platelet count decreased.”
Furthermore, “there were 9 thrombotic events in the BNT162b2 group,” including seven instances of deep vein thrombosis, one case of coagulopathy and one case of ophthalmic vein thrombosis.
Regarding autoimmune issues in the BNT162b2 group, the review states “there were 10 autoimmune disease cases identified,” with one case each of “autoimmune thyroiditis, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, reactive arthritis, fibromyalgia, systemic lupus erythematosus, alopecia areata, psoriasis,” and two cases of psoriatic arthropathy.
Pregnancies were largely glossed over in the review, which states:
“At the time of the data cutoff date (13 March 2021), a total of 50 participants who had received BNT162b2 had reported pregnancies, including 42 participants originally randomized to the BNT162b2 group and 8 participants originally randomized to the placebo group who then received BNT162b2.”
“In total, 12 participants (n=6 each in the randomized BNT162b2 and placebo groups) withdrew from the blinded placebo-controlled vaccination period of the study due to pregnancy, and 4 participants originally randomized to placebo who then received BNT162b2 withdrew from the open-label vaccination period due to pregnancy.
“These participants continue to be followed for pregnancy outcomes. No births have been reported from individuals who have become pregnant in Study C4591001 as of the time of this submission.
“All pregnancies have a risk of birth defect, loss, or other adverse outcomes. Available data on BNT162b2 administered to pregnant women are insufficient to inform vaccine-associated risks in pregnancy.”
Pfizer concludes vaccines are ‘safe and well-tolerated’
Overall, despite the incidence of severe adverse events — some of which were admitted to be related to the vaccine — and deaths, as well as an admitted lack of data regarding outcomes for pregnant women who participated in the trial, the “safety conclusions” of the review indicate the following:
“Based on Phase 1 data from the FIH Study BNT162-01, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 were safe and well-tolerated in healthy adults 18 to 55 years of age, with no unanticipated safety findings … and the AE profile and clinical laboratory results did not suggest any safety concerns.
“Based on Phase 1 data from Study C4591001 and Study BNT162-01, BNT162b1 and BNT162b2 were safe and well-tolerated in younger healthy adults 18 to 85 years of age, with no unanticipated safety findings … and the AE profile did not suggest any safety concerns, including up to approximately 6 months after Dose 2 for BNT162b2 30 μg groups.
“Based on Phase 2/3 data from approximately 44,000 participants ≥16 years of age with up to at least 6 months of follow-up after Dose 2 in Study C4591001, BNT162b2 at 30 μg was safe and well-tolerated across age groups … and the AE profile did not suggest any serious safety concerns. The incidence of SAEs and deaths were low in the context of the number of participants enrolled and comparable in BNT162b2 and placebo. The incidence of discontinuations due to AEs was also generally low and similar between BNT162b2 and placebo groups.
“Cumulative safety follow-up to at least 6 months after Dose 2 for approximately 12,000 Phase 2/3 participants originally randomized to BNT162b2, comprising the combined blinded and open-label periods, showed no new safety signals or suggested [any] new safety concerns arising from this period of follow-up.
“Similarly, open-label follow-up of participants originally randomized to placebo from the time of unblinding to receive BNT162b2 until the data cutoff date showed no new safety signals or concerns.
“The AE profile among approximately 44,000 participants ≥16 years of age enrolled to date as of the most recent safety cutoff date (13 March 2021), was mostly reflective of reactogenicity events with low incidences of severe and/or related events. The incidence of SAEs was low and similar in the vaccine and placebo groups. Few participants withdrew from the study due to AEs. Few deaths occurred overall in both the vaccine and placebo groups with no imbalance.
“For participants randomized to placebo and then unblinded to receive BNT162b2 vaccination, open-label data from the time of unblinding to the data cutoff date (13 March 2021) showed no new safety findings or signals.
“Taken together, efficacy and immunogenicity data suggest the BNT162b2 (30 μg) 2-dose regimen induces a strong immune response and provides durable protection from COVID-19 across a spectrum of individuals representative of the population at large for individuals ≥16 years of age: those with or without prior exposure to SARS-CoV-2 and those in higher-risk categories based on age, race, ethnicity, and/or comorbidity.”
As a result, and based on the above data, the review makes a case for the approval of BNT162b2:
“A vaccine program must be implemented expediently and rapidly expanded to have a significant impact on the pandemic course. Licensure of BNT162b2 is likely to enhance vaccine uptake by facilitating supply of vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech directly to pharmacies and healthcare providers/facilities.
“The greatest impact of BNT162b2 licensure may be direct supply to healthcare providers who serve vulnerable populations such as elderly patients and those who live in rural and underserved communities (i.e., individuals who might be unable to navigate the challenges of securing vaccine access using the systems in place for EUA).
“Expansion of vaccine via licensure would ultimately improve the prospect of achieving population herd immunity to bring the pandemic under control.
“Overall, the potential risks and benefits, as assessed by the safety profile and the efficacy and immunogenicity of BNT162b2 (30 μg), are balanced in favor of the potential benefits to prevent COVID-19 in immunized individuals.
“Likewise, the BNT162b2 30 μg benefit and risk profile support further development in pediatric, maternal, and other at-risk populations.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
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China names world’s ‘hacking empire’
RT | March 15, 2022
Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.
“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.
Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.
“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”
This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February. … continue
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