With the reveal that the objectivity of the CDC (and US HHS) has become both politicized by the executive branch and compromised by the pharmaceutical industry, we have to come to terms with living in a world in which we can no longer take governmental public health pronouncements as gospel truth. Those of us who are thinking for ourselves (and our children) now need to make personal assessments and decisions about COVID-19 vaccines, and then booster vaccination, and then boosters again. As we all assess the advice of HHS, CDC, NIAID, Dr. Fauci, White House Advisor Dr. Francis Collins, the Surgeon General, the FDA, and of course Pfizer, let’s briefly revisit what many consider to be history’s most effective vaccine: the smallpox vaccine produced from variola.
Smallpox kills, and it has been eradicated from the world by use of a highly effective vaccine (with the exception of samples stored in various freezers). It was (is?) a far more serious threat than SARS-CoV-2, in terms of death and disease. In order to understand the science behind vaccines, one must understand the strategies behind vaccination campaigns, and the smallpox vaccines provide a great case study.
Vaccinia (cowpox) virus is closely related to smallpox (variola) virus, and Jenner (in 1796) is often credited with discovering that milkmaids (exposed to cowpox) were resistant to Smallpox disease, and then actively vaccinating against variola using vaccinia virus. The historic smallpox vaccine product principally credited with eradicating Smallpox was labeled as Dryvax, (Wyeth Laboratories, Inc.- formally discontinued in 1982) and was prepared from calf lymph using the New York City Board of Health (NYCBOH) strain of vaccinia. What that means is that the skin of calves were infected with the NYCBOH vaccinia, resulting in widespread infection and a sort of weeping exudate on the skin of the calves as the virus replicates. The calves were loaded into a mechanical holder and the exudate (with the virus) was scraped off (using something that resembled a sweat scraper used for horses) and “processed”, placed into glass vials, freeze dried, and then sealed with a standard stopper. The quality control on the “processing” was pretty crude, and I have personally seen legacy vials of Dryvax that included calf hair in the final vialed product. The vials were shipped out, and then reconstituted with a diluent (saline) and a “bifurcated needle” was dipped into the solution and then repeatedly poked into the skin (typically over the deltoid muscle – the shoulder) of the vaccine recipient, resulting in the typical round smallpox vaccine scar.
The art and science of vaccinology teaches that vaccines can vary in both safety and effectiveness. That this is a sliding scale for which disease severity, pathogen infectiousness (transmissibility, or Ro) and safety of the vaccine product all must be simultaneously optimized, resulting in a three dimensional plot (or “response surface”). The teaching is that if a vaccine is to be given to the general population, it has to have a low adverse event profile (be very safe), particularly if the disease is generally thought to either have a lower risk profile or infection is a rare event. In general, a more “hot” vaccine, in other words one that typically has a more serious adverse event profile, will also be better at preventing infection. In the case of a highly infectious, highly pathogenic virus, the risk profile of the vaccine may be greater – in order to achieve disease people contracting the disease and with the ultimate hope of disease eradication. The licensed Merck Ebola vaccine is an example of a relatively “hot” (reactogenic) vaccine which is only deployed in populations at high risk during an Ebola (highly infectious and pathogenic virus) outbreak. Benefits versus risks. If the pathogen is particularly nasty, then it becomes more acceptable to deploy a vaccine that causes some degree of disease. Makes sense?
There is another important element in the national vaccine program, which is the requirement to keep the vaccine production facilities up and running. These facilities are producing a biological product; they must be kept in production or the process for re-licensure is onerous, if not impossible. In the case of seasonal flu, one of the justifications for the yearly vaccine is to keep the manufacturing plants running and ready for business in case of a truly severe strain of flu or some other, unknown pathogen become a threat. If those facilities are moth-balled, they can’t be brought back on line quickly. Bet you did not know that. One major reason for pushing annual influenza vaccines is to maintain influenza vaccine manufacturing capacity. The industry term used is “warm base manufacturing”. Of course, this results in a very nice annual “cash cow” for the vaccine industry, one which gets annually milked for a tidy guaranteed profit. The term “rent seeking behavior” applies. The same is true of the various “biodefense” vaccines and products which are maintained in the “strategic national stockpile”. In the context of Smallpox, these include ACAM2000. These products have half lives, which is to say that even though they are (hopefully) not used, they still have to be replaced every few years. Again, nice predictable profit. The corporation “Emergent Biololutions” has become particularly adept at exploiting this “market opportunity”, and has managed to monopolize many of the biodefense-related vaccines and products which the US Government purchases for the Strategic National Stockpile, including ACAM2000.
So, there is more than one reason to vaccinate the entire population on a regular basis, and the government basically props up the entire vaccine industry with what are functionally major annual subsidies. Once a policy decision is made to acquire a vaccine product or establish a “standard of care” involving a vaccine, it is never re-evaluated. Any politician or government administrator that even considers rethinking whether a vaccine policy makes good sense is confronted by the specter of being blamed for any outbreak or cases of that disease that may arise – regardless of how (in)effective or risky that vaccine product may be. So, a combination of public policy realities and regulatory barriers to entry (very, very difficult and expensive to demonstrate improved effectiveness or safety for an improved vaccine when there is already an accepted vaccine on the market) make the vaccine business particularly lucrative and predictable for the large manufacturers that produce licensed vaccines.
What is Smallpox?
Before smallpox was eradicated, it was a serious infectious disease caused by the variola virus. It was contagious—meaning, it spread from one person to another. People who had smallpox had a fever and a distinctive, progressive skin rash.
Thanks to the success of vaccination, smallpox was eradicated, and no cases of naturally occurring smallpox have happened since 1977. The last natural outbreak of smallpox in the United States occurred in 1949.
First, note that the modern smallpox vaccine is not the same as the inoculation that has been throughout history.
The earliest smallpox prevention efforts date back to at least the 10th century in China, when physicians found that nasal inoculation of susceptible persons with material from smallpox lesions would sometimes provide immunity. The practice of inoculation appears to have arisen independently in several other regions prior to the 17th century, including Africa and India, but the practice did not gain popularity in western Europe until the 18th century. The wife of an English ambassador, Lady Montagu, observed inoculation in Turkey, and later had her own child successfully inoculated during a smallpox epidemic in England. In this procedure a lancet or needle was used to deliver a subcutaneous dose of smallpox material to a susceptible person. The procedure, also known as variolation, was controversial. It generated immunity in many cases, but it also killed some people and contributed to smallpox outbreaks.
In other words, smallpox is deadly. Historically, 30% of the people who contract the virus die. Many people were maimed and disabled permanently.
That said, the designers of this vaccine wanted it work to not only stop disease, but eradicate it completely. So, the smallpox vaccine was designed to be “hot.” The adverse event profile is much greater than than say, that of the influenza vaccine. It is designed to stop infection and as much as possible, transmission. With flu, the vaccine is only partially effective, because otherwise the cure would be worse than the disease for most healthy people.
The CDC knows this. But they have a mission to stop vaccine hesitancy. To do this, they promote vaccines and the vaccine enterprise as safe and effective. Full stop. No exceptions or questioning tolerated.
The smallpox vaccine is old enough that its risks are well known, and those data can be used to help us better understand how the CDC assesses vaccine safety. It is naive to think that all vaccines are “safe” – no matter what and no matter which vaccine. Unfortunately, officials at the CDC appear to have a belief system that all vaccines are “safe and effective”, which belief has become more a view of a world, a sort of object of faith (catechism) rather than objective science.
Frankly, positioning this as a statement of faith, a sort of ritual endorsed by annoitedhigh priests of public health, gives these officials benefit by removing any reason to doubt or question. The determination and public statements that most vaccines are “safe and effective” is a promotional tool. And this propaganda is not holding up to scrutiny. People are becoming more and more distrustful of the whole vaccine enterprise, and for good reason. It is time that public health be honest and transparent. Vaccines carry risk, some vaccines carry a lot more risk than others. In the case of the vaccines for children program, the cumulative risk of the entire expanding vaccine schedule on our children has never been rigorously assessed.
So, let’s get back to assessing the benefits and risks of the smallpox vaccine as a case study.
Let’s see what safe means to the CDC, from their own website:
Serious Side Effects of Smallpox Vaccine
· Heart problems
· Swelling of the brain or spinal cord
· Severe skin diseases
· Spreading the virus to other parts of the body or to another person
· Severe allergic reaction after vaccination
· Accidental infection of the eye (which may cause swelling of the cornea causing watery painful eyes and blurred vision, scarring of the cornea, and blindness)
The CDC then lists the types of people who might have reason to not take the smallpox vaccine…
The risks for serious smallpox vaccine side effects are greater for:
· People with any three of the following risk factors for heart disease: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood sugar, a family history of heart problems, or smoking
Let’s take a break here and look at just the first four items, the people described as being at greater risk of serious smallpox vaccine side effects:
People with diabetes – that’s 34 million Americans; people with high blood pressure (108 million Americans); people with high cholesterol (76 million Americans); people with heart disease (96 million Americans)
And there’s more:
· People with heart or blood vessel problems, including angina, previous heart attack, artery disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, or other cardiac problems
· People with skin problems, such as eczema [31 million Americans], atopic dermatitis, burns, impetigo, contact dermatitis, chickenpox [more than 95% of American adults have had chicken pox], shingles, psoriasis, or uncontrolled acne
· Infants less than 1 year of age
· Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding
· People who are taking steroid eye drops or ointment
So, while the CDC definitively states that “The smallpox vaccine is safe,” they then exclude huge segments of the population, leaving very few people for whom it might be safe. The list of people at greater risk also includes people with a “family history of heart problems.” Do any of us know even a single person who doesn’t fit that into that category?
However, other researchers place the risks as higher.
A 2021 study assessing vaccine risks in the military population who have received the more modern, smallpox vaccines reported the following.
897,227 SM who received ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine and 450,000 SM who received Dryvax smallpox vaccine were included in the surveillance population. The rate of adjudicated (proven) myopericarditis among ACAM2000 smallpox vaccine recipients was 20.06/100,000 and was significantly higher for males (21.8/100,000) than females (8.5/100,000) and for those < 40 years of age (21.1/100,000) than for those 40 years or older (6.3/100,000). Overall rates for any cardiovascular event (Group 1 plus Group 2) were 113.5/100,000 for ACAM2000 vaccine and 439.3/100,000 for Dryvax vaccine; rate ratio, 0.26 (95% CI, 0.24-0.28). The rates of subjects with one or more defined neurological events were 2.12/100,000 and 1.11/100,000 for ACAM2000 and Dryvax vaccines respectively; rate ratio, 1.91 (95% CI, 0.71-5.10).
The study above is based off of a passive data reporting system, not a clinical trial – so the actual numbers of adverse events are much higher than reported here.
So, cardiac events associated with the smallpox vaccines were at least 1 in every 885 people for the ACAM2000 vaccine and one in every 228 people for Dryvax vaccine in a healthy population. These risks seem highly significant to me, given that the risk of small pox is nil at this time (unless the military knows something that we don’t). Which is why the push to vaccinate all first responders against Smallpox during the Cheney administration (otherwise known as POTUS #43 George W. Bush) was halted – because of too many cases of myopericarditis and no circulating Smallpox. Sound familiar?
The term safe obviously means different things to different scientists and differing cohorts of people.
Note: The Mayo Clinic disagrees with the CDC on the risk and benefits of the smallpox vaccine:
Too high for patients of the Mayo Clinic – but not too high for Americans advised by the CDC. Although a note about the above quote, as 70% of people survive smallpox, it sure seems like they are “cured.” As for treatments, we no longer live in the middle ages – supportive care for infectious diseases work and are highly effective. Words matter – fearporn is not helpful.
To bring this topic home: Is avoiding COVID-19/Omicron worth taking the known and unknown risks of serious adverse events? In some age categories, it might be. In most age categories, it is not worth much risk. For young people, it is not worth any risk, and for children, the risks of the Covid vaccine far outweigh the risks of Covid.
The US Government had relentlessly promoted that “The vaccines are safe and effective,” the same words used for the modern smallpox vaccine. In both cases, safety is a matter of opinion and semantics – not science. Clearly, safety is relative, such as the precautions one might take when skydiving or riding a motorcycle (e.g., having a second parachute, wearing a helmet) – in order to reach the point that an activity is acceptably safe, all the while knowing it’s safer to just skip the activity.
If I proposed a person drink some potion, and said “This potion is safe, unless you are from a family with a history of heart problems,” few people would want the drink. If I added “Oh yeah, and the Mayo Clinic says the risk of side effects from this potion are too high to justify you drinking it, I’d have even fewer takers.
Mandates, which are rigid by definition, seem a bad match for assessments of personal safety, which are, by our nature, flexible and variable. Since the word safe and the idea of safety means different things to different people, such decisions are best left to those who would be most affected by, in this case, vaccination.
The smallpox vaccine shows us what the CDC means when they say something is “safe,” and it isn’t what most people using the word would mean. With risk must come choice. This is the bedrock foundation of modern bioethics and medicine.
After all that we have been through over the last two years, and the admission the the CDC has been withholding data from all of us for political reasons and to avoid “vaccine hesitancy” (which is another way of saying if you knew what the data really show you would not accept the product), who are you going to trust? Your own lying eyes and brain, or what the CDC, HHS, legacy media and the “factchecking” industry tell you?
Thailand’s National Health Security Office (NHSO) as of March 8 has paid 1.509 billion baht (the equivalent of $45.65 million) to settle COVID-19 vaccine injury compensation claims.
The payouts were made to 12,714 people, including family members of some people who died as a result of the vaccine.
An additional 891 claims are pending. A total of 15,933 claims have been filed since the start of the compensation program on May 19, 2021. Of the 2,328 complaints that were rejected, 875 are being appealed.
The figures released on March 9 represent a continued increase in claims approved by Thailand’s NHSO. As of Dec. 26, 2021, only 8,470 claims had been approved for compensation.
The vaccines being administered in Thailand are primarily the British-Swedish AstraZeneca vaccine, and the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine.
Thailand’s vaccine injury compensation program is an example of a “no-fault compensation program.”
As reported by The Defender in December 2021, “no-fault” refers to a measure put in place by public health authorities, private insurance companies, manufacturers and/or other stakeholders to compensate individuals harmed by vaccines.
Such programs allow a person who has sustained a vaccine injury to be compensated financially, without having to attribute fault or error to a specific manufacturer or individual.
No-fault compensation schemes are one of three options used by various countries to handle vaccine injury claims.
The other two options include allowing vaccine-injured people to sue private-sector actors, such as vaccine manufacturers or their insurers, or to place the full financial burden on the patient.
In the case of Thailand, the compensation scheme sets forth the following payout categories:
For cases of death or permanent disability, each family receives 400,000 baht ($11,928).
Those who sustained a disability that affects their livelihood or who lost a limb receive 240,000 baht ($7,157).
For other injuries or illnesses sustained as a result of COVID vaccination, a maximum of 100,000 baht ($2,982) is paid out.
For the third category of claims, the specific amount awarded is contingent on the level of damages found to have been caused by the vaccine, as well as the financial state of the patient.
When the compensation fund was set up in 2021, Dr. Jadej Thammatacharee, the NHSO’s secretary-general, stated the available funds would total 100 million baht ($2.98 million), but that initial budget already has been exceeded many times over.
Thailand’s “no-fault” system makes it easy to secure compensation, at least when compared to similar schemes in the U.S. and other western countries.
Claims can be submitted by the individuals in question, or their families, at the hospital where they were vaccinated, at provincial health offices, or at NHSO regional offices. Moreover, claims can be entered up to two years after the adverse effects first occur.
Any individual claiming injury or side effects can file a claim for initial financial aid to provide an unspecified amount to claimants prior to confirmation that the injuries resulted from the vaccine.
If it is later determined the adverse effects were not a result of the vaccine, the claimants are entitled to keep this initial financial payout.
The turnaround time on claims also appears to be quick, when compared to the U.S. and several other countries.
The Bangkok Post reported that 13 panels across Thailand meet on a weekly basis to consider compensation claims. Those that are approved are paid within five days. Rejected claims can be appealed directly to the NHSO secretary-general within 30 days.
Available figures from the Thai authorities do not break down the number awarded claims for deaths, serious injuries and disabilities, or other injuries and adverse effects.
However, according to information provided by Thailand’s Department of Disease Control (DDC), as of Oct. 24, 2021, three deaths were linked to COVID vaccination.
According to Chawetsan Namwat, the DDC’s director for emergency health hazard and disease control, two of these deaths were a result of thrombosis. The other death came after the onset of a severe allergic reaction and shock following the administration of the vaccine.
Of the 842 deaths that were investigated up until that date, 541 were found to be “coincidental events,” including cardiovascular disease, stroke, pulmonary embolism, blood infections, lung inflammation, lung cancer and breast cancer.
For an additional 66 deaths, it was inconclusive whether the vaccine led to the fatalities — with 47 of these individuals also having been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.
A further 41 deaths were categorized as “unclassified,” as there was not enough information available to make a determination regarding whether the deaths were linked to the vaccines.
According to a Feb. 18 briefing from healthdata.org, COVID-19 was the 13th most common cause of death in the country for the preceding week, behind such causes as chronic kidney disease, liver cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes mellitus and road injuries.
Ischemic heart disease and stroke were recorded as the top two causes of death in Thailand during the same period.
U.S. remains ‘stuck’ at one approved vaccine injury claim since November 2021
As previously reported by The Defender, as of Nov. 1, 2021, only one COVID vaccine injury claim had been approved for compensation by the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
As of today, the figure remains at one — a claim which has not yet been paid. No new claims were compensated in the interim.
“As of March 1, 2022, the CICP has not compensated any COVID-19 countermeasures claims.
“Six COVID-19 countermeasure claims have been denied compensation because the standard of proof for causation was not met and/or a covered injury was not sustained.
“One COVID-19 countermeasure claim, a COVID-19 vaccine claim due to an anaphylactic reaction, has been determined eligible for compensation and is pending a review of eligible expenses.”
Last week, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) introduced the Countermeasure Injury Compensation Amendment Act to help expedite claims by those injured by COVID vaccines.
The bill would amend the CICP to improve responsiveness, create a commission to examine the injuries directly caused as a result of COVID countermeasures and allow those whose claims have been previously rejected to resubmit claims for new consideration.
With only one claim approved for compensation and six claims denied, the CICP has a backlog of approximately 7,050 claims, with 4,097 claims alleging injuries or death from COVID vaccines, and an additional 2,959 claims alleging injuries or death from other COVID countermeasures.
Since 2010, a total of 7,547 compensation claims have been filed with the CICP. Only 41 were deemed eligible for compensation; still fewer (30) were actually compensated.
Notably, as of the March 4 release of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data, a total of 1,168,894 adverse effects following COVID vaccination have been reported, including 25,158 deaths and 46,515 cases of permanent disability.
VICP, however, covers only those vaccines routinely administered to children and to pregnant women. To help fund the program, those vaccines are subject to a federal 75-cent excise tax.
To date, more than 8,400 VICP claims have been settled, out of more than 24,000 petitions, with a total of $4.6 billion issued in settlements.
The small number of approved compensation claims and the slow review process has recently led to calls for the modernization of vaccine compensation programs in the U.S.
Other western countries appear to have developed similarly cumbersome compensation procedures.
For instance, Australia’s newly established no-fault vaccine compensation system was described as “intentionally complex and narrowly targeted.”
Canada, which also only recently established a no-fault compensation program, as of Dec. 16, 2021, had approved fewer than five of 400 claims filed. More recent data from Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program is unavailable as of this writing.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
One of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern American electoral history occurred in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election. On October 14, 2020 — less than three weeks before Americans were set to vote — the nation’s oldest newspaper, The New York Post, began publishing a series of reports about the business dealings of the Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in countries in which Biden, as Vice President, wielded considerable influence (including Ukraine and China) and would again if elected president.
The backlash against this reporting was immediate and intense, leading to suppression of the story by U.S. corporate media outlets and censorship of the story by leading Silicon Valley monopolies. The disinformation campaign against this reporting was led by the CIA’s all-but-official spokesperson Natasha Bertrand (then of Politico, now with CNN), whose article on October 19 appeared under this headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
These “former intel officials” did not actually say that the “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo.” Indeed, they stressed in their letter the opposite: namely, that they had no evidence to suggest the emails were falsified or that Russia had anything to do them, but, instead, they had merely intuited this “suspicion” based on their experience:
We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.
But a media that was overwhelmingly desperate to ensure Trump’s defeat had no time for facts or annoying details such as what these former officials actually said or whether it was in fact true. They had an election to manipulate. As a result, that these emails were “Russian disinformation” — meaning that they were fake and that Russia manufactured them — became an article of faith among the U.S.’s validly despised class of media employees.
Very few even included the crucial caveat that the intelligence officials themselves stressed: namely, that they had no evidence at all to corroborate this claim. Instead, as I noted last September, “virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.” The Huffington Post even published a must-be-seen-to-be-believed campaign ad for Joe Biden, masquerading as “reporting,” that spread this lie that the emails were “Russian disinformation.”
This disinformation campaign about the Biden emails was then used by Big Tech to justify brute censorship of any reporting on or discussion of this story: easily the most severe case of pre-election censorship in modern American political history. Twitter locked The New York Post‘s Twitter account for close to two weeks due to its refusal to obey Twitter’s orders to delete any reference to its reporting. The social media site also blocked any and all references to the reporting by all users; Twitter users were barred even from linking to the story in private chats with one another. Facebook, through its spokesman, the life-long DNC operative Andy Stone, announced that they would algorithmically suppress discussion of the reporting to ensure it did not spread, pending a “fact check[] by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners” which, needless to say, never came — precisely because the archive was indisputably authentic.
The archive’s authenticity, as I documented in a video report from September, was clear from the start. Indeed, as I described in that report, I staked my career on its authenticity when I demanded that The Intercept publish my analysis of these revelations, and then resigned when its vehemently anti-Trump editors censored any discussion of those emails precisely because it was indisputable that the archive was authentic (The Intercept‘s former New York Times reporter James Risen was given the green light by these same editors to spread and endorse the CIA’s lie, as he insisted that the laptop should be ignored because “a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.”) I knew the archive was real because all the relevant journalistic metrics that one evaluates to verify large archives of this type — including the Snowden archive and the Brazil archive which I used to report a series of investigative exposés — left no doubt that it was genuine (that includes documented verification from third parties who were included in the email chains and who showed that the emails they had in their possession matched the ones in the archive word-for-word).
Any residual doubts that the Biden archive was genuine — and there should have been none — were shattered when a reporter from Politico, Ben Schreckinger, published a book last September, entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power,” in which his new reporting proved that the key emails on which The New York Post relied were entirely authentic. Among other things, Schreckinger interviewed several people included in the email chains who provided confirmation that the emails in their possession matched the ones in the Post‘s archive word for word. He also obtained documents from the Swedish government that were identical to key documents in the archive. His own outlet, Politico, was one of the few to even acknowledge his book. While ignoring the fact that they were the first to spread the lie that the emails were “Russian disinformation,” Politico editors — under the headline “Double Trouble for Biden”— admitted that the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Bidenlaptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.”
The vital revelations in Schreckinger’s book were almost completely ignored by the very same corporate media outlets that published the CIA’s now-debunked lies. They just pretended it never happened. Grappling with it would have forced them to acknowledge a fact quite devastating to whatever remaining credibility they have: namely, that they all ratified and spread a coordinated disinformation campaign in order to elect Joe Biden and defeat Donald Trump. With strength in numbers, and knowing that they speak only to and for liberals who are happy if they lie to help Democrats, they all joined hands in an implicit vow of silence and simply ignored the new proof in Schreckinger’s book that, in the days leading up to the 2020 election, they all endorsed a disinformation campaign.
It will now be much harder to avoid confronting the reality of what they did, though it is highly likely that they will continue to do so. This morning, The New York Timespublished an article about the broad, ongoing FBI criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s international business and tax activities. Prior to the election, the Times, to their credit, was one of the few to apply skepticism to the CIA’s pre-election lie, noting on October 22 that “no concrete evidence has emerged that the laptop contains Russian disinformation.” Because the activities of Hunter Biden now under FBI investigation directly pertain to the emails first revealed by The Post, the reporters needed to rely upon the laptop’s archive to amplify and inform their reporting. That, in turn, required The New York Times to verify the authenticity of this laptop and its origins — exactly what, according to their reporters, they successfully did:
People familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.
That this cache of emails was authentic was clear from the start. Any doubts were obliterated by publication of Schreckinger’s book six months ago. Now the Paper of Record itself explicitly states not only that the emails “were authenticated” but also that the original story from The Post about how they obtained these materials — they “come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop”— “appears” to be true.
What this means is that, in the crucial days leading up to the 2020 presidential election, most of the corporate media spread an absolute lie about The New York Post‘s reporting in order to mislead and manipulate the American electorate. It means that Big Tech monopolies, along with Twitter, censored this story based on a lie from “the intelligence community.” It means that Facebook’s promise from its DNC operative that it would suppress discussion of the reporting in order to conduct a “fact-check” of these documents was a fraud because, if one had been conducted, that no fact-check was even published because, if an honest one had been conducted, it would have proven that Facebook’s censorship decree was based on a lie. It means that millions of Americans were denied the ability to hear about reporting on the candidate leading all polls to become the next president, and instead were subjected to a barrage of lies about the provenance (Russia did it ) and authenticity (disinformation! ) of these documents.
The objections to noting all of this today are drearily predictable. Reporting on Hunter Biden is irrelevant since he was not himself a candidate (what made the reporting relevant was what it revealed about the involvement of Joe Biden in these deals). Given the war in Ukraine, now is not the time to discuss all of this (despite the fact that they are usually ignored, there are always horrific wars being waged even if the victims are not as sympathetic as European Ukrainians and the perpetrators are the film’s Good Guys and not the Bad Guys). The real reason most liberals and their media allies do not want to hear about any of this is because they believe that the means they used (deliberately lying to the public with CIA disinformation) are justified by their noble ends (defeating Trump).
Whatever else is true, both the CIA/media disinformation campaign in the weeks before the 2020 election and the resulting regime of brute censorship imposed by Big Tech are of historic significance. Democrats and their new allies in the establishment wing of the Republican Party may be more excited by war in Ukraine than the subversion of their own election by the unholy trinity of the intelligence community, the corporate press, and Big Tech. But today’s admission by The New York Times that this archive and the emails in them were real all along proves that a gigantic fraud was perpetrated by the country’s most powerful institutions. What matters far more than the interest level of various partisan factions is the core truths about U.S. democracy revealed by this tawdry spectacle.
French intellectual and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy (“BHL”), has an odd propensity for appearing alongside western proxy fighters in war zones. And new reports now place him on the ground amid the conflict in Ukraine.
The day after the February 24 launch of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, France 2, the main state-owned television network, hosted a debate featuring, on one side, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, perhaps best known worldwide for his role during the run up to the Iraq war in 2003. Back then, he served as the foreign minister and represented France’s opposition to the American efforts under then president Jacques Chirac at the United Nations Security Council.
After then US Secretary of State Colin Powell made his now infamous speech imploring the international community to back an invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction, De Villepin argued in favor of inspections.
“Given this context, the use of force is not justified at this time. There is an alternative to war: Disarming Iraq via inspections. Moreover, premature recourse to the military option would be fraught with risks,” he said.
History has now proven him correct in his assessment.
De Villepin’s call for prudence and avoidance of military escalation in Ukraine was loaded with historical lessons learned. “Military interventions never yield the expected results,” recalled the former French prime minister. “History has taught us this in Libya, Iraq and the Sahel.”
On the other side of the France 2 debate table was BHL, who has a rather interesting relationship to some of the conflicts evoked by De Villepin. “[Russian President Vladimir Putin] launched this crazy war, without reason, against a people who had done nothing to him,” replied the philosopher.
It seems that in BHL’s world, wars start like magic with a need to protect completely innocent parties that just happen to be on NATO’s side, and not because of covert shenanigans that predate them — something that BHL should certainly know about.
During the NATO-backed war in Yugoslavia — the war in Europe that those commenting on the current situation in Ukraine seem to forget — BHL, who just happened to be hanging out in the region, overtly backed the NATO proxy, then Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović, who, his opponents believed, was a Muslim fundmentalist. Izetbegović was allegedly used by western forces to helm Islamistfighters against Serbia and ultimately carve out a zone of influence and military control in the Balkans. Later, in a 2019 tweet, BHL referred to the al-Qaeda-linked Izetbegović as “one of the great, luminous figures of the 20th century.”
Then, in March 2011, ahead of the NATO invasion of Libya, which led to an overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi that October, BHL was spotted in Libya meeting with “Libyan rebels,” footage of which can be seen in BHL’s documentary, “The Oath of Tobruk.” It would be easy to chalk up Levy’s presence among the western-backed proxy fighters ahead of Gaddafi’s ultimate demise at their hands as just journalistic interest or intellectual curiosity. But that theory is betrayed by French reports of an activist role at the highest level of the French government.
BHL succeeded in bringing three members of the future Libyan government in waiting to meet with then French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace on March 10, 2011 — seven months before Gaddafi’s demise, according toLe Figaro. The newspaper also reported that BHL, who met with then US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at a Paris hotel and noted an American disinterest in military intervention, subsequently took to French airwaves to pressure Sarkozy into having the French take the lead in the invasion by telling the French audience that, “If Gaddafi takes Benghazi, the huge French flag flying on the Corniche will literally be spattered with the blood of the massacred Libyans.” Four days after the media appearance, NATO began its military intervention in Libya.
In 2012, as the NATO-led invasion of yet another country, Syria, raged in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad with “Syrian rebels” backed by CIA and Pentagon covert programs, BHL took to the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival with both Libyan and Syrian rebels, to symbolize “the passing of the torch of Liberty,” according toLe Point magazine. Just a few months later, BHL was calling for France to also send weapons to the western’s proxy “rebels” to fight the Syrian army, specifically, “cannons, anti-aircraft missiles, defensive weapons, for Aleppo, Homs and the rest of Free Syria.”
Then, in February 2013, BHL wrote on his blog, “La Règle du Jeu,” praising then French president Francois Hollande for launching French military operations in Mali, which were ultimately an unsurprising result of the destabilization of Libya caused by the earlier French-led, NATO-backed invasion cheered by BHL himself. “For the first time, in Mali and Libya, force was put at the explicit service of freedom and justice; for the first time – since Valmy! – there is a desired link … between the exercise by France of its power and the defense of values that go beyond it.” In defense of the “values” of leaving countries in tatters for years after hopelessly destabilizing them because their leaders refuse to kowtow to the agenda of Washington and its allies, apparently.
And now, BHL — symbolic of a certain caviar leftist that sells wars and invasions of benefit to the military industrial complex from the lofty perch of humanitarianism — wants action in Ukraine. And after calling for it prominently via French mainstream media, he is hanging out in Odessa — coincidentally, just in time for the launch of the new “Ukraine fighters”, once again doing NATO’s dirty work, but this time comprised of foreign and domestic western-armed warriors, both regular troops and irregular combatants, cheered from the sidelines by the west against Russian troops.
A regular and welcome fixture all over English and foreign western establishment media from America to Europe, BHL tends to appear wherever there’s armed conflict between interests of the western establishment intent on clinging to the current unipolar world order, against those more representative of a more competitive multipolar alternative. His very presence in Odessa should give pause to anyone who still honestly believes that NATO isn’t a directly involved player, using Ukraine as a platform for its ongoing fight against an new and emerging world order over which it risks losing control.
This morning, the UK government will publish the revised Online Safety Bill. It’s a landmark piece of legislation that has been in the works for five years. The government claims that the bill will protect people from being exposed to harmful content on the internet.
Critics have called it the biggest threat to free speech in modern times. According to SKY News:
The Online Safety Bill has been in the works for about five years and will see communications regulator Ofcom get the power to issue fines or block sites that break the rules.
Additions to the bill include the power to hold executives criminally liable if they don’t comply with Ofcom information requests two months after the law begins, rather than the two years previously proposed.
Managers will also now be criminally liable for destroying evidence, failing to attend Ofcom interviews – or giving false information, or for obstructing the regulator if it enters their offices.
The biggest social media firms must also address “legal but harmful” content under the updated proposals.
They will have to do risk assessments on the type of harms that could appear and state in their terms of service how they plan to tackle them.
What constitutes “legal but harmful” material will be set out by the government in secondary legislation.
Have you ever read anything as chilling as “social media firms must address legal but harmful content?”
That’s what the Online Safety Bill is really all about. The government couldn’t give a damn about child safety. Just look at what they’ve done to children over the past two years.
No, they couldn’t care less if kids are targeted by paedophiles on the internet, or if they’re exposed to images of suicide and self-harming. I’m also pretty sure that the government doesn’t give a rats arse about racist abuse.
The Online Safety Bill is a censors charter, plain and simple.
Labour’s Lucy Powell compared alleged “disinformation” spread by the “Russian regime” to covid conspiracy theories. This is from the BBC news website this morning:
Labour’s shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell said the bill’s delays “allowed the Russian regime’s disinformation to spread like wildfire online”.
She added: “Other groups have watched and learned their tactics, with Covid conspiracy theories undermining public health and climate deniers putting our future at risk.”
Conspiracy theories undermining public health? Really? Is she referring to the thousands of doctors and scientists who warned us that lockdowns were far more devastating for public health than viruses?
Does she mean the legions of epidemiologists and virologists who say that the vaccines are unsafe, untested and are causing widespread harm? Given the chance, would she jail a GP for advising a patient to swerve the jabs?
My God, the bill actually proposes that “knowingly spreading medical misinformation” should carry a penalty of two years in prison. Does Powell think that scientists should be jailed for dissenting from the opinions of politicians?
“Climate deniers are putting our future at risk,” she said. What the hell? What a glorious example of Orwell’s newspeak. Climate denier. What is that? Who ever denied that there’s a climate? Powell is insane.
The Great Reset agenda is real. It will become more obvious to people in the coming months and years as they tighten the screws and interfere more and more in people’s lives.
The Online Safety Bill is a pre-emptive strike on the independent media. It really is as simple as that. They plan to make life unbearable for all of us. They want rid of the independent media in time for when the shit really hits the fan.
The bill will pass. The clock is now ticking on The Richie Allen Show and every other independent news outlet.
When the US President Joe Biden announced, on March 8, his decision to ban imports of Russian oil and gas to the US, he opened up a potential business opportunity for the US LNG gas business to expand further into Europe and beyond. While Biden’s decision does not automatically apply to Europe, given how Europe is mindlessly following the US in its footsteps at the expense of its own strategic autonomy, there was/is no denying that most European nations will follow suit the US decision. Indeed, this was Biden’s intention when he said that this decision was made in “close consultation with our Allies and our partners around the world, particularly in Europe … to keep all NATO and all of the EU and our allies totally united.” But this is not just about unity; it is about business, making money and keeping Europe under exclusive US control.
For quite a long time, the US has been making efforts to prevent Europe from asserting too much autonomy in the international arena as a player in itself. Europe decided to refuse to follow the US decision to scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Until recently, it had differences with the US over NATO, with the French President Macron even calling the organisation “brain dead.”
But things are fast changing to the US advantage. By deliberately pushing for NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and by denying Russia any reasonable security guarantees, the US set the stage for the present crisis, which has now not only ‘united’ the EU under the US leadership, but many NATO members – in particular, Germany – have decided to increase their defense budget by at least 100 billion Euros.
What the US President Trump was unable to do through table-talks, the Biden administration has achieved through generating an actual war/ crisis in Eastern Europe. Other than NATO members, non-NATO members like Sweden, too, have decided to increase their budget, with public opinion in Sweden swinging for the fits time in favour of NATO membership in the wake of the on-going crisis. Where will this defense spending go?
There is no denying that no European county will be buying weapon systems from Russia or China, but mainly from the US military industrial complex. (NATO does not have its own force; “NATO forces” refer to multinational forces from NATO member countries, who in turn contribute both personnel and equipment to the organisation for “collective defense.”) A highly expected sale will involve F-35 fighter jets. It is, therefore, not surprising to see two major US military industrial groups, Lockheed and Raytheon, have seen their market shares rising up by 16 per cent and 3 per cent since the start of the war in Ukraine, respectively.
Apart from this massive increase in defense production, a clear indication of war in Europe being a business opportunity for the US is the field of energy export to Europe. The US decision to impose a ban on energy exports from Russia is symbolic insofar as the US is not a large buyer of Russian oil and gas. The imposition of the ban is, however, aimed at luring European markets to the US. The US, in short, is eyeing capturing the European market on a long-term basis.
As it stands, US LNG exporters are already appearing to be the big winners as gas prices in Europe hit all-time high. Major US exporters like Cheniere Energy Inc are among the top beneficiaries, as they have been able to sign long-term delas to sell LNG to Europe in very recent months. The present crisis has only made their task a lot easier and much more profitable at the same time.
This is happening at a time when the US LNG exports are expected to reach 11.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2022, accounting roughly for 22 per cent of the expected global LNG demands next year. The number of cargos of LNG shipped from the US to Europe, only in the first two months of 2022, has reached a record high of 164, as compared to the previous record of 125 in 2020. This trend is likely to continue – and even intensify – amidst European nations’ claims to reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas.
Supplying the US LNG to Europe is also part of a US plan-in-the-making to globalise its exports. As a recent report in the Washington-based think-tank, Centre for Strategic and International Studies – which receives funding from the US government – the US export of LNG to Europe for the next 20 years could provide the foundation for the export of US LNG to Asia, which is the largest market for LNG. Expansion of US LNG gas supply lines to Asia would also mean a direct territorial expansion of the US global influence.
The New York Times’ advocacy of a yet another “trans-Atlantic Pact” between the US and Europe reflects essentially how the path for increasing Europe’s dependency on the US is being laid. The EU/NATO already largely depends on the US for its security, which is one reason why there was, until recently, a growing demand from within Europe to enhance its own strategic autonomy by developing weapons systems “independently of the US.”
These initiatives are unlikely to develop any time soon, and even if they do develop, they will have no impact on Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy. It will only add to the US-led trans-Atlantic alliance.
It is important to understand that until very recently, Europe was seeking autonomy from the US, not from Russia. By manufacturing a crisis in Europe and by forcing the European nations to confront a war in their own continent, the US has been able to bring a sea-change in the European political discourse from seeking autonomy from Washington to reducing ‘dependence’ on Russia. From the US perspective, therefore, the war is already a major strategic victory – a victory that the European elite is either completely unaware of, or has been forced to shut its eyes to.
The Ukraine crisis was largely triggered by NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion. The bloc is the culprit. Instead of reflecting on itself, NATO piles pressure on other countries to stand with it against Russia. This is unreasonable and quite sinister.
“China should join the rest of the world in condemning strongly the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law so we call on [China] to clearly condemn the invasion and of course not support Russia. And we are closely monitoring any signs of support from China to Russia.”
NATO is a puppet of the US, a Cold War military bloc manipulated by the US. The obsolete military organization has launched many ruthless military aggressions and triggered corresponding disasters in which local people underwent great suffering. NATO’s aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo War is one example.
NATO’s hands are stained with blood and the bloc itself has been a major threat to global and local security. Is NATO qualified to criticize other countries? This organization should have been dismantled long ago.
“NATO is the most serious war machine that violates international law and endangers the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries since the end of the Cold War. Since when has the group become a defender of international law? If it is a defender of international law, could you please first apologize for their bombing of Yugoslavia? Could you first compensate for bombing the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, which left three journalists dead, and more than 20 people injured? Stoltenberg is not qualified and has no right or moral basis to make such remarks,” Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, told the Global Times.
The West has fallen into extreme insanity, and this is quite sick. This is also a symptom of the growing abnormality of the international community under the coercion of the US and its allies. Stoltenberg’s rhetoric sounds like he attempted to label China as Russia’s “accomplice.” In terms of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, there is no absolute right and wrong, as the geopolitics, history and culture between them are too complicated. Their tensions are a difficult problem to solve. In this context, portraying their military conflict as good versus evil is not rational and detrimental to address it.
The Chinese ambassador to US Qin Gang said in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that rumors like “Russia was seeking military assistance from China” are “purely disinformation.” All this is information war initiated by the US. NATO is trying to use this kind of information war to intimidate China, and to coordinate Washington, in an attempt to occupy the moral high ground over the Ukraine crisis.
“By making such statements, NATO is trying to distort the focus of the international community from criticizing its eastward expansion to China’s so-called coordination with Russia,” Zhang Tengjun, Deputy Director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said. “NATO is deliberately circumventing its role and responsibility. It is trying to shift the blame and confuse the public. This is very sinister.”
Italian newspaper La Stampa said on Thursday it didn’t do anything wrong when it printed a frontpage image showing the aftermath of a ballistic missile strike on Donetsk, the capital of a breakaway republic in eastern Ukraine, while promising readers coverage of Russian attacks in Kiev and Lvov.
The photograph was meant to demonstrate the “clear horror of the war” and not to assign blame to any particular party, editor-in-chief Massimo Giannini said in an interview with La7 TV channel, responding to criticism of his editorial choices. He said his newspaper didn’t try to mislead readers, despite what detractors say.
“The thing that bothers me most and pains me a lot is that there are also some people here in Italy, some disgraced people of the web, who amplify this and call it a case of disinformation. Where is the disinformation?” he asked.
The Wednesday issue of the paper featured a full-page photo of a street littered with dead bodies, with a man covering his face in grief. “The Carnage,” the headline read. Short text teasers promised stories further in the paper about the “traumatized children in Lvov” and “Kiev preparing for the final assault” by Russian troops.
The photograph was taken on Monday in Donetsk, the capital of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, after its center was struck by a tactical Tochka-U ballistic missile. Its leadership and Russia said Ukraine was the only party that could have launched it and that the rocket’s warhead was a cluster weapon, designed to kill unprotected soldiers in a wide area.
The attack on Donetsk killed 21 civilians and injured scores of others. Moscow called it a terrorist attack and a war crime. The Russian embassy in Italy, responding to La Stampa’s frontpage, said the newspaper didn’t bother to cover it.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said on Thursday that the Italian news outlet, as with other Western mainstream media, was intentionally “distorting the perceptions of its own readers.”
The missile attack proved once again how strong the influence of radical nationalists was on Ukrainian armed forces, the Russian official said. NATO members allowed those forces to entrench themselves in the country “while the media kept silent,” she pointed out. La Stampa’s use of the photo stands out among examples of fake news and is “a real crime,” she asserted.
Lvov, a city in western Ukraine, is now a major destination for refugees fleeing the fighting in other parts of the country. The capital, Kiev, is partially encircled by Russian troops and has been damaged to some extent amid the fighting. The Ukrainian side alleges Russia is deliberately attacking civilians in Kiev to terrorize them. Moscow denies the claim and blames civilian casualties on Ukrainian troops, who allegedly deploy their artillery and anti-aircraft weapon systems near civilian facilities, which get hit by return fire.
As is often the case with AP’s coverage of news having to do with Israel, there’s a serious omission in its reporting on the Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United States.
The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol fugitives attended the “National Prayer Breakfast” held in Washington DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom Lantos (Calif.)
You would think it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events attended by the US president.
Yet, there was not a single AP story in the US on any of this. 1 Not a single national network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts. In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in the entire country. 2
Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government? And why didn’t we learn of them?
Therein lies the story. These two men, it turns out, are just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this iceberg doesn’t just have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water; this iceberg is almost entirely submerged.
They are Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Dubov, Israeli-Russian partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They, along with a number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for allegedly bilking Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude Russian prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel. 3
As the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz explains: “In recent years Russian authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and major stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes caused several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in Khodorkovski’s [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin attack on Yukos.”
The fact is that Israel is an important factor in the ongoing, nation-shaking power struggle now going on in Russia. Yet AP virtually never reports this connection. For example, a few months ago in a typical AP story on this power struggle, “Report: Russia again charges Berezovsky,” 4 Moscow AP Bureau Chief Judith Ingram makes no mention anywhere that Berezovsky is an Israeli citizen, or of his many connections to Israel.
Such omissions by AP and large swaths of the American media leave Americans seriously disadvantaged in deciphering what is going on in Russia, and its profound significance for the world.
In order to make sense of this Russian power struggle, and to understand its importance to the rest of us, it is necessary to understand the usually omitted Israeli subtext. When this is understood, the friendship of such pro-Israel Congressional leaders as Rep. Lantos to fugitive Russian oil tycoons begins to make sense.
To explore this background it is often useful to turn to the Israeli press. In July a major Israeli publication, the Jerusalem Post, carried an article headlined: “Boris Berezovsky: Putin’s Russia dangerous for Israel.” Before describing what this contained, let us first go into a little of the background.
The Oligarchs
Boris Berezovsky is one of seven “oligarchs,” as they are known both inside and outside Russia: massively rich, powerful manipulators who through violence, theft and corruption acquired a mammoth percentage (reports range from 70 to 85 percent) of Russia’s resources, from its oil to the auto industry to mass media outlets.
At the same time, the group steadily gained control over much of the country’s political apparatus. Using extraordinary financial resources and insider dealing, the oligarchs handpicked prime ministers and governmental leaders and barely even bothered to do this behind the scenes.
In 1997 Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of the group and Russia’s sometimes richest man (several of the oligarchs trade the top spot back and forth) told an interviewer before he was arrested and imprisoned by Putin last year:
“If we rank all the fields of man’s activity by profitability, politics will be the most lucrative business. When we see a critical situation in the government, we draw lots in order to pick out a person from our milieu for work in power.” 5
Almost all of these oligarchs, it turns out, have significant ties to Israel. In fact, Berezovsky himself has Israeli citizenship a fact that caused a scandal of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was exposed by a Russian newspaper. 6
Do Berezovsky’s dual loyalties really matter? Yes. In the realm of global dominance, Israel’s interests and Russia’s are considerably divergent. It is in Israel’s interests to bring to power a regime in Russia friendly to Israel, rather than the current one under Putin, which Israeli leaders feel is supportive of its enemies. Not long ago, for example, Putin met with Syrian leaders an action highly disturbing to Israel.
Having an Israeli citizen at the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from Israel’s point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a man. The Jerusalem Post article mentioned above is revealing. It describes Berezovsky as “the Godfather of the Oligarchs’ and Kingmaker of Russia’s Politics’” and reports Berezovsky’s statement that “Putin’s Russia is dangerous for Israel.” Berezovsky goes on to assert that Putin “supports terror” in the Middle East through Russia’s previous relations with Iraq and current relations with Iran. 7
While Israelis may have been delighted at Berezovsky’s position in Russia, It is not surprising that Russian citizens were somewhat less so. Finding that a powerful leader and member of the Russian Security Council was an Israeli citizen was disconcerting, at best.
As a result of the media uproar over Berezovsky’s Israeli citizenship and other events, the Oligarchs’ connections to Israel are widely known in Russia and elsewhere. In Israel they are covered frequently, often with adulation, including a recent hit Israeli TV series called “The Oligarchs.”
“Some of its episodes,” according to Israeli writer Uri Avnery, “are simply unbelievable or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses’ mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their despicable exploits. The series was produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia.”
Avnery writes that the oligarchs used “cheating, bribery and murder,” as they “exploited the disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.” 8
According to a Washington Post story by David Hoffman, the group bought and controlled Russian governmental officials at the highest levels. After financing Yeltsin’s election in 1996, Hoffman writes: “The tycoons met and decided to insert one of their own into government. They debated who and chose [Vladimir] Potanin, who became deputy prime minister. One reason they chose Potanin was that he is not Jewish, and most of the rest of them are, and feared a backlash against the Jewish bankers.” 9
In Russia, the oligarchs are deeply loathed, considered villains who worked to bleed the country dry; during their reign many Russian citizens saw their life savings disappear overnight. A new term was coined for their dominance, “semibankirshchina” (the rule of the seven bankers), and they were widely known to have wielded small, murderous armies. There are rumors that Berezovsky, subject of the respectful AP article, was even responsible for the gunning down of an American journalist, Forbes Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov.
While no one has been charged with the murder of Klebnikov, who had written a book on Berezovsky, many suspect a Berezovsky connection. As a friend of Klebnikov wrote: “Experienced expatriates in Russia shared an essential rule: Don’t cross these brutal billionaires, ever, or you’re likely to go home in a box.” 10
The Chechnya Connection
There is evidence that Berezovsky’s responsibility for death and tragedy may be vastly greater.
“Berezovsky boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya,” Avnery reports, “in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on since then.
“In the end,” Avnery writes, “there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.)”
Yet, apart from the Washington Post, American media report on almost none of this. Instead, US coverage largely portrays Berezovsky and his crowd as American-style entrepreneurs who are being hounded by a Russian government whose actions are, to repeat the media’s commonly used phrase, “politically motivated.”
US news stories, even when they occasionally do hint at questionable practices, tend to use such phrases as “brash young capitalists” to describe the oligarchs. 11 For example, a long series co-produced by FRONTLINE and the New York Times referred to these men as “shrewd businessmen,” and asked “what it’s like to be young, Russian and newly affluent?” 12 Massive violence, dual loyalties, and control of resources are rarely, if ever, part of the picture.
When AP Moscow bureau chief Ingram was asked for this article about Berezovsky’s Israeli citizenship, she claimed to know nothing about it, a curious contention for someone who has been an AP news editor in Moscow since 1999. When Ingram was queried further, she hung up the phone.
An examination of Ingram’s reporting on the Berezovsky story cited above raises serious questions. Though she is located in Moscow, Ingram interviewed only two people for her news story: Berezovsky, who is in London, and Berezovsky associate Alex Goldfarb, in New York. One wonders why she interviewed none of the Russians residing around her.
Similarly, one wonders why not a single AP story has identified Berezovsky’s considerable connection to Israel.
Further, nowhere does Ingram’s article convey the ruthlessness of the oligarchs’ actions, or the significance of their holdings, including control of its media. Unnoted in Ingram’s report is the fact that her subject and fellow oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky have been two of Russia’s most powerful media tycoons.
Before Putin’s crackdown, according to the Washington Post, oligarchs had succeeded in seizing “the reins of Russia’s print and broadcast media, vital to the evolution of the country’s fledgling democracy and growth of its nascent civil society.” Berezovsky crony Gusinsky, who is close friends with Rupert Murdoch and was about the launch a satellite network, fled to Israel when it appeared he would be arrested.“ 13
Somehow, AP’s bureau chief seems to have missed all this.
Does this matter to Americans?
AP is the major news source for the thousands of news outlets around the country who cannot afford to have their own foreign correspondents. When AP chooses not to cover something, its omission is felt throughout the nation. When national news networks and others leave out the same facts, the cover-up is almost total.
Russia, despite its current turmoil, contains enormous power. Its natural resources are gargantuan: it possesses the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and the third largest energy consumer.14 Russia’s significance on the world stage now, as in the past, is immense.
Similarly, the United States is currently the most powerful nation on earth. It is therefore essential that its citizens be accurately informed on issues of significance. Israeli citizens, Russian citizens, and citizens of nations throughout the world know the information detailed above. It is critical that American citizens be no less well informed.
For years, the neocons’ push for war against Iraq was largely not covered by the US media. For even longer, the neocons’ close connections to Israel have gone largely unmentioned in mainstream American news reports. As a result, very few Americans know to what degree many of those responsible for the tragic US invasion and occupation of Iraq have been motivated by Israeli concerns.
The omission in coverage of Iraq has been profoundly disastrous, both for the Middle East and for Americans. In fact, it is quite likely that only history will show the true extent of this disaster. It is deeply troubling to see the same kind of omission occurring on Russia.
End Notes
Interestingly, an AP report sent out only on its Worldstream wire (i.e. to Europe; Britain; Scandinavia; Middle East; Africa; India; Asia; England, but not to US papers) contained information on this at the end of the report.
Washington Post: “Prayer Breakfast Includes Russian Fugitives” (overall, the Post has been an exception to the general blackout on this subject); the Seattle Times, which ran the Post story, and the New York Times, in a short story on page 12 on Sunday, three days after the event. Interestingly, the NY Times story was filed from Moscow (not Washington) and quotes a “spokesman” for the two men, Charles Krause, who has worked as a correspondent in Israel for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. In the Times story Russian attempts to prosecute these men are described as “politically motivated.”
This is a wise move, since Israel is known for often failing to Jewish extradite citizens, no matter what their crime. Even requests for such cooperation by the US, which gives Israel over $10 million per day, sometimes go unheeded by the Israeli government. Private citizens wanted for committing murder in the US, for example, have sometimes not returned for trial.
Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2004
“Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01
“Media and Politics in Transition: Three Models,” Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter, Issue 35, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Feb. 27, 1997
“Boris Berezovsky: Putin’s Russia dangerous for Israel.’, Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2005
“The Oligarchs”, Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, Aug. 3, 2004
“Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia,” By David Hoffman, Washington Post Foreign Service, Friday, August 28, 1998; Page A01,
“Same Old Ruthless Russia,” by Michael R. Caputo, Washingtonpost.com
Washington Post, Aug 28, 1998
October 2003, Sabrina Tavernise,
“Powerful Few Rule Russian Mass Media,” David Hoffman, Washington Post, March 31, 1997; Page A01
Ukrainian military publicized an artillery strike it conducted against a camp of the Russian 35th Combined Arms Army (accompanied by horribly cheezy music considering the occasion).
How does a strike like this happen?
Aside from counter-battery fire, such an installation is defenseless against enemy long-range artillery. What keeps it safe is that normally enemy wouldn’t know about it. The enemy can’t normally see tens of kilometers behind your front line.
On paper the Ukrainians have the capability to discover such camps by flying drones, either in a grid search or directing them to sources of intense radio chatter they might have detected.
But there is reason to believe their reconnaissance is far simpler than that. The New York Timesreports:
In Washington and Germany, intelligence officials race to merge satellite photographs with electronic intercepts of Russian military units, strip them of hints of how they were gathered, and beam them to Ukrainian military units within an hour or two.
So the Americans are providing the Ukrainians with numerous satellite images of the battlefield and of the Russian rear.
So in fact the Ukrainians do not need to spend time and resources discovering the layout of the Russian rear. Something they would have only a limited ability to do.
Instead, the whole Russian rear is laid bare to them courtesy of American satellites.
Knowing exactly where the Russian camps are, they are easy enough to target. Whether with the help of drone surveillance for better precision or not. (Particularly by self-propelled artillery which can quickly change position after a few salvos to avoid potential Russian counter-fire.)
America is neck-deep in this war. This is yet one more aspect of its involvement.
(Or you could say that America launched a war vs Russia decades ago and Russia responded by opening a front in Ukraine. Ergo the daily Pentagon briefings on an ostensibly Russian-Ukrainian war.)
Actually, The New York Times tries to muddy the waters by saying that the US is not passing on “intelligence that would tell Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets” but I don’t know what that is even supposed to mean.
And they say they are not passing on specific intelligence that would tell Ukrainian forces how to go after specific targets. The concern is that doing so would give Russia an excuse to say it is fighting the United States or NATO, not Ukraine.
They’re passing on images coupled with electronic intercepts within an hour but it’s not “specific intelligence” about “specific targets”. So what does that mean? That Americans will send an image of Russian forces and installations but they won’t circle them with a thick red marker? What kind of gaslighting is this? Of course, satellite images will help with targeting and long-range attacks.
CHISINAU – Deputy Speaker of Parliament of Moldova Vlad Batrincea chided the declaration of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), which called the unrecognized state of Transnistria an “area of Russian occupation,” as an attempt to pull Moldova into the conflict in Ukraine. Speaking at a briefing in the Parliament Wednesday, the politician noted that the document was adopted without considering Moldova’s opinion, who did not vote on the declaration.
“We have said repeatedly that Moldova, being a neutral state, must not get involved in this conflict. This is the consensus between the opposition and the authorities. The introduction of this amendment is an attempt to pull our country into dangerous backstage geopolitical games. Some external forces want to get us involved in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. This is totally unacceptable,” Batrincea, who represents Moldova in PACE, said.
He noted that this amendment “was not put to a vote.”
“It would have been logical to ask for Moldova’s opinion, at least in an online mode, because this matter involves us directly, but this was not done. This decision was adopted in an emotionally-charged rush. We regret that Moldova was treated with such lack of respect yesterday, and that proper procedures were violated,” the deputy speaker concluded.
In turn, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Moldova Nikolai “Nicu” Popescu said Wednesday that the PACE declaration is advisory and does not affect legal processes. According to Popescu, the declaration will not affect Chisinau’s position at the Transnistrian settlement talks, and Moldova will retain its neutral position in the conflict in Ukraine, according to its neutral status, cemented in the Constitution of Moldova.
Peacekeepers in Transnistria
The unrecognized republic of Transnistria was established on September 2, 1990, on Moldovan territory on the left bank of Dniester River, inhabited by predominantly Russian-speakers. Local residents opposed the actions of Moldova’s radical politicians, who sought the republic’s separation from the USSR and unification with Romania. Moldovan officials attempted to resolve the situation by force, which ended up causing over 1,000 deaths in the conflict that followed, while tens of thousands were injured or became refugees.
The war came to an end after a peace deal was signed in July 1992 in Moscow, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the conflict zone. Since then, the peacekeepers have been ensuring tranquility and stability in the region in cooperation with both Moldovan and Transnistrian servicemen, which enables Chisinau and Tiraspol to hold talks to settle the conflict. The OSCE, Russia and Ukraine act as mediators and guarantors in these talks.
The Operational Group of Russian Forces of about 1,500 soldiers and officers is also stationed in Transnistria. Equipped with small arms, they support the peacekeeping operation and guard the ammunitions depot in Kolbasna, which stores over 20,000 tonnes of ordnance, relocated there after Soviet forces’ withdrawal from European states. Previously, the authorities of Transnistria blocked the evacuation of the ordnance amid an escalation with Chisinau.
The government of Moldova insists that the Operational Group must be withdrawn and insists on replacing peacekeepers with civilian observers. Tiraspol categorically opposes this, since it considers the Russian forces to be a guarantee of peace.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday it will soon release additional documents pertaining to the operation of Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine. Moscow believes they have been involved in bioweapons research.
Russian military specialists in weapons of mass destruction are analyzing documents obtained from staff members of the Ukrainian labs, ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a daily briefing. He claimed they detailed “implementation by the US in Ukraine of a secret project to study the ways humans can be infected from bats,” which was done in Kharkov.
The official said the same Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in the Ukrainian city worked for years to study under which conditions wild birds carrying flu could cause an epidemic in humans and to assess the damage that would result.
Konashenkov didn’t explain why such research should be considered military in nature, as assessed by the defense ministry.
The spokesman further said more Ukrainian documents will soon be released on the transfer of human samples from Ukraine to the UK and other European nations. The materials will be accompanied by Russian military assessments of the work they detail, he said.
The Pentagon sponsors dozens of labs around the world under the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). The work they do, the US government claims, is benign and is meant to monitor emergence of new dangerous infections. Countries like Russia and China believe they may be more sinister in nature.
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said under oath that labs in Ukraine have been destroying research materials to prevent Russia from seizing them. It was not clear why Washington saw the scenario as dangerous. US officials claimed that the pathogens in question were remnants of Soviet bioweapons programs, which Moscow would presumably already have access to.
Some American public figures, such as Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, were attacked for asking questions about the Ukrainian labs, which supposedly amounts to repeating “Russian propaganda.”
Utah Senator Mitt Romney accused Gabbard of spreading “treasonous lies” with her concerns about the safety of pathogen samples in Ukraine. The hosts of The View television show suggested people asking such questions should be arrested and investigated as possible Russian agents.
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
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French intellectual and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy (“BHL”), has an odd propensity for appearing alongside western proxy fighters in war zones. And new reports now place him on the ground amid the conflict in Ukraine.
Aletho News
