YouTube to demonetize all Russian users, ban ‘state media’
Google-owned video platform expanding its bans from Europe to worldwide
RT | March 11, 2022
YouTube, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, announced on Friday it would block access to “Russian state media” channels across the globe and block all monetization on its platform inside Russia, citing the conflict in Ukraine.
The video-sharing platform wants to remove content “denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events,” as it goes against its Community Guidelines, YouTube said in a statement on Friday, specifically referring to content “about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.”
Having blocked RT and Sputnik in the European Union – at the request of EU governments – on March 1, YouTube announced on Friday it was expanding this censorship to the entire planet, and including all channels “associated with Russian state-funded media.”
The change is “effective immediately,” YouTube said, adding that its systems may take a little while to process it.
YouTube ads have already been “paused” in Russia, but the platform is now extending this to “all of the ways to monetize on our platform” in the country, presumably affecting super-chats and sponsorships as well.
US Officials Meet Maduro, Fail to Drive Wedge Between Venezuela and Russia
By José Luis Granados Ceja | Venezuelanalysis | March 7, 2022
Mexico City, Mexico – A high-level United States (US) government delegation that visited Venezuela on Saturday failed to produce an agreement with the government of Nicolás Maduro.
News of the delegation was first broken by the New York Times, which described the trip as the highest-level visit by US officials in years. Outlets subsequently reported that no agreement was reached. Caracas had not publicly commented on the meeting at the time of writing.
According to Reuters, the US team was led by White House Latin America adviser Juan González and made “maximalist” demands concerning electoral guarantees. Citing three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that the US was seeking new presidential elections, a larger participation of foreign private capital in Venezuela’s oil industry and a public condemnation of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. The Biden administration representatives reportedly offered Venezuela a temporary return to the SWIFT financial transaction system.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who directly participated in the meeting, instead demanded broader sanctions relief and the return of foreign assets such as oil subsidiary CITGO. US officials reportedly brought up the cases of US citizens jailed in Venezuela, including six oil executives imprisoned for corruption and two former Green Berets who took part in a failed coup effort.
The meeting in Caracas was the latest US effort to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin from his allies in the region. US officials told the Times that Washington views Russia’s Latin American allies as a potential “security threat” should the tensions continue to escalate in light of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, which has ratcheted up conflict between the US and Russia.
Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with the US in 2019 after the latter recognized opposition figure Juan Guaidó as “interim president.” The US and its allies refused to recognize the results of the 2018 election that saw Maduro reelected to a six-year term. Washington then proceeded to engage in and support a series of unsuccessful coup plots, ultimately failing to oust Maduro from power.
US strategy toward Venezuela has more recently been focused on isolating Maduro, imposing crippling sanctions on the country’s energy sector and seizing, together with its allies, the country’s assets abroad. In public statements, the Biden administration has expressed its unwillingness to seriously negotiate with Caracas absent new elections.
Nonetheless, due to the failure of the US to successfully install Guaidó as an authority with any real power inside Venezuela, Caracas and Washington have maintained back-channel communications despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations. Guaidó, despite being recognized by the US as the country’s president, was only informed of the high-level delegation the morning of the meeting.
Venezuelan geopolitical analyst Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein told Venezuelanalysis that the leak of the news of the visit of senior US officials was motivated by an effort to drive a wedge between Caracas and Moscow and leave the impression that there was a “chill” in relations between the two countries.
Rodríguez maintained that Washington and Caracas would nonetheless leave the door open to dialogue.
“I believe that there will be continued attempts at rapprochement, especially because the Mexican [dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition] was exhausted,” he said. “The Mexico talks were totally absurd since the opposition was being directed from within the United States, any step they took had to be consulted with Washington. In that sense it is much more feasible for the United States to negotiate directly with Venezuela.”
President Maduro has repeatedly expressed a willingness to negotiate an end to US-led sanctions on the country. The lack of a deal stemming from the visit by the senior-level delegation suggests Venezuela did not find it to be a workable proposal. Reuters reported that US officials agreed to a follow-up meeting.
It would take a considerable reversal of US policy toward the Caribbean nation to get the country to walk away from its Russian ally. Relations between the two countries have only grown in light of US efforts to isolate Caracas. Russian assistance has played an important role in Venezuela’s efforts to attend to the economic crisis in the country, providing support and expertise to the country’s key industries as well as steady investment in Venezuela’s energy sector.
Venezuela likewise recently strengthened its ties with Russia following a visit by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov in February.
Caracas has called for a “peaceful resolution” to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine but has stopped short of condemning the Russian military operation. Venezuela did not vote in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s resolution concerning the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The country’s voting rights have been suspended as a result of unpaid UN membership dues due the impact of sanctions.
In light of coercive measures applied on Russia by the US and the European Union, Maduro has insisted that Venezuela will maintain its commercial relations with the Eurasian nation.
The Venezuelan leader also spoke directly by phone with Putin last week, with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reporting that the Venezuelan president expressed his “firm support” for Russia and condemned destabilization efforts by the US and NATO. Maduro has publicly called NATO’s handling of the Minsk Agreements a “mockery” and argued that their “derailment” constituted a violation of international law.
The Russian ambassador in Caracas Sergey Melik was invited to greet the opening 5th Congress of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, held this Saturday, and was met with strong applause from the delegates.
Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.
Russia adjusts to “sanctions from hell”
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 11, 2022
The Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks at his meeting with government ministers on Thursday constituted his first comments on the West’s “sanctions from hell.” They were focused almost entirely on “a set of measures to minimise the consequences of sanctions on the Russian economy and the people of our country.”
Putin’s number one priority is to hold himself accountable to his people. Unlike his American counterpart, Joe Biden, Putin feels no need of grandstanding, given his high approval rating above 70%.
The paradox is, while the western countries who imposed the sanctions are going through paroxysms of angst, gnawing worries and anxiety syndromes, the “victim”, Russia, seems nonchalant and is calmly adjusting to the “new normal.” The contrast couldn’t be sharper.
Without doubt, the Kremlin prepared thoroughly for the western sanctions. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin told Putin that a “special headquarters” has swung into action to coordinate the activities of all departments, including at the regional level. He said, “Steps to protect the most vulnerable areas are being worked through sector by sector.” The “core goals” are:
- “protecting the domestic market”;
- ensuring uninterrupted functioning of enterprises by eliminating disruptions in logistics and production chains;
- helping the people and businesses to quickly adapt to the changing circumstances; and,
- maintaining employment.
Over 20 major legislations are in the pipeline, which include specific proposals for stabilising financial markets, support industries, especially for the private sector, as well as for the “return of capital.”
One draft law aims to prevent shutdown of factories by foreign owners through “external management.” There is a vague hint of nationalisation, if push comes to shove. Interestingly, most western owners are announcing “temporary suspension of operations” while paying salaries to employees.
The IT sector, construction industry, transport companies and travel and tourism sector will receive special attention — as also agriculture, which is not only about jobs but also food security. There is an overall relaxation of regulatory measures, debt repayment schedules, bureaucratic procedure, etc.
Mishustin noted: “Maximum freedom of economic activity in the country, minimal regulation and control and, of course, support for the labour market will remain the basis for our economic response. The Government will expand import substitution and help domestic producers replace foreign products in supply chains.”
The highlight of yesterday’s event was the presentation by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov on measures to stabilise the domestic financial market, underscoring how accurately the Kremlin anticipated the West’s agenda to isolate Russia.
Siluanov said, “the Western countries have basically launched a financial and economic war” combining a default on their financial liabilities to Russia with a freeze on Russia’s gold and currency reserves. “They are doing all they can to stop foreign trade and the export,” he added, “trying to create a shortage of imported everyday essentials… (and) compel successful businesses with foreign capital to shut down.”
In these circumstances, the government’s “priority is to stabilise the situation in the financial system and ensure uninterrupted operations.” Siluanov explained that the measures taken in this direction include “precautions to control the outflow of capital abroad” and a special procedure for servicing external debt, including national debt, whereby Russia will pay off its external liabilities in rubles and “carry out the conversion by de-freezing our gold and currency reserves.”
Other measures include mandatory surrender of foreign exchange proceeds by companies, higher ruble interest rates, suspension of taxes on individual interest income for two years, suspended VAT on the purchase of gold and “a large project on capital amnesty.”
The central bank will fully guarantee the liquidity and uninterrupted operations of financial institutions. Siluanov claimed, “These measures have already produced results. The situation on the outflow of deposits is being stabilised and the amount of cash withdrawals has been reduced to almost zero… balance of payments is also improving. Current account receipts are balancing out capital flow.”
To be sure, the big increase in oil and gas revenue will offset any decline in revenue in other sectors, thereby reduce borrowing and public debt, and will provide funds for priority spending.
Most important, Siluanov stressed that the government regards the social commitments as the “top budget priority.” He said, “We will ensure the payment of pensions, benefits, salaries and other payments in a timely manner and in full. Medicines are provided as planned as well, including for children with complex diseases..
“In May, low-income families with children will start receiving new payments. We will earmark additional spending for these purposes in the budget system. The Government has begun to implement anti-crisis measures. Our top priority is to maintain employment and jobs, and to support people who need help under the current circumstances.”
All in all, the prognosis here rubbishes the western predictions of “apocalypse now”. The EU’s rejection of Washington’s proposal for sanctions on Russia’s oil exports virtually ensures that there isn’t going to be any income deficit in Moscow. In 2021, the Kremlin balanced its budget with an oil price expectation of $45 per barrel. The prices currently exceed $130 per barrel!
This conservative fiscal approach by the government largely insulates the economy from the effects of Western economic sanctions. Ironically, the pressure is going to be on European leaders who are concerned about major energy supply disruptions from Russia and have to keep their economies supplied with fuel, while also punishing Russia!
On the contrary, if Putin responds with gas cutoffs, that could spike energy prices further, drive inflation, and undermine Europe’s economic recovery. Simply put, Russia is much larger than the contiguous United States, and has an educated population and far more natural wealth than the West’s Russophobes might expect!
Take Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT. The fact of the matter is that while seven Russian banks were removed from SWIFT, those targeted did not include Sberbank or Gazprombank, two of Russia’s largest banks by assets. Why? Primarily due to Europe’s continued reliance on Russia for energy!
The point is, Russia is intricately connected to the global economy, holds large quantities of critical resources, and has been strategically preparing since 2014 to weather the long-term impacts of sanctions and a removal from SWIFT.
Furthermore, it needs to be understood that while several Russian banks are now cut off from SWIFT, they can still execute international transactions with other banks — except that they must use slower and less-secure methods of interbank communication, such as the outdated telex telegram network or phone calls and email.
By the way, Russia has also developed its own internal financial transaction messaging system, the System for Transfer of Financial Messages that could at a pinch serve as a functional alternative to SWIFT.
Equally, the western sanctions against Russia are bound to cause ripple effects across global markets, including supply chain disruptions and higher prices on energy and agricultural goods. Apart from being a key exporter of oil and gas, Russia is the world’s largest producer of palladium and the second-largest producer of platinum—key commodities used in semiconductor manufacturing—and a major exporter of other critical minerals, mining commodities, and agricultural goods.
Clearly, Russia has no dearth of willing trade partners across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, as it comes under compulsion to rely primarily on non-Western-aligned nations for trade markets for the foreseeable future.
This has larger implications. Western sanctions could potentially accelerate a global economic divide between the West and Russian-aligned economies that are open to break away from the current US-dominated financial system, thereby accelerating a broad global economic reorientation.
Surely, sanctions will isolate Russia from the US and EU markets, but its large reserve of natural resources and strong ties to China decrease the likelihood that it will become economically isolated.
On the contrary, if Western sanctions persist, economic relations with Russia could help accelerate the growth of a non-Western bloc in the global economy, which would have deleterious impact on the status of the American dollar as the world currency.
Quite obviously, there are already incipient signs that thoughtful minds in Europe, especially France and Germany, feel troubled and are conscious of the need to rebuild bridges with Russia. How they pan out remains to be seen.
The likelihood is that once the dust settles down in Ukraine and Russia has had its way as regards its security guarantees, a process of rapprochement will commence between the major European countries and Russia sooner rather than later.
In fact, at yesterday’s meeting, Putin expressed confidence that he expects a volte face by the US too, just as the Biden administration has done vis-a-vis Venezuela and Iran recently. Putin also signalled that Russia may not resort to tit-for-tat sanctions against Europe, especially in regard of energy exports.
German Anaesthesiologists: “We will not treat Russian and Belarusian citizens. Our solidarity is with the Ukrainian people!”
eugyppius – March 11, 2022
Remember Ortrud Steinlein, director of the Ludwig Maximilians-Universität Clinic for Human Genetics? She’s the one who declared that, “due to the serious violation of international law by the autocrat Putin, who is obviously mentally disturbed,” she would be “refusing to treat Russian patients.”
Well, that wasn’t an isolated case. It now looks like various Munich physicians got together and worked out this informal sanctions regime among themselves. A few days ago a similar announcement from a private Munich clinic came to light, dating from around the same time and bearing exactly the same message (only in more inflammatory terms):
Munich, 4 March 2022
Dear Colleagues:
We strongly condemn the invasion of the Russian army with the help of the Belarusian government. Russia is not only attacking Ukraine militarily without any justification – this country also threatens Europe, this country threatens our freedom and democracy.
Therefore, from now on and until further notice, we will not treat Russian and Belarusian citizens.
You can save yourself the trouble of registering.
There will be no exceptions, just as Covid-19 and Mr Putin make no exceptions.
In case of doubt, we will dismiss the patients on the day of surgery.
This also applies to patients who have already registered.
Our solidarity is with the Ukrainian people and our measures are the consequences of the military invasion of the Russian army!
After an uproar, the clinic posted a bright-red apology on their website (and also on Facebook):
The reaction to our letter has greatly affected us and made us think. Our intention was to express sympathy with the Ukrainian people and, as other companies have done, to cut business ties with Russia and send a message of support. This idea was not thought through in its entirety at the time. Some have justly criticised the force of our letter, and we accept this criticism in full. Far be it from us to discriminate or exclude patients on the basis of their origin. We apologise for creating this impression. We will continue to treat Russian and Belarusian patients without hesitation.
As a sign of our solidarity, we are donating 10,000.00 Euros to Doctors Without Borders to support their mission in Ukraine.
Wonder of wonders, their aversion to treating Russians didn’t run that deep after all. As soon as it earned them derision, and failed to gain them any virtue points, they were happy to go back to anaesthetising Russians along with everybody else.
Of course, these three lunatics mention Corona in the course of justifying their lunacy. As I said earlier, Corona has politicised the medical profession, and we are seeing what happens when doctors start to think they have special political responsibilities. And all of those deep philosophical debates we had, about the freedom that doctors enjoy to refuse to treat the unvaccinated, are now bearing fruit.
Reality Check: “100 day vaccines” are NOT possible
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 11, 2022
Neatly nestled behind the Ukraine headlines plastered all over the front pages, this past week has seen the World Health Organization meeting to discuss the global legislation to empowering the WHO to combat “future pandemics”.
The first consultation was held on March 1st. The EU passed a motion authorizing the bloc to negotiate such a treaty on March 3rd.
Nobody knows exactly what the hypothetical international regulations – dubbed the “Pandemic Treaty” – would entail, but there are hints.
It’s almost certainly going to involve some kind of international vaccine passport, possibly based on the SMART Health Cards currently rolling out all across the US.
It’s also interesting to note that this treaty is being developed in parallel to the UK “reforming” their Human Rights Act 1998 into a new “UK bill of rights” which seeks to prevent the “abuse” of “rights culture” and place a new emphasis on “social responsibility”.
However, the specifics will remain a mystery until the final proposal is published later this year.
One thing we do know though, is that a big part of the proposed “strengthening” of our pandemic response will be increased funding and resources for developing vaccines even faster than the Covid vaccine.
This aim was announced at the recent Global Pandemic Preparedness Summit in London, where the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced their “100 Days Mission”.
CEPI, for those who don’t know, is a foundation jointly funded by (among others) the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum, whose stated aim is “to develop vaccines to stop future epidemics”.
The 100 Days Mission, which already has its own website and a trending hashtag (#100DaysMission), is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.
In future CEPI wants to produce new vaccines for unknown emerging diseases – what they call Disease X – within 100 days of the pathogen being isolated.
They’ve already secured 1.5 BILLION pounds sterling to further this effort.
Let that percolate.
Over a billion pounds to produce vaccines for a disease that – as yet – does not even exist, and may never exist.
This looks like a further step in the process, begun by the ‘pandemic’ narrative, of redefining everything we previously understood about how infective agents and vaccines interact.
Covid, let’s remember, was a disease-narrative totally removed from all social, scientific and historical context to create a fluid, agenda-driven alternate reality. And it looks as if this is intended to be the ‘new normal’.
Here’s a little refresher course on just how fast the Covid vaccines sped through the usual scientific process:
- The virus was allegedly discovered in December.
- It was fully genetically sequenced by January 10th 2020.
- The paper that all the PCR tests were based on was peer-reviewed in less than 24 hours.
- After decades of failure, the human race produced a dozen effective coronavirus vaccines in less than three months.
- These vaccines were then “safety tested” in less than six months.
All told, from ‘discovering’ the virus to getting the vaccine(s) approved for use on people, it took 300 days.
This process normally takes at least 3-10 years.
It usually takes at least 5-10 years to bring a fully-tested vaccine to market. A paper by Pronker et al, “Risk in vaccine research and development quantified” (PubMed 2013), estimates the average development time for a new vaccine to be over 10 years.
Simply put, it has never been possible to make a vaccine for a new disease in 1000 days, let alone 100.
The speed with which the covid vacines were produced is totally unprecedented in the history of vaccines.
The idea you could further reduce this unprecedented time frame, and produce a safe and effective vaccine in only 100 days is frankly absurd. It’s surreal. Fictional.
For one thing, the vast majority of candidate vaccines don’t work.
The Pronker paper, found that of all potential vaccines products being researched, only about 6% ever actually hit the market.
So, back in the real world, a vaccine manufacturer will go through that 5-10 year process knowing there is a ~94% chance there will be nothing to show for it in the end.
After decades of trying they haven’t managed to produce a vaccine against AIDs, or the flu, or malaria or many other common diseases. These are conditions they know and (allegedly) understand, but they cannot make vaccines for them.
So, in that old world of veridical reality, even if you managed to make a vaccine in 100 days, the odds are it either won’t produce immunity, or it will but will also produce harmful side effects, or maybe it will do literally nothing.
Now, granted, science and technology are not static. We are always moving forward and making progress… but that’s irrelevant to this issue, because even if vaccine manufacturing technology really did take a huge leap forward just in time to battle covid, you still can’t produce a safe vaccine in 100 days, or even 300 days – because the process NEEDS time.
It takes time to test rigorously, it takes time – a lot of it – to a assess long term side effects. The clue is right there in the name.
No amount of new tech is going to permit you to know the ten-year effects of a vaccine in under three months.
With the public eye fixed on Ukraine, and Covid now firmly in the collective unconsciousness’s rearview mirror the powers that be are trying to normalise what was, inherently, an abnormal, unreal (if not impossible) process. To make it easier “next time”.
We’ve already seen Bill Gates lament that the vaccine was too slow, and he was partially right. The Covid story didn’t keep people hypnotized enough to secure everything they needed, in part because their “vaccine” rollout took almost a year.
But for the future “Disease X” waiting in the wings, it will officially only take three months, and the fear will still be fresh. The fact the process will be completely incompatible with reality or sense will not matter in the slightest.
To be clear: You cannot develop a “safe and effective” vaccine for a brand new disease in three months.
You can’t do it in one year.
And if in the future they claim to have done so, they will be lying.
JOHN KIRIAKOU: I Work for Sputnik News
By John Kiriakou | Consortium News | March 9, 2022
I work for Sputnik News. There. I said it. I’m not embarrassed or ashamed. I’m also not a Russian propagandist, despite what you may have read in the “mainstream” media. Sputnik approached me in 2017 and offered me a job as a radio talk show host. I turned them down. Friends told me that it would be a mistake working for the Russian Bear. They said that I would attract attention from the government, maybe even the FBI. Did I really want to do that?
About eight months passed, and Sputnik offered me a job again. Having just been released from prison after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, nobody was beating a path to my door to offer me a job, and I was newly separated from my wife. So I went in for an interview. The network’s editor-in-chief said that he wanted to offer me my own talk show. I said that I was interested, but that I had to have complete editorial freedom. “Done,” was the reply. I said that I wanted to be able to talk about anything I wanted, to be able to criticize anybody I wanted, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Done,” the editor-in-chief said again. I asked if he would be willing to put it in writing in my contract. He did, and I began working at Sputnik in August 2017.
For the first two-and-a-half years, I cohosted a show with Brian Becker, a well-known progressive activist and the co-founder of the ANSWER Coalition. I have deep respect for Brian, who sits to my left, politically, and the show, Loud & Clear, was a hit.
I later cohosted a show with Lee Stranahan, a conservative populist/libertarian and former journalist with Breitbart. We agreed on almost nothing in the year we worked together. And like me, Lee was never told that he had to say something or not say something or to take a certain political position. We were free to speak our minds. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve cohosted a mainstream progressive show with Michelle Witte, an accomplished and very intelligent news professional. I thoroughly enjoy going to work every day. I honestly don’t even see it as work because it’s so much fun.
But to hear The Washington Post tell it (or The New Republic, or the Center for Strategic and International Studies) I’m a dangerous propagandist for Vladimir Putin. The truth is that anybody who says that is either a propagandist himself or simply has never listened to my show.
I first realized that there were people out there who didn’t like or appreciate alternative viewpoints in 2018, when I received an email from a journalist from The New Republic. (She was actually a wedding photographer who worked as a freelance journalist.) She said that she wanted to do a story about my new career at Sputnik. I declined, saying that I wasn’t interesting in being “the story.” She responded, “Look, this story is getting written with you or without you.” I gave her an interview to try to soften the blow, but the result was “The Spy Who Became a Russian Propagandist.”
‘Weakening Our Democracy’
The same thing happened again shortly after The New Republic article was published. In early 2020, CBS News apparently realized that Sputnik was being broadcast on a small station in Kansas City. They listened to my show Loud & Clear and, reacting specifically to a segment that I used to do every Thursday called “Criminal Injustice,” said that I was “weakening our democracy.” How was I accomplishing that incredible feat? I was talking about how the United Nations had declared that the practice of solitary confinement in American prisons is a form of torture. And I advocated for Julian Assange.
A report later in 2020 from the neo-liberal Center for Strategic and International Studies was more direct. It said,
“Sputnik’s weekly segment Criminal Injustice on its Loud & Clear podcast similarly portrays itself as bringing attention to justice being denied to citizens, mixing legitimate grievances with distorted information. Russia’s goal for these programs is not to make the US legal system more just; it is to tell an unrelenting one-sided story to get Americans to believe the system is as corrupt and broken as the legal system in Russia. Putin’s hope is that Americans will give up on democratic institutions, the way so much of his own population has come to accept the corruption in Russia.”
Wow! I had no idea that I had that much influence, that I was that cynical in my creation of Criminal Injustice, or that I had strategized with Vladimir Putin to weaken democratic institutions. If only I could monetize it! The truth is that, after spending 23 months in prison, I have a first-hand view of just how harsh and corrupt our “democratic institutions” are.
So I decided that every Thursday I would interview two friends of mine: Paul Wright, the executive director of the Human Rights Defense Center and the editor of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News magazines; and Kevin Gosztola, an outstanding journalist at Shadowproof.com who focuses on criminal-justice issues. They have nothing whatsoever to do with Russian “propaganda.” They just care about human rights — far more so than does the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Things have gotten tough for Sputnik over the past two weeks. Our sister outlet, the television news network RT America, was forced off the air permanently a week ago. And there are calls from members of Congress, the National Association of Broadcasters, and neoliberal think tanks around Washington for the government to do the same to Sputnik.
They may well succeed. But their complaint that Sputnik pushes “the Russian view” doesn’t carry any weight. So what if it does? BBC carries the British view. DW carries the German view. Al Jazeera carries the Qatari view. Do we ban all of them because Washington objects to a story line? And then do we sit back while the Russians ban CNN, Fox, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, all of which are available in Russia? It’s a slippery slope.
In any case, I would be glad to go on CNN, Fox and MSNBC to talk about my areas of interest, but they have never invited me. Sputnik has given me that platform. If the Washington swells don’t like it, that’s tough luck for them.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.
Chicago Students Try to Cancel Professor Who Predicted Ukraine Crisis
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | March 10, 2022
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is the man who, way back in 2015, said the following:
The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked … What we’re doing is encouraging the Ukrainians to play tough with the Russians. We’re encouraging the Ukrainians to think that they ultimately will become part of the West … And of course the Ukrainians are playing along with this, and the Ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the Russians and instead want to pursue a hardline policy. Well as I said to you before, if they do that their country is going to get wrecked.
Quite a prophetic remark, you might say. Indeed, predicting that Ukraine would “get wrecked” seven years in advance would seem to suggest that Mearsheimer has a good understanding – that he’s worth listening to. (Note: Mearsheimer did not think Russia would launch a full-scale invasion, so he wasn’t 100% right.)
With the Ukraine crisis still dominating the headlines, Mearsheimer must be the golden boy of his department, right? Actually, no. A group of students recently circulated a letter denouncing him for “propagating Putinism” and claiming his actions are “extremely detrimental for our country”.
The students take issue with several statements from Mearsheimer’s 2015 lecture (which is the source of the quotation above). For example, they characterise his use of the word “coup” to describe the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych as “ideological rather than academic”. (They prefer the more heroic-sounding “revolution”.)
The students end their missive by demanding “public disclosure” of all Russian funding received by Professor Mearsheimer, as well as a “statement from the university community at large that it does not condone anti-Ukraine ideology on campus”. They also claim that, if left unaddressed, the problem could “tarnish the reputation of our beloved University”.
I haven’t been able to find any articles suggesting that the university took action in response to the letter. So the students’ campaign appears to have failed. Good.
And it’s of course absurd to suggest that Mearsheimer holds an “anti-Ukraine ideology”. Indeed, much of his 2015 lecture (which the students probably just skimmed through while searching for ‘incriminating’ statements) is concerned with how to prevent Ukraine from “getting wrecked”.
As I noted in a previous post, Mearsheimer’s proposal comprised three elements: ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine; funding an economic rescue plan, together with Russia and the IMF; and insisting that Ukraine respect minority rights, especially minority language rights.
It seems plausible that if we’d followed this proposal, we wouldn’t be in the situation we are today, with Russian troops advancing on Kiev, and the West powerless to intervene for fear of sparking World War III. From what I see, Mearsheimer is a far better friend to Ukraine than the people who dismissed his warnings.
CDC-funded study concludes most COVID vaccine reactions ‘mild’ yet VAERS data show thousands of deaths, hospitalizations
By Madhava Setty, M.D. | The Defender | March 9, 2022
A study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published Monday in The Lancet concluded most COVID-19 vaccine-related adverse events reported during the first six months after the vaccines were rolled out in the U.S were “mild and short in duration.”
For the study, researchers analyzed data captured between Dec. 14, 2020, and June 14, 2021, by two reporting systems, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and v-safe, both of which are overseen by the CDC. Nearly 300 million doses of COVID vaccines were administered during the study period.
The authors found that of the 340,522 adverse events reported to VAERS, 27,023 (8%) were serious, 4,496 of which were deaths.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines a Serious Adverse Event (SAE) as an outcome that is life-threatening or one that results in hospitalization (immediate or prolonged), permanent injury, birth defect or death.
Authors suggest vaccines didn’t cause deaths
As an event capturing system VAERS is not designed to attribute causation. However, the authors noted that there was a “… concentrated reporting of deaths on the first few days after vaccination..”
The temporal relationship of the death to the time of vaccination was demonstrated here:
The correlation in time between inoculation and death is highly suggestive of causation. Instead, the authors chose to explain it as follows:
“This pattern might represent reporting bias because the likelihood to report a serious adverse event might increase when it occurs in close temporal proximity to vaccination.”
The authors suggest that if a death occurs soon after vaccination it will be more likely reported than if the death occurred later. This, they believe, is why the number of deaths asymptotically approaches zero as more time elapses since inoculation.
Independent researcher unable to duplicate study’s VAERS findings
Jessica Rose, Ph.D., attempted to duplicate the Lancet authors’ findings through her independent analysis of the VAERS data.
Despite filtering the database using three different date stamps (Vaccination Date, Onset Date and Received Date), none returned the number of reports published in the Lancet.
From her analysis:
“The closest I got to their estimate when I filtered using the RD (Received Date) data was 371,775.
“For the VD (Vaccination Date) data filter I got 545,275 reports and for OD (Onset Date) data filter I got 499,432 reports.”
In other words, using every date option, Rose found tens (sometimes hundreds) of thousands more reports than the authors of the Lancet study found.
The most conservative number, 371,775, is still nearly 30,000 more than reported. Nevertheless, using the Received Date as the date filter still returned 6,114 deaths — 36% more than the CDC study claimed.
Furthermore, Rose’s most conservative search parameters returned 68,124 SAEs, or three times more than the Lance study.
Rose said she believes using the Received Date field will unavoidably lead to an undercount of actual reports because this field is left blank more often than the other timestamps in a given record.
How can this large difference be reconciled?
One clue is Pfizer’s “Cumulative Analysis of Post Authorization Adverse Event Reports,” a document released through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in August 2021, by the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency.
In it, approximately 50% of adverse events reported to Pfizer were SAEs. The adverse events tabulated in this document were passively reported, as they are in VAERS. This further suggests that the authors of the Lancet report may have undercounted SAEs for an unexplained reason.
What about the v-safe findings?
The authors reported separately on their analysis of v-safe data.
V-safe is an active reporting system. Enrolled participants are contacted by phone and are asked to complete a survey. Active surveys are expected to return more complete data. Subjects agree to enroll voluntarily.
Of the 5,674,420 vaccinated subjects that received a second dose and responded through the v-safe system, 26.5% reported they were unable to do normal activities at the time of survey completion.
Additionally, 16.1% were unable to work, 0.9% received medical care and 2,053 were hospitalized.
Is the data ‘reassuring?’
Reporting on the Lancet study, MedPage wrote:
“In an accompanying editorial, Matthew Krantz, MD, and Elizabeth Phillips, MD, both of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee, characterized the report as ‘reassuring,’ noting that, ‘there were no unexpected signals other than myopericarditis and anaphylaxis, already known to be associated with mRNA vaccines.’”
Krantz and Phillips stated myopericarditis and anaphylaxis were “unexpected” signals but were already known to be a problem.
Nonetheless, the Lancet study found that the incidence of myopericarditis and anaphylaxis were 4.4 and 5.5 per million vaccine doses administered respectively.
Yet coagulopathies (clotting disorders including pulmonary embolism), seizures, strokes and Bell’s Palsy (paralysis of the facial nerve) all occurred at higher incidence rates than myopericarditis according to the Lancet study.
Why aren’t these considered unexpected signals to be further investigated or at least acknowledged?
Anaphylaxis, though reported at an incidence of 5.5 per million in the Lancet study, is known to occur at a much higher rate from COVID vaccines.
In a paper published in March 2021, anaphylaxis following COVID vaccines was found to occur at a rate of 250 per million. These findings are a foundational argument for the existence of a significant and calculable underreporting factor (URF) with regard to all events reported in VAERS.
Steve Kirsch estimated the URF to be approximately 41. It is not possible to know what the URF is for every adverse event. Nevertheless, the 4,496 deaths reported in the Lancet are most likely grossly under-representative of the true number of vaccine-related fatalities.
© 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.
Venezuela backs Russia despite tempting US offers
MEMO | March 10, 2022
The US has been trying to tempt Venezuela into increasing its oil production, but President Nicolas Maduro insists on standing by his traditional ally and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. US officials have visited the country with the promise of continued access to US markets.
Venezuela and other South American countries were surprised by the visits by the officials from the White House and the State Department as soon as the Russian military operation against Ukraine started. Venezuelan newspapers reported that the American justification was the difference in the vision of the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden compared with its predecessor run by Republican President Donald Trump, who once threatened to wage war against Venezuela’s socialist President Maduro to remove him from power.
Venezuela wants to regain its share of oil sales to the US market, which was its main market before sanctions were imposed by Washington. However, it said that this must be done without engaging in any policy hostile to Russia. US companies increased their imports of Russian oil when the embargo on oil from Venezuela was imposed.
Despite the US offers, Venezuela has stressed that any increase in its oil quota will be made in coordination with OPEC. It will not submit to US demands.
Although it is in contact with the Biden administration, Venezuela has made its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine very clear. President Maduro, for example, has told Putin that Russia has the right to defend its security in the face of NATO expansion. Moreover, the Venezuelan representative in the Human Rights Council in Geneva has condemned the punitive measures taken against Russia, while his country abstained during the UN General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning the invasion.
Teach your child censorship!
By Niall McCrae | Unity News Network | March 9, 2022
As any critically thinking parent knows, schools are a hotbed of state propaganda, from subversive gender ideology to prophecies of doom on climate change. But this has worsened significantly in the past two years, with the official covid-19 narrative pushed in every possible way (whether the schools were open or in online learning). An important strategy is to teach children to avoid contrary viewpoints and controversial assertions on the internet.
Yesterday my 5-year-old brought home a booklet handed out to her class, titled Digital Parenting (sponsored by Vodafone). The contents are in tune with the Online Safety Bill: the focus is not on preventing exposure to violence, terrorism or pornography, but on suppressing inconvenient truths.
Featuring in the pamphlet is Nicky Cox MBE, editor of First News newspaper and producer of FYI on Sky News channel, both presenting current affairs to children. According to Cox, ‘as adults we have the experience to question what we read, but children are not so savvy’. The gullibility of the adult populace, duped by bought mainstream media into fearing a killer virus, fraudulent testing, wearing useless facemasks and taking a series of experimental genetic engineering injections, suggests otherwise.
Cox warns that fake news isn’t always obvious: ‘more confusingly there are stories with a kernel of truth which have biased reporting’. Shouldn’t children be taught to understand and critically appraise bias, rather than pretending it is just a tool of opponents? Shouldn’t they be shown different perspectives, and how the likes of the BBC and Guardian project their own prejudices and political agenda? These outlets become more like Pravda, the mouthpiece of Soviet totalitarianism, by the day. Audaciously, Cox congratulates her news as ‘balanced’: does she allow a smidgen of counter-narrative alongside shilling for covid vaccines or war with Russia?
The most egregiously censorial part of this guide is ‘5 terms every parent should know’. First is ‘deepfakes’, which apparently means doctored images. However, the Ukraine theatricals have shown that video or photographs do not need to be manipulated; they can simply be taken from another context, whether from a past war in another continent or from a movie.
Second is cancel culture, which you and I may see as a real problem. No, the booklet casts this as a positive, meaning ‘withdrawal of support for public figures or companies we disagree with’. This is teaching children that it is justifiable to ‘unperson’ someone who thinks differently to them; it is an affront to a free, democratic society. Children should be encouraged to tolerate and listen to other opinions, not to silence them. And resilience should be nurtured, not vulnerability.
Next are misinformation and disinformation. The former is unintentional or careless falsehood, while the latter is deliberate untruth. An example of a misleading message is ‘sharing a covid-19 “miracle cure” without knowing if it’s genuinely effective’. Well, that would be enough to put a health warning on all covid vaccine promotion. But of course the booklet authors are thinking of ivermectin, typically misrepresented by compliant broadcasters as ‘horse dewormer’.
Finally there is digital activism. Like cancel culture, this is something to encourage. It means ‘using digital platforms to encourage social or political change, as seen during the US election and Black Lives Matter movement’. Could it also include supporting the Canadian truckers’ convoy or informed choice on vaccinating kids? Don’t be silly. The establishment and its paid helpers are now nakedly discriminatory, and they don’t care. If you are angered by their hypocrisy and bias, all the better for them.
I would summarise this as a glossy guide to teaching children censorship. Using its own language – a deepfake.
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New Book
The Vaccine Mafia: Pfizer’s Former Chief Toxicologist Proves How Toxic Substances Were Unlawfully Sold to Us as a Solution for COVID-19
By Helmut Sterz
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.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The ‘Gaza Treatment’: How Media Headlines Obscure Who is Bombing Yemen
- Ro Khanna urges Democrats to strip Israel ‘integration’ provision from defense bill
- Why Iran designated British MI6, Royal Navy, and RAF as hostile, terrorist organizations
- Armenian opposition politician dies in custody
- US still trying to recycle failed hypersonic missile programs
- France’s ‘Cold War’: Paris blames Tehran for supermarket fridge hacks
- Psywar no more? 77th Brigade’s sudden death
- Ukraine Already Carved Up… Before Talks Begin? /Prof. Richard Sakwa
- The vindication of Marjorie Taylor Greene
- Nearly 80% of Britons consider Israel a threat to world peace and security: Survey
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- German Authorities Start Initiative To Evaluate Public Register For Climate “Disinformation” Spreaders!
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
