US demands Russia boost natural gas deliveries to Europe through Ukraine
RT | September 22, 2021
The US says Russia must increase supplies of natural gas to Europe through Ukraine to curb skyrocketing energy costs, sticking to its negative stance on the launch of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
“The reality is there are pipelines with enough capacity through Ukraine to supply Europe. Russia has consistently said it has enough gas supply to be able to do so, so if that is true, then they should, and they should do it quickly through Ukraine,” Amos Hochstein, senior adviser for energy security at the US State Department, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
Hochstein said supplies of gas from Russia to Europe are “inexplicably low compared to both previous years and to what they have the capacity to do.” He also said that Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom’s refusal to book additional gas transit through Ukrainian territory for October “increases the concern.”
The US official also accused Moscow of trying to use Europe’s energy crisis to speed up the launch of the newly constructed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Hochstein underlined that US President Joe Biden and his administration oppose the launch of the project.
Gas prices in Europe have been hitting records, with October futures on the Dutch TTF exchange reaching record $963.9 per 1,000 cubic meters this month, while on September 20 the estimated price was $911.2.
Russia’s Gazprom has repeatedly pointed to the connection between high gas prices and lower-than-needed reserves in European underground storage facilities ahead of the approaching winter. As of September 19, those reserves were only 72% full, TASS reported, which is nearly 14% lower than in the past five years.
However, Gazprom emphasized last week that its current volume of gas supplies to Europe is in full compliance with the existing contracts. The company has been uneager to book additional volumes in the pipelines running through Ukraine due to high fees.
Gazprom is also counting on the launch of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline capable of delivering 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually. The pipeline’s daily capacity of gas supply is comparable to the entire volume of liquefied gas that is now supplied to Europe.
However, Russia may have to wait up to four months for EU certification required to start deliveries. The project has been repeatedly delayed under pressure from Washington and some Eastern European countries, which view increasing energy imports from Russia as a threat to Europe’s energy security.
Who represents Afghanistan: Genuine activists vs ‘native informants’
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | September 22, 2021
Scenes of thousands of Afghans flooding the Kabul international airport to flee the country as Taliban fighters were quickly consolidating their control over the capital, raised many questions, leading amongst them: who are these people and why are they running away?
In the US and other Western media, answers were readily available: they were mostly ‘translators‘, Afghans who ‘collaborated’ with the US and other NATO countries; ‘activists’ who were escaping from the brutality awaiting them once the Americans and their allies left the country, and so on.
Actually, the answer is far more complex than that offered by Western officials and media, which ultimately – although inaccurately – conveyed the impression that NATO armies were in Afghanistan to safeguard human rights, to educate women and to bring civilization to a seemingly barbaric culture.
Though political dissent is a basic human right, there is a clear and definitive line between the legitimate right to challenge one’s government/regime and willingly collaborating with another – especially when that collaboration can have dire consequences on one’s own people.
In the United States and Europe, there are thousands of political dissidents from many parts of the world – from South America, the Middle East, East Asia, and others – who are, sadly, used as cheerleaders for political and military interventions, either directly by certain governments, or indirectly, through lobby and pressure groups, academic circles and mainstream media.
These individuals, often promoted as ‘experts’, appear and disappear whenever they are useful and when their usefulness expires. Some might even be sincere and well-intentioned when they speak out against, for example, human rights violations committed by certain regimes in their own home countries, but the outcome of their testimonies is almost always translated to self-serving policies.
Thousands of Afghans – political dissidents, NATO collaborators, students, athletes and workers seeking opportunities – have already arrived in various western capitals. Expectedly, many are being used by the media and various pressure groups to retrospectively justify the war on Afghanistan, as if it was a moral war. Desperate to live up to the expectations, Afghan ‘activists’ are already popping up on western political platforms, speaking about the Taliban’s dismal record of human rights and, especially, women’s rights.
But what is the point of appealing to the western moral consciousness after 20 years of a NATO-led deadly invasion that has cost Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of innocent people?
In Afghanistan, an alternative narrative is evolving.
On September 11, hundreds of Afghan women protested in Kabul University, not against the Taliban, but against other Afghan women who purport to speak from western capitals about all Afghan women.
“We are against those women who are protesting on the streets, claiming they are representative of women,” one of the speakers said, AFP reported.
While AFP made a point of repeating that the women protesters have “pledged” their commitment to “all Taliban’s hardline policies on gender segregation”, emphasising how they were all covered “head to toe,” the event was significant. Among many issues, it raises the question: who represents Afghan women, those who left or those who stayed?
A large banner held by the protesters in Kabul read: “Women who left Afghanistan cannot represent us.”
The truth is no one represents Afghan women except those who are democratically-elected by Afghan society to represent all sectors of that society, women included. Until real democracy is practiced in Afghanistan, the struggle will continue for real freedom, human rights, equality and, obviously, representation.
This fight can only take place within an organic, grassroots Afghan context – whether in Afghanistan or outside of the country – but certainly not through Fox News, the BBC or US Senate hearings.
The late Palestinian-American scholar, Professor Edward Said, repeatedly warned of the pseudo reality painted by the ‘native informants’ – supposed political dissidents recruited by western governments to provide a convenient depiction of the reality in the Middle East and elsewhere, as a moral justification for war. The consequences, as the 2003 Iraq war and invasion have demonstrated, can be horrific.
Said challenged a particular ‘native informant’, the late Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese academic, whose ideas about the Iraqi enthusiasm for the US war, though proved disastrously wrong, were used by George W. Bush and others as proof that the impending war was destined to be a ‘cakewalk‘.
Ajami’s ideas were long discredited, but the political machinations that still prefer ‘native informants’ to genuine human rights defenders and good scholarship remain in place. Many of the Afghan escapees are sure to be strategically placed through the same channels, which continue to promote interventions and sanctions as sound policies.
The war in Afghanistan has ended, hopefully for good, but the conflict on who represents the people of that war-torn country remains unresolved. It behooves the Taliban to deliver on its promises regarding equal representation and political plurality, otherwise there are may others abroad who will be ready to claim the role of legitimate representation.
In the Middle East, in particular, we have already witnessed this phenomenon of the west-based ‘legitimate’ democratic representations. Ultimately, these ‘governments-in-exile’ wrought nothing but further political deception, division, corruption, and continued war.
War-torn Afghanistan – exhausted, wounded and badly needing a respite – deserves better.
Poll: 80% of Palestinians call for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resign
MEMO | September 22, 2021
A recent poll found that about 80 per cent of Palestinians want Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, Quds Press reported yesterday.
The poll was conducted by Khalil Shikaki, who runs the Palestinian Center for Survey and Policy Research in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Shikaki, 1,270 Palestinian adults were interviewed for the survey across the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip between 15-18 September.
“This is the highest number we have seen calling for Abbas’ resignation since Abbas’ election in 2005,” Shikaki told the media.
“If presidential and parliamentary elections were held today,” Shikaki said, “Hamas will win against Fatah if Abbas was Fatah’s choice, but if Fatah nominated Marwan Al Barghouti, it will win.”
A large majority of the Palestinians, the poll found, believe that Hamas deserves to represent the Palestinians, while Fatah, the PA and PA security services have lost people’s confidence.
Meanwhile, most of the Palestinians want Hamas to launch rockets at Israel if it expels Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah and puts restrictions on accessing Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The poll found that the Palestinians have confidence in Hamas’ pledges to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, but they do not believe Fatah and the PA’s promises to do so.
Two-thirds of the Palestinians saw that Hamas fought the last war with Israel in defence of the residents of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Lomborg criticizes medical journals for alarm about climate change
clintel.org
Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg has reacted sharply on the claim of over 200 medical journals, earlier this month, that there are significant health risks to any temperature rise. He concludes that there are very basic mistakes underlying the alarmist claims and sent the following letter to the editor of The Lancet, one of the journals involved. Lomborg posted his letter on twitter.
Below the full letter.
Malmö, September 8, 2021
Dear Dr. Horton,
I read with interest your co-authored editorial “Call for emergency action to limit global temperature increases, restore biodiversity, and protect health” published in BMJ (2021;374:n1734) and many other international journals. As a core argument you write that there are significant health risks to any temperature rise and document it with “In the past 20 years, heat related mortality among people aged over 65 has increased by more than 50%.” However, this mortality increase [i] is a simple count, not a rate. The overwhelming part of the increase is due to the fact that the global population of people aged over 65 increased more than 40% in the same time period. Indeed, the increase in heat mortality rate is a much lower 9.4%. I am sure you agree that making a causal claim without adjusting for a dramatically changed population is fundamentally unsound. In fact, I am positive that you and your journal would demand a rewrite of any paper making such an argument. It is analogously flawed to claiming that Brexit led to better health for the European Union because total deaths overnight dropped 600,000 per year when the UK left. Given the enormous attention that your paper received, I therefore reach out to you to hear what action you will take to ensure that this unsound argument is rectified.
Yours truly,
Bjorn Lomborg President, Copenhagen Consensus, and Visiting fellow, Hoover Institution at Stanford University
I hope it might be useful to visualize the issue.
Below, the left box illustrates your editorial’s claim that temperature rises have increased the number of heat deaths of people aged 65+ by 53.7% while disregarding a 40% increase in the relevant population. The middle box shows the rate of heat deaths for the same population group, which takes into account the rapid increase in the population. I hope you will also find the right box interesting: it compares the heat deaths (which are slowly rising) with the much greater risk from cold deaths (declining much faster) from the Global Burden of Disease study. It highlights the problem with only looking at more heat death but neglecting the much greater fall in cold deaths.

This result is comparable with a new Lancet study that shows global warming increased heat deaths of all deaths by 0.21% (from 0.83% in 2000-03 to 1.04% in 2016-19) and decreased cold deaths by 0.51% (from 8.70% to 8.19%).[ii]
[i] Your reference is indicator 1.1.3, which shows a 53.7% increase in heat mortality from 165,000 annual deaths in 2000-04 to 253,000 annual deaths in 2014-18, from “The 2020 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: responding to converging crises” in the Lancet (https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32290-X).
[ii] Table S5&6, “Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study” Lancet Planet Health 2021; 5:e415–25.
“THESE PATIENTS DESERVE TO BE HEARD” – VAERS WHISTLEBLOWER
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 18, 2021
In a Highwire exclusive, Deborah Conrad, a hospitalist physician’s assistant on the frontlines of the pandemic, pulls back the curtain on the complete lack and disregard in her hospital for reporting Covid vaccine injury to VAERS, this country’s only mechanism to track the safety of these rushed-to-market, mandated products.
In riveting detail, including emails & recorded phone conversations, Conrad exposes the internal push to turn a blind eye to injuries and “tow the company line” that this vaccine is safe.
What did he know and when? Biden’s National Security advisor implicated in Alfa Bank Russiagate scam
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | September 21, 2021
The indictment of lawyer Michael Sussmann promises to shed more light on what really went on during Russiagate. And it also raises questions about the possible involvement of Jake Sullivan – now National Security Advisor.
On September 16, Special Counsel John Durham charged Sussmann, a partner at Perkins Coie, the law firm which represented the Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, with making false statements to the FBI over the course of its Trump-Russia probe.
Sussmann met with counsel James Baker in September 2016, and claimed the Trump Organization had used a secret server of Russia’s Alfa Bank as a communications channel with the Kremlin. What he didn’t mention, according to the indictment, was that he was conducting “opposition research” on Trump, and “coordinating” with the Clinton campaign to present that information to the FBI and mainstream media. In fact, the indictment suggests Sussmann lied, stating he said outright he wasn’t conducting work “for any client.”
This led Baker to “understand that Sussmann was acting as a good citizen merely passing along information, not as a paid advocate or political operative,” when in fact, Durham asserts, he was acting on behalf of three specific clients – an unnamed US tech industry executive, a US internet company, and the Clinton campaign.
Sussmann denies any wrongdoing, and has pleaded not guilty, claiming the charges are politically motivated – his defense lawyers argue that he didn’t make any false statements, and who he was representing was not a material fact. However, in December 2017, the defendant told the Congressional committee on intelligence that information on Alfa Bank was given to him “by a client” and “absolutely” not by “any other source,” and that his client had explicitly directed him to speak to Baker and others.
In any event, dossiers outlining the incendiary allegations were passed anonymously to every major US news outlet over the course of the 2016 presidential election campaign, with many eagerly seizing upon them. However, not all journalists were convinced, and several organizations refused to publish anything on the material. The Intercept issued a withering report on the charges a week prior to the vote, documenting how DNS records provided by the anonymous source “can’t really prove anything at all, and certainly not ‘communication’ between Trump and Alfa,” and no one “can show that a single message was exchanged between Trump and Alfa.”
That same day however, Clinton drew attention to the “covert server” on social media, sharing a statement on the subject by her senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan, acting as if the information her team had passed to the media was new to her.
“This could be the most direct link yet between Trump and Moscow… This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide,” he boldly asserted. “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.”
The indictment makes clear that Sullivan was a key player in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to publicize the Alfa Bank disinformation. It records how Sussmann was “alerted” to the Alfa Bank allegations by his tech executive client in July 2016, and “over the ensuing weeks, as part of their lawyer-client relationship,” the pair engaged with a Clinton campaign lawyer and individuals acting on the candidate’s behalf to share the false charges “with the media and others.”
In mid-September, that lawyer exchanged emails with the “campaign’s manager, communications director, and foreign policy advisor” concerning the false charges, and Sussmann’s success to date with cultivating media interest. This contact was so significant, the lawyer specifically billed the Clinton campaign for the correspondence, an accompanying entry – titled “re: Alfa Bank Article” – naming Sullivan, the campaign’s manager and its communications director.
Sullivan went on to be appointed Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor in November 2020. Now there must be questions as to whether his position remains tenable, given that Durham set up a dedicated grand jury to investigate the Alfa Bank fraud, and several other individuals involved may also subsequently face charges of giving false information to federal officials – the indictment can only raise questions about whether Sullivan was one of them, what he knew, and when.
Durham’s investigative hypothesis is that the Clinton campaign consciously used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the FBI about Trump’s non-existent Kremlin ties in order to “gin up” the agency’s investigative activity in that regard, and damage his electoral prospects. If true, Sussmann certainly seems central to these cloak-and-dagger efforts – he was the Democratic National Committee representative who contracted cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, personally reaching out to its president Shawn Henry for his company’s assistance in investigating the leak of internal emails from the DNC’s servers.
CrowdStrike concluded that the emails had been hacked by Russian intelligence services, which has informed the universally received mainstream wisdom on the subject. Henry’s repeated admissions in December 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee that his company possessed no “concrete evidence” the files were hacked, let alone by Russia, went entirely unreported upon their public release in May 2020. That the CIA maintains technology, dubbed the Marble Framework, which can falsely attribute cyberattacks to foreign countries – including Russia – has likewise never been acknowledged by a Western media outlet.
Another strand of Perkins Coie’s informational assault was the hiring of Fusion GPS, which infamously enlisted the services of former MI6 operative Christopher Steele to compile a dossier on ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The August 2017 testimony of the company’s cofounder Glenn Simpson to the Senate Judiciary Committee would appear to reinforce Durham’s hypothesis, given he revealed that Fusion GPS engaged in a number of insidious schemes to ensure the dossier reached the “leadership level” of the FBI, as it was felt senior operatives would “treat [the information] very seriously.”
One subterfuge involved Steele briefing the Bureau on the allegations, whereupon Fusion GPS “encouraged” journalists to ask the FBI whether they were investigating Trump’s connections with Russia. Another, which proved decisive, saw Steele’s associate Andrew Wood, former UK Ambassador to Russia, speak with John McCain about the dossier at the November 2016 Halifax International Security Forum in Canada. Suitably concerned, McCain arranged for a copy of the dossier to be provided to him, which he then passed to FBI Director James Comey. In turn, it reached President Barack Obama’s desk in the first week of January the following year.
Other schemes may be unearthed over the course of Sussmann’s trial. Fusion GPS alone clearly has much to hide – in 2017, the owners of Alfa Bank sued Fusion GPS and Simpson for publication of false statements accusing the organization of “bribery, extortion, and interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election.” In May this year, the bank’s lawyers filed a motion to compel the disclosure of around 500 documents wrongfully withheld over the course of the trial.
Fusion GPS and Simpson have fought tooth and nail to prevent their release ever since, questionably arguing that they are subject to “attorney-client privilege” and thus should not be subject to production. Among the communications the pair seek to keep secret are those between Fusion GPS and Perkins Coie, including correspondence with Sussmann mere weeks before he met with Baker. Watch this space.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
IMF report suggests credit scores could soon be based on web browsing history
Dystopian future
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 21, 2021
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the results of research conducted into how lenders are likely to be doing their business in the future, and what new information and personal data these companies plan to start asking from borrowers in order to determine their credit score.
The biggest takeaway is the seemingly inevitable shift from merely accessing credit information to also incorporating people’s online behavior into the process of deciding whether to lend them money necessary, for example, to buy a house.
Compared to the way the system now works in most countries – these changes, which are expected to be coming soon, look fairly invasive privacy-wise, and with no “vision” of proper safeguards. Banks and others will go as far as to access personal browsing and shopping history. This would be done by allowing automated systems, powered by algorithms, to harvest the data and turn it into credit reports.
From the report:
“The use of non-financial data will have large effects on the provision of financial services. Traditionally, banks rely on the analysis of customer financial information from payment flows and accounting records. The rise of the internet permits the use of new types of nonfinancial customer data, such as browsing histories and online shopping behavior of individuals, or customer ratings for online vendors.”
Currently, those hoping to take out a loan can expect to have their repayment and credit history length, as well as total debt checked, but going forward, the IMF study suggests, this will be expanded to include what’s known as people’s digital footprint – either collected from data already publicly available, or that obtained by credit bureaus.
The stated goal is to improve “loan default predictions” – and the upcoming trend is sold as a way to give access to money to people who have previously been unable to use loans because their status is “unscorable.” Also known as “credit invisibles,” these are mostly low-income minorities and immigrants, and having access to their personal habits and behavior as exhibited on the internet is supposed to help banks and other lenders “profile” them precisely enough to determine if they should be given a loan.
On the other hand, citizens who are “scorable” but whose score is low might suffer in the new system now in the making, as their online activity could persuade lenders to cut them off from access to money.
Although the move in this direction looks inevitable, some key answers are missing: what data scraped from the internet will be used to determine someone’s credit rating, and how it will be secured.
IMF’s post warns, however, to expect an “efficiency-privacy trade-off.”
Facebook and Instagram delete Project Veritas vaccine video for “misinformation” that could cause “harm”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 21, 2021
Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram have removed a new video from the undercover reporting operatives Project Veritas under its “misinformation” policy.
“We encourage free expression, but we don’t allow false information about COVID-19 that could contribute to physical harm,” the Facebook message shared with Project Veritas read.

Facebook didn’t specifically state which part of the video caused them to decide to delete it.
The video in question featured a whistleblower from the Health and Human Services Department (HHS), registered nurse Jodi O’Malley, making allegations that the federal government were underreporting the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccines.
In the video, O’Malley was discussing with Dr. Maria Gonzales, an ER doctor, who alleges that not all patients suffering from heart inflammation after taking the vaccine are being reported. “But now, they [the government] are not going to blame the vaccine,” Dr. Gonzales said of a patient who had suspected myocarditis.
On hearing of Facebook and Instagram removing the video, O’Keefe made another video sharing the news of the deletion of the video. “We’ve just learned that Facebook and Instagram have taken down this video, and we have a screenshot here which we received from Instagram… It says ‘your post goes against our community standards on misinformation that could cause physical harm.”
O’Malley disputed that the video contained any misinformation. “All I did was just record it,” O’Malley said. “I recorded their statements and I recorded the actual diagnosis, right, now they’re telling the physician the diagnosis [of the] patient is misinformation.”
The deletion of users’ posts based on Facebook’s policy on removing content about “COVID-19 that could contribute to physical harm” was first reported around April of 2021 and is often used on posts that question the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Alabama Hospital Defies Biden Administration, Ends COVID Vaccine Requirement for Staff
By Jack Davis | Western Journal | September 20, 2021
Bowing to the threat of legal action against it, one Alabama hospital has rescinded its requirement that all staff be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
UAB Hospital in Birmingham said it will wait to learn how the federal vaccine mandates announced by President Joe Biden play out before imposing any requirement, according to WBRC-TV.
Last week, the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty said the hospital was violating state law, according to Al.com.
The letter said the state’s ban on vaccine passports means government entities cannot require anyone to disclose vaccine information.
“As the Supreme Court of Alabama has recognized, UAB Hospital is a state-run hospital,” the letter said.
“Consequently, UAB Hospital may not require its employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated or not. Likewise, the Alabama Attorney General has examined the law and concluded that ‘no government, school, or business in Alabama may demand that a constituent, or customer, respectively, be vaccinated for COVID-19 or show proof of his or her vaccination for COVID-19,’” the letter said.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also questioned the legality of the Biden administration mandate, saying he had received complaints about privacy violations, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.
“The Attorney General’s Office has received complaints from healthcare employees who believe their COVID-19 immunization status was obtained by their employers through the ImmPRINT registry for the purpose of verifying compliance with the employer’s immunization requirement,” Marshall said, referring to a statewide immunization database.
“In several of those cases, a shared employer specifically acknowledged accessing the state immunization database for this purpose. This privacy violation is unlawful,” he said.
Marshall said other health care providers should also take note and not be asking employees about their immunization status.
He has said that when the vaccine mandate takes place, Alabama will file a lawsuit against it, according to Al.com.
“The vaccine mandate is unprecedented in its audacity and unlawful in its application,” Marshall said. “The Biden administration knows this full well. The State of Alabama will not allow such an authoritarian power grab to go unchecked.”
Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, said voluntary efforts have produced vaccination rates of 50 percent to 80 percent depending upon the facility.
“It’s not a small issue if we have unvaccinated employees,” Williamson said. “Hospitals have successfully navigated the waters of getting people vaccinated and for the most part, they have been able to do it without mandates.”
The UAB Hospital in Birmingham issued a statement explaining why a mandate imposed one month was scrapped the next.
“The UAB Health System’s policy requiring COVID vaccines for its workers was implemented in August prior to the announcement of forthcoming federal directives,” it said.
“President Biden issued an executive order Sept. 9 indicating that federal rules and regulations will be issued in the coming weeks that will require COVID vaccines for workers at health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid dollars.
“Because UAB Health System must follow federal law, UAB Health System will remove its vaccine policy at this time. UAB Health System will wait for the detailed federal guidance to develop a replacement vaccine policy in order to ensure full compliance with federal law.”
The statement noted that a voluntary incentive that rewards employees who get vaccinated with $400 remains in place.

