UK Gov. awards £320 million tax-payer funded contract for ‘Covid-19 Media Propaganda Campaign’ which runs until April 2022
THE DAILY EXPOSE • MAY 2, 2021
You don’t think things are going to go back to normal on the 21st June 2021 do you? The evidence is mounting to the contrary and the latest piece of the puzzle has cost the British tax-payer £320 million.
Previous pieces of the puzzle have come in the form of a document produced for the UK Government entitled ‘Summary of further modelling of easing of restrictions – Roadmap Step 2’, and a contract currently out for tender for the employment of ‘Covid Marshals’.
The former declares that a third wave is inevitable and that it will be the fault of children and those who refuse the experimental Covid-19 vaccines. Whilst the latter confirms that Covid Marshals will be employed from the 1st July 2021 until the end of January 2022 at the earliest, to the tune of £3 million of tax-payers money.
The latest evidence that things will not be returning to normal on the 21st June 2021 comes in the form of a contract which has been awarded to a single company, costing the British tax-payer £320 million. The contract has a start date of 1st April 2021 and is due to run until the 31st March 2022. It’s stated purpose? “The provision of Media buying services for COVID 19 campaigns.”
The closing date for applications was 12am on the 31st March 2021 and the contract was awarded to ‘OMD Group Limited’. The company is based in London and has a financial director named ‘BELL, Ronald James‘ who has been with the company since the 1st November 2017. But we can also see that there have been three new appointees to the board on the 22nd February 2021. These include FENTON, Laura Claire who has been appointed as CEO. PANESAR, Ravinder who has been appointed as a financial director. And STURGEON, Natalie who has been appointed as CEO.
The three new appointees have certainly struck gold rather quick. We wonder if these people have any ties or links to any members of Boris Johnson’s current Cabinet? Track record would suggest so.
The Government has already spent hundreds of millions of tax payers money since March 2020 to advertise the fact that there is a pandemic and now plan to carry on the tradition for at least another year. The question is, if there was really a deadly pandemic would authorities need to advertise it?
The answer of course lies in the fact that this has never been about a virus, and has always been about control. This £320 million contract is to fund propaganda and maintain the level of fear that they have created in a large amount of the UK population.
The contract also explains why the mainstream media have remained largely silent and toed the line at all times in regards to the narrative being portrayed by the UK Government and their circle of scientific advisors. It would cost them millions of pounds in advertising fees if they refused to do so.
Think things will go back to normal on the 21st June 2021? Think again. This won’t end until we all say it does.
Do anti-depressants work?
By Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | April 30, 2021
Anti-depressant drugs are common. Very very common. According to the Centers for Disease Control in the United States, 13% of adults reported taking an anti-depressant when surveyed a few years ago. Among women over the age of 60, almost one in four was taking an anti-depressant!
When I work in the hospital, I frequently see elderly people who are on five, ten, fifteen, or even twenty drugs simultaneously. Invariably, one or more of these drugs is an anti-depressant. This absurd overuse of medications, an issue known as polypharmacy, is one of the biggest health problems facing elderly people today. Anti-depressants are one of the main drug classes contributing to polypharmacy.
With so many people taking anti-depressants, you would think that they must at the very least be effective. And safe. Why else would so many millions of people be taking them on a daily basis? Why else would doctors prescribe them so freely?
The most commonly prescribed type of anti-depressant is the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Examples of this type of drug include sertraline (a.k.a. zoloft), escitalopram (a.k.a. cipralex), and fluoxetine (a.k.a. prozac). SSRI’s increase serotonin signalling in the brain, which is hypothetically a good thing for people who are depressed. They are generally considered to have the best balance of efficacy and safety of any anti-depressant drug, which is why they are the first line therapy.
So, how effective are SSRI’s at treating depression?
A systematic review and meta-analysis was published in BMC Psychiatry in 2017 that sought to answer this question. The review was funded by the Danish government. It identified 131 randomized placebo-controlled trials investigating SSRI’s as a treatment for depression in adults, with a total of 27,422 participants, and meta-analyzed them (i.e. added all their results together to create one big “meta” trial – this gives a more reliable result than the individual trials can provide).
Before we get in to the results, we need to quickly discuss the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HDRS). The HDRS is the scale most commonly used to assess severity of depression in studies, and also to assess how the severity changes over time. It is a 52 point scale, so a score of 52 is as bad as it can get. A score below eight is considered normal (i.e. not depressed). 8 to 13 is considered to be “mild” depression. 14-18 is considered to be “moderate” depression. 19-22 is considered to be “severe” depression, and anything from 23 and up is considered to be “very severe” depression.
The authors of the review decided, before analyzing the data, that anything less than an average reduction of three points on the scale would be considered a negative result. Personally I think that this is a bit generous. I find it hard to believe that anyone would be able to notice a three point reduction on a 52 point scale. I would have set the threshold higher, at more like six points at the very least. One article published back in 2015 came to the conclusion that people are unable to detect anything less than a 7 point difference on the 52 point Hamilton scale. But as we shall soon see, setting the threshold higher wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. So, let’s get to the results.
Overall, SSRI’s resulted in a 1.94 point greater reduction on the 52 point HDRS scale than placebo. Even when only trials of people with very severe depression (a score of 23 or higher) were included, the improvement over placebo was still only 2.69 points.
So, SSRI’s were not able to get over even the generously low bar set by the reviewers. And let’s remember that most of the studies included in the analysis were industry funded, and industry funded studies usually show a bigger benefit than is seen in reality, so it is likely that the real effect is even smaller than was found in the systematic review.
In other words, SSRI’s are not effective as anti-depressants. Considering that they are currently the first line drug therapy for depression, that would seem to be quite a big problem. And before you suggest that we should use non-SSRI anti-depressants instead, like for example tricyclics, I would note that these have not been shown to be markedly more effective than SSRI’s in head-to-head comparisons. Otherwise we’d be using them as the first line therapy, not SSRI’s.
What about safety? Did SSRI’s cause any serious adverse events?
2.7% of participants in the SSRI arm developed a serious adverse event, as compared with 2.1% in the placebo arm. That is a 0.6% absolute difference, which would mean that roughly one in 170 people treated with an SSRI will suffer a serious adverse event as a result of the treatment. Note that the definition of a serious adverse event is an event that causes death, significant risk of death, disability, and/or hospitalization. In other words, “serious” is serious. So even a small increase in serious adverse events is something that needs to be taken quite, well, seriously.
Medical treatments should ideally result in a decrease in serious adverse events. They certainly should not cause an increase. A truly effective anti-depressant would not just make people feel better, it would also make them less likely to try to commit suicide, which would result in an overall reduction in serious adverse events. No such signal was seen here. Even if you look just at suicide attempts, rather than at adverse events overall, there was no signal that SSRI’s decrease their frequency.
Note that the trials in the review were generally of healthy people under 65 years of age. Frail elderly people treated with SSRI’s will likely experience serious adverse events at a much higher rate than that found here.
Speaking of frail elderly people, in particular those living in nursing homes, I want to take the opportunity to point out that they are frequently the heaviest users of anti-depressants. So you would think that there would be a lot of research showing that anti-depressants are useful to give to the frail elderly… Well, having seen that the evidence doesn’t support using anti-depressants in younger people, you might be a bit skeptical by now. A systematic review was published in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association in 2012, that sought to determine how beneficial anti-depressants are when used as a treatment for depression in people over the age of 65 who are living in nursing homes. The review was funded by the US government.
Two(!) randomized controlled trials were identified that compared anti-depressants with placebo in nursing home residents, with a total of 55(!) participants. It’s pretty shocking that the evidence base is so small, when you consider that nursing home residents are such heavy user of anti-depressants. Basically, when we (doctors) use these drugs on elderly nursing home residents, we have pretty much zero idea what we’re doing, because there is so little evidence.
Neither of the two trials found any benefit to treating nursing home residents with anti-depressants (although to be fair, they were so small that I wouldn’t have expected them to find anything – they were statistically underpowered). The number of participants was far too small to gain any kind of estimate of the prevalence of serious adverse events, although I think it’s fair to assume, as mentioned above, that it would be much higher in this group than in the younger healthier group included in the studies in the previous review.
I’m mainly bringing this tiny systematic review up to illustrate how atrociously small the knowledge base often is when it comes to the effects of drugs on the frail elderly.
What conclusions can we draw these systematic reviews?
Anti-depressant drugs are ineffective against depression. The harms of these drugs clearly outweigh the practically non-existent benefits. That is true for everyone, but especially so for the frail elderly who are at much higher risk of side effects than the general population. In light of this information, which has now been in the public domain for at least a few years, you would expect large campaigns to get doctors to stop prescribing these drugs. Funnily enough, that hasn’t happened yet.
We Need to Hear Much More About Florida and Texas and Less About the Latest Covid Hotspots
By Will Jones • Lockdown Sceptics • April 30, 2021
Would that journalists and broadcasters paid as much attention to places with no restrictions doing fine as they do to the latest places experiencing a Covid surge.
All eyes are currently on India and especially Delhi where, after a year of little impact, the virus is making its nasty presence felt. But as Ivor Cummins points out, India for whatever reason has a long way to go to catch up with countries in Europe and the Americas when it comes to Covid deaths. The country is not a good comparison for the UK where the virus is endemic and substantial population immunity is now present.
If only our media would spend as much time telling the population about how Florida lifted its restrictions back in September, how South Dakota never had any, and how Texas and Mississippi reopened in full at the start of March, as they do telling us about how many people are in hospital in Delhi. The latest positive-test data for these open states is in the graph above, along with two other light-restriction states, South Carolina and Georgia. Note the conspicuous lack of surge despite being basically back to normal. What more evidence do our politicians and scientists need that the threat from the virus is overblown and does not warrant social restrictions or emergency measures? Is the Government interested in data which contradict their preferred narrative?
The Telegraph today is reporting that as of June 21st – another seven weeks away – Brits will be permitted once again to attend large events without anti-social and uneconomic distancing requirements and hug one another. Our ultra-cautious scientists are advising that these things might just be okay by then. Though in case you might have thought they would then end the seemingly endless state of emergency, they have said measures such as staggering entries to venues accommodating large groups and good ventilation will still be required. What part of normal don’t they understand?
Nor is there any indication of a move to return international travel to normal, as the country faces more limitations on travel this summer – when most of the country is vaccinated – than last summer – when nobody was. What this has to do with following the science is, as ever, unclear.
What’s strange is that even in America where parts of their own country are living free and showing that the measures aren’t needed, state governments, with popular support and backed by federal agencies, just carry on with their restrictions, lifting them only very slowly and with no obvious commitment to bringing them finally to an end. It’s as though people don’t want to know. Too much has been invested in the lockdown narrative, it seems, for people to be able to cope psychologically with the trauma of facing the truth that it is fundamentally false. Too many reputations are at risk. Too many interests coincide.
Are we doomed to live forever in this Covid state of emergency? I confess it is hard to see what will prompt governments to bring it to an end, now that we live in permanent fear of the appearance of variants and believe we must continually top up the whole world’s antibodies through rolling annual programmes of vaccinations. One of the most depressing thoughts is I find it almost impossible to imagine Boris Johnson facing the camera and announcing: “My friends, our ordeal is over. The data is clear. The virus is now one among many hazards with which we daily must live. Vaccines are available to the vulnerable, as are effective treatments, and we will continually strive to find the safest ways to protect those at risk from this and other illnesses. It is time to resume our old lives. I declare the state of emergency to be over.”
Will we ever reach a point where we no longer even think about whether some activity is “Covid secure”? Where we no longer see our fellow human beings as sources of infection? It would be good to hear much more often from the Government that this is where it believes we are headed, sooner rather than later.
Update on EU’s Vaccine Passport Scheme
By Toby Young • Principia Scientific • April 29, 2021
We have an update today on yesterday’s vote in the European Parliament, which essentially waved through the Commission’s plans to roll out a vaccine passport scheme across the EU, which we covered yesterday. This is a guest post from a source within the EU.
In Brussels yesterday the European Parliament adopted a negotiating position on the Commission’s Digital Green Certificate proposal. 575 MEPs voted for a compromise text, with 80 against and 40 abstentions.
Voting took place remotely after three hours of speeches to a mostly empty chamber.
The Commission’s desire to create a universal system of health check points within the EU was apparent before the Plenary Session. During the debate it became increasingly clear that these checks will be taking place beyond Member State borders.
MEPs were resigned to passing the Regulation in order to “return to normal” even if it “puts Schengen at stake”.
Voter concerns that European society would be divided were occasionally relayed, usually as a prefix to a bald statement that the DGC would neither discriminate nor function as a pass for entry into Member States.
A handful of MEPs asked to examine the Proposal more critically.
With Parliament’s approval – and the three EU Institutions already in alignment – negotiations between Commission, Council and Parliament on the final text will be a mere formality.
We can expect the rubberstamp by June, ushering in a sophisticated and probably enduring system of health checks across Europe, enhanced by the draconian Passenger Locator Form, also on its way to becoming law.
Most US & UK businesses to REQUIRE at least some employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19, poll shows
© ASU Workplace Commons / rockefellerfoundation.org
RT | May 1, 2021
Many Americans and Brits will face de facto vaccine mandates, as a new poll shows that 56% of businesses will require at least some employees to be inoculated against Covid-19, in many cases under threat of losing their jobs.
The poll, which was conducted by Arizona State University and released on Thursday, showed that 40% of businesses will require all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while 16% will mandate the jabs for at least some of their workers. All told, 88% of businesses will require or encourage their employees to be vaccinated, and 60% said they will demand some kind of proof of inoculation.
The survey, which was backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, paints a bleak picture for those who plan to resist getting the Covid-19 jabs. While the US and UK governments have refrained from making vaccines mandatory – and facing legal challenges that might ensue – the private sector may effectively do it for them. Businesses are already setting the stage to require so-called ‘vaccine passports,’ forcing customers to show proof of inoculation or a negative Covid test before accessing certain goods, services and events.
While many people can choose not to travel abroad or go to business venues that require proof of vaccination, an employer mandate could be more problematic. Arizona State said 31% of businesses plan to take disciplinary action, including possibly firing employees who refuse to comply with their vaccine policies.
A further 44% said non-compliant employees won’t be allowed to return to the workplace, while 27% said they will change the work responsibilities of those who fail to obey. Only 15% said there will be no consequences, even though the vaccines are being administered under emergency authorizations and so far lack the long-term study needed for full regulatory approval.
The survey was conducted at 1,168 companies, mostly large businesses with 250 or more employees based in the US and UK. The average business in the poll still has 57% of employees working remotely. About 75% expect workers to be back on site within the next one to six months, but 72% said they plan to offer more flexible work-from-home policies after the pandemic.
Employee wellbeing has suffered greatly during the pandemic. Nearly 58% of businesses said their concerns over employee mental health have increased, while 52% were more concerned about worker engagement. Other troubling issues included Covid-19’s impact on burnout, productivity and morale.
Twitter isn’t censoring accounts to keep users ‘safe’, but to spoon-feed establishment narratives
By Eva Bartlett | RT | April 30, 2021
It’s one thing to have policies against violence, abuse, and harassment. But in “protecting” users, Twitter is hell-bent on censoring voices that rock the boat, even when all they have tweeted is a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Last week, Simon Goddek, who has a PhD in biotechnology and researches system dynamics, tweeted a link to a scientific study titled, “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?”
Some time later, his account was frozen and he received a notice from Twitter that it would remain frozen until he deleted the offending tweet, and for the 12 hours following that.
In his Telegram group, he wrote:
“I was put into Twitter jail for citing a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Cancel science is real.
“What’s especially concerning is that I didn’t make any personal comment on the paper’s content. I only said that regarding that paper, masks CAN lead to massive health damages. It’s the conclusion of a scientific piece of work that has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 experts in the field.”
According to Twitter, Goddek violated their policy on, “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”
The article in question wasn’t even as risqué as others and merely addressed undesirable side effects of mask wearing. How is that “misinformation”?
I spoke with Goddek to learn more about what happened. Turns out, it’s not the first time.
“The first time I got censored because I cited a scientific, peer-reviewed paper on masks. I was just citing their work, and I got put into Twitter jail. In that tweet, I was saying, ‘Look, it seems masks don’t work.’ So, I also said my opinion.
“This time, I found another study on masks, which says there are adverse effects if you wear masks. So, I was citing the paper without putting my own opinion, and they censored me again, made me delete it and put me into Twitter jail again.”
On April 17, Naomi Wolf tweeted she had been locked out of Twitter for the fourth time for sharing a Stanford study, “proving the lack of efficacy of masks.” That study was also peer-reviewed.
This isn’t merely a case of Twitter deciding that Goddek and Wolf were not in the position to be discussing the efficacy or dangers of masks. Twitter is censoring pretty much anything about Covid that doesn’t match the narrative promoted by the WHO, CDC, and other such bodies.
Even a well-known epidemiologist has faced Twitter’s wrath. An article in the American Institute for Economic Research noted:
“Harvard Professor Martin Kulldorff and co-creator of the Great Barrington Declaration, one of the most cited epidemiologists and infectious -disease experts in the world has been censored by Twitter. His tweet on how not everyone needs a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 was not taken down. He had a warning slapped on it and users have been prevented from liking or retweeting the post.”
That article also emphasized:
“Dr. Kulldorff serves on the Covid-19 vaccine safety subgroup that the CDC, NIH, and FDA rely upon for technical expertise on this very subject.”
On April 10, a group called Drs4CovidEthics tweeted:
“Not a month on Twitter & we were locked out of our account, forced to delete our pinned tweet. We must self-censor or be banned says Twitter (paraphrasing) We mustn’t contradict official sources. But our letters contradict official sources. With good reason. Which we can’t tweet.”
What do they know better than Twitter censors? They’re merely “doctors & scientists from 25+ countries, including heads of ICU, world leading immunologists, experts in public health, drug safety, respiratory illness, GPs, researchers in vaccines, pharmacology, virology, biochemistry…”
I searched for more examples of extreme Twitter censorship and found further censorship of vaccine related information, and one person’s hypothesis on why vaccine talk is so particularly taboo: “$157 billion buys a lot of Facebook and Twitter bans.”
The popular independent website Off Guardian recently was locked out of Twitter for sharing one of its own articles on Covid vaccines, they told me.
In fact, Twitter has been censoring Off Guardian for at least a year. When users try to open a tweet to an Off Guardian article, they are met with a warning that the link could be potentially spammy or unsafe.
The warning continues with a large blue button advising to return to the previous page, and a teeny tiny “continue” on to the article option. Same thing for the independent Canadian website Global Research.
Last year, I tried to tweet an article written by respected journalist F. William Engdahl for New Eastern Outlook (NEO). Twitter wouldn’t allow me to even tweet it, instead giving me an error message about the link being “potentially harmful.”
And it’s not only matters of Covid. Just now, I tried to tweet another NEO article, not related to Covid, and was again met with the same message.
A Twitter account focusing on the propaganda around Xinjiang had his account suspended.
And when the New York Post wrote exposés about Hunter Biden’s emails, Twitter locked the Post’s account.
Which makes it all the more clear this isn’t about “facts” or “safety” but blatant censorship.
Whether or not you agree with a point or comment being made by one of the people censored by Twitter, we should be allowed to access their perspective, research for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. We don’t need Twitter to hold our hands and spoon-feed us establishment narratives.
Twitter’s “rules” page reads:
“Twitter’s purpose is to serve the public conversation. Our rules are to ensure all people can participate in the public conversation freely and safely.”
If you believe that, as the saying goes, I have a bridge to sell you.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Did Jeremy Scahill’s Analysis Fumble the Ball in Its Indictment of Joe Biden as an “Empire Politician”?
The Intercept series on Biden is marred by omissions and even State Department disinformation
By Jeremy Kuzmarov | CovertAction Magazine | April 30, 2021
Known for his exposés of Blackwater and the U.S. dirty wars in the Middle East, The Intercept reporter Jeremy Scahill’s latest blockbuster is a series on Joe Biden’s history as an “empire politician.”
The series is impressive and informative, however, it ignores certain unflattering historical facts and perpetuates a few popular misperceptions.
CovertAction Magazine commends The Intercept’s investigation into Biden’s influence on U.S. foreign policy over the last half-century, and hopes it will amend and improve it by examining some of the problems with what it reported—and the even greater problems with what it failed to report.
In his introduction, Scahill writes that after poring over congressional reports and speeches among other documents, he came to the conclusion that Biden is a man “dedicated to the U.S. as an empire, who believes that preserving U.S. national interests and ‘prestige’ on the global stage outweighs considerations of morality or even at times the deaths of innocent people.”
The series goes on to provide strong evidence to corroborate this assessment.
Scahill details, for example, Biden’s chairing of congressional hearings that helped build support for the 2003 War in Iraq, his staunch support for the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo, and for the kind of military occupation that the U.S. had conducted in Germany and Japan after WW II there.
Biden further supported U.S. aggression in Grenada, Libya and Panama in the 1980s, which resulted in the deaths of many civilians, and in 1981 voted to provide expansive aid to Pakistan in order to arm Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
One year later, Biden tried to justify Israel’s killing of civilians in Lebanon, which even the Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin couldn’t do.
In the 1990s, Biden backed President Bill Clinton as he bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, and supported President George W. Bush’s sending suspected terrorist suspects to Guantanamo Bay.
Biden supported the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan under false pretexts in 1998. [Source: csmonitor.com ]
When he first ran for the Senate, Biden positioned himself as an opponent of the Vietnam War, albeit on tactical grounds, considering the war to have been “lousy policy” rather than a crime.
Before that Biden had obtained a draft deferment because he had asthma as a teenager. However, he never took part in antiwar protests and referred to antiwar protesters who had occupied the chancellor’s office at Syracuse University where he was a law student as “assholes.”
Senator-elect Joe Biden, D-Del., takes his oath of office in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 1972. [Source: theintercept.com ]
During his early years in the Senate, Biden co-sponsored the 1973 War Powers Act, which mandated that presidents obtain congressional authorization before going to war.
Eighteen years later, Senator Biden denounced President George H.W. Bush’s “monarchist” disdain for congressional authority and opposed the Gulf War in Iraq.
Soon after Bush declared victory in the Gulf, Biden, however, determined that his opposition was a political mistake and began a transformation into a top hawk on Iraq and supporter of many subsequent wars.
While early in his career voting to rein in the CIA, he evolved also into a foe of whistleblowers and helped block the nomination of Theodore Sorensen as CIA Director when it was discovered that Sorensen had given an affidavit in the case of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg that sympathized with Ellsberg.
Ted Sorensen, center, arrives with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., right, at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Sorensen’s nomination for CIA director on Jan. 17, 1977. [Source: theintercept.com ]
Distortions and Omissions
As the above summary indicates, there is much to learn from The Intercept’s series and admire.
However, there are certain topics that are only superficially covered, or inexplicably left out altogether.
Scahill, for example, says nothing about how Biden was mentored when he first came into the Senate “as a young kid” by Averell Harriman, the “father of the Cold War.”
A son of one of the original robber barons who founded the legendary Wall Street firm Brown Brothers & Co., Harriman served as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union 1943-1946, Secretary of Commerce 1946-1948, Governor of New York 1955-1958 and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Harriman’s support for an aggressive anticommunist foreign policy was both ideological and personal; he lost a fortune when zinc mines that he had invested in were nationalized by communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
In the late 1970s, Biden accompanied Harriman and his wife Pamela on a trip to Yugoslavia to attend the funeral of Eduard Kardelj, Tito’s intellectual mentor [Tito was the socialist leader of Yugoslavia from 1953-1980].
W. Averell Harriman, Biden’s political mentor. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Two decades later, as a prominent member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden helped see to it that Harriman’s ambition was fulfilled.
He supported secessionist factions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia that caused the breakup of Yugoslavia and aggressively promoted the bombing of Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro, whose end result was the establishment of a giant U.S. military base, Camp Bondsteel.
Aerial photo of Camp Bondsteel. [Source: wikipedia.org]
Scahill’s discussion of the Bosnia war omits any consideration of the geopolitical imperative underlying U.S. policy and presents a misleading narrative about the war.
He writes that “as Yugoslavia’ disintegrated in the early 1990s, Serbia and Croatia began a bloody battle for control of large swaths [of it].” The Serbs, however, had attempted to keep the Yugoslav federation together when Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded with U.S. encouragement.
The IMF and World Bank had contributed to Yugoslavia’s dissolution through its promotion of fiscal austerity and neoliberal economic programs, which Scahill omits.
After his pithy assessment of the war’s origins, Scahill writes that in Bosnia, “Serb forces committed widespread atrocities, particularly against Muslims.” While this statement is true, it reinforces the dominant view of the Muslims as victims of Serb aggression and war crimes.
The Muslims not only committed their own gruesome atrocities, but were led by an Islamic fundamentalist, Alija Izetbegović, who had been arrested in World War II after recruiting Muslims for a military unit organized by the SS Gestapo.
Then Senator Biden speaks with Alija Izetbegović in Sarajevo on April 9, 1993. [Source: aljazeera.com]
The Muslim fighting regiments were also bolstered by 4,000 Arab jihadist fighters from Afghanistan, Algeria, and other Islamic countries and included two future 9/11 hijackers—a fact Scahill ought to have mentioned.
Srebrenica Distortions
The quality of Scahill’s analysis descends further when he promotes misinformation about the July 1995 killings by Bosnian Serb forces of Muslims in Srebrenica.
Scahill writes that “the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)… determined that more than 8,000 people were killed during the massacre and ruled that the Bosnian Serb operations constituted genocide.”
But the 2001 ICTY judgment of Serb commander Radislav Krstic gave a low estimate of seven thousand men that were captured by the Serbian forces at Srebrenica and concluded that only a “few mortal remains” were found near the purported killing site.[1]
The Sarajevo-based International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), an adjunct of the ICTY, which matched the DNA from bone samples with family members of persons reported as missing, in 2007 identified a total of 6,930 Srebrenica victims.[2]
However, some on this list had gone missing prior to July 1995 and the study could not determine the cause of death.[3] Autopsy reports referred to bodies where only shell or mortar fragments were found, militating strongly against the thesis that they were executed.[4]
Satellite image of alleged mass graves were presented by U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright at the UN several weeks after the alleged Srebrenica massacre. The problem is that proof of the mass graves has never been firmly established and Albright never made the photos available for public examination. [Source: nsarchive2.gwu.edu]
Another thing Scahil omits is that Muslim regiments under Naser Orić, commander of the Bosnian Army’s 29th Division, killed over 3,000 Serb soldiers and civilians from the Srebrenica area, including the town Mayor, before the Serb massacre took place.[5]
Naser Orić a U.S.-supported warlord who bragged about massacres of Serbs committed near Srebrenica. [Source: serbiamonitor.com ]
Scahill makes a point of contrasting Biden’s agitation for war in the Balkans with his opposition to the use of force in Haiti to restore populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power after he had been ousted in a right-wing coup, insinuating that Biden was less concerned about Haitians because they were black.
This is fine, but Scahill could have written more about the politicization of human rights and geostrategic imperatives driving U.S. military intervention in the 1990s.
Biden and DuPont
A principle flaw of “Empire Politician” is that it does not discuss political-economy and the corporate interests that drove Biden’s support for the U.S. empire.
Readers are not made aware of the structural forces that need to be overcome for the forever wars to end. Scahill leaves the impression that Biden’s shifting and mostly odious record is the result of his own misjudgments, rather an oligarchic political system, and that a better man in his position might have done better.
We know that Biden enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the MBNA credit card company and big banks in Delaware along with the DuPont Corporation, the infamous war profiteer and polluter which for decades ruled Delaware like a personal fiefdom.
Biden’s first Senate campaign in 1972 was staffed by DuPont employees, had its office on a road named after DuPont and celebrated its victory in the Gold Ballroom of the Hotel DuPont.
Subsequently, Biden employed a DuPont lawyer as a top adviser and DuPont engineer as Senate chief of Staff and later head of his presidential transition team.
From 1974-1996, Biden lived in the DuPont mansion in Wilmington.
Aerial view of the DuPont mansion in Wilmington which Biden lived in from 1974 until 1996. [Source: housebeautiful.com ]
During the 2020 election cycle, DuPont provided the Biden campaign with $95,729.
Biden further received donations from DuPont lobbyists and executives working for companies owned by the Du Pont family.[6]
In the early 1980s, Biden launched an investigation into Summit Aviation Corp., a Middletown, Delaware company owned by Richard “Kip” DuPont that ferried bombs and guns to the Nicaraguan Contras, a right-wing paramilitary group fighting the left-wing Sandinistas, but never released the findings.[7]
Biden’s job clearly was to help to cover up for criminal activities by a prominent DuPont family member in return for DuPont supporting Biden’s political career.
DuPont later benefited from Biden’s policies in the Middle East, a fast-growing market for DuPont which supplies products to the oil and gas industry, and in Ukraine where the company opened a seed plant to support “increased demand for Pioneer brand corn hybrids.”
Imperial Vice President
Like with Biden’s ties to large corporations, Scahill is weak in analyzing Biden’s record as Vice President.
While acknowledging Biden’s role in supporting drone strikes and covert military interventions in the Middle East, he fails to discuss his advancement of U.S. corporate interests in Central America and record as the Obama administration’s key point man on Iraq.
In that latter capacity, Biden forged close relations with Nouri al-Maliki, the “Shia Saddam,” who helped trigger the growth of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) by oppressing Iraq’s Sunni population.
Biden laughs with Nouri al-Maliki, the “Shia Saddam,” at a press conference in Baghdad in 2009. [Source: sandiegouniontribune.com]
Biden later helped install Haidar al-Abadi as Iraq’s president in an attempt to fulfill the long-standing U.S. ambition of privatizing Iraq’s oil industry, and oversaw the Third Iraq War, which was among the least transparent in modern U.S. history.
Journalists Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal determined that one in five of the 27,500 coalition air strikes over Iraq resulted in at least one civilian death, more than 31 times that acknowledged by the U.S. government.[8]
Scene from Mosul after its sacking by U.S.-coalition forces in 2016. [Source: time.com ]
Ukraine
The biggest elephant in the room is Ukraine.
Biden’s actions there during his Vice-Presidency were arguably the most unethical of his career and showed the maturation of a corrupt political figure.
Biden played a key role in supporting a coup in Ukraine in 2014 that brought to power a regime infiltrated by Neo-Nazis, and was a close confidante of post-coup president Petro Poroshenko, who presided over one of the most corrupt regimes in the world.
Biden enjoys a laugh with Petro Poroshenko, the most corrupt leader in Europe. [Source: covertactionmagazine.com ]
Biden further promoted expanded arms sales to the Ukrainian military while it carried out large-scale human rights atrocities in a dirty war in the East provoked by the coup.
Later Biden bragged about blackmailing Ukraine’s president to secure the firing of an honest Attorney General in order to protect a corrupt energy company, Burisma, which appointed his son Hunter to its board of directors—even though Hunter had no experience in the energy field.
New York Post feature story Biden and his son Hunter’s misdeeds in Ukraine, which Scahill ignores. [Source: nypost.com ]
Evidence has emerged that would indicate that Burisma was a CIA front, controlled by a warlord, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who used it to finance private militias that were relied upon to wage the war in the East.
None of this is mentioned in “Empire’s Politician.”
Besides Ukraine, Scahill fails to address Biden’s support for color revolutions in Eastern Europe that resulted in the overthrow of pro-Russian leaders, and his support for oppressive rulers like Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia (2004-2007; 2008-2013), who provoked a deadly war with Russia that Biden supported.
Saakashvili pins a medal on Biden in July 2009. [Source: facebook.com]
Pierre Omidyar and The Intercept’s Black Hole on Ukraine
Given the shortcomings in Scahill’s study, the question needs to be asked: is Scahill limited in his skills as a researcher and historian—merely a B or B+ level performer, or is he compromised by his work for The Intercept?
The Intercept was launched in 2014 with $50 million in seed money from Pierre Omidyar, the founder of e-bay and owner of PayPal, whom Forbes ranked as the 24th richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $21.8 billion.
Pierre Omidyar [Source: usatoday.com ]
Journalists Max Blumenthal and Alec Rubinstein found that Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change.
One of these countries is Ukraine. In 2011, Omidyar’s foundation, the Omidyar Network, gave $335,000 to “New Citizen,” an NGO that was mobilizing political support against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in the 2014 Maidan coup.
The head of New Citizen, Oleh Rybachuk, was a favorite of the State Department, DC neocons, the EU, and NATO—and the right-hand man to Viktor Yushchenko, who had led Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution against Yanukovych, which Biden supported.
Scene from Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. [Source: pinterest.com]
Before the Maidan Square protests, Rybachuk boasted that he was planning another “Orange revolution.”
Oleh Rybachuk [Source: kyivpost.com ]
In December 2013, The Financial Times reported that Rybachuk’s “New Citizen” NGO campaign “played a big role in getting the [Maidan Square] protest up and running.”
New Citizen, along with the rest of Rybachuk’s network of NGOs and campaigns—“Center UA,” which Omidyar’s network provided over $100,000 to in 2012, “Chesno,” and “Stop Censorship”—targeted pro-Yanukovych politicians in an anti-corruption campaign that built its strength in Ukraine’s regions, before massing in Kyiv.
Omidyar’s Network further funded a virulently anti-Russian Ukrainian internet TV station, Hromadske TV, which promoted anti-Yanukovych propaganda during the Maidan protests, and Rappler, another internet TV station that allied with U.S. interests.
Omidyar’s background and support for the Maidan coup could very well explain why The Intercept’s exposé of Joe Biden leaves out Ukraine, and why Scahill watered down his analysis by omitting any discussion of political-economy.
Repression, Censorship, and Ideological Homogeneity on the Left
The Intercept’s black hole with regards to the Ukraine was apparent in the saga of Glenn Greenwald, who resigned after senior editors refused to publish an article of his about Biden and Ukraine before the November 2020 election.
Greenwald was The Intercept’s other star reporter who had published the Snowden leaks and reported on the machinations in Brazil that led to the impeachment of leftist leader Dilma Rousseff and jailing of Lula.
In his resignation letter, Greenwald wrote that “the same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded [The Intercept], culminating in censorship of my own articles.”
In a very subtle way, did Scahill succumb to the censorship and enforcement of ideological homogeneity by limiting the scope of his investigation into Biden?
After writing a puff piece about U.S. bombardiers in World War II entitled Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team, famed author John Steinbeck wrote: “We were all part of the war effort… correspondents were not liars but it is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies.”[9]
Scahill is a viable critic of the military, but it is in the things not mentioned—Ukraine, Burisma, Averell Harriman, Naser Orić, Mosul, the Shia Saddam, Camp Bondsteel, Petro Poroshenko, Alija Izetbegović, and Dupont—that the untruth lies.
- “Radislav Krstić becomes the first person to be convicted of genocide at the ICTY and is sentenced to 46 years imprisonment.” UN, ICTY Press Release, August 4, 2001, https://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/tjug/en/010802_Krstic_summary_en.pdf ↑
- https://www.icmp.int/press-releases/over-7000-srebrenica-victims-recovered/; David Rohde, “Denying Genocide in the Face of Science,” The Atlantic, July 17, 2015. ↑
- Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, “The ‘Srebrenica Massacre’ Turns Twenty Years Old,” Dissident Voice, August 5, 2015, https://dissidentvoice.org/2015/08/the-srebrenica-massacre-turns-20-years-old/ Military service records showed that 140 of the total had been killed in combat months or years before the fall of Srebrenica. Stefan Karganovic, Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide (Srebrenica Project, 2011), 186. Some on the Red Cross’ missing list also turned up on voter rolls later on and could have been captured or killed in other battles. ↑
- See The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics, ed. Edward S. Herman (Evergreen Park, Illinois: Alphabet Soup, 2011); Karganovic, Deconstruction of a Virtual Genocide. ↑
- “The Fall of Srebrenica, July 1995, Bosnia’s Darkest Hour: Srebrenica: Background and Battle,” Clinton Presidential Library, Yugoslavia Genocide, Srebrenica, https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/53013. Orić even bragged about killing 114 Serbs in one single incident. Scahill’s discussion of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is flawed because it omits its involvement in heroin trafficking and ties to Islamic extremism and fact that President Clinton’s special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, referred to them as a “terrorist organization” mere months before the bombing commenced. Scahill misinterprets the reasons why KLA leader Hashim Thaçi was indicted for war crimes; he was accused of criminal involvement in over 100 murders during the war. ↑
- For a critical history of DuPont, see Gerard Colby, Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1984). ↑
- Colby, Du Pont Dynasty, 14, 786, 787. According to an international arms dealer who knew a Summit executive, Summit planes were used by high-ranking members of the Thai military in northern Thailand to protect illegal drug operations along the Cambodian border and for counterinsurgency operations in the Vietnam War and to protect the illegal Southeast Asian heroin connection by which the CIA funded mercenaries. Some of its warplanes–including ones outfitted for spraying crop defoliants–were sold illegally to dictatorships in Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala and Anastasio Somoza’s Nicaragua in operations supported by Theodore Roosevelt III. DuPont may have further set up military training camps at his Maryland farm where there were reports of automatic weapons being fired. ↑
- See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting for the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press Inc., 2019), 178-181. ↑
- John Steinbeck, Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009); Michael Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 137. ↑
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: jkuzmarov2@gmail.com.
Biden to uphold Western Sahara recognition for sake of Israel
Press TV – May 1, 2021
US President Joe Biden has reportedly decided to uphold the Trump administration’s controversial decision to recognize Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over Western Sahara.
The recognition came as part of a deal with the despotic North African country to normalize relations with the Israeli regime.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita during a Friday phone call that the Biden administration would not, “for the time being,” reverse his predecessor’s pro-Israeli move in the waning days of his presidency, US-based Axios news website reported, citing “two sources familiar with the call.”
“The secretary welcomed Morocco’s steps to improve relations with Israel and noted the Morocco-Israel relationship will bring long-term benefits for both countries,” according to a readout of the call released by the State Department.
Responding to inquires about the issue during a Friday press briefing, State Department deputy spokesperson Jaline Porter tried to dodge the issue.
“When it comes to Western Sahara, we are consulting privately with parties on how to best halt the violence there… We would also talk about having the goal to achieve a lasting settlement,” she said.
Trump’s recognition of Western Sahara as part of Morocco reversed decades of Washington’s policy regarding the disputed territory. It was part of a wider agreement with Rabat’s ruler that included the renewal of diplomatic ties between the Israeli and the Moroccan regimes that triggered massive protests in Palestine and Morocco.
The US thus became the only Western country to recognize Morocco’s alleged sovereignty over Western Sahara, which was annexed by the Rabat regime in 1975 after the former colonial government of Spain surrendered control.
The report further revealed that 10 days ago Biden’s Middle East advisor Brett McGurk “spoke to Bourita and gave the impression that there would be no change in the US policy on Western Sahara.”
It report said both Morocco and Israel had become concerned that the Biden administration may reverse Trump’s contentious decision, solely intended to press more Arab dictatorships to recognize Israel.
Last December, Morocco became the fourth US-backed Arab kingdom to strike a deal aimed at establishing ties with Israel. The others were the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
The move sparked protests across the North African country, opposing the deal and expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause while condemning the Israeli regime’s persisting atrocities against Palestine’s native population.
Later, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu invited Morocco’s King Mohammed VI to Tel Aviv in a “warm and friendly” phone conversation, agreeing to continue contacts in order to advance the normalization agreement.
Trump’s controversial decision, which contradicts UN resolutions on the issue, has been challenged by US lawmakers.
In February, half the US Senate signed a bipartisan letter led by Republican Jim Inhofe and senior Democrat Patrick Leahy calling on Biden to reverse Trump’s “illegitimate” decision.
“The abrupt decision by the previous administration on December 11, 2020, to officially recognize the Kingdom of Morocco’s illegitimate claims of sovereignty over Western Sahara was short-sighted, undermined decades of consistent US policy, and alienated a significant number of African nations,” the senators wrote.
“The Sahrawi people deserve the right to freely choose their own destiny. We hope that we can count on you to be a partner in this effort,” they added.
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