The Russian President Vladimir Putin travelled to the country’s “new territories” of Lugansk and Kherson/Zaporozhye Regions on Monday to assess the military situation.
The countdown has begun for the Ukrainian “counterattack”. The arrival of Patriot missile system in Ukraine testifies to the scale of mobilisation to impose heavy losses on Russia. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg paid a surprise visit to Kiev today, his first since the war began.
The leaked Pentagon documents are sceptical about the success of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, but Moscow makes its own assessments. Primarily, the neocons are not going to pull the plug on the Zelensky regime, since that means opening the Pandora’s box when President Biden is about to announce his bid for a second term as president and cannot accept that Ukraine is losing the war.
In reality, Ukraine is haemorrhaging. It is in the nature of attritional wars that at some point, the weaker side breaks and thereupon, the end comes very fast. This was how in Syria where once the 5-year old Battle of Aleppo was won in December 2016, the government forces swept through the country in a string of military victories bringing the curtain down on the conflict.
The attritional war in Ukraine may look “stalemated” but the clincher will be which side is inflicting the greater casualties. There is no question that the massive military, intelligence, financial and economic assistance by the West notwithstanding, Russian forces have ground down the Ukrainian side all along the line of contact.
The Russian ambassador to the UK recently said the ratio of losses in the attrition war is roughly seven Ukrainian soldiers to every Russian soldier. To put things in perspective, western media reports estimate that around 35,000 Ukrainian soldiers will be involved in the upcoming counter-offensive along the 950-km frontline while Putin is on record that the Russian reserve forces on the frontline come to 160,000 soldiers!
The Ukrainian air defence system is in a critical state. Russians have a predominance of artillery and, Russians have heavily fortified the frontline in the recent 5-6 months in multiple layers of defence such as mines, earthworks and bollards to impede advancing tanks, etc.
This is a desperate gambit for Ukraine, which has lost a large share of its most experienced soldiers (estimated 120,000 casualties), to take on the Russians who are having air superiority and missile superiority, air defence superiority and artillery superiority, and trained manpower superiority, above all.
The areas that Putin chose to visit — Kherson / Zaporozhya and Lugansk — are where the Ukrainian counteroffensive is most expected. Putin heard from the commanders the military situation and of course, most certainly, that will be inputs for his decisions on Russian counter-strategies, both defensive and offensive.
Despite the Pentagon leaks and the ensuing disarray and confusion in Washington and European capitals (and Kiev), the Ukrainian counterattack will go ahead to gain back at least some of the lost territory. This is a desperate throw of the dice.
However, delusional thinking still prevails in Washington. This is apparent from a recent article in Foreign Affairs co-authored by two veterans of the US establishment — former State Department official Richard Haass and Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — titled The West Needs a New Strategy in Ukraine: A Plan for Getting From the Battlefield to the Negotiating Table.
The article largely sticks to the myths spawned by the neocons — that Russia’s special military operations failed and the war has “turned out far better for Ukraine than most predicted” — but has occasional flashes of realism. It builds on the refrain currently in vogue in Washington that “the most likely outcome of the conflict is not a complete Ukrainian victory but a bloody stalemate.”
Haas and Kupchan wrote that “By the time Ukraine’s anticipated offensive is over, Kyiv may also warm up to the idea of a negotiated settlement, having given its best shot on the battlefield and facing growing constraints on both its own manpower and help from abroad.”
The authors take note en passe that Russia’s leadership has options and calculations too, as western sanctions have failed to cripple the Russian economy, popular support for the war remains high (above 70%) and Moscow senses that time is on its side as the staying power of Ukraine and its Western supporters and their resolve will wane and Russia should be able to expand its territorial gains substantially.
Fundamentally, Haas and Kupchan hail from another planet. They cannot comprehend that Russia will never accept a scenario where the conflict ends with a ceasefire but the NATO will continue to beef up Ukraine’s military capabilities and steadily integrate Kiev into the alliance.
Why would Russia want to play another game of musical chairs while the West formalises Ukraine’s NATO membership — that is, acquiesce in a replay of the grotesque interregnum between Minsk Agreements of 2015 and Russia’s special military operations?
Putin’s visit to the new territories at this crucial juncture with the attritional war at a tipping point conveys a powerful signal that Russia too has an offensive plan and it is not up to Biden to blow the whistle and call off the proxy war — out of sheer fatigue or pressing distractions in the Asia-Pacific region or due to cracks in western unity or whatever else.
Equally, it is improbable that Russia can ever reconcile with the Zelensky regime, which Moscow sees as a puppet of the Biden administration. But how can Biden possibly dump or lose sight of Zelensky while the skeletons are rattling in the family cupboard?
Most important, Russian public opinion expects Putin to redeem the pledge he made while ordering the special military operations. Anything short of that will mean tens of thousands of Russian lives perished in vain.
It is not in the grain of Putin’s political personality to ignore the groundswell of Russian opinion — or overlook the wounded national psyche as images are playing out of forced eviction of hundreds of monks of Pechersk Lavra, the 11th-century Orthodox cave monastery complex in the heart of Kiev, branded as Russian fifth columnists. It was a calculated political move by Zelensky with tacit western encouragement. (here and here)
What the neocons in the US are yet to grasp is that they failed to subjugate Russia despite all the humiliations poured on its national honour, proud history and enviously rich culture. Why would Russia normalise with states that appropriated its sovereign wealth and imposed such draconian sanctions to bleed and weaken its economy?
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has admitted on CNN that sanctions may ultimately risk hegemony of the US dollar. But her remarks do not go far enough.
Meanwhile, the Russia-China strategic partnership has strengthened, the signal this week being Moscow’s willingness to coordinate with Beijing to counter military challenges in the Far East. (See my blog China, Russia circle wagons in Asia-Pacific)
Russia is far from isolated and enjoys strategic depth in the international community. Whereas, through the past one-year period, the systemic decline of the West and the US’ waning global influence has become an inexorable historical process.
April 20, 2023
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Aletho News | NATO, Russia, Ukraine |
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By Drago Bosnic | April 20, 2023
It’s been well over a month since the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) Su-27SM3 masterfully downed a USAF MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that was spying on regions in southern Russia. The incident occurred on March 14, when the US drone flew just 70 km off the coast of Crimea. At the time, the VKS noted that the MQ-9 had its transponders off while heading toward Russian airspace in what was a clear violation of the agreed protocols for avoiding escalation. At the time, the Pentagon insisted that the drone was “merely conducting routine operations in international airspace over the Black Sea and posed no threat to anyone”. However, as it soon became clear, MQ-9 (presumably the latest Block 5 variant) was carrying out ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) over critically important Russian military infrastructure.
This was certainly a red line for Russia, as it’s perfectly aware that the information acquired through ISR close to Russian airspace is shared directly with the Kiev regime, enabling precision strikes. At the time, top Russian officials such as Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, stated that the incident proves the US is directly involved in the conflict. And indeed, this was certainly causing thousands of Russian military and civilian deaths even before February 24, 2022, because the Pentagon has been providing ISR to Kiev since 2014. Only a few days before the incident, the Neo-Nazi junta forces conducted numerous attacks on civilian settlements in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts (regions), killing and/or injuring hundreds.
The US warhawks were furious at the Biden administration for “allowing the Russians to shoot down our drones”. Some have even called for the Pentagon to “respond in kind”. Thankfully, there are still high-ranking officers in the US military that are perfectly aware of just how bad an idea that is, so these suicidal requests were promptly denied. What’s more, the latest reports indicate that Washington DC has not only drastically reduced the presence of its ISR platforms in areas close to Russia, but has even completely halted the flights of its extremely expensive RQ-4 “Global Hawk” spy drones, the data published by the Flightradar24 tracker website shows. According to its archive of tracks, the last time a US “Global Hawk” drone flew over the Black Sea was on March 21.
Since then, US drones based in Sicily haven’t approached even the Black Sea airspace, let alone the military installations in southern Russia. Before the start of Moscow’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, the Pentagon flew approximately 10 ISR missions per month, spying on Russian troops in Crimea. During the March 21-April 20 period, US “Global Hawk” drones made only three flights from the airbase in Sicily, severely undermining the amount of real-time battlefield data they could provide to the Kiev regime. Worse yet, these missions were conducted from within Romanian airspace and at a distance of over 400 km from Crimea. This is beyond the range of “Global Hawk’s” systems, capable of receiving clear images of an area at a maximum range of 200 km.
“Following the incident with the American Reaper drone, which fell into the waters of the Black Sea on March 14, ‘Global Hawks’ made only two more flights over the Black Sea — on March 17 and March 21 — both at a range no closer than 140 kilometers from the southern coast of Crimea. Apparently, the US command considered further flights in this area impractical. On the one hand, the amount of information received by a drone at such a range is sharply reduced; on the other hand, after March 14, the American side faced the danger of losing such equipment, and a Global Hawk is several times more expensive than a Reaper and is loaded with the most advanced equipment,” a military expert told Sputnik.
Indeed, the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” drones are among the most expensive hardware in the US military. The latest Block 40 variant costs over $130 million apiece, a mind-boggling figure for a single drone. The aircraft is a HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) ISR platform that provides direct support to US forces worldwide. It can fly for up to 36 hours at a range of up to 22,000 km, giving it an unprecedented loitering time and covering approximately 100,000 km² of any given surveyed area in a period of 24 hours. For reference, this is the size of South Korea or Iceland. RQ-4 “Global Hawk” is equipped with various ISR equipment such as radars, optical tracking systems and infrared sensors, all of which have been used extensively to spy on Russian forces in Ukraine.
Weapons such as the HIMARS (among others) are fed battlefield data directly from platforms such as the “Global Hawk”. This means that hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries caused by the aforementioned US weapons across the newly integrated Russian regions were entirely intentional, making them an unadulterated war crime. On the other hand, NATO ISR assets have also contributed to the vast majority of Russian military deaths, prolonging the conflict. The US and NATO don’t even need to fire a single bullet to kill Russian soldiers and civilians. However, while the Kiev regime forces are pulling the trigger, it is the political West’s “eyes” that are targeting them and even issuing commands. Considering these facts, downing NATO’s ISR platforms most definitely saves thousands of lives.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
April 20, 2023
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By Lucas Leiroz | April 18, 2023
Lula’s trip to China was marked by several signals about what may be his foreign policy in his third term. In his speeches, Lula suggested that he will continue to bet on partnerships with the global south and emphasized his criticism of organizations linked to or controlled by the US. Lula’s trip was well received by Chinese partners and brought new hope to bilateral and intra-BRICS relations.
Undoubtedly, the most prominent point in his pronouncements was his support for the de-dollarization of international economic relations. Lula questioned the need to use the dollar as a global commercial currency and expressed his support for the “idea” of creating a currency for the BRICS – or starting to trade in national currencies.
“Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies? (…) Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard? (…) Why can’t a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It’s difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency”, he said during a press conference.
With this, Lula reiterated what he had mentioned previously, during a trip to Argentina, in which he proposed the creation of a currency for Mercosur and another for the BRICS, both with the aim of advancing economic de-dollarization. To his supporters, this sounds like a big sign that Lula is distancing himself from the US and turning towards greater participation in building a multipolar world. However, this seems like an overly optimistic analysis.
De-dollarization is part of the multipolar world, but it is not its essence. Many countries, even US allies, have been seeking to de-dollarize their international transactions in recent years. Japan, for example, has traded with Beijing without the dollar since 2011, as well as Australia since 2013. Also, the EU has traded with Iran without the dollar since 2020. France recently started its de-dollarization process and Switzerland will certainly start this process soon, as it began to get rid of some of its dollar reserves.
In fact, economic de-dollarization is a technical and pragmatic measure, whose purpose is much more to generate economic benefits than to operate any geopolitical transition. In Brazil, the measure has even been supported on a large scale by businessmen and parliamentarians linked to the agribusiness sector, which is the main segment of the Brazilian economy and whose biggest partner is precisely China. Recognizing the Chinese interest in de-dollarization, there is internal pressure from the Brazilian business community for Lula to de-dollarize the economy. Therefore, it is a technical and pragmatic issue that does not mean much for Lula’s foreign policy agenda.
It is also necessary to emphasize that before traveling to China, Lula repeatedly stated that the main subject of his meeting with Xi would be to discuss the Ukrainian crisis. He planned to show his “peace club” proposal to the Chinese president and garner support, but apparently this was not a relevant topic in the talks. Both presidents limited themselves to generic declarations of support for peace and negotiations, without any more emphatic mention of Lula’s “peace club” project.
Considering that Lula planned the terms of his project in advance with American and European politicians, having even signed a joint statement with Biden condemning the Russian special military operation, it is most likely that Xi has refrained from giving any deep support to the Brazilian president. China and Russia are at their closest moment in history, with unlimited cooperation in all areas. Certainly, Xi would not agree to participate in a “peace club” supported precisely by the states that are waging war against Russia. Therefore, the Ukrainian subject ceased to be the main topic of the tour.
Furthermore, Lula signed interesting agreements with China in the field of space cooperation. A memorandum of understanding was also made in the semiconductor sector. The balance of the trip was positive for Brazil and advanced the de-dollarization agenda, but it did not significantly change the analyses that point out that Lula is closer to the West in this third term. In the same sense, Lula also did not revoke his support for prioritizing the EU-Mercosur agreement over the China-Mercosur agreement, which shows that his position of ambiguity remains.
It seems that Lula plans to continue maintaining this ambiguity. He develops his foreign policy based on a merely multilateralist, not a multipolar, mentality. Lula and his team are acting as if the current world scenario were the same as in his first terms, when there was no possibility of contesting the US unipolar geopolitical order, with the emerging countries only seeking greater economic development through multilateralism.
This reality has absolutely changed, and it is now possible to build a really polycentric system, where emerging countries also have a political role, not merely focused on economic and commercial development through multilateral cooperation. It is hoped that Lula’s team will realize this in time and take more relevant measures towards multipolarity, ignoring American pressure.
Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
April 18, 2023
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Aletho News | Brazil, China, European Union, Latin America, United States |
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MOSCOW – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko discussed the situation around the Korean peninsula with Chinese special envoy on North Korea Liu Xiaoming in Moscow, and the parties agreed that Washington and its allies bear responsibility for the escalation of the situation around the peninsula.
“The parties discussed in detail the current situation around the Korean Peninsula. The parties agreed that Washington and its allies are responsible for the current escalation and contrary to their own obligations, refuse to conduct a dialogue with North Korea on providing it with security guarantees and take practical confidence–building measures, on the contrary, they are increasing large-scale military exercises in the region that are provocative,” the ministry said in a statement following the meeting of Rudenko and Liu.
The diplomats emphasized the need to focus the efforts of the parties involved on finding a political and diplomatic solution to the problems of Northeast Asia, taking into account the legitimate security concerns of all states in the region. China and Russia agreed to maintain close coordination on the matter, according to the ministry.
Last week, the North Korean state-run news agency reported that the new-type Hwansong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile was tested under supervision of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Earlier on Monday, United States and South Korea started large-scale combined air drills involving over 100 aircraft — the Korea Flying Training (KFT).
April 17, 2023
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MOSCOW – A delegation of the Russian Foundation for Islamic Culture, Sciences and Education has received assurances from a senior Taliban official that the movement will not let Afghan territory to be used against Russia, a member of the delegation, Magomedbashir Albogachiev, told Sputnik.
“On Sunday, our delegation in Kabul held a meeting with Maulavi Abdul Kabir, Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister for political affairs. He asked us to tell the Russian leadership that the Taliban movement will not let use its territory against Russia or the countries of Central Asia,” Albogachiev said.
According to Albogachiev, the Afghan deputy prime minister said that Afghanistan was “extremely interested” in building comprehensive trade and economic ties with Russia, which is an issue currently complicated by the absence of a clear logistical route.
Earlier in the week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took part in the fourth meeting of the foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries in the Uzbek city of Samarkand, with the officials discussing the situation in Afghanistan and ways to develop a common regional approach to improving it. Lavrov said at a press conference after the meeting that practically all of the participating countries agreed on the necessity to maintain and develop contacts with the Taliban movement.
April 16, 2023
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Today China officially announced the visit of their Minister of Defense Li Shangfu to Russia on Sunday for three days of consultations with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu and also with Russia’s senior military command in charge of the war operations in Ukraine.
Li Shangfu took his present post a little over a month ago following the re-election of Xi Jinping to the presidency and a reshuffling of ministerial portfolios. It was particularly noteworthy that Li has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2018 for alleged cooperation with Russia.
The sense of this visit was interpreted by expert panelists on the news and analysis program Sixty Minutes earlier today as follows: to inform the Chinese leadership of what has been learned by the Russian command from the 14 months of war in Ukraine.
What is the relevance of Russia’s on the ground experience? Although armchair generals in the West were very quick to fault Russia with making serious mistakes and showing unpreparedness in the first phase of the war, the reality is that since WWII no major power has been engaged in a peer-to-peer war entailing vicious fighting on the ground without enjoying command of the skies. That is what we see in Ukraine today. The United States has had no such experience. Nor has China.
The Russians now have a lot to tell their Chinese friends about the latest NATO military tactics and about the U.S. and European hardware that is being given its baptism by fire in direct engagement with themselves. The capture of a German Leopard tank in battle near Kherson yesterday is just one of many war trophies that the Russians can lend out.
Will such sharing of information critically important to China as it examines the possibility of a similar armed conflict with the United States and its proxies over Taiwan be cost free? Of course not. We may take it as a given that during the visit of Li to Russia, he and the Russians will be planning further steps to turn their strategic partnership into something more closely resembling a full-blown military alliance with mutual security obligations.
Meanwhile the Russian Pacific fleet is now on full alert and performing exercises to repel an unidentified potential aggressor. A gentle hint as to who this aggressor might be is the fact that particular attention is being given to maneuvers around the Kurile Islands, over which Japan has territorial claims. Though the subject is not much discussed in our mainstream media, the Russians consider the Japanese navy to be a formidable force. Japan is one of the key allies in the “Pacific NATO” that the U.S. is currently building to contain China and, as needed, to fight a big war against Beijing.
Also worth noting is that last week the Chinese military response to the meetings in California by Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was to simulate an air and sea blockade of Taiwan. This in turn elicited a call by the ever inflammatory Senator Lindsey Graham (R – South Carolina) for the U.S. to disrupt the flow of oil from the Middle East to China in the event of a blockade being imposed on Taiwan. If anything can hasten the signing of a full military alliance between Russia and China, it is precisely that threat.
All of the foregoing latest developments necessarily raise a question that was not discussed on Russian television but which is highly timely for Americans to deal with on their own: whether the Biden Administration, by its ongoing reckless foreign and military policy that is headed towards an unwinnable two-front war, is not betraying the security interests of the United States. I leave it to legal experts whether that would constitute an impeachable offense.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
April 14, 2023
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The U.S. government approved its first three payments to people injured by COVID-19 vaccines — amounting to a total of $4,634.89.
The Health and Resources Service Administration (HRSA) vaccine injury claims report, updated monthly, shows one $2,019.55 payment for anaphylaxis and two payments — $1,582.65 and $1032.69 — for myocarditis.
The payments were made through HRSA’s Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
The CICP was established under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which protects pharmaceutical companies from liability for injuries sustained from “countermeasures,” such as vaccines and medications, administered during a public health emergency.
Since 2010, when it approved its first claim, the program has compensated a total of 33 claims for vaccine injuries — but these are the first awards for COVID-19 vaccines.
“These long-awaited awards were overdue, highly anticipated and speculated upon,” said Kim Mack Rosenberg, acting general counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD). “What is remarkable is that less than $5,000 was paid — total. This is a tragedy that highlights the severe limitations of the program.”
CHD Acting President Laura Bono called the payouts for myocarditis “insulting,” given that mortality rates increase to 50% within five years of diagnosis.
Bono said:
“The CICP is a pathetic, government-run program that gives complete liability protection to the very industries profiting from the COVID vaccine or product. While victims linger with their injuries, paying out-of-pocket for expenses, or at worst die, the industries run to the bank.”
Since the start of the pandemic, people claiming injuries related to COVID-19 vaccines and other countermeasures submitted 11,425 requests for compensation.
Of those, only 19 have been declared eligible for compensation and are undergoing a “medical benefits review” to determine payment.
The anaphylaxis case had been pending medical benefits review since the fall of 2021, and the two myocarditis cases had been pending review since January.
During the medical benefits review, HRSA determines any costs remaining after insurance, workers’ comp, disability or other reimbursements or payments.
Wayne Rohde, an expert in vaccine injury compensation, wrote on his Substack that given the “18+ months to review previous medical benefits that may have been awarded to the injured party [the anaphylaxis case], this process tells me it was a major injury that resulted in very large medical bills.”
Myocarditis is a serious condition that also requires a lot of medical attention, Rohde said.
To date, there have been 1,541,275 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
How does vaccine injury compensation work? the VICP and CICP
HRSA, which operates under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers two vaccine injury compensation programs: the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP).
The VICP is a special, no-fault tribunal housed within the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that handles injury claims for 16 common vaccines on the childhood vaccination schedule. To date, it has awarded more than $4 billion for medical bills, lost wages, lawyer fees, and pain and suffering to thousands of people for vaccine injuries.
The program does not currently cover COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Should COVID-19 vaccines be moved into the program, any injuries would be handled by the already overwhelmed VICP.
The CICP, the only program that covers COVID-19 vaccine injuries at this time, is even less equipped to deal with them, Rohde told The Defender.
“For COVID-19 vaccine-injured people, the CICP is the worst place, it’s the worst option,” Rohde said, “because it is not really a compensation program, it’s a reimbursement program for medical costs.”
The CICP allows individuals to claim compensation only for unreimbursed medical expenses — meaning those not fully reimbursed by insurance or government programs, such as Medicaid — for death and for lost wages up to $50,000.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under the CICP:
“Eligible individuals may be compensated for certain reasonable and necessary medical expenses and for lost employment income at the time of the injury. Death benefits may be paid to certain survivors of covered countermeasures recipients who have died as a direct result of the covered countermeasure injury.
“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the payer of last resort. Therefore, payments are reduced by those of other third-party payers.”
“There’s no pain and suffering here, there’s nothing,” Rohde said.
Because the CICP reviews and resolves claims through an administrative rather than a judicial process, no details other than the amount of the payments have to be shared with the public.
“It’s designed to be very convoluted, very non-transparent,” Rohde said.
The CICP was known for its cumbersome claims process and low likelihood of success for claimants even before the pandemic. Since then, it has seen unsustainable growth.
According to HRSA’s numbers, of the 11,941 claims filed with the CICP since 2010, nearly 11,000 of them are still under review.
The HRSA budget for COVID-19 vaccine injury compensation will increase in fiscal year 2023 — from approximately $1 million to $5 million — and its budget for staffing and contractors will jump from $5 million to $9.5 million.
How would COVID vaccine injury compensation change under the VICP?
For vaccine injury claims to be covered under the VICP rather than the CICP, three requirements must be met:
- The vaccine needs to be recommended for routine administration for children and/or pregnant women.
- It needs to have an excise tax imposed upon it through the legislature.
- There needs to be a notice of coverage published in the federal record.
The COVID-19 vaccine was added to the childhood immunization schedule earlier this year — but the next two steps in the process have yet to be completed and public health officials have not indicated when this might happen.
The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine met for three days last month — behind closed doors, except for a two-hour public comment period — to review the epidemiological, clinical and biological evidence on adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines.
The committee will generate a report that will be used to add injuries to the federal Vaccine Injury Table, which lists known adverse events associated with existing vaccines.
This list helps the VICP and the CICP decide whether to compensate vaccine injury claims.
At the National Academies meeting, Professor Renee Gentry, director of the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic at The George Washington University Law School, told the committee the stakeholders that created the VICP — vaccine manufacturers, lawyers and parents — set it up to be petitioner-friendly, informal, generous and non-adversarial.
But instead, she said, HHS has been “unrelenting” in its opposition to recognizing vaccine injuries.
“I believe the VICP as it exists today would be unrecognizable to those original stakeholders,” she said.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
April 13, 2023
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Aletho News | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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According to a Washington Post exclusive on the origins of the U.S. military leaks now roiling official Washington and its allies and partners today, there may be an untold number of classified documents still out there, yet to be reported.
The Post talked with two of the members of a Discord (online gaming) group who say the “leader” of their tight knit channel had been sharing with them top secret information gleaned from the secure facility/military base from which he presumably worked for some time, but photographs of those documents started coming “beginning late last year.”
The leader of the group — called “OG” — had been literally writing out and annotating classified documents he had access to in his day job up until then, but then began photographing and posting them “several times a week.” Many were quite recent, including, according to the Washington Post, “eye-level” images of the recent Chinese spy balloon incident in early February.
The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server. ….
The breadth of the military and intelligence reports was extensive. For months, OG regularly uploaded page after page of classified U.S. assessments, offering a window into how deeply American intelligence had penetrated the Russian military, showing that Egypt had planned to sell Russia tens of thousands of rockets and suggesting that Russian mercenaries had approached Turkey, a NATO ally, to buy weapons to fight against Ukraine.
The Post ascertained that “the transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see.”
The photographs eventually made their way onto other online channels beginning in February. The New York Times first reported this on April 6. Most of the first batch of top secret missives were purportedly from the daily briefings that were sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley. The Post, however, reported last night a previously unreported document, allegedly an assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, that surmises that even if the Ukrainians make significant gains in any upcoming counteroffensive against the Russians, “Negotiations to end the conflict are unlikely during 2023 in all considered scenarios.”
The original tranche of 53 documents is clearly not the last.
The New York Times today is reporting on “new additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set” that came to attention last week. In their own exclusive, they describe intelligence documents that show infighting between Russia’s defense ministry and intelligence services over a number of issues, including Russian battlefield casualty counts. They also reflect intelligence about supposed willingness of China to transfer weapons to Russia, and the tensions between Wagner Group head Yevgeny V. Prigozhin and the Russian military. According to the NYT :
The new documents were shared in photos, and some are missing pages. Those shown in full include material from the National Security Agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon’s Joint Staff intelligence directorate.
The Washington Post deep dive on the Discord channel does not even guess how many of these photographs or emails with highly sensitive information may have hopped from the original group to the wider online world. As the DoD and Justice Department scramble to find “OG,” the damage is clearly already done, and we could be in for many more revelations to come.
April 13, 2023
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By Ahmed Adel | April 10, 2023
The Pentagon announced it was trying to remove from the internet a major leak of secret documents which have exposed plans relating to Ukraine’s war on Russia. For his part, Elon Musk sarcastically highlighted the vain attempt, saying on Twitter: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”
The American billionaire derided on Twitter the Pentagon’s attempt to remove social media posts containing leaked classified documents relating to the conflict in Ukraine. The day before his tweet, the New York Times newspaper indicated that officials were not successful in removing the publications from the internet.
The leak was described to the News York Times by a senior intelligence official as “a nightmare for the Five Eyes,” the intelligence sharing apparatus between the Anglo countries – the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Some of the documents were found on Twitter and other sites on April 7, a day after US officials announced that they were investigating a potential leak of classified Ukrainian war plans. These war plans include an alarming assessment of Ukraine’s faltering air defence capabilities and notes that 12 brigades are being formed for Ukraine, including nine trained by the US and other NATO allies.
One of the leaks, dated February 23, is labelled “Secret/NoForn,” meaning it was not meant to be shared with foreign countries, and thus confirms the secrecy of the documents.
It is the belief of Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, that the leak is “a significant breach in security” that could hamper Ukrainian military planning as it reportedly prepares for a spring offensive. “As many of these were pictures of documents, it appears that it was a deliberate leak done by someone that wished to damage the Ukraine, US, and NATO efforts,” he said.
The Kremlin said it had no doubts about the participation of the US or NATO, direct or indirect, in the conflict in Ukraine. None-the-less, the leaks would still provide a fascinating insight for decisionmakers in Moscow.
The New York Times reported that the leaks appear to be legitimate Defense Department documents. None-the-less, this did not stop Ukrainian officials from suggesting that the leak was only part of a Russian disinformation campaign aimed at influencing Ukraine’s possible spring offensive.
Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak told Reuters that the data contained a “very large amount of fictitious information” and Russia was trying to seize back the initiative in its “invasion.” His claim, instead, is part of Ukraine’s disinformation campaign, one that has been insisted upon yet exposed consistently since the first days of the war when we consider incidents like Snake Island.
Podolyak, for his part, had only recently spread his own “fictitious information” by claiming that Ukraine will capture Crimea through military means in the next five to seven months because Russia does not have enough resources to control the situation.
Despite ridiculous attempts by Kiev to contradict Washington and blame Moscow, US authorities are trying to find the culprit of the leak. According to a US official, they are determining how the documents were leaked by first identifying which officials had access to them.
The documents are at least five weeks old, with the most recent dated on March 1. The plans did not provide specific action such as when Ukraine would launch the offensive, but experts strongly believe it will occur during the spring. This offensive will include Western-trained troops and newly supplied weapons, including dozens of battle tanks. Although initial gains might be made, it is expected that the offensive will quickly tire out before Russia ultimately launches its own counteroffensive.
In preparing for this offensive, Ukraine has received 49 battle tanks from Western countries; London said it finished training a second group of Ukrainian soldiers on the AS90 self-propelled howitzers it is donating; Washington announced it was providing another $500 million in ammunition for howitzers, rocket artillery, Patriot anti-air systems and other systems; and Poland said it had transferred four of the 14 MiG-29 fighter jets it is giving Ukraine, following a similar move from Slovakia last month.
Very evidently, there are nowhere near enough resources to take an entire peninsula that has been militarised for the better part of eight years, let alone the regions between Crimea and where the Ukrainian forces currently are. No serious analyst believes that Ukraine will capture Crimea, let alone in a time frame of five to seven months, but the propaganda is aimed at securing more Western funds and weapons.
It is for this reason that the leaks are an embarrassing humiliation as it will likely hamper these efforts, and also why Podolyak tried denying them as Russian disinformation. But as Elon Musk sarcastically said: “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
April 10, 2023
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Aletho News | NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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While the value of the information contained in the leaked documents appears somewhat questionable, the timing of the leak itself may speak volumes about the motives of the people who caused it, according to Philip Giraldi, a former CIA station chief.
An apparent classified information leak, which resulted in what seems to be a batch of US documents related to the conflict in Ukraine being posted on social media, has left experts pondering on the significance of this development.
Philip Giraldi, who now serves as executive director of a non-profit anti-war advocacy group the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik that the significance of the leaked materials stems from the fact that they seem to be “highly classified” and have “presumably been leaked by someone senior in the hierarchy of the Pentagon.”
He pointed out that the docs, which appear to be briefing materials for a “military audience,” date back to February and March and feature “limited tactical information.”
“Russia would only benefit by their appearance because it would underline the carelessness of the Pentagon in its handling of sensitive information. Otherwise, I see no benefit,” Giraldi surmised.
At the same time, he argued that the timing of this leak is actually important, as it seems to hint that some people in the US “intelligence/military pipeline” are none too thrilled with the continued “pointless support for Ukraine” and seek to “embarrass the Biden administration into cutting back its efforts.”
“They are likely hoping that the US will begin to seriously support negotiations to end the war,” Giraldi mused. “Recall the Pentagon papers, which did so much to diminish the support of the country for the Vietnam conflict. If the Pentagon cannot keep its own secrets, it would be a major embarrassment.”
He also observed that the US government’s and the media’s reaction to this leak has been quite strong, with Giraldi noting that the Pentagon has apparently suspended some of its daily briefings, “which presumably have been the source of some of the leaked material.”
April 9, 2023
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Israel launched several airstrikes against Syria during the early hours of 9 April, targeting Syrian military sites in the vicinity of the capital Damascus and other areas south of the country, state-media reported.
“At about 05:00 AM, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial aggression with a number of missiles from the direction of occupied Syrian Golan targeting some sites in the southern region,” a military source told state-news outlet SANA.
“Our air defenses intercepted the enemy’s missiles and downed some of them,” the Syrian source added.
The Israeli army claimed to have used airstrikes and artillery to target rocket-launchers and a Syrian military compound. So far, no casualties have been reported and only some material damages ensued.
The Israeli strikes came in response to the firing of several rockets from Syrian territory into the Israeli occupied Golan Heights the night before. Late on 8 April and after midnight on 9 April, a total of six rockets were fired from Syria towards the Golan Heights, three of which landed in Israeli controlled-territory. The missiles were launched in separate barrages.
Two others fell in an open space while the last was intercepted, the Israeli military claimed. Reports suggested that one of the missiles fell in Jordanian territory.
Israel “sees the State of Syria responsible for all activities occurring within its territory and will not allow any attempts to violate Israeli sovereignty,” the Israeli military said in a statement.
The Liwa al-Quds (Jerusalem Brigade) faction, a pro-Syrian government militant group formed in 2013 and made up predominantly of Palestinians, claimed responsibility for the rocket-attack into Israel. The group said that the attack was a response to Israel’s brutal assaults on worshipers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque over the past few days.
In older statements, the Liwa al-Quds group has pledged to “liberate Jerusalem and all of Palestine after purifying Syria from terrorism.”
The rocket-attack was a rare occurrence. The last time rockets were launched from Syria into Israel was in 2019.
This new attack came just two days after dozens of rockets were fired into northern Israel from Lebanese territory in response to Israel’s brutality in Al-Aqsa Mosque.
No group claimed responsibility for firing the rockets from Lebanon. However, Israeli media suggested that it was a coordinated attack carried out by the Palestinians in Lebanon and green-lighted by Hezbollah.
The Hebrew media claims represented the growing fear in Israel of increased coordination between Hezbollah, Iran, the Palestinians, and the axis of resistance in general – while also reinforcing the fear that several fronts are now open against Israel.
These recent rocket attacks against Israel have coincided with an unprecedented surge in Palestinian resistance operations against settlers and soldiers inside of Palestine.
April 9, 2023
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Aletho News | Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Syria, Zionism |
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RT International is now freely available via satellites operated by the Arab Satellite Communications Organization, which is based in Saudi Arabia, and Egypt’s Nilesat. The channel has also been added to India’s DD Free Dish service.
The Russian news network’s English-language channel is now broadcast by Arabsat’s Badr 4 satellite and the Nilesat 201 satellite. No subscription is required for either service.
Both transmitters predominantly serve audiences in North Africa and the Arab Peninsula. The Badr 4 signal can also be picked up in numerous European countries, according to its stated coverage. Viewers in some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa can likewise tune in to Badr 4 and Nilesat 201.
The receiver settings for the two satellites and the list of places where they are available are as follows:
Badr 4
Position: 26.0°E
Frequency (MHz): 12054
Polarization: V
Modulation: DVB-S (QPSK)
Symbol Rate (SR): 27500
FEC: 5/6
SID: 1850
VPID: 2140
APID: 2255
Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Faroe Islands, France, Gaza Strip, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Oman, Palestine (PNA), Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, SADR (Western Sahara), San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Serbia (Kosovo), Slovakia, Slovenia, Sudan, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tunisia, Türkiye, UAE, United Kingdom, Vatican City, West Bank, Yemen.
Nilesat 201
Position: 7.0°W
Frequency (MHz): 11958
Polarization: H
Modulation: DVB-S (QPSK)
Symbol Rate (SR): 27500
FEC: 5/6
SID: 839
VPID: 554
APID: 555
Algeria, Bahrain, Cyprus, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gaza Strip, Gibraltar, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine (PNA), Qatar, SADR (Western Sahara), Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Uganda (in some parts), West Bank, Yemen.
Residents of India can now find RT International on the DD Free Dish satellite service operated by state-owned broadcaster Prasar Bharati. The channel was added to its content on April 1.
The US and its allies have been working for years to reduce RT’s international presence, claiming that the outlet serves as an instrument of Russian propaganda. After the conflict in Ukraine escalated last year, many Western nations demanded that platforms ban RT content from being shown on their territory.
READ MORE: Ban on Russian media protects ‘freedom of expression’ – Borrell
RT offers a viewpoint that it believes Western mainstream media outlets fail to present to their audiences, and urges people to “question more” when consuming news. RT programming is available in several languages, including Arabic, English, French, German, Serbian, and Spanish.
April 8, 2023
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Aletho News | Africa, European Union, Middle East |
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