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Why was Covid so deadly for African Leaders?

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | April 5, 2023

Could Covid have been used as an excuse to bump off political rivals in third world countries? Or perhaps they were removed by foreign powers looking for regime change. For example in March 2020, 12 Iranian politicians and officials died from Covid including a member of the clerical body that appoints the supreme leader, Ayatollah Hashem Bathayi Golpayegni. Admittedly, Golpayegni was 78 but Ali Reza Zali, who was leading the campaign against the Covid outbreak, acknowledged that many of those who died were otherwise healthy.

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) produced a short analysis in 2021 looking at why so many African leaders died of COVID-19. They estimated that the average minister was a 60.5 year old male and that the fatality rate in the general population for this demographic was 0.17%. However, amongst worldwide ministers and heads of states this figure was 0.6% which was heavily skewed by Africa with a fatality rate of 1.33%.

Figure 1

Why, when Africa was barely affected by Covid, were African leaders and ministers disproportionality killed by the disease?

The BMJ found that between 6 February 2020 and 6 February 2021, Covid claimed the lives of 24 national ministers and heads of states around the world. For some reason this didn’t include the Iranian deaths above but putting that aside, 17 of those 24 deaths occurred in Africa.

There was nothing special or different about the demographic of African ministers, “if anything, the African leaders who succumbed to COVID-19 were slightly younger than their seven counterparts on other continents”.

Five suggestions were given as to why the death rate could be so much higher.

  1. More comorbidities. However, no evidence of this was uncovered;
  2. Poor healthcare. You would think of all the people in Africa, the leaders of the nation would have access to the best healthcare around;
  3. General mortality in Africa was higher than reported. This was challenged by the WHO;
  4. African ministers work environments are busier and, therefore, they are more prone to the circulation of the virus. Even the BMJ say this is a weak hypothesis;
  5. 50% of the African deaths occurred in Southern Africa and the majority after the more transmissible ‘South African’ variant was reported.

Or was it something else?

John Magufuli

Not included in the report, due to it happening at the time it was published, was the death of another African leader, John Magufuli. Magufuli was president of Tanzania and died in March 2021, aged 61.

The Tanzanian leader had gone missing for two weeks before his death was announced even though the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa, had insisted that the president was “healthy and working hard”. The media speculated that he was in hospital with Covid but when the vice-president, Samia Suluhu announced his death, she said he had died of heart failure.

From the very start, Mr. Magufuli had been a Covid sceptic. The Guardian’s obituary even called him “Tanzania’s Covid-denying president”. He had said how well Tanzania’s economy would do because they weren’t locking down and causing huge harm.

Just over two weeks before his disappearance, the Guardian published an opinion piece titled “It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president.” The article was sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation.

Mr. Magufuli, who had trained as a Chemistry teacher, first saw through the Covid scam when he realised the false positives produced by PCR tests. He sampled a goat, sheep and even a pawpaw fruit, assigned them human names and ages, sent them off for analysis and all came back with a positive Covid test result.

As a result, the president said “There is something happening. I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation”. At the time of his death, only 21 Tanzanians had died and the president said the country was “Covid-free”. However, the country had stopped testing and recording deaths as ‘with Covid’ so we can’t be sure if this was correct or not.

Masks were laughed at and the government’s advice was to “improve personal hygiene, wash hands with running water and soap, use handkerchiefs, herbal steam, exercise, eat nutritious food, drink plenty of water, and [use] natural remedies that our nation is endowed with”. Whilst in the West, we were told to stop exercising and sit indoors worrying.

The Tanzanian president had also refused to buy “dangerous” foreign vaccines, instead choosing “herbal remedies”. However, even though Western media said this “herbal remedy” lacked scientific evidence, it was in fact made from Artemisia, a plant from Madagascar, shown to fight SARS-CoV-2.

Artemisia is used against malaria and has shown anti-inflammatory effects, including inhibition of interleukin-6 that plays a key role in the development of severe COVID-19. Furthermore, it has been shown to inhibit the viruses invasion and replication, as well as reducing oxidative stress and inflammation and mitigating lung damage. The plant also contains zinc, gallium and selenium, as well as having an antiviral effect.

The week before the president disappeared, ten prominent Tanzanians, including the former Bank of Tanzania Governor, all died from suspected Covid. This led to the WHO calling upon Tanzania to take “robust action”. The president suggested citizens should wear masks but reiterated that the country would not impose a lockdown.

After Magufuli’s death, his vice-president took over the presidency and reversed all his Covid policies.

Image

A million doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine were ordered and a vaccination drive was put in place. A Covid task force was setup, masks had to be worn and lockdowns were enacted.

Pierre Nkurunziza – President of Burundi

Pierre Nkurunziza in 2015, when his decision to run for an unconstitutional third term led to protests across the country. He responded with brutal violence.

President Nkurunziza died unexpectedly, after a short stay in hospital, aged 55 in June 2020. Again, it was suspected that he had Covid but the official reason given for his death was a heart attack.

A month earlier in May 2020, the president had refused to introduce any social distancing or lockdown rules. After the WHO questioned the country’s Covid statistics, Burundi expelled WHO’s coronavirus team and declared them persona non grata for interfering with pandemic management.

On 30th June, new president Evariste Ndayishimiye announced that Covid was Burundi’s biggest enemy and to fight it required “strict compliance with the barrier measures that the Ministry of Health will now display everywhere across the country”.

Malawi

In April 2020, the high court in Malawi stopped the government from implementing a national lockdown. This had been initiated by a civil society group which challenged president Peter Mutharika who wanted a lockdown to save 50,000 Malawian lives. To date 2,686 Malawians have died with Covid.

However, in January 2021, a number of government ministers died including Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Lingson Belekanyama; Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Ernest Kantcheche; Transport Minister, Sidik Mia and Foreign Minister, Sibusiso Moyo (the former army general who ousted Mugabe).

Subsequently, the president used these deaths to stress the importance of new restrictions.

Other deaths

As well as the deaths above, which highlight how Covid deaths were used to change Covid policies in their respective countries, other Covid deaths included:

  • Ambrose Dlamini, Prime Minister of Eswatini (formerly Swaziland);
  • Christian Myekeni Ntshangase, Minister of Public Service in Eswatini;
  • Makhosi Vilakait, Minister in Eswatini;
  • Mahmoud Jibril, former Libyan Prime Minister and part of rebel government that overthrew Gaddafi;
  • Pierre Buyoya, former Burundi president who died in Paris and had just been sentenced to life imprisonment in Burundi over the assassination of his successor, Melchior Ndadye;
  • Khalif Mumin Tohow, Justice Minister of Somalia. This was the second Covid death in Somalia;
  • Sekou Kourouma, Chief of Staff to Guinean President Alpha Conde;
  • Amadou Salif Kebe, Head of Guinea’s electoral commission;
  • Victor Traore, Director of Guinea’s Interpol bureau;
  • Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to the President of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari;
  • Mohamed Ben Omar, founder of the Nigerien Social Democratic Party which allied with the President of Nigeria’s party;
  • Mahamane Jean Padonou, 2016 Nigerian presidential candidate and special advisor to President Issoufou;
  • Ismail Gamadiid, Minister of Climate Change in Somalia;
  • Perrance Shiri, part of the Cabinet of Zimbabwe and cousin of Mugabe;
  • Ellen Gwaradzimba, Minister of State in Zimbabwe;
  • Sibusiso Moyo, Minister of Foreign Affairs in Zimbabwe, noted for announcing the ousting of Mugabe;
  • Joel Biggie Matiza, Minister in Zimbabwe and on the US sanctions list;
  • Jackson Mthembu, Minister in South Africa. A medical helicopter transporting his doctor crashed, killing all 5 on board, the same day Mthembu died;
  • Abdoul Aziz Mbaye, founding member of Senegal’s ruling party;
  • Hasan al-Lawzi, Minister of Information in Yemen.

The list could go on and on.

I’m not saying that any of these people were taken out by the WHO or some international organisation that wanted lockdowns or to sell more vaccines. But what I am saying is that, in less transparent countries, Covid provided the perfect cover to get rid of a political opponent or undergo some type of regime or agenda change.

We have seen in the West how politicised the pandemic became and how politicians used the situation to their advantage as much as possible. Unfortunately for many of those Western politicians, killing people you don’t agree with is a little bit harder and more likely to get you put behind bars.

But in many third world countries, including the ones listed above in Africa, this happens a lot. And normally papers such as the Guardian would be rightly outraged. They would claim a coup had taken place or a political assassination.

However, many of the people who would normally be reporting and getting outraged about these deaths joined the cult of Covid. Suddenly, instead of investigating what happened, the political victor only had to write “maybe died of Covid” and Western media just reported “So sad, Covid is so terrible, if only they had been vaccinated”.

I’m sure some of the aforementioned deaths were due to some respiratory virus but maybe now that some ‘journalists’ are coming out of their Covid-induced reporting comas, they will start investigating whether all these politicians really died from Covid or were politically assassinated. The fact that African leaders were almost 8 times more likely to die from Covid than the general population might give them a clue.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia welcomes Russian Navy frigate

RT | April 5, 2023

Russian Navy ships have paid a visit to Saudi Arabia for the first time in around a decade, the Russian military said on Wednesday. In late March, the detachment, which consists of the frigate Admiral Gorshkov and the medium sea tanker Kama, dropped anchor off the coast of the East African nation of Djibouti.

According to a statement released by Russia’s Western Military District, the two vessels “made a working visit to the port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.”

During their stay, the ships will replenish their fuel, drinking water, and food supplies, Russian military officials added.

The frigate, which can carry state-of-the-art Zircon hypersonic cruise missiles, and the accompanying medium sea tanker began their voyage in January of this year, departing from the main base of Russia’s Northern Fleet, Severomorsk.

The detachment has since participated in two international naval exercises in the Indian Ocean, as well as the Arabian Sea, crossing the equator twice, the statement read.

From March 26 to 28, the two vessels were moored at the international seaport of Djibouti, with the aim of enhancing military cooperation between the two countries.

Djibouti and Moscow discussed, among other things, “issues related to ensuring safe navigation” off the coast of Africa and in the Red Sea region.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

China’s Latest Renaming Of Indian-Controlled Disputed Territory Is A Major Development

By Andrew Korybko | April 5, 2023

The decades-long Sino-Indo border dispute owes its origins to the legacy of British colonialism in the Subcontinent but persists to this day due to the complicated dynamics of this issue, which still remains bilateral despite the US’ efforts to meddling in it for divide-and-rule purposes. The latest major development on this front concerns China’s renaming of Indian-controlled disputed territory on Sunday in what Beijing regards as South Tibet but Delhi administers as Arunachal Pradesh.

This occurred one day prior to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning’s perfunctory policy reaffirmation pertaining to her country’s desire to trilaterally cooperate with Russia and India via the RIC platform, which was prompted by a related question regarding Moscow’s new foreign policy concept. The signal being sent is that Beijing won’t back down from its claims to that region, but nevertheless believes that this shouldn’t be an impediment to improving ties with Delhi.

Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, however, reminded everyone of his South Asian Great Power’s official policy late last month regarding the impossibility of normalizing relations with China so long as their border dispute remains unresolved. The reason why China’s third renaming of disputed territory in the past six years is such a major development is because it reduces the chances of a deal whereby it and India turn the Line of Actual Control (LAC) into their official border.

The impending trifurcation of International Relations into the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the informally Indian–led Global South (within which there are multiple rising powers) could therefore lead to more uncertainty between the last two’s Sino-Indo members. Moscow’s interests are in replicating the Chinese-mediated Iranian-Saudi rapprochement between its fellow BRICS and SCO partners, yet this well-intended scenario is impossible without mutual compromises.

The concept of “face” is immensely important in Asian cultures like China’s, hence why it’s unlikely that Beijing will seriously consider rescinding its enduring claims to Indian-controlled disputed territory after just renaming several areas therein. This insight extends credence to predictions that ties between those two will remain tense for the indefinite future, though this likely state of affairs shouldn’t be misinterpreted as implying that the US will succeed in its plot to divide-and-rule them.

Rather, it simply shows that leading countries with multipolar grand strategies like China and India don’t always see eye-to-eye on every issue, which contradicts the Alt-Media Community’s common misportrayal of all non-Western states as supposedly being united against the US. The reality is that very serious differences persist in Sino-Indo ties, which limits the extent to which they’ll cooperate, potentially even including when it comes to financial multipolarity where they have shared interests.

Looking forward, absent any concessions – whether unilateral or mutual – by  either or both of these two claimants, there’s no credible reason to predict that their relations will considerably improve even if they do indeed end up cooperating to a limited extent on certain issues of shared interest. Russia’s goal is therefore to ensure that their “security dilemma” and related perceptions of each other remain manageable otherwise the outbreak of a large-scale conflict between them could doom multipolarity.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

NATO expansionism in Scandinavia helps America, but puts Finland in line of fire

By Drago Bosnic | April 5, 2023

It’s quite obvious that NATO has always been an auxiliary extension of the United States. This has been the case since the unfortunate inception of the belligerent alliance 74 years ago. Thus, NATO’s crawling aggression should always be observed from the perspective of US expansionism, as the bellicose thalassocracy keeps moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the borders of its geopolitical adversaries. This has been the case in the (First) Cold War and it’s no different nowadays when the US is pushing one European country after another into a broader anti-Russian coalition that now includes the entire European Union. Washington DC is attempting to do the same by constituting a near carbon copy of NATO in the Pacific in a virtually identical step, only aimed against China.

US State Secretary Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attended the admission ceremony with Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto. The Office of the President of Finland said in a statement: “Finland has today become a member of the defense alliance NATO. The era of military non-alignment in our history has come to an end. A new era begins. Each country maximizes its own security. So does Finland. At the same time, NATO membership strengthens our international position and room for maneuver. As a partner, we have long actively participated in NATO activities. In the future, Finland will make a contribution to NATO’s collective deterrence and defense.”

The formal admission of Finland is the latest move in the process of “globalizing” NATO. The buzzword in this particular case is “formal”, not “(NATO) admission” and the reason is quite simple. Finland was never truly neutral, not even during the (First) Cold War and particularly not since it entered the EU. It has always been packed with US/NATO intelligence assets, although this has escalated significantly in the last several decades. Since then, the country has essentially become a NATO member in all but name. Yesterday, this was merely formalized. Although NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg dubbed it “a historic event”, this was just PR and optics aimed to “coincide” with NATO’s 74th anniversary. As for Sweden, it will probably have to wait another year, since publicity is everything for NATO.

Although Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday he was hopeful that Sweden would be joining in the following months, this is highly unlikely if Stockholm keeps meddling in Ankara’s internal affairs. Still, he insisted that Finland’s NATO membership “will be good for [its] security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.” How exactly this is “good for Finland’s security” is yet to be explained by either Brussels or Helsinki. Russia and Finland share a very long border (over 1,300 km), meaning the move has nearly tripled the line of direct contact between NATO and Russia, as the combined border between them has previously been approximately 700 km. Now being well over 2,000 km long, the border could be a major source of tensions.

Considering that Moscow previously never saw Finland as a potential threat, its membership in NATO, a hostile and extremely aggressive military alliance that openly declared and targeted Russia as its primary enemy, Helsinki has unilaterally changed this, prompting Moscow to completely revamp its strategic posturing towards Helsinki. In an interview with RIA Novosti, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko stated that “[Russia] will strengthen [its] military potential in the western and northwestern direction” and that “[Moscow] will take additional steps to reliably ensure Russia’s military security in the event that the forces and resources of other NATO members are deployed in Finland”.

During a briefing at the Kremlin, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov dubbed the move “an aggravation of the situation” and reiterated Grushko’s warning that Russia will be forced to take countermeasures to maintain its security. “The Kremlin believes that this is another aggravation of the situation. The expansion of NATO is an infringement on our security and Russia’s national interests,” he stated. However, Peskov did acknowledge that the situation certainly wasn’t as bad as with the Kiev regime, which the West has long tried to turn into a springboard for active aggression against Russia.

“The situation with Finland, of course, is radically different from the situation with Ukraine, because, firstly, Finland has never had anti-Russian rhetoric, and we have had no disputes with Finland. With Ukraine, the situation is the opposite and potentially much more dangerous,” Peskov added.

Still, from a military standpoint, the situation can hardly be considered optimistic. Finland directly broke from its neutrality when it decided to acquire F-35 fighter jets from the US in late 2021. The Pentagon has direct access to everything the F-35’s sensors can detect, meaning that Finland would be sharing key military data with the US regardless of whether it was a NATO member or not. On the other hand, being a member also means that it’s more likely to see the deployment of US offensive weapons in close proximity to St. Petersburg, Russia’s second most important city.

Restored DC-2 plane shows the wartime insignia of the Finnish air force

In this regard, Stoltenberg was right to say that the admission of Finland is truly historic, but only in the sense that Helsinki is essentially repeating the same mistake as over 80 years ago when it joined the Axis led by Nazi Germany. Now when it’s among “old friends” once again, maybe Finland should dust off the history books and pay very close attention to how this ended the last time.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey’s 2023 election a choice between Eurasianism and Atlanticism

By Ahmed Adel | April 5, 2023

The Turkish President refuses to speak any further with the American ambassador to Ankara. The reason: a recent meeting between the diplomat and the leader of the Turkish opposition only a month and a half before the presidential election. Importantly though, this election will determine whether Turkey will continue its course towards Eurasianism, or revert back completely to the NATO bloc.

With the approach of the presidential election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reacted strongly following the meeting that American ambassador Jeffry Flake had with the leader of the opposition pro-American Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

“Joe Biden spoke, and now you see what his ambassador here does. He visited (Kılıçdaroğlu). It is a shame. You are an ambassador, and you have to know how to act. You should be engaged with the President (not Kılıçdaroğlu),” Erdoğan said in Istanbul on April 2.

“I wonder if he will be ashamed to ask for an appointment from my office. But I tell him now. Our doors are closed to him from now on because he does not know his place. You should know how an ambassador should act,” he added.

Erdoğan’s outburst was instigated because it is evident that Flake, as head of the American diplomatic mission in Turkey, is endorsing Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and the Alliance of the Nation coalition, which is made up of seven political parties.

“Ambassador Flake met with CHP Chairperson Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu today as part of continuing conversations with Turkish political parties on issues of mutual interest between our two countries. He expressed American solidarity and condolences for Türkiye’s earthquake losses,” the American Embassy wrote in a tweet on April 2.

The current president, Kılıçdaroğlu, and two other candidates, Sinan Oğan and Muharrem İnce, will face each other on May 14. At the surface level, the vote will determine who will be the President of Turkey for a five-year term, whilst at the same time the legislative elections will take place.

However, at a deeper level, Erdoğan represents Turkey’s slow pivot towards Eurasianism, where he believes a pan-Turkic world has its place, whilst Kılıçdaroğlu represents Ankara’s traditionally close ties with Washington and NATO. Effectively, Turkish citizens have a very deep ideological decision to make.

Respected Turkish public opinion research centre MetroPOLL conducted a survey with the participation of 2,046 people in 28 Turkish provinces between January 13 and March 14. The survey showed that 44.6% of respondents would vote for Kılıçdaroğlu, while Erdoğan would receive 42% of the votes. This makes the upcoming election one of the biggest challenges to the Turkish president’s long rule.

As this election will be close, the US is hoping that it can do its part to ensure that Kılıçdaroğlu wins. Although the US and Turkey are NATO allies, they have many outstanding issues, particularly relating to Washington’s refusal to sell F-35 fighter jets, US support for the Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, and Turkey’s purchase of the Russian-made S-400 missile defence system.

Tensions significantly escalated even before President Joe Biden entered the White House in 2020. “What I think we should be doing is taking a very different approach to him [Erdoğan] now, making it clear that we support the opposition leadership,” Biden said in a New York Times interview, adding that Erdoğan had to pay the price.

The Kılıçdaroğlu-led opposition bloc has become the darling child of Western media recently, with more anti-Erdoğan coverage appearing on publications like The Economist. The Wall Street Journal, for their part, recently published an article by former US National Security Adviser and notorious warhawk John Bolton, who called on the US to support the opposition or force Turkey out of NATO if Erdoğan won the elections.

It is recalled that Flake had already angered Turkish officials after he shut down the US embassy last year over supposed “security concerns” that Turkey denied. Although the US did not shut down its consulate in Istanbul, it is noted that the mayor of Turkey’s largest city is the immensely popular Ekrem İmamoğlu of the CHP. This again is another signal that the US is backing the CHP in the elections.

But as Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu pointed out regarding Flake back in February: “Türkiye has the misfortune of having US ambassadors seeking to plot coups in our country. Every US ambassador has been engaged in efforts to harm Türkiye. They also try to dispel same advice to ambassadors of other countries.”

In this way, Turkish citizens have a generational choice to make – to continue with Erdoğan’s pursuit of sovereignty and balancing relations with the Great Powers, or a complete submission to Washington and a reversal of the many years of effort made by the Turkish president to achieve sovereignty.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

April 5, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Saudi, Iran, Syria envoys meet in Oman

MEMO | April 4, 2023

The ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria and Iraq held a meeting in the Gulf country of Oman on Tuesday, according to Iraqi Ambassador, Qais Saad Al-Amiri, Anadolu News Agency reports.

The diplomats exchanged views about regional affairs during the meeting hosted by Al-Amiri “in an atmosphere of optimism and familiarity among the attendees,” the Iraqi Embassy in Muscat tweeted.

Last month, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced the restoration of their diplomatic relations during talks hosted by Beijing, a deal called a diplomatic coup by China.

The two sides are expected to open embassies in each other’s capitals within two months since the deal was signed on 10 March.

Talks are also under way between Saudi Arabia and Syria to resume consular services in the two countries, according to the Saudi Foreign Ministry.

April 4, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Germany to receive enough Covid mRNA vaccine to last into the 24th century

Having some of the most insanely stupid pharmaceutical contracts in the world

eugyppius: a plague chronicle – April 2, 2023

You could not have invented a stupider pandemic:

According to the German Ministry of Health, the federal government at the end of February had amassed a reserve of 116 million doses of Corona vaccine. 111 million more doses, valued at around 2.5 billion Euros, are slated for delivery. According to an answer given by the Ministry on 28 March to a question by Thomas Dietz, a Bundestag member of Alternativ für Deutschland, EU treaties oblige the German government to take delivery of these doses. “In view of the current state of the pandemic, the federal government is working to make these EU treaties more flexible,” the answer continues.

Another paper does the maths, and notes that if vaccination continues at the current rate of 2,000 jabs per day, the 227 million doses which Germany will last for 311 years. Of course, all of these doses will expire well before then, so Germany will merely receive all of this useless product, store it at substantial expense in freezers for around eighteen months, and then throw it away. This hurts Corona.

In related news, Welt reports on the curious failure of Lauterbach’s Health Ministry to finish work on the so-called National Reserve for Health Protection, which Merkel’s government planned three years ago. The Reserve was supposed to be a massive depot for masks (but of course), other personal protective equipment and medicines, which would in theory free Germany from reliance on China the next time somebody is stupid enough to cry wolf about a respiratory virus.

So far, the only thing anybody has done to realise this Reserve, is put 245 million masks in it, a substantial portion of which are slated to expire at the end of the year. A Ministry spokesperson explains that the project has devolved from a Health Reserve into a National Trashbin for Worthless Masks that Nobody Wants, because it has received no funding. It appears politicians have lost enthusiasm and now prefer that the manufacturers and the federal states maintain their won “decentralised” reserves. This obviously means that they have quietly written off the project but hope that nobody will realise it.

Despite all that you hear from WEF conference attendees and virus pests like Lauterbach about the importance of “pandemic preparedness”, the will to actually do anything about pandemics – even at the highest reaches of government – has never been lower. Perhaps we’re not the only ones who have concluded, after all that happened since March 2020, that it is indeed best to think less about viruses.

April 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

Descent into Hell: Europe’s top diplomats are nearly at the journey’s end

By Gilbert Doctorow | April 2, 2023

On Friday, 31 March Vladimir Putin signed into law the new Foreign Policy Concept which will guide Russian diplomacy in the years to come. It replaces the existing Concept promulgated eight years ago and sets out on 43 pages in logically organized form what we have been witnessing in Russia’s behavior on the world stage since the launch of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine and subsequent nearly complete rupture of relations with the US-led Collective West. There are few surprises in this document though there are some very important new directions taken over from the USSR which I will tweak out in a separate essay later today or tomorrow.

What I wish to call attention to here is how Russia’s new Foreign Policy Concept was greeted by the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and by an unidentified spokesman for the United Kingdom’s Foreign Office.

The UK spokesperson wrote: “April Fool’s Day tomorrow” with specific mention of the document released by the Russians. I have in front of me the respective news item in The Eastern Herald (India).

Borrell, who is not known for originality, picked up this convenient insult and used it to remark on another Russia-related development of the same day. He wrote: “Russia taking over today @UN Security Council presidency is fitting for April Fool’s day.”

Both statements were issued on their Twitter accounts. As they say, the medium (low-brow to be kind about it) is the message.

When diplomacy degenerates into crude insults as the UK and EU showed yesterday, we are well on our way to total war. Our foreign policy is being conducted by intellectually challenged people who have had a bad upbringing, sad to say.

The path before us is what the French call la déscente aux enfers. Whether we will emerge into a second life through Resurrection after hitting bottom depends on your religious beliefs.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

April 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Russia to Consider ‘NATO Peacekeepers’ as Targets if Deployed in Ukraine, Medvedev Says

Sputnik – 31.03.2023

MOSCOW – Russia will consider so-called NATO peacekeepers as legitimate targets if they get deployed in Ukraine on the front line, Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday.

“They will be a legitimate target for our armed forces if they are placed on the front line without the consent of Russia with weapons in their hands and directly threaten us,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

According to the official, the West’s real goal is to establish a ceasefire on the front line that is favorable to them.

“It is clear that the so-called NATO peacekeepers are simply going to enter the conflict on the side of our enemies [Ukraine] … Unleash that very third world war, which they so fear when they talk,” Medvedev said.

Earlier in March, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated that the European Union is one step away from discussing sending military of some peacekeeping type in Ukraine.

March 31, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US ‘disappointed’ with UN court ruling on Iran

RT | March 31, 2023

The US State Department has criticized a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found that some Iranian funds were seized illegally by American authorities.

Judges at the UN’s top court in The Hague concluded on Thursday that a 2016 decision by the US Supreme Court was in violation of the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations and Consular Rights between the two countries. Back then, the US court ruled that certain assets belonging to Iranian companies should be paid to victims of terrorist attacks blamed by Washington on Tehran.

“Iran is entitled to compensation for the injury caused,” the ICJ said, adding that the US has 24 months to agree on an amount for the payout, or the court will determine one itself.

However, the judges rejected Tehran’s bid for $1.75 billion in assets owned by Iran’s Central Bank (Bank Markazi) in the US to be unblocked, arguing that the ICJ does not have jurisdiction over the matter.

“We are disappointed that the Court has concluded that the turnover of assets of other Iranian agencies and instrumentalities to US victims of Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism was inconsistent with the Treaty,” US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said on Thursday.

The 1955 agreement, signed more than two decades before the Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed government in Iran, “was never intended to shield Iran from having to compensate US victims of its sponsorship of terrorism,” he insisted. The US withdrew from the treaty in 2018.

Speaking at a news conference on the same day, Patel argued that the ICJ’s decision to keep the funds of Bank Markazi frozen was “a major blow to Iran’s attempt to avoid its responsibility, in particular to the families of US peacekeepers, who were killed in the 1983 bombing of the Marine Corps barrack in Beirut.”

Iran denies its involvement in the attack in the Lebanese capital, which killed 299 people of whom 241 were US troops, as well as other terrorist incidents blamed by Washington on Tehran.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry welcomed the ruling by the ICJ, calling it “proof of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s righteousness and the violations by the US government.”

March 31, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

‘Russia alone can already confront the entire West…’

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 30, 2023 

The Russian media reported that President Vladimir Putin made an extraordinary gesture as President Xi Jinping left the Kremlin following the state dinner last week on Tuesday evening by escorting him to the limousine and seeing him off. 

And Xi during the goodbye handshake reportedly responded, “Together, we should push forward these changes that have not happened for 100 years. Take care.” 

Xi was alluding to the past 100 years of modern history that witnessed the United States transforming from a country to the north of Mexico  in the Western Hemisphere to a superpower and global hegemon. 

With his profound sense of history and dialectical mind, Xi was recalling the intense talks with Putin that dwelt on the contemporary realities burying the US’ unipolar moment in the dustbin and on the imperatives of China and Russia joining hands to consolidate the transition of the world order toward democratisation and multipolarity. 

It was an appropriate finale to a state visit that began the previous evening with Xi expressing confidence that Russians will support Putin at the presidential elections next year. At one stroke, Xi “cancelled” the West’s demonising of Putin, mindful of the absurdity of even arranging an arrest warrant against the Kremlin leader to detract from his talks in Moscow. 

China has a scrupulous policy of refraining from commenting on the internal politics of other countries. However, in the case of the situation surrounding Russia, Xi has made a notable exception by signalling his keenness for Putin’s proactive leadership in such tumultuous times. The majority of world opinion, especially in the Global South, will agree. 

Won’t the erudite Russian public opinion take cognisance too — with a roar of approval? Yes, Putin’s consistent 80 percent rating is a signpost. Xi may have poured cold water on the last desperate western ploys of instigating a bunch of Russian oligarchs to spearhead a regime change in the Kremlin.  

To be sure, the timing of Xi’s state visit in the middle of the war in Ukraine messaged the highest importance that China attaches to the relations with Russia. There is great deliberation in doing so, as both China and Russia are locked in spiralling tensions vis-a-vis the United States. 

There has been a dramatic change of mood in Beijing. The nadir was reached with the boorish behaviour by President Biden in his State of the Union address on February 7 when he went off-script and hysterically shouted, “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping.” 

In the Eastern culture, such boorishness is taken as unforgivably scandalous behaviour. In the weeks since the US shot down the Chinese weather balloon and maligned China internationally, Beijing has rebuffed several attempts by the White House seeking telephone conversation for Biden with President Xi. 

Beijing has had enough of Biden’s hollow promises to mend ties while on the sly strengthening alliances across the Asia-Pacific region, inserting the NATO into the Asia-Pacific power dynamic and sending additional forces and firepower to places like Guam and the Philippines, apart from single-mindedly striving to weakening China’s economy. 

Xi’s Moscow visit became a great occasion for Russia and China to reaffirm their “no limit” partnership and scatter the western attempts since the war broke out in Ukraine to create rift in the Sino-Russian relationship. 

To quote Professor Graham Allison at Harvard University, “Along every dimension—personal, economic, military and diplomatic—the undeclared alliance that Xi has built with Russian President Vladimir Putin has become much more consequential than most of the United States’ official alliances today.” 

However, alliance or not, the fact remains that this “new model of major-country relations featuring mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation” — to quote Xi Jinping — is anything but a hierarchical order. 

America’s pundits have a problem comprehending equal relationships between two sovereign and independent nations. And in this case, neither Russia nor China is inclined to declare a formal alliance because, simply put, an alliance inevitably requires assuming obligations and limiting the optimal pursuit of interests in deference to a collective agenda.

What emerges, therefore, is that Putin’s strategic calculus in Ukraine will be shaped much more heavily by events on the battlefield than on any  Chinese input. Russia’s reaction to the Chinese “peace plan” regarding Ukraine testifies to that reality.

No sooner than Xi departed from Moscow, Putin in an interview with with Russia 1 TV, set the record straight that Russia is outproducing the West’s ammunition supplies to Kiev. He said, “Russia’s output level and its military-industrial complex are developing at a very fast pace, which was unexpected by many.”

While multiple Western countries will provide Ukraine with munitions, “the Russian production sector on its own will produce three times more ammunition for the same period of time,” Putin added. 

He repeated that the West’s arms shipments to Ukraine are of concern to Russia only because they constitute “an attempt to prolong the conflict” and will “only lead to a bigger tragedy and nothing more.” 

However, this is not to belittle the great significance of the partnership for both countries in the political, diplomatic and economic spheres. The salience lies in the two countries’ growing interdependency in multiple directions that cannot be quantified yet and keeps “evolving” (Xi) and appears seamless.

The Ukraine war, paradoxically, is turning out to be a wake-up call — a war that can prevent another world war rather than engender one. China understands that Russia has single-handedly taken on the “collective West” and shown it is more than a match. 

This assessment in Beijing cannot escape the West’s attention and will impact the western thinking too for the medium and long term — not only for Eurasia but also the Asia-Pacific. 

A recent article in the Global Times some weeks ago by Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee daily highlighted the ‘big picture.’ 

Hu wrote that the war in Ukraine “has evolved into a war of attrition between Russia and the West… While NATO is supposed to be much stronger than Russia, the situation on the ground doesn’t appear so, which is causing anxiety in the West.” 

Hu drew some stunning conclusions: “The US and the West have found it much more difficult than expected to defeat Russia. They know that China has not provided military aid to Russia, and the question that haunts them is: if Russia alone is already so difficult to deal with, what if China really starts to provide military aid to Russia, using its massive industrial capabilities for the Russian military? Would the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield fundamentally change? Furthermore, Russia alone can already confront the entire West in Ukraine. If they really force China and Russia to join hands, what changes will there be in the world’s military situation?” 

Isn’t the notion prevalent in the US and Europe that the Russia-China alliance is an alliance of unequals itself a self-serving western fallacy? Hu is spot on: Although China’s comprehensive strength is still short of that of the US, in combination with Russia, there is a paradigm shift in the balance and the US is no longer entitled to act as it pleases. 

It is the common concern of Russia and China that the world order must return to an international system with the UN at its core and a world order based on international law. There is no question that the two countries’ strategy is to overturn the “rules-based order” dominated by the US and return to an international order centred on the UN. 

In fact, Article 5 is the very soul of the joint statement issued in Moscow: “The two sides reaffirm their commitment to firmly upholding the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order based on international law and the basic norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and oppose all forms of hegemonism, unilateralism and power politics, the Cold War mentality, confrontation between camps and the establishment of cliques targeting specific countries.” 

Make no mistake that this is not about removing the US as the boss and replacing it with China, but about effectively checking the US from bullying smaller, weaker states, and thereby ushering in a new international order with primacy on peaceful development and political correctness that overrides all ideological differences.   

March 30, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Former CIA officer urges US to make Zelensky drop claims on Crimea and Donbass

By Ahmed Adel | March 30, 2023

The US should bluntly tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Kiev will eventually have to accept territorial concessions, former CIA Counterterrorism Center chief Robert Grenier said. This comes as Zelensky admitted that his people are becoming weary of conflict.

“The time is fast approaching when a senior representative of the Biden administration will need to begin a similarly tough, realistic — and empathetic — dialogue with Zelensky,” he wrote in The Hill, adding that although the US president is “a great friend” of Kiev, “his ability to deliver on his implicit and explicit promises of support for Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ is likely to be curtailed in the near future.”

“Zelensky must be pushed in the direction of a negotiated solution, likely to include territorial concessions on Crimea and the Donbass,” the former CIA official said.

In the expert’s opinion, the Ukrainian conflict does not threaten Washington’s national security, and therefore the total defence of every inch of Ukrainian territory is not on the list of vital interests of the West.

“Now is the time for the administration to engage in some hard critical thinking, followed by tough talk in Kyiv, in NATO capitals, and yes, in Moscow,” Grenier said. He caveated that by saying it is important for NATO to make Ukraine an impregnable fortress to deter Russia in the future, but that the West does not need the whole country for this purpose.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that the Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, are inseparable parts of Russia. At one point in the future, these regions will be completely liberated by Russia and this will be a bitter reality for Kiev and the West to accept.

For his part, US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter recently said that the Ukrainian army would eventually lose Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), which will in turn lead to the country’s defeat and the downfall of Zelensky. He argued that Zelensky still has a chance to avoid further catastrophe if he decides to follow the plan proposed by China. The former intelligence officer said if Zelensky followed China’s peace plan, Ukraine would survive as a nation, its army would be preserved, and it keeps the door open for EU membership.

Known for decades as Artyomovsk, and still called that in Russian, the city has recently been the scene of bloody fighting due to its importance for supplying Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region. When the town is captured by Russian forces, large swathes of Donbass will be opened for liberation.

It is for this reason that Zelensky said in an interview with the Associated Press on March 28 that Russia may begin building international support for a peace deal that could require Ukraine to compromise on promises already made, adding that if Russian President Vladimir Putin “will feel some blood – smell that we are weak – he will push, push, push.”

Zelensky also admitted that he is worried that the war could be impacted by shifting political forces in Washington, which is why in desperation he also extended an invitation for Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Kiev.

“We are ready to see him here. I want to speak with him. I had contact with him before full-scale war. But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have,” he said.

Zelensky also begrudgingly acknowledged “our society will feel tired” if the Ukrainian military were defeated in Artyomovsk. “Our society will push me to compromise with them.”

Although he expressed confidence in finally prevailing over Russia, Zelensky is leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to perhaps slowly normalise the idea that a compromise must be made, one that very well could be unpopular for Ukrainians, especially after all the boastful and arrogant comments made by their president about a final victory.

The war in Ukraine will continue to be a difficult grind, in which Russia will ultimately prevail in, but a realistic mindset by Washington and Kiev can avoid a lot of unnecessary bloodshed. Although there are a lot more voices urging for an acceptance of Russia’s terms, there is still little indication from the Biden administration that they will wind back their support for Kiev.

So long as this flow of Western support does not end, the war will drag out longer than necessary but will still reach the same conclusion. Many US experts are pushing for a swift conclusion to the war as they would rather focus on the deteriorating economic situation at home, especially as the next US presidential election is next year.

Although the economic situation in the US is worsening, Biden continues to blindly send billions to Ukraine, something that cannot be sustained as the election comes closer and closer and criticism becomes harsher. Zelensky perhaps senses that not only his own people are tired of the war, but also Westerners, who are feeling the indirect impact of it, which is why now he has placed such great importance on Artyomovsk.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

March 30, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

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