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Ukrainian soldiers threaten to go AWOL if they are not demobilised

By Ahmed Adel | April 18, 2024

According to the Ukrainian portal Strana, Kiev is facing problems in increasing the number of military personnel as a new mobilisation law will take at least eight months to be imposed. Worsening the situation, military personnel in Odessa are threatening to abandon their positions and even kill if the new law does not allow them to demobilise.

On April 11, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) approved a bill on expanding mobilisation for the military. The National Security and Defence Committee removed the provision on demobilisation from the bill on the eve of its presentation to the Verkhovna Rada for its second reading. Dmitry Lazutkin, a representative of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, later said that a separate bill on demobilisation was planned, which would take eight months.

Ukrainian journalists in Odessa questioned military personnel about their thoughts towards the government’s decision to exclude demobilisation from the bill on military conscription.

In that case, “I will leave the unit without permission,” one of the soldiers told the Ukrainian portal Strana.

Another Ukrainian serviceman said that the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada should go to the front on an equal footing with them, whilst another believes that changes are necessary in the country and that it is not possible to fight with the same soldiers all the time, making demobilisation necessary.

“I’ll shoot them all. They don’t have such a right… So now I get up and go back to the war whilst they have grown their bellies and will sit in the Verkhovna Rada? This shouldn’t happen,” said another soldier.

“There is the expression ‘Servant of the People.’ It is not we who must serve them, but they who must serve us,” added another, in reference to the name of the ruling party founded by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

These threats to go AWOL come as the New York Times reported that since the start of Russia’s special military operation, thousands of Ukrainian men have attempted to flee across the Tisza River from mandatory conscription. According to Romanian authorities cited by the American newspaper, approximately 6,000 men have arrived in their country across the river since February 2022.

“That thousands of Ukrainian men have chosen to risk the swim rather than face the dangers as soldiers on the eastern front highlights the challenge for President Volodymyr Zelensky as he seeks to mobilize fresh troops after more than two years of bruising, bloody trench warfare with Russia,” noted The New York Times.

The new law toughens penalties for attempting to evade military conscription and aims to increase the number of troops on the frontline. The newspaper also highlights that many of the Ukrainians who rushed to volunteer have fought continuously since 2022, with only two weeks of annual leave.

“Soldiers are enlisted until the end of hostilities, with no defined date for release from their obligation to serve. With casualty rates high, being drafted, soldiers say, is like getting a one-way ticket to the front,” the New York Times reported.

The escape of Ukrainians from the country has allowed human trafficking to flourish. In 2023, for example, the Mukachevo Border Guard dismantled 56 criminal gangs involved in this activity.

According to Lieutenant Lesya Fedorova, spokesperson for the Mukachevo Border Guard unit, and whom the newspaper cited, the cost to be taken to the other side of the Ukrainian border currently amounts to $10,000. This is incredibly expensive when considering that the average monthly salary is about $500.

Crossing to the Romanian side via the Tisza River also carries dangers, with Fedorova reporting that at least 22 bodies have been found on the river’s banks, with many more likely having drowned but never found. Yet, this is a risk Ukrainians are evidently willing to take since deployment to the frontlines all but guarantees death or permanent injuries.

It is evident that the new mobilisation law will struggle to recruit the 450,000-500,000 men the Kiev regime is believed to want since there is no morale among the general population and because all those who are motivated to fight have already volunteered. Failure to mobilise enough men will also lead to active soldiers abandoning their posts or even mutiny, a scenario which will be devastating for the country once Russia launches its offensive, expected at the end of spring or summer, and the Ukrainian military is driven back with high casualty numbers.

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

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Could the Russians Seize Congress?

By Patrick Lawrence | Consortium News | April 16, 2024

The Russians are coming — or coming back, better put.

As the November elections draw near, let us brace for another barrage of preposterous propaganda to the effect Russians are poisoning our minds with “disinformation,” “false narratives,” and all the other misnomers deployed when facts contradict liberal authoritarian orthodoxies.

We had a rich taste of this new round of lies and innuendo in late January, when Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who served as House speaker for far too long, asserted that the F.B.I. should investigate demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza for their ties, yes indeedy, to the Kremlin.

Here is Pelosi on CNN’s State of the Union program Jan. 28:

“For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message. Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see. Same thing with Ukraine… I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the F.B.I. to investigate that.”

O.K., we have the template: If you say something that coincides with the Russian position, you will be accused of hiding your “ties to Russia,” as the common phrase has it.

Be careful not to mention some spring day that the sky is pleasantly blue: I am here to warn you—“make no mistake” — this is exactly what “Putin,” now stripped of a first name and a title, “would like to see.”

There is invariably an ulterior point when those in power try on tomfoolery of this kind. In each case they have something they need to explain away.

In 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s defeat at the polls, so we suffered four years of Russiagate. Pelosi felt called upon to discredit those objecting to the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza.

Protest against Israeli genocide in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C., Nov. 4, 2023. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Now we have a new ruse. Desperate to get Congress to authorize $60.1 billion in new aid to Ukraine, Capitol Hill warmongers charge that those objecting to this bad-money-after-bad allocation are… do I have to finish the sentence?

Two weeks ago Michael McCaul, a Republican representative who wants to see the long-blocked aid bill passed, asserted in an interview with Puck News that Russian propaganda has “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” Here is the stupid-sounding congressman from Texas, as quoted in The Washington Post,  elaborating on our now-familiar theme:

“There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical on our airwaves. These people that read various conspiracy-theory outlets that are just not accurate, and they actually model Russian propaganda.”

I read in the Post that McCaul’s staff abruptly cut short the interview when Julia Ioffe, a professional Russophobe who has bounced around from one publication to another for years, asked him to name a few names.

So was this latest ball of baloney set in motion.

A week after McCaul’s Puck News interview, Michael Turner, an Ohio Republican who, as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, swings a bigger stick, escalated matters when, reacting to McCaul’s statements, reported that this grave Russian penetration was evident in the upper reaches of the American government, as again reported in The Washington Post :

“Oh, it is absolutely true. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti–Ukraine and pro–Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor.”

Masked communications uttered on the House floor: Hold the thought, as I will shortly return to it.

The VOA Rendition 

The taker of the cake — so far, anyway — arrived last week from Voice of America, the Central Intelligence Agency front posing as a radio broadcaster, under the headline, “How Russia’s disinformation campaign seeps into U.S. views.” Same theme: The Rrrrrussians are poisoning America’s otherwise pristine discourse in an effort to block authorization of the assistance bill, which also includes aid to Israel ($14.1 billion) and Taiwan ($4 billion).

To drive home its point, VOA quotes a lobbyist named Scott Cullinane, who works for something called Razom, which means “together” in the Ukrainian language. Razom is a non-governmental organization “formed in 2014 to support Ukrainians in their quest for freedom.” That is, Razom’s founding coincided with the coup in Kiev the U.S. orchestrated in February 2014.

Razom works with a variety of Ukrainian NGOs to advance this cause and sounds to me like a player in the old civil-society-subterfuge game, though one cannot be sure because, on its website and in its annual reports, it does not say, per usual in these sorts of cases, who funds it.

Here is a little of VOA’s report on Cullinane’s recent doings on Capitol Hill:

“On a near daily basis, Scott Cullinane talks with members of Congress about Russia’s war in Ukraine. As a lobbyist for the nonprofit Razom, part of his job is to convince them of Ukraine’s need for greater U.S. support to survive.

But as lawmakers debated a $95 billion package that includes about $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, Cullinane noticed an increase in narratives alleging Ukrainian corruption. What stood out is that these were the same talking points promoted by Russian disinformation.

So, when The Washington Post published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid, Cullinane says he was not surprised.

‘This problem has been festering and growing for years,’ he told VOA. ‘I believe that Russia’s best chance for victory is not on the battlefield, but through information operations targeted on Western capitals, including Washington.’”

Straight off the top, there has been no Washington Post “investigation.” The Post simply quoted two paranoid congressmen without bothering to question, never mind investigate, the veracity of their assertions.

Beyond this, the question of Ukrainian corruption is another case of the sky being blue. There is no “alleging” the Kiev regime’s corruption: It is thoroughly documented by, among other authorities, Transparency International, which ranks Ukraine among the world’s most corrupt nations.

You see what is going on here? This is an echo chamber, ever treasured by the propagandists.

Puck News, a web publication of no great account, puts out a warmongering reporter’s interview with a warmongering congressman, The Washington Post reports it, another congressman seconds the assertions of the first, the Post reports that, and then VOA joins the proceedings to report that well-established, beyond-dispute facts are Russian disinformation.

And the echoes multiply, like the circles in a pond when a rock is tossed in. Here is how Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily whose Russophobia dates to its founding during the U.S. occupation after World War II, reported on the assistance bill immediately after the VOA report:

“The controversy about the aid, which has already passed the U.S. Senate, is reflected in numerous posts on social media and articles on news sites. As The Washington Post reports, one actor has played a decisive role in this: the Russian government.”

When propaganda is king, you have to conclude, what goes around keeps going around.

It is well enough to laugh at this silly business, transparently calculated as it is. Except that this kind of chicanery has a long history, and we learn from it that the Russians have been coming, off and on, for seven-plus decades. The consequences of these conjured imaginings, we also learn, are very other than funny.

When I decided to write the book that came out last autumn as Journalists and Their Shadows, exploring the past was essential to the project. If we want to understand our “press mess,” as I call the current crisis in our media, we had better understand how it got this way.

In the course of my researches into the exuberant anti–Communism of the early Cold War years, I came upon a lengthy takeout Look magazine published on Aug. 3, 1948, under the headline, “Could the Reds Seize Detroit?” This piece was exemplary of its time.

“Detroit is the industrial heart of America,” the writer began. “Today, a sickle is being sharpened to plunge into that heart… The Reds are going boldly about their business.”

Before he finishes, James Metcalfe — let this byline be recorded — has Motor City besieged in “an all-out initial blow in the best blitzkrieg fashion.” The presentation featured masked Communists murdering police officers and telephone operators, seizing airports, blowing up bridges, power grids, rail lines, and highways.

“Caught in the madness of the moment, emboldened by the darkness, intoxicated by an unbridled license to kill and loot, mobs would swarm the streets.” Communist mobs, naturally.

It is easy to read this now with some combination of derision and contempt. Do we have any grounds to do so? Are we doing things so differently now?

There were dangers implicit in the Look piece. It published Metcalfe’s paranoic fantasy a year and a few months after President Harry Truman gave his famous “scare hell out of the American people” speech to Congress in March 1947. Look was in essence recruiting the public as the Truman administration launched the Cold War crusade.

Representatives McCaul and Turner are on a recruitment drive of the very same kind. They are not lying to one another in any kind of effort to clean up Congress. Do not wait for them to lift a finger on that score. They are lying to you and me in what amounts to a scare-hell operation.

And the danger this time is the same as the danger last time. It is the cultivation of a climate of fear wherein the American public is to acquiesce as the new Cold War proceeds and all manner of laws and constitutional rights are abused.

Last Friday the House reauthorized, for two more years, the law known as Section 702, which allows the intelligence cabal to surveille Americans’ digital communications — without warrants and on U.S. soil — if they claim to be targeting foreigners suspected of subversive activities.

What does this have to do with the way the paranoids on Capitol Hill, reporters at The Washington Post, and professional propagandists at VOA are currently carrying on about assistance to Ukraine?

Nothing. And everything.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

X Says “Anti-Misinformation” Agency Spreading Falsehoods Caused “Incalculable” Damage

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 18, 2024

DoubleVerify, which says it is in the business of helping brands advertise more effectively while focusing on “transparency and authenticity” has caused X to lose a number of advertisers because it rated the platform’s “brand safety” erroneously.

The factual false information that DoubleVerify published to the world, all the while supposedly working to tackle misinformation, has to do with what the company said was “a graphical error in the display of X’s Brand Safety Rate in DV’s Pinnacle dashboard.”

This error continued to be displayed for four and a half months, showing a false, lower rate, admitted CEO Mark Zegorski.

The DoubleVerify CEO went on to say they took “full responsibility” and apologized, also revealing that the brand safety rate enjoyed by X “across all campaigns” the company measured “exceeded 99.99%.”

The damage done in this way is described by X Corp’s Business Operations chief Joe Benarroch as being “incalculable.”

According to him, dozens of firms justified their decision to pull out of advertising on X referring to DoubleVerify’s rating. This started happening after Elon Musk acquired then Twitter – while previously, those same brands had no problem advertising when the platform had a “politically liberal CEO.”

This was the case even though, according to Benarroch, Twitter had “little to no” brand safety capabilities before the Musk takeover, and that as much as 90% of those capabilities were built afterward.

The context of all this becomes even more interesting considering that the demand for DoubleVerify’s services (and resulting huge revenues) stems from the likes of the controversial Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM, currently investigated by the House Judiciary Committee) “normalizing” the notion that companies must not advertise if a platform is found guilty of “misinformation.”

This has spawned a whole industry of third-party “raters” who are often criticized as using their role and influence to push a certain – namely, left-leaning – political agenda, that results in conservative media, but also those that are center-right, as well as “disobedient” social platforms, losing sometimes vital ad revenue.

DoubleVerify in 2020 bragged that it was the first to harmonize its product with the rules pushed not only by GARM (an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers with links to the World Economic Forum) but also by the 4A’s Advertising Protection Bureau (APB).

April 18, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

FBI Wanted to Install Backdoor to Spy on Users, Telegram Founder Tells Tucker Carlson

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 17.04.2024

Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Russian-born IT entrepreneur and co-founder of the Telegram social network Pavel Durov focused on a variety of topics, including his visit to the United States. The 39-year-old revealed that he was closely watched and monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during his time in the country.

“We got too much attention from the FBI, [and] the security agencies, wherever we came to the US,” Durov said during the interview released on Wednesday.

According to the businessman, one of his top employees once told him that he had been approached by the US government. “There was an attempt to secretly hire my engineer behind my back by [US] cybersecurity officers,” Durov claimed.

He argued that those officers were trying to persuade the engineer to use “certain open-source tools,” which he would then integrate into Telegram’s code that, in Durov’s opinion, “would serve as backdoors” for hacking the platform.

The entrepreneur stressed that he believes what the employee said was true, adding, “There is no reason for my engineer to make up [such] stories.”

When asked if infiltrating Telegram’s systems would allow the US government to spy on its users, Durov stated that he did not dismiss the possibility, acknowledging that any government could potentially carry out such an action. “A backdoor is a backdoor, regardless of who uses it,” he underscored.

The 39-year-old tech tycoon noted that he had “personally experienced similar pressure” in the US, where law enforcement officials approached him on many occasions.

“Whenever I would go to the US, I would have two FBI agents greeting me at the airport, asking questions. One time, I was having breakfast at 9 am and the FBI showed up at the house that I was renting,” the businessman asserted. According to him, FBI agents knew what he and his team were doing, but the agents wanted the details.

“My understanding is that they [also] wanted to establish a relationship to in a way control Telegram better. I understand that they were doing their job. [But] for us running a privacy-focused social media platform, that probably wasn’t the best environment to be in. We want to be focused on what we do, not on government relations of that sort,” Durov pointed out.

The interview comes just a day after Carlson published the first post on his newly-created Telegram page, the Tucker Carlson Network, where users will “get all the latest updates, behind-the-scenes insights, and exclusive content.”

There are already more than 150,000 subscribers for the channel, and their number is growing with every passing second.

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Dutch Parliament instructs government to demand a delay in both WHO votes – and if no delay, to reject the proposals

BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 16, 2024

MOTION BY MEMBER of the Dutch Parliament Mona KEIJZER ET AL.

Proposed April 10, 2024. A majority voted in favour April 16, 2024

After hearing the deliberations, noting that both the Working Group International Health Regulations (WGIHR) and the International Negotiating Body (INB) are authorized to deliver the final legal formulation of the envisaged amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the Pandemic Treaty to the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA), which will take place at the end of May 2024; noting that this process is proceeding at an unprecedented pace, whereas such far-reaching measures require more time to be considered, reviewed and properly implemented; whereas ignoring procedural obligations under IHR and leaving unclear the link between the amended IHR and the new pandemic treaty undermines the international legal order and thus the democratic legitimacy of this regulation in violation of Article 55 of the IHR, which requires proposed amendments to be submitted to the Contracting States at least four months before deliberation and voting in the WHA; whereas this does not provide sufficient opportunity to examine the changes and their important legal, health, economic, financial and human rights implications; whereas the request to adopt the amendments to the IHR or the text of the envisaged pandemic treaty is not in line with the UN principles and guidelines; instructs the government to request a postponement of the vote on the amendments and thus on the IHR and the new pandemic treaty at the World Health Assembly and, if this postponement is not obtained, to vote against the proposed amendments to the IHR and the new pandemic treaty as a whole; and proceeds to the order of the day.

Mona Keijzer, Daniëlle Jansen, Fleur Agema Members Dutch Parliament

April 17, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

“Mobilisation has turned into a real nightmare for Ukrainians” – former PM Mykola Azarov

By Ahmed Adel | April 16, 2024

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov (2010-2014) has described the Kiev regime’s forcible conscription of civilians into the military as “a real nightmare for Ukrainians.” His comments come as the New York Times said that Ukrainian soldiers are being battered and exhausted by Russian forces.

“Territorial recruitment centres in Ukraine (…) began to use weapons against those who try to resist the anarchy and permissiveness they are perpetrating,” Azarov wrote on his Telegram channel.

As Azarov revealed, Anton Kudrich, an ordinary Ukrainian citizen, was driving to his village in the Transcarpathian region when recruitment officers stopped his car at a checkpoint and tried to conscript him. Even though Kudrich stated that he had the right to be exempt from military service according to the law “since his brother died in the war,” the officers ignored this and attempted to put him in their vehicle forcibly.

“Kudrich managed to escape, ran into the forest, but they opened fire on him. He was wounded in the arm and leg,” said the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, adding that the young man’s father is sure that the case will be hushed up since the Ukrainian authorities are covering for each other.

On April 11, the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) of Ukraine adopted a law toughening the conditions for the mobilisation of military personnel. According to Ukrainian media, the clause stipulating the demobilisation of military personnel after 36 months of service was removed from the bill. The regulations give reservists a period of 60 days after mobilisation is decreed to appear before a military registration and enlistment office and update their personal data.

Likewise, the new law allows summons to be sent to electronic accounts and obliges male citizens aged 18 to 60 to carry military registration papers and present them at the request of military registration and enlistment officials, police officers, and border guards.

In another Telegram post, Azarov said that the Kiev regime is using former prisoners “to catch as much of the population as possible” since mobilisation has been “virtually exhausted,” in addition to civilians “fleeing the country in all possible ways.”

In Ukraine, the reserves are depleted, and at the front, the military is asking for rotation, which cannot be done due to a shortage in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Thus, “while the Ukrainian authorities use force against their own people, fewer and fewer supporters remain in the country, and fewer and fewer volunteers appear in the ranks of the Ukrainian forces. This means that with such sentiments in society, Ukraine has a catastrophically small chance of holding out,” the former prime minister stressed.

It is recalled that Azarov has previously accused the Kiev regime of embezzling billions of dollars from the state budget through the procurement of overpriced and subpar equipment, such as ammunition and air defence weapons. In September 2023, Azarov revealed how the Kiev regime signed a contract for four air defence missiles, but only three were procured. Deepening the embezzling in this particular case, Azarov said that all four missiles were written off following a Russian attack, benefiting someone who allegedly used the funds to purchase a new apartment in Paris.

Azarov has been a consistent critic of the Kiev regime and continues to highlight the deeply ingrained corruption and authoritarianism, such as the forced and illegal conscription of civilians. However, he is no longer a rare voice, with more criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the conscription process emerging in the Verkhovna Rada.

“After voting in favour of the mobilisation bill, the Ukrainian people will become not an opponent, but a verdict for [Zelensky] and the Government’s deputies,” independent deputy Dmytro Razumkov wrote on his Telegram channel. “You cannot play with the life of Ukrainians.”

He asked deputies from the ruling Servant of the People party if they would be able to look into the eyes of the soldiers they visited at the front after they removed the clause on demobilisation and rotation of soldiers from the bill.

Alarmingly, much of the bill remains confidential, including the number of Ukrainians who will be mobilised. In recent months, Ukrainian generals and Zelensky have said that between 450,000 and 500,000 people are needed for conscription. This will be difficult to achieve, especially since an article published by The New York Times highlighted that Ukraine has faced a drastic reduction in its population. The military now has very few young men to conscript, while those fighting on the front lines are battered and exhausted.

According to the outlet, it is not clear how quickly Ukraine will recruit and train the additional troops it requires or whether they will be ready before the Russian offensive, which is expected between spring and summer. Despite this reality, the Kiev regime is still preparing for an offensive in 2025 instead of seeking to preserve the lives of thousands of Ukrainians by achieving a peace deal with Moscow.

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

April 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Generating the “national will” to spend hundreds of billions and cede civil and human rights

The 25 year history of how this was foisted on us on the altar of pandemic safety. And how the WHO has repeatedly failed upward.

BY MERYL NASS | APRIL 13, 2024

Bill Clinton Begins the Phony Era of Pandemics and Bioterrorism

In November 1997 US Secretary of Defense William Cohen held up a 5 lb bag of Domino sugar in front of an army of cameras and told the world that if the bag contained anthrax it could wipe out NYC or Washington, DC.

That was not true, but it provided a fitting justification for the start of the DOD’s “biodefense” vaccine program, begining with mandatory anthrax vaccinations for soldiers in March 1998.

According to an NBC cover story,

“In April 1998, President Bill Clinton read a Richard Preston novel, “The Cobra Event,” about a biological attack on the U.S. using a lethal virus that spreads like the common cold.

“It scared the bejesus out of him,” recalls Kenneth Bernard, a now retired U.S. Public Health Service official who was then representing the U.S. in Geneva at the World Health Organization.”

The USG invested in a new smallpox vaccine, ACAM2000, based on the older Dryvax vaccine. The fact that it caused high rates of myocarditis (1 case in 175 doses administered according to CDC) has been ignored.

And the biodefense era began, supplying handsome contracts to those who promised remedies in the new wild west of biowarfare and infectious disease. Many of those who got the contracts had friends in high places, like FOB Ronald Perelman, who made a killing on a smallpox remedy (Tpoxx) that was eventually used as a monkeypox drug. Did it work? Who knows?

The 21st Century ushered in a well-coordinated push to generate fear about:

  1. a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic,
  2. jumps of deadly viruses from animals to humans (“spillover,” zoonoses and epizootics were the new terms to be mastered), and
  3. biologic warfare threats

The 2002-3 SARS outbreak and the Avian influenza (bird flu) outbreak — both beginning shortly after the anthrax letters—were hyped to the max to generate fear of pandemics and biological warfare.

How many people did these infectious diseases kill in the US and around the world?

  1. The anthrax letters caused 5 human deaths, all in the US.
  2. SARS-1 caused under 800 deaths around the world. There were 27 US cases designated as SARS-1 and not a single US death.
  3. Avian flu is said to have caused 463 deaths total in the entire world over the past 20 years, according to the WHO. Only 2 Americans have been identified as having an illness associated with avian flu, and both were very minor. Not a single American has died from avian flu. The recent case of conjunctivitis is recovering.

The CDC and mainstream media claim that avian flu has killed over 100 million chickens. It has not. USDA rules have forced growers to cull over 100 million chickens. When one chicken has a positive PCR test for bird flu, every chicken in the chicken house (and sometimes all those on the farm) must be killed. Was that test even accurate? But expansive claims like these are what gets the public going, and putting up with incursions on their freedoms.

So, on the basis of a bioterrorism ‘performance’ using letters containing anthrax spores sent to Congress and the media that were made in a lab, and two relatively minor zoonotic diseases that failed to kill a single American, we Americans were led by the nose into the era of BIODEFENSE.

In 2009 the Pandemic Preparedness/Biosecurity Agenda really took off with an expensive BANG!

The WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan declared a Pandemic Phase Level 6 for a “swine flu” outbreak that was milder than a normal influenza outbreak: triggering tens of billions of dollars in “sleeper “contracts that the WHO had initiated (and most likely been cut in on) between national governments and vaccine manufacturers. The contracts guaranteed that nations would buy millions or hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines for any future Level 6 pandemic that a WHO Director-General declared.

The contracts did NOT say that the definition of a Level 6 pandemic could be changed so that any new virus at all could meet the definition. But that is what happened. The definition of a level 6 pandemic was changed so that it was meaningless, and a few weeks later Director-General Margaret Chan declared a level 6 pandemic, the contracts were triggered, and on the order of a billion doses of H1N1 flu vaccines were administered. Grandfathered in. Liability-free. Some caused serious side effects: especially the European Pandemrix brand made by GSK. Regulators identified very serious problems early and simply covered them up. Problems like being associated with 10 times higher rates of serious adverse events than other H1N1 vaccines.

Drugs were also ushered in without a license. Here is some archived information on the drugs and other products given EUAs for the mild 2009 swine flu.

Having wrought great harm in 2009, the WHO bounced to another debacle with West Africa’s Ebola pandemic of 2014. Below I have excerpted from a Royal Society opinion piece, but there are many others that provided strong criticisms of the WHO response, including from some of the WHO’s strongest supporters. It seems that really bad mistakes can lead to calls for reform and a bigger budget. We’ve seen Congress “solve” problems this way all the time. Then those “reform” efforts can be used to move an organization in the new desired direction. In this case, the WHO was maneuvered in the biodefense direction.

Reading the article below, it appears that the WHO is an inept, disorganized bureaucracy that has a large stable of authors to write policy briefs, press releases and has other employees who put on conferences. But the WHO has little understanding of actual epidemics and does not like to dirty its hands tending to them on the ground.

What did the UK Royal Society publish about the WHO’s response to West Africa’s Ebola pandemic?

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2016.0307

Extract:

However, after the initial errors of downplaying the outbreak [26], the WHO did maintain continued activity in tackling Ebola. The WHO documents its role in training healthcare workers and burial teams in infection control, community engagement activities and providing epidemiological data [27]. Furthermore, the organization published numerous technical guidance documents, hosted a series of meetings on vaccine options, developed diagnostic tools and expanded laboratory services [21, p. 1309]. Yet none of these activities provided direct patient care, strategic managerial oversight or the infection control that the outbreak response needed. Ultimately, due to a vacuum of international leadership in the operational response (which several in the international community expected the WHO to perform), the patient care, infection control and management were left to others, including Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), a new UN body (United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response—UNMEER) and even the domestic and international militaries [10,19,28].

All reviews attribute some blame to the World Health Organization (WHO) for its delay to take action and for a lack of an operational response in the outbreak. However, while the WHO made some pivotal mistakes, as it itself admits [8], the outbreak exposed tensions between the normative and operational roles of the WHO, and furthermore between what the WHO is able to do (suffering from financial and organizational constraints) and what the global community expects the WHO to do.

The WHO admitted:

“The initial response was slow and insufficient, we were not aggressive in alerting the world, our surge capacity was limited, [I would suggest that WHO staff chose not to endanger themselves or that WHO was instructed to allow the Ebola outbreak to expand across Africa—Nass] we did not work effectively in coordination with other partners, there were shortcomings in risk communication, and there was confusion of role and responsibilities at the three levels [Headquarters, Regional Office and Country Offices] of the organisation [20,21].”

… despite the launch of a WHO Roadmap in August 2014 strategizing the end of the epidemic within six to nine months, [the WHO is full of planners, but has a dearth of doers—Nass] a coordinated international response with WHO at the helm failed to materialize [25] with the outbreak rapidly developing into a humanitarian emergency.

So, the WHO has been failing upward with every global infectious disease crisis for at least the past 20 years, well before COVID.

What does the organization offer us? Apart from providing a hook for globalists to gain more power, control and wealth, the WHO offers nothing to the citizens of developed nations. It does provide some benefits to developing nations, but those benefits could probably be achieved at a much lower cost, and with preferable local decision-making and control, through another organization or through health ministries.

As Dr. Inouye has said and written, it is time for us to Exit the WHO.

April 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Germany confirms its collaboration with genocide

By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | April 15, 2024

A three day Palestine conference in Berlin was forcibly shut down after three hours on Friday. Electricity was abruptly terminated in the midst of the presentation by Salman Abu Sitta, the 87 year old author of the authoritative “Atlas of Palestine”.

Former Greek Finance Minister and leader of DIEM25, Yanis Varoufakis, was prevented from entering Germany to attend the conference. He went on Twitter/X to send a message:

Do you know that the German Interior Ministry has just banned me from entering Germany? Indeed if that were not enough,  I have been banned  from talking to you via zoom, or indeed through a video message like this, exactly like this. The threat being that I will be tried in Germany for breaking German law. Why? Because of a speech that I published yesterday on my blog calling for universal human rights in Israel- Palestine …. So my question to my German friends, to Germans in general whether you agree with me or not doesn’t matter. … Is this (banning) in your name? Is it something that you feel comfortable happening in your democracy? From my perspective this is essentially the death knell of the prospects of democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Another banned guest speaker was UK citizen Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah. He reported on Twitter/X:

I have just returned from Germany where I was prevented from entering the country for attending a conference in Germany to give evidence on the war in Gaza and my witness statement as a doctor working in its hospitals. This morning at 10 I landed in Berlin to attend a conference on Palestine where I had been asked … to give my evidence of the 43 days that I had seen in the hospitals in Gaza, working in both Shifa and al-Ahli Hospital. Upon arrival I was stopped at the passport office. I was then escorted down to the basement of the airport where I was questioned for around 3.5 hours. At the end of 3.5 hours I was told that I will not be allowed to enter German soil and that this ban will last the whole of April. Not just that … if I were to try to link up by Zoom or Facetime with the conference even if I were outside Germany or if I were to send a video of my lecture to the conference in Berlin, then that would constitute a breach of German law and that I would endanger myself to have a fine or even up to a year in prison.

Dr. Abu Sitta further commented:

Germany is defending itself against Nicaraguan charges that it is an accomplice to genocidal war as described by the International Court of Justice. This is exactly what accomplices to a crime do. They bury the evidence and they silence or harass or intimidate the witnesses. …. This crackdown on free speech is a dangerous precedent…  We are watching the first genocide unfold in the 21st Century and for Germany to become implicated as an accomplice in silencing the witnesses of this genocide does not bode well for the rest of the century.

A large contingent of police invaded the conference and shut off the electricity. Organizers told the reported 250 conference attendees to not provoke the police to violence. Afterward, organizers  held a press conference  reporting on the behaviour of police before and during the crackdown. Even before the conference, police tried to intimidate supporters of the conference and the owner of the conference venue. They threatened the venue owner might not be able to hold events in future if the conference went ahead.  An organizer asked, “Are these the methods of the mafia or democracy?”

Western and Israeli media reported the closure was to prevent “anti semitism” or “hatred of Israel”. On this dubious and hypothetical basis, public education about a real ongoing massacre and mass starvation was made illegal.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Censorship & persecution of dissident voices continues across the world

The ‘cautionary tale’ modus operandi

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 15, 2024 

Those who, like the members of HART, have been speaking out for three or four years about the perils of lockdowns, the lack of access to proper medical care and the utter debacle of the unsafe and ineffective vaccines, keep hoping the tide is turning. But for every stone upturned another boulder seems to descend to crush the truth. There is also no apparent end to the persecution of doctors speaking out.

Two physicians from opposite ends of the world and facing loss of their medical careers for speaking out against the vaccine saviour narrative, typify the current authoritarian approach. Charles Hoffe from Canada and Shankara Chetty from South Africa have two things in common, firstly both are clinicians serving a large local population and secondly both have shared their experiences widely.  In Dr Chetty’s case he has reported his success at treating over 1000 covid patients with a combination of repurposed drugs including antihistamines in a clinical centre in rural South Africa with no access to oxygen let alone intensive care. In Dr Hoffe’s case, he first hit the headlines when he reported a high frequency of serious adverse events when his patients started receiving the mRNA vaccines.

Both these hard working and ethical physicians now, three years on, are being subjected to investigations by their medical boards. For Dr Chetty, he has previously been found guilty of professional misconduct but was called to attend a further hearing last week in front of the Health Professionals Council of South Africa. The results of their deliberations are awaited.

For Charles Hoffe the situation is even more bizarre. He was due for a hearing last week but when he submitted all the supportive evidence for his case, the health board in British Columbia deposited a large amount of evidence of their own but then threatened to invoke a ruling by which their evidence would be accepted as ‘fact’ by the court and Dr Hoffe and his legal team would be unable to cross question the data or present any information to the contrary. It looks like the right to a free trial has been abandoned in Canada, along with the right to free speech.

Below is a list of some senior clinicians and academics from across the world who have been vilified for speaking truth to power. It is by no means comprehensive.

USA:

Canada:

Australia:

New Zealand:

Germany:

France:

Switzerland:

  • Thomas Binder (initially incarcerated in a mental institution)

UK:

This list is continuing to grow despite the increasing reports in the scientific literature which confirm almost everything they have said.

When does it stop?

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Congress Summons WEF-Affiliated Media Alliance Co-Founder Over Demonetization Scandal

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 15, 2024

The US Congress would like to have a word with Robert Rakowitz, co-founder of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) – an organization with ties to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The questions being raised here concern suspicion that coordinated targeting of conservative media was organized in order to deprive them of advertising revenue.

GARM is an initiative established by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) in 2019, to then be promoted as a key project in WEF’s Platform for Shaping the Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture.

And now the House Judiciary Committee wants Rakowitz to clarify the role of both WFA and GARM, as part of the ongoing investigation into collusion to suppress conservative outlets.

In this case, the concern is that the collusion involved antitrust behavior as various industry giants teamed up to damage financial interests of other entities, for political reasons.

Rakowitz is asked to appear voluntarily for a transcribed interview, according to a letter Committee Chairman Jim Jordan dispatched last Friday.

Jordan writes that, given his role at GARM, Rakowitz is privy to “unique and specialized information that will advance the Committee’s oversight and inform legislative reforms.”

“To advance our oversight and inform potential legislation related to this coordination, the Committee must understand how and to what extent WFA and GARM may facilitate collusion,” Jordan stated.

The committee’s interest in Rakowitz and GARM stems from documents it has already obtained, which another letter said demonstrated that the Daily Wire itself, but also Fox News and Breitbart were all targeted because of their editorial slant.

GARM is suspected as facilitating – via “brand safety” advice – corporations like Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Mastercard, and Mars, among others on the organization’s steering committee, and cutting advertising ties with those disfavored in the current political climate in the US.

This is believed to have been happening all under the guise of reducing “misinformation” and “fake news.”

And GARM’s influence is massive, given that it gathers over 60 of the top companies globally when it comes to spending money on advertising, in addition to as many as 35 advertising industry groups.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

What authority would scare and shame an already frightened population?

Answer: The UK Government & their behavioural science advisors

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 15, 2024

In the knowledge that people are already in a state of heightened anxiety, what government would choose to further frighten and shame them? When citizens have amended their lifestyles in order to function under difficult circumstances, what government would seek to actively disrupt these necessary and understandable adaptations? And what government believes that a fearful population during a ‘pandemic’ is not acceptable, and opts to instil panic instead? A recently published paper by HART member, Dr Gary Sidley, has revealed that such a regime is our very own UK Government, aided and abetted by their advisors and behavioural science experts.

The state’s strategic deployment of fear, shame and peer pressure/scapegoating – affect, ego and normative pressure ‘nudges’ – to promote compliance with covid restrictions has been widely documented (for example, see here and here). Focusing on the harrowing, and highly contentious, ‘Look them in the eyes’ (LTITE) messaging campaign of January 2021, Sidley has conducted a forensic analysis to expose the rationales offered by the Cabinet Office to justify the use of these emotionally disturbing advertisements on the British people. The findings provide insight into the mindsets and motivations of our political leaders and expert advisors, and convey their callous disregard for the wellbeing of those they are paid to serve.

The advertising agency responsible for the production of the LTITE videos and posters was MullenLowe, and a reminder of the harrowing tone and content of this campaign can be found on their website. The adverts comprise close-up images of acutely unwell patients in intensive care units, alongside weary and stressed healthcare staff (all, of course, clad in respirators or masks), ominous background music, and a voice over saying, ‘Look them in the eyes and tell them you are doing everything you can to stop the spread of Covid 19’. Multiple behavioural science nudges underpin the images and slogans, with fear inflation and shaming being particularly prominent.

Based on the Cabinet Office’s responses to a series of Freedom of Information requests, Sidley has revealed the official explanations proffered by our political leaders and state-funded experts in their attempt to justify the infliction of further emotional distress on an already overly anxious population. Specific aspects of the Cabinet Office reasoning in January 2021 – used to support the endorsement of the LTITE campaign – are listed below, followed by a brief evaluative response:

‘Level of perceived risk … is not as high as March 2020. March a shock to the system but now have learned to live alongside COVID’ (FOI, 2023).

Humans have been ‘living alongside’ respiratory viruses since the time of Adam and Eve. It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that such an observation is a positive one, and a political establishment that have the welfare of their people to the fore would welcome this finding rather than using it to justify the infliction of more fear and shame on its citizenry.

‘They have settled into their own level of “acceptable behaviour” … that fits with their lifestyle, their specific needs and circumstances’ (FOI, 2023).

It is perverse to view these adaptations as reasons for state intervention. A more rational interpretation of these behavioural changes would be that people were increasingly making their own individualised, balanced risk assessments to inform their pragmatic decisions about how best to function in challenging circumstances.

‘Significant and visible difference in behaviour and attitude between the two lockdowns … Fearful but much less panic this time around’ (FOI, 2023).

The implication here is that the observation that people were ‘fearful’ was insufficient to satisfy our policymakers; they wanted full blown ‘panic’. In a liberal democracy, those in positions of influence should endeavour to maintain calm rather than increase alarm; only tyrants purposely terrify their own people.

‘The challenge is in overcoming people’s established ways of managing their lives within the lockdown rules’ (FOI, 2023a).

In a civilised society, during times of national ‘crisis’, our elected leaders (and their expert advisors) would strive to support and empower the creative efforts of their citizens to continue to function through difficult times. To strategically aim to override people’s coping strategies is unforgivable.

What role did state-funded behavioural scientists (‘nudgers’) play in these decisions to inflict further fear and shame on an already overly scared population? Sidley’s research suggests some answers

The quotes cited in the FOIs (as detailed above) derive from the Cabinet Office’s own qualitative research, conducted by ‘Solutions Research’ (a private research agency). However, Sidley revealed other key state actors that were directly involved in the development of the LTITE campaign. Conrad Bird (Director of Campaigns & Marketing at the Cabinet Office) was the senior civil servant who led the commissioning team that provided the creative brief to MullenLowe. Furthermore, the senior minister ultimately responsible for signing off the harrowing LTITE videos and posters was the then Health Secretary, Matt – ‘don’t kill your gran’ – Hancock. As for the behavioural science input, the ‘internal Cabinet Office Government Communication Service Behavioural Science team provided insight and guidance to Conrad Bird’ (FOI, 2024). Thus, this small group of behavioural scientists, located in the heart of government, were formally tasked with furnishing Bird with expert advice on the appropriate use of nudges within the LTITE communications; as such, it is reasonable to assert this band of experts hold a significant degree of responsibility for the fear-inflation and shaming intrinsic to this campaign, via either their active guidance to Bird and his team, and/or their failure to intervene to prevent the unethical deployment of these psychological strategies of persuasion.

The central conclusion to be drawn from Sidley’s critical analysis of the genesis of the LTITE campaign is that we have a government, and a corresponding group of behavioural science advisors, who are willing to frighten and shame an already fearful population in order to lever compliance with state diktats. As things stand, we can expect the same tone and content in government communications the next time our political leaders choose to declare a ‘global crisis’, whether it be under the banner of health, climate, pollution or some other assumed world-wide threat.

April 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Massive Rallies Break Out in Japan Against WHO’s Pandemic Treaty

PharmaFiles by Aussie17 | April 13, 2024

April 13, 2024, will be etched in the annals of modern Japanese history as tens of thousands of citizens across the nation came together in a series of pandemic rallies. The protests centered on the widespread opposition to the Pandemic Treaty, with escalating concerns over “infectious disease” and “public health” becoming potent tools for an unprecedented push towards what is perceived by many as a totalitarian surveillance society.

From the bustling streets of Ikebukuro to the gatherings at Higashi-Ikebukuro Central Park, the sheer scale of participation speaks volumes. Organizers aimed for a monumental turnout of 100,000 protesters to demand answers on crucial issues, such as the stark increase in excess deaths and the lack of transparency on the adverse effects following vaccinations.

The protest not just opposed potential mandatory vaccinations but also the perceived overreach of health authorities and their ties with global pharma, echoing a distressing sentiment of disenfranchisement among the populace. Demonstrators criticized the lack of explanations for a sharp increase in excess deaths and demanded accountability and clarity on vaccine-related casualties.

Eminent speakers, including Professor Masayasu Inoue and modern history researcher Chikatsu Hayashi, provided compelling pre-demonstration speeches that laid bare the concerning dynamics between global health authorities and pharmaceutical agendas. Professor Inoue highlighted the concerning trend of our health being weaponized in what he termed as “a third world war fought with information.” He urged the public to resist introducing genetic vaccines into their bodies, implicating a significant portion of WHO’s funding comes from pharmaceutical giants and private interests like the Bill Gates Foundation. This follows Japan’s Message to the World delivered by Prof Inoue a few days ago.

Modern history researcher Prof Chikatsu Hayashi’s address was a rallying cry to resist the encroaching shadows of global totalitarianism, symbolically referring to the proactive stance against it as “stopping the third atomic bomb with our hands.” His poignant discourse highlighted a national movement poised against not only the Pandemic Treaty but also the underlying structures threatening Japan’s sovereignty and the well-being of its citizens.

April 13 marked not just a protest against a treaty but a stand against a future where health becomes a lever for control and surveillance. The massive turnout signifies a critical moment in Japan’s civic engagement. It’s a call from its people for autonomy, transparency, and the reassessment of global health governance that resonates beyond its borders. Today, Japan stands at the forefront, questioning, challenging, and seeking change for a future where health policy respects national sovereignty and individual rights.

Signing off for now
A17

Video Sources here, here, here.

April 14, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

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