A 59-year-old man unfortunately died in Mexico in late April. Having been bed-bound for weeks and suffering from type-2 diabetes and chronic renal failure, he was at high risk from respiratory virus infection.
It became newsworthy, and the World Health Organization thousands of miles distant even released a media statement, because recent advances in genetic sequencing allowed the presence of Type A (H5N2) influenza virus – a type of bird flu – to be reported in a single clinical sample a month later. Refuting the WHO’s distant bureaucrats attributing mortality to the virus, Mexico’s health secretary is reported as noting that it was chronic illness that caused the death.
Irrespective of cause, deaths are a tragedy for family and friends. This one made global news purely because of advances in diagnostic technology. The WHO, the media, and a growing pandemic industry had been waiting for this inevitable event, testing and screening, as it is critical to perhaps the largest business scheme in human history. There are hundreds of billions on the table, and the will and means to take it. We all need to understand why, and what is supposed to happen next.
Covid and the Resetting of Public Health
Covid-19 has proven the business case for gain-of-function research. It looks increasingly likely that some genetic fiddling really did succeed in moving a bat coronavirus into humans, where it is more amenable to monetization (there is no profit in sick bats, or fear of them). Importantly, despite the broad economic and health catastrophe that followed, those behind the program are continuing much the same work, and not being held to account. There is vast profit with little or no real risk.
However, what the Covid episode really demonstrated is the financial and political gains that can be achieved irrespective of outbreak severity. As Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret pointed out in mid-2020 in their book Covid-19: The Great Reset, Covid-19 can be used to subvert post-World War II concepts of democracy and human rights and return society to a corporate authoritarian model (“Stakeholder Capitalism”), even though the illness is usually mild.
What is needed is a shared narrative among those who stand to benefit; media, governments, and the corporate world. While the term “Great Reset” seems to have been discarded as unpopular, the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) stated intent to penetrate governments and change society to the benefit of their members is clearly undiminished.
Devastating mortality is not needed to drive societal change; just the fear of it. You need a test, visuals such as masks and circles on the pavement, a dependent media, and a research and health establishment whose career opportunities are dependent on compliance. The ramping up of surveillance for the vast sea of viral variants that is nature has just been officially confirmed through the adoption of amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations at the World Health Assembly (WHA) in Geneva. Irrespective of the reality of risk or the massively disproportionate public funding required, the world is going to find a lot more potential threats, and is building a whole industry that will ensure they translate into corporate profit.
The Opportunity of Influenza
Avian influenza, or bird flu, has been around perhaps as long as birds (so was likely a dinosaur malady in Cretaceous times). Humans must have lived alongside it for over 200,000 years, and our primate ancestors far longer. Bird flu viruses are part of a range of variants of the influenza virus family that undergo regular mutation and recombination (even mixing genome from viruses that normally infect different species) that makes them appear relatively new to our immune system. This makes them more harmful and results in a new influenza outbreak almost every year, as our immunity from the last one (or from a prior influenza vaccine) only partially addresses the next.
Sometimes, recombination allows an influenza virus that is mostly confined to other animals, such as birds, to undergo a wider shift that allows it to infect other species, such as humans. This is similar to what scientists sometimes try to simulate in the lab through ‘gain-of-function’ research, such as modifying bat coronaviruses to become pathogenic to humans.
Humans have always lived in very close proximity with, and eaten, animals that harbor influenza viruses. The last major ‘spillover’ of influenza from birds to humans was the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19. It killed perhaps 20 to 40 million people, most probably due to secondary bacterial pneumonia as there were no modern antibiotics. In the century since, an event of this nature has not recurred, and with modern antibiotics and medical care, the mortality of the Spanish flu should now be far lower.
So, why are we seeing the current hysteria regarding bird flu, and why is the media promoting narratives such as potential mortality massively greater than the Spanish flu or any influenza outbreak in human history? The answer, presumably, lies earlier in this article. A very wealthy corporate and financial sector that is influential over governments and media that knows, and has demonstrated, that wealth can be concentrated to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars through fear of a virus.
There is now a rapidly expanding army of virologists, ‘virus hunters,’ public health bureaucrats, and modelers whose sole reason for receiving funding is to find and publicize new variants of viruses. We have international public-private partnerships devoted to developing and distributing vaccines for such events, supported by taxpayer funding. We also have a draft pandemic treaty that has just been deferred by the WHA, intended to further increase public funding for this private good. From an industry viewpoint, its rapid passage in the coming months would benefit from fear and urgency.
Making Bird Flu Work
Declaration of a bird flu pandemic therefore looks almost inevitable, whether facilitated by ongoing gain-of-function research and a lab leak, or through a natural passage to humans. This inevitability is not so much because it is a real and existential threat, but rather because the industry – the financial-Pharma-media-public health complex that has arisen before and through Covid, needs it. The virus is real. The threat can also be made to appear existential. It is likely to proceed with something like the scenario below.
Traces of genome and even whole viruses can be found in raw agricultural produce. Testing these, and human sewage (contaminated with virus from birds or humans), is already underway and will demonstrate this. Genome has already been found in milk, probably because we looked for it – this has probably also happened often, undetected, before.
Extensive testing of workers on chicken farms and on farms where other infected animals are housed (e.g. dairy herds) will find people who test positive for the virus. Biology is highly variable and some people will establish short-lived mild infections. A few will become severely ill and die due to some immune deficiency or factors such as a very high infective dose. Once listed as a rare pneumonia of unknown cause, such infections can now be definitively pinned as bird flu and used very effectively by media to increase viewership. Within the public health community, these occurrences promote salary and research funding and are extremely important.
Mass killing (culling) at chicken farms. This won’t halt spread, as spread mainly occurs through wild bird species. It could theoretically protect workers from the low (but not zero) risk they face. Importantly, it makes news and promotes a perception that something really bad is afoot. Those who order culls do not suffer from them, and industrial chicken producers are compensated by taxpayers, who will also pay more for eggs and chicken meat. Left unchecked, many chickens would have died in an outbreak, while some would have survived.
Mass killing of secondary hosts such as cattle. Again, a low risk to humans. It is also relatively easy to quarantine cattle herds until an outbreak has run its course. However, culling creates publicity and the impression of a dynamic, desperate response, important in creating a sense of a public health sector scrambling to save the public. It also supports a movement claiming that farming for meat should be replaced by highly processed factory-derived alternative foods, an alternative that is struggling for market share. The fake meat industry is supported by some of the same major investors as Pharma, who are very vocal in the pandemic agenda.
Modeling to demonstrate potential mass death within the population. The major modeling groups (e.g. Imperial College London, University of Washington, Gates Foundation) are funded by entities who are invested in Pharma and gained greatly from Covid-19. Modelers understand outcomes that benefit sponsors, which may have influenced the emphasis on worst-case and highly unrealistic outcomes during Covid-19.
Requirement for mass vaccination (or killing) of backyard chickens to keep the community safe. The concept of ‘greater good’ is the most popular of the concepts that underpin fascism, and can be used to ensure broad compliance, with vilification of non-compliers being the penalty. This was used widely by pro-corporate politicians such as Justin Trudeau to isolate and denigrate those who wanted to weigh harms against the benefits of Covid vaccines or supported the concept of bodily autonomy. The UK and Ireland recently introduced a requirement to register all backyard chickens, to facilitate this process.
Requirement for vaccination of chicken owners – owners of every farm or backyard hen. This will be sold as further protecting their neighbors and communities. Those refusing will be portrayed as ‘putting their entire communities at risk, especially ‘the most vulnerable.’ This message, however distanced from context and reality, is very powerful and the media demonstrated during Covid how willing they are to exploit such division and scapegoating.
Lockdowns, school closures, closure of smaller workplaces. As during Covid, this will involve mainly those lacking influence at WEF and similar forums. There will be some deaths in the community, and even busy ICUs from influenza or other causes. The busy ICUs will be highlighted as unusual (which, of course, they are not) to promote a need to ‘all pull together’ and overcome the threat. This is a difficult message to counter, as on a superficial level such fascistic greater good claims make support for individual choice, fundamental to free societies, difficult.
Population-wide mass vaccination. Mass vaccination can be promoted as inconvenient but necessary as an all-in community safety issue. Although people may be more resistant as harms from Covid vaccination become more widely acknowledged, bird flu is already being portrayed as potentially far worse. The vaccine will be pitched as a way to get freedoms back, a form of coercion once anathema in public health but now mainstream. With hundreds of billions in Pharma sales at stake, it is an extremely hard train to stop. Billions spent on advertising, political sponsorship, and propaganda are literally minor business expenses.
The order of the above steps, and the emphasis, may change. None of the steps will stop bird flu. It spreads through wild bird species and will continue to do so. Occasionally, it will spill over into humans. Very occasionally these will cause a significant outbreak. The Spanish flu was a bad example, but life rapidly went back to normal.
Managing Perceptions
In the century since the Spanish flu, influenza outbreaks have continued to resolve naturally with little change in human behavior, but steadily building alarm. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 had been shrugged off as an annoyance and didn’t even stop Woodstock. The SARS outbreak in 2003 (a coronavirus, not influenza) promoted widespread fear, yet killed in total the same as die every 8 hours from tuberculosis. The Swine flu outbreak of 2009, which killed less than normal seasonal influenza, precipitated an international crisis. Pandemics, though real, are mostly about perceptions. So is the response.
The pandemic industry has become far better, and more systematic, at managing perceptions. This is the whole basis on which the behavioral psychology of government ‘nudge units’ was based during Covid. The aim was not a calculated overall public good, but to promote a particular set of public behaviors to address a narrowly defined threat. This is now underway for bird flu. A large part of the populace will comply with increasingly strict measures, not because they have been presented accurate information in context upon which they can make rational choices, but because they are fooled, or coerced, into behaviors they would not normally follow. They will accept restrictions and interventions that they would normally resist.
Unless wider society regains control of the agenda, the Pharma industry and its investors are set to make a killing through bird flu. It will be at least as big as Covid. It will also serve an important role in further building the pandemic industry, justifying the finalization of the postponed WHO Pandemic Agreement (treaty). It is a vital cog in the Great Reset.
Outbreaks do occur and we should monitor and prepare for them. However, we have allowed the development of a system where outbreaks are almost all that matter. Perceptions of risk, and resultant funding, have become grossly disproportionate to reality. The perverse incentives driving this are obvious, as are the harms. The world will be increasingly unequal and impoverished, and sick, building on the outcomes of the Covid response. Fear promotes profit better than calmness and context. It is on us to remain calm and continually educate ourselves regarding context. No one will sell these to us.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
The world of climate policy abounds with bad ideas – from force-feeding an increasingly reluctant driving public a steady diet of EVs, to regulating popular household appliances out of existence.
But one of the worst is megaprojects aimed at sucking carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and burying it deep underground. These pricey monstrosities, we are told, are necessary if the planet is to be saved from the onslaught of manmade greenhouse gases. Known as “direct air capture,” the unproven technology has attracted enough investor interest to finance decarbonization plants that are beginning to sprout up in the U.S. and elsewhere.
In southeastern Montana’s Snowy River region, two strange bedfellows – the Biden administration and ExxonMobil – are proposing a giant carbon sequestration project on and underneath federal land. It would be supported by a vast “carbon capture” network consisting of tens and thousands of miles of new pipelines and dozens of remote storage sites. The White House sees the scheme as advancing its decarbonization agenda, and ExxonMobil is eager to pocket what The Washington Postreports could be as much as $12.7 billion in federal subsidies for participating in the project.
But the Snowy River project is running into fierce resistance from locals, led by ranchers and county officials, who don’t want to see their part of the world used as a dumping ground for a technology they don’t trust. A similar uproar in the Midwest proved the undoing of the Heartland Greenway. Also known as the CO2 pipeline, the Heartland Greenway was supposed to pump 15 million tons of carbon dioxide captured annually from emissions of ethanol plants via a 1200-mile pipeline traversing five states to an underground site in North Dakota. Such was the outcry among landowners, regulators, and elected officials along the path of the pipeline that the developer, Navigator CO2, abandoned the project last October.
Louisiana has over 20 carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects in various stages of planning and development, most of them in the southeastern part of the state. Yet even in a state as historically friendly to the oil and gas industry as Louisiana, the projects are encountering stiff headwinds from residents concerned about the impact of injecting massive amounts of CO2 into ground overladen with bayous. In Iceland, Swiss start-up Climeworks recently opened the world’s biggest direct air capture facility, dubbed “Mammoth,” designed to remove 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year. After Climeworks captures the CO2, and has it pumped deep underground, it sells offsets based on the captured CO2.
But global carbon offset markets have become so dodgy that the Biden administration found it necessary to issue a set of voluntary guidelines to restore trust in the transactions. Released May 28, the new guidelines will “advance high-integrity” voluntary carbon markets, the White House said in a fact sheet.
Carbon offsets are an artificial commodity – completely unrelated to the climate or any other tangible asset. They are an open invitation to fraud, because it is impossible to say what effect buying or selling them will have on the climate. As even the Biden administration acknowledges: “In too many instances, credits do not live up to the high standards necessary for market participants to transact transparently and with certainty that credit purchases will deliver verifiable decarbonization.” A nine-month investigation in Europe into Verra, the world’s leading certifier of the voluntary carbon offset market, concluded last year that “more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most used by companies – are likely to be ‘phantom credits’ and do not represent genuine carbon reduction.” Companies using the Verra standard included Disney, Shell, and Gucci.
Corporate interest in the $2 billion carbon offset market has sagged in recent years, and it is not clear that the White House’s guidelines, including such things as voluntary disclosures by market participants, will improve matters. But carbon offsets and direct air capture and sequestration of CO2 fit neatly into the prevailing narrative that rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are dangerously warming the plant.
But are they? Atmospheric levels of CO2 began rising in the mid-20th century, but the slight warming the Earth is undergoing dates from the late 17th century. In other words, the planet’s slow rebound from the Little Ice Age (ca. 1250-1800) cannot have been caused by something that happened after World War II. Moreover, today’s higher levels of atmospheric CO2 – about 420 parts per million (ppm) compared with roughly 250 ppm in the Little Ice Age – are highly beneficial to plant life and essential to growing crops needed to feed the world’s 8 billion people.
Some entities – whether selling carbon offsets, providing software platforms to facilitate carbon market transactions, or pocketing taxpayer subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration – can make money on the scheme the White House is trying to rescue. But the price paid by ordinary people for solving a non-existent climate crisis is incalculable.
In June 2021, Dr. Sam White, a general practitioner, released a video calling out harmful covid policy. From a scientific perspective every word he said was entirely defensible. Moreover it is clear that he was speaking from an ethical position of wanting to protect his patients from harm. He pulled no punches in addressing the most prominent issues that were causing harm – lack of treatment for the frail, inappropriate gene therapies and masking. In interviews, in 2022, he called the situation a war between good and evil. In doing so he unleashed a torrent of anger among those in a position of power over him, which, three years on, continues to harm him.
He had already resigned from his GP partnership in protest at their vaccination policy in February 2021. His conscience had been keeping him awake at night because he did not want to be a part of the vaccine rollout. Consequently, after resigning he was signed off with stress rather than having to work his notice. NHS England still saw fit to suspend him with an emergency order in June. Dr White managed to record a conversation with an NHS senior clinical adviser who implied that he was mentally unwell. Dr White believes that possession of that recording led the NHS to revoke their suspension. However, by then the NHS had referred him for a GMC investigation and an automatic GMC suspension.
The GMC overturned the suspension in August 2021 but imposed restrictions on him including a ban on mentioning covid on social media and requiring the removal of his previous posts. The legal position is that doctors have a right to free speech but if the GMC could prove Dr White’s speech was a threat to the health of the public or undermined trust in the profession then he could be sanctioned.
Dr White looked to his indemnity provider for support to fund his legal case but they washed their hands of him saying it was a “conduct issue”. With the help of crowd funding support, Dr White took the case to the High Court in November 2021. The verdict was published in December 2021, overruling the GMC and saying they had not followed due process in their actions. The High Court documentation was removed from the judiciary’s website in September 2022 such that other doctors in a similar position will be unable to refer to it in their defence. It is available on the Wayback Machine.
Dr White has asked to be removed from the register, as he is no longer practising conventional medicine, but the GMC have refused and are continuing to persecute him. Every interview he has undertaken has been transcribed and put forward as evidence that he is undermining public health policy and causing the public to lose trust in the profession. The next tribunal hearing is scheduled to last three weeks in August and September 2024. This ongoing investigation, three years later, indicates a relentless effort to discredit and punish Dr. White for his dissenting views.
If that sounds bad, wait until you hear about the NHS’s role.
The same day as the High Court hearing, unbeknown to Dr White or his lawyers, NHSE had a meeting where they decided to refer Dr White for a health assessment, despite the fact he no longer worked in the NHS. This was an opportunity to reopen the investigation into him. They have repeatedly asked if he had returned to NHS work and said he must tell them if he did. What was their intent here? Were they planning to ask any future employer to suspend him all over again?
NHS England has a list of “approved providers”. Any doctor not on their list cannot work for the primary employer of doctors in the country. In 2023, NHS England removed Dr White from their list, effectively barring him from practising within the NHS. He had already shifted his practice to private healthcare with a holistic focus, but this further punishment leaves him with no other options.
The GMC is far from perfect but at least it has due process and a system of appeal for where there might be an injustice. NHS England can unilaterally destroy a career, with no legal recourse.
In some ways, the most disturbing aspect of the whole affair was revealed in the communications between the GMC and NHS England. Firstly, the derogatory terms used about the doctor to justify their behaviour are shocking and reveal a lack of professionalism and intolerance for differing opinions within the medical establishment. Moreover, this language served as a means to rationalise their harsh and unjust actions towards him. Secondly, they appeared to be acting in cahoots. The GMC’s apparent open and fair processes have been bypassed by direct communication with NHS England, stripping Dr White of a right to employment.
Dr. Sam White’s case is a stark example of systemic injustice and the erosion of professional rights within the NHS and the GMC. His ongoing persecution for voicing dissenting views underscores a troubling intolerance for ethical and scientific debate, reminiscent of a Kafkaesque nightmare where rationality and justice are subordinated to bureaucratic oppression.
The European Union (EU) is planning to implement a new set of draconian mass surveillance rules shortly after Sunday’s EU Parliament election, a member of the EP has warned after the plans surfaced on the internet.
The conclusion that radical surveillance measures are in the works proceeds from documents detailing the meetings of working groups, dubbed “high level group(s) on access to data for effective law enforcement.”
The documents originate from the EU Commission, and contain a number of recommendations, including reintroducing indiscriminate retention of communications data in the bloc, creation of encryption backdoors, as well as forcing hardware manufacturers to give access to anything from phones to cars to law enforcement through what is known as “access by design.”
MEP Patrick Breyer announced that the plan contains 42 points produced by the EU Commission and governments of member-countries. The purpose of being able to access phones, IoT (such as “smart home”) devices, and cars is to make sure they can be monitored around the clock.
Meanwhile, the return of controversial data retention is planned despite a previous ruling of the EU Court of Justice, and could even be extended to include over-the-top services such as messengers (this is defined as retaining IP information data “at the very least”). That, Breyer explains, means that all internet activities will become trackable.
A favorite target of authorities actively undermining their image as democracies has for a while been end-to-end encryption. Here, the EU intends to ban secure encryption of metadata and subscriber data, as well as force messaging services who implement encryption to allow interception.
The EU further plans to “tackle” the use of encryption devices that it declares are “proven to be used solely” by criminals. In reality, the right to install encryption backdoors in phones and computers can be abused to spy on anyone, dissidents and critics included.
Technology providers will, if so ordered by judicial authorities, have to break encryption in order to “facilitate access to data at rest in user’s devices.” And there will be “mechanisms for robust cooperation with communication and technology providers” – meaning they will have to share data with governments and law enforcement.
If these agencies demand, service providers must activate GPS location tracking, according to these recommended “solutions for effective law enforcement.” Representatives of providers who refuse could end up in jail.
“This extreme surveillance plan must not become a reality, if only because it has been cooked up by a completely one-sided secret group of surveillance fanatics working without any real transparency or democratic legitimacy,” Breyer stated.
Today, the largest protest against the World Health Organization (WHO) began, with an opening speech by Kazuhiro Haraguchi, a former Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan and a current member of the House of Representatives. The massive gathering aimed to highlight several critical issues, as Haraguchi delivered a powerful and heartfelt address that resonated with many.
Haraguchi began by addressing the grief and loss felt by countless individuals and families due to the pandemic. With a deep sense of sincerity, he extended his condolences and took responsibility for the failings of those in power. “I apologize to all of you. So many have died, and they shouldn’t have,” he said. His words reflected a deep empathy and regret for the preventable tragedies that have occurred, setting a somber yet resolute tone for the event.
One of the key points in Haraguchi’s speech was his criticism of the ban on Ivermectin, a drug developed by Dr. Satoshi Omura, which he believed could have played a significant role in combating the pandemic. Haraguchi questioned the motives behind the ban, suggesting that economic interests were prioritized over public health. “Why? Because they are cheap. They don’t want it because it will interfere with the sales of the vaccines,” he argued. This statement drew loud applause from the crowd, many of whom felt that corporate profits had taken precedence over human lives.
Haraguchi then shared a deeply personal story about his own health struggles. After receiving vaccines, he developed a severe illness, specifically a rapidly progressing form of cancer. “This time last year, I had neither eyebrows nor hair. Two out of the three supposed vaccines I received were lethal batches,” he revealed. This candid account of his battle with cancer, which included significant physical changes like hair loss, struck a chord with the audience. He recounted an incident where his appearance became a point of distraction in the Diet, with an opponent focusing more on his wig than the issues at hand.
Adding to the conversation, Haraguchi disclosed that he was not the only member of Japan’s National Diet to suffer adverse effects from vaccines. He mentioned that three of his colleagues had been severely affected, with some even hospitalized. “They are falling to pieces, some hospitalized. But they don’t speak up,” he explained. This revelation underscored a broader issue: the reluctance or inability of public figures to discuss their personal health challenges openly.
Haraguchi was particularly passionate about the attempts to silence those who question current policies and government actions. He recounted a recent incident where he was banned from speaking on Channel 3 after an interview with its president. “The other day, I spoke with the President of Channel 3, and I was banned. They are trying to silence our voices,” he stated. This attempt to censor dissenting voices highlighted a critical concern about freedom of speech and expression. Haraguchi urged the audience to remain steadfast in their resolve, saying, “They are trying to block our freedom, our resistance, our power. But we will never lose.”
In the conclusion of his speech, Haraguchi issued a rallying call for action. He urged the people to stand united in challenging the government and its questionable decisions. “Let’s overthrow this government,” he proclaimed, emphasizing the need for change and accountability. He called on legislators to continue fighting for the people’s lives and freedoms, “Let’s make it happen,” he concluded.
The protest that is happening right now (31st May 2024), which aims to draw tens of thousands of participants, marked a significant moment in the global discourse about pandemic management and health policies. Haraguchi’s speech, filled with personal anecdotes and strong criticisms, resonated deeply with the attendees.
The new “foreign agents” law will help Georgians tell right from wrong and real friends from fake ones, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik, arguing that the legislation should be called the “transparency law.”
Georgia’s “foreign agents bill,” which designates non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power,” became law on May 28. The US immediately announced sanctions against Georgian politicians backing the legislation, while the EU threatened to freeze the country’s candidate status.
One might wonder as to why the law, which resembles the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), has been received with such animosity in the West. The crux of the matter is that the legislation is aimed at exposing the West’s deep disrespect of Georgia’s sovereignty, according to former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter.
“In Georgia today, as we speak, there are 27,000 Western-funded NGOs. What are these non-governmental organizations doing? It’s about buying a generation of Georgian citizens, a young generation, a generation that has lost touch with who they are and what they are as Georgians, a generation that is out of touch with the reality of what happened to Georgia in the 1990s,” Ritter told Sputnik.
Over the past several decades, Georgians have experienced what the “European choice” really entails, Ritter continued, referring to US-backed Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s aggression against South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers in August 2008, which was quickly repelled by Moscow. Following Saakashvili’s botched invasion, Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which had declared their independence from Tbilisi in the early 1990s.
Putting Georgia First
Currently, the Western-backed Georgian opposition wants to create a “second front” against Russia, something that would be nothing short of suicidal, according to Ritter. This policy of confronting Russia is part and parcel of an overall package that includes Georgia becoming a member of the European Union and member of NATO, which would also mean ceding Georgia’s sovereignty to the West, the military expert warned.
“Georgian Dream has the best interests of Georgia in mind,” said Ritter. “The EU wants Georgia to participate in the economic sanctioning of Russia. The Georgian Dream Party so far has said no. Look what happened to Europe when they sanctioned Russia, it boomeranged, backfired. What about Georgia? By not participating in the economic sanction of Russia, the Georgian economy has grown more than 10% over the course of the last two years and is on pace to continue this level of growth. That’s called looking out for Georgia first.”
When it comes to Georgian NATO membership, many of the nation’s seasoned military officers, who participated in NATO’s Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo campaigns and brought home the dead bodies of Georgian soldiers, are no longer enthusiastic about joining the alliance, the expert remarked.
Ritter explained that territorial disputes with South Ossetia and Abkhazia will not allow Georgia to join NATO any time soon, adding that the irony is that the two breakaway republics will not start settling their disagreements with Tbilisi until the latter gives up its NATO aspirations.
New Law to Prevent West From Meddling in Georgia’s Elections
Unlike Georgia’s former pro-Western leaders and opposition, the Georgian Dream Party has taken a middle path of steering the nation away from economic and political crises, according to the pundit. In light of this, the upcoming October elections will become a litmus test for Georgians, and the governing party doesn’t want the West to decide the nation’s fate by meddling in the vote via thousands of US and EU-funded non-governmental organizations. Hence, the adoption of the law, which will help separate the wheat from the chaff, he said.
“One of the goals in passing this legislation was to prevent the EU and the US from taking control of the political opposition, directly and indirectly, by pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars through these 27,000 non-governmental organizations. By stopping this, by exposing this foreign money, the reality of this foreign money, the Georgian Dream Party is betting that the Georgian people will be shocked by the depths to which ostensible friends, the US, the EU, have gone to buy Georgia, not respecting Georgia as a sovereign state, not respecting the Georgian people as a sovereign people.”
Georgian Dream lawmakers want to prevent external forces from dragging the nation into another debacle, according to the expert. They want Georgians to choose their own way on the world arena, not as “Europeans,” but as “Georgians.”
“The Georgian Dream Party is betting that the Georgian people at the end of the day will recognize that they are not European – that they are Georgian. They are Eurasian. They are unique. That they don’t belong in a continent that doesn’t want them. They belong in the homeland, in the South Caucasus, from which they come. And that their closest big neighbor, Russia, has been the best friend of Georgia over time than any other nation on the planet. This is the Georgian dream. This is the dream of the Georgian people. And this should be the dream of anybody who claims to be a friend of the Georgian nation,” Ritter concluded.
While critics claim that technologically complex US weapons produce unreliable systems in limited quantities because of cost, a report by Responsible Statecraft proves otherwise, stating that the failure of US weapons in Ukraine is much due to the military’s lack of adequate testing.
Successive “game-changing” systems like the Switchblade drone, the M-1 Abrams tank, Patriot air defense missiles, the M777 howitzer, the Excalibur guided 155 mm artillery round, the HIMARS precision missile, GPS-guided bombs, and Skydio drones with artificial intelligence were all transferred to Ukraine. That is when the show of strength began.
For instance, the $60,000 limited-quantity Switchblade drone didn’t work against armored targets, and Ukrainian troops chose instead $700 Chinese commercial models bought online, RS reported.
The $10 million Abrams tank kept malfunctioning and was soon taken out of combat. Russia was able to capture at least one, which they added to a display of NATO weaponry in a Moscow park alongside an M777 howitzer and other items. This stands as a plain display of mockery toward the US and its so-called military superiority.
The M777 cannon, known for its accuracy, proved to be too vulnerable in rough conditions. Its barrels frequently wore out and needed replacement in Poland, while its 155 mm ammunition has been suffering from short supply.
No one will sign up to be part of a deal on Kiev-Washington arms co-production, given Russian precision strikes on Ukrainian military infrastructure amid its proxy war with NATO, former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett told Sputnik.
The US State Department recently announced a $2 billion package for Kiev aimed at creating the so-called Ukraine Defense Enterprise Program (UDEP) fund.
In particular, the fund could be used to “strategically weaken Russia by transitioning partners away from Russian systems and supporting [foreign military financing] loans to partners and allies,” an unnamed State Department official was cited by the Defense One news outlet as saying.
“Without any doubt, the US funding package for Ukraine – intended to be used to stimulate Europe’s arms industry, fund US-Ukraine arms co-production, and lure countries away from the Russian arms market – will fail in all of its objectives,” former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett said in an interview with Sputnik.
He explained that “the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme will ultimately fail because the entire nation of Ukraine is now devolving into a failed state.”
Another aspect pertains to the fact that Ukraine “has no personnel able to create weapons anymore, and no ability to establish such an enterprise on its soil, as Russia would immediately target and destroy any such facilities before they could produce or deploy any weapons to be used against Russian soldiers,” per Bennett.
“The Ukrainians know this, and therefore no one would ‘willingly’ sign up to be part of any facility in Ukraine that does such activities because it would just be a matter of time before the building disappeared in a mountain of rubble,” the ex-State Department analyst pointed out.
When asked what specific types of arms or ammunition the US could co-produce with Ukraine, Bennett said that “these type of guerilla terrorist weapons might include drones, sea, air, and land bombs.”
He didn’t rule out that investor nations involved in the UDEP project “would most likely be Britain, France, Germany, and the Baltic nations.”
Touching upon the issue of the weapons market, Bennett said the US “has been on a conveyor belt of producing weapons for the shallow purpose of enriching politicians and the military-industrial complex, and not for military efficiency purposes.” Per him, “This is a lethal flaw, and an impediment which the rest of the world sees and therefore consciously and unconsciously views US-NATO weapons on a lower level than the Russian weapons.”
Bennett referred to Russian weapons as something “designed to defeat the US-NATO Ukrainian military,” which he said is viewed as “the main destabilizer of the world.”
So, he went on to say, “It is logical to assume that Russian weapons will be valued and sought after as the natural antidote or best defense against future Western Empirical operations — which they openly boast is coming with fatalistic and narcissistic indifference.”
As such, the US-Ukrainian arms development scheme “will once again confirm to the American and European peoples — currently held hostage by their governments — that the real enemy of Western peoples are the tyrants in their own government who are using the war to bleed money from citizens and construct an endless excuse for absolute authoritarian political control using endless fear and ‘rumors of war’,” the ex-State Department analyst concluded.
Conflicts of interest within the medical community have reached record highs as concerns for patient safety and independent scrutiny of Big Pharma products are driven by newly released information showing serious conflicts of interest.
As the investigation into the origins and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic takes center stage through congressional hearings, shocking testimony is being revealed to the public. Shockingly, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health, has admitted under oath that NIH was funding gain of function research. In an even more shocking turn, newly released emails from Dr. David Morens, who worked as Senior Advisor to the Director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases directly under Dr. Anthony Fauci, reveal shocking revelations that senior officials at NIH were purposely using private emails and having in person conversations to avoid FOIA requests. Amidst all of this, HHS has stripped all funding from Peter Daszak, and Eco Health Alliance.
Testimony from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Senior Scientific Advisor David Morens — a longtime aide to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci — only deepened congressional concerns about the possibility of concealed or destroyed emails concerning connections between the institute and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A memo and over 150 emails released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday show that Morens spent considerable time and energy avoiding the Freedom of Information Act — a law that requires federal agency records to be provided to the public on request with limited exceptions.
Morens deleted sensitive emails, conducted official business on a private email account, and worked with an NIAID administrator in the Freedom of Information Office to strategically misspell keywords that the public might request to be searched, the committee alleges.
Morens sought to conceal emails in which he championed his close friend EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, a scientist who subcontracted NIAID funding to the lab in Wuhan for experiments that made coronaviruses more deadly. Morens said that he and Daszak met twenty years ago and were part of the same close knit “fraternity” among emerging infectious diseases experts.
The subpoenaed emails make clear that Morens repeatedly advocated for EcoHealth and Daszak from within Fauci’s inner circle — serving as an intermediary between Daszak and Fauci — and often using his private Gmail account to shuttle messages.
One email released by the committee suggests that Fauci himself may have subverted public records requests through use of a personal email account, bypassing official channels.
“I can either send stuff to Tony on his private email or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens emailed on April 21, 2021. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
Other emails show Morens and Daszak strategizing about how to convey information to Fauci without leaving a paper trail.
Morens confirmed Wednesday that he discussed grants from NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with Fauci.
“I certainly told him some things that he asked me to tell him about the situation with Peter [Daszak],” Morens said.
That statement contradicts a transcribed interview Morens gave the committee earlier this year in which he said he did not recall discussing EcoHealth or the Wuhan lab with Fauci.
“The evidence establishes that Dr. Morens likely provided false testimony to the Select Subcommittee,” the committee’s memo states.
The committee may recommend that the Department of Justice investigate Morens for making false statements, a crime in violation of Title 18 Section 1001.
The testimony follows revelations last week that Morens stated he would delete any “smoking guns” implicating a connection between Daszak’s organization and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Far from allaying concerns, Morens’ subpoenaed emails and testimony only raised more questions about the culture at the NIAID around transparency and public records requests. Indeed, the emails and testimony suggest NIAID may have systems in place to help employees evade FOIA requests.
NIAID did not reply to a request for comment.
In addition, Morens wrote an email about the possibility of a “kickback” for helping to restore EcoHealth’s NIAID funding. He wrote profane emails that referred to binge drinking and sex, and made a remark about former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky wearing a skirt, raising concerns about his lack of professionalism and attitudes toward women.
“It is very disturbing to witness this type of behavior from Dr. Fauci’s senior advisor, but the evidence is clear and overwhelming. Dr. Fauci’s NIAID was unfortunately less pristine than so many, including the media, would’ve had us all believe,” said Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio.
In one of the emails obtained by the committee, Morens acknowledges that the reputation of EcoHealth and Daszak affect the reputations of Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
“From Tony’s numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you, which also protects their own reputations,” Morens wrote in October 2021.
Morens’s attorneys turned over 30,000 emails to the committee responsive to a subpoena on April 30, just before Daszak testified to the committee on May 1. It remains to be seen whether more emails come to light following the new revelations that Fauci apparently used a private Gmail account and that Morens used a Proton Mail account in addition to his Gmail account.
Morens said that the emails about a “back channel,” a “kickback,” and “smoking guns” simply reflected “black humor.” Morens also expressed regret for how his emails had undermined trust in NIAID.
“I’ve already apologized for making snarky and profane comments but I made them thinking that they were made on my private Gmail in a manner that was just between a small group of friends,” Morens said. “It’s embarrassing to me. I shouldn’t have done it. But I accept that I did it. I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry.”
However Morens gave unclear testimony in response to the question of whether he improperly used his personal email to conduct official business.
Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., read out six separate emails in which Morens referred to avoiding FOIA. It took over three minutes to read every one.
“This Gmail communication thing was set up purely to deal with personal things that were not government business,” Morens said.
“How can you say that when in all of these emails you said you were intentionally avoiding FOIA? You said it in your own words, sir,” Lesko said.
Lesko countered that official emails had been forwarded to his private Gmail, that the emails on his Gmail had his official NIAID position in the email signature.
Morens blamed a technical issue.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you,” Lesko replied.
‘Do I get a kickback???’
When the novel coronavirus emerged from the same city in China with a high security lab specializing in coronaviruses, Daszak’s collaboration with the lab and with University of North Carolina gain-of-function coronavirologist Ralph Baric came under scrutiny — including from non-virologists like Wenstrup.
For his part, Morens helped Daszak with non-public information when concerns about the Wuhan lab prompted NIH to suspend EcoHealth’s grant. Morens forwarded Daszak an email marked “for official use only” in April 2020.
Morens appears to have helped Daszak navigate around NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer’s request for more information about the Wuhan lab in 2020 as a condition of the reinstatement of the grant, possibly hampering the U.S. government from accessing more information about the research underway there. Morens even personally edited EcoHealth’s response to Lauer, one email shows. That email too contradicts Morens’s transcribed interview earlier this year, perhaps exposing him to criminal penalties.
Daszak’s testimony earlier this month indicated that he never asked the Wuhan lab for genomic data beyond 2015 or so or for relevant lab notebooks — instead merely forwarding a request for information from NIH.
Morens also alerted Daszak to the forthcoming publication of documents released under FOIA in September 2021.
Morens invoked Fauci’s name in an email in which he appealed to an EcoHealth Alliance board member to continue to support the organization upon Daszak’s request.
After the grant was reinstated — despite Daszak’s failure to provide the data and information about the Wuhan lab that NIH requested — Morens sent an email referring to a “kickback.”
“Ahem…. Do I get a kickback??? Too much fooking money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss….” he wrote.
“Of course there’s a kick-back,” Daszak replied.
Morens said the emails were in jest and denied receiving payment or any gifts from EcoHealth or Daszak.
Members of the committee of both parties expressed concerns that Morens used official resources and the imprimatur of the NIAID to improperly assist the embattled EcoHealth, and how that could impact NIAID.
“I just hope you’re going to be very careful as you are telling us what the facts are because I’m very disturbed about other people who may be thrown under the bus in some of the wiley statements you made on your personal statements,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., an apparent reference to Fauci and Collins.
The Department of Health and Human Services has suspended federal funding both to EcoHealth and to Daszak personally pending an investigation into their handling of taxpayer funds. EcoHealth and Daszak could face debarment of any federal funds for several years.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who recently co-launched a bipartisan investigation into biosafety issues at the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, called upon the DOJ to investigate Morens Wednesday and alleged a criminal conspiracy to conceal records at NIAID.
The emails also indicate that Morens played a central role at NIAID in early debates about gain-of-function experiments — specifically, controversial experiments on highly pathogenic avian flu in 2011 — and that he privately criticized scientists in favor of stronger biosafety regulations at Rutgers University, Harvard University and Stanford University.
Symptoms of a dying empire are arrogance and a refusal to adapt to change. The M-1 Abrams tank is an outdated Cold War symbol of the power of the US Army. It was designed in the 1970s, costs far too much to upgrade and maintain, burns far too much fuel, lacks overhead protection from drones, and is far too heavy for most off-road operations and rural bridges. This was exposed during the war in Ukraine when M-1 tanks were easily destroyed on the battlefield. The Ukrainians were sent 31 70-ton M-1s and quickly asked to trade them for German Leopard tanks since the super heavy M-1s easily got stuck in mud, broke down often, and required daily refueling. After seven M-1s were destroyed during their first three months of sporadic combat, most were withdrawn from units.
“Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats”; Tara Copp; AP News; April 25, 2024; https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-ru…
“M1 Abrams Ineffective By 2040 In Fight Against China: Army Study”; The Warzone; Joseph Trevithick; October 4, 2023; https://www.twz.com/m1-abrams-ineffec…
Some 126 of the Tory party’s 344 MPs have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups, Declassified has found.
The revelation comes as Rishi Sunak calls a general election in which his unequivocal backing of Israel could cost the party votes.
The value of the donations or hospitality amounts to over £430,000, with the organisations paying for sitting Conservative MPs to visit Israel on 187 occasions.
Some of those trips also involved visits to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and a small number were co-sponsored by groups which do not form part of the Israel lobby.
The main funder is Conservative Friends of Israel, a parliamentary group which does not disclose its own sources of funding.
Other notable donors include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange, and the European Leadership Network.
Thirteen Tory politicians have accepted over £50,000 in total to travel to Israel since 7 October, including for “solidarity” missions.
Friends of Israel
Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is a pro-Israel lobby group set up in 1974 by Michael Fidler, a Tory politician described in one biography as having political views “reminiscent of the philosophy of Enoch Powell”.
The organisation has long standing links with the Israeli state, and is “beginning to resemble the Westminster outpost for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud coalition”, according to veteran journalist Peter Oborne.
Around 80 percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI. Over the past decade, it has taken more MPs on overseas trips than any other political donor in Britain.
Publicly available data reviewed by Declassified shows that CFI has funded 118 sitting Tory MPs to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 towards the visits.
Those MPs include deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, home secretary James Cleverly, and justice secretary Alex Chalk, prior to their appointment to the cabinet.
Some 22 of those CFI-led visits have been subsidised by the Israeli foreign ministry to the tune of over £8,000 in total.
The Israeli state has also independently funded trips for Nadhim Zahawi and Kwasi Kwarteng, two former UK chancellors, as well as John Whittingdale MP, then the shadow secretary of state for the environment.
Past CFI delegations have involved tours of factories run by Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems. When journalist David Cronin asked whether the lobby group was funded by Elbit Systems in 2011, a CFI spokesperson said: “I don’t have to give you those details”.
Solidarity missions
CFI’s lobbying activities have intensified since 7 October.
The group has led two “special solidarity” delegations to Israel amid the Gaza genocide, involving six MPs – Stephen Crabb, Theresa Villiers, Robert Jenrick, Michael Ellis, Nicola Richards, and Greg Smith.
In Israel, the MPs were hosted by president Isaac Herzog, whose statement in October 2023 – that the “entire nation” of Gaza was responsible for Hamas’ attack on Israel – was cited by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as plausible evidence of incitement to genocide.
CFI also funds parliamentary candidates to visit Israel even before they become elected.
Prior to the 2019 general election, CFI brought a delegation of prospective parliamentary candidates to Israel, seven of whom – Siobhan Baillie, Miriam Cates, Dehenna Davison, Peter Gibson, Tom Hunt, Robert Largan, and Matthew Vickers – are now MPs.
In February 2024, one month after Israel was put under investigation by the ICJ for genocide, CFI led another trip to Israel for four more prospective MPs, Alexander Clarkson, Katie Lam, Ben Obese-Jecty, and Bradley Thomas.
CFI’s lobbying efforts are not limited to funding trips to Israel.
The organisation also prepares briefing material for MPs, enjoying “superb access to Downing Street, Westminster, and Whitehall”, and hosts an annual banquet which functions as a public display of support for Israel.
Prime minister Rishi Sunak addressed their latest banquet in January, calling CFI “an integral part of our party”.
AIPAC
Other notable pro-Israel lobby organisations which have funded Tory MPs include the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Jewish National Fund (JNF), and the National Jewish Assembly (NJA).
The total value of their donations is over £42,000.
AIPAC is a pro-Israel organisation based in Washington, and one of the most powerful lobbying forces in US politics.
Michael Gove, who has led the charge to ban British public bodies from boycotting Israel, accepted £3,086 from AIPAC to attend and speak at its conference in Washington in 2017.
James Morris MP attended an AIPAC conference in 2011, funded by its sister organisation the American Israel Education Foundation, while Henry Smith MP was funded directly by AIPAC to attend its conference the next year.
Other funded attendees of AIPAC events include Jonathan Djanogly MP and former UK home secretary Priti Patel. Their travel was paid for by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank with opaque funders and close links to Israel.
The JNF is a quasi-governmental organisation which has supported illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine. It has been described by historian Ilan Pappé as a “colonialist agency of ethnic cleansing”.
Matthew Offord MP has accepted £2,799 from JNF UK to travel to Israel on two occasions.
The NJA, meanwhile, is chaired by Gary Mond, who was asked to step down from the Board of Deputies of British Jews after liking Islamophobic posts on Facebook. One of the NJA’s core objectives is “supporting Israel”.
Since 7 October, it has sent two “solidarity missions” to Israel, and contributed £27,801 to former UK home secretary Suella Braverman’s recent trip to Tel Aviv.
Following her trip, Braverman said that Israel’s killing of three British aid workers in Gaza should not be a reason for “Britain to soften its support for Israel”.
Braverman added that she was “certain that Israel is nowhere near breaking international law”, six weeks before the International Criminal Court announced arrest applications for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gollant.
ELNET and AICE
Two of the other key organisations that fund Tory MPs’ trips to Israel include the European Leadership Network (ELNET) and the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange (AICE).
ELNET was formed in 2007 to “counter the widespread criticism of Israel in Europe”.
The organisation’s British wing is directed by former Labour MP and Labour Friends of Israel chair, Joan Ryan, while much of its operations are run from its office in Tel Aviv, headed by Emmanuel Navon.
In February, Navon described Israel’s planned offensive into Rafah as “necessary” and suggested that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell “need not worry about Gaza civilians”.
ELNET has funded six Tory MPs to visit Israel since 7 October, including Shaun Bailey, Lisa Cameron, Antony Higginbotham, Tom Hunt, Matthew Offord, and Andrew Percy.
The organisation also paid for former defence secretary Liam Fox to attend the US-Europe-Israel Strategic Dialogue in Washington in 2022.
The total cost of these delegations was £22,776.
AICE was established in 2003 by the then Israeli foreign minister, Netanyahu, and his Australian counterpart.
Four Tory MPs – John Howell, Jack Lopresti, Andrew Percy, and Will Quince – have accepted over £18,000 from AICE to travel to Israel on ten occasions.
Lopresti is also the only British politician to have also accepted a donation from Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems.
In addition to this, he helped to open Elbit’s “research, development and manufacturing hub” in Bristol alongside the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, in 2023.
More recently, Lopresti has been calling for politicians to distance themselves from campaign group Palestine Action.
Yet there has been little media attention on Lopresti’s association with Elbit Systems, Palestine Action’s main target, whose drone was used to kill three UK aid workers in April.
Other Tory MPs have accepted funding from European Friends of Israel and the Israel Allies Foundation.
Individual donors
The above data does not include donations from individuals linked to pro-Israel lobby organisations. Nor does it include donations to the Conservative Party itself from pro-Israel lobby organisations or individuals.
However, this area also deserves attention. In 2009, Peter Oborne reported in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that individuals linked to CFI had funded the Conservative Party to the tune of £10m.
A number of these individuals, such as Trevor Pears, Michael Lewis, David Meller, and Lord Kalms, have also donated to senior Tory figures.
That includes David Cameron, the unelected foreign secretary, who accepted £20,000 from Pears during his bid to become Tory party leader in 2005. Cameron also accepted hospitality from the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs three years later.
Grant Shapps, the current defence secretary, accepted £4,990 from Meller in July 2023, and an undisclosed amount from Lewis in 2005.
Other recipients of funding from Meller, Kalms, or Lewis include the former prime minister, Liz Truss, former shadow home secretary, David Davis, former defence secretary, Liam Fox, and Michael Gove.
The Israel lobby’s impact
The lobby is far from the only factor which conditions support for Israel in Britain.
The US government, which staunchly backs Israel, holds considerable sway over British foreign policy.
Some British politicians are committed Zionists, and would support Israel whether or not they received funding from the Israel lobby.
A small number of Tory MPs who have accepted Israel lobby funding, moreover, have gone on to oppose some of the Israeli government’s policies.
That includes former UK foreign secretary William Hague, who mildly criticised Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006 as “disproportionate”.
Some EU member states are considering imposing sanctions on Georgia, including the suspension of visa-free travel regime, over the foreign agents bill, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the situation.
On Saturday, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the controversial foreign agents bill that had been adopted by the country’s parliament last Tuesday. The parliament needs a simple majority to override the veto.
A number of EU countries, led by Estonia, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Sweden, aim to discuss restrictive measures towards Georgia at the EU Foreign Affairs meeting next week, the Financial Times reported.
The potential sanctions include suspending visa-free travel to the European Union by Georgians, freezing of EU funds for the country and some targeted sanctions, the newspaper cited the officials as saying.
If the foreign agents bill is enacted, Georgia’s EU accession progress will face a major setback, an EU official said.
The draft law “On the Transparency of Foreign Influence” was initially submitted to the Georgian parliament in February 2023 but was withdrawn the following month amid a wave of protests and pressure from Western countries. After revision, the term “foreign influence agent” was replaced with “organization promoting the interests of a foreign power,” while the rest of the content remained the same.
The latest iteration of the bill has sparked weeks of mass protests in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi amid concerns that it could block the South Caucasus nation’s path to EU membership. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell criticized the bill in March, saying its adoption could have serious repercussions for EU-Georgian relations.
The West is acting as harshly and “crazily” as possible with regard to Georgia because it failed to destabilize the situation in the country earlier, as it did with Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
The EU’s call on the Georgian authorities to ensure the right of citizens to protest can be interpreted as interference in internal affairs for the purpose of regime change, Maria Zakharova said. According to her, otherwise the EU’s call “can be interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of the state with the aim of regime change.
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
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