Connecticut School Board Faces Lawsuit for Rejecting School-Based Mental Health Clinic That Wanted to Treat Teens Without Parents’ Consent
By Brenda Baletti Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023
The Killingly Board of Education in Connecticut has been under fire since March 2022 when it refused to sign a five-year contract to install a federally funded school-based health center (SBHC) that would provide mental health services to minors without parental consent.
Instead, the board contracted for a similar center, but with month-to-month terms and parental consent required for treatment — and without federal grants or the rules they might impose.
The board’s rejection of the initial proposal, approved by the superintendent, led to the board and its members being slammed in local media, personally attacked, and subjected to a state investigation and a lawsuit.
Kelly Martin, vice chair of the Killingly Board of Education, and Sheila Matthews, founder of the nonprofit AbleChild, shared the board’s story with CHD.TV host Stephanie Locricchio on Monday’s “Good Morning CHD.”
Next week, the Killingly board faces a hearing, following a report last month — by attorney Michael McKeon, director of legal and governmental affairs for the Connecticut State Department of Education — criticizing the board’s actions.
The Killingly board rejected McKeon’s report as a “position statement,” and underscored the work they have taken to support Killingly children’s mental health.
The recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of SBHCs across the country — largely justified as an intervention into a mental health crisis among young people —- has critics concerned children will receive unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
School board beset by two-year battle including pandemic policies
Martin told Locricchio the controversy began when the school superintendent presented the school board with a proposal to put an SBHC in the school. The proposal provided only one possible service provider: Generations Family Health Center, which explicitly provided services without parental consent.
But many board members objected.
“The problem was never [with providing] mental health treatment,” Martin said. “We recognized that post-COVID children really, really need help. The problem was with the parents never being informed that the child was going to be treated.”
She added, “And that was something that was important to us — the parent doesn’t need to know what’s being discussed, [but they do] need to know that the child has a problem and is being treated and that they can actually keep a watchful eye on that child.”
The board voted down the SBHC, and a battle began. A group of parents represented by attorney Andrew A. Feinstein filed a complaint against the board seeking to overturn its vote, Martin said.
Once the board turned down the initial proposal, it interviewed alternative mental health services providers and set up a mental health clinic in the school where parents must opt-in to their child’s treatment.
But the state is not happy with that, she said. “They want that very first option, so it’s been an uphill battle since the lawsuit was actually filed,” she said.
The board had already come into conflict with the superintendent because it voted against an in-school COVID-19 vaccine clinic and then ended the in-school mask mandate.
Martin described the blowback:
“We have had people attack us constantly for the last two years. They’re making accusations that we don’t care about the mental health of children, [that] we don’t care about children at all. They’ve accused us of being racist, of being white supremacists. You name it, we’ve been accused of it.
“It’s been a very long two years. It all started when we started to give a little bit of pushback on some of these things.”
She said the group of people attacking them is small, “but they’re very vocal, they’re very loud,” and their actions have made board supporters afraid to speak out.Every Dollar has
Superintendent and attorney suing the board have conflicts of interest
The school board investigated the origins of the proposal and found the superintendent had put in a request for funding a mental health clinic without ever informing board members.
Martin said over the last few decades, power over schools has slowly been transferred from school boards to superintendents.
Because the clinic was to be grant-funded, they combed through the school board history to find which board policies had been changed to give power over grants to the superintendent — and reversed them.
In this case, the grant was part of ESSER II funding (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) — $54.3 billion made available by the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 — with the requirement that it be awarded by September 2023.
She said the argument being made publicly and to parents was that this was a completely free, grant-funded clinic that would provide children with immediate assistance — so it was seen as a great idea all around.
But the clinics aren’t actually free, Martin pointed out. Once the grant ends, the cost burden shifts to the district.
Martin said children with mental health issues, of course, do need support as quickly as possible, but the only proposal made was for a clinic with a contract that was five years long and no parental consent.
She said the board wanted to review a variety of proposals, but they were only given that one.
In its investigations, the board also learned the superintendent sat on the board of the Northeast Early Childhood Council together with members of Generations — the one clinic he brought to the board.
After the board interviewed several other proposed clinics and selected one, she said Feinstein and a dissenting board member launched a media campaign smearing the clinic they selected, accusing it of bending to the board’s political agenda, which it implied was right-wing or “tea party.”
The selected clinic pulled out of the agreement with the board for fear its reputation would be ruined.
The board finally found another school-based mental health care provider, but the entire process dragged on for two years.
Little school board ‘up against Goliath’
Matthews, who works on national issues surrounding children’s mental health, became involved when she saw news stories that gave a disproportionate amount of negative attention to one small school board.
She began researching the issue and found that Feinstein is a registered lobbyist in the state of Connecticut and has received payments from a law firm dedicated to mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma and to government grants that fund school-based clinics.
Matthews explained how government funding is funneled to different behavioral health vendors to set up clinics or provide medications, which make millions from children’s suffering.
Matthews and Martin said the school assessed students’ mental health by having them fill out anonymous surveys in school, without parental knowledge or consent, which is a common practice.
The surveys ask serious questions — such as whether the children are experiencing suicidal ideation — without any follow-up.
Instead of addressing students’ mental health, the questionnaires are simply evidence-gathering mechanisms to justify funding requests, Matthews said.
Both women encouraged parents to talk to their children about these surveys and to exercise their parental rights to opt out of them. Mathews’ organization AbleChild provides a sample letter parents can use to do this.
According to Matthews, $258 billion has come into the states from these ESSER funds overall. States are compelled to distribute the funds quickly before deadlines pass, but involving parents and community organizations slows down that process, she said.
“And these vendors smell the money,” she added.
Matthews, who studies how federal funds are directed to distribute potentially dangerous medications to children — particularly among children in foster care and on Medicaid — said the funds are lining the pockets of industry, not supporting children’s mental health.
“These block grants, this is the Achilles heel we have to take a look at. We have to look at these behavioral health vendors that have already set up shop in our school system.”
She said at minimum there needs to be a way to track the grants awarded so that parents can research what is happening in their schools and make informed decisions.
She added:
“This little town in Connecticut, they are up against Goliath. Okay? They are up against the drug companies. They are up against the behavioral health vendors. They’re up against the state. They’re up against the federal government. They are swimming in, I want to say, an ocean of corruption when it comes to these grants.”
Martin said the next step in the school board’s case is an inquiry hearing at the state building in Hartford on Oct. 11 at 10 a.m. It is open to the public.
Locricchio appealed to CHD.TV’s audience to show support for the board, especially because local supporters have been scared into silence by the public attacks.
“We would love to see some of our CHD [Children’s Health Defense] supporters there to stand with Kelly and Sheila and all the people that are involved in this because it could be your school district tomorrow that’s going through it,” Locricchio said. “And we know that we are so much stronger together.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Zelensky Should Have Stayed Home
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 3, 2023
Most Americans do not understand how the United Nations functions, or does not function as the case might be, preferring to think of it as some kind of debating society where the 193 member nations representing the world community can vent over issues that they rarely have control over. Nevertheless, in spite of the torrent of words and the lack of any real program, it is always interesting to watch and listen to the UN’s annual General Assembly meeting, which is held in New York during September. This year’s meeting was particularly interesting as it came complete with a major war blazing in Eastern Europe as well as political turmoil in Africa and rising tension with China. It also features the rumblings coming from a new emerging global economic movement, the so-called BRICS developing as a champion of a multipolar-world currency challenge to the US-European dollar dominated international monetary and banking system.
And with economic union, there is also some political realignment, with China strengthening its ties to the developing world and Russia entering into defense arrangements with Iran. President Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin will be meeting in Beijing later this month to discuss common concerns. And, as usual, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed up to vent his hostility towards Iran with demands that that country’s alleged “nuclear program” be confronted militarily and the sooner the better, just as he has been claiming for the past twenty years.
Indeed, several back stories playing out during this year’s meeting made it more than usually interesting. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to turn the gathering into an anti-Russian hate fest, but though there was much complaining about Moscow’s attack on Ukraine coming from the Baltic States and others, the ground continues to be shifting against Zelensky over concerns that the war has become an unwinnable money pit that could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange. Speaking before a UN Security Council session, Zelensky was reduced to harshly criticizing the UN itself for failing to prevent or resolve conflicts before calling for Moscow to be stripped of its veto power on the Security Council. Zelensky, his voice rising in anger, complained how “It is impossible to stop the war because all actions are vetoed by the aggressor.” Observers noted immediately that Zelensky’s complaint did not help his cause. While there have been calls for UN reforms in the past, including over the veto power, the existence of the veto for a limited number of post-1945 greater powers was the only reason the United Nations could be created in the first place at all.
Zelensky also did real damage to his position when he said that while the Ukrainian refugees in Europe have “behaved well . . . and are grateful” to those who have given them shelter, it would not be a “good story” for Europe if a Ukrainian defeat “were to drive the people into a corner.” It was reasonably enough seen by critics as nothing less than a threat of possible unrest producing domestic terrorism as well a possible internal insurrection uncontrollable by whatever Ukrainian government survives defeat. Such unrest might involve the millions Ukrainian refugees without houses and jobs already in place in other European nations if Zelensky is not given all the support which he apparently believes is his due.
Zelensky’s actual message to the General Assembly was not quite so incendiary and impulsive as his other interactions while on his visit, but he offered little new. He reportedly received an obligatory “warm welcome” from those in attendance, but “he delivered his address to a half-full house, with many delegations declining to appear and listen to what he had to say.” He warned those present that “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order. We have to stop it. We must act united to defeat the aggressor.” Zelensky did go overboard when he referred to Russia and Russians as “evil” and as “terrorists” and accused them of carrying out a “genocide” against Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov responded to comments made by both President Joe Biden and Zelensky by turning the argument around and observing that it is the US and its NATO “puppets” who already “are waging war against us.”
Zelensky’s frustrations spilled over in Washington on the following day where he met both with Biden and with some members of Congress and also dropped by the Pentagon and left flowers at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington Virginia. His meeting at the White House with the president went relatively well with the announcement of a new aid package in the works including “significant air defense capabilities,” and, according to one report, even some of the much sought after ATACMS long range missile systems. Nevertheless, to his evident disappointment, Zelensky was not given a hero’s welcome like he received last year. He met privately with Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, and several other GOP hawks who will be instrumental in approving any aid, as well as with Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer who promised to be “in his corner.” McCarthy boldly asked what Zelensky needed to win the war and to provide lawmakers with “a vision of a plan for victory.”
Nevertheless, it seems that many conservative Republicans and some progressive Democrats are fed up with the war and are concerned over the lack of accountability combined with the all too evident level of corruption within the Ukrainian government. There are moves by some in the GOP to separate Ukraine funding from other defense appropriations, requiring a separate vote, and other proposals by the White House to guarantee the money even if the government shuts down. One wonders if anyone had the grit to ask Zelensky how many mansions he owns in Israel, Europe and the United States, but that is precisely the sort of story that is being increasingly written about Ukraine’s comedian turned war hero, demonstrating that the public and even the media have become tired of the charade. A continuing multi-billion-dollar cash flow, seen by Joe Biden as necessary to keep the war going until the 2024 election to vindicate his policy, is still likely but it is no longer a slam-dunk.
Two other media accounts also suggest that the dissatisfaction with Zelensky and the war is breaking through the self-imposed acceptable narrative on the war, that Vladimir Putin is an aggressor without any real provocation from Kiev, a despot and the human monster. One came surprisingly from the New York Times and is apparently a leak from the White House or Pentagon on a September 6th missile attack on the Ukrainian village of Kostiantynivka which killed at least 18. The attack was quickly labeled by Zelensky as a war crime carried out by Russian “terrorists” which was echoed by the US media but an investigation, presumably carried by the US military and intelligence using satellite and other technical methods, has now determined that the missile was fired by Ukraine. This is similar to the missile attack that struck Poland in November 2022, which also was blamed by Zelensky on Russia but turned out to be from Ukraine, both incidents reflecting just how willing Zelensky is to lie and cheat to get a NATO and US intervention in a full-scale war with Russia, which could easily go nuclear.
The other story tells how Poland will not be providing any more arms to Ukraine, in part because it is now building up its own defenses and also over Ukrainian attempts to flood the Polish agricultural market with cheap low quality grain that it cannot sell elsewhere. To describe the Polish action as disappointing to Zelensky would be an understatement, but it is one more indication that many former allies are now seeing Ukraine as a lost cause and are looking to their own national security and economic interests. Both of these stories were, incidentally, published while Zelensky was in the United States hat in hand, and it must be considered that the timing was deliberate to damage the Ukrainian president’s credibility to coincide with the UN General Assembly visit and the trip to Washington.
Zelensky’s journey to North America ended in Ottawa, where he apparently recouped some of his swagger during a speech to the Canadian government and parliament which resulted in standing ovations. Or so it seemed. The Canadians produced a 98 year old Hungarian veteran of the Second World War named Yaroslav Hunka who had fought against the Russians and emigrated to Canada after the war ended. He too was cheered by the assembled Canadian politicians. The intention was clearly to present a narrative of a brave Ukrainian who fought valiantly to free his country from Russian domination but it didn’t quite work out that way. To fight the Russians required being in Nazi Germany’s armed forces and it turned out that Hunka had served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, a volunteer unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians commanded by German officers that has been rightly or wrongly credited with a number of wartime atrocities against Russians, Poles and Jews. Soldiers in the division swore a personal loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler. The bad judgement shown by the Canadian government in producing Hunka without fully investigating his story subsequently produced a huge uproar in Canada, with the head of parliament resigning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in deep political trouble and the Polish government demanding that Hunka be extradited to them for a war crimes trial. There has been some suspicion that Zelensky may have been instrumental in arranging the affair in expectation that it would strengthen Canadian support for his cause. Instead, it has accomplished the reverse and Zelensky returned home with little or nothing accomplished.
Zelensky must also confront back home a war that he is decisively losing and a country in ruins. And Joe Biden made clear in his speech addressing the UN General Assembly that negotiations with Russia to end the Ukraine fighting would not be considered. Joe included a pledge to support the conflict until it is Russia that is doing the surrendering: “The United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity and their freedom… Russia alone bears responsibility for [the war]. Russia alone has the power to end this war immediately. And it is Russia alone that stands in the way of peace, because Russia’s price for peace is Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine’s children.” In short, the speech was a lot like Joe Biden and the band of scoundrels and grifters that he has gathered around him in the White House, heavy on bellicosity but short on any serious planning or strategies to make the world and this country a better place. Joe would like to see the war continue to bring its eventual end a lot closer to the US elections, where he hopes to self-identify as a strong leader and a “winner” taking on America’s enemies. Good luck Joe.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Hungary sets condition for further Ukrainian aid from Brussels
RT | September 29, 2023
Budapest will block further EU aid to Ukraine if Kiev doesn’t account for the money it has already received from Brussels since the start of the conflict with Russia, a senior Hungarian government official has said.
“There are many technical ways to finance Ukraine and also help in the humanitarian field,” said Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office. He told a briefing on Thursday that Hungary had no objections to individual EU countries providing assistance to Kiev.
He said unanimity would be required regarding any changes to the EU budget, however, which is currently “on the table for amendment.”
Budapest will make sure that Ukraine “will not receive a single penny of new aid” if it can’t account for the funds it has already been given by the EU, Gulyas insisted.
In June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen requested an increase of €66 billion ($69.9 billion) for the EU’s long-term budget, which includes €17 billion (around $18 billion) for providing grants for Ukraine.
According to EU data, the bloc and its individual members have supplied Kiev with more than $88 billion in financial, military, humanitarian, and refugee assistance since February 2022.
It’s “absurd and embarrassing” that Brussels keeps withholding EU funds from Hungary while looking for ways to find more money for Ukraine, Gulyas said.
“Let’s hope it’s not because the money was spent on something else, God forbid it was given to a country outside the EU,” he added.
The bloc suspended around €7.5 billion ($7.9 billion) of funds allocated to Hungary in 2022 over what it called rule-of-law concerns.
Hungarian authorities have taken a balanced approach to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. While supplying humanitarian aid, Budapest has refused to send arms to President Vladimir Zelensky’s government. Hungary has also consistently called for a peaceful settlement to the crisis and criticized sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow, arguing that they were hurting the EU more than Russia.
US meddling in EU state’s election – Russian intelligence
RT | September 28, 2023
The US is willing to go to any lengths, including blackmail and bribery, to ensure the incumbent government wins the upcoming election in Slovakia, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.
In a press release issued by the SVR on Thursday, director Sergey Naryshkin accused the White House of increasingly meddling in Slovakia’s internal affairs as the Central European country approaches the parliamentary election this weekend.
The opposition in Slovakia has made it abundantly clear that it would not unquestioningly follow the US lead if elected, and according to the SVR, stands a good chance of coming out on top in the vote.
To prevent this from happening, “the US State Department sent instructions to several of its European allies to conduct targeted work with local political and business circles,” the Russian intelligence agency claimed. It further alleged that Washington has sanctioned the use of methods such as blackmail, threats, and bribery.
The SVR also claimed that the US has already instructed the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Simecka, who also serves as the European Parliament vice-president, to form a “cabinet completely loyal to Washington,” should his party triumph.
“Taking these realities into consideration, the upcoming election in Slovakia can hardly be viewed as a democratic expressing of the will of the people, and free from external influence,” the SVR concluded.
Citing an anonymous European Commission official, Politico reported in June that Brussels feared a potential victory for former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction – Slovak Social Democracy party would spell “disaster” for the EU’s position on Russia sanctions and continued defense aid for Ukraine.
NATO member Slovakia has supplied Kiev with armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. However, Fico has made it clear that he will terminate the aid if he returns to power. He has also called into question the need for economic measures against Moscow.
A recent poll commissioned by Slovakia’s TV JOJ 24 broadcaster indicated that Progressive Slovakia and Direction – Slovak Social Democracy are neck and neck, with 18% and 17.7% of support respectively.
House Panel Releases Emails Showing US Attorney Blocked FARA Probe Into Joe Biden
Sputnik – 28.09.2023
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives Oversight Committee released redacted emails it claims show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked federal agents from conducting a FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in August 2020.
“Newly released emails and documents show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf did not allow agents to investigate Joe Biden as part of a FARA probe,” the Oversight Committee said via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.
In the email, dated August 7, 2020, it appears Lesley told federal investigators they made a mistake in their search warrant request by including Biden. Lesley purportedly claims Biden falls outside of the scope of their FARA investigation.
The House Oversight Committee will hold the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden on Thursday to begin further examining alleged criminal activity involving Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.
The committee has been investigating alleged foreign bribery and influence peddling involving the Biden family and entities in countries including Ukraine and China. Biden denies ever having discussed foreign business affairs with his son.
Citing bank records, the committee on Tuesday revealed that Hunter Biden in 2019 received two payments wired from China totaling $260,000 with President Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address.
McCarthy, in light of the new findings, said the Republican impeachment inquiry against Biden will uncover the whole truth.
Disgraced Ukrainian Ex-Army Spox Slams Zelensky’s Theatrics, Complains About Drugged Up Mercs
© AFP 2023 / ROMAN PILIPEY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.09.2023
Ukraine is fighting to protect “Western values” from Russian “slaves” descended from Mongols, but is facing difficulties due to poor morale, corruption, drug-addicted mercs, and a president who seems more focused on theatrics than the conflict itself, disgraced Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has revealed.
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (formerly Michael John Cirillo), the 46-year-old US-born Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson who garnered international media attention and scorn earlier this month after calling for Russian journalists and officials to be “hunted down,” was suspended last week as the scandal reached Washington.
Speaking by video on two separate occasions (before and after her suspension) with legendary Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, who posed as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Ashton-Cirillo revealed important details on the seedier underbelly of their work for Ukraine, including minutiae they didn’t really get into while acting as a military spokesperson.
Problems With Morale, Corruption and Mercs
“We’re having struggles on the information warfare front, and we have the morale issue,” Ashton-Cirillo revealed, saying they’d spoken to soldiers who are “very frustrated because they didn’t feel like they were being heard in certain areas.”
“And so we are dealing with the reality that until we win the information war, our Western partners won’t feel the pressure. But we must win the information war both here on the streets of Ukraine, and in the newsrooms in New York and London and elsewhere,” the spox said, pointing to their personal efforts to change language surrounding the conflict to smooth over unpleasant realities, like calling foreigners serving in the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces “foreign fighters” instead of what they actually are – mercenaries.
Commenting on the recent high-profile murder of a British merc in Ukraine by one of his comrades, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that Kiev has a “terrible problem” with “most” of the foreign fighters in the country, “because they are just a step above mercenaries and they come here because all they know is warfare. While I defend them in public, in private I know many of them have very far-right leanings, there’s some Nazi groups.”
“I also know that many of them are doing this because they have no lives in their own countries. And so we have security risks and more importantly we have morale and psychological issues because foreign soldiers are here for the money – most of them. And those people are going to be the ones willing to engage in drugs, willing to engage in fundraising where they’re putting the money in their own pockets. It’s something we have to be very careful about,” they stressed.
Commenting on the state of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that the situation is “terrible,” and appeared to confirm long-standing speculation about Ukrainian officials pilfering stocks of Western-supplied weapons deliveries.
Ashton-Cirillo also privately accused members of Ukraine’s political and military elite of “trying to profit off of the blood of our lost soldiers,” and “trying to profit off the blood of the men and women who are losing arms and legs.”
They also complained that the unrealistic promises being made to Kiev’s patrons, including about the now-stalled counteroffensive, means that “our partners can’t trust us in negotiations and our partners can’t trust our projection for what’s going to happen in the future. Because all they can judge us on are the results.”
The suspended spox stressed that while it’s okay to spread propagandistic “messaging” about Ukraine’s ‘successes’ on the battlefield in public, “it’s not good when we’re using this in discussions with our partners in Washington, our partners in Brussels, and especially our partners in the Eastern European nations.”
Ashton-Cirillo also took pot shots at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, emphasizing that his theatrics and “populism” are no longer of any value. “It’s been 19 months of this, it’s not about theater anymore. Theater was important in the first days and weeks. It’s not about populism sir. It’s not about populism on the world stage,” the ex-spox stressed, adding that they would be thrilled to join the ballot on Poroshenko’s European Solidarity in elections, if they end up being held.
Russians Should Be ‘Hunted Down’
Ashton-Cirillo doubled down in private to the pranksters on comments she made publicly calling for “Russian propagandists” to be “hunted down,” saying that Russian journalists “should not be able to hind behind” their status as news people, and that Kiev should use “all our weapons,” including attacks targeting Russian media figures and officials.
Recalling, for example, the tributes paid to the late Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bombing last year, Ashton-Cirillo suggested that “that goes to show that who she was in [Russia’s] eyes. It wasn’t some woman who was accidentally killed. This was an evil creature who died a death they deserved for trying to genocide innocent people.”
Ashton-Cirillo also reiterated that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova should “of course” be targeted for elimination. “The worst part with her is she gets accepted in the same way that a State Department spokesperson would be accepted. To me there’s nobody should be off limits…over the course of being able to carry out our full liberation.”
‘Russians are Not European’
Expanding on comments they have made publicly referring to Russians as inhuman “orcs,” Ashton-Cirillo offered their interlocutor a brief ‘history’ of the Russian people, emphasizing that “the reality is Russians are not European,” but “have a different culture.”
“Russians are Asian, and ultimately they do come from the Mongols, they do come from a grouping… of people who are wanting to be slaves and want to be led just as it was from the days of Genghis Khan. I wish the rest of Europe and the rest of the Western world understood that Europe ends at Ukraine. We are protecting European values and Western values the same way those did hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years ago when the Mongols were coming in,” Ashton-Cirillo said.
“While I don’t know every Russian, I will say that what’s happening in the Kremlin and what’s happening to every Russian that supports Vladimir Putin’s decisions are not human. These people are not human. They are enemies of humanity,” they added.
Post-Suspension Blues
In the second conversation, conducted after her suspension, Ashton-Cirillo called their removal “political,” and said the decision “came from the highest levels.”
“I was told that it came from New York… on the trip that the government is on currently,” the disgraced spox said, referring to Zelensky’s trip to the US last week. “I think I was told that they had to make a big deal and to shut me up in order to possibly get help, so that’s why I understand it. I understand it’s political. I’m still in the army, I’m still speaking to several high-level officers doing my other work, just not as spokesperson.”
Who Owns the United States?
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 26, 2023
The recent sparring between Elon Musk and the despicable Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has cast considerable light on the successful attempts by Jewish groups to dominate America’s foreign as well as some domestic policies, in part by taking away the First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech so their behavior cannot be challenged. As readers of Unz will be aware, Musk has threatened to sue the ADL for as much as $22 billion for defaming him and doing material damage to his business interests while also falsely smearing Musk himself and the platform for allegedly providing an antisemitic haven for “hate speech.” In Musk’s view, the ADL has put pressure on potential advertisers not to do business with him and to engage in a total boycott of his social networking sites.
Greenblatt’s argument is that material that he considers to be anti-semitic should not be allowed on any public forum, to include Musk’s site X, formerly known as Twitter. If Greenblatt were concerned with public incitements to kill Jews or damage their property there might be a case to be made, but the fact is that such behavior is already criminalized. Greenblatt is much more expansive than that, condemning any criticism of Jewish group or even individual behavior or the actions of Israel, which have included various war crimes and crimes against humanity to include targeting and killing Palestinian children and harvesting the organs of Palestinian prisoners. Israel is also a nation that is increasingly ethnically exclusive and has a state religion that is intolerant and repressive of other creeds, to include minority Christians and Muslims.
Beyond Musk, Greenblatt and the ADL have also focused on Tucker Carlson given his high profile and popularity among conservatives. Greenblatt repeatedly demanded that Fox News fire Tucker for discussing the “great replacement” theory as well as other white-nationalist talking points. Greenblatt has denounced Carlston’s alleged willingness “To use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic, antisemitic, and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform.” He called on advertisers to stop supporting the Carlson program and Fox with their dollars and was delighted when Carlson was finally fired in April. Many believe that the firing was in large part due to pressure from ADL and other Jewish groups.
In other words, in the America envisioned by Greenblatt and his friends who are pressuring advertisers not to support sites like X and passing laws penalizing or even criminalizing anyone who seeks to boycott Israel over its behavior, it will be more-or-less possible to speak freely on any subject as long as it does not involve Jews. That suggests an assumption by ADL that Jews have special status not enjoyed by anyone else. As a result Jews have been able to exploit their alleged singular and perpetual victimhood to assume de facto control over media sources of information as well as both major political parties using that old tried and true mechanism, money, and lots of it. It is a subject that in itself will not be open to discussion and which Greenblatt dismisses as an anti-semitic trope amounting to “hate speech.”
Interestingly enough, the wrath of Greenblatt is apparently not shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is regarded as no shrinking violet when it comes to promoting his country’s interests, as he sees them, and the dominance of Jewry worldwide. Netanyahu was in the United States last week for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly but he made time to fly to California to visit Musk’s Tesla car assembly plant. The two men sat down to have a public chat in front of news cameras and, while it was clear that they were being polite and non-combative, it was also true that Netanyahu was careful not to accuse Musk of being an anti-semite or anything like that.
Netanyahu, who may have a better understanding than does Greenblatt of which way the wind is blowing regarding his country and Jewish power in general, might be playing a clever game in which he avoids a hard edged and dangerous Greenblatt approach while proceeding quietly with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and aggrandizing himself in power through his attack on the country’s courts. Netanyahu clearly understands that Israel has crossed the apartheid threshold vis-à-vis Palestine and its neighbors and that most of the world despises his country, to include many Americans who are beginning to see the light that they have been used and abused for the past 75 years. He has chosen to ignore the critics as the wisest path, in which he may be correct.
How have Jews in America and Canada as well as in Europe and Australasia become so politically powerful? Now that Musk has opened the door to discussing the Jewish issue with some candor, a number of articles and discussions have begun to appear in the media and some universities have even developed enough of a spine to start teaching true narratives on the Middle East supported by books that groups like ADL are seeking to ban. The most powerful piece to appear recently was on Mondoweiss, entitled “Biden’s Israel Policy is Scripted by Saban.”
Mondoweiss’s title refers to Israeli-American Hollywood-based media producer Haim Saban, who sums up his political philosophy with a pithy “I’m a one issue guy and my issue is Israel!” Saban has been the largest individual donor to the Democratic Party since the Clintons and his power has resulted in unswerving fealty to US interests as perceived through the optic of its relationship with the Jewish state. He is similar to megadonor Sheldon Adelson, now deceased, who performed the same service with the Republican Party. Sheldon’s wife Miriam, an Israeli, has maintained the legacy of keeping the GOP in line through control of political donations. The Adelsons were reportedly responsible for Donald Trump’s move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and other concessions re the Palestinians, Iranians and Syrians. The withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was due to pressure from the Adelsons, a move that was contrary to the actual US interest to monitor Iranian nuclear developments. Sheldon’s only failure was failing to convince Trump to bomb Iran.
Saban, who recently spent three hours in the Oval Office advising Joe Biden, is most clearly seen through his own comments on the relationship between the US and Israel. Hint: Israel’s interests always come first! For example, he shrugged off criticism of his giving money to AIPAC, “which supports Republican election deniers, because his one issue is Israel” saying in an interview: “The only goal of this organization is to prevent people who are against US-Israel relations from advancing and to support those who support relations between Jerusalem and Washington… Many Democrats called me and said ‘are you stupid? you’re a Democrat who supports [2020 election deniers]?’ I always say the same thing: It’s a specific, defined issue, and that is the US-Israel relationship. In that sense, I’m not interested in anything else.”
Re the Democratic Party leadership and Joe Biden, Saban observed that the party is “still solidly pro-Israel, and there are only about a dozen members of Congress who are anti-Israel.” Saban funded Hillary Clinton in 2008 but responded angrily when Obama “refused to echo Hillary Clinton’s call to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Iran attacked Israel.” Saban did not trust Obama on the issue of Israel and was initially rebuffed when he tried to arrange a meeting in 2010. He told a journalist that “I had a list of questions… And Chicago’—Obama campaign headquarters—‘could not organize that meeting. … I was ready and willing to be helpful, but ‘helpful’ is not to write a check for two thousand three hundred dollars. It’s to raise millions, which I am fully capable of doing.” Obama eventually came to respect Saban’s millions. “By 2013, President Obama was the speaker at a fundraiser at the Sabans’ house in L.A. attended by 120 people who paid between $16,200 and $32,400 each to attend.”
The result of the largesse is that Biden’s policy on the Middle East is now being scripted by Haim Saban, whose millions he requires for the upcoming 2024 campaign. It is as simple as that, appreciating that donation of cash in hand is better than platitudes about suffering Palestinians. That is what constitutes “truth” for both major political parties, who are de facto owned by the Adelsons and the Sabans who will always place Israel first. That Saban and Adelson (who is buried in Jerusalem) were and are both Israeli citizens and have been allowed to wield such power on behalf of a foreign country with which the US shares almost nothing in the way of actual values is shameful and it is also technically illegal or possibly even treasonous as they are acting as Foreign Agents. And it is more than that morally speaking – it is a disgrace. Joe Biden in particular should be ashamed of his folding when confronted by Jewish money as he is in charge, but it is apparently not an emotion that he is familiar with.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
FDA rush to approve killer ‘vaccines’ but reject life-saving allergy treatment
By Roger Watson | TCW Defending Freedom | September 25, 2023
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), quick to approve an experimental and untested Covid-19 ‘vaccine’, is now stalling over approval of a new device that could save the lives of people who go into anaphylactic shock.
Anaphylactic shock, or anaphylaxis, is an extreme immune system reaction to an allergy which leads to a massive release of chemicals around the body, principally histamine, in an effort to deal with an allergen. This reaction of the body is, in fact, an overreaction and the response leads to difficulties with breathing and sudden and dramatic drop in blood pressure (shock). If untreated it can be fatal.
One of the first lines of treatment for anaphylaxis is an EpiPen which can be carried by those who know they have allergies. It is a device containing the drug noradrenaline (called norepinephrine in the US) that counteracts the shock induced by anaphylaxis. However, an EpiPen requires the injection of noradrenaline intramuscularly. This is invasive and if the person is unable to administer the drug others can be reluctant, either not knowing how to use the device or being afraid to. Also, the drug has to get from the musculature to the bloodstream to be effective. This can take five to ten minutes during which time the person may die.
How much better if noradrenaline could be administered more directly into the bloodstream. Manufacturing a device to do this intravenously, far less expecting anyone other than a medic, nurse or paramedic to have the expertise to do this in an emergency, is a tall order. But drugs can be administered rapidly into the bloodstream nasally and a company, ARS Pharmaceuticals, has developed an injection-free device for administering noradrenaline nasally in the form of an epinephrine nasal spray.
What’s not to like, you may think. Well, the FDA don’t like it and have withheld approval pending further testing. The FDA objections are based on the need for further clinical data in people with anaphylaxis due to the fear that it may fail to work.
It is, surely, heartening that the FDA has the best interests of potential anaphylaxis sufferers at heart. If only they had had the same concern on 2021 when they approved the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccines. It has been exposed in these pages from the start of the Covid-19 vaccine rollout that these were ‘experimental’ medications and had not been tested adequately before approval. Well, they have been tested now and the outcome is clear: they were completely unnecessary; they do not work; and they are extremely dangerous leading to injury and death. They undoubtedly have played a large part in the level of excess deaths observed in recent years.
According to UK government figures, the overall fatality rate from Covid-19 (always a disputed figure due to the difficulty in distinguishing ‘with Covid’ from ‘from Covid’) is 0.1 per cent. The estimated fatality rate from anaphylaxis – made uncertain by the fact that many suspected cases are dead before being found – is between 0.7 and 2 per cent. Recent England hospital Covid-19 admissions are approximately 3,000 per month at the latest available figures. The annual rate of hospitalisation in England for anaphylaxis in 2022-23 was 26,000; at approximately 2,000 monthly, the same order of magnitude as the Covid-19 admissions.
Bearing in mind that it is not easy to distinguish Covid-19 from other respiratory infections but that anaphylaxis is unmistakable and more fatal and, assuming a similar situation in the US, the recent FDA decision regarding nasally administered noradrenaline for anaphylaxis in the light of their unseemly haste over Covid-19 vaccinations is hard to understand. Could political and financial pressured be involved? Surely not!
‘Of Course He Was Paying’: Former Ukrainian Business Leader Accuses Top Zelensky Adviser of Bribery
By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 19.09.2023
A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing renewed corruption allegations after an exiled Ukrainian business leader claimed the man worked for him for years as a go-between handling payments to Ukrainian officials.
“Tatarov used to solve all issues with law enforcement” – that’s what Oleh Maiboroda, the former executive director of Ukrbud Development, one of Ukraine’s largest construction companies, told Western media on Tuesday about Oleh Tatarov.
Once a lawyer, Tatarov now serves as Zelensky’s top adviser on law enforcement and security agencies, a position he’s held since 2020. However, according to Maiboroda, Tatarov was running bribes for him for the five years before he took the job for Zelensky.
The lawyer’s connections across the Ukrainian legal system, from police officials to judges and prosecutors, made him the perfect man to smooth over the approval processes for Ukrbud’s many promising construction projects.
“Of course he was paying,” Maiboroda said. “He was giving them money so these arrangements were done … He knew about law enforcement and warned us to be careful about saying almost anything on the phone.”
The former Ukrainian business leader showed to Western media a list of bribes allegedly paid by Tatarov, totaling some $1.8 million.
Maiboroda has himself fled Ukraine and currently lives in Vienna, where he hopes to stay safe from corruption charges against him in Kiev.
Tatarov is no stranger to such accusations, either: a previous case, brought by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Anti-Corruption Action Center’s (AntAC), claimed he had bribed a forensic expert on behalf of Ukrbud, even going so far as to publish the WhatsApp conversation in which Tatarov agreed to the bribe. However, the case was closed in April 2022 on procedural grounds.
“The discussion on the incumbent president’s values is over,” Vitaly Shabunin, the head of AntAC’s executive board, said in 2021. “Volodymyr Zelensky shares Tatarov’s values. This means that Zelensky … doesn’t see any problems in Tatarov’s corruption-related crimes.”
Zelensky has stood by his man through the tribulations, refusing to fire or even to condemn Tatarov despite citizen petitions like the one AntAC organized, with more than 25,000 signatories.
Kiev, which hopes to join the European Union and NATO, has struggled with endemic corruption that promises to not just frustrate its admission hopes, but which endangers the flow of Western weapons and financing to Ukraine as well. To that end, Zelensky has made statements condemning corruption and pledging to crack down, and sweeping firings have “cleaned house” across bureaus such as the Defense Ministry, where the firings have reached the highest ranks.
Last month, Zelensky fired all 24 of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment offices, which are awash with accusations of corruption, including that dozens of recruitment officers have accepted bribes to exempt eligible men from being drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Earlier this month, Oleksiy Reznikov was fired as defense minister, and on Monday, Zelensky fired all six deputy defense ministers. Reznkov’s replacement, Rustem Umerov, is himself under investigation for what NABU calls “gross violation of labor laws” and that he and his deputies “took actions aimed at concealing the facts of theft of state property” while he was head of the State Property Fund (SPF).
No accusations of corruption have been brought against any of the former ministers, but the AntAC spoke of the terminations as a “positive step” toward cracking down on corruption and improving accountability.
“The ministry of defense is one of the least reformed ministries in our country, and it is not able to cope with the challenges of the war,” AntAC executive director Daria Kalenyuk told a US newspaper on Monday, adding it was timed to coincide with Zelensky’s trip to Washington, DC, where the president hopes to shore up US support for his government.
A small but growing faction of the Republican Party is openly questioning US support for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. While some have demanded audits and better accountability for the tens of billions of dollars in aid flowing to Kiev, others have demanded the support halt entirely, especially in light of the disastrous Ukrainian counteroffensive this past summer.
“Many countries are sending major resources to Ukraine, and rightly so, but governments and populations will soon lose patience for that if there are not signs that the government is serious about fighting corruption,” an anonymous Western diplomat in Kiev told British media.
Emails Show Decade of Hunter Biden Spinning Journalists on Foreign Business Deals
The Hunter Biden laptop archive shows years of careful efforts to manipulate media outlets, a rare window into the DC spin cycle.
BY LEE FANG | SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
Speaker Kevin McCarthy, announcing that the House of Representatives will pursue an impeachment inquiry, suggested that the probe will hinge in part on deceiving the American public about Hunter Biden’s foreign business ventures.
“President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business deals,” McCarthy said at a press conference. GOP lawmakers, he added, have “uncovered credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct.”
Such an investigation will likely force an examination of the public narrative regarding Hunter Biden’s consulting deals that go back at least a decade. During President Obama’s second term, then-Vice President Joe Biden was the administration’s point man on the nation’s policy toward Ukraine, a perch he used to urge the country to adopt sweeping ethics reforms to resist “the cancer of corruption” and enact sweeping ethics reforms.
At the time, some American journalists began to question whether the vice president’s stern message was undermined by his son Hunter Biden’s employment at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was owned by a notorious local oligarch.
Emails on Hunter’s laptop reveal that the inquiries sparked an internal debate within his team of consultants and public relations agents. Ultimately, they devised a series of responses about Hunter’s work with Burisma that were, at best, misleading and, at worst, outright falsehoods.
The Biden team has constructed a careful image of Hunter Biden’s business ventures, sometimes employing a sophisticated myth-making operation aided by allies in the media who rarely challenged or investigated their false claims. The laptop emails show that the team closely monitored critical reporting and pushed to shape coverage with reporters from the New York Times, Time magazine, Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press.
Their spin informed much of the ensuing coverage in the mainstream press, defusing the issue, even as President Trump and other Republicans insisted that Ukraine was a hotbed of Biden family corruption. Although he had no background in the energy field and little experience in corporate governance, Hunter Biden, who had a law degree, was appointed to the board of Burisma in May 2014.
It was revealed later that he was paid about $1 million per year – as was his business partner Devon Archer. In a press release announcing his appointment, Hunter Biden is quoted as saying, “I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
That same month, journalist Michael Scherer reached out with questions about the arrangement.
Several consultants employed by Burisma, including Ryan Toohey of FTI Consulting and Heather King, a partner at the law firm Boies, Schiller, & Flexner, where Hunter worked as counsel, strategized over how to respond to Scherer, a reporter then with Time magazine who has since joined the Washington Post.
For the Scherer inquiry, laptop emails show, Hunter’s business associates settled on a strategy to deflect the most direct questions and obfuscate the true intent of Burisma’s attempts to sway U.S. government officials.
One of Hunter’s associates noted that they planned to respond to Scherer’s attempts to reach David Leiter, a former aide to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, hired to work for Burisma. The plan was to use an assistant to make Leiter “unavailable to comment, as opposed to some sort of statement that made it seem like we were unwilling or refusing to engage with the reporter.” Leiter, the emails show, was in fact available, but the public relations team wanted to keep him out of reach.
Scherer wanted to know why Burisma was on a hiring spree of well-connected American lobbyists, including Leiter and others. In response, Toohey planned to tell Scherer that the hired guns were simply working on issues related to energy independence, economic growth, as well as “transparency and good governance.”
In response to other questions posed by Scherer, Toohey prepared a statement claiming that Hunter Biden will “not be engaged with the U.S. government” on anything related to Burisma.
The response belied a detailed lobbying agenda spelled out in other emails.
Burisma had made clear that the company had hired Leiter, Hunter Biden, and other political operatives as part of a focused plan to obtain Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa as well as to persuade American officials to intervene with Ukrainian government officials to drop an investigation of his business interests.
In a May 2014 email, Vadim Pozharskyi, a close adviser to Zlochevsky, explained to Hunter that he needed his “advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” a reference to an ongoing investigation of Zlochevsky by Ukrainian prosecutors.
That month, Pozharskyi again wrote to Hunter, spelling out the “working plan for both FTI and David,” reiterating that he wanted the lobbyists to intervene against the “politically motivated proceedings initiated against us in Ukraine” and to overcome the “US entry ban” for the Burisma owner.
“The immediate plan is to reach out to the Energy and Ukraine desks, respectively, at State Dept,” wrote Heather King, the attorney working closely with Hunter Biden at the time. “That will include outreach to Carlos Pascual, he is the top US energy diplomat,” she added.
Scherer printed the denials, but to his credit, reported on the odd circumstances surrounding Biden’s hiring, at a time when Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point person for Ukraine, with a special focus on energy policy in the region.
In many cases, Hunter Biden’s associates cast him as simply an auditor with a special focus on renewable energy sourced from geothermal vents. That was the strategy in response to an inquiry from Stephen Braun, a reporter for the Associated Press. “Mr. Biden will not lobby on behalf of Burisma. His role is to advise the company’s legal and compliance unit, including guidance on corporate governance standards.”
Behind the scenes, Hunter Biden’s team knew otherwise. In emails conferring over how to deal with Braun’s questions, Pozharskyi reiterated the plan to provide Braun with “minimum information.”
Like many other articles from this time, the AP story focused on the conflict of interest issues, noting the denials around any lobbying with a degree of skepticism:
A former Washington lobbyist, the vice president’s son is effectively exempt from most rules that would require him to describe publicly the legal work he does on behalf of Burisma.
Hunter Biden will not lobby for the company, said Lawrence Pacheco, an official with FTI Consulting, a Washington government affairs company recently hired by Burisma.
Pacheco did not say whether Biden might oversee or advise on any future Burisma lobbying strategy in the U.S. Pacheco said the company “does not take positions on political matters.”
Braun could not be reached for comment. Scherer declined an opportunity to comment on the Hunter Biden emails. Biden, Toohey, and King did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the emails clearly indicate that substantial resources were allocated to managing both Burisma and Hunter’s personal image. Pozharskyi pointed out that Burisma had retained American consultants to reach out to “the most reputable European and American journalists/newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs,” while assistance was required to handle Wikipedia, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other online platforms. Burisma, wrote Pozharskyi, sought a “detailed algorithm on how the Company should act in case of bad publicity.” The effort included scrubbing negative details from Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia, while bolstering the online credentials of Burisma, emails show.
A highly focused effort to monitor and shape news media coverage helped maintain the public profile. Even with relatively low visibility, independent media were closely watched. Hunter and his team monitored Vice News as well as the gadfly website ZeroHedge. In response to critical reporting from Vice, one colleague noted approvingly that the article was not being “reposted or republished” in Ukrainian media.
In July 2014, Toohey circulated an investigative piece I wrote for Salon about Hunter Biden’s hiring at Burisma, which noted that the vice president’s son had been retained amid a string of nepotistic hires likely aimed at influencing natural gas and energy policy.
In the article, I noted that Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine to “announce a $50 million aid package that included technical support for increasing the country’s natural gas production – an investment that could bolster profits at Burisma Holdings, where his son is a director.” What was not known at the time, however, was that Hunter Biden was already working with a team of public affairs consultants to channel U.S. government technical assistance to his client.
The laptop emails show that even this relatively brief mention of Hunter Biden and a potential conflict of interest with his father raised concerns.
“All, please see below a piece that mentions Hunter’s appointment as part of a broader trend, mostly within the context of relatives of eleceds [sic] engaged to lobby for the energy industry,” wrote Toohey, attaching a copy of the text of my piece. But, he added, “This was a freelanced piece picked up in a number of web-based outlets including Salon, but nothing with significant reach.”
Pozharskyi replied that he had seen the piece earlier and “wanted to have a discussion in this regard.”
In some cases, the team celebrated media coverage that elevated its desired narrative. Politico reported Hunter’s hiring at Burisma and simply printed quotes from the company’s official statements:
“The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals,” Alan Apter, Burisma Holdings’ chairman of the board of directors, said in a statement, which was reported by The Moscow Times on Tuesday.
Biden, joining the board, will be in charge of the legal unit, the company said. He will also provide support for Burisma Holdings “among international organizations.”
Biden said the company will help strengthen Ukraine’s economy.
Pozharskyi circulated a link to the Politico article to Hunter and his associates, noting the “positive coverage.”
Hunter’s membership on the Burisma board received renewed attention in late 2015, as then-Vice President Biden was set to visit Ukraine where he planned to address the parliament on the need to adopt new reforms against a culture of corruption in the country. James Risen of the Times, among others, renewed inquiries directed toward Hunter and his associates about the rationale behind his appointment to the company, Burisma, and why the company appeared to be buying access to high levels of government.
In one email found on Hunter’s laptop, Risen asked, “What lobbying activities is the company engaged in the US?” among other questions to Hunter Biden. In response, a Burisma spokesperson straightforwardly claimed that “no one is lobbying on their behalf.”
The company’s lobbying efforts were not covered in the story ultimately published by the New York Times, which featured Risen’s piece on Dec. 8, 2015. The article included a statement from the Hunter Biden team, crafted by the strategy firm FTI Consulting, asserting that the company’s focus was on “corporate governance and transparency.”
Risen’s article did not address whether Hunter’s business career demonstrated such expertise or his lack of experience in the energy field. Although Risen identified Hunter as “a former Washington lobbyist,” he accepted the denial that no lobbying was involved.
In reality, just a month prior to the email exchange with the Times, Burisma, following Hunter Biden’s advice, had hired Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic lobbying firm, to influence the Obama administration. A copy of the agreement, belatedly filed with the Justice Department, reveals that the firm, which aided in lobbying State Department officials on Ukrainian energy policy, received a monthly retainer of $30,000.
Blue Star Strategies was even copied on the emails with the Hunter Biden team on its response plan to Risen.
Risen also allowed a Burisma spokesman to decline to state Hunter’s compensation while claiming it was “not out of the ordinary” for such board positions. It was later disclosed that he was paid about $1 million per year, which is far higher than the typical compensation. As a point of comparison, median annual compensation of board members at Fortune 500 companies is around $110,000.
Risen, now with The Intercept, did not respond to a request for comment.
Political operatives of all ideological backgrounds frequently manipulate public perception – often employing specialized “crisis communication” firms to suppress negative coverage and shape desired narratives. What is remarkable about the Hunter Biden episode is how successful it was, and how uncritically most media organizations treated this unorthodox relationship between a president’s son and a controversial foreign corporation.
In response to the Wall Street Journal, Toohey worked closely with Blue Star Strategies’ Sally Painter and Karen Tramontano to craft a message defusing questions around a conflicting message between Hunter and his father. They settled on a strategy of presenting the Ukrainian gig as perfectly “aligned” with an anti-corruption agenda, laptop emails show. The lobbyists suggested that they release a statement to the Journal claiming that Hunter’s work for the Ukrainian energy giant, to supposedly strengthen corporate governance, are “also goals the United States.”
The Journal printed the statement, attributing it to a spokesperson.
Such coverage – which suggested Hunter Biden had engaged in questionable but ultimately harmless behavior that did not involve, much less implicate, his father – set the narrative for most coverage in mainstream outlets. When President Trump told Ukraine’s president in 2018 that “there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” and asked him to look into Joe Biden’s demand that the prosecutor looking into Burisma be fired, Democrats moved to impeach him.
The Biden spin continued even after the New York Post published the first articles based on material from Hunter’s laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, sought to discredit the New York Post’s reporting that Hunter Biden had arranged a dinner meeting between his Ukrainian associates at Burisma and his father when he served as vice president. At the time, the Biden presidential campaign claimed that it “reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time, and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.” Kessler reiterated this denial as though it were an established fact.
It turned out to be false. The July testimony by former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer confirmed that Hunter Biden had arranged a secret dinner with his Ukrainian business partner and his father, as the New York Post had originally reported. The ongoing saga over the Washington Post’s role in covering up the Biden revelations was detailed last month by RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry.
Last month, Kessler “updated” his article to acknowledge this.
Also last month, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, who has dismissed any hint of scandal regarding Biden business dealings, appeared on Live at the Table, a podcast hosted by Noam Dworman, the owner of New York City’s Comedy Cellar. The show went viral as Dworman challenged Bump’s claims that there was “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
In a heated exchange, Bump conceded that Hunter Biden’s text messages that claim, “unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary,” was one form of “evidence.” Moments later, Bump ended the interview and walked off the set.
The interaction provided a rare moment of visible accountability for the establishment press, which has largely followed the Biden spin for an entire decade on this issue.
Yet the White House is still hoping it can still instruct journalists on how to cover the story. Shortly after McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry announcement, President Biden’s White House staff circulated a memo, instructing media outlets on how to cover the news. In bold type, the memo claimed that the entire Hunter Biden conflict of interest scandal had been “refuted” and “debunked” – language that was adopted in media reports about the inquiry in Vox, NBC News and CNN.
The UN’s New Political Declaration on Pandemics
By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | September 15, 2023
On September 20th our representatives meeting at the United Nations (UN) will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: “Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.”
This was announced as a ‘silence procedure,’ meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organization (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’
The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare, and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population were simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:
- They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program (your money),
- This will deliver great wealth to some people who now work closely with the WHO and the UN,
- The powers being sought from your government will reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes, and
- Logically, pandemics will only become more frequent if someone intends to make them so (so we should wonder what is going on).
Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralization of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by your governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.
Whilst the Declaration’s thirteen pages are all over the place in terms of reality and farce, they are not atypical of recent UN output. People are trained to use trigger words, slogans, and propaganda themes (e.g., “equity,” “empowerment of all women and girls,” “access to education,” “technology transfer hubs”) that no one could oppose without risking being labeled a denier, far-right, or colonialist.
The Declaration should be read in the context of what these institutions, and their staff, have just done. It is difficult to summarize such a compendium of right-speak intended to veil reality, but it is hoped this short summary will prompt some thought. Wickedness is not a mistake but an intended deception, so we need to distinguish these clearly.
Doing Darkness Behind a Veil of Light
Put together, the following two extracts summarize the internal contradiction of the Declaration’s agenda and its staggering shamelessness and lack of empathy:
“In this regard, we:
PP3: Recognize also the need to tackle health inequities and inequalities, within and among countries, …
PP5: “Recognize that the illness, death, socio-economic disruption and devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, …”
‘Recognition’ of devastation is important. SARS-COV-2 was associated with mortality predominantly within wealthy countries, where the median age of Covid-associated death was between 75 and 85 years. Nearly all of these people had significant comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, meaning their life expectancy was already restricted. People contributing significantly to economic health were at very low risk, a profile known in early 2020.
These three years of socio-economic devastation must, therefore, be overwhelmingly due to the response. The virus did not starve people, as the Declaration’s writers would like us to believe. Deteriorating disease control was predicted by the WHO and others in early 2020, increasing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Economic disruption in low-income countries specifically results in more infant and child deaths.
In Western countries, adult mortality has risen as expected when screening for cancer and heart disease are reduced and poverty and stress increase. Knowing this, the WHO advised in late 2019 to ”not under any circumstances” impose the lockdown-like measures for pandemic influenza. In early 2020, under the influence of their sponsors, they advocated for them for Covid-19. The Declaration, however, carries no note of contrition or repentance.
Undeterred by incongruity, the Declaration goes on to describe Covid-19 as “one of the greatest challenges” in UN history (PP6), noting that somehow this outbreak resulted in “exacerbation of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty…”. In fact, it acknowledges that this caused:
“… (a) negative impact on equity, human and economic development across all spheres of society, as well as on global humanitarian needs, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, the enjoyment of human rights, livelihoods, food security and nutrition, education, its disruption to economies, supply chains, trade, societies and the environment, within and among countries, which is reversing hard-won development gains and hampering progress…” (PP6)
To restate the obvious, this does not happen due to a virus targeting sick elderly people. It occurs when children and productive adults are barred from school, work, healthcare, and participation in markets for goods and services. Economic, social, and health catastrophe inevitably results, disproportionately harming poorer people and low-income countries, conveniently far indeed from the halls of Geneva and New York.
No, we were not all in this together.
Not all were negatively impacted by this catastrophe. People and corporations who sponsor much of the WHO’s health emergency work, and that of its sister organizations such as CEPI, Gavi, and Unitaid, did very well from the policies they advocated so strongly for. Software and Pharma companies made unprecedently high profits, while this mass impoverishment played out. The international agencies have also gained; construction and recruitment are strong in Geneva. Philanthro-capitalism is good for some.
The main aim of the Declaration is to back the proposed WHO international health regulation (IHR) amendments and treaty (PP26), key to ensuring that viral outbreaks that have such a small impact can remain highly profitable. An additional $10 billion per year in new financing is requested to support this (PP29). There is a reason why most countries have laws against scams. The UN and its agencies, fortunately for its staff, are outside of any national jurisdiction.
Based on their sponsors’ assessments, the staff of these agencies are doing their job well. For the rest of humanity, their work is an unmitigated disaster. In 2019 they said never lock down, then spent 2020 defending top-down lockdowns and mandates. For three years, they theatrically pretended that decades of knowledge on immunity, disease burden, and the association of poverty with mortality did not exist.
Now they write this UN Declaration to fund their industry further through taxpayers they so recently impoverished. Once tasked to serve the world’s vast populations, particularly the poor and vulnerable, the UN vision has been consumed by public-private partnerships, the allure of Davos, and a fascination with high-net-worth individuals.
When Words are Used to Obscure Actions
While the Declaration underlines the importance of educating children during pandemics (PP23), these same organizations backed school closures for hundreds of millions of children at minimal risk from Covid-19. Among them, several million more girls are now being farmed off to nightly rape as child brides, others in child labor. Women and girls were disproportionately removed from education and from employment. They weren’t asked if they supported these policies!
The girls are being raped because the people paid to implement these policies did so. They know the contradiction, and the harm. But this is a job like many others. The only unusual aspects, from a business standpoint, are the sheer amorality and lack of empathy that must be engaged to excel in it.
To justify wrecking African children’s lives, the UN claims that the continent has “over 100 major public health emergencies annually” (OP4). Africa has a rising burden of endemic diseases that dwarfs mortality from such outbreaks – over half a million children die every year from malaria (increased through the Covid-19 lockdowns) and similar burdens from tuberculosis and HIV. By contrast, total Covid-19 deaths recorded in Africa over the past 3 years are just 256,000. The 2015 West African Ebola outbreak, the largest such recent emergency pre-Covid, killed 11,300 people. MERS and SARS1 killed less than 1,000 each globally. However, induced poverty does cause famine, raises child mortality, and wrecks health systems – is this the health emergency that the UN is referring to? Or are they simply making things up?
Through the IHR amendments, these agencies will coordinate the locking down, border closures, mandated medical examinations, and vaccination of you and your family. Their Pharma sponsors reasonably expect to make several hundred billion more dollars from these actions, so we can be confident that emergencies will be declared. By claiming 100 such events annually in Africa alone, they are signaling how these new powers will be used. We are to believe the world is such that only the abandonment of our rights and sovereignty, for the enrichment of others, can save us.
The UN and the WHO do recognize that some will question this illogic. In PP35, they characterize such skepticism as:
“health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization.”
The WHO recently publicly characterized people who discuss adverse effects of Covid vaccines and question WHO policies as “far-right,” “anti-science aggressors,” and “a killing force.” This is unhinged. It is the denigration and hate speech that fascist regimes use. The reader must decide whether such an organization should control their freedom of expression and decide what constitutes truth.
It is not helpful here to give details of all 13 pages of right-speak, contradiction, and fallacy. You will find similar rhetoric in other UN and WHO documents, particularly on pandemic preparedness. Straight talk is contrary to business requirements. However, the first paragraph in the Declaration’s ‘Call to Action’ sets the tone:
“We therefore commit to scale up our efforts to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and further implement the following actions and express our strong resolve to:
OP1. Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to overcome inequities and ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products to ensure high-level attention through a multisectoral approach to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies, particularly in developing countries;”
There are 48 more. You paid taxes so that someone could write that!
Those millions of girls suffering at night, the hundreds of millions of children who had their futures stolen, the mothers of those malaria-killed children, and all suffering under the increasing burden of poverty and inequality unleashed by this farce are watching. The Declaration, like the WHO IHR and treaty it supports, awaits the signatures of the governments that purport to represent 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.
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Book Summary
The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food
Lies Are Unbekoming | January 20, 2026
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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