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Ukraine’s Defeat to Unmask Dirty Secrets of ‘Conflict-Loving’ Western Elites

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 06.03.2024

A series of leaks related to NATO military and intelligence operations in Ukraine demonstrate the West’s futile attempts to intimidate Russia into imploding as they once did with the USSR, Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

Germany’s “Luftwaffe” leak has triggered a heated debate in the Western mainstream press, with the Guardian warning that NATO is “growing reckless” over Ukraine. Additionally, Politico has acknowledged that the chatter from the Bundeswehr was not part of a Russian “disinformation” operation, but rather a source of “uncensored information”.

“The leak adds to piles of evidence and reasonable suspicions that US and allied governments/contractors/grantees have abandoned adherence to truth-seeking, in favor of shoving a global governance model by unelected bureaucrats upon the masses inside and outside their home countries,” Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik.

“Ignoring inconvenient and hard truths about Russia now and concerning her history, Biden and the permanent class of conflict-lovers still seem to believe they can intimidate the Russian Federation into imploding as they once did with the Soviet Union,” he highlighted.

The release of a recording featuring German high-ranking officers discussing the possibility of sending Taurus missiles to Ukraine to destroy Russia’s Crimean Bridge occurred shortly after The New York Times published a story about a network of 12 secret bases run by the CIA in Ukraine since 2014.

Surprisingly, some CIA operatives couldn’t resist boasting about the operation right after the Russian special military operation began.

The Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe tweeted in April 2022 about a “bonanza of information” the American military had learned about Russia’s “tactics and procedures” since the beginning of its special military op in Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

In response, Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran who retired from a senior rank in 2019, wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) on April 27, 2022:

“Actually, it started a long time ago… we learned this between 2014-2022. Not just now. It was an 8-year lab experiment on Russian TTPs [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures]. On EW [electronic warfare]. On everything. This is why Ukrainians (with our advice/assist) are doing so well. Ask those in the IC [intelligence community] and UW [unconventional warfare] communities. We learned a sh*t ton.”

Nonetheless, despite learning “a sh*t ton” about Russia’s warfare strategy, the CIA has failed to prevent a string of defeats sustained by the Ukrainian military on the battlefield. Still, one should bear in mind that US IC agents could have been deployed with other missions rather than turning Ukraine into an impregnable fortress, according to Ortel.

What Dirty Secrets Are Western Leaders Hiding in Ukraine?

For instance, sensitive information about a network of US-funded biowarfare laboratories in Ukraine, uncovered by the Russian Ministry of Defense over the past two years, suggests that American politicians as well as military and intelligence operatives had been involved in potentially illegal activities and experiments in the Eastern European country which are strictly prohibited in the US.

“On Ukraine, one wonders what dirty work Ukrainian officials and contractors may have performed inside and outside Ukraine that could not readily be performed inside the United States,” the Wall Street analyst remarked.

“Because the Deep State over-classifies information and does not appear to be subject to meaningful oversight, we likely will not learn what specific factors brought the US and allied governments to prod so aggressively, painting the Russian Federation as an enemy, instead of welcoming Russia into a re-configured NATO as, apparently, Putin himself suggested. It seems to me that too many at the very top of Western governments see much more personal advantage in milking public sector expenditures for themselves fighting endless real and imagined conflicts than they see in crafting lasting peace and other solutions,” Ortel pointed out.

US Political Families Like the Bidens, Clintons and Others Cashed In On Ukraine

Furthermore, the Wall Street analyst pointed out that established US political dynasty families such as the Bidens and the Clintons pounced at the chance to profit off the situation in Ukraine. A specific example that Ortel discussed with Sputnik was the collaboration between Victor Pinchuk and his wife Olena with the Clinton Foundation to combat HIV/AIDS in Ukraine during the early 2000s. Ortel believes that the fight against AIDS served as a facade for money laundering activities.

“A laudable project conceptually, perhaps, this effort was never legitimately approved in the United States looking through the public record, but allowed the Clintons and their allies to unlock hundreds of millions in government grants and donations for which there has never been a legitimate accounting, just as Hillary Clinton needed a war chest to fund her Senate re-election campaign and her presidential ambitions,” the Wall Street analyst said.

Most recently, the Clinton Foundation announced a similarly questionable charity initiative together with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife Olena, Ortel noted, referring to corruption allegations haunting the Zelenskys.

In essence, Ortel believes that numerous Western players, including multinational companies, stand to lose a great deal in the event that Ukraine is defeated. Consequently, some Western leaders have even suggested the idea of deploying NATO military units to Ukraine.

US ‘Forever Wars’ Impoverishing Americans

No matter how hard the West tries to win its proxy war in Ukraine, the outcome of the conflict appears to be sealed, Ortel affirms. What’s more, the US has been repeatedly engaged in protracted overseas military conflicts, most of which had not ended on Washington’s terms.

“Especially in Vietnam, then afterwards in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, ‘policy-makers’ and ‘thought-leaders’ have failed to learn from their grievous mistakes,” the analyst said. “Instead of pursuing lasting peace or actually tackling vexing problems, many worship at the altar of perpetual wars, secure in the knowledge that industry patrons and egomaniacal billionaires will reward them richly along the way, and that they may never be punished for their misdeeds,” he noted.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans have not reaped any “bonanzas” from this decades-long war economy; instead, they have witnessed their living standards decline, he pointed out.

“As the world enmeshed after 1988, profit margins across the private sector (in a true and consistent accounting) fell, as did per hour incomes, adjusted for taxes and inflation. Over the same period and accelerating now under the husk of President Biden, public sector bureaucrats at all levels learned they could appropriate humongous sums of money, and then direct vast portions to themselves through family members and other supporters, via ‘leaky’ foundations, large and small.”

Ortel believes that regardless of NATO increasingly beating the war drums over its proxy conflict in Ukraine, “support for more fighting in Ukraine and against Russia will ebb” both in the US and Europe. A potential harbinger of change is the decision by Maidan coup plotter, Victoria Nuland, to step down from her position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, according to the analyst.

March 6, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Collapsing Empire: ‘How US Broke Kosovo’

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen English | February 28, 2024

In an extraordinary testament to the sheer pace and scale of the US Empire’s collapse, on February 15th Politico published a remarkable investigation, How the US broke Kosovo and what that means for Ukraine. In unprecedentedly forensic, candid detail, it documents how NATO violently “wrenched” the province from Yugoslavia’s grasp, then forged a politically and economically dysfunctional, unsustainable “American protectorate” in Belgrade’s place, while US officials and corporations corruptly profited every step of the way.

The relevance of Kosovo’s fate to what will inevitably befall whatever territory comprises Ukraine once Russia has completed its Special Military Operation couldn’t be starker. Whenever that day comes, Kiev will be wholly reliant on US support to keep its literal lights on, reconstruct whatever isn’t irrecoverable, and pay salaries of state employees and government officials. Washington already pumps tens of billions into the country for the latter purpose alone.

While there is a growing sense among Ukrainians within and without the country, they have been abandoned and betrayed by their American “friends”, officials in Kiev continue to talk up their alliance with Washington, while routinely pleading publicly for short- and long-term financial assistance from the Empire. Yet, as Politico observes:

“For Ukraine, the task of fixing its shattered infrastructure will represent a daunting, generational challenge. For corporate America, it will be just another business opportunity. And if Kosovo is any guide, the Ukrainians should be careful what they wish for.”

‘Serious Reservations’

The “liberation” of Kosovo Albanians, and creation of an “independent” state in the province – long-considered “the cradle of Serb civilisation” and “Serbia’s Jerusalem” – began as a deeply personal pet project of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and longtime deep state operatives and notorious warmongers like Madeleine Albright. Their crusade was then adopted by subsequent US administrations. Accordingly, Kosovo today is laden with monuments, avenues and squares dedicated to these individuals, including Wesley Clark, who as US Supreme Allied Commander Europe oversaw NATO’s criminal bombing of Yugoslavia.

Such is the affinity of Kosovo Albanians for the States, star spangled banners and garish posters proclaiming, “Thank You USA!” can be found in profusion throughout Pristina. As Politico notes too, “at one point, local authorities seriously contemplated naming a lake after Donald Trump” – and “the affection is mutual.” Entire generations of US officials “carry Kosovo around with pride,” a Washington diplomatic source boasted to the outlet. “But should they?” Politico bluntly enquires.

The answer, unambiguously, is absolutely not. Once Pristina unilaterally declared independence in 2008 – a highly controversial move unrecognised by much of the international community, and Serbia, its constitution still categorising the province as Belgrade’s sovereign territory – “American fortune hunters” started moving in en masse, employing “prominent former officials from the Clinton administration who’d had a hand in helping Kosovo liberate itself” to “grease the skids.” In other words, secure lucrative contracts via dubious if not outright criminal means, for personal enrichment.

An early entrant in this imperial feeding frenzy was US government-tied construction giant Bechtel, “a major player in the reconstruction of Iraq’s energy sector” following the illegal 2003 Anglo-American invasion. Its mission in Kosovo – building two highways – was much more modest. Nonetheless, US officials first had to convince authorities in Kosovo, “which had a poverty rate of about 60 percent at the time,” the roads were a vital necessity.

In order to bolster its sales pitch, Bechtel recruited Mark Tavlarides, a member of Bill Clinton’s National Security Council during the Kosovo War, and then-US Ambassador to Pristina Christopher Dell, to assist. Despite “serious reservations about the project’s economic viability on the part of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” authorities greenlit the proposal in 2010, while refusing to publish the full contract, “despite pressure from civil society groups.” It was nonetheless revealed the effort’s final cost wasn’t capped.

Initially, the highways were to span just over 100 kilometers, and cost €400 million. By the time of their completion two years later, they had been shrunk to just 77 kilometers, at a cost of €1 billion. Undeterred, in 2014 Pristina handed Bechtel another major highway contract. Completed five years later at a cost of €600 million, multiple Kosovo officials involved in the deal were recently jailed for secretly overpaying the company to the tune of €53 million.

‘Kosovo’s Saviors’

Politico’s investigation highlights a spectacularly egregious aspect of US “nation building” in Kosovo, largely unacknowledged or outright ignored in the mainstream over the past two-and-a-half decades. Namely, the very same officials intimately involved in Yugoslavia’s destruction profited – or, at least, sought to profit – from their actions subsequently. The same is true of every other target of imperial intervention since.

Politico dubs Albright “one of the icons of Kosovo’s fight for freedom.” As US Secretary of State 1997 – 2001, she aggressively tubthumped for NATO “intervention” in Yugoslavia, and resultant privatisation of the country’s industry and resources, which at the time of the bombing was overwhelmingly worker-owned. The 78-day-long aerial onslaught destroyed just 14 Yugoslav tanks, while decimating 372 industrial facilities, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. The military alliance took direction from US corporations on what sites to target.

Subsequently, Albright – via her personal investment firm Albright Capital Management – sought to make a mint from the wreckage. She gradually began buying up Kosovo’s newly-privatised telecommunications sector, and in 2013 was on the verge of seizing a 75% stake in the formerly state-owned PTK, the province’s postal and telecommunications authority. Major controversy over the deal at home and abroad eventually forced her to back out. Local celebrity not dimmed, six years later a statue of Albright was unveiled in a Pristina square named after her.

Politico records how Albright’s “family and colleagues remain active” in Kosovo, including her daughter Alice, who as chief executive of US government aid agency Millennium Challenge Corporation, “issues development grants” to Pristina, which then get handed back to US corporations via government contracts. Meanwhile, Wesley Clark has been attempting to profiteer in the would-be country for over a decade. He is reportedly “unapologetic about his efforts to reap financial benefit from his reputation as one of Kosovo’s saviors.”

Despite that “reputation”, Clark has been unsuccessful. In 2012, as chair of Canada-based Envidity Energy, he began vying for rights to Kosovo’s copious lignite coal reserves, the fifth largest in the world, promising an investment of $8 billion. The next year, Pristina conveniently tore up laws “designed to prevent foreign investors from exploiting the country’s mineral wealth in a way that didn’t serve Kosovo’s interests,” granting Envidity a licence to dig for coal throughout the province, without public tender.

A scathing 2016 UN Development Program report put an end to Clark’s “Kosovo dream”, expressing concern that Envidity’s project would’ve been completely illegal were it not for the scrapped legislation, there was a high risk of bribery and corruption if it went ahead, and Kosovo “would be stripped of its resources with the profits going into the pockets of foreign investors.” Negative comparisons were also drawn with Bechtel’s grossly exorbitant highway construction. Subsequently, Kosovo’s parliament withdrew Envidity’s licence. However, Clark was undiscouraged:

“The former general is now concentrating on renewable energy projects. He has met with Prime Minister Kurti and other top Kosovo officials to discuss his plan to reimagine the country’s energy infrastructure.”

‘Forgotten Battalion’

Politico observes that the “failure of US nation-building” in Kosovo is particularly conspicuous, given the province is “tiny, roughly one-third the size of Belgium, with a population of 1.8 million,” with a GDP of just $10 billion – “less than one-quarter the size of Vermont’s, the smallest US state in terms of economic activity.” As such, “making a difference there would not require the US to invest the trillions poured into Afghanistan and Iraq.” Furthermore, “the population loves the US.”

The outlet acknowledges the Empire “threw plenty of money” at Pristina post-1999, but “Washington’s priorities were informed more by short-term American business interests than providing the country what it really needed to develop.” Kosovo may have “been a good bet” for “the American businesses active” in the province, but not the local population. This more widely reflects how “political will in Washington to remain engaged in foreign countries typically fades once big business has squeezed what it can out of America’s presence.”

While these revelations are apparently surprising to Politico, and may well be news to many of its Western readers, it is a major, long-apparent structural flaw in the Empire’s foundations, which will be Washington’s ultimate undoing in many parts of the world. This is particularly the case throughout the former Yugoslavia. Today, the entire Balkans cries out for new infrastructure, and much else besides.

Yet, Western investment to rebuild what was destroyed – in several cases by NATO bombing – and renew roads and other logistics structures and facilities has been almost entirely unforthcoming in the decades since. A chronic lack of employment opportunities and derisory incomes has moreover precipitated a grave, region-wide population collapse. In “American protectorate” Kosovo, these issues are particularly pronounced, with the highest unemployment and poverty rate in Europe by some margin.

The wars also created, or exacerbated, a host of social and political problems with no simple resolution, which Western powers still struggle to comprehend, let alone settle. In closing, Politico notes that on top of a failure to invest in Kosovo for the benefit of its population, “Washington and Brussels have utterly failed” to end the conflict between Belgrade and Pristina on the future of Kosovo’s remaining Serb population. The outlet expresses disbelief that:

“Despite a quarter century of trying, the US, the most powerful country in the world, has been incapable of resolving what amounts to a border dispute involving a population the size of a small American town.”

Of course, the US is no longer the world’s most powerful country. The military, diplomatic, and economic clout it exerted during Yugoslavia’s destruction has been lost, and will not be returning. This decline is writ large in Kosovo, which is home to Camp Bondsteel, the largest and most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe since the Vietnam War. Covering almost 1,000 acres, it was meant to house 7,000 troops, although typically just 1,000 are stationed there.

Bondsteel, Politico reports, has been nicknamed the “Forgotten Battalion” in Washington as a result. Despite its manpower shortages, “the troops there, are nearly the only thing standing between Kosovo and Serbia.” The long-term viability of the base, and the corrupt, collapsing protectorate posing as a state it supports, is an open question.

March 5, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Secrets and Lies. NATO’s Role in Ukraine Is as Sleazy as the EU’s

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 4, 2024

Did Jens Stoltenberg really say that he had recently given “permission” to Ukraine to use F-16 fighter jets there in the war against Russia? If so, we can add it to the list of bumbling, buffoonish Freudian slips that he has chalked up himself while in office. But it does at least give us a glimpse of how western elites are no longer bothering to even cover up the fact that the war in Ukraine has, in reality, very little to do with Ukraine but rather is a much bigger war fought by the West against Russia.

Yet the whole issue about F-16s in Ukraine will be shrouded in lies, doublespeak and fake news. The real story of these outdated fighter jets from the Netherlands – some might call a bribe to Biden to secure the Dutch prime minister as next NATO boss – will probably never be known. Journalists who even want to ask who will really fly these planes – Ukrainians or U.S. pilots – will never get a straight answer but be fobbed off with the normal NATO ‘secrets and lies’ which are what we have all come to understand is the normal modus operandi for this so-called defence organisation. Timing is critical. Does Ukraine have the 6 months minimum time that Ukrainian pilots will need just to fly them, following intensive training? It’s a good bet that we will see them operational by the end of the summer with contracted, retired U.S. air force pilots flying them though – probably not in dogfight scenarios as they are no match for the newer Su-35s which Russia has – used in air to ground attacks. Of course, such a shift in strategy will lead Russia to target Ukrainian airfields, which some analysts are reporting is already happening but in reality, like so many decisions taken by NATO, this is just the latest in a long line of miscalculations. These 20-year old planes are going to be a real prize for Russia to shoot out of the skies like ducks on a Sunday afternoon. Pity the pilots who will be in their cockpits as they are on a suicide mission.

The truth though will be very hard to get to with the F-16s. NATO will already have its fake news ready for the suppliant journalists ready to oblige.

It’s a similar story with a recent statement by Zelensky himself who claimed that something like 30,000 Ukrainians so far had died in battle. Did he forget a zero there reading from his notes? Did too much cocaine affect his vision? Was it a joke?

No, it was no joke. Just more fake news dutifully processed by corrupt western media who don’t have journalists among them even capable of questioning the statement.

However, the reason why the numbers of dead Ukrainian soldiers is such a polemic is interesting. You might be forgiven for thinking that if the real figure of at least 300,000 dead Ukrainians were to be admitted, that this would have a political consequence for Zelensky himself. And this would be true within a democratic context. But Zelensky has shut down all media that doesn’t replicate his propaganda, eliminated all opposition parties so it’s hardly likely anyone is going to question this ludicrous figure of 30,000 or so. In reality there is a much more salacious, if not mercurial reason why he needs to stick to this work of fiction: graft.

What is not at all reported, even alluded to, is the racket being run by senior army officers close to him who are drawing the salaries of dead soldiers – and how the West turns a blind eye, once again, to this particular scam involving millions of dollars of western aid. Recently the EU agreed to send to Kiev 12.5 billion euros a year in cash for public sector salaries. Given the racket going on over dead soldiers salaries, this makes Brussels complicit in money laundering. Would it be far fetched to assume that senior EU officials are receiving kickbacks, in return? Given Ursula von der Leyen’s murky dealings with Pfizer and the recent news that she is to evade any scrutiny for another 5 years in office, assuming her corrupt friends in the EU support her second term, it becomes clear what the EU and NATO’s objectives are in Ukraine of late: just keep the machine turning over and Zelensky in power. The Ukraine war is not a charitable case, as some western leaders would like you to believe. It is not even about protecting the so-called values of the west, as no one really believes the bullshit that Putin is going to invade other EU countries once his tanks reach Kiev after the country inevitably collapses when the army surrenders or occupies itself with a civil war. Ukraine war is a racket and NATO is part of it, as is the EU elite. No one works for nothing and we should be very suspicious about Boris Johnson turning up in Kiev to lend his support to Zelensky. Is he on the latter’s payroll for PR services? Probably. Will any journalists ask this or file ‘freedom of information’ requests to even clarify who paid for the trip (as anyone who knows Boris, knows he has no cash)? Of course not.

March 4, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Perils of VIOXX: The Worst Drug ever Unleashed?

Imagine That! | March 1, 2024

March 4, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Hunter’s Associate: Biden Scion Planned Global Hedge Fund to Benefit Poppa Joe

Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 27.02.2024

As Hunter Biden braces for deposition in the US Congress on Wednesday, his former business associate has spilled the beans about the first family’s plan to build a global hedge fund.

US president Joe Biden’s son Hunter plotted to set up a shadowy fund to cash in on his influence — so says a former business partner.

Independent US media outlet Just the News has obtained a recent statement by Hunter Biden’s business associate Jason Galanis to the House impeachment inquiry.
He said Hunter and his business buddies planned to build a global hedge fund with Joe Biden as its “central asset.”

“The entire value-add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden,” Galanis told the House impeachment investigators. “Our objective was to build a diversified private equity platform, which would be anchored by a globally known Wall Street brand together with a globally known political name.”

Hunter Biden sought “strategic relationships to the venture” with tycoons from all over the world, including from post-Soviet space.

Just the News quoted emails from Hunter Biden’s infamous “laptop from hell” which allegedly confirm the ambitious plan.

“This is a global cooperation group that will assist each other in our respective regions in whatever manner possible,” Hunter’s other associate, Jeff Cooper, wrote in March 2014. The younger Biden proposed a list of billionaire investors for the new venture, including tycoons from China, Spain, Kazakhstan, Russia, South America, Africa and the Middle East.

One of Hunter’s partners, Chinese businessman Xuejun “Henry” Zhao, showed interest in the plan based on the prospect that Joe Biden would join the venture after his vice presidential term ended.

“Mr. Zhao was interested in this partnership because of the game-changing value add of the Biden family, including Joe Biden, who was to be a member of the Burnham-Harvest team post-vice presidency, providing political access in the United States and around the world,” Galanis said.

Galanis’s lawyer provided a draft email backing up the businessman’s testimony.

“Michael, please also remind Henry [Zhao] of our conversation about a board seat for a certain relation of mine,” Hunter reportedly wrote. “Devon [Archer] and I golfed with that relation earlier last week and we discussed this very idea again and as always he remains very very keen on the opportunity.”

According to Galanis, the “certain relation” was none other than Joe Biden. Even though the phrase was removed from the final email, it remained in Galanis’ records.

The group’s plan to assemble a “dream team” of international billionaires and create a global Biden business empire took a serious knock when Archer and Galanis were charged and convicted of a plot to steal $43 million in tribal bonds.

Hunter Biden avoided scrutiny despite “then-available documentation that we were partners, were involved in the decision making that involved illegal self-dealing, and all of us had financially benefited from these schemes,” Galanis claimed.

Galanis told House investigators that the illegal tribal bond scheme was part of a larger effort to create a financial platform for the Biden hedge fund.

“In an effort to build this financial platform, I engaged in unlawful conduct. Our companies were entrusted with $11 billion of union members’ pension fund money whose trust I betrayed,” Galanis stated. “I pleaded guilty. I have had eight years in federal custody to reflect on my actions and I am profoundly sorry for my role.”

Hunter Biden is expected to appear before the Oversight Committee on Wednesday and testify to the Republican-led impeachment hearing about his family’s business dealings and Joe Biden’s role in his son’s financial schemes.

Congressional investigators argue that Joe Biden was used by his son as a “brand” due to his vice presidential position. They say he not only knew about Hunter’s deals but participated in them, likely profiting. Biden has so far denied being aware of his son’s business operations.

House Republicans have been running their investigation into the Biden family’s apparent influence-peddling for several years.

According to US media, Hunter’s testimony will take place behind closed doors — even though he previously insisted on a public hearing — and will not be video-taped, although the transcript will be released to the public.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Biden regime wants to put the US on permanent war footing

The new ‘defense industrial strategy’ is a boon for the arms makers, not so much for regular Americans

BY JULIA GLEDHILL | RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT | FEBRUARY 23, 2024

The White House is steering the United States into a budgetary ditch it may not be able to get out of.

The Biden administration is supersizing the defense industry to meet foreign arms obligations instead of making tradeoffs essential to any effective budget. Its new National Defense Industrial Strategy lays out a plan to “catalyze generational change” of the defense industrial base and to “meet the strategic moment” — one rhetorically dominated by competition with China, but punctuated by U.S. support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Instead of reevaluating its maximalist national security strategy, the Biden administration is doubling down. It is proposing a generation of investment to expand an arms industry that, overall, fails to meet cost, schedule, and performance standards. And if its strategy is any indication, the administration has no vision for how to eventually reduce U.S. military industrial capacity.

When the Cold War ended, the national security budget shrank. Then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin and deputy William Perry convened industry leaders to encourage their consolidation in a meeting that later became known as the “Last Supper.” Arms makers were to join forces or go out of business. So they ended up downsizing from over 50 prime contractors to just five. And while contractors needed to pare down their industrial capacity, unchecked consolidation created the monopolistic defense sector we have now — one that depends heavily on government contracts and enjoys significant freedom to set prices.

In the decades since, contractors have leveraged their growing economic power to pave inroads on Capitol Hill. They have solidified their economic influence to stave off the political potential for future national security cuts, regardless of their performance or the geopolitical environment.

Growing the military industrial base over the course of a generation would only further empower arms makers in our economy, deepening the ditch the United States has dug itself into for decades by continually increasing national security spending — and by doling about half of it out to contractors. The U.S. spends more on national security than the next 10 countries combined, outpacing China alone by over 30%.

Ironically, the administration acknowledges in the strategy that “America’s economic security and national security are mutually reinforcing,” stating that “the nation’s military strength depends in part on our overall economic strength.” The strategy further states that optimizing the nation’s defense needs typically requires tradeoffs between “cost, speed, and scale.” It doesn’t mention quality of industrial output — arguably the biggest tradeoff the U.S. government has made in military procurement.

Consider, for instance, the B-2 bomber, the F-35 fighter jet, the Littoral Combat Ship, the V-22 Osprey, and many other examples of acquisition failures that have spanned decades. More recently, the Government Accountability Office has reported that while the number of major defense acquisition programs has fallen, both costs and average delivery time have risen.

So what is the military really getting from more and more national security spending? Less for more: Fewer weapons than it asked for, usually late and over budget, and, much of the time, dysfunctional. Acquisition failures are a major reason the Congressional Budget Office projects that operations and maintenance spending will significantly exceed the rate of inflation for the next decade — a considerable budgeting issue for a military that seemingly has no plans to reduce either its force structure or its industrial capacity. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Biden’s new National Defense Industrial Strategy specifically states there is a need for the U.S. to “move aggressively toward innovative, next-generation capabilities while continuing to upgrade and produce, in significant volumes, conventional weapons systems already in the force.” Ironically, the military has spent over two decades developing the F-35, next-generation technology that the Pentagon still hasn’t greenlit for full-rate production.

Throwing more money at an industrial base comprised of businesses too big to fail won’t increase the quantity or quality of its output. But that’s exactly what the strategy urges. One of the priorities is to “institutionalize supply chain resilience.” It’s an important goal, but one the administration proposes the Pentagon tackle, in part by investing in “spare production capacity,” what the strategy defines as “excess capacity a company or organization maintains beyond its current production needs.”

But building factories to sit empty is not supply chain resilience. It’s wasting money on unnecessary infrastructure, creating a profit motive for arms makers to make more weapons. And for an industry constantly sounding the alarm about the need for consistent “demand signals” from Congress, the Pentagon’s plans to invest a generation of U.S. taxpayer money in “spare production capacity” sounds a lot like throwing the demand-supply principle out the window. In that case, the U.S. might as well consider nationalizing the defense industry, which already lacks competition and relies almost entirely on the government. Why not eliminate the profit motive? It’s not like making money drives contractors to produce quality products on time or within budget.

Besides supply chain resilience, another priority laid out in this strategy is “flexible acquisition.” The stated goal is to reduce costs and development times while increasing scalability. In pursuit of that goal, the administration proposes “a flexible requirements process” for multiyear contracts, and the expansion of multiyear contracting writ large. It reasons that as priorities shift in an “evolving threat environment,” so too should contractors’ deliverables. But pairing flexible requirements with an increasing number of multiyear contracts is a recipe for disaster.

Before Russia attacked Ukraine, multiyear contracts were relatively rare — limited to major aircraft and ships. The Congressional Research Service notes that estimated savings on these programs have historically fallen within the range of 5% — 10%. But those are estimates, and they may not apply to other munitions now produced under multiyear contracts. The report also confirms that actual savings are “difficult to observe,” in part because the Pentagon does not track the cost performance of multiyear contracts.

Just because multiyear contracting is more common doesn’t mean it’s cheaper. And while the Pentagon argues that multiyear contracts give contractors the so-called demand signal they need to ramp up production, contractors don’t usually spend their extra money on identifying efficiencies or making capital investments to increase output at a lower cost — and the Pentagon isn’t checking.

The strategy also proposes “aggressive expansion of production capacity.” It notes that during peacetime, weapons acquisition tends to focus on “greater efficiency, cost effectiveness, transparency, and accountability.” Taking caution not to assert that the United States is in wartime, the strategy contrasts peacetime acquisition policy with “today’s threat environment,” calling for “crisis period acquisition policy” that revitalizes the industrial base and shifts focus from efficiency and effectiveness to ensuring that military contractors are “better resourced.” But contractors don’t have a resource problem, and “crisis acquisition policy” puts the United States on a “permanent war footing.”

Lawmakers must challenge the administration’s maximalist national security strategy by interrogating its push to expand military industrial capacity so drastically. It’s critical that they do, not only because the U.S. is limited in what it can produce and provide to other countries but also because arms industry greed is boundless — and without off-ramps or constraints, the U.S. government may find in 20 or 30 years that it’s in a ditch it can’t get out of.

Julia Gledhill is an analyst in the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Before joining POGO, she was a foreign policy associate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

February 27, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism | | Leave a comment

“On Call”: Dr. Fauci’s Forthcoming Memoir

Bizarre book description on Amazon

BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | FEBRUARY 25, 2024

Over coffee this morning, I found myself wondering what Dr. Fauci is up to these days. I was already aware that he’d joined the Georgetown School of Medicine faculty as a “distinguished professor” last summer. More recently in the news is the announcement that his memoir—titled On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service—will be published by Viking on June 18, 2024.

The following is the publisher’s description of the book on Amazon:

The memoir by the doctor who became a beacon of hope for millions through the COVID pandemic, and whose six-decade career in high-level public service put him in the room with seven presidents

Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous – and most revered – doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role. His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero.

His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease  preparedness at home. ON CALL will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.

It’s notable that Dr. Fauci hasn’t been “on call” as a treating physician since he joined NIAID as a clinical associate in 1968.

Downright astonishing is the fact that, within the same country, public perceptions of a man can be so diametrically opposed. It’s probably true that, during the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci was “a beacon of hope for millions,” even though he did the following:

1). Oversaw grants to the key players who were responsible for creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab.

2). Concealed the true (lab) origin of SARS-CoV-2.

3). Undermined President Trump’s advocacy of early treatment modalities such as hydroxychloroquine, and was generally dismissive of early treatment.

4). Strongly advocated the widespread use of Remdesivir, in spite of clear data that it causes kidney damage, especially in patients with already compromised kidney function.

5). Was a key actor pushing mass vaccination with mRNA gene transfer shots that are neither safe nor effective.

Especially bizarre in the book description is the final sentence: “He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.

In fact, Dr. Fauci is the embodiment of overarching, illegitimate power that has no place in a constitutional republic.

February 26, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine ready for war with China – top MP

Kiev is a “valuable ally” of Washington, Aleksey Goncharenko said while demanding more funding

Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko at a press conference on Capitol Hill on February 5, 2015 in Washington, DC. © AFP PHOTO/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
RT | February 24, 2024

Kiev is ready to assist the US in a war against any enemy, be it Iran, North Korea, or China, a senior Ukrainian MP has said, claiming that his country would prove to be a valuable military ally.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Friday, Aleksey Goncharenko doubled down on calls for the US to send Ukraine more military aid amid gridlock in Congress. “[The] United States of America told [us that] we will be with you ‘as long as it takes.’ Now it’s time to keep the promises.”

Goncharenko rebuked US politicians for focusing too much on the looming 2024 presidential election, saying Ukraine should not be a “victim” of this. He also claimed that supporting Ukraine serves Washington’s interests regardless of who wins the race for the White House.

In the event of a future war, the Americans “will need people who will stand shoulder to shoulder with them,” but not many nations would be willing to go all-in to support the US, the lawmaker said.

”Ukrainians are ready… We are ready to stand with the United States shoulder-to-shoulder, either in trenches near Tehran, or in North Korea, or near Beijing. No difference,” he stated. “Because we appreciate your support.”

Despite his plea for more Western military aid, Goncharenko argued that Ukraine has “the second strongest army in the free world” after the US, making it “a very valuable ally.”

“But today we need your support to defend our country,” he added, blaming gaps and delays in arms shipments for the loss of the strategic Donbass city of Avdeevka last week. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian retreat from the heavily fortified city, which was often used as a launching pad to target civilians in Donetsk, turned into a disorganized rout with heavy casualties.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that the capture of Avdeevka is “certainly a success,” adding that it needs to be advanced further.

Last year, Putin claimed that the Ukrainian government was defending the interests of other countries rather than its own, and that the West was using Kiev as “a battering ram” and a “testing ground” against Russia.

February 24, 2024 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Conspiracy theorists’ threaten mainstream media, says Canadian PM

RT | February 21, 2024

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday blamed social media for preventing major news outlets from shaping public opinion the way they used to.

The Liberal Party leader took his message to the Conservative stronghold of Alberta, sitting down with radio host Ryan Jespersen for an exclusive 30-minute interview on his Real Talk podcast.

“There is out there a deliberate undermining of the mainstream media,” Trudeau said, answering a question towards the end of the interview. “There are the conspiracy theorists, there are the social media drivers who are trying to do everything they can to keep people in their little filter bubbles, to prevent people from actually agreeing on a common set of facts, the way CBC and CTV – when they were our only sources of news – used to project across the country, at least a common understanding of things.”

Earlier this month, Trudeau denounced the move by Bell Media to lay off many of its local journalists and sell 45 of its 103 regional radio stations, arguing that local journalism holds Canadian democracy together.

“There are massive changes that need to happen in our media landscape, and [the] government can try and create conditions and incentives for it to happen,” he told Jespersen on Wednesday.

“We’re putting money towards local independent media,” Trudeau added, having argued a moment earlier that such overt funding would compromise news outlets as mouthpieces of the government.

In June 2023, the Canadian parliament passed the Online News Act (ONA), under which search engines and social media platforms would have to compensate news outlets for posting their content. While Google has complied, Facebook is “choosing to be bad guys about this,” Trudeau told Jespersen. Meta has responded to ONA by blocking all news content by Canadian publishers on Facebook and Instagram.

Ultimately, it’s up to Canadians to declare they don’t want to accept the “encrapification of news,” Trudeau said, borrowing the phrase from British Columbia Premier David Eby.

Trudeau’s comments on the podcast also echoed those made by former US President Barack Obama in a May 2023 interview to CBS. Obama named “a divided media” as one of the things he was worried about, noting that the US once had “three TV stations … and people were getting a similar sense of what is true and what isn’t, what was real and what was not.”

“How do we return to that common conversation? How can we have a common set of facts?” the 44th US president wondered at the time.

February 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

How The Courts Could Decide Who Controls Congress

By Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox | Knowledge is power! | February 6, 2024

Most voters don’t pay too much attention to the judicial candidates when they head to the polls to cast their vote. Honestly, I can understand their thought process. There’s nothing sexy about courts, judges, judicial panels, and so on. Most voters probably feel like they will never end up in a court of law. If they keep their nose clean, and live a life of lawfulness and piety, then they probably feel that they won’t ever be at the mercy of a judge, or a panel of judges, to decide their fate.

However, there is a grave danger in this method of thinking. Even if you personally never have the need or the occasion to sue someone, or be sued by someone, judges are rendering decisions in cases that affect your life, whether or not you are a direct party to a lawsuit. A golden example of that notion is my “quarantine camp” lawsuit against Governor Kathy Hochul and her Department of Health. Most New Yorkers are (unfortunately) blissfully unaware of this epic legal battle, and yet, five judges sitting in an appellate court in Rochester, New York may have sealed the fate of 19 million New Yorkers in determining whether or not unelected bureaucrats in the DOH can throw you into a quarantine detention center, with the force of police, for however long they like, without any proof that you are sick. (For more on that, you can read one of my many articles about that lawsuit, or other media content on it, here, or here, or here).

So, judges are every bit as powerful and noteworthy on the ballot as the vote you cast for your governor, or president, or senator, etc… My quarantine lawsuit is just one example. Another example which I’d like to delve into in more detail in this article is how judges may very well end up deciding who controls Congress.

With a very close margin in the House of Representatives, quite literally, every seat counts. (My standard disclaimer applies: I am not Republican. I am a Constitutionalist and believe the power of the people over the power of the political elites must prevail). So let’s set the stage… the Republicans control the House currently by only 4 seats. The Democrats control the US Senate, and the White House. If the Republicans lose control of the House, then Americans will be subjected to a very toxic one-party-rule. Remember my motto on this – I don’t care which party it is, when one party has total control, they go totally out of control! Here’s the article I wrote on that last year.

Most people think of New York as a “deep blue” state that is full of radical left-wing voters. That is terribly wrong. If you look at a map of New York state after the last couple of presidential elections, you’ll see that the vast majority of the state votes “red,” and it’s only a couple of our cities that vote “blue.” New York is the reason the Republicans took control of the House when the 2022 elections yielded a net gain of 5 seats for Republicans. In other words, in 2022, New Yorkers flipped 5 of our Congressional seats from Democrat to Republican, and that gave the Republicans the majority in the House.

So, it’s no surprise that many talking heads say New York is the pathway for the Democrats to regain control of the House next year after the elections this November. And here is where the courts come in. When one political party controls a state legislature, if they are empowered to draw the Congressional districts within their state, then this opens the door to gerrymandering. As a result, the party that is not in control will then usually bring a lawsuit to defend their right to have districts that are not gerrymandered. This happens in lots of states, and it is 100% happening here in New York. I am the spokeswoman for a non-partisan organization called Stop NY Corruption, and as such, I am fully familiar with the redistricting saga that has been taking place here since the 2022 election.

I wrote an article with the history and back story, which you can find here. If you prefer audio/visual, you can check out one of the number of press conferences or interviews I’ve done on this topic, some of which are posted on the Stop NY Corruption website. Most recently, I just spoke at a presser yesterday up in Albany together with former Congressman Lee Zeldin, State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, and Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar. Check out the video of our press conference here or double click on the thumbnail below.

So when these lawsuits over Congressional lines are brought in the courts, no matter which state, it is the decision of the judges that determines whether or not We the People will decide our elected representatives in Congress, or whether the political party bosses will choose what districts we live in, and who our Congressional reps will be. In a recent poll of likely New York voters, 81% of voters believe that gerrymandering is a form of cheating. According to that same poll, 78% of voters believe that gerrymandering leads to more corruption. If you want to see the full poll results, you can find that on the Stop NY Corruption website here.

To add another layer of concern, citizens really need to understand where their judges are coming from. What I mean by that is, in some states (like here in New York), the voters elect our trial court judges, but our appellate court judges and our Court of Appeals judges (New York’s highest court) are all appointed… by our governors. Ugh! So you cannot vote off the bench any “higher court” judges here in New York, and any other state that has this same judicial structure. Remember that the next time you vote in a gubernatorial election. Depending on how your state courts are designed, you may not be voting for just a governor, you could also be voting for the person who appoints your state’s appeals court judges.

Same goes for federal courts… the president appoints all federal judges, no matter what level of court they preside over (trial court, appeals court, United State Supreme Court). So you aren’t just voting for a president this November, you’re voting for the person who will place judges in the federal courts throughout our entire country. Extremely powerful authority.

February 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | | Leave a comment

Ukraine’s Corruption has Poisoned America

By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | February 21, 2024

The U.S. Congress is working towards a bill which would fund Ukraine into 2025. This, of course, is into the next presidential term. As Senator JD Vance recently explained to Tucker Carlson, the idea behind this is that if Donald Trump is again elected it will obligate him to continue supporting Ukraine and bring about an opportunity to impeach him if he does not.

Many have wondered why the U.S. political class is so obsessed with Ukraine, but I believe the answer is simple: money. I used to have a relatively elegant theory of NATO’s grand strategy, developed over a long period of observation, regarding the geopolitics of containing Russia’s sea access. However, since the outlandish and forgotten “Hunter Biden funded biolabs in Ukraine” story of early 2022, something different has become clear: our political class has been driven mad by the wages of corruption in Ukraine. When you look at the way that one ramshackle country has driven our politics both foreign and domestic, it is perhaps a defining feature of our era.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the former Soviet states, already poor from the collapse of communism, became what many have described as a sort of neoliberal hell, with state resources looted by newly wealthy oligarchs and sold to the West for pennies on the dollar. It is generally considered that Russia began to emerge from this as the time Putin took power and confronted some of the oligarchs who then fled the country—seemingly his original sin with the Western powers.

Though Russia remained corrupt, it has still shown a lot of economic growth, whereas corruption has absolutely crippled post-Soviet Ukraine. It was fake concerns about corruption that led the United States to support the so-called “Orange Revolution” of 2004 in Ukraine. However, more cynical observers know such actions are thin excuses for Western governments and financial interests to send hordes of attendants described as employees of “NGOs” to pick a country apart, prevent independent government, and ensure the enormous flow of funds in both directions. Though many genuine experts as well as the conventional wisdom knew it was treacherous for the United States to get involved in Ukraine because of the country’s historic, cultural, and economic ties to Russia, the opportunities for graft were too great to be resisted.

When the United States promoted the “Maidan Revolution” in 2014, they were able to remove a corrupt, pro-Russian president and replace him with a genuine oligarch willing to sell the country to the West. At this point, any sense of caution had completely gone out the window. There was a determination to pull Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit despite Barack Obama’s later admission that Ukraine would always be a core interest to Russia but not the United States.

The late Justin Raimondo wrote a 2017 article entitled, “Adam Schiff: Grifter, Racketeer, Warmonger” which gives unique insight into what has consumed our political class. In a feat of blatant corruption, Congressman Schiff of California had a fundraiser hosted at the house of a Ukrainian-born arms dealer, and then proceeded to call everyone who didn’t want the U.S. taxpayer to buy that guy’s equipment and send it to Ukraine a traitor. This didn’t even become a scandal: as far as I know, only Raimondo even noticed.

The Russiagate hoax which defined much of Trump’s term was when things became even more egregious. Many remember that long-time Trump associate Paul Manafort ultimately went to prison, in part relating to his lobbying for a Ukrainian political party. Fewer remember that the Podesta Group, those reliable Democrat courtiers, also had to shut down over the same thing. In both instances, those men were lobbying for groups seen as “Pro-Russian,” which is to say, both Republicans and Democrats have been profiting off of both factions in Ukraine. Then, of course, there was Trump’s phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, where he asked him to investigate Hunter Biden’s activities in the country. Trump was impeached over the premise that he threatened to shut off the aid bonanza; even if it was untoward to bring it up regarding the son of a political rival, cooperating on international corruption cases is the sort of thing which governments commonly do.

The broader Hunter Biden scandal is what really showcases the extent to which corruption associated with Ukraine has poisoned our domestic politics for at least ten years. Note that Hunter’s business partner was John Kerry’s stepson, and that family members of the political class and retired politicians commonly do these things. We just learned about Hunter’s activities because he happens to be a whoremongering crackhead. Joe Biden, of course, bragged about getting an anti-corruption prosecutor in Ukraine fired, directly tying this to their receipt of foreign aid, something much more blatant than Trump’s phone call.

What is more notable is the Hunter Biden biolabs story, which I called “The Mother of All Conspiracy Theories” at the time. Everything was wrong with what was going on there, perhaps most of all that these lunatics couldn’t help but to fund biolabs right near the Russian border while constantly convincing us the whole region was under threat. What else have we still not learned about what our political class has done in this impoverished and deeply corrupt country which has now haunted three consecutive presidencies?

The journalist Lily Lynch recently highlighted an incredible passage that Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most important architects of American power, wrote in his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard. He warned that the biggest fear of the United States should be that Russia, China, and perhaps Iran, form a sort of “antihegemonic” grand coalition based on “complementary grievances” against the United States. He said that no matter how remote this possibility is, our country must display geostrategic skill in Eastern Europe to prevent this from happening. Of course, through extraordinary efforts, our foreign policy class has managed to bring about the exact scenario which Brzenziski feared, despite viewing it as “remote.”

Incompetence doesn’t cover the series of decisions which brought us here, and neither does some grand strategy which is not working out. What has happened is that our rulers saw the perfect morass of corruption in Ukraine and waded in. Ukraine proved an incredible racket where they got paid in Ukraine to lobby for U.S. funding and profit off of the acquisitions in the United States, and then profit off of the corrupt misdirection of the funds and materials when the “aid” arrived in Ukraine. By racketeering, they have burnt the candle at both ends, and it seems that in no time it shall run out of wax and burn everything to the ground.

But damn has it been a good grift, if you were able to get in on it.

February 21, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment

America’s Fat Children Now in Ozempic Marketers’ Crosshairs

By Ben Bartee | Armageddon Prose | February 17, 2024

Via Reuters :

“A small but rapidly growing number of U.S. adolescents began treatment with Novo Nordisk’s <NOVOb.CO> weight-loss drug Wegovy last year, a powerful new tool to address record rates of pediatric obesity, according to data shared exclusively with Reuters.

In the first 10 months of 2023, 1,268 children ages 12 to 17 with an obesity diagnosis* started taking Wegovy, according to U.S. insurance claims data compiled by health technology company Komodo Health.”

* This psychological condition via framing the obesity epidemic as a “disease” with an accompanying “diagnosis” is not to be overlooked, as it provides valuable insight into how the pharmaceutical industry successfully parlays every physical, psychological, and social ailment into a medical diagnosis through a process called “medicalization” that I have previously described in great detail, which then opens the door for expensive, patented pharmaceutical interventions where they don’t naturally belong.

Strategically placing obesity within the “disease” bucket precludes the individual (referred to as “the patient,” an object to be worked upon, like a car with a faulty transmission) from exercising any personal agency over their health. Instead, the patient’s issue becomes a medical one best left to the anointed “experts” to resolve — almost always with expensive drugs or surgeries.

The actual disease, whether real or invented, obesity or “gender dysphoria,” is rarely resolved, but, given the financial incentives to keep the pill mills churning out product, one has to wonder whether that was ever the point from the industry’s perspective to begin with.

Continuing:

In 2022, only 25 children were prescribed the drug, which did not receive U.S. approval for adolescent use until December of that year. A month later, the influential American Academy of Pediatrics recommended weight-loss drugs be offered to children with obesity starting at age 12.”

In a decent society, the American Academy of Pediatrics would be designated a criminal enterprise, if not a biomedical terrorist organization, and its ringleaders prosecuted with vigor.

Via Influence Watch :

“In 2018, AAP reported $121,878,940 in revenue and $62,163,314 in net assets. More than half of its revenue came from its memberships, journals, and publications. The AAP also reported receiving $20.5 million in government grants and over $12.9 million in outside contributions. That same year, AAP reported $118,478,392 in expenses, including nearly $800,000 spent on legislative lobbying.

AAP gains a significant portion of its revenue through sponsorships at its conferences and frequent member events, though it has received criticism for its seemingly hypocritical sponsorship arrangements. In 2010, AAP hosted a conference which featured SweetSurprise.com, a corn-syrup promotion compony, as a sponsor, despite the fact that the AAP itself advocated against high fructose corn syrup and claimed that soda consumption was associated with higher rates of obesity.”

Let’s discover together who  — in addition to the likes of Bill Gates and Google — funds the AAP.

It’s probably deeply ethical physician’s groups and nunneries and whatever, right? The Mother Teresas and similar such do-gooders of the world.

Surely.

Why, spank me silly and call me Suzy; it’s none other than Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of Ozempic, itself!

But let’s not be conspiracy theorists and allege a conflict of interest.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

Follow his stuff Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.

Related: Obesity Is a ‘Brain Disease,’ Claims ‘Expert’

Related: How the Obesity-Industrial Complex Keeps Americans Sick, Fat, and Sad

February 17, 2024 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

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