White House opposes independent oversight of Ukraine aid
RT | July 11, 2023
President Joe Biden’s administration has objected to plans by US lawmakers to establish an independent inspector general who would scrutinize Washington’s massive military and economic aid packages for Ukraine.
At issue is a provision added to the $874 billion US defense budget for the government’s next fiscal year, calling for an additional oversight layer on Ukraine aid modeled after the inspector general established for reconstruction in Afghanistan. Conservative lawmakers, including Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, have argued that the White House lacks adequate controls to prevent fraud and other misuse of the $113 billion in aid approved by Congress to support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.
However, the administration argued on Monday that the Pentagon inspector general and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are already working with relevant congressional committees to “ensure accountability” for Ukraine aid. The Pentagon inspector general and the GAO are currently conducting investigations of “every aspect of this assistance,” the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said in a statement.
The White House also opposes an amendment to the defense bill that would expand the authority of the Afghanistan reconstruction inspector general. “This expansion is both unnecessary and unprecedented” because inspectors from both the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development already oversee the aid, the OMB said.
John Sopko, the independent inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, warned in February that strong safeguards were needed to prevent corruption from undermining Washington’s aid packages for Ukraine. Failure to learn from the US mistakes in Afghanistan, where much aid was “diverted or stolen,” could lead to a repeat in Ukraine.
“You’re bound to get corrupt elements of not only the Ukrainian or host government, but also of US government contractors or other third-party contractors to steal the money,” Sopko told Fox News.
Last year, Congress blocked an initiative spearheaded by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, to audit the aid to Kiev.
Ukraine consistently ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky fired a number of top officials earlier this year for profiteering. An August 2022 report by CBS News indicated that only about 30% of the Western weaponry sent to Kiev was actually making it to the front lines because of waste and corruption.
Hunter Biden Reportedly Has Extensive Ties With a Dozen Senior US Officials
Sputnik – 10.07.2023
WASHINGTON – US President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, has reportedly maintained “extensive ties” with almost a dozen of current and former senior government officials since the time when his father served as vice president under the Obama administration.
A digital analysis carried out by Fox News detailed a list of officials with whom Hunter Biden was or continues to be in close contact, and includes US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, senior Biden adviser Michael Donilon, and a close aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, among several other people.
Hunter Biden and Sullivan were cooperating with each other during their joint work on the board of the Truman National Security Project, a liberal foreign policy think tank. Sullivan worked there in 2017-2019, while Hunter was also serving on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings and the Chinese private equity fund BHR Partners. The US is currently investigating those and his other foreign business activities.
The outlet noted that former White House official Mike McCormick accused Sullivan of being a “conspirator” in the Biden family’s “kickback scheme” in Ukraine at the time.
The report also cites an extensive email exchange between Hunter Biden, at the time when he was with Burisma, and then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken. That correspondence shows the two men scheduled at least one meeting with each other.
Moreover, their communications go back at least a decade. For instance, Hunter contacted Blinken’s wife, Evan Ryan, in June 2010 asking for Blinken’s non-government email address, the report said. “Can I get Toni’s non-govt email? I wanted to send him something,” the message read.
Ryan is currently serving as White House cabinet secretary.
The report also mentioned email exchanges between Hunter Biden and several other cabinet members.
US House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into alleged criminal acts committed by the Biden family, including corruption and influence peddling. Earlier this month, panel chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) characterized the alleged actions as “organized crime.”
The committee’s probe is partially based on accusations from a confidential FBI informant, who alleges Joe and Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy company. Lawmakers are also investigating deals tied to China.
In June, Hunter Biden’s attorneys and the US Justice Department announced an agreement under which he will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and enter a pretrial diversionary agreement on a felony firearms offense in an effort to resolve the criminal probe against him and avoid prison time.
Prion Disease and the mRNA Shots: Some Light in the Dark
By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | July 6, 2023
In a 2022 paper, Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., Peter McCullough, M.D., MPH, and others discussed how the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines produce G-quadruplexes and microRNAs that can lead to prion disease.
The effect becomes significantly worse after the second dose of the Pfizer shot.
Prions are pathogenic agents that can induce the abnormal folding of cellular proteins, leading to diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and Alzheimer’s.
In his June 20 Substack post, researcher Adam Gaertner provides an accessible mini-tutorial on the complex and inspirational nature of cellular proteins. He addresses the structure and function of prions, the mechanisms by which they form, and how they can wreak havoc on any organ, especially the brain.
Prion disease can lead to a number of rare, progressive neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia, ataxia and spasticity before it becomes fatal, typically within just a few years of diagnosis.
Gaertner challenges the orthodoxy that there is no cure for prion disease by discussing several recent discoveries that offer “some unexpectedly good news.”
Innate immune suppression by SARS-COV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes and micrornas. Credit: Seneff, Nigh, Kyriakopoulos and McCullough.
Further investigation into mRNA and CJD
Gaertner began his research work into potentially useful therapeutics for prion disease and has also funded the development of a non-invasive prion blood test.
He even undertook his own study of people who were diagnosed with or died of CJD-like symptoms (n=60) after receiving the (mostly Pfizer) mRNA jab.
Nevertheless, he readily admits that he has yet to establish absolute proof of causation.
In a European Union document related to the approval of the vaccine, Gaertner discovered what could be the smoking gun: The liquid nanoparticles used to encase the mRNA came primarily from cow fat. According to Gaertner, the document in question even admitted mRNA’s potential to cause prion protein contamination.
Nearly a year after Gaertner publicized his discovery — which convinced some but not all researchers — a paper by Jean-Claude Perez documented 26 cases of “a new form of CJD” observed within a few days of the Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca vaccinations.
Of these, 20 people died within less than five months of the injection. (At the time of the paper’s publication, only one of the 26 had survived.)
The ‘good news’
While admitting that “there is not, ordinarily, a whole lot of good news to be had concerning prion diseases,” Gaertner outlined a mechanism by which “residues on the spike [protein] bind to the many and varied amyloidogenic proteins,” thus resulting in the blood clots observed by more than a few embalmers since the introduction of the mRNA shots.
He explained how this process can “bind up” the prionic proteins:
“So, what we essentially have here is, instead of a silently cascading apocalypse, buried deep inside parts of the brain that we will never reach, we likely, instead, have these long, stringy, vein-shaped agglomerations of the various amyloid proteins, binding together wherever they meet, and apparently at least somewhat resistant to being broken down by the body’s natural processes for dealing with such eventualities.”
The “really good news” comes from the way ivermectin binds directly to the spike protein — which has itself been described as a “prion-like” protein — thus blocking the spike from connecting to the ACE-2 receptor and “preventing the key from ever entering the keyhole.”
According to Gaertner, ivermectin also prevents the “amyloidogenic aggregations to the spike protein,” thereby arresting the production and proliferation of the prionic proteins. He adds:
“Ivermectin is, without a shadow of a doubt at this point, a true miracle drug: With so many applications, from antiviral, to cancer treatment, to anti-inflammatory, and of course in its originally recognized anti-parasitic application, there should be little wonder why the powers that be have done their best to diminish it as ‘horse paste.’”
Gaertner also notes that in a “very unscientific poll” he conducted on Twitter, 80% of respondents reported that a single, low dose of ivermectin significantly improved “brain fog,” a common post-COVID-19 symptom.
He described a number of “relevant investigational therapeutics” for use against the spike protein and its effects, including serrapeptase, quercetin, methylene blue and resveratrol, some of which demonstrate a “very broad range of useful actions.”
Expressing his belief that the lack of progress on therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases is likely due to “your run-of-the-mill Pharma and charity corruption,” Gaertner nonetheless found cause for optimism.
“There’s been a lot of progress, on a lot of fronts, and more comes regularly as the world continues waking up,” he said.
John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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.
New York state quietly shuts down Excelsior Pass program that cost $250M in tax money to build
YourDestinationNow | July 8, 2023
The state of New York has quietly shut down its Excelsior Pass program that cost taxpayers $250 million. The now-defunct pass was the Empire State’s version of a Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine passport.
State officials announced on June 30 that the digital vaccine passport “will no longer be available” by July 28. They cited “reduced demand for access to digital COVID-19 test and vaccine records,” alongside “the official end of the COVID-19 public health emergency” last May 11, as reasons for the discontinuation.
Given this, the Empire State said it “will no longer recommend its use, provide technical support or release future versions” of the mobile app that holds the vaccine pass. “New users will be unable to log in and register for it.”
“Your data collected for [the Excelsior Pass] continues to be private and secure. [The state of] New York has gained knowledge on digital credentialing from this effort and remains interested in the potential this type of technology could bring in the future.”
Jordan Schachtel of the Dossier recounted that New York City (NYC) made use of the Excelsior Pass in its “Key to NYC” vaccine passport program for over two years. Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and his successor, current Mayor Eric Adams, utilized the pass to prohibit entry to indoor facilities to those who refused to get injected with the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna injections and the single-dose Johnson & Johnson shot.
He continued: “The Excelsior Pass program began in early 2021 with an estimated cost burden of $2.5 million. It later ballooned to a sum approaching 100 times over the original budget, with an approximate amount of $250 million being handed out to IBM, Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group (BCG).”
Excelsior Pass now the subject of a probe by state inspector general
Citing state records, Schachtel wrote that Deloitte and BCG have billed taxpayers in the Empire State approximately $200 million for the pass’ “marketing” and “buildout” costs since 2021. Meanwhile, IBM has billed around $40 million plus $200,000 monthly since 2021 for “data storage” fees.
A May 14 piece by the Times Union‘s Joshua Solomon elaborated on the state’s expenditures in relation to the Excelsior Pass. Records obtained by the newspaper found that New York state has paid Deloitte and BCG almost $28 million to work on the app. IBM had also received an additional $36 million for its work on the pass, with $2.2 million in March for “application development” being the most recent payment.
Back in October 2021, Deloitte billed the state $3.6 million in Excelsior Pass costs. Two months later in December 2021, BCG billed the state for nearly $10 million in costs related to its work in reopening New York and on the Excelsior Pass.
“The money spent on the Excelsior Pass, and its accompanying ‘wallet,’ continued to flow to the consulting groups, even as the peak of the pandemic passed and the need for the app plummeted,” the Times Union piece noted. “The work by BCG and Deloitte was just one element of $200 million that flowed from New York to those firms that are now the subject of a state inspector general’s investigation. As the nation’s COVID-19 emergency fades from the front page, the spending renews the debate about New York’s ongoing use of contracts that were amended without public oversight during the pandemic.”
“While a handful of people in New York took action to protest against the authoritarian movement pass system, the vast majority of New Yorkers were happy to accommodate the bio-medical tyranny,” Schachtel pointed out. “In NYC, virtually every business complied with the program either out of sympathy or for fear of being shut down by the government.”
He ultimately remarked: “That’s $250 million down the drain, and on to the next ‘crisis.'”
How the Taliban crushed the CIA’s heroin bonanza in Afghanistan
The Taliban has not once, but twice eradicated Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation, the world’s largest source of heroin.
By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | July 7, 2023
In the aftermath of the chaotic US and UK withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir warned in the Washington Post of the dangers of “ignoring one important consequence of the Taliban takeover: the coming boom in Afghanistan’s narcotics trade.”
Mir then boldly predicted that, “in the next few years, a flood of drugs from Afghanistan may become a bigger threat than terrorism.”
This projection of an international drug trade boom seemed plausible, considering the longstanding accusations that the Taliban funded their two-decade insurgency against the occupying forces by controlling opium production. In fact, it was believed that 95 percent of heroin used in Britain originated from Afghan opium.
It comes as a surprise then, that a June 2023 report published by Alcis, a British-based geographic information services firm, revealed that the Taliban government had all but eliminated opium cultivation in the country, wiping out the base ingredient needed to produce heroin. This outcome mirrored a similar move by the Taliban in 2000 when they were in power the first time.
Ironically, instead of praising Kabul’s new leaders for quashing the source of illicit drugs, the international community responded to this development with criticism. Even the US Institute for Peace (USIP), which is funded by the US government, argued that “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.”
Such western displeasure towards the Taliban’s efforts to dismantle the global heroin trade may seem perplexing at first glance.
However, a closer examination of events in Afghanistan reveals a different perspective. Under the guise of the “War on Terror,” the 2001 US and UK invasion was driven in part by the desire to restore the heroin trade, which the Taliban had abruptly terminated just a year earlier.
The western powers sought to reestablish the lucrative flow of billions of dollars that the heroin trade provided to their financial systems. In fact, “For 20 years, America essentially ran a narco-state in Afghanistan.”
‘Dollar for Dollar’
To understand the origins of the Afghan heroin trade, a review of US involvement in the central Asian nation is necessary, beginning in 1979 when the CIA embarked on a covert program to undermine the pro-Soviet Afghan government in Kabul.
The US covertly supported an umbrella of Muslim guerrilla fighters known as mujahideen, with the hope that provoking an insurgency would entice the Soviet Army to intervene. This calculated move would force the Soviets into occupying Afghanistan and engaging in a protracted and costly counter-insurgency campaign, thereby weakening the Soviet Union over time.
To accomplish this, the CIA turned to its close allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, for help. Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan facilitated a meeting between CIA Director William Casey and Saudi King Fahd, in which the Saudis committed to matching “America dollar for dollar supporting the mujahedeen.”
The US and Saudi Arabia, with help from Pakistani’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), set up training camps for the mujahideen in Pakistan, and supplied them with advisors, weapons, and cash to fight the Soviets.
Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the founder of the Hizb-i-Islami militia, was among the most prominent mujahideen leaders, receiving some $600 million in aid from the CIA and its allies.
Journalist Steve Coll writes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Ghost Wars that Hekymatyar recruited from the most radical, anti-western, transnational Islamist networks to fight with him, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab volunteers. CIA officers “embraced Hekmatyar as their most dependable and effective ally,” and “the most efficient at killing Soviets.”
Caravans of opium
Aid to Hekymatyar and other mujahideen leaders was not limited to cash and weapons. According to renowned historian Alfred McCoy:
“1979 and 1980, just as the CIA effort was beginning to ramp up, a network of heroin laboratories opened along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier. That region soon became the world’s largest heroin producer.”
The process involved smuggling raw opium gum to Pakistan, where it was processed into heroin in laboratories run by the ISI. The finished product was then discreetly transported via Pakistani airports, ports, or overland routes.
By 1984, Afghan heroin supplied a staggering 60 percent of the US market and 80 percent of the European market, while devastatingly creating 1.3 million heroin addicts in Pakistan, a country previously untouched by the highly-addictive drug.
McCoy states further that, “caravans carrying CIA arms into that region for the resistance often returned to Pakistan loaded down with opium.” Reports from 2001 cited by the New York Times confirmed that this occurred “with the assent of Pakistani or American intelligence officers who supported the resistance.”
In May 1990, the Washington Post reported that the US government had for several years received, but declined to investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by its allies, including “firsthand accounts of heroin smuggling by commanders under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.”
Rise of the Taliban
When the Soviets did finally withdraw in 1989, the country fell into civil war as the major CIA-backed factions began fighting among themselves for control of the country. Mujahideen leaders became warlords and committed terrible atrocities against the local population while fighting amongst themselves.
It was during this anarchy that religious students from the madrassas (seminary schools), the Taliban, emerged with the help of Pakistani intelligence to take control of the country in 1996, subsequently inheriting the opium trade, which continued unhindered for several years.
In July 2000, however, Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered a ban on all opium cultivation. Remarkably, the Taliban successfully slashed the opium harvest by 94 percent, reducing yearly production to only 185 metric tons.
Five months later, in December 2000, the US and Russia used the UN Security Council to impose harsh new sanctions on Afghanistan, citing the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden following the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, in which 17 US sailors were killed. Bin Laden had taken refuge in the Islamic Emirate in 1996 after he was expelled from Sudan.
The New York Times reported that US officials sought to impose the new sanctions, despite warnings from the UN that “a million Afghans could face starvation in coming months because of a drought and continued civil war.”
Following the attacks on 11 September, 2001, Bush administration officials demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden once again. Mullah Omar insisted the US first provide evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt, but President Bush refused this request and ordered the US air force to begin bombing Afghanistan on 7 October.
In the wake of the bombing, Mullah Omar dropped the demand for evidence, and offered to hand over Bin Laden to US ally Pakistan for trial. Bush administration officials once again refused.
Journalist and author Scott Horton highlights in his book Fool’s Errand a peculiar aspect of the US campaign: the lack of a clear focus on capturing or eliminating Bin Laden. In fact, President Bush had already stated on 25 September that success or failure should not be defined solely by capturing Bin Laden.
Horton notes further that US planners made no initial effort to hunt down Bin Laden and the foreign Arab fighters supporting him. Instead, head of US Central Command, General Tommy Franks prioritized partnering with Afghan warlord Rashid Dostum to take control of the north of the country, and establish a “land link” to Uzbekistan.
Turning to the warlords
To also capture the capital, Kabul, and other key cities in the south, Alfred McCoy notes the CIA:
“Turned to a group of rising Pashtun warlords along the Pakistan border who had been active as drug smugglers in the south-eastern part of the country. As a result, when the Taliban collapsed, the groundwork had already been laid for the resumption of opium cultivation and the drug trade on a major scale.”
Though US forces were too late to prevent Bin Laden’s escape to Pakistan, the US bombing campaign came just in time for the beginning of poppy planting season. Poppies are planted in the autumn so that the juice from the plant, from which opium is extracted, can be harvested in spring.
McCoy clarified further that, “the Agency (CIA) and its local allies created ideal conditions for reversing the Taliban’s opium ban and reviving the drug traffic. Only weeks after the collapse of the Taliban, officials were reporting an outburst of poppy planting in the heroin-heartlands of Helmand and Nangarhar.”
In December, one of these rising Pashtun warlords, Hamid Karzai, was appointed Chairman of the Afghan Interim Administration and later president.
By the spring of 2002, large amounts of Afghan heroin were once again being transported to Britain via daily flights from Pakistani airports. The Guardian observed the case of a 13-year-old girl who was stopped after she stepped off a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Islamabad to London carrying 13kgs of heroin with a street value of £910,000.
Industrial scale
Thanks to the “land link” established by General Franks, heroin also immediately began flowing north from Mazar-e-Sharif, under CIA ally Rashid Dostum’s control, to Uzbekistan and then to to Russia and Europe.
The flow of heroin was witnessed by Craig Murray, the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who explained that Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, facilitated the smuggling of heroin from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it was then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to Moscow and then Riga. As Murray noted:
“Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker… The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.”
‘A hands off approach’
In addition to Dostum, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s younger brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, quickly secured a prominent role in the Afghan heroin trade.
Credible reports emerged that Wali Karzai was deeply involved in the heroin trade, however, according to the New York Times, the incidents were never investigated, “even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.”
Senior officials at the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) complained that the Bush “White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter.”
The Times later reported that according to a top former Afghan Interior Ministry official, a major source of Wali Karzai’s influence was his control over key bridges crossing the Helmand River on the route between the opium-growing regions of Helmand Province and Kandahar. This allowed Karzai to charge huge fees to drug traffickers to allow their drug-laden trucks to cross the bridges.
Like Dostum and Hekmaytar, Wali Karzai built his heroin empire while on the CIA payroll. The agency began paying Karzai in 2001 to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operated at the agency’s direction in and around Kandahar and to rent a large compound for use as the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. The CIA also appreciated Karzai’s help in communicating and sometimes meeting with Afghans loyal to the Taliban.
Karzai also served as the head of Kandahar’s elected provincial council. According to a senior US military officer in Kabul quoted by the Times, “Hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money are flowing through the southern region, and nothing happens in southern Afghanistan without the regional leadership knowing about it.”
The blame game
In late 2004, as reports of Karzai’s involvement in the heroin trade were emerging, Alfred McCoy writes that “the White House was suddenly confronted with troubling CIA intelligence suggesting that the escalating drug trade was fueling a revival of the Taliban.”
A proposal from Secretary of State Colin Powell to fight the heroin trade was resisted by US ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and then-Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani. As a compromise, the Bush administration used private contractors for poppy eradication, an effort that New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall later described as “something of a joke.”
Additionally, reports of a 2005 cable sent by the US embassy in Kabul to Powell’s successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, viewed Britain as being “substantially responsible” for the failure to eradicate poppy cultivation. British personnel chose where the eradication teams worked, but those areas were often not the main growing areas, and “the British had been unwilling to revise targets.”
The cable also faulted President Karzai, who “has been unwilling to assert strong leadership.” The State Department nevertheless defended him, saying, “President Karzai is a strong partner, and we have confidence in him,” despite reports of his brother’s key role in the heroin trade.
But the problem went beyond Wali Karzai. A UN report for the World Bank published in February 2006 concluded the Afghan heroin trade was operating with the assistance of many top Afghan government officials and under the protection of the Afghan Ministry of Interior.
As evidence of CIA and Afghan government involvement in the heroin trade grew, the focus of the western media shifted towards blaming the Taliban for using drug profits to fund their insurgency against foreign forces.
However, historian Peter Dale Scott challenged this narrative, citing UN estimates that the Taliban’s share of the Afghan opium economy was a fraction compared to that of supporters of the Karzai government. Scott emphasized that the largest share of the drug trade was controlled by those aligned with the Afghan government.
The surge
In early 2010, the Obama administration announced a “surge” of 33,000 US troops to help pacify the country, with a particular focus on key districts known for poppy cultivation. One such district was Marja in Helmand province, which McCoy referred to as “the world’s heroin capital.”
Despite the surge’s mission, US commanders seemed unaware of Marja’s significance as a hub for heroin production, fueled by the surrounding opium fields that accounted for 40 percent of the world’s illicit opium supply.
In September 2010, eight months after the start of the surge, “unsubstantiated” reports emerged that British soldiers were involved in trafficking heroin out of Afghanistan using military aircraft at airports in Camp Bastion and Kandahar.
Camp Bastion, jointly operated by the UK and the US, was located near Lashkar Gah, another major center of poppy cultivation. In 2012, it was alleged that poppy cultivation was taking place just outside the base’s perimeter, with British soldiers providing protection to farmers against Afghan security forces.
By late 2014, British and US forces withdrew from Camp Bastion, handing it over to Afghan forces, who renamed it Camp Shorabak. However, according to a UN report, “the opium-growing area around Britain’s main base in Afghanistan nearly quadrupled between 2011 and 2013.”
Despite the withdrawal, opium exports from Camp Shorabak apparently continued, and a small number of British military personnel returned in 2015 in what was described by the Ministry of Defense as an advisory role.
In 2016, Obaidullah Barakzai, a member of the National Assembly of Afghanistan, claimed, “It’s impossible for a few local drug smugglers to transfer opium in thousands of kilos. This is the work of the Americans and British. They transport it by air from Camp Shorabak.”
After US forces chaotically withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, the Taliban once again succeeded in eliminating poppy cultivation, showing it was far from a “dedicated drug cartel” after all.
Follow the money
In November 2021, an opium merchant claimed that “All the profits go to the foreign countries. Afghans are just supplying the labor.”
Peter Dale Scott noted that according to the UN, some $352 billion in drug profits had been absorbed into the western financial system, including through the US’ largest banks in 2009. As a result, Scott said the “United States involvement in the international drug traffic links the CIA, major financial interests, and criminal interests in this country and abroad.”
In 2012, the Daily Mail reported that HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, faced up to £640million in penalties for allowing “rogue states and drugs cartels to launder billions of pounds through its branches,” and for becoming “a conduit for criminal enterprises.”
The billions in profits flowing from the Afghan heroin trade into western banks have now been eliminated by the Taliban not once, but twice in the past two decades.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s pronouncement in July 2000 that poppy cultivation was “un-Islamic” was, therefore, a more likely cause of the US sanctions imposed in December of the same year, and of the US invasion of Afghanistan a year later, than was any US desire to apprehend Bin Laden and dismantle Al-Qaeda.
In March 2002, just six months after the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan, a journalist asked President Bush, “Where’s Osama bin Laden?” Bush replied, ‘I don’t know. I don’t really think about him very much. I’m not that concerned.”
The Afghan drug trade serves as a stark reminder of the intricate connections between geopolitics, illicit economies, and global finance, and the need for greater transparency and accountability in addressing these complex issues.
The historical evidence also challenges the simplistic narrative that the Taliban largely controlled the Afghan drug trade, highlighting the dominant role played by the US-backed Afghan government and its allies in the CIA.
Majority of US Voters Believe Biden Involved in Son Hunter’s Foreign Business Deals – Poll
Sputnik – 06.07.2023
WASHINGTON – A majority of likely voters in the United States believe that US President Joe Biden was involved in his son Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which are under investigation by US House lawmakers, a Rasmussen Reports poll revealed on Thursday.
More than half of respondents, 58%, said that it was likely that Biden was involved in his son’s foreign business deals, with 44% believing it “very likely,” the poll said.
One-third of respondents said it was unlikely Biden was involved in the foreign business deals, and 10% are unsure.
The poll comes amid an investigation by the US House Oversight Committee into alleged criminal acts committed by the Biden family, including corruption and influence peddling. Earlier this month, panel chairman James Comer characterized the alleged actions as “organized crime.”
The committee’s probe is partially based on accusations from a confidential FBI informant, who alleges that Joe and Hunter Biden received millions of dollars from a Ukrainian energy company. Lawmakers are also investigating deals tied to China.
However, Biden has denied ever speaking to his son about his business deals, contradicting testimony from an IRS whistleblower involved in matters related to Hunter Biden.
The survey polled 1,054 likely US voters on June 28-29 and July 2. The poll maintains a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points with a 95% confidence level.
Walensky Warns Public to Beware of ‘Misinformation’ and ‘Politicized Science’
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 5, 2023
As she ended her tenure last week as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned the American public to be on guard against “misinformation” and the “politicization of science.”
Walensky told The Wall Street Journal she hopes Americans will make health decisions based on “their own risk assessment and their own personal risks, but not through politics,” emphasizing that public health recommendations also shouldn’t be politicized.
“Ironically, this comes after two-and-a-half years of Walensky misinforming the public and politicising the science,” investigative journalist Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., wrote on her Substack.
Demasi and many others took to Twitter to remind people of Walensky’s false statements and politicized decision-making.
Walensky last week published a farewell op-ed in The New York Times, in which she wrote that public health is critically important in the U.S., and yet she “fear[s] the despair from the pandemic is fading too quickly from our memories.”
She complained that “the agency [CDC] has been sidelined, chastened by early missteps with Covid and battered by persistent scrutiny.”
She also told the WSJ that public health shouldn’t fall along partisan lines.
Yet stark political partisanship defined her time at the CDC. The WSJ reported that a recent KFF poll showed political affiliation was the strongest demographic predictor of COVID-19 vaccination. And about one-quarter of Americans don’t trust the CDC’s health recommendations, according to a 2022 survey published in the journal Health Affairs.
Walensky acknowledged “missteps in communicating” by the CDC, which, she said, “could have done a better job” making it clear to the public that the agency’s message could change during the pandemic.
But, she told the WSJ, the CDC has a plan to regain public trust in the future — by working directly with media organizations to discuss how to best shape public opinion prior to releasing scientific information to the public.
She said the CDC plans to use a method called “prebunking,” where they will communicate directly with media organizations before they release information to let the media know which details about public health might be “misconstrued.”
According to The Associated Press (AP) “prebunking” by public health agencies allows the agencies to define something as “misinformation” before readers have an opportunity to encounter it elsewhere as possibly true.
Then search engines such as Google prioritize “credible websites” like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) or the CDC’s in its searches.
FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, the Virality Project and Google are among those who have promoted prebunking as a way to combat misinformation.
Journalist Kim Iversen proposed a different approach Walensky might take to restoring public trust in the CDC.
She said:
“Well, the way to do it is to apologize, to own up to your lies, to own up to the mistakes that you made and to discuss why you did that, why the agency followed such political partisanship when they should have been following science, why they ignored the science that was right in front of them.”
CDC broadcast a long list of ‘misinformation’ during Walensky’s tenure
Throughout her tenure at the CDC, which began when Biden took office in January 2021, Walensky made a series of public statements that have proven to be false.
Evidence has since emerged that Walensky knew many of these statements were false when she made them.
In March 2021, Walensky famously told Rachel Maddow, that “vaccinated people do not carry the virus, don’t get sick.”
The CDC was forced to walk back her statements a few days later. But that message was the basis for vaccine mandates imposed later that year by the Biden administration, businesses, universities and public venues throughout the country.
In a mid-June congressional hearing, Walensky defended her March statements, claiming they were true at the time.
But the Washington Examiner reported on June 20 that emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request showed Walensky and Dr. Francis Collins were aware of and discussed “breakthrough cases” of COVID-19 in January 2021 — just before the vaccines became widely available — and yet continued to tell the public the vaccines would prevent transmission.
In that same congressional testimony, Walensky also defended the mask mandates, saying that the summary of Cochrane’s review — which found wearing masks in the community “probably makes little to no difference” in preventing viral transmission — had been “retracted.”
But it was neither retracted nor had the authors of the review changed the language in the summary, Demasi reported.
In June 2021, Walensky told “Good Morning America” that the risk of myocarditis was extremely rare, and there was overwhelming data the vaccines were safe for children — even after hundreds of cases of myocarditis had been reported and the CDC had been aware of a safety signal since February.
Under Walensky, the CDC also gave false information on vaccine safety monitoring, added the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood vaccine schedule despite known harms, withheld data on boosters from the agency’s own advisers and told pregnant women the vaccine was safe — just days after Pfizer reportedly finalized a report demonstrating it wasn’t.
In a March study by Krohnert and others, researchers compiled instances of errors in data presented by the CDC during the COVID-19 pandemic in publications, press releases, interviews and Twitter. The authors reported 25 instances where the agency under Walensky promoted demonstrably false numbers.
In most (80%) cases, the CDC exaggerated the severity of the pandemic. For example, Walensky gave a briefing on June 23, 2022, during which she claimed COVID-19 was a “top 5 cause of death” in children, which was untrue.
Most recently, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic gave Walensky until July 12 to turn over phone records involving American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten. The House is investigating potential political interference on the part of AFT with the CDC’s school reopening recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic, The Defender reported.
Walensky warns of ‘future threats’
Walensky warned at the end of her Times op-ed:
“I want to remind America: The question is not if there will be another public health threat, but when. The C.D.C. needs public and congressional support if it is going to be prepared to protect you from future threats.”
To take on these “future threats” the Biden administration nominated Dr. Mandy Cohen, an internal medicine physician and former state health secretary of North Carolina, to replace Walensky.
But critics warn Cohen is “a public health COVID authoritarian” who is “fully entrenched in the ‘bio-pharmaceutical complex.’”
Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cohen failed to recognize therapeutics and natural immunity, and supported lockdowns, vaccine mandates and masking.
Cohen comes to the CDC from the private sector, where she is executive vice president of Aledade and CEO of Aledade Care Solutions, whose executive leadership and board of directors includes people with connections to the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Walensky congratulated Cohen on her nomination, describing her as “a respected public health leader who helped North Carolina successfully navigate” COVID-19, and whose “unique experience and accomplished tenure in North Carolina … make her perfectly suited to lead CDC as it moves forward by building on the lessons learned from COVID-19 to create an organization poised to meet public health challenges of the future.”
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.
Ukrainian conflict an “opportunity” for the CIA – William Burns
By Lucas Leiroz | July 4, 2023
US authorities no longer hide their anti-Russian ambitions in Ukraine. In a recent statement, CIA Director William Burns said the Ukrainian conflict would be a “unique opportunity” for Washington. The case shows how Western strategists really want to destabilize and harm Russia as much as possible, with no intention of peace or diplomatic goodwill.
The head of American intelligence revealed in a lecture at the Ditchley Foundation in the UK on July 1 that his agency plans to explore the possible opportunities for infiltration that would arise from the weaknesses of a Russian society allegedly dissatisfied with the conflict in Ukraine. This would be, according to him, an appropriate occasion to advance anti-Russian plans in the intelligence sector.
“Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression (…) That disaffection creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service. We’re not letting it go to waste”, he said.
In this regard, Burns also made it clear that the CIA is already taking steps to advance its projects. According to the official, the agency launched a recruitment channel on Telegram in May, showing “business” proposals for Russian officers, military, government representatives and scientists who want to provide information from Moscow to American forces.
“We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we’re very much open for business,” he added.
Two days later, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky went public to reveal that his regime is constantly in cooperation with the CIA, and there are no secrets between them. Recently, Zelensky and Burns met during a director’s visit to Kiev. On the occasion, the neo-Nazi leader talked to the US official about many “important things”, such as what Ukraine “needs” to keep the proxy war on Russia.
“My communication with the CIA chief should always be behind the scenes. We discuss important things – what Ukraine needs and how Ukraine is prepared to act (…) We don’t have any secrets from the CIA because we have good relations and our intelligence services talk with each other (…) The situation is pretty straightforward. We have good relations with the CIA chief, and we are talking. I told him about all the important things related to the battlefield that we need”, Zelensky said.
According to an anonymous source linked to the American government interviewed by CNN, Burns’ visits to Kiev are frequent, despite the fact that media outlets often do not pay attention to these events:
“Director Burns recently traveled to Ukraine, as he has done regularly since the beginning of Russia’s recent aggression more than a year ago (…) As with other trips, the director met with his Ukrainian intelligence counterparts and President Zelensky, reaffirming the US commitment to sharing intelligence to help Ukraine defend against Russian aggression”, source said.
Indeed, Burns’ words about the CIA seeing the conflict as an “opportunity” show that American intelligence wants to take advantage of events in Eurasia to generate instability in Russian society, fomenting frictions in the government, military and civil institutions. Burns exposes the plans very clearly and does not hide his intentions, which makes the US hostile stance towards Russia public.
The CIA director’s regular visits to Kiev are actually part of these anti-Russian plans. American intelligence actively interferes in the conflict, manages the activities of its proxy state directly from the battlefield, acting as a true belligerent party. This high level of information sharing and strategic integration shows that there is certainly American participation in all crimes committed by the neo-Nazi regime, including terrorist attacks and murders of civilians in the undisputed territory of the Russian Federation.
However, it remains to be seen whether the US anti-Russian plans will really be effective. The director is mistaken in his assessment of the Russian scenario when he says that there is “disaffection” and growing frictions in Russia as a result of the conflict. Vladimir Putin’s popularity and Russian national unity have been greatly strengthened by the progress of the special military operation, contradicting Burns’ claims.
Also, it is unlikely that any incursion attempt by American intelligence will be successful, considering that Russian security forces are on high alert for this type of threat, having occurred repeated operations focused on neutralizing infiltrated foreign agents and terrorist networks. Moscow is aware that the real enemy side in the current conflict is the US-led West, which is why it is acting cautiously to protect itself.
Furthermore, Burns’ words about an alleged public CIA recruitment of Russian citizens through Telegram sounded unconventional. This type of strategy sounds amateurish and ineffective in terms of security, since Telegram is an easily accessible network and Russian forces could act against citizens who search for the CIA there – in addition to infiltrating their own counterintelligence agents in the process of recruitment.
Either Burns made this announcement as a bluff to try to “scare” Russia by demonstrating that it was advancing intelligence operations, or in fact the CIA is desperate in its search for agents on the ground in Russia and is making basic strategic mistakes. In both cases, it is clear that American intelligence does not seem prepared to defeat Russia.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
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Lies are Unbekoming | January 25, 2026
The waiting room is clean. The receptionist is polite. The forms ask reasonable questions. Nothing in the physical environment suggests danger. The magazines are current. The hand sanitizer dispenser works. Someone has chosen calming colors for the walls.
A pregnant woman sits in a chair designed for her comfort. She has been told to be here. Not ordered—no one orders. Recommended. Strongly recommended. Everyone does this. Her mother did this. Her friends did this. The women in her prenatal group compare notes about their appointments the way they compare notes about nursery furniture. Which provider did you choose? What tests have you had? The questions assume the answers. The answers assume the questions.
She will be offered things today. Offered is the word used. The offers will come with information sheets that list risks and benefits in tabular form. She will sign consent documents. Everything will be voluntary in the legal sense. No one will hold her down. No one will threaten her. She will choose, and her choices will feel like choices, and she will leave feeling she has done the responsible thing.
What she will not feel is the weight of what has been arranged before she arrived. … continue
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