MEPs call for change of EU policy on Ukraine
RT | October 12, 2023
Ukrainian lives are being sacrificed by the “totally corrupt” elite in Kiev to which the EU recklessly sends billions of euros, several members of the European Parliament said at an event on Wednesday hosted by the think-tank Voice of Europe.
“We must stop this tragicomedy for Europe, for Ukraine and for Russia. We must try to find a path to prosperity again, and the first step is peace,” MEP Thierry Mariani of the French National Rally (RN) party argued at the roundtable, held in the central hall of the European Parliament in Brussels.
“Ukraine must remain a bridge” between Russia and Europe, Mariani added. He also pointed out that the current conflict has roots in 2013, when the EU tried to push Kiev to renounce a free trade deal with Russia and sign the Association Agreement with Brussels. This led to the Maidan demonstrations and the February 2014 coup.
Maximilian Kra of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) said he had traveled around Ukraine, describing it as “a beautiful country with very decent people.”
“I’m afraid that these decent people of Ukraine are now being sacrificed for the interests of the Kiev elite,” who own millions in real estate in southern France, Kra said. He also voiced fears that the US may ask the EU to foot the bill for the Ukraine conflict, now that Washington’s attention has been preoccupied by Israel.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. And I can tell you that this is already happening. Because Germany has already promised $1 billion to Ukraine, while the US will allocate only $200 million,” he said.
Marcel de Graaff of the Dutch Forum for Democracy (FvD) argued that Ukraine needs to make peace with Russia as soon as possible.
“I speak very directly because they have already lost. They are now sacrificing people up to 70 years old at the front. They no longer have reserves. They are losing right now,” said de Graaf.
He also described Ukraine as “the most corrupt country in the world,” now being given “tens of billions of euros” by the West. “I heard that [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s mother-in-law bought a villa in Egypt for several million dollars, and we are still wondering where our money is going. This is a totally corrupt civilization,” de Graaf added.
One major problem, according to the Dutch MEP, is that all trust has been lost between Russia and the West after the revelations by former German and French leaders that the Minsk Agreements were a ploy to buy Kiev time to prepare for war.
Kra brought up that Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk had presented the German Bundestag a “smart” peace plan based on Minsk II, a proposal that would have seen the rebel republics of Donetsk and Lugansk rejoin Ukraine with broad autonomy.
“At the time, no one knew that Minsk II was a fake, as Merkel later stated,” Kra added, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s December 2022 admission.
Henri Malos, president of Voice of Europe and host of the roundtable, also lamented the demise of the Minsk Agreements, which he said offered security and sovereignty for both Russia and Ukraine.
Senators Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin Play Musical Chairs
One arch interventionist replaces another to lead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 10, 2023
Many Americans have come to accept that corruption and lying is the name of the game in Washington and, increasingly, at both state and local levels of government, in part because lying and stealing by those who run the country has become virtually consequence free. To cite only one example, the current ruinously expensive war against Russia began when the US and other NATO powers lied to Mikhael Gorbachev about their intentions regarding expansion of the “defensive” alliance into Eastern Europe. They then lied again in 2014 with the Minsk Accords, which were supposed to give some measure of autonomy to the Russian ethnic regions of Ukraine in the Donbas, an apparent concession that served as cover for arming and training the Ukrainian Army. Finally, the US and its friends arranged for regime change in Ukraine in 2014 to replace the friendly-to-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych with a pro-western candidate selected by the fanatical State Department neocon Victoria Nuland, who boasted how Washington had spent $5 billion to bring about the flip in government. That move warned Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding what was going on so he quickly annexed Russian ethnic majority Crimea, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet is based.
Driving all the US led aggression against Russia is the neocon foreign policy embraced by most of the two major political parties which demands that the United States have military superiority over all competitors everywhere around the world where it has interests or allies. That has meant by one count something like 1,000 foreign military bases. By way of comparison, Russia has only one overseas base, in Syria. And the maintenance of all those bases as well as the network of installations inside the US costs lots of money which fattens defense contractors and also winds up in the pockets of aspiring politicians while increasing the national debt to unsustainable levels. And it is no surprise to learn that when generals and admirals retire from active service, 80% of them wind up employed by contractors to lobby their former colleagues on the latest weapons systems that are so urgently required to maintain supremacy.
The recent exposure of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey’s apparent tendency to accept bribes in exchange for various kinds of favorable treatment and protection was a particularly lurid tale in part because much of the loot consisted of $480,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and in a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1 Kilogram in weight to the value of more than $100,000. In the garage was an upscale $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible that was a gift to Menendez’s then girlfriend, who had wrecked her own vehicle in an accident in which she had struck and killed a pedestrian. The car came from one of the New Jersey businessmen currently involved in the corruption and bribery investigation and no one can quite explain how an accident in which someone had died was never properly investigated by police. Menendez had allegedly helped the businessman by arranging to block a criminal investigation into his company’s activities.
Menendez is indeed a powerful senator even though there is more than a whiff of suspicion surrounding him and his activities. A Cuban American who is prominent in the Hispanic caucus, he was regarded as a political hardliner from his bully pulpit as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 2015, Menendez was indicted on federal corruption charges but the jury was unable to reach a verdict, and the case was dropped in 2018. In April 2018, the United States Senate Select Committee on Ethics “severely admonished” Menendez for accepting gifts from donor Salomon Melgen without obtaining committee approval, for failing to disclose certain gifts, and for using his position as a senator to advance Melgen’s interests. This time around, however, the evidence for wrongdoing is much more compelling and it even involves a foreign country, Egypt, so he has resigned his chairmanship but has refused to leave the Senate. He claims he is innocent, of course and continues to promote Biden’s view of the world, to include identifying the “core American foreign policy values” as “democracy, human rights, and the rule of law” even though it does not apply to him. And, of course, as a Cuban that worldview includes perpetual hostility to Havana and all its works, including its links to Russia.
Bob Menendez is up for reelection in 2024, but opinion polls taken just after the reports of his corruption surfaced indicate that he has no chance of winning against several Democrats who will challenge him. He will certainly receive some favorable press and significant campaign donations as he’s long been linked to Jewish lobbying groups like AIPAC and is closely aligned with Israel on foreign policy issues to include opposing in 2015 the President Barack Obama nuclear deal with Iran, asserting falsely that Iran is already working on a nuclear weapon. In March 2017, Menendez co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.270), which sought to make it “a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.” More important perhaps, Menendez has twice advanced legislation through his committee supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, so the White House will presumably do everything it can to protect him, but only up to a certain point.
Menendez has been replaced by Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland, who will not be running for re-election in 2024. Cardin, who is Jewish, is a strong and consistent supporter of Israel, like Menendez, and an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin of Russia. He was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution expressing objection to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as a violation of international law. Cardin warned that “Congress will take action against efforts at the UN, or beyond, that use Resolution 2334 to target Israel.” Cardin also voted with Republicans to support President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He declared that the time that “Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and the location of the US Embassy should reflect this fact.” Cardin and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, like Menendez, were strong supporters of the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act in late 2018, described above, and they also called for a sanctions mechanism to punish international organizations that seek to boycott Israel or its illegal settlements.
Oddly, Cardin has sometimes been credited with being a “human rights advocate,” a label which the Palestinians and others might object to. The claim is based on his authorship of US legislation referred to as the Magnitsky Act. According to Cardin and his allies in Washington, Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer hired by Bill Browder head of Hermitage Capital Management Fund, an Anglo-American investment fund operating in Moscow, to investigate the apparent diversion of as much as $230 million in taxes due to the Russian government. Hermitage was a hedge fund that was focused on “investing” in Russia, taking advantage initially of the extremely corrupt loans-for-shares scheme under Boris Yeltsin, and then continuing to profit greatly during the early years of Vladimir Putin’s ascendancy. The loans-for-shares scheme that made Browder his initial fortune has been correctly characterized as the epitome of corruption, an arrangement whereby foreign investors worked with local oligarchs to strip the former Soviet economy of its assets paying pennies on each dollar of value. Along the way, Browder was reportedly involved in making false representations on official documents and bribery. Nevertheless, by 2005 Hermitage was the largest foreign investor in Russia.
Magnitsky allegedly became a whistleblower after discovering that the missing money had been stolen by the police, organized crime figures and other government officials. After he went to the authorities to complain he was unjustly imprisoned for eleven months. When he refused to recant he was both beaten and denied medical treatment to coerce him into cooperating, resulting in his death in jail at age 37 in November 2009. He has become something of a hero for those who have decried official corruption in Russia.
The Magnitsky case is of particular importance because both the European Union and the United States have initiated sanctions against the Russian officials and entities that were allegedly involved. In the Magnitsky Act, sponsored by a Russia-phobic Cardin and signed by President Barack Obama in 2012, the US asserted its willingness to punish foreign governments for violations of human rights. Russia reacted angrily, noting that the actions taken by its government internally, notably the operation of its domestic judiciary, were being subjected to outside interference. It reciprocated with sanctions against US officials as well as by increasing pressure on foreign non-governmental pro-democracy groups operating in Russia. Tension between Moscow and Washington increased considerably as a result and Congress subsequently passed the so-called Global Magnitsky Act as part of the defense appropriation bill in 2016. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama in December. It expanded the use of sanctions and other punitive measures against regimes guilty of egregious human rights abuses though it has never been applied to US friends like Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has been used to punish China and Cuba. It was also sponsored by Senator Cardin and was clearly primarily intended to intimidate Russia.
The tit-for-tat that has severely damaged relations with Russia is based on the standard narrative embraced by many regarding who Magnitsky was and what he did, but is it true? Many now believe that there was indeed a huge fraud related to Russian taxes but that it was not carried out by corrupt officials. Instead, it was deliberately ordered and engineered by Browder with Magnitsky, who was an accountant not a lawyer, personally developing and implementing the scheme used to carry out the deception.
To be sure, Browder and his international legal team have presented what they regard as evidence in the case. But while it might be that Browder and Magnitsky have been the victims of a corrupt and venal state, it just might be the other way around. To cite only one example, much of the case against the Russian authorities is derived from English language translations of relevant documents provided by Browder himself. The actual documents in Russian sometimes say something quite different.
So there we go again. As the wheel turns in Washington nothing really changes. Benjamin Cardin as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs will promote the same policies of unrelenting hostility towards countries like Russia and China as did his recently resigned predecessor Bob Menendez. And as fighting between Israel and Gaza has just broken out, you can count on how the United States will line up even as hundreds of Palestinian children die as a powerful Israel pummels and pounds and largely civilian population in Gaza. Those are the sorts of things that American citizens can count on these days, unfortunately.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
NZ doctors avoided Covid jabs while insisting the public had them
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2023
The New Zealand Ministry of Health granted vaccine exemptions to hundreds among its key staff whilst hypocritically insisting that the public be vaccinated.
An Official Information Act (OIA) request to the ministry dated August 2, 2023 asked the following question:
‘According to the legislation at the time in 2021, there were operational exemptions available for those who were not getting vaccinated against Covid-19. How many requests were received? How many were approved by the ministry?’
Matt Hannant, Interim Director, Prevention, National Public Health Service, replied:
‘From 13 November 2021 to 26 September 2022, a total of 478 applications for Significant Service Disruption exemption (SSD) were received. 103 applications were granted, covering approximately 11,005 workers. Please note that it is not possible to provide the exact number of workers that were covered by SSDs. This is because it was possible for an organisation to submit an application to cover more than one worker.’
So exactly how many Ministry of Health staff and associated contractors benefited from the vaccine exemptions? I have made inquiries and found some staff prepared to leak information. One source has told me that 95 consultants in the Dunedin region alone benefited from vaccine exemptions. Another source has pointed to a group of doctors working in Northland who arranged among themselves to remain unvaccinated. The total appears to run to hundreds and possibly more.
It seems that those granted exemptions were restrained by gagging orders so that they could not tell anyone that they had been granted exemptions: it was a secretive process that the Ministry of Health was anxious to hide from the public.
In any case, any doctor advising a patient that mRNA Covid vaccination might be risky faced disciplinary action, and many were suspended.
So medical staff allowed themselves to be manipulated into a position whereby, if they were unvaccinated themselves, they were still required to advise their patients to vaccinate, a recipe for widespread hypocrisy in the health service.
This process was certainly approved by Dr Ashley Bloomfield (then chief executive of the Ministry of Health) who gained considerable notoriety by refusing vaccine exemptions to those among the public severely injured by their first jab, insisting that they continue with a vaccination schedule. Given Dr Bloomfield’s close working relationship with Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins (then Health Minister, now Prime Minister) it is quite likely that they approved it. The opposition leaders were also likely kept in the loop.
The criteria for granting exemptions apparently entailed an assessment concerning how vital staff were to the working of the health service. In other words, senior figures and those holding key surgical positions could insist that they remain unvaccinated and continue to be allowed to work. Meanwhile unvaccinated nurses, for example, could not gain exemptions and lost their positions.
If senior staff who wished to remain unvaccinated had spoken out publicly, the issue of Covid vaccine safety might have been given a public airing. Instead the Ministry of Health and the government kept a lid on all and any discussion. It did so through liaison with mainstream and social media outlets to censor content and through tight control of staff.
Senior medical staff who chose to remain unvaccinated may have been aware of a 2019 paper in Frontiers in Oncology journal entitled Gene Therapy Leaves a Vicious Cycle which reported:
‘Gene therapy has been caught in a vicious cycle for nearly two decades owing to immune response, insertional mutagenesis, viral tropism, off-target activity, unwanted clinical outcomes (ranging from illness to death of participants in clinical trials), and patchy regulations.’
As someone who has analysed social data over the last fifty years, I do sympathise with the doctors who opted for caution. That would be a normal reaction to new medications. It takes years to assess safety. So how unsafe is the mRNA Covid vaccine? Extremely unsafe, as shown by the 2023 excess death data across OECD nations.
The most highly Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are in order Portugal, Chile, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Spain and Australia. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is 91 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 12 per cent above the five-year historical average.
The least Covid vaccinated nations in the OECD are Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Poland, Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Switzerland. Their average percentage of the population vaccinated is just 63 per cent. Their average rate of excess deaths so far in 2023 is 0 per cent compared to the five-year historical average. In other words, they have averaged a normal death rate.
Anyone who suggests that the death rate among the unvaccinated is higher than the vaccinated is running against the tide of evidence. This view doesn’t fit with the international data.
The standard way to resolve this inconsistency would be to refer to prospective studies which assemble two matched groups, vaccinate one group and leave the other unvaccinated and measure what happens over a significantly long period. In the normal course of vaccine approval this would have been done for around ten years prior to approval. No one has done this.
In the Pfizer trial the unvaccinated control group were all vaccinated after a few months, ensuring that long-term comparative outcomes are unavailable. In any case, during those few months more people died in the vaccine group than the unvaccinated control group. There are also many studies differentiating the outcomes of the vaccinated and unvaccinated that we have reported including journal citations.
How concerning is the excess death problem? According to the OECD there were 1.2 million excess deaths in 2022 among their member countries, with a combined population of 1.2 billion: one excess death in every 1,000 people.
Now it is becoming accepted that both Covid and Covid vaccination began their lives in a biotech lab, it doesn’t seem to much matter what proportion of excess deaths are due to Covid and what to Covid vaccination, but for the record in 2022 there were approximately 200,000 deaths ‘with Covid’ in the OECD. In summary, OECD excess deaths not attributable to Covid were one million in 2022 alone. This probably extends to a few millions worldwide, about the same as the annual deaths during World War one.
You can see why it is so important for those involved in creating Covid policy and enforcing mandates to make sure that everyone continues to believe that more unvaccinated die than vaccinated because otherwise their narrative that Covid policy is saving millions of lives completely falls apart.
In this light we can now assess the motivations of those still poking fun at the vaccine injured or accusing the ‘vaccine hesitant’ of seeking to undermine the government. For example the New Zealand Disinformation Project, funded by the Prime Minister’s Office, in common with many politicians, have described vaccine injury as a conspiracy theory. They are trying to hide their own mistakes which have undermined the health of the nation.
For the last couple of years the Hatchard Report has had a simple lament: ‘No one in authority seems prepared to ask why excess deaths are occurring at an unprecedented rate’. Deaths are in fact a very stable part of life. In a normal year there are no excess deaths. Insurance actuaries calculate how many of us will die and when with great accuracy, and set life insurance premiums accordingly. Right now, actuaries must be having sleepless nights because something has gone terribly wrong that has not happened at any other time during the last 100 years outside war and conflict zones: a great many people are falling ill and dying when they should be alive and well.
The Ministry of Health has been hiding these disturbing facts while quietly and hypocritically acknowledging their staff have a right to avoid these risks. They have not just gaslighted the public, they have recklessly put the public’s lives at great risk. This has broken families and communities, pitting one against another. It has caused tragedies affecting families across the nation, while the Ministry of Health and the government are going through tortuous and secret processes in order to conceal what is happening. Moreover they have plans to continue to roll out more experimental vaccines.
Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Has Ties to Hollywood, Corporate Dems
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023
The latest series of revelations by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker concerning the organization responsible for creating the list of the “Disinformation Dozen” confirm connections to more dark money sources and to key political and Hollywood figures.
In an article published Monday in Tablet Magazine and on his Substack, Thacker also revealed the organization — a nonprofit called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm.
Prior to coming up with its “Disinformation Dozen” list, Thacker said, CCDH was part of a campaign to silence independent media and prominent political opponents.
CCDH has since turned its attention to attacking X (formerly Twitter) and its owner, Elon Musk, and supporting the recent passage of a sweeping new censorship bill in the U.K.
According to Thacker, the influence of CCDH and its founder and CEO, Imran Ahmed, on the Biden administration, policymaking circles and mainstream and social media is disproportionately large for a small organization founded and managed by a non-American — raising questions about who, or which entities, are backing CCDH.
Those questions led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH in late August. Jordan gave CCDH until Sept. 29 “to produce its communications with the executive branch related to content moderation, the accuracy or truth of content, and the deletion or suppression of content.”
CCDH responded to the subpoena on Sept. 29, claiming it “produced all documents and communications” which were requested. Notably, the letter came on the letterhead of a law firm representing CCDH, instead of from the organization directly, while the publicly viewable online version of the letter does not include the accompanying documents.
‘Disinformation Dozen’ list led to censorship of Kennedy, others
In March 2021, CCDH drafted a report and accompanying list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.
The report claimed, “Just twelve anti-vaxxers are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media platforms,” and concluded social media “platforms must act” against these individuals.
The White House and social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook used the report to censor the individuals on the list.
In one example, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki cited the CCDH report during a July 2021 press briefing to pressure Facebook into censoring the accounts in question. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki claimed.
Legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others also cited the report, in an attempt to discredit the people on the list.
Thacker, writing for Tablet, said Twitter specifically took action against Kennedy after it received the “Disinformation Dozen” list — and was subjected to White House pressure:
‘“COVID-19 misinfo enforcement team is planning on taking action on a handful of accounts surfaced by the CCDH report,’ a Twitter official wrote on March 31. One account they eventually took action against belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running against Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.”
CCDH provides White House with ‘powerful weapon to use against critics’
“What, then, do we know about the CCDH?” Thacker wrote Monday in Tablet. “In effect, it seems, the organization provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration’s policies.”
“While few journalists have bothered to investigate the opaque group, the available evidence paints a picture that is likely different from what many in the public would expect of a ‘public interest’ nonprofit,” Thacker added.
As part of his July investigation leading to the release of the CCDH-related “Twitter Files,” Thacker was unable to discover who funds and supports the organization. He told The Defender in July that he believed CCDH was a “dark money” group.
Kennedy, testifying at a July 20 hearing organized by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, also called CCDH a “dark money” group.
A subsequent investigation by GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji was able to trace some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.
Yet, unanswered questions about CCDH and Ahmed remained for Thacker, who wrote on Substack:
“How did some guy from London with no D.C. political experience get noticed by the White House and attract so much media attention? Where does he come from? What’s his background? Where does he get his money? Who is behind this?”
As part of his latest investigation, Thacker wrote that he “lucked into finding a critical, anonymous donor who dropped $1.1 million into CCDH’s coffers.”
A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.
This represented “around 75% of all the funds they took in that year,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker added, “According to tax records, Ahmed began to run CCDH from D.C. in 2021, and CCDH took in $1.47 million in their very first year operating in the United States.”
‘CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party’
This was not the only interesting insight into CCDH’s operations. Thacker also discovered CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).
According to Thacker, CAP is a “D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party.” It was founded by John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump. And yes, CAP has close ties to the Biden administration,” Thacker wrote.
Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab, Thacker wrote in Tablet. In a previous “Twitter Files” release, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was funded by various U.S. government agencies and defense contractors and “remains a central piece in the ‘censorship-industrial complex.’”
Thacker quoted Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. Benz told Thacker the Atlantic Council is “one of the premier architects of online censorship” and has, in recent years, “had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers.”
“One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right,” he added.
CCDH spent $50,000 to lobby Congress on COVID ‘misinformation’
Thacker also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.
“Go a little deeper and you find the other members of the [CCDH] board,” Thacker wrote on Substack, adding, “The one who caught my attention is Aleen Keshishian.”
Keshishian, who is also an adjunct professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, lists clients including actor Mark Ruffalo, who according to Thacker, “tweets support” for CCDH.
Her other clients include Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez and Natalie Portman.
“Ahmed’s connections to Hollywood actors could account for some of the money he has raised from anonymous sources, as wealthy celebrities sometimes wish to keep their political donations hidden from fans,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
Unusual for a nonprofit, CCDH also hired a PR and lobbying firm, Lot Sixteen, to work on its behalf.
“Very few activist groups have the financial means to hire private lobby shops — even those with an established presence on Capitol Hill — but during a few quarters of 2021 and 2022, CCDH paid Lot Sixteen $50,000 to lobby congressional offices on COVID-19 misinformation and ‘preventing the spread of misinformation and hate speech online in social and mainstream media,’” Thacker wrote.
Thacker told The Defender that even large and well-established nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Public Citizen have not hired PR firms to work on their behalf.
“None of those groups that I’m aware of, the longest-established groups in D.C., have ever had the money to hire a private lobby shop like CCDH did. It’s just bizarre,” he said, adding that this is because CCDH is “a political campaign designed to look like a grassroots public-interest organization.”
Thacker said he contacted Lot Sixteen and “asked them how they confirmed that Imran Ahmed was compliant with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act],” noting that “This guy’s a foreigner. No one knows where his money comes from. How do they know his money’s not coming from overseas and he’s not in violation of foreign lobbying laws?”
“They didn’t get back to me,” Thacker said. “My guess is they didn’t do due diligence.” He also told The Defender that while CCDH “lists only four or five employees” on its website, “if you go on LinkedIn, there’s about 20 other people working for him.
“What nonprofit does not list all their employees? It’s just bizarre,” Thacker said.
CCDH ‘rarely disclose funders’
According to Thacker, CCDH and associated groups have operated in secrecy and under multiple identities for several years.
“Ahmed’s history is hard to track,” he wrote for Tablet. “The two groups he has run — Stop Funding Fake News [SFFN] and CCDH — seem to pop up out of nowhere, switch addresses, rarely disclose funders, omit naming all employees, and feature websites that change names or disappear from the internet.
“While Ahmed eventually acknowledged in 2020 that he helped launch both [groups] … his involvement remained hidden for some years. Stop Funding Fake News started in February 2019 claiming to be a ‘social movement’ too frightened to name its own grassroots activists,” Thacker added.
Thacker said that by searching archived versions of CCDH’s website on the Internet Wayback Machine, he was able to find out more information about the organization.
“One of the first things I ran across was reports about CCDH incorporating in the U.K. back in 2018,” said Thacker who looked up their filings in England to find their address and who was on their board. “One of CCDH’s first directors is a guy named James Morgan McSweeney,” he wrote on Substack.
According to Thacker, McSweeney “is a power broker in UK politics, and a top staffer to Keir Starmer, who is now the head of the British Labour Party. So CCDH is not really some disinterested, public nonprofit, it’s a political campaign by British Labour.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said that CCDH “registered in late 2018 in London, first as Brixton Endeavours Limited” and when it incorporated, its “only director was a staffer for Keir Starmer.” The group also “shared an address with an organization that supported Starmer,” while Damian Collins, a member of the Tory Party, later joined as an officer.”
Thacker wrote on Substack that CCDH, SFFN and Ahmed have often operated as “political operative[s] for conservative members of the British Labour party,” including on behalf of Starmer, to help “destroy the Left in the United Kingdom.”
Starting in 2019, SFFN “claimed some very sizable left-wing scalps in London, mostly by lobbing vague accusations of fake news at political enemies. The group helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership while tanking the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
In one instance, SFFN claimed that they convinced 40 major brands, including Adobe, Chelsea FC, eBay and Manchester United, to stop placing their advertisements on the websites of such news outlets, a tactic SFFN called “demonetizing.” They also claimed that they were “educating” advertising agencies.
“Essentially, SFFN and [CCDH] were front groups created by conservatives in Labour for an internecine battle against leftists in their own party. The Canary reported that CCDH’s address linked the group back to Keir Starmer’s people,” Thacker wrote on Substack. SFFN reports were also cited in the British Parliament.
Having accomplished this, SFFN “became moribund, rarely tweeting from their social media account,” Thacker wrote in Tablet, noting that this did not matter as Ahmed “pivoted his focus” to the U.S., where his list of “‘disinformation’ targets just happened to be critics of the Democratic Party establishment” — including Kennedy.
“Just as he had done for the Labour Party, Ahmed used the CCDH to attack as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ various critics of the Biden arm of the Democratic Party,” Thacker wrote.
Association with Democrat-affiliated groups helped CCDH’s ‘unusual’ ascent
According to Thacker, CCDH now primarily operates in the U.S., based out of a virtual office that hundreds of D.C. nonprofits list as their residence. This is despite the fact that CCDH is still based in the U.K.
The site lists CCHD as a broad nonprofit devoted to “Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy / Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis (NTEE).” It lists Ahmed as CEO with a 2021 base salary of $126,333 and Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress, the think tank of the corporate Democrats, as chair of the board.
According to Thacker, the prominent ascent of CCDH and Ahmed in U.S. policy and media circles is unusual.
“I want to point out how odd it is that a British political operative is now running a partisan campaign in the United States. This rarely happens,” Thacker wrote on Substack. “For a variety of complex reasons, British political operatives don’t come to the United States, Americans go to England [and other countries].”
“It doesn’t happen,” Thacker told The Defender. “That was my question from the beginning. This guy is quoted from the White House podium, has all these Congressmen sending letters on his behalf, who has appeared in front of Congressional hearings run by Democrats when they had the House of Representatives.”
“Probably what it is, is Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress,” Thacker said. “That’s the think tank for the corporate Democrats. That’s probably his entryway.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “One rumor that came up often in the dozen or so conversations” he had “with people who have observed Ahmed for years, is that he works for British intelligence,” although this has not yet been confirmed.
Thacker told The Defender that Ahmed and CCDH have played “the same game” in the U.S. and U.K., except that “instead of it being directly ‘Republicans are bad, these people are good,’ they find some way that they can say, ‘aha, hate!’ So, it’s taking this idea and rebranding it for political purposes.”
Writing in Tablet, Thacker said that “Ahmed’s story is critical to understanding the new push for censorship under the guise of combating hate.”
‘Obsession’ with Kennedy, Musk, vaccines
Having become fully embroiled in U.S. politics, Thacker said that Ahmed and CCDH have developed an “obsession” with figures such as Kennedy and with issues such as COVID-19 vaccines — receiving broad media coverage in the process.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.”
Thacker told The Defender that “every one of these ‘disinformation experts’ out there — I don’t care if they’re a fact-checker, a think tank, a journalist, an academic, they’ve all done work on elections and on vaccines. So, they’re all election ‘experts’ and vaccine ‘experts.’ How you become an expert in both, I don’t know, but that’s what they are.”
“It’s a complete and total obsession,” Thacker added. “There’s not a single ‘disinformation’ expert out there who I’ve not seen do something on vaccines. They’re obsessed … why, out of all the things that you can target, why do you target vaccines? I can only think that there’s some kind of funding behind it, where that funding comes from, what it’s about. That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”
Thacker also said “it’s just bizarre” that someone like Ahmed can come in and be obsessed about vaccines and not have a single tweet criticizing Pfizer or Moderna. “He’s not found any problems with the Biden administration’s vaccine policies. Not one … Ahmed appears where the corporate Democrats need expertise.”
Musk recently became a new target for CCDH and Ahmed. Writing in Tablet, Thacker said, “Ahmed is now trying to drive away Elon Musk’s advertisers on X, this time based on dubious claims that the … site is a playground for racists,” including claims made in interviews with The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
“Once again, these efforts have been uncritically amplified in the press and in a letter to Musk from House Democrats that reiterates Ahmed’s claims, and cites him and CCDH,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
These attacks led Musk and X to sue CCDH and Ahmed in July, accusing them of making false and misleading claims about hate speech on the platform, and illegally accessing the computers of Brandwatch, a company that works with Twitter — a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In response, MSNBC published an Aug. 1 op-ed by Ahmed, claiming CCDH “has been at the forefront of cataloging and reporting on the hate proliferating on the platform owned by Elon Musk.”
“All of his targets just happen to be the people who the corporate Democrats don’t get along with, so that’s Elon Musk right now,” Thacker told The Defender, noting that Ahmed and CCDH have not targeted other social media platforms to the same extent.
Yet, Ahmed continues to enjoy a platform in the establishment media. Thacker told The Defender this is “because none of those reporters have bothered to look into his background in the U.K. or to look at where his money’s coming from, or to look at what’s inside the [Musk/X] lawsuit against him. It plays into their weird obsession with Musk.”
In parallel, CCDH board member Damian Collins “led a series of inquiries” in the British parliament “into ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’ on social media,” helping promote the “Online Safety Bill,” intended to purge online “disinformation,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
“When Collins held hearings on the bill — which was passed into law just weeks ago — the first person to give testimony in support of online bans was Imran Ahmed,” Thacker added.
On Substack, Thacker previewed more reports about CCDH and Ahmed he will soon release, including regarding ties “to Peter Hotez, an American physician, an ardent proponent of Anthony Fauci and cheerleader in the national media for vaccines and Biden administration pandemic policies.”
“I hope this helps people understand how to do their own digging into dark money groups,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
In Tablet, he wrote that Ahmed has “been a servant to the power of political parties who deployed him and the CCDH to weaponize the charge of hate speech and misinformation against their enemies.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
FDA ties with Gates Foundation
Maryanne Demasi, reports | October 4, 2023
In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Under the MOU, the two entities agreed to share information to “facilitate the development of innovative products, including medical countermeasures,” such as diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to combat disease transmission during a pandemic.
The FDA has MOUs with many academic and non-profit organisations, but few have as much to gain as Bill Gates, who has invested billions into pandemic countermeasures.
Experts are concerned the Gates Foundation could have undue influence over the FDA’s regulatory decisions of these countermeasures.
David Gortler, an ex-senior adviser to the FDA commissioner between 2019 and 2021, says he is “suspicious” of the MOU.
“If the Gates Foundation establishes an MOU with a regulator on a product they want to develop, it seems like it would be a conflict of interest. What if every other drug company did the exact same thing as the Gates Foundation?” he says.
David Gortler, former senior advisor to FDA commissioner 2019-2021
Gortler, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, explained that normally, meetings between developers and regulators are supposed to be an official part of the public record and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
“However, an MOU such as this can circumvent the usual requirements for the transparency of official communications,” says Gortler. “This way their communications can be kept secret.”
David Bell, a former medical officer for the World Health Organisation (WHO) who now works as a public health physician and biotech consultant, agrees that the MOU has potential to corrupt the regulatory process.
“The narrative is that philanthropic foundations can only be good, because they’re making vaccines and saving thousands of lives, so we need to cut the red-tape and help the FDA get stuff done quickly otherwise children will die,” says Bell. “But in reality, it has potential to corrupt the whole system.”
David Bell, physician and biotech consultant
Bell adds, “Speaking generally, close relationships between regulators and developers raise inevitable risks that shortcuts and favours will break down the rigorousness of the product review, putting the public at risk.”
Revolving door
The FDA has been roundly criticised for its “revolving door.” Ten of the past 11 FDA commissioners left the agency and secured roles with pharmaceutical companies they once regulated.
Similarly, the Gates Foundation hired high-ranking members of the FDA, who bring with them intimate knowledge of the regulatory process.
For example, Murray Lumpkin had a 24-year career at the FDA, serving as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner and representative for global issues. Now, he is deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Gates Foundation, and signatory on the MOU.
And Margaret Hamburg, who served as FDA commissioner between 2009 and 2015, is now on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gates Foundation.
Murray Lumpkin, deputy director regulatory affairs, Gates Foundation; Margaret Hamburg, scientific advisory board, Gates Foundation
Bell has no doubt that these appointments were strategic to “game the system” saying, “If I worked at the Gates Foundation, I would certainly hire somebody like Murray Lumpkin.”
The only way to fix the revolving door problem Bell says, is to have a ‘non-compete clause’ in their contracts.
“It might be that FDA employees cannot work for the people they’ve regulated for at least 10 years. There are places that have those rules – private companies have agreements that you can’t work for a rival,” said Bell.
The FDA dismissed questions about the potential for conflicts of interest, or the lack of transparency over its communications with the Gates Foundation. In a statement, the FDA said:
FDA regulatory decision making is science-based. Former FDA officials do not impact regulatory decisions. FDA only collaborates with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the MOU as described.
Gates has billions at stake
Gates boasted about receiving a 20-to-1 return on his $10 billion investment into the “financing and delivery” of medicines and vaccines.
“It’s the best investment I’ve ever made,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Decades ago, these investments weren’t sure bets, but today, they almost always pay off in a big way.”
In Sept 2019, just prior to the pandemic, SEC filings showed the foundation purchased over 1 million shares for $18.10/share. By Nov 2021, the foundation dumped most of the stock for an average of $300/share.
Investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel reported the foundation pocketed approximately $260 million in profit – more than 15 times its original investment – most of it untaxed because it was invested through the foundation.
In his recent book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic,” Gates warns that future pandemics are the biggest threat to humankind and that survival depends on global pandemic preparedness strategies, firmly positioning himself at the centre of shaping the agenda.
In October 2019, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201, which gathered government agencies, social media companies and national security organisations to war game a “fictional” global pandemic.
October 2019, Gates and WEF fund Event 201 to simulate a global pandemic response
The key recommendations from the event were that such a crisis would require the deployment of new vaccines, surveillance and control of information and human behaviours, by orchestrating the co-operation and co-ordination of key industries, national governments, and international institutions.
Several weeks later when the covid-19 pandemic emerged, many aspects of this ‘hypothetical scenario’ became a chilling reality.
The Gates Foundation, which holds shares in a range of drug companies including Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, is now credited with wielding significant influence over the direction of the global response to the pandemic, saying its goal is to “vaccinate the entire world” with a covid-19 vaccine.
Global dominance
The Gates Foundation has poured millions into funding NGOs, media, and international agencies, earning Gates significant political clout.
Financial contributions to the media have garnered Gates favourable news coverage, boasting on the foundation’s website it committed almost $3.5 million to The Guardian in 2020 – 2023.
The UK medicines regulator – the MHRA – disclosed it took approximately $3 million in funding from the Gates Foundation in 2022, which would span across several financial years.
Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr labelled Gates “the most powerful man in public health” because he managed to steer the WHO’s pandemic strategy to focus primarily on vaccination.
Kennedy said in an interview that the WHO “begs and rolls over” for Gates’ funding, which now makes up over 88% of the total amount of the WHO’s donations by philanthropic foundations.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, Presidential Candidate
“I think [Gates] believes that he is somehow ordained divinely to bring salvation to the world through technology,” said Kenney. “He believes the only path to good health is inside a syringe.”
The Gates Foundation’s CEO Mark Suzman responded to concerns that the foundation has “disproportionate sway in setting national and global agendas, without any formal accountability to voters or international bodies.”
“It’s true that between our dollars, voice, and convening power, we have access and influence that many others do not,” admitted Suzman in his 2023 annual letter .
“But make no mistake – where there’s a solution that can improve livelihoods and save lives, we’ll advocate persistently for it. We won’t stop using our influence, along with our monetary commitments, to find solutions,” he wrote.
Connecticut School Board Faces Lawsuit for Rejecting School-Based Mental Health Clinic That Wanted to Treat Teens Without Parents’ Consent
By Brenda Baletti Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023
The Killingly Board of Education in Connecticut has been under fire since March 2022 when it refused to sign a five-year contract to install a federally funded school-based health center (SBHC) that would provide mental health services to minors without parental consent.
Instead, the board contracted for a similar center, but with month-to-month terms and parental consent required for treatment — and without federal grants or the rules they might impose.
The board’s rejection of the initial proposal, approved by the superintendent, led to the board and its members being slammed in local media, personally attacked, and subjected to a state investigation and a lawsuit.
Kelly Martin, vice chair of the Killingly Board of Education, and Sheila Matthews, founder of the nonprofit AbleChild, shared the board’s story with CHD.TV host Stephanie Locricchio on Monday’s “Good Morning CHD.”
Next week, the Killingly board faces a hearing, following a report last month — by attorney Michael McKeon, director of legal and governmental affairs for the Connecticut State Department of Education — criticizing the board’s actions.
The Killingly board rejected McKeon’s report as a “position statement,” and underscored the work they have taken to support Killingly children’s mental health.
The recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of SBHCs across the country — largely justified as an intervention into a mental health crisis among young people —- has critics concerned children will receive unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
School board beset by two-year battle including pandemic policies
Martin told Locricchio the controversy began when the school superintendent presented the school board with a proposal to put an SBHC in the school. The proposal provided only one possible service provider: Generations Family Health Center, which explicitly provided services without parental consent.
But many board members objected.
“The problem was never [with providing] mental health treatment,” Martin said. “We recognized that post-COVID children really, really need help. The problem was with the parents never being informed that the child was going to be treated.”
She added, “And that was something that was important to us — the parent doesn’t need to know what’s being discussed, [but they do] need to know that the child has a problem and is being treated and that they can actually keep a watchful eye on that child.”
The board voted down the SBHC, and a battle began. A group of parents represented by attorney Andrew A. Feinstein filed a complaint against the board seeking to overturn its vote, Martin said.
Once the board turned down the initial proposal, it interviewed alternative mental health services providers and set up a mental health clinic in the school where parents must opt-in to their child’s treatment.
But the state is not happy with that, she said. “They want that very first option, so it’s been an uphill battle since the lawsuit was actually filed,” she said.
The board had already come into conflict with the superintendent because it voted against an in-school COVID-19 vaccine clinic and then ended the in-school mask mandate.
Martin described the blowback:
“We have had people attack us constantly for the last two years. They’re making accusations that we don’t care about the mental health of children, [that] we don’t care about children at all. They’ve accused us of being racist, of being white supremacists. You name it, we’ve been accused of it.
“It’s been a very long two years. It all started when we started to give a little bit of pushback on some of these things.”
She said the group of people attacking them is small, “but they’re very vocal, they’re very loud,” and their actions have made board supporters afraid to speak out.Every Dollar has
Superintendent and attorney suing the board have conflicts of interest
The school board investigated the origins of the proposal and found the superintendent had put in a request for funding a mental health clinic without ever informing board members.
Martin said over the last few decades, power over schools has slowly been transferred from school boards to superintendents.
Because the clinic was to be grant-funded, they combed through the school board history to find which board policies had been changed to give power over grants to the superintendent — and reversed them.
In this case, the grant was part of ESSER II funding (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) — $54.3 billion made available by the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 — with the requirement that it be awarded by September 2023.
She said the argument being made publicly and to parents was that this was a completely free, grant-funded clinic that would provide children with immediate assistance — so it was seen as a great idea all around.
But the clinics aren’t actually free, Martin pointed out. Once the grant ends, the cost burden shifts to the district.
Martin said children with mental health issues, of course, do need support as quickly as possible, but the only proposal made was for a clinic with a contract that was five years long and no parental consent.
She said the board wanted to review a variety of proposals, but they were only given that one.
In its investigations, the board also learned the superintendent sat on the board of the Northeast Early Childhood Council together with members of Generations — the one clinic he brought to the board.
After the board interviewed several other proposed clinics and selected one, she said Feinstein and a dissenting board member launched a media campaign smearing the clinic they selected, accusing it of bending to the board’s political agenda, which it implied was right-wing or “tea party.”
The selected clinic pulled out of the agreement with the board for fear its reputation would be ruined.
The board finally found another school-based mental health care provider, but the entire process dragged on for two years.
Little school board ‘up against Goliath’
Matthews, who works on national issues surrounding children’s mental health, became involved when she saw news stories that gave a disproportionate amount of negative attention to one small school board.
She began researching the issue and found that Feinstein is a registered lobbyist in the state of Connecticut and has received payments from a law firm dedicated to mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma and to government grants that fund school-based clinics.
Matthews explained how government funding is funneled to different behavioral health vendors to set up clinics or provide medications, which make millions from children’s suffering.
Matthews and Martin said the school assessed students’ mental health by having them fill out anonymous surveys in school, without parental knowledge or consent, which is a common practice.
The surveys ask serious questions — such as whether the children are experiencing suicidal ideation — without any follow-up.
Instead of addressing students’ mental health, the questionnaires are simply evidence-gathering mechanisms to justify funding requests, Matthews said.
Both women encouraged parents to talk to their children about these surveys and to exercise their parental rights to opt out of them. Mathews’ organization AbleChild provides a sample letter parents can use to do this.
According to Matthews, $258 billion has come into the states from these ESSER funds overall. States are compelled to distribute the funds quickly before deadlines pass, but involving parents and community organizations slows down that process, she said.
“And these vendors smell the money,” she added.
Matthews, who studies how federal funds are directed to distribute potentially dangerous medications to children — particularly among children in foster care and on Medicaid — said the funds are lining the pockets of industry, not supporting children’s mental health.
“These block grants, this is the Achilles heel we have to take a look at. We have to look at these behavioral health vendors that have already set up shop in our school system.”
She said at minimum there needs to be a way to track the grants awarded so that parents can research what is happening in their schools and make informed decisions.
She added:
“This little town in Connecticut, they are up against Goliath. Okay? They are up against the drug companies. They are up against the behavioral health vendors. They’re up against the state. They’re up against the federal government. They are swimming in, I want to say, an ocean of corruption when it comes to these grants.”
Martin said the next step in the school board’s case is an inquiry hearing at the state building in Hartford on Oct. 11 at 10 a.m. It is open to the public.
Locricchio appealed to CHD.TV’s audience to show support for the board, especially because local supporters have been scared into silence by the public attacks.
“We would love to see some of our CHD [Children’s Health Defense] supporters there to stand with Kelly and Sheila and all the people that are involved in this because it could be your school district tomorrow that’s going through it,” Locricchio said. “And we know that we are so much stronger together.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Zelensky Should Have Stayed Home
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • OCTOBER 3, 2023
Most Americans do not understand how the United Nations functions, or does not function as the case might be, preferring to think of it as some kind of debating society where the 193 member nations representing the world community can vent over issues that they rarely have control over. Nevertheless, in spite of the torrent of words and the lack of any real program, it is always interesting to watch and listen to the UN’s annual General Assembly meeting, which is held in New York during September. This year’s meeting was particularly interesting as it came complete with a major war blazing in Eastern Europe as well as political turmoil in Africa and rising tension with China. It also features the rumblings coming from a new emerging global economic movement, the so-called BRICS developing as a champion of a multipolar-world currency challenge to the US-European dollar dominated international monetary and banking system.
And with economic union, there is also some political realignment, with China strengthening its ties to the developing world and Russia entering into defense arrangements with Iran. President Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin will be meeting in Beijing later this month to discuss common concerns. And, as usual, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed up to vent his hostility towards Iran with demands that that country’s alleged “nuclear program” be confronted militarily and the sooner the better, just as he has been claiming for the past twenty years.
Indeed, several back stories playing out during this year’s meeting made it more than usually interesting. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to turn the gathering into an anti-Russian hate fest, but though there was much complaining about Moscow’s attack on Ukraine coming from the Baltic States and others, the ground continues to be shifting against Zelensky over concerns that the war has become an unwinnable money pit that could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange. Speaking before a UN Security Council session, Zelensky was reduced to harshly criticizing the UN itself for failing to prevent or resolve conflicts before calling for Moscow to be stripped of its veto power on the Security Council. Zelensky, his voice rising in anger, complained how “It is impossible to stop the war because all actions are vetoed by the aggressor.” Observers noted immediately that Zelensky’s complaint did not help his cause. While there have been calls for UN reforms in the past, including over the veto power, the existence of the veto for a limited number of post-1945 greater powers was the only reason the United Nations could be created in the first place at all.
Zelensky also did real damage to his position when he said that while the Ukrainian refugees in Europe have “behaved well . . . and are grateful” to those who have given them shelter, it would not be a “good story” for Europe if a Ukrainian defeat “were to drive the people into a corner.” It was reasonably enough seen by critics as nothing less than a threat of possible unrest producing domestic terrorism as well a possible internal insurrection uncontrollable by whatever Ukrainian government survives defeat. Such unrest might involve the millions Ukrainian refugees without houses and jobs already in place in other European nations if Zelensky is not given all the support which he apparently believes is his due.
Zelensky’s actual message to the General Assembly was not quite so incendiary and impulsive as his other interactions while on his visit, but he offered little new. He reportedly received an obligatory “warm welcome” from those in attendance, but “he delivered his address to a half-full house, with many delegations declining to appear and listen to what he had to say.” He warned those present that “The goal of the present war against Ukraine is to turn our land, our people, our lives, our resources into a weapon against you, against the international rules-based order. We have to stop it. We must act united to defeat the aggressor.” Zelensky did go overboard when he referred to Russia and Russians as “evil” and as “terrorists” and accused them of carrying out a “genocide” against Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov responded to comments made by both President Joe Biden and Zelensky by turning the argument around and observing that it is the US and its NATO “puppets” who already “are waging war against us.”
Zelensky’s frustrations spilled over in Washington on the following day where he met both with Biden and with some members of Congress and also dropped by the Pentagon and left flowers at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial in Arlington Virginia. His meeting at the White House with the president went relatively well with the announcement of a new aid package in the works including “significant air defense capabilities,” and, according to one report, even some of the much sought after ATACMS long range missile systems. Nevertheless, to his evident disappointment, Zelensky was not given a hero’s welcome like he received last year. He met privately with Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, and several other GOP hawks who will be instrumental in approving any aid, as well as with Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer who promised to be “in his corner.” McCarthy boldly asked what Zelensky needed to win the war and to provide lawmakers with “a vision of a plan for victory.”
Nevertheless, it seems that many conservative Republicans and some progressive Democrats are fed up with the war and are concerned over the lack of accountability combined with the all too evident level of corruption within the Ukrainian government. There are moves by some in the GOP to separate Ukraine funding from other defense appropriations, requiring a separate vote, and other proposals by the White House to guarantee the money even if the government shuts down. One wonders if anyone had the grit to ask Zelensky how many mansions he owns in Israel, Europe and the United States, but that is precisely the sort of story that is being increasingly written about Ukraine’s comedian turned war hero, demonstrating that the public and even the media have become tired of the charade. A continuing multi-billion-dollar cash flow, seen by Joe Biden as necessary to keep the war going until the 2024 election to vindicate his policy, is still likely but it is no longer a slam-dunk.
Two other media accounts also suggest that the dissatisfaction with Zelensky and the war is breaking through the self-imposed acceptable narrative on the war, that Vladimir Putin is an aggressor without any real provocation from Kiev, a despot and the human monster. One came surprisingly from the New York Times and is apparently a leak from the White House or Pentagon on a September 6th missile attack on the Ukrainian village of Kostiantynivka which killed at least 18. The attack was quickly labeled by Zelensky as a war crime carried out by Russian “terrorists” which was echoed by the US media but an investigation, presumably carried by the US military and intelligence using satellite and other technical methods, has now determined that the missile was fired by Ukraine. This is similar to the missile attack that struck Poland in November 2022, which also was blamed by Zelensky on Russia but turned out to be from Ukraine, both incidents reflecting just how willing Zelensky is to lie and cheat to get a NATO and US intervention in a full-scale war with Russia, which could easily go nuclear.
The other story tells how Poland will not be providing any more arms to Ukraine, in part because it is now building up its own defenses and also over Ukrainian attempts to flood the Polish agricultural market with cheap low quality grain that it cannot sell elsewhere. To describe the Polish action as disappointing to Zelensky would be an understatement, but it is one more indication that many former allies are now seeing Ukraine as a lost cause and are looking to their own national security and economic interests. Both of these stories were, incidentally, published while Zelensky was in the United States hat in hand, and it must be considered that the timing was deliberate to damage the Ukrainian president’s credibility to coincide with the UN General Assembly visit and the trip to Washington.
Zelensky’s journey to North America ended in Ottawa, where he apparently recouped some of his swagger during a speech to the Canadian government and parliament which resulted in standing ovations. Or so it seemed. The Canadians produced a 98 year old Hungarian veteran of the Second World War named Yaroslav Hunka who had fought against the Russians and emigrated to Canada after the war ended. He too was cheered by the assembled Canadian politicians. The intention was clearly to present a narrative of a brave Ukrainian who fought valiantly to free his country from Russian domination but it didn’t quite work out that way. To fight the Russians required being in Nazi Germany’s armed forces and it turned out that Hunka had served in the 14th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, a volunteer unit made up mostly of ethnic Ukrainians commanded by German officers that has been rightly or wrongly credited with a number of wartime atrocities against Russians, Poles and Jews. Soldiers in the division swore a personal loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler. The bad judgement shown by the Canadian government in producing Hunka without fully investigating his story subsequently produced a huge uproar in Canada, with the head of parliament resigning, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in deep political trouble and the Polish government demanding that Hunka be extradited to them for a war crimes trial. There has been some suspicion that Zelensky may have been instrumental in arranging the affair in expectation that it would strengthen Canadian support for his cause. Instead, it has accomplished the reverse and Zelensky returned home with little or nothing accomplished.
Zelensky must also confront back home a war that he is decisively losing and a country in ruins. And Joe Biden made clear in his speech addressing the UN General Assembly that negotiations with Russia to end the Ukraine fighting would not be considered. Joe included a pledge to support the conflict until it is Russia that is doing the surrendering: “The United States, together with our allies and partners around the world, will continue to stand with the brave people of Ukraine as they defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity and their freedom… Russia alone bears responsibility for [the war]. Russia alone has the power to end this war immediately. And it is Russia alone that stands in the way of peace, because Russia’s price for peace is Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine’s children.” In short, the speech was a lot like Joe Biden and the band of scoundrels and grifters that he has gathered around him in the White House, heavy on bellicosity but short on any serious planning or strategies to make the world and this country a better place. Joe would like to see the war continue to bring its eventual end a lot closer to the US elections, where he hopes to self-identify as a strong leader and a “winner” taking on America’s enemies. Good luck Joe.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Hungary sets condition for further Ukrainian aid from Brussels
RT | September 29, 2023
Budapest will block further EU aid to Ukraine if Kiev doesn’t account for the money it has already received from Brussels since the start of the conflict with Russia, a senior Hungarian government official has said.
“There are many technical ways to finance Ukraine and also help in the humanitarian field,” said Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office. He told a briefing on Thursday that Hungary had no objections to individual EU countries providing assistance to Kiev.
He said unanimity would be required regarding any changes to the EU budget, however, which is currently “on the table for amendment.”
Budapest will make sure that Ukraine “will not receive a single penny of new aid” if it can’t account for the funds it has already been given by the EU, Gulyas insisted.
In June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen requested an increase of €66 billion ($69.9 billion) for the EU’s long-term budget, which includes €17 billion (around $18 billion) for providing grants for Ukraine.
According to EU data, the bloc and its individual members have supplied Kiev with more than $88 billion in financial, military, humanitarian, and refugee assistance since February 2022.
It’s “absurd and embarrassing” that Brussels keeps withholding EU funds from Hungary while looking for ways to find more money for Ukraine, Gulyas said.
“Let’s hope it’s not because the money was spent on something else, God forbid it was given to a country outside the EU,” he added.
The bloc suspended around €7.5 billion ($7.9 billion) of funds allocated to Hungary in 2022 over what it called rule-of-law concerns.
Hungarian authorities have taken a balanced approach to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. While supplying humanitarian aid, Budapest has refused to send arms to President Vladimir Zelensky’s government. Hungary has also consistently called for a peaceful settlement to the crisis and criticized sanctions imposed by Brussels on Moscow, arguing that they were hurting the EU more than Russia.
US meddling in EU state’s election – Russian intelligence
RT | September 28, 2023
The US is willing to go to any lengths, including blackmail and bribery, to ensure the incumbent government wins the upcoming election in Slovakia, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.
In a press release issued by the SVR on Thursday, director Sergey Naryshkin accused the White House of increasingly meddling in Slovakia’s internal affairs as the Central European country approaches the parliamentary election this weekend.
The opposition in Slovakia has made it abundantly clear that it would not unquestioningly follow the US lead if elected, and according to the SVR, stands a good chance of coming out on top in the vote.
To prevent this from happening, “the US State Department sent instructions to several of its European allies to conduct targeted work with local political and business circles,” the Russian intelligence agency claimed. It further alleged that Washington has sanctioned the use of methods such as blackmail, threats, and bribery.
The SVR also claimed that the US has already instructed the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Simecka, who also serves as the European Parliament vice-president, to form a “cabinet completely loyal to Washington,” should his party triumph.
“Taking these realities into consideration, the upcoming election in Slovakia can hardly be viewed as a democratic expressing of the will of the people, and free from external influence,” the SVR concluded.
Citing an anonymous European Commission official, Politico reported in June that Brussels feared a potential victory for former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction – Slovak Social Democracy party would spell “disaster” for the EU’s position on Russia sanctions and continued defense aid for Ukraine.
NATO member Slovakia has supplied Kiev with armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. However, Fico has made it clear that he will terminate the aid if he returns to power. He has also called into question the need for economic measures against Moscow.
A recent poll commissioned by Slovakia’s TV JOJ 24 broadcaster indicated that Progressive Slovakia and Direction – Slovak Social Democracy are neck and neck, with 18% and 17.7% of support respectively.
House Panel Releases Emails Showing US Attorney Blocked FARA Probe Into Joe Biden
Sputnik – 28.09.2023
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives Oversight Committee released redacted emails it claims show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked federal agents from conducting a FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in August 2020.
“Newly released emails and documents show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf did not allow agents to investigate Joe Biden as part of a FARA probe,” the Oversight Committee said via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.
In the email, dated August 7, 2020, it appears Lesley told federal investigators they made a mistake in their search warrant request by including Biden. Lesley purportedly claims Biden falls outside of the scope of their FARA investigation.
The House Oversight Committee will hold the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden on Thursday to begin further examining alleged criminal activity involving Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.
The committee has been investigating alleged foreign bribery and influence peddling involving the Biden family and entities in countries including Ukraine and China. Biden denies ever having discussed foreign business affairs with his son.
Citing bank records, the committee on Tuesday revealed that Hunter Biden in 2019 received two payments wired from China totaling $260,000 with President Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address.
McCarthy, in light of the new findings, said the Republican impeachment inquiry against Biden will uncover the whole truth.
Disgraced Ukrainian Ex-Army Spox Slams Zelensky’s Theatrics, Complains About Drugged Up Mercs
© AFP 2023 / ROMAN PILIPEY
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 27.09.2023
Ukraine is fighting to protect “Western values” from Russian “slaves” descended from Mongols, but is facing difficulties due to poor morale, corruption, drug-addicted mercs, and a president who seems more focused on theatrics than the conflict itself, disgraced Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces spokesperson Sarah Ashton-Cirillo has revealed.
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (formerly Michael John Cirillo), the 46-year-old US-born Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesperson who garnered international media attention and scorn earlier this month after calling for Russian journalists and officials to be “hunted down,” was suspended last week as the scandal reached Washington.
Speaking by video on two separate occasions (before and after her suspension) with legendary Russian pranksters Vladimir ‘Vovan’ Kuznetsov and Alexei ‘Lexus’ Stolyarov, who posed as former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Ashton-Cirillo revealed important details on the seedier underbelly of their work for Ukraine, including minutiae they didn’t really get into while acting as a military spokesperson.
Problems With Morale, Corruption and Mercs
“We’re having struggles on the information warfare front, and we have the morale issue,” Ashton-Cirillo revealed, saying they’d spoken to soldiers who are “very frustrated because they didn’t feel like they were being heard in certain areas.”
“And so we are dealing with the reality that until we win the information war, our Western partners won’t feel the pressure. But we must win the information war both here on the streets of Ukraine, and in the newsrooms in New York and London and elsewhere,” the spox said, pointing to their personal efforts to change language surrounding the conflict to smooth over unpleasant realities, like calling foreigners serving in the ranks of Ukraine’s armed forces “foreign fighters” instead of what they actually are – mercenaries.
Commenting on the recent high-profile murder of a British merc in Ukraine by one of his comrades, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that Kiev has a “terrible problem” with “most” of the foreign fighters in the country, “because they are just a step above mercenaries and they come here because all they know is warfare. While I defend them in public, in private I know many of them have very far-right leanings, there’s some Nazi groups.”
“I also know that many of them are doing this because they have no lives in their own countries. And so we have security risks and more importantly we have morale and psychological issues because foreign soldiers are here for the money – most of them. And those people are going to be the ones willing to engage in drugs, willing to engage in fundraising where they’re putting the money in their own pockets. It’s something we have to be very careful about,” they stressed.
Commenting on the state of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Ashton-Cirillo admitted that the situation is “terrible,” and appeared to confirm long-standing speculation about Ukrainian officials pilfering stocks of Western-supplied weapons deliveries.
Ashton-Cirillo also privately accused members of Ukraine’s political and military elite of “trying to profit off of the blood of our lost soldiers,” and “trying to profit off the blood of the men and women who are losing arms and legs.”
They also complained that the unrealistic promises being made to Kiev’s patrons, including about the now-stalled counteroffensive, means that “our partners can’t trust us in negotiations and our partners can’t trust our projection for what’s going to happen in the future. Because all they can judge us on are the results.”
The suspended spox stressed that while it’s okay to spread propagandistic “messaging” about Ukraine’s ‘successes’ on the battlefield in public, “it’s not good when we’re using this in discussions with our partners in Washington, our partners in Brussels, and especially our partners in the Eastern European nations.”
Ashton-Cirillo also took pot shots at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, emphasizing that his theatrics and “populism” are no longer of any value. “It’s been 19 months of this, it’s not about theater anymore. Theater was important in the first days and weeks. It’s not about populism sir. It’s not about populism on the world stage,” the ex-spox stressed, adding that they would be thrilled to join the ballot on Poroshenko’s European Solidarity in elections, if they end up being held.
Russians Should Be ‘Hunted Down’
Ashton-Cirillo doubled down in private to the pranksters on comments she made publicly calling for “Russian propagandists” to be “hunted down,” saying that Russian journalists “should not be able to hind behind” their status as news people, and that Kiev should use “all our weapons,” including attacks targeting Russian media figures and officials.
Recalling, for example, the tributes paid to the late Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bombing last year, Ashton-Cirillo suggested that “that goes to show that who she was in [Russia’s] eyes. It wasn’t some woman who was accidentally killed. This was an evil creature who died a death they deserved for trying to genocide innocent people.”
Ashton-Cirillo also reiterated that Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova should “of course” be targeted for elimination. “The worst part with her is she gets accepted in the same way that a State Department spokesperson would be accepted. To me there’s nobody should be off limits…over the course of being able to carry out our full liberation.”
‘Russians are Not European’
Expanding on comments they have made publicly referring to Russians as inhuman “orcs,” Ashton-Cirillo offered their interlocutor a brief ‘history’ of the Russian people, emphasizing that “the reality is Russians are not European,” but “have a different culture.”
“Russians are Asian, and ultimately they do come from the Mongols, they do come from a grouping… of people who are wanting to be slaves and want to be led just as it was from the days of Genghis Khan. I wish the rest of Europe and the rest of the Western world understood that Europe ends at Ukraine. We are protecting European values and Western values the same way those did hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years ago when the Mongols were coming in,” Ashton-Cirillo said.
“While I don’t know every Russian, I will say that what’s happening in the Kremlin and what’s happening to every Russian that supports Vladimir Putin’s decisions are not human. These people are not human. They are enemies of humanity,” they added.
Post-Suspension Blues
In the second conversation, conducted after her suspension, Ashton-Cirillo called their removal “political,” and said the decision “came from the highest levels.”
“I was told that it came from New York… on the trip that the government is on currently,” the disgraced spox said, referring to Zelensky’s trip to the US last week. “I think I was told that they had to make a big deal and to shut me up in order to possibly get help, so that’s why I understand it. I understand it’s political. I’m still in the army, I’m still speaking to several high-level officers doing my other work, just not as spokesperson.”
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New Book
Breast Cancer: Before You Consent
A new Unbekoming paperback
Lies are Unbekoming | September 18, 2026
Peter Gøtzsche reviewed every randomised mammography screening trial ever conducted for the Cochrane Collaboration. Cochrane’s headline is that, assuming a 15% mortality reduction, one woman in 2000 avoids dying of breast cancer over ten years. Ten are overdiagnosed and treated. Two hundred experience false alarms.
But that headline assumes the reduction. When Gøtzsche looked only at the trials with adequate randomisation — the higher-quality ones — the reduction disappeared. No effect on breast cancer mortality. No effect on all-cause mortality.
This is the Cochrane finding, published in the establishment’s own database of systematic reviews.
No woman being asked to consent to a mammogram this week knows it.
That is why the new Unbekoming paperback exists. … continue
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