By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 1, 2023
Four months after The Guardian and other European media outlets revealed the world’s leading carbon credit certifier sold worthless offsets to major corporations, the head of Washington-based Verra has stepped down.
“I am writing to let you know that after nearly 15 fantastic years as the CEO of Verra, I have decided to step down,” Verra’s CEO, David Antonioli, wrote in a LinkedIn post last week. He’s leaving the role after dominating the multi-billion dollar carbon offset market for years and certifying over a billion dollars in credits through its verified carbon standard (VCS).
Antonioli expressed gratitude towards the current and past employees and was proud of Verra’s accomplishments as the world’s leading standard-setter for climate action and sustainable development. He did not give a reason for his abrupt departure.
Antonioli’s exit comes four months after The Guardian, German weekly Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial, a non-profit investigative journalism organization, revealed a damning report on how Verra approved tens of millions of dollars of worthless offsets to Disney, Shell, Gucci, and other big corporations.
The report found Verrra issued “phantom credits” to major corporations that don’t represent genuine carbon reductions. Some corporations purchased these fraudulent credits and labeled their products as “carbon neutral.”
Days after The Guardian’s report in January, Antonioli rejected the findings, calling them “outlandish claims” and heavily defended Verra’s certification of carbon credits. But after all that, Antonioli is still stepping down.
Meanwhile, “Some firms are moving away from offsetting-based environmental claims, such as Gucci, which has removed a carbon neutrality claim from its website that heavily relied on Verra’s carbon credits,” The Guardian said.
“This is a pivotal moment for carbon markets. In order to scale the critical funding required for carbon sequestration at a planetary scale, we must ensure integrity, transparency, and real benefits for local communities and biodiversity. A new generation of innovative players is collaborating with standard bodies, academics, corporates, and communities, creating a new era of carbon markets that gives me hope.”
Despite having previously purchased “worthless” carbon offsets, companies such as JPMorgan, Disney, and BlackRock continue their ESG commitments. In particular, JPMorgan pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase credits for carbon removal.
Recall Elon Musk tweeted one year ago, “ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”
As we noted earlier this year, “Carbon Credits Are The Biggest Scam Since Indulgences… How You Can Avoid Being Fleeced.”
BY MARYANNE DEMASI, PHD | MAY 30, 2023
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr recently said that if he becomes president, he will ban pharmaceutical advertising on US television.
“It’s not good to have pharmaceutical advertising on TV,” said Kennedy. “It’s good for the television stations, it’s good for the pharmaceutical companies, but it’s not good for public health.”
The US and New Zealand are the only two nations globally that allow drug companies to promote their products directly to the consumer – known as direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA).
Kennedy said that because of pharmaceutical advertising in the US, Americans use more prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world, and yet, they have the worst outcomes.
Americans have the lowest life expectancy compared to other wealthy nations and the highest rate of avoidable deaths, despite spending nearly 18% of GDP on healthcare in 2021.
Kennedy told me he blames “the influence of the pharmaceutical lobby in Washington, and indirectly, the influence of media companies that earn some $18 billion in revenue annually from direct-to-consumer drug advertising.”
In the 80s, there were few prescription drug ads broadcast on US TV because the regulatory standard made it difficult to provide adequate information about drug labelling to consumers. David Kessler, FDA Commissioner between 1990 and 1997, also vigorously opposed DTCA.
But when Kessler left the agency, the new administration eased regulatory restrictions and the floodgates opened. Within a decade, DTCA went from US$2.1 billion in 1997 to US$9.6 billion in 2016.
“They do it because it works,” said Barbara Mintzes, professor of evidence-based pharmaceutical policy at the University of Sydney. “Drug companies would not be spending the money if it did not lead to expanded sales.”
Proponents argue that DTCA empowers the consumer with information about diseases and drug treatments by encouraging informed discussions between patients and their medical providers. But Mintzes is not convinced.
“I totally agree that people need information on medicines but getting that information from advertising is not the same as getting it from an unbiased source,” said Mintzes.
Mintzes has long argued against DTCA saying, “There is no public health rationale and no reliable evidence that it leads to better care, public or patient empowerment, or to the type of information needed for shared informed treatment choices.”
Many Americans are unaware of the persuasiveness of DTCA. A national FDA survey found that 29% of consumers believed that only completely safe medicines could be advertised on TV. In California, it was 42% of consumers.
The decision about which drugs are advertised is not made on public health grounds, but on what will maximise profits.
“It’s a marketing decision,” says Mintzes. “Often, it’s a small, select group of drugs that are very expensive, on patent, and are not necessarily the best available treatments in terms of effectiveness or safety.”
According to a recent study published in JAMA, most of Big Pharma’s spending (68%) on the top-selling prescription drugs in 2020, were of ‘low added benefit’ for patients.
The study’s lead author Michael DiStefano, a researcher at Johns Hopkins said it’s probably a strategy of the pharmaceutical industry to “drive patient demand for drugs that clinicians would be less likely to prescribe.”
“When a consumer sees these advertisements on TV or social media, they should really question if it’s the best drug for them and have a conversation with their provider,” said DiStefano.
The FDA regulates the promotion of medicines and the content of DTCA, under the authority of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). It requires that advertising is accurate, and only promotes the drug for approved conditions, clearly stating harms and ways to get more information.
However, the agency lacks the resources to police it properly.
A 2002 Government Accountability Office report found the FDA’s oversight of DTCA was lacking. The agency had allowed some drug companies to repeatedly disseminate new misleading advertisements for the same drug.
Further, a change in the FDA’s procedures for reviewing draft regulatory letters led to a significant lag in issuing letters to demand the removal of misleading advertising – some regulatory letters were not even issued until after the advertising campaign had run its course.
From 1999 to 2004, Vioxx was among the most aggressively advertised medicines in the US. Merck spent more than US$100 million per year in advertising to consumers and generated annual sales of more than US$1 billion.
But Merck ran a deceptive advertising campaign, which misrepresented the safety of Vioxx and improperly concealed the drug’s increased risk of stroke. Vioxx was estimated to have caused 88,000–140,000 heart attacks in the USA alone – 44% of which were fatal.
A significant proportion of those people who died, took Vioxx after seeing it advertised on TV.
During the pandemic, the FDA began promoting covid-19 products – antivirals and vaccines – something that is not in the agency’s remit.
FDA commissioner Robert Califf, for example, repeatedly advertised the benefits of Pfizer’s antiviral drug paxlovid and covid-19 vaccines for reducing the risk of long covid.
“The FDA commissioner can’t tweet like this,” wrote Vinay Prasad, a practicing haematologist-oncologist at the University of California San Francisco. “How does the FDA preserve the authority to regulate truthful marketing, when the FDA commissioner is a billboard for Pfizer? These claims are not validated by the highest methods. This is unbelievable.”
In addition, director of the FDA’s vaccine division Peter Marks, featured in multiple videos on the FDA’s website, encouraging people to take the newly authorised bivalent boosters.
“It always feels odd to see the FDA promote products,” said Jessica Adams, a regulatory affairs expert. “The agency used to go out of its way to respect patient-provider decision-making and not interfere with the practice of medicine.”
In fact, the FDA’s own homepage was promoting the covid-19 vaccines.
“The FDA acts like a cheerleading or marketing arm of pharma companies, not a regulatory agency” said Aaron Siri, attorney at Siri & Glimstad law firm. “By promoting these shots, the FDA has hopelessly conflicted itself from later admitting these products have serious issues.”
“It is not the role of the FDA to promote vaccines or advise people to get them. Its role is to objectively assess whether they are safe and effective to its standard,” added Siri.
Kennedy has renewed calls to put an end to the FDA→Big Pharma “revolving door” which leads to undue influence over the agency.
Ten of the last 11 commissioners have gone on to secure roles with the pharmaceutical or biotech industries they once regulated – most within a year or two of leaving the FDA (see table).
Califf was announced as FDA commissioner on 17 Feb 2022 (his second time). SEC filings indicate that he resigned from the board of directors of Centessa Pharmaceuticals, the day before the announcement.
“That is an indication of just how completely industry has captured this agency,” said Kennedy vowing to shake up the system if he becomes president.
“We will institute new rules extending the waiting period before former officials can enter industry, consulting, and lobbying. We want real public servants in positions of public trust,” he added.
Kennedy believes the key to reforming the FDA will be to put qualified people in positions from outside the pharmaceutical industry, and to call on whistle-blowers, dissidents, and other people of integrity from within the FDA.
The FDA did not comment on the agency’s ‘revolving door’, nor did it answer whether the agency had considered instituting an extended waiting period between the time officials leave the FDA and enter industry.
RT | May 31, 2023
A militant wearing the insignia of Mexico’s notorious Gulf Cartel (Cartel Del Golfo, CDG) was filmed in the state of Tamaulipas carrying a US-made anti-tank missile launcher. Milenio TV identified the weapon as a Javelin, thousands of which were sent to Ukraine by the Pentagon.
Footage filmed in Matamoros on Monday and aired on Tuesday evening by the news channel Milenio TV showed a man with CDG patches armed with a Kalashnikov rifle and a missile they said was the Raytheon-made FGM-148.
Over 10,000 Javelins from Pentagon stockpiles have been sent to Ukraine since last February, to the point where the US military has begun to run out of the missiles itself.
Milenio presenter Azucena Uresti noted on Twitter that the estimated value of a Javelin launcher on the black market was anywhere from $20,000 to $60,000, while the average cost of a missile was about $30,000.
Keen-eyed military experts believe the weapon in the Milenio footage may actually be the AT-4, a Swedish-made disposable anti-tank launcher, which is also in use by the US military and likewise supplied to Ukraine by the thousands.
Russia has repeatedly warned the US and its allies not to “stuff” Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, both because this risked a direct confrontation and since nonexistent controls would result in the weapons ending up in the criminal underworld.
A RT investigation in July 2022 found a variety of Western-supplied weapons, including anti-tank rockets, for sale on the “dark web.” Several months later, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned that $1 billion a month worth of Western weapons was ending up in the hands of “terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia.”
Kiev has denounced this as “propaganda” and insisted all were accounted for.
The US outlet CBS censored their documentary on weapons supplies to Ukraine after the government in Kiev objected. Last month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said the West was aware its weapons were ending up on the black market, but that most governments did not care because arming Ukraine mattered more to them.
The Gulf Cartel is based in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, specifically in the border city of Matamoros, just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. It dates back to the 1930s, but gained in notoriety in the late 1990s, when it spun off a notorious militia called Los Zetas. The group has since broken off on its own. Though primarily known as a drug smuggling cartel, CDG has also been accused of racketeering, abductions, money laundering, and trafficking of people, sex slaves and weapons.
In March, the cartel apologized for one of its factions kidnapping four Americans and killing two of them, in what they said was a case of mistaken identity. Five members of that faction were handed over to the Mexican police.
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | May 29, 2023
A bipartisan group of Senators sent a letter to the Defense Department chief calling for an investigation into major American arms dealers accused of systemic “price gouging,” on Wednesday, according to The Hill.
The letter, signed by the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mike Braun (R-IN) Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), cites former Pentagon officials, auditors, and other insiders who spoke to CBS and accused military-industrial complex giants, such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing, of ripping off the US taxpayer.
During a recent 60 Minutes report, Shay Assad, who worked as a Pentagon contract negotiator for 40 years, cites numerous examples while explaining to the outlet that these firms overcharge the DOD for “[everything from] radar and missiles … helicopters … planes … submarines… down to the nuts and bolts.”
The report said these “astronomical price increases” have worsened sharply amidst Washington’s exponentially rising demand for weapons systems to both bolster Taiwan – in a thinly-veiled effort to destabilize China – and support NATO’s proxy Kiev during its war with Russia.
“Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and TransDigm are among the offenders,” the senators asserted. Their letter continues, “[these contractors are] dramatically overcharging the Department and U.S. taxpayers while reaping enormous profits, seeing their stock prices soar, and handing out massive executive compensation packages.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the letter’s recipient, sat on Raytheon’s board of directors before accepting his current post. The lawmakers charge that these companies are securing profits ranging from 40% to even as high as 4,000%.
The military budget will soon surpass the once unthinkable $1 trillion mark. The DOD has requested a record $842 billion for the next fiscal year, roughly half of which will go to “the offenders,” just such private defense contractors.
While the Joe Biden administration has asked Congress to approve a nearly $900 billion military budget. The hawkish legislature will almost certainly add tens of billions more to Biden’s proposed budget. For 2023, Congress added another $45 billion to Biden’s already mammoth request for $813 billion, resulting in a finalized $858 billion annual military spending bill.
Even these eye-opening numbers do not tell the whole story, because the real national security state budget is already fast approaching $1.5 trillion.
The lawmakers’ letter also expresses concerns about the Pentagon’s ability to audit, track and mitigate fraud risk. The DOD’s accountability system is completely “broken.” Assad said, “No matter who they are, no matter what company it is, they need to be held accountable. And right now that accountability system is broken in the Department of Defense.”
The Senators complained that, for decades, this obscene, unaccountable spending has been ongoing. The letter cites a 2021 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found the Pentagon failed to implement any comprehensive solution to combating this “unconscionable” fraud, as Assad has described it.
“The DOD can no longer expect Congress or the American taxpayer to underwrite record military spending while simultaneously failing to account for the hundreds of billions it hands out every year to spectacularly profitable private corporations,” the Senators declared. These firms “have abused the trust government has placed in them…exploiting their position as sole suppliers for certain items to increase prices far above inflation or any reasonable profit margin,” the letter continued.
“It’s not really a true capitalistic market because one company is telling you what’s going to happen. [It’s a] monopoly,” retired DoD auditor Mark Owen told CBS.
Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.
RT | May 31, 2023
The FBI has again refused to turn over documents subpoenaed by the US Congress regarding bribery accusations against President Joe Biden, prompting House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer to warn that he will seek to hold the agency’s director in contempt for “obstructionist” tactics.
“The FBI’s decision to stiff-arm Congress and hide this information from the American people is obstructionist and unacceptable,” Comer said on Tuesday in a statement.
The Kentucky Republican added that the committee will take steps to hold FBI director Christopher Wray in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a lawful subpoena.
“Americans deserve the truth, and the Oversight Committee will continue to demand transparency from this nation’s chief law enforcement agency,” Comer added.
At issue is an FBI informant file detailing allegations that Biden accepted $5 million in foreign bribes in exchange for policy favors when he worked as vice president under then-President Barack Obama. The FBI received the tip in June 2020. The allegations came to light earlier this year, when a whistleblower informed Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of their existence.
FBI officials have missed multiple deadlines to comply with the subpoena, including Comer’s latest demand that the documents be handed over by Tuesday. Wray has claimed that the allegations against Biden were unverified and that the so-called FD-1023 file in the case must be kept private to protect FBI informants.
House Republicans have sought the documents to weigh the substance of the allegations against Biden and examine whether the FBI has handled the case properly. Comer argued earlier this month that the agency has had the evidence for years and has apparently “done nothing” with it.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said on Tuesday that he will lead members of his party in voting to hold Wray in contempt if the FBI director refuses to turn over the FD-1023. He added that any sensitive information on the informant could be redacted.
The FBI issued a statement saying any discussion of pursuing contempt proceedings against Wray is “unnecessary.” The agency said it had offered in a letter to Comer to provide information to the committee “in a format and setting that maintains confidentiality and protects important security interests and the integrity of FBI investigations.” Wray is scheduled to discuss the issue with Comer on Wednesday in a phone call.
Comer has said the allegations “fit a pattern” of then-Vice President Biden flying to various countries, taking an unusually active role in US foreign policy decisions, then receiving wire transfers from those nations into bank accounts linked to his family members.
The House Oversight Committee released documents earlier this month showing evidence of the bank transfers. Biden, meanwhile, argued that the committee’s findings were “not true.”
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 30, 2023
A team of pro-fluoride researchers led by California’s dental director intentionally omitted data from a study seeking to undermine the forthcoming National Toxicology Program (NTP) report linking fluoride exposure to neurodevelopmental damage in children, according to documents released last week.
The documents — obtained through a California public records search and posted in a press release by the Fluoride Action Network — show that the team, led by Dr. Jayanth V. Kumar, a dental surgeon, conducted a meta-analysis of the scientific literature on fluoride’s neurotoxicity and found a link between fluoride exposure and lowered IQ in children at low levels of exposure.
However, they omitted the data and wrote a paper concluding there was no evidence of a link.
Four rounds of peer review rejected Kumar’s manuscript as “poorly researched,” “internally inconsistent” and committing “unashamed exaggeration” before the journal Public Health finally published the study last month.
NTP report: ‘no obvious threshold’ at which fluoridating water is safe
Kumar et al.’s study was published online less than a week before the NTP’s May 4 Board of Scientific Counselors (BSC) meeting where advisors would finalize any recommended changes before the NTP publishes the final version of its report on fluoride’s neurotoxicity.
The NTP, an interagency program run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that researches and reports on environmental toxins, conducted a six-year systematic review to assess scientific studies on fluoride exposure and potential neurodevelopmental and cognitive health effects in humans.
Its groundbreaking report on those findings — which consists of a “state of the science” monograph and meta-analysis surveying the literature on the links between fluoride exposure and cognitive health effects — concluded that prenatal and childhood exposure to higher levels of fluoride is associated with decreased IQ in children.
It also found that given that children are exposed to fluoride from multiple sources, there was “no obvious threshold” at which fluoridating water would be safe.
That means even when water is fluoridated at lower levels (typically 0.7 mg/L), studies found children had dangerous levels of fluoride in their systems.
The study’s findings contradict mainstream assumptions, the position of the dental industry, the sugar industry and the health regulatory agencies on the safety and benefits of fluoridating water to prevent cavities, despite substantial evidence to the contrary, including a series of studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
At the BSC meeting, the American Dental Association (ADA), with whom Kumar is affiliated, used his meta-analysis as evidence there were problems with the NTP study and argued that the NTP report should therefore be postponed.
This was just the latest in a series of attempts by industry and regulatory agency officials to “weaken, delay, or kill” the report.
The report is a key document in the ongoing lawsuit filed by Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation and private individuals against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seeking to end water fluoridation.
The lawsuit was put on hold for more than two years pending the finalization and publication of the report. After the NTP scientists finalized their draft in May 2022 — which they deemed ready for publication — U.S. District Judge Edward Chen ruled the EPA could no longer delay the trial.
The case is moving forward as the report goes through the final stages of review.
The plaintiffs hope the report will be published in final, rather than draft, form prior to the next phase of the trial in January 2024.
The report was subject to an unprecedented number of peer reviews and agency commentary, and as a direct attempt by the NIH to block its publication, internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed.
The final step in its publication will be for the NTP director to consider the BSC’s suggestions and make any amendments to the report prior to publication.
The BSC recommended the NTP include comment on the recently published meta-analyses, but they were not aware that Kumar et al. buried data in order to support their findings.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Connett, partner at the law firm Waters Kraus & Paul, provided the evidentiary documents to the NTP last week so the agency can consider the omitted data in its long-awaited final review of fluoride’s neurodevelopmental toxicity.
Connett told The Defender :
“We felt it was important to make the NTP aware of the omitted data as it directly contradicts the paper’s conclusion, and further undermines the dental lobby’s main talking point that the neurotoxic hazards of fluoride only occur at high doses.”
How researchers manipulated ‘the science’
Email exchanges between Kumar and his co-authors and transcripts from Kumar’s deposition in the lawsuit show Kumar and his co-authors are professionally committed to water fluoridation.
Kumar is a member of the pro-fluoridation ADA’s National Fluoridation Advisory Committee and one of the nation’s leading promoters of fluoridation. He admitted in the deposition that his job is “to promote fluoridation.”
Dr. Susan Fisher-Owens, one of his co-authors, receives funding from Colgate, which also promotes water fluoridation.
Kumar also admitted that part of his job was to work with the ADA’s marketing consultant to come up “with the best messaging and strategies for how to best advocate for fluoridation,” including messaging to “inoculate policymakers” with pro-fluoride information before they speak with anyone questioning the policy.
The documents show the researchers set out to prove there was no link between low levels of fluoride and lowered IQ in children, specifically to undermine the NTP report.
In a presentation to the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors in February 2021, Kumar told his colleagues he was hoping to pre-empt the NTP monograph by publishing his own meta-analysis and finding a “friendly editor” to publish it.
He reiterated this point in an email to his co-authors in July 2022, in which he emphasized there was “urgency” to get their paper published. “I wanted to publish the paper before the NTP report,” he wrote.
But publishing their desired results met a series of roadblocks as peer reviewers at the Journal of the American Dental Association rejected the study twice, finding the “discussion is unbalanced and misleading.”
One reviewer expressed concern that “the misinformation in this manuscript will fuel more controversy rather than stimulate prudent science-based decisions.”
Reviewers at Pediatrics Journal similarly rejected the study as marked by “fallacious” reasoning with conclusions that were “internally inconsistent.” Another reviewer said that a “facile style of citation increases concern about the balance of the work.”
But reviewers were unaware that Kumar also omitted data that contradicted his desired conclusions.
In an email to Kumar in February 2022, the study’s biostatistician Honghu Liu, Ph.D., told Kumar he thought the results of his analysis were “headed in the right direction.”
But on March 5, 2022, Liu wrote to Kumar explaining they had done analyses trying to find a safe threshold — ideally, around 1.5 mg/L — for fluoride in water, below which there is no association with reduced IQ in children. However, he wrote, “the results are opposite to what we hoped for.”
Liu told Kumar he would keep trying to produce different results. “Although hard, we can test more models to try to identify a threshold that can lead to a nonsignificant fluctuation in IQ before the threshold and a significant drop in IQ after the threshold,” he wrote.
But further analysis continued to show an association between low levels of fluoride exposure and decreased IQ. According to Liu, the dose-response analysis was “unfortunately not showing what we like to show.”
To resolve the problem, they eliminated the analysis from the study.
On March 24, 2022, Kumar sent his colleagues an email, quoting the particular parts of the NTP monograph that he sought to invalidate with their paper and raising concerns that reviewers would question their research if they included a certain figure that contradicted their conclusions.
When the team submitted the study to Public Health for publication, the analysis showing an association between low-level water fluoridation and IQ deficits had been removed.
The study concluded, “These meta-analyses show that fluoride exposure relevant to community water fluoridation is not associated with lower IQ scores in children.”
Connett sent the omitted analysis along with an explanation of how Kumar’s conflicts of interest influenced the outcome of his study in a letter to the NTP last week and urged them to take it into consideration as they evaluated the meta-analysis.
He wrote:
“The public counts on NTP to provide the best available science on the chemicals that impact their lives. I recognize this is a challenging task, particularly for chemicals with significant political interests at stake, but it is vital nonetheless.”
Through FOIA and public records requests, the plaintiffs revealed how high-level public health officials blocked the report’s publication after the NTP determined it was finalized.
They also showed how the ADA sought to influence the “independent” National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics to insist on further review.
Commenting on what else they might uncover about efforts to protect pro-fluoridation interests, Connett told The Defender :
“The only reason we were able to get Kumar’s emails is because he’s a government official who is subject to Freedom of Information requests. It raises the question of what else we would learn if the emails of private actors, like the PR strategists who Kumar works with, were also accessible.”
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.
By Andrei Dergalin – Sputnik – 27.05.2023
As new revelations about the IRS probe into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs are being brought forth, a former US state senator suggests that the Department of Justice and the FBI should probably focus their attention on more serious matters related to the US president’s family.
An IRS whistleblower named Gary Shapley dropped a bombshell this week related to a tax probe into the shady affairs of Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden.
Shapley, who supervised Hunter’s tax probe since January 2020, has alleged he discovered signs of the investigation being “slow-walked” prior to him taking over, and that the Department of Justice tried to interfere with and thwart his probe.
Commenting on this development, former Colorado State Senator Ted Harvey told Sputnik that Shapley’s surprise about how long the investigation has been taking likely stems from the fact that the latter has never previously worked on a case involving a president’s son or an “elite Democrat operative.”
“Everybody that’s part of the Democrat machine never has their day in court because the machine protects them. And this shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody,” he explained while speaking on Sputnik’s Fault Lines podcast.
Harvey did note, however, that he would rather have the FBI look into the “actual criminal behavior of the Biden family” and into how said family allegedly put the US national security at risk, adding that, he does not particularly care about “any tax evasion from the president’s son.”
“I want the FBI and the Justice Department to look into the real issues with the Biden family and the corruption that we’ve seen there,” he added.
Meanwhile, Steve Gill, attorney and CEO of Gill Media, observed that while mainstream American media used to like whistleblowers, that same media now appears rather critical of them due to the media’s job essentially being to “protect the Biden family at all costs.”
He also pointed to allegations of foreign governments “dishing millions of dollars to the grandchildren of Joe Biden,” telling Sputnik’s Final Countdown podcast that it would be interesting to find out “exactly what these under-age grandchildren were doing to generate income from foreign governments.”
By Nick Corbishley – naked capitalism – May 26, 2023
The ostensible goal of the operation is to provide “support and assistance to the Special Operations of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and National Police of Peru,” including in regions recently engulfed in violence.
Unbeknown, it seems, to most people in Peru and the US (considering the paucity of media coverage in both countries), US military personnel will soon be landing in Peru. The plenary session of Peru’s Congress last Thursday (May 18) authorised the entry of US troops onto Peruvian soil with the ostensible purpose of carrying out “cooperation activities” with Peru’s armed forces and national police. Passed with 70 votes in favour, 33 against and four abstentions, resolution 4766 stipulates that the troops are welcome to stay any time between June 1 and December 31, 2023.
The number of US soldiers involved has not been officially disclosed, at least as far as I can tell, though a recent statement by Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, who is currently person non grata in Peru, suggests it could be around 700. The cooperation and training activities will take place across a wide swathe of territory including Lima, Callao, Loreto, San Martín, Huánuco, Ucayali, Pasco, Junín, Huancavelica, Iquitos, Pucusana, Apurímac, Cusco and Ayacucho.
The last three regions, in the south of Peru, together with Arequipa and Puno, were the epicentre of huge political protests, strikes and road blocks from December to February after Peru’s elected President Pedro Castillo was toppled, imprisoned and replaced by his vice-president Dina Boluarte. The protesters’ demands included:
Brutal Crackdown on Protests
Needless to say, none of these demands have been met. Instead, Peru’s security forces, including 140,000 mobilised soldiers, unleashed a brutal crackdown that culminated in the deaths of approximately 70 people. A report released by international human rights organization Amnesty International in February drew the following assessment:
“Since the beginning of the massive protests in different areas of the country in December 2022, the Army and National Police of Peru (PNP) have unlawfully fired lethal weapons and used other less lethal weapons indiscriminately against the population, especially against Indigenous people and campesinos (rural farmworkers) during the repression of protests, constituting widespread attacks.”
As soon as possibly next week, an indeterminate number of US military personnel could be joining the fracas. According to the news website La Lupa, the purported goal of their visit is to provide “support and assistance to the Special Operations of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces and National Police of Peru” during two periods spanning a total of seven months: from June 1 to September 30, and from October 1 to December 30, 2023.
The secretary of the Commission for National Defence, Internal Order, Alternative Development and the Fight Against Drugs, Alfredo Azurín, was at pains to stress that there are no plans for the US to set up a military base in Peru and that the entry of US forces “will not affect national sovereignty.” Some opposition congressmen and women begged to differ, arguing that the entry of foreign forces does indeed pose a threat to national sovereignty. They also lambasted the government for passing the resolution without prior debate or consultation with the indigenous communities.
The de facto Boluarte government and Congress are treating the arrival of US troops as a perfectly routine event. And it is true that the US military has long held a presence in Peru. For example, in 2017, U.S. personnel took part in military exercises held jointly with Colombia, Peru and Brazil in the “triple borderland” of the Amazon region. Also, the US Navy operates a biosafety-level 3 biomedical research laboratory close to Lima as well as two other (biosafety-level 2) laboratories in Puerto Maldonado.
But the timing of the operation raising serious questions. After all, Peru is currently under the control of an unelected government that is heavily supported by Washington but overwhelmingly rejected by the Peruvian people. The crackdown on protests in the south of the Peru by the country’s security forces — the same security forces that US military personnel will soon be joining — has led to dozens of deaths. Peru’s Congress is refusing to call new elections in total defiance of public opinion. Just a few days ago, the country’s Supreme Court issued a ruling that some legal scholars have interpreted as essentially criminalising political protest.
As Peru’s civilian institutions fight among themselves, Peru’s armed forces — the last remaining “backbone” in the country, according to Mexican geopolitical analyst Alfredo Jalife — has taken firm control. And lest we forget, Peru is home to some of the very same minerals that the US military has identified as strategically important to US national security interests, including lithium. Also, as I noted in my June 22, 2021 piece, Is Another Military Coup Brewing in Peru, After Historic Electoral Victory for Leftist Candidate?, while Peru’s largest trading partner is China, its political institutions — like those of Colombia and Chile — remain tethered to US policy interests:
Together with Chile, it’s the only country in South America that was invited to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was later renamed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership after Donald Trump withdrew US participation.
Given as much, the rumours of another coup in Peru should hardly come as a surprise. Nor should the Biden administration’s recent appointment of a CIA veteran as US ambassador to Peru, as recently reported by Vijay Prashad and José Carlos Llerena Robles:
Her name is Lisa Kenna, a former adviser to former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a nine-year veteran at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a US secretary of state official in Iraq. Just before the election, Ambassador Kenna released a video, in which she spoke of the close ties between the United States and Peru and of the need for a peaceful transition from one president to another.
It seems more than likely that Kenna played a direct role in the not-so-peaceful transition from President Castillo to de facto President Boluarte, having met with Peru’s then-Defence Minister Gustavo Bobbio Rosas on December 6, the day before Pedro Castillo was ousted, to tackle “issues of bilateral interest”.
On a Knife’s Edge
After decades of stumbling from crisis to crisis and government to government, Peru rests on a knife’s edge. When Castillo, a virtual nobody from an Andean backwater who had played an important role in the teachers’ strikes of 2017, rode to power on a crest of popular anger at Peru’s hyper-corrupt establishment parties in June 2021, Peru’s legions of poor and marginalised hoped that positive changes would follow. But it was not to be.
Castillo was always an outsider in Lima and was out of his depth from day one. He had zero control over Congress and failed miserably to overcome rabid right-wing opposition to his government. Even in his first year in office he faced two impeachment attempts. As Manolo De Los Santos wrote in People’s Dispatch, Peru’s largely Lima-based political and business elite could never accept that a former schoolteacher and farmer from the high Andean plains could become president.
On December 7, they finally got what they wanted: Castillo’s impeachment. Just hours before a third impeachment hearing, he declared on national television that he was dissolving Congress and launching an “exceptional emergency government” and the convening of a Constituent Assembly. It was a preemptive act of total desperation from a man who held no sway with the military or judiciary, had zero control over Congress, and had even lost the support of his own party. Hours later, he was impeached, arrested by his own security detail and taken to jail, where he remains to this day.
Castillo may be out of the picture but political instability continues to reign in Peru. The de facto Boluarte government and Congress are broadly despised by the Peruvian people. According to the latest poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), 78% of Peruvians disapprove of Boluarte’s presidency while only 15% approve. Congress is even less popular, with a public disapproval rate of 91%. Forty-one percent believe that the protests will increase while 26% believe they will remain the same. In the meantime, Peru’s Congress continues to block general elections.
Peru’s “Strategic” Resources
As regular readers know, EU and US interest in Latin America is rising rapidly as the race for lithium, copper, cobalt and other elements essential for the so-called “clean” energy transition heats up. It is a race that China has been winning pretty handily up until now.
Peru is not only one of China’s biggest trade partners in Latin America; it is home to the only port in Latin America that is managed entirely by Chinese capital. And while Peru may not form part of the Lithium Triangle (Bolivia, Argentina and Chile), it does boast significant deposits of the white metal. By one estimate, it is home to the sixth largest deposits of hard-rock lithium in the world. It is also the world’s second largest producer of copper, zinc and silver, three metals that are also expected to play a major role in supporting renewable energy technologies.
In other words, there is a huge amount at stake in how Peru evolves politically as well as the economic and geopolitical alliances it forms. Also, its direct neighbour to the north, Ecuador, is undergoing a major political crisis that is likely to spell the end of the US-aligned Guillermo Lasso government and a handover of power to Rafael Correa’s party and its allies.
And the US government and military have made no secret of their interest in the mineral deposits that countries like Peru hold in their subsoil. In an address to the Washington-based Atlantic Council on Jan 19, Gen. Laura Richardson, head of the U.S. Southern Command, spoke gushingly of Latin America’s rich deposits of “rare earth elements,” “the lithium triangle — Argentina, Bolivia, Chile,” the “largest oil reserves [and] light, sweet crude discovered off Guyana,” Venezuela’s “oil, copper, gold” and the fact that Latin America is home to “31% of the world’s fresh water in this region.”
She also detailed how Washington, together with US Southern Command, is actively negotiating the sale of lithium in the lithium triangle to US companies through its web of embassies, with the goal of “box[ing] out” US adversaries (i.e. China and Russia), concluding with the ominous words: “This region matters. It has a lot to do with national security. And we need to step up our game.”
Which begs the question: is this the first step of the US government and military’s stepping-up-the-game process?
The former president of Bolivia Evo Morales, who knows a thing or two about US interventions in the region, having been on the sharp end of a US-backed right-wing coup in 2019, certainly seems to think so. A few days ago, he tweeted the following message:
The Peruvian Congress’ authorisation for the entry and stationing of US troops for 7 months confirms that Peru is governed from Washington, under the tutelage of the Southern Command.
The Peruvian people are subject to powerful foreign interests mediated by illegitimate powers lacking popular representation.
The greatest challenge for working people and indigenous peoples is to recover their self-determination, their sovereignty and their natural resources.
With this authorization from the Peruvian right, we warn that the criminalization of protest and the occupation of US military forces will consolidate a repressive state that will affect sovereignty and regional peace in Latin America.
Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel Lopéz Obrador, who refuses to acknowledge Boluarte (whom he calls the “great usurper”) as Peru’s president and has recently faced threats of direct US military intervention in Mexico’s drug wars from US Republican lawmakers, had a message for the US government this week: “[Sending soldiers to Peru] merely maintains an interventionist policy that does not help at all in building fraternal bonds among the peoples of the American continent.”
Unfortunately, the US government does not seem interested, if indeed it ever has been, in building fraternal bonds with the peoples of the American continent. Instead, it is set on upgrading the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. Its strategic rivals this time around are not Western European nations, which are now little more than US vassals (as a recent paper by the European Council of Foreign Relations, titled “The Art of Vassalisation”, all but admitted), but rather China and Russia.
White House Tells Social Media Platforms To Take A “Zero-Tolerance” Stance Against “Hate Speech”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 26, 2023
The White House unveiled a strategy to fight antisemitism that involves telling Congress to push social media platforms to be held “accountable” for hate speech.
The 60-page document details four pillars of the strategy which are raising awareness, improving safety for Jewish communities, reversing what they call the normalization of antisemitism, and countering antisemitic discrimination and hate speech.
In a pre-recorded message before the unveiling of the strategy, President Joe Biden described it “a historic step forward” and the “most ambitious and comprehensive US government-led effort to fight antisemitism in American history.”
The document contains over 100 calls to action for legislators and others in society to fight antisemitism, including calling on online platforms to have “zero-tolerance” for hate speech.
The outline involves working with social media platforms heavily.
“We also call on Congress to hold social media platforms accountable for spreading hate-fueled violence, including antisemitism; impose much stronger transparency requirements on online platforms,” the White House said in a statement.
MAGYAR HÍRLAP | May 26, 2023
No one has the courage and aptitude to lead Europe today, meaning there is no political leadership in the European Union, especially in the European Commission, said Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga at a Budapest conference on Thursday.
“In the European Union today, it is non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations and think tanks that tell Europe how to run Europe, according to the will of their own leaders,” she said.
“Recently, for asymmetric reasons, a crisis of confidence has arisen between the EU leadership and the Hungarian government. This is because the Hungarian government, unlike the EU institutions, says what it thinks and does what it says,” she added.
Varga said Europe is stumbling around the stage of history as a clumsy sideshow, drifting from crisis to crisis, and since the migration crisis, it has been trying to make policy in a way that is completely divorced from the real needs of its citizens. She said the institutional system also failed during the Covid crisis and then shot itself in the foot with sanctions against Russia after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
She warned that immigration is a crisis that still affects Europe and continues to cost the Hungarian budget heavily.
“At the same time, by defending Europe, we have to constantly fight the judgments and proceedings of the European Court of Justice,” she said. “Waiting for yet another slap in the face instead of any good deed, that is the fate of Hungary.”
Varga noted that during the coronavirus crisis, the EU made deals regarding vaccines, and yet those text messages have never been produced, referring to the murky case involving EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“We make no secret of the fact that we want to hold the functioning of the institutions in the European Union accountable in terms of the rule of law. Let’s talk about whether the European Commission, the European Parliament, the European institutions are respecting the rules, whether the rule of law is working in the institutions,” said the minister.
On the issue of the Hungarian EU presidency, the European Parliament has no say in this, the minister said, stressing that more than 10 years ago, a unanimous European Council decision had established the order of the member states, which can only be changed by unanimity. The presidency is not only a right but also an obligation, and the opposition will not achieve anything by such an attempt, but it could do enormous damage.
According to the minister, the European Parliament wants to block Hungary’s EU presidency precisely because it fears that Hungary will take stock of the dysfunctional state of EU institutions.
RT | May 24, 2023
Black Lives Matter is spending money at double the rate it takes in revenue as donations to the activist group plummet and management costs rise, causing its asset base to shrink.
Donations to BLM’s Global Network Foundation tumbled to less than $9.3 million in its latest fiscal year, ended on June 30, down a staggering 88% from the preceding 12 months, according to state tax filings. Revenue was even lower, at $8.5 million, amid investment losses. The group’s spending totaled over $17 million, or twice as much as it took in.
The documents were first obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, showing that the financial bonanza that BLM reaped during its 2020 protests against police brutality is now dwindling. Net assets dropped 28% in the latest fiscal year, declining to $30.2 million.
Part of the problem is that even as the foundation throttles back its activities – expenses for “program services” plunged 65% from a year earlier, to $11.5 million – it’s spending even more on management. Those costs rose 36% last year to $5.1 million.
The group’s leaders have also been accused of siphoning off donations for their personal gain. A sister organization, Black Lives Matter Grassroots, claimed in a lawsuit that foundation leader Shalomyah Bowers diverted $10 million for his own use. His predecessor, co-founder Patrisse Cullors, resigned in May 2021 after being accused of living a lavish lifestyle on BLM’s wealth. She reportedly purchased four homes for a combined $3.2 million while heading the group.
The Cullors family continues to benefit financially from BLM. The documents showed that her brother, graffiti artist Paul Cullors, received $140,000 in compensation last year in his role as “head of security.” In addition, his security firm was paid more than $750,000. Filings for the previous fiscal year showed that the foundation paid a company owned by Damon Turner, father of Patrisse Cullors’ child, nearly $970,000 for “live production, design and media” services.
An auditors’ review of the group’s finances reportedly found that Bowers’ company had been paid nearly $1.7 million over the preceding two years for “management and consulting services.”
Cicley Gay was brought in as the BLM foundation’s chairwoman in April 2022, at least partly to help sort out the group’s finances. She reportedly had difficulties managing her own finances, filing for bankruptcy protection from creditors three times between 2005 and 2016.
Cullors and two other activists launched the BLM movement in 2013, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed black teenager Trayvon Martin during a February 2012 scuffle while serving as a neighborhood watchman in Sanford, Florida.
BLM raked in donations from Microsoft, Amazon and other corporations in the summer of 2020, after the killing of black Minneapolis resident George Floyd by police sparked a wave of protests around the country and overseas. Cullors referred to the huge cash influx as “white guilt money.” Many of the demonstrations escalated into riots, leaving many Americans injured and dead and causing billions of dollars in property damage.
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By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
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