Biden’s Mammoth $33BN Ukraine Package Includes Help With Wartime Propaganda
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | April 28, 2022
Politico’s Christopher Miller noted earlier that the record-smashing $33 billion spending package that the White House is proposing for Ukraine actually “dwarfs the annual defense budgets of most nations.” To which we naturally asked: how many billions of dollars does it take to turn a ‘proxy’ war into a ‘direct conflict’?
For starters it’s clear that such a massive amount of taxpayer money means that Washington clearly doesn’t expect that the war will end anytime soon, as multiple US defense and intelligence officials have recently testified. In fact General Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee during the first week of this month that he sees this as a “very protracted conflict” to come that will be “at least measured in years.”
Biden in his Thursday rollout remarks described that the new aid package “begins the transition to longer-term security assistance.” But interestingly as part of this assistance, a key area that the US will fund is what’s essentially information warfare…
Independent journalist and media commentator Michael Tracey has pointed out…
White House fact-sheet says part of the mammoth $33 billion spending package it’s requesting for Ukraine will be to “support independent media.” Because nothing screams “independent” like being directly funded by the US Government as part of its “information warfare” initiative.
Of course, going back to at least 2014 the US government has funded such Ukraine initiatives as “citizen journalism” to push back against ‘Russian influence’ in the country.
As WikiLeaks has documented long ago, there was similarly heavy State Department and US intelligence funding of “independent” and “opposition” media in Syria in the lead-up to and during the decade-long war to try and overthrow Assad.
But this marks a huge expansion of the United States much more directly assisting Ukraine in its media and wartime propaganda efforts. The White House fact sheet detailing the scope of the security aid package spells out in a bullet point:
- Counter Russian disinformation and propaganda narratives, promote accountability for Russian human rights violation, and support activists, journalists, and independent media to defend freedom of expression.
This as “freedom of expression” is often suppressed at home, ironically enough especially targeting independent media outlets.
Also of little comfort to the US taxpayer in terms of a potential eventual path to WW3 between two nuclear armed powers is this section under a header titled Help Ukraine Defend Itself Over the Long-Term…
- A stronger NATO security posture through support for U.S. troop deployments on NATO territory, including transportation of U.S. personnel and equipment, temporary duty, special pay, airlift, weapons system sustainment, and medical support.
Ultimately this means hundreds of millions will go toward propping up “independent media” which will actually in truth be US-state funded pro-NATO information efforts.
Biden regime seeks $33 billion more for Ukraine
Samizdat | April 28, 2022
US President Joe Biden has asked Congress for an additional $33 billion in funding to prop up Ukraine in the ongoing conflict with Russia. A vast part of the massive package is destined for additional military and security aid, while the rest will be used for economic and humanitarian assistance.
“The Administration is requesting $20.4 billion in additional security and military assistance for Ukraine and for U.S. efforts to strengthen European security in cooperation with our NATO allies and other partners in the region,” the white House said in a statement.
Unveiling the package during his speech at the White House, Biden said it was “critical” for the lawmakers to adopt it. “We need this bill to support Ukraine and its fight for freedom,” he said, admitting the price was not “cheap.” “But caving to aggression is going to be more costly if we allow it to happen,” he stressed.
The US administration wants the aid package to get designated as emergency spending, so that it does not have to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. Apart from the massive aid package for Ukraine, Biden is also seeking new powers to target wealthy Russians the US administration believes to be ‘oligarchs.’
“I’m also sending to Congress a comprehensive package that will enhance our underlined effort to accommodate (sic) the Russian oligarchs and make sure we take their ill-be-gotten gains. We’re going to accommodate them, we’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes, their ill-begotten gains,” Biden stated, struggling with the world “kleptocracy” to describe those wealthy Russians to be targeted. “These are bad guys,” he said eventually.
If enabled, the proposed powers would allow US authorities to “streamline the process for seizure of oligarch assets,” to sell these and to funnel the proceeds to Ukraine.
The US alone has funneled more than $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the ongoing conflict broke out late in February. Washington’s allies poured in lavish economic and military aid to Kiev as well, with certain Western officials – including British PM Boris Johnson and top EU diplomat Josep Borrell – openly stating they wanted Ukraine to beat Russia on the battlefield.
Moscow has repeatedly warned the West against ramping up aid for Kiev, stating that this would only prolong the ongoing conflict and inflict further damage on Ukraine, as well as suffering on the country’s people.
The White House is Turning the War in Ukraine into a New Gold Rush
By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 27.04.2022
The Americans have a saying that every new president needs his own “splendid little war.” They understand perfectly that a war of that kind will enrich the incoming political and military establishment and also solve many social and financial problems in the country, not least unemployment, and help reduce foreign debt.
The political establishment has found it easy to arrange matters behind the back of the indecisive and ailing 46th US president, Joe Biden (about whose mental acuity many, both in the US and internationally, are now seriously concerned), and continue the work of previous administrations in drawing Russia deeper into the Ukrainian crisis.
As a result, Washington clearly has no interest in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict, and in provoking its escalation into outright war the White House has found itself forced to put together an anti-Russian coalition and supply more and more consignments of arms to the Ukrainian government.
On March 2, 2022 Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian Foreign Minister, claimed that Ukraine had “mobilized an international anti-war coalition, which already has at least 86 states and 15 international organizations” and that “19 countries are giving weapons to Ukraine.” And in a briefing on March 8 Pentagon Press secretary John Kirby confirmed that Ukraine was receiving weapons form 15 countries, including the USA.
The press briefing, published on the official web site of the US Department of Defense, stated that the United States had committed more than $4 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including $3.4 billion since the beginning of Russia’s special operation! According to the briefing, the US had provided security assistance including 700 Switchblade drone systems, 16 Mi-17 helicopters, more than 1,400 shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft missile systems, 183,000 155mm Howitzer artillery rounds and 72 tactical vehicles to tow them, 200 armored personnel carriers, 121 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones and more than 7,000 small arms. The Pentagon is also providing the Ukrainian armed forces with 5,100 Javelin anti-tank missiles and more than 14,000 “other anti-tank systems.”
As for the claim that representatives of the US military and political establishment have a financial stake in the Ukrainian conflict, it is enough to take the example of the Javelins. According to a number of US experts and industry publications, the US has provided Ukraine with approximately a third of its stock of Javelin anti-tank missiles. Significantly, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has taken personal charge of supplying the Javelins to Ukraine. The reason is clear – he has long been closely linked to the manufacturer, and is now able to place government orders for these weapons. And with Javelin stocks steadily decreasing, the US army has requested new supplies, which means that Lloyd Austin is placing new orders, and may soon be making a big profit from these transactions.
Let us now look at the articles that have appeared in the US media – clearly planted by the Pentagon – suggesting that the transfer of the US’s supplies of Javelins may damage its own defense readiness, as there is the risk that remaining stocks may be insufficient to respond in the event of an “unexpected conflict.” Naturally, articles of this type are a form of propaganda, aimed at promoting the interests of the Department of Defense and of its head, Lloyd Austin. Currently the US army is not directly engaged in conflict, and is therefore able to replace its reserves of these weapons without difficulty. And by stepping up production volumes, Washington is able to boost its profits and create new jobs.
Many of the Javelins that have fallen into the hands of the Russian, PRD and PRL armies during the current conflict have an expiry date of 2022. Many media have reported on an embarrassing incident in the Yavoriv training ground, while US military specialists were instructing Ukrainian soldiers in the operation of the Javelin system – using a Javelin whose service life had expired. After firing the missile, the missile, fortunately without its warhead attached, fell to earth, almost under its users’ feet.
In other words, the war in Ukraine will, for a long time to come, boost the wealth of members of the United States’ political and military elite, including Pentagon officials, as they offload old stock, attract new orders from other countries, and embroil Washington in the “remote conflict” of their own creation. As for the European governments, US puppets who are supplying more and more of their own arms to Ukraine at Washington’s behest, they will, in the end, start to realize that this policy is harming them. By providing military assistance they are merely serving to draw out Russia’s military operation and tighten the financial noose around their own necks – which is one of the USA’s main goals. For, as a result of Washington’s rush to pressurize them into supplying Kiev with “sponsored military support,” in the end the European nations’ own arms reserves will run low, and they will be forced to restock by ordering new armaments from the USA.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the US government is standing on the sidelines and watching on with glee – it knows that when Europe and Nato need to replenish their arsenals, it will be the US military industrial complex that gets the contracts. And, in their joy the heads of the armament industry are drinking themselves into oblivion.
According to a recent article in The Independent, the arms companies are rushing to cash in on this new “gold rush” triggered by the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. While to pickings from supplying arms to Kiev may be fairly modest, remilitarizing Europe would bring the US arms manufacturers huge profits. And the arms bosses have already started making promises to their shareholders and talking to the media about the profits to be gained from this project. Countries such as Germany, committed to a policy of pacifism since the end of World War II, are now trying to reform their militaries. Germany has already ordered 35 F-35 fighters, the most modern combat aircraft, from the American manufacturer Lockheed Martin, as well as 60 Chinook CH-47F heavy transport helicopters from the US aerospace giant Boeing.
Poland’s Ministry of Defense has signed a contract for the purchase of 250 US-made Abrams M1A2 SEPv3 tanks, the latest version of this vehicle. It has also signed an agreement for logistical and training support, including training for tank teams. In total, it has budgeted some $6 billion for the purchase of these tanks. According to the Polish army, this is its largest arms purchase since the Second World War.
To make sure no-one else benefits from this new Gold Rush the US intends to coordinate the international supply of arms to Ukraine, and to this end is organizing a conference on Ukraine at the United States European Command in Stuttgart, as reported by the German news television channel Welt.
Dutch Party Asks Zelensky to Account for $850 Mln Personal Wealth
By Ilya Tsukanov | Samizdat | April 26, 2022
Last year, a Pandora Papers leak revealed that Mr Zelensky, who campaigned on promises to “break the system” of oligarchic control and corruption in Ukraine, set up a spider web of offshore companies in 2012. Zelensky’s office justified the move by saying they were a form of “protection” against former President Viktor Yanukovych.
A Dutch political party has taken an interest in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s personal finances.
“Zelensky has a fortune: various estimates put his wealth at around $850 million. He amassed most of it after taking office as president. Where does the money come from? And more importantly, where is it going?” the Forum for Democracy asked in posts on its Twitter and Telegram accounts on Monday.
The Dutch national conservative and hardline Eurosceptic party boycotted Zelensky’s speech to the Dutch parliament last month, denouncing it as a violation of nearly two centuries of democratic tradition, which forbid foreign heads of state from speaking before the House of Representatives.
The party also expressed concerns about Zelensky’s ban of political parties, including the main opposition party, and the shuttering of TV channels critical of his regime.
The Forum for Democracy did not specify where it got its $850 million estimate.
Ilya Kiva, a Ukrainian opposition lawmaker who was stripped of his mandate last month, alleges that “hundreds of millions of dollars” are being wired to accounts controlled by the president’s office, where they are being plundered, not just by Zelensky and his staff, but by “Western politicians who get kickbacks for their [countries’] assistance”. Kiva has suggested that Zelensky’s earnings have recently jumped to about “$100 million a month”.
Before becoming president in 2019, Zelensky co-owned the Kvartal 95 television entertainment company, which he co-founded in 2003. Last week, Volodymyr Landa, deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes Ukraine, said that the company earns about $20-$30 million per year, with Zelensky owning a 25 percent stake.
Before the 2019 election, Zelensky’s family also earned a 25 percent stake in the Maltex Multicapital Corp, a tax shelter in the British Virgin Islands, through a separate Belize-registered shell company, Film Heritage, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Zelensky insisted after the election that he had dropped his share in the company, and has not mentioned the company in any of his tax declarations since 2018.
However, in October 2021, the OCCRP reported that the president, his family, and members of his inner circle have held on to Maltex, and operate an entire network of shady offshore companies, at least two of them used to buy property in London near the famous 221B Baker Street and the Houses of Parliament.
Ihor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch who heavily sponsored Zelensky’s campaign in 2019, has himself been accused of stealing $5.5 billion from PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest commercial lender, and funnelling it offshore.
Pressed by media over the offshore-related revelations late last year, Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff, assured that the president had been forced to create the offshores to “protect” income from the “aggressive actions” of the “corrupt” government of President Viktor Yanukovych. “Journalists have de facto confirmed the president’s absolute respect for the standards of anti-corruption legislation”, Podoliak said.
Yanukovych was ousted in a Western-backed coup in 2014, giving rise to the Ukraine crisis which continues to this day.
Big Tech monopolies are good for national security, former intelligence officials say
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 25, 2022
Big Tech, its lobbyists and allies, have come up with yet another, opportunistic given the current geopolitical situation, “argument” as these corporate behemoths fight to prevent any legislation that would limit their already vast and growing power.
And the argument is that Big Tech serves US foreign policy as an important asset, essentially by means of providing wide-reaching censorship, and needs to be preserved just the way it is: with its monopolistic power not restricted with new laws, and that means no breaking up of these companies into parts that would render their stranglehold on the market weaker, nor passing any meaningful new regulation.
The ongoing war in Ukraine is used as a handy example and excuse for how important Big Tech companies are to the ability of the US to advance its policy around the world. (How this functions domestically, and what ties to what centers of power Big Tech has in that scenario, is a different question.)
The recommendation to leave Big Tech alone for the sake of US national interests abroad came in a letter signed by a number of former intelligence officials, whose names have already been cropping up over the years in a variety of now debunked affairs, complete with the claim that the Hunter Biden emails were not authentic, and were instead a product of Russian disinformation.
These officials include Obama administration-era CIA head Michael Morrell, Leon Panetta, who was both at the helm of Pentagon and the CIA during that time, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Observers critical of the Big Tech-Big Government dynamic, like Glenn Greenwald, consider these figures to be “disinformation agents” themselves, while presenting their activities as a relentless fight against disinformation; and on top of that, some of them have financial ties to some of the largest tech corporations. None of that is stopping these figures from assuming the self-styled role as spokespeople for national security.
But what’s happening here is just another instance of Big Tech lobbying, which has over the years and decades gone through different phases, enlisting at different times lobbying pros, public figures, and even small businesses who wind up suffering from the giants’ grip on the digital markets. Sometimes this lobbying has been “hidden” inside alleged grassroots campaigns, but not this time – this time it’s former spies, bringing up the issue of the importance Big Tech has for foreign policy, at a time when geopolitics is on everyone’s mind.
Boiled down, however, they do it to shore up Big Tech’s offensive against two particular pieces of legislation currently considered at various levels in the US Congress: these are bipartisan proposals that aim to tackle tech giants’ antitrust behavior that harms competition, thanks to the comprehensive nature of these companies’ control over various markets. One example given is how Google can – and does – use its Search to downrank video platforms, competitors to another of Google’s arms, YouTube. Not to mention what are by now notorious app store practices put in place by the Google/Apple duopoly. Beyond that, there’s the issue of the digital ad market tightly controlled by Google and Facebook.
Both bills designed to put an end to this and loosen the monopolistic stranglehold of Google, Apple, Amazon, and others – one in the Senate, and another in the House – have been doing well so far, receiving support from many lawmakers from both parties, emboldened by the general anti-Big Tech mood.
Even those senators that have financial ties with these corporations and refused to sponsor the Senate bill, eventually voted in favor when it was considered by the Judiciary and Antitrust Committee. This is seen as a sign that the public’s odium toward tech giants has now gained momentum that means politicians can no longer afford to ignore it, despite their campaigns, donations, and personal financial priorities.
All in all, many believe that the two bills have a good shot at becoming law – and that has clearly been the signal to the rattled tech juggernauts to bring out the big lobbying guns. And wrap the message in a big narrative: national security, and the Russian threat.
The signatories of the new letter, Greenwald writes, demand that the anti-Big-Tech bills “first be reviewed not only by the judiciary and antitrust committees, but also the national security committees where they wield power and influence, which have traditionally played no role in regulating the technology sector.”
“A Magnet for Conspiracy Theories”: Wikipedia Kills Entry for Hunter Biden’s Investment Company
By Jonathan Turley | April 24, 2022
Wikipedia editors are under fire this week for removing the entry for Rosemont Seneca Partners, the investment company connected to Hunter Biden and his alleged multimillion dollar influence peddling schemes. The site bizarrely claimed that the company was “not notable.” The timing itself is notable given the new disclosure that Hunter Biden’s business partner, Eric Schwerin, made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015. That included a meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden despite Biden’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings. Schwerin was the president of Rosemont Seneca.
Wikipedia has been accused of raw bias in removing the entry at a time when interest in the company is at its peak, including the possibility of an indictment of Hunter Biden over his financial dealings. Rosemont Seneca is one of the most searched terms for those trying to understand the background on the Biden business operations.
Yet, an editor known only as “Alex” wrote that the company was simply “not notable” — an absurd claim reminiscent of the recent claim by Atlantic Magazine’s writer Anne Applebaum that she did not cover the scandal because it simply was “not interesting.”
Alex wrote: “This organization is only mentioned in connection with its famous founders, Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz.” That itself is an odd statement. It is mentioned as one of the key conduits of alleged influence peddling money. Alex added that “keeping it around” ran the risk of the page becoming “a magnet for conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.”
Any Wikipedia page could be a magnet for conspiracy theories, including the page on Hunter Biden himself. The fact is that this is a real company with real dealings that are the subject of a real criminal investigation. Indeed, various Republican members have already pledged to conduct investigations into this and other companies if they secure either house of Congress after the midterm elections.
So Wikipedia killed it just as a United States Attorney is drilling down on financial dealings of Hunter Biden, including money received from foreign sources through Rosemont Seneca.
The bias in the reference to the “conspiracy theories” is glaring. While some clearly misstate the facts of the Hunter Biden dealings (on both sides of the controversy), the central role of the company in these dealings is no conspiracy theory. I have long criticized Hunter Biden and his uncle for engaging in raw influence peddling — a practice long associated with the Biden family.
I have also been highly critical of how media and social media companies killed the Hunter Biden story. Much like Wikipedia’s explanation this week, they claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story was merely conspiracy theories and Russian disinformation before the election. We are now approaching the midterm elections and suddenly Wikipedia is killing the page on this key company.
Republican senators claim that Hunter Biden was a partner in Rosemont Seneca with Chris Heinz, the stepson of future Secretary of State John Kerry, and their friend, Devon Archer. Archer was recently sent to prison for fraud in a matter that did not involve Hunter Biden.
In 2013, Rosemont Seneca entered into a business partnership with a Chinese investment fund called Bohai Capital. There are references in these transactions to Bohai Harvest RST. “RST” stood for “Rosemont Seneca Thornton,” a consortium of Rosemont Seneca and the Thornton Group, a Massachusetts-based firm.
Hunter Biden’s counsel insists that he did not have an equity interest in RST. However, Rosemont Seneca and RST feature greatly in the controversial transactions with foreign figures. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal reports that:
“Prosecutors have focused in particular, those people said, on the payments from Burisma, which first flowed to a company called Rosemont Seneca Bohai LLC before going on to Mr. Biden. Between 2014 and 2019, Hunter Biden held a Burisma board seat for which he was paid around $50,000 a month.”
The company has been tied to a series of payments to Hunter Biden from car purchases to cash transfers that are under investigation. Wikipedia does not (and should not) take sides in such allegations. Rather, it can serve as a conduit for those searching the company as part of a major and ongoing controversy.
Yet, “Alex” does not consider any of that “notable” and dismisses references to the company in a federal investigation as mere “conspiracy theories.”
Wikipedia was founded on lofty and even revolutionary goals of empowering the world with free access to sources of knowledge. The key minds behind Wikipedia saw the danger of bias creeping into this work and emphasized the need for strict neutrality.
Larry Sanger declared “Wikipedia has an important policy: roughly stated, you should write articles without bias, representing all views fairly.”
Likewise, Jimmy Wales insisted “A general-purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should steer clear of taking any particular stance other than the stance of the neutral point of view.”
I have long been a fan of Wikipedia and its noble purpose. For that reason, I am saddened by this move which seems to reject the essential pledge of the company. Wikipedia’s editors have been increasingly accused of bias in such decisions. However, this move is particularly raw and inexplicable. Wikipedia will lose the trust of many if it goes down the path of companies like Twitter in allowing staff to use its platform for their own political agendas.
Wikipedia should immediately reverse and disassociate itself from the decision of “Alex” on the Rosemont Seneca page.
When will these vaccine zealots wake up to the truth?
By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | April 24, 2022
WE should not understate the naivety of the government, media and scientists during the pandemic. The tabloid-style stories of severe Covid outcomes, the authoritative voice of Dr Anthony Fauci (who has financial conflicts of interest), the allure of the word vaccine, and the exaggerated death toll in foreign lands all combined into a convincing call for immediate and coercive action. Yet behind the stories, the highly profitable pharmaceutical PR system was running at full steam playing on the fear factor. New Zealand fell head over heels in love. Love knows no reason and that was certainly the case here.
New Zealand is a long way from the rest of the world. We have a tradition of proud independence and self-sufficiency, but we rolled over and played Follow the Leader. No one in a position of influence struck a note of caution, especially not our Prime Minister. We instituted the largest public borrowing programme in our history and spent it on a US mega corporation with a poor safety record and a history of punitive malpractice judgments. The government instituted saturation advertising of vaccine safety and efficacy, and then followed up with mandates, sackings and social exclusion. Our media shouted down those few asking questions.
Times, however, have changed. The respected and conservative Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has aired concerns about poor regulatory decisions at the US Food and Drug Agency (FDA) over booster shots. It joins a growing international chorus of highly qualified and influential voices.
On April 3, in an opinion piece entitled ‘FDA Shuts Out Its Own Experts in Authorising Another Vaccine Booster’, Dr Marty Makary, a surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, wrote: ‘The FDA last week authorised Americans over 50 to get a fourth Covid vaccine dose. Some of the FDA’s own experts disagreed, but the agency simply ignored them.’
Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (arguably the world’s most influential medical journal) and a member of the FDA advisory committee on vaccines told CNN last month: ‘I haven’t seen enough data to determine whether anyone needs a fourth dose.’
Dr Cody Meissner, also a member of the FDA vaccine advisory committee and chief of paediatric infectious diseases at Tufts Children’s Hospital in Boston, agreed: ‘The fourth dose is an unanswered question for people with a normal immune system.’
A third member of the committee, Dr Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, went further. He told the Atlantic magazine that he advised his 20-something son to forgo the first booster.
Two top FDA officials, Marion Gruber, Director of the FDA Office of Vaccine Research and Review and her deputy Paul Krause, quit the FDA in September last year complaining of undue pressure to authorise boosters and a lack of data to support their use.
Unbelievably, the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) rubber-stamped the FDA decision to approve a second booster without even convening its panel of external independent vaccine experts.
The WSJ article described the effect of boosters as fleeting, mild and short-lived. It sounded a note of alarm saying that neither the CDC nor the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) had made a priority of studying vaccine complications. Moreover their VAERS data collection and analysis process is incomplete and inadequate. In other words, the safety investigation to date of adverse effects of mRNA vaccination is incomplete and potentially misleading.
The central question raised by the WSJ opinion piece is, why wouldn’t the US regulators wish to undertake accurate and complete investigation of adverse effects of mRNA vaccination? Have pharmaceutical interests been able to influence decision-making at the FDA to their own commercial advantage at the expense of safety considerations?
The British Medical Journal agrees. On March 16 it published an article which said: ‘Evidence-based medicine has been corrupted by corporate interests, failed regulation and commercialisation of academia.’
The lessons are obvious. We have stifled debate and slavishly followed FDA advice. Now there is a need for revaluation and debate. We have travelled a long way down a one-way street, but it appears to be a dead end. The triumphant articles published about a survey of vaccine-resistant people born in Dunedin was a low point in uncritical mainstream media publishing. We have to regain an objective voice.
A paper published on April 5 in the New England Journal of Medicine found that any measurable protective effect of the fourth inoculation (which in any case, it found, is very small in absolute terms) disappeared after just eight weeks. Moreover a paper in the Lancet on April 8 admitted that boosters carry a risk of additional side-effects. Both these papers, however, skirted the obvious safety questions in favour of weak praise for vaccine orthodoxy.
In contrast the WSJ article asked the important question: ‘Who is actually getting serious about measuring the extent of adverse events, rather than continuing to urge uncritical acceptance of a largely ineffective vaccine?’
So far New Zealand media have steered clear of such questions. Dr Ashley Bloomfield, chief executive of the country’s Health Ministry, has refused to institute mandatory reporting of adverse events following mRNA Covid vaccination and he has excelled at denying vaccine exemptions to those injured by the first shot. Silence is no longer tenable, although in actuality it never was. Questions have to be asked. No ifs or buts. Overseas media outlets of the thinking kind are waking up.
If we can’t face debating rationally with our critics, we are drifting on to the rocks of ignorance and prejudice.
Time for us to wake up.
EU commission sued over Covid-19 vaccine secrecy
Samizdat | April 23, 2022
Five Green MEPs are suing the European Commission over its ultra-secretive vaccine contracts, arguing that the heavily redacted versions released by the EC “made it impossible to understand the content of the agreements,” in a statement published Friday.
“Secrecy is a breeding ground for distrust and skepticism, and it has no place in public agreements with pharmaceutical companies,” Margrete Auken, a Danish MEP involved in the suit, declared, adding that “the European Commission’s refusal to provide transparency on its vaccine contracts affects the public’s confidence in the EU’s ability to obtain the best possible outcome for its citizens.”
The MEPs are demanding the details of the contracts the EC signed with vaccine-makers BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax, including price per dose, advance payments, conditions for vaccine donations, liability, and indemnification matters.
“Purchases made with public money should come with public information, definitely in matters of health,” Dutch MEP and party to the lawsuit Kim van Sparrentak said in the group’s statement, noting that “confidentiality under the guise of trade secrets only fuels uncertainty and fear.”
In addition to Auken and van Sparrentak, the MEPs signing on to the suit are Tilly Metz (Luxembourg), Jutta Paulus (Germany), and Michele Rivasi (France), the chair of the parliament’s committee on Covid-19.
The lawsuit, filed in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, comes as EC President Ursula von der Leyen revealed that every EU member state would be required to adopt EU Digital Covid Certificates, a digital health passport issued to those with proof of vaccination, a negative PCR test, or proof of recovery from Covid-19. While the validity period for such certificates was due to lapse at the end of June, the EC is not only renewing it another year, but making it mandatory for all 27 EU countries from July 1. Only 15 are currently using it, according to von der Leyen.
The move comes despite many EU states winding down their Covid-19 restrictions, moving away from some of the stricter measures imposed in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Germany, which had initially sought to require all citizens over the age of 60 to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, has been forced to axe those plans after they were voted down in the Bundestag, though the country’s health minister has warned that the government may reimpose mask mandates, as he expects infections to increase in the fall.
In response to the lawsuit, the EC has insisted it cannot reveal the contracts it signed with the vaccine-makers back in 2020, claiming “the commission is in the business of respecting contracts.” At the time, EU lawmakers who wanted to see the contracts were prohibited from taking notes and forced to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Much of the world seemed to be headed for mandatory Covid-19 vaccination six months ago. However, the realization that despite their manufacturers’ initial promises, the vaccines were no magic bullet – not only incapable of stopping the spread, but incapable of preventing further infection – has cooled public fervor for mandates. Health concerns and complaints of discrimination against the unvaccinated have also contributed to the backlash. However, the manufacturers, as well as most officials, continue to insist that the vaccines are “safe and effective.”
IMF to expedite $5 billion loan to Ukraine
Samizdat | April 20, 2022
Ukraine likely needs $5 billion a month in financial assistance to keep its economy operating and the immediate priority was finding ways to fill that gap in the next three months, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva.
The Washington-based financial institution will start work on a future loan program, but it was “unfair” to expect Ukraine to implement a far-reaching package of reforms at the moment, Georgieva told a news conference on Wednesday.
On Sunday, Kiev requested $50 billion in financial support from the Group of Seven (G7) nations and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cover a budget deficit largely created by the military conflict with Russia.
Ukraine is also considering issuing 0% coupon bonds to bridge the fiscal gap, as the country is currently facing an estimated $7 billion deficit a month, according to Oleg Ustenko, the top economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The IMF and World Bank have approved more than $2 billion in loans to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in the country. Meanwhile, the World Bank said it was preparing nearly $1.5 billion in extra funds to allow essential Ukrainian government services to continue.
Over the weekend, Georgieva said “more [funds] would be necessary … to keep the economy functioning and prevent inflation shooting up.”
MIT’s Dean of Science responds to me: She’s NOT interested in looking at the vax safety data!
She has intellectual curiosity in all areas of science… except the vaccines
Steve Kirsch with MIT Dean of Science Nergis Mavalvala taken April 15, 2022 at MIT breakfast in Palo Alto
By Steve Kirsch | April 15, 2022
Summary
The Dean of Science at MIT believes open discussion to resolve differences of scientific opinion should be encouraged. That’s the good news.
However, when I asked her whether she would publicly call for such a discussion for the vaccines, her answer was “No.” That’s the bad news.
I also asked her if I could show her data that would change her mind. Her answer was, “No.”
This is an important issue; it is an issue that affects the health of every MIT student, staff, and faculty member. She knows that there are two legitimate sides of this issue because she knows that at least one MIT faculty member agrees with me that the COVID vaccines are dangerous. Yet open discussion on this is forbidden at MIT. They simply are not interested in hearing from anyone with any credentials (such as my colleagues) who is able to challenge their policies.
Dean Mavalvala should be actively facilitating the resolution of this important issue by calling for an open discussion. Instead, she is stonewalling and hoping it will go away. She’s wrong. It won’t.
My meeting with Dean Mavalvala
I was able to speak personally to the Dean of Science at MIT today thanks to an MIT breakfast scheduled 10 minutes from my home.
As you can see from the photo above, she’s fully bought into the mainstream narrative that masks work even though the science says they don’t work at all (and it isn’t even a close call). So I didn’t think my conversation would go that well. I was right.
I started off asking her why nobody at MIT would sponsor my talk. She said that the faculty sponsor must be both familiar with and supportive of the body of work.
OK, so that’s actually a reasonable response. No objection from me.
She also knew that Professor Retsef Levi had agreed to sponsor my talk on the MIT campus. But it wasn’t MIT who located Professor Levi. I was the one who found Professor Levi. He subscribes to my Substack and saw my frustration and reached out to me.
Professor Levi is a hero… one of the few (perhaps only) MIT faculty members who independently looked at the data and came to the same (obvious) conclusion that the vaccines were bad news. All of his attempts to persuade other MIT faculty members to look at the underlying data were unsuccessful. So now I don’t feel so bad. It’s not just me. People just don’t like to be shown they are wrong…especially on something that is life threatening.
I asked Dean how I could convince her that the MIT policies on the vaccine and masking were wrong. She replied that science advances through peer-reviewed research.
I said sure, but that process has been corrupted. She agreed with that but said that’s the way it is.
She was not interested in looking at any data that would challenge her beliefs that the vaccines are safe and effective
Next, I asked if I could meet with her to share the data showing the vaccines are unsafe. She said she was not interested in that because that isn’t her field.
That’s interesting because right after our conversation, she gave a talk about how she is fascinated by all areas of science and loves her job as Dean since she gets to learn about all the cool stuff going on at MIT.
Yet she is not interested in seeing data that challenges her beliefs that affect everyone at MIT, and that has likely caused injury and perhaps death of MIT students, staff, and faculty members. So her intellectual curiosity basically stops at the point that I challenge her strongly held beliefs.
I said that it is really important that there should be an OPEN discussion between the different points of view on the vaccine. She agreed.
She then gave her talk.
After the talk, I asked her if she would “walk the talk.” Specifically, would she publicly call out the “experts” who refuse to be challenged to have an open discussion with those who have differing views?
Her answer was “no” she wouldn’t call for this because she thinks the vaccines are safe.
I pressed her on this. I believe that her role as Dean of Science at MIT includes championing science in public policy. When public policy is based on bad science, all our science leaders should be speaking out about that. At that very instant, she and her handlers insisted that “she had to leave” before she could answer my question.
So I then sent her the following email offering to finish the conversation.
Dean Mavalvala,
I’m sorry you were rushed at the end and we didn’t have time to continue our conversation.
This is important to resolve as we believe that over 100,000 Americans have been killed by the vaccine and we have 10 different ways to show that. If we are right, the vaccines should be immediately stopped and not mandated at MIT.
I would like to finish our conversation on a zoom call. It would take less than 5 minutes.
I think you have a responsibility to call for the right thing which is an open discussion between the two sides. You agreed this was the right thing to do before your speech.
This isn’t going to be resolved by “peer reviewed science” since that process has been corrupted (which you acknowledged). Also, resolution of differences through publication of peer reviewed studies is a laborious, time consuming process that has been corrupted.
It’s important to have the disagreements over the vaccine resolved ASAP as a huge number of Americans refuse to be vaccinated. Are they justified? It’s a matter of great public concern.
Open discussions are a faster, more efficient way to resolve such differences. This is especially important when we are in a state of emergency.
For example, in less than 2 hours, we were able to resolve all of our issues with the Bangladesh mask study due to the interactive nature of the discussion. In just 2 hours, it became clear to any objective viewer that the study failed to show masks worked. This would have taken years to resolve via peer review since there would be conflicting papers.
In addition, science is supposed to encourage resolution of differences through discussion and debate rather than censorship.
I note that the scientists who disagree with the mainstream narrative WANT an open discussion/debate on the key issues.
Yet those who claim the vaccines are safe and effective WANT censorship and REFUSE to be held accountable.
For example, this happened in Canada where 3 top Canadian scientists asked for a discussion with Canada’s health authorities. The authorities did not show up at the table. They sent no one. How do we resolve our differences when the other side is afraid to show up at the table?
As Dean of Science at MIT you should be speaking out publicly against the censorship of scientists because you should be a defender of Science. Similarly, I believe you should call for those who promote the mainstream narrative on vaccine safety to accept challenges from legitimate qualified scientists. You could say this is not your role, but the fact is that no other prominent person is stepping up to the plate to do this. As a defender of science, it is your responsibility to step in and make things right, don’t you think? If not, who will?
-steve
I will let you know if I hear back. Don’t hold your breath.
If you know anyone at MIT, be sure to share this article with them.
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Inside Job? Inside What?
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 28, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky Dispute in Historical Perspective – Sixth part of the series titled “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
In his chapter on “Left Gatekeepers” and the “Shame of Noam Chomsky,” Barrie Zwicker refers to the the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. Less compelling is Zwicker’s reference to the “New World Order” as the “diaboligarchy’s” directing agency. To me this unfortunate choice of words is much too closely associated with the often crude and chauvinistic populism of Alex Jones and his Infowars media network. Many have come to see Jones’ lucrative media operation as a limited hangout set in place by handlers trying to hold the activities of the 9/11 Truth Movement within manageable constraints.
Due to the important findings over fifteen years of the citizens’ investigation into 9/11, the culprits most deeply implicated in the crime can be identified with much more specificity than an entity vaguely described as a “New World Order.” As Kevin Barrett and many others insist, the time has come to name the names of the probable culprits, Noam Chomsky prominent among them.
While Alex Jones ultimately serves the same masters as Chomsky, the former’s media product is often much closer to the mark of what is really going on than the content of Noam Chomsky’s more magisterial pronouncements. Jones goes at least part of the way into realities of the deep state politics of the twenty-first century. Chomsky, however, sacrificed his capacity to contribute cogently to sensible discourse on contemporary geopolitics by making himself a primary instrument of the most consequential deep state deception of recent times. As a leading agent of disinformation in the psychological trenches of the ongoing Global War of False Flag Terrorism, Chomsky has reduced himself to the level of skeptic pretender Michael Shermer. In the style of Shermer, the elder Chomsky has become an establishment TV professor readily available on Netflix. … continue
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