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Global PR Giant Launches Provocative HPV Vaccine Ads Targeting Gen Zers

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | December 7, 2023

A multinational public relations firm last week launched a provocative advertising campaign — under the slogan “HPV Fucks Everybody” — designed to persuade Gen Zers to get the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

The PR firm, Publicis Groupe, launched the campaign in collaboration with the nonprofit Fuck Cancer. The campaign doesn’t name a specific HPV vaccine brand name. However, Merck’s Gardasil vaccine is the only HPV vaccine brand distributed in the U.S., and Merck is a client of Publicis Groupe.

When asked if Merck was funding the campaign, a spokesperson for Fuck Cancer told The Defender, “This campaign has no connection with Merck and is a collaboration between Publicis Health Media and Fuck Cancer (a non profit). Please note that we are promoting a vaccine that is safe and saves lives.”

There are currently 80 cases pending in federal court against Merck alleging Gardasil caused injuries and the federal Vaccine Court has paid out more than $70 million to people making claims regarding Gardasil.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), also a Publicis client, developed the HPV vaccine technology, which it licenses, in the U.S., exclusively to Merck.

In addition to Merck and the NIH, other Publicis Groupe clients include the World Economic Forum (WEF), pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer, GSK, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma and several pharmacy chains that administer the HPV vaccines, including Walmart, Rite Aid and CVS Health (owners of Target pharmacies and clinics).

Campaign ‘uses sex to sell its case’

The new campaign targets young adults directly through a series of ads featuring “diverse, sexy images” and edgy music, accompanying the message that it doesn’t matter who you are, you are at risk because “HPV Fucks Everybody.”

Photos of a black couple, a white couple and a furry couple kissing, and a multiracial group of young people partying are featured on the website and will be featured in the ads.

The images are accompanied by lines like, “Stop the spread. Get the shot. Keep doing you,” according to “Pharma & Health Insider” — a PR site that publishes promotional stories with a news-like appearance.

HPV transmission is likely to occur via sex, the PR story said, so the campaign “uses sex to sell its case.”

“Targeting all 18–26-year-olds who are sexually active (or who want to be), the campaign behaves just like its audience: honest, bold and unbounded by tradition,” said Alison McConnell, chief marketing officer at Publicis Health Media — one of Publicis’ “solution hubs.”

Michelle Stiles, author of “One Idea To Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda,” told The Defender that campaigns run by elite global PR firms may appear absurd to a skeptical observer, but they have tremendous power to shape global public health agendas.

She said:

“The trendy and provocative messaging targeting sexually active youth for yet another vaccination campaign should hopefully be met with ample amounts of skepticism or outright laughter for those who paid attention during the previous rollout of the COVID-19 shots.

“Unfortunately, these million-dollar campaigns are extremely dangerous because they are so effective.”

Ben Mallory, executive vice president/creative director for Digitas Health, another Publicis subsidiary collaborating on the campaign, said the campaign is designed to inform young people that they will be infected with HPV, that such infection will be risky and that vaccination is the answer.

“For a generation that doesn’t discriminate, it’s important they realize that HPV doesn’t either,” he said. “That’s what the campaign communications [sic]: It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’re into, if you’re not vaccinated, you’re at risk.”

Trying to reach ‘largest and most influential generation’

The campaign will air 30-second and one-minute ads on 150 college campuses and in 150 malls in major markets, and also post on lifestyle websites like Thrillist, PopSugar, the dating site Grindr.

An audio campaign will follow, along with advertising in “points-of-care,” which can include clinics or pharmacies.

On the campaign’s website, people can also sign up to “get the shot” at major retail pharmacies including Walgreens, CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart, Target and Kroger — companies Publicis Groupe also represents.

McConnell, Publicis’ marketing director for the campaign, said they are trying to reach Gen Z because it is “the largest and most influential generation.”

That makes this campaign different from most previous HPV vaccination PR campaigns that targeted parents.

This shift in focus reflects recent shifts in direct advertising by Gardasil maker Merck.

Merck’s early ads targeted parents of adolescents, but in 2022 they shifted gears and started targeting parents of young children with ads like this one, which appeals to parents of the older elementary school children.

These ads focused on marketing the vaccine as “cancer prevention” rather than as acting on a sexually transmitted disease, a strategy the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoted to encourage more young people to get vaccinated.

Last year, Merck expanded its advertising campaign to target adults through age 45, in commercials like this one, marketing the vaccine as protecting against a long list of cancers.

Merck has invested heavily in shaping the market since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug in 2006. In October, it announced that its 2023 third-quarter Gardasil sales grew 13% to $2.6 billion.

Fact-checking the campaign’s claims

The campaign sample ad and its website, which provide no citations, make many misleading or erroneous claims.

The campaign’s approach appears to be rooted in the “fear-based” or “fear-appealing” messaging designed to “nudge” people into getting vaccinated, commonly utilized during the COVID-19 pandemic and in global public health more generally.

According to the CDC, HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. and the majority of sexually active people will get it at some point in their lives, even if they have only one or very few sexual partners.

But the vast majority of HPV infections are cleared by the immune system and less than 10% of infections are linked to any clinical symptoms. Clinical symptoms can include a variety of warts and cervical dysplasia, which may be benign or precancerous.

Yet the campaign website claims, “HPV turns into cancer about 10% of the time,” a claim public health agencies don’t make.

There are over 200 strains of the HPV virus, a subset of which are deemed “high-risk.” HPV can cause genital warts and some strains have been associated with some types of cancer. However, HPV is not the sole risk factor for any cancer, and cancers associated with HPV can also sometimes develop without the presence of the virus.

Methods like regular pap screening are highly effective and have been found to reduce the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer among women by at least 80%.

But the sample ad on the site presents HPV as something always scary and dangerous.

It says:

“HPV Fucks Everybody. In fact, there are more than 14 million new HPV infections in the US each year, because HPV doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are, what you look like who you love or what you’re into. HPV will infect more than 85% of sexually active people of all races, ethnicities and genders. It can lead to genital warts, or worse, over ten types of cancer. So it doesn’t matter if your status is single, committed, or complicated. It doesn’t even matter if you’re not currently sexually active.”

The website also claims the HPV vaccine can prevent a whopping 33,700 types of HPV-related cancers. Even Gardasil 9’s package insert and the CDC website only indicate the HPV vaccine for some cancers of the cervix, vagina, vulva, penis, anus and back of the throat with the HPV virus.

The campaign also repeats Merck’s claims that the vaccine is “safe and effective” and that the side effects are “mild.”

But a series of ongoing lawsuits against Merck allege the drugmaker fast-tracked Gardasil through the FDA’s approval process and deceptively conducted clinical trials to mask serious side effects and exaggerate the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Some of the signature impacts observed following HPV vaccination in thousands of adverse events reports worldwide include permanently disabling autoimmune and neurological conditions such as postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.

To date, there are no valid studies showing the HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer. However, there are studies suggesting the vaccine could increase the risk of cancer.

Finally, the campaign promises that getting vaccinated can “put an end to HPV. For you, for us, for them. For everyone.”

However, the Gardasil 9 vaccine is designed only to suppress nine of the over 200 strains of HPV, and recent research has shown that when the HPV vaccine suppresses certain types of “high-risk” HPV strains, those strains are replaced with other strains associated with some cancers.

While the World Health Organization has launched a global campaign to eradicate cervical cancer as a public health threat, it has not indicated a similar project for HPV.

Publicis is part of ‘the propaganda arm of the global elite’

The campaign is spearheaded by Publicis Health Media and Digitas Health, which are both part of Publicis, along with Fuck Cancer.

According to the campaign publicity, Publicis Health Media is particularly concerned with HPV because the company CEO Arthur Sadoun was diagnosed and treated for HPV-associated cancer.

Last year, the company published a holiday video where board chair Maurice Lévy and Sadoun were joined by actor Michael Douglas, who was diagnosed and treated with throat cancer a decade ago, to promote the HPV vaccine and the Publicis Groupe.

As part of its cancer marketing focus, Publicis Groupe launched its Working with Cancer initiative, at the WEF. In partnership with 30 of the largest global companies, including Pfizer, Sanofi, PepsiCola, Meta and others, the campaign seeks to “abolish the stigma and insecurity that exist for people with cancer in the workplace,” according to the campaign website.

During Super Bowl LVII in February, it ran a commercial about the campaign that won a Gold Lion from the Health & Wellness jury at the 2023 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June.

Publicis Groupe is an ad holding company, which recently rebranded “for the connected age” itself as a “platform,” according to its website.

As Stiles details in her book, just a few such companies — including Publicis, Omnicom, WPP and Interpublic Group — dominate the global media landscape.

Each ad-holding company has billions of dollars in revenue and serves thousands of corporate clients along with universities, nonprofits and governmental and nongovernmental organizations.

As public relations firms, they design ad campaigns and they develop and strategically place print and broadcast media content in mainstream news and PR publications for their clients. They also create public relations campaigns like those described here to develop, promote and defend the reputations of their clients.

They design their strategies in part by collecting data “on virtually every U.S. consumer” and on journalists, politicians and scientists.

Other tactics include flooding the media landscape with spin, developing talking points for “experts” to use in public appearances and generally “using underhanded tactics to promote and defend their clients,” Ecowatch reported.

According to Stiles, an estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by corporate media comes from public relations firms.

She said:

“There is no doubt that the top three PR holding firms WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis, whose collective revenue is over 44 billion, function and should be thought of as the propaganda arm of the global elite.

“The finely-tuned, targeted messages not only create revenue for the transnational capitalist class but just as importantly define the global problems to be solved and the way in which they should be solved, leaving very little room for other creative options.”

Each agency has smaller subsidiaries and PR affiliates under the same corporate ownership, creating the appearance that there are more players in the media field than there actually are. More recently, they have also begun to “gobble up” data companies.

For example, in this campaign, two of three collaborators are part of the Publicis Groupe.

The public relations site Pharma & Health, where one of the “stories” about the “HPV Fucks Everybody” campaign was posted by MediaPost Inc., a marketing company that posts up to 50 different industry blogs.

“Adding together the global revenue of the top 250 independent PR firms ($17 billion) with the PR holding companies ($44 billion) and we are literally swimming in marketing messages intended to consolidate capital for the mega-corporations,” Stiles said.

“The medical messaging repeatedly advises us to outsource health and wellness to drugs or vaccines, poor choices indeed,” she added.

A Defender investigation into Publicis’ clients last year, found it serves a wide range of corporate, governmental and supra-governmental agencies including the WEF and U.S. government agencies like the National Security Agency, tech giants like Google, Amazon, Disney, Microsoft and Meta, and corporate clients PepsiCo, Phillip Morris and Saudi Aramco.

Publicis Groupe was implicated in the “Monsanto File” scandal, where the company was found to be using Publicis Consultants and FleishmanHillard, an Omnicom subsidiary, to launch a PR offensive to rehabilitate the image of genetically modified organisms and pesticides.

Newsguard, a for-profit fact-checking organization backed by Big Pharma, Big Tech, the U.S. government and the American Federation of Teachers — a staunch advocate of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and masks for schoolchildren — is also a client.

So is the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a politically driven service consistently attacking anyone who raises questions about vaccine efficacy or safety, and the organization responsible for creating the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” list.

In her book, Stiles also explains that asset management firms Vanguard and BlackRock are among the top 10 shareholders in the top four ad agency holding companies.


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.

December 8, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Hungary: EU’s Covid-19 vaccine purchases reek of corruption

Remix News | December 7, 2023 

In the European Commission, the procurement of Pfizer vaccines has been surrounded by suspicions of corruption for some time, especially regarding negotiations between EC President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, which were conducted over text messages that subsequently “disappeared.”

“It is clear that these vaccines were ordered and forced on member states in unnecessarily large quantities,” the Hungarian Government Information Center said in response to a request from daily Magyar Nemzet, after it emerged that Pfizer and BioNTech had filed a lawsuit against the Hungarian government in January this year over the purchase of some of the Covid-19 vaccines.

According to documents obtained by Politico, the plaintiffs are demanding payment from Hungary for 3 million BioNTech/Pfizer vaccines worth around €60 million.

Von der Leyen held preliminary talks with the head of Pfizer in March 2021 on the purchase of the coronavirus vaccine, and virtually agreed to the details by text message with the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, Albert Bourla. An investigation into the deal, worth around €35 billion, was launched in January 2022, but the European Commission president’s team failed to find the text messages in question.

EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly concluded that von der Leyen had deliberately obstructed her work by claiming not to have found any text message between the EU commission president and Bourla. It later emerged that they had allegedly only reviewed internal document registers, not text messages, saying they were too short-lived and therefore not covered by EU law on the retention of policy documents.

The anti-Hungarian EU commissioner Vera Jourová, also previously suspected of corruption, could only defend von der Leyen, citing the short-lived, ephemeral nature of text messages.

However, according to the Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, the behavior of the committee members did not comply with the transparency required by EU rules, and no attempt was made to carry out a comprehensive investigation into the matter.

The European Commission president also defended herself by saying that she was not involved in the negotiations and that the messages did not influence the course of the deal. It is no coincidence that von der Leyen has tried to play down the importance of the text message negotiations, as the purchase of Pfizer vaccines has also caused a financial loss for the European Union: Under the terms of the mega-contract with Pfizer and BioNTech, Brussels will buy 900 million doses of vaccines worth $35 billion between the end of 2020 and 2023, with an option for a further 900 million doses.

December 7, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Why America might let Venezuela take Esequibo

By Drago Bosnic | December 6, 2023

When the United States wants to fabricate a reason to, euphemistically speaking, “intervene” in any part of the world, it needs to create a “credible threat”. When there’s none, American intelligence, diplomatic and other assets create one. For instance, during the Kuwait crisis, Iraq was effectively pushed into taking control of its tiny oil-rich southern neighbor, an event Washington DC soon (ab)used to the maximum, launching the (First) Gulf War, one of many American invasions and bombings of Iraq. The belligerent thalassocracy seems to like this recipe so much that it simply can’t help but keep using it everywhere. A senior US diplomat and member of the Foreign Service April Glaspie met Saddam Hussein on July 25, 1990, and told him the following:

“We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.”

Barely a week later, on August 2, the US and its numerous vassals and satellite states launched Operation Desert Shield, which led to Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. It’s important to note that this wouldn’t be the first time Secretary Baker has lied, as evidenced by his infamous promise of “not one inch to the east” given to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev regarding NATO expansion beyond the borders of former East Germany. However, in less than a decade, the world’s most aggressive neocolonialist alliance spread nearly 41 million inches (over 1000 km) precisely to the east and effectively restarted the Cold War (although it could be argued it never ended). However, that’s all long-forgotten history now, right? Well, not really.

As previously mentioned, the US loves recycling “proven” foreign policy frameworks. The latest example would be Venezuela, a nation Washington DC has been eying for decades at this point. Formerly a (neo)colony of the US, under the leadership of the late Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, Caracas became arguably the most fiercely independent nation in South America. It has pushed back against several American attempts at a casus belli, particularly during Trump’s presidency, when the infamous John Bolton tried to push for the invasion of Venezuela. Since then, the South American country has significantly strengthened its position, firmly allied to Russia, China and other superpowers of the emerging multipolar world.

After Joe Biden became president, Venezuela did get some breathing room, as Washington DC looked to the east (remember, the same one it promised not to expand to). The Biden administration’s crackdown on the oil industry led to the depletion of the SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve), which then had to be restocked somehow. The US government unwillingly looked to Caracas. The pro-Biden elements in the DNC are extremely worried that if the SPR isn’t resupplied adequately, it would be impossible to prevent the further growth of gas prices ahead of the 2024 presidential election, which could completely destroy their already plummeting chances for successful reelection. Precisely this might be Venezuela’s once-in-over-a-century opportunity.

Namely, apart from the long overdue recognition of legitimacy by the US, finally putting an end to its crawling aggression against the South American country, Venezuela might get the chance to settle an old territorial dispute with neighboring Guyana, a (former?) British colony. On December 3, Caracas even held a referendum on annexing nearly 160,000 km² of the area known as Esequibo, a very oil-rich region that comprises approximately 75% of Guyana’s territory. A logical question would be, why? Why is Venezuela making such a move at this time? Several days ago, Zero Hedge argued that President Maduro has significant leverage over President Biden, who recently boasted about leading “the most powerful nation in the history of the world”.

It should be noted that Venezuela, while extremely oil-rich, has been having a lot of issues extracting enough oil due to its outdated industrial capacity, primarily thanks to US sanctions that have been preventing much-needed modernization. Thus, Caracas might be opting to take (or retake, in its view) these areas from Guyana so it could finally extract more oil, which could strengthen its position, particularly vis-a-vis the US. However, Brazil expressed concern about the possible instability on its northern border, so it increased its military presence in northern areas, which border both countries. Although Brazil‘s official position is that of de-escalation, the US probably hopes any major changes to the strategic situation in the north could pit the South American giant against Venezuela.

Under President Lula, Brazil maintains good relations with Caracas, but their relationship wasn’t always like that, particularly under former president Bolsonaro, who recognized US puppet Juan Guaido as the “legitimate leader”. While both are effectively out of the picture, the return of any antisocialist leaders to power in Brazil could result in tensions that Washington DC would gladly (ab)use to put a dent in the emerging multipolar world. On the other hand, Maduro might not make the move on Esequibo, as all this could be a ploy to get more concessions from the US, particularly in terms of lifting sanctions that could reinvigorate the Venezuelan economy.

Either way, the possible Venezuelan intervention in Guyana would be virtually impossible to stop, particularly in the initial phase. The small country simply doesn’t have the power necessary to prevent such an operation, as Venezuela is vastly superior militarily. Perhaps Maduro could give the US “guarantees” that he won’t expand “an inch to the east”, which would be a fitting analogy to America’s foreign policy. However, Caracas should tread carefully, as the wounded beast in Washington DC is desperate for a win after it made a historic mistake of taking on Russia, a resurgent superpower that has effectively defeated America’s crawling aggression in Europe. The belligerent thalassocracy doesn’t need much in terms of excuses for an invasion, especially so close to home.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian surgeon slams HRW as unreliable source, says al-Ahli Hospital report ‘baseless’

Press TV – December 6, 2023

A British-Palestinian surgeon has denounced as “unfounded” a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the deadly strike on Gaza’s al-Ahli Hospital, saying it was published without a genuine investigation or conclusive evidence, and that HRW is not a reliable source “as it serves the enemy.”

Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta made the remarks during a lecture titled “The destruction of Gaza’s health sector: confronting devastation and forced displacement” in the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday.

Sitta highlighted that HRW neither communicated with the director of the hospital nor contacted the doctor who received Israeli orders for evacuation in its report.

He went on to say that HRW did not bother to talk to any of the witnesses of the crime as it unfolded, adding, “I always told you never use HRW as a reliable source because it served the enemy.”

On Sunday, HRW reported that evidence suggested a misfired Gaza rocket was the likely cause of an explosion that resulted in heavy casualties at al-Ahli Hospital on October 17, which left at least 417 people dead.

In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, As’ad Abdukhalil, a professor at California State University, Stanislaus, said Sitta’s verdict against HRW was “very damning.”

Sitta, traveled with Doctors Without Borders via Egypt to Gaza on 9 October to work in the besieged territory’s hospitals as a surgeon. He worked in both al-Shifa and al-Ahli hospitals in Gaza.

He has already recounted harrowing healthcare-related ordeals the Palestinian civilians have gone through during Israel’s onslaught on the besieged Gaza Strip.

HRW said in its report that, “The explosion that killed and injured many civilians at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, 2023, resulted from an apparent rocket-propelled munition,” such as those commonly used by Palestinian resistance groups.

It claimed that the findings of its investigation into the explosion were based on a review of photos and videos, satellite imagery, and interviews with witnesses and experts.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said all indications pointed to Israel’s responsibility, adding that the HRW report was biased towards Israel and was not “decisive”.

“HRW hasn’t come up with any evidence to support their findings nor eyewitness testimonies nor opinion of independent military exports,” he said, adding that Hamas received questions from HRW two weeks ago but asked it to delay its report until after the war had ended.

The explosion at the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital triggered outrage across the Arab world. Palestinians blamed an Israeli air strike, while Israel claimed it was caused by a misfiring Palestinian rocket launch.

Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, Israel has pounded hospitals across the besieged enclave where thousands of displaced people and patients were sheltering.

The regime has falsely accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of using hospitals as bases, which Hamas has dismissed.

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas: Biden’s sexual violence claims “cheap Zionist propaganda”

Palestine Information Center – December 6, 2023

GAZA – The Hamas Movement has strongly denounced US president Joe Biden for adopting the Israeli narrative that accuses Palestinian resistance fighters of committing sexual assaults on October 7.

In a statement on Tuesday, Hamas said Biden’s sexual violence claims against its fighters reflected his moral decline and his adoption of Israeli propaganda.

Hamas said that Biden was “supposed to have a minimum level of objectivity and avoid repeating empty and baseless accusations and adopting cheap Zionist propaganda.”

“Repeating such a blatant lie is a Zionist behavior aimed at covering up the ethnic cleansing and genocidal crimes that are being committed by the criminal Nazi occupied army against our people, with American cover and weapons,” Hamas underscored.

Hamas also described Biden’s remarks as “an attempt to mislead the public opinion after the world has seen the good treatment the detainees received from the resistance.”

The Movement called on the international media outlets to side with the truth and debunk the new Zio-American claims against the Palestinian resistance, as they did before when they exposed the lies of beheading children and using Al-Shifa Hospital as a command and control center.

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

DR. MIKE YEADON’S ADDRESS TO THE MEMBERS OF UK PARLIAMENT (4 DECEMBER 2023)

Bitchute

December 6, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

The Fall of Minneapolis

December 1, 2023

Produced by Liz Collin

Written & Directed by Dr. JC Chaix

Cinematography & Original Soundtrack by Josh Feland

See the references and research

Minneapolis Crime Statistics

Based on the bestseller

Award-winning investigative journalist Liz Collin sets the record straight. She uncovers what really happened on Chicago Avenue and exposes the truth of the 2020 riots.

Based on conversations with those who were there—including Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, and other Minneapolis police officers who’ve never spoken out before—Liz exposes how the facts were manipulated to dupe and divide America.

buy the book

December 5, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Washington State GOP Submits Official Ethics Complaint Against Secretary of State for Alleged Misuse of Public Money in Monitoring and Suppressing Criticism

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 3, 2023

Washington (State) Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is facing a formal legal challenge in the form of a complaint filed by local Republicans, alleging the use of public funds to launch spying and censorship against political opponents (but mostly, it would seem, those opposed to Hobbs.)

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

The election period surveillance, introduced through what is known as a sole source contract, was awarded for at least $147,600 and the company was able to put its tools in motion even before the contract was approved.

The Washington State Republican Party (WSRP) on Thursday announced that it, in cooperation with a Long Law office attorney, had submitted its complaint to the Washington State Ethics Board.

Hobbs is accused of spending public money to bankroll the AI company whose “specialty” is voter surveillance via methods like “fact-checking” and subsequent suppression of information unfavorable to the state secretary and her political camp.

The company, called Logically, is registered offshore.

The complaint makes a note of the fact that as secretary of state, regardless of political affiliation, Hobbs has a duty to act in an unbiased and fair manner when it comes to elections.

The state Republicans, however, allege that she violated these (state and federal) constitutional requirements and her oath of office.

Related: AZ Governor Katie Hobbs Asked Twitter To Censor Her Critics, Emails Show

One of the provisions that Hobbs is accused of ignoring is the obligation stemming from the US Constitution, specifically its First Amendment, about the government (i.e., its officials at various levels) not being allowed to take any action that “abridges freedom of speech.”

Proper discharge of office and electioneering at public expense are some of the other unlawful behaviors that the Washington Republicans want her investigated for.

What Hobbs was doing was through a creation of her own, known as Information Security & Response Division; the AI company’s task was surveillance of citizens/opponents of Hobbs’ policy who were expressing themselves on the internet.

According to the complaint, terms as “threats to electoral integrity and (those) targeting the (Washington State) secretary of state or staff” were used as justification for “monitoring voter communications in order to alert Secretary Hobbs of critical or unwelcome ‘narratives’, providing bi-weekly analysis and producing reports of citizen comments, trends, and statistics.”

These bi-weeklies were available to Hobbs, and “outside stakeholders.”

Logically was scouring X, Rumble, Truth Social, Substack, etc, but it was on Facebook where it “conspired to label citizen comments as false, apply warning labels, and suppress distribution of the unwelcome speech” which let Hobbs “suppress and abridge free speech on a massive scale.”

“This is nothing but state-funded electioneering with no public benefit and an Orwellian Totalitarian State promoting the views of the Democrat party and censoring their rivals. WA SoS (secretary of state) actions are part of the destruction of civil society and have absolutely no consideration for the people or the Constitution,” reads the complaint.

December 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Pfizer sued for “false and deceptive” COVID-19 vaccine claims

Maryanne Demasi, reports | December 1, 2023

Myself and others have reported on the exaggerated claims made by vaccine manufacturers about the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines.

In November 2020 for example, Pfizer published results in a press release claiming its mRNA vaccine was “95% effective against COVID-19.” The statistic was widely cited by politicians, academics, and the media.

Several weeks later, when details of the trial were published, it became evident the ‘relative risk reduction’ of 95% corresponded with an ‘absolute risk reduction’ of only 0.84% – a far more conservative number which was never publicly promoted.

The way in which the statistic was communicated to the public was likely to have distorted people’s perception of the vaccine’s benefit and increased their willingness to be vaccinated.

I also wrote about how Pfizer hid its data on waning immunity. Regulatory filings showed Pfizer had evidence, early into the vaccination campaign, that its vaccine’s efficacy waned, but the company waited months before alerting the public.

Pfizer would not explain why it delayed the publication of its data, but if the public was told about the vaccine’s fading efficacy at the time, it would have hampered the uptake of the vaccine.

These deceptive practises are now part of a lawsuit against Pfizer.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced this week that he’s suing Pfizer, saying the company “intentionally misrepresented the efficacy” of its vaccine and censored people “who threatened to disseminate the truth” about the vaccine in public discussions.

In a statement, Paxton wrote, “We are pursuing justice for the people of Texas, many of whom were coerced by tyrannical vaccine mandates to take a defective product sold by lies…The facts are clear. Pfizer did not tell the truth about their COVID-19 vaccines.”

Paxton is seeking more than $US 10 million in civil fines and a court order barring Pfizer from speaking publicly about the efficacy of its vaccine.

The lawsuit

According to the 54-page lawsuit, Pfizer engaged in a “deception campaign across several fronts” and consequently, the company became “grossly and unfairly enriched by its deceptive acts,” namely;

·      First, duration of protection: FDA recognized when it first authorized Pfizer’s vaccine that it was “not possible” to know how effective the vaccine would remain beyond two months. But in early 2021, Pfizer deliberately created the false impression that its vaccine had durable and sustained protection, going so far as to withhold highly relevant data and information from the consuming public showing that efficacy waned rapidly.

·       Second, transmission: FDA warned Pfizer that it “needed” additional information to determine whether the vaccine protected against “transmission” of COVID-19 between persons. But Pfizer instead engaged in a fear-mongering campaign, exploiting intense public fears over the year-long pandemic by insinuating that vaccination was necessary for Americans to protect their loved ones from contracting COVID-19.

·       Third, variant protection: Pfizer knowingly made false and unsupported claims about vaccine performance against variants, including specifically the so-called Delta variant. The vaccine performed remarkably poorly against the Delta variant, and Pfizer’s own data confirmed this fact. Nonetheless, Pfizer told the public that its vaccine was “very, very, very effective against Delta.”

The lawsuit goes on to say that Pfizer also took overt action to intimidate and silence people who posted factual information about the COVID-19 vaccines, in order to “prolong the effectiveness of the company’s deception campaign.”

Paxton said, “When the failure of its product became apparent, Pfizer then pivoted to silencing truth-tellers.”

In the lawsuit, journalist Alex Berenson is named as one of the people censored. It states Berenson posted information that was critical of the mRNA vaccines to his hundreds of thousands of followers, so Pfizer “plotted to silence Berenson and eliminate his speech from public discourse.”

In addition to coercing social media platforms to censor truthful information, the lawsuit states that Pfizer intimidated vaccine skeptics. In November 2021 for example, CEO Albert Bourla labelled them “criminals” who have “literally cost millions of lives.”

In summary, the lawsuit states:

Pfizer knowingly and recklessly engaged in a multi-faceted scheme to mislead the American public about the efficacy of its COVID-19 vaccine, including making affirmative misrepresentations, withholding material information, and taking steps to censor and suppress individuals who disseminated truthful information adverse Pfizer’s deceptive scheme to increase sales and consumption of its vaccine.

Many have welcomed the move saying it could have political ramifications or encourage other States to launch similar lawsuits.

December 1, 2023 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

‘If We Get Away With It, It’s Legal’: Documents Reveal New Details on U.S. Government’s ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 29, 2023

Government agencies, private-sector firms, academia and nonprofits were collaborating to combat alleged “misinformation” and “disinformation” as far back as 2017, according to new documents released Tuesday.

The “CTIL Files” — which refer to the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTI League, a key player in the so-called “Censorship-Industrial Complex” — are based on documents received from an unnamed but “highly credible” whistleblower, according to investigative journalists Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag and Matt Taibbi, who released the files.

The new documents rival or exceed the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” in “scale and importance,” according to the journalists, two of whom — Shellenberger and Taibbi — were instrumental in releasing many of the “Twitter Files” that first called attention to the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”

A comprehensive picture of the birth of the ‘anti-disinformation’ sector

The documents, which the journalists detailed on Substack, center around the activities of the CTI League, which “officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).”

According to the journalists, the CTI League documents “offer the missing link … to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files” and “offer a comprehensive picture of the birth of the ‘anti-disinformation’ sector.”

“The whistleblower’s documents describe everything from the genesis of modern digital censorship programs to the role of the military and intelligence agencies, partnerships with civil society organizations and commercial media, and the use of sock puppet accounts and other offensive techniques,” the journalists wrote.

Documents in the “CTIL Files” show members of the CTI League, DHS officials and key figures from social media companies “all working closely together in the censorship process.”

This “public-private model” laid the groundwork for “anti-misinformation” and “anti-disinformation” campaigns launched by the U.S. and U.K. governments in 2020 and 2021, the journalists wrote, including attempts to circumvent First Amendment protections against government censorship of speech in the U.S.

Such tactics included “masking censorship within cybersecurity institutions and counter-disinformation agendas; a heavy focus on stopping disfavored narratives, not just wrong facts; and pressuring social media platforms to take down information or take other actions to prevent content from going viral,” they added.

The CTI League went still further though, the journalists wrote, engaging “in offensive operations to influence public opinion, discussing ways to promote ‘counter-messaging,’ co-opt hashtags, dilute disfavored messaging, create sock puppet accounts, and infiltrate private invite-only groups.”

Such censorship lies at the heart of Missouri et al. v. Biden et al., a First Amendment censorship case where injunctions were issued against several federal agencies and government officials, barring them from communicating with social media companies regarding user content. The injunctions are now under review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Former British intelligence analyst charged with creating counter-disinformation project

The journalists wrote that while previous releases of the “Twitter Files” and “Facebook Files” revealed “overwhelming evidence of government-sponsored censorship,” they had not revealed “where the idea for such mass censorship came from.”

The whistleblower alleged that a key figure in the CTI League, “a ‘former’ British intelligence analyst, was ‘in the room’ at the Obama White House in 2017 when she received the instructions to create a counter-disinformation project to stop a ‘repeat of 2016.’”

By 2019, this analyst, Sara-Jayne “SJ” Terp, had “developed the sweeping censorship framework,” leading a team of U.S. and U.K. “military and intelligence contractors” who “co-led CTIL.” Previously, in 2018, Terp attended a 10-day military exercise organized by the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, according to the journalists.

It was there that Terp met Pablo Breuer, a former U.S. Navy commander, who became a key figure in the CTI League. According to Wired, the two realized that misinformation “could be treated … as a cybersecurity problem.” This led to the development of CogSec, which soon housed the “MisinfoSec Working Group.”

“Terp’s plan, which she shared in presentations to information security and cybersecurity groups in 2019, was to create ‘Misinfosec communities’ that would include government,” the journalists wrote.

By spring 2020, it appears Terp achieved this plan, as the CTI League partnered with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which has been implicated in prior releases of the “Twitter Files” for its role in the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.”

The MisinfoSec Working Group included Renee DiResta, a former CIA operative who worked for the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) — later renamed the Virality Project (VP). This group “created a censorship, influence, and anti-disinformation strategy called Adversarial Misinformation and Influence Tactics and Techniques (AMITT).”

According to the journalists, AMITT adapted “a cybersecurity framework developed by MITRE, a major defense and intelligence contractor that has an annual budget of $1 to $2 billion in government funding.” MITRE is a backer of the Vaccination Credential Initiative and the SMART Health Card — a digital “vaccine passport.”

Terp used AMITT to develop the DISARM framework, which the World Health Organization (WHO) applied in “countering anti-vaccination campaigns across Europe.”

The same framework “has been formally adopted by the European Union and the United States as part of a ‘common standard for exchanging structured threat information on Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference’” according to the journalists.

‘Can we get a troll on their bums?’

According to the journalists, MisinfoSec’s motivation for counter-misinformation was the “twin political earthquakes of 2016: Brexit and the election of Trump.”

“There’s something off kilter with our information landscape,” Terp and other CTI League members wrote, according to documents.

“The usual useful idiots and fifth columnists — now augmented by automated bots, cyborgs and human trolls — are busily engineering public opinion, stoking up outrage, sowing doubt and chipping away at trust in our institutions. And now it’s our brains that are being hacked,” they added.

In spring 2020, the CTI League set its sights on COVID-19-related narratives, targeting users who engaged in messaging that ran contrary to official policy.

“CTIL began tracking and reporting disfavored content on social media, such as anti-lockdown narratives like ‘all jobs are essential,’ ‘we won’t stay home,’ and ‘open America now,’” the journalists wrote.

“CTIL created a law enforcement channel for reporting content as part of these efforts. The organization also did research on individuals posting anti-lockdown hashtags … and kept a spreadsheet with details from their Twitter bios. The group also discussed requesting ‘takedowns’ and reporting website domains to registrars,” they added.

Regarding the “we won’t stay home” narrative, internal documents revealed by the whistleblower showed that CTI League members wrote, “Do we have enough to ask for the groups and/or accounts to be taken down or at a minimum reported and checked?” and “Can we get all troll on their bums if not?”

They also called posters circulating online promoting anti-lockdown posters “disinformation artifacts,” saying, “We should have seen this one coming” and asking “can we stop the spread, do we have enough evidence to stop superspreaders, and are there other things we can do (are there countermessagers we can ping etc).”

During CTI League brainstorming sessions to develop strategies for “counter-messaging for things like encouraging people to wear masks,” statements such as “Repetition is truth” were uttered by CTI League staff, the journalists noted.

The CTI League also sought to go “beyond simply urging Twitter to slap a warning label on Tweets, or to put individuals on blacklists.”

According to the journalists, “The AMITT framework calls for discrediting individuals as a necessary prerequisite of demanding censorship against them” and “trying to get banks to cut off financial services to individuals who organize rallies or events.”

As part of these efforts, even truthful information was targeted. In a 2019 podcast on “Disinformation, Cognitive Security, and Influence,” Terp admitted, “Most information is actually true … but set in the wrong context.”

“You’re not trying to get people to believe lies most of the time,” she said. “Most of the time, you’re trying to change their belief sets. And in fact, really deeper than that, you’re trying to change, to shift their internal narratives … the set of stories that are your baseline for your culture.”

Previous “Twitter Files” releases have revealed that true information was targeted for censorship by the U.S. government and social media platforms like Twitter if the information contradicted official policy regarding COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions.

‘Cognitive security’ a euphemism for censorship

In the same podcast, according to the journalists, Terp said, “Cognitive security is the thing you want to have. You want to protect that cognitive layer. It basically, it’s about pollution. Misinformation, disinformation is a form of pollution across the Internet.”

The journalists wrote, “A key component of Terp’s work through CTIL, MisinfoSec, and AMITT was to insert the concept of ‘cognitive security’ into the fields of cybersecurity and information security.”

Such “cognitive security” was seen as being threatened by the erosion of the mass media’s control on information and influence over public opinion.

Documents revealed by the whistleblower included a MisinfoSec report stating “For a long time, the ability to reach mass audiences belonged to the nation-state (e.g. in the USA via broadcast licensing through ABC, CBS and NBC).”

“Now, however, control of informational instruments has been allowed to devolve to large technology companies who have been blissfully complacent and complicit in facilitating access to the public for information operators at a fraction of what it would have cost them by other means,” the report said.

The same report also called for a form of “pre-bunking,” to “preemptively inoculate a vulnerable population against messaging,” suggesting that DHS-funded Information Sharing and Analysis Centers could be used to promote such pre-bunking.

‘If we get away with it, it’s legal’

Public-private partnerships were specifically sought out in an attempt to circumvent First Amendment free speech protections in the U.S., the documents revealed, even while Bloomberg, The Washington Post and Wired wrote glowing articles portraying the CTI League as a mere group of “volunteer” cybersecurity experts.

Yet, according to the journalists, “In just one month, from mid-March to mid-April [2020], the supposedly all-volunteer CTIL had grown to ‘1,400 vetted members in 76 countries’” and had “helped to take down 2,833 cybercriminal assets on the internet” including some which impersonated government organizations, the United Nations and WHO.

On the same 2019 podcast, according to the journalists, Breuer explained how the CTI League was getting around the First Amendment, by working to get “nontraditional partners into one room,” including “maybe somebody from one of the social media companies, maybe a few special forces operators, and some folks from Department of Homeland Security.”

Together, they would “talk in a non-attribution, open environment in an unclassified way so that we can collaborate better, more freely and really start to change the way that we address some of these issues,” Breuer said.

Breuer even likened these tactics to those employed by the Chinese government, saying “If you talk to the average Chinese citizen, they absolutely believe that the Great Firewall of China is not there for censorship. They believe that it’s there because the Chinese Communist Party wants to protect the citizenry and they absolutely believe that’s a good thing.”

“If the US government tried to sell that narrative, we would absolutely lose our minds and say, ‘No, no, this is a violation of our First Amendment rights.’ So, the in-group and out-group messaging have to be often different,” he said.

The whistleblower told the journalists that CTI League leaders did not discuss their potential violation of the First Amendment.

“The ethos was that if we get away with it, it’s legal, and there were no First Amendment concerns because we have a ‘public-private partnership’ — that’s the word they used to disguise those concerns. ‘Private people can do things public servants can’t do, and public servants can provide the leadership and coordination,’” the whistleblower said.

According to the journalists, the authors of the MisinfoSec report also “advocated for police, military, and intelligence involvement in censorship, across Five Eyes nations, and even suggested that Interpol should be involved.”

The CTI League documents also suggest that the organization was involved in a form of domestic spying, with one document noting that while censorship activities abroad are “typically” performed by “the CIA and NSA and the Department of Defense,” such efforts “against Americans” necessitate the use of private partners because the government lacks the “legal authority” to do so.

According to the whistleblower, CTI League members also went to great lengths to conceal their activities, with a CTI League handbook recommending the use of burner phones, online pseudonyms and the generation of fake AI faces. One document advised, “Lock your s**t down … your spy disguise.”

One suggested list of questions to be posed to prospective CTI League members proposed asking whether those individuals had ever “worked with influence operations (e.g. disinformation, hate speech, other digital harms etc) previously” and whether those efforts included “active measures” and “psyops” (psychological operations).

Indeed, according to the documents, several CTI League members had worked for the military or intelligence agencies, while according to the whistleblower, “roughly 12-20 active people involved in CTIL worked at the FBI or CISA” — even, for a time, displaying their agency seals alongside their names on the CTI League’s internal Slack channel.

Terp, for instance, previously designed machine learning algorithms and unmanned vehicle systems for the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence.

According to the whistleblower, the CTI League sought “to become part of the federal government.”

Shellenberger, Taibbi to testify before Congress this week

According to the journalists, the FBI declined to comment, while CISA, Terp and other CTI League figures did not respond to requests for comment.

However, one CTI League member, Bonnie Smalley, did respond to the journalists’ request. She wrote, verbatim, “all i can comment on is that i joined cti league which is unaffiliated with any govt orgs because i wanted to combat the inject bleach nonsense online during covid. … i can assure you that we had nothing to do with the govt though.”

“CTIL appears to have generated publicity about itself in the Spring and Fall of 2020 for the same reason EIP did: to claim later that its work was all out in the open and that anybody who suggested it was secretive was engaging in a conspiracy theory,” the journalists wrote.

“But as internal messages have revealed, much of what EIP did was secret, as well as partisan, and demanding of censorship by social media platforms, contrary to its claims,” they said, adding that “EIP and VP, ostensibly, ended, but CTIL is apparently still active, based on the LinkedIn pages of its members.”

The journalists said the documents will be presented to Congressional investigators and made public, while protecting the identity of the whistleblower.

Shellenberger and Taibbi will testify at Thursday’s hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. They previously testified before the same committee in March.

On Tuesday, Taibbi appeared in a live YouTube webcast presenting some of the key revelations from the first release of the “CTIL Files.”


Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

November 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ex-Soviet state summons Western envoys over funding of local media

RT | November 29, 2023

Azerbaijan has filed complaints with the US, Germany and France over the illegal funding of a local media outlet, which has published investigations into government corruption. Three of its journalists were recently arrested on accusations of currency smuggling.

On Tuesday, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry issued a statement saying the ambassadors of the three Western countries had been summoned to a meeting. They were informed that the AbzasMedia portal was conducting unlawful financial operations with the participation of organizations registered in those states. They were also told that their embassies were involved in such activities.

Azerbaijani legislation prohibits the allocation of funds to unregistered projects. However, according to the foreign ministry, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), FreedomNow, New Democracy Foundation, and other organizations illegally transferred funds to the country, violating the rules of grant allocation and illegally facilitating the activities of the unregistered media portal AbzasMedia.

AbzasMedia said in a statement that, several days ago, three of its journalists were arrested on charges of “currency smuggling” and sentenced to four months in custody, linking the case to its corruption investigations. The outlet also reported that, according to police, €40,000 ($44,000) in cash was found in the office, and accused officers of “deliberately putting money in the office to justify arrests.”

Last month, the government of neighboring Georgia raised the alarm over the actions of the USAID-funded Center for Applied Nonviolent Strategies (CANVAS), saying it was planning to unleash a violent color revolution. The US Embassy in Tbilisi claimed the accusations against CANVAS were “false and fundamentally mischaracterize the goals of our assistance to Georgia.”

On its website, USAID states that it is “investing in democracy work to advance a free, peaceful, and prosperous world.”

USAID activities have been banned in Russia since 2012. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, this decision was mostly due to the fact that the nature of the agency’s work in the country did not always comply with the stated goals, including their “attempts to influence the political process” through the distribution of grants.

November 29, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

It pays to be friends with Zelensky: $75m yachts reveal sudden wealth of the Ukrainian leader’s inner circle

In the Midst of Brutal War: Extravagance and Proxy Intrigues Ignite Global Outrage

By Andrei Datsyuk | The Islander | November 21, 2023

In the heart of Eastern Europe, where the tumult of war clashes with the allure of Western support, a seismic scandal unfolds, casting a long shadow over Ukraine’s leadership. President Volodymyr Zelensky, once seen as a beacon of hope against corruption, is now ensnared in a scandal involving the alleged purchase of two luxury yachts, “Lucky Me” and “My Legacy,” worth a combined $75 million. This lavish expenditure, facilitated in the opulent settings of Abu Dhabi and Antibes, starkly contrasts with Ukraine’s dire war reality and raises damning questions about the integrity and criminal liability of its leadership amidst heavy reliance on Western aid.

In a striking expose, an independent journalistic inquiry has brought to light an egregious display of opulence by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s closest associates. Boris and Serhiy Shefir, two of Zelenskyy’s confidants, have been implicated in the purchase of two ultra -luxury yachts, with a jaw-dropping combined cost of $75 million. These purchases, completed in October 2023 in Abu Dhabi and Antibes, raise severe concerns about corruption at the highest levels of Ukrainian leadership. The extravagance is particularly alarming given the context: these funds, likely derived from Western aid allocated for Ukraine’s war effort against Russia, appear to have been diverted for personal luxury, highlighting a disturbing (criminal) misallocation of resources intended for the nation’s defence.

Journalist Shahzad Nasir, in a revealing video exposé, has brought to light a scandalous facet of corruption within the Ukrainian leadership at the absolute highest levels:

An explosive expose has brought to light allegations of massive corruption at the highest levels of Ukraine’s leadership

The Ukrainian leadership’s reputation has been further marred by a recent corruption scandal involving high-ranking military officials. Key army chiefs have been caught misusing US aid, intended for the nation’s defense, to indulge in extravagant purchases of luxury vehicles and properties in Spain. This egregious misuse of funds starkly contrasts with the plight of Ukrainian soldiers facing ammunition shortages on the frontlines. President Zelensky’s response, firing these officials, appears as a belated effort to address corruption. This pattern of corruption, increasingly visible to the public, points to a troubling common denominator: the Zelensky administration. This revelation challenges the integrity of Ukraine’s governance in a time of crisis, casting a shadow over Zelensky’s leadership.

The juxtaposition of Zelensky’s associates’ extravagant yacht purchases with the corruption scandal in Ukraine’s military casts a glaring light on a pattern of corruption and misallocation at the heart of the nation’s governance. Amidst the backdrop of brutal war, these revelations not only underscore a profound disconnect in Ukraine’s leadership but also hint at a systemic graft, where the nation’s resources and Western aid are diverted for personal gain at a time when national solidarity, unity and responsible leadership are desperately needed.

Boris and Serhiy Shefir, emerging from the same roots as President Zelensky, have risen to prominence and power. Born in the same city as Zelensky, Kryvyi Rih, they share a bond that transcends the professional; a camaraderie rooted in shared experiences and a collective rise to prominence through the “Kvartal-95 studio.” However, their proximity to power and recent indulgence in lavish lifestyles, amidst the grim realities of a nation ripped apart by an unnecessary war, a war provoked by Ukraine via its master in Washington, raises grave questions about corruption and misallocation within Ukraine’s elite. This ostentatious display of wealth, in stark contrast to the country’s dire needs, highlights the troubling nexus of personal enrichment and power in Ukrainian politics, where the welfare of the nation is seemingly secondary to the luxuries of the few.

“Lucky Me” Purchase Documents
“My Legacy” Purchase Documents

Appointed as the first assistant to President Zelenskyy in 2019, Serhiy Shefir’s deeper entanglement in Zelenskyy’s covert financial dealings soon came to light. Investigative reports by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project unveiled Shefir’s pivotal role in managing Zelenskyy’s offshore network, spanning the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize. This web of deceit, exposed by the Pandora’s Archives, revealed Shefir as the clandestine custodian of Zelenskyy’s wealth, executing high-value property purchases in London. Notably, Shefir acquired a lavish three-bedroom apartment on Glenworth Street and a luxurious two-bedroom flat in Chalfont Court, totaling over £3.78 million ($5.78 million). These revelations, too significant for even Kiev-aligned Ukrainian media to ignore, underscore a staggering level of corruption, implicating the highest echelons of Ukrainian leadership in a scandalous misuse of power and wealth.

Ukraine’s chronic struggle with corruption is deeply rooted in its history. The oligarchic power structures have long cast a shadow over the nation’s governance, epitomized by the infamous Burisma scandal and the contentious dismissal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, allegedly to protect Hunter Biden. This particular episode underscores the intricate web of political power and corporate interests in Ukraine, igniting international scrutiny and raising critical questions about external influences on the country’s legal and judicial processes. These ongoing issues of systemic corruption erode both domestic confidence and international trust in Ukraine’s institutions.

The lavish lifestyles and controversial financial dealings of President Zelensky and his associates have cast a shadow over Ukraine’s already fragile trust in governance. This juxtaposition of opulent yacht purchases and unchecked personal spending amid Ukraine’s reliance on Western aid paints a grim picture of leadership. The implications of this misallocated aid extend beyond Ukraine’s borders, stirring unrest in the Middle East and spotlighting the interconnectedness of Ukraine’s internal politics with global geopolitical dynamics.

The recent shopping extravaganza by Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska in New York City amplifies concerns over the misuse of American aid. These actions not only raise questions about the ethical conduct of Ukraine’s first family but also signal the potential role of Ukrainian corruption in fuelling regional instability. This crisis transcends national boundaries, posing a significant challenge to global stability and the fight against corruption.

As Ukraine endures the horrors of war, with over half a million lives lost in an unnecessary conflict, the populace struggles for daily survival. In stark contrast, their leaders, basking in luxury, exhibit an alarming indifference. The yachts “Lucky Me” and “My Legacy” serve as a poignant emblem of this leadership’s blatant disconnect from the nation’s suffering. At this pivotal moment, Ukraine faces a crucial decision: embrace democratic ideals and tackle corruption, or persist on a path where power and luxury eclipse the urgent needs of a nation in agony. This choice will not only dictate Ukraine’s future but also mirror its dedication to the democratic principles it professes, amidst a climate of contempt and apathy from its rulers. Reports like these fuelling righteous anger don’t bode well for Zelensky as he clings to power amid swirling rumours of coups, underscoring the volatile and uncertain nature of his tenure.

November 28, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment