Attempts by the US State Department to brush off Seymour Hersh’s article about the sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines as “nonsense” are overt lies that display shocking ignorance of American history, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Friday.
The veteran investigative journalist reported on Wednesday that the US was behind the destruction of the Baltic Sea pipelines in September 2022. American divers planted charges under the cover of a NATO exercise, and a Norwegian airplane detonated them remotely when the time came, Hersh wrote.
“It would not be typical for us to engage allies and partners on something that is utter and complete nonsense,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Thursday, answering a question about Hersh’s article.
Zakharova said she was astonished by Price’s audacity to call “nonsense” what US President Joe Biden and Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland openly described as their preferred outcome.
“The US is once again lying live on air, openly mocking journalists who asked fully justified questions,” Zakharova said.
Washington also has a history of targeting civilian petrochemical infrastructure, Zakharova noted, citing the 1983 CIA sabotage of a pipeline in Nicaragua as an example.
“You did this, you do this, and you will do this until you’re stopped,” the spokeswoman added.
As for bringing allies and partners into “nonsense,” Zakharova argued that this was precisely what “trans-Atlantic solidarity” means in practice, referring to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one example.
“Twenty years ago, Secretary of State Colin Powell brought to the UN Security Council a vial of something, and called [on] allies and partners to invade a sovereign state, without any evidence, over claims that proved to be utter nonsense. Ned, do you know your own department’s history?” Zakharova said. “I have no doubts that at the State Department they are bad with the history of their own country. That’s why we are where we are.”
Explosions that damaged both Nord Stream pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm cut off the flow of Russian natural gas to Germany. US officials tried to blame Russia for the blasts, while expressing delight at the destruction and calling it an “opportunity” for Europe. The White House has denounced Hersh’s report as “utterly false and complete fiction.”
Zakharova noted that Denmark and Sweden had refused Russian offers to assist with the investigation, while Norway declined to provide aid citing EU sanctions, adding that this shows the three governments were not interested in finding out the truth, but rather covering it up.
China has demanded that the United States “explain itself to the world” if the revelations in Seymour Hersh’s story about US intel being responsible for destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines are true.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist published an article this week in which he asserted that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation.
According to Hersh’s sources, the explosives were planted in June 2022 by US Navy divers under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise and were detonated three months later with a remote signal sent by a sonar buoy.
One source told Hersh that the plotters knew the covert operation was an “act of war,” with some in the CIA and State Department warning, “Don’t do this. It’s stupid and will be a political nightmare if it comes out.”
Now Beijing is demanding that the White House address the issue, seemingly unimpressed with the Biden administration’s rather weak response to merely label the story “false”.
Earlier today, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning asserted that Washington would have to bear responsibility if the report is confirmed as accurate.
“If the conclusions of the investigation are true, then the US behavior is unacceptable,” the diplomat told reporters, adding that the US would need to “explain itself to the world community.”
The Kremlin also responded to the report by demanding a fresh international investigation into the attack, which was preceded by both Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland asserting that the pipelines would be taken out if Russia invaded Ukraine.
Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said Hersh’s article showed “the need for an open international investigation into this unprecedented attack on this critical infrastructure.”
“It’s a very important piece, which… must provoke the acceleration of the international probe. But we, on the contrary, witness attempts to silently wind down such international investigation,” he added.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is also calling for a full inquiry.
“The Pulitzer Prize winner’s suspicions must be investigated,” wrote co-chairman of the AfD parliamentary group, Tino Chrupalla.
“Has NATO’s leading power carried out an attack on our country’s vital critical infrastructure in European waters? Then one would have to question whether the alliance guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it. The consequence would be the withdrawal of all U.S. troops.”
National Security Adviser to President Biden Jake Sullivan played a prominent role in plotting the September 26, 2022, sabotage against the Russo-European Nord Stream pipelines, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed. So, who is Jake Sullivan: “the cat’s meow,” “once-in-a-generation intellect,” or a reckless hawk?
“I have great respect for Hersh and his reporting and believe that Sullivan could certainly have been instrumental in pushing for and carrying out this deceitful campaign that likely has inflicted monumental damage on citizens worldwide while also sapping America’s remaining national prestige,” Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik.
In December 2021, Jake Sullivan, acting with Joe Biden’s blessing, convened men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments to come up with a plan on how to destruct Nord Stream 1 and 2 designed to pump Russian natural gas to Europe, according to Seymour Hersh’s recent bombshell.
In early 2022, the CIA told Sullivan that they knew how to blow up the pipelines. The group decided to keep the risky plot on a hush. The US Congress wasn’t informed. The US military and intelligence operatives did their best to conceal Washington’s role in the sabotage. As per the investigative journalist, the team had concerns about the legality of the plot and was well aware that it could quickly morph into a foreign policy nightmare.
After the pipelines had been destroyed, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and, later, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland openly praised the development.
“When any crime is committed, the immediate question to ask when seeking suspects is ‘to whose benefit?’ Not only did it benefit the US, US officials made comments before and after the pipeline’s destruction virtually confirming their role and the benefits derived,” Brian Berletic, geopolitical analyst and former US marine, told Sputnik.
For his part, Jake Sullivan stated laconically on September 27, 2022, that the US was supporting efforts to investigate the “apparent sabotage” and “will continue [it’s] work to safeguard Europe’s energy security.”
“Hersh’s reporting on the Nord Stream bombing is completely convincing and I know for a fact that he has reliable sources, mostly in the intelligence community, but I would rather regard Sullivan as the implementer of the attack on the pipeline by virtue of his position rather than the driving force behind it,” Philip Giraldi, former CIA station chief, now an executive director of the Council for the National Interest, told Sputnik. “To be sure, Joe Biden would have had to promote and endorse the project.”
Clinton’s Golden Boy
Jake Sullivan, 46, has long been praised as a “golden boy” by the US mainstream media. Having graduated from Yale in 1998 Sullivan became an advisor to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2008 and later, after Hillary dropped out from the race, he advised Barack Obama during his general election campaign.
Sullivan was just 32 when he was sworn in as Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff for policy at the US State Department. When Clinton left the State Department in early 2013, Obama promoted Sullivan to the position of national security adviser to then-Vice President Joe Biden.
In 2015, Sullivan married Margaret Goodlander, onetime advisor to well-known hawks Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who used to previously work for the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for a New American Security. (Goodlander is currently Counsel to Attorney General Merrick Garland).
Sullivan is known for being a quiet but prominent member of the Clinton-Obama team. According to the press, he was part of the “exclusive” team working on resuming relations with Cuba and striking the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal. He is also said to be Hillary’s close confidante in the Libya plan, which was developed months before the 2011 NATO invasion of the North African state and brutal killing of its leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Sullivan and his boss, Clinton, adhered to the concept of “smart power,” which encompasses the use of military threat, force, and sanctions and the soft-power levers favored by foreign policy doves, which includes humanitarian aid and negotiations.
The aide was reportedly called “the cat’s meow” and a “potential future president” by Hillary, while Biden lauded him as a “once-in-a-generation intellect.”
In 2015, the sandy-haired Minnesotan joined Hillary on her 2015/2016 election cycle as a foreign policy adviser and eventually returned to the US administration as Joe Biden’s national security adviser in 2021.
Sullivan Lacks True Sense of Right Versus Wrong
However, there’s another side to Sullivan’s stellar career. “Sullivan is clearly drunk on power and lacking a true sense of right versus wrong,” according to Ortel.
“Sullivan is a fiercely partisan globalist who achieved numerous high honors in academic life so he is supremely self-confident and, sadly, often grievously wrong,” Ortel told Sputnik. “One way to get a sense of the way he operates is to look through the State Department and Podesta WikiLeaks files and the FBI Vault files on Hillary Clinton where Sullivan is frequently involved. Like the Clintons, Sullivan thrust himself into contact with powerful Democrats and operated well above his experience level early on. But unlike the Clintons, Obama, and Biden, Sullivan has yet to hold elected office.”
One might wonder why Sullivan rose to prominence so fast even though he had relatively little experience in government affairs. Hillary herself admitted that Jake wasn’t the most experienced diplomat when it came to foreign policy.
“Jake was not the most experienced diplomat at the State Department I could have chosen, but he was discreet and had my absolute confidence,” Clinton wrote in her memoir Hard Choices while describing her decision to tap Sullivan to kick off negotiations with Iran in 2012. “His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process.”
According to US media observers, Sullivan’s primary secret is that he mastered himself in delivering on his boss’s wants and needs even when it went contrary to rules and ethics. The US press quoted a senior Obama aide as saying that Sullivan was ready to do “everything” for then-Secretary Clinton.
Unsurprisingly, Sullivan had no scruples about Hillary’s unsecured email server use for classified and top secret government correspondence. He was bullish on Washington’s Libyan and Syrian interventions which spiraled out of control, completely ruining the North Africa state and leaving the Syrian Arab Republic in tatters.
“Under Obama and Biden, Sullivan is connected to train wreck after train wreck, from the Arab “spring”, to Benghazi, ISIS, the Iran ‘deal’ and more. He seems to be a huge fan of secret negotiations that are never subject to oversight,” Ortel noted.
Sullivan got mired in Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi scandal revolving around the former secretary of state’s failure to prevent a brutal slaughter of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other US nationals in Libya on September 11, 2012. During the investigation into the matter, the House committee stumbled upon Sullivan’s letter in which the official emphasized that “we need to live in a world of risks,” while touting Washington’s decision to oust Gaddafi which opened the door to chaos in Libya.
Trump-Russia “Collusion” Hoax
“In the 2016 campaign, he had every motive to hide the misdeeds of the Clintons, including corruption and tax fraud involving The Clinton Foundation and many other charities,” said Ortel, who has been conducting a private investigation into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years. “Here it will prove interesting to see what [Special Councel] John Durham has to say about Sullivan, including his likely role pushing the Russian Hoax, for Trump’s impeachment and for electing Joe Biden.”
Sullivan appeared to have no scruples about actively spreading the Trump-Russia collusion narrative and keeping the myth alive even after the allegations about Trump were proven null and void. Later, Durham’s investigation shed light on Clinton campaign operatives’ role in peddling a fake Trump-Alfa Bank story and uncorroborated “dirty dossier” by ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
However, when testifying under oath before the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in December 2017, the Clinton confidante denied any knowledge of the plot or people involved in it.
US investigative journalist Paul Sperry alleged that Sullivan was well-aware that the Trump-Alfa Bank story was “cooked-up” and personally spearheaded a “confidential project” to link Trump to the Kremlin.
Sullivan was also the one who personally promoted the Trump-Russia collusion story prior to the 2016 elections. Thus, during the July 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia, Sullivan met with a number of mainstream media producers and anchors to tell a story “that Trump was conspiring with Putin to steal the election.”
Around that time, the CIA intercepted Russian intelligence’s “chatter” about a Clinton “foreign policy adviser” who allegedly proposed a plan to vilify Donald Trump by linking him to the Kremlin in order to distract public opinion from Hillary’s emailgate scandal. Some US observers believe that the foreign policy adviser in question was Jake Sullivan.
According to Ortel, Sullivan could well be aware of many other “dirty” secrets of the US Democratic establishment, including the Clinton’s alleged pay-to-play schemes, Joe and Hunter Biden influence peddling and Team Obama’s efforts to undermine then-sitting President Donald Trump through a string of dodgy investigations and leaks.
“Simply put, Sullivan has no choice but to cover up the disasters connected to Biden, Obama and Clinton and likely cannot accept the grave errors (and high crimes) that seem to have been committed. In this effort, he will believe he is secure because his wife is a close advisor and friend of Attorney General Merrick Garland,” the Wall Street analyst remarked.
Nord Stream Reporting Not Done
When it comes to the Nord Stream sabotage, “in a just process, Sullivan and his co-conspirators would swiftly be charged, convicted and incarcerated if it is proven that he orchestrated an undeclared war against Russia,” argued Ortel.
According to Ortel, by fanning the flames of proxy war against Russia, Team Biden both pursues vested interests and seeks to cover up and obscure political misdeeds involving Biden, Clinton and Obama in Ukraine and other nations from 2009 to date.
Still, it appears that one could soon hear more about the Biden administration’s secretive and risky plot. Hersh indicated to Sputnik that more investigative pieces about the Nord Stream explosion were forthcoming, but declined to provide further details.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s silence on the recent revelation by an American investigative journalist that US navy divers blew up Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline speaks volumes, Maximilian Krah of the German AfD party told Sputnik.
Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who blew the whistle on US atrocities in Vietnam War and more recently on prisoner torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that American deep-water divers had planted explosives under three of the four Nord Stream pipelines that were detonated remotely last September at the order of President Joe Biden.
NATO allies said in the wake of what Kremlin said was a “terrorist attack” that the scale of the explosions in the Swedish and Danish waters suggested that a state was involved. Sweden, Denmark along with Germany, the main beneficiary of Russian gas, opened separate probes into the blasts.
Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament, said lack of reaction from Scholz to the breakthrough report suggested that he must have been warned in advance about the covert sea operation, which was conducted under the cover of a NATO Baltic Sea exercise last summer.
“It is certain that the German government was informed of the sabotage beforehand by the Americans. This is the only explanation for Scholz’s awkward silence. With the addition of a woke and irresponsible warmonger like [Foreign Minister Annalena] Baerbock, who declares that Germany is at war with Russia, nothing surprises me,” he said.
Krah argued that the sabotage put an end to what had long been a headache for the Scholz government — the need to justify to Germans why the second leg of the natural gas pipeline had not been pumping cheap gas to his country.
“The problem is that this is tearing the German economy to pieces and significantly impoverishes Germany. Moreover, the billions spent by Germany in this gas project, which ensured us cheap energy, are lost, but the coalition which governs Germany does not care. Officially, Scholz knows nothing. Apparently, we live in a democracy,” he added.
Hersh wrote that cheap Russian gas had been a boon for the German economy, fueling its post-war rise to prosperity while diminishing Europe’s dependence on the United States. He cited a source with direct knowledge of the US operational planning as saying that Norway played a key role in helping the US organize the attack and keep the Swedish and Danish navies in the dark.
Both the United States and Norway dismissed the allegations as lies. Russia said it was no surprise that Hersh’s report was largely overlooked by Western mainstream media despite Biden and Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland outright warning Russia months before the attack that the pipeline would be dealt with if it launched a military operation in Ukraine.
Krah said it had been obvious to everyone in the German opposition that the sabotage of the crucial energy infrastructure was NATO’s doing. All attempts to point the finger at Russia were ridiculous and did not hold water. Hersh wrote that the White House tried to accuse Russia of self-sabotage in a string of calculated leaks but never suggested a clear motive, beyond retribution.
“The State Department and the White House categorically deny it, but I was in Washington two months ago and all my American political interlocutors, Democrats and Republicans alike, had no doubts: it was the United States that organized or sponsored the action by the British, and it was Biden who personally gave the green light,” Krah said.
“Democrats and Republicans in Congress disagree on everything, except on their willingness to pursue an aggressive foreign policy, especially toward China and Russia,” the lawmaker added.
Edward Snowden, who exposed the US government’s mass surveillance program a decade ago, appeared unconvinced by Washington’s stringent denial on Wednesday that it had anything to do with the bombing of both Nord Stream pipelines.
The explosive story, which was published earlier in the day by the legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, described the September 2022 explosions as the work of US intelligence. He dutifully included the responses he received from the CIA and the White House, which denied everything and called the story “completely and utterly false” and “false and complete fiction,” respectively.
“Can you think of any examples from history of a secret operation that the White House was responsible for, but strongly denied?” Snowden tweeted on Wednesday afternoon. “Besides, you know, that little ‘mass surveillance’ kerfuffle.”
He attached a lede from an April 1961 news story, in which US Secretary of State Dean Rusk denied the Bay of Pigs had been “staged from American soil.” Rusk also told reporters that “the Cuban affair was one for the Cubans themselves to settle” but that the US was sympathetic to enemies of “Communist tyranny.”
Contrary to Rusk’s denials, the 1961 invasion was a CIA operation that used Cubans opposed to Fidel Castro’s government as proxies. In a social media post in May 2021, the US spy agency showcased a commemorative coin minted for “an anticipated (but never realized) Bay of Pigs victory.” The agency’s museum described the operation as “an unqualified disaster” which ended with most of the 1,400 invaders captured or killed within three days.
In addition to describing the details of the Nord Stream operation, Hersh’s article recalled the statements by US President Joe Biden and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland suggesting the US would “bring an end” to the natural gas pipeline connecting Germany with Russia. After the explosions, Western media quickly accused Moscow of blowing up its own pipeline to somehow spite the US and its allies, though never offering any evidence to back up that claim.
Snowden’s “kerfuffle” was a reference to his own experience in 2013. The former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) contractor handed over a trove of classified documents to several media outlets proving that the government was warrantlessly spying on Americans, in direct violation of US laws. The top intelligence officials testified in Congress that this was not the case, only for evidence to later prove their perjury.
Washington responded by charging Snowden with theft of government property and giving classified information to unauthorized persons, among other things. The US also revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia, where he eventually received political asylum.
Twenty years ago, former Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his now-infamous address before the United Nations Security Council, making the case for war against Iraq.
The presentation would later be revealed as lies. Sadly, it would also turn out that no one seemed to care.On February 5, 2003, I watched it all with a sense of boiling anger. The day before, I had made the following prediction to Japanese media:
“He’s [Powell] going to present circumstantial evidence that packaged together and presented will make a compelling case that [UN weapons] inspections don’t work, inspections can’t work, that Iraq is actively conspiring against inspections, thereby, denigrating the efficacy of inspections, while the world waits for inspectors to do their job. The purpose of Colin Powell’s presentation tomorrow is to destroy international trust and confidence in weapons inspections and that is a darn shame.”
I was 100% correct in my assessment.
I was in Japan at the invitation of Japanese activists to generate political opposition to America’s looming war on Iraq. I addressed the Japanese parliament and spoke with several major Japanese media outlets. Shortly after Powell finished speaking, I gave an interview with Kyodo News, where I dismissed Powell’s assertions that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction as “unsubstantiated.”
“There’s nothing here that’s conclusive proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction,” I told Kyodo News. “Everything in here is circumstantial, everything in here mirrors the kind of allegations the US has made in the past in regard to Iraq’s weapons program,” I said. “He just hits you, hits you, hits you with circumstantial evidence, and he confuses people – and he lied, he lied to people, he misled people.”
Powell’s iconic moment was when he raised a vial of white powder – a proxy intended to simulate dry powder anthrax, a potent biological weapons agent, in an effort to link Iraq with the terrorist attacks in the US in October 2001 where dry powder anthrax was sent through the US postal system in envelopes. Ironically, the anthrax in question was actually produced by the US. Iraq is only known to have produced liquid bulk anthrax, which has a shelf life of only three years, and the last known batch of liquid bulk anthrax was produced in 1991 at a state-owned factory which was destroyed in 1996.
“Colin Powell holds up a vial of dry powder anthrax and he makes allusions to the attack in the United States through the letters. That was US government anthrax! It had nothing to do with Iraq,” I said. Powell, I explained, was engaging in “classic bait-and-switch” in his presentation. “Iraq, anthrax, vial, dry powder – what connection do they have? None!”
During my February 4 media event in Japan, I made the following prediction about the consequences of Powell’s UN presentation:
“The United States will seek to compel the Security Council into passing a new resolution, if the Security Council fails to do so the United States will go it alone with its narrow coalition and I see a massive aerial bombardment beginning by the end of February, I see ground troops in significant numbers crossing over into Iraq by early March, and I don’t see this war finishing anytime soon. While we may occupy Baghdad sometime in June, we’ll be occupying Iraq for months, if not years. It will be an occupation that will be carried out with the violent opposition of the Iraqi people, and I see an increase in the acts of anti-American terror abroad. I think an American invasion of Iraq is the best recruitment poster that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda will ever have.”
I challenged Powell’s assertions until I was blue in the face, including at a public forum held at the University of Tokyo the day after Powell spoke, February 6.
It was to no avail.
“There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more,” Powell told the Security Council, “and he has the ability to dispense these lethal poisons and diseases in ways that can cause massive death and destruction.”
All lies. But the US mainstream media repeated his words as gospel, and the American people ate it up as if it were Manna from heaven. My country went to war based upon a foundation of lies told by someone who, up until that moment, was seen as one of the most credible individuals in American public service ever.
The Powell presentation set a precedent of public lies which haunts the US and the world to this day. The United States, it seems, is incapable of telling the truth about anything, especially when it deals with national security and foreign policy.
The current manifestation of this precedent is playing out before the world when it comes to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As was the case with Iraq and Anthrax, the US leads a coalition of compliant partners in spreading similar lies about Russia, whether to ignore history when labeling the Russian decision to intervene an “unprovoked act of aggression”, backing the Ukrainian version of the Bucha massacre, or misleading the Ukrainians and the world about the ability of US-led injections of military equipment to change the tide of battle against Russia – it won’t.
It is virtually impossible for Russia to even begin to contemplate negotiations when the party sitting at the other side of the table, the United States, incorporates lies into every aspect of its argument. The Powell Precedent is pure poison, and the world, especially Russia, would be foolish to accept any drink from a chalice offered by the United States.
Colin Powell may no longer be with us, but his legacy lives on in the bodyguard of lies he helped build around everything the US has said and done since that fateful day 20 years ago.
The latest report by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which blames Damascus for carrying out a chemical attack in Douma in 2018, looks like a political hit piece meant to justify the West’s continued military aggression against the Syrian government, says Alexander Shulgin, Russia’s permanent representative to the organization.
Speaking to RT, Shulgin vehemently dismissed the report, which was released in late January by the so-called Investigation and Identification Team (IIT). Calling the IIT “completely illegitimate,” he claimed the group’s creation was pushed through by the US and its allies in order to undermine the core principles of the OPCW and international law and replace them with their own “made-up rules.”
The IIT’s report, according to Shulgin, is riddled with inconsistencies and factual gaps, and barely holds together. Furthermore, none of Russia’s or any other country’s “uncomfortable” questions regarding the details of the IIT’s findings were even remotely addressed during an OPCW briefing on the report, the ambassador claimed.
Shulgin also noted that the report highlighted the double standards currently present within the OPCW. When Russia presented evidence of a chemical attack in Aleppo back in 2016, every minute detail of Moscow’s findings was heavily scrutinized by the organization, he said. However, when it comes to the attack in Douma, OPCW officials seem to turn a blind eye to basic questions such as how and when the evidence was gathered and presented during the investigation.
“For instance, they referred to the fact that some new sample has appeared, provided by a third party. What is this third party? Nothing is said about it. They just say ‘trust us’,” said Shulgin, noting that the sample in question had never been reported on in previous investigations.
“So before, there was no sample, but now, suddenly, it has somehow appeared. Without any explanations,” the ambassador stressed, suggesting its sudden appearance can only be explained by the need for the US, France, and UK to escape international accountability for their aggression against Syria.
The three NATO states launched a series of airstrikes against civilian and military targets in Syria in April 2018 after the so-called ‘White Helmets’ – an NGO operating in rebel-controlled areas of Syria – published a series of videos supposedly showing the aftermath of a chlorine attack on the residents of Douma.
Syria has vehemently denied any responsibility for the incident, and both Damascus and Moscow have repeatedly pointed to evidence, including testimonies from alleged victims, that suggests the incident was staged in order to justify a Western attack.
The EU’s crusade against Russian media does not seek to curb free speech but in fact pursues the opposite goal, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday. His remarks triggered criticism from Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that Russia has viewed the media crackdown as a sign of a dictatorship.
Speaking at a conference dedicated to the EU’s response to foreign disinformation, Borrell said that the sanctions on Russian media “effectively banned them from operating” within the bloc.
“In doing that, we are not attacking the freedom of expression, we are just protecting the freedom of expression,” he argued.
Borrell also noted that the EU is trying to support those media organizations that Russia has classified as ‘foreign agents’, a designation meaning that an entity is either funded from abroad or is under “foreign influence.”
“What I’m saying is not just rhetoric. I cannot go into detail, but believe me, we try to support them in practical terms,” he said, adding that he would not say how in order not to do them “a bad favor.”
In an attempt to defend the EU’s media policies, Borrell claimed that Russia is using “manipulation and interference as a crucial instrument” in the Ukraine conflict. In light of this, the diplomat said that the EU would launch a platform called the Information Sharing and Analysis Center to combat falsehoods.
“We need to understand how these disinformation campaigns are organized … to identify the actors of the manipulation,” he stressed.
Commenting on Borrell’s remarks, Zakharova stated that in the past Moscow regarded the media crackdown as “a manifestation of liberal dictatorship.” But the way the diplomat described these policies in his latest speech made them “sparkle with fresh colors with a shade of delusion,” she added.
In recent years, the EU has unleashed a campaign against Russian media which only intensified when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. In March, the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT, with the number of blacklisted channels only growing in the following months as the bloc introduced new sanctions against Russia.
Whenever I go online, I see people posting pictures of plane trails in the sky and asking why we see so many of them. Some argue they are con (densation) trails whilst others say they are chem (ical) trails. Whilst there are very convincing arguments on both sides it is impossible to ascertain the truth. However, we can look at what has happened in the past to give a theory more credibility.
In a previous post, I looked at previous, documented and declassified examples of governments, via the military, spraying their own citizens. All in our best interest of course, until it isn’t.
Today I will look at a tragic story that happened in a North Devon village called Lynmouth in the 1950s.
Lynmouth is a beautiful village on the edge of Exmoor in England.
The river West Lyn and East Lyn flow down from the village of Lynton above and discharge into the sea. If you ever visit the villages and don’t fancy the steep walk up the hill between the two, you can ride in comfort on a water-operated funicular that has been in operation since 1890.
In the early 1950s, the UK government, together with an international team of scientists, decided to start meddling in weather manipulation. Project Cumulus was initiated and was operational between 1949 and 1952. Its purpose was to experiment with various cloud seeding techniques and therefore control when and where it rains.
Between 4 August and 15 August 1952 flights were flown conducting further weather manipulation experiments. However, Project Cumulus abruptly stopped on 15 August 1952. Coincidentally, on the same day a tragedy in Lynmouth unfolded.
Within a number of hours, the biggest flooding event for 300 years hit Lynmouth, destroying hundreds of buildings, bridges, cars and sadly killing 35 people. A further 420 villagers were made homeless. Bodies washed out to sea were never found. One girl who was interviewed at the time lost six family members and spoke about her mother identifying her grandmother’s body. “Mum identified her by this huge wart on her back because she hadn’t got no head, or arms, or legs when they found her.”
90 million tons of water, together with thousands of tons of rock hit the village, destroying everything in its path. Overall that month, North Devon, where the village is situated experience 250 times more rainfall than was normal for August.
Soon afterwards, the remaining villagers called for an investigation and discussed rumours of planes circling before the deluge.
However, the government and the Ministry of Defence denied any “cloud-seeding” experiments had taken place and the tragedy was labelled as a ‘hand of God’ event. Any talk of weather manipulation was considered a conspiracy theory and even to this day it is labelled as such on Wikipedia.
That was until 2001 when the BBC conducted an investigation into the floods and confirmed that secret experiments were causing heavy rainfall. Many of the classified documents had gone missing but the Document team tracked down RAF logbooks and personal testimony.
One pilot described how, as part of Operation Cumulus, he sprayed salt into the air causing a heavy downpour 50 miles away. Other flights using silver iodide are also likely to have taken place.
“The rain was the heaviest for several years – and all out of a sky which looked summery … there was no disguising the fact that the seedsman had said he’d make it rain, and he did.
“Toasts were drunk to meteorology and it was not until the BBC news bulletin [about the Lynmouth tragedy] was read later on, that a stony silence fell on the company,”
The Guardian also reported on the findings, although they now categorise the story in their “silly season” section. They quote a RAF navigator who said “we flew straight through the top of the cloud, poured dry ice down into the cloud. We flew down to see if any rain came out of the cloud. And it did about 30 minutes later, and we all cheered.”
The British Geological Survey examined soil sediments in the district of Lynmouth to see if any silver or iodide residues remain. The testing was limited due to restrictions in place because of foot and mouth disease, and it is inconclusive. However, silver residue has been discovered in the catchment waters of the river Lyn.
The BBC investigation was turned into a Radio 4 programme called “The Day They Made it Rain” in which they suggest that the Air Ministry and Treasury were aware that the experiments were causing damage to civilians.
According to declassified minutes, the war office was interested in increasing rain and snow by artificial means for a number of reasons including:
bogging down enemy movement;
incrementing the water flow in rivers and streams to hinder or stop enemy crossings;
clearing fog from airfields; and
to explode an atomic weapon in a cloud to produce a far wider area of radioactive contamination than in a normal atomic explosion.
But remember, these types of experiments only happened in the past. Your government loves you now and would never do anything like that nowadays.
We could end the debate on COVID vaccine safety instantly. All we need is the death-vax record data. But today, that data is being concealed by the health authorities in every jurisdiction. Here’s why.
Executive summary
A simple database of death-vax records should be made publicly available by the CDC and other health authorities worldwide.
The death-vax records can be analyzed in seconds using a variety of totally objective methods to show whether the COVID vaccines have increased or decreased all-cause mortality in each age range.
No medical records, cause of death, etc. are required or needed. Just the age, date of death, and dates of vaccination are all that is required for each death since the start of the COVID vaccination program.
The death-vax data has been collected, but it has never been made publicly available anywhere in the world. There is no PII or HIPAA violation by disclosing the records.
There is absolutely no excuse for this data not to be made PUBLICLY available now.
Because kids are most at risk, universities in particular should be demanding data transparency of the death-vax records.
It is immoral and unethical for universities to mandate COVID vaccines if the health authorities refuse to show us the death-vax database records that would justify their use.
The death-vax record data
The death-vax data consists of one record for each death since Dec 14, 2020 to the present with these columns:
Age
Date of death
Date of each COVID vaccine administered (blank if unvaccinated)
The CDC could quickly collect this information, do the database join, remove the PII fields, and make this database publicly available.
This would reveal to the entire world whether the vaccines are safe or not. Instantly. No more debates.
No medical records are required. No judgment is required. The analysis is all based on mathematics and the law of large numbers. If the vaccines are saving lives, we’ll know it. If the vaccines are killing people, we’ll know it.
Introduction
EVERYONE should be demanding to see the death-vax record-level data. It can be easily compiled. It is dispositive. We’d know instantly whether the vaccines are safe or not. No more arguments. No more debates. No more censorship. One and done.
Yet, nobody in the mainstream infectious disease or epidemiology community seems to care about seeing this data. Nobody is calling for it. Why is that? Are they afraid of being proven they are wrong?
If the vaccine is so safe, they should be shouting for the release of this data from the rooftops because nearly 80% of the public is no longer drinking the Kool-Aid:
But the authorities are remaining silent and keeping the data under wraps. That can only mean one thing: the data is horrible and they know it. That’s why they are hiding it from public view.
That’s not just a hunch. I did my own data collection and analysis. Even after adjusting for the bias of the reporters (by restricting the analysis to just parents and grandparents of the reporter), the signal of harm was huge.
Science used to be about data. Not anymore.
Science used to be about data and what the data shows. Sadly, today, science is about what the CDC says, even if there is no data in support of the recommendation whatsoever.
The most stunning example of this is the “six foot rule.” Did you know that it was entirely fabricated out of thin air? From Presidential Takedown page 49:
What is even more stunning is that the CDC has never admitted this publicly. This is evidence that they are a corrupt organization and the corruption goes to the very top of the organization.
We have over two years of data. Why not make it public?
We now have over two years worth of death and vaccination data for people who died after getting a COVID shot, yet nobody wants to see the record level data tied to the vaccination dates?!?!
Let me be perfectly clear:
This is an abject failure of the entire medical community for not demanding to see this data.
People paid for us to see this data with their lives. Why is it being hidden from us?
In the US, hundreds of millions of people participated in a massive clinical trial and have data to share with people. At least 500,000 of the participants paid the ultimate price: they sacrificed their lives to send a message to America about the vaccines. It is extremely disrespectful to these people to ignore their death data and not share it with the public. Why are we not allowing these people to share their data?
Do you think if we could ask those people right before they died, “Do you want to let others know what killed you?” Do you think they would all say, “No! Don’t let anyone know. Please keep it a secret!”?
Every institution in the world that is recommending or requiring COVID vaccination should be DEMANDING to see this data made public
John Beaudoin and I have been calling for the death data to be set free and made public. We have been ignored.
Why aren’t any of these organizations calling for data transparency here so we can learn the truth?
The mainstream medical community
Heads of state throughout the world
The CDC
The FDA
The White House
Congress
The mainstream media
Public health authorities
Any doctor or nurse who recommends the jab to patients
Universities who mandate the vaccines for students, staff, or faculty
Any organization that supports COVID vaccines for their members, employees, or visitors
The data exists in VSD as well. But the CDC won’t allow anyone to see it.
The data exists in every state health department. But you can’t FOIA it because it requires a join to avoid PII problems and FOIA requests are not allowed if they generate effort like that. So FOIA requests won’t work.
It’s time for everyone to demand that our health authorities “Show us the data!”
We should all refuse to comply until they produce it.
In the same way Tom Cruise said passionately “Show me the money,” everyone all over the world should be equally passionate with their doctors and healthcare authorities and demand: “Show me the DATA” before we agree to comply with their requests/demands regarding vaccination.
Civil disobedience in Canada
Check out this video from True North entitled “Show us the data and evidence” that described the civil disobedience in Canada:
Business owners and local politicians are pushing back against the government’s lockdown measures. Their ask of the government is simple – if you’re going to shut us down, show us the data and evidence.
Calling all parents: ask your school why they aren’t calling for the data to be produced
The data that we have shows that the biggest harm is being done to kids.
Therefore, the biggest urgency is to put pressure on any school or university that recommends or requires the COVID vaccines to drop it immediately
Please ask the university president or head of school at any school your child attends to contact the CDC and let them know that if the CDC doesn’t make the death-vax record level data publicly available with the next 30 days, that the school will suspend their COVID vaccination policies until such time as this data is produced and scientists can analyze it. That is the only ethical thing to do.
You can refer to my article in your email.
The public health authorities have been voluntarily keeping the data secret for two years now. That data would end the debate. We should not let them continue to get away with it.
Last Thursday, the FDA convened its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) to discuss the future of covid vaccines.
The panel voted 21 to 0 in favour of moving towards a more simplified vaccine schedule – an annual shot which would be updated as new variants emerge – much like the annual flu shot.
Despite the unanimous vote, VRBPAC members did raise concerns about knowledge gaps and questioned the need to boost everyone, as well as the futility of chasing rapidly mutating viruses.
But it all fizzled out quickly, and the FDA promised to reconvene in May or June to discuss the data further.
That said, I had some interesting observations of my own.
Still no correlate of protection
We are three years into the pandemic, and the FDA has still not established a “correlate of protection” for the vaccines.
Eight covid-19 vaccine emergency use authorisations (EUAs)* have been granted, based on their ability to induce “neutralising antibodies,” a surrogate marker of protection.
The idea is, the more antibodies you produce, the better you are protected.
Except, neutralising antibodies do not predict the degree to which someone is protected from infection… and the FDA knows it.
Ofer Levy, VRBPAC member and Professor of Paediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital first voiced his concern at the April 6, 2022 meeting.
“We’re at risk of doubling down on a failed strategy,” said Levy as the committee discussed a framework for offering annual covid shots for Americans.
“Where is the federal effort to coordinate all of that to develop a public repository around the correlate of protection, and to make sure we have the best available data for the immunogenicity when we make those decisions?”
The FDA’s top vaccine official, Peter Marks, agreed with Levy.
“There is not a clear, perfect, immune correlate of protection” admitted Marks, “We’re using poor man’s immune correlates of protection here — or poor person’s immune correlates of protection with antibody levels.”
In Dec 2022, Peter Marks reiterated these concerns in an article published in JAMA. He and his co-authors wrote:
“Therefore, unless correlates of protection that are strongly associated with duration of protection against COVID-19 can be identified, it is likely that rather than relying on immunobridging to infer vaccine effectiveness, large randomized clinical trials similar to the initial trials of the currently authorized or licensed vaccines for COVID-19 will be required to ascertain the effectiveness of these new vaccines.”
But fast forward to this latest meeting, and it becomes clear that we’re all still in the dark.
We have no correlate of protection, the FDA is relying heavily on real world studies (confounded data) and the agency still has not demanded any randomised controlled trials to show the bivalent booster can reduce severe disease or hospitalisations.
It’s no wonder doctors are coming out in droves, refusing to have any more covid shots until the FDA demands better studies.
“I don’t think we can say with credibility what the objective benefits are for someone like me to take an additional dose, nor what the rate of any rare but important side effects would be,” tweeted Todd Lee, a physician certified in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine in Quebec, Canada.
Similarly, Vinay Prasad, haematologist-oncologist at the University of California San Francisco vowed not to take any more shots until there were data from randomised controlled trials.
“I took at least 1 dose against my will. It was unethical and scientifically bankrupt. I am not done with that error. No more,” he tweeted.
No update on subclinical myocarditis
As part of its post-marketing requirements, Pfizer is legally obligated to conduct a study involving people aged 16 to 30 to look at rates of subclinical myocarditis (i.e. underlying damage to the heart muscle without causing symptoms).
The final report was due 31 Dec 2022, but that deadline lapsed, and the FDA said nothing. There was no mention of the study, neither in the briefing notes ahead of the VRBPAC meeting, or during the meeting.
I asked the FDA directly for access to Pfizer’s study, but the agency said in an email, “You may submit a FOIA request for this information, or if you would like it more quickly, you can reach out to the manufacturer directly.”
Pfizer did not respond to my request, and the FDA refused to confirm whether it had even received Pfizer’s study, before abruptly ending our communication.
Jessica Adams, an expert in drug regulatory affairs pointed out on twitter that the FDA had quietly changed the due date for the study from 31 Dec 2022 to 30 June 2023.
So, now as it stands, millions of young people will receive boosters, mandated or not, without knowing if the vaccine is causing subclinical myocarditis.
FDA still working from home
Finally, the meeting was again held online because the majority of FDA employees are still working from home.
Since all federal employees have been mandated to take the covid-19 vaccine to “protect themselves and those around them,” why aren’t they conducting face-to-face meetings?
“FDA leaders are in a bubble. How much longer will the FDA (18,000-employees) continue to work remotely? It’s mid-day on a weekday and the parking lot is essentially empty” tweeted Marty Makary, surgeon and public policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
“The FDA was telling the rest of America to get vaccinated, mask up and go back to work, but the FDA mysteriously did not follow its own advice,” said David Gortler, drug safety expert and former senior advisor to the FDA commissioner.
Well, it’s as though the FDA heard the cries.
Today, the FDA announced that “staff will be transitioning to a hybrid workplace.” This transition will enable face-to-face formal meetings between FDA and industry to resume within weeks.
*FDA issued eight EUAs based on neutralising antibodies (immunobridging studies) – an unproven correlate of protection.
At a time when concerns about serious adverse reactions to the Covid-19 vaccines are escalating, one might reasonably expect the World Health Organisation (WHO) – a specialised agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health – to take immediate and decisive action. Perhaps a recommendation to pause the vaccine rollout would be a reasonable step under the circumstances. Or maybe an urgent request to member states to rapidly undertake thorough investigations of the links between the mRNA vaccines and serious physical harms, such as myocarditis. But no, those responses have not been forthcoming. Instead, the WHO has published communication guidance on how to nullify criticism of the vaccines.
The document, titled Vaccine Crisis Communication Manual – a step-by-step guidance for national immunization programmes, was produced in 2022 by the WHO European office with the stated aim of supporting countries ‘in effectively responding to events which may erode the public’s trust in vaccines and authorities that deliver them’. The manual offers detailed recommendations about how those in authority should respond to a ‘vaccine crisis’ (defined as any occurrence that ‘will most likely or has already eroded public trust in vaccines … and may create uncertainty’). The explicit, overarching goal is to ‘rebuild trust in vaccines’.
The guidance is structured – with military precision – around four sequential phases:
1. Co-ordinate & engage
2. Design communication response
3. Monitor public opinion & the media
4. Inform the public
In keeping with the dominant narrative during the Covid era, the presumption is that vaccinations are always for the greater good. Repeatedly asserted throughout the document is that adverse events may not be causally linked to the jabs. Pre-prepared messages are recommended that ‘emphasize the value of immunization based on a risk-benefit analysis’. Somewhat sinisterly, public health officials are advised to ‘use existing or implement new monitoring tools to monitor public opinion’ and to maintain ‘good relations with key journalists and the media’. And when someone dies in the aftermath of vaccination, communicators are directed to say, ‘We are committing all available resources to the investigation of this unfortunate incident and are doing our utmost to find the cause as soon as possible’; (it is doubtful whether the vaccine-harmed population would concur with this claim). Clearly, the overarching goal of this WHO manuscript is to protect the pro-vaccine narrative under any circumstances.
The tone of this WHO document perpetuates the myth that anyone questioning the net benefits of the jabs is an ‘anti-vaxxer’ who is spreading misinformation. One illustrative example is the reference to an earlier – 2017 – WHO publication, titled ‘How to respond to vocal vaccine deniers in public’. Co-authored by Katrine Habersaat (who is also a co-author of the WHO, 2022, document) the article refers to these ‘vaccine deniers’ as people who have ‘a very negative attitude towards vaccination and are not open to a change of mind no matter the scientific evidence’. According to Habersaat, these agitators ‘censor opposing opinions’ and ‘use personal insults or even legal actions to silence representatives of the scientific consensus’. In light of the widespread vilification and censorship endured by those experts who have, over the last three years, challenged the dominant Covid narrative, the irony of these assertions is off the scale.
There was once a time when the primary aim of the WHO was the provision of accessible and holistic healthcare to all, regardless of socioeconomic status. The content of this Vaccine Crisis Communication Manual provides further evidence that this is no longer the case. The welfare of ordinary people is not the WHO’s priority; the appeasement of their pro-vaccine paymasters now takes precedence.
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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