Met Police Invokes “National Security” about Epstein Meeting with US Senators in the UK
BY WHITNEY WEBB |
UNLIMITED HANGOUT| JUNE 13, 2022
A Freedom of Information request filed by UH in connection with Whitney Webb’s upcoming book was blocked by UK Metropolitan police on “national security” grounds. The request sought information on the two sitting US Senators who met with Jeffrey Epstein at a Wexner-owned residence in the UK, a meeting where Met Police officers had provided security.
In connection with Whitney Webb’s upcoming book on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, One Nation Under Blackmail, Unlimited Hangout filed a Freedom of Information request asking UK law enforcement and the Ministry of Defence the identity of two sitting US senators who were present at Foxcote House in North Warwickshire, UK on September 1, 2002. UH contributor Johnny Vedmore had previously obtained information from eyewitnesses of that meeting that, not only were two US Senators present at that location that day, but that Metropolitan Police officers had supplied security for the meeting. The FOI request was filed to Metropolitan Police, the UK Ministry of Defence and North Warwickshire Police and only a response from the Metropolitan Police was received.
The motive for UH’s FOI request is as follows. It is known that Jeffrey Epstein, as attested to by Epstein’s flight logs, was present in this part of the UK during this same period (from August 31, 2002 to September 2, 2002) and eyewitnesses saw him attend this specific meeting at this location with two attractive and glamorously dressed women on each arm. One of these women was Nicole Junkermann, a former model and apparent intelligence asset as revealed in Vedmore’s previous investigative work. The other woman was described by eyewitnesses as a tall brunette. Per those eyewitness accounts, Epstein personally escorted the two women into the room where the two senators were waiting.
Notably the house where this meeting took place, Foxcote House, has been owned by the family of Leslie Wexner, specifically his wife Abigail Wexner, since 1999. Wexner’s role in financing much of Jeffrey Epstein’s activities, legal and illegal, is a major focus of Webb’s upcoming book and Wexner has encountered considerable difficulty in explaining away his relationship with Epstein, despite the largely servile posture of mainstream media in this regard.
Given the circumstances, it seems highly likely that this meeting was a high-profile instance of Jeffrey Epstein engaging in the sexual blackmail of sitting American politicians. However, due to the well-known scandal around Jeffrey Epstein, his name was not used in our FOI request in order to avoid potentially “spiking” the response.
Despite the omission of Epstein’s name, Metropolitan Police responded to the request stating that they can “neither confirm nor deny whether it holds” the requested information. Their response goes on to state that confirming or denying “whether any United States of America (USA) senators were afforded protection could undermine the safeguarding of national security.” It also notes that it blocked providing the requested information on four other grounds aside from “national security” (five in total), including “international relations”, “law enforcement”, “health and safety”, and “personal information.” It also states that providing the requested information could place “those who are afforded protection, protection officers and members of the public at risk.”
Screenshot of the response from Met Police
UH has since re-filed a new, related FOI request asking why Metropolitan Police officers were providing protection to a meeting where Jeffrey Epstein was present, since his criminal activities are undeniable.
The UK changed the definition of “case” to INCREASE Covid numbers. Again.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 11, 2022
Yesterday Sky News and the Huffington Post and several other outlets all flared up near-identical headlines warning that …
Covid Infections Increase For First Time In Two Months
The HuffPo goes on to explain in more detail…
The jump is thought to have been caused by increases in cases compatible with the original Omicron variant BA.1 and the newer variants BA.4 and BA.5, according to the Office for National Statistics.
All the articles cite the Office of National Statistics (ONS) talking about Omicron and seem to consider this an explanation.
None of them mentions the fact the UK’s Health Security Agency (UKHSA) literally changed the definition of a Covid “case” back in February, making it almost inevitable cases would go up.
It’s all detailed in this post from the UKHSA site, helpfully titled “Changing the COVID-19 Case Definition”.
The article explains that the UKHSA will be moving on from the traditional meaning of “cases”, and instead counting what they call “case episodes”.
Meaning that, up until now, one person repeatedly testing positive for “Covid” throughout the pandemic was considered one “case”:
Until now, COVID-19 cases have been reported at the individual level: every positive test taken and reported by one person has been considered part of a single case record, initiated by their first positive test.
But from now on different positive tests of the same person will be considered separate “cases” as long as they are 90 days apart:
Positive test results that are 90 days apart (regardless of negative tests in between) will be considered as a separate episode of infection, and therefore the person is counted as a case more than once.
The supposed justification for this decision is “waning immunity” and the Omicron variant causing spikes in “reinfections”:
Although reinfections were initially very rare, we have seen the number rising slowly over the last two years, as immunity from prior infection wanes and new variants emerge. During the Omicron variant wave, the number and proportion of people being reinfected with SARS-CoV-2 has increased.
However, the inevitable consequence of this decision will be to make the case numbers go up. The press not including this in their story about the rising case numbers is – at best – astonishing incompetence.
In fact, making case numbers go up is literally the only impact it will have.
The UKHSA goes out of its way to point this out, highlighting that the change will have no effect at all on how they monitor infections, since they already treat new positive tests as new cases for the purpose of contract tracing, and have been doing so all along:
contact tracing has undertaken a very safe practice of following all positive cases, regardless of whether they were possible reinfections or cases of prolonged infection.
So, in short, whether or not the change is scientifically justified, it is a purely aesthetic one that will have no impact on anything, except to make case numbers look bigger.
And, of course, it’s not scientifically justified.
They have already stretched the meaning of “cases” well past its breaking point by defining anyone who tests positive as a “Covid case” whether or not they have any symptoms.
Now every single person who, over the past two years, tested positive on the useless PCR tests and was declared a “case”, can test positive again on the same useless PCR and be declared a new case.
Of course, messing with language to inflate statistics has been the modus operandi since the beginning of the “pandemic”. “Fully vaccinated”, “herd immunity”, “cause of death”, “vaccine”, “case” all have been subject to “updated” definition.
Clearly, this further torturing of statistics is about maintaining the flagging “pandemic” narrative.
Allowing people to become more than one “case” means the ever-increasing numbers of people rejecting the vaccines, masks and hysteria can be countered by the steadily dwindling number of NPCs who still religiously take Covid at face value.
It’s a desperation move. One that, hopefully, people will see right through.
Russia accuses US of concealing data on biolabs
Samizdat | June 12, 2022
The US has been concealing information about its “military biological activity” in the post-Soviet states, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. This, according to Zakharova, raises “serious questions” about Washington’s compliance with the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
In an interview with TASS published on Sunday, Zakharova said, “the United States prefers to remain silent about the ongoing work in the post-Soviet space and does not provide information within a framework of the BTWC confidence-building measures.”
“Assertions that the activity of the Pentagon and related structures is focused solely on health issues are not true. Clearly, health care assistance does not require the involvement of the US military,” Zakharova said.
She added that Washington’s claims that it is collecting biomaterial and monitoring the epidemiological situation “only reinforce and intensify” Russia’s fears over America’s compliance with the BTWC.
Moscow’s recently published evidence regarding the alleged sprawling network of US-funded biolabs across Ukraine only adds to the suspicions, Zakharova said.
In a series of briefings starting in March, the Russian military has presented evidence of the Pentagon’s involvement in funding laboratories in Ukraine. According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, the US poured more than $224 million into biological research in Ukraine between 2005 and early 2022. Western pharmaceutical giants, nonprofits, and even the US Democratic Party were involved in the scheme, Moscow claims.
The Pentagon has “significantly expanded its research potential not only in the field of creating biological weapons, but also obtaining information about antibiotic resistance and the presence of antibodies to certain diseases in populations of specific regions” while working in Ukraine, Lieutenant-General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Force, said in May.
Zakharova also pointed out that the US has not yet withdrawn its reservation to the 1925 Geneva Protocol for the prohibition of biological and chemical weapons. The US was among the countries that declared the protocol would cease to be binding regarding enemy states that do not observe the prohibitions of the protocol.
In this regard, “the question quite reasonably arises about the real goals of the Pentagon’s international military biological activity,” Zakharova said.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon published the ‘Fact Sheet on WMD Threat Reduction Efforts with Ukraine, Russia and Other Former Soviet Union Countries’. In the document, the US military said that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US and its partners have led “cooperative efforts to reduce legacy threats from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons left in the Soviet Union’s successor states, including Russia.”
According to the Pentagon, the US has “worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health,” by providing support to “46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades.” These programs have focused on “improving public health and agricultural safety measures at the nexus of nonproliferation.”
In the same paper, the US military accused Russia and China attempting “to undermine this work by spreading disinformation and sowing mistrust in the people and institutions all over the world that contribute to WMD threat reduction.”
According to Zakharova, Moscow considers this publication part of Washington’s “information campaign” aimed at justifying its military biological activities in the post-Soviet space and to “divert the attention of the international community from its true non-transparent and unseemly direction.”
Another nudge to vaccinate children and for whose benefit?
The runaway train that refuses to be knocked off course
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | June 10, 2022
When the JCVI considered covid vaccines for children in July 2021, they stated, “JCVI is of the view that the health benefits of universal vaccination in children and young people below the age of 18 years do not outweigh the potential risks”. Even in September 2021, they still said, “A precautionary approach was agreed given the very low risk of serious disease in those aged 12 to 15 years without an underlying health condition that puts them at increased risk.” As HART bulletin readers will know, the Chief Medical Officers eventually recommended the vaccine for 12-15s, in the vain hope of reducing school closures, which of course could have been achieved by simply stopping routine testing of asymptomatic school children and the sending home of healthy contacts.
Roll on to February 2022, when a ‘non-urgent offer’ was made of Pfizer vaccine for 5-11-year-olds, JCVI stated, “This advice on the offer of vaccination to 5 to 11-year olds who are not in a clinical risk group is considered by JCVI as a one-off pandemic response programme. As the COVID-19 pandemic moves further towards endemicity in the UK, JCVI will review whether, in the longer term, an offer of vaccination to this, and other paediatric age groups, continues to be advised.”
If any of our readers has seen this review, we would be pleased to know, as it might help us clarify the surprising appearance of Covid-19 on the NHS routine immunisation programme. Placing an unlicenced preparation onto the routine schedule is unprecedented. It raises serious questions of the legality, given the conditional authorisation was predicated on there being an emergency. It is also of course a subtle way of making parents think this vaccine is just run-of-the-mill. The current low uptake (53% of 12-15s and a mere 8.5% of 5-11s) suggests that at present, parents are well aware that covid-19 vaccines are not the same as other vaccines, either in terms of the risk of the disease for children or in terms of drug safety. They will also be well aware that lots of their triple vaccinated adult friends and family, have been catching covid regardless.
Not content with slipping this drug into the schedule under cover of the 4-day Jubilee holiday, the Local Government Association has been pushing behavioural psychology techniques to increase vaccine uptake in the young. Their opening gambit is, “Younger generations are more likely to be vaccine hesitant partly because they perceive themselves to be at lower risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19”. Surely, this is not a ‘perception’, it is a ‘fact’, which should surely have been viewed as a blessing, rather than an annoyance.
It gets worse: “Highlight the pro-social benefits of vaccination
Behavioural Insight: Emphasising the pro-social benefits of vaccination is particularly effective among young people. Prosocial benefits include achieving herd immunity and protecting others, especially those that are vulnerable and cannot get vaccinated. Combining both informational and emotional content can be effective.” Another one for the fact checkers – the JCVI say, “the benefits to the wider population are highly uncertain.”
And worse: “Highlight social norms about vaccination
Behavioural Insight: Highlighting that there are growing intentions to get vaccinated, that most people are getting vaccinated and that they approve doing so, can effectively encourage vaccine take up. Since young people tend to be more susceptible to peer influence, it is likely that social norms can be particularly effective when targeting this group.
Potential application: Emphasise Social norms in communications targeted towards young people. Make vaccination visible to other young people by setting up vaccination centres in university campuses or schools. Launch an ‘I will get vaccinated’-pledge on social media.”
And faintly ridiculous: “Second vaccine jab compliance
Ensuring residents take their second vaccine dose could be a challenge with which councils can support PHE and the NHS. This could be especially the case if news on vaccine efficacy and new strains undermines the perceived value of the second jab.” Again, the use of the word ‘perceived’ implies that the ‘news’ on vaccine efficacy and new strains is somehow irrelevant to informed consent. No wonder the powers that be don’t want people to see this graph from week 13 of 2022, dropped from the more recent weekly vaccine reports.
THE WHO, PANDEMIC PREPAREDNESS, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FALSE MESSAGING
By Dr David Bell | Pandemics – Data and Analytics | June 9, 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO), and the growing pandemic preparedness industry sponsoring it, has faced considerable challenges in maintaining support for its COVID-19 response. It has addressed this difficult situation with simple and uniform messaging. The compliance thus achieved by the WHO has been vital to achieving a successful concentration of wealth, benefitting not just its major sponsors, but also the army of global health staff who have remained obedient throughout.
Threatening this progress, a skeptical minority within the public sphere have been using evidence and rational argument to undermine the pandemic industry’s potential. As the pandemic preparedness and response narrative is poorly defensible on rational criteria, such criticism and opposition must be dealt with and dismissed by other means. This is being achieved through the creation of a dogma around mass COVID-19 vaccination sufficiently separated from reality as to render the normal processes of debate irrelevant. If the gap between pandemic messaging and reality can be kept sufficiently wide, few passengers can step off, and this lucrative gravy train becomes unstoppable.
Small lies can be argued against, big lies become matters of faith
The development and mass deployment of vaccines has been a key component of the COVID-19 response, underpinning much of the transfer of wealth from lower-income people and countries to large Pharma, their investors and the global health workforce they sponsor. Against a background of rapidly increasing global poverty, this unprecedented increase in wealth has in turn raised the potential for unprecedented funding to global health institutions – the mostly Western-based industry that fills offices and drains aid budgets in Europe and North America. A significant cognitive decoupling has been necessary across this sector to achieve sufficient uniformity of voice and purpose, as the institutions involved were ostensibly intended to improve the health and uphold the rights of those less financially fortunate. To achieve success, staff of the WHO and other international organizations therefore had to be enabled to signal virtuous intent while acting in concert for corporate gain.
Vaccines traditionally protect the vaccinated against a target pathogen and humans tend to develop good immunity after respiratory virus infections. These two realities create an urgent problem for the pandemic preparedness industry, as the increased financing set to expand their reach is dependent on successfully convincing the world that these truths are indeed fallacies. Thus, to sell COVAX, the WHO’s financing facility for mass COVID-19 vaccination and the model for future pandemic responses, it was vital for the WHO to ensure that the obvious nonsensical nature of the programme would be ignored. This required coordination and adherence to a single simple message, repeated incessantly to stifle external opinion; a slogan so ridiculous that it becomes inarguable. In other words, it required propaganda.
It is essential to focus people on simplistic slogans if the aim is to suppress their tendency for independent thought and to make any venture in that direction a cause of stress. If people can see their respected authority figures standing behind a statement that is otherwise obviously false, it becomes easier to accept that the false must be true than to stand alone against authority and the crowd. Once one’s colleagues are on-board, the Asch conformity phenomenon kicks in – if everyone else is saying ‘X’, then it surely must be ‘X’, even if it looks like ‘Y’. If a health programme flies in the face of all existing medical knowledge, it must therefore be supported by a sufficiently strong dogma to negate evidence-based arguments. It is a testament to the power of group-think, loyalty to sponsors and the allure of money that this has, thus far, been brilliantly achieved.
COVAX – Selling the golden goose
“No one is safe, until everyone is safe”, the WHO’s COVAX motto, fulfills all the above criteria.
Most people want to be safe – and to achieve industry aims, the public must be convinced that others, not just themselves, are the key to their personal safety. They must support the blame or coercion being applied to these others. But the brilliance of ‘No one is safe, until everyone is safe’ is not just in its appeal to self-preservation and its divisiveness, but in its simple stupidity.
1) For the slogan to be true, the vaccine must be transmission-blocking only. It must not protect the vaccinated individual. Otherwise, their safety will not be dependent on the vaccination of others. However, the WHO and its partners also claim that “COVID-19 vaccines provide strong protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death”. Therefore, in promoting its ‘No one is safe’ slogan, WHO staff must collectively proclaim a falsehood. This builds loyalty and cohesion, as a lie is more easily maintained within a like-minded group.
2) To be ‘safe’ from a virus, one must either be intrinsically at very low risk (as most people are to most viruses) or gain immunity.
- ‘Intrinsic low risk’ created a huge problem for the mass-vaccination narrative early in the COVID-19 outbreak, as data from China showed the very strong skew of severe COVID-19 towards old age, and association with certain comorbidities. Most people are clearly at minimal risk. This had to be suppressed to enable mass-vaccination – all must consider themselves at risk. Public health agencies and their corporate backers even proclaimed impending catastrophe for the people of sub-Saharan Africa, more than half of whom are under 20 years of age. The use of age-based disease metrics, standard for disease-burden assessments up to 2019, were put aside and ‘COVID-19’ mortality reported as raw mortality numbers only.
- Immunity presents a problem, as it is both the pathway through which vaccines work, and the way we naturally gain protection. Immunity makes us safe, but natural immunity is useless to investors. While a safe vaccine would be preferable to a dangerous virus, once infection has occurred the gain from vaccination is minimal. This poses an immediate threat to profits and share price. The response to this dilemma included one of history’s more ludicrous statements from a global institution, when the WHO modified its herd immunity definition to only recognize immunity resulting from pharmaceutical intervention. This is nonsense to anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of immunology, and of course the WHO’s staff have at least rudimentary knowledge.
Inevitably, SARS-CoV-2 has continued spreading, including from the vaccinated. Based on serology from Africa, India and the USA, and the highly transmissible Omicron variant, we can now be confident that nearly all the world’s population have post-infection immunity. It is no biological surprise that immunity gained from a respiratory tract infection with whole virus reduces disease severity more effectively than injection with spike-protein or its mRNA precursors. Claiming that mass vaccination still has public health relevance in these populations requires both abandonment of logic, and a willingness to dispense with decades of prior scientific learning. It requires acceptance of dogma.
A final component of the COVAX strategy, to lock-in celebrity support and enable those promoting the vaccine to still feel virtuous, is ‘vaccine equity’. People in rich countries are having boosters whilst many of the ‘global poor’ still await their first doses. The lack of benefit to be obtained from these doses, and the requirement of coercion to attain high coverage, are irrelevant – inequity in vaccine distribution simply has to be ‘bad’. Whilst pushing more boosters on high income markets, the same Pharma companies can look good by demanding vaccine equity, advocating for the ‘disadvantaged’. In reality this diverts resources from areas of greater need, thereby killing more children, but such fine print will never make the front pages. Commodity equity expands markets and provides returns, while health equity does not. Fear of being vilified as anti-equity helps keep skeptics quiet.
Bolting down the golden goose
Science, including public health, were previously held to be based on processes of logic, based on an acceptance that aspects of our world are grounded in discoverable truth. This concept is a threat to COVAX and the wider pandemic preparedness narrative. It is a threat to the return on investment of the pandemic industry’s sponsors. Greed is a stronger driver than truth, and it must be allowed to run free if society is to be truly reset in favor of those who wish to concentrate and control its wealth.
Despite its massive internal contradictions, disproportionate cost, coercion, and requirement for its promoters to live obvious lies, COVAX and the entire mass-vaccination paradigm has created a strong model for the success of the wider pandemic preparedness project. If truth in public health can be so readily dispensed with, and those working in the field so willingly corralled, the potential for milking the public’s trust and desire for safety presents unprecedented potential for profit. As this wealth accumulates, it supports the continuing advocacy and manipulation required to keep its adherents loyal. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle – we can expect to see more outbreaks, health emergencies and pandemics declared, more vaccines rolled out, and more wealth concentrated as a result. An unstoppable cycle burying truth under a growing fog of fear and falsehood.
That, at least, is the plan. The eventual outcome will depend on whether truth, human rights, equality and trust were ever fundamental to maintaining societal cohesion and peace. If they were, then let us hope the chaos that follows their abandonment is somehow contained. For now, business is business, and the golden goose, bolted down in a hall of lies, will keep on laying.
On Ukraine, ‘progressive’ proxy warriors spell disaster
Urging leftists to support the Ukraine proxy war, Bernie Sanders aide Matt Duss whitewashes the US role, attacks The Grayzone, and advocates dangerous militarism.
By Aaron Maté | The Grayzone | June 7, 2022
The unanimous vote by progressive lawmakers for the $40 billion Ukraine funding bill has been followed by a near-unanimous refusal to defend it. To date, no member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – with the sole exception of Cori Bush – has publicly explained why they chose to hand over billions of dollars to the weapons industry and intensify a proxy war against nuclear-armed Russia.
Amid this resounding silence, Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, has stepped in to fill the void. In a New Republic article titled “Why Ukraine Matters for the Left,” Duss attempts to convince fellow progressives that the “provision of military aid” to Ukraine “can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.” Duss has only praise for a Biden administration that, in his view, “should be applauded for its judicious reaction to the Ukraine crisis.” By contrast, Duss opts to launch an attack on dissident journalists, myself included, who don’t share his enthusiasm.
To make his case, Duss omits an abundance of inconvenient facts, betraying either considerable ignorance of the Ukraine-Russia conflict or a deliberate effort to distort it.
While apologia for US hegemonic projects is normal in DC foreign policy circles, Duss’ contribution is particularly noteworthy given his painstaking attempt to cast himself as an outsider. “Our political class,” Duss states, “advocates military violence with a regularity and ease that is psychopathic.” Duss’ comment is both accurate and wildly ironic, given his choice to advocate our political class’s military violence in Ukraine — with the remarkable ease that he identifies in others as psychopathic.
When it comes to how the Biden administration has handled the Ukraine crisis, Duss cannot identify a single fault. “The Biden team clearly did not seek this war,” Duss claims, and “in fact… made a strenuous, and very public, diplomatic effort to avert it.”
Duss does not explain what the administration’s “strenuous” diplomacy entailed, perhaps because even its top officials now openly admit that none existed.
In an interview with War on the Rocks, State Department counsellor Derek Chollet was asked if NATO expansion into Ukraine was “on the table” in pre-invasion contacts with Russia. “It wasn’t,” Chollet replied. The White House, Chollet explained, “made clear to the Russians that we were willing to talk to them on issues that we thought were genuine concerns they have that were legitimate in some way,” including “arms control.” (emphasis added) But when it comes to “the future of Ukraine” and its potential NATO membership, Chollet said, this was deemed a “non-issue.”
To Duss, the Biden administration’s (openly admitted) refusal to even discuss Russia’s core demands – and to only entertain issues that it deemed to be “legitimate” on Russia’s behalf – is apparently a “strenuous diplomatic effort.” If “diplomacy” amounts to enforcing US hegemony, as many in DC seem to believe, then Duss would have a case. But in the rest of the world, where diplomacy entails constructive dialogue with a semblance of parity, he does not.
Duss also takes aim at the argument, advanced by prominent leftists including former Brazilian President Lula da Silva, that a US-European pledge that Ukraine won’t join NATO “would have solved the problem” with Russia.
To refute Lula, Duss stresses that “in the weeks leading up to the war, U.S. allies, specifically German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, signaled clearly” that Ukraine’s NATO ascension “was not going to happen.” According to Duss, it is Putin who sabotaged their efforts by invading, and who “has now made that discussion moot.”
Duss omits what also happened in the weeks leading up to the war. While Germany and France did indeed float a proposal to keep Ukraine out of NATO, it was Ukraine – with US backing – that rejected it. According to an account in the Wall Street Journal, Scholtz proposed to Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 19 – five days before Russia’s invasion — that Ukraine “renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal,” signed by both Putin and Biden. But Zelensky rejected Schultz’s plan, a response that “left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading.” In dismissing the Germans’ NATO proposal, Zelensky joined the Biden White House, as State’s Derek Chollet acknowledged and other Biden officials made clear in public.
Ignoring US-Ukrainian rejectionism, Duss then declares that “it seems absurd to suggest that even an ironclad public pledge from President Biden that Ukraine would never be accepted into NATO would have convinced Putin to draw back the 180,000 troops he had placed on Ukraine’s borders.” Perhaps, but that very public pledge happened to be the centerpiece of Germany’s last-minute diplomatic effort – one that Duss himself invoked, and that Zelensky (along with Biden) chose to reject.
Duss’ whitewashing of the Biden administration’s rejection of diplomacy before the Russian invasion carries over to the period since.
Since Russia’s invasion, Duss says, the White House has “acted with restraint and care not to get drawn into a wider war with Russia.” While it is true that Biden has opted not to start World War III – in other words, has opted not to trigger a global suicide pact — he has done anything but act with “restraint.” One day before Duss’ article was published, Biden authorized the delivery of medium-range advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. These rockets have the capacity to strike inside of Russia; the US is acting on Ukraine’s assurance that it won’t.
Duss may support undermining diplomacy in Ukraine and shipping off billions of dollars worth of heavy weaponry instead, but this can only be described as “restraint” if the sole measure is an immediate — rather than merely prospective — nuclear holocaust.
Duss is so impressed with Biden’s handling of the war that he cannot even detect a tangible path that could end it. “As of this writing,” Duss declares, “I have seen no evidence of a settlement in the offing—as in, a deal that Putin would actually entertain, let alone accept—that we’re refusing to ‘push for.'”
If Duss cannot see evidence of a realistic settlement that Russia could accept, then he is being willfully blind. Russia’s explicit proposals, issued before the war and after, including two weeks into the invasion, called on Ukraine to “cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states.”
It is worth noting that the latter is Russia’s only new condition: for the eight years before the February invasion, Russia formally accepted the Minsk accords, which, to end the Donbas war, would have kept the Donetsk and Lugansk regions inside Ukraine’s borders, with limited autonomy.
Duss is free to argue that Russia’s terms for ending the war are unacceptable. But to pretend that Russia has not even laid out those terms, is to essentially advocate that the war never end.
By omitting Russia’s stated terms for a settlement, Duss also allows himself to erase one of the invasion’s key causes: the 2014 Maidan coup, and the ensuing eight-year Donbas war that had left more than 14,000 people dead by the time Russian forces crossed the border on February 24th.
In his 2500+ word piece, Duss makes no mention of the Donbas war and how it began: the 2014 ouster of a democratically elected Ukrainian president, with new leadership selected by Washington; the coup government’s assault on Ukraine’s ethnic Russian and anti-coup citizens, who launched a rebellion in the Donbas; the critical role of fascists and neo-Nazis in the Maidan coup and the Donbas war since; the fascist-led sabotage of the 2015 Minsk accords, which could have put an end to the conflict. By omitting this history, Duss can also omit how the US has helped undermine the Minsk agreements by siding with Ukrainian’s far-right and choosing to use the Donbas war to “fight Russia over there” (Adam Schiff) and “make Russia pay a heavier price,” (John McCain), because Ukraine’s “fight is our fight.” (Lindsey Graham).
After ignoring Russia’s stated grounds for a peace settlement, Duss goes on to disingenuously claim that the Ukrainian government has been pushing for one.
“Ukraine presented Russia with a far-reaching set of proposals over a month ago, including a commitment to ‘permanent neutrality,’” Duss claims. “Volodomyr Zelenskiy continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war.”
It is true that Ukraine presented Russia with a 10-point plan in late March. But Duss omits what happened immediately after: while Russia “signaled its preliminary support,” (RAND analyst Samuel Charap) Ukraine’s Western backers sabotaged it, and Zelensky acquiesced. In early April, Ukrainian and Russian officials were finalizing details for a Zelensky-Putin summit. But UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Kiev and ordered him to halt diplomacy. Citing sources close to Zelensky, Ukrayinska Pravda reports that Johnson informed his Ukrainian counterpart that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.” Johnson also relayed that even if Russia and Ukraine chose to sign security guarantees, the UK and its allies would not take part – rendering any such agreement worthless.
Zelensky clearly received the message, as Duss’s own source makes clear. When Duss claims that Zelensky “continues to offer to negotiate directly with Putin to end the war,” he links to a Reuters article that reveals such an “offer” to be hollow. Zelensky, Reuters reports, said he would only negotiate with Putin if Russia first withdrew entirely from Ukraine – an obvious non-starter. “Get out of this territory that you have occupied since February 24,” Zelensky said. “This is the first clear step to talking about anything.” Zelensky also “ruled out suggestions… that Ukraine should make concessions for the sake of securing a peace agreement that would allow Putin to save face.”
Thus, returning to Duss’ rendering, Zelensky’s “far-reaching proposals” were immediately rescinded under Western orders, and Zelensky’s “offer to negotiate” was premised on a condition that would have made negotiations impossible.
None of this is to suggest that Russia was justified in launching an invasion of Ukraine. To defend the use of force, which has been so catastrophic, Russia has to meet a high burden of evidence that, in my view, it has not. But one does not need to defend Russia’s invasion to see through Duss’ attempt to whitewash the US role in provoking and prolonging it.
Tellingly, Duss is openly hostile to journalists who have reported on the context that he has omitted. Out of nowhere, Duss introduces an attack on The Grayzone, the Max Blumenthal-founded news outlet that I work for. While Duss has nothing but praise for Biden, he has nothing but ad hominems for us (“pernicious authoritarian agitprop,” “atrocity-denying grifters” “click-baiting provocateurs”). After sharing this vitriol, he then immediately declares that engaging with us is “wasting time.”
I feel the same way about his juvenile name-calling, but interested readers can judge for themselves whether his insults are supported by facts. (He links to two “sources,” one a Medium blog post that, true to the neo-McCarthyite norm, peddles innuendo that The Grayzone is funded by Russia, among other smears).
If Duss is genuinely concerned about wasting time, he also might reflect on why he devotes ample space to paying lip service to progressive principles, only to ultimately endorse policies that flagrantly violate them. “Centering opposition to U.S. imperialism and militarism is an entirely appropriate starting point,” Duss states. Yet Duss’ desired end point would see leftists center U.S. imperialism and militarism, with disastrous results: among them, prolonging a proxy war against a nuclear armed power, threatening a worsening global food crisis, and sentencing more Ukrainians to death.
Even putting aside US complicity in the Ukraine proxy war and its dangers for the planet, progressives like Duss might wish to consider the likely political consequences. One obvious guide is the election of 2016, when Donald Trump won over a significant portion of voters by claiming to oppose the military interventionism that Duss is now urging progressives to embrace. Having seemingly learned nothing from 2016, Democrats in 2022 are again ceding anti-war sentiment to Republicans, 68 of whom voted against the $40 billion Ukraine bill in the House and Senate (versus zero Democrats).
As at least some Republicans vote against the proxy war, Biden has defended the domestic pain caused by his Ukraine proxy war by blaming “Putin’s Price Hike” and trying to argue that “defending freedom is going to cost.” Biden’s defense of “freedom” in Ukraine is now costing him a transatlantic flight to grovel at the feet of the Saudi autocracy, in the hopes of staving off a humiliating cost in the November midterms.
Continuing his mealy mouthed approach, Duss both claims to support diplomacy while simultaneously declaring it to be unattainable. The US, he says, “should certainly be actively engaged in finding a diplomatic path to end the war, and avoid committing to maximalist aims that could foreclose one.” But yet, according to Duss, “for the moment that path is unclear.”
If the path toward peace for Ukraine is unclear to Duss, then that can only be because he has chosen to erase the factual background and the diplomatic solutions on offer, thereby reinforcing the “maximalist aims” that he claims to oppose. Duss’s proxy war apologia will certainly win him a warm reception in establishment DC circles. For the US progressive movement, Ukraine, and the rest of the planet, it only spells disaster.
France investigating nuclear ‘cover-ups’
Samizdat | June 10, 2022
The French government is investigating whistleblower allegations that a state-run utility agency attempted to conceal safety issues at a nuclear power plant. Prosecutors confirm they are following up on complaints filed late last year.
Officials in Marseille launched an investigation into the alleged safety problems last month after an anonymous whistleblower said conditions at the Tricastin nuclear plant in southern France were “endangering the lives of others,” French newspaper Le Monde reported on Wednesday.
An engineer at the facility, the whistleblower also accused officials at the plant of “harassment,” as well as “violations of the criminal code, the environmental code, the labor code and the regulations relating to nuclear installations.” Though incidents continued – including a mysterious power surge at one reactor in 2017 and a flood at the same station one year later – no action was taken.
The largely state-run firm which operates the plant, Electricite de France (EDF), confirmed the ongoing investigation to the Wall Street Journal, saying the probe would help to “shed all necessary light on the alleged facts and thereby show the truth.”
Speaking to Reuters on Thursday, a lawyer for the whistleblower, William Bourdon, said the complaint was initially filed in November, but noted that the subsequent investigation does not target EDF directly. Instead, a probe “against X” has been launched, allowing prosecutors to look into the actions of multiple different parties.
The new investigation marks another blow for the French utility, which has recently taken half of the country’s nuclear reactors offline due to scheduled maintenance and refueling, and even outages caused by corrosion and damage. The spate of shutdowns coincided with soaring energy prices across Europe and elsewhere, driven in part by the conflict in Ukraine, as well as Western sanctions on Russian gas and oil exports.
The cost of inspecting and repairing the French nuclear plants could exceed €4.5 billion ($4.8 billion), according to recent EDF estimates, well beyond previous expectations. France derives around 70% of its electricity from nuclear power, and has seen a jump in prices throughout 2022.
Prior to the whistleblower filing, the Tricastin nuclear site had encountered some safety issues, including two separate uranium leaks within a matter of days in July 2008 which contaminated 100 employees at the plant and led to a ban on using local water for drinking, swimming, and agriculture.
Covid Passes – and coercion – are here to stay
By Niall McCrae | TCW Defending Freedom | June 10, 2022
So the Covid Pass was not just for Christmas. Despite all the rhetoric of ‘living with Covid’, the Civil Service seeks two deputy directors for further development of this digital health certification (one a ‘delivery lead’, the other a ‘service management’ role). Seemingly a coronavirus outbreak is being exploited to usher in technocratic surveillance whereby the state will know our every movement. And given the excuse of another pandemic, or perhaps a climate-related emergency, such movement will be readily curtailed.
Looking back, we can see how society was primed by the authorities and mainstream media for the language of a ‘new normal’. The term ‘lockdown’, first used in a US prison setting, began to appear in British newspapers several years ago, typically in hyperbolic Daily Express reports of an incident in a railway station or department store. Was this predictive priming? Soon after Covid-19 emerged, the media were warning of ‘Long Covid’. As we now know, mRNA vaccines were already patented, and perhaps this syndrome was a prepared disguise for the likely litany of vaccine injuries; every symptom under the sun was included.
‘Long Covid’, though, may have a different and darker meaning. The Covid-19 regime has set a precedent, and draconian infection controls could be reinstated at any time. Anyone who thinks Covid-19 is over is very naïve. In places as diverse as Portugal, Finland, North Korea and New York the disease has returned to the headlines, with summer surges feared owing to holidaying, festivals and other socialising (otherwise known as fun). The virus will never officially disappear, and a largely compliant public will accept public health controls while dissidents will be forced to comply or suffer the consequences.
Vaccine passports, like Covid, are ready to pounce again. They were introduced in a limited way in England, while the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland went much further. Nicola Sturgeon, a leader who basked in the glow of ‘saving Scots’ lives’, imposed restrictions long before and after the allegedly reckless rulers in Westminster.
It was as recently as January this year that the Scottish government expanded the use of vaccine passports. Adults needed to show proof of being fully vaccinated (less than four months since last jab) or a negative test before admission to nightclubs, unseated indoor events with more than 500 people, unseated outdoor events with over 4,000, and any event with more than 10,000 in attendance.
Many commentators believed that the SNP was using Covid-19 as a wedge in its independence drive, but the Labour assembly in Wales was just as extreme. In January Big Brother Watch launched a judicial review against Welsh ministers for its vaccine passport regime. Lawyer Shirin Marker of Bindmans LLP said: ‘In maintaining the Covid Pass Scheme, the Welsh government is exercising an unprecedented level of control over the rights and freedoms of the public. In these circumstances, it is essential that the Welsh government is transparent about what evidence they have relied upon to impose the scheme. Unfortunately, to date, such evidence has not been forthcoming.’
I suspect that decisions were made at UK level to use the Celtic fringes to test the water. Whereas the Scots and Welsh were manipulated by national consciousness, the awkward English have too many Samuel Bamfords against the establishment. And another Peterloo could turn the tide. Remember the poll tax riots, after the policy was introduced in Scotland with little resistance.
While he was still fooling us with Churchillian rhetoric, Boris Johnson repeatedly expressed his opposition to identity cards, an authoritarian creep of Tony Blair’s government. In the Daily Telegraph in 2004 he wrote: ‘There is the loss of liberty, and the creepy reality that the state will use these cards – doubtless with the best possible intentions – to store all manner of detail about us, our habits, what benefits we may claim, and so on.’
Yet as Prime Minister throughout the Covid-19 debacle, Johnson has keenly promoted the ‘build back better’ agenda espoused by the World Economic Forum. He agrees with WEF leader Klaus Schwab that we cannot return to the ‘old’ normal. While the British people feel they have left Covid-19 behind, at least for now, Johnson’s administration is spending public money to advance the Covid Pass. He will know of plans on a global scale, about which we can merely speculate. The enthusiasm of ministers for a new pandemic treaty, which would override national democracy, shows that we remain in the ratchet. What was Michael Gove doing at the recent Bilderberg meeting in Washington?
The blurb in the job advertisement states that the Department of Health and Social Care, which is administering the Covid Pass, is ‘central to the government’s response to Covid-19, the biggest challenge the country has faced in a lifetime’. Really? If there had been no constant barrage of sensational media messages in the last two years we would have carried on our lives regardless. Many of us know more victims of vaccine injury than of the virus itself.
Referring to the Prime Minister’s ‘Living with Covid’ strategy, the advert notes that ‘the NHS Covid Pass will be required at events and for international travel for the foreseeable future’. Living with Covid means never letting Covid go. And it is obviously not only about health, as this boast indicates: ‘Covid Pass is an award-winning DHSC programme undertaking a complex transition while continuing to deliver a vital citizen service in a changing health landscape.’
Digital surveillance here we come. But is it even more than that? Why are governments around the world so determined to inject us with repeated vaccines against a mostly mild and unremarkable respiratory virus? Are we being genetically engineered, and for what purpose? I can’t answer that, but clearly more jabbing is planned. In some countries the vaccine passport had slots for eight or ten doses, like a coffee loyalty card. Vast sums have been spent on stocks of Pfizer and Moderna vials.
I wonder how the interview panel would answer if applicants ask how many jabs they would be expected to take. Or is this post at a level high enough for vaccine immunity? For the plebs, however, Covid will be very long indeed.
US government admits participation in Ukrainian biolabs
By Lucas Leiroz | June 10, 2022
In a recent statement, US government officials finally admitted that the country helped to build and maintain biolaboratories on Ukrainian soil over the last two decades. The declaration comes from the Pentagon, which reinforces the military importance of the program of biolabs abroad. However, US officials still insist on the evidently fallacious narrative that the laboratories were intended for “peaceful” use.
In an online statement on Thursday, June 9, US Defense Department’s representatives said that Washington has been involved in the activities of 46 biolabs within Ukrainian territory, whose objectives, according to them, would be to act cooperatively with local experts in order to improve Ukraine’s biological safety and human and animal health.
“The United States has also worked collaboratively to improve Ukraine’s biological safety, security, and disease surveillance for both human and animal health, providing support to 46 peaceful Ukrainian laboratories, health facilities, and disease diagnostic sites over the last two decades (…) “This work, often conducted in partnership with outside organizations, such as the WHO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), has resulted in safer and more effective disease surveillance and detection (…) Ukrainian scientists have acted consistent with international best practices and norms in publishing research results, partnering with international colleagues and multilateral organizations, and widely distributing their research and public health findings”, Pentagon’s spokespersons said.
The representatives also emphasized that there was no research being carried out in Ukraine involving the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. In this sense, the use of the biolabs would be restricted to activities related to the search for peaceful medical knowledge and without any military purpose, which seems contradictory, considering that there were US military personnel operating in these facilities, such as in all US biolaboratories in other countries.
In fact, if the function of the biolabs really existed only in a non-military way, the units could be managed by civilian institutions of the US government, instead of having the active participation of the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Furthermore, in this case, the American health authorities would be the ones called upon by the government to provide public clarification on the case, not the Pentagon. In the current conjuncture, the American authorities seem to contradict themselves successively, unable to hide the obvious truth that the country was producing biomedical research of a military nature in Ukraine.
In addition, the security policy surrounding the research carried out there raises suspicions about its possible peaceful use. Although in the statement it is claimed that the US acted in partnership with Ukrainian and international organizations, there was no publicity of data on the results of research in these units. In fact, the very existence of the laboratories had previously been denied by some American authorities – although some specific people, such as the Undersecretary Victoria Nuland, have also admitted, showing how there are continuous contradictory statements by the US government.
It seems that in the current situation, after Russia has exposed so much data about the clandestine activities of such labs and their supporters, there is no longer any way Washington can deny the existence of the activities, so it tries to maintain damage control through a “partial confession”, admitting the existence but denying the use for production of biological weapons.
Furthermore, even if we consider all the Pentagon’s statements true, many questions will remain unanswered. The sources of funding for the laboratories, according to data presented by the Russians, involved a wide network of private agents, including Big Pharma companies, such as Pfizer and Moderna, and Hunter Biden himself, son of the US president, known worldwide for carrying out illegal activities in Ukraine. None of this has been clarified by the Pentagon or any other American authority so far.
In addition, by not answering about private funding sources, the US government raises even more suspicions on the possible biological weapons research. It is true that there was American public money applied in the operations of the biolabs, but Russia denounces the existence of private investments that have not been recognized by the US so far. This means that there were at least two sources of funding for such activities. One of these sources was the US government itself, which supposedly financed peaceful biomedical research, while the other source, which involves pharmaceutical companies and corrupt agents, remains unofficial and, consequently, without clear purposes. Certainly, it was the private source that financed illegal research with bioweapons, which could not be included in official US state accounting documents. There are many questions Washington has yet to answer.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Enjoying Your Membership in the Mass Shooting of the Day Club?
Made-to-order censorship from the people who brought you 9/11
Helen of desTroy | June 9, 2022
When Nina “Mary Sloppins” Jankowicz predictably crashed and burned as the standard-bearer for the Biden administration’s Ministry of Truth, most people with two brain cells to rub together rejoiced. This was a logical response to aesthetic terrorism, as the gratingly-voiced compulsive liar being shoved in our face was a clear example of the narrative managers adding insult to injury. But anyone who thought we had heard the last of Washington’s Disinformation Governance Board was sadly mistaken. The creature which has replaced Jankowicz is significantly more horrifying, a nightmarish Nosferatu whose mommy was in the Mossad, who’s played a starring role in some of the most heinous crimes against humanity of the last two decades.
sleep tight
I’m talking, of course, about Michael Chertoff.
While there’s no direct smoking-gun proof that the current Mass Shooting Of The Week Club is connected to the Disinformation Governance Board, Chertoff has something of a history of weaponizing extremely dodgy incidents of “terrorism” to advance his agenda, whether that’s getting the Patriot Act passed after 9/11 or having the full nude body scanners manufactured by his company the Chertoff Group’s client Rapiscan (yes, the horrifically invasive body scanner company actually had the word “rape” in the name) installed in airports across the US after the “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab supposedly tried and failed to detonate a bomb in his big-boy panties aboard an airplane.
The Chertoff Group’s client list is positively bursting with the sort of company that would benefit from a rash of mass shootings, and Chertoff himself sits on the board of the Jeffrey Epstein-backed Carbyne911, a firm perhaps most notable for its many links to Israeli intelligence, the cartoonish way in which Tel Aviv has sold it as precisely the solution to America’s mass shooting ‘problem,’ and the ease with which it can be turned into a Trojan horse for the Unit 8200 alumni who founded it, allowing Israeli spies to slurp up a wealth of sensitive information without even having to deceive their targets. Carbyne911 turns the user’s phone into an audio/video transmitter in much the same way as infamous Israeli spyware firm NSO Group’s Pegasus malware did, except Carbyne911 is installed deliberately by the user, ostensibly to keep them “safe” – and activating one device activates all other devices in the area that have Carbyne911 installed, potentially giving the company access to an entire building’s worth of sensitive audio-visual data. The company also sells its services for non-emergency purposes, allowing it to keep its foot in the door for those slow times between mass shootings, and in addition to the US, Israel and Mexico, it has offices in Ukraine, which is surely just a coincidence…
Chertoff, one of the architects of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 torture policy, is also well-known for his utter lack of humanity – something that would have been inculcated in him from a young age if his mother Livia Eisen was, as many qualified investigators believe, an early Mossad member. One would have to look far indeed for anyone more likely to inaugurate a “mass shooting of the day” campaign in order to strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights once and for all, or have certain political views declared illegal and elevated to the level of domestic terrorism – all while making a buck for his Chertoff Group security industry clients. Guilford County, North Carolina reportedly plans in the wake of this sudden outpouring of senseless FBI-adjacent violence to begin installing body scanners at its 19 high schools and 23 middle schools, and with the bidding process open you can bet that Rapiscan or its parent company OSI Systems will be taking a big bite out of the taxpayer’s wallets in that state – if not, in reality, out of crime.
Setting up one mass shooting after another is quite clever, from the point of view of pure evil. Researchers digging through the exhaustive amount of evidence indicating at least one “retired” FBI agent had explicit advance knowledge of where, when, how, and with what weapons Payton Gendron was going to shoot up a supermarket in Buffalo will have their work cut out for them simultaneously researching the constantly-shifting stories fed the public by Uvalde, Texas authorities following the shooting at Robb Elementary School, where a kid supposedly so poor his peers mocked him mercilessly for it was suddenly able to afford over $5000 worth of high-end guns and ammo (we know the prices because he supposedly sent the receipt to one of his online “friends” – who couldn’t possibly have been another agent who wanted to make sure his donations to his little buddy in Uvalde were being well-spent! surely there’s an innocent reason CNN deleted that claim from their current version of the story!) while also keeping an eye out for any possible anomalies at the New Orleans graduation shooting and the Tulsa hospital shooting and the Pittston, PA Wal-Mart shooting and the Los Angeles high school shooting—which all took place in a 48-hour span. By the time the identity of Gendron’s FBI pal is confirmed, will anyone even remember who he is?
They won’t, of course, certainly not in the US’ goldfish-memory news cycle. But the ideas slipped into Gendron’s word salad of a manifesto will be added to the list of unacceptable views the holding of which makes an individual a terrorist in the eyes of the government. Unreadable mashups of copypaste, memes, and gearhead masturbation like his magnum opus make it clear that these incidents are being deployed as de facto shopping lists for ideas the narrative managers want removed from circulation. Gendron (or rather, the intelligence agents who programmed him to open fire inside a Buffalo supermarket last month) is not only obsessed with so-called assault rifles and military-grade body armor, “he” also appears to be capable of basic levels of pattern recognition regarding the activities of international financial cartels with a tendency to hide behind a certain ethnic group who use the religion to which they supposedly belong and its members as human shields for all manner of atrocities, then accuse anyone who notices of “antisemitism” for having eyes, ears and a functional brain. This phenomenon has been observed and described by scholars for centuries, and its perpetrators are sick of ordinary people noticing, hence their decision to shoehorn it in between an array of juvenile “white supremacist” cliches in the hope of having any mention of this reality declared “hate speech.”
This sort of thing is hardly new. The intelligence agents who crafted Gendron’s “manifesto” followed a long tradition of guilt-by-association when they larded it with credibility grenades largely consisting of the kind of dull-edged racism one generally sees in the kind of person who, in the absence of any real accomplishments of his own in which he can take pride, falls back on his ancestry, which he embraces with an overblown “pride” as if an accident of birth is an adequate substitute for achievement. No one with a functioning critical capacity actually believes these types are a threat before the FBI puts a gun in their hands and points them at the nearest pressure point. But throwing a bunch of bodies on the pile has ginned up a new round of well-funded outrage, perhaps best exemplified by New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who leveraged the death toll to pass a law against the contents of the manifesto so incomprehensible and unpopular even the media establishment can’t find anything nice to say about it.
Now anyone who expresses any of the ideas espoused by someone who later goes on a shooting rampage – whether he’s gently guided by an FBI agent (or a rumored yet frustratingly citation-deficient online cheerleading section) or merely motivated by revenge on an ex-girlfriend or a doctor who may have made a mess of his back surgery – becomes that much easier to tar and feather with the all-purpose “hate speech” brush.
For the parasitic elites and the intelligence agencies, who generally work hand in hand anyway, expressing such “white-supremacy-adjacent” ideas will be seen as a precursor to embarking on yet another mass shooting rampage, deemed “pre-crime” under the Domestic Terrorism bill recently passed in the House and only a few more mass shootings away from being rammed through the Senate. Anyone expressing such ideas can be imprisoned for their own “safety,” in the same way as was laid out in the Trump administration’s proposed HARPA and DEEP programs. HARPA proposed monitoring an individual’s electronic devices for signs of mental illness, which could be acted upon to neutralize the individual without evidence they would so much as hurt the proverbial fly; DEEP would similarly intervene against individuals deemed to be “mobilizing toward violence,” deploying “court ordered mental health treatment,” electronic monitoring, and every other tool in the I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-prison toolbox against individuals who’ve done nothing except set off what has become an absurdly sensitive set of pre-crime “red flags.” Given that the mass shooting of Columbine was believed by those closest to the perpetrators to be triggered by their use of antidepressant drugs, the idea of funneling would-be shooter types into psychiatric care instead of as far away from it as possible is ironic at best, a sick joke at worst.
And given the ever-yawning definition of Domestic Terrorism in 21st century America, the only way to escape the tightening net of absurdly punitive speech laws will soon be to curl up in the fetal position at the feet of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink as he lies sleeping, like a loyal pet, in order to prove oneself clean of ideological sins.
Thus, while the seemingly endless stream of mass shootings unfolding over the last two weeks is clearly designed to encourage Americans to beg their government to take their guns away, anything, anything to make it stop, for the children, et cetera, it’s also designed to encourage Americans to shut up those mean people online, because if they can’t convince the half of the population that owns guns to chuck them over an increasingly absurd series of “mass shootings,” taking away their right to complain is a sufficient consolation prize.
Playing chicken with dead kids is the sort of sick game only a Michael Chertoff could win, and given the absolute cowardice that sets in when anything about a mass shooting – even really obvious things like retired FBI agents befriending the shooters and being publicly told where and when they would commit their acts in time to prevent them – is questioned, he is likely to come out on top if we allow this insanity to continue without asking the obvious questions – not just about who benefits (that much is clear) but about who is setting these events up one after another to go off in a carefully timed string like fireworks on the 4th of July (and we can expect a biiiiiiig mass shooting that day, just to hammer their point home).
Monkeypox is following the Covid playbook step by step
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 8, 2022
Monkeypox is back in the headlines as of yesterday, back to work after a short break.
It burst onto the front pages, with concomitant BIG RED NUMBERS and daily case updates a couple of weeks ago, and then went quiet. The press pretty much stopped talking about it.
… until they started again.
Yesterday it was reported that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has “upgraded” monkeypox to a “notifiable disease”, meaning any positive test must be immediately reported to the government agency.
Ever one for subtlety, the Telegraph’s front page reports this as “monkeypox upgraded to same level as leprosy and the plague”
Across the pond, the US CDC has made the curiously synchronised decision to increase their travel alert on Monkeypox to level 2, which recommends people “practice enhanced precautions”.
Let’s be clear here – the “monkeypox outbreak” is a joke.
Anybody actually taking any of this seriously after the last two years of Covid hysteria needs a major reality check.
At this point you should be assuming any disease “outbreak” is a hoax until proven otherwise. Really proven, not “trust me, I’m an expert” proven.
For those who haven’t got to that stage yet, consider all the ways that monkeypox is following the exact same path as “Covid”…
- The monkeypox outbreak was “predicted” by an exercise a few months before it happened. Just like Covid.
- We’ve seen the narrative re-inforced by rumours that it’s a bio-weapon. These accusations have gone both ways, with the Western press saying Monkeypox is a Russian bio-weapon and Chinese rumours claiming it was deliberately released by the US. Just like Covid
- We’re seeing institutions revising history in order to inflate the potential threat of the disease. just like Covid.
- Monkeypox is being diagnosed via a PCR test. These tests are going to become more widely available as test-makers “seize the new market” and governments plan to “ramp up testing”. Increased testing (with an unreliable test) could artificially inflate “cases”, and feed the panic. Just like covid.
- The monkeypox narrative is being pushed by countries on both sides of the “New Cold War”. Just like covid.
They’re already resorting to the “new variant” headline, that wasn’t a thing for Covid for almost a year. Is this due to desperation or impatience? Who can say, but there must be some reason for the accelerated timeline.
They’re even trying to bring masks back into style by claiming monkeypox may have become airborne.
And, of course, the biggest similarity is in the solution: “vaccines”.
It has already been decided that vaccines originally designed for smallpox work for monkeypox too, and that they are best way to stop the spread of the disease.
Meanwhile, the monkeypox story over at Science tells us…
As monkeypox threat grows, scientists debate best vaccine strategy”
It seems the “experts” can’t decide between “ring vaccination” – where you vaccinate every close contact of a confirmed monkeypox case – or “broader vaccination campaigns”.
Note, they don’t debate if we need a vaccine strategy at all.
The US government is already set to spend at least 180 million dollars on smallpox vaccines.
In Europe, pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic is seeing a huge up-tick in its contracts as EU nations treat monkeypox as a “wake-up call”.
So, vaccine manufacturers are set to make a tidy profit… Just like covid.
Whatever eventually comes of this story, it certainly seems that Covid has put a “pandemic” playbook in place, one that each new scare-disease will follow.
It’s all so predictable… and yet the people in charge actually expect us to believe it. Worst of all, some people actually will.
I started by calling monkeypox a joke, and that might be literally true. It’s hard not to feel like they’re making fun of us.
And if that’s the case then, just like at school, the best thing we can do is simply ignore it.
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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- The Broken Contract
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- If Americans Knew
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- A New Library in Gaza Rises From the Ashes of Destruction
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- The Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza — A cry at sea to the world’s dormant conscience
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- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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