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Claims That Childhood Vaccines ‘Saved Millions of Lives’ Based on Flawed Models

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 29, 2025

Claims by public health agencies and in top medical journals that childhood vaccination prevents millions of deaths annually are based on flawed epidemiological models, according to a paper published today by Correlation, a Canadian nonprofit research organization.

The author, all-cause mortality expert Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., argues these claims are based on “tentative and untethered models of epidemiological forecasting” that produce “unlikely results.”

The models depend entirely on invalid estimates of vaccine efficacy and disease prevalence and virulence, none of which are based on real-world data concerning actual deaths, according to Rancourt.

They also fail to account for other complex factors contributing to child mortality — particularly in low-income countries, where most of these millions of infant lives are purportedly saved. These factors include nutritional deficiency, toxic exposures and poverty.

Rancourt also found that, contrary to public health claims, there are no examples in all-cause mortality data of a drop in infant or child mortality temporally associated with the rollout of a childhood vaccination program.

On the contrary, he wrote, independent observational studies have tied vaccine rollouts to increased infant or child mortality and morbidity.

In the paper, Rancourt develops an alternative model using yearly all-cause infant mortality. He estimates that childhood vaccination campaigns since 1974 may have been associated with approximately 100 million vaccine-related deaths.

However, he emphasizes that any true estimate of mortality would also have to account for other factors, such as the shifting political and economic dynamics that drive poverty and its associated health problems.

Children’s Health Defense Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski said, ”Rancourt points out serious flaws in mainstream debates over childhood vaccination that are premised on errors in generalization and lead to childlike black-and-white thinking when it comes to vaccine safety.”

Jablonowski said the paper clearly demonstrates that claims vaccines have saved millions of lives globally, “hang on a few impossible assumptions.” Those include:

  • That no human can die from a vaccine (directly or indirectly).
  • That children who die from a “vaccine-preventable” pathogen were otherwise perfectly healthy.
  • That we understand how diseases spread in all contexts.
  • That all children have the same health, diet, exercise habits, access to clean water, toxin and environmental exposures, genetic disposition, etc., as the clinical trial participants.
  • That clinical trials accurately represent the risks and benefits of the vaccine.
  • That once a vaccine is developed, all other medical interventions suddenly stop working.

Rancourt said he began writing the paper to demonstrate the “ludicrous theoretical modelling exercises” behind the spectacular claims of reduced infant mortality from mass vaccination programs.

“But what I discovered is that the longstanding industry of administering vaccination programmes to save infants in low-income countries from death is scientifically baseless and a fraudulent enterprise that removes resources and attention away from urgently needed development to correct ongoing mass neocolonial exploitation,” he said.

‘Garbage in, garbage out’

Many top researchers have raised public concerns about epidemic modeling, particularly in research that serves the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. John Ioannidis has pointed out that “epidemic forecasting has a dubious track record,” which became particularly evident during the COVID-19 period. Models can easily be compromised or skewed if they use poor data, incorrect assumptions, lack epidemiological information or fail to consider all dimensions of a given problem.

This, combined with the fact — highlighted by former editors of both The Lancet and The BMJ — that medical journals have become “an extension of the marketing arm of pharmaceutical companies” has led to the proliferation of forecasting models that don’t meet even the most basic standards for modeling, Rancourt said.

In recent years, epidemiologic modelers have published many papers claiming to estimate mortality averted through childhood vaccination.

Rancourt argued these models share two fatal flaws: They are based on unreliable assumptions of vaccine efficacy and they “guesstimate” deaths avoided using disease models not anchored in real-world data.

The safety and efficacy numbers for these models always come from clinical trials, which he says are “systemically unreliable” in assessing efficacy and fail to evaluate safety.

The trials are, “overwhelmingly controlled by an industry making large profits from the vaccines, and this industry has amply, historically, consistently and repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to act fraudulently at the expense of endangering the public,” Rancourt wrote.

Also, the trials themselves introduce several biases. For example, trials are conducted with healthy children, but vaccines are administered to children with multiple vulnerabilities, particularly in low-income countries.

The trials also don’t test the vaccines against true placebos, don’t monitor children long-term for safety issues, and don’t test against disease prevention or safety in the real world.

Second, they rely on “guesstimates” of deaths averted — estimating how many children didn’t die because they got the vaccine — based on isolated models for disease contagion that aren’t validated by real-world research.

Most importantly, they fail to account for the fact that childhood mortality rates are affected by a wide range of factors — including underlying health conditions, poor nutrition and access to care — beyond simply whether a child is vaccinated or not.

“I argue that the proverbial computing term ‘garbage in, garbage out’ pre-eminently applies in these circumstances,” Rancourt said.

Breaking down claims that vaccination has saved 154 million lives since 1974

To illustrate his points, Rancourt analyzed a recent study funded by the World Health Organization (WHO) and published in The Lancet by Andrew J. Shattock, Ph.D., and colleagues.

The study concluded that “Since 1974, vaccination has averted 154 million deaths, including 146 million among children younger than 5 years of whom 101 million were infants younger than 1 year.”

Rancourt calculated this would be the equivalent of 5.7% of global deaths annually, or a 20% reduction in global infant mortality.

Rancourt said it would be a “fantastic” medical achievement. “Some might reasonably call it unbelievable.”

In addition to the WHO funding, the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium — funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates-backed Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — provided the models. Members of the research team also receive funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Wellcome Trust and other organizations with financial and political interests in promoting mass vaccination.

For The Lancet study, Shattock estimated deaths avoided by vaccination using only theoretical models for how disease spreads — with no attention to context. And then used efficacy rates from vaccine clinical trials to estimate how many children who would have gotten sick and died don’t because vaccines are present.

The study repeats that model for each of the nine vaccines it considered to arrive at the number of lives saved.

The study also estimated the numbers based on the assumption that, otherwise, infant mortality would have remained constant between 1974 and 2024. However, in reality, infant mortality had been dropping before that, which the model should have accounted for.

The study “collapses on examination of its premises,” Rancourt wrote.

The problem of poverty

Perhaps the most glaring issue, Rancourt said, is that models touting high numbers of lives saved by vaccines fail to account for the reality that child mortality is influenced by many complex factors, particularly in low-income countries.

For example, the WHO states that the measles vaccine has the greatest impact on infant mortality, accounting for most lives saved from all vaccines. However, deaths from measles are typically related to malnutrition. Mortality and morbidity rates from infectious diseases like measles decline with improved living standards.

Malnutrition also makes children more vulnerable to environmental toxins — including vaccines, Rancourt noted.

In other words, malnutrition, including of the mother, makes a child highly vulnerable to death from a wide range of infections that don’t occur or aren’t fatal in well-nourished children living in healthy environments.

Low-income countries not only lack funding for public health, Rancourt said, but vaccination campaigns divert resources away from other health priorities like clean water and basic health services.

Vaccination programs increase infant and child mortality 

Contrary to repeated claims that vaccines save millions of lives, Rancourt’s analysis of the relationship between vaccine rollouts and infant mortality rates suggests the opposite — that these programs have contributed to increased infant and child mortality.

Rancourt correlated changes in the global infant mortality rate with major vaccine rollouts between 1980-1999 and 1999-2015. During those periods, global infant mortality rates were declining, but the rate of decline slowed after the vaccine rollouts.

The deceleration became more marked in about 1992, when the hepatitis B and pneumococcal conjugate vaccines were introduced, even in low-income countries.

Had the decline in infant mortality continued at the same rate from the period before vaccine rollouts, there would have been 100 million fewer infant deaths. Instead, the rate of decline in mortality slowed precisely when the rollouts happened.

All researchers modeling the benefits of vaccination missed or disregarded this evident temporal correlation, Rancourt said.

Rancourt’s findings corroborate observational studies, including those showing the introduction of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine in low-income countries led to a spike in infant mortality among vaccinated babies.

However, Rancourt cautioned that he was presenting the simplest possible model. A true estimate would have to adjust for the benefits of improving living conditions. It would also have to account for the impacts of “aggressive so-called globalization” in the 80s and 90s that facilitated the global expansion of industry, global vaccination campaigns and industrial agriculture, which all had varied and significant impacts on low- and middle-income countries.

Rancourt concluded the overwhelming cause of high infant mortality is extreme poverty associated with severe malnutrition and exposure to toxic living environments.

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

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The US Is Reeking the Smell of Fear

By Hua Bin | January 31, 2025

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has sent a shockwave through the US tech industry and Wall Street in the last week.

Its LLM R1, trained under $6 million and 2 months, has outperformed the latest offerings from OpenAI, Meta, Google and Microsoft, who have spent tens of billions and years on their models.

The DeepSeek AI app has topped download charts in the US and China, replacing ChatGPT as the No. 1 AI productivity tool.

Due to its breakthrough technology that shows powerful AI can be developed with very limited investment in compute, DeepSeek’s emergency has sent Nvidia stock reeling, losing as much as 17% on Monday and wiping out $600 billion in market cap.

Interestingly, as we speak, barely a few days after the shockwave on Wall Street, DeepSeek is experiencing a massive denial of service (DoS) attacks from the US on its servers, affecting new registrations.

The US government, including the US Navy, has banned the use of DeepSeek for its personnel. And the congress is already discussing ways to slow down and disrupt DeepSeek.

This episode is eerily reminiscent of the Huawei ban, the TikTok ban, the chip ban, and the EV tariffs. The US regime has fully adopted the Tonya Harding school of how to win by breaking the leg of her competitor. Ask Nancy Kerrigan about it.

As thoughtful people put all these panic-ridden actions in context, the most obvious conclusion emerges – the US regime is not acting from any position of strength. It is behaving like a chicken little who cannot compete, win honestly, and is running scared.

The list of anti-China activities out of successive US regimes is long and varied –

– Trump started to impose 60% tariff on Chinese imports since 2017, a policy the Biden regime continued.

– The Biden regime imposed 100% tax on Chinese EVs, which have not yet even entered the US market. But the competitiveness of Chinese EVs is enough to get Biden to enact pre-emptive tariffs.

– Biden regime imposed dozens of export controls on China, often using coercion against its own “allies” to follow suit such as Holland’s ASML and South Korea’s Hynix and Samsung.

– Biden regime put thousands of Chinese companies on the US entity list with all sorts of made-up justifications in hope of disrupting these companies’ operations.

– Trump is again making noises to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. He is going further to threaten invading Panama and Greenland to contain China.

– The FBI launched the infamous China Initiative to prosecute Chinese scientists working in the US, yielding zero prosecutable case after ruining the lives of numerous scholars and scientists.

McCarthyism is alive and well in the “land of the free”. J Edgar Hoover, the cross dresser, would be proud of the viciousness of the criminal organization he founded.

– The US regime has also harassed the hundreds of thousands Chinese students in the US, who are contributing $150 billion a year to the US economy. It is attempting to prevent Chinese students from studying in advanced technical fields. Anyone studying the defunct neoliberal economics or neoconservative politics and faux democracy is welcome.

– The congress passed a $1.6 billion smear fund in a so-called “anti-CCP propaganda” campaign. The best to counter other’s so-called propaganda is of course to launch a bigger one of your own.

– Every political appointee, as well as elected official, must espouse a fervent anti-China rhetoric in confirmation hearings, TV interviews, and corporate media op-eds. If you are not a China hawk, you have no place in the US power elite.

– Every Pentagon official and military industrial complex funded “think tanker” is expected to sound tough about the coming China US war. They come up with frightening concepts like the “unmanned Hellscape” strategy in the Taiwan Strait, seemingly unaware that China is years ahead in drone tech and production.

– The US has tried to mobilize its vassals from Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and India into anti-China military alliances. It has formed fearsome-sounding acronyms like AUKUS and QUAD, which are looked upon in awe only by itself.

The “most powerful country in the history of the world” (as self-claimed by multiple US regimes) seems unconfident to take on China on its own.

On the other hand, China is playing its own game. There is no political figure or “expert” jumping up and down on national or local TV to shout against the US. There is little attention paid to the theatrics in Washington and its client states.

China is focused on overcoming the difficulties posed by the aggressive US actions, reducing dependencies, and developing its indigenous capabilities.

– China has diversified its trades. Trading with emerging markets now account for more than 50% of China’s total trade. Trade with the US is less than 3% of its GDP as of 2024.

– Huawei has revived its mobile business and dethroned Apple to return to market leadership in China. Its leadership is more entrenched in the core telecom technology area. It is more vertically integrated with its own chip design and manufacturing supply chain.

Huawei has expanded its product offerings to include mobile operating systems (Harmony OS NEXT), electric vehicles, streaming services, and autonomous driving.

– In AI, Chinese companies are making rapid progress. In addition to DeepSeek, ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba, 01.ai have all developed sophisticated LLM models.

– China leads in industrial AI applications from robotics, drones to autonomous driving. Companies such as Unitree, DJI, BYD, Xiaomi are integrating AI technologies into multiple areas of practical applications beyond generative AI.

China is also translating its industrial, technological and economic power into military power.

It has recently launched the world’s first 6th generation fighter prototypes (not one but two at the same time), the world’s first drone-carrier, the first hypersonic stealth unmanned airplanes for strike and reconnaissance, the first stealth unmanned warship, and the most powerful long-range air defence systems.

It is progressing rapidly in directed energy weapons, military 5G, atomic timing, and space warfare systems.

All these military technological breakthroughs were unveiled in the last 3 months.

While US politicians and military figures seem to conflate theatrics with reality, China is quietly amassing the capability to overwhelm its opponent in raw military might, industrial might and economic might.

As we watch with amusement the clownish performance of the US elite, the stinking odor of fear reeks so much you can smell it from across the Pacific.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Sinophobia | , | Leave a comment

Nvidia suffers record one-day stock market value drop

RT | January 28, 2025

Nvidia’s stock plummeted 17% on Monday, erasing approximately $589 billion from its market capitalization and marking the largest single-day loss in US corporate history. The sharp decline follows concerns over mounting competition from the Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek.

The selloff was part of a broader tech downturn that saw the Nasdaq Composite fall 3.1%, its worst day since December. Nvidia shares closed at $118.58, marking their most significant drop since March 2020 during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Monday’s plunge also dethroned Nvidia as the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, at $2.9 trillion, pushing it back to third place behind Apple and Microsoft.

The downturn was triggered by DeepSeek’s launch of an open-source R1 model, which the company claims was trained in just two months at a fraction of the cost required by US-based firms like OpenAI. This development has raised questions about the sustainability of high AI-related spending, particularly on Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) that dominate the AI chip market.

Nvidia itself described DeepSeek’s innovation as “an excellent AI advancement,” but argued that it expects demand for its chips to increase rather than diminish. “Inference requires significant numbers of Nvidia GPUs and high-performance networking,” a company spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

Beyond Nvidia, the selloff extended to other tech and semiconductor companies. Broadcom saw its stock drop 17%, wiping out $200 billion in market value. Data center companies heavily reliant on Nvidia’s chips, such as Oracle, Dell, and Super Micro Computer, also experienced sharp declines of at least 8.7%.

Oracle’s chairman, Larry Ellison, saw his net worth fall by $27.6 billion, the most among affected billionaires, according to Forbes. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s personal fortune dropped by $21 billion, ranking as the second-largest personal loss.

The AI-fueled stock surge of the past two years has made companies like Nvidia central to market confidence. Nvidia’s shares soared 239% in 2023 alone, driven by demand from tech giants like Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon.

The latest development comes amid growing tensions in the AI race between the US and China. Despite US export restrictions on high-end chips, DeepSeek has managed to deliver competitive performance compared to OpenAI’s o1, relying on lower-spec GPUs.

US policymakers have taken note of the competition. Venture capitalist David Sacks, who was appointed as the White House’s AI and crypto advisor under President Donald Trump, called for renewed focus on innovation to counteract China’s advancements.

“DeepSeek’s success shows that the AI race will be very competitive,” Sacks wrote on X, urging the US to avoid complacency. Another billionaire venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, has described DeepSeek’s emergence as a “Sputnik moment” for American tech.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Trump might defy policy to reach nuclear deal with Iran: Responsible Statecraft

Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2025

President Donald Trump has signaled an unexpected shift in the conventional US policy regarding Iran, revealing that the only issue his administration would face with the Islamic Republic is its development of a nuclear weapon.

Speaking on Fox News’ Hannity show on January 23, Trump did not address Iran’s regional policies, its defiance of the Israeli occupation, or the possibility of enforcing a regime change. Rather, his only focus was preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

In this regard, a Responsible Statecraft report, written by Eldar Mamedov, recalled previous statements by Iranian officials, confirming that the nation does not seek nuclear weapons, adding that this could facilitate a political agreement between Washington and Tehran.

Tehran has also gestured its willingness to re-engage with the West, particularly following the election of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and his government coming to power. However, despite the mutual political willingness, the path to a deal remains highly complex and is vastly different from 2015, when the JCPOA curtailed Iran’s nuclear program.

Is a nuclear deal possible? 

Following Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the JCPOA, his imposition of sanctions, and the EU’s failure to abide by the terms of the deal, Iran significantly advanced its program, including enriching uranium to 60%—a step away from weapon-grade levels (90%)—and deploying advanced centrifuges. Nuclear expert Kelsey Davenport notes that Iran could now produce enough material for five to six nuclear bombs in just two weeks, according to Mamedov.

The situation is further complicated by the limited access the IAEA has had to Iran since 2021, heightening concerns about unmonitored nuclear material potentially being moved to covert sites, as well as shifts in Iran’s nuclear rhetoric that suggest a potential rethinking of its doctrine.

While Tehran officially maintains it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, regional challenges could incentivize Iran to consider a nuclear deterrent, Mamedov explained.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats of a direct attack, possibly with US support and cover, could possibly motivate Iran to contemplate threshold weaponization as a defensive measure.

Mamedov writes that negotiations to achieve a potential deal would have to consider Iran’s extensive nuclear program, as well as the set of motivations it has to expand its nuclear manufacturing. In this context, concessions would have to be made, addressing the regional situation and Iran and its allies’ security concerns, which prompted nuclear development in the first place.

Although Iran’s Leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei approved re-engagement and Pezeshkian’s reformist government advocated for a more proactive approach, majorly to ease US sanctions on the Islamic Republic, some Iranian politicians still have reservations, citing the US decision to withdraw from the JCPOA. This makes the matter one of “how to engage”, rather than if engagement should be initiated.

Some Iranian officials see little benefit in trading their nuclear leverage for uncertain sanctions relief. They are also bolstered by a new strategic partnership with Russia, which includes military and security cooperation, providing deterrence against potential attacks by “Israel” or the US.

The time is now!

Currently, proponents of waiting for a US initiative hold sway in Tehran at the moment. Reformists, however, argue this approach wastes time, suggesting Trump may seek a quick deal to enhance his peace-making image, especially with the Ukraine conflict dragging on. A limited framework deal, similar to Trump’s DPRK agreement, could be quickly drafted if the political decision is made, according to Mamedov.

While doubts remain about achieving a substantive follow-up deal, even a symbolic agreement—such as a handshake between Trump and an Iranian leader—could de-escalate tensions, marginalize pro-Netanyahu factions, and create room for broader negotiations addressing nuclear issues, sanctions, and regional concerns, Mamedov wrote.

Diplomatically, Iran has engaged with the EU and E3 (Britain, France, Germany) to prevent them from undermining progress by invoking UN sanctions before the October 2025 deadline. While Tehran has no illusions about the EU’s ability to restore the JCPOA without US involvement, these talks signal Iran’s seriousness about a deal and aim to avoid the E3 acting as spoilers out of fear of being excluded from future US-Iran agreements.

The most viable path forward seems to be a limited bilateral deal between the US and Iran to ease tensions, followed by multilateral negotiations with the original JCPOA signatories. With political will apparent on all sides, the opportunity to advance diplomacy is now.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Germany: Berlin needs emergency loans after migrants blow €500 million hole in city’s budget

Refugees have cost Berlin billions and that is only one German city

Remix News | January 27, 2025

Despite claims that migrants are going to fund the entire West and save pensions with all the tax funds they generate, reality is once again encroaching. Now, the Berlin Senate is preparing emergency loans to cover refugee costs at a time when Berlin is cutting services, including for schools, due to increasingly dire budget shortfalls.

Notably, a Christian Democrat (CDU), Kai Wegner, is the mayor of Berlin, but under his leadership, not much has changed from the previous left-wing government. Berlin’s Finance Senator Stafan Evers, also of the CDU, is reportedly preparing efforts to provide an emergency loan to cover the cost of refugees.

One of the problems is that Berlin has a debt brake that keeps the city from taking on further debt, but the government says it has the legal ability to make an exception.

In 2025, Berlin indicates it will cost €500 million to accommodate migrants. Remix News has reported on the soaring costs of housing migrants in Berlin in recent years. In 2023, it cost Berlin nearly €500 million a year to house migrants, which equals €1.5 million a day. Recently, there has been a push to convert massive buildings into refugee housing, which would cost Berlin hundreds of millions over the next decade just for one building.

Notably, Berlin already froze school budgets in 2024, but these budget cuts are not enough. The figure of €500 million also does not factor in other costs, such as education, integration efforts, and policing.

The report from the CDU, prepared in conjunction with its coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), has not been yet made public, according to Tagesspiegel.

Berlin took in 21,000 fewer refugees last year than in 2022, when 32,752 refugees arrived, mostly due to an extreme shortage of housing. Currently, 41,000 people live in accommodations run by the State Office for Refugee Affairs.

In all likelihood, the solution will be more debt and more spending, with Berlin ready to declare an emergency to make up for the shortfalls.

On the federal level, the situation may be even more dire, with nearly €50 billion spent on migrants in 2023. Across Germany and much of the Western world, immigration is not only fueling a debt crisis, but it is also a major factor in skyrocketing housing prices.

On top of the millions of poor newcomers who need housing is also the role of foreign investors, who are buying up property across the West. The issue has gotten so dire that even those on opposite sides of the political spectrum, such as Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez and former Czech PM Andrej Babiš are proposing massive taxes on foreign buyers of property in their countries.

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | | Leave a comment

Iran’s hard choice on FATF conundrum

Press TV – January 26, 2025

The issue of Iran’s membership in Paris-based Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) is one of the hotly disputed topics, with proponents and opponents each ardently sticking to their respective positions.

Supporters argue that Iran’s continued inclusion in the FATF blacklist has become a major challenge for the economy and a problem for the Iranian policy-making system for many years.

For years, economic and trade activists and entrepreneurs have accused decision-makers of indifference to financial transaction problems resulting from Iran’s disconnection from the global payments network SWIFT.

They cite the high cost of trade, economic and financial transactions due to the use of unconventional and obsolete methods such as exchange offices and commodity barter which has led the growth of dealership and rent-seeking activity, corruption, and a shadow economy, calling for legal and policy measures to remove Iran from the FATF blacklist.

In 2016, Iran under the administration of president Hassan Rouhani agreed to an FATF action plan to move from the blacklist to the gray list, accepting 37 of the Western watchdog’s 41 recommendations and introducing relevant legislation to implement them.

By 2020, however, the FATF reinstated the country on its blacklist due to what it called Iran’s failure to complete the process.

The dispute centers around the Palermo Convention on combating transnational organized crime and the CFT Act on fighting the financing of terrorism, which the Iranian parliament approved in 2018, but the Guardian Council rejected due to their conflicts with “resistance economy guidelines”, national security policies, and “contradiction with the Sharia”.

Opponents of the FATF membership believe that with multiple US sanctions imposed on Iran over the years, the approval of Palermo Convention and the CFT Act and a subsequent removal from the blacklist would not improve trade and transaction for the Islamic Republic.

The 39-nation FATF, established by the Group of Seven (G7) largest developed economies at a Paris summit in 1989, is billed as a global body that aims to develop policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, thus protecting the integrity of the international financial system.

Its founders praise it for its global standards. However, global standards consist of a standard setter and a standard user. The standard setter influences independent organizations and standard users to adopt standards based on the expert knowledge that is suitable for the standard setters’ logic of appropriateness.

Scholars say FATF primarily reflects the preferences of power countries and is a tool for the US and Europeans to force those preferences on other jurisdictions.

FATF’s core agenda reflects consensus among the US and EU member states to paint non-compliant jurisdictions as rogue, unreliable players, thereby scaring off would-be investors.

According to IMF data, the world economy had a gross domestic product (GDP) of $105 trillion in 2023, some $90 trillion of which belonged to FATF members. The sum included about $5.2 trillion in laundered money, most of which belong to major economies.

As for terrorist financing, the FATF has never subjected the US and the Europeans to its anti-terrorism standards for supporting the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) which until recently was on their list of terrorist organizations. Ironically, Paris hosts the annual meetings of the MKO which has a history of bombings, terrorist attacks, horrific murders like burning, decapitation, dismemberment, as well as money laundering and heist from banks.

The proponents of the FAFT still have a case. They argue that without membership, the development of economic relations with neighbors will face serious challenges and costs since they are all members of the group.

The dossier is before the Guardian Council amid fears and hopes since the country’s national interests are at stake. Ultimately, maximum care should be taken to ensure that any decision would improve the country’s situation and not lead to any self-imposed sanctions and not shoot the country in the foot.

January 26, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Conflict in Ukraine Not Tied to Oil Prices, But to Western Actions – Kremlin

Sputnik – 24.01.2025

MOSCOW – The conflict in Ukraine is taking place because of a threat to Russia’s national security, as well as the West’s complete refusal to listen to its concerns, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

“This conflict is taking place because of a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation, because of the threat to Russians who live in certain territories, because of the unwillingness and complete refusal of Americans and Europeans to listen to Russia’s concerns,” Peskov told reporters.

The conflict in Ukraine does not depend on oil prices, Peskov added.

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would ask Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations to lower the oil price and it would end the conflict in Ukraine “immediately.”
Trump stated that “right now the price is high enough that that war will continue.”

“You’ve got to bring down the oil price. You’ve got to end that war, they should have done it long go,” the US president said.

January 24, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Mackinder’s Maritime Hegemony & the Return of Eurasian Land-Powers

By Professor Glenn Diesen | January 23, 2025

Halford Mackinder developed the theoretical framework for the divide-and-rule strategy of maritime hegemons, which was adopted by the British and thereafter the Americans. Mackinder argued that the world was divided into two opposing forces – sea powers versus land powers. The last land-power to connect and dominate the vast Eurasia continent was the nomadic Mongols, and their collapse was followed by the rise of European maritime powers in the early 16th century linking the world by sea.

The UK and US both pursue hegemonic strategies aimed at controlling the Eurasian landmass from the maritime periphery. Island states (the US being a virtual island) do not need large standing armies due to the lack of powerful neighbours, and they can instead invest in a powerful navy for security. Island states enhance their security by dividing Eurasia’s land powers so a hegemon or an alliance of hostile states do not emerge on the Eurasian continent. The pragmatic balance of power approach was articulated by Harry Truman in 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany and in that way let them kill as many as possible”.[1] A maritime power is also more likely to emerge as a hegemon as there are few possibilities of diversifying away from key maritime corridors and choke points under the control of the hegemon.

Railroads Revived the Rivalry Between Sea-Powers and Land-Powers

Russia, as a predominantly landpower, has historically been contained and kept weak by limiting its access to reliable maritime corridors. However, Russia’s weakness as a large landpower could become its strength if Russia connects the Eurasian continent by land to undermine the strategic advantage of the maritime hegemony.

The invention of intercontinental railways permitted Russia to emulate the nomadic character of the Mongols and end the strategic advantage of maritime powers. Russia’s development of railroads through Central Asia from the mid-19th century resulted in the Great Game as Russia could reach British India. In the final decade of the 19th century, Russia developed the trans-Siberian railroad that challenged British imperial interests in East Asia. In 1904, Mackinder warned:

“A generation ago steam and the Suez canal appeared to have increased the mobility of sea-power relatively to land-power. Railways acted chiefly as feeders to ocean-going commerce. But trans-continental railways are now transmuting the conditions of land-power, and nowhere can they have such effect as in the closed heart-land of EuroAsia, in vast areas of which neither timber nor accessible stone was available for road-making”.[2]

Mackinder warned about the possibility of a German-Russian alliance as it could establish a powerful centre of power capable of controlling Eurasia. Mackinder thus advocated for a divide-and-rule strategy:

“The oversetting of the balance of power in favour of the pivot state, resulting in its expansion over the marginal lands of Euro-Asia, would permit of the use of vast continental resources for fleet-building, and the empire of the world would then be in sight. This might happen if Germany were to ally herself with Russia”.[3]

US Hegemony from the Periphery of Eurasia

Mackinder’s ideas were developed further with Nicolas Spykman’s Rimland Theory in 1942, which stipulated that the US had to control the maritime periphery of the Eurasian continent. The US required a partnership with Britain to control the western periphery of Eurasia, and the US should “adopt a similar protective policy toward Japan” on the eastern periphery of Eurasia.[4] The US thus had to adopt the British strategy of limiting Russia’s access to maritime corridors:

“For two hundred years, since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has attempted to break through the encircling ring of border states and the reach the ocean. Geography and sea power have persistently thwarted her”.[5]

The influence of Spykman resulted in it commonly being referred to as the “Spykman-Kennan thesis of containment”. The architect of the containment policies against the Soviet Union, George Kennan, pushed for a “Eurasian balance of power” by ensuring the vacuum left by Germany and Japan would not be filled by a power that could “threaten the interests of the maritime world of the West”.[6]

The US National Security Council reports from 1948 and onwards referred to the Eurasian containment policies in the language of Mackinder’s heartland theory. As outlined in the US National Security Strategy of 1988:

“The United States’ most basic national security interests would be endangered if a hostile state or group of states were to dominate the Eurasian landmass- that area of the globe often referred to as the world’s heartland. We fought two world wars to prevent this from occurring”.[7]

Kissinger also outlined how the US should keep the British strategy of divide and rule from the maritime periphery of Eurasia:

“For three centuries, British leaders had operated from the assumption that, if Europe’s resources were marshaled by a single dominant power, that country would then resources to challenge Great Britain’s command of the seas, and thus threaten its independence. Geopolitically, the United States, also an island off the shores of Eurasia, should, by the same reasoning, have felt obliged to resist the domination of Europe or Asia by any one power and, even more, the control of both continents by the same power”.[8]

Henry Kissinger followed the Eurasian ideas of Mackinder, as he pushed for decoupling China from the Soviet Union to replicate the efforts to divide Russia and Germany.

Post-Cold War: America’s Empire of Chaos

Less than two months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US developed the Wolfowitz doctrine for global dominance. The leaked draft of the US Defense Planning Guidance (DPG) of February 1992 argued that the endurance of US global primacy depends on preventing the emergence of future rivals in Eurasia. Using the language of Mackinder, the DPG document recognised that “It is improbable that a global conventional challenge to US and Western security will re-emerge from the Eurasian heartland for many years to come”.

To sustain global primacy, the “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival”, which included preventing allies and frontline states such as Germany and Japan from rearming. The DPG also argued for preserving economic dominance as “we must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order”.[9]

The US abandoned the agreements for an inclusive pan-European security architecture based on “indivisible security” to mitigate security competition and replace it with alliance systems to divide the world into dependent allies versus weakened adversaries. Zbigniew Brzezinski authored the Mackinderian post-Cold War policies of the US to sustain global hegemony: “America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained”. The strategy of preserving US dominance was defined as: “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and keep the barbarians from coming together”.[10]

If Russia would resist American efforts, the US could use its maritime dominance to strangle the Russian economy: “Russia must know that there would be a massive blockade of Russia’s maritime access to the West”.[11] To permanently weaken Russia and prevent it from connecting Eurasia by land, Brzezinski argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union should ideally be followed by the disintegration of Russia into a “loosely confederated Russia – composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic”.[12]

The Rise of Greater Eurasia

The US has become reliant on perpetual conflicts to divide the Eurasian continent and to preserve its alliance systems. US efforts to sever Russia and Germany with NATO expansionism and the destruction of Nord Stream have pushed Russia to the East, most importantly toward China as the main rival of the US. The cheap Russian gas that previously fuelled the industries of America’s allies in Europe is now being sent to fuel the industries of China, India, Iran and other Eurasian powers and rivals of the US. The efforts by China, Russia and other Eurasian giants to connect with physical transportation corridors, technologies, industries, and financial instruments are anti-hegemonic initiatives to balance the US. The age of Mackinder’s maritime hegemons may be coming to an end.

[1] Gaddis, J.L., 2005. Strategies of containment: a critical appraisal of American national security policy during the Cold War. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.4.

[2] Mackinder, H.J., 1904, The Geographical Pivot of History, The Geographical Journal, 170(4): 421-444, p.434.

[3] Ibid, p.436.

[4] Spykman, N.J., 1942. America’s strategy in world politics: the United States and the balance of power. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, p.470.

[5] Ibid, p.182.

[6] Gaddis, J.L., 1982. Strategies of containment: A critical appraisal of postwar American national security policy. Oxford University Press, New York.

[7] White House 1988. National Security Strategy of the United States, White House, April 1988, p.1.

[8] Kissinger, H., 2011. Diplomacy. Simon and Schuster, New York, pp.50-51.

[9] DPG 1992. Defense Planning Guidance. Washington, 18 February 1992.

[10] Brzezinski, Z., 1997. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geopolitical Imperatives. Basic Books, New York, p,40.

[11] Brzezinski, Z., 2017. How to Address Strategic Insecurity In A Turbulent Age, The Huffington Post, 3 January 2017.

[12] Brzezinski, Z., 1997. Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76(5): 50-64, p.56.

January 24, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US Arms Ukraine, Europe Pays the Bill

Sputnik – 23.01.2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Thursday that European taxpayers would have to pay for US military supplies to Ukraine if the new US administration agreed to provide them.

“On Ukraine, we need US also to stay involved and to do as much as possible to get Ukraine in a position of strength, whenever peace talks start. But I can tell the Europeans, if this new Trump administration is willing to keep on supplying Ukraine from its defense industrial base, the bill will be paid by the Europeans,” he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

The NATO chief said during the annual Ukrainian Breakfast event he was convinced that Europeans needed to be willing to pull their weight because, in his view, Americans were paying more despite being farther away from Ukraine than Europe.

Rutte also added that the alliance should increase its support for Ukraine in order to change the “wrong direction” in which the conflict is moving.

“We have to step up, not scale back, the support for Ukraine, we have to change the trajectory of the war which is ongoing, and so far we know the frontline is moving in the wrong direction,” Rutte said.

The annual WEF forum takes place from January 20-24 in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Russia believes arms supplies to Ukraine hinder the settlement process and directly involve NATO countries in the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the United States and NATO not only supply weapons to Kiev but also train personnel in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, which he argues is not conducive to peace.

January 23, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Kuwait announces ‘significant’ oil discovery

MEMO | January 21, 2025

The Kuwait Oil Company yesterday announced the discovery of a new oil reserve in the Al-Julaiah offshore field within its territorial waters.

The company said in a statement, the discovery, estimated at around 950 million barrels of oil equivalent, is set to strengthen the nation’s standing as a global leader in crude oil production and exportation.

According to the statement, tests conducted on the Zubair geological reservoir in the Julaiah 2 exploratory well yielded promising production results. The field spans an area of 74 square kilometres, with reserves estimated at around 800 million barrels of medium-density oil, free of hydrogen sulphide and containing a low percentage of carbon dioxide.

Additionally, the field holds 600 billion standard cubic feet of associated gas, equivalent to 950 million barrels of oil equivalent.

The Julaiah field marks the second marine field discovered under the current exploration plan, following the discovery of the Al-Nukhadha marine field in July 2024.

January 21, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Americans say US spends too much on Ukraine – poll

RT | January 20, 2025

The majority of Americans believe the US government is spending too much on aid for Ukraine, a recent New York Times/Ipsos opinion poll suggests.

According to the findings, 51% of respondents say the country is “spending too much” on Kiev, while 28% believe the current amount is appropriate. Only 17% say the country should boost spending on Ukraine.

Similarly, 53% of those surveyed say US aid to Israel is excessive, with 30% considering it adequate. The survey, conducted from January 2 to 10, involved 2,128 people nationwide.

Public sentiment reflected in the survey suggests that most Americans want Washington to prioritize domestic issues over foreign aid. Among the respondents, 60% say the US “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” while only 38% believe the country should continue to be active in global affairs. The poll also indicates that 60% believe the US government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient,” while 72% say it is “working to benefit itself” and its own agenda, not the people.

This comes after the government’s recent decision to provide Ukraine with an additional $500 million military aid package, announced on January 8. Congress has appropriated a total of over $175 billion on assistance for Kiev since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, of which $65.9 billion has been direct military assistance, according to the latest data from the Pentagon.

US spending on Ukraine has recently drawn criticism from Marco Rubio, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state in the upcoming administration. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as part of his confirmation last week, he said the US should no longer give Kiev indefinite support and criticized the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden for failing to clearly delineate the “end goal” of the funds it has been pouring into the conflict.

“What exactly were we funding? What exactly were we putting money towards?” he asked, saying the current approach of “however much it takes for however long it takes” is not realistic.

Moscow has warned that Western aid to Ukraine only serves to prolong the conflict without changing the outcome. It has said it is willing to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but maintained that any settlement must begin with Kiev ceasing military operations and acknowledging the reality that it will not regain control of former Ukrainian regions that voted to join Russia. Moscow has also insisted upon Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

EU member pledges to veto future Ukraine aid

RT | January 19, 2025

Slovakia will veto any future Ukraine aid considered by the EU, Prime Minister Robert Fico has announced. Bratislava will now take a “reciprocal” approach to hostile moves by Kiev, he warned.

Fico issued the threat in a video address posted to social media late on Saturday. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky believes everyone should be his “servant,” Fico asserted, warning such an approach would not work with him.

“In my case, the scythe hit a rock. Robert Fico is a Slovak prime minister and not a Ukrainian servant,” Fico stated.

Bratislava will take a “reciprocal” approach to Kiev in the row over the transit of Russian natural gas that Kiev ended at the beginning of the new year, Fico warned, pledging to veto any future aid packages from the EU. The packages require unanimous backing from all the members of the bloc to be passed.

The Slovak prime minister also reiterated other potential moves against Ukraine that he had articulated previously, namely halting the emergency electricity supply, stopping humanitarian aid deliveries, or cutting benefits received by Ukrainian refugees in Slovakia.

“I am increasingly convinced that President Zelensky is forcing us into reciprocity, and we will go for it,” Fico stated.

Once a major supporter of Ukraine, Slovakia changed its stance after Fico took office in late 2023, halting military aid to the country and pledging to veto its potential accession into the US-led NATO bloc.

The already strained relations between Bratislava and Kiev have further deteriorated owing to the row over the Russian gas, which Slovakia has been heavily dependent upon. Kiev opted not to renew the transit contract and halted the flow despite Moscow’s repeated signals that it was prepared to continue supplying its customers in the EU through Ukraine’s pipeline system.

Fico initially proposed negotiating with Zelensky on the border between the two countries, but the latter urged him through social media to come to Kiev instead. The response was deemed undiplomatic in Slovakia. Fico then proposed to meet Zelensky in Davos next week, where both leaders are expected to head. The proposal was openly mocked by Kiev, with Zelensky suggesting the Slovak leader could end up in Sochi, Russia, instead.

January 20, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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