A Western Media Outlet Just Exposed Kiev’s Propaganda Machine
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | JUNE 8, 2023
Semafor is a Western online media outlet co-founded by Ben Smith and Justin B. Smith, whose claim to fame are that they used to be the founding editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News and the former CEO of Bloomberg Media. Neither they nor their joint platform can credibly be accused of being so-called “Russian agents” or “Russian propaganda”, which is important to remember when reading Ben’s recent piece that dives deep “Inside the high-stakes clash for control of Ukraine’s story”.
He exposed the dark truth about Kiev’s infowar operations that cynics have long suspected. Ben revealed that “Articles and broadcasts from outlets including NBC News, The New York Times, CNN, The New Yorker, and the Ukrainian digital broadcaster Hromadske have led to journalists having their credentials threatened, revoked, or denied over charges they’ve broken rules imposed by Ukrainian minders.” He also cited sources who spoke anonymously due to fear of having their press credentials revoked.
The other important part of Ben’s piece was when he informed readers that “[Ukraine’s] military press office vets journalists and issues passes which allow them to travel to certain areas, often with press handlers, and to interview officials, after signing a document stating that journalists will abide by rules outlined by the military.” Kiev quite clearly doesn’t believe in freedom of the press, which the West claims is sacred, yet its state patrons looked the other way out of narrative convenience until recently.
In late April, Politico cited unnamed Biden Administration officials who expressed concern about the potential consequences if the Western public’s expectations of Kiev’s NATO–backed counteroffensive aren’t met. The only reason why they were unrealistically high to begin with, however, was precisely because the US turned a blind eye to Kiev churning out countless pieces of propaganda through the control that it exerts over foreign media.
Efforts have since been made to bring Western perceptions closer to reality, but they might be too little too late to make much of a difference for some people after the psychological damage was already done. Moreover, the root cause of the problem still hasn’t been resolved and might never be. If Ukraine began telling the truth about the NATO-Russian proxy war, then there’d likely be a serious crisis of confidence among its people and throughout the rest of the West more broadly.
The Washington Post gave readers a glimpse of just how poorly Kiev’s forces are faring in their detailed report that was published in mid-March, which illustrated the logistical and organizational challenges that still remained despite the over $165 billion that their side received from NATO. For as informative as it is, this piece of journalism represented the exception rather than the rule. In general, Westerners have been fed nothing but propaganda about this conflict since the start of Russia’s special operation.
That’s a problem for anyone in those countries who cares about how their taxpayer funds are being spent. It’s important for the public to be accurately apprised of the progress in this proxy war in order to determine whether it’s worth financing indefinitely. Furthermore, they shouldn’t have been gaslighted about “politically inconvenient” facts such as the prevalence of Nazi symbols among Kiev’s fighters by being told that it’s “Russian propaganda” until the New York Times just ran a story proving that it’s true.
Slowly but surely, Westerners are becoming aware that mostly everything they’d hitherto thought about this proxy war was the result of literal propaganda. They might still support Kiev’s cause in principle for whatever their personal reasons may be, but they’re increasingly unlikely to take whatever positive news they hear about it at face value like before. People will start questioning everything more, which is a positive trend that every honest person should appreciate.
Top 5 completely absurd lies about Russia since SMO started
By Drago Bosnic | June 8, 2023
Russophobia and anti-Russian propaganda run very deep, particularly in the political West. For centuries, various European invaders have been portraying Russia in the worst possible light. Over time, this became extremely intricate and even found its way into the mainstream. However, more recently, particularly since the start of the special military operation (SMO) in Ukraine, Russophobic propaganda became completely absurd. Choosing the top 5 of these certainly wasn’t an easy task, as the amount of ludicrous claims is absolutely mind-boggling. From the “Ghost of Kiev” and “the last stand of the Snake Island defenders” to pickle jar air defenses and the “Goat of Kiev”, you get a pretty good idea of just how laborious such a task could’ve been. However, in terms of being completely devoid of any logic, here are the top 5, in chronological order.
Russia destroys its own Nord Stream pipelines
According to the “free press”, on September 26, 2022, Moscow was extremely bored with all the windfall coming from rising natural gas prices, so it decided to blow up its Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines after spending the previous 17 years building them. Interestingly, Russia decided to do this only a day after Poland and Norway opened the Nord Stream’s primary competitor, the Baltic Pipe, running through Denmark and bringing in gas from the North Sea. Obviously, in order to make the task more difficult, but also more fun, Russia decided to conduct the attack within the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Denmark and Sweden, instead of its own.
For months, various “conspiracy theorists” kept claiming that Russia didn’t actually destroy its own pipelines. However, the “free press” had “conclusive evidence” that the “cartoonishly evil Kremlin”, previously accused of “weaponizing” its vast energy reserves against the European Union, decided to destroy it and help the US profit immensely from the EU’s weaning off Russian natural gas. US President Joe Biden openly threatening to destroy Nord Stream, as well as Victoria Nuland’s snarky boastfulness about the pipelines becoming “a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” mean absolutely nothing and are just Russian propaganda.
The destruction of its own pipelines came approximately a month after some in the EU suggested using the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to increase Russian energy imports and also “coincided perfectly” with the manifold surge in US LNG shipments to the EU, which surpassed Russian natural gas deliveries for the very first time. This resulted in even the usually compliant Brussels bureaucrats complaining that the US is engaged in war profiteering.
Russia blows up the Crimean Bridge
On October 8, the “evil dictator Putin” was sick and tired of seeing the Crimean Bridge whole, so he decided to blow it up. Unfortunately, the men he entrusted this task with failed and managed to “only” partially damage the bridge which is crucial for Russian logistics. Once again, in order to make it more fun, Putin ordered the saboteurs to try and reach Crimea through Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia, then go through southern Russia and reach the bridge from the east. Repeated snarky remarks by Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak who boasted about the attack, as well as similar statements from the Kiev regime’s Defense Ministry and even Zelensky himself were just another piece of Russian propaganda and they could never in any way implicate anyone else.
Russia wants to irradiate itself by attacking the Zaporozhye NPP
After Russian forces took over the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (NPP), “evil Putin” realized that his troops there didn’t have much to do, so he decided to order the nearby Russian artillery unit to start shelling their own comrades in the NPP. Apparently, this was the only way to extract the sensitive US nuclear technologies from there, as Russia lacks such advanced high-tech due to its extremely underdeveloped nuclear energy industry. According to undeniably truthful reporting by the “free press”, Russian shelling is ongoing as President Putin wants to make sure his forces there also get irradiated in case of a catastrophic detonation of one or all reactors. The only reason this hasn’t happened yet is the chronic lack of shells and the poor precision of the Russian artillerymen.
Russia regularly attacks itself with drones
The escalating drone attacks across western parts of Russia, including the capital city of Moscow, clearly cannot be the fault of its neighbor to the southwest. Which begs the question of where do these mysterious unmanned flying machines come from? Once again, the only logical conclusion could be President Putin’s unrelenting boredom. Because Moscow is too safe, this significantly amplifies the monotony, resulting in the Russian president’s orders for repeated attacks on the capital city. This is also a good way to make sure Russian air defense units in and around Moscow have something to do. However, Putin might have gone a bit too far recently, as he ordered a drone strike on the Kremlin and possibly on himself. The “free press” reports that this might have something to do with his rapidly deteriorating physical and mental health, as clearly indicated by the way Putin sits and places his hands.
Russia blows up its own dam in order to flood itself
On the morning of June 6, Russia realized it has had enough of the Kakhovka dam being too whole, so it decided to blow it up. The “evil Kremlin” went ahead with this plan after realizing it would result in catastrophic flooding of the areas under its control and also endanger hundreds of defensive positions of the Russian military. In addition, the water supply for Crimea is now at risk, once again clearly implying that Putin had every reason to order the destruction of the dam, as Crimeans were obviously too bored with all the water they’ve been getting since the Northern Crimean Canal was reactivated. Another important piece of evidence pointing to Moscow is that this also endangers the Zaporozhye NPP, which Russia clearly wants to destroy in order to irradiate itself (see point four).
However, although several Kiev regime’s top officials, such as Major General Andriy Kovalchuk, stated they’ve been planning to attack Kakhovka and even conducted “test strikes”, this is obviously just Russian propaganda by rabidly pro-Kremlin outlets such as the Washington Post. Interestingly, some Western analysts and experts, particularly those from the “free press” such as CNN and NBC have suggested this might have something to do with Russia finally acknowledging that the Normandy landings were much more important than the Eastern Front during the Second World War, as the event “coincided” with the 79th anniversary of the D-Day.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Western journalists face huge censorship in Ukraine – media
RT | June 6, 2023
The Ukrainian government imposes severe restrictions on Western reporters, forcing them to show only what the military wants them to see and stripping the credentials of those who tell uncomfortable truths, the news site Semafor reported on Monday.
Journalists from NBC News, the New York Times, CNN, and The New Yorker have all clashed with the Ukrainian government after they strayed outside the strict limits imposed on their work by Kiev, Semafor reported.
“The authorities only allow press tours with press officers, where they show off in front of the camera and are afraid to show the real situation,” Ukrainian photographer Maxim Dondyuk wrote on Instagram in May after Ukrainian authorities threatened to strip his press accreditation. Dondyuk had taken pictures of the dire conditions in Ukrainian trenches for a New Yorker article.
New York Times journalist Thomas Gibbons-Neff has had his credentials revoked on several occasions, including after he reported that Ukrainian forces were using banned cluster munitions. Magnum photographer Antoine d’Agata had his access denied after documenting the psychological suffering of Ukrainian soldiers in a mental health facility. An NBC News crew had their press passes revoked after they traveled to Crimea and interviewed locals who were happy to live in Russia and supported the Russian military.
Journalists working in Ukraine have to sign a document stating that they will follow rules set by the military, and can only interview approved officials and visit approved areas. Furthermore, three journalists working in Kiev told Semafor that reporters have been asked “to take lie detector tests to prove they aren’t Russian agents.”
Reporters have no choice but to comply, or be left out of work. One anonymous journalist said that Ukrainian authorities “might snatch my press credential” if they found out he complained about the situation to Semafor. Others have been more eager to accept the bargain, with Semafor noting that “most Western news outlets treat Ukrainian soldiers as, at some level, ‘our boys’.”
Some Ukrainian reporters, however, feel that the restrictions are counterproductive. Dondyuk said that they inevitably lead to “only stupid propaganda” making it out of Ukraine, while Nastya Stanko, a correspondent for Ukrainian news site Hromadske, said: “It’s more important to have journalists who can honestly show what happens on the front lines, and I’m not sure it’s clear to everyone in the army.”
Aside from losing accreditation, journalists who anger the Ukrainian government can face more serious consequences. After reporting from Crimea, NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons found his name published on the ‘Mirotvorets’ (Peacemaker) blacklist for “crimes” against the country. Linked to the Ukrainian state, Mirotvorets posts the names and personal details of Ukraine’s “enemies,” some of whom have been murdered after their inclusion in the database. When someone on the list is killed or dies in other circumstances, text reading “liquidated” is imposed over the individual’s photograph on the site.
The bureaucrats & science retards responsible for the last three years of destruction and mass medical experimentation are unrepentant and eager to do the same thing all over again
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | June 3, 2023
While I travel and work on a longer piece, I thought you might enjoy some outtakes from this recent article in Welt, about the complete lack of self-reflection exhibited by German pandemic Science-Followers even after the failure of their policies:
Helge Braun … the former head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery, was invited to Berlin’s Futurium to discuss science and politics. Behind the scenes, Braun was a key figure in the German Corona response. Time for a few awkward questions? The CDU politician need not fear them – despite his vehement advocacy of school closures and lockdowns …
He was joined by three members of the Leopoldina [that is, the German National Academy of Sciences] – climate researcher Gerald Haug, its president; paediatrician and adolescent physician Jutta Gärtner and sociologist Armin Nassehi. The Academy became known during the pandemic not for its balanced scientific advice, but primarily for its politicised demands for tougher measures. And as often as its members emphasised institutional independence from the government that evening, you could tell their intellectual independence was notably lacking.
“Team Caution,” as members of the Leopoldina members still like to call themselves, was full of praise for their own work … “The pandemic was a good example of science-based policy advice,” Haug explains – and by “good” he really does mean that the Academy advised well … “Team Caution” always did everything right … The sensible majority followed the recommendations of the government, the Leopoldina and the RKI. Everything else is nasty fake news from the internet.
Yet Haug himself is a good example of the Leopoldina’s convoluted self-perception. On the one hand, he insisted repeatedly that science only represents “the facts”; that is, he claims objectivity for his profession. On the other hand, Haug freely admits that the Leopoldina aimed to “really hit it out of the park” and “make a splash” with their recommendations. “We’re often too soft…”
A real problem with the technocrats, is that they only have relevance in one direction. As soon as the National Academy of Sciences issues an opinion that the virus isn’t much to worry about and people should continue to live their lives as before, their political relevance is finished. For this reason alone, technocratic systems will be biased towards intervention, even in harmless situations, and nothing they tell you to do can ever be trusted.
The damage inflicted by lockdowns, the vaccines, social exclusion and attendant social conflicts – nobody wanted to talk about that. Nor did anyone want to discuss Braun’s role as one of the main instigators of the German pandemic response, distinguished internationally especially by the long school closures. As is well known, Braun’s promise that all measures would end “as soon as we have made an offer of vaccination to everyone in Germany” turned out to be empty talk. His threat that the vaccinated should receive “more freedom” than the unvaccinated, on the other hand, became brutal reality. No matter. For Braun, the Corona era represents a positive interaction between politics and science, which serves as an important example for the future.
Braun claimed that “Citizens don’t like arguments in politics. The strange democratic understandings of this unassuming Merkel confident could be summed up as “Dare to demand more expertocracy …
At the end, they moved on from Corona to discuss climate change. A scientist in the audience suggested that the Leopoldina should … take to the streets. The opinionated moderator suggested that, when it comes to climate, fear is rational; and that, in consequence, the rational mandate of science would be to spread fear …
Apparently, the politicians and academics who set the tone in the Corona crisis now feel encouraged to extend the Corona model to future grand programmes …
Mark my words: Should they ever be allowed to get the public panic juggernaut up and running again, what they do next will make Corona seem like a mildly rough case of cultural and political indigestion. They’ve learned that the hard limits on their power are far weaker than they ever imagined. Their dark ambitions will hang over us like a Sword of Damocles for decades now.
G7 leaders scaremonger over Iran’s nuclear programme, but WMDs aren’t their real concern
By Robert Inlakesh | RT | June 1, 2023
The G7’s concern over Iran’s nuclear programme parrots a decades-old WMD conspiracy theory, aimed at drumming up public support for anti-Iranian action that is really aimed at curtailing Tehran’s conventional weapons programme, regional alliances and the development of stronger ties with Moscow.
After the meeting between the Group of Seven (G7) leaders in May, a number of announcements were made on the trajectory of the alliance. Germany, France, the UK, the US, Japan, Canada, and the European Commission all agreed to take measures to reduce trade reliance on China. They also agreed to advance their commitment to Ukraine’s war budget, while pledging to combat Iran’s influence in the Middle East. The agenda platform, set out from the Japanese city of Hiroshima, seeks to further exacerbate the schisms between major world and regional actors in the emerging multipolar order.
Tehran has long been the target of Western ire and sanctions, and until recently was locked in a rivalry with its Persian Gulf neighbor Saudi Arabia. However, as the US and its allies focus their efforts on combating Russia and China, this has presented opportunities for the less powerful Iran to survive under sanctions.
On May 17, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi signed a deal to finance the construction of an Iranian rail route that aims to supplement the international North-South Transport Corridor. It also emerged this month that 28 Russian energy companies plan to visit Iran, seeking to increase cooperation with and potentially help in advancing Iran’s oil and gas industry. These two developments add to the growing cooperation between the world’s two most sanctioned nations, both of which have proven themselves capable of finding alternatives to the West and circumventing the intended effects of its sanctions.
It is in this context that the conspiracy theories about Iran’s alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon have emerged again in Western discourse. The G7’s draft communique on the issue expressed the nations’ concerns “about Iran’s unabated escalation of its nuclear programme,” while reiterating the “clear determination that Iran must never develop a nuclear weapon.” However, the assertions about Iran’s nuclear programme were also accompanied by the following sentence:
“We express our grave concern regarding Iran’s continued destabilising activities, including the transfer of missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS) and related technologies to state and non-state actors.”
Western officials have a long track record of wrongly predicting Iran’s development of an atomic bomb, offering false speculation about when Iran will have one whenever a separate major issue pops up. Now that Russia-Iran ties are developing, Tehran-Riyadh rapprochement has been brokered by Beijing, and the sanctions have failed to bring about regime change, it seems there is a build-up to another push to condemn the Iranian government on an issue which the Western world can unite over.
Earlier in May, UK foreign secretary James Cleverly told Fox News that “preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon remains an absolute priority in UK foreign policy,” going on to say that Britain continues to work “very, very closely” with Germany, France and the US to impose sanctions on Iran. And no talk of Iranian nuclear weapons would be complete without an Israeli official chiming in. Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that Tehran now has enough uranium for five nuclear weapons.
Since 1992, Israeli officials have been constantly making false claims and predictions on how long it will take for Iran to build a nuclear bomb, with former Israeli President Shimon Peres first warning the international community “that Iran would be armed with a nuclear bomb by 1999.” Back in January of 2021, former IDF chief Aviv Kochavi even made the claim that the nukes could be developed in “months, maybe even weeks.”
In reality, there is no proof that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, nor is there any evidence to suggest Tehran is seeking to develop the bomb, let alone use it. At this point, after the deadlines set by the countless predictions have passed, the current talk amounts to little more than a fact-free conspiracy theory. Thinking rationally about it, it would make no sense for Iran to use a nuclear weapon either, in the event that it actually is seeking one, especially not against Israel, as this could end up destroying the third-holiest site in the Islamic faith.
There are, however, a number of ways that Iran presents a clear and present threat to the West’s agenda in the Middle East. The first and most immediate threat comes through its defense industry. Iran now produces sophisticated drones and missiles that are capable of doing significant damage to NATO and Israeli forces in the Middle East, if need be. Additionally, Tehran has allies like Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, Ansarallah (the Houthis) in Yemen, Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq, and many others, who remain powerful in their own given arenas.
Lastly, it is clear that Iran is now on track for a brighter future economically. It has managed to end its hostility with Saudi Arabia, and this has meant that their competition inside a range of Middle East nations has eased. These strides toward regional stability have been coupled with developing relations between Tehran and Moscow. Iran also agreed on a potential $400 billion deal with China, announced back in 2021, which at the very least opened the door for further cooperation and investment.
At a time when the US and its European allies are focusing heavily on combating both China and Russia, it is a great frustration to witness Iran, their top Middle East foe, come together with their enemies. This is why the issue of nuclear weapons has come up again. Not that Western nations, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons themselves, are in any position to tell others what to do – but it is clear that the question of an imminent Iranian WMD is not a serious one.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.
Enthusiasm for the vaxx falls ever lower & millions of unwanted doses expire
The German press discover that maybe big pharma & their political enablers are not our friends after all
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | June 2, 2023
I know it’s not the repudiation we hoped for, but the widening displeasure over the deeply idiotic and imprudent contracts that the European Union negotiated with Pfizer and BioNTech for Covid-19 vaccine doses says a lot about where the vaccinators find themselves, politically and socially, at this late hour.
That erstwhile pillar of the vaccinator-industrial complex, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, has revealed a markedly reduced enthusiasm for the vaccines and their procurement in the past months. After attacking the lack of transparency surrounding the contract negotiations, they’ve found the energy to deplore all the worthless vaccine that our health ministers have purchased:
In Germany, by the end of March 2023, around 83 million Covid-19 vaccine doses expired and were thrown away by with the federal government alone. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) has informed a private session of Bundestag budget committee of these developments …
These figures raise many questions. Did Germany, especially under Lauterbach’s predecessor Jens Spahn (CDU), but also during Lauterbach’s tenure during the fight against the pandemic, order too much vaccine? Could they have avoided these costs, which reach into the billions? Or did the state have no choice, because it was not foreseeable how many people would get vaccinated, and how many injections would be needed for effective protection in the longer run?
What devastating answers all of these questions have.
In any case, the EU and the Federal Republic of Germany have purchased far more vaccine than is needed now. As the Ministry of Health informed the Bundestag, Germany has donated 120 million vaccine doses to other countries. Even after these donated doses left the central warehouse, further doses nevertheless expired …
The Ministry explains that additional doses have expired ““at the various stages” of the supply chain. This refers to doses shipped to wholesalers, pharmacies and doctors’ offices. These parties are in turn responsible for “proper disposal,” the ministry explains. They did not provide figures on how many doses had expired and been destroyed by these wholesalers, pharmacies and medical practices. It is possible that these numbers have not been collected.
In other words: The 83 million figure represents a floor; nobody actually knows or is all that eager to tabulate how many doses have been thrown away.
When asked by the SZ, the Ministry of Health did not say how much the expired and destroyed doses at the federal level cost. Publicly available data nevertheless supports the assumption that the costs to the taxpayer … are in the billions.
And that may not be all.
Through the start of 2023, the federal government had ordered a total of 672 million doses for 13.1 billion Euros, generally via the EU. Each jab therefore costs just on average just under 20 Euros … According to the Ministry of Health, by the start of May, around 192 million doses had been injected in Germany, and some of the deliveries are still outstanding.
More than a year ago, the Berlin-based newspaper Tagesspiegel asked whether Lauterbach was threatened with “billions in damages”. At that time, it was already becoming apparent that vaccine could remain unused. In mid-2022, 3.9 million vaccine doses had expired. By the beginning of 2023, there were already 36.6 million vaccine doses. And now, only five months later, it is already 83 million. By the end of last year, approximately 54 million doses had expired and in the first quarter of 2023, approximately 29 million doses had been destroyed, the ministry informed the Bundestag.
Possibly even more vaccine will have to be destroyed. As of the beginning of May, the federal government still has stores amounting to around 120 million doses. Their future is “fraught with uncertainty” and depends, among other things, on the future course of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health informed the Bundestag. The Federal Government still intends to give “unneeded vaccine” to other countries.
Not a single country anywhere on earth can be found to take this stuff.
To avoid having to destroy more vaccine, the EU has now negotiated a partial cancellation of supply contracts with the pharmaceutical companies BioNTech and Pfizer. A “cancellation fee” is due for this, Lauterbach informed the Bundestag. According to reports, Lauterbach did not give a figure. The cancellation fees for unwanted vaccine is likely to reach costs in Germany alone of hundreds of millions of Euros.
While the details of the deal are officially secret, an outraged Polish health minister revealed several weeks that Pfizer and BioNTech have demanded that EU countries pay 50% of the cost for every previously ordered yet unneeded vaccine dose.
At the end of the article there lurks this foul paragraph:
With early access to safe and effective vaccines, many lives have been saved and millions of people have been protected from serious illness. The economic costs of the pandemic have also been reduced and the “impact on social life has been noticeably mitigated.” The vaccine surplus is a consequence of this strategy. This is how the Ministry of Health justified the bulk purchases in the Bundestag.
We’ve been over this many times at the plague chronicle, but as long as politicians and the press continue to indulge in these hollow excuses, I’ll keep repeating myself: It’s strange indeed that enthusiasm for these SaFE aNd EfFeCtIvE vaccines should have plummeted in precise inverse correlation to public experience with them. You’d almost think that the more the vaccinators were allowed to vaccinate, the more everybody decided the vaccines weren’t for them after all. This is hardly the response you’d expect to such miraculous, life-saving side effect-free products.
A great many journalists, bureaucrats, politicians and ordinary people were complicit in the excesses of the past several years, and as the policies of the pandemic continue to sour, they’ll do anything but talk about it. This more than anything is the reason for the deafening silence surrounding all of these matters. What critique there is will increasingly attach itself to isolated matters, such as school closures, and to specific initiatives in which few participated directly, such as the buying of vaccines. They’ll do everything they can to assign blame in those few areas, where they can’t be blamed themselves.
The Ursula von der Leyen Affair
Free West Media | June 2, 2023
After a criminal complaint in Belgium against the President of the European Commission, the so-called SMS-case, now takes a new turn. The judge responsible for the investigation will likely gain access to the secret messages exchanged between Ursula von der Leyen and Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, at least if they haven’t been deleted.
The agreements on vaccines negotiated via SMS between EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s CEO Albert Bourla have caused much ink to flow, not least because many legally knowledgeable claim that the EU Commission, which is not elected, does not have the mandate to negotiate in these matters.
Due to this suspicion of negotiations “outside the framework” of the mega-contract for vaccine procurement signed, it would constitute a crime not to present these SMS messages, which are legally considered administrative documents and thus should be recorded. If they have been deleted, President Ursula von der Leyen, as the responsible head of a public authority, must answer in court. The case could reveal the existence of “a corruption pact,” according to French lawyer Diane Protat, but has received very little attention in mainstream media.
Several alternative media have written about the administrative contortions in the case when EU parliament members twice unsuccessfully invited Pfizer’s CEO to come and explain himself before the European Parliament. He accepted the first invitation, but canceled at the last minute and sent a subordinate, Janine Small, instead. When asked directly, she admitted that they had not tested whether the vaccine was effective against transmission but stubbornly refused to disclose any financial terms in the agreement.
Conflicts of interest? Corruption?
Since October 2022, an investigation has been ongoing within the European authorities. Then in December, the BonSens association initiated a procedure at the New York State Court to have the infamous text messages handed over, as they have serious suspicions against the President of the European Commission regarding conflicts of interest or even corruption.
The fact is that no official document precisely describes the official terms from the negotiations of the gigantic third contract for the purchase of Pfizer vaccines, covering 1.8 billion doses, for an amount of more than 70 billion euros.
Something else not reported to any significant extent by mainstream media is that the New York Times sued the European Commission, on the same grounds, to gain access to the text messages on January 25, 2023.
On April 5, 2023, lobbyist Frédéric Baldan filed a new complaint, this time as a criminal case in Belgium, to investigating judge Frenay in Liège. His complaint directly refers to the issue of the third contract for vaccine procurement and the fact that the negotiations were apparently conducted outside the usual framework to negotiate this type of contract, bypassing the steering committee responsible for evaluating the bids. Ursula von der Leyen, however, has no mandate giving her the right to intervene in this type of contract negotiation.
Belgian law has a peculiarity. A public authority operator who arbitrarily violates a constitutional law risks imprisonment (article 151 of the penal code). In this case, it is about the right to allow every citizen access to administrative documents, according to the principle of publicity.
The complaint is thus from a private individual and concerns civil liability for improper exercise of authority, exceeding powers, destruction of public records, illegal bias, and corruption. The complaint, therefore, aims to cover all eventualities.
This case is a real earthquake on the European political scene, which has already been hit by suspicions of corruption against the EU’s Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou and the QatarGate scandal.
Chaos
Even though the EU Commission did not want to let citizens, or even EU parliamentarians, shed light on the (expensive) economic conditions for the purchases of vaccines, a legal solution could be found at the state level and its jurisdiction, in this case, Belgium.
Moreover, a dozen European states, including Poland and Bulgaria, are now questioning the purchase price of vaccine doses and are concerned about the obligation to recommend products that, besides widespread doubt about their real effectiveness, are no longer useful since the Covid-19 epidemic phenomenon is over.
In France, 46 million doses remain in the health administration’s warehouse and will go to waste. There are more than 30 million doses in Italy and more than 10 million in Belgium. A real waste. How to support – or how it was possible to support – the idea that even more doses need to be purchased under threat of being sued for non-compliance with a commercial contract … that nobody gets to see?
This situation has handed all the cards to the pharmaceutical industry, primarily to Pfizer, which has grabbed more than three-quarters of the sales contracts. This prompts European Parliament Member Michèle Rivasi, from Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV), to say:
“It seems as if it is the pharmaceutical companies that have been holding the pen at the EU Commission.”
She has discussed the case in several French media, such as the left-wing newspaper l’Humanité, which has presented the subject on its YouTube channel. The newspaper Valeurs Actuelles brought up the subject in a column by Patricia de Sagazan. The EU news website EURACTIV covered the subject. Sud-Radio also addressed this news thanks to André Bercoff, who left the word to Diane Protat and Frédéric Baldan.
A Catastrophic Silence for Democracy
The subject could quickly go from soap opera to a major legal and political scandal. The President of the EU Commission, who already has a turbulent past with the German justice system from when she was the country’s defense minister, has shown many signs of close friendship with Albert Bourla, not least through her husband, who works in the pharmaceutical field.
The exchanged text messages must be shown to the public to not further discredit the EU institutions, short-circuited by von der Leyen’s wish to handle this matter herself. EU institutions suffer from an apparent worrying structural weakness, namely, being overly exposed to the power behind industrial and financial lobbying groups.
Since the beginning of the “health crisis” in 2020, mainstream media has shown a clear inactivity on these issues. The ethical rules for journalists established in the Munich Declaration of 1971 aim to guarantee citizens objective and factual information about the dangers threatening public affairs and the common interest. Today’s corps of journalists often seems to have forgotten these rules.
This silence is serious for democracy and stability in the political sphere in Europe. While citizens’ mistrust of the media continues to grow in Europe, this situation also damages the image of the EU, and its member states that do not react to the deficiencies in the supranational institutions that now largely govern the countries.
The not-so-heroic lockdown critic
By James Delingpole | TCW Defending Freedom | June 2, 2023
Dan Hannan has written another piece reminding us how heroically outspoken he was during lockdown. He writes in the Sunday Telegraph: ‘A handful of columnists – and it really was a handful, you could count us on your fingers – had argued from the beginning that the restrictions were excessive. We were almost universally howled down as murderers who wanted to cull the population . . .’
I’m sure many of us will remain eternally grateful for Lord Hannan’s selfless courage. But rather than resting on his laurels over what he may or may not have written three years ago, might not the noble lord more usefully direct his talents towards addressing the much more pressing problems of the present?
Foremost among these problems, I would suggest, is the looming WHO Pandemic treaty and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). If implemented they would give the World Health Organisation unprecedented powers over sovereign states. These powers would include the right to mandate all manner of highly restrictive measures: lockdowns, masks, quarantines, border closures, travel restrictions, medication of individuals including vaccination and medical examinations.
For full details I recommend the excellent summary by Dr Elizabeth Evans of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance published by TCW under the headline ‘Fight this sinister power grab by the unelected, unaccountable WHO’. What becomes clear if you read the article and follow the links is that the threat posed by the WHO is very real. If its plans are implemented – as currently appears more likely than not – it will represent arguably the most egregious assault on human freedom in the history of the world.
Never before, after all, has an unelected, supranational body been given such power over the lives of pretty much every single person on the planet. The WHO won’t just be able to decide on freedom of movement (whether, for example, it is permissible to keep them under house arrest or in quarantine camps, as happened during lockdown) but even whether or not they live or die or spend the rest of their days as cripples as a result of a compulsory ‘vaccine’ programme.
So let’s read what that doughty freedom fighter Dan Hannan has to say on the subject, shall we? Here he is, further down his hero-of-the-lockdown article: ‘Even more incredibly, some leaders would suggest we set up an international ‘pandemic treaty’, potentially giving the World Health Organisation binding powers on such matters – almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists.’
Hmm. I’ve read that sentence a number of times and still I can’t quite make sense of what he is saying. Why is he trying to turn a real problem into a merely theoretical one? Surely, verifiably, unquestionably the case is that the World Health Organisation IS pressing ahead with its treaty, and that sovereign nations around the world will probably sign up to it. Yet instead of acknowledging this fact, Hannan has chosen to dress it up as something highly improbable – ‘incredibly’ – being mooted by certain, unidentified silly politicians or newspaper columnists. Then, as if to pull the rug from under the possibility that this nonsense should ever come to pass, he adds that curious, distancing phrase ‘almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists’.
Well, yes, indeed, it would unarguably make ‘conspiracy theorists’ more credible because they have been warning of this threat for quite some time. But would their being proved right really be such a bad thing? In Hannan’s view, it appears, yes it would because – as he hints in a subsequent paragraph – he has a bit of an axe to grind on this score.
‘Two people I know have been pushed by all this into conspiracist paranoia. They went from asking (perfectly reasonably) why young people needed to be jabbed for a disease that posed no danger to them to doubting the efficacy of all vaccines. Then they started muttering about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Now they are parroting the Kremlin line on Ukraine.’
I’m not quite sure what the relevance of Ukraine is to lockdowns. But I think what Hannan is telling us from his lofty perch in the House of Lords is that there is a right way to think about things and a wrong way to think about things – and that he clearly knows which is which, whereas these paranoid conspiracists are so away with the fairies that their every argument can be dismissed.
But are they? Are they really? On the subject of vaccines, for example, there is a perfectly lucid and reasonable case to be made that they are not the medical miracle but a gigantic con trick which has done far more harm than good to the health of the public.
As for the dismissive line about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab, this is plain dishonest. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second-biggest funder of the World Health Organisation after the US. Klaus Schwab wrote and published a book in 2020 called Covid-19: The Great Reset, spelling out how the global pandemic was a beneficial crisis which political leaders groomed by his World Economic Forum could use to make a new world order in which we would own nothing and be happy. Using a dismissive word such as ‘muttering’ doesn’t magically vanish these men away into a paranoid fantasy world where they pose no threat to our real one. Rather, it suggests a writer who is using rhetorical tricksiness to lead his readers away from the truth.
On lockdown, he concludes: ‘It would be comforting to pin the responsibility on someone: autocratic politicians, cowardly bureaucrats, sensational broadcasters. But the horrible truth is that, as a country, we did this to ourselves; and, in all likelihood, we would do it again tomorrow.’
The deception here is worth of Iago. ‘Politicians’ pushed the lockdown and vaccine agenda not because they were ‘autocratic’ but because they were corrupt, spineless and under the thumb of supranational institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the WHO. Bureaucrats pushed it not because they are cowardly but because as Deep State functionaries that was precisely their job. Broadcasters and newspapers like the one Hannan writes for pushed it not out of sensationalism but because they were either bought and paid for – or bullied and cowed – by the government to pump out relentless Covid propaganda while suppressing inconvenient truths such as vaccine injury.
At no point in his piece does Hannan address the fact that the primary driver responsible for all those things he so laments about lockdown Britain (‘taped-off playgrounds’, ‘power-crazed coppers’, ‘listless moody teenagers’) was the military-grade, state-orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to brainwash the public into believing that a fairly routine flu bug was the worst thing since the Black Death. The public would never have overreacted in the way it did if it hadn’t been bullied, cajoled, bribed, blackmailed and tricked into doing so by the political class of which Lord Hannan is a card-carrying member.
Chinese ‘Secret Police Stations’… Fact or Fiction?
Canadian Patriot | May 28, 2023
In this first of a series of Canadian Patriot short films debunking anti-China Psyops, we ask the question ‘Is there actual evidence that secret Chinese Police Stations have been set up around the world as part of a Communist subversion of western freedom? This film will evaluate whether the single source used to justify this claim (a Spain-based human rights group called Safeguard Defenders) actually proves its accusations, and what actually controls it?
Stay tuned for future videos in this series which will investigate claims of Chinese election interference in Canada, Russian interference in the USA, Chinese spy balloon attacks, and more.
To pick up a copy of Breaking Free of Anti-China Psyops, click here:
https://canadianpatriot.org/2022/12/03/new-release-breaking-free-of-anti-china-psyops-how-the-cold-war-is-being-revived-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
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Former CBC reporter says outlet suppressed negative stories about COVID shots, lockdowns
By Anthony Murdoch | LifeSiteNews | May 25, 2023
OTTAWA, Ontario – A former journalist who worked for the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) shockingly revealed that reporters were stopped from being able to cover stories critical of COVID vaccines and lockdowns, and were instead encouraged to push government “propaganda.”
The shocking revelations were made by past CBC Manitoba reporter Marianne Klowak during testimony at the National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) on May 18 in Ottawa.
“I know that as a public broadcaster, you’d expect us to be telling you the truth, and we stopped doing that,” said Klowak.
“And it was a number of stories that I have put forward that were blocked, but it seemed to me as a journalist who’d been there 34 years, it’s like the rules had changed overnight. And it changed so quickly that it left me just dizzy.”
Klowak noted that it was her editors who prevented her from doing stories in relation to protests against the COVID mandates, as well as reports of people having adverse events to the COVID shots, as reported by doctors.
She noted she had “witnessed in a very short time the collapse of journalism, news gathering, investigative reporting,” adding that the way she “saw it” is that “we were in fact pushing propaganda.”
“Not only had we shut down one side by silencing and discrediting anyone opposing the narrative, we had elevated and designated ourselves as gatekeepers of the truth. We no longer believed our audience was capable of thinking for themselves,” she told the NCI.
Klowak said a story of hers about a woman who had a COVID vaccine injury was completely neutered, or in effect “sanitized.”
“It should be just a straight story about someone who suffered an adverse reaction and we shouldn’t downplay it,” she noted.
“Instead, the way I saw it, her story was buried in experts and health officials and stats, which sanitized it.”
Klowak admitted that journalists “failed to hold power to account and no one was holding the media to account.”
In July of 2022, Klowak revealed that the CBC deliberately skewed its reporting on COVID-19 inoculations.
She said that CBC was “canceling one whole side of the debate” as the experimental COVID-19 shots became available across the world.
The NCI is a citizen-led and citizen-funded independent initiative investigating the government’s response to the COVID so-called pandemic.
At the inquiry in Ottawa as well, Dr. Christopher Alan Shoemaker, a Canadian doctor with 45 years of experience, testified about the injuries correlated with the COVID-19 mRNA injections, notably the jab’s effects on kids and reproductive health.
Shoemaker had his medical license suspended in January of 2022 by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) because he spoke out against the COVID shots.
As for Klowak, she left the CBC in late 2021. Since then, other CBC reporters have left over what they also see as biased COVID news coverage.
In January 2022, journalist Tara Henley quit for similar reasons, saying, “Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted.”
About a month ago, retired Canadian Lt. Col. David Redman testified before the NCI that legacy media outlets such as the CBC are “ministries of propaganda.”
Many have accused the CBC and other media outlets of holding a pro-government bias because of those outlets’ ties to public funds.
In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that his Liberal government would give legacy media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), an extra $595 million in federal assistance over the next four years.
Per its 2020-2021 annual report, the CBC receives about $1.24 billion in public funding every year, which is about 70% of its funding.
Despite these efforts, the Department of Canadian Heritage recently admitted the “bailout” of media has not worked in helping to prop up legacy media outlets.
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From the Archives
CIA’s Hidden Hand in ‘Democracy’ Groups
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | January 8, 2015
Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy stress their commitment to freedom of thought and democracy, but both cooperated with a CIA-organized propaganda operation in the 1980s, according to documents released by Ronald Reagan’s presidential library.
One document showed senior Freedom House official Leo Cherne clearing a draft manuscript on political conditions in El Salvador with CIA Director William Casey and promising that Freedom House would make requested editorial “corrections and changes” – and even send over the editor for consultation with whomever Casey assigned to review the paper. … continue
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