UK blocked Ukraine peace deal – Moscow
RT | April 27, 2024
Ukraine abandoned a draft peace treaty with Russia in 2022 under British pressure, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
The deal, which could have ended the Ukraine conflict weeks after it started, was approved by negotiators in Istanbul, but Kiev later pulled out of the talks.
The German newspaper Welt reported on Friday that Moscow had issued additional demands after a deal had already been outlined, such as making Russian the second official language in Ukraine, implying that this had ended any hopes of an agreement.
Peskov denied those claims on Saturday, citing remarks made by Ukrainian MP David Arakhamia, who led Kiev’s delegation at the talks.
In an interview to domestic media last November, Arakhamia said then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had intervened in the peace process and had urged the Ukrainians to “just fight” Russia.
Kiev effectively discarded the deal under “direct pressure by London,” Peskov stressed. “The rest is speculation. I suggest we learn from the source.”
Asked whether the draft treaty could serve as a basis for further peace talks, Peskov said Kiev’s public position was to reject talks with Russia. The idea of reviving the failed agreement was floated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko when he met Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin earlier this month.
Johnson has denied derailing the peace talks, but has also bragged on multiple occasions about his policy of nudging Kiev into continuing hostilities with Russia, which the British politician claims to be a fight for global democracy.
“There could be no more effective way of investing in Western security than investing in Ukraine, because those guys without a single pair of American boots on the ground are fighting for the West,” Johnson told students at Georgetown University during a visit to the US this month. The Ukrainians “are effectively fighting our own fight, fighting for our own interests,” he added.
Russian officials have described the Ukraine conflict as a Western proxy war against Moscow, which the US and its allies allegedly intend to wage “to the last Ukrainian.” Their goal, according to Moscow, is to contain Russia and stall its development, rather than protect the interests of the Ukrainian people.
Why won’t Chris Packham have a real debate on climate?
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | April 25, 2024
On Sunday, the BBC did something unusual. It invited Luke Johnson, a climate contrarian, to join a panel with Laura Kuenssberg to discuss net zero. As followers of this debate will know, the BBC’s editorial policy unit issued guidance to staff in 2018 saying: ‘As climate change is accepted as happening, you do not need a “denier” to balance the debate.’ Although it did allow for exceptions to this rule: ‘There are occasions where contrarians and sceptics should be included within climate change and sustainability debates.’ Presumably this was one such occasion.
The other two people on the panel – Chris Packham and Layla Moran – are members of the climate emergency camp, so there was no pretence of ‘balance’. At one point, the exchange between Johnson and Packham became heated and when the latter invoked the recent downpour in Dubai as well as extensive wildfires in the ‘global south’, as evidence of the effect of anthropogenic global warming, Johnson challenged him to come up with evidence that extreme weather was caused by carbon emissions.
‘It doesn’t come from Toby Young’s Daily Septic [sic], which is basically put together by a bunch of professionals with close affiliations to the fossil fuel industry,’ replied Packham. ‘It comes from something called science.’ This was hailed by Packham’s side as a slam-dunk rebuttal of Johnson’s argument. The Canary wrote up the exchange under the following headline: ‘Chris Packham just humiliated Kuenssberg’s preposterous climate-denying guest.’ The London Economic, which describes itself as ‘a digital newspaper with a metropolitan mindset’, summarised it as follows: ‘With science on his side, Chris Packham was able to deliver a devastating put-down when challenged on the evidence of climate change.’
I can’t help thinking Packham’s ‘devastating put-down’ would have been more effective if it had been true. The people who put together the Daily Sceptic, a news publishing site I’ve edited since 2020, have no connections to the fossil fuel industry. If Packham and his allies are so convinced of the rightness of their cause, why invent reasons to discredit their opponents? A clip from the show including this claim was posted on Twitter by BBC Politics and retweeted by Laura Kuenssberg, getting, at last count, 845,000 views. And to think the BBC launched a multi-million-pound department last year to ‘address the growing threat of disinformation’.
What about Packham’s claim that ‘something called science’ provides all the evidence we need that extreme weather events are caused by burning fossil fuels? There’s really no such thing as ‘the science’, as in a consensus viewpoint among scientists that’s so incontrovertible no serious debate is possible. All scientific theories are just hypotheses and, as such, subject to challenge. Indeed, if it were illegitimate to challenge these theories, progress in science wouldn’t be possible. To pretend that the science of what causes extreme weather is ‘settled’ when it’s the subject of ongoing dispute suggests that Packham and his pals aren’t capable of having a proper grown-up discussion.
Full story here.
Toby Young actually understates his complaint, as there is no evidence that weather is actually becoming more extreme – something the IPCC admit.
It is very easy for these conmen to claim it is, and simply justify it with a statement that “scientists say”. But as Toby points out, they are unable to back it up with actual data and evidence.
The idea, fraudulently circulated by grant funded climate scientists, that global warming means extreme weather has always been by definition absurd. After all, does this mean that the Earth’s climate was ideal during the Ice Age, which would be the logical conclusion?
The simple fact is that there has always been unpleasant weather, storms, floods, droughts, and glaciation. If Chris Packham can provide evidence that these have all gotten worse in recent times, then let him present it.
If he can’t, the BBC should apologise for broadcasting false statements, exclude him from all future debates on climate change, and ban him from making any further such political comments if he wishes to remain as an employee.
A Warped View of Patriotism on Pat Tillman
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | April 24, 2024
A recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times demonstrates what is a warped interpretation of the term “patriotism.” The op-ed is about former football player Pat Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan twenty years ago. It’s written by Bill Dwyre, a former sports editor for the Times.
Dwyre reminds us that Tillman was motivated to join the military after the 9/11 attacks. He gave up a $3.6 million football contract to join the U.S. military and was hoping to be sent to Afghanistan to fight the terrorists.
Dwyre writes, “It was a can’t-miss story of patriotism. Americans applauded from the safety and comfort of our homes and communities.” (Since he uses the pronoun “our,” presumably Dwyre fell into the “safety and comfort” group rather than the “patriot” group.)
Unfortunately, however, Dwyre doesn’t explain why Tillman’s act was one of “can’t miss” patriotism. Apparently for him it’s a self-evident truth.
No declaration of war
The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It is the higher law that we the people impose on government officials. We are expected to obey their laws, and they punish us when we fail to do so. By the same token, they are supposed to obey our law, the Constitution.
The Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war as a prerequisite to a president’s waging war against any other nation-state. If a president and his army wage war without a congressional declaration of war, they are acting in violation of the law.
It is undisputed that President Bush did not secure a congressional declaration of war from Congress before he ordered his military to invade Afghanistan. That made their war illegal under our form of government.
How can participating in an illegal war be considered “patriotic”? Dwyre doesn’t explain that.
The U.S. was the aggressor under Nuremberg
Moreover, the common perception is that Bush invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban regime, which was governing the country, had been complicit in the 9/11 attacks by having knowingly harbored Osama bin Laden, who U.S. officials suspected had orchestrated the attacks.
Not so. Bush initiated his war because the Taliban regime refused to comply with his unconditional demand to deliver bin Laden into the hands of the Pentagon and the CIA. Yet, there was no extradition treaty between Afghanistan and the United States and, therefore, Afghanistan was operating within its rights under international law to refuse Bush’s unconditional extradition demand.
Nonetheless, knowing that the Pentagon and the CIA would torture bin Laden into confessing to the crime, Afghanistan offered to deliver him to an independent nation for a fair trial. In making the offer, Afghanistan sought the same amount of proof that would be required in a normal extradition hearing. The U.S. government refused the offer, perhaps because it was unable to provide such proof.
Therefore, given that Afghanistan had the authority under international law to refuse Bush’s extradition demand, that makes Bush’s invasion illegal under the war-of-aggression provision of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.
How can participation in an unconstitutional and illegal war be considered “patriotic”? Unfortunately, Dwyre fails to explain.
If one assumes that the 9/11 attackers were the ones who did the attacking (as compared to the attacks being an “inside job,” as some believe), it’s worth pointing out that they were motivated by the death and destruction that the U.S. government’s foreign policy had wreaked in the Middle East. But of course, a real “patriot” does not bring up that discomforting fact and instead blindly supports the government’s claim that the terrorists attacked us out of hatred for our “freedom and values.”
Tillman’s opposition to the Iraq War
One of the fascinating aspects of Dwyre’s op-ed glorifying Tillman’s patriotism is what he leaves out of the op-ed. Tillman was an outspoken opponent of Bush’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq. Dwyre doesn’t even mention that, which is revealing.
Keep in mind, after all, that Bush’s war on Iraq was also waged without a congressional declaration of war, making it illegal under our form of government. Bush’s claim that he was waging to war to enforce UN resolutions falls flat because only the UN can enforce its resolutions. The fact is that the U.S. war on Iraq was an even clearer case of a war of aggression under the Nuremberg principles than the U.S. war on Afghanistan.
Despite Tillman’s fierce objections to the U.S. war on Iraq, the U.S. military nonetheless ordered him to “serve” in Iraq, which he did. Keep in mind though that every U.S. soldier takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution and is under a legal and moral obligation to refuse to obey unlawful orders. Tillman chose to obey the unlawful order to deploy to Iraq.
U.S. government lies
After his “service” in Iraq, Tillman was deployed to Afghanistan, where he continued to speak out against the U.S. war on Iraq. It was there that he was killed. As Dwyre points out, the U.S. military initially lied about his death, claiming falsely that he was killed by enemy fire. In fact, what actually happened is that he was killed by his own men in what was described as “friendly fire.”
In 2006, Tillman’s brother, Kevin Tillman, wrote a scathing op-ed on truthdig.com, in which he echoed his brother Pat’s view of the Iraq war: “Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.”
Why would’t Dwyre mention Pat Tillman’s (and his brother’s) fierce opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq in his op-ed? My hunch is that it’s because he considers opposition to U.S. wars to be unpatriotic and, therefore, Tillman’s apparent lack of “patriotism” with respect to Iraq doesn’t fit conveniently within his patriotism narrative. Under Dwyre’s warped interpretation of patriotism, apparently it’s only those who blindly support the U.S. national-security state’s foreign wars and its interventionist foreign policy who should be considered “patriots.” Apparently, those who reject such wars and choose instead to remain in the “safety and comfort” of their homes instead of fighting them should be considered non-patriots.
The sanctions regime against the DPRK under threat
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 24.04.2024
On March 28, 2024, Russia vetoed the extension of the mandate of the UN panel of experts to monitor the sanctions against the DPRK until April 30, 2025. This is important, because according to the established procedure, the decision to extend the term of office of the so-called 1718 Sanctions Committee must be made by April 30, otherwise it will be unable to continue with its activities.
What is the 1718 Sanctions Committee?
Resolution 1718 was adopted in October 2006 in response to the nuclear threat posed by North Korea. The Resolution prohibited the supply, sale or transfer to the DPRK of any military equipment and weapons, and also of materials, equipment, goods and technology that could be used in North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction programs. Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted a number of other resolutions tightening the sanctions on North Korea.
The eight-member Panel of Experts supporting the UN Sanctions Committee on North Korea was established in 2009 pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1874, which was adopted in response to the DPRK’s second nuclear test, to monitor compliance with the sanctions imposed on the DPRK by the UN member states. A panel of eight UN Secretary General-approved experts from the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia, as well as South Korea, Japan and Singapore (theoretically) – collects, studies, analyzes data on the implementation of sanctions against the DPRK, submits a twice-annual report on sanctions violations to the United Nations Security Council based on information from UN member states and other open source materials, and makes recommendations on the sanctions issue.
Since its founding the group has reportedly uncovered a number of sanctions violations, including those related to the DPRK’s nuclear and missile programs and other prohibited activities such as the import of luxury goods and ship-to-ship transfers of sanctioned items.
The UN Security Council votes annually to extend the Panel’s mandate, and in 2023 Russia voted in favor of the extension.
Two days before the vote, NK News, citing “informed sources at the UN,” reported that Russia and China had proposed adding “sunset” clauses to the sanctions regime against the DPRK as a precondition for extending the Panel’s mandate. They proposed adding an expiration date to the de facto open-ended sanctions regime, and requiring a new consensus of the UN Security Council member states in order to renew the sanctions for a further term. Russia also proposed reducing the frequency of the group’s reports submission from twice to once a year.
The NK News article noted that the US, UK and France refuse to accept these proposals, which means that Moscow will be likely to veto the extension of the Panel’s mandate.
The Russian proposals were rejected and Russia blocked a draft resolution submitted by the United States, although 13 of the 15 UN Security Council members voted in favor of it. The representative of China, who abstained from voting, expressed support for Russia’s position, saying that the proposal to set an expiration date for sanctions on North Korea was “highly practical and quite feasible.”
Russia’s arguments
Explaining the reason for Russia’s exercise of its veto right Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, said that the authors of the document did not take into account Moscow’s proposal to set a time limit for the sanctions against North Korea, which remain indefinite.
As Vasily Nebenzya stated before the vote, it was “long overdue” for the Council to update the sanctions regime against the DPRK in light of the realities of the situation.
However, all attempts by Russia and China to link the level of sanctions pressure with the current behavior of the DPRK “have always been met with the absolute unwillingness of Western countries to depart from their destructive and punitive logic towards the DPRK.”
The 1718 Committee’s Panel of Experts, tasked with monitoring the sanctions policy, “failed to perform its direct duties” and was unable to “develop sober assessments of the state of the sanctions regime,” and as a result “its work was reduced to playing along with the West’s policies, repeating biased information, and analyzing newspaper headlines and low-quality pictures.”
Unfortunately, the present author has to agree with this statement, because the Panel’s reports included almost exclusively “investigations” made by sensationalist media outlets, with no critical analysis and an overreliance on the phrase “highly likely.”
According to the Russian representative, the West, led by the United States, is trying to “strangle” the DPRK through unilateral restrictions, propaganda and threats against the country’s leadership.
Given the above background, Russia proposed that the Council embark on an open and honest review of its sanctions measures against the DPRK, but “the US and its allies did not want to hear us and did not include our proposals in the draft resolution which was put to a vote today. Under these conditions, we do not see any ‘added value’ in the work of the Committee’s Panel of Experts and cannot support the American draft.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova has twice commented on the problem, emphasizing that “the Council can no longer act according to its established patterns with regard to the Korean Peninsula issue.” The security situation in the region has not improved over the long years of sanctions (the DPRK’s missile and nuclear capabilities have only grown, the present author would add), and the devastating humanitarian consequences of the sanctions on the DPRK’s civilian population are evident. Moreover, it is not the DPRK that is aggravating the current situation, but rather the increasingly aggressive military activity of the United States and its allies that is leading to a new round of escalation in the region.
Many experts agree with this assessment. For example, Andrei Lankov, a prominent Russian-speaking researcher on the DPRK, told NK News that the increasing politicization of the Panel of Experts’ work has rendered it unable to reliably monitor the extent of the DPRK’s sanctions evasion. In his view, the differences of opinion within the DPRK Panel of Experts “reflect the main problem with the UN in its current form: it can only work if there is a consensus of the major powers.”
What was the reaction of the “international community”?
As Russian military expert Vladimir Khrustalev notes, the suspension of the Panel of Experts’ mandate significantly undermines the viability and certain legal aspects of the sanctions regime in its previous form.
But, of course, the reaction of US and South Korean officials and experts has been to condemn Russia. Western analysts say the absence of the 1718 Committee, whose main task is to monitor sanctions violations, would make it easier for Russia to engage in arms deals with the DPRK – long accepted in the West as an established fact.
US Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller expressed disappointment over Russia’s veto of the resolution and China’s abstention, calling the Committee the “gold standard” for providing fact-based, independent analysis and recommendations.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed “deep regret” over the veto: “The Panel of Experts has fulfilled its role in monitoring the DPRK, which… continues to violate sanctions through various illegal actions such as nuclear and missile provocations, arms exports, sending workers abroad, cyberattacks and military cooperation with the Russian Federation, and is building up its nuclear and missile potential.”
Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies, said that the key factor behind the lifting of the UN’s sanctions monitoring of North Korea was not only by the rapprochement between Pyongyang and Moscow, but also by growing hostility between the United States and Russia, which “pushed the latter to establish closer ties with North Korea. Their strategic relationships are inherently interconnected. In addition, there is growing criticism in the UN Security Council that the sanctions are useless.”
Maria Zakharova’s second statement was a response to such rhetoric. In addition, Russia pointed out the inadmissibility of such criticisms on the part of the United States, which for the past five months has been blocking UN Security Council resolutions on the situation in the Gaza Strip, thereby covering up the mass deaths of Palestinian civilians caused by Israeli actions.
In turn, the DPRK expressed its gratitude to Russia. As the DPRK’s permanent representative to the UN, Kim Song, said, “we highly appreciate the decision of the Russian Federation to veto the Security Council’s draft resolution on the 1718 Committee.” Kim recalled that Pyongyang has never recognized either the sanctions imposed by the Security Council or the work of the sanctions committee.
Does all this mean the end of the sanctions regime?
Unfortunately not. Of course, the West is stoking fears that “the end of the Expert Panel will encourage North Korea to continue to engage in prohibited acts with impunity and frustrate international efforts to deter growing nuclear and missile threats.” However, Seoul, Washington and other like-minded countries will step up their coordination by imposing individual or multilateral sanctions in order to keep “turning the screws” on Pyongyang. As Kim Eun-hye stated in a briefing, “Despite the suspension of the Panel, we will continue to honor the sanctions against North Korea and make every effort to create an environment in which North Korea has no choice but to refuse to move in the wrong direction.”
Most likely, the panel of experts will simply be replaced. Victor Cha already proposes to fill the vacuum with an “alternative mechanism” involving countries with similar positions on the issue, such as the US, South Korea, Japan, Australia, etc., who will cooperate by sharing information.
Eric Penton-Voak also suggests that as an alternative to the Expert Panel the activities of think tanks and media specializing in the area be stepped up, which could make the enforcement of the sanctions more effective.
The first steps in this direction have already begun. On April 5, 2024, the US State Department stated that “amid the growing need for tighter international cooperation to address North Korean threats following Russia’s recent veto of a resolution on the annual renewal of a UN panel monitoring the enforcement of sanctions against the North” US Senior Official for North Korea Jung Pak will visit Romania, Poland, and Sweden. She will negotiate on challenges from North Korea’s “unlawful nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, malicious cyber activity, and deepening military and political partnership with Russia.”
Some experts, however, are more pessimistic. Frank Aum, a senior expert at the US Institute of Peace, notes that “the termination of the panel further erodes the multilateral sanctions regime against North Korea and forces the United States and other countries to pursue more unilateral, bilateral or monolateral efforts to crack down on North Korea.” In his view, “this scenario represents not just a crisis for advocates of pressure and sanctions against North Korea, but also the broader functioning of the UNSC and the post World War II international order.”
The present author rather agrees with these views. Yes, the UN structure will be replaced by a private shop whose verdicts will be even more biased, but less binding. The US is unlikely to lift the sanctions, considering any movement in this direction ideologically unacceptable. But another deep crack has appeared in the façade of the UN as an independent arbitration institution.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
As Ukraine’s Defeat Looms, Imaginary War Unravels
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | April 24, 2024
On April 11th, US General Christopher Gerard Cavoli, chief of Washington’s European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, addressed US lawmakers on Ukraine’s dire battlefield situation, warning Kiev “could lose” without further Wunderwaffe. Along the way, he made a number of startling disclosures about the size of Russia’s military, and losses, which detonated numerous narratives universally and unquestioningly perpetuated by the mainstream media from the very start of the proxy war to this day.
“We do not see significant losses in the air domain, especially their (Russian) long-range and strategic aviation fleets…Russia’s strategic forces, long-range aviation, cyber capabilities, space capabilities, and capabilities in the electromagnetic spectrum have lost no capacity at all,” Cavoli said. In all, while the Russian air force had lost “some aircraft”, this represented “only about 10% of their fleet”:
“The overall message I would give you is [Russia’s military has] grown back to what they were before… their overall capacity is very significant still, and they intend to make it go higher… Russia is reconstituting [its forces] far faster than our initial estimates suggested. The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine… Russia launches very large-scale attacks every few days keeping with their production rate… They produce, they save up, they launch a big attack.”
Such is the pace at which events move these days, many may have forgotten that in December 2023 a US intelligence report, conveniently declassified right when Volodymyr Zelensky was touring Washington desperately attempting to drum up support for yet more “aid”, suggested Russia had lost 90% of its prewar army, with combat deaths in excess of 300,000. The report claimed Moscow’s personnel and vehicle losses were so severe, it would take 18 years to replenish what was hemorrhaged over the invasion to date.
Independent analyst Will Schryver has coined the term “Imaginary War” in respect of the proxy conflict. It is a battle primarily concerned with convincing Western citizens that free, democratic Kiev is making a heroic stand against Russian barbarism, which it can and will win. Ukraine, with NATO’s backing, was until recently excelling in this effort. Every step of the way though, they’ve been losing the real war – and badly.
‘Intelligence Updates’
Social media is a core component of the Imaginary War. Academic research shows Twitter is home to a massive pro-Ukraine bot army, endlessly pumping out pro-Kiev, anti-Russian messaging. The same is no doubt true of every social media platform. This helps create the illusion of nigh-universal support for Ukraine globally, when outside the West, populations and governments are either neutral, or outright supportive of Russia, perceiving the conflict to be a strike against NATO, and Western imperialism.
Furthermore, over the first 18 months of the conflict, mainstream journalists, pundits, and politicians heavily depended on the unsubstantiated pronouncements of “Oryx”, an anonymous Twitter account analysing on-the-ground imagery, for loss figures on both sides. Its posts suggested from day one, destruction of Russian tanks, jets, armoured vehicles and more was many orders of magnitude higher than that suffered by Ukraine, indicative generally of the war being an unmitigated disaster for the invaders.
A representative March 17th 2022 Washington Post investigation boldly declared Russia had to date “lost thousands of soldiers and thousands of vehicles while failing to make significant progress,” based almost entirely on Oryx’s findings. Similarly, a BBC article the next month prominently touted figures produced by Oryx suggesting Ukraine had “destroyed, damaged or captured at least 82 Russian aircraft, including jets, helicopters and drones,” while only sacrificing 33 of its own.
A nameless Western intelligence official told the BBC Kiev desperately required “long and mid-range air defences”, in “large quantities.” UAF Captain Vasyl Kravchuk, reportedly possessed of a “surprisingly ready smile” when he spoke to Britain’s state broadcaster, signed off by stating, “past wars have shown, whoever dominates the air wins the war.” The underlying propaganda message, that Ukraine was so far comfortably prevailing in the skies, but needed Western help to keep it up – and therefore emerge victorious overall – couldn’t have been clearer.
Oryx’s findings were even routinely cited by Britain’s Ministry of Defence in daily Twitter “intelligence updates”, which were widely shared, and subsequently featured in and informed the content and headlines of many news reports. For example, in April 2023 an update asserted, “Russia has lost 10,000+ military vehicles since its illegal invasion of Ukraine began, according to tracker Oryx.” The post was viewed over one million times. Parliament’s 2023 Intelligence and Security Committee report boasted that “the impact” of these “unprecedented” updates was “substantial”.
The report went on to note how the Ministry of Defence intelligence estimates “informed decisions made by [government] ministers and Armed Forces chiefs” on London’s “posture towards Russia.” One can only hope Oryx’s output did not formally influence Britain’s proxy war strategy in Ukraine. Audits by eagle-eyed internet sleuths have demonstrated the account consistently perpetuated wildly inaccurate, inflated figures, by counting photos and footage of the same damaged vehicles shot from different angles as individual, separate Russian losses, while misrepresenting Ukraine’s destroyed Soviet-era vehicles as Russian.
Conspicuously, Oryx abruptly ceased its work when Ukraine’s much-vaunted, long-delayed “Spring” counteroffensive began in June 2023. A cynic might suggest, given Kiev was equipped with heavily hyped Western Wunderwaffe for the effort, whoever was running the operation – and/or the individuals and entities ultimately managing them – concluded the same dishonest tactics couldn’t work this time round. In October 2023, the account was deleted outright without warning or explanation, meaning its bogus archive can no longer be critically scrutinised at all.
‘Classic Hero’
Coincidentally, that same month, a number of anonymous, high profile “OSINT” accounts similarly focused on Ukraine likewise abruptly shuttered, or announced their intention to do so. This included Calibre Obscura. Beloved by NAFO, the account similarly emphasised Russian embarrassment and failure. A video Calibre Obscura published in September 2022 of a fleeing Russian tank crashing into a tree set to farcical music went viral, generated much mainstream coverage, and was presented by Zelensky at a press conference celebrating that month’s successful counteroffensive in Kharkiv.
With the Imaginary War nearing over, and the Zionist genocide in Gaza beginning, it was of course necessary to wind down “OSINT” operations entirely, or focus them elsewhere. The silence of Bellingcat, a British and US government-funded validator of NATO narratives, on Israel’s crimes, despite a wealth of photo and video footage attesting to the monstrousness, is palpable, and illuminating.
In December 2023, novelist Lionel Shriver authored a lament for The Spectator, on how she “got caught up” in the proxy conflict’s “story”, which “had a spectacular opening chapter, a classic hero… and as wicked a villain as Shakespeare could have contrived.” However, Kiev’s catastrophic counteroffensive – which saw over 100,000 Ukrainians die to recover 0.25% of lost territory – meant she was now “quietly losing interest in this conflict,” along with many others in Europe and the US:
“This is supposed to be a David and Goliath story. But David and Goliath is a crap story if the giant wins… Predictable, a bit disheartening and not really a story at all, just the way the world works. Besides, a Western audience wants to see the good guy win, both to mete out justice and to enjoy victory by proxy. Ukraine’s anguishing self-defence is not a novel. But it’s not satisfying our fictional appetites.”
Shriver concluded that it was “time to urge the Zelensky government to enter talks to bring this depressing war to its depressing conclusion,” as “dragging out an entrenched stalemate merely racks up a higher body count and destroys more Ukrainian homes and infrastructure to no purpose.” She added, “sitting back and giving Ukrainians just enough weaponry to keep fighting to the last man and woman, only for the country to finally end up where we always knew it would, is not just immoral. It’s murder.”
It is indeed immoral, and murder, to keep the unwinnable, real war Ukraine has been fighting since February 2022 grinding on, as anti-imperialist, anti-war activists and journalists have been intoning every step of the way. That confirming this self-evident fact came at the expense of so many lives, marking it as a criminal tragedy. Unhappily for Shriver and many others, with the total collapse of the frontline impending any day now, and Russia seeking Kiev’s “unconditional surrender”, the “story” may not end with Ukraine electively entering talks.
Fake Physician Allison Neitzel Caught Running Real Medical Misinformation Site
Medical clown for “disinformation reporters” at NBC and Mother Jones crashes her own disinformation circus
By Paul D. Thacker | The DisInformation Chronicle | April 3, 2024
Promoted to national prominence by a coterie of reporters tackling pandemic misinformation, physician Allison Neitzel took a hard fall last week when she was forced to atone for promoting misinformation and defaming medical experts—by posting an apology on her website, and pinning the same to the top of her social media X account. But unless you hang on every word of Democratic Party aligned reporters with a knack for labeling everyone they don’t like a “conspiracy theorist,” you likely don’t know physician Allison Neitzel.
If you haven’t heard of her, you should know her name and story.
Allison Neitzel’s story encapsulates everything that went wrong during COVID when self-defined “disinformation reporters” glommed onto anyone they tripped over on social media as an “expert” they could deploy to castigate those refusing to bend the knee to Big Pharma.
“I know of Allison because of the way she has targeted me,” says Tracey Beth Høeg, a physician researcher and associate professor of clinical research at the university of Southern Denmark. Neitzel has deleted many of her social media posts denigrating Hoeg, including one in which she labeled her “Hoeg hag.”
“The fact she has not nearly completed her training but has appointed herself as an expert physician in pointing out misinformation strikes me as both odd and ironic,” Hoeg continued. “For example, as you can see, she is really attacking me rather than anything substantive about what I have done or said.”
Allison Neitzel rocketed to national fame on CNN after graduating from the Medical College of Wisconsin and posting a letter on social media that accused Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers of spreading COVID misinformation. Rodgers said he was allergic to one of the vaccine ingredients and didn’t need to be vaccinated because he had already been sick with COVID, however, this was almost a year before the CDC stated that prior infection was no different than being vaccinated.
Despite spreading false information about Rodgers, Neitzel’s letter and purported medical bona fides proved catnip to reporters at MedPage Today, Mother Jones, and NBC, who quoted her as a physician exposing medical misinformation. Columns Neitzel has written for websites WhoWhatWhy and Science-Based Medicine also claim she is a physician focusing on disinformation.
And this is where the circus fun begins, because famed medical misinformation expert Allison Neitzel is not now, nor has she ever been, a physician.
Allison Neitzel did not respond to multiple requests for comment to explain.
COVID clown show
I began unraveling Allson Neitzel’s COVID circus act shortly after she posted the apology to her website with the ironic name “MisinformationKills” and pinned it to the top of her @AliNeitzelMD X account.
Neitzel’s apology details a long list of false statements she made against multiple physicians accusing them of a fraud and grift, along with weasel words that make clear this is a non-apology apology, in the vein of “I am sorry if you feel bad.”
“I regret if anyone understood the statements as accusations that any of them had engaged in fraudulent professional or business practices,” Neitzel writes.
You can read her apology, but the depth and particulars of Neitzel’s defamation of real medical experts is impossible to know because she has deleted many of her posts on social media and on MisinformationKills.
But particulars don’t matter.
Neitzel is one in a legion of medical clowns the media launched into prominence during the pandemic because they served as useful idiots for “disinformation journalists” needing a quotable “expert” to bash people who dared question conventional COVID wisdom, or who charged that the government made phony claims about a lab accident in Wuhan, overstated the efficacy of masks and lockdowns, or lied about the safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines.
What makes Allison Neitzel unique from the COVID clown posse is that she was forced to retract and apologize for her lies and fake claims.
Interested, I dug into her background and discovered that all the outlets claiming Neitzel was a physician hadn’t bothered to do a modicum of due diligence before platforming her, because guess what? Allison Neitzel isn’t a physician.
Donning clown costume
The first social media trace I could find for Allison Neitzel is a 2019 Facebook post by the Medical College of Wisconsin. “Third-year med student Allison Neitzel helped teach young students how to use blood pressure cuffs, listen to heart and lung sounds through the use of a stethoscope, how to perform CPR and more.”
But when Neitzel jumped into the national conscience in 2021, she began claiming she was a “physician.” A group called the National Association of Medical Doctors (NAMD) posted Neitzel’s letter criticizing Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers in their Journal of Medicine, where she signed as “Allison Neitzel is a physician.” (Stay tuned: While researching the NAMD, I learned even more about COVID grift, which I will report in a future investigation.)
But when you look into Wisconsin law, you find the state defines a physician as “an individual possessing the degree of doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy or an equivalent degree as determined by the medical examining board, and holding a license granted by the medical examining board.”
So I looked up Neitzel in the National Provider Identifier Standard (NPI) which lists everyone licensed as a physician in the U.S. And guess what?
Allison Neitzel isn’t a physician.
Of course, her false claims of being a physician didn’t stop multiple media outlets from promoting Neitzel as a “physician” and misinformation expert. Let’s take a look.
COVID clown circus
Neitzel made two appearances as a “physician” in 2023 stories written by Kiera Butler at Mother Jones. Butler specializes in “COVID disinformation” stories that uncover “anti-vaxxers” and “right-wing” forces peeking out from every corner of America to harm the public with “misinformation.”
In one of her more amusing reporting incidents, Butler penned an article that claimed natural immunity from prior COVID infection was a “dangerous theory” spread by anti-vaxxers.
After California passed a law to discipline doctors for sharing “false COVID information” with patients that differs from the “scientific consensus” (whatever that is), Butler began attacking physicians who sued to stop the censorship, claiming that they were spreading medical lies. Linking to a tweet by Neitzel, who she labeled a “physician and disinformation researcher” Butler reported that “far-right rhetoric” and Nazi propaganda were supporting the lawsuits.
In fact, a California judge blocked the law for violating physicians’ First Amendment rights. Having first signed a bill that created the law, Governor Newsom then repealed it.
Neitzel was also featured in a story by NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny, another “disinformation reporter” who specializes in “extremism”—code in the disinformation world for “conservative” as people like Zadrozny never seem to find extremism among liberals.
In a story looking into anti-vaxxers—a favored topic for disinformation types—Zadrozny reported on aggressive online harassment against physicians and quoted Neitzel as an expert.
Online harassment has become increasingly common for doctors during the pandemic, according to Dr. Ali Neitzel, a physician researcher who studies misinformation.
“The targeting of individual physicians is a well-worn tactic,” Neitzel said. “But this cheaply done fake — trying to frame a doctor who is doing unpaid advocacy work — that’s a new low.”
Forget that Neitzel is not even a physician. The absurdity is that Zadrozny quoted Neitzel—forced to post an apology last week for fomenting years of misinformation, and years of harassing physicians—as an expert commentator on misinformation and harassment of physicians.
It’s that ludicrous.
Trying to understand Zadrozny’s reporting, I emailed her questions pointing out that Neitzel was never a physician, and asking if she had bothered to check into Neitzel’s credentials.
“Do you plan to correct your article?” I asked.
True to the disinformation journalism game, in which reporting errors are never admitted nor corrected, Zadrozny never responded.
Neitzel’s online persona as a misinformation expert also gained her entrée into three different articles at MedPage Today.
- Bebe Rexha’s Wound Care; ‘The System Is Broken’; Finding Nemo in a Blood Drain
- Ron Johnson and the COVID Disinformation Pipeline
- Should Doctors Worry About ‘Nuremberg 2.0?’ (MedPage Today labels this article an “exclusive special report”)
“Can you explain why MedPage Today ran so many stories featuring Allison Neitzel who falsely claimed to be a physician and has been forced to post an apology for defaming physicians?” I emailed MedPage Today’s editor-in chief Jeremy Faust, an instructor at Harvard Medical School.
“I’m trying to understand if such reporting meets the standards at MedPage Today and if you plan to run any corrections or clarifications.”
Faust refused to respond to questions sent to his Harvard email.
Neitzel’s claims of being a physician also garnered her a column at the nonprofit news organization WhoWhatWhy. “Allison Neitzel, MD, is physician-researcher and founder of the independent research group MisinformationKills, which has investigated the dark money and politics behind public health disinformation with a focus on the pandemic,” reads her author bio page.
“Why have you claimed Allison Neitzel is a physician?” I emailed WhoWhatWhy’s editor-in-chief, Russ Baker. “And do you plan to continue claiming Neitzel is a physician?”
Baker did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Neitzel also wrote a column for the site “Science-Based Medicine” where her bio states she is a physician. Science-Based Medicine is a marketing site for the biopharmaceutical industry run by David Gorski, a Wayne State University surgeon, self-described “misinformation debunker,” and ardent vaccine cheerleader.
After the European Medicines Agency concluded in April 2021 that unusual blood clots should be listed as a very rare side effect for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, Gorski called foul on the regulator. The UK government eventually stopped offering the AstraZeneca vaccine, and The BMJ reported last year that dozens of patients had launched legal action against AstraZeneca after suffering the same vaccine side effects that Gorski claimed were nonexistent.
In an email to Gorski, I asked why he lists Neitzel as a physician when she doesn’t meet the legal requirements for a physician in Wisconsin where Neitzel resides.
Gorski called the question “pedantic” and said he will ignore Wisconsin law in favor of a definition for “physician” that he found on the website for the American Medical Association.
“In general, ‘misinformation’ reporting seems to have certain ideas they are told are true/false and it’s about finding evidence to support what they have been told,” says Hoeg. “Also the ‘misinformation’ reporters often seem less qualified in terms of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the scientific studies and domains than the people/scientists they are accusing of spreading ‘misinformation.’”
CORRECTION: In reporting on Allison Neitzel’s farcical rise to media glory, I mixed up the websites MedPage Today and Medscape. The Medscape articles featuring Allison Neitzel are Young Doc to Aaron Rodgers: Be a ‘Team’ Player on COVID Vaccine and Physicians Get Cyberbullied Over Vaccine Advocacy.
Shame on me for making this mistake. Shame on Medscape and MedPage Today for platforming COVID circus clown Allison Neitzel.
UPDATE: Following this exposé, Allison Neitzel changed her X account to be compliant with Wisconsin law and more honestly represent her credentials.
She’s a work in progress.
ABC fact checking is a ‘black box’
Who are the fact checkers, what are their qualifications and how do they decide what is true or false?
Maryanne Demasi, reports | April 22, 2024
Australia’s public broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), proudly announced in 2022 that it had partnered with the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), an international alliance of major news corporations and Big Tech firms, to counter the growing threat of “fake news.”
It was part of sweeping reforms in the media to deliver ‘trusted’ news to global audiences and protect the public from the harms of misinformation and disinformation online.
Spearheaded by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), partners include Reuters, Associated Press, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and ABC Australia, along with social media and tech giants – Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Microsoft (LinkedIn) and Google (YouTube) to name a few.
When ABC announced its new alliance with TNI, Justin Stevens, ABC News Director said, “We’re pleased to join the Trusted News Initiative and, in the process, provide Australian audiences with a deeper and better-informed view of our region and the world.”
Justin Stevens appointed ABC News Director in April 2022
During the pandemic, the alliance promised to focus on preventing “the spread of harmful vaccine disinformation,” and “the growing number of conspiracy theories,” targeting online memes that featured anti-vaccine messaging or posts that downplayed the risk of covid-19.
But critics have grown increasingly uneasy about the alliance. They say governments are being protected by journalists, instead of being held to account for their pandemic policies and they’re concerned the alliance has shaped public discourse by controlling people’s access to information and censoring content that diverges from the status quo.
Weaponising fact checking
Deploying fact-checkers is one way that TNI members control the dissemination of public information. When they label a statement ‘false’, ‘wrong’, or ‘misleading’, it’s used by social media platforms to legitimise the censorship of that content by deprioritising, hiding, demonetising, or suppressing it.
Debunking content is time consuming and costly. Fact-checkers are invariably junior journalists or intern researchers, with little to no understanding of complex scientific issues or public health policies, and often appeal to governments for the ‘truth’.
When the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration opposed government enforced lockdowns, fact checkers ran hit pieces on the authors – the notable academics were then shadow-banned, censored and deplatformed from social media.
In the case of the ABC, its original in-house fact checking unit was axed in 2016 because of Federal budget cuts, but was revamped the following year when the ABC teamed up with RMIT University in Melbourne to form the RMIT ABC Fact Check and RMIT FactLab departments.
The ABC paid more than $670,000 to RMIT between 2020 – 2023 as part of its joint fact-checking venture but they quickly gained a reputation for being flawed. For example, concerns about the suppression of the lab leak theory were labelled as “false” even though they were true.
ABC’s fact checkers were also accused of being biased by SkyNews because they had used their influence to censor disfavoured political views in the Voice to Parliament referendum.
Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick grilled ABC’s Managing Director David Anderson at a Senate Estimates hearing about the network’s dodgy fact-checking practices last year.
“Who is fact-checking the fact-checkers?” asked Senator Rennick.
“You’ve made some outrageous claims on these fact-checks that aren’t correct, and you haven’t actually backed them up with any facts,” added Rennick, accusing the ABC of bias for predominantly fact-checking politically conservative voices in the media.
Sources say these controversies have prompted the ABC to cut ties with RMIT whose contract ends in June 2024.
New fact-checkers, same problems?
An ABC spokesperson said the network is now building its own internal fact-checking team, called “ABC NEWS Verify,” which appears to have similarities to the “BBC Verify” initiative.
“ABC NEWS Verify will be our centre of excellence for scrutinising and verifying information in online communities,” said the spokesperson outlining the various tasks of fact checkers. “Establishing a dedicated team will enhance and focus our efforts, creating a hub for verification best practice.”
I asked the ABC if it had any internal policy document outlining the criteria its fact-checkers would use to deem content as ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ but the spokesperson responded saying “no it doesn’t.”
Andrew Lowenthal, an expert in digital rights and a Twitter Files journalist, said the ABC’s failure to explain how it intends on fact-checking claims was “seriously ridiculous.”
“That the ABC is seeking to decide what is misinformation without laying out any criteria demonstrates just how farcical and political ‘fact-checking’ has become,” said Lowenthal.
“Without transparent and publicly available criteria the program will quickly turn into a partisan advocacy initiative,” he added.
Andrew Lowenthal, Twitter Files journalist
Lowenthal’s Twitter Files investigation confirmed the Australian government was monitoring Covid-related speech of its citizens and requesting that posts were flagged and censored if they deemed them to be misinformation.
“In that investigation, the government’s Department of Home Affairs was relying on Yahoo! News and USA Today, among others, to justify their take down requests or they’d hire journalists without scientific credentials. We need dialogue, not diktats, to determine what is true,” said Lowenthal.
Senator Rennick agreed, saying the ABC’s process lacks transparency. “Who are these people that claim to be the fact-checkers in the first place and what are their credentials? Sounds to me like it’s a black box,” said Rennick.
“Often when fact checkers come out with their reports, they don’t give the other person they’re fact checking, a right-of-reply. Also, they rarely disclose the conflicts of interest of the so-called ‘experts’ they use to fact check claims,” he added.
Michael Shellenberger, author, journalist and founder of Public, has written extensively on the “censorship industrial complex.”
“That’s what the trusted news initiative [TNI] was all about…a strategy to use fact checking initiatives to demand censorship by social media platforms,” said Shellenberger.
Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins 2020)
“They can pretend that’s not what it’s about, but the fact that the news media are participating in this, is grotesque. It’s a complete destruction of whatever reputation and integrity they used to have,” he added.
“Organisations like BBC and ABC… they used to have reputations for independence and integrity, but they’ve now decided to destroy their entire reputation on the mantle of them being the deciders of the truth. The Central Committee. That’s totalitarianism that’s not free speech.”
The ABC says its new ABC NEWS Verify will have no connection to TNI.
Impartiality and credibility?
TNI’s broad principles of working in lockstep towards a single narrative, has meant that legacy media operate largely as a mouthpiece for government propaganda, offering little critique of public health policies…and ABC has been no exception.
During the pandemic, the broadcaster repeatedly came under fire after its medical commentator Dr Norman Swan made countless calls for harsher lockdowns, mask mandates and covid boosters – policies that strongly aligned with the government but had little scientific backing.
Swan’s commentary rarely provided an impartial perspective and he was eventually called out for failing to publicly disclose his financial interest in seeking government contracts related to covid-19.
In addition, Ita Buttrose, who was ABC Chair until last month, was seen fronting Pfizer’s advertising campaigns for covid products. ABC defended Buttrose saying, “Given she was not involved in editorial decisions, there was no conflict of interest.”
Ita Buttrose, former ABC Chair, March 2019 – March 2024
The ABC denies its alliance with TNI has impacted its editorial independence but Shellenberger says the entire purpose of joining TNI is to ensure they become the single source of truth.
“They’ve stopped doing real reporting, and they’re just out there wanting to be paid to regurgitate and act like publicists for the government. It’s grotesque. It’s not journalism, it’s propaganda,” said Shellenberger.
Resisting the tyranny
Some journalists have been resisting what they perceive to be ‘tyranny’ in legacy media and the widespread suppression of free speech.
In June 2021, a group of around 30 journalists rallied together to denounce TNI’s “censorship and fearmongering” and accused the alliance of subjecting the public to a distorted view of the truth.
The group known as ‘Holding the Line: Journalists Against Covid Censorship’ shared concerns that reporters were being reprimanded by their superiors and freelancers were being blacklisted from jobs for not following the “one official narrative.”
Presidential hopeful Robert F Kennedy Jr has filed a lawsuit against TNI alleging that legacy media organisations and Big Tech have worked to “collectively censor online news” about covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election.
The lawsuit states:
“By their own admission, members of the “Trusted News Initiative” (“TNI”) have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.”
A group of 138 scholars, public intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum have since published The Westminster Declaration.
In essence, it’s a free speech manifesto urging governments to dismantle the “censorship industrial complex” which has seen government agencies and Big Tech companies work together to censor free speech.
In Australia, the journalist’s union MEAA has called on ABC’s newly appointed Chair Kim Williams to “restore the reputation of the national broadcaster by addressing concerns about the impact of external pressures on editorial decision making.”
Kim Williams, current Chair, ABC Network Australia
Williams, who took over from Buttrose last month, has warned his journalists that “activism” is not welcome at the ABC and that if they fail to observe impartiality guidelines, they should consider leaving the network.
Will the ABC course-correct with Williams at the helm? Now that trust in legacy media is at historical lows, the ABC’s partnership with TNI does little to assuage fears that the network has passed the point of no return.
NB: I was a TV presenter/producer at ABC TV (2006-2016) and wrote about my experiences with censorship at the network here and here.
They Think We Are Stupid, Volume 8
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | April 23, 2024
Everything you need to know about our ruling class’s opinion of you. As always, these headlines are presented without commentary.
US lawmaker demands ‘proof’ on CIA’s Russia scare
RT | April 22, 2024
After stoking fears of Russian expansionism to win congressional approval for more Ukraine aid, US intelligence agencies should provide proof of their justification for continuing to fund a “proxy war” that will inevitably end in defeat for Kiev, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) has argued.
Speaking on Monday in an interview with former White House aide Steve Bannon, Greene pushed back against claims that Russian forces will take Poland and continue “marching across Europe” if they’re allowed to defeat Ukraine. She noted that US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) only agreed to push through the $61 billion Ukraine aid bill, which was approved on Saturday, after hearing intelligence briefings hyping the Russian threat.
“If the American people are going to have to pay for it, then show us this proof that was shown to Mike Johnson in the SCIF [sensitive compartment information facility],” Greene said. “Why is this classified information? If this is a real threat to all of Europe, if this is a threat to America and our national security, then roll out the presentation.”
The second-term lawmaker said Johnson received no such classified briefings on the US border crisis, which poses a real threat to the American people. “They don’t care about that,” she said. “They care about continuing the business model built on blood and murder and war in foreign countries, the business model that continues funding the military-industrial complex in order, supposedly, to create American jobs and build up the American economy.”
“This is the most disgusting business model that anyone has ever seen, probably in the history of mankind.”
Greene reiterated her call to oust Johnson as speaker, saying Republican voters are so disgusted about the Ukraine bill that the party will lose control of the House in this year’s election if the current leadership remains in place. The White House’s emergency funding request for Kiev had been stalled since last fall because a majority of Republicans opposed it. Republican lawmakers voted against the legislation by a 112-101 margin on Saturday, but Johnson overrode his own party by allowing a vote and winning passage with unanimous Democrat support.
Johnson won praise from the Washington media for his reversal on Ukraine aid – CNN even likened him to Winston Churchill – while Greene came under attack for criticizing him. The New York Post put a picture of Greene on its Sunday cover with a Soviet ushanka superimposed on her head and a caption saying, “Nyet, Moscow Marjorie.”
Greene insisted that congressional Republicans can’t win in the November election without the support of ‘America First’ voters. She added that sending more aid to Ukraine will only cause more bloodshed without changing the outcome of the conflict.
“This just continues the war maybe a few more months, maybe to the end of the summer,” Greene said. “It doesn’t guarantee a Ukrainian victory because everyone knows they’re going to lose eventually. It just is a matter of when. But it does guarantee that more Ukrainian men will be slaughtered on the battlefield.”
Whooping Cough Boosters for Adults? The Vaccines Don’t Even Work for Kids, Experts Say
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 19, 2024
Cases of pertussis — or whooping cough — in the U.S. dropped during the pandemic and today continue to be lower than pre-pandemic levels, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
“We are not seeing anything unusual,” Jasmine Reed, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson, told the news outlet.
However, in the same article — “Whooping Cough Rising in Some Countries. Why You May Need a Booster” — NBC contributor Kaitlin Sullivan reported that “outbreaks in Europe, Asia and parts of the U.S. should be a reminder to get vaccinated, experts say.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, told NBC the current situation “won’t turn into a pandemic because we have a highly vaccinated population.”
Schaffner added: “However, let’s make sure that pregnant people get vaccinated, that babies are vaccinated on schedule, and the rest of us take the Tdap vaccine every 10 years.”
This is especially necessary to protect infants, who are especially vulnerable to the otherwise typically mild illness, NBC reported.
Experts told The Defender they thought the NBC report was unnecessarily alarming, cited outdated methods for protecting babies, and failed to consider serious and well-known concerns with the safety and efficacy of DTaP and Tdap vaccines.
Pertussis vaccines don’t prevent transmission
Dr. Bob Sears, author of “The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child,” told The Defender that studies have shown the pertussis vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission.
“There’s no medical or scientific reason to advise giving the vaccine to any group of people for the purpose of preventing transmission to others,” Sears said.
He added:
“We have whooping cough in our society simply because this is one of several vaccines that doesn’t reduce the spread of its disease. The vaccine simply doesn’t work that way, and no amount of scientific hope or wishful thinking will change that.”
The United Kingdom saw an increase in whooping cough cases in January. According to The BMJ, the spike seen there also occurred in other European countries, but the outbreak primarily affected people ages 15 and older, who are not at high risk from the illness. Only 4% of cases in the recent spike were in infants.
NBC also reported that China had a 15-fold increase in cases in January, part of a variable epidemiology of the disease seen over the last 10 years. That increase amounted to 15,275 cases among a population of over 1.4 billion people.
Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told NBC that the outbreaks and mild isolated cases the agency reported in the San Francisco Bay area, Hawaii and New York are normal and something “we expect to see every year.”
Whooping cough is a highly contagious respiratory illness that manifests as a cold in most people, but it can be serious for newborns who have a very narrow trachea, Dr. Meryl Nass, an internal medicine physician, told The Defender.
Deaths from pertussis are extremely rare, averaging about 10 per year. About 85% of deaths happen in children under two months of age — before babies are even eligible to begin the pertussis vaccination.
Nass said pertussis is extremely common and endemic in the U.S. It tends to be misdiagnosed as cold or flu and medical attention is rarely sought, except for babies.
Current formula needs to be ‘scrapped or reworked’
Dr. Paul Thomas said the NBC article “completely ignores the risk of death from the vaccine, which is documented to be greater than the number of deaths prevented — even before you consider that 50-90% of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occurs in the week after infant vaccines, of which the DTaP is the most concerning.”
Maternal-fetal medicine expert Dr. James Thorp told The Defender the pertussis vaccine has never been proven to be safe or effective in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.
And there have been no long-term studies examining all health outcomes related to the vaccine, Thorp said.
Babies and children currently receive the DTaP vaccine, designed to protect against pertussis, diphtheria and tetanus. People ages 7 and older receive the Tdap booster, designed to protect against diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis.
Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Years,” said that both DTap and Tdap are old vaccines that rely on recognizing the pertactin protein to develop immunity.
About 85% of pertussis circulating in the U.S. is pertactin-negative making the vaccine at best 15% effective, he said.
The CDC has been tracking changes in the prevalence of bacteria causing whooping cough for years. The most recent CDC data, reported this month, found that the Bordetella parapertussis type of whooping cough has significantly overtaken B. pertussis in prevalence — and research published in Vaccines in March shows the existing vaccines “scarcely provide protection” against this strain.
“This pertussis vaccine needs to either be scrapped or reworked to provide one that is effective,” Thomas said.
“Those vaccinated are now getting pertussis at a much higher rate than those with natural immunity and not vaccinated for pertussis,” he added. “It is the vaccinated who are also most likely to bring pertussis to newborns and put them at risk.”
Vaccinated — not unvaccinated — more likely to give infants pertussis
NBC reported that although the disease poses no serious threat to most adults, adults ought to get vaccinated to protect infants.
The article quotes Schaffner as saying, “Anyone who comes to see the new baby should have had a recent inoculation with Tdap vaccine, to provide a cocoon of protection around that baby.”
But Thomas said the concept of cocooning, “where you vaccinate the adults and children and caregivers in the infant world to provide a cocoon of protection, has been long abandoned as it has failed to protect infants.”
“It turns out those vaccinated still get pertussis and because sometimes it is a less severe infection (a minor vaccine benefit) they are more likely to be around infants and put them at risk for pertussis.”
Nass noted that antibiotics provide some protection against whooping cough transmission, but not against symptoms. And because the disease is misdiagnosed in adults and very mild, few take them.
Thomas said the best approach for parents with an infant — because the disease is relatively harmless after one year — is to avoid indoor crowds and sick visitors.
“Even family and visitors who are not sick should wash their hands with soap and water before touching the baby and not kiss the baby on the face, hands or feet,” he said. “It is worth noting that the worst of the pertussis dangers was largely gone even before the vaccine was introduced to the masses.”
‘No vaccine should be given during pregnancy’
Nass told The Defender that another problem with pertussis vaccine efficacy is that it takes multiple shots — given at ages 2, 4, 6 and 15-18 months — for a child to develop some immunity.
However, children are only really at risk of death from the illness very early in life, before the shots provide any protection.
Thorp said that because the original goal of protecting infants with the vaccine in the first year of life was “a miserable failure” pharmaceutical companies began advocating to give the shots to pregnant women.
In 2012, the CDC first began recommending the TDap vaccine for pregnant women to protect newborn infants, despite the fact that they largely don’t need the diphtheria or tetanus components, Nass said.
“The CDC could have recommended manufacturers make just a pertussis vaccine for this purpose, but chose not to,” she added.
This was another example, Thorp said, “where this fable that the vaccine would provide immunity was forced down the throats of pregnant women with the backing of the medical-industrial-complex without a randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.”
No vaccine should be given during pregnancy, Thorp said. “But now the pharmaceutical industrial complex is pushing six vaccines including for influenza, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, RSV, and COVID-19.”
“From the fetus to the infant at 12 months of life, there are about 42 vaccines administered in 2024, compared with about 11 in 1986,” he added. “This is absurd and an abomination of science.”
Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Informed Dissent
Medical Dissidents, Agency Capture, and Dr. Mary Talley Bowden’s Battle with the FDA over Ivermectin
BY M.C. ARMSTRONG | HONEST MEDIA | APRIL 18, 2024
Dr. Mary Talley Bowden recently sued the FDA for stepping beyond their charter, defaming Ivermectin prescribers, and, thereby, interfering with the doctor-patient relationship. Last month, Dr. Bowden resolved her suit, receiving a substantial undisclosed settlement from the government agency.
Dr. Pierre Kory has been an early and staunch defender of the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 in humans. Kory believes the FDA settled this case with Bowden because they had likely hired the PR firm Weber Shandwick to create the now infamous “horse dewormer” campaign (detailed below) to smear Ivermectin and its proponents. If true, once Bowden’s lawsuit went into the phase of discovery then this information would have been revealed, but we will never know since the case is now settled. Weber Shandwick lists the CDC, Pfizer, and Moderna as their clients.
Honest Media covered Ivermectin and the “horse dewormer” controversy in a letter sent to the Associated Press documenting the lies the AP published about the drug. We have also recently received a trove of emails between Dr. Bowden and the Arizona Mirror, an outlet that smeared Dr. Bowden and her colleague, Dr. Peter McCullough. After reviewing them, we can say that these documents illustrate the media’s contempt for medical dissidents.
But why this fear of letting dissenting doctors speak? There has been virtually no coverage of Dr. Bowden’s case. Where there is documentation, like with Jen Christensen’s reporting for CNN, nobody gives voice to the victor and victim, Dr. Bowden. Why?
Dr. Bowden, a Stanford-trained ear, nose, and throat doctor from Houston, has treated more than 6,000 patients suffering from COVID. She is a strong and intelligent woman of science speaking truth to power. Here, in Dr. Bowden, is that “gutsy woman” who Americans were told to admire by leaders like Hillary Clinton. But there’s an implicit caveat in the cult of Clinton’s “gutsy woman:” Such women are to be ignored (and even pilloried and censored) if they challenge the orthodoxies of the Democratic Party or the DNC-aligned Big Pharma industry.
For prescribing Ivermectin and dissenting against the dominant COVID narratives, Dr. Bowden was forced to resign from Houston Methodist Hospital. And she wasn’t the only doctor to face such consequences. Dr. Robert Apter and Dr. Paul Marik, two other Ivermectin physician-advocates, joined Dr. Bowden in her suit against the FDA. Marik, for his part, was forced to resign from Eastern Virginia Medical School as well as Sentara Norfolk General.
Last month, Dr. Bowden traveled to the Supreme Court to stand in solidarity with activists as SCOTUS listened to Murthy v. Missouri. The Murthy case concerns the suppression of medical dissidents, specifically, and online censorship, more broadly. Dr. Bowden addressed the crowd of protesters about her four-year battle with the captured government agency:
How many COVID patients did they examine? How many histories did they take? How many prescriptions did they write? Zero. None of them have cared for a single COVID patient, but because they had the full support of Big Pharma, the government, and, most importantly, the media, they became the scientific authority on a novel disease they had zero first-hand experience in treating.
Bowden has a point. The FDA’s campaign against doctors such as herself gained purchase with the public, in part, because the agency’s claims were amplified by a mainstream media that is shaped and funded – captured – by Big Pharma. Due to the massive influx of advertising dollars and the perfect storm of misinformation and disinformation summoned by Russiagate, the 2020 election, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the American public’s trust in the mainstream media has reached record lows. Bowden’s case reveals another example of why the public is justified in its skepticism.
Let the Doctors Speak
I recently spoke with Dr. Bowden about her fight with the government.
“This was a war on Ivermectin,” she said. “But it was also a war on the doctor-patient relationship.”
I asked her what precipitated the suit against the FDA. Dr. Bowden told me that never before in her career had she witnessed interference with the doctor-patient relationship from the FDA or her local pharmacies. When I asked about prescribing a drug that wasn’t FDA-approved, she told me that she’d often prescribed off-label in the past, with no problems, and that she approached Ivermectin, initially, with hesitancy and skepticism. She said she preferred prescribing monoclonal antibodies at the beginning of the pandemic, but sought new options when access to these treatments became restricted.
“I was nervous to start using it,” she said. “Before I started, I looked at the FDA’s website and the toxicity data. Once I was assured that it worked (maybe not as quickly as monoclonal antibodies), I started offering it to patients.”
Not only did Dr. Bowden prescribe Ivermectin to her patients and witness positive results, but she used it herself. She’s had COVID three times. And in every instance of Ivermectin treatment, both with herself and her patients, she observed either efficacy or minimal side effects.
“I haven’t lost one patient due to Ivermectin,” she said.
In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology honored the discovery of Ivermectin with a Nobel Prize. The NIH lauded this “multifaceted drug,” which was largely unknown in American public discourse prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then, suddenly everyone and their grandmother was an expert on the dangers of Ivermectin. Seemingly overnight, the American people absorbed a viral propaganda campaign from the very government agency (the FDA) that they supported with tax dollars. And if you were a doctor or patient seeking this low-cost, award-winning therapeutic treatment, you were suddenly in the crosshairs of the “war on Ivermectin.” This policing of the poor and the independent all started, according to Dr. Bowden, “with the horse tweet.”
On August 8, 2021, the FDA weaponized its social media account to stigmatize physicians like Dr. Bowden and skeptical and underprivileged patients seeking affordable alternative care. The agency issued a tweet with two images: a veterinarian outdoors caring for a horse, coupled with a physician in an office caring for a masked human. The text for the tweet reads: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” This tweet, with its careful use of the colloquial and the second person, supplemented with a juvenile binary logic, became the most popular tweet in FDA history.
Hate wins clicks. Fear creates fog. Shortly after the tweet’s publication and viral propagation, Dr. Bowden’s life came undone.
“I never had a pharmacy deny a prescription before,” she said.
Dr. Bowden’s struggle with the pharmacy was just the tip of the iceberg, revealing the stranglehold Big Pharma now has on health care in America. Dr. Bowden suffered (and still suffers) from vicious attacks online, as well as alienation from her peers. She was forced to resign from her workplace, Houston Methodist Hospital. She explained to me that the “war on Ivermectin” was more vitriolic than anything she’d ever seen before in the discourse on public health. And whereas most doctors bent the knee, stayed silent, and complied with government mandates, Dr. Bowden (and others) fought back. Her case represents what one might call a scientific profile in courage.
What does fighting back look like? Well, for starters, perhaps it begins with telling the truth in public and revealing the whole story of Dr. Bowden’s struggle, along with that of fellow medical dissidents like Dr. Kory, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration), and Dr. Peter McCullough.
In Dr. Bowden’s and Dr. McCullough’s recent email exchanges with the Arizona Mirror, one can see, firsthand, a publication that ignores the opportunity to correct factual errors. The Mirror instead willfully litters its reporting on Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough with misinformation, ad hominem attacks, bizarre references to Qanon, constant allusions to shadowy conspiracy theories, and the slanderous insinuation that Dr. McCullough is antisemitic.
The Association Fallacy
One of the most recurrent disinformation patterns we have witnessed in studying the defamation of populist voices, broadly, and Dr. Bowden’s case, specifically, is what scholars of rhetoric call the association fallacy. In short, the association fallacy describes claims where even oblique social connection to a stigmatized individual or organization (like QAnon) is used to poison the claims of the targeted speaker. Simply associating the terrifying name of the poisonous organization with the speaker scares the reader and creates an irrational – fallacious – connection.
What’s troubling, in the case of the Arizona Mirror reporting, is that Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough have no ties to QAnon. Furthermore, Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough both reached out to Jim Small, the paper’s editor, and politely asked that these fallacies be removed from the Mirror’s articles.
For example, Dr. Bowden and Dr. McCullough called attention to the Mirror’s repeated use of the ad hominem “anti-vaxxer” to label Dr. McCullough and associate the doctor with the world of “anti-vaxxers.” In their email exchange, Dr. McCullough confides in Small that he has “accepted dozens of vaccines during the course of my life.”
But the Mirror refused to mirror the truth and remove the slur. The Mirror refused to interview these doctors, refused to correct their reporter’s mistakes when alerted by the victims, and, furthermore, sought to defame the doctors through ad hominem attacks and the association fallacy.
To witness how the association fallacy works, consider the following sentence about Dr. Bowden’s colleague, Dr. McCullough, from the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod Macdonald-Evoy: “McCullough has become a darling to those in both Qanon and the broader conspiracy world, appearing regularly on shows like the one hosted by antisemite Stew Peters, who said the COVID vaccine is a bioweapon.”
In one sentence, the reporter has accused the doctor (without directly accusing him) of antisemitism and conspiracy theory simply by virtue of association with other human beings, mostly unnamed, who populate “the broader conspiracy world.”
What is happening to people like Dr. McCullough and Dr. Bowden rarely happens to those in power. It happens to those who challenge power.
The Arizona Mirror and CNN should be ashamed. They punished informed dissent. They refused to contextualize Dr. Bowden’s struggle as part of a subculture of dignified scientists and physicians. They erased and defamed Dr. Bowden and her colleagues. They published fear porn and called it journalism. They left out this gutsy woman’s voice. Honest Media has chosen a different path. We let the doctor speak.
IRGC: Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor not among Operation True Promise’s targets
Press TV – April 18, 2024
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) dismisses reports of affliction of damage to the Israeli regime’s Dimona nuclear reactor during the Islamic Republic’s recent Operation True Promise against the occupying regime.
“The Dimona reactor has not been among the bank of targets of the Islamic Republic’s recent punitive measure against the Zionist regime,” IRGC spokesman Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif said on Thursday.
“Publication of this news is a big lie and a malignant effort in line with the enemy’s psychological operation towards deception of the public opinion,” he added.
The remarks came after the Israeli regime’s Ma’ariv newspaper claimed satellite images had allegedly shown that one of the reactor’s buildings had been struck at least once during the Iranian operation, adding that up to two hits had also taken place in its vicinity.
The Corps launched the operation late on Saturday in response to a deadly attack by the regime against the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic premises in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1.
The Israeli attack had resulted in the martyrdom of Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, his deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and five of their accompanying officers.
In retaliation, the IRGC targeted the occupied territories with a barrage of drones and missiles. The retaliatory strikes inflicted damage on Israeli military bases across the occupied territories.
Amid speculation about fresh potential Israeli aggression, senior Iranian political and military leaders, including President Ebrahim Raeisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, have warned of a stronger and more severe response.
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Three Reasons Macron is a Hypocrite when it Comes to Venezuela
By Jim Carey | Geopolitics Alert | January 29, 2019
Paris – French President Emmanuel Macron recently voiced support for protesters in Venezuela as his own country has been ground to a halt by protests every weekend.
There is an overused saying that “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” While these few words may be cliche there is definitely one man that they can be applied to after this weekend: Emmanuel Macron.
Even though the French President is into the third month of protests against his government, he has decided to weigh in on the legitimacy of another country’s government and his latest outrageous statements just highlight the hypocrisy of Macron and Western leaders in general. … continue
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