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West knows Ukraine weapons leaking to black market – Seymour Hersh

RT | April 23, 2023

Western-supplied arms are being sold by Ukrainian commanders to smugglers in Poland, Romania and other states, veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed.

The Pulitzer Prize winner, speaking to Afshin Rattansi on his program ‘Going Underground,’ said the West is aware of this black market trade, as some reports about missing arms shipments have even appeared in the US media.

Hersh claimed that, according to his data, almost immediately after the conflict broke out between Kiev and Moscow last February, “Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine.”

“Often, it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them… to the dark market,” he explained.

The journalist noted that there was concern in the West last year that some of the arms sent to Ukraine, such as Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, could be used to “shoot down an airplane at considerable height.”

As for Western-supplied weapons ending up on the black market, “CBS wrote a story about it that they were forced to retract,” Hersh said.

When asked about why the piece was retracted, the journalist said the media is supporting the stance of the US government that “we’re on the side of Ukraine. We all hate Russia.”

Hersh was likely referring to the documentary “Arming Ukraine,” which CBS aired last August. The promo for the film, which included a claim by the founder of pro-Ukraine NGO Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman, that only 30% of military aid actually reached the frontline, was removed, while the documentary itself and the story accompanying it were redacted.

Russian officials have on many occasions warned about Western-supplied arms being smuggled outside Ukraine, thus deteriorating the security situation elsewhere around the globe.

“NATO military supplies intended for the Kiev regime end up in the hands of terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, Southeast Asia,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in October. At the time, she estimated the black market turnover at $1billion per month.

An investigation by RT last summer also revealed how various weapons supplied to Kiev by the West were being sold on the dark net. The journalists were able to swiftly negotiate to the purchase of a US-made kamikaze drone with smugglers. However, it impossible to confirm whether the sellers actually had the weapons in stock, as the reporters did not complete the purchase.

The full version of Going Underground’s interview with Seymour Hersh will be aired on RT on Monday.

April 23, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Broken Trust

Can the relationship with state healthcare ever be repaired?

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | April 21, 2023

For many people, the words ‘trust the experts’ now invoke a sort of pavlovian horror response. This trope serves as a visceral reminder of 3 years’ constant gaslighting for daring to question the narrative, the relentless stream of celebrity medics repeating the ‘safe and effective’ mantra and the bullying and coercion to take a ‘vaccine’ that millions of people didn’t feel they needed or wanted. It had all the hallmarks of an abusive relationship. Core medical ethical principles were destroyed, the weaknesses of protocolised top-down healthcare delivery were exposed and of course there was direct harm to individuals. Is it any wonder that a great many of the British public never want to hear the words ‘our NHS’ ever again, cringing as they remember the weekly clapping ritual.

An inclination to throw the baby out with the bathwater is now a strong instinct for many who feel completely let down. If the relationship with state healthcare stands any chance of being repaired, harms enacted in recent years need to be properly acknowledged and people’s concerns carefully listened to. The uncomfortable question as to whether the NHS can function in its current incarnation should be aired. For a lot of people a ‘great reset’ of the medical profession would be a necessary condition of return. Indeed, many medics wonder if they can remain in a system that is clearly failing those it is supposed to serve.

As one doctor with decades of experience laments:

“If I continue to practise conveyor belt and recipe book medicine under the current system, the benefit is only to the Medical Business Model; hospitals, laboratories, diagnostic centres and the pharmaceutical industry all benefit in a model designed to keep the patient sick.”

Another consultant doctor reflecting on the past few years, had the following comments:

“The most odious revelation to me was when early on the directive came forth forbidding doctors, on pain of GMC punishment, to use their own initiative to treat a Covid patient with any other substance, drug, or agent whatsoever than that which was approved officially (of course at this point there was nothing in that category), save only for using it in an officially approved Clinical Trial. I felt utterly betrayed as a doctor. The whole essence of the doctor-patient relationship was abruptly abolished. We were now in the CMO-patient relationship. My role was merely to be a minor minion box-ticking algorithm slave. No clinical discretion. No discussion along the principles of best interest of the patient with informed consent. Oh no, that’s old hat! I saw the moral authority and overshadowing support of the entire medical establishment wither up like Jonah’s gourd.”

Multiple articles are now appearing reporting that morale for those working within the NHS is at an all-time low.1,2,3 One can only imagine that bearing witness to some of the most inhumane policies in NHS history for 3 years straight has not helped. Add to this the long hours on low pay, with increasingly limited time to spend with patients due to unmanageable waiting lists, and you have a perfect recipe for abysmal job satisfaction. Do we really want those in charge of our healthcare decisions to be forced to work under these conditions?

So now to the question of trusting medical advice that has been co-opted, protocolised and politicised, not to mention censored and distorted by financial interests. The UKHSA is supposed to be the government gatekeeper that is ‘responsible for protecting every member of every community from the impact of infectious diseases’. Just yesterday the agency was still urging people on Twitter to go and get their first and second covid vaccine. This is now so ludicrously at odds with the available evidence that any sane member of the public should conclude that the regulatory system in the UK is officially broken. It is worth taking the time to read the comments under the tweet to see that the public’s natural survival instincts seem to have well and truly kicked in. This random selection suggests the UKHSA may need to read the room:

If you tuned in to the Twitter Space on Sunday ‘Are mRNA injections causing cancers?’ hosted by Dr Kat Lindley and Neil Oliver, you would have heard a heated exchange between consultant orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmad Malik and London-based oncology professor, Angus Dalgleish. Dr Malik wanted to get to the bottom of why Professor Dalgleish felt moved to write an article advocating for young people to take the covid vaccine in July 2021 entitled:

What every young person who fears the jab MUST be told: Vaccine expert ANGUS DALGLEISH dismantles beliefs that have seen rates stall among the 18-30s

Well that seems like a pretty clear message. Get the damned vaccine.

Given his background in vaccine research, Prof Dalgleish would have been very clear that long-term safety data is not an optional extra when injecting young people or pregnant women. When questioned, Prof Dalgleish revealed that he did not actually write the article himself. There was a phone interview with a Daily Mail journalist, which he described as ‘bullying’ and the article was an entirely perverted representation of that call. Nonetheless, his name appears alongside the article with the effect that the message therein appears to come from a distinguished professor of medicine.

Professor Dalgleish dramatically revised his position on covid injections after his son suffered acute myocarditis following the shots. Whilst it is obviously a good thing that he was courageous and open-minded enough to change his stance, it is very worrying that he is still an outlier. One can count on one hand the working medics willing to speak out on this issue. And it begs the question, what if Professor Dalgleish’s son hadn’t been injured? Would there have been more advertorials in the Daily Mail with his name alongside? Why are journalists ‘bullying’ through a particular narrative on medical matters? This rather suggests they have a particular agenda. As one Dr Roger Hodkinson, an eminent Cambridge educated pathologist says, “when politics plays medicine, that’s a very dangerous game.” Notably Dr Hodkinson is now only available to view on Bitchute, having been deplatformed from the more mainstream channels such as YouTube. More media censorship of highly qualified counter-narrative voices.

Working for a monopoly such as the NHS, with a mortgage and a family to feed, one might well find medical ethics end up somewhere below personal financial obligations. This is regrettable but understandable. Medics are human beings. Perhaps it is the fault of an increasingly secular society that somehow medics have been elevated to demi-gods and as a result their word is often deemed infallible. However, many more people now realise that this is simply not the case. If this disordered power dynamic is to be realigned, certain conditions need to be met:

  • A genuine admission that mistakes were made. Not that ‘The Science™’ changed. It did not change and millions of people who resisted the military grade psy-op are fully aware of this;
  • An overhaul of medical training so that clinicians do not feel afraid to speak out when they see something is wrong, and in fact should be encouraged to do so;
  • The gaslighting must stop altogether. Those who have suffered injury or trauma need to be given proper air time and have their concerns addressed. They also need to be properly and fairly compensated.
  • Open and unfettered discussions need to take place, allowing medics to speak freely about what has happened during the past 3 years, identifying with honesty and integrity what must not be repeated.

Taxpayers spend in excess of £220 billion per annum on the NHS. Weekly excess deaths are presently consistently way above average, whereas after a period of high mortality in the frail and elderly it should be well below normal levels. The public (and indeed the staff) deserve better. If this is impossible, perhaps the entire system needs to be completely reimagined.

Footnotes

  1. Former Grange paramedic reveals morale in NHS at ‘all time low’
  2. Staff morale at an all time low at hospitals in York trust
  3. Staff morale at Bronglais Hospital at ‘all-time low’, doctor says ahead of strike vote

April 22, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Problems with Seoul’s efforts to intensify the human rights issue in North Korea

By  Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 17.04.2023 

On March 28, 2023 South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol stated that “the reality of the horrific human rights violations against the North Korean people must be fully revealed to the international community.

On March 31, 2023 the Ministry of Reunification of the Republic of Korea (ROK) published the 2023 Human Rights Report of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for the first time in seven years. Under the North Korean Human Rights Act passed in 2016, the Unification Minister is required to submit an annual report to the National Assembly on the human rights situation in North Korea. But the previous Moon Jae-in administration classified the reports as confidential, citing privacy concerns of North Korean defectors who gave interviews. In addition, South Korea was careful not to initiate discussions about human rights in the DPRK and not to co-sponsor relevant resolutions. According to conservatives, the Moon government did not release the report in the interest of appeasing the regime in Pyongyang for the purpose of inter-Korean dialogue, being duplicitous with human rights and indulging Kim Jong-un.

The 450-page document was compiled based on some 1,600 cases of human rights violations attested to by 508 North Korean defectors between 2017 and 2022. The ministry noted that through the publication of this report, it expects to reveal to the world the real human rights situation in the DPRK in order to improve it.

In the conservative media, the content of the report was presented as “there is no other place in the world where human rights are more brutally suppressed than here,” but is it all right? After all, the issue of “human rights,” as we well know, is quite often used to accuse North Korea of all possible sins, although we addressed the problems associated with collecting evidence back in 2014-2015, when the UN published a heartbreaking report that presented North Korea as a country “worse than Nazi Germany” in some respects. However, most of the “stories” were based on the testimony of Shin Dong-hyuk, who was later exposed as a liar and disappeared from big politics.

Since the new president of the ROK is clearly paying great attention to “human rights,” Seoul could not avoid touching on this topic. Alas, the submitted text has similar issues to the 2014 UN report. It is based on the accounts of defectors, most of whom appeared to be either retelling rumors or saying what interviewers wanted to hear. And while the list of the report’s main theses should theoretically horrify the untrained reader, it raises questions from more experienced ones. There are counterarguments to nearly every crucial point or sound bite.

Drug trafficking, dissemination of South Korean goods and content, religious practices and superstitions (such as keeping the Bible, and spreading Christianity), homosexuality, and prostitution all carry the death penalty (including execution in public). The regime also carried out the secret execution of a homosexual man in 2014 and a woman “who was accused of prostitution in 2013.”

The DPRK Criminal Code is available for public review. And from its text it is clear that, except for political crimes, the death penalty is imposed for premeditated murder or drug-related crimes with serious aggravating circumstances. There is no article for homosexuality in the DPRK Penal Code at all, and the punishment for prostitution or distribution of South Korean content is much more lenient.

Information about shootings for other crimes is taken from invalid sources, because as a rule, defectors retell rumors or adjust to the interviewer, understanding what he or she would like to hear. Sometimes anti-Pyongyang propaganda publishes supposed quotations from secret orders, but they are not copies of documents, so we “have to take their word for it.”

In addition, one can note that a single incident becomes mainstream. Data about a single incident (say, the execution of a gay man) are presented as “the regime executes homosexuals,” and this wording gives the impression that it happens systematically.

“In 2020, the North enacted a ‘rejection of reactionary ideology and culture’ law, with penalties of up to 10 years’ hard labor for people who bring and spread other people’s culture and information in an attempt to tighten state control over people’s ideology. The punishment is known to be more severe for those who watch and distribute South Korean dramas, movies, and music.”

As the author repeatedly noted, the problem with this law is that no one has seen its official text. Its description is given only by propaganda resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which had previously published falsehoods of this kind on more than one occasion. The problem is that, according to Western experts, if such data have no refutation, they are taken into account.

“The report states that a pregnant woman was publicly executed because of the 2017 distribution of a video in which she dances while pointing her finger at a portrait of the country’s late founder, Kim Il-sung. In 2015, six teenagers aged between 16 and 17 were executed in Wŏnsan for watching South Korean videos and using opium.”

The examples mentioned in the media show the breadth of interpretations and are reminiscent of the very famous case of the two teenagers from Iran who were hanged. It is alleged that they loved each other and were executed for homosexuality, but it later turned out that the reason for the trial and execution was the kidnapping of a 13-year-old boy, whom they had long tortured and raped.

Here we have the story of a group of students where it is not so much about watching soap operas as it is about opium. Given the past, the attitude toward opium in the DPRK is no less harsh than in China, and regularly watching movies while drugged is quite in line with the establishment of an opium den and the involvement of minors in drug addiction.

Most residents earn their living through private economic activity because the food supply system is not working properly.

The non-working food supply system actually works, but there are two comments: on the one hand, the rations are small and it is very hard to live on them. On the other hand, it is not planned. Against the backdrop of Kim Jong-un’s economic transformation, most rations are bought with wages and not obtained with ration cards – these remain only a symbol that the distribution system works.

There is discrimination against women who are subjected to various types of violence in the family, in educational institutions, in the army, and in places of detention.

There is discrimination against women victims of violence, but at the level of society, not the state. A mother whose daughter was raped by Shin Dong-hyuk complained that now no one would marry her daughter. But this problem is characteristic of the traditional society with its corresponding attitude toward premarital sex. Also, it is not up to South Korea to criticize someone for domestic violence or school bullying.

Students are often involved in extracurricular activities.

Involving students in extracurricular activities could be a feature of the mobilization economy or part of the learning process. But the authors of the report found this to be a violation of children’s rights.

The freedom of residence of persons with disabilities is restricted.

The author has seen disabled people in Pyongyang, and it is likely that “restricted freedom of residence” actually means that disabled people stay in boarding houses where there are comfortable conditions for them.

Prisoners in political prison camps, prisoners of war, abductees, and separated families face serious human rights violations such as executions, forced labor, surveillance, and discrimination.

Actually, the correctional system is built on surveillance and forced labor. Living conditions in DPRK prisons are indeed difficult, the problem is the verifiability of the information. Also, the author wonders, where have the prisoners of war come from since 2017?

The system of free medical care does not function adequately, and patients have to “thank” doctors in other ways (money, goods, etc.).

Just because doctors have been “thanked” since the Arduous March and there is corruption in the medical system, this does not mean that the healthcare system has collapsed. Otherwise, the country would not have coped with the coronavirus outbreak last year.

There are cases of “summary“ execution: for attempts to cross the border, unauthorized stay in the border area during the tightening of security in 2020-2022, in cases of prisoners caught trying to escape, etc.

As can be seen, “summary executions” in fact refer to the “sentry on duty shot a man who tried to cross the prohibited area” type of situation. The garrison regulations of any army give a sentry such an authorization. In this case, if all the procedures were complied with, he would not even be the subject of an investigation.

The DPRK has a total of 11 “camps” where political prisoners are held, of which five are currently operating.

In essence, there is a decrease in the number of camps, but the authors of the report chose not to publicize this point, although it is a very important indicator that the repressive burden on the masses is actually decreasing.

Meetings and public hearings are held once a week to address various life circumstances.

Interestingly, “self-criticism sessions” or party meetings in which certain elements of private life are discussed have been recorded as violations of human rights. Internet analogies with similar practices within the “culture of abolition” in the West or South Korean audiences are suggested on their own.

There are searches and inspections of homes, search and seizure, and wiretapping of phones.

This fact is hard to deny: even the leader of the people’s group (the neighboring communities) has such rights, but the authors of the report have remained silent about how often this is done and to what extent it is accompanied by abuse.

Discrimination based on “songbun” (social origin) in terms of education, employment and choice of place of residence.

All attempts to verify the use of “songbun” in the 21st century rest on the materials of the right-wing conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo. According to the author’s personal data, today’s songbun is more reminiscent of Soviet questionnaires of the 1980s, where questions about relatives abroad and presence in the occupied territories were still present. The author’s respondents also emphasized that personal qualities were placed above origin.

Forced mobilization for participation in major public events and rallies.

As far as the author knows, student meetings in the ROK, as well as participation in rallies by members of trade unions or Protestant sects are also held under the “attendance of all those who want is strictly mandatory” system, but like party meetings or homeroom periods at school, this is considered a violation of human rights.

Workers sent abroad work up to 17 hours a day for very little compensation.

North Korean workers’ living conditions abroad are, in fact, quite well known. And the author has repeatedly written in the pages of the IEE that the remaining portions of North Korean workers’ wages are enough to return home a respectable and well-off person. And talk of a 17-hour workday is more about the plight of defectors working illegally in China or Southeast Asia.

Torture, forced labor, sexual violence, and hunger in correctional institutions.

When it comes to the detention of prisoners, there are plenty of problems, but the authors of previous reports were compelled to note an improvement in the overall state of affairs.

Thus, the indication of practices typical of most authoritarian regimes is interspersed with outright lies, and will be another aggravating factor in inter-Korean relations.

It should be noted that this activity of the South is taking place against the backdrop of Seoul’s intense attempts to fit into the “universal” agenda in general. South Korea is in every way expressing its approval and support for the UN reports of the group. On March 28, the South Korean government welcomed a new UN human rights report condemning abductions and human rights violations in North Korea. In the report, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) highlighted the economic, social, and emotional suffering of victims of enforced disappearances. It also criticized North Korea’s systematic abductions and enforced disappearances as “crimes against humanity.”

The report is based on 80 in-depth interviews conducted between 2016 and 2022 with 38 men and 42 women victims of enforced disappearances. These included relatives of the enforced disappeared, North Koreans who fled their country, and foreigners who fled the North after being abducted. Unfortunately, there are not many details, which already leads to questions.

For example, it is not very clear to the author where “abductions and enforced disappearances” come from in North Korea. Regimes of this kind try to act according to the law, even when it comes to reprisals in the extrajudicial system. Enforced disappearances without trial are typical of other types of regimes, be they Latin American juntas or Lee Seung-Man-era South Korea, because even under Park Chung-Hee they tried to arrest and charge people.

A separate story concerns the kidnapping of ROK citizens. We’ve also written about it before, so let me remind you briefly: up to a certain time, persons with relatives in the North were subjected to reprisals because they were believed to have gone north with the Communists. But a loophole was found in the laws, and suddenly it turned out that if relatives were taken away by force, they were victims who deserved compensation. Of course, all those who wished to upgrade their official status changed their versions.

As for the foreigners who were kidnapped and managed to escape, it is assumed that we are talking about kidnapped Japanese citizens – this fact was recognized in 2002, after which those who survived did not escape, but were released.

On March 4, 2023, the 52nd session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution condemning the gross human rights violations in North Korea. The UNHRC has been passing resolutions condemning human rights violations in North Korea since 2003, but importantly, the document was again co-sponsored by the ROK for the first time in five years. The ROK did not co-sponsor such resolutions between 2019 and 2022, seeking to avoid tensions in inter-Korean relations and to resume dialogue with the North.

The document criticized “widespread and systematic” human rights violations in the north of the Korean peninsula. It calls on the North Korean authorities to ensure freedom of speech, allow the creation of independent media outlets, and revise the law on blocking foreign cultural content. In addition, the resolution requires Pyongyang to disclose information about the whereabouts of foreigners who have been detained or abducted by North Korean secret services.

The resolution also calls on Pyongyang to disclose all relevant information, including the whereabouts of foreigners detained or abducted in the North, to the families of the victims. This appears to reflect a demand to clarify the circumstances surrounding the death of a South Korean fisheries official who was shot and killed by North Korean border guards during the “Yellow Sea incident” in 2020.

Pyongyang categorically rejected the resolution, calling it “the product of a political conspiracy.” As Han Tae-song, permanent representative of the DPRK to the UN office in Geneva, said in his address to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), “This document was written for the sole purpose of embarrassing the DPRK. It is aimed at realizing a pipe dream of overthrowing our society.” “The DPRK will never tolerate any hostile action by the US and the forces following it that infringe on our sovereignty and dignity, and will make every effort to protect the genuine people’s system and their rights.”

Thus, the topic of human rights in the DPRK is used by Seoul rather as an element of the general agenda, despite the controversial evidence base and the risks that playing on these strings will provoke an understandable reaction from the DPRK that is not conducive to easing regional tensions.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, is a leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences.

April 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Here’s Why The US Is Trying To Pin The Blame For Sudan’s “Deep State” War On Russia

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 21, 2023

Debunking The Latest Fake News Narrative

CNN published an exclusive piece on Thursday alleging that “Evidence emerges of Russia’s Wagner arming militia leader battling Sudan’s army”. They claim that satellite imagery shows increased Russian military transport activity between Libya and Syria in the run-up to Sudan’s “deep state” war. According to CNN, this confirms rumors that General Haftar is supplying Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hamedti”) with surface-to-air missiles (SAM) on behalf of Wagner.

The Wall Street Journal published their own exclusive piece the day prior on Wednesday alleging that “Libyan Militia and Egypt’s Military Back Opposite Sides in Sudan Conflict”, so these two stories complement one another. Both Hamedti and Wagner have denied these claims, however. The Sudanese Ambassador to Russia also confirmed that “Russia is a friendly country to us so we have been in direct contact with [the] Russian Foreign Ministry since the very beginning of those events last Saturday.”

That diplomat’s reaffirmation of Sudan’s close ties with Russia is especially important since he represents the government that’s internationally recognized as being led by Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, who commands the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and is one of the two figures vying for power. At present, Khartoum therefore doesn’t extend credence to the emerging US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) narrative that Russia is arming the RSF via Haftar-Wagner, but that could soon change.

Preconditioning The Public For Another Proxy War  

Unless the present three-day Eid ceasefire holds and leads to the start of peace talks that ultimately end this “deep state” war, which is unlikely since both sides made clear their intent to completely destroy the other, then this conflict is expected to resume in the near future. Should the SAF fail to defeat the RSF and possibly even be placed on the backfoot, then Burhan might gamble that it’s in his best interests to parrot the MSM’s anti-Russian accusations in an attempt to receive direct Western military support.

That scenario isn’t all that far-fetched either considering that the Associated Press and Politico both cited unnamed officials on Thursday to report that the US is assembling additional troops in nearby Djibouti to prepare for the possible evacuation of Americans from Sudan. This pretext could easily be exploited to arm the SAF and/or attack the RSF, especially if the Pentagon claims that the latter tried stopping its operation by building upon last week’s claim that its forces shot at an armored US diplomatic vehicle.

In the event that Burhan repeats the MSM’s emerging anti-Russian narrative and promises to rubbish Sudan’s naval base deal with Moscow upon defeating the RSF, then the Biden Administration can “justify” its military intervention on the basis of “defending Sudanese democracy from a Kremlin coup”. The public would then be told that the latest conflict was sparked by Russia’s support for the “insurgent” RSF, which the MSM would attribute to its interests in defending Wagner’s mining operations there.

American Meddling In Russian-Egyptian Relations

This would predictably precede an unprecedented but preplanned information warfare campaign painting Russia as a “destabilizing” force in Africa, which would be aimed at counteracting its hitherto highly successful efforts at presenting itself as a force of stability in support of legitimate governments. The purpose of this aforesaid operation would be to erode Russia’s newfound “Democratic Security” appeal across the continent with a view towards reversing the decline of Western influence there.

Furthermore, Burhan’s potentially opportunistic piggybacking on the earlier described emerging anti-Russian narrative could have serous implications for Moscow’s ties with Cairo due to the perception of them backing opposite sides in Sudan’s “deep state” war. Russian-Egyptian relations have recently been beset by scandal upon the latest Pentagon leaks alleging that Cairo abandoned its supposedly secret plan to supply rockets to Moscow under pressure from Washington and agreed to arm Kiev instead.

Considering this context, the scenario of Egyptian-backed Burhan blaming Russia for sparking the latest conflict could therefore lead to the rapid deterioration of Russian-Egyptian ties, especially if Cairo decides to indirectly retaliate against Moscow by curtailing its investment rights in Port Said. Those two signed an additional agreement on this industrial zone last month, which was first approved in 2018 and is supposed to help Russia expand its economic engagement with the broader region.

Punishing The Emirates For Its Close Relations With Russia

That goal could be jeopardized if Egypt decides to punish Russia through these means in response to Burhan opportunistically piggybacking on the MSM narrative in an attempt to obtain direct Western military support against the RSF. Furthermore, the UAE’s ties with Egypt and the US could also become much more complicated in that event too since Abu Dhabi is accused of backing reportedly RSF-allied Haftar, being favorable disposed to that armed Sudanese group, and secretly allying with Russia.

The last-mentioned accusation was brought to the public’s attentions as a result of the previously mentioned Pentagon leaks, which were denied by the UAE but coincided with the weakening of its ties with Washington that are partially over that Gulf country’s growing ones with Moscow. There are more factors at play than just the Russian-Emirati relationship, but the point is that the UAE’s problems with the US could be amplified by the MSM if Burhan accuses Russia of arming the RSF via Haftar-Wagner.

It also deserves mentioning that America’s other ulterior interest in its incipient propaganda campaign against Russia in Sudan is to complicate its geopolitical opponent’s logistical connections with the Central African Republic (CAR), which owes its continued existence as a state to Moscow’s military support. The Kremlin largely relies on transit across Sudan in order to supply its forces and its ally’s there, but this could be cut off if Burhan jumps on the anti-Russian bandwagon and revokes Moscow’s privileges.

The Chadian Connection

Lastly, another strategic factor behind this latest information warfare offensive against Russia is that it could ruin that country’s surprisingly solid relations with regional military heavyweight Chad. As explained in this recent analysis here, N’Djamena ended up expelling the German Ambassador earlier this month for meddling instead of the Russian one despite the US telling its counterparts in late February that Moscow is using Wagner in the CAR and Libya to arm anti-government rebels against it.

The Associated Press cited an African analyst from a Western risk assessment firm in their article on Thursday about 320 SAF troops fleeing to Chad to claim that this development could prompt N’Djamena into taking those forces’ side in Sudan’s “deep state” war. According to Benjamin Hunter, “N’Djamena is likely to oppose (Dagalo) due to fears that RSF dominance in Darfur could empower Chadian Arabs to unseat the (president’s) regime. Many within (Dagalo’s) Rizeigat tribe live across the border in Chad.”

If Chad becomes embroiled in Sudan’s “deep state” war on Burhan’s side, then it might be susceptible to Western suggestions that jumping on the anti-Russian bandwagon like he would have already done in this scenario could lead to them suspending their regime change campaign against N’Djamena. Should that happen, then this regional military heavyweight might also support any potentially forthcoming rebel/terrorist offensive that its historical French partner could soon plot against Russia in the CAR.

Concluding Thoughts

Putting everything together, the US plans to achieve the following strategic objectives by introducing the narrative that Russia is arming the RSF:

1. Entice Burhan to extend credence to these claims in exchange for US military support;

2. Demand that he also rescinds Russia’s naval base rights and cuts off its overflight access to the CAR;

3. Consider direct support to the SAF on the pretext of commencing an “evacuation operation” in Sudan;

4. Discredit Russia and the UAE’s African engagement policies by framing both as “destabilizing forces”;

5. Attempt to provoke a crisis in Russia’s relations with Sudan’s Chadian and Egyptian neighbors;

6. Exploit the above scenario to assemble a regional coalition for pushing back against Russia in Africa;

7. Encourage Chad to support a French-backed rebel/terrorist offensive in the Russian-allied CAR;

8. Plot a copycat proxy war in Russian-allied Mali in order to crush the Kremlin’s influence in the Sahel;

9. Perfect this new Hybrid War method prior to employing it all across the continent;

10. And thus turn Africa into the top proxy war battleground of the New Cold War.

The US therefore has many reasons to push this fake news campaign, though it’s unclear whether it’ll ultimately achieve any of its envisaged objectives or not.

April 22, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Head of Norwegian Shipyard Denies Presence of Spy Equipment on Russian Trawlers

Sputnik – 21.04.2023

Greger Mannswerk, head of Norwegian shipyard Kimek located in the town of Kirkenes, which borders Russia, said on Friday that the shipyard’s employees did not find any spy equipment on board Russian trawlers, commenting on recent reports from Norwegian media.

“We have a pretty good understanding of what’s on board and we have never found anything to indicate that they [Russian seamen] are engaged in intelligence gathering. We cannot know if there are any [Russian] intelligence officers on board today, but no fisherman enters a Norwegian harbor without the [Norwegian] police and armed forces having a full idea of who is on board,” Mannswerk was quoted as saying by the broadcaster.

This week, the media published the results of an investigation, which said that up to 50 civilian Russian ships could be involved in intelligence operations against Norway.

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Russia has no plan to ruin Western unity, Kremlin tells WaPo

RT | April 21, 2023

The Washington Post says it has obtained secret Russian documents detailing a plan to bring anti-establishment political parties together in Germany in an effort to sow discord in the West. The Kremlin has responded that it does not interfere in the domestic affairs of other nations.

The purported Russian documents, largely dated from July to November last year, were obtained by an unidentified European intelligence service, the US news outlet said on Friday. It did not explain how it gained access, but it also interviewed some German politicians for the story.

The article said Moscow’s plan was “part of a hidden front in Russia’s war against Ukraine” and an attempt “to undermine Western unity.” The Soviet Union harnessed anti-war sentiment in the same way, an anonymous German security official told the Post.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the alleged Russian plan “100% fake.” He told the Post : “We never interfered before and now we really don’t have time for this.”

The strategy, as described in the article, involves “marrying” Germany’s far-left Die Linke with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Sahra Wagenknecht, an MP from Die Linke, would have a chance of winning the chancellorship with such backing, the plan suggests.

The Post spoke to Wagenknecht’s former husband, Ralph Niemeyer, who assessed her electoral chances as high. He claimed that Russian officials told him that such an outcome would be in Moscow’s interest.

But Wagenknecht would never accept any support from Moscow, Niemeyer added, and the idea of a union with AfD did not sit well with her either. The politician herself told the Post that there would not be “any cooperation or alliance” between her “and elements of the AfD in any form.”

The Post claimed that the effort was led by Sergey Kirienko, the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, along with unnamed “political strategists” tasked with executing it. The documents do not show any attempts by the Russian government to communicate the strategy to German politicians or potential allies, the report said.

The article cited instances of Die Linke and AfD holding protests against Berlin’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict and the damage caused by anti-Russian sanctions to the national economy. Members of AfD interviewed by the newspaper said being on the same side of the issue was the result of an intersection of values rather than any Russian influence campaign.

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Ron Unz: Analyzing the Holocaust

Iranian Channel Four TV (IRIB) – March 20, 2023

Part #1

Part #2

April 21, 2023 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Via col Vento in the United States of Amnesia: Whistleblowers, Leaks and Fratricide

Michael Hoffman’s Revelation of the Method | April 19, 2023

Fratricide is Satanism

Satanic activities are not the domain of one political wing. One of the most wicked black magic sacrifices occurred in the early 20th century, in a mass immolation known as the First World War, a useless fratricide, tantamount to an open air Satanic ritual, placating the devil with human sacrifices and approved by the churches.

Each church hierarchy among the belligerents declared that God was on the side of their army, and then dispatched young men in the flower of youth to cross oceans and trenches and butcher other young men in the flower of youth.

World War I was fought between traditional monarchies and conservative governments deeply entrenched in Christendom and nonetheless behaving diabolically. It was Churchianity in charge, not Christianity, and it reflected a self-deception that is quintessentially demonic.

In Ukraine at this moment another fratricide is underway—a civil war between Slavic people. It would be an understatement to say that the Cryptocracy is not generally fond of Slavs. The Cryptocracy’s aversion to Slavic people is one of the destabilizing facts that remans secret in what is otherwise the age of the Making Manifest of All that is Hidden (Revelation of the Method).

In 1941 Adolf Hitler stated, “The Slavs are a mass of born slaves who feel the need for a master” (cf. Manfred Henningsen, “The Politics of Purity and Exclusion” in  Björn H. Jernudd (ed.), The Politics of Language Purism, [1989], p. 48). Hitler proceeded to kill millions of Slavs in combat in the course of his invasions of Slavic nations (Poland and later Russia).

Hitler’s occult beliefs (documented in our book, Adolf Hitler: Enemy of the German People) were partly the result of his initiation into “Theosophy,” an occult system that taught a “root races” ideology in which the “Aryan race” was held to be superior.

There are exceptions to Nazi racial animus toward Slavs. Hitler was an admirer of Józef Pilsudski (1867-1935), the Polish leader who vanquished the Bolshevik army in 1920. These individual cases do not however, nullify the fact that Hitler killed more Slavic people than any other leader of the 20th century, an act whose theurgic dimension is overlooked.

The Nazis’ post-war plans for Eastern Europe entailed deportations to gain “living space” for German settlers, with Poles, Russians and “western” Ukrainians targeted for mass extrusion to Siberia (cf. Czeslaw Madajczyk, “Vom ‘Generalplan Ost’ zum ‘Generalsiedlungsplan,” in Rössler, Der “Generalplan Ost”: Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungsund Vernichtungspolitik [1993], p. 13).

As Hitler was useful, so too are Putin, Zelensky and Biden. The current fratricide in Ukraine is exceedingly pleasing to hidden forces beholden to esoteric doctrines and the very public Neocon element in the United States which, in spite of being wrong about every war the U.S. has fought in the 21st century, continues to drive foreign policy in Washington, under both Democrats and Republicans, feeding cash and war materiel to Zelensky’s regime in pursuit of maximum carnage between the Ukrainians and the Russians.

NATO’s Unsung Crimes

Prior to the anti-Slav abattoir in Ukraine, beginning with the Clinton administration, US General Wesley Kanne Clark commanded NATO forces in Slavic Serbia, bombing trains, buses and civilian centers in cities and killing thousands of civilians. Forces under his command also destroyed ancient Serbian churches and monasteries. There was no war crime trial because Clark attributed the killing and destruction to “collateral damage.” That’s the magic wand our government waves to dispense with prosecution by the International Court of Justice where the US is determined to prosecute Putin and absolve Zelesnsky.

On April 23, 1999 Clark’s NATO forces intentionally bombed a Serbian radio and TV station in Belgrade, killing 16 reporters and staff members. NATO excused the attack by asserting the barbaric doctrine that killing journalists is justified if they engage in propaganda: “NATO defended the air strike by saying the TV station was a legitimate target because of its role in what NATO called ‘Belgrade’s campaign of propaganda” (BBC, October 24, 2001).

These facts are down the Memory Hole’s greased chute. The New York Times and the corporate media generally don’t report crimes like those of NATO as part of any annual “This Day in History” memorial. To learn about them the enterprising researcher has to dig, and the American people are too distracted by digital and televised phantasmagoria to take up the spade.

Jack Teixeira’s Intel Leak and the Disclosure of Ukraine War Secrets

The recent disclosure of secret U.S. government files has resulted in reporting almost exclusively confined to the question of how the government’s security was breached. The secrets themselves contained have been mostly ignored or underplayed. The two most substantive revelations are the fact that US combat troops are stationed in Ukraine and the US intends to ensure that the fratricidal slaughter continues throughout 2023.

Glenn Greenwald: “There will be no negotiations, there will be no diplomatic settlement, there will be nothing but ongoing grinding, endless war that you will pay for beyond the $100 billion already authorized.”

The leak of NSA and CIA secrets has been treated as a grave criminal act by the media who were chiefly responsible for the apprehension of 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira, as the result of a report published in the Washington Post of April 12, which led the FBI directly to the leaker.

The New York Times in an April 16 article, “Finding the Pentagon Leak Suspect,” also boastes of its role in assisting law enforcement in apprehending the whistleblower.

These facts should in the future dissuade any whistleblower gullible enough to trust that the Post and the Times will keep secret their revelations of government-perpetrated felonies.

Greenwald:

“Why… would self-proclaimed journalism outlets do the job of the FBI and hunt down the leaker and boast of the fact that they were the ones who found him even before the FBI did?…

“There aren’t many ways to define the function of a free press and what journalism is without referencing the way in which journalists are supposed to bring transparency to the most powerful institutions… The idea of journalism, ostensibly, in theory, is to bring transparency to what the most secretive and powerful institutions are doing in the dark. Exactly what this leak did…

“One of the ways, arguably the only real way, that we, as journalists, now have to show the public what these institutions of power are doing in the dark is through leaks. Leaks of the things that they don’t want you to see, oftentimes being classified information.

“Classified information is not some sacred text. Classified information is nothing more than a document or a piece of information that the government has stamped on that word “classified” or “top-secret,” because they want to make it illegal for you to learn about it. That’s the effect of calling a document classified or top secret. And one of the things I learned in working with many large archives of government secrets and classified material is that, more often than not, when the government calls something classified or top secret, it’s not because they’re trying to protect you. It’s because they’re trying to protect themselves.

“They’re trying to make it illegal for anybody to show what it is that they’re saying and doing in the dark because what they’re saying and doing in the dark is composed of deceit, corruption, or illegality. And that’s why the most important journalism over the last 50 years…the Pentagon Papers, through the WikiLeaks reporting, the Snowden reporting… have taken place when people have been able to show you, the public, documents and other information that people inside the government wanted you not to see and made it illegal for anyone to show it to you”.

The spin-doctoring about leaks and the “need” for the Deep State to keep the truth about their treacherous machinations from the public, is an exercise in the artifice of political theater. The media, when it suits their purposes, appropriate to themselves the illustrious appellation of “patriot.” With the Federal government in the hands of tyrannical social engineers who keep the Cryptocracy’s esoteric grand design for the subjugation of our nation on schedule, leaking government secrets is now derided as unconditionally iniquitous—almost—though not quite.

We qualify our observation due to the fact that the media routinely leak the secrets the Deep States wants revealed. They pretended that an “unauthorized” CIA leaker revealed that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation,” when in fact the CIA ordered CNN to make the information public, disguised as an unauthorized leak. There are good leaks and bad leaks. The ethical metric is decided by determining whether the leak favors the Deep State or undermines it. The contents of Hunter’s laptop was anathema to the ruling class so their intelligence arm ordered the media to brand it a fake conjured by Putin. The media can’t confess that they take orders from government intelligence agents hence, their subservience is disguised as a report about a clandestine fact disclosed without permission; in other words a “good” leak. There were many of those while Trump was president.

Young Jack Teixeira is a whistleblower who sounded an alarm about the propagators of World War III who occupy the US government, which seems somewhat newsworthy apart from the debate about leaks, yet it is not. Furthermore, to anticipate a criticism, the documents he released do not endanger our men and women in uniform. No sensitive intelligence on personnel in harm’s way was disclosed.

The facts about the gradual introduction of US special forces into Ukraine are incendiary; so too the knowledge that the Biden administration has no peace plan or ceasefire in mind, only more slaughter in the Slavic civil war’s ever larger butcher’s bill.

“Land of Felony”

If the American people were not so distracted and alchemically processed the revelation that Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and President Biden both declared the Nordstream Pipeline would be destroyed as indeed it was, by US agents, as well as the secrets contained in Mr. Teixeira’s leak, would awaken them and cause them to rise and work for the prosecution of the criminals in the District of Corruption.

Yet, as we take the occult pulse of programmed Americans we discover that they are exhausted rather than energized by the steady stream of shocking revelations of crime and corruption that flood our TVs and computer screens in this era.

Nineteen children were killed in Uvalde, Texas while the cops stood around and let it happen a few yards from where they stood.

Ho-hum.

Then there’s the Nashville massacre. It’s been nearly a month since a trans-gender individual shot to death three children and three adults at a Christian school in that city. Prior to the massacre the perpetrator reportedly issued a manifesto which we the people have not been allowed to see. Notice that not one sentence of that document has been leaked. It’s locked down tighter than Joe Biden’s soul.

It has in the interim however, been dismissed as a nothingburger by David B. Rausch, Tennessee’s top cop. Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said that what police found isn’t so much a manifesto spelling out a target, as a series of rambling writings indicating no “clear” motive.

Nothing to see here folks, you can go back to sleep.

Sooner or later the manifesto will be released, possibly in redacted form, at some point in time sufficiently distant from the March 27 killings to dull the edge of public outrage.

Moreover, the delay of the release may itself be a psychological warfare ruse to discredit conspiracy theorists—and anyone else who is skeptical toward government. If the manifesto really is a “nothingburger,” why wouldn’t the authorities release it within a few days after the shootings? By suppressing it they build tension among the masses over the suspicion that some substantial secret is being withheld. If, when it is released, it is found to be a tissue of trivia, every skeptic from Elon Musk to Tucker Carlson will be made to look overwrought and foolish.

Tennessee news media have added the following concerning the alleged analysis and investigation of the manifesto: “The writings remain under careful review not only by Metro police, but also by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit based in Quantico, Virginia.”

The FBI’s “Behavioral Analysis Unit” has legendary status for discovering the mental secrets of monstrous murderers. This detail of their “crime-fighting” expertise exerts as much star power as did J. Edgar Hoover’s one-time polished image as a nemesis of the Mafia. Both are myths. The “Behavioral Unit” is a reference to miscreants inside the FBI who manipulate the behavior of Americans by directing, as we document in Twilight Language, ritual and mass murders subsequently blamed on the “lone nut” patsies who people “Arlington Road.”

One historical datum that is via col vento in the United States of Amnesia is the truth that the FBI was a participant in the terrorism it grouped under the title it concocted, “University and Airline Bomber” (“Unabomber”), crimes which were wholly attributed to LSD-experiment victim and scapegoat Ted Kaczynski. The details are in our book, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare.

Ambrose Bierce, a Union veteran of the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Kennesaw Mountain, was a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, renowned for his caustic wit. In Mexico to cover Pancho Villa’s rebel army he wrote home, “If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs.”  He disappeared in Mexico in 1914.

It would take a wordsmith of the caliber of Bierce to adequately account for the criminal politics in which our nation is at present sunk, and which would probably not have surprised the man who wrote, “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of felony.”

Copyright ©2023 by Independent History and Research

April 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Scandinavia’s Fake News About Russia Is Meant To Distract From Sy Hersh’s Nord Stream Report

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 19, 2023

A joint “media investigation” by the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden just claimed that Russia has been using at least 50 civilian ships to spy on the North Sea for the past decade in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage sometime in the future. Kremlin spokesman Peskov denied these allegations and accused those countries of trying to distract from last September’s Nord Stream terrorist attack.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited unnamed US administration sources to report in early February that Biden personally authorized that attack, which most folks already figured but it was nevertheless extremely newsworthy for this to come from someone as reputable as Hersh. Around a month later, the New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming to have uncovered the alleged culprit, which they said was a rogue group of people who weren’t connected to any government.

The US’ Latest Disinfo Campaign About The Nord Stream Terrorist Attacks Was Preplanned”, however, since the argument can compellingly be made that the US planted the seeds of an alternative narrative to rely upon as a backup plan in the event that the truth started leaking out like it did in Hersh’s report. It’s within this context that the Scandinavian states’ “media investigation” was published, thus extending credence to similar concerns that it’s also nothing more than a distraction from that journalist’s work.

After all, those outlets claimed that Russia has supposedly been spying on the North Sea through these means for the past ten years, and it’s extremely unlikely that they suddenly stumbled upon relevant “evidence” in support of that conclusion at this particular point in time. Rather, they were almost certainly fed this information by those countries’ intelligence services, with possible input from NATO as a whole and/or its US leader.

It’s unclear whether there’s any truth to their report, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there’s at least a kernel thereof since it’s a clever way to spy on the NATO-controlled North Sea. That, however, doesn’t mean that this was being done in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage there sometime in the future. This part of their report was probably included purely to revive the completely ridiculous narrative that Russia was the one responsible for the Nord Stream terrorist attack.

Whatever the purpose of Russia’s alleged spying in those waters may have been, it’s highly unlikely to have concerned sabotage except as an absolute last resort in the event of a conventional war with NATO. The reason behind this assessment is that only a state-level actor or a false flag “non-state” one connected to a state actor is capable of carrying out such acts, especially in waters that are completely controlled by and under the total surveillance of that US-led bloc, and doing so would be an act of war.

It’s with this in mind that Peskov’s denial should be taken seriously since it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia is plotting impending acts of sabotage there that it would definitely be caught committing red-handed in the fringe scenario that this is attempted. This doesn’t mean that Moscow wasn’t possibly spying on NATO’s naval activities in the North Sea, but just that this wasn’t done for the purpose of plotting sabotage except as an absolute last if it ever formally went to war with that bloc.

Considering this, Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the NYT’s report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.

April 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Russian envoy slams Die Welt over ‘kill Putin’ quote

RT | April 18, 2023

Germany’s Die Welt daily “hit rock bottom” in its anti-Russian zeal last week, the Russian ambassador to Berlin, Sergey Nechaev, said on Monday, in response to an interview with American columnist Fred Kaplan in which he said the “easiest way” to end the Ukraine conflict is for someone to “kill Putin.”

Die Welt has left “this de facto call for murder” unredacted and uncommented on and even used it as a headline, Nechaev wrote in a damning post published on the embassy’s Telegram account. The envoy was apparently referring to Die Welt’s Twitter account, which used the “killing” quote to draw attention to the interview with Kaplan on its social media.

“It is unfortunate that some German media keep crossing all the lines and hitting rock bottom,” the ambassador said, adding that “although this is outrageous, it is no longer surprising.”

Kaplan made the statement in response to Die Welt’s question about the “most plausible scenarios” of ending the military conflict between Moscow and Kiev, which has now been ongoing for morethan a year.

“The easiest way for this to end is for someone to kill Putin,” Kaplan stated, adding that a “new leader” could then come to power, who would declare Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “a folly” and gain the support of the Russian elites to end the conflict. The American journalist and political scientist said he does not believe that Moscow will prevail, adding that otherwise the conflict could last “for years” and potentially end with an agreement that would involve the US and China as “guarantors.”

The US columnist also admitted that Kiev is fully dependent on US aid and that a halt to this assistance might force the Ukrainian government to “strike a deal” with Moscow. “Without the US assistance, it [Ukraine] would not last long,” he said.

Die Welt’s choice of a quote has also been met with criticism on social media. One person accused the outlet of being “no longer above … an incitement to murder.” “Is it a call for murder?” another person asked, warning that killing the Russian president could also bring “hardliners” to power in Russia, potentially putting the world on the brink of a nuclear war.

The German media outlet has not commented on the criticism so far. Neither the text of the interview nor the Twitter post has been altered in any way as of the time of this writing.

April 18, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Leaked Pentagon documents about Chinese balloons only expose US’ purpose to press, coerce China: experts

By Xu Yelu | Global Times | April 16, 2023

Regardless of the authenticity of the leaked documents purportedly revealing details of four Chinese “balloons,” the purpose of the US’ continuous hyping of the incident is to create a consensus of fear toward China among Americans, and to hype so-called China’s lack of respect to the US in the international community, experts said on Sunday.

According to The Washington Post on Saturday, a document produced by the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency dated February 15 contains the most detailed government assessment to date of three Chinese airships.

Citing intelligence analysts, the US media outlet assessed that one of the “balloons” that flew over the US in February could generate enough power to operate “any” surveillance and reconnaissance technology, including a type of radar that can see at night and through clouds and thin materials.

However, Chinese military experts said that some of the content mentioned in this leaked document cannot be counted as so-called evidence, but rather serves the political purpose of the US to continue hyping the so-called threat of China’s civilian unmanned airship, while exaggerating the military use of Chinese civilian airship.

Using high altitude balloons for scientific research activities has become an international norm, with data from the China Science Daily showing that by 2018, the US had released more than 2,000 high altitude balloons, France around 3,000, and Japan more than 800.

Civilian balloons include two categories. Some are released by scientific research units for purposes that include monitoring atmospheric circulation and meteorological detection, and the other comes from companies, such as Google, which use balloons for navigation and communication, Chinese military expert Song Zhongping told the Global Times on Sunday.

In the leaked classified documents published by The Washington Post, it assessed that the solar panels on one balloon could generate upward of 10,000 watts of solar power, more than enough to operate any surveillance capability, including synthetic aperture radar.

However, experts said that the mention of solar panels can only illustrate the good quality, cost-effectiveness, and energy storage efficiency of China’s solar panels. “The US’ ‘free’ advertisement for China’s solar panels allows more countries around the world to recognize that China’s solar panels perform very well,” Song said.

In addition, experts pointed out that the leaked documents only reflect that the US is an untrustworthy country that cannot keep secrets. “Who would dare believe and engage with a country that can’t keep secrets? This is a vivid portrayal of the loss of credibility of the US in the world, especially among its allies,” Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.

According to the provisions of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention), the civilian unmanned airship has the same legal status as civil aircraft. It is clear that the US has not obtained any evidence, only speculation that the solar panel is providing power to remote sensing equipment, which is completely unfounded, experts said.

At the same time, the Financial Times published an article entitled “China stalls Antony Blinken’s Beijing visit over ‘spy balloon’ concerns” on Saturday, alleging that China is refusing to let US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visit Beijing over concerns that the FBI will release the results of an investigation into the downed suspected Chinese “spy balloon.”

The US has always tried to impose pressure on China before high-level US officials’ visit to force concessions from China in communication with the US, experts said. Even if there were no balloon incidents, there would be other incidents.

This approach demonstrates that the US lacks sincerity in handling its relationship with China and is an attempt to force China to cave in by coercion, threats, and intimidation, Li said. The US’ intention to link the “balloon incident” to Blinken’s postponed visit to China is to shift blame onto China for all the problems, obstacles or inconveniences in China-US relations.

“The whole thing is a shameful event directed by the US, which exposes the US’ true intentions of creating chaos in China-US relations and regional security. This is both sinister and pathetic,” Li said.

April 16, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

CDC Hired Ad Firm to Write ‘News’ Articles Promoting Flu Shots for Kids, Elderly, Documents Reveal

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 14, 2023

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hired a marketing firm to write what looked like news articles but were actually ad placements created to persuade parents of young children and elderly people to get flu shots, according to documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD).

The documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the CDC in September 2020 hired Weber Shandwick, a marketing firm, to create and place unattributed articles on news sites.

The campaign was part of a multi-year, $32 million dollar contract between Weber Shandwick and the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) to promote influenza vaccination and strengthen NCIRD’s immunization program.

The FOIA-requested contract specifies the ad agency will develop a wide variety of media strategies to deliver the CDC/NCIRD’s message on flu vaccines — but not always in its name — including writing unbranded articles for media distribution, spokesperson training, celebrity outreach, social media blitzes, social listening and monitoring, podcasting and more.

The contract could be renewed for a total award of $55.2 million, according to USAspending.gov, a federal grants database.

The broader campaign, described in the documents obtained by CHD, is dedicated to implementing “strategic health communication to provide a full range of communication support to change attitudes and behaviors to prevent diseases of interest to NCIRD.”

Every year the CDC launches a flu vaccination campaign — seeking to vaccinate every person in the U.S. ages 6 months and older.

Past campaign strategies have been largely fear-based, with the CDC’s in-house marketing team explicitly encouraging television personalities and public health experts and others to “state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)” for flu season and to represent each flu season in ways that will “motivate behavior (e.g., as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or in past years,’ ‘deadly’).”

The CDC recently incorporated another strategy that researchers call “native advertising,” which involves training and/or paying trusted, non-governmental actors to promote vetted ideas in conversation, community spaces and social media in ways that don’t appear to the targeted individual to be linked to official government campaigns.

Starting in 2021, the CDC spent hundreds of millions of dollars using these same advertising strategies to push the COVID-19 vaccines among communities of color.

‘Leveraging content with third-party credibility’

The FOIA documents — which only partially fulfilled CHD’s request and came heavily redacted — show Weber Shandwick subcontracted with Brandpoint, another public relations firm with expertise in “MAT release,” to create the articles related to flu shots.

MAT release means developing “branded, consumer-facing” articles that look like news articles, but are actually ads. Brandpoint specializes in making such ads and distributing them to a wide network of print and online publishers.

According to Brandpoint’s website, “These articles allow brands to leverage their own content and the credibility of third-party media companies while reaching consumers on the local news and media sites they frequent daily.”

In other words, the articles and announcements encouraging flu vaccination appear to be news, posted in English and Spanish on websites and radio stations that people know and trust, such as the San Antonio Express-News, the Houston Chronicle, WJCL in Savannah, Georgia, and KSBW in Salinas, California, according to the documents.

For example, Brandpoint has a Los Angeles Times content page that links to several of its articles. The print ads sometimes, but not always, carry a small label that marks them as a “paid post” but does not indicate who paid for them.

Figure 1: Sample Brandpoint Copy

Figure 2: Sample Brandpoint Image

For the flu vaccination campaign, Brandpoint developed article-like content, which included images of children, and paid to place them on different news sites. The CDC approved the ads, and most of them focus on childhood vaccination.

Some of the stories outlined CDC recommendations, but they don’t appear to be written by the CDC. Instead, the listed author is Brandpoint — often written as “(BPT)” — and the articles follow journalistic style conventions, so there is no way for the reader to know the CDC bankrolled the information.

Brandpoint committed to running ad articles on at least 800 online locations, flooding people’s media landscape with CDC-sponsored content. Many of Brandpoint’s story links from this campaign no longer work.

CHD is working to obtain records not yet provided by the CDC related to the agency’s contract with Weber Shandwick.

CDC supported ‘intentionally unbranded’ messaging to avoid appearance of ‘top-down’ advice

Since 2021, the CDC has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to create “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and train “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines in communities of color in every state across the country.

The CDC’s strategy included training clergy members, teachers, neighborhood businesses, community organizations and others to promote its COVID-19 and flu vaccine messaging so it would appear those messages came from within people’s existing communities, rather than from the federal government.

FOIA documents show this “native marketing” strategy began at least as early as 2020. In this case, the strategy focused on placing “organic” messages in third-party and social media — places the marketing agencies identified would be most likely to influence the target audiences.

Peer-reviewed research published in Plos One in 2020 found that messaging on social media that was unbranded — not visibly associated with the CDC or other government agencies — was more likely than a “top-down” approach to yield “positive attitudes toward the flu vaccine,” particularly among African American and Latino people.

The research, funded by healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, paid micro-influencers to select vetted messages and use them to create their own original content promoting flu vaccination on their social media pages.

Payment, which varied according to each influencer’s reach and influence, ranged from $84 to $360 per influencer.

Content was “intentionally unbranded to ensure that it aligned with the look and feel of their [influencer’s] pages.”

The “native advertising” strategy is used commonly in advertising, but prior to this study, it was untested in public health. It’s based on research demonstrating people are more likely to engage with — and change their behavior based on — content they don’t think is tied to a campaign or to advertising.

When people in the study’s target region, particularly among “at-risk groups,” were exposed to messaging from people with whom they “had trusting relationships,” they were in fact more likely to change their attitudes and behaviors regarding the flu vaccine than when the message came from the “top-down.”

But unbeknownst to them, the messages were created by researchers to include “pre-selected” and “vetted facts,” including messages like “everyone needs a flu shot,” side effects are minimal, the flu vaccine is “safe and effective,” etc.

Influencers also were instructed not to use the word “vaccine” but rather “shot” because of negative associations with the word vaccine.

A $10 billion market by 2030

The flu vaccine market is booming, according to market analysts who estimate the global flu vaccine market will grow to $10 billion by 2030, up from $5 billion in 2020.

Allied Market Research makes this projection based on the fact that “Healthcare organizations all over the world like Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have suggested vaccines” for the treatment of influenza.

Several major pharmaceutical companies produce flu vaccines available in the U.S., including AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Mylan, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis, Sanofi Pasteur and Seqiris.

The CDC says private vaccine producers projected they will produce 173.5 million to 183.5 million doses of quadrivalent influenza vaccines for the 2022-2023 season in the U.S.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC has advocated that people get the flu and COVID-19 vaccines and CDC vaccine promotion funding targeted the two vaccines together.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in 2021 unanimously voted 14-0 to co-administer the COVID-19 and flu vaccine to adults and children, with no scientific evidence to back the decision.

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine advisory committee met in January, representatives from the CDC and FDA reported they thought instances of stroke following receipt of Pfizer’s new booster in the elderly may be connected to the flu vaccine and said they would conduct research to determine if this was the case.

When asked by a committee member if it would be prudent to separate the flu and COVID-19 vaccines for elderly people, the CDC’s Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, responded:

“I think talking about spacing the vaccine is premature and I’ll just reinforce that the CDC’s recommendation for COVID vaccination and for flu vaccination have not changed.”

The Allied Market Research report confirms that pairing the two vaccines is good for the flu vaccine markets.

It states, “The COVID-19 outbreak is anticipated to have a positive impact on growth of the global influenza vaccine market. As the number of the population affected with COVID-19 virus increases, the demand for influenza vaccine surges.”

Government efforts — which by the CDC have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars for flu and COVID-19 — help Big Pharma’s profits soar.

“Increase in government support and surveillance regarding vaccination against influenza on the national and global levels to monitor the supply, distribution, and administration of flu vaccines is one of the crucial factors driving the market growth,” the report states.

Flu vaccine comes with risks, no evidence it’s effective

Although the CDC reports 36,000 to 80,000 deaths per year from flu, data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — available on the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) website — show that CDC’s annual estimates are off by orders of magnitude, according to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman on leave, who outlined the existing scientific data on flu in a May 2020 letter to Sanjay Gupta.

NCHS data report the average number of mortalities attributable to influenza on death certificates is little more than 1,000, but the CDC is able to inflate the data by conflating flu and pneumonia deaths, BMJ Senior Editor Peter Doshi reported.

Doshi charged the CDC with deliberately lying about annual flu deaths to “[work] in manufacturers’ interest by conducting campaigns to increase flu vaccination.” He warned that “by arbitrarily linking flu with pneumonia, current data are statistically biased.”

Even its promoters concede the flu vaccine has low efficacy. The Mayo Clinic reports the flu vaccine is, at best, 50% effective for reducing the risk of illness among healthy adults ages 18 to 64 (a group with already low flu risk) and the CDC reports it is 40-60% effective at reducing risk.

Two Cochrane reviews found the scientific data provides “no evidence for the utilization of vaccination against influenza in healthy adults as a routine public health measure” and no evidence that the vaccine reduces transmission.

The Cochrane researchers accused the CDC of deliberately misrepresenting the science in order to support their universal influenza vaccination recommendation.

Even the National Institutes of Health reported there is no evidence that flu vaccination in elderly adults reduces mortality from flu.

Evidence shows the vaccine carries serious risks. Roughly two-thirds of the claims compensated in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (5,297 claims) have been for influenza vaccine injuries. In 2021, the total compensation to date — paid by U.S. taxpayers — was almost $4.5 billion, CHD reported.

And there is a lack of safety studies for two of the most targeted demographics for the flu shot — children and pregnant womenKennedy wrote. In fact, studies have linked flu vaccination to miscarriages and birth defects.


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a 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.

April 14, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment