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Biden signs ‘Havana Syndrome’ law, Berlin police report new ‘cases’ blamed on mystery weapons scientists say don’t exist

RT | October 8, 2021

As President Joe Biden signed a law funding the treatment of 200-plus US officials who claim to have been affected by so-called Havana Syndrome, German police said they were looking into more possible cases.

Berlin police confirmed on Friday they were investigating an “alleged sonic weapon attack on employees of the US Embassy,” in response to reporting by the tabloid Der Spiegel. The embassy declined to comment on the investigation.

Meanwhile in Washington, Biden signed into law the Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks (HAVANA) Act, passed unanimously by Congress last month, providing money for the treatment of more than 200 government employees who claim to have been affected by the mystery syndrome.

“Civil servants, intelligence officers, diplomats, and military personnel all around the world have been affected by anomalous health incidents,” Biden said in a statement. “Some are struggling with debilitating brain injuries that have curtailed their careers of service to our nation. Addressing these incidents has been a top priority for my administration.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters the US government is “determined to get to the bottom as quickly as possible of the attribution and cause of these incidents,” with the intelligence community “in the lead on that.”

“They’re actively examining a range of hypotheses, but they have not made a determination about the cause of these incidents or who is responsible.”

US media and many members of Congress, however, seem convinced that the symptoms – which were first reported at the US Embassy in Cuba in 2016 – were the work of some kind of weapon, and have pointed the finger at Russia. About half of the Americans who claim to have been affected are employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.

CIA Director William Burns said in July that there was a “very strong possibility” the symptoms were caused deliberately, and pointed to a study by a National Academy of Sciences panel from December 2020 that listed “directed energy” beams as a plausible cause.

Last month, however, the State Department released a redacted version of the classified 2018 report by JASON, a scientific advisory group, that ruled out microwave or ultrasound energy, saying that the power requirements were prohibitive and pointing out that electronics were not affected.

The JASON report said that a third of the original reports were “most likely” caused by the noise made by a specific species of cricket – a conclusion a US Berkeley scientist reached independently in early 2019 – while others may have been of psychological origin.

October 9, 2021 Posted by | Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘Superspreader of misinformation’: NYT corrects story that exaggerated child Covid-19 hospitalizations by over 90%

RT | October 8, 2021

The New York Times had to issue a doozy of a correction on an article by its Covid-19 reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who somehow inflated the number of US children hospitalized with the virus to 14 times the actual level.

Mandavilli claimed in her article, published on Tuesday, that nearly 900,000 Covid-infected children had been hospitalized in the US since the pandemic began. As the Times admitted on Thursday, the available data shows that the correct figure from August 2020 to October 2021 was more than 63,000.

The inaccuracies didn’t stop there. The correction also noted that contrary to Mandavilli’s reporting, Sweden and Denmark haven’t begun offering single-dose vaccines to children. The newspaper added that the story misstated the timing of an upcoming FDA meeting regarding proposed use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in children as young as five years old.

The scale of the erroneous hospitalization figure was reminiscent of gaffes by President Joe Biden, such as saying 120 million Americans had died from Covid-19 and 150 million had been killed by gun violence. It’s not clear how the blunder occurred, but the mainstream media has been accused of hyping the severity of the pandemic. A hidden-camera investigation by Project Veritas in April purported to show a CNN technical director saying the outlet purposely stoked fears of Covid-19 to boost ratings.

Ironically, the Times itself has decried Covid-19 misinformation. For instance, the newspaper posted an article earlier this week vilifying Dr. Joseph Mercola as “the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation.” In August, the Times said ‘Russian disinformation’ was being spread to suggest that the Biden administration would impose a Covid-19 vaccine mandate. A month later, Biden ordered that healthcare facilities, federal contractors and businesses with more than 100 employees force their workers to be inoculated, taking the choice over getting the jab away from about 100 million Americans.

While the Times and other mainstream outlets have billed themselves as the arbiters of truth, Mandavilli’s error-laced article is only the latest in a long line of inaccurate reporting by the newspaper. For example, the newspaper falsely claimed that Russia had offered bounties on American troops in Afghanistan and that police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol.

“The New York Times is a superspreader of misinformation,” said Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Mandavilli stirred anger among conservatives in May, when she said the theory that Covid-19 leaked from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology had “racist roots.” She later deleted her Twitter post, lamenting that the pushback to her remark had been “ridiculous.”

“Someday, we will stop talking about the lab-leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots,” Mandavilli said in the original tweet. “But alas, that day is not yet here.”

It’s not clear why the reporter was rooting for the lab leak theory to go away, as even chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said it should be investigated after previously trying to squash the notion.

The Wall Street Journal had reported two days earlier that three scientists at the Wuhan lab had been hospitalized with Covid-19 symptoms in the fall of 2019, near the time when the first cases of the virus were reported in China.

The Times’ former lead reporter on Covid-19, Pulitzer Prize nominee Donald McNeil Jr., resigned under pressure in February after co-workers campaigned for his firing. His sin was responding to a high school student’s question about a classmate’s use of the N-word by repeating the slur when he asked for context on how it was used. He had worked for the newspaper since 1976.

October 9, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

FULL OF GAS

By Paul Robinson | IRRUSSIANALITY | October 8, 2021

It’s 20 degrees here in Ottawa. For October, that’s something of a heatwave, and it’s meant to stay this way for a week or so, well into the middle of the month. Beyond that, the weather guys say that we’re in for a generally warm autumn. No need for the winter tires just yet.

Europe, though, is said to be headed for a deep cold spell in the coming months. So good for us, bad for Europe – unless you like winter sports, of course, in which case it’s the other way around. But regardless of what weather you prefer, cold has consequences, one of which is that you have to turn the heating up, for which you need fuel. And in the modern post-coal world, that increasingly means burning natural gas.

Unfortunately, this is a bad time to do so, for the price of natural gas has shot up in recent months, as you can see from the chart below. This is a result of increased demand, reduced output from wind turbines, and a reduction in supplies as Europe’s main suppliers – Norway and Russia – fill up their own stocks before winter. This has apparently ‘all but wiped out stocks’ in the rest of Europe. The markets have responded with a binge of frenzied speculation, shoving natural gas prices up to unnaturally high levels.

Which is obviously Russia’s fault. Because, well … it’s bad, and it’s natural gas, and so Russia must be to blame. After all, we know that all those traders on the futures markets take their orders from the Kremlin.

To give example of the hysterical rhetoric floating around, CNBC ran this headline yesterday: ‘The US was right – Europe has become a “hostage” to Russia over energy, analysts warn.’ The following story then told readers that ‘Europe is now largely at Russia’s mercy when it comes to energy,’ citing analyst Timothy Ash (who regularly pops up on the pages of the Kyiv Post) denouncing Russia’s ‘energy blackmail’ and saying that:

‘Europe has now left itself hostage to Russia over energy supplies … [It’s] crystal clear that Russia has Europe (the EU and U.K.) in an energy headlock, and Europe (and the U.K.) are too weak to call it out and do anything about it … Europe is cowering as it fears [that] as it heads into winter Russia will further turn the screws (of energy pipelines off) and allow it to freeze until it gets its way and NS2 [North Stream 2] is certified.’

If I get this right, the logic is that Russia is deliberately withholding supplies from Europe in order to force Germany to complete the certification of the North Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany and Russia. Unfortunately, Ash fails to provide a shred of evidence for this claim, and it’s not as if the Russians are expressing any sort of concern that the certification may not happen, or that they are specifically targeting Germany.

In fact, there’s no evidence that Russia is blackmailing anybody. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin even sought to calm international markets by telling the Russian gas company Gazprom to keep sending supplies through Ukraine even though it would be cheaper to send them via alternative routes. It’s important to maintain Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier of energy, he noted, adding that Russia would indeed increase supplies to Europe this year, with exports possibly reaching a record high.

Critics complain that Russia could be pumping more gas to Europe than it currently is. It is apparently true that the volume of deliveries has been down in the past couple of months, as Russia fills up its own stocks before what is expected to be a harsh winter. But, deliveries for 2021 as a whole are on par with last year and Russia is meeting all its contracts. Furthermore, as Ben Aris has pointed out, it’s not that easy for Russia to greatly increase the quantity of gas it supplies Europe via existing pipelines. This is because different gas fields serve different pipelines, with limited connections. The line going via Ukraine comes from fields that are already ‘maxed out’. Additional gas would have to come from the Yamal peninsula – i.e. via North Stream or North Stream 2. With the former already at capacity, that in essence means the latter. In other words, Aris concludes:

‘It is possible for Russia to send more gas west without using NS2 but it’s limited & most expensive option for Gazprom. By far easiest & cheapest option for both Gazprom & EU is to turn NS2 on. This would solve the current gas crisis.’

It seems to me that Russia’s critics need to decide what they want. For years, they’ve been complaining that Europe is buying too much Russian gas. Now, though, they’re complaining that the Russians won’t sell them more! The Russians sell you gas – that’s a sign that they’re out to get you. They won’t sell you gas – proof that they’ve got you!

Frankly, it makes no sense.

Besides which, people don’t sell you stuff unless you ask them to, which in business terms means signing a contract with them. Russia, as previously said, is fulfilling its contracts. What more is it meant to do? As German chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out this week, if European states haven’t signed up to buy Russian gas, they can’t really complain if they don’t get it. She said:

‘To my knowledge, there are no orders where Russia has said we won’t deliver it to you, especially not with regard to the pipeline in Ukraine. Russia can only deliver gas on the basis of contractual obligations, and not just only like that.’

Absolutely.

Of course, if Russia was exploiting the rising cost of gas by engaging in price gouging, there might still be some grounds for complaint. But that’s not the case. Russia prefers to lock its customers into long-term contracts. Anybody who had the good sense to sign such a contract with Gazprom a while back when prices were low will now be laughing: their supplies are guaranteed and they’ll be cheap. Germans, Hungarians, Serbs, and the like are probably feeling a bit smug right now. Others who preferred to gamble on the market, or to dump Russia for an alternative supplier such as American LNG will now have to pay the price. But that’s their fault not Russia’s. As Putin pointed out:

‘The practice of our European partners has confirmed it once more that they made mistakes. We talked to the European Commission’s previous lineup, and all its activity was aimed at phasing out of so-called long-term contracts. It was aimed at transition to spot gas trade. And as it turned out, it has become obvious today, that this practice is a mistake.’

None of this, unfortunately, has stopped the flood of stories blaming Russia for Europe’s gas crisis, a crisis that is in large part due to the latter’s own errors. To give a flavour, here’s some of the headlines in the American and British press this past 24 hours:

‘Don’t Fall For Putin or Orban as They Try to Exploit Europe’s Energy Crisis’ – Washington Post

‘As Europe Faces a Cold Winter, Putin Seizes on the Leverage From Russia’s Gas Output’ – The New York Times

‘Russia has the West over a barrel: Fury at “bullying” Putin for offering Europe more natural gas IF his Nord Stream 2 pipeline is approved.’ – Daily Mail

‘Gas price crisis: Is Putin using energy supply as a weapon and what is its new Nord Stream 2 pipeline?’ – Sky News

‘UK dubbed “Putin’s puppet” as “Soviet” Britain’s gas prices plummet after Russian offer’ – Daily Express

‘How “Sleepy Joe” handed Putin the bargaining chip he is using to hold Europe to ransom in gas crisis’ – Daily Mail

Now, I can understand why Western politicians would want to find a scapegoat for their own failings, but why does the press go along with this? Wasn’t there a time when the Fourth Estate prided itself on holding the powers that be at home to account? Apparently no more. Blaming Russia obviously sells more copy. As long as that remains the case, expect the pipelines of BS to keep on flowing profusely!

October 8, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

US is only country still hanging on to chemical weapons, Russia says, after Washington unveils ‘Novichok’ questions

An open storage for the collection of burnt ammunition containing toxicant agents. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
RT | October 6, 2021

Russian diplomats have hit out at the US after American officials signed a letter demanding information on the circumstances of the purported poisoning of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, accusing Washington of double standards.

On Tuesday, Moscow’s embassy in Washington issued a fiery statement after the US and 44 other countries presented a series of answers from Russia over the incident as part of a missive passed over to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Navalny and his German doctors insist that he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok last year. The envoys blasted the allegations as “unfounded,” and the Kremlin has argued that all requests for evidence from Berlin have gone unanswered.

In response to the allegations, the embassy argued that Russia “is committed to its obligations” under chemical weapons treaties and, “in 2017, our country destroyed all national stocks of chemical warfare agents, which was documented by the OPCW.”

However, the envoys argue that “the US continues to be the only country in the world that has not destroyed its impressive arsenal of chemical weapons.” In 1991, then-US President George H.W. Bush committed to destroying its stockpiles of lethal agents, but progress has since been hampered by a number of issues and decommissioning is still underway, leaving large quantities of chemical munitions, including mustard gas shells.

In March, the US slammed Russia with sanctions, urging Moscow to get rid of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile following the allegations of the use of Novichok against Navalny. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, however, maintained that “Russia declared and verified the destruction of all chemical weapons on its territory many years ago and fully complied with international conventions… Russia has no chemical weapons.”

“By the way,” Peskov added, “we expect that our counterparts will also comply with these conventions.”

This is not the first time that Russia has called on the US to dispose of its chemical weapons. In 2018, the spokesperson for the country’s Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, responded to former US President Donald Trump’s request for Russia to “stop the arms race” developing between the two nations. “Great idea,” Zakharova said. “Let’s start by getting rid of chemical weapons. American ones.”

In response to the US’ latest accusations regarding Russia’s supposed chemical warfare capabilities, the embassy said that it is in the world’s interest that Washington complies with the UN’s international regulations surrounding disarmament. “We call on Washington to complete the chemical demilitarization program as soon as possible and fulfill international obligations, making the world safe from the potential use of this type of weapon,” the embassy added.

October 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

With much of Europe facing a worsening squeeze on gas supplies, the West is already looking to blame Russia

By Rachel Lloyd | RT | October 6, 2021

With gas prices rising dramatically across much of Western Europe, and a dip in its transit through Belarus and Ukraine to the EU, many commentators have pointed the finger once again at Russia, as the source for all their woes.

For some, this is evidence that President Vladimir Putin is weaponizing energy to the detriment of the rest of Europe. However, recent events and well-established agreements seem to tell another, less glamorous, story.

Turning off the taps?

The issue being painted as the next big Russian conspiracy is a noticeable drop in gas supplies being moved through Belarus to the EU. Posted on the site of Gazprom – Russia’s state energy corporation and Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas – are numbers that appear to substantiate a 70% dip in volumes reaching the EU, compared with last month.

That number has upset many, especially in the face of Europe’s biggest energy crisis in years. However, the fact is that there are other well-known factors at play using these numbers as evidence that Russian malevolence is more fear-mongering than fact.

Likely the biggest reason is last year’s agreement between Gazprom and its Belarusian subsidiary operator, where it was decided that much less gas would be transited through the Yamal-Europe pipeline in the fourth quarter of 2021. Unsurprisingly, this change was set to start in October of this year, perfectly coinciding with the drop seen today.

Could Moscow really predict a crunch in the European gas market a year in advance? Not likely, especially considering the uncertainty of Covid-19 and its effect on the near future of the world economy and society.

While there may be a dip in gas deliveries right now, when all data is placed on a timeline of the last four years rather than just two misleading months, it’s clear that such anomalies are typical and that there have been similar falls, which have quickly recovered.

Also, overall supplies from Russia to the EU are still on pace with the prior month’s numbers, if not a bit better. The first four days of October show an average of 210 million cubic meters, which is par for the course compared to September and previous months.

The full picture

There are, of course, other variables that need to be considered, some of which existed before the energy crisis first reared its ugly head. In December of 2019, Kiev and Moscow struck a deal on gas transit via Ukraine. As part of it, Russia’s minimum pledged for shipment was changed to 40 bcm annually from 2021 to 2024, down from 65 bcm in 2020 and 86.8 bcm in 2018.

Additionally, the September agreement between Moscow and Hungary has seen the TurkStream pipeline begin pumping supplies to the Central European nation, starting last week. The deal will supply Hungary with 4.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia annually for the next 15 years. Gas supplies that may have generally transited through Ukraine or the Yamal pipeline are now being funneled through a new route across the Black Sea in order to reach Hungary and Croatia.

There’s also the genuine concern about the cold and snow of the winter season. Russia, known for its harsh winters, can see temperatures drop below -40 centigrade in Siberia – where many of Russia’s gas fields are located. The lower temperatures and harsh conditions of an extreme winter can directly impact oil and gas production and transit.

Typically, to avoid shortages, reserves are filled for storage. However, last year, Russia dealt with an especially long and cold winter and is currently scrambling to stockpile oil and gas to meet its own domestic needs. Gazprom’s oil and gas inventories plummeted to 16% at the end of last winter, well below the standard 35% seen in years prior.

And with the expectation of another brutal snowy season comes the unfortunate understanding that the natural gas powerhouse is not yet in a position to provide more gas to the rest of Europe. In November, when Gazprom should have storage sites replenished, there is hope that Russia can begin to prioritize taking excess volumes and channeling them into the Western European market.

Not orchestrated by Moscow

The unprecedented gas crisis in Europe is currently causing consternation from politicians and economists to those getting their heating bills in the mail. Prices have surged over the past few weeks, often breaking records each day. Current costs are six times higher than last year, with seemingly no end in sight.

However, faulting Putin for the increase is a reach. Demand globally has spiked, potentially as a result of the world economy’s reemergence after the end of global lockdowns. There is more competition among East Asian countries as they angle for a piece of the pie. Just as in Russia, Western European stocks of natural gas were depleted significantly following last winter. There may also be issues developing from Europe’s energy transition.

Delayed by American sanctions in 2019, Nord Stream 2 is beginning to run tests, with natural gas currently being filled in one of the two pipelines. The project will double the current export capacity of gas supplies to Western Europe and is currently awaiting German approval. Had such a delay at the behest of the US not occurred, perhaps gas prices would not be soaring.

In essence, Europe’s current crisis is the result of a perfect storm of conditions – many of which are out of Moscow’s control.

Gazprom “cannot wave a magic wand and deliver extra gas to any place in Europe that requires it on short notice,” notes Vitaly Yermakov, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “No matter how hard Gazprom tries, it cannot single-handedly balance such a huge market as Europe.”

Perhaps those countries worst affected should come together and start searching for solutions, rather than just for someone to blame.

Rachel Lloyd is a policy analyst at the Russian Public Affairs Committee (Ru-PAC). She writes about Russia-US relations, international law, and American foreign policy.

October 6, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

There’s a wide range of factors causing massively increased gas prices in Europe, but Russia is not one of them: Kremlin

By Jonny Tickle | RT | October 6, 2021

Russia has nothing to do with the rapidly rising gas prices in Europe, and the country is providing as much as it possibly can to the rest of the continent, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, amid accusations that Moscow is to blame.

Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the idea that Russia is playing any part in the rising prices. Earlier that day, the price of gas in Europe once again reached a historical record of $1,900 per 1,000 cubic meters.

“The first and most important thing is that we not only believe, but we insist that Russia is playing no role in what is happening on the gas market in Europe,” Peskov said, noting that Gazprom is pumping as much gas as it can “within the framework of the existing contracts.”

According to the Kremlin spokesman, Russia has avoided huge gas prices due to a well-thought-out strategy, while Europe has made mistakes.

“It’s all very simple. If you bet on the development of wind energy, you create the appropriate infrastructure,” Peskov explained. “But different climate processes happen and suddenly there is less wind. This is what is happening this year in Europe. There is less wind and generation is down.”

Some have accused Moscow of intentionally limiting gas supplies to Europe as a means to speed up the launch of the controversial pipeline Nord Stream 2, which was recently completed.

On Tuesday, the European Commission announced it would look into suggestions that Moscow is trying to boost gas prices. However, according to European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, Russia is “fulfilling its long-term contracts.”

October 6, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Could the CIA be behind the leak of the Pandora Papers, given their curious lack of focus on US nationals?

By Kit Klarenberg | RT | October 4, 2021

Hailed as shedding new light on the global elite’s complex financial arrangements, the Pandora Papers pose many questions – not least where are the Americans? Are the authors unwilling to bite the hidden hand that fed them?

On October 3, the Washington, DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) announced the leak of almost three terabytes of incriminating data on the use of offshore financial arrangements by celebrities, fraudsters, drug dealers, royal family members, and religious leaders the world over.

The ICIJ led what it called “the world’s largest-ever journalistic collaboration,” involving over 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries, to comb through the trove of 12 million documents, dubbed the ‘Pandora Papers’.

Among other things, the data reveals the use of tax and financial secrecy havens “to purchase real estate, yachts, jets and life insurance; their use to make investments and to move money between bank accounts; estate planning and other inheritance issues; and the avoidance of taxes through complex financial schemes.” Some documents are also said to be tied to “financial crimes, including money laundering.”

While the publication of articles related to the documents’ bombshell contents is only in its early stages, the Consortium promises that the records contain “an unprecedented amount of information on so-called beneficial owners of entities registered in the British Virgin Islands, Seychelles, Hong Kong, Belize, Panama, South Dakota and other secrecy jurisdictions,” with over 330 politicians and 130 Forbes billionaires named.

Despite the voluminous haul, many critics have pointed out that ICIJ maps of where these “elites and crooks” hail from and/or reside are heavily weighted towards Russia and Latin America – for example, not a single corrupt politician named is based in the US. The organization itself notes that the most significantly represented nations in the files are Argentina, Brazil, China, Russia and the UK – which seems odd, when one considers the Consortium identified over $1 billion held in US-based trusts, key instruments for tax avoidance, evasion, and money laundering.

Then again, past blockbuster releases by the ICIJ, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), its chief collaborator, have contained similarly incongruous omissions. For instance, in March 2019, the latter exposed the ‘Troika Laundromat’, through which Russian politicians, oligarchs, and criminals allegedly funnelled billions of dollars.

The OCCRP published numerous reports on the connivance, and detailed information on the many millions laundered via major Western financial institutions in the process, including Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase. However, not once was HSBC ever mentioned – despite the Troika having openly advertised the bank as its “agent partner,” and then-OCCRP data team head Friedrich Lindberg publicly conceding that HSBC was “incredibly prominent” in “all” of the Troika’s corrupt schemes.

The reason for this extraordinary oversight has never been adequately explained, although one possible answer could be that the OCCRP’s reporting partners on the story were the BBC and The Guardian. The former was headed by Rona Fairhead from 2014 to 2017, who also served as non-executive director of HSBC between 2004 and 2016. Meanwhile, the latter has long enjoyed a lucrative commercial relationship with the bank, which is surely vital to keeping the struggling publication’s lights on.

The April 2016 Panama Papers investigation, jointly led by the ICIJ and OCCRP, revealed how the services of Panamanian offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca had been exploited by wealthy individuals and public officials for fraud, tax evasion, and to circumvent international sanctions. The pair’s reporting, and resultant media coverage, focused heavily on high-profile individuals such as then-UK prime minister David Cameron, who profited from a Panama-based trust established by his father.

A key promoter of the Papers’ most lurid contents was billionaire Bill Browder. What the convicted fraudster, and indeed a vast number of news outlets that featured his comments about the leak, have consistently failed to acknowledge was that he himself is named in Mossack Fonseca’s papers, linked to a large number of shell companies in Cyprus used to insulate his clients from tax on vast profits he amassed for them while investing in Russia during the tumultuous 1990s, and disguise ownership of lavish properties he owns abroad.

As Browder has testified, he enjoys an intimate relationship with the OCCRP, having engaged them in his global crusade against Russia since his unceremonious ban from entering the country in 2005. Furthermore, many other mainstream outlets, including Bloomberg and the Financial Times, which he has likewise used as pawns in his Russophobic propaganda blitz, have reportedly declined to publish stories about his dubious financial dealings.

Such evident reluctance to bite the hand that feeds could well explain why the Pandora Papers appear largely silent on the offshore dealings of wealthy US nationals and US-based individuals.

Take for instance the fortunes of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and investor George Soros, which reportedly total at least $11.6 billion and $7.5 billion respectively – no information implicating them in any questionable scheme has yet been unearthed. It may not be a coincidence that both provide funding to the ICIJ and OCCRP via their highly controversial Luminate and Open Society ‘philanthropic’ enterprises.

The OCCRP’s roll call of financiers offers other reasons for concern – nestled among them are the National Endowment for Democracy and United States Agency for International Development, both of which avowedly serve to further US national security interests, and have been embroiled in numerous military and intelligence operations to destabilize and displace foreign “enemy” governments since their very inception. Moreover, though, there are disturbing indications that the OCCRP itself was created by Washington for this very purpose.

In June, a White House press conference was convened on the subject of “the fight against corruption.” Over the course of proceedings, a nameless “senior administration official” announced that the US government would place “the anti-corruption plight at the center of its foreign policy,” and wished to “prioritize this work across the board.”

They went on to state the precise dimensions of this anti-corruption push “[remained] to be seen,” but it was expected that “components of the intelligence community,” including the director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, would be key players therein.

Their activities would supplement existing, ongoing US efforts to “identify corruption where it’s happening and take appropriate policy responses,” by “[bolstering] other actors” such as “investigative journalists and investigative NGOs” already receiving support from Washington.

“We’ll be looking at what more we can do on that front… There are lines of assistance that have jump-started [investigative] journalism organizations,” they stated. “What comes to my mind most immediately is OCCRP, as well as foreign assistance that goes to NGOs.”

These illuminating words, completely ignored at the time by Western news outlets, have gained an even eerier resonance in light of recent developments. Indeed, they seem to establish a blueprint for precisely what has transpired, courtesy of the OCCRP, the very organization it “jump-started” and financially supports to this day.

For its part, the media merely state that the ICIJ “obtained” the documents, their ultimate source unspecified. As such, it’s only reasonable to ask – is the CIA behind the release of the Pandora Papers?

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. 

October 4, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

YouTube deletes 2 channels of RT DE with 600K subscribers over ‘community guidelines’ violation

RT | September 28, 2021

YouTube has permanently deleted two of RT’s German-language channels, the news outlet has announced. RT DE was listed among top News & Politics channels on the social media platform, with hundreds of millions of views.

The Google-owned video service “has deleted the RT DE channel, as well as our second channel DFP [Der Fehlende Part, “the missing piece”], without the right to restoration,” Dinara Toktosunova, head of RT in Germany, announced on her Telegram channel on Tuesday.

The main RT DE channel was barred from live-streaming and uploading videos for seven days since September 21, on the basis of a strike over “community guidelines” violations, for alleged “medical misinformation” in four videos. YouTube did not elaborate on what specifically was questionable in the clips. The videos, some weeks while others months old, focused on the Covid-19 crisis. They featured, among others, an interview with German epidemiologist Friedrich Puerner, who was critical of the governmental ways of battling the pandemic.

The strike was due to expire on Tuesday, but YouTube removed the channel. The social media platform said in a statement: “We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from Youtube.”

The same thing happened with DFP, which had no strikes and posted RT DE content. A YouTube representative later confirmed that publishing material on the DFP was, according to the tech giant, a violation of the strike handed to RT DE’s main channel. As a result, both channels were deleted.

RT DE was among the top five German-language channels in YouTube’s News and Politics category, based on Tubular Labs data for August, with over 600,000 subscribers and almost 547 million total views.

In recent months, RT DE has faced mounting pressure in Germany, including over its plans to launch a TV broadcast later this year. In mid-August, Luxembourg denied RT’s application for a German-language broadcast license. Chancellor Angela Merkel denied pressuring the neighbouring country to do so, despite multiple German outlets reporting that representatives from Berlin met with Luxembourg officials to discuss the issue.

Ahead of the planned TV launch, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said some German media outlets had waged “an outright information war” against RT. The same month, Die Welt – owned by the Axel Springer conglomerate – published two opinion pieces that German courts later found contained false claims about RT DE.

Earlier this year, Commerzbank abruptly and without explanation announced that it was shutting down accounts associated with RT DE. When the outlet reached out to other German banks, its inquiries about doing business were ignored or rejected.

September 28, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

BBC submarine drama is anti-Russian propaganda machine in action

By Johanna Ross | September 25, 2021

The scene: a British nuclear submarine. A detective has been sent to investigate the death of a sailor. When she asks the Naval Commander why there needs to be so much secrecy, as Britain is not at war, he responds ‘That is an illusion. We have always been at war’.

The series, entitled ‘Vigil’ is the BBC’s most watched drama of the year, and has been well publicised, attracting an audience of 10.2 million over its first week. It depicts a fight with an illusive, ruthless adversary that successfully manages to infiltrate a UK submarine to ‘knock out Britain’s nuclear deterrent’, killing British citizens in the process. The murder weapon of choice is a nerve agent; can you guess who the enemy is yet?

Of course it’s Russia. Nuclear submarines, nerve agent, a treacherous opponent; from the opening sequence with video footage of Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev projected onto a submarine, the audience is under no illusion as to who this adversary is. Nowadays, the British public almost expects it to be Russia.

For years now the UK population has been schooled on ‘evil Russia’ across all media platforms – from the news to TV dramas to films – with the line between fiction and reality becoming increasingly blurred. One of the most Googled questions about the ‘Vigil’ drama series is ‘is it real?’ This is hardly surprising given the sheer volume of anti-Russian content, with cinema often dramatising real life events and vice versa.

Take the Skripal case, for instance. The apparent poisoning with ‘Novichok’ of the former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter took place just a few months after a British/American TV series ‘Strike Back’ was released, in which a ‘rogue Russian biochemist‘ was working on a substance of the very same name. That was probably the first time that western audiences had ever heard the word ‘Novichok’, and yet, by extraordinary coincidence, it was to appear on our TV screens just a few months later, in the news.  The finger of blame was immediately pointed at Moscow, just as preparations were being made for Russia to host the 2018 world cup. The timing could not have been worse for the Kremlin, and yet it helped Britain considerably in its bid to discredit Russia in its hosting of the sporting event.

TV and cinema being used by governments as instruments to sway and foster public opinion is nothing new. In the book ‘Propaganda and empire: the manipulation of British public opinion, 1880-1960’ John M MacKenzie explores the plethora of ways the British government promoted imperialism throughout the empire’s existence, not only through cinema, but using everything from cigarette cards to school textbooks. During the war, the British Ministry of Information also pumped out films with instructive government messaging under the direction of Humphrey Jennings. These documentaries were more about what to do and what not to do, promoting slogans such as ‘grow your own’ and ‘make do and mend’ to aid the war effort on the home front.

The ‘Vigil’ drama obviously had a considerable budget. And its political function is twofold; it highlights the ‘threat’ from Russia, and the question of the Trident’s future in an independent Scotland. By playing up the idea of a real, imminent danger from Russia, it persuades the viewer of the importance of retaining Britain’s nuclear deterrent. As tensions grow between East and West, and Boris Johnson pursues his ‘Global Britain’ strategy, we will no doubt see more programmes emphasising Britain’s military strength countering Russia and let’s not forget, China. Sadly, such manipulation of the population doesn’t encourage understanding between peoples and instead, fosters division and discrimination. At best it is Britain using Russia as a scapegoat to bolster its sense of national pride; at worse, it is laying the groundwork for a future conflict with Russia.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

September 25, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Film Review, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Putin the Poisoner? More Doubts Over Attempts to Delegitimize Russia’s Leader

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 23, 2021

It seems that ever since Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 the western media and numerous politicians have been working especially hard to convince the world that the Russian government is little better than a modern version of Josef Stalin’s USSR. Part of the effort can be attributed to the Democratic Party’s desire to blame someone other than the unattractive candidate Hillary for the defeat, but there is also something more primitive operating behind the scenes, something like a desire to return to a bipolar world in which one knew one’s enemies and one’s friends.

The anti-Russian bias has manifested itself in a number of ways, to include the fabricated libel referred to as Russiagate, but it also featured personal denigration of the Russian leadership as a rogue regime inclined to employ assassination by poisoning against its critics and political opponents.

The first widely publicized assassination of a Russian dissident took place in London in 2006. Alexander Litvinenko, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer and critic of the government who had sought asylum in England, died after he met two Russian acquaintances in a hotel bar and was reportedly poisoned by a dose of radioactive polonium inserted into his cup of tea. The Russians whom he had met with were named by the British police but the Russian government refused extradition requests. Without any evidence, the British media claimed that Litvinenko had been killed under orders from Putin personally.

More recently, the poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on March 4th, 2018 made headlines around the world. Sergei was living near Salisbury England and his daughter was visiting from Moscow when they were found unconscious on a park bench. A policeman later investigating the incident also suffered from the effects of what appeared to be a nerve agent, which investigative sources claimed had been sprayed on to the front door handle of the Skripal residence. Both Sergei and Yulia survived the incident.

There was quite a bit that was odd about the Skripal case, which came at a time when there was considerable tension between Russia and the NATO allies over issues like Syria and Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin was regularly demonized, seen in the western media as a malevolent presence stalking the world stage.

Observers noted that the British investigation of the poisoning relied from the start “… on circumstantial evidence and secret intelligence.” And there was inevitably a rush to judgment. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson blamed Russia before any chemical analysis of the alleged poisoning could have taken place. British Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament shortly thereafter to blame the Kremlin and demand a Russian official response to the event in 36 hours, declaring that the apparent poisoning was “very likely” caused by a made-in-Russia nerve agent referred to by its generic name novichok. The British media was soon on board, spreading the government line that such a highly sensitive operation would require the approval of President Putin himself. Repeated requests by Russia to obtain a sample of the alleged nerve agent for testing were rejected by the British government in spite of the fact that a military grade nerve agent would have surely killed both the Skripals as well as anyone else within 100 yards.

The expulsion of scores of Russian diplomats and imposition of sanctions soon followed with the United States and other countries following suit. The report of the new sanctions was particularly surprising as Yulia Skripal had subsequently announced that she intends to return to her home in Russia, leading to the conclusion that even one of the alleged victims did not believe the narrative being promoted by the British and American governments.

The response within the United States was also immediate and threatening. A New York Times editorial on March 12th entitled Vladimir Putin’s Toxic Reach thundered: “The attack on the former spy, Sergei Skripal, who worked for British intelligence, and his daughter Yulia, in which a police officer who responded was also poisoned, was no simple hit job. Like the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko, another British informant, who was poisoned with radioactive polonium 210, the attack on Mr. Skripal was intended to be as horrific, frightening and public as possible. It clearly had the blessing of President Vladimir Putin, who had faced little pushback from Britain in the Litvinenko case. The blame has been made clearer this time and this attack on a NATO ally needs a powerful response both from that organization and, perhaps more important, by the United States.”

But the story of the poisoning of the Skripals began to come apart very quickly. Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray detailed how the narrative was cooked by “liars” in the government to make it look as if the poisoning had a uniquely Russian fingerprint. Meanwhile prize winning U.S. investigative reporter Gareth Porter summed up the actual evidence or lack thereof, for Russian involvement, suggesting that the entire affair was “based on politically-motivated speculation rather than actual intelligence.”

The head of Britain’s own top secret chemical weapons facility Porton Down even contradicted claims made by May and Johnson, saying that he did not know if the nerve agent was actually produced in Russia as the chemical formula was revealed to the public in a scientific paper in 1992 and there were an estimated twenty countries capable of producing it. Some speculated that a false flag operation by the British themselves, the CIA or Mossad, was not unthinkable. Development of novichok type poisons is known to have taken place at both Porton Down and at the U.S. chemical weapon facility Fort Dietrich Maryland.

But the most damning evidence opposing a Russian role in the alleged poisonings was that Moscow had no motive to kill a former British double agent who had been released from a Kremlin prison in a spy swap after ten years in prison and who was no longer capable of doing any damage. If Moscow had wanted him dead, they could have killed him while he was still in Russian custody. Putin had an election coming up and Russia was to be the host of the World Cup in the summer, an event that would be an absolute top priority to have go smoothly without any complications from a major spy case.

There is now new evidence that the claims of Russian involvement in the alleged assassination attempt were fraudulent, engineered by the British government, possibly in collusion with American intelligence, to smear Vladimir Putin in particular. Bulgarian investigative journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva has written an article entitled “UK Defense Ministry Document Reveals Skripals’ Blood Samples Could have been Manipulated.”

Relying on a series of British-version Freedom of Information Act queries, Gaytandzhieva determined that there was a considerable gap between the time when it was claimed the Skirpals’ blood was drawn and the time when it was actually tested for possible poisons at Porton Down. The gap is inexplicable and means in legal terms that the chain of custody was broken. It further suggests that the samples could have been deliberately diverted and tampered with.

Gaytandzhieva, who provides copies of the relevant government documents in her article, sums up her case as “New evidence has emerged of gross violations during the UK investigation into the alleged poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on 4th March 2018.” The Ministry of Defense, which is in charge of the British military laboratory DSTL Porton Down which analyzed the Skripals blood samples responded to a request that “Our searches have failed to locate any information that provides the exact time that the samples were collected.” The samples “were collected at some point between 16:15 on 4 March 2018 and 18:45 on 5 March 2018. Even the time of arrival at Porton Down is indicated as “approximate.”

She also cites some expert testimony, “A British toxicologist [commented] that ‘It is inconceivable that with such a visibility case, and the obvious significance of any and all biological samples, normal and expected sample logging and documentation did not take place. The person drawing the sample, in any clinical or forensic setting knows that the date and time must be recorded, and the donor positively identified. In a criminal case, evidence gleaned from these samples would be thrown out as inadmissible… This lack of protocol is either very sloppy or clandestine.”

If the Skripals case sounds very similar to the recent alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny it should, as the same rush to judgement by many of the same players took place. Navalny became ill while on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow on August 20th, 2020 and was taken to a hospital in Omsk after an emergency landing. The Russian hospital could not find any poison in his blood and attributed his condition to metabolic disorder. Two days later, the Russian government allowed Navalny to be transported to a hospital in Germany which then announced that the Putin government had poisoned Navalny with novichok, which became the story that was read and televised worldwide. Interestingly, there is now evidence that the air medevac team was standing by and ready even before anyone knew Navalny was ill, suggesting that it was planned in advance. Once in Germany, as in the case of the Skripal poisoning, the evidence of the crime mysteriously disappeared for a while. Blood samples and water bottles allegedly containing the novichok were sent to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons offices for verification. They took five days to arrive.

The doubts regarding both the Skripals and Navalny poisonings might suggest that the Cold War never really ended, at least from the Anglo-American perspective. Whatever Vladimir Putin has been doing for the past three years hardly touches on genuine U.S. or British interests, unless one considers the governance of places like Ukraine and Syria to be potentially threatening. That someone, somewhere, somehow seems to be making an effort to isolate and delegitimize President Putin by making him an international poisoner is tragedy elevated by its absurdity to the level of farce. It serves no purpose and, in the end, can only lead to mistrust on all sides that can in turn become very, very ugly.

September 23, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

New Proof Emerges of the Biden Family Emails: a Definitive Account of the CIA/Media/BigTech Fraud

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer warns that emails and other documents reported on by The NY Post about Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China may be “Russian disinformation,” Oct. 16, 2020.
By Glenn Greenwald | September 22, 2021

A severe escalation of the war on a free internet and free discourse has taken place over the last twelve months. Numerous examples of brute and dangerous censorship have emerged: the destruction by Big Tech monopolies of Parler at the behest of Democratic politicians at the time that it was the most-downloaded app in the country; the banning of the sitting president from social media; and the increasingly explicit threats from elected officials in the majority party of legal and regulatory reprisals in the event that tech platforms do not censor more in accordance with their demands.

But the most severe episode of all was the joint campaign — in the weeks before the 2020 election — by the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party to censor and suppress a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Joe Biden. On October 14 and then October 15, 2020, The New York Post, the nation’s oldest newspaper, published two news reports on Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China that raised serious questions about his integrity and ethics: specifically whether he and his family were trading on his name and influence to generate profit for themselves. The Post said that the documents were obtained from a laptop left by Joe Biden’s son Hunter at a repair shop.

From the start, the evidence of authenticity was overwhelming. The Post published obviously genuine photos of Hunter that were taken from the laptop. Investigations from media outlets found people who had received the emails in real-time and they compared the emails in their possession to the ones in the Post‘s archive, and they matched word-for-word. One of Hunter’s own business associates involved in many of these deals, Tony Bobulinski, confirmed publicly and in interviews that the key emails were genuine and that they referenced Joe Biden’s profit participation in one deal being pursued in China. A forensics analyst issued a report concluding the archive had all the earmarks of authenticity. Not even the Bidens denied that the emails were real: something they of course would have done if they had been forged or altered. In sum, as someone who has reported on numerous large archives similar to this one and was faced with the heavy burden of ensuring the documents were genuine before risking one’s career and reputation by reporting them, it was clear early on that all the key metrics demonstrated that these documents were real.

Despite all that, former intelligence officials such as Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper led a group of dozens of former spooks in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Note that this phrase contains two separate assertions: 1) the documents came from Russia and 2) they are fake (“disinformation”). The intelligence officials admitted in this letter that — in their words — “we do not know if the emails are genuine or not,” and also admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” Yet it repeatedly insinuated that everyone should nonetheless believe this:

Letter from 60 former intelligence officials about the New York Post reporting, Oct. 19, 2020

But the complete lack of evidence for these claims — that even these career CIA liars acknowledged plagued their assertions — did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to censor this reporting from the internet. One of the first to spread this lie was the co-queen of Russiagate frauds, Natasha Bertrand, then of Politico and now promoted, because of lies like this, to CNN. “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared her headline in Politico on October 19, just five days after the Post began its reporting. From there, virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.

On October 21 — exactly one week after the Post‘s first report — The Intercept published a false story under the melodramatic headline “We’re Not a Democracy” about these materials from former New York Times reporter James Risen. This propaganda assault masquerading as “news” mindlessly laundered the CIA’s lies about the laptop. This is what appeared in this outlet that still claims to do “adversarial” reporting:

Their latest falsehood once again involves Biden, Ukraine, and a laptop mysteriously discovered in a computer repair shop and passed to the New York Post…. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.

Note that even the intelligence officials, who acknowledged they had no evidence to support this claim, were more honest than The Intercept, which omitted that critical admission. Days later, this very same outlet — which I co-founded seven years earlier to be adversarial, not subservient, to evidence-free assertions from the intelligence community, and which was designed to be an antidote to rather than a clone of The New York Times — told me that I could not publish the article I had written about the Biden archive because it did not meet their lofty and rigorous editorial standards: the same lofty and rigorous editorial standards that led to uncritical endorsement of the CIA’s lies just days earlier. It was that episode, as Matt Taibbi recounted at the time, that prompted my resignation from the outlet I created in protest of this censorship, in order to report instead only on free speech platforms such as this one.

But the media disinformation about the Post‘s documents — obviously designed to protect Joe Biden in the lead-up to the election — were not the worst aspect of what happened here. Far worse was the decision by Twitter to prohibit any discussion of this reporting or posting of links to the story both publicly and privately on the platform. Worse still was the immediate announcement by Facebook through its communications executive Andy Stone — a life-long Democratic Party operative — that it would algorithmically suppress the story pending a “fact check” by “Facebook’s third-party fact-check partners.” Despite multiple requests from me and others, Facebook never published the results of this alleged fact-check and still refuse to say whether it ever conducted one. Why? Because the documents they blocked millions of Americans from learning about were clearly true and authentic.

As indicated, there was ample proof from the start that these documents were genuine and that the only ones engaged in “disinformation” and lies was this axis of the CIA, corporate media, and Big Tech. Yet the most dispositive proof yet emerged on Tuesday — not from a right-wing news outlet that liberals have been trained to ignore and disbelieve but from one of the most mainstream news institutions in the country.

A young reporter for Politico, Ben Schreckinger, has published a new book entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power.” To his great credit, he spent months investigating the key documents published by The New York Post and found definitive proof that these emails and related documents are indisputably authentic. His own outlet, Politico, was the first to publish the CIA lie that this was “Russian disinformation,” but on Tuesday — without acknowledging their role in spreading that lie — they summarized Schreckinger’s findings this way: the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.” In his book, the reporter recounts in these passages just some of the extensive work he did to obtain this proof:

A person who corresponded with Hunter in late 2018 confirmed to me the authenticity of an email in the cache. Another person who corresponded with Hunter in January 2019 confirmed the authenticity of a different email exchange with Hunter in the cache. Both of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of being embroiled in a global controversy.

A third person who had independent access to Hunter’s emails confirmed to me that the emails published by the New York Post related to Burisma and the CEFC venture matched the substance of emails Hunter had in fact received. (This person was not in a position to compare the published emails word-for-word to the originals.)

The National Property Board of Sweden, part of the Swedish Finance Ministry, has released correspondence between Hunter and House of Sweden employees to me and to a Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, under the country’s freedom of information law. Emails released by the property board match emails in the cache.

Excerpts from POLITICO reporter Ben Schreckinger’s new book: “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power”, Sept. 2020

Given what I regard as the unparalleled gravity of what was done here — widespread media deceit toward millions of American voters in the weeks before a presidential election based on a CIA lie, along with brute censorship of the story by Big Tech — and given that so much of what was done here took place on television, we produced this morning what I regard as the definitive video report of this scandal. I realize this report is longer than the standard video — it is just over an hour — but I really believe that it is vital, particularly with the emergence of this new indisputable proof, to take a comprehensive look at how the intelligence community, in partnership with Big Tech and the corporate media, disseminated massive lies and disinformation, using censorship and other manipulative techniques, to shape the outcome of what was a close election. (We will very shortly institute our new feature of producing transcripts for all videos above ten minutes in length, but I really hope that as many people as can do so will watch this video report).

After observing what they did, I hope and believe you will have a similar reaction to the one I had after spending the day compiling and reporting it all. No matter how much you despise this sector of the corporate media, it is nowhere near close enough to the level of contempt and scorn they deserve. You can watch our video report on my Rumble page.

September 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

US demands Russia boost natural gas deliveries to Europe through Ukraine

RT | September 22, 2021

The US says Russia must increase supplies of natural gas to Europe through Ukraine to curb skyrocketing energy costs, sticking to its negative stance on the launch of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

“The reality is there are pipelines with enough capacity through Ukraine to supply Europe. Russia has consistently said it has enough gas supply to be able to do so, so if that is true, then they should, and they should do it quickly through Ukraine,” Amos Hochstein, senior adviser for energy security at the US State Department, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Hochstein said supplies of gas from Russia to Europe are “inexplicably low compared to both previous years and to what they have the capacity to do.” He also said that Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom’s refusal to book additional gas transit through Ukrainian territory for October “increases the concern.”

The US official also accused Moscow of trying to use Europe’s energy crisis to speed up the launch of the newly constructed Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea. Hochstein underlined that US President Joe Biden and his administration oppose the launch of the project.

Gas prices in Europe have been hitting records, with October futures on the Dutch TTF exchange reaching record $963.9 per 1,000 cubic meters this month, while on September 20 the estimated price was $911.2.

Russia’s Gazprom has repeatedly pointed to the connection between high gas prices and lower-than-needed reserves in European underground storage facilities ahead of the approaching winter. As of September 19, those reserves were only 72% full, TASS reported, which is nearly 14% lower than in the past five years.

However, Gazprom emphasized last week that its current volume of gas supplies to Europe is in full compliance with the existing contracts. The company has been uneager to book additional volumes in the pipelines running through Ukraine due to high fees.

Gazprom is also counting on the launch of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline capable of delivering 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas annually. The pipeline’s daily capacity of gas supply is comparable to the entire volume of liquefied gas that is now supplied to Europe.

However, Russia may have to wait up to four months for EU certification required to start deliveries. The project has been repeatedly delayed under pressure from Washington and some Eastern European countries, which view increasing energy imports from Russia as a threat to Europe’s energy security.

September 22, 2021 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

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