RT | March 26, 2023
The EU will respond with further sanctions if Belarus presses ahead with hosting Russian nuclear weapons on its soil, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, has stated. Borrell called the decision to transfer tactical weapons to Belarus “an irresponsible escalation” by Moscow.
“Belarus hosting Russian nuclear weapons would mean an irresponsible escalation and threat to European security,” Borrell tweeted on Sunday. “Belarus can still stop it, it is their choice,” he continued, adding that “the EU stands ready to respond with further sanctions.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed on Saturday that his country’s tactical nuclear weapons will arrive in Belarus as early as this summer. Putin said that he made the decision after the UK announced it would transfer toxic depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine, a move he described as a sign of London’s “absolute recklessness.”
Belarus has already been extensively sanctioned by the EU and US since the start of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine last February. Brussels has blacklisted more than 20 Belarusian officials, cut five of the nation’s banks off from the SWIFT system, and imposed numerous trade restrictions.
Prior to 2022, the EU banned Belarusian flights from operating in its airspace and imposed five separate sets of sanctions in response to President Alexander Lukashenko’s 2020 election victory, which the EU deemed fraudulent.
In his announcement on Saturday, Putin explained that any nuclear weapons transferred to Belarus would remain under Russian control.
“There is nothing unusual,” about this arrangement, Putin stated, explaining that “the United States has been doing this for decades” by keeping its own nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye.
“They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allies,” he said. “We agreed that we will do the same, without violating our international obligations on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
RT | March 25, 2023
Hungary will not agree to Ukraine joining NATO and the EU as long as Kiev continues to discriminate against ethnic Hungarians living in Transcarpathia, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
Szijjarto added that he raised the issue at a meeting with the UN assistant secretary general for human rights, Ilze Brands Kehris.
Up to 99 Hungarian primary and secondary schools are in danger of being closed in Ukraine due to the nation’s education law, Szijjarto said. “I made it clear to Ilze Brands Kehris… that Hungary will not be able to support Ukraine’s transatlantic and European integration [bids] under any circumstances as long as Hungarian schools in the Transcarpathia region are in danger,” the minister wrote on Facebook on Friday.
Kiev has been cracking down on minority language rights for years. Laws enforcing the use of Ukrainian in education and television were adopted as early as 2017 under then-President Pyotr Poroshenko. In 2018, another law banned the teaching of Russian, as well as Romanian, Polish, and Hungarian beyond the primary school level.
In 2019, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission criticized Ukraine’s State Language Law, saying it “fails to strike balance between strengthening Ukrainian and safeguarding minorities’ linguistic rights.”
Budapest has been among the most vocal critics of Kiev’s language policies in the West. According to Szijjarto, Ukraine has not done anything substantial to address Hungary’s concerns.
“For the past eight years, we have continuously received promises from the Ukrainian authorities that they will solve this problem, but they have not actually done anything,” he said.
Around 156,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Ukraine, most of them in the western region of Transcarpathia. Ukraine is also home to around 150,000 ethnic Romanians and more than 250,000 Moldovans, and Bucharest previously joined Budapest in demanding that the language laws be revised.
In February, Szijjarto announced that the Council of Europe will review Kiev’s treatment of minorities and issue a report on its alleged discrimination against ethnic Hungarians and Romanians living in Ukraine this summer. He pointed to yet another law adopted in December 2022, which mandated the use of Ukrainian in most aspects of daily and public life, including schools.
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 23.03.2023
The US and its allies slapped packages of sanctions on Russia shortly after Moscow had launched its special military operation in Ukraine.
Russian Prime Minister Mishustin stated on Thursday that the US-led Western sanctions barrage targeting Russians has failed.
“At the very beginning, the West tried to assure that the sanctions were not directed against our citizens. And at the time, there were no illusions on this score. But now, even a person far removed from global politics understands that the main target was precisely the Russian people,” the prime minister emphasized during his speech at the State Duma, Russia’s lower house.
He said that the West “stopped at nothing”, even going as far as blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipeline network and seizing banking accounts.
Also, they “disconnected [Russia] from the international payment system, trying to block all banking and any other economic activity [of the country],” Mishustin pointed out.
The Russian PM emphasized that despite the sanctions, “goods and services-related payments as well as money transfers are being carried out just like before.”
“All bank cards in Russia that were previously in use are still working. The government also managed to reduce inflationary pressure and preserve the banking sector’s stability,” Mishustin stressed.
He recalled that last spring, “analysts were predicting a probable double-digit decline in Russia’s gross domestic product (GDP),” but he emphasized “we weathered the storm.” “It was a tricky task. The economic slowdown, [which was] inevitable under such conditions, was quite mild. Nevertheless, We’ve put the economy back on the growth track,” he added.
The Russian prime minister highlighted that in this regard the government had created “all the necessary work conditions for those companies that see their future in Russia, including firms from unfriendly states.”
“Despite all the restrictions, the negation of property rights, and the discriminatory measures that Russian businesses faced in the West, foreign companies feel comfortable when working in Russia,” Mushustin noted. He warned that “if foreign firms ditch their business operations in Russia and fail to take care of the future of their enterprises and employees, we will protect the interests of our people.”
The PM cautioned that “external pressure” on the Russian economy is unlikely to show signs of easing any time soon, and that “the period of [the economy’s] adaptation will end in 2024. Moreover, Russia will embark on the path of long-term progressive development.”
Last year, Western governments began to slap sweeping sanctions on the Russian economy over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. However, these measures finally boomeranged on the economies of the US-led West as these restrictive measures sent inflation (especially in the energy sector) skyrocketing to record highs while simultaneously driving their societies into a cost of living crisis.
By Ahmed Adel | March 23, 2023
Although Western media were boasting about Sberbank’s 78% plunge in profit in 2022 due to US-led sanctions, with CEO German Gref acknowledging a “most difficult year”, it appears that the US economic system is the one actually on the brink as four banks have already collapsed, with dozens more expected to follow.
CNN described the Russian bank’s drop in profit as a “collapse” in its headline, but then had to admit in the article that “Sberbank’s resilience in the face of sanctions helped Russia’s banking sector recover from a loss-making first half in 2022.”
This is in line with Gref’s belief that this year’s profits should be close to the record 1.25 trillion rubles ($16.5 billion) earned in the “pre-crisis year.” “Our business model passed another strength test,” he added.
It is recalled that Russian Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on March 14 that there is “practically” no risk of Russia facing a fallout from the SVB collapse, adding that: “Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions.”
Despite alarmist headlines from US media and experts, Peskov was proven correct as no Russian bank has collapsed despite Western sanctions. Meanwhile, the full repercussions of SVB’s downfall are yet to be felt, with former Lehman Brothers executive Lawrence McDonald believing that up to another 50 American banks could collapse if structural problems are not fixed.
“So Lehman failed and then it forced this too-big-to-fail system, and then, now this interest rate shock to the regional banks is moving hundreds of billions of dollars out of regional banks into the big banks… So you could have another 50 bank failures… unless they fix the structural problem,” said McDonald on March 22.
“There’s going to be further damage. They have to cut rates and then they have to have a deposit guarantee, a larger one, that’s what they’re going to come up with… That’s a bailout. That’s basically the federal government taking on bank deposit risk,” he added.
By being cut-off from the Western banking system, Russia is effectively protected from the series of bank collapses that are expected to follow. Russia faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis, a demonstration of how it too was exposed to weaknesses in the US economy.
Although Russia was cut-off from SWIFT only two-days after the special military operation began, in addition to many other Western restrictions, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap, President Vladimir Putin boasted about the resilience of the Russian economy.
The IMF reported that Russia’s economy contracted by 2.2% in 2022 and will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3%, and then 2.1% in 2024. This is impressive when considering that fellow European countries, which are not sanctioned, will be struggling immensely. The UK is expected to contract by 0.6% and Germany will have a growth of only 0.1%.
At the same time, the OECD forecasts that US economic growth would slow from 1.5% this year to 0.9% next year. This is due to higher interest rates slowing down demand. Bloomberg on March 21, citing sources, reported that the US Treasury Department is studying the possibility of guaranteeing all bank deposits in the event of a recession in the banking sector.
The current banking crisis has forced economists, including from the esteemed JPMorgan Chase, to make new recession forecasts after any hopes of recovery were snuffed away.
“The Fed is facing a difficult task on Wednesday, but it is likely already past the point of no return,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients on March 22. “A soft landing now looks unlikely, with the airplane in a tailspin (lack of market confidence) and engines about to turn off (bank lending).”
Goldman Sachs also echoed JPMorgan and said in mid-March that the banking crisis could deliver a severe blow to economic growth.
For his part, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has warned multiple times, including as recently as March 9 but even from before the banking crisis, that the economy could be heading for a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” referencing a Looney Tunes character who was always blissfully unaware that he was about to hit the ground after running off the edge of a cliff.
However, the expected collapse of many banks in the US and the impending economic crisis has not deterred the determination of the Biden administration to fanatically arm, fund and train the Ukrainian military and regime. With millions of Americans on the verge of dropping out of the Middle Class, Washington continues to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, and all the while Western sanctions are now beginning to have a minimum effect on the Russian economy, thus effectively rendering them nearly useless.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
RT | March 21, 2023
Ukraine will not be allowed to join the EU or NATO until it restores the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in its Transcarpathian Region, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a press conference in Brussels, Szijjarto added that the US-led military bloc was violating its own rules by pushing ahead with a set of meetings involving the Kiev government despite Budapest’s objections.
“I would like to say that we will not support any significant integration movement of Ukraine towards the EU or NATO until the rights of the Hungarian ethnic community that it had prior to 2015 are restored in Ukraine,” the foreign minister told reporters.
Around 150,000 ethnic Hungarians live in modern Ukraine’s Transcarpathian Region, just across the border from Hungary. Budapest will not give up on them “under any circumstances,” despite pressure from both sides of the Atlantic to do so, Szijjarto added.
He also objected to the convening of the NATO-Ukraine Committee on ministerial level despite Budapest’s objections.
“This decision violates NATO’s unity and procedures for the unity of will,” Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said on Tuesday, referring to the bloc’s consensus requirement.
Szijjarto has voiced his objections to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, but agreed to attend the April 4 meeting for the “opportunity to discuss minority protections.”
Hungary became a member of NATO in 1999 and joined the EU in 2004. In recent months, Brussels has withheld funding from Budapest in an attempt to compel the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban to implement a set of policies championed by the bloc, which he has rejected as harmful.
Hungary has consistently argued for a negotiated end to the hostilities in Ukraine. Budapest continues to prohibit any transit of weapons or ammunition through Hungarian territory, and has not agreed to supply Kiev with arms or ammunition.
Press TV – March 21, 2023
The United States and the European Union have announced new shipments of military aid to Ukraine.
The US government announced on Monday a new package for the Kiev forces fighting Russian troops in pro-Moscow regions in eastern Ukraine. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington will send Ukraine $350 million in weaponry and equipment.
Separately, a group of 17 EU member states plus Norway said they have agreed on a two-billion-euro plan to deliver artillery rounds and other ammunition to Ukraine over the next year.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell had called on member countries to provide Kiev with one million artillery rounds, including from their own stockpiles. Borrell described the move as “a historic decision” for the 27-nation bloc and Norway.
“We are taking a key step towards delivering on our promises to provide Ukraine with more artillery ammunition,” he said, noting 18 countries had signed up to a European Defense Agency (EDA) project to place joint orders for ammunition with the defense industry.
In the meantime, Kiev has complained its forces are compelled to ration firepower as Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, which kicked off more than a year ago, has turned into an exhaustive war of attrition.
The secretary general of the NATO, however, says Ukraine’s Western allies are having a hard time keeping up with Kiev’s ever-increasing demand for ammunition.
“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting allied stockpiles,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters last month.
Russia launched the war after Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the 2014 Minsk agreements and Moscow’s recognition of the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Since then, the US and its European allies have imposed unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow while supplying large consignments of heavy weaponry to Kiev, flooding Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars of weapons and munitions. Moscow has condemned the West’s weapons shipments to Kiev, warning that it will only prolong the war.
Remix News | March 17, 2023
The main issue facing Europe today is war, which puts Hungary in a difficult situation, as the effects of war are severe and immediate, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a meeting of the Organization of Turkic States summit in Ankara.
The prime minister stressed that, unfortunately, Europe was suffering from a “war psychosis,” with the continent drifting further into war day by day. Orbán thanked the leaders of the Turkish states for strengthening the voice of peace. Hungary — on account of its population’s Asian origins — is an honorary member of the Organization of Turkic States.
Orbán thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who, he said, had so far been able to mediate successfully between the warring parties, and called on him to continue his efforts in the future.
“Only in this way can we have a chance for peace,” Orbán said. He also thanked the Turkish president for the fact that Hungary and Turkey could coordinate their work within NATO.
Hungary’s geographical proximity to the war has placed the issue of pursuing peace at the top of the agenda for Hungary, according to Orbán.
“Ukraine is a neighboring state, and the effects of the war are therefore severe and direct, with inflation skyrocketing and energy prices at an all-time high,” he said, adding that “many Hungarians have now died in the war because men from the Hungarian community in western Ukraine are also being conscripted into the army.”
“For Hungary, the most important thing is to save human lives, and that is why we are advocating a ceasefire as soon as possible and peace negotiations.”
At the same time, the prime minister expressed the view that what is happening in Europe is more than just war, because in fact, “the whole of Europe is being reshuffled in terms of power relations,” and this will also have repercussions for Turkey. He added that Hungary is also seeing another threat: “There are processes going on in the world economy that could lead to a new global balance.”
He said that the segmentation of the world economy is against Hungary’s interests, and Hungary sees its future not in segmentation, but in acting in the collective interest and improving interconnectivity.
“The Turk states can play a key role in this, because here we are European, Caucasian and Central Asian countries connected to each other on the basis of mutual respect, setting a good example for the whole world,” the prime minister said in his speech.
By Francis Menton | Manhattan Contrarian | March 7, 2023
Often I focus on bureaucratic regulation of energy because the ability to restrict use of energy is the ultimate societal control. Once they have obtained the ability to restrict use of energy, bureaucrats could, if they choose, take away most of our freedom to enjoy life and return us to the income levels of the Stone Age. Will they stop before going that far, making reasonable tradeoffs to enable the people to flourish economically? Or will they instead pursue environmental purity without concern for the well-being of the populace?
So far all indications are that bureaucracies — and environmental bureaucracies in particular — are utterly incapable of making reasonable tradeoffs. You don’t go into a career as an environmental bureaucrat if you think that your concern for the environment is something that can or should be compromised.
In the U.S., battle is currently joined on multiple fronts as to whether unaccountable bureaucracies get to declare the non-toxic beneficial gas CO2 a “danger” to human health and welfare and thereby claim the ability to shut down the entire fossil fuel energy economy and force a multi-trillion dollar (and probably impossible and impoverishing) energy transition on the people. (One such front is the litigation where I am one of the lawyers, CHECC v. EPA, pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.). Also in the U.S., the Supreme Court, in the recent case of West Virginia v. EPA, has announced what they call the “major questions doctrine,” where bureaucrats, at least in areas of “major” economic impact, are to some degree constrained in their exercise of power by the explicit delegations of authority granted them by Congress. To the extent that restrictions on human activity in the name of the environment must gain approval from the Congress, there is at least a forum for competing interests to be heard, for tradeoffs to be considered, and for big mistakes to get corrected before enormous economic damage can be done.
But consider for a moment how it works in the different governance model of the EU, where bureaucrats answer to no one and are virtually unconstrained. This consideration is relevant to the U.S. situation, because the EU governance model of the unconstrained bureaucratic state, at least as to environmental issues, is the one favored by Democrats in our Congress and by the “liberal” justices on the Supreme Court.
Over in the EU, they have decided that nitrogen — or maybe it is “reactive nitrogen” — is a pollutant. And pollutants are bad, and therefore they should be reduced or, better, eliminated. And the bureaucracies have been empowered toward this goal.
Well, here’s the problem. Nitrogen is an essential building block of life, including human life, without which we all starve to death. Every protein is made up of amino acids, and every amino acid has at least one atom of nitrogen in it. Here is a table of the chemical formulas of the main amino acids:
So no nitrogen, no proteins. And no proteins, no people. So where are we going to get the nitrogen to make up our proteins? The air is about 78% nitrogen — how about just take it from there? But it turns out that neither plants nor animals have the ability to make direct use of the nitrogen in the air. Instead, the nitrogen needs to be “fixed” into the soil in some “reactive” form for plants to be able to use it; and then, animals get the nitrogen for their proteins from the plants. Throughout history, humans depended on the luck of the level of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil to grow edible plants to make their proteins. But often the soil quality would be low. One way to up the nitrogen content of soil was animal manure. And then came along the technological advance of figuring out how to combine nitrogen from the air with hydrogen, generally from natural gas, to make ammonia (NH3) for fertilizer that could be spread on the ground. Between widespread use of manure and increase in manufactured ammonia fertilizers, suddenly lack of usable nitrogen in the soil was no longer a limiting factor on ability to grow crops. Over the twentieth century, and particularly the later decades, yields soared.
Here is a stock photo of crops on the same field, with and without nitrogen fertilizer:
But meanwhile over in the EU (and not just there), the battle of the bureaucrats to eliminate nitrogen pollution is in full swing. You probably recall the protests of the Dutch farmers from last summer. From Reuters, June 22, 2022:
Thousands of farmers were gathering in a village near the centre of the Netherlands on Wednesday to protest a government plan to curb nitrogen pollution. . . . The protest in Stroe, 70 kilometres east of Amsterdam, follows the introduction last week of targets for reducing pollution by harmful nitrogen compounds in some areas by up to 70% by 2030. . . . Reductions are necessary in emissions of nitrogen oxides from farm animal manure and use of ammonia for fertilisation, the government says. Nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere help form acid rain, while fertiliser washed into lakes can cause algal blooms that kill marine life.
But how about the need for nitrogen for proteins to keep the human population alive? They seem to have completely lost track of that. This is an area where the absolute goal of “no nitrogen” is completely insane. Sure, too much nitrogen in the wrong form and in the wrong place at the wrong time can be a problem. But nitrogen in sufficient amounts in a form usable in the soil is completely essential to feeding the human population here on earth. Tradeoffs must be made. Yet the bureacuracies, in their zealotry, appear completely incapable of even considering such heritical ideas.
This week the farmer protests have moved on to Belgium, which has joined the war against nitrogen-emitting agriculture. From Reuters, March 3:
Farmers from Belgium’s northern region of Flanders drove thousands of tractors into Brussels on Friday in a protest against a new regional government plan to limit nitrogen emissions. . . . Agricultural organisations said in a joint statement that the nitrogen agreement as it now stands “will cause a socio-economic carnage”.
I’ve got news for the EU bureaucrats: you can put all your farmers out of business, but unless you are planning to starve your own people the food will have to be produced somewhere, and the nitrogen “emissions” will be essentially the same. They’ll just be moved somewhere else. I’m old enough to remember when being self-sufficient in food production and not dependent on food imports was considered a positive good for a country. But that was before environmental zealotry went to the extremes that we see today.
By Noah Carl | The Daily Sceptic | March 6, 2023
Europe has made it through the winter largely without incident: there were no major blackouts or power outages, and fears of large-scale civil unrest did not come to pass. What’s more, the price of natural gas – which in August was more than 18 times higher than its recent historical average – is now a mere 2.5 times higher.
That’s the good news.
Here’s the bad. We didn’t avoid catastrophe thanks to wise and far-sighted choices on the part of our leaders. We basically got lucky. The winter of 2022/23 was one of the warmest in recorded history, dramatically reducing the demand for natural gas. Had the temperature been normal, things could have gotten fairly dicey.
There’s more bad news. Keeping the lights on and the gas burning didn’t come cheap. As of September last year, European countries had earmarked €768 billion for energy subsidies. OECD countries (of which Europe comprises the lion’s share) spent about 18% of GDP on energy in 2022, compared to only 10% the year before.
As an apocryphal quote has it, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Just how much is €768 billion?
One potential yardstick is the cost of reconstruction for Ukraine, which in December was estimated at €500 billion and may now be as high as €600 or €700 billion. To be clear: this isn’t some estimate of the ‘total cost of the war’ – which would be far, far higher. It’s just the cost of reconstruction.
Nonetheless, it implies that the amount European countries have earmarked for energy subsidies would be enough to repair all the damage to Ukraine’s buildings and infrastructure that’s been sustained since the start of the war – a war that has seen whole towns reduced to rubble.
As the analyst Ralph Schoellhammer notes, European countries imported more LNG last year than Japan, South Korea and China combined. Yet this is set to change as China’s economy comes roaring back after the lockdown hiatus.
While the creeping global recession may temper demand for LNG, rising industrial activity in China will have the opposite effect. Keeping a lid on European gas prices thus requires ongoing ‘demand destruction’ – a fancy way of saying that factories will have to make do with less. (As of December, industrial gas demand is about 25% below the 2013–2019 average.)
Europe’s energy crisis still isn’t over. But we’re admittedly in a better position than I’d thought we’d be – owing mainly to warmer weather.
Calls for vaccine manufacturers to fund an institute for those harmed
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | March 13, 2023
Things aren’t going very well for Germany’s foremost virus pest, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach. His approval ratings have dwindled, and he hardly tweets anymore. Increasingly he avoids virological topics entirely, probably to escape the relentless mockery his every remark on this front brings. On Saturday, things got even worse for him, as Welt reported that he’d falsified his CV while applying for a professorship at Tübingen in 1997. From the coalition government, where he might’ve expected vigorous defence as late as last year, there is only deafening silence.
Under these gathering clouds, Lauterbach granted an interview yesterday to the state media programme ZDF Heute Journal, for a segment on vaccine injuries. In the course of the remarkable conversation, Lauterbach was confronted with and forced to disavow his earlier claims from 2021 that the vaccines are “side-effect free”; recognised that every injury is one injury too many and called these cases “dismaying”; likened the so-called “post-vaccination syndrome” (Post-Vac) to Long Covid; emphasised that he wasn’t responsible for negotiating the contracts which exclude pharmaceuticals from liability; and twice called pharmaceutical company profits “exorbitant,” agreeing that these firms should fund an institute to help those those who have been injured by their products.
This isn’t a total reversal: Lauterbach doesn’t denounce mass vaccination and doesn’t question massaged official estimates which put serious injuries at a rate of less than 1 in 10,000. We’re nearer the beginning than the end of a steady process of repudiation here. Still, this is a big deal.
Because the interview will be selectively clipped, I provide this full translation:
Christian Sievers of the ZDF Heute Journal (henceforth S): The Federal Minister of Health is with us. Many thanks and good evening, Mr Lauterbach.
Karl Lauterbach (hereafter L): Good evening, Mr Sievers.
S: What do you say to those who have been affected [by vaccine injuries]?
L: First of all, what’s happened to these people is absolutely dismaying, and every single case is one too many. I honestly feel very sorry for these people. There are severe disabilities, and some of them will be permanent. So it’s hard. What we do as a state is that the health insurance companies pay the treatment costs, and, well, the federal states bear the support costs, if support is necessary. But in fact we have problems on both sides, because we don’t yet have the drugs for treating them. These are being feverishly researched. The entitlement to benefits is also often very bureaucratically tied-up. So I really do understand the people who are complaining here.
S : Now you’re making it sound like everything is settled. But when you talk to these people, you hear exactly the opposite. A year of fighting, being turned away again and again – many officials simply don’t believe them, sometimes they never get an answer at all, and then after running the gauntlet to get their vaccine injuries recognised, all they receive is a small sum. That can’t be all the state has to offer these people right now, can it?
L: Absolutely not, and I don’t want to give that impression, because that’s not how I see things. These cases must be more quickly recognised, these vaccine injuries, and we’re now slowly getting a clearer picture. But I should also point out, just so I don’t leave a false impression: severe vaccine injuries happen in less than 1 in 10,000 vaccinations, according to the Paul Ehrlich Institute or the European licensing authorities. So it’s not that common. But because our understanding of these injuries is getting clearer and clearer, it should also be possible in future to identify those who are affected more quickly, so that we can get them quicker help.
S: Why did you, Mr Lauterbach, still claim in the summer of 2021 that the vaccines had no side effects?
L: Well, that was an exaggeration that I once made in a misguided tweet. But it wasn’t fundamentally my position. I had already commented very, very often on the side effects of vaccinations. For example, I …
S: But you often said afterwards that there were hardly any or practically no [side effects. You said this again on the [television talkshow] Anne Will. So, you’ve always given the impression that side effects aren’t really an issue at all.
L: Well, that’s not right, as I just said. I was aware of the figures at the time, and they’ve remained relatively stable. These vaccines have been used worldwide, 1 in 10,000 [are injured], so you can say it’s a lot, or you can say it’s not so many. But the vaccine really does protect against serious illness and, by the way, very often also reduces the risk of Long Covid. This is similar to what we’re talking about here, with the Post-Vac syndrome, so the vaccinations – there’s an outweighing benefit, but it’s true, 1 in 10,000 is the frequency of serious side effects.
S: Now the first lawsuits are pending against BioNTech, and also against other vaccine manufacturers. What do you think that’ll go?
L: I can’t speculate, that’s not my job. As minister I have to be careful. It’s true that within the framework of these EU contracts, the companies were largely exempted from liability and that the liability therefore lies with the German state, so to speak, as just described, with the federal states … but the most important thing is, looking ahead, we need treatments, and I’ll therefore set up a programme with the Ministry of Health, where we’ll investigate the consequences of Long Covid, and also Post-Vac syndrome, where we’ll look into this and improve care. That’s a contribution we can make.
S: When will this happen, in concrete terms? It’s precisely these affected people who are suffering all these delays, who want to know.
L: That’s true, but I’m negotiating with the budget committee, and indeed it’s a programme I’d like to launch as soon as possible, and I’m in budget negotiations for this money. So it’s something that we also have to bring to frutition, it’s an obligation, and it would network the experts in this field in such a way that the probability of good therapy in Germany would grow.
S: Now, you just mentioned the liability waiver for pharmaceutical companies. It means that the pharmaceuticals can, so to speak, relax in all these lawsuits, because the state has assumed the risk. So it’s the state – that is, you, the federal government – that has to answer for any damages claims that may arise. Does you feel good about that?
L: What does feeling good mean? First of all, I didn’t negotiate the contracts; as far as my office is concerned, I inherited them, and I believe that it was due to the situation at that time that people wanted to get the vaccines as quickly as possible, and so the state assumed liability. Maybe that was the right thing to do, because it’s better for the state to be liable than to have to go through long settlements or lawsuits with companies.
S: But we’ve just seen how difficult it is to actually get money from the state. What do you think will happen now? Do you think that in view of the situation, for example, pharmaceuticals could voluntarily put money into a foundation? Would that be an idea if they don’t have any liability?
L: It would definitely be a good idea if companies would show a willingness to help out here, because the profits have been exorbitant – exorbitant profits. So that wouldn’t just be a good gesture, we should expect it. But you ask me, what will next? I’d say the optimistic scenario is that we finally learn how to deal with Long Covid and Post-Vac, how we can manage that, and that we moreover recognise case fasterdo that people don’t have to wait so long to be recognised as having Post-Vac syndrome in the first place.
S: That’s a promise from the Federal Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach. Thank you very much for the interview this evening.
L: Thank you.
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Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
By Lisa Pease | Consortium News | September 16, 2013
More than a half century ago, just after midnight on Sept. 18, 1961, the plane carrying UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others went down in a plane crash over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). All 16 died, but the facts of the crash were provocatively mysterious. … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
Aletho News 