Combination Routine Childhood Vaccination Associated with Development of Asthma and Eczema
Hazard Ratios Too High to be Ignored
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | December 2, 2024
The University of Nottingham published a study from the West Midlands General Practice Database (n=29,238) and gave the world a rare look at how unvaccinated children compared to those who received combinations of vaccines DPPT (Diphtheria, Polio, Pertussis, Tetanus) at months 2, 3, 4 and MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) at 12 and 15 months.
The authors reported hazard ratios far in excess of two and attempted to adjust them by frequency of visits. I can tell you as an epidemiologist that the crude measures of association are far more important. For example, if an unvaccinated child is perfectly healthy without problems, then the visit rate to the clinic will be very low. In this group, there was a more than 10-fold increased risk with vaccination. Conversely vaccinated with asthma or eczema the visit rates will be higher.
As you can see from the table, both DPPT and MMR were significantly associated with the later development of asthma and eczema. These data suggest that children who undergo routine combination vaccination face higher risks of childhood allergic diseases. Conversely the unvaccinated have low or negligible risks. Going natural appears to be a healthier way to have a young child remain healthy.
Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH
President, McCullough Foundation
Desperate Escalations in Middle East & Ukraine
Alastair Crooke, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen | December 1, 2024
I had a conversation with Alastair Crooke about the escalating situation in the Middle East and Ukraine. Thousands of Turkish-backed jihadists invade Aleppo immediately after the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. Russia’s Oreshnik missiles change NATO’s calculations. The commitment to deeply flawed narratives in the Middle East and Ukraine results in miscalculations and failure to pursue course correction.
Watch at Odysee
When Is A Ceasefire Not A Ceasefire?
When it is set up by Washington and Israel is involved
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 30, 2024
We are possibly witnessing another stealthy move by Washington and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to enhance the Israeli position in a Middle East at war while pretending to do something else. President Joe Biden and his cast of know-nothings have been bleating for months about their desire to arrange a “humanitarian” ceasefire in Gaza and Lebanon while also alternatively whining about the Jewish state’s “right to defend itself,” but somehow the arrangements proposed have never quite satisfied Netanyahu. Bibi has repeatedly declared that he will not accept any halt to the fighting, presumably until all the Palestinians are dead, but would accept some kind of suspension of the conflicts as long as he has the option to return to unleashing the mass murder whenever it suits him. He deceptively labels that “making sure that the bad guy ‘terrorists’ abide by the agreement.” In that context of everyone lying to everyone else, Genocide Joe has managed to drag his sorry ass over the finish line with a “whereas laced” US endorsed temporary peace formula for Lebanon that suits Bibi just fine. In fact, it suited him so well that he could not resist renewing his attacking the Lebanese last Thursday even before the ink was dry on the ceasefire documents.
The ceasefire, arranged largely by Amos Hochstein, an Israeli who served in the Israeli army and is now Biden’s roving negotiator, was agreed to on November 27th. Its written provisions include 60 days for Hezbollah to withdraw to the Litani River, 18 miles north of the border, while Israel withdraws from all of south Lebanon that it has occupied. The Lebanese army will occupy the area vacated by Hezbollah and will work with the UNIFIL soldiers to monitor the process and maintain the peace in what will be designated as a weapons free zone. Complicating the agreement, there is a side letter from the United States to Israel confirming American support for Israel to “act in self-defense,” a term that Israel can exploit to reintervene in Lebanon. In the letter, the US also commits itself to share with Israel intelligence on Iran providing any support for Hezbollah. Israel is to be permitted to act “in self-defense” if Hezbollah violates the ceasefire in the area south of the Litani and it is also allowed to conduct reconnaissance flights over Lebanon to monitor developments. As usual, Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed a “win,” stating that he had reached an understanding with the US that Israel would “maintain full military freedom of action” in southern Lebanon. “If Hezbollah violates the agreement and tries to arm itself, we will attack. If it tries to renew terrorist infrastructure near the border, we will attack. If it launches a rocket, if it digs a tunnel, if it brings in a truck with missiles, we will attack.” As 35,000 Hezbollah militants actually live in the disarmed zone and presumably will try to return home, Israel will always have an excuse to resume its offensive.
To be sure, Lebanon was happy to accept any reprieve from the destruction wrought by Israeli bombs and artillery rounds, even if Israeli ground forces had been less than successful. Lebanon’s war losses have been calculated to be upwards of $8.5 billion dollars, together with thousands of civilians killed and injured. That includes Israel’s destruction of 100,000 homes and substantial impacts on health, education, and agriculture, according to the World Bank. But there is nevertheless, of course, a lot of speculation as to why any agreement was reached at all given Netanyahu’s unrelenting demand that he have a free hand to punish his neighbors and Biden’s usual cowardice whenever he is confronted by the Israeli gauleiter. The most interesting theory regarding why Israel has agreed to the US drafted ceasefire with Lebanon is that the Israeli government has finally figured out that it is not exactly winning its two little wars even though it has killed tens of thousands, or possibly even hundreds of thousands, of Arabs.
Regarding Israel’s own casualties, one assumes that the US Defense Department knows roughly or even in detail the numbers of dead and wounded that the Israel Occupation Force (IOF) is sustaining in its unconventional warfare in both Gaza and south Lebanon. Some credible analysts even have concluded that the Israeli military is under considerable pressure due to a high casualty rate in ground fighting involving its best soldiers, overreliance on reservists, and shortages of equipment and weapons in spite of the Biden airlifts occurring on an almost daily basis. There are reports that even the Pentagon is now running out of certain types of weapons, including artillery shells and smart bombs. A respite in the fighting against the still formidable Hezbollah enemy would be welcome both to the Israeli government and to the military planners particularly as the ceasefire is drafted to favor Israel, which can intervene in Lebanon at will just by alleging a Lebanese failure to enforce the agreement. Netanyahu may also be looking forward to the Trump factor in seven weeks. Donald Trump has always been a consequence free supporter of Israel and his cabinet is composed of hardcore Zionists. So, there is every reason for Netanyahu to believe that with Trump in power he will be able to manipulate circumstances involving both Gazans and Lebanese to enable a US supported move towards the large-scale attack on Iran that Bibi has wanted for decades.
“Victory” has also become elusive as fighting drags on well into its second year on all fronts and Israel’s “freeing of the hostages” has not only failed to materialize, it has resulted in the actual killing of some prisoners of Hamas by Israeli bombs and gunfire. Israel has failed to establish any of the “realities” it wanted to create by invading Lebanon: there is no buffer zone and instead a full IOF retreat, no Hezbollah disarmament, no Hezbollah withdrawal, and no Hezbollah removal from political power in Lebanon. Publicly, Israel got a decoupling between Gaza and Lebanon, but it also was punished with an international arrest warrant for multiple war crimes and genocide being issued against Israel’s Prime Minister and former Defense Minister. Even though the US has rallied around defense of Israel, the demands for isolating Israel worldwide due to its clearly demonstrated ongoing genocide will intensify.
The disruption and sinking of the Israeli economy due to the evacuation of the northern tier of the country under Hezbollah pressure, an increasing number of international boycotts, and the closure of many businesses, has been widely observed, as has also been the actual departure of many more educated Jewish Israelis holding US and European passports. There is considerable talk among antiwar Israeli Jews in the diaspora and even in liberal newspapers like Haaretz that Israel is in a very real sense self-destructing.
This all derives from the growing belief that the Israeli leadership has begun to realize that it does not have an effective military solution either to end the war in its favor nor to extend it to include the US as an ally in attacking Iran. If Netanyahu and his generals thought they could continue the carnage for another ninety days until the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, they almost certainly would have gone in that direction without any talk of ceasefire. Instead, leaked reports suggest that the generals themselves are complaining that the government of Netanyahu “has no plan” and have demanded a cutback due to heavy losses.
There are, to be sure, other theories to explain the surprise development of the so-called ceasefire, particularly as it so closely involves the United States and Israel, neither which can be trusted. The lull in the fighting certainly gives the IOF a break during which time it can regroup and re-equip with the help of Washington. And, as noted above, the concession to Israel that it can re-engage if it determines that Lebanon is not abiding by the ceasefire will be easy to manipulate as Israel is, if anything, a master of deception. So the agreement to down arms benefits Israel with Netanyahu, backed by the US, continuing to be able to call the shots on what comes next on the Hezbollah front.
So will the ceasefire hold or is it another gimmick by the US and Israel? In fact, as noted above, the uneasy truce between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah was violated by Israel on its second day in Lebanon on Thursday, by an airstrike that it inevitably claimed targeted militants violating terms of the cease-fire deal. The Israeli strike was the first of its kind since the US backed ceasefire went into effect before dawn on the day before. In spite of the clear violation, neither of the war’s combatants, Israel or Hezbollah, seemed keen to immediately return to full-scale fighting. The Israeli military said the incident, near the border in southern Lebanon, had targeted two militants entering a Hezbollah rocket facility that had been used to fire into Israel. Lebanon’s army, which is set to play a major role in enforcing the truce, also accused Israel of violating the ceasefire “several more times” on Thursday afternoon. The Israeli military claimed that its soldiers had in fact interdicted other militants attempting to enter into southern Lebanon. “With the same power we used to secure the agreement, we will now enforce it no less so,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military’s chief of staff, said in a subsequent video. It is no doubt precisely how Israel will behave in the future and how little the US, as a guarantor of the agreement together with France, will be tempted to intervene to maintain the peace contrary to Netanyahu’s wishes. That partisanship by Washington is precisely the problem and it suggests that the both the integrity and viability of the ceasefire might reasonably be questioned.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
A surprise assault on Syria, but can it last?
By Haidar Mustafa | The Cradle | November 30, 2024
In his speech announcing Israel’s agreement to a ceasefire with Lebanon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct threat to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, warning him of “playing with fire.” Those words came mere hours before armed terrorist factions from Idlib launched a shock offensive on Syrian army positions in the de-escalation zone in the western countryside of Aleppo. The operation is being led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebranded incarnation of Al-Nusra Front – or Syria’s Al-Qaeda franchise – led by Abu Muhammad al-Julani, with the participation of other international terror organizations such as the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP).
The army is preparing to deter aggression
On the morning of 27 November, armed extremist groups launched violent attacks on Syrian army positions in the vicinity of the 46th Regiment and toward the villages of Orem al-Kubra, Orem al-Sughra, Basratun, Anjara, and the surrounding areas, located a short distance from the M5 Aleppo-Hama-Damascus highway.
In their first surprise attack, as part of an operation called “Deterrence of Aggression,” the militants were able to enter a number of villages that Syrian army forces had evacuated in preparation for containing the breach, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the 2019 de-escalation agreements between Turkey, Russia, and Iran.
The scope of the battles quickly expanded on the international road and into the city of Aleppo. A Turkish security source quoted by Qatari-funded Middle East Eye said that the goal of the military operation launched by HTS and its allies is the recovery of the positions gained by the Syrian forces with the support of Russia during the battles of 2017 – 2020.
The militants claim that the Syrian and Russian army’s “violations” of the de-escalation agreements – and their intensification of strikes on Idlib – prompted these military operations in order to regain their control of these areas. They say that the Syrian army’s retreat in Aleppo’s western countryside provided impetus for the militants to launch further attacks toward rural eastern Idlib.
Within three days, armed extremist groups were able to reach the heart of Aleppo and declare a curfew for 24 hours. As the confrontations intensified, Syrian and Russian warplanes launched a series of violent raids on HTS and Turkestani sites and supply lines in Darat Azza, Al-Atareb, Sarmin, and other areas. These airstrikes are still ongoing, with video footage revealing heavy losses in the ranks of the extremist factions and several media sources confirming fatalities of more than 200 members of HTS and other militant groups in the Aleppo and Idlib regions.
The expansion of air attacks by the Syrian and Russian forces led, on Thursday morning, to a lull in HTS’ field momentum as the group suffered both human and material losses. Sources on the frontline also reveal the arrival of huge military reinforcements to the main confrontation zone, which extends over an area of more than 26 kilometers in western Aleppo – Syrian troops and supplies that are planning a counterattack to restore the status quo. Military expert Haitham Hassoun explains to The Cradle that the Syrian army has regrouped in the rear lines of defense at a depth of 7 to 8 kilometers in preparation for carrying out the counterattack.
How did the preparations go?
In reality, the HTS operation was by no means a spur-of-the-moment offensive but rather a result of years-long preparations spearheaded by US and Turkish intelligence to unify the ranks of various extremist factions in Syria’s north. This project took place under the direct supervision of the Turkish army, which aimed to converge the militant groups in Idlib and the Aleppo countryside and place decision-making in the hands of mainly two parties: the so-called Syrian National Army (SNA), which is loyal to Ankara, and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria.
In this mash-up of terror outfits are the Turkestan and Uyghur “jihadist” groups, used primarily as strike forces in specific military operations, largely fulfilling the interests of their US and Turkish funders.
Military expert, Brigadier General Haitham Hassoun, confirms that preparations to launch this operation began “a long time ago,” and that the participating groups established a joint ops room about a month and a half ago. He believes that the militants benefited from “misdirection” and electronic warfare media operations carried out by Turkish intelligence to camouflage their intentions and movements and by Turkish occupation forces inside Syria during the days preceding the shock offensive. The militants further benefited from sophisticated intel that helped them exploit existing loopholes on the ground and were aware of vacuums in the Syrian army’s positions, which then led to this breach and confusion in the defense lines.
Who made the decision, and what is the goal?
Today’s scenes in Idlib and Aleppo remind Syrians of a period they thought they had put behind them after the 2016 liberation of Aleppo and the 2019 de-escalation understandings. But those hard-fought understandings had always remained fragile, given that Turkiye evaded its commitments to purge the M5 area of terrorist groups. The militancy in Syria’s north served Ankara’s interest in maintaining pressure on Damascus. It also explains this week’s armed operation – an action the Turks believe will force the Syrian government to enter negotiations under fire, especially if armed extremists re-enter Aleppo or sever the critical international route.
On the other hand, one objective of the operation may be the US decision to maintain a state of conflict in the region and redirect pressure toward Russia and its regional allies ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
As many commentators have pointed out, the military operation was launched in the direct aftermath of Netanyahu’s explicit threats in his speech this week and is likely connected to Israel’s regional war and Tel Aviv’s determination to sever the Syrian route for members of the Resistance Axis. The offensive appears to have been coordinated with the NATO-member Turkiye, under the direction of Turkish occupation authorities and intelligence services, which have for years managed and supported the various extremist groups in northern Syria.
In a preliminary estimate, what is happening is a return to the situation before 2019, a re-invasion that effectively seeks to derail all the achievements of the Astana peace process. In turn, this deserves nothing less than an equally brash and unexpected response: a Syrian military counter-offensive that not only reclaims the positions held by Syrian army forces a few days ago but one that decisively pushes all the way to Darat Izza and beyond up to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkiye, cutting off communications routes between the militants in the Aleppo and Idlib regions, and restoring the entire governorates under Syrian government control.
What began as a shock assault may have created an opportunity to end the state of limbo in the country’s north at the end of the Syrian war, provide Damascus and its allies a way to sidestep unproductive de-escalation understandings, and hand the Syrian state a legitimate, legal and moral justification to liberate all territories from terror organizations.
Until or unless this happens, western Aleppo and eastern Idlib will remain active battlefields. However, according to informed sources, the militants are unlikely to remain in an advantageous position for long for several key reasons.
First is the imminent arrival of large Syrian military reinforcements to the area, which will not allow Aleppo to fall into the hands of foreign-backed extremists. Second, these US and Turkish-backed militant groups are less likely to achieve their goals today than in the early years of the war because of seismic political and economic shifts in Europe, which fears the revival of the Syrian conflict and another flood of refugees to its borders.
Third, Damascus has returned to the Arab fold by rejoining the Arab League and being welcomed by several Persian Gulf states. Those capitals are no longer interested in backing jihadists, resuscitating the war, or destabilizing Lebanon and Iraq, Syria’s direct and connected neighbors, at this moment. Nor are they interested in opening up the Syrian military arena to Iranian advisors or forces again.
West covering up for Kiev on chemical weapons – Moscow
RT | December 1, 2024
Ukraine’s Western backers are concealing Kiev’s use of chemical weapons, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s ambassador-at-large on the Kiev regime’s war crimes, told RT in an exclusive interview. He said Russia has documented proof of Kiev’s troops using toxins against Russian soldiers and civilians, but any attempts by Moscow to appeal to international watchdogs are stalled by the West.
“Ukraine has used various types of chemical weapons throughout the conflict, and this is documented and recorded by our relevant departments,” Miroshnik stated, adding that the findings have been repeatedly submitted to the Hague-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). He noted that the toxins Kiev uses are supplied by Western states, which also provide it with “so-called diplomatic cover,” hushing up its use of prohibited substances.
“[Kiev] sincerely believes that the West will in every possible way shield it from liability for the use of prohibited types of weapons. And, unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening within the framework of a number of international organizations, in particular, the OPCW,” the official stated, noting that Russia’s requests to probe incidents in which Kiev uses chemical weapons “are blocked with enviable regularity” and any data Moscow provides as evidence “is not considered” at all.
“Under pressure from the Americans, the British, this situation is simply hushed up, talked down, and [doesn’t] turn into a detailed investigation,” he stressed.
According to Miroshnik, as of this past summer, Russian experts had recorded more than 400 instances of prohibited chemical weapons being used by Kiev. They have also discovered a number of laboratories in Ukraine that produce chemical agents and toxic substances. The official noted that Kiev is “indiscriminate” when using prohibited types of weapons, targeting both Russian soldiers at the front and civilians via drone attacks.
Western support allows Kiev to keep using the banned toxins with impunity, Miroshnik claimed, “demonstrating that any red lines from the Ukrainian side can simply be crossed and nothing will happen to them for it.”
Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukraine of using chemical weapons on the battlefield and of hosting American biolabs on its territory. Earlier this fall, Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiological Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, warned that Kiev was preparing a false-flag chemical weapons attack with the aim of framing Russia.
He also accused Ukraine of deploying chemical weapons disguised as smoke bombs during its incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, and said such munitions were used in the Russian town of Sudzha in August, with more than 20 people exposed to the toxins.
US breaks off ‘strategic partnership’ with Georgia; blasts Tblisi for ‘pro-Russia lean’
Press TV – November 30, 2024
The United States has broken off its “strategic partnership” with Georgia after the latter’s decision to suspend negotiations on potential accession to the European Union, while condemning Tbilisi for, what it called, leaning towards Russia.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller announced the development on X, former Twitter, on Saturday.
“The US and EU regret Georgian Dream (GD)’s decision to suspend EU accession,” he wrote, referring to Georgia’s ruling party.
“The EU is a bulwark against the Kremlin. We have, therefore, suspended our Strategic Partnership with Georgia,” Miller said.
He also claimed that the party’s decision on the accession talks was a “betrayal” of the European country’s constitution.
The State Department, meanwhile, released a statement on Washington’s decision, accusing the GD of “various anti-democratic actions [that] have violated the core tenets of our US-Georgia Strategic Partnership.”
By freezing the accession talks, it added, the party “has rejected the opportunity for closer ties with Europe and made Georgia more vulnerable to the Kremlin.”
The department also claimed that Georgian people “overwhelmingly support integration with Europe.”
GD Chairman Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze suspended the accession process on Thursday, saying the EU was expecting Georgia to enact “reforms” in exchange for joining the bloc that were actually “steps that mean renouncing our dignity.”
The official was referring to Brussels’ various demands on Tbilisi, including its repealing of the foreign agents’ law that requires NGOs and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign donors to register as organizations “bearing the interests of a foreign power.”
Brussels, he added, was effectively “blackmailing” Tbilisi through the demands.
The EU, itself, froze Georgia’s application for joining the bloc earlier this year in response to ratification of the law among other things.
The Georgian premier, meanwhile, addressed the ongoing anti-government riots that have been underway in the capital for the past two days, during which anarchists have put up barricades along the central Rustaveli Avenue and thrown fireworks at the riot police.
The country, he said, would not allow a revolution to take place, saying the rioters were seeking to overthrow the government, using the same tactics that were used during 2014 riots in Ukraine, known as the Maidan riots, which ousted the government in Kiev.
“In Georgia, the Maidan scenario cannot be realized. Georgia is a state, and the state will not, of course, permit this,” Kobakhidze said.
Georgia’s State Security Service also commented on the riots, calling them evidence that a violent coup attempt was taking place in the country.
“Developments occurring in recent days in the country show that planned destructive processes are taking place in accordance with actual circumstances becoming known to the State Security Service as part of the investigation of the violent upheaval case. We informed the society in advance about that,” the service said.
Specific political parties and non-governmental organizations are interested in a violent coup, it noted, adding that the developments were being investigated under Article 315 of the Georgian Criminal Code that covers conspiracy or mutiny for purposes of violent change of the Georgian constitutional order.
Trump’s Picks for Surgeon General and Top Posts at FDA, CDC Earn Mixed Reviews
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 25, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead three key federal public health agencies “would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health” — but they’re also “controversial,” according to NPR.
Trump tapped Dr. Marty Makary to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general.
“The roles will be key to helping to enact Trump’s second term health agenda, which could include agency reform and changes to public health policies,” Axios reported.
The three agencies report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Earlier this month, Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to lead HHS.
Weldon previously criticized COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. Makary and Nesheiwat first expressed support for vaccines and other pandemic-related policies but have become more critical in recent years.
Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who has worked with the FDA as a consumer representative, addressed mainstream criticism of the nominations. She told The Defender that “the pharmaceutical and medical-industrial complex is very worried.”
She added:
“The pharmaceutical and food industries have faced little resistance from regulators and Congress. The strong pushback we’re seeing now suggests they fear what might happen under an administration willing to challenge the status quo.”
Dr. Joseph Varon, president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender, “Leadership in these agencies is critical for fostering trust in public health and ensuring evidence-based policies. We hope the nominees are committed to transparency, innovation and addressing the ongoing challenges in healthcare, particularly the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Makary: U.S. government the ‘greatest perpetrator of misinformation’
Makary, a public health researcher and surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, developed the surgical safety checklist, adopted by the World Health Organization and credited with saving many lives. Makary worked with the first Trump administration, including on surprise medical billing, NPR reported.
Earlier this year, Makary published “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” The book highlighted evidence that many modern-day health crises in the U.S. were caused or hastened by the medical establishment.
According to The Gateway Pundit, “Makary was initially an advocate for the COVID vaccine but changed his perspective as more data became available.” NPR noted that Makary “voiced support for lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking” but later “became increasingly outspoken” against such policies.
In 2021, Makary called the Biden administration’s CDC “the most political CDC in history” for not being forthcoming with the public about COVID-19 and the vaccines. According to the New York Post, he criticized the CDC and Biden administration for their “unsupported claims” about COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.
Makary has also been vocal about the potency of natural immunity to COVID-19, criticizing the medical establishment’s “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”
In May, he criticized The New York Times for being slow to report on the thousands of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.
Last year, Makary said during congressional testimony that “public health officials have made many tragic mistakes during the pandemic.” Those mistakes included ignoring natural immunity, dismissing the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab leak, closing schools, masking toddlers and “pushing boosters for young people.”
In September, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy at a congressional roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the chronic disease epidemic. During the roundtable, Makary said, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government.”
In his announcement, Trump said Makary would work with Kennedy to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender Makary has a “steep learning curve regarding vaccines in general” but has taken “encouraging stances late in the pandemic about the COVID vaccine and countermeasures.”
Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, said Makary represents “a mixed bag of mainstream medicine and outside-the-box thinking.” He credited Makary for opposing “mandatory COVID-19 injection boosters” and criticizing the FDA’s rejection of natural immunity.
Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead praised Makary’s nomination. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a physician with a deeper understanding of what ails our healthcare system and what’s needed to restore integrity to the FDA after six decades of regulatory capture.”
“Makary seems uniquely positioned to bring meaningful change,” Witczak said. “He understands the systemic harm caused by overmedicalization and the corporate capture of healthcare. His history of challenging mainstream narratives during COVID shows he isn’t afraid to speak out.”
Weldon sponsored bill to ban mercury from vaccines
Dr. Dave Weldon is an Army veteran who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1995 and 2009.
In a statement, Kennedy praised Weldon’s experience, saying he “will bring the truth and transparency needed to restore the public’s confidence” in the CDC.
In 2007, Weldon sponsored a bill that would have banned mercury from vaccines, expressing concern about “an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC,” because the agency promotes vaccination while assessing their safety.
According to Politico, Weldon also “raised concerns about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and Gardasil, Merck’s papillomavirus virus, or HPV vaccine.
While in Congress, Weldon also introduced legislation outlawing human cloning and helped secure a deal that banned patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos, according to The Associated Press.
According to NPR, Trump said Weldon would “proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic,” and “prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards.”
John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said Weldon “was sounding the alarm on failures in the vaccine system 20 years ago.” He said Weldon attended conferences like Defeat Autism Now and listened to mothers of vaccine-injured children, which is “not a behavior many doctors are inclined to do.”
Hooker said he was “very encouraged” by Weldon’s nomination, and that he’d like to know more about Weldon’s position on “the bloated vaccine schedule as well as COVID-19 countermeasures.”
He credited Weldon with helping independent thimerosal researchers gain access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a collaborative project that monitors vaccine safety and conducts studies on vaccine side effects.
Hooker, who participated in that project, said “Our access to the VSD was rescinded months later because [the CDC] didn’t like our results, which included a definitive link between thimerosal and autism. Weldon indeed will need to implement myriad changes to the flawed and fraudulent process.”
Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will face a Senate confirmation process, due to legislation passed in 2022, NPR reported.
Nesheiwat: ‘egregious unethical & harmful’ to add COVID shots to childhood schedule
Nesheiwat, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is a medical contributor to Fox News and medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.
Nesheiwat previously promoted the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, NPR reported. According to The Gateway Pundit, Nesheiwat has since changed her position and her “recent statements indicate a significant shift in her perspective.”
In October 2022, Nesheiwat tweeted, “If CDC approves a COVID vaccine addition to the routine schedule of vax for kids, it will mark the most egregious unethical & harmful decision to children. No mandates. Especially for a vax that can’t prevent disease.”
Nesheiwat has also questioned the efficacy of the COVID shots, tweeting in February 2023, “Covid vax does not prevent disease like we once thought it did per the cdc /Pfizer etc.,” and has tweeted in support of natural immunity.
In a statement, Trump called Nesheiwat an advocate for preventive medicine and praised her “commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”
Mead said Nesheiwat’s about-face on vaccines “shows she has the ability to think critically,” which could help her “serve as a bridge builder at a time of deep division.”
A ‘historic opportunity to shake up the establishment’
Calling healthcare in the U.S. “horribly broken,” Hooker said the three nominees will face several challenges if confirmed because federal public health agencies require reforms.
Hooker said:
“Corporate influence, including the corporate capture of these agencies, is the biggest problem to be tackled. First and foremost, we need to protect children … from the highly flawed policies of these agencies.
“All influences from Big Pharma, Big Food and Big Ag need to be completely rooted out and the whole edifice should be rebuilt brick-by-brick to include only those policies that help and never harm children.”
Gilmore said public health agencies should publicize “all the data they have available.” He also called for a ban on vaccine mandates. “We have to be able to sue in a real court for vaccine injuries,” he added.
Varon called for independent clinical trials and for “independent scientific inquiry and reducing undue influence from corporate or political pressures.” He also called for promoting early treatment protocols for emerging diseases and giving physicians “the flexibility to treat patients with evidence-based approaches.”
“This moment represents a historic opportunity to shake up the establishment,” Witczak said. “After years of feeling like leaders were paying lip service — or working against the public — I finally see hope for meaningful reform. It’s time to restore these agencies’ missions to serve the public, prioritize safety, and act with integrity.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
CDC Escalates Childhood Hyper-Vaccination Agenda for 2025
By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH | Courageous Discourse | November 30, 2024
The 2025 Immunization Schedule was approved by ACIP and adopted by CDC Director Mandy Cohen on October 24, 2024:
Children are now recommended to be exposed to 36 vaccine doses from in-utero to age 2 (4 doses in the pregnant mother, 32 doses in the child from birth to age 2). By age 18, the CDC now advises over 70 doses when taking into account routine COVID-19 and flu injections. This represents a massive increase in recommended vaccine doses since the inception of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act giving vaccine makers full liability protection:
Since they enjoy full liability protection, pharmaceutical companies currently get their injections approved with no long-term, placebo-controlled trials. Follow-up periods range from just 3 days to 6 months, with most studies lacking a placebo group entirely. It’s evident that our regulatory agencies are compromised and are not prioritizing the public’s best interests:
Childhood hyper-vaccination is likely contributing to the skyrocketing autism rates:
The vast majority of American’s have clearly demonstrated their rejection of unnecessary and unsafe vaccines and likely won’t comply with the absurd ACIP schedule. A recent CDC report found that the vast majority of adults refuse COVID-19 genetic booster shots with no human data, as well as flu and RSV vaccines:
The ill-advised federal vaccine racket needs to be re-assessed based on proper scientific studies and restructured to protect the health of America’s children.
Nicolas Hulscher, MPH
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
Houthis Have Trapped American Superpower in Dangerous ‘Stalemate’, US Media Say
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 30.11.2024
The US military is “locked in a dangerous stalemate” in its campaign against the Houthis, proving “unable to effectively stop the rebels from attacking ships,” and at the same time “unlikely” to be given a free hand for all-out war against the group, a top mainstream US business publication has suggested.
“The American military has led a Western naval coalition into battle against the Houthis to curb their relentless attacks, but a year of intense combat has brought the US no closer to ending the threat posed by the rebels – and, for now, a more aggressive approach doesn’t appear to be the desired course,” Business Insider suggested, citing the sentiments of US officials and experts, including the Biden administration’s top Yemen envoy.
“The restrained approach to the ongoing Houthi crisis leaves the US military engaged in combat operations without a clear path to victory,” BI said, pointing to the toll Houthi attacks have had on Red Sea shipping, which up until a year ago accounted for up to 15% of all maritime trade.
Then there’s the impact on the US military’s much vaunted reputation – the limits to which have been made clear over the past year amid its inability to degrade the potential of a group armed with $20,000 drones, homemade ballistic missiles and Soviet-era air defense systems.
“The threat still persists, and there doesn’t seem to be much abating that,” former US Central Command chief Gen. (ret.) Joseph Votel said. Instead, US operations “have been clearly focused on trying to defend ourselves and going after launch sites, production sites, storage sites, maybe some command and control sites – but none of that seems to be deterring the Houthis at all,” Votel complained.
“Allowing the Houthis to protract their gradual escalation campaign is a much more dangerous policy choice for the US in the long run than a more decisive military effort would have been,” Brian Carter, Middle East analyst at the DC-based American Enterprise Institute neocon think tank, argued, highlighting the impact Houthi persistence has had on the US’s perceived strength abroad.
Gen. Votel added that the more assets the US deploys against the Houthis, the less there will be for the Pentagon’s other global priorities, including challenging China in the Pacific.
A recent report by Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimated that the US has spent over $2.5 billion on the anti-Houthi campaign over the past year – which includes the cost of stationing multi-billion dollar carrier strike groups in the region, and the $4 million+ apiece missiles the US has fired to take down Houthi drones.
US Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante told a defense forum earlier this month that as a missile expert, he was “shocked” by the Houthis’ increasingly advanced missile capabilities, saying the militia has proven able to churn out new arms that “can do things that are just amazing.”
Last month, an article in an issue of West Point military academy’s Combating Terrorism Center Sentinel journal revealed that Houthi projectiles nearly landed hits against a US supercarrier and a missile destroyer over the course of Red Sea operations earlier this year.
Israel too has seen the growing power of Houthi missile and drone capabilities, facing attacks by large, airplane-style UAVs and a new hypersonic ballistic missile the Houthis have called the ‘Palestine-2’.
The Houthis have linked the end of their Red Sea campaign to a halt in the year-plus long war in Gaza, and recently urged President-Elect Trump to “fulfill his commitment to Arab voters and supporters of Gaza” and pressure Israel to stop the fighting in the besieged enclave, and halt American aggression against Yemen itself, emphasizing that the US was “paying an economic and military price” for its role as Israel’s lackey.
“The question remains: will Trump continue with the same policy and will the American aggression against Yemen continue? If it continues, the American economy will suffer more losses,” a militia source told Newsweek earlier this month.
Despite being sanctioned and designated a terrorist organization by the Trump administration, the Houthis have been among the traditional international adversaries of the US to have expressed cautious optimism over the prospects of Trump’s return to the White House.
Last week, Ali Larijani, a senior advisor to the Iranian Supreme Leader, echoed the Houthis’ sentiments, suggesting “the question is whether the America of the Trump era sees its interests in continuing the behavior of the Democrats – who pulled America down in the region and destroyed its reputation… or do they want to make a turn in accordance with America’s national interests,” including by putting an end to “warmongering in the region.”
European elites are destroying Europe – again
Strategic Culture Foundation | November 29, 2024
One would think that having suffered two world wars only decades apart, European politicians might be more cautious about starting another one. Incredibly, however, the countries of Europe are being plunged into another conflagration.
Not much has changed over a century, it seems. War is still the result of imperialist intrigue and no accountability to the masses of citizens by arrogant politicians aided by relentless media propaganda lies.
European elitist rulers are a treasonous clique who are destroying Europe because of their abject servility to U.S.-led Western imperialism.
To put it crudely, Europe is being abused like a bondage plaything for the Washington and European elites. Shudder the thought of Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas in dominatrix garb or Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz as the gimps. But sometimes, the truth can be stranger than fiction.
Russian President Vladimir Putin nailed it this week when he slammed European political heads who are “dancing to the tune of the Americans.” In an address to the Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in Kazakhstan, Putin said the crisis over Ukraine showed that European so-called leaders have no independence or autonomy. They are non-entities as far as serving the democratic interests of their nations is concerned.
Instead of pushing for a diplomatic solution to the worst conflict on the European continent since World War Two, European political elites are slavishly going along with Washington’s criminal proxy war against Russia, which is in danger of spiraling into a nuclear Armageddon.
This week the buffoonish former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson openly admitted that the conflict in Ukraine was a proxy war against Russia. But that didn’t give Johnson pause for thought or shame. He urged the Europeans to send more weapons to Ukraine. Nor did his crass candidness elicit any outcry or condemnation. Johnson, the imbecile, was, in effect, confirming what Russia has been warning is the essence of the conflict in Ukraine – a U.S.-led war using Ukrainian cannon fodder.
Then, we had the chief of Britain’s intelligence agency MI6, “Sir” Richard Moore, holding forth to an audience in Paris that Russia’s Putin was causing “staggeringly reckless sabotage” across Europe. The British spymaster claimed that Russia was threatening the continent with nuclear weapons to weaken NATO support for Ukraine. He omitted the glaring fact that the U.S., Britain, and France have dramatically escalated the conflict by supplying a NeoNazi regime in Ukraine with long-range missiles to strike Russia.
Meanwhile, the governments in Germany and Nordic countries are issuing dire public warnings for people to “get ready for war” by building bomb shelters in their homes and stocking up on non-perishable foods.
You could hardly make this insanity up except in the dystopian novels of George Orwell. The continent is being led by the nose to disaster by politicians and corporate-controlled media who have lost their minds. They long ago lost any self-respect or independence and are simply acting as the most pathetic surrogates for U.S.-led imperialism.
Even without the ultimate catastrophe of war, Europe has been brought to ruination by elitist politicians who have unquestioningly followed the American agenda of trying to strategically defeat Russia through a proxy war.
Central to this U.S. strategic objective is vanquishing decades of mutually beneficial energy trade between Europe and Russia. The sanctions imposed on the Nord Stream gas pipelines by Trump during his first administration, followed by the blowing up of the pipes by the Biden administration in September 2022, are testimony to that bigger picture. None of the European governments or their news media properly investigated that huge crime of state-sponsored terrorism.
The proxy war and sanctions on Russian energy that the European leaders happily went along with have caused the European economies to implode. Critical commentators talk about the deindustrialization of Europe.
Even the Financial Times, in a recent in-depth report on Germany’s “broken economy”, sounded aghast at “the most pronounced downturn in Germany’s postwar history.” The report surveys auto, chemical and engineering sectors crucial to the German economy and cites “high energy costs” as the detrimental factor.
However, the Western media, even in supposed “in-depth reports” like the Financial Times, are careful not to spell out the obvious cause of Europe’s economic collapse: the U.S.-led proxy war in Ukraine and the consequent damage in Europe’s relations with Russia.
Media reports deplore a “jobs massacre” in Germany’s industrial giants like Volkswagen and Thyssenkrupp without explaining the cause as if the calamity is somehow random misfortune.
As if that is not bad enough, the incoming Trump administration is lining up heavy tariffs on exports from Europe as well as China, Canada, and Mexico. That will be a coup de grâce for the European economies delivered by its American ally.
Europe is in this appalling predicament – facing economic ruin amid a potential military conflagration – all because it has been misled by people like Ursula von der Leyen, Josep Borrell, France’s Macron, Germany’s Scholz (and Angela Merkel before him), and Netherlands former premier Mark Rutte, who is now the gung-ho head of NATO calling for more European weapons to Ukraine. Many others can be named from the Nordic countries, Poland, and the Baltic states. Rather fittingly, the European elitist political class has a long and vile history of Russophobia, going back to collaboration with Nazi Germany in its genocidal aggression against the Soviet Union.
The tragedy of Europe is not something mysterious or ill-fated. It is the direct result of elitist rulers who have assiduously conducted policies that harm European citizens. These charlatan leaders are shameless in their Russophobia and surrogacy for U.S.-led Western imperialism – even to the point of killing their own people through economic devastation or worse – world war.
The conflict in Ukraine is solvable through negotiations and dialogue that acknowledges the historical causes. From Russia’s point of view that pertains to NATO’s treacherous expansionism since the end of the Cold War.
But this is the deep dilemma facing Europe. Not one of the politicians (apart from a few honorable exceptions) is capable of thinking or acting independently because they are ideological slaves.
Rational diplomacy and respect for democracy and peace are beyond these political degenerates. Their complicity in a bankrupt system of Western imperialism makes them incapable of doing the right thing for humanity. That’s why the vile history of wars keeps repeating. They and their corrupt, warmongering system must be swept aside.
Deception, manipulation, sabotage: What the UK does to keep the Ukraine war going
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | November 30, 2024
Unless you want to be blind, it is obvious that Ukraine under the Zelensky regime is not remotely a free country. In politics, after massive repression, there are only remnants of an opposition, which face continuing oppression and harassment by the government, as even the French newspaper Le Monde, generally naïve about the Zelensky regime, has reported.
Ukraine’s public sphere is stifled by nationalist propaganda, pressure, and demonstrative, intimidating terror. Before the escalation of 2022, even a robustly propagandistic tool of Western information warfare such as Freedom House could still acknowledge that much: its 2018 report, authored by Ukrainian researcher Vyacheslav Likhachev, identified Ukraine’s Far Right organizations as “a threat to democracy” and “aggressively trying to impose their agenda on Ukrainian society, including by using force against those with opposite political and cultural views.”
Regarding Ukraine’s media, expect not much resistance from there. They are tightly controlled and, often, pro-actively obedient, whether out of misguided conviction, fear, or careerism. Even Ukraine’s Western supporters, as well as some courageous critics in Ukraine, have voiced criticism of the crude propaganda habits of the Zelensky regime.
Make no mistake: The authoritarian features of the rule of Vladimir Zelensky – formerly the object of a veritable Western personality cult that, by now, at least some devotees must feel embarrassed about – are not the result of the large-scale war. The politics of Zelenskyism, to coin an ugly but handy term, were always unusually deceitful and manipulative and, by 2021 at the latest, openly bending toward authoritarianism, as many Ukrainian critics pointed out at the time.
And yet: Imagine a future trial, maybe to be held in Ukraine, of Zelensky and his team. The defense would not be able to do much about their record of corruption, but it would certainly at least try to blame some of the former leader’s underhanded and tyrannical tendencies on the war. It would be a stretch, but lawyers have to do their best, even for the worst of clients.
In the case of the Western users of the Zelensky regime, though, such a defense would not be merely far-fetched but completely absurd. Yet a defense some of them at least might come to need. Take for instance the case of Britain’s Lieutenant General Charlie Stickland and his shadowy but numerous associates.
The unfortunately important general – boasting of his pirate ancestors and in charge of “UK-led joint and multinational overseas military operations” – and his motley crew have just been the object of an investigative exposé by Grayzone reporter Kit Klarenberg. In, for now, two articles, the Grayzone has detailed how, in 2022, Stickland set up a below-the-radar network of “an assortment of leading academics, authors, strategists, planners, pollsters, comms, data scientists and tech.” Under the name Project Alchemy and overlapping and liaising with another group of wannabe keyboard Ninjas calling themselves – I kid you not – “the Elders,” this conspiratorial group has worked on, in essence, keeping the Ukraine war going at any price and by means foul and fouler.
Based on leaked documents, the Grayzone’s reporting is revealing in more ways than can be discussed here. Yet, as we are dealing with prose authored by militant bureaucrats and self-weaponizing intellectuals in the land of George Orwell, that old stickler for the English language, we would be remiss not to appreciate their bizarre lingo. It brings together a certain jejune rugby field boyishness – “mischief” is proudly being made – with a militarized sociolect of corporatese: “fusion players” and “sideways thinkers” get “badged” and “meshed in” to “move at pace,” and – greatest pride of the eminent executive – stand ready to work over the weekend!
Doing what exactly? All kinds of things, really, and all based on one stupid yet once immensely popular assumption: that the proxy war in Ukraine could be leveraged to defeat Russia, reduce it to geopolitical insignificance, impose regime change on it, and even break it up. Some, including the new de facto foreign minister of the EU, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas – imagine Annalena Baerbock, but without the brilliant intellect – still seem to be on that political equivalent of an LSD trip gone terribly wrong. What a hangover it will be one day, probably soon.
In Britain, highlights of Project Alchemy groupthink included hatching plans for stay-behind sabotage networks and recommending the example of the underground “Gladio” operations that NATO ran in Western – not, please note, Eastern – Europe during the Cold War. Strictly speaking, Gladio was an Italian label, while the same bad idea had different names in other countries. By now, though, Gladio stands for a whole plethora of clandestine organizations set up, ostentatiously, to engage in partisan resistance in case of a Soviet attack and occupation.
You may feel that, in principle at least, for generals, preparing for the possibility of future partisan warfare is not an objectionable activity. Yet the issue is that, in reality, the Gladio operations were not only extremely dubious in constitutional and legal terms, as being entirely beyond democratic control and oversight, as well as tied to foreign intelligence services. In addition, these networks served to fight a dirty war against the domestic left, including by terrorism, false-flag attacks, the systematic use of far-right conspirators and terrorists, and support for military coups.
An influential, black-ops-connected British general and his chums wanting to learn lessons from Gladio for underground networks in Ukraine? The country with the best-armed (compliments of the West), most whitewashed and naively underestimated (compliments of the Western media and self-weaponizing intellectuals of the Anne Applebaum/Tim Snyder variety), most aggressive, and most militarized far right in the world? Swimming in arms right next to an EU-NATO Europe they will soon feel bitterly disappointed by? What could possibly go wrong? But maybe Charlie ‘Pirate’ Stickland is “fusion”-”thinking” “sideways” in Churchillian terms: “Set Europe Ablaze!” Yet Stickland seems to have overlooked that Churchill wanted to set it ablaze against the Nazis, not with them.
All of this is, in and of itself, very bad, if unsurprising, news. But Project Alchemy has been prolific, producing lousy ideas the way Russian industry is churning out artillery shells and missiles. There also were: a frank emphasis on “creatively using” – let’s be honest: breaking – the law so as to get silly violent things done, including “deniable ops”; a daft idea to attack the Kerch Bridge, as if Russia would not strike back (both have by now happened, the militarily useless attack and the painful payback); an anticipatory strategy of how to manipulate the British public in case it should get tired of pumping money into the proxy war; attempts to undermine BRICS-plus (thinking big and bigger); plans to shut down Russian media in the West, obviously; and, last but not least, an aggressive strategy to use covert lawfare and deliberate financial pressure to bring down Western critical media as well, including, as it happens, the Grayzone. Say what you will, but Stickland and company seem to have had a foreboding from where exactly they would get their richly deserved come-uppance.
It would be tempting to think of this wave of disinformation and manipulation in the West as a kind of “Ukrainization.” As if the West had caught the contagion of the Zelensky regime’s very bad habits. But to be fair, the West has its own, well-established tradition of waging war by massive lying on the home front. In 2019, it was the Washington Post, usually hewing close to the American government line, that ran a series of in-depth stories detailing how, during the West’s long war in Afghanistan, started almost two decades before, the US had been “at war with the truth.” Suddenly, clearly in preparation of the impending Western retreat, readers were allowed to learn that while “officials constantly said they were making progress,” they “were not, and they knew it.”
And the name of that Washington Post series? The Afghanistan Papers. That, of course, was a reference to the famous Pentagon Papers, an internal and classified Defense Department review of US policy and warfare in Vietnam that was leaked to the New York Times by the historic whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who suffered severe, criminal attempts to silence, and in effect, destroy him. The long American intervention, begun indirectly in the 1940s and escalating into one of the most brutal US campaigns of the twentieth century in the 1960s, only ended with the total defeat of both Washington and its South Vietnamese proxy in 1975.
The New York Times began to publish the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Once again, as with the later bloody Western fiasco in Afghanistan, the moment of truth – some truth – came late, only toward the end of a policy catastrophe that had long been supported by compliant mainstream media. The Grayzone is considered alternative media, and its reporters are doing a much better job at real journalism than their competition in the mainstream version. As to the mainstream media, they clearly have not yet reached the stage of always-too-late revelation that, during the proxy wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, was marked by 1971 and 2019, respectively.
How do we know? They are ignoring the Grayzone’s sensational revelations about a military-think-tank-industry conspiracy to undermine the law, deliberately manipulate the public, and wage proxy war in a way that is both dirty and bound to backfire very badly on the West itself. One more sign that all too many in the West are not yet ready to face reality, even while the Ukrainians they claim to help but only use keep dying.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Ugly Truth of Ukraine’s Criminal Use of Chemical Weapons
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 30.11.2024
Politicization of the work of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) by the US and its allies is illustrated by the situation around the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, Vladimir Tarabrin, Russian Permanent Representative to the OPCW underscored at the 107th session of the organization’s Executive Council in October.
November 30 marks the Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Warfare, which is observed annually by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
This commemoration throws into focus how warnings about Ukraine’s use of toxic chemicals against Russia’s Armed Forces are being ignored by the West. Instead, fabricated allegations are being peddled against Moscow, noted Vladimir Tarabrin, Russia’s permanent representative to the OPCW.
Russia has sufficient expertise to identify facts of chemical weapons use in the zone of its special military operation in Ukraine. It is conducting investigations as required by OPCW provisions.
Unlike the unfounded accusations concocted by Ukraine and its Western patrons, Russia operates “exclusively with verified facts.”
Ukraine covertly used DM-105 chemical munitions under the guise of smoke shells in the city of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region in August, revealed Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops.
More than 400 cases of the use of chemicals such as BZ, prussic acid, chlorine cyanide, and riot-control chemical agents have been recorded in Ukraine since 2022.
Tests of wipe-samples from chemical equipment found in a lab near Avdeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) revealed it had been producing 3 kg of toxic substances per day.
Ready-to-use agents containing a toxic mixture based on thallium nitrate were found in a cache seized from Ukrainian troops in August 2024.
Washington boosted efforts to develop bioagents capable of selectively targeting specific ethnic groups, the Russian Defense Ministry said in August.
Ukraine procured hundreds of tons of toxic chemical precursors scheduled by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), according to the ministry.
Ukrainian forces are being trained to use chemical ammunition with Western artillery systems, captured documents and manuals show.
The US Pentagon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and American biotech firms have been funding potentially illegal biological research in Ukraine in violation of international treaties.
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From the Archives
World War II Didn’t End The Great Depression
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
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