US-Israeli proposals do not include permanent ceasefire: Source
Al Mayadeen | October 31, 2024
The Israeli and US proposals regarding a deal on Gaza lack provisions for a permanent ceasefire or a complete withdrawal from the Strip, a Palestinian source told Al Mayadeen on Thursday.
Instead, the proposal entails 10 days of calm in exchange for the release of four Israeli captives, including two women, in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian detainees, according to the approved mechanism.
The proposal also stipulates the entry of about 300 aid trucks daily into Gaza.
The source stressed that Hamas believes the US wants to exploit partial initiatives to benefit election campaigns only. Meanwhile, upcoming meetings are planned between Fatah and Hamas to resume discussions on managing the Gaza Strip and forming a special committee with mutual approval from both parties.
Netanyahu ‘buying time’ with Gaza deal negotiations: Hamas official
On Wednesday, Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas official told Al Mayadeen that in any negotiations, the movement’s goal is to stop the war on the Gaza Strip while “Israel” merely seeks a prisoner exchange.
Al-Nounou stressed that any potential agreement must include a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction of the Strip, an end to the blockade, and a captive-prisoner exchange.
According to the official, prioritizing a prisoner exchange alone would not necessarily lead to a lasting ceasefire.
The Palestinian official argued that current discussions regarding a deal are merely a waste of time, under the guise of negotiations in preparation for the coming US elections.
Al-Nounou said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim with these proposals is to “buy time”, which he sees as “part of a local or US election campaign.”
“We have no veto on listening to mediators if they have any proposals,” the Hamas official reiterated but underlined that the movement had made it clear that it opposes a temporary pause of hostilities and the resumption of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.
The Palestinian official clarified that openness to offers is distinct from agreeing to them, particularly “if they fail to meet the resistance’s four core demands,” affirming, “If we are invited to hear new proposals, we will certainly attend.”
His statements echoed those of the movement’s spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri, who confirmed on Tuesday that Hamas has responded to requests from mediators to discuss new proposals regarding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
Several meetings have already occurred on this matter, with more scheduled to follow, Abu Zuhri indicated.
Texas judge: Enforcing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism limits speech
Interim decision allows policies to remain in place for now
‘Freedom for Palestine’ protest march that drew thousands of participants on November 4, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
MEMO | October 31, 2024
Georgian president refuses to back up election theft claims
RT | October 30, 2024
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has refused to be interviewed by the prosecutor general’s office about her claims of election fraud, arguing that investigators should look for evidence themselves.
Zourabichvili has joined several pro-Western opposition parties in accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of “stealing” Saturday’s parliamentary vote, without providing specific examples.
The Prosecution Service of Georgia subsequently launched an investigation into the alleged falsification of the election and summoned Zourabichvili to appear on Thursday and provide evidence on the matter.
“I don’t intend to go to the prosecutor,” Zourabichvili said at a press conference in Tbilisi.
“It’s not up to the president to provide the proof,” she argued, adding that NGOs, election monitors and ordinary citizens have been providing “huge amounts” of evidence of election rigging. She said that more than 1,100 complaints have been filed regarding the conduct of the election.
“In any standard investigation, it’s the investigative body’s duty to gather proof, not the other way around. I’ve never seen an investigative authority ask a president for election-related evidence,” the president wrote on X.
“What we’re witnessing is an attempt to fuel tension and fear amid frustration over stolen votes. There’s psychological pressure directed at both you and me,” she added.
Mamuka Mdinaradze, executive secretary of Georgian Dream, advised the president to cooperate with the prosecutors. “President Zourabichvili must answer what her accusations are based on,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “We are ready, as part of the investigation in the prosecutor’s office, to open any polling station to prove that the elections were held fairly.”
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that Zourabichvili and the opposition “have no evidence of election fraud, and if they do not go to the prosecutor’s office, this will be the clearest evidence that they made false statements about the elections.”
Kobakhidze previously stated that the election was “absolutely clean, democratic and fair.”
Zurab Japaridze, leader of the Girchi – More Freedom party said the critics of the government “do not trust” the prosecutor’s office and would advise the president not to meet with them.
Official tallies showed Georgian Dream received nearly 54% of the vote, winning a convincing parliamentary majority. The French-born Zourabichvili has rejected the results, describing the election as a “Russian special operation.” Along with the opposition leaders, she has demanded a new election, organized under international supervision.
Georgian election officials complained about Zourabichvili’s rhetoric on Tuesday, urging the prosecutors to investigate “unfounded attacks” on the central election commission. They noted that international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have “positively assessed the elections” and found no significant violations. The US and the EU, however, expressed their concerns and urged the Georgian authorities to investigate the reports of irregularities.
Will Tuesday’s Vote Counts Be Another Sham Biden-Harris Statistic?
By James Bovard – Mises Wire – October 30, 2024
If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election on Tuesday, Americans will be told that the final vote count is a sacred number that was practically handed down from Mt. Sinai engraved on a stone tablet. Any American who casts doubt on Harris’s victory will be vilified like one of those January 6, 2021 protestors sent to prison for “parading without a permit” in the US Capitol. Actually, anyone who doubted the 2020 election results was being prominently denounced as “traitors” even before the Capitol Clash.
But is there any reason to expect the final vote count in next week’s presidential election to be more honest than any other number that the Biden-Harris administration jiggered in the last four years?
Biden, Harris, and their media allies endlessly assured Americans that the national crime rate had fallen sharply since Biden took office. That statistical scam was produced by the equivalent of disregarding all the votes in California and New York. FBI crime data simply excluded many of the nation’s largest cities until a revision earlier this month revealed that violent crime had risen nationwide.
Deceitful national crime data helped cover-up the disastrous impact of open border policies. The Biden-Harris administration did backflips to avoid disclosing the true size of the surge of illegal immigrants from early 2021 onwards. Kamala Harris did zombie-like face plants in recent interviews when elbowed for honest answers.
In the same way that another surge of unverified mail-in ballots may determine the 2024 election, Biden manipulated the number of illegal aliens by using his presidential parole power to entitle more than a million people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cubans, and other countries to legally enter and stay in America on his own decree. The Biden administration even provided a vast secretive program to fly favored foreign nationals into select airports late at night where their arrival would occur under the radar.
Some states will officially count mail-in ballots that arrive well after Election Day even if the envelopes have no postmark. This is the same “late doesn’t matter” standard that Biden used to vindicate the $42 billion provided by his 2021 infrastructure law to boost broadband access in rural America—which Uncle Joe said was “not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity.” Unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority, Biden’s broadband program has nothing to show since it delivered faster internet access to almost no one. The same default occurred with the Inflation Reduction Act’s alleged showpiece achievement—42,000 new charging stations around the nation for electric vehicles. But that program produced more presidential applause lines than EV refills. As of March, $7.5 billion in federal spending had only produced seven new charging stations nationwide.
How many votes will Harris lose on Tuesday because Americans remain outraged at the inflation that has slashed the dollar’s value by more than 20 percent since Biden took office? There would be far more popular fury if the feds had not deceived Americans about the full financial damage that Washington inflicted. The official inflation statistic doesn’t count soaring mortgage and housing costs—which is akin to excluding any state south of the Mason-Dixon Line from the national vote tally. Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, said that if the feds today used the same inflation gauges used in the 1970s, Biden’s peak inflation would have been 18 percent, twice as high as the reported number.
Tens of millions of voters will not be obliged to show any identification before voting in this election: they are presumed trustworthy regardless of zero verification. But this is the same standard that the Biden-Harris administration uses for not disclosing its most controversial policies to American citizens. People will vote next week without knowing the facts behind whistleblower allegations on Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party, to Secret Service failures to prevent Trump assassination attempts, and the brazen details of the Censorship Industrial Complex.
In Washington, politicians feel entitled to applause for any grandiose promise—regardless of their failure to deliver. Similarly, politicians and election officials promising that the presidential vote count will be accurate and reflect “the will of the people” is far more important than tabulating the actual ballots. Will the unmanned ballot boxes in big cities be stuffed with bogus ballots the same way a politician jams endless balderdash into his campaign speeches? As pundit Stephen Kruiser quipped, “the clothing donation boxes that were all over my old neighborhood in Los Angeles were probably more secure than the ballot drop boxes.”
Of course, if Trump wins, then all the forces of decency must instantly shift to the other side of the barricades. Any electoral victory by Trump will be illegitimate because of politically incorrect comments made by speakers at Trump campaign rallies. As in 2017, if Trump wins, every “true patriot”—or at least every true progressive—will be honor-bound to join The Resistance™.
Moscow slams Washington for ‘repressive’ treatment of Russian reporters
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. © Sputnik / Aleksei Danichev
RT | October 30, 2024
The US violated its own laws on freedom of the press by detaining a group of Russian journalists earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday. She was commenting after an incident involving a crew of Izvestia reporters who had arrived in the US to cover the upcoming election.
The crew arrived in Washington DC late on Monday. Despite having the necessary entry permits and credentials, they were detained at the airport, stripped of their filming equipment, and interrogated, Izvestia reported.
One member of the crew, cameraman Vladimir Borovikov, said he was questioned for ten hours, then denied entry and expelled from the country after having his visa annulled. US authorities cited “administrative reasons” for his expulsion, according to Zakharova.
She claimed that the incident was a clear example of Washington’s “global campaign” against Russian media.
“We regard what happened as yet another gross violation by Washington of its obligations in the area of ensuring freedom of access to information and media pluralism,” Zakharova said in a statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s website. The action was “demonstrative” and intended to show Washington’s “readiness to use its repressive apparatus to block information that is inconvenient for them,” she added.
“Such actions are fully consistent with the logic of the global campaign against Russian media declared by the current [US] administration, which directly contradicts not only America’s international obligations, but also the provisions of its own constitution,” Zakharova stated, warning that “the tyranny of the American authorities will not remain without a proper response.”
In an interview with Sputnik Radio on Tuesday, Zakharova explained that Russian media outlets are being targeted for working as a “mirror that reflects what is really happening in the world” instead of the Western-approved narrative, especially when elections are involved.
“Everyone knows that the US elections are a circus. Accordingly, everyone wants to look at them… Our journalists went through all the procedures [but] were detained and interrogated for hours… This is their democracy in action. Where are all these journalists’ rights?”
Zakharova noted that besides other violations involving the detention of the Izvestia crew, the US authorities failed to notify the Russian Embassy in Washington about the incident. Diplomats were therefore unable to intervene in the proceedings and provide assistance.
The US has placed multiple sanctions on Russian media, with the latest introduced last month. In mid-September, Washington sanctioned RT and its parent company TV-Novosti, accusing them of “functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence.” Following the move, US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, banned several Russian news networks. Multiple media reports also claimed that Russian media crews have repeatedly been denied access to international events.
FBI ran ‘honeypot’ operation on 2016 Trump campaign – whistleblower
RT | October 30, 2024
Former FBI Director James Comey personally ordered “honeypot” spies to infiltrate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to an agency whistleblower. The off-the-books operation was described by the agency insider as a “fishing expedition” to find wrongdoing among Trump’s team.
The operation was “personally directed” by Comey and launched in June 2015 without any case file being created in the FBI’s database, according to a whistleblower report handed to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and seen by the Washington Times.
At the time, Trump had just announced his first presidential campaign and neither he nor anyone on his campaign team was suspected of any crimes. Nevertheless, Comey ordered two “honeypot” agents to infiltrate Trump’s team on the campaign trail with the aim of extracting damning information from adviser George Papadopoulos, the report claimed.
A “honeypot” agent refers to an attractive woman who uses a sexual or romantic relationship to gather intelligence from a target.
Comey’s operation took place a year before the FBI’s ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia, which later morphed into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year ‘Russiagate’ probe. According to the whistleblower, the honeypot operation was kept “off the books” to conceal it from the US Justice Department’s inspector general, who later determined that Comey knowingly lied when submitting evidence to obtain a warrant to surveil Trump’s campaign.
Papadopoulos was eventually questioned by the FBI and in 2017 pled guilty to making false statements to agents regarding his alleged contacts with Russia the year before. He served 12 days in federal prison in 2018, and has claimed ever since that he was entrapped by FBI agents posing as Russians with damaging information on Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
He complained about sloppy FBI agents “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians” during the Crossfire Hurricane probe, and claimed to have been targeted by at least one “honeypot” beforehand. However, Papadopoulos thought that the woman was working for the CIA and “affiliated with Turkish intelligence,” he said in 2019.
The operation was canceled when a newspaper obtained a photograph of one of the agents and was about to publish it, the whistleblower claimed. The FBI allegedly contacted the newspaper claiming that the woman in question was an informant, and not an agent, and would be killed if the photo was released, successfully preventing its publication. One of the agents was then allegedly transferred to the CIA so she would not be available as a potential witness.
“The FBI employee personally observed one or more employees in the FBI being directed to never discuss the operation with anyone ever again, which included talking with other people involved in the operation,” the report states.
The Judiciary Committee told the Washington Times that it “plans to look into” the report. Trump fired Comey in 2017, describing him as a “liar” and a “slimeball.”
State Department Threatens Georgia With ‘Consequences,’ Amid Rigged Election Claims
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | October 29, 2024
The State Department and the European Union are demanding Tbilisi repeal “anti-democratic” legislation and investigate election “irregularities” respectively after the Georgian Dream Party won this weekend’s parliamentary elections. Georgian leaders including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and President Salome Zourabichvili are at odds, with Zourabichvili accusing Kobakhidze’s party of winning a “total fraud” election.
Per the official tally, Georgian Dream won 54% of the vote, with multiple opposition parties earning between 3-11%. Georgian Dream will form the country’s next government as they now hold a minimum of 90 out of the national parliament’s 150 seats. However, four opposition parties which favor integration with the EU are refusing to participate in the new legislature, deeming the election stolen, and accusing the ruling party of pushing Georgia towards a pro-Russia direction. President Zourabichvili called for protests and vowed she will not recognize the plebiscite’s results.
Tens of thousands of Georgians protested for hours outside parliament on Monday night, the demonstrations reportedly ended with no plans for further action but dispersed peacefully. The Georgian government and electoral commission have dubbed the election free and fair.
State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller threatened Georgia with “consequences” before adding his demands. Miller characterized the election as having taken place within an “environment shaped by the ruling party’s policies including misuse of public resources, vote buying and voter intimidation.”
He made clear the path Georgia is taking does not bode well for its future in America’s orbit, “We encourage Georgia’s governing officials to consider the relationship they want with the Euro-Atlantic community rather than strengthening policies that are praised by authoritarians.”
Finally Miller, speaking for a government which has extensively meddled in Georgian elections including staging a coup in the 2003 Rose Revolution, warned “We do not rule out further consequences if the Georgian government’s direction does not change.” He then insisted that Tbilisi begin “withdrawing and repealing anti-democratic legislation.”
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe praised Georgia’s voter participation, substantial presence of citizen and party observers, as well as the diversity of ballot choices during the election. OSCE observers “found the legal framework to be adequate for holding democratic elections.” Although they also accused the ruling party of exploiting an “already uneven playing field,” and claimed there were instances of intimidation, coercion, and pressure being put on voters including public sector employees.
EU Council chief Charles Michel is calling on the relevant authorities in Georgia to “swiftly, transparently, and independently investigate and adjudicate electoral irregularities and allegations thereof.” He added, “These alleged irregularities must be seriously clarified and addressed.”
Western governments are condemning Georgia’s ‘law on transparency of foreign influence,’ which requires agencies to register as “agents of foreign influence” if they are operating within Georgia and foreign sources account for over 20% of their funding. Georgia’s parliamentary speaker signed the bill into law after it was vetoed by President Zourabichvili earlier this year. The law operates similarly to the US Foreign Agents Registration Act.
The West is also in an uproar against Georgian laws banning gender reassignment surgery, gay marriage, and so called LGBTQ “propaganda” including PRIDE-style events along with certain books and films. Although, polling shows significant public disapproval in Georgia of same-sex marriages.
Last month, a senior US official told Voice of America, the American state-funded media outlet, that Washington is preparing sanctions on former Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s influential founder, over his opposition to Tbilisi joining NATO and the EU.
An analysis by Ian Proud published by Responsible Statecraft makes the case that the ruling party’s victory can be explained not by election rigging but as a popular response to various economic and immigration crises.
Proud notes the uneven trade relationship the Caucasian country maintains with the EU since signing the EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement ten years ago. EU states benefit from robust exports in Georgia while purchasing four times less Georgian imports. The trade balance is more even with the Eurasian States, although they too export 1.8 times more than they import.
At the same time, the Washington-led proxy war with Moscow in Ukraine is both funded and championed by the EU. The war has caused an immigration crisis in Georgia with nearly 90,000 people emigrating from Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine between 2022 and 2023. This has led to a surging unemployment rate of over 26%, while housing prices are up 35% and rent prices have risen as much as 50%.
In 2008, at NATO’s Bucharest Summit, Brussels announced both Tbilisi and Kiev would one day join the Washington-led military bloc which has been mired in disastrous wars in the Balkans, North Africa, and Central Asia. The admission of both states to the alliance is viewed in the Kremlin as a major national security threat and provoked Russia’s invasions of both Georgia sixteen years ago and now Ukraine.
As Scott Horton, the Libertarian Institute’s director, has detailed, the now jailed former president Mikheil Saakashvili, the victor of the US-backed Rose Revolution, “was incentivized to take bigger risks due to the Bucharest Declaration of America’s intent to bring them into the NATO alliance just four months before, U.S. military support and vague security assurances the Bush government had given his government that spring. Saakashvili launched an attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia in the southern Caucuses Mountains, then enjoying full autonomy and protection by Russian peacekeepers under a deal that had been brokered by [the] European Union… The Russians, suffering casualties in the initial assault, quickly struck back, destroying Georgia’s invading force and securing South Ossetia’s independence from Georgian rule.”
Barack Obama’s administration orchestrated a coup and overthrew the government in Kiev during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Subsequently during the Donald Trump years, the White House armed Ukraine’s military, including Neo Nazi militias integrated in the National Guard. Concurrently, Kiev entrenched ties with US special operations forces and the CIA as it waged a war against ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbas region.
Under the current White House, as tensions mounted over the Donbas, the erstwhile USSR state became a de facto NATO member as Washington eschewed diplomacy with the Kremlin, refusing to discuss rescinding Ukraine’s invitation for membership with the alliance, culminating in Russia’s 2022 invasion.
U.S. mercenaries killed in Russia, West goes hysterical on dubious North Korea claim
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 29, 2024
“It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week.
It certainly is an alarming development that American, Canadian and Polish mercenaries were killed in action on Russian soil this week. The members of a recon and sabotage unit were eliminated by Russian forces as they crossed into Russia’s Bryansk region from Ukraine.
But von der Leyen and other Western leaders said nothing about that. They were hyperventilating instead over ropey claims about North Korean troops sent to Russia.
Credible Russian security footage showed the dead men lying beside supplies of heavy weapons, including Semtex explosives and anti-tank grenade launchers, “enough to blow up a small city,” it was reported. One of the casualties bore the tattoo of the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite airborne special forces unit. It is unclear if the American soldier was a former member of the U.S. Army who had joined a private mercenary contractor or if he was redeployed from army ranks to fight in Ukraine against Russia.
Either way, the presence of military combatants from the United States and other NATO states on Russian territory is stark evidence that the NATO powers are directly involved in the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.
Washington and Brussels have maintained the tenuous fiction that they “only” supply weapons to Ukraine but that NATO is not a participant in a conflict with nuclear-powered Russia.
That fiction has always been an insult to common sense. NATO countries have been actively involved in recruiting foreign mercenaries to go fight in Ukraine. Russia estimates that 15,000-18,000 militants have traveled to deploy with the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the conflict erupted in February 2022. Large numbers have been killed or taken prisoner.
Mercenaries have been identified from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, and Georgia, as well as jihadists from Syria trained by American occupation forces at bases such as Al Tanf. It is estimated that foreign fighters from over 100 countries have ended up in Ukraine, aiding the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime.
Some of them are no doubt “soldiers of fortune” making a payday. Others would have to be NATO servicemen because the operation of technical weapons such as HIMARS artillery and so on must involve NATO handling expertise.
The desperate incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that began on August 6 was thought to have included many foreign mercenaries. One American private military contractor identified was the Forward Observation Group.
The Western media have largely ignored or obscured the reports of NATO connections to the ground fighting. Not surprising given the propaganda function of Western “news” media in what is information warfare.
Meanwhile, this week, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte announced concern that North Korean troops were fighting in the Kursk region. This was the first time that NATO had officially made the claim. For weeks there have been speculation and rumours about North Korean troops joining Russian forces.
The U.S. and European media ran headlines implying that the NATO claims were fact.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated: “North Korean soldiers are deployed to support Russia’s war of aggression. It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace.”
Healthy skepticism is warranted. NATO’s Rutte did not provide any evidence to support his claim. He simply referred to his discussions with South Korean military intelligence officials.
The Ukrainian de facto dictator Vladimir Zelensky (he canceled elections months ago) has for months been pushing claims that thousands of North Korean troops are joining Russia’s ranks in Ukraine.
It seems significant that Zelensky met with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol last year at the G7 summit in Hiroshima. It was their first meeting. Immediately after that encounter, South Korea pledged more military and financial aid to Ukraine. Zelensky’s wife also made suspicious trips to South Korea to attend “media events”.
President Yoon’s approval rating among the South Korean public has hit rock bottom over a range of grievances, including soaring cost of living. Yoon is a hawk on relations with North Korea. Pyongyang has slammed Seoul for deliberately antagonizing tensions.
Under President Yoon, South Korea has become a major weapons exporter, having sold an estimated $20 billion worth of arms over the last two years. South Korea is warning that it will increase military supplies to Ukraine on the back of claims that North Korean troops are being deployed in Russia.
There seems to be a lot of dramatizing about the purported North Korean contingency. The Kiev regime is amplifying claims as a way to get the United States and NATO more involved in the proxy war. The White House has expressed concerns about the claims of Pyongyang’s alleged participation. For President Yoon, Ukraine represents opportunities to boost his flagging poll numbers and economic gains from increased weapons exports.
The Western media are wishfully claiming that the deployment of North Korean troops is a sign of desperation by Russian President Vladimir Putin over supposed military losses in Ukraine.
That contention does not make sense. Russian forces are rapidly advancing to fully take control of the Donbass region in Ukraine. The NATO-backed side is losing territory at the fastest rate in more than two years of conflict. The idea that Russia needs North Korean military help is implausible, if not absurd.
Moscow signed a mutual defense pact with Pyongyang earlier this year. If North Korean soldiers are deployed to Russia, perhaps for training, that is entirely a legal and sovereign matter between consenting parties.
It is not Russia that is being “desperate”. The deployment of American and other NATO mercenaries to Ukraine is a real sign of desperation that the Kiev regime has run out of cannon fodder and is engaging in cross-border provocations.
Of course, NATO and Western leaders would prefer to fantasize about North Korea than to admit the truth of their “grave escalation” on Russia’s borders and reckless threat to world peace.
Idaho Health Board First in U.S. to Defy CDC and FDA by Removing COVID Vaccines From Clinics
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 29, 2024
Idaho’s Southwest District Health will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines after its board voted 4-3 last week to pull the shots from the 30 locations where it provides healthcare services.
“It’s the first health agency in America to do that,” Laura Demaray, a Southwest Idaho resident and nurse who attended the Oct. 22 vote, told The Defender.
Miste Karlfeldt, executive director of Health Freedom Idaho, agreed that the board’s vote is historic. “It’s thrilling,” she told The Defender.
The board’s vote came after it received about 300 public comments urging the district, which encompasses six counties, to stop promoting the shots.
Just before the board voted, members heard presentations from cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, pediatrician Dr. Renata Moon and obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. James Thorp on safety concerns related to the COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. John Tribble, the board’s only physician, invited them to speak.
“Dr. Tribble was a very brave board member who is very aware of the harms of the COVID injection,” said Demaray. “He asked me to help gather the presenters.”
Demaray, who said she knows many people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines, and others reached out to experts who could present data related to COVID-19 vaccine harms to the board. “It was total teamwork.”
Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense CEO, applauded the board’s action:
“After hearing from 300 constituents, listening to well-informed physicians and assessing the public record, the Southwest Idaho Health District Board made an informed decision not to stock its own clinics with COVID shots.”
Demaray and Holland pointed out that the board didn’t take away anyone’s freedom to get a COVID-19 vaccine. “If residents want, they can obtain the shots from other pharmacies and doctors’ offices,” Holland said.
Demaray said the board’s decision showed “there’s some distrust in this shot.” She added:
“If a health district is giving a shot in their own clinics, then it means they believe in the shot and they don’t think somebody will get hurt. It means they support it tacitly.”
Holland said, “The Health District Board was conveying its values to the public — ‘these products are unsafe and we do not promote them’ — and the board was within its authority to do this.”
A precedent for other health agencies?
Tribble told The Defender some of the backstory leading up to the historic vote. “The people of this district were demanding answers,” he said. “Many came forward with heartbreaking stories of vaccine injury.”
After listening to its residents, the board members felt it was important to allow “the free and open discussion and evaluation of the evidence for and against the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.”
In addition to hearing presentations from McCullough, Moon, Cole and Thorp, the board also heard from district staff physician Dr. Perry Jansen who recommended keeping the vaccine on the district’s clinic shelves.
“In the end,” Tribble said, “the evidence clearly showed a lack of safety and efficacy as it compares to the risk from COVID-19 and their [the board members’] decision reflected that.”
The board members who voted to remove the shot “exhibited courage” because they did so “based on the evidence, in direct opposition to the federal health agencies’ recommendations.” Tribble said:
“I believe our actions here stand as an example and precedent for other health agencies to take back control of their health and freedoms from a corrupted federal system. I hope this will inspire other health agencies to openly discuss this issue and evaluate the evidence for themselves.”
‘That is how you open up a can of truth’
Karlfeldt said she’s confident the board’s landmark decision will embolden other health administrators across Idaho and the rest of the U.S. to make similar moves.
Demaray agreed. She said she already heard from two other Idaho health districts that are now considering pulling the COVID-19 shots from their clinics after learning of the Southwest District’s vote.
Demaray encouraged other U.S. citizens to reach out to their local health board members, asking them to review the safety information on the COVID-19 vaccines.
Many federal health agency leaders are captured by industry, but that’s not the case with most local-level health officials, Demaray said. “They aren’t all bought out yet.”
“If you bring your local doctors like Dr. Tribble — or Dr. Cole, Dr. McCullough, Dr. Moon and Dr. Thorp — if you bring them and they make presentations, it is public record and your community gets to see that,” she said.
“That is how you open up a can of truth,” Demaray added.
There’s a lot of power at the local level because while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends COVID-19 vaccines and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves them, it’s typically the local agencies that adopt policies to promote them.
Holland said, “Sadly, people need to accept that they cannot trust the federal government anymore when it comes to their health.”
VAERS: 1.6 million reports of injury or death after COVID vaccination
Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist at the McCullough Foundation, commended the board for its action.
“Southwest Idaho Health District has made the correct and brave choice to remove COVID-19 injections from their clinics,” Hulscher said. “The updated boosters were never tested in humans, while previous iterations have demonstrated that they’re not safe for human use.”
Hulscher noted that Boise State Public Radio’s coverage of the vote labeled the presentations by McCullough and others as “anti-vaccine.”
The Boise State Public Radio article — which referred to McCullough and the other presenters as “doctors widely accused of spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation” — appeared to “blindly favor COVID-19 vaccines,” he said, “while ignoring deeply worrisome safety data.”
For instance, the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID-19 vaccination continues to climb.
VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirming the reported adverse event was caused by the vaccine. VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
As of Sept. 27, there were 1,604,710 VAERS reports of injury or death following a COVID-19 vaccination.
The board’s vote has helped create greater public awareness that the COVID-19 shots “are massively injurious gene therapy products,” Holland said.
Tribble agreed:
“People need to understand that these shots are not vaccines by the traditional definition. That is to say, they do not impart immunity or prevent transmission.
“They were rushed to market, given legal immunity and coercively pushed upon the world’s population backed by unfounded fears spread by governments and media.”
Moreover, the safety and efficacy data we have is limited and primarily released by the same vaccine companies that stood to make hundreds of billions of dollars off of these injections, Tribble added.
“This experiment with mRNA gene therapy during COVID-19 will be shown to be one of the most egregious examples of democide in world history,” he said.
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.
NIH Spending $2.2 Million to ‘Nudge’ Elderly to Get More Vaccines
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 29, 2024
Using U.S. taxpayer dollars, researchers at two universities are identifying older people behind on their recommended vaccines and testing personalized “nudges” to coax them into getting more shots. nih-nudge-more-vaccines-feature.jpg
According to grant documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding the $2.2 million “BE IMMUNE” clinical trial, which began in 2020 and will run through 2025.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington are using Electronic Health Records (EHR) data — the electronic records from doctors’ offices containing patients’ detailed health and demographic data — to target African American, Hispanic and Asian people with lower flu, pneumococcal and herpes zoster vaccination rates.
The ongoing study blames the “poor vaccination rates” on patients’ and clinicians’ “widespread decision-making biases.” The trial is testing strategies drawn from behavioral economics, which uses insights from psychology to understand — and in this case to “nudge” or direct — people’s decision-making behavior.
The randomized controlled study is headed up by Dr. Shivan Mehta and a team of healthcare management experts who combine medical and business-based strategies to run studies like these.
The trials often are based in Penn Medicine’s in-house “Nudge Unit,” where behavioral design teams are dedicated to figuring out how to influence patient choices.
The grant is part of a massive initiative by the NIH to increase vaccine uptake by changing how people make decisions. The initiative has included hundreds of millions of dollars in grants since 2020 to create “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines.
It also included more than 50 grants worth $40 million designed to increase HPV vaccine uptake.
Testing the ‘ladder’ of behavioral interventions
The study is testing different “nudges” at more than 100 primary care practices at Penn Medicine, University of Washington Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Health System, one of the world’s largest EHR vendors in the world.
Over 1,000 primary care physicians and thousands of eligible patients at those practices are involved in the trial.
The range of tested interventions is scaled on a ladder.
Nudges lower on the ladder try presenting people with information so they can make their own decisions about vaccines —- methods that typically are not very effective for increasing vaccine uptake, the researchers said.
Nudges higher on the ladder either prompt people to make decisions, or simply plan their decisions for them.
For example, one nudge automatically sets up vaccination appointments for people, compelling them to go to their appointment and get vaccinated unless they intentionally opt out.
The “opt-out” framework has been effective in other areas of healthcare, such as colorectal cancer screening or persuading more people to take their flu shots, the researchers reported.
Netflix uses prompts to encourage binge-watching — healthcare should prompt people to get more shots
Penn’s “Nudge Unit,” which bills itself as the “world’s first behavioral design team embedded within a health system,” houses the study, which is also being conducted in a similar unit at the University of Washington.
Economist Richard H. Thaler and legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein popularized nudging in their 2008 book, “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” as a method to create a “choice architecture” designed to influence people’s behavior in a predictable way “but without restricting choice” — particularly for policies or measures that might otherwise be unpopular.
Penn launched its Nudge Unit in 2016, inspired by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Nudge Unit, established in 2010 to shape citizen behavior in the United Kingdom — a strategy the Penn researchers thought should also be applied to healthcare.
Penn’s Nudge Unit founders argued in a 2018 New England Journal of Medicine article that healthcare should use the same strategies businesses use to influence consumer behavior.
For example, they said, airlines require consumers to actively choose whether to purchase trip insurance before they can buy a plane ticket. Netflix changed its default settings to automatically play the next episode in a TV series to encourage binge watching.
“Similar opportunities exist to direct clinicians and patients toward better health care in situations where there’s consensus about desired behaviors,” they wrote, citing effective drugs, vaccines and targeted therapies as examples.
The strategy is being implemented globally — management consulting firm McKinsey reported that about 400 “nudge units” had been established globally by 2021.
However, even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed Gavi concedes, “the theory has its critics — detractors argue that nudges can be paternalistic, invasive, ideological, and coercive in ways that erode public trust.”
The researchers behind this study also found that often the nudge approach doesn’t work.
In those cases, they argue “a stronger intervention—a ‘shove’—may be needed.”
EHR — an opportunity to scale up the nudge
The researchers celebrated EHR for offering a unique opportunity to develop and rapidly scale up personalized nudges.
The records increasingly are used for research and clinical trial recruitment because they contain a wealth of data. And new technological tools now allow researchers to “mine, assimilate, analyze, link, reproduce and transmit information” gleaned from that data.
Twila Brase, a registered nurse and author of “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth about Electronic Health Records,” told The Defender most people think the privacy of their EHR is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPPA — but that’s not the case.
HIPPA only guarantees your data will be secure as it is passed among the various entities that have access to it, including researchers, Brase said. And that access can be provided without your consent.
“Nowhere in the law does HIPPA give you control over your medical records,” she said.
Because the records contain massive amounts of personal information that can be used and linked in many different ways, researchers studying EHR-based research argue that the use of EHR also raises “pressing questions concerning privacy, confidentiality, and patient awareness.”
They say that the use of one’s EHR data for research reasons can be confusing or even impossible to opt out of because often the provision of healthcare is linked to accepting a policy allowing researchers to use EHRs.
And EHR research often operates on the same logic as the nudge — an “opt-out” approach where permission is assumed unless a patient explicitly indicates they want to revoke it.
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.
Israel’s Deadly Miscalculation: Consequences of Attacking Iran & Hezbollah
Dialogue Works | October 29, 2024
Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran and advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiations team: (https://x.com/s_m_marandi)
The US Is Funding 70% of Israel’s Wars
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | October 29, 2024
A new report by the Israeli outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since October 7, finding that Washington is funding 70% of Tel Aviv’s military costs. In a little over a year, the US has provided Israel with more than $20 billion in military aid.
“The scope of American aid since the beginning of the war is about 85 billion shekels… According to official estimates by the Bank of Israel, the total cost of the war is…approximately NIS 118 billion.” It continues, “Therefore, according to a simple calculation, The Americans financed about 70% of the war effort.”
According to the Cost of War Project, the US has given Israel $22.57 billion in military aid since the Hamas attack. Calcalist concludes without US support, Tel Aviv’s war would simply be unaffordable.
“There is no doubt that without the American aid the government deficit for the years 2024-2025 (which is one of the highest in the country’s history), would have increased by about 4.3 % GDP, which would have made it unfinanceable,” it says. “Therefore, it is doubtful whether this war would have been conducted as it is – neither in intensity nor in scope – without the American assistance.”
The US has sent Israel tens of thousands of bombs, artillery rounds, and tank shells. Those weapons have been used to commit countless war crimes against the Palestinian people of Gaza.
The official death toll in the besieged enclave now exceeds 43,000. However, a group of American healthcare workers who have spent time volunteering in Gaza estimate the actual death count to be over 118,000.
Dr Tammy Abughanim, a pediatric intensive-care surgeon, said, “We cannot do our jobs, because Israel has made our jobs impossible, and Israel has made our jobs impossible with the direct support of the United States.” She added, “We all know the obvious step is to stop supplying Israel with the arms that it is using, the weaponry that it is using to target and kill civilians.”
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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