Conflicts of interest within the medical community have reached record highs as concerns for patient safety and independent scrutiny of Big Pharma products are driven by newly released information showing serious conflicts of interest.
As the investigation into the origins and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic takes center stage through congressional hearings, shocking testimony is being revealed to the public. Shockingly, Dr. Lawrence Tabak, principal Deputy Director of the National Institutes of Health, has admitted under oath that NIH was funding gain of function research. In an even more shocking turn, newly released emails from Dr. David Morens, who worked as Senior Advisor to the Director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases directly under Dr. Anthony Fauci, reveal shocking revelations that senior officials at NIH were purposely using private emails and having in person conversations to avoid FOIA requests. Amidst all of this, HHS has stripped all funding from Peter Daszak, and Eco Health Alliance.
Testimony from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Senior Scientific Advisor David Morens — a longtime aide to former NIAID Director Anthony Fauci — only deepened congressional concerns about the possibility of concealed or destroyed emails concerning connections between the institute and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A memo and over 150 emails released by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Wednesday show that Morens spent considerable time and energy avoiding the Freedom of Information Act — a law that requires federal agency records to be provided to the public on request with limited exceptions.
Morens deleted sensitive emails, conducted official business on a private email account, and worked with an NIAID administrator in the Freedom of Information Office to strategically misspell keywords that the public might request to be searched, the committee alleges.
Morens sought to conceal emails in which he championed his close friend EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, a scientist who subcontracted NIAID funding to the lab in Wuhan for experiments that made coronaviruses more deadly. Morens said that he and Daszak met twenty years ago and were part of the same close knit “fraternity” among emerging infectious diseases experts.
The subpoenaed emails make clear that Morens repeatedly advocated for EcoHealth and Daszak from within Fauci’s inner circle — serving as an intermediary between Daszak and Fauci — and often using his private Gmail account to shuttle messages.
One email released by the committee suggests that Fauci himself may have subverted public records requests through use of a personal email account, bypassing official channels.
“I can either send stuff to Tony on his private email or hand it to him at work or at his house,” Morens emailed on April 21, 2021. “He is too smart to let colleagues send him stuff that could cause trouble.”
Other emails show Morens and Daszak strategizing about how to convey information to Fauci without leaving a paper trail.
Morens confirmed Wednesday that he discussed grants from NIAID to the Wuhan Institute of Virology with Fauci.
“I certainly told him some things that he asked me to tell him about the situation with Peter [Daszak],” Morens said.
That statement contradicts a transcribed interview Morens gave the committee earlier this year in which he said he did not recall discussing EcoHealth or the Wuhan lab with Fauci.
“The evidence establishes that Dr. Morens likely provided false testimony to the Select Subcommittee,” the committee’s memo states.
The committee may recommend that the Department of Justice investigate Morens for making false statements, a crime in violation of Title 18 Section 1001.
The testimony follows revelations last week that Morens stated he would delete any “smoking guns” implicating a connection between Daszak’s organization and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Far from allaying concerns, Morens’ subpoenaed emails and testimony only raised more questions about the culture at the NIAID around transparency and public records requests. Indeed, the emails and testimony suggest NIAID may have systems in place to help employees evade FOIA requests.
NIAID did not reply to a request for comment.
In addition, Morens wrote an email about the possibility of a “kickback” for helping to restore EcoHealth’s NIAID funding. He wrote profane emails that referred to binge drinking and sex, and made a remark about former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky wearing a skirt, raising concerns about his lack of professionalism and attitudes toward women.
“It is very disturbing to witness this type of behavior from Dr. Fauci’s senior advisor, but the evidence is clear and overwhelming. Dr. Fauci’s NIAID was unfortunately less pristine than so many, including the media, would’ve had us all believe,” said Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio.
In one of the emails obtained by the committee, Morens acknowledges that the reputation of EcoHealth and Daszak affect the reputations of Fauci and former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins.
“From Tony’s numerous recent comments to me, and from what Francis has been vocal about over the past 5 days, they are trying to protect you, which also protects their own reputations,” Morens wrote in October 2021.
Morens’s attorneys turned over 30,000 emails to the committee responsive to a subpoena on April 30, just before Daszak testified to the committee on May 1. It remains to be seen whether more emails come to light following the new revelations that Fauci apparently used a private Gmail account and that Morens used a Proton Mail account in addition to his Gmail account.
Morens said that the emails about a “back channel,” a “kickback,” and “smoking guns” simply reflected “black humor.” Morens also expressed regret for how his emails had undermined trust in NIAID.
“I’ve already apologized for making snarky and profane comments but I made them thinking that they were made on my private Gmail in a manner that was just between a small group of friends,” Morens said. “It’s embarrassing to me. I shouldn’t have done it. But I accept that I did it. I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry.”
However Morens gave unclear testimony in response to the question of whether he improperly used his personal email to conduct official business.
Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., read out six separate emails in which Morens referred to avoiding FOIA. It took over three minutes to read every one.
“This Gmail communication thing was set up purely to deal with personal things that were not government business,” Morens said.
“How can you say that when in all of these emails you said you were intentionally avoiding FOIA? You said it in your own words, sir,” Lesko said.
Lesko countered that official emails had been forwarded to his private Gmail, that the emails on his Gmail had his official NIAID position in the email signature.
Morens blamed a technical issue.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe you,” Lesko replied.
‘Do I get a kickback???’
When the novel coronavirus emerged from the same city in China with a high security lab specializing in coronaviruses, Daszak’s collaboration with the lab and with University of North Carolina gain-of-function coronavirologist Ralph Baric came under scrutiny — including from non-virologists like Wenstrup.
For his part, Morens helped Daszak with non-public information when concerns about the Wuhan lab prompted NIH to suspend EcoHealth’s grant. Morens forwarded Daszak an email marked “for official use only” in April 2020.
Morens appears to have helped Daszak navigate around NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer’s request for more information about the Wuhan lab in 2020 as a condition of the reinstatement of the grant, possibly hampering the U.S. government from accessing more information about the research underway there. Morens even personally edited EcoHealth’s response to Lauer, one email shows. That email too contradicts Morens’s transcribed interview earlier this year, perhaps exposing him to criminal penalties.
Daszak’s testimony earlier this month indicated that he never asked the Wuhan lab for genomic data beyond 2015 or so or for relevant lab notebooks — instead merely forwarding a request for information from NIH.
Morens also alerted Daszak to the forthcoming publication of documents released under FOIA in September 2021.
Morens invoked Fauci’s name in an email in which he appealed to an EcoHealth Alliance board member to continue to support the organization upon Daszak’s request.
After the grant was reinstated — despite Daszak’s failure to provide the data and information about the Wuhan lab that NIH requested — Morens sent an email referring to a “kickback.”
“Ahem…. Do I get a kickback??? Too much fooking money! DO you deserve it all? Let’s discuss….” he wrote.
“Of course there’s a kick-back,” Daszak replied.
Morens said the emails were in jest and denied receiving payment or any gifts from EcoHealth or Daszak.
Members of the committee of both parties expressed concerns that Morens used official resources and the imprimatur of the NIAID to improperly assist the embattled EcoHealth, and how that could impact NIAID.
“I just hope you’re going to be very careful as you are telling us what the facts are because I’m very disturbed about other people who may be thrown under the bus in some of the wiley statements you made on your personal statements,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., an apparent reference to Fauci and Collins.
The Department of Health and Human Services has suspended federal funding both to EcoHealth and to Daszak personally pending an investigation into their handling of taxpayer funds. EcoHealth and Daszak could face debarment of any federal funds for several years.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who recently co-launched a bipartisan investigation into biosafety issues at the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs, called upon the DOJ to investigate Morens Wednesday and alleged a criminal conspiracy to conceal records at NIAID.
The emails also indicate that Morens played a central role at NIAID in early debates about gain-of-function experiments — specifically, controversial experiments on highly pathogenic avian flu in 2011 — and that he privately criticized scientists in favor of stronger biosafety regulations at Rutgers University, Harvard University and Stanford University.
The Russian military possesses perhaps the most comprehensive, multilayered and multi-domain electronic warfare capabilities in the world, using an array of short, medium, long and ultra-long range systems to effect throughout the course of the proxy war with NATO in Ukraine.
The Russian military continues to ramp up its ability to disrupt the Starlink internet capabilities Ukraine’s troops use to coordinate their forces, collect intel and launch drone attacks on Russian frontline positions, causing mass “outages” in the Kharkov area of the front and playing a role in the rapid pace of Russia’s recent advances.
That’s according to Ukrainian officials, soldiers and electronic warfare specialists queried by the New York Times to find out why Russia’s EW operations had slowed frontline troops’ ability to communicate using Starlink internet to a crawl, forcing troops to resort to simple text messages.
NYT warned that if Russia’s massed efforts to disrupt Starlink “continue to succeed, it could mark a tactical shift in the conflict, highlighting Ukraine’s vulnerability and dependence on the service provided by Mr. Musk’s company,” while raising “broader questions about Starlink’s reliability against a technically sophisticated adversary.”
“We’re losing the electronic warfare fight,” a deputy commander from the Ukrainian 92ndAssault Brigade’s drone battalion told the newspaper. “One day before the attacks, it just shut down. It became super, super slow,” he complained.
A Ukrainian drone operator confirmed the connectivity issues. “During the first hours the front line was very dynamic. The enemy was moving. And we were moving as well. We needed to be to be fast in communicating,” the soldier said, complaining that the loss of Starlink connectivity “made everything more complicated” and “time consuming.”
Starlink, which operates by beaming internet down to portable Earth-based terminals using vast constellations of satellites, has been in Russia’s crosshairs since the early months of the Ukrainian crisis.
Sputnik has detailed the technical minutiae of some of the tools Russia has at its disposal to jam Starlink’s operations in Ukraine without breaking international law – including the use of ground-based radars to detect the operation of and pinpoint the location of Starlink terminals, and jamming signal transmission directly. The Borshchevik is one such system.
Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov told the NYT that Russia’s latest attacks against Starlink appeared to be using more advanced technology, saying the Russians were “testing different mechanisms to disrupt the quality of Starlink connections because it’s so important for us.”
Fedorov did not elaborate on the nature of these “powerful” Russian EW systems, but said Kiev has maintained constant communication with Starlink to try to resolve the problems.
Experts from NATO countries aren’t entirely certain what’s causing the signal loss – improved and more precise Russian jamming equipment, or a new breed of special electronic warfare weapons mounted on drones to confuse the GPS signals. NYT also didn’t rule out that “solar storms” may be responsible for random outages.
Russia has demonstrated a mounting technological advantage over Ukraine in recent months, blasting through heavily fortified defensive lines in the Donbass – which Ukraine’s military had spent nearly a decade building up with NATO’s help, and advancing rapidly in the Kharkov region to create a “sanitary zone” after repeated Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure, including the border city of Belgorod.
Retired US Army Lieutenant General and former spec ops commander Mike Nagata warned last week that America was “falling behind” its adversaries in electronic warfare despite its best efforts.
“The gap between where the United States should be and where we are, in my judgement, continues to expand not everywhere, but in far too many places,” Nagata said at a Special Operations Forces Week conference in Tampa, Florida.
The former commander’s assessment was echoed by Hudson Institute senior fellow Daniel Patt in recent Congressional testimony. Patt warned in March that Russian EW systems had resulted in a dramatic drop in the effectiveness of some US GPS-guided munitions sent to Ukraine from 70 percent to as low as six percent.
Over the past two years, Russia has fine-tuned its electronic warfare capabilities to jam NATO artillery shells and JDAMs, heavy and long-range strike drones, and missiles. An informed source told Sputnik last October that Russia’s EW troops were preparing equipment to suppress F-16s when they arrive in Ukraine.
Electronic warfare has been a traditional Russian strong suit going back to Soviet days, when doctrines emphasized the “total integration of electronic warfare and physical destruction resources” on the battlefield.
As the Iranian nation mourned the tragic death of President Ebrahim Raisi this week, the United States could not even muster a respectful offer of condolence.
The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, officially that country’s top diplomat, made a crass remark that the Iranian people would be “better off”. This as the Islamic Republic had declared five days of mourning for the late president whose funeral in the city of Mashhad was attended by millions of Iranians.
President Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash along with the country’s much-respected Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and several other dignitaries who were also on board the aircraft. The fatal crash happened in treacherous weather over a mountainous region in northwest Iran as the president’s entourage returned from a visit to Azerbaijan.
Most of the world expressed shock and grief over the loss. The UN General Assembly held a minute’s silence and at the funeral, 68 nations were represented including officials from Russia and China.
The United States and Iran have been staunch adversaries for almost half a century following the Iranian revolution in 1979. Nevertheless, it is a basic matter of diplomacy and etiquette for countries to show a token of sympathy at such a time of national mourning.
The disgraceful and cheap comments about the death of Iran’s president show how inadequate Blinken is as the supposed U.S. primary diplomat. But the failure is not merely a personal matter, it epitomizes the general collapse of Washington’s political quality and international standing. The United States presumes to be a world leader but it evidently has no class. Biden, the president and Blinken’s boss, is a foul-mouthed crank who regularly insults other leaders with ignorant prejudice.
On Blinken’s insult over the Iranian president’s death, Russia’s presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov expressed the disgust of many observers around the world when he said: “It is hard to believe that a diplomat — let alone a high-ranking official of a country such as the United States — would make such a clumsy remark, to say the least. In essence, it was an insult directed at an entire nation.”
Apart from the lack of human decency, there is a total lack of politics. Blinken’s offensive comment comes at a moment of extreme tension in the Middle East amid a genocide perpetrated by the Israeli regime with support from the United States. The powder-keg situation could explode at any time into an international war engulfing the entire region. Israel and Iran have already exchanged military blows.
All diplomats worth their salt should be trying to calm tensions, not inflame them. Blinken’s contemptible insult to the Iranian people is a reckless provocation.
But such sensibility and respect are too much to expect from Blinken who has shown himself to be way out of his depth as a diplomat.
Last week, the “top diplomat” embarrassed his office by playing guitar on stage in a bar during an official visit to Kiev. Blinken was in the Ukrainian capital promising billions of dollars more in military aid to prolong a bloody and futile proxy war against Russia. Reliable estimates put the Ukrainian military death toll at over 500,000 in over two years of combat. Yet, here was Blinken strumming electric guitar with a local rock band. Even more cringe-making was his choice of song, Neil Young’s ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’. Not only was Blinken tone deaf to the horror of war, but he was oblivious to the fact that the song is an explicit condemnation of American imperialist barbarity.
How could anyone be so stupid and insensitive? That is the measure of Antony Blinken right there.
Lamentably, Blinken has a lot of dubious company in Washington. Their collective arrogance and incompetence are driving the world to calamity. It is reported this week that Blinken is among those in Washington advocating for the supply of long-range U.S. weapons to strike Russian territory. Others pushing this recipe for World War Three include Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and former State Department official Victoria Nuland.
Blinken’s blunders should have seen him sacked long ago in disgrace. He was a chief cheerleader for arming the Kiev regime long before the conflict escalated in February 2022. He along with Nuland and others was instrumental in setting the course for this proxy war that runs the risk of spiraling into a nuclear war.
During his previous posts as national security advisor to President Obama and Biden when he was vice president, Blinken endorsed the NATO “human rights” war on Libya and the “pro-democracy” proxy war for regime change in Syria. The latter involved Washington arming sectarian terror gangs – until Russia and Iran put an end to that dirty operation.
This trail of disaster chartered by Blinken should have ensured his barring from ever ascending to the prominence of Secretary of State. However, that is assuming such appointments are made based on sanity and sound foreign policy.
No, Blinken is a war criminal whose ignorant narcissism knows no bounds. He is nothing but a useful tool for American imperialist warmongering. The guitar-playing, Harvard-educated Blinken is a manikin that provides a pseudo-liberal image to cover for the barbarity of US global power.
His ineptitude is leading the world to an abysmal state of confrontation in the Middle East and between nuclear powers over Ukraine.
What’s more though is the deplorable truth that Washington is full of clones like Blinken. The level of political culture in the U.S. establishment that spawns the likes of Blinken is so putrid and prevalent, that it is difficult to envisage any quality thinkers and leaders emerging.
The degeneration of politics and diplomacy in the United States has been on a long decline much like its global power. Some of Blinken’s more recent predecessors include Mike Pompeo (“we lie and cheat all the time”) and Hillary Clinton (who gloated about the murder of Muammar Gaddafi with “we came, we conquered, he died”); Condoleezza Rice (of Iraq war and rendition torture notoriety) and Colin Powell (who told barefaced lies to the UNSC over WMD). The list of degenerates goes on.
But in Blinken’s case, he’s probably the high point – or maybe that should be the low point – of polished incompetence.
Cometh the hour of U.S. failure, cometh the man who embodies abject failure.
WASHINGTON – The United States should stop sending money to Ukraine and attempt to negotiate peace as soon as possible, US Congressman Thomas Massie told Sputnik on Friday.
“I think we should quit sending money there. I think we should try to negotiate peace as soon as possible,” Massie said on the sidelines of the 2024 Libertarian National Convention.
US lawmakers are showing dwindling support for sending military aid to Ukraine each time the matter comes to a vote, Massie highlighted.
“The support for sending weapons to Ukraine is weakening in the US Congress, as you can see with each subsequent vote,” the congressman emphasized.
There should be some effort made to bring both Ukraine and Russia to the upcoming conference in Switzerland as it is hard to imagine negotiations without Russia, Massie stressed.
“This sounds kind of hard to negotiate a peace if they don’t have Russia at the table. So I think there should be some effort to have Ukraine and Russia there,” the congressman said.
Talks Must Go On
Talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden could help solve the conflict in Ukraine, and even lower-level discussions between top diplomats could help achieve progress, Massie highlighted.
“I think it could help,” Massie said when asked whether talks between Biden and Putin could help solve the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. “Although, even lower-level negotiations would help as well, I think.”
When asked at what level such discussion should be held, the congressman said, “Maybe at the secretary of state level, for instance.”
Massie expressed his view that it is “wrong” that communications between the US and Russia are limited.
“I think there should be talks,” he said.
‘Very Short-Sighted Policy’
The US government freezing of foreign assets, including those of Russia, is a very short-sighted policy and sends a message to the international community that the United States may stop honoring transactions, the congressman emphasized.
“I think it’s very short sighted of our government to freeze for instance, Treasury assets, that are held by other countries, such as Russia, because it sends a message to the world that if you buy our debt, then we may not honor the transaction at some point,” Massie explained.
The representative added that US moves to freeze foreign assets are “extremely dangerous” because they will increase the price that Washington has to pay to finance its debt.
“I’m sure that our closest allies will still trust that we’ll be good on our word, but other sovereign funds will have a diminished appetite for financing our debt,” Massie said. “So, I think it’s very short-sighted of us to do that.”
Moscow has maintained that any attempt to confiscate its frozen assets would violate international law, with the Russian Foreign Ministry labeling such an action as theft.
No More Money to Ukraine
The congressman argued that he opposes the US government sending more money to Ukraine unless such assistance achieves peace.
“I told our own speaker – if you want to send $60 billion and the goal is to achieve some kind of peace, I might be compelled to vote for it. But I’m not voting for $60 billion that will then only necessitate another $60 billion,” the representative clarified.
Massie also said that both sides to the conflict in Ukraine will eventually run out of people if fighting continues.
“I think it’s immoral to grind up people in this war on both sides,” Massie added.
Earlier on Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced that the United States was providing a new weapons package for Ukraine worth $275 million.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Monday the United States has already delivered many of Ukraine’s “top-priority requirements” and much more assistance is on the way.
Austin added that he expects a steady flow of US assistance for Ukraine on a weekly basis.
Russia has consistently warned against continued arms deliveries to Ukraine by the collective West, saying they would only prolong the conflict but would not change the situation on the ground.
Since October 2021, it has either failed the flight test or scrubbed launches.
Three years.
The joint Army/Navy Dark Eagle Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, that despite the $8.3 billion in R&D invested in it have so far failed to successfully fire a single AUR, All Up Round, it doesn’t fill you with confidence after the cancellation of the Air Force AGM-183 Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), both are/were hyper-sonic glide missiles.
Don’t believe the January 2023 estimates of 41 million per missile if it ever gets off the ground. Yet another signature failure of the sclerotic and arthritic Pentagon spending sprees using an acquisition system the Soviets would blanch at.
The US remains the most expensive paper tiger in the history of the Earth.
The ARRW program was launched in April 2018 and originally planned to achieve initial operational deployment in 2022. However, in November 2023, after conducting two test flights in August and October 2023, the ARRW hypersonic program was officially cancelled.
Poland and Greece on one side and EU behemoth Germany on the other have presented competing visions of a common European air defense system. Sputnik asked respected Polish political observer Mateusz Piskorski about the hidden tectonic political, economic and geostrategic tensions that the rival plans have laid bare.
Warsaw and Athens on Thursday urged the European Union to join forces to create a common “air defense shield” for the bloc.
“Europe will be safe as long as the skies over it are safe,” Polish and Greek prime ministers Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote in a joint letter to European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. “That is why the EU needs a new flagship program – a European air defense shield – a comprehensive air defense system to protect our common EU airspace against all incoming threats.”
The ‘shield’ “must be a program which addresses [the] major vulnerability in our security” resulting from an array of global crises, and one “which strengthens the EU’s overall defense capabilities and incentivizes European defense companies to develop cutting-edge technologies,” the letter stressed.
Von der Leyen, up for reelection in the quickly approaching elections to the European Parliament in June, quickly endorsed the Polish-Greek proposal at a debate Thursday night.
The new air defense proposals comes after –and apparently as a direct challenge to, a German-led initiative floated in 2022 to create a ‘European Sky Shield’, involving the joint European purchase of pricey air defense equipment. That project fell into obscurity after other major EU partners, including France, expressed opposition to purchasing weapons made outside the bloc.
France and Italy have been pushing their own sophisticated rival to the American Patriot missile system known as the SAMP/T – priced at roughly $500 million per battery and $2 million per interceptor missile (compared to about $1 billion per battery and $4 million per missile in the Patriot’s case). Both systems have been thrashed by Russian forces after being sent to Ukraine.
The competing EU air defense proposals and inability to agree on a bloc-wide policy to date is logical outcome of a union divided by internal political divisions, economic and strategic considerations, and the overbearing influence of Europe’s partners in Washington, says Mateusz Piskorski, a former Sjem lawmaker, independent political observer and columnist for the Mysl Polska (‘Polish Thought’) newspaper.
Piskorski reminded Sputnik that the second of the competing air defense proposals have been unveiled on the eve of elections to the European Parliament, and recalled that both the Polish and Greek prime ministers are members of the same European-level party – the center-right, pro-Europeanist European People’s Party.
“As representatives of this pan-European party, the ranks of which incidentally include Ursula von der Leyen, they are likely trying to demonstrate in the framework of pre-election activities that they have their own version and vision of a European air defense system. In other words, this is an election campaign issue,” Piskorski explained.
From that perspective, the observer stressed that there’s no question that the Polish-Greek ‘European Air Defense Shield’ is an alternative to the German European Sky Shield proposal, recalling that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats are direct competitors to the European People’s Party at the EU level.
“Secondly, of course, there are certain political subtleties,” Piskorski said, pointing to lingering Greek animosities to Germany’s treatment of Athens a decade-and-a-half ago when Greece suffered economic collapse, and the strict austerity programs enforced on it at Berlin’s direction.
Poland too has “historical and political grounds” of its own to express skepticism of German initiatives, Piskorski said.
“Everyone understands that the creation of such a system – the development of this program would require the effort of all EU members,” and that a major European power – Germany or France, would have to take the lead, the observer noted.
One of the prime reasons Europe already doesn’t have its own common air defense system comes down to the influence of its “Anglo-Saxon friends, and, naturally, first and foremost the USA, who are protecting their own interests and see continental Europe as their protectorate,” Piskorski said.
The UK plays second fiddle in this arrangement, having left the EU through Brexit, closing the door to any pan-European integration projects, including defense policy.
With Central European countries like Poland owing their allegiance to the US, Piskorski rules out the creation a genuinely European mutual air defense arrangement at the current stage. “No one will say so directly, but such an initiative would not be received kindly by Washington and American authorities, just like attempts to create a common European defense policy,” he said.
“Attempts to create large, powerful structures in the military-industrial complex of continental Europe are projects which contradict the main economic and geopolitical interests of the United States,” Piskorski stressed.
That said, the observer doesn’t rule out a European move toward “strategic autonomy,” to quote President Macron of France, including as far as questions related to defense are concerned, after the presidential elections in the US, and in the event that Washington scales back its participation in and financing for various defense-related projects in Europe.
“This would make these projects more concrete and substantive. But this is a question for the future. It’s a slow process. I think that the process of gaining autonomy in this area may take at least several years, perhaps several decades,” Piskorski stressed.
Discord in Europe
Besides US intransigence, up to and including the possible use of agents of influence to resist EU air defense initiatives, there are issues of financing, as well as “technological barriers,” the observer believes.
“There are many factors here, but first and foremost of all is the question of financing. We know that, unfortunately, the European Commission’s sanctions policy and the so-called ‘green agenda’ on environmental issues, among other things, has resulted in European industry being curtailed. Europe is in a fairly deep economic crisis, at least for now,” Piskorski said.
As for technological barriers, “they are connected, first of all, with the fact that Europe has relied exclusively on the United States in this regard in the past, and did not have time to develop its own technologies to the same level… And of course, within Europe there is competition between the defense-industrial complexes of different nations. Naturally, any EU country will seek to support the interests of its own manufacturers, developers of technology, and so on,” the political observer summed up.
Symptoms of a dying empire are arrogance and a refusal to adapt to change. The M-1 Abrams tank is an outdated Cold War symbol of the power of the US Army. It was designed in the 1970s, costs far too much to upgrade and maintain, burns far too much fuel, lacks overhead protection from drones, and is far too heavy for most off-road operations and rural bridges. This was exposed during the war in Ukraine when M-1 tanks were easily destroyed on the battlefield. The Ukrainians were sent 31 70-ton M-1s and quickly asked to trade them for German Leopard tanks since the super heavy M-1s easily got stuck in mud, broke down often, and required daily refueling. After seven M-1s were destroyed during their first three months of sporadic combat, most were withdrawn from units.
“Ukraine pulls US-provided Abrams tanks from the front lines over Russian drone threats”; Tara Copp; AP News; April 25, 2024; https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-ru…
“M1 Abrams Ineffective By 2040 In Fight Against China: Army Study”; The Warzone; Joseph Trevithick; October 4, 2023; https://www.twz.com/m1-abrams-ineffec…
A physician’s assistant is suing a New York hospital system, alleging it violated the federal False Claims Act by failing to complete mandatory reporting of injuries associated with the COVID-19 vaccine to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).
Deborah Conrad worked at United Memorial Medical Center, part of Rochester Regional Health (RRH), until October 2021, when she said she was fired for reporting vaccine-related adverse events.
Conrad filed the lawsuit in May 2023, but the complaint wasn’t unsealed and made publicly available until February, TrialSiteNews reported last week.
She is seeking job reinstatement and back pay for herself and civil penalties on behalf of the U.S. government.
Most importantly, Conrad told The Defender, she hopes the lawsuit will lead to changes in how vaccine adverse events are reported.
“How can anybody trust the vaccine program when medical professionals are not adhering to the reporting requirements of the one system we have in place that is meant to assure us that these things are safe?” she asked.
“I want policy change. I don’t care about the money, the vindication. I want to be able to trust the health system,” Conrad said.
Under the False Claims Act, whistleblowers can file a lawsuit on behalf of the federal government against an entity they allege profited from taxpayer funds by defrauding the government.
False Claims Act cases are initially sealed while the government investigates the cases and determines whether it will intervene and take the case on itself, or allow the whistleblower to proceed with the action.
The government decided not to intervene in the case. It is now unsealed and moving forward with Conrad as the “relator,” who gives evidence to the court on behalf of the U.S. government.
She told The Defender the evidence she is submitting to the court is substantial — she meticulously saved every email, patient file and recorded conversations with supervisors and other hospital staff.
United Memorial Medical Center, like all institutions in the U.S. that administered the COVID-19 vaccines, signed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) COVID-19 Vaccination Program Provider Agreement, according to the complaint.
The agreement stipulated that organizations providing the shots and which received compensation for doing so from the federal government were required to “report moderate and adverse events following vaccination” to VAERS.
By not doing so, Warner Mendenhall, the attorney representing Conrad, told The Defender, they were out of compliance with the agreement. And, he added, the agreement clearly stipulates that non-compliance violates the False Claims Act.
The hospital not only failed to report cases, it blocked Conrad from submitting approximately 170 reports of serious adverse events to VAERS between May 27 and Oct. 6, 2021, Conrad said.
The hospital system also failed to report over 12,000 adverse events, the complaint alleges.
Mendenhall said they estimated that number based on the number of people vaccinated at one of the healthcare facilities or another nearby clinic who then presented at the hospital for treatment for an injury that was likely linked to the vaccine.
The complaint contains several examples of such cases.
On behalf of the U.S., Conrad is seeking damages that fall into what Mendenhall described as “three buckets.”
First, he said, each entity was paid an administrative fee — approximately $40 — for each injection. The suit seeks a refund of that money to the government for the thousands of shots administered.
Next, for every failure to report, there is a mandatory penalty of at least $20,000. For 12,000 cases, that would total more than $240,000,000.
Finally, the “third bucket” of damages would be the cost of the treatment that people had to pay for their vaccine injuries. By failing to meet their obligations as a vaccine provider, he said the hospital failed to provide people with the proper necessary treatment they ought to be entitled to and those costs should be reimbursed.
If Conrad prevails in court, the hospital will go bankrupt — but that isn’t the intent, Mendenhall said.
“We don’t want to bankrupt community hospitals,” he said. “That’s not what we are about. We want them to do their job, to do what they are supposed to do and file the reports,” he said. “And we want Deb Conrad rehired to run the program.”
Conrad is suing only one hospital system, but there are roughly 2,800 systems in the country, Mendenhall said. “As far as I know, not a single one of them met their obligations under the vaccination program participation agreement. And they all signed it.”
The False Claims Act, “is a way for us as a people, if we want to hold these providers accountable for their wrongdoing, we actually can do it,” Mendenhall told Trial Site News. “There’s a very clear pathway here. It’s outlined here, and they all agreed to it.”
Ray Flores, senior outside counsel for Children’s Health Defense, told The Defender the case represented a “bold effort to hold those who allegedly defrauded the people of the United States accountable.”
In detailing the ways the hospital precluded providers from reporting to VAERS, “the allegations in the complaint solve part of the mystery of why only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported,” he said.
Conrad: ‘I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy’
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Conrad had been a physician assistant for nearly 20 years. She spent most of that time as a hospitalist, working in inpatient medicine and the intensive care unit in the same hospital.
At United Memorial, she was director of Advanced Practice Providers, sat on the medical executive board, saw patients and was the first non-physician to receive the Physician Excellence award.
When the COVID-19 vaccine came out, her whole life changed, Conrad said. As she had done throughout her career, she reported to the hospital the safety issues and new trends in illness that she was seeing, such as elderly vaccinated people hospitalized for COVID-19 or young people with blood clots.
In researching whether providers in other places were witnessing the same issues, Conrad discovered VAERS — which she said she and her colleagues had never been told about, despite claims later made by the hospital — and began reporting cases.
She volunteered to take on this reporting role for the hospital, reporting all of the adverse events that came into the facility.
As the number of adverse events grew, the reporting became too onerous, so Conrad asked the hospital to develop a plan to efficiently complete the reports, to protect patients and to remain in compliance.
Instead, the hospital informed her it would be auditing her work.
The hospital accused Conrad of over-reporting and being “antivaxxy.” This was a problem, the hospital informed her in an email included in the complaint, because “we are very much advocating for patients to receive the vaccine.”
She was forbidden from filing reports for any patient she was not directly caring for, even though her leadership role meant she oversaw all patients, Conrad said.
If she had other concerns, they said she could register them in the hospital’s internal email system, “Safe Connect,” which she did. However, those reports weren’t going anywhere.
Concerned the events weren’t being reported and that the hospital was out of compliance with the agreement it had signed, Conrad began reaching out to the CDC, the FDA, the New York State Department of Health and the hospital accreditation board.
Rather than receiving support, Conrad said:
“I kept getting gaslit and made fun of and told I was crazy.
“Then I got called into a meeting and they threatened to report me to the state for spreading misinformation, saying that basically doing VAERS reports and talking to patients about their potential side effects is misinformation, and that I was spreading vaccine hesitancy, and that’s not allowed.
“And they said if it continued they were going to report me to have basically my license taken away. Wow. So at that point, I knew I was in real trouble.”
She contacted a lawyer and went public with her experience on The Highwire and in The New York Times. She also started a GoFundMe campaign, anticipating her possible firing.
The hospital threatened to report her to the New York State Society of Physician Assistants for spreading vaccine misinformation. Just a few months earlier, the same organization had nominated Conrad for a seat on the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct.
In what Conrad called “direct retaliation,” on Oct. 6, 2021, she was publicly surrounded at her workstation by human resources staff and escorted to a room where she was interrogated about her public comments.
“They basically told me, are you going to leave quietly or are we going to walk you out?” she said.
Conrad said the firing was very public and humiliating, which she thought was meant to scare others. “As a result of me being publicly fired, it’s my understanding that now no one [at the hospital] is reporting to VAERS,” she said.
Providers aren’t trained to use VAERS
The VAERS system is the primary public reporting system for flagging vaccine safety issues. For members of the public, it’s a voluntary system. However, healthcare professionals are required to report certain events.
Yet, Conrad said, she never learned about VAERS in her medical training and the hospital never offered training for the system. She said they never mentioned the system to staff until she complained publicly.
“We come out of school knowing every side effect for every drug known to man, because they have no liability shield, but we are never taught there could be anything wrong with vaccines,” she said.
“We didn’t even know there’s a reporting system. Why is that? Why do we have a liability shield for vaccines if they’re so safe? Why would we need it when we don’t have it for drugs that we know are not always safe? None of it makes sense,” she added.
Conrad said this “flawed” and “fraudulent” system is responsible for the rise in “vaccine hesitancy.” “They blame people like me for this hesitancy,” she said, “but they are the ones who created the issue by not enforcing” safety and injury reporting.
Instead, she said, the public health agencies normalized previously unthinkable ideas, such as it’s normal for vaccines to make people sick, or that reused cloth masks would protect from infectious disease and much more.
Healthcare is about safety, she said. “First, do no harm. That’s the oath I took when I graduated. But they’re using the doctors to harm patients unknowingly and not teaching them about the safety mechanisms we put in place.”
Conrad said she hopes the lawsuit will help change that. Now that it is unsealed, she said, “We’re able to go back out there and start talking about things because the public cannot forget. We cannot forget what has been done. Otherwise it’ll happen again.”
Mendenhall said he expects a response from the hospital system next week. He predicts they will submit a motion to dismiss, which he intends to contest.
“This is the first case of its kind,” he said. “I predict we will succeed in defending any motion to dismiss because Deb did such a good job with the evidence and her story is very compelling.”
The US wants a “prominent” role in Gaza after Israel’s military operation in the Palestinian enclave ends, Politico has reported. Washington expects a joint Palestinian-Arab force of several thousand troops to take charge of security in Gaza after the current conflict.
On Thursday, Politico reported details of discussions within the administration of US President Joe Biden about what a post-war settlement should look like, citing four officials and a leaked document from the Department of State.
The US reportedly wants to retain a “civilian adviser” to any future security force, likely based in Egypt or Jordan. American forces, however, would “never enter Gaza itself” in order to avoid the impression that Washington was “dictating the future of the territory.”
A classified document from March envisioned an American filling the role of a “director-general” of the future security mission, according to the outlet. Under that proposal, the force would consist of roughly 2,000 Palestinians and 1,000 troops from Arab-speaking nations. It would be commanded by an officer from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, or “ideally” Egypt.
The timeline for the implementation of Washington’s plans are unclear, according to a US intelligence assessment described by Politico earlier this week. The document said Israel had managed to reduce the strength of Hamas forces by up to 35% since the group’s attack on Israel last October. However, it has recruited thousands of new fighters in recent months, a source in the intelligence community told Politico.
The Pentagon’s widely reported efforts to deliver humanitarian aid via a floating pier have been undermined by logistical and security issues. No food reached starving Palestinians between last Friday and Tuesday of this week, spokesman Pat Ryder told reporters, blaming the delay on local NGOs that were tasked with distributing the aid.
The US has refused to work with the UN Refugee Agency, a prominent provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, after Israel accused some of its employees of involvement in the October 7 attack. Last month, the UN said it had closed or suspended its probes into the allegations because Israel had failed to provide any evidence substantiating its claims.
“President Biden … has been equally emphatic on the record that the two-state solution should be brought about through direct negotiations through the parties, not for unilateral recognition,” White House National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, stated during a news briefing. Ireland, Spain and Norway’s decision to recognise a Palestinian State at a time of genocide is a belated symbolic act which the US is clearly displeased with, despite each country’s political autonomy.
If the symbolic gesture is to hold any meaning, however, it must be divested from the two-state narrative which is also part of the genocidal actions Israel is performing in Gaza.
So far, judging by the statements, the recognition is far from reaching practical political significance. Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Store, equated the decision with purported equivalence: “two states, living side by side, in peace and security”. A Palestinian State will not stop Israel from committing genocide. Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, stated, “We’re not going to allow the possibility of the two-state solution to be destroyed by force because it’s the only just and sustainable solution to this terrible conflict.” Wrong. The two-state paradigm enabled Israel to colonise Palestine further. And, besides, the decolonial alternative exists. Ireland’s Prime Minister evoked the image of security and peace with neighbours, referring to the coloniser and the colonised. But world leaders know enough of colonialism to recognise that peace is not synonymous with colonisation.
Of course, the US would prefer negotiations to eclipse any recognition of a Palestinian State. Negotiations and the absence of them are also part of the political process that led to the current genocide in Gaza. But what Ireland, Spain and Norway are offering is still tethered to the two-state compromise. If it were not for the genocide unfolding in plain sight, the news would have been relegated to an announcement irksome to Israel. Even if the gesture is not backed by political action supporting decolonisation – the statements clearly show the leaders’ intent to safeguard the two-state diplomatic trajectory – Israel committing genocide in Gaza makes a belated, symbolic recognition of Palestine significant because, at the very least, it asserts the ongoing existence of the Palestinian people in the face of the ongoing genocide.
Israel is intent on eliminating Palestinians from Gaza and the US is diligently aiding Israel with its weapons shipments. Recognition of a Palestinian State at such a time puts the gesture in direct conflict with what Israel and the US are trying to achieve, even if the statements by Norway, Ireland and Spain have kept to the conventional narrative. What happens next is of far greater consequence.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likely facing an international arrest warrant, which part of diplomacy will European countries want to preserve? And how much validity will the two-state compromise retain? It is one thing to harp on a defunct paradigm, but genocide not only can eliminate a population but also the diplomacy that Europe prides itself upon. It is up to any country that recognised Palestine to rethink its politics and diplomatically corner the US and Israel into isolation, by thinking beyond the two-state paradigm and relate the recognition of a Palestinian State to Palestinian decolonisation and liberation.
WASHINGTON – The US is launching a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation with Georgia over the passing of a “foreign influence” law in the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
“I am also launching today a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between the US and Georgia. It remains our hope that Georgia’s leaders will reconsider the draft law and take steps to move forward with their nation’s democratic and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. As we review the relationship between our two countries, we will take into account Georgia’s actions in deciding our own,” Blinken said.
Additionally, the US is implementing a visa restriction policy on Georgian officials, and their families, who are responsible for facilitating passage of a foreign agents law that could derail the country’s path to join the EU, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a press release.
“In response to these actions, the Department of State is implementing a new visa restriction policy for Georgia that will apply to individuals who are responsible for or complicit in undermining democracy in Georgia, as well as their family members,” Blinken said.
On Saturday, Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili vetoed the foreign agents bill that had been adopted by the country’s parliament last Tuesday. The parliament needs a simple majority to override the veto.
Despite having been targeted by the most powerful, pro-Israel political organization operating in America, libertarian-minded Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie stomped his two Republican primary challengers on Tuesday — and then used social media to mock his Israel-first detractors.
Massie cruised to victory, amassing 76% of the vote, while his two would-be vanquishers roughly split the difference, with Michael McGinnis edging Eric Deters by about 1%. With no Democratic opponent even bothering to take on Massie in November, he’s set up for a sixth term representing Kentucky’s 4th congressional district, which stretches all along the northernmost part of the state.
“Tonight’s victory is a referendum on thousands of independent votes I have cast in Washington DC on behalf of Kentucky’s 4th District,” said Massie.
“I’ve consistently upheld the Constitution by voting for and sponsoring legislation to support the right to keep and bear arms, the right to free speech, freedom of religion and the right to privacy. I’ve also fought against endless foreign wars, foreign aid and inflationary policies, regardless of who is in the White House.
Earlier this month, the independent campaign-spending arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) announced that it was pouring $300,000 into advertisements on Fox television affiliates across the Bluegrass State. The over-the-top ads said, “Israel, the Holy Land [are] under attack by Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah… and Congressman Tom Massie.”
Massie has repeatedly stood out as one of the very few Republicans willing to defy the wishes of the potent pro-Israel lobby. In recent months, he voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would make universities tolerating unacceptable statements about Israel targets of federal civil rights-based punishments. He also voted against the latest, $14.3 billion aid package, noting that “Israel has a lower debt-to-GDP ratio than the United States.”
After Massie’s lopsided win was apparent, AIPAC tried to downplay the outcome, saying that, rather than trying to oust him in the primary, the group wanted to damage him statewide — clearly in anticipation of a possible Massie 2026 Senate run to take the seat of retiring Senate Majority Leader and quintessential establishment swamp creature Mitch McConnell.
Massie said AIPAC was guilty of “election campaign malpractice.” Referring to the $400,000 total that AIPAC had spent against him recently, he told McClatchy DC, “I’m laughing because it has the same effect as lighting it on fire and burning it… What it could do is up my name ID statewide, but two years from now nobody’s going to remember what the ad was about.”
He also deftly turned AIPAC’s announcement of its attack-blitz into a fundraising opportunity. As word of AIPAC’s campaign spread on social media and via ZeroHedge and other outlets, more than 1,200 people contributed $101,000 to his coffers in just four days.
On Tuesday evening, Massie seized on AIPAC’s defensive tweet, drawing attention to the fact that it had been “ratio’d” by the Twitterverse.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
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Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
