CDC Demonstrates Failure of Public Health Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic
BY DR. HARVEY RISCH | APRIL 1, 2024
In so many words—and data—CDC has quietly admitted that all of the indignities of the Covid-19 pandemic management have failed: the masks, the distancing, the lockdowns, the closures, especially the vaccines, all of it failed to control the pandemic. It’s not like we didn’t know that all this was going to fail, because we said so as events unfolded early on in 2020, that the public health management of this respiratory virus was almost completely opposite to principles that had been well established through the influenza period, in 2006. The spread of a new virus with replication factor R0 of about 3, with more than one million cases across the country by April 2020, with no potentially virus-sterilizing vaccine in sight for at least several months, almost certainly made this infection eventually endemic and universal.
Covid-19 starts as an annoying, intense, uncomfortable flu-like illness, and for most people, ends uneventfully two-three weeks later. Thus, management of the Covid-19 pandemic should not have relied upon counts of cases or infections, but on numbers of deaths, numbers of people hospitalized or with serious long-term outcomes of the infection, and of serious health, economic and psychological damages caused by the actions and policies made in response to the pandemic, in that order of decreasing priorities. Even though numbers of Covid cases correlate with these severe manifestations, that is not a justification for case numbers to be used as the actionable measure, because Covid-19 infection mortality is estimated to range below 0.1% in the mean across all ages, and post-infection immunity provides a public good in protecting people from severe reinfection outcomes for the great majority who do not get serious “long-Covid” on first infection.
Nevertheless, once the Covid-19 vaccines were rolled out, with a new large wave of the delta strain spreading across the US in July-August 2021 even after eight months of the vaccines taken by half of Americans, instead of admitting policy error that the Covid vaccines do not much control virus spread, our public health administration doubled down, attempting then to compel vaccination on as many more people as could be threatened by mandates. That didn’t work out too well as seen when the large Omicron wave hit the country during December 2021-January 2022 in spite of some 10% more of the population getting vaccinated from September through December of 2021.
A typical mandate example: in September 2021, Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued Emergency Proclamation 21-14.2, requiring Covid-19 vaccination for various groups of state workers. In the proclamation, the stated goal was, “WHEREAS, COVID-19 vaccines are effective in reducing infection and serious disease, and widespread vaccination is the primary means we have as a state to protect everyone … from COVID-19 infections.” That is, the stated goal was to reduce the number of infections.
What the CDC recently reported (see chart below), however, is that by the end of 2023, cumulatively, at least 87% of Americans had anti-nucleocapsid antibodies to and thus had been infected with SARS-CoV-2, this in spite of the mammoth, protracted and booster-repeated vaccination campaign that led to about 90% of Americans taking the shots. My argument is that by making policies based on number of infections a higher priority than ones based on the more serious but less common consequences of both infections and policy damages, the proclaimed goal of the vaccine mandate to reduce spread failed in that 87% of Americans eventually became infected anyway.
In reality, neither vaccine immunity nor post-infection immunity were ever able fully to control the spread of the infection. On August 11, 2022, CDC stated, “Receipt of a primary series alone, in the absence of being up to date with vaccination through receipt of all recommended booster doses, provides minimal protection against infection and transmission (3,6). Being up to date with vaccination provides a transient period of increased protection against infection and transmission after the most recent dose, although protection can wane over time.” Public health pandemic measures that “wane over time” are very unlikely to be useful for control of infection spread, at least without very frequent and impractical revaccinations every few months.
Nevertheless, infection spread per se is not of consequence, because count of infections is not and should not have been the main priority of public health pandemic management. Rather, the consequences of the spread and the negative consequences of the policies invoked should have been the priorities. Our public health agencies chose to prioritize a failed policy of reducing the spread rather than reducing the mortality or the lockdown and school and business closure harms, which led to unnecessary and avoidable damage to millions of lives. We deserved better from our public health institutions.
Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD
References Cited
1. Inglesby TV, Nuzzo JB, O’Toole T, Henderson DA. Disease mitigation measures in the control of pandemic influenza. Biosecur Bioterror. 2006;4(4):366-75. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/bsp.2006.4.366
2. Ramirez VB. What Is “R-naught”? Gauging Contagious Infections. Healthline, June 14, 2023. https://www.healthline.com/health/r-naught-reproduction-number
3. Worldometer. United States Coronavirus Cases. March 28, 2024. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
4. Gupta S. Was I wrong about the Covid infection fatality rate?. UnHerd, April 5, 2023. https://unherd.com/newsroom/how-wrong-was-i-on-covid-ifr/
5. Inslee J. PROCLAMATION BY THE GOVERNOR AMENDING PROCLAMATIONS 20-05 and 20-14: 21-14.2. COVID-19 VACCINATION REQUIREMENT. Issued September 27, 2021. https://governor.wa.gov/sites/default/files/proclamations/21-14.2%20-%20COVID-19%20Vax%20Washington%20Amendment%20(tmp).pdf
6. CDC. 2022-2023 Nationwide COVID-19 Infection- and Vaccination-Induced Antibody Seroprevalence (Blood donations). March 22, 2024. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#nationwide-blood-donor-seroprevalence-2022
7. Our World in Data. Total number of people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Downloaded March 27, 2024. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/people-vaccinated-covid
8. Massetti GM, Jackson BR, Brooks JT, Perrine CG, Reott E, Hall AJ, Lubar D, Williams IT, Ritchey MD, Patel P, Liburd LC, Mahon BE. Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems – United States, August 2022. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022;71(33):1057-1064. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7133e1.htm
Dr. Harvey A. Risch MD, PhD is a Professor Emeritus of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and a guest contributor for Peter Navarro’s Taking Back Trump’s America
Bill to Extend Mass Surveillance Program Fails House Vote
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | April 10, 2024
A group of 19 House Republicans bucked GOP leadership and voted with Democrats against a bill that would extend Section 702, the law that allows for mass surveillance and the collection of Americans’ data.
On Wednesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) brought the legislation up for a procedural vote, and it failed 193-228. The Republican opposition was made up of a group of freedom-oriented Representatives led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
“The reauthorization lacks essential reforms to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, such as requiring the FBI to obtain a warrant before searching Americans’ data and a prohibition on the government purchasing Americans’ data from third-party data brokers,” the Flordia congressman said in a statement. “FISA authorities have been used to violate the law more than 278,000 times by the national security state, and there has yet to be any consequences for this illegal activity by our government.”
Gaetz criticized Johnson for letting a bill to renew Section 702 come to the floor without sufficient reforms. “If Speaker Johnson is unwilling to fix FISA Section 702, we are left wondering what he is indeed willing to fix. Now, the very authorities that we saw weaponized against President Trump and the American people are poised to get enhancements under this reauthorization, rather than any of the reforms that are so desperately needed,” he explained.
In the leadup to the 2016 election, the FBI launched an investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign and alleged ties to the Russian government. That probe was based on opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and ultimately failed to prove any ties between Trump and the Kremlin.
Trump announced his opposition to the bill prior to the vote on Truth Social, saying, “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!” While Trump now says he opposes Section 702, he signed extensions to the program when he was in the White House.
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 has allowed the US government to warrantlessly sweep up the information of millions of Americans for decades. It is set to expire on April 19.
However, even if Congress fails to act before April 19, the Wall Street Journal reports that surveillance will continue for at least a year. 702 spying “could potentially continue for another year due to how and when the secretive court that oversees the program grants annual approval for the categories of intelligence collection it allows.” WSJ adds, “Such a continuation of the program would almost certainly be met with legal challenges, a complexity that Biden administration officials have said they want to avoid.”
Jim Jordan Demands Big Tech CEOs and Feds Hand Over Censorship Collusion Documents
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 10, 2024
Advocating for transparency in the interactions between Big Tech and the government, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has taken further action. On Tuesday, he issued letters to the FBI, Department of Justice, and CEOs of key Big Tech firms, including Amazon, Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. These letters were not just mere inquiries; they were demands for documents that could shed light on the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Jordan’s initiative isn’t isolated but comes in the context of an ongoing legal battle concerning the government’s alleged collaboration with social media platforms. He pointed out in a recent press release that the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) had, as of March, re-engaged with major social media companies. This development, especially considering the FITF’s prior interactions with these companies during the 2020 presidential election, raises significant concerns for Jordan. With the 2024 presidential election on the horizon, he finds the renewal of this relationship between the FITF and Big Tech worrisome.
The documents are related to the renewed efforts of the DOJ to work with tech companies after the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of censorship claims.
He expressed these apprehensions, stating, “Given the FITF’s improper role in communicating with social media and technology companies during the 2020 presidential election, the resumption of meetings between the FITF and Big Tech before the 2024 presidential election is deeply troubling.”
But Jordan’s requests went beyond mere expressions of concern. He specifically asked Alphabet, and similarly, the other companies and government agencies, to produce detailed documentation of their communications with the FITF or the San Francisco Field Office of the FBI. He underscored the urgency and legitimacy of his request by referencing a continuing subpoena issued last year.
Occupied Nation: How the CIA Created Modern Germany
The sprawling U.S. embassy in Berlin. [Source: spiegel.de]
By Kit Klarenberg | CovertAction Magazine | April 9, 2024
On February 4th, The Economist published a devastating analysis—or perhaps, “pre-mortem”—on the collapse of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) under Olaf Scholz’s stewardship. Elected in what the Western media contemporaneously branded a “shock” result in September 2021, hopes for his coalition government in many quarters were high. Today, he enjoys the worst approval ratings of any Chancellor in modern history, and national opinion polls place SPD approval at 15% or lower.
The Economist frames Scholz’s collapsed fortunes, and the prospects of his party’s imminent extinction as a serious force within German politics, as a microcosm of Berlin’s declining economic and political clout more widely. It notes that the nation’s finances have gone “limp” during his tenure, with business-sector confidence collapsing, and record inflation destroying citizens’ incomes and savings. Other sources have detailed the country’s “deindustrialization,” Politico coining the nickname, “Rust Belt on the Rhine.”
In keeping with those meditations on Germany’s ever-worsening woes, The Economist’s bleak diagnosis made no mention of how Western sanctions imposed on Russia in February 2022 created Berlin’s crisis. Scholz was a prominent cheerleader for the Biden administration’s push to “make the Ruble rubble.” Now that effort has so spectacularly backfired that it can no longer be ignored or spun otherwise; Newsweek admits “any realistic war game could have easily predicted” the sanctions would not only fail, but boomerang on the sanctioners.
Those few analysts who predicted the invasion of Ukraine well in advance universally failed to anticipate Berlin would support and facilitate any U.S. counterattack, particularly in the financial sphere. They believed Germany possessed the requisite autonomy and sense not to commit willful economic suicide in service of Empire. After all, the country’s stability, prosperity and power were heavily dependent on cheap, readily accessible Russian energy. Voluntarily ending that supply would be inescapably disastrous.
For this failure, they can be forgiven. Berlin, particularly in the wake of reunification, has successfully presented itself to the world as sovereign, led by sensible people acting in the best interests of their nation, and Europe. In truth, ever since 1945, Germany has been a heavily occupied nation, drowning under the weight of U.S. military installations, and its politics, society and culture aggressively shaped and influenced by the CIA.
This unacknowledged reality is amply spelled out in Agency whistleblower Philip Agee’s 1978 tell-all book, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe. Comprehending who is truly in charge in Berlin, and what interests Germany’s elected representatives are actually serving, is fundamental to understanding why Scholz, et al., so eagerly embraced the self-destructive sanctions. And why the facts of Nord Stream 2’s criminal destruction can never emerge.
“Enormous Presence”
Following World War II, the United States emerged as the world’s undisputed military and economic superpower. As Agee wrote, the overriding aim of U.S. foreign policy thereafter was to “guarantee the coherence of the Western world” under its exclusive leadership. CIA activities were accordingly “directed toward achieving this goal.” In service of the Empire’s global domination project, “left opposition movements had to be discredited and destroyed” everywhere.
After West Germany was forged from the respective occupation zones of Britain, France and the U.S., the fledgling country became a particularly “crucial area” in this regard, serving as “one of the most important operational areas for far-reaching CIA programs” in Europe and elsewhere. Domestic Agency operations in West Germany were explicitly concerned with ensuring the country was “pro-American,” and structured according to U.S. “commercial interests.”
In the process, the CIA covertly supported the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and SPD, and trade unions. The Agency “wanted the influence of the two major political parties to be strong enough to shut out and hold down any left opposition,” Agee explained. The SPD had a radical, Marxist tradition. It was the only party in the Reichstag to vote against the 1933 Enabling Act, which laid the foundations for Germany’s total Nazification, and led to its proscription.
Newly reinstituted following the war, the SPD maintained its revolutionary roots until 1959. Then, under the Godesberg Program, it abandoned any commitment to challenging capitalism in a serious way. It stretches credibility to suggest the CIA was not expressly responsible for neutering the party’s radical tendencies.
In any event, effective control of West German democracy ensured that Washington’s “enormous presence” there–which included hundreds of thousands of troops and almost 300 separate military and intelligence installations—was not challenged by those in power, irrespective of the party to which they belonged, despite a majority of the population consistently opposing U.S. military occupation.
This presence in turn granted the CIA “a number of different covers to work behind,” according to Agee. The majority of its operatives were embedded within the U.S. military, posing as mere soldiers. The Agency’s biggest station was an army base in Frankfurt, although it also boasted units in West Berlin and Munich. U.S. operatives were “highly qualified technicians who tap telephones, open mail, keep people under surveillance, and encode and decode intelligence transmissions,” working “all over the country.”
Dedicated divisions were charged with “making contact with organizations and people within the political establishment,” such as the SPD and its elected representatives. All the intelligence collected was “used to infiltrate and manipulate” the same organizations. The CIA, moreover, collaborated “very closely” with West German security services in many domestic spying efforts, the country’s assorted intelligence agencies conducting operations at the Agency’s direct behest, “often [to] protect CIA activities from any legal consequences.”
“Discredit and Destroy”
Intimate bedfellows as they were, there were nonetheless “difficulties” in the CIA’s relationship with its West German counterparts, per Agee. The Agency never fully trusted their protégés, and felt a pronounced need to “keep an eye” on them. Still, this lack of faith was no barrier to the CIA partnering with the BND, West Germany’s foreign intelligence service, to secretly purchase Swiss encryption firm Crypto AG in 1970. Perhaps this was done to “protect CIA activities from any legal consequences.”
Crypto AG produced high-tech machines through which foreign governments could transmit sensitive high-level communications around the world, safe from prying eyes. Or so they thought. In reality, the clandestine owners of Crypto AG, and by extension the NSA and GCHQ, could easily decipher any messages sent via the firm’s devices, as they themselves crafted the encryption codes. The connivance operated in total secrecy for decades thereafter, only being exposed in February 2020.
The full extent of the information collected via Crypto AG—along with key national competitor Omnisec AG, which the CIA also owned—and the nefarious purposes to which it was put is unknown. It would be entirely unsurprising though if the harvested data helped inform CIA operations to “discredit and destroy” left-wing opposition in West Germany and beyond, efforts that no doubt continue to this day.
The Cold War may be over, but Germany remains heavily occupied. It hosts the largest number of U.S. troops of any European country, despite an overwhelming majority of the population supporting their partial or total withdrawal in the years following the Berlin Wall’s collapse. In July 2020, then-President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of 12,000 soldiers of the 38,600-strong contingent still there.
While intended to punish Germany for greenlighting the now-destroyed Nord Stream 2, polls indicated most Germans were only too happy to say “auf wiedersehen.” In all, 47% were in favor of them leaving, while a quarter called for the permanent closure of all U.S. bases on their soil. Yet, just two weeks after entering the White House, Joe Biden reversed his predecessor’s policy, returning 500 soldiers who had departed.
The President also scrapped plans to relocate the Stuttgart-based U.S. Africa Command, which effectively embeds Washington in the armed forces of 53 countries across the continent, elsewhere in Europe. Research shows the Command’s training programs have precipitated a significant rise in the number of military coups in Africa. As Agee attested, U.S. military bases are a hotbed of CIA spies. Berlin therefore must remain “one of the most important operational areas for far-reaching CIA programs” within and without the country, whether Germans like it or not.
Xi meets Lavrov, reaffirms China’s emphasis on partnership with Russia
By Yang Sheng | Global Times | April 9, 2024
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday in Beijing. Chinese analysts said the meeting sends a strong signal that China will firmly develop its strategic partnership with Russia, despite pressure from the West. The China-Russia partnership continues to be key for the global strategic balance and the hope for promoting a multipolar world in which countries of the Global South will have greater roles to play.
Xi asked Lavrov to convey his sincere greetings to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Noting that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries, Xi said China and Russia have embarked on a new path of harmonious coexistence and win-win cooperation between major countries and neighbors, which has benefited the two countries and their peoples and contributed wisdom and strength to international fairness and justice, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Lavrov in Beijing, and both sides expressed hope for strengthening practical cooperation in various fields, Xinhua reported.
Wang, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that China is willing to work with Russia, in accordance with the consensus reached by the two heads of state, to strengthen the synergy of the two countries’ development plans and promote practical cooperation in various fields.
The top diplomats of the two countries held a joint press conference after their meeting. Wang mentioned “five always” at the press conference. For example, he said that the two countries should always follow the strategic guidance of head-of-state diplomacy, and should always adhere to the principle of no-alliance, no-confrontation and no-targeting at any third party.
China and Russia should always stay on the right course on major matters of principle. As permanent members of the UN Security Council and major emerging countries, China and Russia actively respond to the common aspirations and legitimate concerns of the people of all countries, advocate a new path of state-to-state relations featuring dialogue and partnership rather than confrontation and alliance, and actively promote the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, said Wang.
Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the remarks made by Xi and the “five always” raised by Wang provide a “framework and outline” for the future development of the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination.
Yet many voices from the West, mainly from the US as well as some senior NATO officials, insist on depicting the China-Russia relationship as akin to an “anti-West alliance,” which is completely wrong. By reaffirming the principles of “non-alignment, non-confrontation, and not targeting any third party,” China and Russia are refuting those voices with a clear stance, experts said.
Multipolar world
China always attaches great importance to the development of China-Russia relations, and stands ready to strengthen bilateral communication with Russia and enhance multilateral strategic coordination in BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), Xi said when meeting with the visiting Russian top diplomat.
Xi said that the two countries will show more responsibility, unite countries in the Global South in the spirit of equality, openness, transparency and inclusiveness, promote the reform of the global governance system, and vigorously lead the building of a community with a shared future for humanity.
China and Russia are trying to promote a multipolar world where developing countries and emerging economies of the Global South will play a greater role, which is the antithesis of the unipolar world dominated by the US, analysts said.
“China and Russia will not target any third party, but if hegemonic forces threaten China and Russia, or threaten world peace, China and Russia will stand together and fight to protect their own interests and safeguard world peace together,” said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University.
This is why China and Russia, as well as other members in the UN Security Council, are pushing an immediate cease-fire and the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza, even as the US vetoed these attempts time and again, before the Ramadan cease-fire resolution eventually passed on March 25, experts said.
Wang said at the joint press conference that Russia will hold the BRICS presidency this year, and China will take over the rotating presidency of SCO this year. The two sides will support each other’s chairmanship and light up the “moment of South” global governance.
Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the School of Politics and International Relations of the UK’s University of Kent, told the Global Times at a forum in Beijing on March 28 that China-Russia relations are “one of the key axes for international politics, and it’s not only very important but also necessary” to maintain the global strategic balance.
Lavrov said at the meeting with Wang that Russia supports the China-initiated Global Security Initiative, and is willing to deepen cooperation with China on multilateral platforms to promote the establishment of a more just and democratic international order.
The two sides also had in-depth exchanges on the Ukraine issue, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and other international and regional issues of common concern.
Ukraine crisis and counterterrorism
Wang said at the joint press conference with Lavrov that on the Ukraine issue, China hopes to see a “cease-fire and an end to the war as soon as possible.” China supports the timely convening of an international conference recognized by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation by all parties, and a fair discussion of all peace options, whether it is track one or track two, Wang noted.
Cui Heng, a scholar from the Shanghai-based China National Institute for SCO International Exchange and Judicial Cooperation, told the Global Times on Tuesday that “some Western countries have always blamed China for its ‘pro-Russia’ stance, but actually we are just asking for a mechanism that can be accepted by all parties and can treat everyone equally.”
“China’s stance is based on the desire to stop the bloodshed, but the US’ stance is to use the [Russia-Ukraine] conflict to weaken Russia as much as possible. The development of the crisis to some extent depends on the US presidential election later this year,” Cui noted “If Donald Trump is elected, there will be a chance to break the deadlock, but if Joe Biden gets reelected, we might also see some changes, as Washington and its allies might not be able to afford the war anymore.”
Xi stressed at the meeting with Lavrov that China supports the Russian people in following a development path that suits their national conditions, and supports Russia in combating terrorism and maintaining social security and stability.
At the joint press conference with Lavrov on Tuesday, Wang stressed that China must also pay attention to the resolution of other global and regional hot spot issues, including continuing to counter terrorism. “China once again reiterated its condemnation of the terrorist attack in Moscow and its condolences and support for Russia,” said Wang.
“The Chinese people are also victims of terrorism, and terrorism has always been a common threat facing mankind. The international community should resolutely combat all forms of terrorism with a ‘zero tolerance’ attitude, firmly support the efforts of all parties to maintain national security and stability, strengthen international anti-terrorism cooperation, coordinate development and security, and eliminate the breeding grounds for terrorism,” Wang remarked.
“I want to thank China for their condolences in connection with the terrorist attack in the Moscow Region on March 22, and for their support of Russia’s fight against terrorism,” Lavrov said during the meeting with Wang.
All those involved [in the terrorist attack] will be certainly punished, Russia’s top diplomat stated. “Our [Russia-China] cooperation on counter-terrorism will continue, including within the framework of multilateral institutions.”
China and Russia are two major powers in the SCO, and counter-terrorism cooperation between them and other SCO members is significant for regional peace and stability, especially when the threat of terrorism has reemerged in relevant regions, experts said. Apart from the discussion on the diplomatic level, the militaries, law-enforcement and intelligence agencies of the two countries will promote cooperation on combating terrorism, experts said.
Star wars coming – top US general
RT | April 9, 2024
The possibility of a conflict in space is no longer just theoretical, General Stephen Whiting, head of the US Space Command, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the 39th Space Symposium at the command’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, Whiting painted an alarming picture of Russian and Chinese orbital capabilities.
China has built a “kill web over the Pacific Ocean to find, fix, track and, yes, target US and allied military capabilities,” Whiting said, describing Beijing’s efforts as moving at “breathtaking speed.”
Since 2018, Russia has doubled and China has tripled the number of their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) satellites in orbit, while also testing and fielding anti-satellite weapons. Meanwhile, the US has “the world’s best space architectures,” but its military constellations are “optimized for a benign environment,” he said.
Russian and Chinese space weapons “hold at risk our modern way of life and how we defend this nation, and we must be able to deter and counter these threats when called upon to achieve space superiority,” the general said.
Whiting described a possible armed conflict in space as “economically and environmentally devastating, perhaps for decades,” and said the US wishes to keep things in the state of “enduring competition” instead.
The US is already working with Canada, Australia and the UK on Operation Olympic Defender, a program intended to “optimize space operations,” according to the Space Command. Whiting announced that Germany, France and New Zealand have been invited to join as well.
He also revealed that the command’s new Capability Assessment and Validation Environment (CAVE) has achieved “minimum viable capability.” The modeling and simulation laboratory will enable the US military to “derive better ways of deterring and planning to conduct operations for a war that’s never happened, and a war we don’t want to happen,” he said.
Washington recently accused Moscow of having undisclosed anti-satellite capabilities, possibly nuclear in nature. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US claims were “unfounded” and a ploy to manipulate arms control talks. The Russian embassy in Washington has also accused the US of using “Russophobic slogans” to mask its own plans to militarize space.
UK and France Talk of Reviving WWI Alliance Over ‘Fear’ of Trump Return
Sputnik – 09.04.2024
In an op-ed penned on the 120th anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, a landmark agreement signed between the British Empire and France in 1904, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne penned an op-ed essentially calling for the revival of the alliance.
The two ministers argued that NATO must mobilize to deny Russia a victory in Ukraine, claiming that the UK and France, two of the military bloc’s founders and nuclear powers, “have a responsibility in driving the alliance to deal with the challenges before it.”
“We must do even more to ensure we defeat Russia. The world is watching – and will judge us if we fail,” they wrote in a piece published by The Telegraph.
Commenting on this development, Dr. John Laughland, a lecturer in politics and history at the Catholic Institute of the Vendée (ICES) in France and specialist in international affairs, observed that the UK and France are “two principal military powers in Europe” and do enjoy “quite a high level” of bilateral military cooperation.
He did point out, however, that though London and Paris “have indeed been strengthening that cooperation for some years now,” as Cameron and Sejourne wrote, he does not see “any substantial new initiatives” in the article, which he dismissed as “essentially just propaganda.”
Whereas the Entente managed to prevail in World War I in no small part due to the Russian Empire’s contribution to the cause, Dr. Laughland suggested that this new British-French axis would inevitably lean on the United States, “because everything that they say about the British-French Entente is in the context of NATO.”
“The current war is a NATO war. And so they are leaning on the Americans,” he remarked.
He suggested that France and the UK may be driven by the fear of Donald Trump’s reelection as the president of the United States.
“I think that the European powers, including France and Britain, are trying to pre-empt that outcome because whether rightly or wrongly, they fear that Trump would want to make peace in Ukraine, make peace with Russia,” the scholar mused. “But again, I regard this as just a piece of gesture politics, this article and this commemoration.”
Dr. Laughland also recalled a previous attempt by Cameron to partially revive the Entente in 2010 by signing military defense agreements with France during his premiership, with one of the outcomes of said deal being “the attack on Libya in 2011, which, as far as we understand, was a Franco-British initiative.”
“It was a French initiative which the British immediately supported. And the attack on Libya in 2011, which, of course, the Americans also supported, and then became a NATO attack, was an absolutely catastrophic war. It showed once again that NATO is an aggressive alliance,” he remarked. “I say once again, because, of course, NATO had attacked Yugoslavia in 1999. So unfortunately, it’s a very bad precedent, the 2010 agreement.”
Meanwhile, Mikael Valtersson, former officer of the Swedish Armed Forces and chief of staff of the Sweden Democrats political party, argued that the real reason for this talk about reviving the Entente Cordiale is the UK’s and France’s desire to “take a larger role in international politics” coupled with them realizing that they are not “big enough to do it on their own.”
“Both United Kingdom and France are also united in their nearly fanatical hard-line approach towards Russia. As they say in the article, Russia must lose and Ukraine must win,” he added.
According to Valtersson, this “hardline approach” towards Russia may be the reason why Germany was not included in this scheme as Berlin and Paris do not see eye to eye on how to deal with Moscow.
“The difference is that the French leader, President Macron in France, belongs to the belligerent anti-Russian camp, while the German leader Chancellor Scholz belongs to a more moderate grouping,” he explained. “These facts make a new Entante very fragile. Macron might be replaced as French president by a more nationalistic and pragmatic successor. Then the so-called alliance with the UK will be over and done with.”
Another reason for not including Germany might be the UK and France’s concerns that the German economic prowess would afford Berlin “too much influence” in such an alliance, not to mention London and Paris’ fears about Trump’s possible return to the White House, he noted.
“This talk about a revived Entente Cordiale might be an attempt from the UK and France to take over, or at least to prepare to take over, the leadership of the belligerent anti-Russian camp in the West. [It could be] Preparations in case the US abandons Ukraine,” Valtersson postulated. “But as I said earlier, it’s a weak alliance since a large part of the French population isn’t aboard.”
“But as long as the UK and France are united and work together with other belligerent states as the Netherlands, Poland, the Baltic and Nordic states, they probably can force Germany to slowly follow their lead in creating a prewar mentality in large part of Europe,” he added.
Russia launches terrorism probe into US and NATO officials
RT | April 9, 2024
Intelligence agencies and law enforcement are looking at certain Western government officials as part of an investigation into the funding of terrorist attacks such as the massacre at Crocus City Hall and the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines, the Russian Investigative Committee announced on Tuesday.
The probe was launched after a referral by several Russian lawmakers, which accused the US and its allies of organizing the March 22 attack on the Moscow concert venue.
Investigators are currently looking at the potential involvement of “specific individuals from among government officials, people with civic and commercial organizations of Western countries,” said committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko.
It has already been established that funding for terrorist attacks inside Russia has been funneled through Ukrainian companies, including the notorious Burisma Holdings – former employers of US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter – Petrenko added.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia has also said it would follow the evidence leading to “persons and structures located in the US, Germany, France and Cyprus.”
In addition to last month’s Crocus City Hall attack, the investigation is looking at other terrorist acts, including the assassinations of prominent public figures and the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in international waters.
Investigators are establishing the connections between the direct perpetrators of terrorist acts and “foreign curators, organizers and sponsors,” Petrenko added.
Palestine’s Sacrifice
By Paul Larudee | Dissident Voice | April 8, 2024
Years ago, I made the statement that Palestinians had not sacrificed enough. It was meant to be a shocking statement, but it wasn’t a judgmental one. What I meant was that all of the terrible sacrifices that Palestinians had made up until that time had failed to liberate Palestine, and that we would know when adequate sacrifice had been made by the standard of whether liberation had been achieved.
I believe that we are reaching a vantage point where this accomplishment is now within view, or at least just over the horizon. If so, it is utterly astonishing, but the greatest part of the sacrifice is yet to come. We call it genocide, and although we are in the midst of it, we have not yet seen the worst.
Israel, which has spent its entire history building its image and cementing its relationships – security, technological, academic, economic and cultural – with the rest of the world, now perceives that it must allow itself to become a reviled international pariah in order to commit horrors that will preserve itself as a Zionist exclusivist enclave on stolen territory. Israel, in its desperation, has given up on all civilized pretenses and most links to the outside world, except its lifeline with the only superpower that can single-handedly transfuse enough arms and wealth to maintain its ability to wreak havoc upon its unwanted subjugated population and instill fear in its neighbors.
It has come down to this: From Israel’s perspective, it must commit genocide in order keep the Zionist dream of a Jewish state alive. There will be no de Klerk-Mandela moment, no integration, no truth commission, no mutual acceptance. The Israelis who believed in good will and mutual respect do not exist anymore, and their dream was a fantasy in any case, depending as it did upon tolerance in a society that required racist credentials for admission. Roughly a million of them emigrated in the decade prior to October 7th, 2023, and another million in the six months after. In the remaining Israeli population, fanaticism rules. It is the future of Israel, to the extent that it has any. Like the crusader castle at Acre, it will be a fortress that remains until it is no longer viable, losing its body of the faithful, unwilling to keep it going.
That is the future. At present, it is a fearful, enraged beast, ready to commit all manner of atrocities in order to resist the inevitable. As it makes no visible progress against its armed foes in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon, it is now seeking to widen the war, with direct superpower military engagement. Although the US remains unlikely to take the bait, it is also ruled by a similar siege mentality, especially at the highest levels of government, which are impervious to popular will, and are wedded to interests that largely determine its composition, regardless of the party “in power”. One of those interests is the Israel lobby, which not surprisingly maintains especially strong control over US policy towards Israel. The practical implications are that, regardless how unpopular a government or its policy may be, it will not waver in its support for Israel – in effect a sock puppet with a teleprompter.
These factors will raise the cost of the Palestinian victory. Yet even those who are the victims of the greatest crime of this century refuse to accept a return to life in the concentration camp that was Gaza. Indeed, the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are swelling with more recruits than they can accept at present.
Will the crescendo of the world’s voices and actions prevent the worst from happening? Will the ships of aid and volunteers change the outcome? The demonstrations? The suspension of trade and exchange agreements? The isolation of Israel as a pariah? The alienation of Jewish youth from Zionism? I would like to think so, but as far as I can tell, none of this has any impact upon the thinking – much less the decisions – in Israel or the US. Our predictions for the future are projections of the past and present, and I see nothing in those projections that will avert the course of genocide. I would love to be wrong.
Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization.
Desperados… NATO cranks up false-flag mode
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 9, 2024
It’s open season for false-flag provocations in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Russia is winning the war – now in its third year – and the NATO weapons laundering scam with its NeoNazi regime in Ukraine is coming apart. So what to do?
Only two weeks after a terror attack near Moscow that killed 144 civilians, which the Western media roundly attributed to Islamist jihadists and Western governments categorically asserted had nothing to do with the Ukrainian regime it sponsors, there now follows a spate of other false flags.
Russia is being accused of dropping chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers while also trying to blow up Europe’s biggest civilian nuclear power plant.
Over the weekend, Western media reports bore the hallmark signs of disinformation campaigns by peddling lame claims that the Russian military was dropping gas grenades on Ukrainian troops.
It was reported that chemical weapons were being used daily to target Ukrainian positions near Lyman and Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast. The source of this information was purportedly an “American combat medic” serving in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces. That detail alone raises suspicion of planted disinformation.
The second realm of cloying propaganda is the sudden reappearance of reports that the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is coming under constant artillery fire from drones. Those attacks had gone into a lull since last year. Now they are back, as if by clockwork.
Western media have repeated their earlier pattern of trying to make out that it is not clear whether it is the Ukrainian or the Russian side that is firing on the ZNPP – thereby risking a nuclear catastrophe that would engulf Europe from radioactive fallout.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is again shamefully indulging the Western media disinformation. Grossi confirmed that the ZNPP was hit at least three times in recent days and he warned of “a significant risk of a major nuclear accident” adding that “this cannot happen”. But Grossi feigns to be agnostic about who is carrying out the attacks. He did not specifically call out the Ukrainian side as the perpetrator.
The Western media affects the ambiguous notion that it could not confirm Ukrainian or Russian claims, thereby giving the impression that it could have been Russian strikes on the ZNPP.
That is ludicrous. Russian forces control the nuclear plant having taken it in March 2022 soon after intervening in Ukraine to halt the aggression of the NATO-backed regime. Russia has provided documented evidence to the UN that the Ukrainian side has been targeting the ZNPP repeatedly with US-supplied artillery and NATO logistics.
Yet the Western media and the UN’s IAEA indulge in the risible charade that Russian forces might be shelling a nuclear plant that they are in possession and control of.
The Western media claims that Russia is resorting to chemical weapons are also absurdly illogical. Why would Russia need to use such a weapon when it is already gaining the strategic upper hand in the war? Besides, Russia has verifiably destroyed all of its chemical weapons years ago as mandated by the 1997 CW Convention.
The same illogical scenario was seen when the Syrian Arab Army was in full control of the battlefield against NATO-backed mercenaries. It was the Western-sponsored cut-throat jihadists of Al Nusra Front and so on that were the ones who contrived chemical weapons attacks and the Western media would reflexively and wrongly blame the Syrian state forces. The provocation succeeded in Syria in triggering the United States, Britain and France to launch air strikes against the Syrian army.
Russia has no need – even if it had chemical weapons – to use them when it is decimating NATO’s proxy army of the NeoNazi Ukrainian regime.
Likewise, Russia commandeered the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant at an early stage in the conflict knowing that the NATO regime would otherwise use it as a terror card. How right Russia was. The NATO forces are once again stepping up efforts to bomb the ZNPP in an attempt to create a crisis that would presumably justify an escalation by NATO.
Just like the atrocious mass murder at the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on March 22, the NATO proxy war is shifting to all-out hybrid terrorism. The NATO axis has lost conventional warfare on the battlefield due to Russia’s superior firepower and military tactics.
The NATO powers are becoming desperate from the historic defeat. They have invested an unprecedented huge amount of political and financial capital in winning a proxy war to defeat Russia – and they stand to now lose with devastating losses.
This is the feverish context for French leader Emmanuel Macron mouthing off about sending NATO troops into Ukraine and other NATO leaders issuing desperate pleas for more weapons supplies and compulsory military conscription. Their insane proxy war is a monumental debacle that spells calamity for the political establishments in the West, including the lying propaganda news media.
Amid this desperation on a sinking ship of Titanic proportions, the NATO powers are going into full false-flag mode to create some frenetic distraction.
The trouble for them is that we have been here many times before, and the whole world can see through their sordid playbook.
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The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | September 5, 2026
Before the killings that helped bring down Ukraine’s president in February 2014, American diplomats were discussing who should enter its government. In a leaked telephone call, senior State Department official Victoria Nuland told US ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, “I think Yats is the guy,” referring to opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk. Washington had clear preferences and was working to advance them. Later that month, Yatseniuk became prime minister.
Ivan Katchanovski’s The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine examines the violence that preceded that transfer of power. Drawing on television footage, witness testimony, forensic examinations and Ukrainian court proceedings, he argues that elements of the opposition shot protesters and police in a false-flag operation. His case centres on evidence of protesters being shot from opposition-controlled locations, including Hotel Ukraina, overlooking the killing ground. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- What changes with Lula or Flávio?
- Britain leads Western media’s demise through ‘fear porn’ narrative
- The Maidan Killings and the False-Flag Case
- Georgia’s Largest Healthcare System Will Fire Employees Who Refuse Flu Vaccine
- The Five-Year Fuel Crisis: Why the World Economy Is Paying for a War It Thinks Is Ending
- Trump’s Big Bluff on Iran
- Swiss scammed out of millions by Ukraine-linked call centers – media
- Germany facing potential ‘violent conflict’ with Russia – spy chief
- Ukraine’s EU neighbors reject new plea from Kiev – Politico
- British Transport Police Facial Recognition Trial Scanned 926,912 People With Zero Arrests
- If Americans Knew
- “We See Our Homes Now From A Satellite, Like Strangers”
- Watch “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack”, originally censored by BBC
- NAZA: Israeli embassies in UK and US promote rival documentary to challenge Gaza genocide allegations
- David Ellison appoints Israeli to lead merged Paramount-Warner studios
- Turkish Red Crescent helps elderly Gaza man walk again after Israel confiscates his prosthetic limb
- Four Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks in Gaza
- Two Palestinian youths killed and village razed as Israeli attacks on West Bank continue
- Two more Christian women victims of Israeli raids on Gaza
- Cruelty, Deprivation, Indignity: A Journalist’s 22 Months in Israeli Prison
- New IDF Website Frames Slain Gaza Journalists as Terrorists
- No Tricks Zone
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
