Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Online Censorship To Include CISA
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 4, 2023
A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.
Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.
The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.
This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.
This persistent governmental interference has been described by Judge Doughty as perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Indeed, it beautifully mirrors a dystopian reality, where a government body, akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, suppresses intellectual discourse and emulation.
The suppression campaign under the Biden administration is far from prejudiced; it has methodically targeted any view conflicting with government narratives. Subjects like natural immunity to Covid-19, vaccine efficacy, origins of the virus, and the effectiveness of mask mandates have become taboo, leading to a wilful silence of experts and common citizens alike.
Such tactics have seen CISA act as a bridge between third parties, flagging potentially problematic content. Having regular interactions with social media platform representatives, they have exploited their authoritative position by pushing them to adopt practices aligned with their censorship agenda.
This has led the Fifth Circuit Court to reassess their previous position. Contrary to their September ruling which stated that communication between CISA and social media companies was constitutional, they now acknowledge that CISA had crossed the line of mere information sharing and actively influenced content moderation policies, leading to the demotion and removal of posts.
While the court order stands, a 10-day stay allows the government to seek permission for a review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Has Ties to Hollywood, Corporate Dems
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 3, 2023
The latest series of revelations by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker concerning the organization responsible for creating the list of the “Disinformation Dozen” confirm connections to more dark money sources and to key political and Hollywood figures.
In an article published Monday in Tablet Magazine and on his Substack, Thacker also revealed the organization — a nonprofit called Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm.
Prior to coming up with its “Disinformation Dozen” list, Thacker said, CCDH was part of a campaign to silence independent media and prominent political opponents.
CCDH has since turned its attention to attacking X (formerly Twitter) and its owner, Elon Musk, and supporting the recent passage of a sweeping new censorship bill in the U.K.
According to Thacker, the influence of CCDH and its founder and CEO, Imran Ahmed, on the Biden administration, policymaking circles and mainstream and social media is disproportionately large for a small organization founded and managed by a non-American — raising questions about who, or which entities, are backing CCDH.
Those questions led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH in late August. Jordan gave CCDH until Sept. 29 “to produce its communications with the executive branch related to content moderation, the accuracy or truth of content, and the deletion or suppression of content.”
CCDH responded to the subpoena on Sept. 29, claiming it “produced all documents and communications” which were requested. Notably, the letter came on the letterhead of a law firm representing CCDH, instead of from the organization directly, while the publicly viewable online version of the letter does not include the accompanying documents.
‘Disinformation Dozen’ list led to censorship of Kennedy, others
In March 2021, CCDH drafted a report and accompanying list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which included Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.
The report claimed, “Just twelve anti-vaxxers are responsible for almost two-thirds of anti-vaccine content circulating on social media platforms,” and concluded social media “platforms must act” against these individuals.
The White House and social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook used the report to censor the individuals on the list.
In one example, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki cited the CCDH report during a July 2021 press briefing to pressure Facebook into censoring the accounts in question. “There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms,” Psaki claimed.
Legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others also cited the report, in an attempt to discredit the people on the list.
Thacker, writing for Tablet, said Twitter specifically took action against Kennedy after it received the “Disinformation Dozen” list — and was subjected to White House pressure:
‘“COVID-19 misinfo enforcement team is planning on taking action on a handful of accounts surfaced by the CCDH report,’ a Twitter official wrote on March 31. One account they eventually took action against belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now running against Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.”
CCDH provides White House with ‘powerful weapon to use against critics’
“What, then, do we know about the CCDH?” Thacker wrote Monday in Tablet. “In effect, it seems, the organization provides the White House with a powerful weapon to use against critics including RFK Jr. and Musk, while also pressuring platforms like Facebook and Twitter to enforce the administration’s policies.”
“While few journalists have bothered to investigate the opaque group, the available evidence paints a picture that is likely different from what many in the public would expect of a ‘public interest’ nonprofit,” Thacker added.
As part of his July investigation leading to the release of the CCDH-related “Twitter Files,” Thacker was unable to discover who funds and supports the organization. He told The Defender in July that he believed CCDH was a “dark money” group.
Kennedy, testifying at a July 20 hearing organized by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, also called CCDH a “dark money” group.
A subsequent investigation by GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji was able to trace some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.
Yet, unanswered questions about CCDH and Ahmed remained for Thacker, who wrote on Substack:
“How did some guy from London with no D.C. political experience get noticed by the White House and attract so much media attention? Where does he come from? What’s his background? Where does he get his money? Who is behind this?”
As part of his latest investigation, Thacker wrote that he “lucked into finding a critical, anonymous donor who dropped $1.1 million into CCDH’s coffers.”
A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.
This represented “around 75% of all the funds they took in that year,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker added, “According to tax records, Ahmed began to run CCDH from D.C. in 2021, and CCDH took in $1.47 million in their very first year operating in the United States.”
‘CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party’
This was not the only interesting insight into CCDH’s operations. Thacker also discovered CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).
According to Thacker, CAP is a “D.C. think tank aligned with the corporate arm of the Democratic Party.” It was founded by John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign against Donald Trump. And yes, CAP has close ties to the Biden administration,” Thacker wrote.
Clark was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab, Thacker wrote in Tablet. In a previous “Twitter Files” release, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi reported that the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was funded by various U.S. government agencies and defense contractors and “remains a central piece in the ‘censorship-industrial complex.’”
Thacker quoted Mike Benz, a former U.S. State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online, a free-speech watchdog. Benz told Thacker the Atlantic Council is “one of the premier architects of online censorship” and has, in recent years, “had seven CIA directors on its board of directors or board of advisers.”
“One might conclude that CCDH functions as an arm of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, to be deployed against the perceived enemies of corporate Democrats, whether they come from the left or the right,” he added.
CCDH spent $50,000 to lobby Congress on COVID ‘misinformation’
Thacker also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.
“Go a little deeper and you find the other members of the [CCDH] board,” Thacker wrote on Substack, adding, “The one who caught my attention is Aleen Keshishian.”
Keshishian, who is also an adjunct professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, lists clients including actor Mark Ruffalo, who according to Thacker, “tweets support” for CCDH.
Her other clients include Jennifer Aniston, Selena Gomez and Natalie Portman.
“Ahmed’s connections to Hollywood actors could account for some of the money he has raised from anonymous sources, as wealthy celebrities sometimes wish to keep their political donations hidden from fans,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
Unusual for a nonprofit, CCDH also hired a PR and lobbying firm, Lot Sixteen, to work on its behalf.
“Very few activist groups have the financial means to hire private lobby shops — even those with an established presence on Capitol Hill — but during a few quarters of 2021 and 2022, CCDH paid Lot Sixteen $50,000 to lobby congressional offices on COVID-19 misinformation and ‘preventing the spread of misinformation and hate speech online in social and mainstream media,’” Thacker wrote.
Thacker told The Defender that even large and well-established nonprofit groups such as Greenpeace and Public Citizen have not hired PR firms to work on their behalf.
“None of those groups that I’m aware of, the longest-established groups in D.C., have ever had the money to hire a private lobby shop like CCDH did. It’s just bizarre,” he said, adding that this is because CCDH is “a political campaign designed to look like a grassroots public-interest organization.”
Thacker said he contacted Lot Sixteen and “asked them how they confirmed that Imran Ahmed was compliant with FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act],” noting that “This guy’s a foreigner. No one knows where his money comes from. How do they know his money’s not coming from overseas and he’s not in violation of foreign lobbying laws?”
“They didn’t get back to me,” Thacker said. “My guess is they didn’t do due diligence.” He also told The Defender that while CCDH “lists only four or five employees” on its website, “if you go on LinkedIn, there’s about 20 other people working for him.
“What nonprofit does not list all their employees? It’s just bizarre,” Thacker said.
CCDH ‘rarely disclose funders’
According to Thacker, CCDH and associated groups have operated in secrecy and under multiple identities for several years.
“Ahmed’s history is hard to track,” he wrote for Tablet. “The two groups he has run — Stop Funding Fake News [SFFN] and CCDH — seem to pop up out of nowhere, switch addresses, rarely disclose funders, omit naming all employees, and feature websites that change names or disappear from the internet.
“While Ahmed eventually acknowledged in 2020 that he helped launch both [groups] … his involvement remained hidden for some years. Stop Funding Fake News started in February 2019 claiming to be a ‘social movement’ too frightened to name its own grassroots activists,” Thacker added.
Thacker said that by searching archived versions of CCDH’s website on the Internet Wayback Machine, he was able to find out more information about the organization.
“One of the first things I ran across was reports about CCDH incorporating in the U.K. back in 2018,” said Thacker who looked up their filings in England to find their address and who was on their board. “One of CCDH’s first directors is a guy named James Morgan McSweeney,” he wrote on Substack.
According to Thacker, McSweeney “is a power broker in UK politics, and a top staffer to Keir Starmer, who is now the head of the British Labour Party. So CCDH is not really some disinterested, public nonprofit, it’s a political campaign by British Labour.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said that CCDH “registered in late 2018 in London, first as Brixton Endeavours Limited” and when it incorporated, its “only director was a staffer for Keir Starmer.” The group also “shared an address with an organization that supported Starmer,” while Damian Collins, a member of the Tory Party, later joined as an officer.”
Thacker wrote on Substack that CCDH, SFFN and Ahmed have often operated as “political operative[s] for conservative members of the British Labour party,” including on behalf of Starmer, to help “destroy the Left in the United Kingdom.”
Starting in 2019, SFFN “claimed some very sizable left-wing scalps in London, mostly by lobbing vague accusations of fake news at political enemies. The group helped to run Jeremy Corbyn out of Labour Party leadership while tanking the lefty news site Canary, after starting a boycott of their advertisers,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
In one instance, SFFN claimed that they convinced 40 major brands, including Adobe, Chelsea FC, eBay and Manchester United, to stop placing their advertisements on the websites of such news outlets, a tactic SFFN called “demonetizing.” They also claimed that they were “educating” advertising agencies.
“Essentially, SFFN and [CCDH] were front groups created by conservatives in Labour for an internecine battle against leftists in their own party. The Canary reported that CCDH’s address linked the group back to Keir Starmer’s people,” Thacker wrote on Substack. SFFN reports were also cited in the British Parliament.
Having accomplished this, SFFN “became moribund, rarely tweeting from their social media account,” Thacker wrote in Tablet, noting that this did not matter as Ahmed “pivoted his focus” to the U.S., where his list of “‘disinformation’ targets just happened to be critics of the Democratic Party establishment” — including Kennedy.
“Just as he had done for the Labour Party, Ahmed used the CCDH to attack as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ various critics of the Biden arm of the Democratic Party,” Thacker wrote.
Association with Democrat-affiliated groups helped CCDH’s ‘unusual’ ascent
According to Thacker, CCDH now primarily operates in the U.S., based out of a virtual office that hundreds of D.C. nonprofits list as their residence. This is despite the fact that CCDH is still based in the U.K.
The site lists CCHD as a broad nonprofit devoted to “Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy / Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis (NTEE).” It lists Ahmed as CEO with a 2021 base salary of $126,333 and Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress, the think tank of the corporate Democrats, as chair of the board.
According to Thacker, the prominent ascent of CCDH and Ahmed in U.S. policy and media circles is unusual.
“I want to point out how odd it is that a British political operative is now running a partisan campaign in the United States. This rarely happens,” Thacker wrote on Substack. “For a variety of complex reasons, British political operatives don’t come to the United States, Americans go to England [and other countries].”
“It doesn’t happen,” Thacker told The Defender. “That was my question from the beginning. This guy is quoted from the White House podium, has all these Congressmen sending letters on his behalf, who has appeared in front of Congressional hearings run by Democrats when they had the House of Representatives.”
“Probably what it is, is Simon Clark from the Center for American Progress,” Thacker said. “That’s the think tank for the corporate Democrats. That’s probably his entryway.”
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “One rumor that came up often in the dozen or so conversations” he had “with people who have observed Ahmed for years, is that he works for British intelligence,” although this has not yet been confirmed.
Thacker told The Defender that Ahmed and CCDH have played “the same game” in the U.S. and U.K., except that “instead of it being directly ‘Republicans are bad, these people are good,’ they find some way that they can say, ‘aha, hate!’ So, it’s taking this idea and rebranding it for political purposes.”
Writing in Tablet, Thacker said that “Ahmed’s story is critical to understanding the new push for censorship under the guise of combating hate.”
‘Obsession’ with Kennedy, Musk, vaccines
Having become fully embroiled in U.S. politics, Thacker said that Ahmed and CCDH have developed an “obsession” with figures such as Kennedy and with issues such as COVID-19 vaccines — receiving broad media coverage in the process.
Writing for Tablet, Thacker said, “After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination and appeared on Joe Rogan, Ahmed told the BBC, “He’s working really hard to keep people from knowing he’s a hardcore anti-vaxxer.”
Thacker told The Defender that “every one of these ‘disinformation experts’ out there — I don’t care if they’re a fact-checker, a think tank, a journalist, an academic, they’ve all done work on elections and on vaccines. So, they’re all election ‘experts’ and vaccine ‘experts.’ How you become an expert in both, I don’t know, but that’s what they are.”
“It’s a complete and total obsession,” Thacker added. “There’s not a single ‘disinformation’ expert out there who I’ve not seen do something on vaccines. They’re obsessed … why, out of all the things that you can target, why do you target vaccines? I can only think that there’s some kind of funding behind it, where that funding comes from, what it’s about. That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”
Thacker also said “it’s just bizarre” that someone like Ahmed can come in and be obsessed about vaccines and not have a single tweet criticizing Pfizer or Moderna. “He’s not found any problems with the Biden administration’s vaccine policies. Not one … Ahmed appears where the corporate Democrats need expertise.”
Musk recently became a new target for CCDH and Ahmed. Writing in Tablet, Thacker said, “Ahmed is now trying to drive away Elon Musk’s advertisers on X, this time based on dubious claims that the … site is a playground for racists,” including claims made in interviews with The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Guardian.
“Once again, these efforts have been uncritically amplified in the press and in a letter to Musk from House Democrats that reiterates Ahmed’s claims, and cites him and CCDH,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
These attacks led Musk and X to sue CCDH and Ahmed in July, accusing them of making false and misleading claims about hate speech on the platform, and illegally accessing the computers of Brandwatch, a company that works with Twitter — a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
In response, MSNBC published an Aug. 1 op-ed by Ahmed, claiming CCDH “has been at the forefront of cataloging and reporting on the hate proliferating on the platform owned by Elon Musk.”
“All of his targets just happen to be the people who the corporate Democrats don’t get along with, so that’s Elon Musk right now,” Thacker told The Defender, noting that Ahmed and CCDH have not targeted other social media platforms to the same extent.
Yet, Ahmed continues to enjoy a platform in the establishment media. Thacker told The Defender this is “because none of those reporters have bothered to look into his background in the U.K. or to look at where his money’s coming from, or to look at what’s inside the [Musk/X] lawsuit against him. It plays into their weird obsession with Musk.”
In parallel, CCDH board member Damian Collins “led a series of inquiries” in the British parliament “into ‘disinformation’ and ‘fake news’ on social media,” helping promote the “Online Safety Bill,” intended to purge online “disinformation,” Thacker wrote in Tablet.
“When Collins held hearings on the bill — which was passed into law just weeks ago — the first person to give testimony in support of online bans was Imran Ahmed,” Thacker added.
On Substack, Thacker previewed more reports about CCDH and Ahmed he will soon release, including regarding ties “to Peter Hotez, an American physician, an ardent proponent of Anthony Fauci and cheerleader in the national media for vaccines and Biden administration pandemic policies.”
“I hope this helps people understand how to do their own digging into dark money groups,” Thacker wrote on Substack.
In Tablet, he wrote that Ahmed has “been a servant to the power of political parties who deployed him and the CCDH to weaponize the charge of hate speech and misinformation against their enemies.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Ukraine’s backers blinded by Russia hate – top analyst
RT | October 5, 2023
Kiev’s globalist and neo-conservative supporters in the West are so driven by their hatred of Russia that they completely disregard the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who are dying in a futile effort to defeat Moscow’s forces, US public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has argued.
Sachs, an award-winning economist who advised the Russian and Ukrainian governments following the breakup of the Soviet Union, made his comments in an interview posted on Thursday by US podcast host Andrew Napolitano. Asked how the US and its NATO allies can ignore the catastrophic destruction of Ukraine while prolonging the conflict and making false claims of battlefield successes, Sachs said they are “blinded” by their hatred of Russia.
“They are not counting the Ukrainian dead,” the analyst said. “They have lied to the public all along about the military situation . . . . They want so much to fight Russia and have someone else do the fighting and the dying that they want another massive recruitment of the remaining Ukrainian young men that can be grabbed off the streets and be thrown into the killing fields.”
More than 83,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed during a Donbass counteroffensive that began in June, according to an estimate released by the Russian Defense Ministry last month. Despite knowing that the Ukrainians have no chance of making major gains on the battlefield amid Russia’s air superiority and artillery dominance, Kiev’s benefactors have shown a “grotesque” disregard for the heavy casualties, Sachs said. He argued that the UK, in particular, has championed the counteroffensive because of London’s centuries-long and deeply embedded desire to crush Russia.
Sachs, now a UN adviser and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, has argued that NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe helped trigger the current crisis. He said Washington and its allies missed many opportunities to avoid the current conflict, then kept it going by discouraging Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky from finalizing a peace deal with Russia in March 2022.
Responding to claims by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that critics of Washington’s Ukraine policy are “siding with” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Sachs argued that he’s showing concern for the Ukrainian people. “I don’t want Ukraine to be completely destroyed by these neocons, by their fantasy world, by their desire to throw Ukrainians by the hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” he said. He added, “This isn’t siding with Putin or siding with anybody. This is trying to protect Ukraine from American zealots.”
Sachs claimed that US President Joe Biden must reach out to Putin to negotiate an end to the bloodshed, which would involve ruling out adding Ukraine to NATO, as well as addressing Russia’s legitimate security concerns. “We have stoked so much provocation in this, so much anxiety, overthrowing governments, starting multiple wars, pushing NATO enlargement, abandoning nuclear agreements, and then saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t want to negotiate,’” the analyst said.
McCarthy’s Ouster Signals US ‘Preparing Populace at Large’ to Defund Ukraine
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.10.2023
Kevin McCarthy lost the House speakership this week after his GOP colleague Matt Gaetz tabled a motion to remove him over alleged “side deal” talks with President Biden and the Democrats on Ukraine funding. The shock ouster comes amid growing weariness among Americans over the proxy war, and possible preparations to dump Kiev, experts told Sputnik.
The fallout over Kevin McCarthy’s historically unprecedented removal as speaker of the House of Representatives continues to send shockwaves of confusion and dread across the furthest reaches of the American empire, including in Ukraine.
“We are freaking out. For us it is a disaster,” Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a senior Ukrainian lawmaker responsible for lobbying Kiev’s efforts to join the European Union, told US media, commenting on the threat of Washington cutting off its military and financial support.
“We are interested in getting things sorted out so American democracy can function, and so we can restore the bipartisan consensus on supporting their own national interest by supporting Ukraine,” Klympush-Tsintsadze emphasized. Apparently, to the politician, a “functioning” American democracy seems to mean continuing to pump tens of billions of additional dollars into Kiev, which faces a looming debt crisis, and is now dependent on Washington and its allies for some 70 percent of all government expenses, as Western creditors prepare to collect dividends on their “investments.”
“There is nothing good, but, objectively, we have simply become hostages of their internal politics,” Ukrainian parliament finance committee deputy chairman Yaroslav Zheleznyak complained, referring to last week’s budget deal showdown – in which Republicans threatened to force a shutdown if the budget included billions in additional funding for Kiev.
The Zelensky government estimates that Kiev still has access to about $1.6 billion in US defense support and $1.23 billion in budgetary assistance. The Pentagon says some $5.4 billion in cash also remain in Presidential Drawdown Authority funds –allowing for weapons stocks from American armories to be sent to Kiev. However, senior Biden administration officials, including the president himself, have expressed fears that “only weeks remain” before a lack of additional funding will start becoming “a serious battlefield concern” for Kiev.
“It does worry me,’ Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday, when asked about the possibility of funds drying up. “But I know there are a majority of members of the House and Senate in both parties who have said that they would support funding Ukraine,” he added. “I’m going to make the argument that it’s overwhelmingly in the interest of the United States of America that Ukraine succeeds.”
“Obviously, time is of the essence,” an administration official stressed, warning of the risks of Congress sitting on its hands without appropriating additional cash to Kiev before the current short-term spending package runs out in mid-November.
Preparing the Public for Bad News?
“I have difficulty thinking of Ukraine as a primary issue for American politicians,” Dr. Nicolai Petro, an international politics professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Sputnik, commenting on the role played by Ukraine funding in the chaos in Washington over the past week.
“I think it is more of a symbolic issue and that their primary interest is not voting up or down on Ukraine aid,” but “what that symbolizes and how it can play out in the American political process.”
Pointing to the deeply murky nature of US spending on Ukraine and the “hide the ball” approach to appropriations, Petro predicted that the Biden administration will likely be able to squeeze out more cash from already appropriated funding for some time even if additional Congressional funding dries up.
The growing debate in Washington over Ukraine has also rippled across the Atlantic to Britain – the second-staunchest supporter within NATO of continuing the proxy war. Even there, Petro pointed out, a debate seems to be gaining strength over just how much more money can be lifted from taxpayers’ pockets and transferred to Kiev.
“London and Washington seem to be on the same wavelength here. We’re both at the same time ramping up production and are not sure how much we have and how much is even needed. Last month, for example, the new UK defense minister said London would deliver tens of thousands of new artillery shells. Three weeks later, it’s ‘we’ve given away as much as we can afford’. This sort of flip-flop is very convenient when you’re preparing the populace at large for a transition of policy from ‘we’ll do whatever it takes as long as it takes’ to ‘no we really need to be thinking about the cost.’ That’s a very different argument to make,” the academic emphasized.
This shift in rhetoric is related to the fact that the US and some of its allies are approaching crucial elections, with “all the polls and the recent elections [in Europe] suggest[ing] that this NATO proxy war in Ukraine is extremely unpopular. And that in and of itself it is going to at least affect the narrative between now and several key elections,” Petro said.
Dems Shoot Themselves in the Foot
McCarthy was ousted Tuesday by an extremely narrow margin of 216 in favor to 210 opposed, with only eight Republicans – led by rebel Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, supporting his removal alongside Democrats.
“My biggest question going forward is, is this going to be the right move for Democrats?” independent US journalist Rachel Blevins told Sputnik.
“Because they may have just shot themselves in the foot a little bit by getting rid of someone like Kevin McCarthy, who was trying to work with them, you know, maybe promising a separate vote to ensure funding for Ukraine and all that. Well now it could end up being that the next Republican speaker does not want to work with them whatsoever,” the observer pointed out.
The ouster could have repercussions for Ukraine going forward. While interim House Speaker Patrick McHenry has repeatedly supported Congressional votes on Ukraine funding – apart from last week’s attempt to roll assistance into the government funding bill, several candidates vying for the speakership have expressed opposition to further aid, including Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, Oklahoma Representative Kevin Hern, and Florida Congressman Byron Donalds.
What a Difference a Year Makes
“I know that Joe Biden is not happy right now,” Blevins emphasized. “He’s probably the most furious with all of this, because he was expecting McCarthy to get that funding through. He was not happy that it was not there in that bill to keep the government open.”
“What was interesting was to see that back and forth” over Ukraine, the observer added. “Because in the Senate, they had at least $6 billion for Ukraine, which is a lot of money to the average person, obviously. But when it comes to Ukraine, that’s just enough to keep it rolling for a few months. So they come up with $6 billion. Then in the House, they basically put Democrats in a position where they said, ok, here’s a funding bill to keep the government open. If you say you’re against it, it’s literally just over Ukraine funding. So that’s on you. And you have to answer to your constituents and saying that you wanted a government shutdown just so that you could fund a country that most Americans can’t find on a map,” the observer said.
“Also notable is the latest polls show that half of the American public doesn’t think Congress should keep continuing to approve funding for Ukraine. And so whenever those members of Congress go in there, they’re going to have to find a better justification for it than now, because it’s something that at least half of Americans don’t say is a priority. And that’s certainly not where Congress was even just one year ago when they were passing unprecedented funding and there was no fight about it whatsoever,” Blevins summed up.
Gitmo detainees continue to be tortured by CIA physically, mentally: Attorney
By Syed Zafar Mehdi | Press TV | October 4, 2023
Torture has always existed at Guantanamo Bay in different forms and the inmates there continue to be tortured physically and psychologically, says a US-based human rights attorney.
In an interview with the Press TV website, Alka Pradhan, who has represented Guantanamo Bay detainees as well as victims of US drone strikes, described various forms of torture prevalent at the notorious American detention facility, also known as Gitmo, in southeastern Cuba.
“In the early days, it took the form of beatings and forced nudity, starvation and force-feedings, and other terrible techniques,” said Pradhan, referring to the institutionalizing of torture at Gitmo.
“Now, decades of arbitrary detention, and lack of family visits and medical care – including botched or substandard procedures carried out by poorly qualified staff – continue to torture these men psychologically and physically.”
Pradhan, one of the leading human rights lawyers in the US, is currently Human Rights Counsel at the Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions. She was previously Counter-Terrorism Counsel at Reprieve US, where she represented several Guantanamo Bay detainees.
She also conducted advocacy and litigation on behalf of civilian victims of US drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan and has advised the US government on compliance with international legal obligations.
Last week, Pradhan was invited to the European Parliament to speak on Gitmo human rights abuses amid growing calls from human rights advocates to shut down the notorious US detention center.
She is an attorney representing Ammar al-Baluchi, an Iranian citizen, who has suffered high-degree torture at the hands of the CIA and even denied medical care by the White House.
“Ammar, an Iranian citizen, was brutally tortured for 3.5 years at the “black sites” – the CIA’s secret prisons all over the world – before he was rendered to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006,” Pradhan told the Press TV website.
“According to CIA records, CIA personnel used him as a human experiment, bashing his head against a wall over and over again for hours, to obtain their interrogator certifications. They also tortured him using water, shackling his wrists over his head, beatings, forced nudity, and forced starvation. For most of his time at the black sites, he was sleep-deprived, first with ear-splitting music, and then with 24/7 fluorescent lights,” she hastened to add.
Ammar, the American human rights attorney, said is 46 years old today and suffers from multiple brain injuries because of CIA torture as well as severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), inability to sleep normally and cognitive decline, denied proper medical care by the US government.
“They will not allow medical histories to be taken that discuss the causes of his ailments (torture), the DoD (US Department of Defense) will not allow independent doctors to treat him, and according to the Chief Medical Officer, they do not have the ability to provide complex medical care or do proper surgeries here,” she said.
“Despite entreaties, the White House and DoD have absolutely refused to either implement a proper medical and torture rehabilitation program here or conduct humanitarian transfers of the remaining men to places where they can receive the care they need.”
Pradhan also spoke about the Guantanamo military commissions set up by the US government that have only exacerbated the miserable conditions of Gitmo inmates.
These military commissions, she said in a conversation with the Press TV website, were built to “benefit from CIA torture while hiding as many details of the torture program as possible.”
“The US government made a conscious decision after 9/11 to torture men abroad instead of bringing them to court for prosecution. Once they could no longer hide them in secret prisons, it was too late to prosecute them in real US courts because of that torture,” Pradhan said.
“The Military Commissions Act was written to allow the government to use torture-acquired evidence (the bulk of their evidence against these men), but also to prevent them from giving the defense the information we require about exculpatory or mitigating factors – like the men’s torture in CIA black sites,” she added.
The US-based attorney said the US government has “continuously invaded attorney-client privilege, with listening devices in our meeting rooms and the FBI attempting to place an informant on one defense team”, noting that the corruption in the military commissions “precludes any justice.”
On why the US government chose a detention facility in Cuba, away from the mainland, to detain people after the 9/11 attacks, Pradhan said the decision was taken so that the US “exercises complete control” and international and domestic laws do not apply.
“To this day, the US refuses to apply the Constitution in the military commissions, or the full provisions of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to the remaining detainees. And the detainees themselves have no real legal remedies – they are not allowed to file lawsuits in the United States, and no country will sanction the US for its illegal treatment of these men,” she stated.
The international calls for the closure of the notorious detention facility have grown louder, but the Joe Biden administration, like previous administrations, has adopted the policy of dilly-dallying.
Pradhan said the strength of the US propaganda campaign around Guantanamo at the beginning, “labeling all of the men here the “worst of the worst” and categorizing them all as some sort of combatant against the United States, has proven impossible to reverse.”
“Despite the fact that no one should ever have been held at Guantanamo, that most were sold to the US for bounty payments, and that only a handful have ever been charged, most Americans still believe that Guantanamo detainees are all terrorists,” she told the Press TV website.
“President Obama had the ability to tell the truth about the men at Guantanamo, even when Congress stopped him from closing the facility, but he did not. The enduring misinformation about the detainees means that many countries do not want to accept them and that Congress has banned any transfers of the men to US territory.”
Hollywood director latest sexual predator to find refuge in Israel

MEMO | October 4, 2023
Disgraced Hollywood director Brett Ratner, who stands accused by multiple women of rape and sexual harassment, revealed last week he relocated to Israel just days after being a special guest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in New York.
Ratner has followed in the footsteps of other sexual predators who have fled to Israel in recent years, including another Hollywood director, Bryan Singer, who moved to Israel several years ago after being accused of rape and sexual assault of several minors.
Thanks to lax extradition laws and the so-called “law of return” known as ‘Aliyah’ – which grants citizenship to Jews across the world based on ancestral claims that are two millennia old – Israel has become a sanctuary for Jewish sexual predators as well as countless fraudsters, money launderers, and war criminals.
According to Jewish Community Watch, an organization that tracks accused pedophiles, over 60 US citizens accused of pedophilia have successfully fled to Israel in the past few years.
However, in an interview with Hareetz last year, the head of Magen for Jewish Communities, an Israeli NGO that tracks sexual predators, revealed that “there are about 100 rabbis, teachers, and other figures who have been accused, charged or convicted of sexual abuse overseas and subsequently found refuge in Israel.”
Awareness of Israel’s safe haven status for sex offenders received a boost in recent years due to the case of Israeli-Australian citizen Malka Leifer, the headmistress of an ultra-Orthodox girls’ school in Australia, who fled to Israel in 2008 after allegations surfaced of her sexually abusing female students.
She was finally extradited in 2021 and faces trial in Victoria on 70 charges of child sex abuse.
Another predator who fled to Israel and is finally facing extradition is Mexican diplomat Andres Roemer, who stands accused of rape and sexual harassment by over 60 women. After more than two years of dragging their feet, Israeli authorities arrested Roemer on Monday.
Despite the serious accusations against him, Roemer even had a street named after him in the city of Ramat Gan.
But while Roemer is finally expected to face justice, Mexico is still seeking the extradition of the former head of the criminal investigation agency, Tomas Zeron, who is wanted in connection to the disappearance of 43 students in southwestern Mexico in 2014.
Zeron is also accused of embezzling over $50 million and torturing suspects.
Despite being wanted by Interpol, Zeron has been living in an upscale apartment building in Tel Aviv since late 2019 due to his ties to the Israeli tech sector, including embattled firm NSO Group — makers of the Pegasus spyware.
Furthermore, western media reports revealed earlier this year that Israeli authorities are “unlikely” to extradite Zeron as “payback” for Mexico’s support of the Palestinian cause and their approval of UN inquiries into Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.
FDA ties with Gates Foundation
Maryanne Demasi, reports | October 4, 2023
In 2017, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Under the MOU, the two entities agreed to share information to “facilitate the development of innovative products, including medical countermeasures,” such as diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics to combat disease transmission during a pandemic.
The FDA has MOUs with many academic and non-profit organisations, but few have as much to gain as Bill Gates, who has invested billions into pandemic countermeasures.
Experts are concerned the Gates Foundation could have undue influence over the FDA’s regulatory decisions of these countermeasures.
David Gortler, an ex-senior adviser to the FDA commissioner between 2019 and 2021, says he is “suspicious” of the MOU.
“If the Gates Foundation establishes an MOU with a regulator on a product they want to develop, it seems like it would be a conflict of interest. What if every other drug company did the exact same thing as the Gates Foundation?” he says.

David Gortler, former senior advisor to FDA commissioner 2019-2021
Gortler, now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC, explained that normally, meetings between developers and regulators are supposed to be an official part of the public record and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
“However, an MOU such as this can circumvent the usual requirements for the transparency of official communications,” says Gortler. “This way their communications can be kept secret.”
David Bell, a former medical officer for the World Health Organisation (WHO) who now works as a public health physician and biotech consultant, agrees that the MOU has potential to corrupt the regulatory process.
“The narrative is that philanthropic foundations can only be good, because they’re making vaccines and saving thousands of lives, so we need to cut the red-tape and help the FDA get stuff done quickly otherwise children will die,” says Bell. “But in reality, it has potential to corrupt the whole system.”

David Bell, physician and biotech consultant
Bell adds, “Speaking generally, close relationships between regulators and developers raise inevitable risks that shortcuts and favours will break down the rigorousness of the product review, putting the public at risk.”
Revolving door
The FDA has been roundly criticised for its “revolving door.” Ten of the past 11 FDA commissioners left the agency and secured roles with pharmaceutical companies they once regulated.
Similarly, the Gates Foundation hired high-ranking members of the FDA, who bring with them intimate knowledge of the regulatory process.
For example, Murray Lumpkin had a 24-year career at the FDA, serving as senior advisor to the FDA commissioner and representative for global issues. Now, he is deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Gates Foundation, and signatory on the MOU.
And Margaret Hamburg, who served as FDA commissioner between 2009 and 2015, is now on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Gates Foundation.

Murray Lumpkin, deputy director regulatory affairs, Gates Foundation; Margaret Hamburg, scientific advisory board, Gates Foundation
Bell has no doubt that these appointments were strategic to “game the system” saying, “If I worked at the Gates Foundation, I would certainly hire somebody like Murray Lumpkin.”
The only way to fix the revolving door problem Bell says, is to have a ‘non-compete clause’ in their contracts.
“It might be that FDA employees cannot work for the people they’ve regulated for at least 10 years. There are places that have those rules – private companies have agreements that you can’t work for a rival,” said Bell.
The FDA dismissed questions about the potential for conflicts of interest, or the lack of transparency over its communications with the Gates Foundation. In a statement, the FDA said:
FDA regulatory decision making is science-based. Former FDA officials do not impact regulatory decisions. FDA only collaborates with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation under the MOU as described.
Gates has billions at stake
Gates boasted about receiving a 20-to-1 return on his $10 billion investment into the “financing and delivery” of medicines and vaccines.
“It’s the best investment I’ve ever made,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “Decades ago, these investments weren’t sure bets, but today, they almost always pay off in a big way.”
In Sept 2019, just prior to the pandemic, SEC filings showed the foundation purchased over 1 million shares for $18.10/share. By Nov 2021, the foundation dumped most of the stock for an average of $300/share.
Investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel reported the foundation pocketed approximately $260 million in profit – more than 15 times its original investment – most of it untaxed because it was invested through the foundation.
In his recent book, “How to Prevent the Next Pandemic,” Gates warns that future pandemics are the biggest threat to humankind and that survival depends on global pandemic preparedness strategies, firmly positioning himself at the centre of shaping the agenda.
In October 2019, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum hosted Event 201, which gathered government agencies, social media companies and national security organisations to war game a “fictional” global pandemic.

October 2019, Gates and WEF fund Event 201 to simulate a global pandemic response
The key recommendations from the event were that such a crisis would require the deployment of new vaccines, surveillance and control of information and human behaviours, by orchestrating the co-operation and co-ordination of key industries, national governments, and international institutions.
Several weeks later when the covid-19 pandemic emerged, many aspects of this ‘hypothetical scenario’ became a chilling reality.
The Gates Foundation, which holds shares in a range of drug companies including Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, is now credited with wielding significant influence over the direction of the global response to the pandemic, saying its goal is to “vaccinate the entire world” with a covid-19 vaccine.
Global dominance
The Gates Foundation has poured millions into funding NGOs, media, and international agencies, earning Gates significant political clout.
Financial contributions to the media have garnered Gates favourable news coverage, boasting on the foundation’s website it committed almost $3.5 million to The Guardian in 2020 – 2023.
The UK medicines regulator – the MHRA – disclosed it took approximately $3 million in funding from the Gates Foundation in 2022, which would span across several financial years.
Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr labelled Gates “the most powerful man in public health” because he managed to steer the WHO’s pandemic strategy to focus primarily on vaccination.
Kennedy said in an interview that the WHO “begs and rolls over” for Gates’ funding, which now makes up over 88% of the total amount of the WHO’s donations by philanthropic foundations.

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Presidential Candidate
“I think [Gates] believes that he is somehow ordained divinely to bring salvation to the world through technology,” said Kenney. “He believes the only path to good health is inside a syringe.”
The Gates Foundation’s CEO Mark Suzman responded to concerns that the foundation has “disproportionate sway in setting national and global agendas, without any formal accountability to voters or international bodies.”
“It’s true that between our dollars, voice, and convening power, we have access and influence that many others do not,” admitted Suzman in his 2023 annual letter .
“But make no mistake – where there’s a solution that can improve livelihoods and save lives, we’ll advocate persistently for it. We won’t stop using our influence, along with our monetary commitments, to find solutions,” he wrote.
Ukraine Fatigue Is Worrying NATO Elites – and So They Should Be
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 4, 2023
On both sides of the Atlantic, there is now discernible fatigue and anger among citizens over the bottomless money pit that is NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.
The only wonder is that it has taken so long for the Western public to get wise to the scam.
The disgraceful adulation of a Nazi war criminal by the whole Canadian parliament in a perverse show of solidarity with Ukraine against Russia has helped focus public attention on the obscenity of the NATO proxy war.
All told, since the NATO-induced conflict blew up in February last year, the American and European establishments have thrown up to €200 billion into Ukraine to prop up an odious Nazi-infested regime.
All that largesse that is billed to U.S. and European taxpayers has resulted in a slaughter in Europe not seen since the Second World War – and a failed Ukrainian state. And of course huge profits for the NATO military-industrial complex that bankrolls the elite politicians.
Times are changing though. In the United States, the financially conservative Republicans have had enough of the blank checks to the Kiev regime. The U.S. Congress finally showed a modicum of sanity to prevent a government financial shutdown – by dropping military aid to Ukraine. That shows how twisted Washington’s priorities have become when national self-interest has to wrestle with funding for a Nazi regime.
And then following the Congressional vote to temporarily end funding for Ukraine, the Kiev regime’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba dared to reprimand American lawmakers: “We are now working with both sides of Congress to make sure that it does not (get) repeated under any circumstances.”
Meanwhile in Europe, Slovakian citizens have voted for a new government to end the military fueling of war in Ukraine. The Smer-SD party led by Robert Fico won the parliamentary elections primarily on the vow to shut off any further weapons supply to the Kiev regime.
This week also saw massive protests in Germany against Olaf Scholz’s coalition government over the latter’s abject pro-war policies in Ukraine. German Unity Day on October 3 prompted a mass rally in Berlin denouncing the NATO proxy war in Ukraine and calling for peace negotiations to end the conflict.
There were also unprecedented protests across Poland in Warsaw, Lodz and other cities against the PiS government’s slavish implementation of the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine. Faced with millions of Ukrainian refugees and neglect of social needs for Poles, the PiS ruling party has recently threatened to end weapons supply to Kiev – a move less about principle and more about trying to buy votes in the forthcoming election on October 15. Nevertheless, the belated move by the Polish government illustrates the concern among European leaders about growing public disdain over the seemingly endless financial aid allocated to Ukraine.
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, says it is a “worrying” sign that Washington for the first time closed the coffers for Ukraine.
The EU foreign ministers held a summit in Kiev on Monday. It was the first time that their summit was convened in a non-EU country. The agenda was a little too self-conscious, slated as a show of “solidarity” with Ukraine.
Borrell and the other EU diplomats said the summit was a warning to Russia to not count on “weariness” among Europeans over support for Ukraine. Who is he trying to convince? Russia or Europeans?
The unelected European elites described the war in Ukraine as an “existential crisis” which requires never-ending support for the Nazi regime against Russia.
Such melodrama needs serious qualification. The conflict is only “existential” for certain people: the NATO ideologues, the elitist leaders, the military-industrial complex, and the corrupt Nazi regime in Kiev. But it’s not existential for most other people who want to end this insane slaughter, grotesque wasting of public finances, and perilous flirting with nuclear war.
Significantly, the contrived EU summit in Kiev was not attended by Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijjarto. In highly critical comments on the EU’s misplaced priorities, he said that other countries do not understand why Europe “has made this conflict global” and why people living in Asia, Africa and Latin America have to pay for it due to growing inflation, energy prices and unstable food supplies.
The Hungarian diplomat slammed the EU leaders for their double standards and hypocrisy, adding: “I can say that the world outside Europe is already really looking forward to the end of this war because they do not understand many things. They do not understand, for example, how it can be that when a war is not in Europe, the European Union, looking down with fantastic moral superiority, calls on the parties to peace, advocates negotiations and an immediate end to violence. However, when there is a war in Europe, the European Union incites the conflict and supplies weapons, and anyone who talks about peace is immediately stigmatized.”
At least two members of the EU and the NATO alliance – Hungary and Slovakia’s new government – are opposed to the absurd military and financial support fueling the war in Ukraine. Both countries want peace negotiations with Russia to be prioritized. There is an unavoidable sense that this common sense dissent will grow into a domino effect because it is the truth and has an unassailable moral force.
What the conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated clearly to the Western public is just how morally bankrupt their governments and media have become. American and European elitist leaders may kid themselves a little longer by pretending there is no weariness and fatigue over their proxy war against Russia. The more they pretend the greater the eventual crash and downfall from public anger.
