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Five evidence-based early known Covid facts – ignored and censored

Highly acclaimed experts presented evidence-based facts on Covid-19 early in 2020, but were ignored and censored by authorities

BY THEO L. GLÜCK | FREEDOM RESEARCH | SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The official narrative in the Covid crisis tried to persuade the public that various mandates and coercions, limiting people’s individual freedoms, were all based on science. The myth of this has visibly eroded, as it has been revealed how much of the strategies, influencing the lives of millions, was based on fear, pressure from media and political tactics. Reference to science was often enough used as a disguise.

Five evidence-based facts known already in 2020, but ignored by the authorities:

  • The virus had spread much more widely and was far less dangerous than initially claimed by the authorities.
  • The risk from Covid-19 differed by a factor of 1,000 for different age groups, and the risk was much higher for people with comorbidities (e.g. obesity, diabetes, anxiety disorders, etc.) and nutrition deficiencies.
  • Those who had recovered from the disease had developed strong natural immunity, but this evidence-based fact was systematically ignored or downplayed by the authorities.
  • Covid-19 vaccines received marketing authorisation without having been tested in clinical trials for virus transmission or infection.
  • Covid-19 vaccines have considerable side effects that were already known during the clinical trials of the vaccines.

The closure of parks and playgrounds was part of lockdown policies, carried out with reference to science.

Already in 2020, there were a number of important and evidence-based facts about both Covid-19 and the response to the Covid crisis that were highlighted by many scientists and doctors. Consideration of these facts would have prevented the introduction of ill-considered and ineffective Covid measures and reduced the resulting harms.

The virus had spread much more widely and was much less dangerous than claimed

The SARS-Cov-2 virus was already much more widespread globally in early 2020 than official sources (including the World Health Organization, or WHO) claimed. Prof. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Eran Bendavid wrote on March 24, 2020, that fears of Covid-19 were based primarily on a miscalculated death toll reported by the WHO, which was vastly exaggerated as it did not take into account the actual rate of infection. This meant, in particular, that the mortality rate among those infected was much lower than initially claimed and the risk posed by Covid-19 to the vast majority of people, particularly those under 70, was many times lower.

A team led by professor John P. Ioannidis of Stanford University scientifically showed in a study published already in May 2020 that the risk of dying from Covid-19 for people under the age of 65, even in pandemic epicentres, was very low, and deaths amongst people under the age of 65 with no comorbidities were remarkably uncommon. They proposed that strategies focusing specifically on protecting high-risk elderly individuals should have been considered in managing the pandemic.

On October 14, 2020, the Bulletin of the World Health Organisation published a study by prof J. P. Ioannidis, according to which the median rate of deaths among people infected with Covid-19 in autumn 2020 was 0.23-0.27%, with a rate of 0.05% among people under 70 years of age, which was tens of times lower than official (including the WHO’s) estimates in March and April 2020.

Even though such evidence-based data were known early on, the authorities in many countries and the WHO continued to scare the public about the particular danger of a novel viral disease, and imposed restrictions on millions of healthy people. Among other things, many countries restricted people from exercising, staying outdoors and playing sports, thereby compromising people’s overall health and increasing the risk of developing all the diseases (including Covid-19) more severely.

Thousand-fold difference in the risk from Covid-19

Harvard University Professor Martin Kulldorff had already stated in April 2020 that it was clear from the data from Wuhan early on in the crisis that there was a thousand-fold difference in the risk from Covid-19 across different age groups, and that failing to account for this difference was one of the major flaws in the public response to the Covid crisis.

Prof Martin Kulldorff was quick to point out the thousand-fold difference in risk from Covid-19 (Thérèse Soukar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Among people exposed to Covid-19, people in their 70s had roughly twice the mortality of those in their 60s, 10 times the mortality of those in their 50s, 40 times that of those in their 40s, 100 times that of those in their 30s, 300 times that of those in their 20s, and a mortality that was more than 3000 times higher than it was for children. According to Kulldorff, public authorities should have taken this wide variation between age groups into account when designing Covid interventions. Counter measures specifically targeting the elderly, the highest risk group, would have not only protected them but other groups as well. Age-specific measures had to be part of the strategy, otherwise unnecessary mortality, hospital burden and economic losses followed.

Professor Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh also estimated early on that the elderly were 10,000 times more at risk from Covid-19 than those under 15. But it goes e ven further. It’s not just the elderly, it’s the elderly who are infirm, have comorbidities or are frail. These were the people who were particularly at risk, and the main target group that should have been addressed. In his view, this was also the most important and obvious reason why there were alternatives to social closures and other coercive state measures.

In addition, it was clear from quite early on that it were the people with serious comorbidities that would fall seriously ill. In one of Europe’s epicentres of the early outbreak, Italy, a report found as early as in March 20, 2020, that the median age of the 3200 deaths testing positive for Covid-19 was 78.5 years, and more than 95% of them had one or more comorbidities. A large-scale study in the US confirmed that over 95% of hospitalised adults were persons with at least one comorbidity condition and the main risks were obesity, anxiety and fear disorders and diabetes. However, it was also clear, for example, that the proportion of overweight people varied widely between countries, even within the same age groups. For example, obesity already affects 42% of the US population, but in Vietnam the same number is only 2%, in India 4% and <10% in most of the African countries.

The association of nutritional deficiencies with severe morbidity was also known before the Covid crisis. Vitamin D, for example, plays an important role in the immune system. Already in the first half and second half of 2020, studies showed a clear correlation between the low levels of vitamin D and the risk of severe Covid-19 disease. For that reason, many doctors and researchers stressed the need for adequate vitamin D intake in the autumn of 2020, ahead of the second wave, especially for older people at risk.

Although these facts were known early on, authoroties continued to scare the public by claiming, among other things, that the virus did not discriminate between infected people and could be fatal to anyone. Health authorities also failed to advise people to take important steps to support their general health, such as getting enough fresh air and sunshine, eating a healthy diet, controlling blood pressure and diabetes, losing weight, etc. On the contrary, authorities directed people indoors, in many countries penalised them for going outdoors, and just promoted vaccinations instead of various treatments and lifestyles.

In the UK, scary posters were used in large-scale campaigns to get people to follow the “rules”

Ignoring natural immunity

The importance of natural immunity was systematically downplayed by the health authorities, major vaccine manufacturers and the World Health Organisation (WHO). In some countries (such as the USA), it was not even taken into account in the implementation of Covid measures, while the authorities only reiterated the need to vaccinate as many people as possible.

At the same time, studies carried out before the vaccination campaigns started, i.e. by the end of 2020, clearly showed that recovery from the disease provides strong immunity for at least 8 months and most likely longer. By October 2021, at least 81 studies had already been published confirming immunity to Covid-19 conferred by recovery.

In addition, a number of studies at the beginning of the Covid crisis showed that a significant proportion of the population may have already had immunity to Covid-19, as SARS-Cov-2 was only one of several coronaviruses. Nearly half of the unaffected individuals had the corresponding T-cells, indicating the body’s previous exposure to coronaviruses and ability to cope with them.

Many doctors and scientists, including Dr. Robert W. Malone, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche, Dr Marty Makary, Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Tess Lawrie, Dr. Richard Urso, Dr. Paul E. Alexander, Prof Norman Fenton, Prof Martin Neil and others found it puzzling that health officials chose to ignore the scientific fact that infection provided long-lasting and strong protection to millions of people who had recovered from Covid-19. Prof. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Prof. Martin Kulldorff have stressed that while natural infection may not have provided permanent infection-blocking immunity, it offered, in high likelihood, permanent anti-disease immunity against severe disease and death. However, scientists who during the Covid crisis stressed the importance of natural immunity and asked to take into account when divising public policies, were not only ignored but censored and cancelled.

Ignoring natural immunity has had serious consequences, including avoidable vaccine complications and harms, loss of lives, financial and other collateral damage, and loss of credibility of the public health authorities.

Vaccines were not tested for reduction of virus transmission or infection

Covid-19 vaccines, which were introduced at warp speed, were not tested in clinical trials to see if they reduced infection or transmission. Shortly before their vaccine was granted emergency marketing authorisation in the US (on 3 December 2020), this fact was admitted by the CEO of Pfizer, Albert Bourla, and later by a Pfizer official during an official hearing at the European Parliament, although the vaccine manufacturers gave the public an impression that the vaccines protected against infection and transmission.

To the experts who looked closely at the design and results of the Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials, the fact that the vaccines were not tested for reduction of virus transmission or infection was evident already in late 2020. For example, the editor of British Medical Journal (BMJ) Dr. Peter Doshi stated on October 21, 2020, that none of the vaccine clinical trials had been designed to detect the efficacy of these vaccines on reducing any serious outcomes such as hospital admissions, use of intensive care, or deaths. Neither did they examine the efficacy of vaccines for their ability to interrupt transmission of the virus.

Dr Peter Doshi considers it wrong that primary data from clinical trials are not available (screenshot from Youtube)

Prof. William A. Haseltine drew attention to the serious shortcomings of these clinical trials on 23 September 2020, after Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson had published their vaccine trial protocols. According to him, the trials seemed to be designed to prove that their vaccines worked, even if the measured effects were minimal, as they mainly investigated only how well could the vaccines prevent mild Covid-19 symptoms. Haseltine pointed out that a closer look at the protocols made it clear that these trials did not provide confidence in vaccine efficacy in protecting against serious illness or in preventing an infection of Covid-19. It also appeared that these trials were intended to pass the lowest possible barrier of success. Haseltine concluded that these vaccines were not the “silver bullet” that would end the Covid crisis.

Yet tens of millions of people around the world were subjected to compulsory vaccination, and many lost their jobs because of non-compliance, severely restricting their individual freedoms and fundamental rights.

Ignoring the side effects of the vaccines

Data on the side effects of the vaccines were already available in documents published by the vaccine manufacturers on their clinical trails in late 2020, although few were able to or considered it important to look at them in depth. This was made considerably more difficult by the fact that vaccine manufacturers refused to publish the raw data needed for an objective assessment. Raw data from clinical trials have still not been fully disclosed.

For example, the Pfizer vaccine trial was designed, conducted, analysed and compiled by Pfizer staff and all the raw data belong to the company. The BMJ editorial board believes that refusing to disclose the original data is morally unacceptable for any clinical trials, but especially those involving major public health interventions. The BMJ has been calling on vaccine manufacturers for years to disclose the original data from clinical trials, since clinical trial data must be available for independent scrutiny.

Nevertheless, experts pointed out many inconsistencies and questionable findings in the Covid-19 vaccine trial reports already in early 2021, such as the facts that:

  • higher-risk target groups (elderly and immuno-compromised individuals) were clearly under-represented in the trials,
  • a number of subjects were withdrawn for unknown reasons,
  • even the officially reported rate of adverse reactions was several times higher than it was, for example, for flu vaccines.

In addition, it has come to light that the vaccine manufacturer Pfizer was aware of several serious side effects amongst the vaccine participants in clinical trials in early 2021, but chose to conceal them, such as the case of 12-year-old Maddie De Garay, who became disabled in the trial and is now partially paralysed, requiring a wheelchair and feeding tube. None of her 35 adverse reactions were mentioned in the New England Journal of Medicine article reporting on the vaccine trial.

Regardless of all that, since the beginning of 2021, mass vaccination campaigns were launched in many countries of the world, which in a short period of time transformed from an attempt of vaccinating the vulnerable target groups (the elderly) into an increasingly massive effort to vaccinate as many people as possible, even up to with children and infants, providing no rational argument or evidence base to do so.

A new expert analysis of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trial papers published in 2022 clearly found that participants in these clinical trials were more likely to experience a serious adverse reaction to vaccination than to be hospitalized for Covid-19.

Summary

As shown above, there is ample reason to argue that the evidence base for the decisions made in the greatest global health crisis of recent decades was severely deficient. Covid measures were determined not on the basis of evidence nor reasonable assumptions, but rather on the basis of emotional reactions and political tactics, fuelled by fear and media pressure. Societies were under constant pressure from global organisations (WHO, European Commission, etc.), authorities and the mass media – which included the increasingly loud rhetoric of maximizing lockdown, maximizing masking, maximizing vaccination etc.

However, there were also those in power who relied on knowledgeable experts (e.g. in the US, states such as South Dakota, Florida, Texas, etc.), as did some who were in charge of public health institutions (for example in Sweden), succeeding to resist irrational and unscientific pressures while enduring media bashing, vilification and unpopularity. At said places, the decision-makers generally avoided locking down the society and did not impose coercive state measures (compulsory mask mandates, compulsory vaccination, etc.). Thanks to their non-conformist and common sense approach, we now know much about which measures worked and which didn’t, the mistakes every society should avoid in future health crises, and how the slogan of ‘follow the science’ was often used as propaganda to subjugate societies to the dictates of a line of authority.

September 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Crime and Impunity… One Year Lying About U.S.-Led NATO’s Nord Stream Terrorism Breeds More War

Strategic Culture Foundation | September 29, 2023

The sheer total impunity over the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines raises an appalling vista of the lawlessness and barbarity in today’s world.

The United States and its NATO accomplices are recklessly and callously pushing a war in Ukraine against Russia which has seen up to half a million Ukrainian soldiers slaughtered and is putting the world at risk of a nuclear conflagration. The criminal insanity stems from the lack of any legal accountability for the United States, which grotesquely declares itself the custodian of “rules-based order”.

One year ago this week, an outrageous crime against international peace was committed and yet the Western governments and media perform like the proverbial monkeys who incredibly refuse to see, hear or speak of any evil.

The profound moral and philosophical challenges are worthy of exploration in an epic novel akin to Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment.

But this is not fiction. They are cold facts of real life.

By far, the most credible explanation for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines is provided by the investigative reporting of veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh.

Many other independent observers concur with Hersh’s account that the gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea were blown up by a covert U.S. military operation in collusion with other NATO forces.

According to Hersh, the sabotage was ordered by President Joe Biden and his top White House aides.

The infrastructure intended to pump natural gas from Russia to Germany was owned by those two nations as well as several other European companies. It cost at least $20 billion to construct over a decade. On September 26, 2022, the pipes were rendered inoperable by a series of underwater explosions.

Biden had explicitly threatened in February 2022 to take out the gas pipes during a White House press conference accompanied by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The motive for the Americans was to cut off Europe and Germany, in particular, from Russian energy fuel which was to be replaced by vastly more expensive U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas. Great for American business, absolutely detrimental for Europe, as the recession-hit European economies now attest.

The motive and means for carrying out the crime have been thoroughly described by Hersh and others.

And yet in an audacious act of collective denialism, the Western governments and media refuse to investigate this monumental crime. Official reports into the incident carried out by Denmark, Germany and Sweden have been suppressed with no conclusions published about the identity of the perpetrator.

Russia has been refused permission by European states to participate in a joint criminal investigation.

This week Moscow once again called on the United Nations Security Council to issue a condemnation of the sabotage and to launch an impartial probe into the extraordinary violation of international law. Previous appeals at the Security Council from Russia have been rebuffed by Western powers.

Laughably, Western media have feigned an agnosticism about the “mysterious explosions”. Such media have credulously indulged in blatant diversionary disinformation, for example, initially claiming that Russia carried out self-sabotage, and then later claiming that the sophisticated and highly complex military operation was the feat of “pro-Ukrainian militants” working off a yacht.

There is a pre-eminent reason for the Western silence. That is, to avoid the proverbial elephant in the room that this was a terrorist crime committed by the United States under the orders of its president.

To acknowledge this fact would of course bring the United States into fatal disrepute. It would be seen more than ever as a rogue terror state that presumes itself to be above the law.

Washington’s imperialist interests of dominating Europe and displacing Russia as an energy supplier are central to the reason for the war in Ukraine. This selfish and criminal agenda becomes evident if the Nord Stream act of terrorism is acknowledged and properly understood. The Western public would be up in arms over the false propaganda about the Ukraine war and the supposed “defense of democracy”.

Not only that but the European and NATO states would be seen as the criminal accomplices and pathetic vassals that they are. The United States sabotages European civilian infrastructure and the economies of its supposed allies – and yet those allies utter not a word of protest. Indeed, they have willingly and meekly participated in their self-harm.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders should be prosecuted for complicity in international terrorism and treason against their national interests.

Ironically, this week, Joe Biden while in Arizona dared to tell American voters that they face a stark choice in the presidential elections coming next year. Biden said the choice would be for U.S. citizens to either “support democracy” under his continued leadership or “elect extremism” under Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate.

What could be more extreme than Biden ordering his military agencies to blow up gas pipelines owned by Russia and other European states?

The fact that Biden and the United States have been permitted to get away with the outrage of Nord Stream terrorism is why Washington and its NATO acolytes have continually escalated the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia over the past year.

The astounding impunity afforded to the U.S. and its NATO accomplices over the Nord Stream incident is consistent with the way these same imperialist powers have gotten away with mass murder and waging criminal wars for decades without any prosecutions. The U.S. establishment and its clandestine agencies are a criminal syndicate that also suffers from delusions of virtue.

Impunity breeds more criminality. The United States and its Western partners have rarely, if ever, been held to account for their historic crimes against the rest of the world. When such a transparent, brazen act of terrorism is perpetrated as in the Nord Stream sabotage and it is ignored then the world has shifted to an even more perilous situation where crimes have no punishment and even greater, more nefarious crimes can be engaged in.

The U.S. and its NATO henchmen, in particular Britain, are arming a Nazi regime in Kiev with tanks, cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells and longer-range missiles to strike Russia. The impunity that the Americans and their partners believe that they have acquired is shocking and hideous. There is no restraint.

For years, the NATO axis has been arming and training Nazi battalions in Ukraine to cynically take an imperialist war to Russia’s doorstep. Canada’s scandalous adulation of a Nazi war criminal in its parliament last week is a sign of the depraved times we live in. But we have reached this degeneration because, as the Nord Stream incident illustrates, the Western powers, primarily the executive American power, feel they are not just above the law but entitled to smash the law for whatever objective they deem desirable.

When those who profess to uphold the law, break the law, then there is no law. That is the frighteningly barbaric world we live in today.

Biden warned this week of fascism creeping up on the United States in the form of domestic political rivals. The reality is fascism, imperialist lawlessness and barbarity are already well-ensconced in this White House.

September 29, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Rand Paul Issues Ultimatum: Withdraw Ukraine Billions Or Face Government Shutdown

By Steve Watson | Summit News | September 29, 2023

Senator Rand Paul declared that he will hold up a spending bill in the Senate and push toward a government shutdown unless $6 billion in aid to Ukraine is removed from the legislation.

Paul took to Twitter noting that he will only allow a vote on the spending stopgap before the Sept. 30 deadline for funding government if Senate leaders get rid of the massive amount of money earmarked for the war.

“If leadership insists on funding another country’s government at the expense of our own government, all blame rests with their intransigence,” Paul wrote.

Last week, Paul slammed the Ukrainian leadership as “corrupt” and blasting the visiting President Zelensky as “begging for more money.”

In the Senate, Paul asked “When will the aid requests end? When will the war end? Can someone explain what victory looks like?”

Paul also noted that Zelensky has cancelled Democracy in the country.

“They’ve cancelled the elections. What kind of democracy has no election?” he noted, adding “next year, Zelensky said he’s not going to have an election because it would be inconvenient during the war and would be expensive.”

He continued, “if you don’t have elections, who in the world will be supporting a country that’s not a democracy? They’ve banned the political parties, they’ve invaded churches, they’ve arrested priests. So, no, it isn’t a democracy. It’s a corrupt regime.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. warned on Thursday that the “next step of Ukraine War escalation” is stationing United States military advisers on the ground.

“Have they forgotten how we got embroiled in Vietnam?” RFK Jr. noted, linking to a recent article in Foreign Affairs calling for on-the-ground training:

September 29, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

‘Sixty Minutes’ holds up the mirror to the West: and the picture in the frame is ugly

By Gilbert Doctorow | September 28, 2023

Readers will note that I have very often made reference to what I learn watching talk shows on Russian state television Rossiya 1 directed at their domestic audience, namely Sixty Minutes and Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. Very often the expert panelists, whether leaders of the Duma parties and Duma committee chairmen or retired military officers, offer commentaries that are insightful and novel.

However, another aspect of these programs is perhaps still more useful to my professional work, and that is their putting on air each day digests of Western television broadcasting, and especially  interviews or public speeches by well-known American and European politicians. The Western broadcasters which are featured most often on these Russian programs include CNN, ABC News, Fox News, the BBC and ZDF (Germany). The videos posted are not sound bites. On the contrary, they can be several minutes long each, and very often are clustered to show Western coverage of a given issue.

To be sure, some of the issues covered day after day are marginal. I have in mind transgender events and scandals such as the fight over multi-gender toilets being introduced in various American school systems or the fight over drag shows presented to the children of soldiers on U.S. military bases. The intent of the Russian newscasters is to highlight the degeneracy that now passes for progressive culture in the West. But the stories speak for themselves and the Russian news hosts are not thickening the paint. As they like to say on a frequently repeated Euronews segment: “No comment.”

But other issues are serious, geopolitical and entirely germane to the military confrontation with the West that Washington and Brussels have brought on. These Russian broadcasts allow Western politicians to utterly discredit themselves before any right-thinking person with a moral compass for a conscience.

Several such cases have come up in the past two days. One was an interview given by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell in which he repeats nearly word for word what fellow Republican and the as yet unindicted war criminal, the senior Senator from the state of South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, has been saying to reporters during and following his last visit to Kiev: that the war in Ukraine serves American objectives perfectly because it is hitting the Russian army hard while costing the United States not a single life of its men in uniform.

Of course, the assertion that no American servicemen have been killed in Ukraine is a lie. To be sure, the Poles have provided the largest contingent of NATO officers and soldiers to have been killed by the Russians in Ukraine. The Poles are close to Ukrainians in having a death wish by going up against The Bear. But American soldiers and officers are on the ground in Ukraine in their capacity as instructors and intelligence operatives, and the Russian missile strikes on concentrations of “foreign mercenaries” almost certainly have taken the lives of GIs.

But that one lie is the least of McConnell’s offenses against human decency. He has openly stated  the most cynical logic to justify the deaths of at least 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers and officers as well as the permanent maiming of countless others. All for the sake of weakening Russia militarily and ensuring that not a single American pays the price? I put aside the question of whether the Russian armed forces have actually been weakened. I believe the contrary is true. Of course, Lindsey Graham took this narrative one step further than McConnell by expressing the hope that as many Russians will die as is possible. Sixty Minutes does not let anyone forget that, every few days showing Graham delivering these obscenities.

In presenting to their public statements that were duly recorded by American broadcasting companies, is Russia engaging in propaganda? Absolutely not. It is doing the job of normal journalism, informing its audience.

Sixty Minutes today also put on the screen the latest remarks by Donald Trump on how he would have prevented the Russian invasion of Ukraine: by bringing the market price of oil down to $40 and so drastically cutting the revenues available for Russia to stage its assault on Kiev. The presenters and panelists did comment on this one, saying flatly that Russia will be sure not to support Trump’s next bid for the White House if these idiotic remarks by The Donald are his much touted but till now closely held “peace plan.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also was given plenty of air time on Russian state television today. One video showed him standing by visiting Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Canadian parliament several days ago applauding the honors bestowed by the Speaker on a Ukrainian freedom fighter who settled in Canada after the end of the Second World War. The fact that this freedom fighter fought the Russians from within a Nazi SS Waffen unit that murdered civilians in Galicia became public after this ceremony and resulted in the Speaker’s resignation, in the Parliament adopting a resolution condemning the Nazis and in a public apology by Trudeau for the scandal. However, as Sixty Minutes highlighted in its coverage of Trudeau’s remarks on the subject, he left out of his list of victims of the SS Waffen and Nazi forces in general any mention of the deaths inflicted on Russians.

In case the audience did not quite understand the moral monster who today sullies the family name of Trudeau, Sixty Minutes also put on air a lengthy denunciation of Trudeau that appeared on Indian television in which inter alia he was called out as a cocaine addict whose plane on arrival in India for the G-20 gathering several weeks ago was found to be carrying illicit narcotics but was untouchable. The same Indian broadcast said that Trudeau missed the first day of the G-20 because he was busy taking drugs in his hotel room. Is this Russian propaganda? Or is it just airing dirty linen that others living in the “free world” have put out for their audiences? In any case, the point being made is that Justin Trudeau and fellow addict Zelensky have more in common than admiration for old Nazis.

Lastly, Sixty Minutes today did not ignore the former Secretary of State and presidential candidate of 2016, Hilary Clinton. They offered a clip from Clinton’s interview yesterday with CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour in which she asserted that Vladimir Putin was himself responsible for the expansion of NATO. Here the temptation was too great and the panelists indulged their revulsion for the lady who was behind the whole fake Russia-gate story that did so much to bring us to the brink of WWIII. Was she fair game for their mocking and contemptuous words about her? Of course she was.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023

September 29, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

How Soviet-era doctrine and weapons trump American warfighting

By Drago Bosnic | September 29, 2023

Since the very start of Russia’s special military operation (SMO), there have been several persistent overhype tropes that the mainstream propaganda machine has been pushing relentlessly. One of those is that American/NATO weapons and fighting doctrine are far superior to Russian/Soviet equivalents and that this was the reason why Moscow has such “huge losses”. Obviously, these assessments are based on multilayered lies and half-truths designed to support each other with endless media self-quoting. These propaganda tropes have been largely successful when it comes to convincing the Western public that Russia is supposedly “weak”, resulting in laughable claims that Moscow’s forces “rolled into Ukraine as the world’s second most powerful military, but ended up being the second most powerful in Ukraine”, among other things.

On the other hand, behind the scenes, the Pentagon has been in quiet panic mode, as it sees hundreds of billions worth of NATO-sourced weapons burning in Ukraine, while Russia’s investments in the SMO have not only been “surprisingly low,” but also extremely cost-effective. This is without even considering the fact that the casualty ratio of the Kiev regime forces vs. the Russian military is close to 10:1, which is absolutely atrocious given that the former has been training with NATO for over two decades now (intensively for well over a decade). In fact, according to Western sources quoting American veterans currently fighting for the Neo-Nazi junta troops, it’s precisely the Western training and equipment that’s the issue and that the sole reason why the Kiev regime has been able to hold at all is that its commanding cadre has switched back to their Soviet-era training.

Namely, according to a recent report, Ukrainian soldiers would have far higher casualties if they fought the way American forces do. A United States Army veteran, callsign Jackie, told the Business Insider that “Ukrainians would be worse off if they followed American battlefield doctrine and that they were actually better at understanding some types of modern fighting”, adding that “if we use[d] American doctrine here, we would definitely have a bad time”. Jackie took part in US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq before becoming a training contractor for the US military. After Russia launched the SMO, he decided to join the Neo-Nazi junta “to help train its troops and to fight alongside them”. Apart from the usual propaganda tropes (mandatory at this point), Jackie made several admissions, including the claim that Ukrainians are “ahead of the US in some obvious ways”.

“We don’t even have a clear doctrine for small drone use really at this time,” he told the Business Insider, adding: “The Ukrainians are quite advanced in that fact. The Ukrainians are quite ahead of us on integration of these small drone systems and small, medium drones.”

Jackie also stated that “Ukrainians had to operate in ‘guerilla stealth mode’ even when doing big operations” and that this was because their troops are “so disadvantaged as to be considered insufficient by any NATO country standard to breach the forces on that part of the line“. Ukrainians themselves are also saying the same, insisting that “they have to adjust [Western/NATO] training to survive on the battlefield”. The Business Insider claims that “Jackie’s comments mirror those made in September by a Ukrainian commander trained by US, British, and Polish soldiers”.

“If I only did what [Western militaries] taught me, I’d be dead,” the commander stated back then.

The Ukrainian conflict shares little to no resemblance to countless US aggressions against countries around the world, as the belligerent thalassocracy is very careful not to invade any remotely capable opponents. What Washington DC usually does is enforce sanctions and isolate the targeted country first. Only then it calls upon a pack of its vassals and satellite states to invade directly. The Business Insider itself admitted this, using Afghanistan and Iraq as examples where Western troops had significant equipment and weapons advantages. It also quoted a former US Army Ranger who fought in Ukraine and said that “the fighting there was far worse than what [he] experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan“. US Army veteran Jackie also insisted that “training Ukrainian soldiers ‘from the ground up’ was not appropriate given how much the soldiers had already fought”.

These rather unusual admissions by Western combat veterans are also reinforced by the Kiev regime’s far more successful usage of Soviet-era weapons and equipment than was ever the case for NATO-sourced equivalents. Namely, the Neo-Nazi junta certainly doesn’t shy away from allowing its forces to use the Soviet military doctrine, weapons and equipment. These have proved to be a far greater threat to the Russian military, particularly on the tactical level. And yet, the successes based solely on the Soviet way of fighting were unashamedly attributed to Western systems, such as the grossly overhyped HIMARS. In the early days of the SMO, Ukrainian ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles), such as the “Stugna-P” (based on a long line of Soviet/Russian ATGM types), performed significantly better than Western ATGMs such as the “Javelin”, NLAW, AT4, etc.

The same can be said for a plethora of other weapon systems, including regular and rocket artillery, as well as missile strikes. According to Russian military sources, even the recent attack on the headquarters of the Russian Black Sea Fleet was carried out by using the R-360 “Neptune” missile (essentially a deep Ukrainian modernization of the Soviet-era Kh-35). And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine was quick to attribute the strike to the Anglo-French “Storm Shadow/SCALP EG” cruise missile. However, Russian SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems have been quite successful in shooting down both ballistic and cruise missiles provided by the political West. In other words, Soviet/Russian warfighting is superior because it was built/conceptualized for war, while its Western equivalent is extremely efficient during military fashion weeks and in Hollywood.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

September 29, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

RT surges after X (aka Twitter) removes censorship – ‘disinformation’ lobbyist

RT | September 27, 2023

NewsGuard, a self-proclaimed disinformation watchdog, has lamented the rise in popularity of RT and 11 other news outlets after Elon Musk relaxed censorship on X (formerly Twitter).

Among 12 media accounts analyzed, RT experienced the highest engagement growth in the 90 days following Musk’s decision in April to remove ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels from certain outlets, NewsGuard said on Tuesday. The number of ‘likes’ and reposts for RT’s account increased to 2.5 million in the period studied, up from 1.3 million.

The analysis focused on Chinese, Iranian, and Russian media outlets, which NewsGuard branded “state-run disinformation sources” and purveyors of “propaganda.”

NewsGuard cited political memes posted by Iranian news accounts as purported examples of disinformation. Another instance was supposedly a link shared by Iran’s PressTV to an article on remarks made by US presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who argued that Americans “created” the Islamic State terrorist group. Kennedy made the claim during an election rally in Boston, where he accused Washington of decades of misguided foreign policy.

The self-described disinformation watchdog advocates imposing strict moderation on online platforms to protect users from supposed foreign influence. NewsGuard’s rating of news outlets generally labels mainstream Western media as trustworthy, while outlets linked with governments opposed by the US are branded deceitful.

Among NewsGuard’s advisers is Michael Hayden, a former head of the CIA and the NSA. He was notably one of the more than 50 former intelligence officials who claimed in 2020 that the factual New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Others include former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former US Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and former US Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel. The latter stated publicly that his job in the Obama administration was jokingly described as “chief propagandist” by others.

The Pentagon and Microsoft have contracted NewsGuard services.

The report heavily implied that the lack of X labels for the likes of RT was to blame for the rise in engagements, as it is now “impossible for users to know whether an account is government-affiliated” simply by looking at posts.

NewsGuard claimed that the 12 accounts in question are attempting to conceal their associations, such as when RT rebranded from its previous name Russia Today. The report described the move as taking place “several years ago,” although the rebranding was implemented in 2009.

Musk, who formally stepped down as CEO of X (then Twitter) in June, ordered the ‘government-funded’ and ‘state-affiliated’ labels to be removed amid a row with America’s NPR, which exited the platform after being branded. Around the same time, X ended its ‘shadow-ban’ on RT and others, lifting a restriction imposed under the previous executive leadership.

The subsequent publication of the ‘Twitter Files’ has detailed extensive US government oversight and pressure on the social media company to amplify Pentagon talking points over dissenting voices.

NewsGuard conceded that Musk’s move to end restrictions on X, which it described as “pushing” undesirable accounts, may have benefited them.

In August, NATO’s Strategic Communications Center of Excellence blamed Musk for a “dramatic rise” in the visibility of Russian government and media accounts.

September 28, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

US meddling in EU state’s election – Russian intelligence

RT | September 28, 2023

The US is willing to go to any lengths, including blackmail and bribery, to ensure the incumbent government wins the upcoming election in Slovakia, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed.

In a press release issued by the SVR on Thursday, director Sergey Naryshkin accused the White House of increasingly meddling in Slovakia’s internal affairs as the Central European country approaches the parliamentary election this weekend.

The opposition in Slovakia has made it abundantly clear that it would not unquestioningly follow the US lead if elected, and according to the SVR, stands a good chance of coming out on top in the vote.

To prevent this from happening, “the US State Department sent instructions to several of its European allies to conduct targeted work with local political and business circles,” the Russian intelligence agency claimed. It further alleged that Washington has sanctioned the use of methods such as blackmail, threats, and bribery.

The SVR also claimed that the US has already instructed the leader of the Progressive Slovakia party, Michal Simecka, who also serves as the European Parliament vice-president, to form a “cabinet completely loyal to Washington,” should his party triumph.

“Taking these realities into consideration, the upcoming election in Slovakia can hardly be viewed as a democratic expressing of the will of the people, and free from external influence,” the SVR concluded.

Citing an anonymous European Commission official, Politico reported in June that Brussels feared a potential victory for former Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Direction – Slovak Social Democracy party would spell “disaster” for the EU’s position on Russia sanctions and continued defense aid for Ukraine.

NATO member Slovakia has supplied Kiev with armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. However, Fico has made it clear that he will terminate the aid if he returns to power. He has also called into question the need for economic measures against Moscow.

A recent poll commissioned by Slovakia’s TV JOJ 24 broadcaster indicated that Progressive Slovakia and Direction – Slovak Social Democracy are neck and neck, with 18% and 17.7% of support respectively.

September 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , | Leave a comment

House Panel Releases Emails Showing US Attorney Blocked FARA Probe Into Joe Biden

Sputnik – 28.09.2023

WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives Oversight Committee released redacted emails it claims show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked federal agents from conducting a FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) investigation into then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in August 2020.

“Newly released emails and documents show that Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf did not allow agents to investigate Joe Biden as part of a FARA probe,” the Oversight Committee said via X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday.

In the email, dated August 7, 2020, it appears Lesley told federal investigators they made a mistake in their search warrant request by including Biden. Lesley purportedly claims Biden falls outside of the scope of their FARA investigation.

The House Oversight Committee will hold the first hearing of the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden on Thursday to begin further examining alleged criminal activity involving Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

The committee has been investigating alleged foreign bribery and influence peddling involving the Biden family and entities in countries including Ukraine and China. Biden denies ever having discussed foreign business affairs with his son.

Citing bank records, the committee on Tuesday revealed that Hunter Biden in 2019 received two payments wired from China totaling $260,000 with President Joe Biden’s Delaware home listed as the beneficiary address.

McCarthy, in light of the new findings, said the Republican impeachment inquiry against Biden will uncover the whole truth.

September 28, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Fauci Secretly Met With CIA to ‘Influence’ COVID Origins Investigation, House Republican Alleges

By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | September 27, 2023

Dr. Anthony Fauci visited CIA headquarters to “influence” its COVID-19 origins investigation, according to allegations disclosed Tuesday by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio).

Wenstrup, in a letter to Inspector General Christi Grimm at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said he had information suggesting Fauci was “escorted” into CIA headquarters “without a record of entry.”

Wenstrup is chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. A subcommittee spokesperson told the Daily Mail the committee “has received information from multiple sources across multiple agencies regarding Dr. Fauci’s movements to and from the CIA.”

Neither Wenstrup nor any subcommittee member or spokesperson identified specific date(s) Fauci is alleged to have visited the agency.

Tuesday’s press release from the Committee on Government Oversight and Accountability, which is overseeing the subcommittee’s investigation, called attention to allegations by six CIA whistleblowers that they received “significant financial incentives” to change their stance that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.

In light of evidence uncovered earlier this year establishing Fauci’s involvement in the “Proximal Origin” paper claiming to disprove the lab leak theory, the subcommittee said it found Fauci’s presence at the CIA “questionable,” alleging it “lends credence to heightened concerns about the promotion of a false COVID-19 origins narrative by multiple federal government agencies.”

Wenstrup asked Grimm to send the subcommittee by no later than Oct. 10 any documents and communications related to Fauci’s movements between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2022, into any facilities owned, operated or occupied by the CIA.

Wenstrup also requested the pay and bonus history of all past and current members of HHS’ “COVID Discovery Team(s)” and information about staff and contractors at HHS, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the U.S. Marshals Service who may have been involved.

“Our goal is to ensure the scientific investigative process regarding the origins of COVID-19 was fair, impartial, and free of alternative influence,” Wenstrup stated.

Wenstrup did not reveal the source of the information on Fauci’s CIA visit, but the letter mentioned HHS’ Special Agent Brett Rowland, requesting Grimm make him available for a “voluntary transcribed interview.”

CIA whistleblower and intelligence community reports on COVID origins

A joint letter from the subcommittee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio), sent Sept. 12 to CIA Director William Burns, outlined the testimony of a “multi-decade, senior-level, current agency officer” alleging six of the seven analysts investigating the COVID-19 origins were given a “significant monetary incentive to change their position.”

According to the unidentified whistleblower — a decorated and long-serving CIA officer with expertise in Asia, according to the Substack Public — the six analysts, all with significant scientific expertise, were paid off in order to bury their findings that COVID-19 most likely originated from the Wuhan lab.

The seventh and most senior member of the team was alone in believing the virus had a zoonotic origin, the letter stated.

The CIA whistleblower said, “Fauci’s expert opinions were a significant consideration and were part of our classified assessment … His opinion substantially altered the conclusions that were subsequently drawn,” Public reported today.

“He came multiple times and he was treated like a rockstar by the Weapons and Counter-Proliferation Mission Center. And, he pushed the Kristian Anderson [‘Proximal Origin’] paper,” the whistleblower added.

In a separate letter, the subcommittee also requested Andrew Makridis, former COO at the CIA who was known to have taken part in the investigations, participate in an interview.

Democrats from both committees told ABC News they “were given no prior notice of a whistleblower’s existence, let alone testimony. Without further information regarding this claim from the Majority, we have no ability to assess the allegations at this time.”

CIA Director of Public Affairs Tammy Kupperman Thorp told the New York Post, “At CIA we are committed to the highest standards of analytic rigor, integrity and objectivity. We do not pay analysts to reach specific conclusions. We take these allegations extremely seriously and are looking into them.”

In June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified a 10-page report on its investigation into the links between the Wuhan lab and COVID-19. In the report, the ODNI admitted the lab performed genetic engineering of coronaviruses, that people working at the lab got sick in December 2019 “consistent with but not diagnostic of COVID-19,” and that they found a lack of “adequate biosafety precautions.”

However, the ODNI report stated the CIA remained “unable to determine the precise origin of the COVID-19 pandemic,“ but that “almost all IC [intelligence community] agencies assess that SARS-CoV-2 was not genetically engineered” and that “all IC agencies” determined the virus “was not developed as a biological weapon.”

In February, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a “low confidence” assessment that the virus most likely originated from the leak at the Wuhan lab.

Several days later, FBI Director Christopher Ray, during an interview with Fox News, said the bureau believed the pandemic was likely the result of a lab accident in Wuhan.

‘Proximal Origin’ lab-leak-denying paper linked to Fauci

Fauci’s alleged visit to the CIA is the latest data point in a growing body of evidence gathered by the subcommittee investigating the pandemic showing the former NIAID director played a central role in directing and influencing the official COVID-19 origin narrative, chiefly by suppressing the lab leak theory.

Tuesday’s announcement included a link to the subcommittee’s July report, “The Proximal Origin of a Cover-Up: Did the ‘Bethesda Boys’ Downplay a Lab Leak?”

In the “Proximal Origin” paper, prompted by Fauci in early 2021 and written by Kristian Anderson, Ph.D., professor of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research, Anderson and his co-authors argued the virus was not laboratory-made or purposefully manipulated, and that the lab leak scenario was implausible.

The subcommittee report stated the “Proximal Origin” paper has been accessed 5.84 million times and was “one of the single most impactful and influential scientific papers in history” that was used to “downplay the lab leak hypothesis and call those who believe it may be true conspiracy theorists.”

The report further alleged Fauci was aware of the monetary relationship between NIAID, EcoHealth Alliance, and WIV, and that he funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the WIV.

After reviewing more than 8,000 pages of documents and 25 hours of testimony, the subcommittee concluded that “‘Proximal Origin’ employed fatally flawed science to achieve its goal … to kill the lab leak theory.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense’s chairman on leave, explores Fauci’s longtime involvement in gain-of-function research in his new book, “The Wuhan Cover-up: And the Terrifying Bioweapons Arms Race,” due for release Nov. 14.

John-Michael Dumais is a news editor for The Defender. He has been a writer and community organizer on a variety of issues, including the death penalty, war, health freedom and all things related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

September 27, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Iran Boasts of Hybrid Drones’ Capability, Warns of Hair-Trigger Response to Any Aggression

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.09.2023

The Islamic Republic has developed dozens of increasingly sophisticated turboprop and rocket-powered unmanned aerial vehicles over the decades, designed for missions ranging from reconnaissance to long-range precision strikes against land and sea targets.

Iran has reportedly developed a new hybrid aerial and sea-based drone capable of landing on and taking off from water, with senior military officials calling on Persian Gulf nations to ensure security collectively, while warning Washington and its allies of the consequences any aggressive moves.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has built drones that can take off from and land on the water,” IRGC Commander Ali Reza Tangsiri said in an interview with local media over the weekend, pledging that more details about the drone will be provided at a later date.

“The IRGC Navy has also built hybrid drones that fly with one engine, with the second engine serving as a propelling engine,” Tangsiri said. That UAV is said to have the capability to carry out reconnaissance missions lasting up to 15 hours.

The water-landing drones, reportedly designed to be able to carry missiles and bombs, would dramatically enhance the IRGC Navy’s already substantial naval and coastal defense capabilities in the defense of the nation’s vast coastlines in the Persian Gulf, along the crucial world energy transportation chokepoint in the Strait of Hormuz, and in the Gulf of Oman.
Tangsiri reiterated Tehran’s long-standing diplomatic stance that Persian Gulf security can be assured by regional countries, without any interference from non-Gulf countries, and proposed the creation of an eight-nation pact of Persian Gulf-adjacent countries to ensure regional security, including Iran, Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The opportunities to forge such a regional security pact shot up dramatically this spring after Iran and Saudi Arabia signed a surprise normalization of relations deal mediated by China. Washington, Riyadh’s longtime traditional partner in the region, was forced to begrudgingly accept the warming of relations between the traditional Gulf foes, while expressing skepticism over the agreement’s ability to last, and leveling new sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Separately, at a military ceremony outside Qom, central Iran on Monday, Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Baqeri warned Iran’s potential enemies that the nation’s military is on a hair-trigger alert to respond instantaneously to any aggression.

“The Iranian Armed Forces have set up a unified body to establish security in the country,” Baqeri said. “State of readiness is a familiar concept for our armed personnel. That is, every moment we have our hands on the trigger and our eyes on the radar screen, along with surveillance and intelligence equipment so that no conspiracy is organized against the country and the enemies do not wish to launch aggression and undermine our security,” the top commander added.

Also speaking at the event, Iranian Army Ground Forces Commander Kioumars Heidari warned that “if the enemies put a foot wrong and commit a foolish or mischievous act” against Iran, they “will receive a decisive response from the Army’s ground forces.”

“If the enemies attack Iran from the air, they will have no place to sit on the ground, and if they attack Iran from the ground, we will annihilate them within seconds by God’s grace,” Heidari added.

Iran unveiled a new ultra-long range drone last week at a military parade dedicated to the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, with the UAV, named the Mohajer-10, capable of flying up to 2,000 km with a weapons payload of up to 300 kg, able to stay airborne for up to 24 hours at a time.

Regional tensions flared between the Iran and the US have recent months amid Washington’s decision to dramatically ramp up its naval, air and troop presence in the Persian Gulf following Iran’s crackdown on oil smuggling and maritime navigation violators.

Last month, IRGC Navy Commander Tangsiri stressed that the large US warships traversing Persian Gulf waters have been forced to obey Iran’s maritime rules.

Armed with an impressive and technically advanced military-industrial complex, Iran’s military design philosophy seems aimed at providing the country with David vs. Goliath-type asymmetric warfare capabilities against larger and technically more powerful adversaries, with the country building up mosquito fleets of fast boats armed with machineguns and artillery, hundreds of coastal defense batteries, dozens of drone designs, and maritime power projection capabilities using old tanker ships converted into mobile support platforms to save on costs. Iran’s strategy has enabled it to become one of the top 20 militarily most powerful countries in the world, while spending just a fraction of what the US does on defense ($6.8 billion vs $877 billion in 2022).

September 27, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

US Aid to Ukraine May Dry Out, But Not Because of House GOP

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 27.09.2023

The US may run out of money to support Ukraine “in a few weeks,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby has warned. However, it’s not the potential government shutdown that could shrink the Ukrainian aid, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski has told Sputnik.

The Biden administration wants the US Congress to pass a $24 billion package for Ukraine along with other spending initiatives as soon as possible. Washington has already committed over $110 billion in Ukraine assistance to date.

While House Republicans appear skeptical about further financial and military assistance to the Kiev regime, which has failed to succeed with its summer counteroffensive, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy proposed to pass a stopgap measure to avoid a looming government shutdown. September 30 is the deadline. GOP lawmakers have signaled that they won’t include any funds for Ukraine in their stopgap bill.

On September 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Capitol Hill to lobby for a hefty multi-billion package. Even though McCarthy (unlike his predecessor Nancy Pelosi) did not provide the Ukrainian president with an opportunity to address the House, he held a conversation with Zelensky.

The day after the meeting with Zelensky, McCarthy told reporters in the Capitol that he had decided to keep the $300 million in Ukraine aid in the Pentagon funding bill, adding that another spending measure set for the State Department and foreign operations would also include money for Kiev. The development is by no means surprising, according to retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense.

“The Pentagon has stated that Ukraine funding and aid would continue unabated by any government shutdown, and this includes the payment of salaries for tens of thousands of Ukrainian government employees and bureaucrats – even as paychecks for US government employees, and bureaucrats can and likely would be held back in the event of a shutdown,” Kwiatkowski told Sputnik. “I think this is a Pentagon and administration attempt to remove the ability of the Congressional GOP Freedom Caucus to argue that they desire to pay American salaries, before they pay Ukrainian ones – by saying we (the Biden admin) are paying Ukrainian salaries no matter what you (the House America First-types) do.”

When it comes to the larger $24 billion package, the former Pentagon analyst has a sense that “if serious negotiations are forced on Speaker Kevin McCarthy, they will find a way to reduce this amount, or to separate this aid out for separate and subsequent Congressional consideration.” The Biden administration has publicly promised this aid to Ukraine, but they do not control the appropriations – the House does, she emphasized.

“However – the Pentagon could simply provide it to Ukraine using a recalculation ‘trick’ and devaluing of past aid in the amount of $24 billion. I give this a 50% chance of happening in some way,” Kwiatkowski said.

For example, in late June, the Pentagon said that it had overestimated the value of the arms it supplied to Kiev by $6.2 billion over the past two years. Four weeks earlier, the US Department of Defense cited an accounting error of at least $3 billion. Eventually, the “surplus” simply went back into the Pentagon’s pot allocated for Ukraine within the president’s drawdown authority (which allows providing Kiev with weapons directly, without Congressional approval).

“I think there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to wring out much of the promised $24 billion – but that the political battle, here in the US, to make that happen will reveal much to Congress and the American people about both the shady accounting ‘principles’ of the Pentagon and the honest situation in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski said.

Still, trouble is brewing for Kiev: it seems like many in Congress on both sides of the political aisle are beginning to understand the practical and political need for Kiev and Washington to end the conflict immediately, according to the former Pentagon analyst.

She suspects that “the truth about the terrific loss on the battlefield and in Ukrainian military capability in the past 18 months is getting to the various committees in both the House and the Senate.”

“It appears that many otherwise hawkish Congressmen and Senators want to put Ukraine behind them politically, and develop massive new spending for some idea of ‘containing’ China in the Pacific,” the retired lieutenant colonel pointed out. “If the CIA and DIA are influencing our Congress, which they do by design, we may see Ukraine aid one-for-one shifted to that China ‘effort’ as part of a negotiation. The cold reception of Zelensky in US political circles portends that much of Congress wishes to extricate themselves from the dangerous proxy war Biden and his advisors, left over from the Obama days, have contrived, and incidentally, have lost.”

In August, a majority of US respondents told pollsters they oppose more aid for Ukraine. In September, another survey indicated that 41% now say the United States is doing too much to support Ukraine, up from 33% in February and 14% in April 2022. Remarkably, even Democratic voters now appear to hold this stance, despite previously being staunch supporters of more US spending on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific topic has steadily been getting hotter this year: first, the Pentagon announced about speeding up the provision of weapons to Taiwan island; then, in August, the White House signaled that it would ask Congress to fund arms for Taiwan as part of a supplemental budget request for Ukraine; in mid-September, the mainstream press reported that the US plans to redirect $85 million in military aid allocated for Egypt to Taiwan. If the pivot to Asia becomes the main focus of US lawmakers, the flow of funds to Kiev may soon start drying out.

September 27, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Who Owns the United States?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

The recent sparring between Elon Musk and the despicable Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has cast considerable light on the successful attempts by Jewish groups to dominate America’s foreign as well as some domestic policies, in part by taking away the First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech so their behavior cannot be challenged. As readers of Unz will be aware, Musk has threatened to sue the ADL for as much as $22 billion for defaming him and doing material damage to his business interests while also falsely smearing Musk himself and the platform for allegedly providing an antisemitic haven for “hate speech.” In Musk’s view, the ADL has put pressure on potential advertisers not to do business with him and to engage in a total boycott of his social networking sites.

Greenblatt’s argument is that material that he considers to be anti-semitic should not be allowed on any public forum, to include Musk’s site X, formerly known as Twitter. If Greenblatt were concerned with public incitements to kill Jews or damage their property there might be a case to be made, but the fact is that such behavior is already criminalized. Greenblatt is much more expansive than that, condemning any criticism of Jewish group or even individual behavior or the actions of Israel, which have included various war crimes and crimes against humanity to include targeting and killing Palestinian children and harvesting the organs of Palestinian prisoners. Israel is also a nation that is increasingly ethnically exclusive and has a state religion that is intolerant and repressive of other creeds, to include minority Christians and Muslims.

Beyond Musk, Greenblatt and the ADL have also focused on Tucker Carlson given his high profile and popularity among conservatives. Greenblatt repeatedly demanded that Fox News fire Tucker for discussing the “great replacement” theory as well as other white-nationalist talking points. Greenblatt has denounced Carlston’s alleged willingness “To use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic, antisemitic, and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform.” He called on advertisers to stop supporting the Carlson program and Fox with their dollars and was delighted when Carlson was finally fired in April. Many believe that the firing was in large part due to pressure from ADL and other Jewish groups.

In other words, in the America envisioned by Greenblatt and his friends who are pressuring advertisers not to support sites like X and passing laws penalizing or even criminalizing anyone who seeks to boycott Israel over its behavior, it will be more-or-less possible to speak freely on any subject as long as it does not involve Jews. That suggests an assumption by ADL that Jews have special status not enjoyed by anyone else. As a result Jews have been able to exploit their alleged singular and perpetual victimhood to assume de facto control over media sources of information as well as both major political parties using that old tried and true mechanism, money, and lots of it. It is a subject that in itself will not be open to discussion and which Greenblatt dismisses as an anti-semitic trope amounting to “hate speech.”

Interestingly enough, the wrath of Greenblatt is apparently not shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is regarded as no shrinking violet when it comes to promoting his country’s interests, as he sees them, and the dominance of Jewry worldwide. Netanyahu was in the United States last week for the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly but he made time to fly to California to visit Musk’s Tesla car assembly plant. The two men sat down to have a public chat in front of news cameras and, while it was clear that they were being polite and non-combative, it was also true that Netanyahu was careful not to accuse Musk of being an anti-semite or anything like that.

Netanyahu, who may have a better understanding than does Greenblatt of which way the wind is blowing regarding his country and Jewish power in general, might be playing a clever game in which he avoids a hard edged and dangerous Greenblatt approach while proceeding quietly with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and aggrandizing himself in power through his attack on the country’s courts. Netanyahu clearly understands that Israel has crossed the apartheid threshold vis-à-vis Palestine and its neighbors and that most of the world despises his country, to include many Americans who are beginning to see the light that they have been used and abused for the past 75 years. He has chosen to ignore the critics as the wisest path, in which he may be correct.

How have Jews in America and Canada as well as in Europe and Australasia become so politically powerful? Now that Musk has opened the door to discussing the Jewish issue with some candor, a number of articles and discussions have begun to appear in the media and some universities have even developed enough of a spine to start teaching true narratives on the Middle East supported by books that groups like ADL are seeking to ban. The most powerful piece to appear recently was on Mondoweiss, entitled “Biden’s Israel Policy is Scripted by Saban.”

Mondoweiss’s title refers to Israeli-American Hollywood-based media producer Haim Saban, who sums up his political philosophy with a pithy “I’m a one issue guy and my issue is Israel!” Saban has been the largest individual donor to the Democratic Party since the Clintons and his power has resulted in unswerving fealty to US interests as perceived through the optic of its relationship with the Jewish state. He is similar to megadonor Sheldon Adelson, now deceased, who performed the same service with the Republican Party. Sheldon’s wife Miriam, an Israeli, has maintained the legacy of keeping the GOP in line through control of political donations. The Adelsons were reportedly responsible for Donald Trump’s move of the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and other concessions re the Palestinians, Iranians and Syrians. The withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was due to pressure from the Adelsons, a move that was contrary to the actual US interest to monitor Iranian nuclear developments. Sheldon’s only failure was failing to convince Trump to bomb Iran.

Saban, who recently spent three hours in the Oval Office advising Joe Biden, is most clearly seen through his own comments on the relationship between the US and Israel. Hint: Israel’s interests always come first! For example, he shrugged off criticism of his giving money to AIPAC, “which supports Republican election deniers, because his one issue is Israel” saying in an interview: “The only goal of this organization is to prevent people who are against US-Israel relations from advancing and to support those who support relations between Jerusalem and Washington… Many Democrats called me and said ‘are you stupid? you’re a Democrat who supports [2020 election deniers]?’ I always say the same thing: It’s a specific, defined issue, and that is the US-Israel relationship. In that sense, I’m not interested in anything else.”

Re the Democratic Party leadership and Joe Biden, Saban observed that the party is “still solidly pro-Israel, and there are only about a dozen members of Congress who are anti-Israel.” Saban funded Hillary Clinton in 2008 but responded angrily when Obama “refused to echo Hillary Clinton’s call to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Iran attacked Israel.” Saban did not trust Obama on the issue of Israel and was initially rebuffed when he tried to arrange a meeting in 2010. He told a journalist that “I had a list of questions… And Chicago’—Obama campaign headquarters—‘could not organize that meeting. … I was ready and willing to be helpful, but ‘helpful’ is not to write a check for two thousand three hundred dollars. It’s to raise millions, which I am fully capable of doing.” Obama eventually came to respect Saban’s millions. “By 2013, President Obama was the speaker at a fundraiser at the Sabans’ house in L.A. attended by 120 people who paid between $16,200 and $32,400 each to attend.”

The result of the largesse is that Biden’s policy on the Middle East is now being scripted by Haim Saban, whose millions he requires for the upcoming 2024 campaign. It is as simple as that, appreciating that donation of cash in hand is better than platitudes about suffering Palestinians. That is what constitutes “truth” for both major political parties, who are de facto owned by the Adelsons and the Sabans who will always place Israel first. That Saban and Adelson (who is buried in Jerusalem) were and are both Israeli citizens and have been allowed to wield such power on behalf of a foreign country with which the US shares almost nothing in the way of actual values is shameful and it is also technically illegal or possibly even treasonous as they are acting as Foreign Agents. And it is more than that morally speaking – it is a disgrace. Joe Biden in particular should be ashamed of his folding when confronted by Jewish money as he is in charge, but it is apparently not an emotion that he is familiar with.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

September 26, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

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