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Medical Board Chief who wanted Doctors delicensed for ‘misinformation’ in bed with PR firm tied to CDC, Pfizer, Moderna

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 18, 2023

The head of a national medical organization who publicly called for doctors to lose their licenses unless they supported government narratives on COVID-19 treatments and vaccines concealed his relationship with a public relations firm whose client list also included Pfizer, Moderna and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Dr. Richard Baron, president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is a client of Weber Shandwick, investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker reported on Wednesday.

In late 2021, Baron publicly pushed for doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19 and the vaccines to lose their license and certification. Baron said then that “putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.”

Weber, the world’s second-largest PR firm, has branded its team as “misinformation and disinformation” experts and says it provides clients with services to help manage any perceived threats posed by spreaders of such information.

The firm has organized conference panels on “medical misinformation” in which Baron participated.

Last year, Baron partnered with Weber Shandwick to propose a South by Southwest (SXSW) panel titled “When Doctors Prescribe Misinformation.” The proposal was subsequently accepted and the panel took place at SXSW in Austin, Texas, on March 13.

According to Thacker, “Weber Shandwick’s panel featuring Dr. Baron has been widely promoted by the PR firm’s employees,” including Sarah Mahoney, executive vice president, Healthcare Communications, Strategy & Planning for Weber Shandwick, who in a LinkedIn post, wrote she “can’t think of a more important topic right now.”

The CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in September 2020 awarded Weber a $50 million contract “to promote the vaccination of children, pregnant women and those at risk for flu and increase the general acceptance and use of vaccines,” according to the PR firm’s website.

Under the contract, Weber employees were embedded in the NCIRD to “communicate the risks and recommended actions for outbreaks and convey vaccine recommendations to healthcare providers,” according to Thacker.

Medicine has always been ‘in bed with Big Pharma’

Several doctors have faced disciplinary action by state medical boards for allegedly spreading “misinformation.” One of them is internist and biological warfare epidemiologist Dr. Meryl Nass, a member of Children Health Defense’s scientific advisory committee.

Nass on Thursday sued the Maine Board of Licensure, which suspended her license in January 2022.

The board’s suspension arose from its adoption of a position statement promulgated by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) threatening physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.

In 2021, ABIM and FSMB collaborated to create the statement used to discipline Nass.

Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements, primarily related to demonstrating competence in one’s field of specialization, including completing a residency, being certified by the residency director, and paying for and passing the board examinations.

Nass told The Defender that in order to get certified by organizations like ABIM, there are several requirements. She explained:

“You complete a medical residency in your field of specialization. Your residency director certifies your competence and moral character, and you must pay for and pass your board examination to demonstrate your command of your specialty.

“When you’ve paid them for board certification and successfully completed all the requirements, how can they change the rules 20 or 50 years later and say, ‘we’re going to decertify you now because we don’t like your viewpoint?’

“There was nothing in any documentation from the Board of Internal Medicine about misinformation, or any other standards that the board can impose apart from competency to practice when it issued certifications.”

Dr. Richard Eggleston, a retired ophthalmologist in Clarkston, Washington, also faces disciplinary action — by the Washington Medical Commission — arising from articles he published in a local newspaper in 2021, questioning the official narrative and medical advice related to COVID-19.

Doctors aren’t being targeted exclusively for spreading “misinformation” — some, like Dr. Mary Kelly Sutton, an integrative physician, were targeted for their less-than-100% support for COVID-19 vaccines.

Last month, the Massachusetts medical board revoked Sutton’s medical license, claiming she improperly exempted eight children from required school vaccinations. This came a year after California also revoked Sutton’s medical license.

Sutton told The Defender, “The voice of medicine today is determined by the marketing wisdom of Madison Avenue, not by what is sound information from scientific research.”

Sutton said the whole practice of medicine rests on sharing and providing information necessary for informed decisions and consent. When specialty boards issue vague accusations, they engage in “harassment,” and an “egregious overreach of power” and are obstructing the practice of medicine.

A California law aimed at punishing doctors for providing “misinformation” to their patients is now in “legal limbo” following conflicting rulings in state courts earlier this year, which could affect Sutton’s and other California doctors’ cases going through the courts.

This trail of evidence demonstrates medical boards are not simply acting on their own authority but in collusion with state governments, federal agencies and private companies.

“There’s no one who is a ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ expert whose opinion does not align with the government and with the corporations,” Thacker told The Defender. “That’s what makes them an ‘expert.’”

“What’s always been true is that medicine has been in bed with Big Pharma,” he added. “It’s now becoming a lot more transparent. These relationships are much more transparent.”

‘A very political attempt to shut down people from having alternative viewpoints’

According to Thacker, Baron began his “crusade for the biopharmaceutical industry” in September 2021. In a post for ABIM’s blog, Baron said, “I want to state unequivocally that ABIM can and does take action, independent of state licensing boards, to remove certification from physicians for unprofessional and unethical behavior.”

For Thacker, Baron’s concern about “misinformation” was first triggered when physicians spoke out against COVID-19 vaccine safety, efficacy and side effects. “These are the same concerns held by Weber Shandwick, who Pfizer and Moderna are paying big buck[s] to promote their vaccines,” he said.

“Baron’s relationship with Weber Shandwick was not disclosed” by JAMA, Thacker said, “nor in an accompanying viewpoint Baron wrote for JAMA.”

After an inquiry by Thacker, JAMA’s editor-in-chief, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, said, “We initiated our internal investigation earlier this week, in accordance with our standard processes for allegations of non-disclosure of conflicts.”

“It is notable that Baron has done his best to mislead the public and other physicians about what he is doing,” Nass said. “He claims the ABIM is trying to ‘protect the legitimacy of medical expertise’ rather than censoring viewpoints it does not like.”

Nass said Baron “conjures up examples of what the board might censure.” She pointed to a Feb. 23, 2023, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) article Baron co-authored with attorney Carl J. Coleman, which stated:

“When a licensed physician insists that viruses don’t cause disease or that COVID-19 vaccines magnetize people or connect them to cell towers, professional bodies must be able to take action in support of fact and evidence based practice.”

“Yet this is a fabrication,” Nass said, adding:

“Instead, Dr. Baron, who earns about $1.2 million yearly from the ABIM and the ABIM Foundation, has decertified Drs. Peter McCullough, Paul Marik and Pierre Kory — all highly celebrated, published and esteemed doctors in their fields.

“None of them have uttered any mumbo-jumbo about cell towers, magnetism or a non-viral etiology for COVID-19. All have had their board certifications revoked for the viewpoints they expressed — viewpoints that are supported by a preponderance of the medical literature.”

In a January 2022 article for Health Affairs, Coleman wrote, “Licensing boards are state agencies subject to the First Amendment, and as such they are limited in their ability to penalize physicians based on the content of their speech.”

Yet, a 2022 NEJM article co-authored by Baron argued that while “Differences of opinion in medicine are necessary for progress … there are some opinions that have been so thoroughly repudiated by existing evidence as to be considered definitively wrong.”

‘All this money is sloshing around now for misinformation research’

According to Thacker, “PR firms are now moving into the ‘disinformation’ space after decades of deceit on behalf of multiple industries,” with Weber Shandwick having “expanded into the disinformation space in late 2021,” promoting tactics that help “brands combat misinformation and disinformation that may implicate them.”

Speaking to Thacker, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, director of bioethics at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said, “The ABIM is clearly part of this ‘medical misinformation’ push, which is orchestrated by pharmaceutical companies and their PR allies” and which serves “the interests of Big Pharma.”

Remarking on the presence of a “medical misinformation” panel at SXSW, long known as a music, film and technology festival, Thacker told The Defender, “Anyone and everyone is getting involved in ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation.’”

“Baron has given a TED Talk, for instance. Why is TED Talks involved in this?” he asked.

In 2019 Baron delivered a talk at TEDx Chicago titled, “Please Don’t Confuse Your Google Search with My Medical Degree.”

For Thacker, the answer relates to financial interests. “All this money is sloshing around now for ‘misinformation’ research. Anyone can hop up and down saying ‘I’m an expert on misinformation and disinformation, get me a grant, get me on a panel,’” he said.

Weber embedded staffers within the CDC while representing Pfizer, Moderna

Thacker wrote that prior to discovering Baron’s ties to Weber Shandwick, he had confirmed the PR firm’s ties to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers Pfizer and Moderna.

These ties did not prevent the CDC from awarding the $50 million contract to Weber Shandwick in September 2020 to push vaccines. The Daily Mail subsequently reported Thacker’s findings.

Medical Marketing and Media reported “Weber’s duties include providing 10 on-site health communications staffers, seven health comms specialists, two health research specialists and one social media specialist” to NCIRD, as well as “generating story ideas, distributing articles and conducting outreach to news, media and entertainment organizations.”

In October 2020, a blog post by Stacy Montejo, senior vice president at Weber Shandwick, disclosed that Pfizer is one of the firm’s clients. A month later, with Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine awaiting Emergency Use Authorization, the company hired Weber Shandwick to handle the vaccine’s publicity, according to PR Week.

Such relationships have continued to the present. In June, Moderna announced a new communications strategy “to further educate the world about Moderna’s mRNA technology and its promise to transform the future of human health.”

The effort is led by Laura Schoen, “who is sometimes titled president of global healthcare at Weber Shandwick, and other times chief healthcare officer at IPG DXTRA, Weber Shandwick’s parent company,” Thacker wrote.

Lucy Rieck, a Weber Shandwick employee, previously publicly tweeted support for a panel Moderna proposed for this year’s SXSW, titled “COVID, Monkeypox, Disease X, What’s Next?” That proposal does not appear to have been accepted for presentation.

Conflicts of interest between Weber Shandwick, the CDC and NCIRD, and Pfizer and Moderna do not appear to have been disclosed.

In October 2022, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sent a letter to the CDC inquiring about its relationship with Weber Shandwick and requesting “information regarding the nature of Weber’s work for the NCIRD.” It’s unclear whether the CDC complied with the request.

Todd S. Richardson, one of the attorneys representing Eggleston, told The Defender “While it is certainly understandable that governmental agencies will hire PR firms to help them get their message out … it becomes of real concern to me when those agencies, or people working within the agencies, try to silence those who disagree.”

According to Thacker, the web of relationships between Weber Shandwick doesn’t just extend to Big Pharma companies, the CDC and its agencies, or to doctors such as Baron. Academics such as Brown University’s Claire Wardle, Ph.D., a key figure in the “misinformation research” space, have participated in some of the firm’s events.

Wardle, a professor of the practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at Brown University who has no scientific or medical credentials, participated in an online meeting organized by Weber Shandwick in October 2020 to discuss “election misinformation.”

Subsequently, Wardle played a key advisory role in the Biden administration, federal agencies, social media platforms and Ivy League institutions as they sought to censor content that ran counter to the government’s COVID-19 narrative.

According to Thacker, she “helped organize many of today’s campus disinformation groups … with funding from Google” and later sent Twitter a report aimed at countering the “growing threat of disinformation to trust in COVID-19 vaccines.”

Thacker said the biopharmaceutical industry is “the smartest at putting out disinformation. What other industry has bought off the medical community and the science community?” he asked. “They bought off the researchers, the government, the academic journals.”

Thacker said he believes much of what is labeled “misinformation” in medicine and academic research “is really just corporate PR,” and that “Congress needs to take a harder look at funding for ‘misinformation research.’“


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.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

No Justice for Trump

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute For Political Economy | August 18, 2023

The four indictments against Trump are ridiculous in their charges. There is no legal basis in law for any of the indictments. Moreover, many of the indictments are violations of Constitutionally protected civil liberties. All the indictments amount to is an assertion that to charge Democrats with fraud in an election is a felony. It is OK to charge Republicans with fraud.

Charges of electoral fraud have accompanied every election cycle in US history whether at the local, state, or national level. Many believe today that John F. Kennedy got to the White House because the Democrat machine in Chicago counted the graveyards. George W. Bush’s election was disputed and had to be settled by the Supreme Court. Never before has it been a crime to dispute an election.

What explains the criminalization of Trump’s dispute of the election? I will suggest a number of reasons. One is that the Democrats know that they cannot win against Trump, and polls show that Biden is so unpopular even with Democrats that they cannot again steal the election. So the Democrats decided to misuse city, county, and federal prosecutors to tie up Trump with four criminal indictments of multiple charges in order (1) hopefully to discredit him in the public eye, and (2) tie him up in court proceedings and trials so that he cannot campaign. Maybe all the stress will kill an old man. Clearly if the Democrats thought they could win, they would not bring shame on themselves and their party and on government in the United States with obviously politically-inspired indictments of the leading candidate for President. Clearly the people do not believe the indictments. A political party that cared about the country would not split the country in half by weaponizing law. But the corrupt Democrats and their Ruling Establishment backers only care about power. America now has an entire political party totally devoid of integrity. Power uber alles is the Democrats only principle.

Another is the incompetence of the prosecutors. Jack Smith is so totally incompetent that he has had to admit mistakes in his filings and has been repeatedly over-ruled by the federal judges overseeing his two phony indictments. In other words, Jack Smith is so thoroughly incompetent that he is unqualified to be a para-legal in a small town. No self-respecting and competent attorney would bring such false charges, especially against an American President.

The two black prosecutors, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, are quota law school grads and quota hires. Once law schools reduced their admission requirements, they had to lower their standards, because if the quota admissions didn’t pass, the law schools would be accused of racism and of creating false hopes. The result is a lower level of competence of all graduates, black and white, male and female.

It is well known that Alvin Bragg cannot explain how a city or state court can try a person on a federal charge, which is his only felony charge. He can’t even explain what the federal charge is.

Fani Willis has 11 charges against trump, all of which are nonsensical and false, especially her racketeering charge under the RICO law put in place to convict the Mafia. Only an incompetent idiot would equate protest of electoral fraud with racketeering. Aside from being nonsensical charges in Trump’s case, fani Willis’ charges to be valid require criminal intent. Fani Willis provides no evidence that Trump harbored criminal intent when he responded to expert evidence of electoral fraud and tried to get the matter investigated prior to Biden being declared the winner. Nowhere in her indictment does Fani Willis provide any evidence of criminal intent or any reason why she thinks criminal intent is involved.

The indictments boil down to this: It is a felony to accuse Democrats of electoral fraud.

Considering how the locations of the trials have been orchestrated, it is highly unlikely that the jury pools will contain one person who is not a Trump-hater. In other words, the Democrats know that the juries they select will convict Trump even if the evidence proves him innocent. The ground has been prepared so that indictment means conviction. The kangaroo convictions will be appealed and eventually might reach an honest court, but the process will take years, thus ensuring Biden a second term.

This is America today. It is far worse than a Banana Republic. We are now presented with four Kafkaesque, Stalinist trials of a President of the United States. If they can do this to a President, a mere citizen has no chance. The corrupt, incompetent trio of Smith, Bragg, and Willis are achieving the destruction of legal integrity and civil liberty in the United States. The result will be social disintegration.

Americans are going to very much regret that they accepted the stolen 2020 presidential election and that they acquiesced in the white liberals’ goal of placing anti-white blacks in power over them.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

US Guantanamo judge dismisses ‘confession’ obtained by torture

Press TV – August 19, 2023

A US military judge has rejected a “confession” coerced out of a young Guantanamo Bay captive through torture following the September 11, 2001 highly suspicious terror attacks in Washington and New York that led to military invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq.

The judge in the military tribunals held for captives still held in the Cuba-based US Guantanamo Bay military prison and torture facility ruled that the “confession” obtained from Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors, was tainted by years of abuse and torture inflicted on him at the hands of the CIA and FBI intelligence agents and operatives.

“Exclusion of such evidence is not without societal costs,” wrote the judge, Col. Lanny Acosta, in handing down his ruling.

“However, permitting the admission of evidence obtained by or derived from torture by the same government that seeks to prosecute and execute the accused may have even greater societal costs.” Acosta further emphasized.

Attorneys for both Nashiri and five other suspects — accused of involvement in the September 11 attacks and held captive and tortured for decades without trial or legal representation — have struggled for over 10 years now in the Guantanamo military court to exclude evidence against them that was coerced through torture.

The six were captured separately after the 2001 attacks and shuttled through CIA-run “black sites” in numerous US-allied countries across the globe, such as Thailand and Poland, where they were subjected to intense torture techniques, including waterboarding, physical beatings and sleep deprivation.

Following the arrival of the captives at the Guantanamo military prison, some of them, including Nashiri were again subjected to intense interrogation and torture by FBI agents in early 2007 and other instances.

The judge’s decision comes as obtaining confession from prisoners through torture remains a major violation of international law.

The US military has accused Nashiri of being an al-Qaeda recruiter that plotted various attacks on American interests in the Arabian Peninsula.

US forces captured Nashiri in 2002 and transferred him to the Guantanamo prison in 2006 after he remained for four years in the custody of CIA interrogators and repeatedly tortured.

In September 2011, he was charged by a US military commission on nine counts related to his alleged involvement in planning al-Qaeda attacks.

His military trial showcased by the very entity that captured and tortured him has repeatedly faced delays, due to insistence by his assigned military lawyers that he suffered repeated torture while under detention of the CIA spy agency collaborating with US military forces occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Western calls for Ukraine peace talks a ‘tactical ploy’ – Moscow

RT | August 19, 2023

The US and its allies do not want the Ukraine conflict to end and their purported peace initiatives are merely attempts to buy Kiev time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published on Saturday.

Geopolitical issues need to be discussed “not with [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters,” Lavrov said earlier this year. Negotiating directly with the Americans would make sense, he told the magazine International Affairs when asked about the idea.

“The problem, however, is that the United States has no intention of ending the conflict,” Lavrov explained, noting that “their officially declared objective is to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia.”

Prospects for negotiations between Russia and the West “are non-existent at this stage,” Lavrov said, while Kiev “Western sponsors are constantly pushing them to up the ante.”

Insisting on Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called ‘peace formula’ at meetings in Copenhagen and Jeddah – to which Russia was not invited – “hardly demonstrates an intention by the West to negotiate with Russia,” Lavrov said. Moscow has dismissed Zelensky’s ten-point list of demands as an unacceptable ultimatum unrelated to reality.

Russia has repeatedly tried to negotiate, from the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements to the “drastic attempt to convey our concerns to Western capitals” in December 2021, Lavrov noted. The West “arrogantly rejected” Moscow’s initiative and ramped up deliveries of weapons and ammunition to Kiev instead.

“We regard the Westerners’ hypocritical calls for talks as a tactical ploy to buy time once again giving the exhausted Ukrainian troops a respite and the opportunity to regroup, and to send in more weapons and ammunition,” Lavrov said, adding that “this is the path of war, not a peaceful settlement process.”

Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany, admitted last December that the 2015 Franco-German proposal in Minsk was “an attempt to give Ukraine time” to build up its military. This was then confirmed by former French President Francois Hollande.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Lost Cause Is in the Air

By William Schryver – imetatronink – August 18, 2023

Back in February, I wrote what was and will likely remain the longest blog post I have authored. (I solemnly promise not to do such a thing again.)

Among other things, I observed:

“… the milieu of the past several weeks, during which time we have observed a pronounced rhetorical revolution in the popular western narratives regarding the NATO/Russia war in Ukraine.

“Lost cause is in the air. Many who have privately known this to be the case for some time have finally been sufficiently emboldened to publicly embrace the obvious — albeit reluctantly, and often with a good measure of rationalization and lingering misinformation in tow.”

Of course, at that point in time, the pivotal Battle of Bakhmut had not reached its inevitable conclusion, and the dream of a decisively triumphant Ukrainian march to Crimea was still cherished fondly by those partial to that cause.

As per usual, my sense of the trajectory of events anticipated something that would still take some time to be realized in full.

In any case, lost cause is now acrid in the late summer air of August 2023 — cordite, sulphur, and putrefied flesh.

Chagrined accounts of Ukrainian slaughter and woe are now rippling through the mainstream western media, and spilling off the lips of the “credentialed commentariat”.

It has become the pitiless massacre many of us predicted all those months ago.

And, of course, it never had a chance to be anything else.

What were they thinking?!

How did the Imperial Masters of War ever persuade themselves that their money, weapons, several thousand mercenaries, and a large fraction of the male population of Ukraine could defeat Russia in a high-intensity industrial land war on its borders?!

Did they really believe NATO armaments, training, intelligence, surveillance, planning, command, and impotent economic sanctions would be sufficient to defeat a resurgent Russia in 2022 and beyond?

I think they almost certainly did. Hubris and its attendant delusions are staples of end-of-empire epochs.

Of course, they’re going to try to spin this major geostrategic defeat such that its true realities, causes, and consequences are obscured. Already they’ve been working overtime to subtly dismiss the obvious conclusion that Russia is simply too strong and capable to defeat militarily.

I’ve noted the recurring talking point that the repulse of Ukraine’s offensive is being attributed to Russia’s supposedly archaic employment of “minefields and trenches” in a complex array of static defense lines.

Somehow they neglect to mention the overwhelming dominance of Russian artillery, its dizzying array of battlefield attack drones, its air superiority, its first-rate motorized infantry maneuver, and its relentless long-range precision missile strikes on rear-area logistical targets.

The simple fact of the matter is that, not only was defeating Russia beyond the capacity of the Mother of All Proxy Armies NATO built in Ukraine, it would likewise defy the never-yet-demonstrated and effectively fictitious American “mastery” of what the Pentagon has fancifully termed “combined-arms operations”.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the damn fools aren’t still stupid enough to try.

Either way, as I wrote in my previous post:

Matters have reached the point where the imperial masters will be forced to choose between a humiliating disengagement and abandonment of Ukraine to its fate — or otherwise blunder into a calamitous direct military intervention.

I continue to be convinced they won’t go there. And for the sake of the bereaved mothers, widowed wives, and fatherless children of the young American men who would be compelled to act out the catastrophe, I sure hope I’m right.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

West has shown its ‘true Russophobic face’ – Lavrov

RT | August 18, 2023

Washington and Brussels have openly unleashed a hybrid war against everything Russian, dropping their masks after decades of pretending to be civilized and adequate international partners, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with International Affairs, published on Saturday.

“Many of our former partners have been concealing their Russophobic nature under the veil of hypocrisy, but have now shown their true face in all its glory,” he said. “However, there is also the flip side of the coin here, since the Global Majority saw the true face of those who went as far as [to] aspire to a monopoly in defining the so-called universal values.”

“Today’s West is steered by people like Josep Borrell who divide the world into a blooming ‘garden’ and ‘the jungle,’ where the latter clearly applies to most of humanity,” Lavrov added.

The West has spent decades cynically transforming neighboring Ukraine into a “hostile military bulwark against Russia by nurturing an entire generation of politicians ready to declare war on our shared past, culture and everything Russian,” according to Lavrov.

Western capitals even openly admitted that reaching a peaceful settlement in Ukraine was never part of their plan, and that the Minsk agreements were originally designed to “buy some time to prepare a military scenario and deliver weapons to Kiev.”

“I think that the essential thing we must understand in this regard is that the West wants to do away with our country as a serious geopolitical rival,” the top Russian diplomat said “They have not hesitated to use subversive methods and perform acts of sabotage, as was the case with the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea.”

Lavrov also accused Washington and its allies of using all possible coercive means to prevent Russia’s partners from engaging in economic and other kinds of cooperation, while also “making outrageous efforts to disconnect Russia from international cooperation mechanisms in culture, education, research, and sports.”

One thing that the West fails to understand, according to Lavrov, is that “Russia will use all means to defend its people and its vital interests,” and thus would be better for the opponents to realize that “confrontation with Russia is futile and switch to more civilized” means for achieving a balance of interests.

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Russophobia | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Anglo-American War on Russia – Part Nine (Preparing a Nuclear Attack)

Tales of the American Empire | August 17, 2023

The United States spent over a trillion dollars the past two decades to prepare for a surprise nuclear strike on Russia. The United States withdrew from major arms control treaties and built newer and more accurate nuclear missiles. It built missile bases in Poland and Romania and hundreds of new submarines and destroyers to launch cruise missiles or long-range anti-missile missiles.The United States Army and Navy developed, tested, and deployed mobile missile launchers to Europe while Generals insist they have the right to deploy such systems on Russia’s borders, to include inside Ukraine and Finland. This was barely reported in America’s corporate media, which spews constant propaganda about Russian threats to prepare the public for nuclear war.

_________________________________

Related Tale: “All Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal”;    • All Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal  

“America’s Secret Planned Conquest of Russia”; Washington’s Blog; December 29, 2016; https://archive.ph/TR1qG

“Navy Unveils Truck-Mounted SM-6 Missile Launcher in European Test”; Joseph Trevithick; The War Zone; September 14, 2022; https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone…

“Army Fires Tomahawk Missile From Its New Typhon Battery In Major Milestone”; Joseph Trevithick; The War Zone; July 3, 2023; https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone…

“Dr. Strangelove”; movie clip of a psychopathic American General advocating a massive nuclear attack on Russia;    • Dr. Strangelove (1964) – General Turg…  

“Putin’s Warning”; plea to reporters at the 2016 International Economic Forum to tell the truth;    • Putin’s Warning: FULL SPEECH  

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”;    • The Anglo-American War on Russia  

August 19, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , | Leave a comment

Unexploded device detonates in Donetsk killing three

RT | August 18, 2023

Three utility workers were killed in the Russian city of Donetsk on Friday when a faulty Ukrainian cluster shell exploded, according to local officials. Another worker was injured in the blast.

The workers, who had been repairing water pipes in central Donetsk, were caught in the blast during their lunch break. They were killed on the spot in a “detonation of an explosive device,” Donetsk Mayor Aleksey Kulemzin said. Two others were hospitalized following the blast.

According to media reports and local officials, the explosion was caused by a Ukrainian cluster artillery shell. The unexploded device may have been hanging from a tree or in a trash can, local residents told the media. The shell suddenly detonated and released its sub munitions, which exploded, hitting the civilians.

In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has ramped up its use of cluster munitions, repeatedly firing them at Donetsk and other locations near the front line. The shells have already caused multiple deaths and injuries among civilians.

The uptick in the use of cluster munitions comes after last month the US sent so-called dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM) for NATO-caliber 155mm howitzers. The controversial delivery, which was criticized even by some of the US’ closest allies, came as a stop-gap measure to compensate for a shortage of conventional artillery shells, as admitted by President Joe Biden.

Over the course of the ongoing conflict, Russia has accused the Ukrainian military of repeatedly using cluster munitions from its domestic stockpiles to target civilian areas. In particular, Kiev’s forces have on many occasions shelled Donetsk and its surroundings with unguided multiple rocket artillery projectiles containing the controversial anti-personnel PFM-1 petal mines.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Russians gained wealth amid war in Ukraine while Western countries lost trillions of dollars: Report

Press TV – August 18, 2023

Russia got richer last year amid the war in Ukraine, while the Western countries that provided funds and weapons to Kiev to fight against Moscow lost trillions of dollars of their wealth.

Russia added $600 billion of total wealth in 2022, the Business Insider (BI) reported this week, citing the latest annual Global Wealth Report of the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) published on Tuesday.

According to the BI, the number of Russian millionaires rose from around 350,000 to about 408,000 last year. However, in 2022, about 1 million of an estimated 23.7 million lost their millionaire status in the United States.

It said 4,500 Russians joined the super-rich people’s club of ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNW) — people with more than $50,000,000 — last year.

In the meantime, the collective West, North America and Europe together, lost $10.9 trillion, UBS said, noting that the US alone shed $5.9 trillion of its wealth.

The Swiss bank suggested that Russia’s gains might be attributed to the rising price of oil, a major export commodity and a key economic engine for Russia.

Russia’s added wealth came amid the West’s unprecedented anti-Moscow economic sanctions.

Western officials have admitted that the West’s sanctions on Russia had backfired, hurting Europeans instead.

Amid the West’s planning for anti-Moscow sanctions shortly after the start of war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin warned European buyers of Russian oil and natural gas that punitive measures imposed by the West would backfire, and those Western countries would be hit worse by the bans.

After Western countries banned Russia’s oil, Moscow turned to the East and increased its sales of crude to other countries which in turn re-exported oil to the European countries.

As a result, Mexico, India, and Brazil also gained significant amounts of wealth in 2022, while the US, Japan, Canada, and Australia lost the most, the UBS report suggested.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Diplomacy with Russia necessary for Europe – former French President

By Lucas Leiroz | August 18, 2023

Showing realism and willingness for dialogue, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy strongly criticized the West’s stance on the Ukrainian crisis and demanded more diplomatic efforts. For the former politician, it is necessary for Europeans to live peacefully with Russia, as it is not possible to continue a policy of confrontation and aggression in the long term.

Sarkozy’s criticisms were made during an interview with the French newspaper “Le Figaro”. He spoke with journalists about possible solutions to the current conflict in Ukraine and endorsed the need to pursue peace through diplomacy. Sarkozy condemned the policy of prolonging the war through unlimited military assistance to Kiev, which has been one of the main points of Emmanuel Macron’s foreign policy.

For Sarkozy, Macron failed to continue to deal with the reality of the conflict mainly “due to pressure from [some] eastern Europeans”. Last year, Macron was severely slammed by Polish leader Mateusz Morawiecki because he was trying to negotiate with Moscow in the early weeks of the special military operation. In May 2022, Morawiecki compared Macron’s stance to an “attempt to negotiate with Hitler”. Sarkozy sees this event as an important point of international pressure, boosting Macron’s decision to adhere to the policy of unlimited support to Kiev.

The former president also negatively assessed the project of Ukrainian membership in the European Union. For him, these plans are merely “fallacious promises that will not be held”. Sarkozy compared the Ukrainian access to the Turkish one, making it clear that in both cases the projects are unlikely to succeed.

Also, Sarkozy emphasized the importance of maintaining good relations with Russia due to the geographical factor. Considering the proximity between the EU and Russia, it is necessary that both sides are diplomatically close, without friction and conflicts. Sarkozy admits that the confrontation with Russia is only of American interest, not European, and therefore there must be a reformulation of Europe’s Ukraine policy.

“Russia is a neighbor of Europe and will remain so (…) In this regard, European interests are not aligned with American interests. We cannot stick to the strange idea of ​’fighting a war without fighting”, he said.

Another subject commented by Sarkozy was the territorial issue. For him, peace negotiations will have to deal rationally with the possibility of recognizing Crimea and Russian historic territories. Sarkozy states that with Ukraine’s impossibility to win the war, there are only two alternatives: freeze the conflict or recognize the territorial loss. The first option seems inadequate because a new war situation would arise in the future, while on the other hand the recognition of territories can be legitimate, if done by referendum with international observers.

“When it comes to this territory (Crimea), which was Russian until 1954 and where a majority of the population has always felt Russian, I think any step back is illusory (…) If the Ukrainians do not completely manage to win them back, then the choice will be between a frozen conflict – which we know will inevitably lead tomorrow to a new hot conflict – or we can come out on top by resorting, again, to referendums strictly supervised by the international community to settle these territorial questions in a definitive way”, he added.

It is necessary to note that Sarkozy does not adopt a “pro-Russian” opinion. He echoes the Western “consensus” of criticizing Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine, even referring to the special military operation by the biased word “invasion”. The very proposal to redo the referendums in Crimea and other regions shows Sarkozy’s distrust of Russia, since Moscow has already held referendums that have been widely verified by invited international observers, having no need to redo them. So, the former president’s opinion is undoubtedly aligned only with European interests, with no pro-Russian bias.

The problem is that Europe is now conditioned to believe that American interests are its own. And this is precisely what Sarkozy is criticizing. He reminds how geography is a basic principle of international politics. Neighboring regions must strive to maintain friendship and respect so that there are no conflicts, as they will always be close and have to deal with each other, rationally overcoming disagreements. And this is what Sarkozy advocates for EU-Ukraine-Russia relations – that, despite disagreements, a peaceful [and realistic] solution is found as soon as possible.

Obviously, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime rejected Sarkozy’s proposal. Zelensky’s aide Mikhail Podoliak accused the former French leader of “deliberately participating” in “genocide and war” by simply advocating diplomacy. For the Ukrainian official, Sarkozy’s ideas are “fantastic” and “criminal”, as Crimea and Donbass are supposedly “unconditional territories of Ukraine”. In fact, this type of position on the part of Kiev is not surprising, since in addition to being one of the sides directly involved in the conflict, the regime works as a proxy for Washington, completely adhering to American anti-Russian narratives.

What really matters is whether French and European politicians will be attentive to Sarkozy. The former president is denouncing an obvious reality: to satisfy American interests, Europe is destroying itself and harming its relations with a neighboring power. Current politicians need to be aware of this scenario and reverse it. However, unfortunately, it seems the current generation of heads of state does not have the same strategic understanding as Sarkozy.

Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.

You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Think tank experts pushing for endless conflict in Ukraine share a common benefactor

By Rachel Marsden | RT | August 18, 2023

Experts with important-sounding titles linked to academic-sounding entities have been shaping hearts and minds in the press, both at home and abroad, in favor of endless conflict in Ukraine. Guess what deep-pocketed benefactor lurks beneath the surface?

During the Iraq War, the Pentagon guided retired generals in making the rounds of TV and radio shows as ‘military analysts’ to promote the Bush administration’s agenda in the Persian Gulf. It was like inviting Ronald McDonald on a program to debate and discuss the merit of Big Macs. You could almost see the strings attached to the puppets, linked to the military-industrial complex that benefited from war without an off-ramp.

Fast forward 20 years, and the sales tactics have drastically changed. The generals have been replaced by various experts with academic credentials, typically linked to one or more ‘think tanks’. Far from the neutral academic centers of intellectual integrity that the names suggest, these entities are little more than laundromats for discreet special interests. I should know – I used to be a director of one.

Every Wednesday, some of the highest-ranking figures of the Bush administration would come to our Washington, DC office to deliver their main agenda points for the week, requesting assistance in placing and promoting them to both grassroots activists sympathetic to the cause and to the general public. The experts within the think tank were hired based on political litmus tests, no doubt to ensure that their views aligned with the organization’s. When they no longer do, you’re either fired or you leave.

The donors, many of whom were well-known millionaires and billionaires driven by a passion for certain issues, would come straight out and ask for bang for their buck in exchange for the opening of their wallets. In some cases, an entire project or department would be mounted at the think tank with the understanding that it would be fully funded by a single donor. These rich, influential folks typically had business or investment interests that benefited from shaping the establishment narrative in their favor, and they wanted to do so without leaving any footprints. What better way than to have it all fronted by a shiny veneer of expert credibility?

So while the generals of the Iraq War era had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer in representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, the new salesmen of endless armed conflict in Ukraine have overwhelmingly adopted the more subtle model. A study published in 2020 found that the top 50 think tanks received over a billion dollars from the US government and its defense contractors and manufacturers, including some of the biggest beneficiaries of weapons production today ‘for Ukraine’. The top recipients of this funding include the Atlantic Council, German Marshall Fund of the United States, Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, New America Foundation, RAND Corporation, Center for a New American Security, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Stimson Center.

Some of these black boxes are more ideologically-driven than others. The Heritage Foundation, for example, leans overwhelmingly neoconservative and interventionist. Others, like the Atlantic Council and German Marshall Fund, are effectively force multipliers for NATO talking points. But the RAND Corporation also houses systems analysts and scientists specializing in space and computing. The fact that not all of these entities – or even the people who work within some of them – can be tossed into the same basket and labeled mere parrots for the special interests of their organization’s benefactors helps to muddy the waters.

In an analysis published in June of media coverage related to US military involvement in Ukraine, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft found that, when a think tank is cited regarding the issue, 85% of the time it’s a think tank with “financial backing from the defense industry.” Taken at face value, this risks being interpreted by the general public as expert ‘consensus’ on the need for US taxpayers to continue flooding Ukraine with weapons, unaware that it’s really just a bunch of Pentagon-backed actors agreeing with each other about the need to pursue the most profitable course of action on behalf of their War Inc. sugar daddies. Just like when climate scientists, who have parlayed climate change into endless funding and a perpetual justification for their existence, aren’t going to kill their cash cow by arguing that the climate can’t be controlled by man and that throwing cash at the issue – or at them – is futile.

Many of the Ukraine think tank experts are quick to attack analysis and information published on platforms they don’t like – such as RT – as ‘Russian-backed’. You’d have to be living under a rock these days to not know that RT is linked to Russia. No transparency issues there. But there is far less transparency around their own organizations’ financing. Where is their insistence on being above board about the use of defense industry cash to influence not just the general public but the course of the conflict itself? Around a third of top foreign policy think tanks don’t disclose this Pentagon funding, according to the Quincy Institute. Nor is it unheard of for these experts to springboard from these establishment-friendly platforms and the public notoriety they provide, right into public office – where they can translate the same agenda that they promoted into actionable policy. Isn’t it important for voters to consider the powerful hidden hand who helped to get them there?

August 18, 2023 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Dr. Meryl Nass sues Maine Medical Board over suspension, alleges Board violated her first amendment rights

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 17, 2023

Dr. Meryl Nass today filed suit against the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine and its individual members, alleging the board violated her First Amendment rights and her rights under the Maine Constitution.

The complaint alleges the board engaged in retaliatory conduct against Nass, a practicing internal medicine physician and member of the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientific advisory board, when the board suspended her medical license for publicly expressing her dissenting views on official COVID-19 policies, the COVID-19 vaccine and alternative treatments.

“Because she was outspoken, the board targeted Dr. Nass as someone to silence,” her attorney, Gene Libby told The Defender.

In fall 2021, the board issued a position statement, quoted in the complaint, stating that licensees could face disciplinary action if they “generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation.”

In October 2021, soon after the statement was issued, the board received a complaint alleging Nass was spreading misinformation online and soon after launched an investigation.

The board suspended Nass’ medical license on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing, accusing her of engaging in “unprofessional conduct” by spreading “misinformation about COVID-19.”

It also accused her of improperly prescribing hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for three patients for off-label uses of those drugs.

The board suspended Nass’ license and ordered a neuropsychological evaluation, implying she was mentally impaired or a substance abuser and incompetent to practice medicine.

“There were no grounds to order a mental health examination,” Libby said. “That was simply a means to communicate to the public that there was something wrong with Dr. Nass, to discredit her and tarnish her reputation.”

After Nass moved to have the board dismiss its complaint against her, alleging First Amendment violations, the board on Sept. 26, 2022, withdrew its accusations of “misinformation”, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.

The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.

Nass told The Defender :

“The two primary complaints against me were that my statements were misleading and that I was prescribing drugs off-label. My speech — which I should note, was not simply opinion, it was an educated opinion developed after consulting the medical literature — is protected by the First Amendment.

“And prescribing drugs off-label is a perfectly legal thing to do, as explicitly stated on the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] website. Somewhere between 20-50% of drugs are prescribed off-label. The lawyers on the board staff know all of this. It’s their job to know the law with respect to medicine.

“They didn’t do this because they thought I had committed some kind of violation. They did it because they thought I’m older and I wouldn’t have the money to challenge them and so they could get away with it — they thought they could turn me into a poster child to scare all the doctors in the country.

“It is part of this broader attempt by the U.S. government and governments across the world to criminalize dissent by criminalizing so-called ‘misinformation.’”

Libby said the remaining allegations against Dr. Nass “are simply a pretext to discipline her. Because now, from an institutional standpoint, the board has to do something. She’s been under suspension for 19 months, which is the longest suspension that I’m aware of for any physician in the state.”

The board refused to schedule hearings on Nass’ suspension on consecutive days. Instead, it has held one day of hearings every other month. There have been six days of hearings so far over 10 months — and Nass’ license has been suspended the entire time.

“This is fundamentally unfair to Dr. Nass, but she’s within the grip of an institution that doesn’t want her speaking out,” Libby said.

In her lawsuit, Nass alleges the board and its members used their power to “crush dissenting views and chill disfavored speech.”

Nass is asking the court for declaratory relief, for an injunction to stop the board from continuing to retaliate against her and for monetary damages and legal fees.

CHD is providing financial and legal resources to Nass’ Maine-based legal team.

CHD President Mary Holland told The Defender :

“CHD is proud to support Dr. Nass’ lawsuit against the Maine medical board and its individual members.

“The board and its members have deprived Dr. Nass of her license and livelihood for over a year with no basis whatsoever. This kind of censorship, intimidation and punishment of doctors of conscience must stop.

“People need independent, thoughtful, caring physicians like Dr. Nass to be honored, not hounded as the board has done.

“I am pleased to see this case move forward in the courts in the interests of justice, for Dr. Nass, her patients and the broader society.”

Board provided resources to ‘combat spread of vaccine misinformation’

The Maine board’s Fall 2021 position statement expressed its support for a statement by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) — a private organization with no regulatory authority — which threatened physicians “who generate and spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation” with suspension or revocation of their medical license.

According to the statement, physicians have a high degree of public trust and therefore a responsibility to “share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health.”

The Maine board’s statement endorsed the FSMB statement, encouraged physicians to address misinformation when encountered, directed physicians to use circulated materials from the American Medical Association (AMA) and said that questioning the COVID-19 vaccine qualifies as “misinformation,” according to the complaint.

The AMA materials provide scripts, talking points and strategies for “combating the spread of vaccine misinformation.”

The Maine board’s chair, Dr. Maroulla Gleaton, is also an FSMB director.

Nass is a widely recognized expert on the anthrax vaccine and biological warfare. She testified before Congress six times and was quoted in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.

She has also been a prominent critic of governmental handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the suppression of effective treatments such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and the safety and risks of the vaccine — all topics she has discussed in her Substack, on the radio, in interviews and elsewhere.

But, the complaint notes, her positions have been in conflict with those asserted in the position statement and the resources it highlights as “supporting the fight against COVID-19 misinformation.”

This was merely an attempt by the board to justify its decision to immediately suspend Nass and to intimidate her, the complaint alleges.

Board’s only concern was ‘silencing’ Nass and ‘branding her as crazy’

When Nass questioned the board’s authority to investigate a complaint unrelated to the practice of medicine and instead “focused entirely on a statement made in her private life,” the board responded, on Oct. 14, 2021, that she was engaged in “alleged unprofessional conduct” by provisioning “misleading and/or inaccurate” information.

In the January board meeting where the board decided to suspend her license, the conversation focused on Nass’ “unprofessional conduct due to the spreading of misinformation about COVID-19.”

The board also cited three matters related to treating patients, alleging Nass improperly diagnosed a patient “over the phone,” that she had provided misinformation to a pharmacist about why she was prescribing ivermectin for a patient, and that she had improperly issued another prescription.

On Sept. 7, 2022, Nass moved to dismiss the complaint, alleging the board was violating her First Amendment rights.

The board responded by withdrawing all charges based on her speech, retaining only the charges related to the treatment of three patients.

Libby told The Defender that through the entire investigation and hearings, the board never even spoke to the three patients. It did not inform them their medical records had been subpoenaed, or ask them about their treatment by Dr. Nass.

“Yet the remaining disciplinary charges are all predicated on Dr. Nass’ consultation with and advice to these patients.”

Libby called the patients to testify in Nass’ hearings. They all made “glowing comments” about her availability, her medical advice and her handling of their cases and expressed anger that Nass was being targeted by the board for their cases.

Libby said he interpreted this to indicate the board’s singular focus was not to ensure patient well-being, but rather “silencing Dr. Nass and attempting to brand her as crazy.”

According to the complaint, the board’s animus against Nass is also demonstrated by the fact that it is flouting its own rules for selecting and paying expert witnesses.

Board guidelines stipulate that witnesses can be paid a maximum of $125/hour for preparation and $175/hour for testimony and that the witnesses should have the same specialty as the practitioner in question and be licensed to practice in Maine.

But the board is paying Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency room physician from Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, $500/hour to testify.

And board member Gleaton, who has conflicts of interest because of her position as FSMB director and has acted in openly mocking ways, has refused to recuse herself.

The next medical board hearing is set for mid-September.

But in the meantime, Libby said “The actions of the board are so outrageous, they need to be acted on legally.”


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

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.

August 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment