By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | July 21, 2023
‘Virologists have been exploiting us and screaming fire where there was none’: Dr Denis Rancourt giving his testimony to the National Citizens’ Inquiry in Ottawa, Canada.
This citizen-led, citizen-funded inquiry into Canada’s Covid-19 response, by definition cannot be commissioned or conducted impartially by the government whose responses and actions are the subject of the investigation. It has already held hearings in Vancouver, Ottawa and Quebec City at which scientific, medical, and legal experts have testified under oath, along with journalists and Canadian citizens who have pertinent testimony to offer. On May 17 Dr Rancourt, a scientist with a PhD in physics who has held key research positions in France and the Netherlands prior to becoming a physics professor and lead scientist at the University of Ottawa 23 years ago, gave his evidence.
For the last three years, with a team of statisticians and scientific researchers, he has been conducting a vast number of studies on all-cause mortality. These have focused on North America but have included other Western nations, resulting in more than 30 scientific reports. His findings appear conclusive, and establish that there was no particularly virulent pathogen on the planet in 2020; that excess deaths that year were entirely caused by the measures imposed against a fictitious threat, and then from 2021 onwards, by the vaccines.
He further concludes that none of the various ‘pandemics’ announced by the US and Canada since the Second World War was reflected in excess all-cause mortality. In other words, they too were fiction.
Importantly, at the inquiry hearings Dr Rancourt explained his focus on all-cause mortality data. It is because it contains no bias. It is a simple counting of deaths per age group, by sex, state, city and as a function of time. It enables one to spot and correlate events such as heatwaves, earthquakes, wars, economic depressions; anything that perturbs the population sufficiently to cause mortality. Its ‘power’ is that it provides a clear, unmanipulated picture of a given population.
During a 97-minute testimony he provided detailed evidence to show how he arrived at three core conclusions:
1. ‘If governments had done nothing out of the ordinary, if they had not announced a pandemic, not responded to a presumed new pathogen, done nothing more than what is usually done when there is high seasonal mortality in the winter, there would have been no excess mortality. There was the usual ecology of pathogens which we live with and are always present. People get ill, they recover, some die, but there was no pandemic that caused excess mortality beyond the historic trend, and that would have remained the case if we had just left things alone.’
2. The measures that governments applied were many different forms of assault, all of which contributed to excess mortality.
3. The Covid-19 vaccination campaign has caused huge excess mortality in clearly visible peaks which are seen directly associated with the roll-out of various vaccine doses to different age groups and in different jurisdictions, and likewise with the administration of boosters. The excess mortality occurs immediately following vaccination and lasts a few days, then the curve of mortality declines exponentially over a period of about two months. Dr Rancourt emphasises that it is not possible to have such an unusual pattern without it being causally connected to the injections.
Explaining why there was no pandemic of a viral respiratory disease, Rancourt shows that when one integrates the all-cause mortality in the ‘Covid’ period there were huge variations from area to area, which defies the hypothesis of viral spread.
The US excess mortality in this period was five times higher than that of neighbouring Canada proportionately to its population, which is epidemiologically impossible. These differences were also visible between US states, which means one has to look at social factors to explain the phenomenon. The excess deaths occurred mainly in the Southern states, which have a high incidence of seasonal bacterial pneumonia, and these infections went inadequately treated because during the ‘Covid’ period all Western nations cut antibiotic prescriptions by at least 50 per cent. Another strong population correlation factor was the number of people with disabilities. The US has a large number of registered disabled, and people who rely on outside support for everyday needs cannot function in a society in lockdown. It also has high numbers of poor people, and with the closure of churches, schools and community facilities, these populations were utterly stripped of their usual mechanisms of survival.
Excess mortality in 2020 in Europe was equally inconsistent with the notion of viral spread. Immediately after the pandemic was announced Lombardy in Italy became a hotspot, where hospitals put two people at a time on mechanical ventilators. But Italy’s crisis did not flow into Switzerland, nor did Spain’s high death toll cross the border into Portugal, and Alsace’s peak in Eastern France did not affect neighbouring Germany. This constitutes counter-evidence of a viral respiratory disease. Furthermore, although the lethality of ‘Covid’ was said to be exponential with age, mortality data shows no correlation with age.
Dr Mike Yeadon, who understands the biological effects of fear, told James Delingpole in their recent discussion: ‘Two mg of diazepam, a cup of tea and a biscuit, arm around the shoulder and give them an oxygen mask. I think most people would have gone home, but instead they admitted and murdered them.’
As the fraud began with the seeding of an idea of a pandemic, solid, irrefutable data is key in dismantling the illusion. This Dr Rancourt provided.
He completed his testimony with a plea to scientists and physicians to go back and look at the data of who is dying, and where and when, and what it correlates to. He believes there has to be a reset of thinking to recognise that virologists have been exploiting us and shouting fire where there was really nothing present. Clinicians and emergency staff have donned ‘Covid glasses’, he believes, making them see things as dangerous which at any other time would appear perfectly normal.
He postulates that the way to reset thinking is to use hard data that cannot be disputed, and that is all-cause mortality data. Unless this central data issue is addressed, he fears pandemics will be declared without basis, and populations will be assaulted at will.
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 21, 2023
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday approved an anthrax vaccine for adults ages 18-65, according to Emergent BioSolutions, the vaccine’s maker.
The vaccine, Cyfendus, is approved for use after suspected or confirmed exposure to Bacillus anthracis, also known as anthrax, but must be administered together with other antibacterial drugs, Reuters reported.
Emergent said it had been delivering Cyfendus to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 2019, under pre-emergency use authorization status.
The efficacy of Cyfendus for post-exposure prophylaxis was tested only on animals.
Dr. Meryl Nass, bioterrorism and anthrax expert, told The Defender she is skeptical about whether the vaccine offers any new substantive health benefit.
“Given the history of the company’s many failures, and the lack of proper safety or efficacy testing of prior anthrax vaccines, one can only expect problems,” Nass said.
“The fact that there is no label available, there is no information on how it was tested, what placebo was used, et cetera — that all adds to the consternation and concern people should have about the value of this product,” Nass added.
Emergent said the drug has been in development for 20 years in collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), formerly headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Paul Williams, senior vice president at Emergent, said anthrax “remains a high-priority national security threat.”
Cyfendus is comprised of Emergent’s anthrax vaccine adsorbed (AVA), marketed as Biothrax, plus an additional adjuvant, the name of which the company did not disclose.
Cyfendus is administered in two doses over 14 days to elicit an immune response that the company said: “can be especially important in response to a large-scale public health emergency involving anthrax.”
Nass said that during the 2001 anthrax scare, where politicians and media organizations across the country received anthrax in the mail, five people died — but “everyone who got antibiotics early did not come down with anthrax and none of them died.”
“So,” Nass said, “antibiotics worked.” Nass emphasized that after exposure to anthrax, one needs treatment immediately — not over the longer period of time it takes for a vaccine to work.
“The fact that it’s required to be given with antibiotics,” Nass said, “which is what you should have when exposed to anthrax, raises the question: What additional benefit are you gonna get from this vaccine? I don’t know.”
Emergent’s stock shares gained 16.2% in pre-market trading after it announced the FDA approval.
Benchmark analyst Robert Wasserman said the approval provides “greater assurance” the company will reach its projected 2023 earnings of $260-$280 million, Bloomberg Law reported.
The price spike comes on the heels of “a difficult few years,” financially for the company, FiercePharma reported.
The company, founded in 1998 as government contractor BioPort to distribute and produce the anthrax vaccine for the U.S. military, reached its financial zenith early in the pandemic after earning lucrative contracts to produce Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines.
But a congressional report in 2021 revealed the company hid likely contamination problems at the plant from FDA inspectors and eventually had to destroy 400 million vaccine doses — which led its share price to fall from $133 to $7.
History of the anthrax vaccine
The anthrax vaccine was developed and in limited use in the military since 1970.
Biothrax has been produced by Emergent since 2002. Prior to Thursday’s announcement, it was the only anthrax vaccine licensed for humans in the U.S.
Nass explained that in 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) made the vaccine compulsory as part of the Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program (AVIP) for all 2.5 million military service members — including active duty and reserve personnel and civilian contractors.
The DOD implemented the mass vaccination program in 1998.
Reports of adverse reactions and dissent on the part of service members led to congressional hearings and in early 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform recommended halting the mandatory program, although it was not officially halted.
As of 2000, more than 500,000 service members had received at least one dose of the vaccine, which was designed to be administered in six doses.
The plant where the government produced the anthrax vaccine faced a series of regulatory issues and was closed in 1997, according to Nass.
BioPort acquired it from the state-owned Michigan Biologic Products Institute in 1998 and rebuilt it, but was not FDA-authorized to produce the vaccine. So for a period, the vaccines were unavailable.
Then, starting on Sept. 18, 2001 — a week after the 9/11 attacks — when Americans were in a state of fear or heightened concern, media outlets began reporting that a sophisticated, weaponized and fatal form of anthrax had been sent via mail to numerous news outlets and American politicians.
New letters continued to appear over the next six weeks and the media and the government implied they were somehow linked to the 9/11 attacks.
Later, the media and figures such as John McCain linked the anthrax to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. In 2008, the FBI accused U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins of being responsible for the attacks, although Ivins took his own life before he could be prosecuted and the FBI’s claims are widely doubted.
ProPublica, McClatchy and PBS Frontline, which did their own investigation, questioned the FBI’s evidence.
The Government Office of Accountability (GAO) and the National Academies of Science both also found that the FBI lacked data to back its claims.
But the hype created by the anthrax letters primed the American public to support draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act, Dr. Joseph Mercola argued.
It also became the primary justification for continuing to produce the vaccine and administer it to service people, Pam Long wrote in The Defender.
In 2002, shortly after the FDA approved BioPort’s new vaccine plant, the GAO issued a report to Congress on the AVIP.
The report enumerated a significant number of adverse reactions to the vaccine — more than double the rate reported by the manufacturer — along with the mass exodus of military pilots and other valuable military personnel who refused the mandate.
It also noted that anthrax adverse reactions were very similar to Gulf War syndrome symptoms and that many veterans reported the vaccine as the cause of this illness, which they also reported in congressional hearings, according to Nass.
From 2000 to 2018, the military anthrax mandate was challenged several times in court for lacking FDA approval and licensure, and for lacking proven potency against fatal inhalation of anthrax.
During this time, the DOD restricted the anthrax vaccine to a smaller group of “at-risk troops” and halted and resumed the program several times.
Prior to 2001, the DOD concluded that biological agents such as anthrax were not a threat for mass casualties due to the limited number of countries with the expertise and sophistication required to weaponize and disseminate anthrax.
According to an investigation by investigative journalist Whitney Webb, the 2001 anthrax attacks also rescued Emergent Biosolutions, then BioPort, from certain financial ruin.
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.
BY KEVIN BARRETT | JULY 23, 2023
To say that RFK Jr. goes out of his way to avoid offending Jews would be an understatement. He presents himself as the world’s biggest friend of the Jewish people in general and the Jewish (supremacist) state of Israel in particular.
The first mainstream article that covered RFK’s presidential run with a positive spin was David Samuels’s piece in the Jewish magazine Tablet. But since then there hasn’t exactly been a groundswell of Kennedy support in the mainstream Jewish community. Aside from free-thinking outliers like Naomi Wolf and some of my radio guests (Josh Mitteldorf, Barry Kissin, Steve Brown, Ron Rattner) it seems that most of American Jewry, or at least its media wing, views RFK Jr.’s candidacy with trepidation.
That trepidation metamorphosed into hysterical denunciation last week, when the candidate’s off-the-record dinner-table remarks about ethnic-specific bioweapons and COVID-19 triggered the biggest two-minute anti-Semitism media hatefest since Kanye West went defcon 3. The New York Post broke the story with a lying headline: “RFK Jr. says COVID was ‘ethnically targeted’ to spare Jews.” What Kennedy actually said, in informal conversation, was:
COVID-19. There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese…We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
The candidate could be fairly accused of hyperbole: The study he was citing did not indicate how disproportionally COVID affected different ethnicities, but only analyzed one genetic factor, which may or may not have had much real-world effect. But that study does say pretty much what RFK says it does. What it does not say, and what RFK Jr. did not say, is that COVID was a Jewish-Chinese bioweapon designed to kill white and black people.
But you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage. Nor would you know it from remarks of Congressional reps like Debbie Wasserman Schulz, who tried to censor Kennedy’s anti-censorship testimony, saying “Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly made despicable antisemitic and anti-Asian comments.”
The witch hunt, of course, was unsurprising. What was surprising was that RFK Jr. would say something that was begging to be misinterpreted as “anti-Semitic.” This is the guy, after all, who presents himself as the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel candidate in the known universe. Why would he even bring up the “ethnic targeting” study, much less exaggerate it in such a way as to practically force the ADL and its friends to accuse him of blaming COVID on the Jews?
Some RFK supporters might wonder if their hero, like Trump before him, is playing 3D chess. Maybe RFK knows full well who really killed his father and uncle. In that case, his exaggerated philosemitic pro-Israel schtick would be a ruse. Like his father before him, who kept publicly quiet about the murder of his brother JFK in hopes of winning the presidency and undoing the coup, RFK Jr. could be blowing (pro-Zionist) smoke to camouflage the reality of his mission. Could he have deliberately provoked the hysterical attacks in order to garner free publicity and let the media and political establishment further discredit itself—the sort of thing that Trump has made a political career out of?
All things considered, the 3D chess scenario is unlikely. RFK is considerably smarter than Trump, but he is less manipulative. Unlike Trump, RFK is sincere. He is the what-you-see-is-what-you-get candidate. I don’t think he’s lying or being manipulative when he professes undying love for Israel, hatred for Nazi Germany, and concern about COVID affecting ethnicities differently in light of what we know about ethnic-specific bioweapon research.
But the question remains: Why is Kennedy so irrationally extremist in his support for Israel? And why did he intemperately exaggerate the COVID-ethnicity study in such a way as to invite attacks? Both his rabidly Likudnik Zionism and his ill-considered “anti-Semitic” bioweapon speculation seem, shall we say, immoderate, if not a little unhinged.
So let’s put RFK Jr. on Dr. Freud’s proverbial couch. Freud coined the term reaction formation: “a defense mechanism in which people express the opposite of their true feelings, sometimes to an exaggerated extent. For instance, a man who feels insecure about his masculinity might act overly aggressive. Or a woman with substance use disorder may extol the virtues of abstinence.” In many cases, the subjects are not even consciously aware of their true feelings. The peacenik who is so bellicose in his pacifism that he is always starting fights—I have known several—is generally unaware that his real motivation is not dedication to peace, but smoldering inner aggression. And then there are the greedy, ambitious, competitive, materialistic people who adopt leftist politics to conceal their real feelings about money and status. I’ve known more than a few of those too. And don’t get me started about the ranting anti-global-warming fanatics who seem to think their bloviations will save the world while your skepticism will destroy it, even as their excessively comfortable lifestyles emit far more carbon in week than you do in a month.
So reaction formations are quite common, and often a big driver of people’s political views. RFK Jr.’s grossly exaggerated, seemingly irrational pro-Israel extremism has all the hallmarks of a classic reaction formation. If such is the case, Kennedy would be hiding his repressed hostility to the Jewish state not only from others, but also from himself.
But why would Kennedy hate Israel, yet remain in deep denial of his real feelings? For the same reason that Hamlet hated his stepfather Claudius but couldn’t bring himself to act. Israel killed Kennedy’s father, just like Claudius killed Hamlet’s. But just as Hamlet grew up in Claudius’s household, vulnerable to Claudius’s despotic power, RFK Jr. grew up in post-Zionist-coup America, helpless and defenseless. Vulnerable people in the household of an abuser, especially children, have a tendency to engage in identification with the aggressor: “an unconscious mechanism in which an individual identifies with someone who poses a threat or with an opponent who cannot be mastered.” From RFK Jr.’s perspective, that would be the Zionists. He totally identifies with them, even with their most disgustingly vulgar mediocrities like Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and hyperbolically deems himself the biggest Zionist of all.
But What About the Blurt-Out?
If a reaction formation explains RFK’s ultra-Zionism, then what explains his COVID-targeted-to-spare-Jews blurt-out? Paging Dr. Freud again!
Actually, you don’t really need serious psychoanalytic chops to figure this one out. RFK’s repressed, unconscious hostility to Zionists, kept under wraps by his hyper-Zionist reaction formation, found a way of expressing itself. So although RFK was never consciously aware that what he was saying sounded a whole lot like “COVID was targeted to spare the Jews,” his unconscious mind was all-too-aware, and indeed put those equivocal words right into his mouth.
Like the classic Freudian slip, this kind of blurt-out scenario illustrates how the unconscious mind can occasionally short-circuit the conscious mind and speak unspeakable truths. Translation: “Outrageous Jewish anti-goy conspiracies are not always imaginary.” So the paranoid reaction of people like Debby Wasserman Schulz is not quite as crazy as it sounds: Debby’s unconscious is getting the gist of what Bobby’s unconscious is saying, and she doesn’t like it.
Intergenerational Trauma
The psychiatric symptoms on both sides stem from deeply-rooted intergenerational trauma. RFK Jr., of course, grew up with the trauma of his president-uncle’s dastardly murder in 1963, and his father’s equally dastardly murder (presumably by the same parties) in 1968. A modern-day Hamlet, he spent his formative years under tremendous social pressure to refrain from challenging his fathers’ and uncles’ murderers. We could also speculate about the Kennedy family’s roots in the holocausted earth of Ireland—the Irish have suffered real genocide and persecution to more than rival the Jews’ mostly-mythical suffering at the hands of alleged anti-Semites who supposedly hate them for no reason whatsoever—but let’s not go there, lest some of my less-enlightened readers start succumbing to Irish Holocaust denial.
On Wasserman-Schulz’s side, the intergenerational trauma is apparently so horrific that it can only be cured by psychedelic drugs. In “Can We Cure Anti-Semitism with Molly?” the Jewish Daily Forward’s senior editor Rob Eshman opens with a question:
“If you learned that a single pill had led a neo-Nazi to renounce his hateful beliefs, would you:
Eshman notes that Israel, the world’s MDMA capital, uses the “love drug” to treat PTSD. We may imagine that child-murdering IDF snipers like the “I shot 13 kids today” tweeter are gradually eased back into what passes for Israeli normalcy with the help of psychedelic sessions that rewire their brains for love (of fellow Zionist Jews at least) instead of drooling 24/7/365 hatred of Palestinian kids (“little snakes”) and the mothers who bear them.
But can MDMA cure Zionist Jewry of its 3000-year-old collective case of PTSD? To answer that question, we would need to know whether individual Jews really suffer the pain experienced by their persecuted ancestors. Scientists are working hard to convince us that they do.
An alternative explanation of why so many ultra-privileged Jews experience so much suffering from historical collective memories blames culture, not genetics. The film Defamation memorably shows Israeli children being horrifically traumatized by their elders, who drum it into their impressionable little heads that the goys all want to exterminate them.
And speaking of Jews traumatizing Jews, what about infant circumcision? Paging Dr. Bowlby!
Attachment studies have shown that very young children—babies, really—are extremely vulnerable to psychological trauma. A terrible experience at eight months of age or even earlier is likely to ruin your life in a way that a vastly worse experience at a later age might not. Traumatic experiences involving damage to the mother-child bond, in particular, seem to be responsible for much if not most of the world’s misery. (Moral: To form a happy and peaceful person, keep the baby in skin-to-skin contact with the mother, and breastfeed on demand, for the first two years of life, as many traditional cultures do.)
What you do NOT want to do is rip the baby out of the mother’s arms and inflict unspeakable torture by carving up the most sensitive part of its anatomy with a knife. This will wreck the mother-child bond due to the mother’s perceived betrayal of her child (and create overcompensation in the form of the Jewish mother syndrome) while forming an unconscious memory of a horrific attack by a terrifying outsider. Later in life, the child will be culturally conditioned to transfer its fear and loathing onto the imaginary figure of a new terrifying outsider: the evil goy who wants to kill us. It’s the perfect formula for creating a profoundly neurotic, powerfully ethnocentric group identity.
So to summarize: RFK Jr.’s dysfunctional relationship with Zionism—which stems from the willingness of traumatized Zionists like Ben Gurion to commit outrageous crimes in order to preserve the nuclear weapons they imagine they need to save their lives from the evil Jew-hating goys—is a complete mess. I doubt that even the best therapist, armed with all the MDMA in Israel, could effect a cure.
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 20, 2023
In newly unveiled testimony, Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), disclosed that the FBI was aware of the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as early as 2019. However, the Bureau declined to affirm its legitimacy to major tech companies during the 2020 election period.
That was already known. But it turns out that on the day the New York Post broke its report about the laptop, the FBI confirmed its validity to Twitter, only to retract their statement with a hasty “no further comment” response. From that point forward, the Bureau withheld comment on the laptop’s veracity to other tech giants, leading to widespread confusion and speculation ahead of the 2020 election.
According to a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Dehmlow revealed in her testimony that FBI staff, who had been warning social media platforms of potential Russian interference via a “hack and leak” operation prior to the 2020 election, were aware that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not an instance of Russian disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
When Twitter inquired about the laptop’s legitimacy on the day of the New York Post’s release, an FBI analyst confirmed its authenticity. However, an FBI attorney swiftly interrupted, leaving the conversation with “no further comment.” Following suit, Facebook also received the same vague response from the Bureau.
As per Dehmlow’s account, Twitter, after receiving initial confirmation about the laptop’s legitimacy, joined Facebook in imposing a censorship campaign that significantly influenced the voting behavior of a large number of Americans. Sharing the link was prohibited on Twitter, and the New York Post account was locked for several weeks. Facebook reduced the story’s visibility as well.
The FBI reportedly had regular interactions with major tech companies leading up to the election but chose to avoid answering direct questions about the laptop’s authenticity after the initial admission to Twitter.
In the backdrop of this confusing narrative, Big Tech was led to believe, by the FBI and other influencers, including the Biden campaign, that the controversial information from Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation aimed at manipulating the election. When, in reality, many consider the censorship of the story to be the true attempt at election manipulation.
The FBI had possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop as early as December 2019, a fact confirmed in Gary Shapley’s testimony, an IRS whistleblower, to the House Ways and Means Committee. Yet the FBI chose to maintain its “no comment” narrative until after the 2020 election, further compounding the confusion.
A federal judge’s memorandum ruling in Missouri v. Biden demonstrated that this approach deprived millions of Americans from getting a clear understanding of an important issue in the 2020 presidential election.
Chairman Jordan is now demanding that Wray identify those within the FBI’s FITF who knew about the laptop’s authenticity yet still advocated for the agency to remain silent until after the election. He also demanded all documents, records, and communications related to the FBI’s meetings with Silicon Valley giants since 2017 be handed over by August 3 and that all FBI employees involved in this issue be available for transcribed interviews with the committee.
Sputnik – 21.07.2023
WASHINGTON – An analyst with the FBI conducted an improper search of a US senator’s name in a surveillance database, American media reported on Friday, as lawmakers weigh the future of the agency’s surveillance authorities.
The FBI analyst searched information collected using warrantless surveillance programs using the names of a US senator and a state senator, the report said, citing a recently declassified court document.
The June 2022 searches were reportedly conducted due to information indicating the lawmakers were potentially targeted by foreign intelligence agents. However, the analyst failed to receive approval from higher-ups before conducting a sensitive search involving public officials.
Moreover, the analyst failed to demonstrate the searches would be reasonably likely to produce foreign intelligence or criminal evidence, the report said.
It was also reported the declassified court document notes there is no reason to believe the FBI has improved its compliance with surveillance protocols.
The revelation comes as lawmakers in Congress weigh whether to extend the FBI’s surveillance authorities, following multiple allegations of misuse. US intelligence and national security officials have repeatedly defended the program and its importance to their missions.
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 21.07.2023
The POTUS and his son are investigated by the Republican-controlled House panel over allegations that they ran an illegal “pay-to-play” corruption scheme involving cash payments to Hunter Biden in exchange for access to his father while Biden was vice president.
Republicans have gone on Twitter to react to the release of an unclassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) document related to President Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in an international bribery scheme, with some GOP members calling for his impeachment.
They included Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called the 46th US president “a criminal, […] leading us into WW3.”
“Republicans can no longer delay, but we need 218 Republican votes to do it. I’ve been there since day one and so are the American people. IMPEACH BIDEN!!!” she added.
Greene was echoed by Anna Paulina Luna, who argued that Biden “needs to be impeached” because of the “evidence and testimony” that she had seen as a member of the House Oversight Committee investigating the Biden family finances. “He is compromised and his son is selling access to him,” Luna tweeted.
The same tone was struck by Lauren Boebert as she wrote that it’s necessary to “Read and understand just how deep the corruption goes,” and that “Biden should be thrown out of office. Impeach!”
Similar messages were shared by Jim Banks, who described the Bidens as the “Most corrupt family to ever live in the White House,” also urging for Joe Biden’s impeachment.
The reaction comes after Republican Senator Chuck Grassley released the FBI’s FD-1023 form on Thursday, which focused on how Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, ostensibly “coerced” chief executive of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Nikolai Zlochevsky to pay them $5 million each in exchange for their help in getting a Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the firm fired.
The document pertains to the FBI’s interview with a “highly credible” confidential source who detailed multiple meetings and conversations he or she had with Zlochevsky over the course of several years starting in 2015. During those gatherings, the Burisma CEO at one point reportedly said that Joe Biden’s son “was stupid”, and that “his [Zlochevsky’s] dog was smarter.”
Hunter sat on the board of Burisma at the time while his father served as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Grassley, for his part, stressed that he released the document so that Americans can read it “for themselves without the filter of politicians or bureaucrats.” The senator acquired the form via legally protected disclosures by Justice Department whistleblowers, according to the senator’s office.
The FBI responded with a sharply worded statement, slamming GOP lawmakers for ignoring the bureau’s “significant concerns” about the dangers of releasing the material.
“We have repeatedly explained to Congress, in correspondence and in briefings, how critical it is to keep this source information confidential. […] Today’s release of the 1023 – at a minimum – unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source,” the FBI statement said.
The developments follow US Internal Revenue Service investigator Joseph Ziegler telling lawmakers he discovered Hunter Biden and his business associates received $17 million from foreign sources, including $7.3 million from Burisma, during a probe he described as hindered by senior Justice Department officials.
Ziegler had remained anonymous until his appearance at a House oversight committee hearing on Wednesday that was convened over Republican allegations that President Biden and his son Hunter were involved in a bribery scheme with Burisma.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys and the US Justice Department announced last month an agreement under which he will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and enter a pretrial diversionary agreement on a felony firearms offense in an effort to resolve the criminal probe against him and avoid prison time.
Since 2018, the First Son has been under a series of investigations into tax-related crimes, drug use, money laundering and illegal business dealings in foreign countries, including Ukraine and China. Investigators are specifically looking into the content of Hunter Biden’s so-called “laptop from Hell”, which purportedly included naked photos and graphic videos of the 46th president’s son.
The Cradle – July 22, 2023
The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed new legislation on 21 July to bolster normalization efforts between Israel and Arab countries, pledging nearly $120 million in funding and naming Saudi Arabia as a key candidate.
The Regional Integration and Normalization Act seeks to encourage the Arab world to solidify diplomatic ties with Israel.
US Senator Bob Menendez remarked that “this bill capitalizes on the dynamics that are profoundly reshaping the Middle East and North Africa,” adding, “Further integration in this region, one marked by conflict and disunity, must be a pillar of US foreign policy moving forward. It will remain a region that is critical to US strategic interests, and we should support efforts that increase stability and prosperity for our partners and the region’s citizens.”
This bill will create an ambassador-level official for the Abraham Accords, expand normalization and “integration, ”support the development of an Abraham Accords and Negev Forum Economic Partnership, and support joint cybersecurity training.
This development comes a few days after US President Joe Biden hosted Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the White House.
Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took power last year, Biden has avoided meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister due to a controversial judicial overhaul.
By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | July 22, 2023
On July 18, US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib issued a joint statement with fellow Congresswoman Cori Bush, declaring they would boycott the visit of the Zionist regime president Isaac Herzog to Washington.
“Bestowing President Herzog with the rare honor of a joint address to Congress while the Israeli apartheid government continues to enable and directly support racism and brutal settler attacks is a slap in the face to victims, survivors, and their loved ones—including the families of Americans murdered by this regime like Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad,” read the statement.
Many human rights groups, anti-war activists, and other so-called “progressives” hailed the statement, especially considering the popular support Israel has in US Congress – and the absolute grip of the Zionist lobby.
Meanwhile, run-of-the-mill Democrats and Conservatives condemned the boycott, using their typical smears – falsely claiming the boycott is “Anti-Semitic.”
“It’s contradictory to claim to support human rights when you’re arming the oppressors with billions of dollars of bullets and bombs,” noted the statement by Tlaib and Bush.
The choice of words was extremely interesting – especially considering Tlaib’s tweet a few days later.
“Syrian Dictator Bashar al-Assad is a war criminal,” wrote the Congresswoman who represents Michigan’s 12th District on her Twitter page.
“I introduced the Justice for Syrians resolution with Rep. Ilhan [Omar] to hold Assad accountable for crimes against humanity. It’s time for the Syrian people to have justice.”
Israel, who Tlaib and Omar boycotted, has been illegally bombing Syria for years – sometimes multiple times per week, killing innocent Syrians. Not to mention the West, spearheaded by the US, has been at war with the Arab country via direct confrontation and its proxies for over 10 years.
The United States has invested billions of dollars into destabilizing Syria, which has caused a humanitarian crisis impacting millions of people in the country, starving Syria through horrific sanctions, destroying its cities, or funding Al Qaeda-backed extremists to execute pro-Damascus supporters.
The new resolution comes the same year Syria suffered a horrific earthquake, killing thousands – and millions could not receive aid because of the previous sanctions Tlaib, Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other “progressives” overwhelmingly supported.
The new resolutions will open a path to more sanctions where civilians will suffer, exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that the West has aided and abetted.
Boycotting the Israeli regime is morally right but these so-called “progressives” cannot condone their own government’s foreign policy that revolves around invasions and sanctions, which the likes of Tlaib, Omar and Ocasio-Cortez actively have the power to make a difference.
The fact is, you cannot serve in the halls of US Congress, at least as a Democrat or Republican – without serving imperialism. That is because the very nature of “progressivism” has shifted in the United States.
Attributes of the progressive movement for decades were demands for fair criminal justice, anti-police brutality, healthcare benefits, and of course, demands to stop a war.
Now, however, with an emerging generation that does not want to participate in the previous generations’ wars, a shift has been made. To appeal to the new generation of Americans, war itself is being sold as “progressive” in order for Americans to buy it.
The “Squad” – a group of so-called “progressive” Congress members (which includes Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, and more) – sells wars masterfully.
Rallying their voter base with ideas of “taxing the rich” and “social rights,” these members of Congress work in unison with the war hawks in Congress to pass bill after bill meant to support the United States’ military interests.
For example, when the United States and its clients were orchestrating deadly riots in Iran late last year, the majority of the progressive “Squad” voted “YEA” on a resolution condemning the Islamic Republic and supporting the actions of foreign-backed rioters.
There are dozens of similar examples – all one needs to do is find a military conflict the US wants to be involved in and they can find a bill that the “progressives” have signed supporting it – Syria, Iran, China, Russia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Cuba. The list goes on.
It’s no wonder why US President Joe Biden has been able to pass a series of multi-billion dollar packages for weapons shipments to Ukraine – it has become “progressive.”
The neo-Nazis that flood the military ranks of the Kiev regime are now painted as defenders of freedom, democracy, and European interests.
In order for the US to continue to wage its unpopular wars and invasions, it needs a voter base that is convinced that what the Pentagon is doing is right.
Washington has recognized that the new generation – from later millennials to the young Generation Z – cannot be so easily pulled into wars as the previous generations.
To continue its criminal missions across the globe, Washington will need to turn these wars “progressive”. They will need to become fighters for “human rights,” for “liberal democracy.”
All it takes is an analysis of the framing of war 20 years ago versus today. In 2003, then-US President George Bush told Americans that America needed to fight to “defend itself from those who want to take away its democracy.”
In 2023, Joe Biden is fueling destabilization efforts in the same regions under the guise of “bringing democracy.” Progressive-minded people need to be convinced that “human rights” and “social justice” are being “exported” – albeit via the barrel of a gun.
The new generation must wake up to this. They must see through the deception of “progressives” in Congress who are just the Cold Warriors of today. If they don’t, they will risk being pulled into another military quagmire just like previous generations, or be tricked into supporting the US’ proxy efforts.
Perhaps a good first step forward would be to question why even the most so-called “progressive” members of the US Congress want to serve the war machine.
Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.
By Colonel (ret.) Douglas Macgregor, US Army | The Kennedy Beacon | July 20, 2023
From the moment the war in Ukraine started, Western reporting on the war was a radical repudiation of the truth. Washington and its NATO allies always knew that NATO expansion to Russia’s borders would precipitate an armed conflict with Moscow, but NATO’s ruling globalist class did not care. For them, Russia in 2022 was unchanged from the weak and incapable Russia of the late 1990s. The risk of failure seemed low. Ergo, Russia could be bullied into submission.
Americans and most Europeans did not bother to question or analyze. Widespread strategic ignorance about Russia and Eastern Europe ensured that most Americans and even West Europeans would react quickly and viscerally to the Western media’s distorted images and lies about Russia. At the same time, tolerance for criticism of Washington’s role in fashioning the corrupt and deceitful conduct of the Volodymyr Zelenskyy Regime and its war was disallowed in the press.
Washington’s ruling class was cheered when it dismissed Russian proposals for talks on any grounds that did not recognize NATO’s right to transform Ukraine into a base for U.S. and Allied Military Power aimed at Russia. Ukrainian flags sprouted from the lush grounds of America’s wealthier neighborhoods like flowers in an arboretum and wonders in the form of limitless military assistance, miracle weapons, and cash were promised to President Zelenskyy––promises that strategic reality did not justify.
In 2022 the Biden Administration no longer possessed the military and economic strength to wage high-end conventional warfare that it had in 1991. Waging a major war 10,000 miles from home on the Eurasian continent is impossible without the support of truly powerful Allies on the model of the British Empire during WWII. Washington’s NATO allies are military dependencies, not formidable strategic partners.
Whereas Russian Military Power is still structured for decisive operations launched from Russian soil, U.S. Military power is geared to project limited air, naval, and land power thousands of miles from home to the periphery of Asia and Africa. American military power consists of boutique forces designed for safari in Africa and the Middle East, not decisive combat operations against great continental powers like Russia or China.
Eighteen months later Ukraine is in ruins. Its latest counteroffensive achieved nothing. In the last three weeks, an estimated 26,000 Ukrainian soldiers died in pointless attacks against world-class Russian defenses ‘in depth.’ (Defenses ‘in depth’ mean a security zone of 15 -25 kilometers in front of the main defense, that consists of at least three defense belts twenty or more kilometers deep.)
By comparison, Russian losses were minimal.
Today, more than 100,000 Russian troops are conducting offensive operations along the Lyman-Kupiansk axis. These forces include 900 tanks, 555 artillery systems and 370 multiple rocket launchers. It does not take much imagination to anticipate the breakthrough of these forces to the North where they can encircle Kharkiv.
Once Russian Forces surround the city, they will become an irresistible magnet for Ukraine’s last reserve of 30-40,000 troops. Ukrainian Forces attacking to the East to break through to Kharkov will present the combination of Russian space and terrestrial-based ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) assets and Precision Strike Aerospace, Artillery, Rocket, and Missile Systems with a target array that only a blind man could miss.
None of these developments should surprise anyone in the West. Building a Ukrainian army on the fly with a hotchpotch of hastily assembled equipment from a multitude of NATO members and an officer corps of many courageous, but inexperienced officers had little chance of success even under the best of circumstances.
Wars are decided in the decades before they begin. In war, the sudden appearance of “Silver Bullet” technology seldom provides more than a temporary advantage and strong personalities in the senior ranks do not compensate for inadequate military organization, training, thinking, and effective equipment. A new, leaked memorandum from sources inside Ukraine illustrates these points:
“Units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are at such terrible states of degradation that soldiers are abandoning their posts, and whilst not mentioned in these documents, a flood of videos have been published from Russian sources claiming Ukrainian service personnel are surrendering at the first opportunity owing to the belief that they are being treated as ‘nothing more than cannon fodder.’”
Events on the ground are beginning to overtake the carefully orchestrated charade in Kiev. There is little that pontificating retired generals and armchair military analysts can do to halt the inevitable. Moscow understands that the war will not end without Russian offensive action. Whatever Washington’s original goals may have been, they are unrealizable. Russian Forces will soon fall on the Ukrainian forces with the momentum and the impact of an avalanche.
In view of these points, before all of Ukraine’s manpower is annihilated, or a “Coalition of the Willing” from Poland and Lithuania marches into Western Ukraine, Washington can arrest Ukraine’s downward spiral into total defeat, and Washington’s own irresponsible drift into a regional war with Russia for which Washington and its allies are not prepared.
Cooler heads can prevail inside the beltway. The fighting can stop, but a ceasefire, and the diplomatic talks that must proceed from a ceasefire, will not occur unless Washington and its Allies acknowledge three critical points:
First, whatever form the Ukrainian State assumes in the aftermath of the conflict, Ukraine must be neutral and non-aligned. NATO membership is out of the question. A neutral Ukraine on the Austrian model can still provide a buffer between Russia and its Western Neighbors.
Second, Washington and its Allies must immediately suspend all military aid to Ukraine. Doubling down on failure by introducing more equipment and technology the Ukrainian Forces cannot quickly absorb and employ is wasteful and self-defeating.
Third, all U.S. and allied personnel, clandestine or in uniform, must withdraw from Ukraine. Insisting on some form of NATO presence as a face-saving measure is pointless. The attempt to extend NATO’s “new globalist world order” to Russia has failed.
The point is straightforward. It is time for Washington to turn its attention inward and address the decades of American societal, economic, and military decay that ensued after 1991. It’s time to reverse the decline in American national prosperity, and power; to avoid unnecessary overseas conflict;and to shun future interventions in the affairs of other nation states and their societies. The threats to our Republic are here, at home, not in the Eastern Hemisphere.
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | JULY 21, 2023
The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.
On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a reputation for speaking what the White House wants to hear, no matter his professional judgment.
Indeed, on July 19, the Biden administration announced additional security assistance of about $1.3 billion for Ukraine. The Pentagon said in a statement that the announcement “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.” That is to say, the US will be using funds in its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, which allows the administration to buy weapons from industry rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
According to the Pentagon, the latest package includes four National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and munitions; 152 mm artillery rounds; mine clearing equipment; and drones.
Meanwhile, in an ominous development, no sooner than Russia let the UN-brokered grain deal expire on July 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky disclosed that he had sent official letters to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggesting to continue the grain deal without Russia’s participation.
On the very next day, Kiev followed up with an official letter to the UN’s International Maritime Organization spelling out a new maritime corridor passing through Romania’s territorial waters and exclusive maritime economic zone in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
Evidently, Kiev acted in concert with Romania (a NATO member country where the 101st Airborne Division of the US army is deployed). Presumably, the US and NATO are in the loop while the UN’s imprimatur is being arranged. It goes without saying that the NATO has been working on a new maritime route in the Black Sea for sometime already.
This is a serious development, as it seems a precursor to involving the NATO in some way to challenge Russia’s domain dominance in the Black Sea. Indeed, the NATO’s Vilnius Summit Communiqué (July 11) had forecast that the alliance is gearing up for a vastly enhanced presence in the Black Sea region, which has been historically a Russian preserve, where its has important military bases.
The relevant para in the NATO Communiqué said: “The Black Sea region is of strategic importance for the Alliance. This is further highlighted by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. We underline our continued support to Allied regional efforts aimed at upholding security, safety, stability and freedom of navigation in the Black Sea region including, as appropriate, through the 1936 Montreux Convention. We will further monitor and assess developments in the region and enhance our situational awareness, with a particular focus on the threats to our security and potential opportunities for closer cooperation with our partners in the region, as appropriate.” [Emphasis added.]
Four things need to be noted:
Most certainly, a new maritime route in northwestern and western regions of the Black Sea along Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey (all of whom are NATO member countries) will cut off the Russian garrison in Transnistria (Moldava) and would boost Kiev’s capability to strike at Crimea. The NATO involvement would complicate any future Russian operations to liberate Odessa as well, which is historically a Russian city.
Apart from the huge legacy of culture and history, Odessa is a port head for the industrial products of Russia and Ukraine. The Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline (which the Ukrainian saboteurs blew up recently) is one of the best examples. The 2,471 km pipeline, the longest ammonia pipeline in the world, connected the world’s largest ammonia producer, TogliattiAzot, in Russia’s Samara region with Odessa Port.
In strategic terms, without control over Odessa, NATO cannot have force projection in the Black Sea region or hope to resurrect Ukraine as an anti-Russia outpost. Nor can NATO advance toward the Transcaucasus and the Caspian (bordering Iran) and Central Asia without dominating the Black Sea region.
And for the same reasons, Russia cannot afford to cede the Black Sea region to the NATO, either. Odessa is a vital link in any land bridge along the Black Sea coast connecting the Russian hinterland with its garrison in Transnistria, Moldova (which the US is eyeing as a potential NATO member.) In fact, Crimea’s security will be endangered if hostile forces establish themselves in Odessa. (The attack on the Kerch Bridge in October 2022 was staged from Odessa.)
Clearly, the entire US project on the new maritime route is intended to pre-empt Russia from gaining control of Odessa. It factors in the strong likelihood that with the Ukrainian offensive floundering, Russia may soon launch its counter-offensive in the direction of Odessa.
From the Russian perspective, this becomes an existential moment. The NATO has virtually encircled the Russian Navy in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea (with the induction of Sweden and Finland as members). The freedom of navigation of the Baltic Fleet and the dominance in the Black Sea, therefore, become all the more crucial for Russia to freely access the world market round the year.
Moscow has reacted strongly. On July 19, Russian ministry of defence notified that “all vessels sailing in the waters of the Black Sea to Ukrainian ports will be regarded as potential carriers of military cargo. Accordingly, the countries of such vessels will be considered to be involved in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.”
Russia has further notified that “the north-western and south-eastern parts of the international waters of the Black Sea have been declared temporarily dangerous for navigation.” The latest reports suggest that the Black Sea Fleet of warships are rehearsing the procedure for boarding foreign ships sailing to Ukrainian waters. In effect, Russia is imposing a sea blockade of Ukraine.
In an interview with Izvestia, Russian military expert Vasily Dandykin said he would now expect Russia to stop and inspect all ships sailing to Ukrainian ports. “This practice is normal: There is a war zone there, and in the past two days it has been the scene of missile strikes. We’ll see how this will work in practice and whether there will be anyone willing to send vessels to these waters, because this is very serious.”
The White House has accused Russia of laying mines to block Ukrainian ports. Of course, Washington hopes that the NATO moving in as the guarantor of the grain corridor, replacing Russia, would have resonance in the Global South. The Western propaganda caricatures Russia as creating food scarcity globally. Whereas, the fact of the matter is that the West didn’t keep its part of the bargain reciprocally to allow the export of Russian wheat and fertiliser, as has been acknowledged by the UN and Turkey.
What remains to be seen is whether beyond the raging information war, any NATO country would dare to challenge Russia’s sea blockade. The chances are slim, the daunting deployment of the 101st Airborne Division in next-door Romania notwithstanding.
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By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
