Biden to Spend $5 Billion on New Coronavirus Vaccine Initiative Supported by Gates, Fauci and Republican Lawmakers
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 123, 2023
The U.S. government will spend $5 billion on a program to accelerate the development of new coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics, White House officials announced this week in an interview with The Washington Post.
Dubbed “Project NextGen,” the new initiative will serve as the successor to the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed,” launched in March 2020 to expedite the development of COVID-19 vaccines.
Similar to Operation Warp Speed, Project NextGen — with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation — will encourage public-private partnerships.
According to Reuters, the project will be managed out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will coordinate across various government agencies and private-sector actors, covering “all phases of development from lab research and clinical trials to delivery.”
“Scientists, public heath [sic] experts and politicians have called for the initiative, warning that existing therapies have steadily lost their effectiveness and that new ones are needed,” the Post reported.
The new initiative is based on a “roadmap” for the development of new coronavirus vaccines, formulated by the University of Minnesota and led by a former Biden administration official.
A ‘roadmap’ for ‘better’ coronavirus vaccines
Operation Warp Speed invested approximately $30 billion in the development, manufacturing and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, according to USA Today, with six drugmakers each receiving more than $1 billion, along with a promise of a “guaranteed market” if they successfully developed a vaccine.
Project NextGen was originally to be named “Project COVID Shield,” after some Republican lawmakers called for the launch of an “Operation Warp Speed 2.0” to build on the Trump administration’s legacy.
However, “White House officials wanted some distance from the Trump effort as well as from COVID-focused branding, when much of the country had moved on from the pandemic,” the Post reported, quoting two anonymous Biden administration officials.
The new initiative also will be “more modest,” and have a “more open-ended mission,” unlike Operation Warp Speed, which focused exclusively on COVID-19.
According to USA Today, the initial $5 billion in funding “will be financed through money saved from contracts costing less than originally estimated.”
Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus coordinator, said the new initiative has three primary goals: creating longer-lasting vaccines, accelerating the development of nasal vaccines and bolstering efforts to create “broader” pan-coronavirus vaccines.
The project also includes funding for more durable monoclonal antibodies.
The name “Project NextGen,” made more sense, Jha said, as it is “a different time” with “a different set of goals.” The new name “much more accurately captures what it is that we are trying to do,” he said.
Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota, is helping lead the effort.
In February, CIDRAP developed a “roadmap” for the development of “better” coronavirus vaccines. This “roadmap” serves as the basis for Project NextGen.
Osterholm was a member of the COVID-19 advisory board convened by then-president-elect Joe Biden’s transition team. The board was dissolved when Biden took office in January 2021.
Jha told the Post, “It’s been very clear to us that the market on this is moving very slowly. There’s a lot that government can do, the administration can do, to speed up those tools … for the American people.”
Previously, during a July 2022 White House coronavirus vaccine summit, Jha said:
“We need vaccines that are more durable. Vaccines that offer broader and longer-lasting protection. Vaccines that can stand up to multiple variants. Vaccines that can handle whatever Mother Nature throws at us.”
Osterholm characterized existing COVID-19 vaccines as “really good” but “not great.”
“There is a substantial amount of work [to be done] to take these good vaccines and hopefully achieve better vaccines,” Osterholm said.
Osterholm noted that SARS-CoV-2 is the third new coronavirus to appear in the past two decades — Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) were the other two. According to Osterholm, it would be “great” to be prepared for a fourth new coronavirus when and if it appears.
Reuters quoted an unnamed HHS spokesperson, who stated:
“While our vaccines are still very effective at preventing serious illness and death, they are less capable of reducing infections and transmission over time. New variants and loss of immunity over time could continue to challenge our healthcare systems in the coming years.
“Project NextGen will accelerate and streamline the rapid development of the next generation of vaccines and treatments through public-private collaborations. The infusion of a $5 billion investment, at minimum, will help catalyze scientific advancement in areas that have large public health benefits for the American people, with the goal of developing safe and effective tools for the American people.”
The Post noted, however, that while the outbreak of new coronaviruses in recent decades has “spurred worries about the potential for future health crises,” it might take years to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, noting that such efforts have been unsuccessful for influenza despite decades of efforts.
Speaking to USA Today, Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, expressed skepticism about Project NextGen’s goals, noting that similar efforts to develop flu and HIV vaccines have been in progress for more than 40 years, without result.
Offit said that the effectiveness of nasal vaccines remains unclear, as they remain in the clinical trial stage at this time. Dr. John Moore, an immunologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, expressed a similar view, saying “it’s seriously naïve to believe that it will be easy to make [a nasal vaccine].”
He added that the emphasis on improving existing COVID-19 vaccines, which he described as “amazing,” would likely undermine public trust in those vaccines.
Moore told USA Today that “an initiative like this is much needed and should have been put in place much sooner,” adding that “Anyone familiar with vaccine development knows that translation into a practical product is a much harder and more expensive process” than the creation of a basic vaccine.
“A lot of designs that look good in the early stages fizzle out because they cannot be manufactured efficiently under the conditions required for human trials,” Moore said.
According to Jha though, the new project and its investment in a new generation of coronavirus vaccines “will have very large benefits for other respiratory pathogens we deal with all the time, like flu and RSV.”
Gates, Rockefeller Foundations behind Project NextGen
On Feb. 21, CIDRAP published its “roadmap for advancing better coronavirus vaccines” — with $1 million in support from the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, “To help jump-start the search for better vaccines [and] develop broadly protective vaccines.”
According to the project description, the funding was used to assemble “an international collaboration of 50 scientists who mapped out a strategy to make the new vaccines a reality.”
Osterholm stated at the time, “If we wait for the next event to happen before we act, it will be too late.”
Bruce Gellin, M.D., M.P.H., chief of Global Public Health Strategy at The Rockefeller Foundation, said that there is an “urgency” to take the next steps, calling for an “equivalent” to Operation Warp Speed.
According to CIDRAP, Gellin “has led several federal vaccine initiatives and has been a technical advisor for groups including Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, COVAX, and the World Health Organization.”
The Gates Foundation is a partner of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, which, in turn, closely collaborates with the ID2020 Alliance, which promoted the development of digital ID. Microsoft is a founding member of the ID2020 Alliance, as well as Gavi, the BMGF, the World Bank, Accenture and the Rockefeller Foundation.
CIDRAP received the $1 million grant in April 2022, and by October 2022, had developed a draft version of its “roadmap.” According to Osterholm, it draws on a similar “roadmap strategy” employed by CIDRAP for previous projects, including the improvement of seasonal flu vaccines and the development of a universal flu vaccine.
For the new “roadmap,” these efforts culminated in a 92-page report, and accompanying summary, published in Vaccine journal. The project is divided into five core areas: virology, immunology, vaccinology, animal and human models for vaccine research, and policy and funding.
In an accompanying commentary published in the same issue of Vaccine, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, a former FDA commissioner who is co-president of the InterAcademy Partnership, and Dr. Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, said that COVID-19 vaccines have been effective in preventing serious disease.
Hamburg was a participant in the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) monkeypox pandemic simulation in March 2021, based on a remarkably prescient “fictional” monkeypox outbreak in May 2022. She is a board member of the Nature Conservancy and vice president of NTI’s Global Biological Policy and Programs and is on the board of Gavi.
However, according to Hamburg and Poland, there are some problems with the current vaccines, including “notable reactogenicity” in certain individuals, a short duration of protection, and technical requirements that make them difficult to store and administer in remote locations and areas with low resources.
They said the next-generation vaccines may offer additional benefits such as “new methods of delivery — transdermal patches, oral or intranasal vaccines — which are easy to distribute and apply, stimulate mucosal immunity, and potentially block transmission,” adding that this is superior to the current strategy of “chasing” new variants and developing boosters.
Hamburg and Poland said that a universal coronavirus would be easy to stockpile, but the road to the development of such a vaccine could take a “tiered approach,” starting with the creation of a “variant-proof” COVID-19 vaccine, followed by developing vaccines that offer broader protection against various coronavirus families.
Members of CIDRAP said in February that funding would be a challenge for the initiatives set forth in their “roadmap,” due to “shrinking support for large-scale vaccine investments, now that the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic has mainly passed.”
The federal funding earmarked for Project NextGen would, however, appear to address this issue.
Other challenges the CIDRAP team identified included the “lack of corporate incentives, uncertainty around public demand for a broadly protective vaccine, and the feasibility of expanding vaccine production capacity.”
Gellin, however, said in a Feb. 21 University of Minnesota press release that: “Time and time again, we have seen that investment in science brings solutions. The COVID-19 pandemic galvanized the research community and advanced vaccine R&D efficiently and through broad collaborations,” essentially previewing Project NextGen.
On April 20, CIDRAP will hold a one-hour “scientific webinar,” open to the public, presenting their “roadmap.”
Republican lawmakers, Fauci pressed for ‘Warp Speed 2.0’
Political wrangling delayed the funding of Project NextGen, according to the Post, which reported that Republicans insisted that funds were left over from prior COVID-19 aid packages.
Ultimately, HHS “shifted funds intended for coronavirus testing and other priorities” into the new initiative.
Dr. Anthony Fauci was one of the voices who “spent months pressing Congress for billions of dollars that could be used to develop next-generation vaccines and treatments,” the Post reported, adding that these arguments “largely fell flat” in the face of Republican opposition.
However, according to the Post, “Even some of the Republicans who blocked the White House’s coronavirus funding requests last year said they wanted a ‘Warp Speed 2.0’ to rush updated vaccines and treatments that would better fight the virus.”
In August 2022, former Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) wrote to President Biden, stating “Operation Warp Speed was the most successful public health program since small pox. It saved millions of lives, and it should be resurrected as soon as possible.”
Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for Preparedness and Response at HHS, told the Post that the Biden administration learned lessons from Operation Warp Speed, including how to speed up vaccine development, and that these lessons would be applied to Project NextGen.
“We’ve learned a lot in these three years,” O’Connell said. She added that some of the lab work related to Project NextGen has begun, and that the government has launched efforts to identify potential partners in the private sector.
“We’ve begun surveying the landscape out there — assessing what vaccine candidates are available, [and] moving through what exciting technologies are there,” she said.
According to the Post, O’Connell and her team informed companies working on the development of monoclonal antibodies that the government may soon make new investments in the technology.
Jha, however, refused to set a timetable for when new products developed under the aegis of Project NextGen would be available to the public, the Post reported.
“The timelines are really going to be predicated on how quickly the scientific advancements continue, and how quickly we can study and measure the efficacy and safety of these products,” Jha said.
Project NextGen is also still without a leader, with the White House “still considering candidates,” according to the Post, which noted that the process is slowed down by “Democrats’ desire to avoid questions of conflicts of interest that dogged Operation Warp Speed, after Trump officials selected Moncef Slaoui, a pharmaceutical industry executive with significant stock holdings, to lead that program.”
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.
Trump’s arrest exposes America’s Soros-style (in)justice system
By Tony Cox | RT | April 12, 2023
Alvin Bragg, the New York City district attorney who made a name for himself by arresting Donald Trump, waxed triumphantly about his effort to take down the former president. You see, the Manhattan prosecutor said, no one is above the law in the “business capital of the world.”
“We today uphold our solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law,” Bragg told reporters last week, following Trump’s arraignment on 34 criminal charges. “No amount of money and no amount of power changes that enduring American principle.”
So as Bragg tells it, the patriotic decision to prosecute Trump was all about equal justice under the law. Never mind that Bragg campaigned for office by pledging to prosecute the locally hated ex-president in a county where Joe Biden won 86.8% of votes in the 2020 presidential election. And never mind that Bragg’s 2021 campaign for the Manhattan DA job was bankrolled largely by billionaire activist George Soros, the biggest donor to Democratic Party candidates and causes.
That’s right, Bragg says his case is legally and ethically righteous. However, a closer look at the indictment reveals that the charges he filed are so legally dubious that only a Manhattan jury of Trump haters might buy his story. He’s prosecuting Trump for allegedly falsifying business records six years ago, and he’s bypassing the two-year statute of limitations on such misdemeanors by elevating the charges to felonies. To make that possible under New York’s criminal code, he’s claiming the offenses were committed to cover up violations of election laws when Trump was running for president in 2016.
Those alleged violations stemmed from a supposed hush-money payment to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump. The payment wasn’t illegal on its face, but if it was proven to have been made solely for the purpose of helping Trump win the election, it would exceed the legal limit for a political contribution. Both the Federal Election Commission and the US Department of Justice looked into the matter at the time and found no cause to pursue a case against Trump.
Even if you give Bragg the benefit of the considerable doubt regarding his motives for going after Trump – just as the 2024 election is approaching, with the former president polling as the top Republican candidate – it would be tough to argue that he’s driven by the interests of justice. For one thing, Bragg shows no interest in investigating the leaks of information about Trump’s prosecution to the media, which is itself a felony under New York law.
For another, his approach to justice is making the city increasingly more lawless. Bragg used his first memo after taking office as DA in January 2022 to direct prosecutors to quit sending so many criminals to prison and downgrade charges for such crimes as armed robbery and drug dealing. He also ordered his underlings to make sentencing recommendations that address racial disparities in incarceration – meaning the criminal’s punishment should depend at least partly on his or her skin color.
During Bragg’s first year as DA, 52% of the felony cases referred to his office were downgraded to misdemeanors (the opposite of the Trump charges being upgraded to felonies). Nearly half of the felony cases Bragg’s office did take on ended in defeat for the prosecution.
With many laws being enforced lightly, if at all, crime has surged in America’s largest city and the business capital of the world. Car thefts are at a 16-year high. There were more than 2,000 felony assaults committed in January alone, up 15% from a year earlier, according to police figures.
If there’s one thing on which Bragg appears to be really cracking down – other than Republican presidential candidates – it’s self-defense. Consider the case of Manhattan parking-garage attendant Moussa Diarra, who woke up in a hospital earlier this month to find himself handcuffed to his bed. The 57-year-old had been shot twice by a suspected car burglar. The suspect also was shot, during a tussle for his gun as the garage attendant fought for his life.
Weeping at his predicament, Diarra reportedly told his boss, “I got bullets in me, and I’m chained to a hospital bed, but I didn’t do anything wrong.” He was charged with attempted murder and illegal possession of a gun – the same gun that the suspected burglar, a career criminal with over 20 arrests on his rap sheet, used to shoot him.
The charges against Diarra were later dropped, “pending further investigation,” amid public outrage over the case. Diarra had to hire a lawyer, who suggested that his client was initially charged because the authorities hadn’t had time to sort out how the two men wound up shot. But police claimed the DA’s office directed the arrest and charging of the garage worker.
This might be viewed as an aberration, or merely an unfortunate circumstance for Diarra. Perhaps he was handcuffed to his hospital bed because police couldn’t immediately discern that he was a hero, rather than a perpetrator, so it was just a placeholder to charge him. That might be believable if not for Bragg’s pattern of trying to punish people who defend themselves.
Before Diarra, there was Jose Alba, a 61-year-old Dominican bodega owner who was attacked behind the counter of his Harlem store by a 35-year-old black ex-con last July. After sitting passively and pleading with the assailant, reportedly saying “Papa, I don’t want a problem,” Alba fought for his life as the attack escalated, stabbing the younger man to death. Surveillance video of the incident shows Alba being stabbed by the attacker’s girlfriend as he fights the man off.
Alba was arrested for murder and incarcerated at the notorious Rikers Island jail, where he reportedly didn’t even receive proper treatment for his stab wounds. His bail was initially set at $250,000. Bragg finally dropped the charge weeks later, but only after public outcry, including statements by Mayor Eric Adams and New York Police Department Commissioner Bill Bratton that Alba clearly acted in self-defense. The DA didn’t charge the girlfriend who stabbed Alba.
In another case, Bragg broke a campaign promise to drop the charges against Tracy McCarter, a nurse who fatally stabbed her abusive husband, allegedly in self-defense. In other cases, he has downgraded charges against serial criminals, such as a man who had nearly 90 arrests on his record and had his bail set at just $1 after being busted last month for two alleged robberies on the same day.
In rationalizing his policies against enforcing some laws, Bragg has claimed that limited resources must be freed up to focus on violent crime. Yet, on his watch, violent criminals – at least those who weren’t acting in self-defense – have been set free without bail while awaiting trial. The DA cut a sweet plea-bargain deal for a man arrested for raping a teenager, requiring him to serve only 30 days in jail, but while out on bail and awaiting sentencing, he sexually assaulted five more people.
Nevertheless, with resources stretched thin and a poll showing that 40% of New York City office workers are considering leaving the city because of crime concerns, Bragg has found time to prosecute a political enemy. He’s doing so in a case stemming from seven-year-old allegations that the more relevant authorities – those who police federal elections – found unworthy of pursuing.
Whatever is going on with law enforcement in Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan, it’s not about equal justice under the law – or any kind of true justice at all. This sort of unjust legal activism isn’t limited to New York, either. Soros has reportedly helped stake about 70 lawyers to victory in district attorney elections around the US. These social justice warriors have made their cities less safe and more racist, calibrating their prosecutorial policies to essentially legalize certain types of crime and favor certain categories of criminals.
MSNBC political analyst Peter Beinart recently offered a leftist’s perspective on what’s driving the prosecution of Trump, arguing that a coalition of groups that are historically victims of discrimination – black people, Jews and “LGBT folks” – have “come together to push back against the white Christian nationalist assault on American democracy.”
Yes, the aggrieved victim classes are so concerned about protecting democracy that they’re banding together to take down the leading Republican presidential candidate, potentially taking him off the 2024 election menu if they’re successful. They would love to dictate the candidates from which voters can choose because, you know, democracy.
The first arrest of a former US head of state is a clown show, which some foreign leaders have been honest enough to point out. For instance, El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said, “Think what you want about former President Trump and the reasons he’s being indicted, but just imagine if this happened in any other country, where a government arrested the main opposition candidate. The United States’ ability to use ‘democracy’ as foreign policy is gone.”
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
US professor quits after allegedly faking racism stats – media
RT | April 12, 2023
Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart has quietly resigned after a month-long absence amid an inquiry into whether he faked data in multiple studies to inflate the prevalence of racism in the US, the Florida Standard reported last week.
A fellow of the American Society of Criminology, Stewart was first publicly accused of falsifying data in 2019 by the co-author of one of his studies, University of Albany criminology professor Justin Pickett, who claimed Stewart had made several misleading changes to the numbers in their 2011 paper ‘Ethnic threat and social control: Examining public support for judicial use of ethnicity in punishment’ immediately before publication.
The published study claimed that public desire for harsher sentences for black and Hispanic offenders increased in proportion with the size of the minority populations in a community. However, the study data showed no such relationship existed, and that the opposite might even be true. Pickett revealed that his colleague had doubled the sample size while leaving out nearly three quarters of the counties polled, mangling the data to the point of incoherence, and said Stewart refused to turn over the raw data so that Pickett could re-run the calculations himself.
That study and four more were subsequently retracted, but when Pickett tried to bring the matter to the university’s attention, he claims he was met with four months of stonewalling. When the school did eventually mount an inquiry, the three-person panel in charge included two people who had co-authored studies with Stewart, violating Florida State’s conflict of interest policy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that inquiry claimed it had not found enough evidence for fraud and advised against continuing the investigation.
Pickett told the Florida Standard that coverups by colleagues are common in the field, explaining “there’s a huge monetary incentive to falsify data and there’s no accountability. If you do this, the probability you’ll get caught is so, so low.”
Stewart, who is black, complained to the university that Pickett – who is white – had “essentially lynched [him] and [his] academic career.”
In 2020, a sixth paper authored by Stewart was retracted – though not before being cited by 186 other papers. Another investigation found enough merit in the fraud claims to pursue them, apparently imperiling Stewart’s $190,000 per year position. Florida State declined to discuss the matter with the Florida Standard, and Stewart’s profile is still live on the university’s website.
Zelensky and team stole at least $400 million of Western aid – Seymour Hersh
RT | April 12, 2023
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his senior officials are skimming American taxpayer dollars by the hundreds of millions, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed on Wednesday. The alleged grift even includes schemes involving trade with Russia itself.
Zelensky and his entourage embezzled at least $400 million from US funds meant for diesel procurement last year, Hersh claimed in a new article on Substack, citing a CIA estimate.
Meanwhile, Kiev has allegedly been buying diesel fuel, which is essential for the war effort, from Russia itself – and in the process skimming large sums of US funds earmarked for diesel payments.
Reports had earlier surfaced about how oil products originating in Russia had made their way to Ukraine through Bulgaria and Latvia. The scheme involving the Baltic state, which was reported in detail by the Latvian television program Neka Personiga, may have violated the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions.
An expert cited by Hersh compared the level of corruption in Ukrainian procurement to what was seen in Afghanistan, when a US-backed government was in charge in Kabul. According to his sources, ministries in Kiev compete to set up front firms in order to export weapons and ammunition, with the relevant officials profiting from kickbacks. The US government , meanwhile, has stated that it has seen no evidence of Western-supplied weapons in Ukraine being diverted elsewhere.
Hersh cited an intelligence source who referred to the January meeting between Zelensky and CIA Director William Burns. The US official allegedly presented a list of 35 generals and ministers known to the CIA to be corrupt. Senior Ukrainian officials also complained that Zelensky “was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals,” the source explained, comparing the meeting to a scene from a 1950s mob movie.
Hersh contends that the Ukrainian leader’s response was to fire staff from the Cabinet of Ministers, regional administrations, and other parts of the Ukrainian government. Kiev claimed the move was part of its anti-corruption strategy. Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov, who became mired in a scandal over purchases of overpriced food for troops, was widely expected to be sacked at the time, but he survived the purge.
Hersh’s sources blamed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan for the ongoing crisis in the US government, which allegedly suffers from discord between the White House and intelligence community. The two top foreign policy officials have shown “strident ideology and lack of political skill” over the Ukraine conflict, according to the sources.
One Particular Pentagon Doc Exposes The Unprofessionalism Of The US’ Intel Community
BY ANDREW KORYBKO | APRIL 12, 2023
Vice News reported on one of the recently leaked Pentagon documents in their article titled “Leaked Pentagon Docs Share Wild Rumor: Kremlin Plans to ‘Throw’ Putin’s War While He’s Getting Chemo”. Someone in the US’ Intelligence Community (IC) spied on a high-profile target in Kiev who claimed to have heard from a Kremlin source that two top Russian military officials planned to sabotage the special operation around 5 March while President Putin allegedly underwent chemotherapy.
Instead of reasonably questioning that outlandishly conspiratorial claim, they felt it fitting to pass it along to the Pentagon, which explains why it ended up in one of the leaked documents. This was extremely unprofessional because the allegation should have been closely scrutinized first in order to ascertain its veracity so as not to inadvertently mislead major US military figures. The very fact that it wasn’t shows that there are serious problems in terms of how the US’ IC operates.
For example, it could have been the case that Russia used a double agent to plant this ridiculous rumor for the purpose of deceiving its opponents into getting their guard down around that time. Another explanation is that the supposed source really does work for Ukrainian intelligence but just told his handlers whatever he thought they wanted to hear so that they’d keep getting paid. A third possibility is that the Ukrainian official knew he was being spied on by the US and invented the story to mislead it.
In any case, the scenario that they speculated about didn’t unfold since those two top Russian military officials didn’t sabotage the special operation around 5 March like the report claimed would happen. Nevertheless, major US military figures were still exposed to this ultimately false information, which could have influenced their relevant calculations in this conflict. This only happened because the US’ IC is so unprofessional that they didn’t try to confirm the information first before passing it along to them.
Casual observers of foreign affairs might be under the naïve impression that whatever government officials tell one another in secret supposedly has some degree of truth to it, ergo why they’re inclined to extend credence to the claims made in whatever leak it might be, whether this one or others. In reality, they lack the proper understanding of how the US’ IC operates, which results in them also being misled and falling under false impressions such as the one pushed in that particular document analyzed above.
Russia or Ukraine attempted to manipulate the predicted end US recipient of this false information as was previously explained. If the alleged source was a double agent, then Moscow planted this story to mislead Kiev and Washington into getting their guard down at that time, but it could also have just been Kiev manipulating its patron to make its major military officials think that the Kremlin is in chaos. Either way, the end result is that this false information was pushed up the stovepipes to Pentagon leaders.
It can therefore be regarded as an immensely successful disinformation operation at least with respect to exposing its intended target to this conspiracy theory, though it remains unclear whether they acted on it in any way. Even so, it could have indirectly influenced them by contributing to other details that major US military officials considered when making various decisions related to how they’re waging this proxy war.
The takeaway is that casual observers should reflect on the lesson contained within this piece in order to better understand the way that the US’ IC operates, which is surprisingly unprofessional as revealed by this particular document contained in the latest leaks. Wishful thinking was obviously at play, which is why someone felt it fitting to pass along this ultimately false information to Pentagon leaders. This should never have happened and shows that there are serious problems in terms of competence.
Pentagon Leaks Show Washington ‘Dissidents’ Want ‘Offramp’ From Ukraine ‘Disaster’
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
The leak of US defense assessments of Ukraine’s long-promised military offensive has caused turmoil in Washington and Kiev. Retired US diplomat James Jatras, an adviser to the US Senate Republican leadership, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, explain the motives behind it.
Pentagon officials behind the leak of Ukraine’s battle plans are looking for an “offramp” from the escalating proxy conflict with Russia, two former Washington insiders have said.
Pundits have speculated that the Pentagon reports on Ukrainian battle plans leaked to Telegram channels and heavily reported in the US mainstream media are a US smokescreen to misdirect Russia, a convenient excuse for ending costly support to Volodymyr Zelensky’s Kiev regime or even a Moscow psy-op fake.
Retired US diplomat James Jatras told Sputnik that the leak “indicates that there are some dissident voices within the US government who are not comfortable with the direction of policy.”
Those elements “would like to slow it down or maybe even change its course” but are still “a distinct minority within the establishment,” he stressed.
The Senate adviser said it was significant that the leak came from the Department of Defense, not his old employer, the State Department.
“There are people within the military who realize that we’re moving toward a potential disaster in Ukraine. Those are more realistic people,” Jatras said. “They’re familiar with the hard facts of military power,” while the State Department and the White House “believe their own propaganda.”
Other former US military and intelligence officers have argued that the leaks are the result of frustration over Washington’s backing of Ukraine. But the ex-diplomat said that came from “further down the chain of command,” and “primarily within the military.”
He also disagreed that the leak complicated the US plans for the conflict, since the consensus in Washington was that Ukraine just “needs to roll the dice” and create “the appearance of making some sort of progress.”
At that point the US will either up the ante with its support for Kiev or announce “some kind of a peace proposal” based on the illusion that they “go to the table with an advantage on Ukraine’s side,” Jatras predicted.
The “danger” was that Russia might grant the West a “face-saving gesture” in return for a peace deal that meets its demands of de-militarization, de-Nazification and no NATO membership for Ukraine.
“These are fundamentally dishonest people here,” Jatras cautioned. “They would not keep any word or any assurance any more than they lived up to the Minsk Agreement.”
As for the timing of the revelations, the Republican advisor said the intention was likely to was to slow down or change the direction of policy,” pointing to a US “tradition” of leaks from the establishment all the way back to the Vietnam War.
But he noted that “none of those things made much difference in the direction of American policy. It still took years for the policy establishment to be ground down by having reality catch up with them.”
Jatras said more leaks could follow, but only if there was a “really disastrous development on the ground in Ukraine.” While some neoconservative Republicans want to switch focus to a confrontation with China over Taiwan, “leaving Ukraine would not be as cost free for American prestige internationally as was our loss in Afghanistan.”
Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Sputnik that he did not accept either claims that the documents were part of a disinformation effort.
“This is somebody who has access to highly sensitive information, probably at the Joint Chiefs of Staff level, who decided, my God, you know, if the American people knew this, maybe we could stop this terrible, inexorable drift toward wider war in Ukraine and perhaps including nuclear weapons,” McGovern argued.
“The Ukrainians are upset, of course, because it shows that we’re spying on them. But, you know, surprise, surprise, we do that on everybody,” the former Langley insider pointed out. “Precisely the same thing happened when high level people leaked information, which became too embarrassing for the president to widen the war. In that case, in Vietnam.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office has already said that Kiev’s plans for the long-advertised spring counter-offensive will have to be re-written following the leak. McGovern took that as proof that Ukraine isn’t ready for a major operation.
“Zelensky himself said three weeks ago ‘We can’t do a spring counteroffensive unless we get the weapons that we need’ and everyone knows that the weapons that they need, although promised, won’t get there in time,” McGovern pointed out. “So this is kind of a way to rationalize.”
The former intelligence official argued the real reason for the leak was that “people in Washington are trying to find their offramp” and need to “expose the lies that have been told by people like the defense secretary, people like the head of the CIA.”
“There’s a hopeful sign here that these leaks will shut the Americans into thinking, whoa, wait a second, we’ve been lied to about this war. Ukraine is not winning,” McGovern said. “Maybe it’s time to sit down, do something sensible and negotiate.”
For more in-depth analysis and commentary, check out the latest episode of Sputnik’s podcast The Critical Hour.
Russia didn’t blow up Nord Stream – Trump
RT | April 12, 2023
Former US President Donald Trump has dismissed claims that Russia was behind the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, but said that speculating on the true perpetrator might “get our country in trouble.”
Speaking to Fox’s Tucker Carlson in an interview set to air in full this week, Trump was asked for his thoughts about “who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline,” which was hit by multiple blasts under mysterious circumstances last September.
“I don’t want to get our country in trouble so I won’t answer it. But I can tell you who it wasn’t, was Russia. How about when they blamed Russia. They said ‘Russia blew up their own pipeline.’ You got a kick out of that one, too. It wasn’t Russia,” he told the Fox News pundit.
While the US and other Western governments have so far offered few details about ongoing investigations into the sabotage, a February report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh stated that US President Joe Biden had personally ordered the bombing as a way to persuade Germany to ramp up support for Ukraine amid its conflict with Russia.
Washington has vocally denied the report, which relied on anonymous sources, and insisted it had no role in the bombings. “It’s a completely false story. There’s no truth to it. Not a shred of it,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Fox in February.
Ukrainian officials have similarly denied any involvement in the Nord Stream sabotage, and subsequent reporting by the New York Times has claimed that an unnamed “pro-Ukrainian group” was behind the attack. It is unclear how the group could have accomplished the bombing from a small pleasure yacht as reported, however, as the operation would have required military-grade explosives and experienced divers, among other things.
Hersh has rejected the Times’ account as part of a “cover-up” staged by US intelligence agencies, as the outlet has largely cited unnamed intelligence officials to support its story.
Moscow has also voiced skepticism about the “pro-Ukrainian group,” with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov arguing the story was deliberately circulated by Western media outlets to distract from the revelations purportedly uncovered by Hersh.
READ MORE:
US has “profound concerns” over success of Ukraine’s offensive, says document leak
By Ahmed Adel | April 12, 2023
The Ukrainian military is planning a new spring offensive, which will reportedly begin between Orthodox Easter on April 16 and Labour Day on May 9. This expected offensive has received much international media attention, particularly because of the bold and bombastic claims made by Ukrainian officials, such as the fallacy that Ukrainian troops will reach Crimea within seven months. However, a leaked US intelligence document found that a shortage of troops, ammunition and equipment could cause the Ukrainian military to fall “well short” of their goals.
It is recalled that Ukraine unveiled on April 2 a 12-point plan on how to integrate Crimea into the country after conquering the peninsula from Russia. However, Washington is sceptical that it can be achieved, meaning that this planned offensive is just a method to secure more weapons, funding and interest from the West.
The leaked document, labelled “top secret,” gave a bleak assessment from early February and warned of significant “force generation and sustainment shortfalls.” More alarmingly for Kiev is that such an offensive will result in only “modest territorial gains.” This leak obviously provides a more realistic assessment of the war in Ukraine, which is why Washington is scrambling and threatening journalists to not publish the contents of the leaks as it obviously contradicts previous claims made by the State Department and their controlled media apparatus.
Most importantly perhaps is that many of the documents are dated to February and March, meaning most of the information is current and relates to the awaited Ukrainian spring offensive.
According to the Washington Post, the leaked document predicts that the Ukrainian military will only achieve “modest success” despite Kiev’s strategy revolving around capturing areas already liberated by Russia in Donbass, while at the same time pushing south to cut the land bridge between Russia proper and Crimea.
The near impossibility of the offensive, according to the document, is because of the potency of entrenched Russian defences, as well as “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies” which will probably “strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive.”
The Washington Post said that the leaks “reveal profound concerns about Ukraine’s readiness to withstand a Russian offensive” while “beyond the leaked document, US officials said the prospects for a modest outcome in the spring offensive also were reinforced in a classified assessment by the National Intelligence Council” which “found that Ukraine was unlikely to recapture as much territory as Kyiv did last fall.”
Although a senior Ukrainian official did not dispute the contents of the leak, another senior official said the revelations were unlikely to compromise the planned spring offensive, saying: “It’s been obvious to everyone since November that the next counteroffensive will be focused on the south, first Melitopol and then Berdyansk. But the exact place — we can change that the week before.”
Perhaps the most interesting changes since the leaks were published is a begrudging acknowledgement in Western mainstream media that the situation is not desperate for Russia, as people have been led to believe since the conflict began, and rather it is the Ukrainian military suffering from significant shortages.
Considering the Washington Post’s propensity to disseminate Ukrainian disinformation and fake news, the newspaper surprisingly acknowledged that “the difficult fight against Russia has exhausted Ukraine’s troops and hardware, making every day the war drags on an advantage to the larger Russian military.”
This is a point that has been argued for well over a year by military experts: Russia has all the time in the world to fight this war on its own terms; Ukraine does not have time as its military is exhausting, Ukrainian civilians are war weary, and European citizens are suffering from a self-inflicted economic and cost-of-living crisis.
As the newspaper noted, “the prospect of pouring billions of dollars into a military stalemate with only incremental gains in one direction or another could weaken the resolve” of those who are backing the Kiev regime, particularly Europe and the US, who could possibly sharpen “calls for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow.”
This too will prove difficult though as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has endlessly promised a total victory, including the conquest of Crimea. This is obviously a delusional belief that will never come to pass, and rather it is a fantasy that Zelensky must maintain to continue receiving Western funds and weapons.
None-the-less, as the latest Washington Post article exposes, prospects for success, even with the arrival of thousands of Western-trained Ukrainian soldiers, are very low. This suggests that there could be a catalyst for a narrative shift in Western media, especially if the expected offensive fizzles out to nothingness after making some initial gains.
Yet, as already said, none of these revelations should be considered shocking or surprising if one objectively looks at events in Ukraine.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Doctors in Kentucky, California Received Millions in Bonus Payments for Vaccinating Medicaid Patients Against COVID
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 11, 2023
The federal government and insurers incentivized healthcare providers in Kentucky and California to vaccinate Medicaid patients against COVID-19 by offering bonuses based on the percentage of patients successfully vaccinated.
“[This is] truly sickening and I am embarrassed for my profession by this,” Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, wrote on her Substack, where she posted several documents relating to the COVID-19 vaccine provider incentive programs.
The documents help to draw a picture of the broader effort at the federal, state and local levels to unleash a range of strategies targeting low-income and people-of-color communities, which tended to have lower vaccination rates.
The strategies included providing hundreds of millions of dollars for the creation of “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials and for training “trusted” and “influential messengers” to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines to communities of color in every state.
Nass’ revelations showed these efforts went beyond advertising, fear campaigns, payments to patients and payments to trusted community actors and included, in some cases, direct financial incentives to healthcare providers.
Kentucky: Medicaid paid doctors up to $250 per vaccinated Medicaid patient
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield Medicaid in Kentucky told physicians in 2021 it would “recognize your hard work by offering incentives for helping patients make the choice to become vaccinated.”
The more people vaccinated, the higher the per-person incentive.
For physicians who treated an Anthem Medicaid cohort with a minimum of 25 patients in their practice, Anthem Medicaid offered incentives for vaccination by Sept. 1, 2021, that ranged from a $20 bonus per vaccinated person for physicians who vaccinated 30% of the cohort, to $125 per vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of the cohort, with several incremental steps in between.
As time went on, the rates increased.
Between Sept. 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, physicians received payments ranging from $100 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 30% of their patient cohort, to $250 per newly vaccinated person for those who vaccinated 75% of their patient cohort.
In 2022, the Anthem provider incentive program changed to a flat rate. Providers received $50 per newly vaccinated Medicaid patient. This included children ages 6 months to 4 years and kids 12 and older vaccinated between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2022, and children ages 5 to 11 vaccinated between June 1 and Dec. 31, 2022.
Medi-Cal: $350 million in incentives to vaccinate low-income children, people of color
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) on Aug. 6, 2021, announced $350 million in incentive payments — $250 million to providers and $100 million for direct non-monetary payments, such as gift cards, to vaccine recipients — to encourage vaccination among Medi-Cal’s 14 million beneficiaries.
Of the $350 million, $175 million came from state general funds and $175 million from federal funding. The funding period lasted from Sept. 2, 2021, through Feb. 29, 2022.
The program offered incentives to managed care plans in the name of “health equity.” In the press release, DHCS Director Will Lightborne said that raising rates among Medi-Cal beneficiaries was essential because “California will only be safe when everyone is safe.”
Nass noted that this program was rolled out one day after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN the vaccines don’t prevent virus transmission. “That’s clearly a contradiction,” Nass told The Defender.
The funding targeted Medicaid recipients with low vaccine uptake — the homebound, communities of color, youth ages 12 to 25 and people ages 50 to 64 with multiple chronic conditions — and incentivized outreach and vaccination activities for providers and pharmacies.
At the time of the announcement, only 45.6% of Medi-Cal beneficiaries age 12 and over had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to over 76% of Californians overall.
The DHCS funding included payments to community-based organizations, food banks, advocacy groups and faith-based organizations. This key strategy of funding grassroots leaders to act as “grassroots” proxies spreading the federal government’s vaccine message was widespread throughout the pandemic.
Providers could also couple this grant with a CAIRVaxGrant, which offered providers up to $10,000 to enter all of their historical electronic health record immunizations into the California Immunization Registry (CAIR).
The grant stipulated that after startup costs, payments would be directly tied to “meeting specific vaccination goals,” similar to the Kentucky program.
The incentive payment structure under the California plan was complex, paying a financial reward to healthcare providers who met particular benchmarks that varied by county and demographic but overall increased the percentage of vaccinated patients among their Medicare beneficiaries.
Under this incentive structure, providers had to meet particular vaccination targets in order to get paid. Those who were especially successful in increasing vaccination rates in the target groups would be entered into a “high performance pool,” receiving extra money for substantially moving the vaccination rates for Medicaid recipients 75% higher than baseline or within 10% of a given county’s general rate.
In the equation that determined the incentive payment structure, different demographic groups were weighted differently. For example, vaccine recipients ages 12 to 25 were weighted more highly than older recipients and those in the two racial/ethnic groups with the lowest uptake were also given greater weight.
By Jan. 21 of this year, despite this $250 million push, Medi-Cal vaccination had only increased to 52.9%.
Medicaid pays doctors more to administer COVID vaccines than other shots
As part of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Biden administration fully funded the COVID-19 vaccination program, making vaccines free regardless of health insurance status.
To cover the costs of the uninsured and underinsured, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) paid provider costs of vaccine administration through an Uninsured Program and a COVID-19 Coverage Assistance Fund.
Reimbursements were based on national Medicare rates, but the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which sets those rates, increased the reimbursement rate over time. Through March 14, 2021, HRSA paid $28.93 for a single-dose vaccine or for the second dose in a series of 2, and $16.94 for the first dose in a series of two.
On March 15, 2021, those rates increased to $40 per dose and $75.50 for an “in-home” dose of the vaccine.
Nass said the initial payments were in line with Medicaid payments for other vaccines, but the increased payment marked a departure from the usual reimbursement structure.
Usually, all CMS changes to Medicare payments for specific services must go through notice and comment rulemaking, but “to save time during the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency bypassed that route before increasing payments for administering the vaccines,” JAMA reported.
CMS said the higher payments were meant to help expand COVID-19 vaccination, supporting “actions taken by providers, such as growing existing vaccination sites, conducting patient outreach and education, and hiring additional staff,” Healthcare Finance News reported.
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.
Global Thunder 23: What Message Do US’ Latest Nuclear Drills Send Russia?
B-52H Stratofortresses from the 2nd Bomb Wing line up on the runway at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., Oct. 14, 2020. The B-52 is a long-range, heavy bomber that can perform a variety of missions and has been the backbone of U.S. strategic bomber forces for more than 60 years.
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
United States Strategic Command, the Pentagon arm responsible for military operations involving nuclear weapons, kicked off annual command and control drills this week. What message do the drills send Washington’s adversaries?
STRATCOM’s press service has done its best to calm concerns about the nuclear drills which began on Tuesday, assuring that they are ordinary, annually-scheduled exercises definitely “not” being held “in response to the actions by any nation or other actors.”
“Global Thunder 23 (GT23) involves personnel throughout the strategic enterprise including US STRATCOM components and subordinate units. The purpose of GT23 is to enhance nuclear readiness and ensure a safe, secure, and reliable deterrence force,” the command said in a statement.
“In addition to US personnel, GT23 will involve key allied personnel and partners, including United Kingdom personnel, who will integrate into senior leadership teams and work across a broad spectrum of areas offering policy support and operational insight… As in previous years, Global Thunder 23 will include an increase in bomber aircraft flights throughout the exercise,” STRATCOM added.
The formal goal of the drills seems pretty simple: to train US forces responsible for launching nuclear weapons against Washington’s adversaries, and assess operational readiness in coordination with allies – typically including Britain, Canada, Denmark, Australia, and South Korea. US forces involved in the drills ordinarily involve Air Force Global Strike Command and nuclear bomber wings dotting North America, plus forces responsible for launching America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and nuclear submarine crews.
The first Global Thunder drills were held in October 2014 – the same year relations between the West and Russia collapsed in the aftermath of a US-backed coup in Kiev. So much for STRATCOM’s statement that the drills aren’t held “in response to the actions of any nation.”
The last Global Thunder drills were held in November 2021, with the 2022 drills postponed to this week amid the escalation of the Ukraine crisis into a full-blown NATO-Russia proxy war.
Global Thunder 23 comes at a curious time. Washington and its allies spent the better part of the last year warning about purported Russian plans to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, leaving aside the fact that the US is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons in wartime, and the fact that only America’s doctrine allows for nukes to be used preemptively and against non-nuclear-armed enemies.
What Other Recent Nuclear Drills Have There Been?
A separate STRATCOM command exercise dubbed “Global Lightning” was held in January 2022 in coordination with US Indo Pacific Command, with those drills focusing on “headquarters processes and procedures necessary to plan and respond to a military crisis.” Unlike Global Thunder, Global Lightning involves no associated field training.
Last October, NATO held the “Steadfast Noon” drills, simulating the use of American nuclear weapons by Washington’s European allies. Those exercises took place in Belgium, the UK, and over the North Sea. 14 countries and 60 aircraft of various types, including nuclear-capable bombers and spy and tanker planes, took part.
Russia’s nuclear forces held their own nuclear exercises, dubbed “Grom” (“Thunder”), the same month, notifying the US on what the Pentagon said was a “routine annual exercise” in compliance with arms control obligations. The Grom drills involved tests of components of all three elements of Russia’s nuclear triad, including live-fire launches of submarine, aircraft, and ground-based nuclear missile systems.
The nuclear superpowers aren’t the only ones to have conducted nuclear exercises recently. Last month, North Korea held two days-worth of drills “simulating a nuclear counterattack” against enemy targets – including the firing of a tactical missile carrying a mock nuclear weapon, amid growing regional tensions sparked by the increased frequency of US, South Korean, and Japanese exercises.
Drills’ Dangers
One doesn’t have to go very far back in history to recognize the danger of nuclear exercises resulting in a spiraling escalation. Nearly 40 years ago, in November 1983, a NATO command post drill known as Able Archer almost sparked a global nuclear holocaust after the Soviet military brass and the KGB became convinced that the Reagan administration was preparing an all-out surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet “evil empire.” Recently declassified documents have revealed that Pentagon planners deliberately took a number of provocative steps to raise Soviet suspicions, including a radio-silent airlift of 19,000 US troops to Europe, training involving “new nuclear weapons release procedures,” and multiple intentional “slips of the tongue” involving references to B-52 bomber flights as “strikes.” Additional declassified docs released in 2021 revealed that the Soviet military took the Able Archer drills so seriously that it prepped over 100 strike aircraft in Central Europe with live nuclear weapons.
Although communication channels between the Kremlin and the White House have improved since that time, the situation involving nuclear weapons can arguably be said to be even more dangerous today than it was in the mid-1980s. Since then, the US has not only moved nuclear weapons-related defense infrastructure over 1,000 km closer to Russia’s borders, but come up with a dangerous new military doctrine known as “Prompt Global Strike,” which envisions a massed non-nuclear attack against adversaries using ballistic and cruise missiles to quickly decapitate the enemy’s political and military leadership. The PGS initiative, announced by the Pentagon shortly after Washington’s exit from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia in 2002, prompted Moscow to begin research into an array of next-gen hypersonic weapons designed specifically to make US military planners think twice before deciding to launch aggression.
It Was a Sad Friday in Jerusalem
By Steven Sahiounie | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 10, 2023
April 7 was “Good Friday” for Western Christians, the day when they believe Jesus was hung on a cross. But it was a “Sad Friday” in Jerusalem. To the Muslims of the world, this is the third Friday of Ramadan, and this morning worshippers attempting to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem were prevented entry to the area and severely beaten by Israeli Police batons. Street vendors and shopkeepers were also attacked by Israeli Police. It was indeed a sad Friday.
Who gave the order to attack the worshippers inside the Al Aqsa Mosque?
Kobi Shabtai is the Commissioner of the Israel Police. In 2021, he ordered the police to prevent access to the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem in a similar escalation of tensions then.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir leaked a recording of a conversation with Shabtai, in which he said, “There’s nothing we can do. They murder. It’s in their nature. That’s the mentality of the Arabs.” There were calls by Israeli Arab politicians for his dismissal because of his racist remarks.
Why did Israeli police storm Al-Aqsa Mosque?
On April 4, about 80,000 worshippers attended the evening prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem. Some of the Palestinians stayed overnight in the mosque to pray in a tradition observed during Ramadan. Some voiced concern to protect the third holiest site in Islam from extremist Jewish settlers who had threatened to come to the mosque to offer animal sacrifices in honor of Passover, which began on April 4.
The extremist Jewish settlers have a plan to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build a Jewish Temple on its site.
By the early hours of April 5, Palestinians had filled the streets near the mosque to pray the early morning prayer. The Israeli police were ordered to prevent Palestinians under the age of 40 to enter the area for prayers. By evening, the police entered the mosque by force and arrested dozens of worshippers after severely beating both men and women praying inside.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a statement “What happened in Jerusalem is a major crime against the worshipers. Prayer in Al-Aqsa Mosque is not with the permission of the [Israeli] occupation, but rather it is our right.”
Israeli air strikes on Gaza
In response to the attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, several rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli air force then targeted multiple locations across Gaza causing damage to homes and the Al-Durrah Children’s Hospital in Gaza City. The Geneva Convention prohibits attacking civilian health facilities.
Israel has imposed a blockade upon Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since 2007, an illegal act of collective punishment. Israel’s repeated attacks upon the Gaza Strip have primarily impacted civilians, resulting in potential war crimes and crimes against humanity according to international investigations. Israel uses U.S. weapons to enforce its blockade and attack the Gaza Strip in violation of U.S. laws.
Lebanon rockets
A Palestinian resistance group in southern Lebanon launched rockets yesterday at Israel from Marjayoun in southern Lebanon in response to the Israeli attacks on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Israeli forces then retaliated by striking southern Lebanon, but both sides have since stopped, and no casualties were reported. The flare-up came at a time when Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is in Lebanon on a private visit.
Previous attacks
The Arab League met in an emergency session after the Israeli police raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque left at least 12 Palestinian injured, and 400 arrested on April 5, who remains in custody at Atarot police station in East Jerusalem.
The raids continued into the morning as Israeli police were videoed assaulting and pushing Palestinians out of the compound and preventing them from praying, while Israeli extremist settlers were allowed in under police protection. The police used stun grenades, tear gas, batons, and rifles to beat the worshippers. Some victims suffered respiratory injuries due to the gas which was thrown into the mosque after the police first broke the upper windows.
The Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “The extremist approaches that control the policy of the Israeli government will lead to widespread confrontations with the Palestinians if they are not put to an end.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported that the Israeli police prevented them from reaching the mosque to attend to three injured victims who needed hospitalization.
Israeli police said in a statement that they were forced to enter the compound after “masked agitators” locked themselves inside the mosque with fireworks, sticks, and stones. No violence would have occurred if the police had remained outside. The police had never been threatened by people inside the mosque, and it was an unprovoked attack on people praying inside a closed building.
“Israel is committed to maintaining freedom of worship, freedom of access to all religions and the status quo and will not allow violent extremists to change that,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu is calling the victims inside the mosque ‘extremists’ when in fact it is his citizens, the extremist Jews who provoked the attack by insisting on going to the mosque during Passover. Netanyahu’s government is an alliance between his party and extremist Jewish parties who call for the deportation of all Palestinians, and refuse all calls for human rights for Palestinians. Netanyahu is bound to be beholden to those extremists, even though he has ridiculed them in the past. If he were to stand up to them now, the alliance would be broken, his government would fall, and he would go straight to jail. The only thing keeping him out of jail on multiple corruption charges is those extremists like Ithamar Ben-Gvir.
The U.S. reaction
The UN, Turkey, the U.S., Canada, and several other countries and bodies have expressed concern about Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Washington said on Wednesday that it was “extremely concerned” about the violence.
“We urge all sides to avoid further escalation,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. “It is imperative now more than ever that Israelis and Palestinians work together to de-escalate tensions and restore calm.”
“We remain extremely concerned by the continuing violence and we urge all sides to avoid further escalation,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
Since 1948, the U.S. has provided Israel with over $125 billion in military aid, which transformed the Israeli forces and police into one of the world’s top forces. Israel has been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally, and yet the U.S. has never once held Israel accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the apartheid state in Israel.
With its silence, the U.S. stands complicit in the crimes against the Palestinian people who are deprived of every human right.
Turkey
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the Israeli police raid, calling such acts in the mosque compound a “red line” for Turkey.
“I condemn the vile acts against the first qibla of Muslims in the name of my country and people, and I call for the attacks to be halted as soon as possible,” Erdogan said. “The name of this is the politics of repression, the politics of blood, the politics of provocation. Turkey can never remain silent and unmoved in the face of these attacks.
Canada
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, “We need to see the Israeli government shifting in its approach, and Canada is saying that as a dear and close and steadfast friend to Israel, we are deeply concerned about the direction that the Israeli government has been taking.”
UAE
The UAE foreign ministry said in a statement, “The UAE called on Israeli authorities to halt escalation and avoid exacerbating tension and instability in the region.”
Saudi-Iran agreement
The recent restoration of full diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia has changed the Middle East. Now, the two biggest powerhouses in the region have put differences aside and are willing to work together for peace and security. Neither nation has normalized a relationship with Israel, even though Netanyahu stated in December 2022 that getting a deal with Saudi Arabia was one of the two biggest goals of his new administration.
The U.S. has not offered any leadership for decades on an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In the meantime, the U.S. has slipped from global leadership, especially from the days of influence in the Middle East, since the area has turned independent of dictates from the Oval Office.
‘Pentagon Leak’ Indicates US Allies Not Falling in Line With Washington’s All-In Ukraine Policy
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 11.04.2023
The apparent Pentagon leak has shown that Washington’s attempts to force its allies into following its military agenda is not working well anymore, as the Kiev regime is losing grip and ground, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, told Sputnik.
Alleged Pentagon documents, with some of them marked “top secret,” have found their way to the web over the past few weeks. The trove contains information ranging from American military plans in Ukraine, to sensitive data linked to China and the Middle East, and also shed new light on Washington’s spying on its allies. This is not the first time that Pentagon documents have been leaked: in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a senior research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies, turned over a batch of Pentagon files pertaining to the US’ involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 to The New York Times, which prompted a heated public debate. Meanwhile, the veracity of the latest trove is in question, as South Korea, the UK, Israel, and Bulgaria have dismissed the apparent leak as “false.”
“There’s so much speculation,” said Daniel McAdams. “Could it be someone from the Pentagon who understands that the White House has absolutely no idea what it’s doing and is dragging us into World War III? Could it be someone like that, a whistleblower? Possibly. Could it be someone in the White House understanding that this is a lost war? They’ve lost the war and they’re looking for an off-ramp. And if they could point out the fact that Ukraine’s resources are severely depleted when the so-called spring offensive comes and it fails like most people expect it to fail, they could say, ‘Well, the information was out there. You all knew that they didn’t have a chance anyway, so it’s not our fault. See you later.’ You know, that could be another thing.”
Judging from the documents in question, the US has recently been busy with persuading its allies to kick off deliveries of military equipment and lethal weapons to the Kiev regime. The alleged Pentagon files shed light on Seoul’s concerns that artillery shells provided to the US by South Korea could then be transferred to Ukraine. The batch also showed that the US has not given up hope on forcing Tel Aviv into sending missiles to the Kiev regime and even alleged that the Bulgarian government is considering sending Kiev its MiG fighter jets. However, the US allies have resolutely denied planning any of the aforementioned weaponrs deliveries to Kiev.
“I don’t think it’s anything unusual to see the US pressuring its so-called allies into doing what Washington wants done on foreign policy,” McAdams noted. “I mean, the leaks are very strange, because it’s not obvious what the purpose of leaking them was right now. The idea that the US is pressuring countries like South Korea and Israel is not a surprise, but it does show at least that the US is all-in on its Ukraine policy and it’s demanding that the rest of the world fall in line (…) There are two reasons [for the US pressuring its allies to give weapons to Ukraine]. First of all, the neocons (…) who run our foreign policy, they never back off. They never back away. That’s number one. And number two, this whole thing is a money-laundering scheme. The Central Europeans give up Soviet-era weapons, and then they use money given to them by Washington to purchase brand new weapons from the US military-industrial complex. This is a massive scam on a multi-tens of billions of dollars scale.”
The US sent Ukraine nearly $47 billion worth of military aid last year and still Washington is pressuring smaller allied nations to join its effort and fork out. However, the problem is that it isn’t working and those countries are pushing back and saying “no,” McAdams continued. He cited French President Emmanuel Macron as saying recently: “We can’t just follow the Americans on their foreign policy anymore.” According to the US scholar, this is a clear indication that “there is a shift coming.” In addition, it has also become clear that the Kiev regime is incapable of winning on the battlefield and negotiations are long overdue. The apparent Pentagon leak describes a gloomy picture of Ukraine’s depleted stockpiles and manpower.
“I think what it says is that it’s hopeless. But again, the strange thing about these leaks is that this is hardly a revelation. Anyone who follows the Ukraine-Russia conflict beyond just watching CNN understands that Ukraine is in a terrible situation. It’s already lost a thousand tanks. Another 100 tanks is not going to make a big difference. You can’t train a military on all of these different weapons systems and military systems and none of them are interconnected, none of them match. You’ve got a German tank over here, an English tank over here, and an American tank over here. You can’t win a war that way against any opponent, but certainly not against the Russian military. It can’t be won that way. So it’s not a revelation, it confirms what many people who are following this thing already know,” McAdams concluded.
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- Seyed M. Marandi: US-Iran War Inevitable: Kuwait and Bahrain May Fall
- Leaders Condemn Ansarallah Attack on Saudi Arabia While Ignoring Illegal War Against Yemen
- Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network
- Yemeni Armed Forces Warn Airlines Against Using Saudi Airports, Exempt Mecca and Medina
- If Americans Knew
- Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
- The Last-Minute Decision That Gave Israel Its Name
- The American Conservative: How Trump Made the World Go Nuclear
- Meet the US generals and admirals advancing Israeli policy
- Opinion: Why news organizations should boycott Israel
- The Israeli witch hunt of Sami Abu Shehadeh exposes the lie of the ‘Jewish and democratic’ state
- No state has a ‘right’ to exist – least of all Israel
- Testimonies about Gaza’s civilian death toll expose Israel’s atrocities – Daily Update
- How Israel Conquered the Latin American Right
- Agents search Rep. Omar’s Washington home in criminal probe as she vows she won’t ‘be silenced’
- No Tricks Zone
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
