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US efforts to ban TikTok are pure projection by the world’s biggest spy power

By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 4, 2023

As the United States contemplates a possible ban on TikTok, it relentlessly accuses Beijing of using the popular Chinese-owned social media application as a means of espionage, claiming that the Communist Party has access to user data.

Ironically, Washington itself is known to be doing exactly what US politicians are accusing China of doing. Using the unique advantage of having jurisdiction over the world’s top internet companies, the US has given itself the right to look into the private communications of foreign citizens anywhere in the world. Combine that data-sharing between intelligence agencies of the US and its allies, and you get the most comprehensive espionage regime in the world.

While American politicians and media constantly talk about fears of Chinese espionage, the near-absence of coverage of Washington’s own spying efforts ought to be a reminder of where the true power lies. When it comes to the shady activities of the CIA and the NSA, the public tends to only learn what they did years later from declassified documents, or what they “have been doing all along” from rare whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. All discussion and speculation about what they “may be doing right now” tends to be dismissed as conspiracy theories. Conversely, allegations of Chinese spying activities are constantly explained as “we all know they’re doing it” in the public eye, despite the lack of solid proof.

These warning signs remind us that the most cryptic source of all spying in the world is not China, but the US. Since the Second World War, the US has, in conjunction with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, maintained a worldwide spying regime known as the ‘Five Eyes’ which, in the age of mass communications, has been designed so that each government can bypass its own privacy laws and judicial restraints in order to spy on each other’s citizens, while supplying information within the group. In doing so, they have created a number of communication interception and surveillance programs, as revealed by Snowden, such as PRISM, ECHELON, XKEYSCORE, etc.

Of course, the US nearly holds a monopoly over the means of information and data gathering – definitely more so than any other country. This is because it has the privilege of having the world’s most dominant internet companies located on its own soil, such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Meta. These organizations are required by law to share data with the US government and authorities should they request it. But the US has also gone even further, as revealed by the Washington Post in 2020, the CIA had secretly acquired a Swiss cryptography company and used it to rig those machines to be able to spy on all who used them.

In pursuing its comprehensive spying regime, the US has been keeping an eye on friend and foe alike. This has included wiretapping the chancellor of Germany, coordinating with the intelligence services of other countries to undermine their commercial interests, such as Denmark and the Eurofighter program, and the list goes on.

And yet, American lawmakers suggest that you should truly be scared of TikTok, even as they prepare to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows US intelligence agencies to spy on foreign citizens’ phones and online communications without a warrant. Legalized in 2008, Section 702 needs to be reauthorized every few years lest it lapses under a sunset clause. Congress extended it in 2012 and again in 2018 and there’s little reason to believe it will fail to do so again before the next deadline, set for December this year.

The real problem Washington has with TikTok is not the alleged spying for Beijing’s benefit – it’s the fact that TikTok is the first global-spanning social media network of its magnitude that isn’t under US control – and thus, cannot be weaponized by the US for its own espionage. As such, it weakens the global surveillance regime built up by the US, which is, perhaps, the principal motivation behind Washington’s obsession with keeping control of “the future of the internet” out of Beijing’s hands. It’s more than a matter of spy games – it’s a matter of hegemony, and as such, it’s pure projection on Washington’s part to sound the alarm over TikTok’s alleged breaches of privacy.

As it stands, the US has an unrivaled digital spying network and is the greatest single threat to individual privacy online. If major internet companies are not owned or controlled by Washington or its closest allies, then the privacy of individuals around the world is increased, not decreased. The US has never been apologetic or open about how it monitors the communications of billions of people. Even if one has their suspicions about China, how can Washington’s claims about TikTok, and the motives behind the mounting pressure on the social media platform, be taken at face value?

April 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

China warns US seeking cyber ‘hegemony’

RT | April 8, 2023

China has dismissed US moves to control spyware and accused Washington of seeking to maintain “hegemony in cyberspace” under the false pretext of “national security.”

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the recent White House order to crack down on certain surveillance tech would not change the fact that Washington is the “biggest threat to global cybersecurity.” US agencies have targeted foreign states and companies “under the pretexts of national security and human rights without any evidence,” Ning claimed.

“The US government, in an attempt to maintain its hegemony in cyberspace, knowingly abuses technology for cyber surveillance and theft of secrets,” she told reporters on Friday, urging the US to “stop its global hacking operations.”

While US president Joe Biden’s new executive order called to ban “commercial spyware that poses risks to national security or has been misused by foreign actors,” a reporter at Friday’s press briefing noted the move was at odds with the administration’s previous work with the Israeli cyber surveillance firm NSO Group.

According to a report in the New York Times earlier this week, the US government signed a “secret contract” with the firm through a front company in 2021, which allowed officials to use NSO Group’s ‘Landmark’ geolocation tool to covertly track “thousands” of phone users in Mexico. The deal also “allows for Landmark to be used against mobile numbers in the United States,” though the outlet said it had no evidence that had happened yet.

Despite language in the executive order urging federal agencies to stop employing tools that have been “misused” by governments abroad, the deal with NSO Group “still appears to be active,” the NYT reported.

The Israeli firm has previously come under fire for allegedly working with more than a dozen foreign states to target lawyers, journalists and human rights activists using its powerful ‘Pegasus’ spyware program, including in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. Other media reports have also claimed the FBI bought the tech under a secret agreement and tested ways to hack into American cell phones, though it remains unclear to what extent the program was deployed against US citizens.

April 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Macron & Von Der Leyen’s Trip To China Served A Very Pragmatic Purpose

By Andrew Korybko | April 8, 2023

Many in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) dismissed the importance of French President Macron and European Commissioner Von Der Leyen’s trip to China, implying that President Xi wasted his precious time meeting with them over several days all for nothing. In truth, their trip actually served a pragmatic purpose in that it allowed each party to speak candidly about their concerns at this pivotal moment in the global systemic transition, hence why all sides made the time to meet with one another in Beijing.

While it’s true that the two European representatives wishfully hoped that they’d sway their Chinese counterpart around to seeing the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine the same way that they do, that wasn’t the primary reason why everyone took the time out of their busy schedules last week. What really brought them all together in Beijing was the impending inflection point that’s quickly approaching in that aforementioned conflict.

Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive will be a make-or-break moment. On the one hand, it could wildly succeed in pushing Russia back to its pre-2014 borders, in which scenario China could then feel compelled to arm Moscow as a last resort in order to preemptively avert the possibility of it losing. That would in turn prompt the US to pressure the EU into sanctioning the People’s Republic, thus spiking the chances that they’ll swiftly decouple, which would harm both of their interests while advancing the US’.

On the other hand, however, Kiev’s counteroffensive might not ultimately achieve all that much as evidenced by the Washington Post’s report a month back about how poorly its troops are faring. In that scenario, Russia could either flip the momentum to make a major breakthrough across the Line of Contact and beyond or seriously encourage Kiev to agree to a ceasefire. The last-mentioned possibility would certainly be supported by China and most likely France now too.

Considering the grand strategic stakes connected to the outcome of Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive, which will probably lead either to a Chinese-EU decoupling per the first scenario or China and France jointly mediating a ceasefire per the second, it made sense why they’d all meet ahead of time. The real drivers of events are the US, its Polish-led Central European partners (which includes the Baltic States), and their proxies in Kiev, whose success or lack thereof will shape the future of Chinese-EU ties.

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course, but the fact of the matter is that the EU is unlikely to be able to effectively resist the US’ sanctions pressure in the event that China feels compelled into arming Russia as a last resort as was earlier explained. They know how painful it would be for their already struggling economies, especially since this dramatic scenario could push them over the edge into a full-fledged recession, but that’s precisely why two of their top representatives wanted to speak to President Xi.

He wanted to speak to them too in order to clarify that China hasn’t yet armed Russia but perhaps also explain why it might feel compelled to do so in the hypothetical sense without directly confirming this contingency plan due to how sensitive it is. Simply put, the EU wanted to know what would have to happen for China to cross Brussels’ “red line” by arming Russia, while China wanted to know whether the EU would be willing to cross Beijing’s “red line” in that scenario by sanctioning it in response.

Both sides also wanted to explore just how far the other would go if they felt compelled by circumstances or pressured by the US respectively, ergo another reason why they all felt it important enough to take the time out of their busy schedules to meet over the past few days. If the whole purpose was just for the European representatives to spew propaganda to President Xi aimed at swaying him to their side in the NATO-Russian proxy war, then the trip wouldn’t have taken place.

The AMC’s top influencers were therefore far off the mark in assessing the purpose of last week’s visit, which failed to account for the pragmatic reason why all three parties prioritized meeting at this specific time. It was important for them to speak candidly about how they’ll react to the two most likely forthcoming scenarios to emerge from Kiev’s upcoming counteroffensive, which will result in them either decoupling under US pressure or working together to broker a ceasefire.

In the interim between their meeting and whichever of those two trajectories their ties are pushed along, all sides at least had something tangible to show with respect to the statements released by Macron and Von Der Leyen after their respective meetings with President Xi. Russia’s TASS drew attention to three highlights from the former concerning their support for a UN-enshrined multipolar world order, peace in Ukraine based on international law, and overlap on many other issues.

While cynics might claim that these statements have more symbolism to them than substance, they’re at least something that all parties can build upon in the scenario that China doesn’t feel compelled to arm Russia as a last resort or the EU largely resists the US’ pressure to sanction it if that happens. In any case, President Xi wouldn’t waste his valuable time staging a multi-day photo-op just for the sake of releasing several perfunctory statements so it should be taken for granted that China’s intent is sincere.

This insight further discredits the AMC’s over-simplistic conclusion that the whole trip was a gigantic waste of everyone’s time and failed to achieve anything worth the three parties’ while. It might not result in avoiding the worst-case sequence of events that was earlier described regarding their accelerated decoupling under US pressure, but the intent was to candidly discuss the future of their ties in that context in an attempt to mitigate the mutually disadvantageous consequences if that unfolds.

April 8, 2023 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pfizer’s RSV Vaccine for Older Adults Linked to Guillain-Barré Syndrome, But Drugmaker Says It’s ‘Safe’

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 7, 2023

People who receive Pfizer’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine should be monitored for Guillain-Barré syndrome, according to the authors of a Pfizer-funded study published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The paper — one of several published Wednesday reporting interim analyses for Pfizer’s phase 3 clinical trials for the RSV vaccine — concluded the vaccine was effective in preventing RSV in adults age 60 and over “without evident safety concerns.”

But that same article also flagged Guillain-Barré syndrome as a safety concern moving forward with the vaccine.

“If RSVpreF vaccine [Pfizer’s RSV vaccine] is approved and recommended, these adverse events warrant close monitoring in future studies and with real-world data and post-marketing surveillance,” the authors of the NEJM study said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to approve Pfizer’s RSV vaccine for older adults in May.

Safe and effective?

Guillain-Barré syndrome is a rare disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks its own nerves. Symptoms can range from brief weakness to paralysis.

The FDA asked Pfizer to include the condition as an “important potential risk” of the vaccine and to develop a safety study to monitor for potential cases if the shot is approved, CNBC reported.

When the FDA vaccine advisory panel met in February to review Pfizer’s data pre-publication, there was substantial disagreement about the data on safety and effectiveness, although the majority of the committee voted to recommend the vaccine for approval.

Four of 12 committee members voted that the safety data was not adequate for approval — and one abstained — because of their concerns with the Guillain-Barré cases.

Four committee members also voted the evidence of vaccine effectiveness was not adequate for approval, while seven said it was and one member abstained.

In the NEJM study, one person developed Guillain-Barré syndrome and another developed Miller Fisher syndrome, a subset of Guillain-Barré. The symptoms appeared six and seven days post-vaccination, respectively.

The person with Miller Fisher syndrome recovered. The person diagnosed with Guillain-Barré continues to suffer from loss of motor function.

CNBC reported:

“In the New England Journal of Medicine article, the scientists said the two cases occurred in patients who were in an age group that has an increased risk of developing Guillain-Barré. Potential factors other than the vaccine also could have caused the individuals to develop the syndrome, they added.

“But the FDA said the agency views the Guillain-Barré cases as possibly related to the vaccine because the patients developed the syndrome shortly after receiving the shot, according to briefing documents published in February.

“Pfizer concluded that the cases were unrelated, and the clinical trial’s data monitoring committee did not identify any safety concerns with the vaccine.”

Dr. Hana El Sahly, the FDA committee chair and professor of molecular virology and microbiology and infectious diseases at the Baylor College of Medicine, said Guillain-Barré has an incidence of about 1 in 100,000 among people ages 60 and older. But in the vaccine trial, the rate was closer to 1 in 9,000, which is significantly higher.

“It’s significant in terms of incidence,” she said. The FDA advisors told Pfizer that safety monitoring for Guillain-Barré after FDA approval “would be crucial,” CNBC reported.

There is currently no vaccine approved to prevent RSV, a lower respiratory disease that is one of the most common causes of childhood cold-like illness and was first discovered in humans in 1956.

The illness is mild for most people.

In children under age 5, RSV causes 58,000 to 80,000 hospitalizations per year and 100 to 300 deaths.

In adults ages 65 and older, RSV causes 6,000 to 10,000 deaths and 60,000 to 160,000 hospitalizations per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Research shows the virus originated in monkeys housed in a Maryland facility where they were used to conduct polio vaccine research.

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), told The Defender :

“I find it ironic that Pfizer is creating a vaccine for RSV, an illness that was created due to the development of the polio vaccine. It seems like vaccine manufacturers are paid to prevent diseases that they already created.

“The incidence of Guillain-Barré is very troubling and although many patients recover, there is nerve damage associated with it leading to permanent weakness, numbness and fatigue.”

The NEJM study reported that the vaccine was 86% effective at preventing lower respiratory tract illness with three or more symptoms, and 66% effective at preventing the illness with two or more symptoms, among adults over age 60.

The study determined there were not enough cases of severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract illness — meaning cases needing hospitalization or ventilation or extra oxygen — to determine whether the vaccine was effective for those cases, CNN reported.

RSV vaccines for pregnant women failed to meet major goal in trials

Pfizer is also seeking FDA approval for its vaccine to protect infants from RSV by vaccinating pregnant mothers.

However, in the interim data on clinical trials, also published Wednesday in the NEJM, the vaccine failed to meet one of its two main goals.

Last year, Pfizer reported that its vaccine was highly effective at protecting newborns from RSV. The drugmaker also sought rapid FDA approval for the vaccine for pregnant mothers.

The FDA is expected to decide by August.

According to the study published Wednesday, the vaccine was 82% effective in preventing severe lower respiratory tract illness — such as very low oxygen levels or need for ventilator support — in infants in the first 90 days of life, but that dropped to 69% efficacy up to 180 days after a baby is born.

But the vaccine failed to meet its second big goal: reducing non-severe RSV-associated lower respiratory illness in infants.

The study enrolled 7,128 women — half received the RSV vaccine and half received the placebo.

Severe illness occurred within three months in six infants whose mothers received the vaccine, compared with 33 infants from the placebo group who contracted serious RSV infections.

The company evaluated 3,570 infants as part of the study, Reuters reported.

Big Pharma’s race for the RSV vaccine

The RSV virus causes annual outbreaks of respiratory illnesses in all age groups, typically during the fall, winter and spring in most regions of the U.S. It has existed for decades and doesn’t usually spark alarm.

But RSV made headlines last fall as part of a “tripledemic” — COVID-19, flu and RSV — scare, just as these new RSV products were preparing to come on the market.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman-on-leave, said at the time, “fear sells,” tweeting:

As The Defender reported, pharmaceutical companies have been working on the development of a vaccine for RSV since the 1960s — at times with deadly outcomes.

After a disastrous attempt at producing a vaccine, where 80% of vaccinated children were hospitalized, RSV vaccine development was put on hold.

Over the last several years, “lured by the prospect of a large untapped global RSV vaccine market,” four manufacturers set their sights on RSV vaccine development for infants, pregnant women and the elderly.

Initially, Johnson & Johnson and Bavarian Nordic also were developing RSV vaccines, but the former dropped out of the race last month and Bavarian Nordic’s clinical trials are in progress.

That leaves Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), who have been in a tight race to be the first Big Pharma player to tap into the RSV vaccine market, which is estimated to be over $5 billion and could exceed $10 billion by 2030, Reuters reported last month.

Both companies have RSV vaccines under regulatory review with the FDA.

The FDA advisory committee voted unanimously in favor of GSK’s vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing lower respiratory tract disease caused by RSV in adults aged 60 and above, and voted 10 to 2 for its safety last month, based on interim data presented last October, Reuters 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.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The Great ‘Disinformation’ Hoax

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | APRIL 7, 2023

Writer Jacob Siegel has talked to UnHerd‘s Freddie Sayers about America’s new censorship complex. In a 13,000 word essay for Tablet, Siegel explains how ‘disinformation’ is an invention that has morphed into a tool of governance. He told Sayers:

Disinformation is a means by which the Government in cooperation with private tech companies and civil society, NGO groups, censors, uses extra-legal means to censor political discourse around issues like Covid vaccinations, lockdowns, the elections. And in the U.S., it’s a free-for-all. It’s a blank cheque to censor anything. So on one level, disinformation is ostensibly censorship in order to protect national security. In a larger sense, that machinery of censorship is not opportunistically looking to erase certain things from the public record that are unflattering to political elites. It’s actually rather more than that. It is a means of governance. It is a system of power. It is its own system of power, outside of the formal, official — in the U.S., constitutional — means by which the Government is supposed to operate.

How did this ‘tool of governance’ become so mainstream, asks Sayers? The U.S. Government, Siegel points out, has long engaged in promoting disinformation of its own, but the ‘war on disinformation’ was begun by Barack Obama. One of the last things the former President did while in office was sign into law the ‘Countering Foreign Disinformation Act’, which fully committed the U.S. to a counter-disinformation campaign, which according to Siegel “was really always in spirit, and very quickly in practice as well, an information war directed against the American people”.

Siegel continues:

There was originally this foreign dimension… But from the very beginning, ‘foreign’ is a kind of ruse that’s setting up what is actually a much larger, effectively omni-directional structure, because the internet is global, that can censor anywhere but which is, in practice, focused on the domestic political environment inside the U.S. and specifically on this populist surge, which is taken as an existential threat by the ruling party officials in the U.S. who see populism in truly apocalyptic terms.

Siegel argues that the consequences of this censorship for American society should not to be minimised:

The system of secrecy and the Government’s own promotion of conspiracies, like the idea that Donald Trump was an agent of Vladimir Putin or a Russian stooge, which the U.S. intelligence agencies promoted. It’s not simply that they are wrong or pernicious, or that this reflects corruption. They actually drive people crazy. They deranged the political system. They ruin the ability for people to engage sanely and transparently in their own politics.

Worth reading (and watching) in full.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

DHS is sued for censorship records on meetings with Big Tech

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 6, 2023

Judicial Watch has decided to sue the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the federal agency failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to meetings with Big Tech representatives where censorship was allegedly discussed.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to force the DHS to disclose documents detailing how its Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) worked with companies behind social media platforms in order to censor speech.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

The initial FOIA request dates back to December of last year, and the advocacy group said that it wanted to gain access to records and communications of CISA Director Jen Easterly, a former CISA director, Christopher Krebs, former CISA Senior Cybersecurity Advisor Matt Masterson, and CISA Senior Cybersecurity Advisor Brian Scully.

These documents concern meetings that CISA either hosted or facilitated with Meta and Facebook, , Wikimedia Foundation, Pinterest, and Microsoft’s LinkedIn on the topic of “election security.”

Furthermore, Judicial Watch wanted information about several other meetings, including those with DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, FBI, US Secret Service, NSA, and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence employees, related to the previously mentioned meetings, and those with Election Infrastructure Subsector Government Coordinating Council.

The Judicial Watch press release refers to the Twitter Files where journalist Matt Taibbi on several occasions mentions CISA’s involvement in censorship activities, and cites these and the dates when the contacts or communication occurred.

The group also refers to Twitter Files revelations regarding the FBI’s role in censorship decisions, notably the pressure it exerted on the site to act in this way, and Taibbi’s testimony before Congress about the collusion between the Biden administration – including the Democratic National Committee and federal, state, and local law enforcement – and Big Tech, with the goal of suppressing legitimate information.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton described all this, and more that is mentioned in the statement, as “an unholy conspiracy in the Biden administration to censor Americans in collusion with Big Tech.”

As for the lawsuit, Fitton said it “shows the censorship abuse is furthered by unlawful secrecy and cover-ups.”

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The West sets a disturbing new precedent over murdered Russian military blogger

By Rachel Marsden | RT | April 6, 2023

Apparently terrorism and murdering reporters get a free pass if the Western establishment doesn’t like the target’s profile – or if the perpetrator risks being linked to an ally.

The radio silence from the West is deafening in the wake of the murder of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky at a cafe in St. Petersburg. Tatarsky was killed after being handed a statue by a young woman, Darya Trepova, that subsequently blew up the entire venue.

For all of the Western officials’ differences with Russia, can they really not at least bring themselves to condemn a blatant act of terrorism in the middle of a major city center? We’re talking here about the same folks who spent two decades kicking down doors around the world under the guise of fighting a “Global War on Terrorism.”

Just a few years ago, cartoonists and writers for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were gunned down in broad daylight at their Paris office by jihadists who objected to the publication’s portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed. Western leaders roundly condemned that terrorist act, standing firmly on the principle that you couldn’t just go around murdering people who conveyed thoughts and views that you didn’t like. Many of these leaders even traveled to Paris to march alongside a massive crowd in defense of freedom of expression and the press.

Now, however, they can’t even bother to muster the most meager defense of the same principles in the wake of Tatarsky’s murder in an attack that investigators claim is linked to Ukraine.

It seems that whenever there’s any alleged involvement of Ukraine, the West conveniently turns a blind eye. The automobile explosion that killed Russian journalist and activist, Darya Dugina, near Moscow comes to mind. “American officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it,” reported the New York Times last October. Similarly, the Washington Post reported this week that the “unwritten rule” among Western officials is “don’t talk about Nord Stream” – the pipeline network carrying gas from Russia to Europe that was mysteriously blown up last year – since they “would rather not have to deal with the possibility that Ukraine or its allies were involved.”

Then there is the “Mirotvorets” list of journalists and activists maintained by Kiev-based NGO, the Mirotvorets Center, which names people “whose actions have signs of crimes against the national security of Ukraine, peace, human security, and the international law.” It has yet to either be shut down by the Ukrainian government or denounced by Western allies, despite a 2017 United Nations report on human rights in Ukraine urging Ukrainian authorities to address it.

Acts of terrorism and affronts to free speech are clearly in the eye of the Western beholder, which would explain why much of the media rhetoric focuses on Tatarsky’s pro-Russia stance. The void left by the lack of official reaction from Western officials is being filled with Western press articles focusing on the Ukrainian-born blogger’s prior involvement with Russian-backed separatist forces in 2014 in the Donbass. There, he got his start in covering events through his Telegram channel, which grew to become wildly popular, with CNN noting his “ardent pro-war commentary.” But if prior military experience of some kind, and taking sides in one’s coverage of armed conflict, was justification for murdering journalists, then every Western veteran who started a blog, and every opinion journalist, would be fair game.

There was no shortage of Western outrage over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi embassy in Istanbul a few years ago, despite his longstanding activism against the Saudi leadership. Why should the death of this Russian blogger be treated any differently?

Bulgarian investigative journalist, Cristo Grozev, who was heavily featured in the Academy Award-winning feature documentary film about Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny, apparently thinks that some people are just “legitimate targets”  for terrorism, and argues that the cafe may not have been a “purely civilian location.” Although it was previously owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of Russian private military enterprise, Wagner Group, that doesn’t magically transform a dining establishment, which welcomes anyone right off the street in the middle of a major city, into some kind of a military base. If an American general walks into the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pentagon City, Virginia, it doesn’t suddenly turn the hotel or its bar into a legitimate military target for bombing by some entity that has a score to settle with Washington.

And what about every journalist who has been embedded as the guest of Western troops in conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan and has promoted the talking points of their hosts while siding with their own country? Are they fair game for picking off now, too?

The prominent Washington Institute for the Study of War think tank, whose board members include American generals Jack Keane and David Petraeus, as well as Washington’s former ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, previously and routinely qualified Tatarsky as a prominent Russian military blogger whose work they apparently considered worthy of informing their research.

It seems like there’s an effort underway by some members of the Western establishment to reframe this egregious act of terrorism and murder as something trivial, all because the target was a Russian whose views they don’t like – and that’s an awfully slippery slope.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Almost two million unexploded bombs cleared after US war in Laos

RT | April 7, 2023

More than 1.8 million unexploded bombs were cleared in Laos between 1996 and February 2023, the Southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare revealed this week.

A total of 1,808,254 unexploded ordnances (UXOs) were removed from an area covering 80,000 hectares, making the land safe for farming and other forms of agricultural development, according to Minister Padeumphone Sonthany.

The figures were announced at a press conference in the country’s capital Vientiane on Tuesday on the 18th annual International Day for UXO/Mine Awareness.

Laos is, per capita, the most heavily-bombed country in the world. From 1964 to 1973, the US military dropped more than two million tons of bombs on the nation during the Vietnam War – more than on Germany and Japan combined throughout World War II. It is estimated that around 30% of the bombs dropped did not explode.

The US conducted prolonged bombing campaigns – the so-called ‘Secret War’ – in Laos during the Vietnam War in a bid to disrupt supply lines between the country and Vietnam. The scale of the attacks, which were conducted in secrecy by the CIA, were revealed during a 1971 congressional hearing, as well as by US media investigations.

Of the 1.8 million UXOs removed and safely detonated during the period, 1,056,393 were cluster bombs. Another 4,336 were characterized as ‘large’ bombs, and 2,456 were landmines. Some 745,069 of other types of munitions were included in the statistics reported by China’s Xinhua News Agency, which cited Laotian media reports from last Wednesday.

The report said that 2,846 people had been involved in UXO-related accidents between 2015 and 2022, and that people from 4,092 villages across the country had been educated about the risks posed by UXOs. It added that the munitions continue to pose a grave threat to civilians and remain a barrier to increased agricultural production.

Rice is a key agricultural product in Laos, with over 60% of arable land used for its cultivation.

It is estimated that around 80 million unexploded live bomblets remain obscured in Laos, a product of the 270 million cluster bombs previously dropped on the country by US forces.

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Joe Biden’s Most Awkward Gaffes | Biden 2020 Compilation

Matt Orfalea | March 25, 2023

Joe Biden 2020. The definitive compilation. I can mix up words & numbers as much as the next guy but no mentally fit person REPEATEDLY forgets that they are running for President of the United States. Yikes!

https://twitter.com/0rf

April 7, 2023 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Hatchet job on RFK, Jr. is new low for ‘journalism’

The AP has jumped the shark and shows again the MSM is among the most toxic agents in society

By Bill Rice, Jr. | April 6, 2023

I was working on another big article when news hits that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is planning to run for president.

I’m  going to have to come back to that article after reading the most egregious smear piece I’ve ever read. The article was written by an unnamed AP “journalist.”

Whether you are a fan of Kennedy or can’t stand him, every person in America should read this hatchet job for confirmation that journalism in America has now fallen below the gutter. 

The real threat to America and “democracy” isn’t RFK, Jr. its instead journalists at once prestigious news organizations who now exist to attack people brave enough to dissent from the authorized narratives.

What follows are excerpts from this hit piece of malicious slander. I added my comments although the examples of yellow journalism are so obvious I probably didn’t need to. (Emphasis added).

***

“NEW YORK (AP) — Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist and scion of one of the country’s most famous political families, is running for president …”

Comment: The writer got “anti-vaccine activist” into the story after the fourth word. The not- exactly subtle theme of the article is that “anti-vaccine activists” are worse and more dangerous than communists, NAZI’s, KKK leaders and “gold bugs.” As we will see, they are just as atrocious as supporters of Donald Trump, January 6th “insurrectionists” and deniers of Russian election “hacking.”

“… The 69-year-old’s campaign to challenge incumbent President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination is a long shot ….”

Comment: So there we have it: The AP somehow already knows Kennedy has no chance to defeat his opponent, a man who has the worst approval ratings in history and is suffering from ever-worsening and plainly obvious dementia (a medical condition the AP will never report).

“…  Kennedy … was once a bestselling author and environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water …”

Comment: In this entire “fair and balanced” article, this is the closest thing readers get to a flattering comment about Mr. Kennedy.

FWIW, Kennedy is still a best-selling author. His book “The Real Anthony Fauci” sold more copies than any non-fiction book published in the last two years. (In my own book review, I called this book perhaps the most important non-fiction book published in my lifetime.)

“… But more than 15 years ago, he became fixated on a belief that vaccines are not safe. He emerged as one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement, and his work has been described by public health experts and even members of his own family as misleading and dangerous …”

Comment: It doesn’t matter that his “fixation” that many vaccines are unsafe … is 100 percent correct.

Per the “watchdog” and skeptical journalists at the Associated Press, America’s “public health experts” have never uttered an incorrect statement in their entire careers.

For example, on Covid topics, their batting average is 1.000. The science is completely “settled,” per the experts. It’s only the “old” debunked science that says it’s okay to keep challenging and questioning pronouncements of other scientists.

“Kennedy had been long involved in the anti-vaccine movement, but the effort intensified after the COVID-19 pandemic and development of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Comment: The article correctly points out that Kennedy is skeptical about the safety and efficacy of many vaccines. Why in the heck would he get fired up about a “vaccine” that’s not even a real vaccine, a gene therapy that was mandated and shot into the arms of billions of people after three months of alleged safety trials? A shot he thinks – based on his copious research – is killing or injuring millions of people, including innocent children.

I would hope such a person’s activism would “intensify” when the Mother of All Dangerous Vaccines was pushed onto the world.

If Kennedy just stuck to railing against contaminated drinking water at Camp Lejeune or asbestos cases, his life’s calling might be acceptable to the AP. But screaming about a vaccine that 250 million Americans got that is causing 100,000 times more harm is simply … not acceptable.

“… His anti-vaccine charity, Children’s Health Defense, prospered during the pandemic, with revenues more than doubling in 2020 to $6.8 million …”

Comment:  Why did his charity “prosper” and get so many more donors? Could it be that large numbers of people and donors support his work? Does the AP have a problem with non-profits whose work has large numbers of supporters?

Also, Kennedy is the founder and leader of  a non-profit that is growing and attracting far more supporters. No other non-profit is doing this work. This means Kennedy went out on a limb by himself. The fact Children Health Defense is becoming very popular and more important actually speaks favorably of Kennedy’s leadership and organizational talents.

“… His organization has targeted false claims at groups that may be more prone to distrust the vaccine, including mothers and Black Americans, experts have said, which could have resulted in deaths during the pandemic …”

Comment: What are these “false claims?” The AP doesn’t tell us. This is the same AP that’s swallowed hook-line-and-sinker probably 100 “false claims” about Covid.

And note how the author sneaks in his/her point about Kennedy’s efforts harming “Black Americans” and “mothers.”

Re-stated: Kennedy’s work is killing black people … and if you are targeting black people for abuse and death, you are a racist … which means your comments must be banned by social media (which actually happened to Kennedy).

It never occurs to this writer that Kennedy might be trying to save or help black people … “mothers” too.

“… Kennedy released a book in 2021, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in which he accused the U.S.’s top infectious disease doctor of assisting in “a historic coup d’etat against Western democracy” and promoted unproven COVID-19 treatments such as ivermectin, which is meant to treat parasites, and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine …”

Comment: Anthony Fauci did play a leading role in a coup against Western democracy.”

“Teflon Tony” led the movement to ban worship services, visits to nursing homes, shut down businesses, closed schools, made wearing worthless masks mandatory … all by emergency orders or bureaucratic edicts.

In a real “democracy,” big decisions are supposed to be voted on by elective bodies after serious and open debate. Our “New Normal” democracy is actually totalitarianism run amok. This is the type of “Western democracy” endorsed by the AP.

It has also been proven, per multiple studies, that ivermectin and HCQ benefit certain Covid patients. I would argue – like Kennedy does in his book – it’s also been proven that studies reaching this conclusion were sabotaged by people like Anthony Fauci.

“… His push against the COVID-19 vaccine has linked him at times with anti-democratic figures and groups. Kennedy has appeared at events pushing the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and with people who cheered or downplayed the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 …”

Comment: This is run-of-the-mill slander by association. The writer names allegedly awful figures and then links one person to these supposedly dangerous and nefarious individuals.

“… A photo posted on Instagram showed Kennedy backstage at a July 2021 Reawaken America event with former President Donald Trump’s ally Roger Stone, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and anti-vaccine profiteer Charlene Bollinger. All three have promoted the lie about the 2020 election being stolen …”

Comment: Did you get this? Someone once snapped a photo of Kennedy with Roger Stone and Michael Flynn at … a political rally. In the AP’s more-healthy democracy, people simply can’t attend political rallies to support a cause they think is important.

Note: It’s already “settled” political science that no election fraud happened in the 2020 election. This is a “lie” just like it’s the “truth” that Russia stole the 2016 election after a couple dozen Russian trolls mades some posts that nobody saw on Facebook.

“… The photo was posted but later removed by Bollinger, who has appeared with Kennedy at multiple events. She and her husband sponsored an anti-vaccine, pro-Trump rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6. Bollinger celebrated the attack and her husband tried to enter the Capitol. Kennedy later appeared in a video for their Super PAC …”

Comment: Here we have a shocking case of another outlawed, undemocratic “pro-Trump rally.” Apparently Kennedy is disqualified from running for president because somebody he knows “entered the Capitol” on January 6th.

“… Kennedy has repeatedly invoked Nazis and the Holocaust when talking about measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, such as mask requirements and vaccine mandates …”

Comment: Showing your papers, persecuting “anti-vaxxers,” “anti-maskers” and “anti-lockdowners” are NAZI-like tactics. So are “quarantine camps.” So are exhortations of political leaders to rat-out your neighbors who are not complying with their masters’ orders.

Plenty of credible scientists and skeptics believe millions of innocent people have already died and/or suffered life-altering medical conditions because of these alleged “mitigation” edicts. Those are Holocaust-type numbers. If the analogy fits …

“… Kennedy has at times invoked his family’s legacy in his anti-vaccine work, including sometimes using images of President Kennedy.”

Comment: To seal the narrative that Kennedy is beyond the pale, we learn that the fiend has actually shown images of his late uncle.

Presidents Biden, Obama and Bill Clinton can publish images of President Kennedy, but not his nephew.

“His sister Kerry Kennedy … told the Associated Press in a 2021 interview her brother is “completely wrong on this issue and very dangerous.”

Comment: This is the last sentence of the story. RFK, Jr. – per his sister no less – is “completely wrong on this issue and very dangerous.”

Kennedy’s sister probably hasn’t even read his book, where Kennedy included more than 2,200 footnotes to back up his claims. She’s probably never spoken to one mother who is anguished (and feels hopeless) because of the loss or debilitating injury suffered by their beloved child.

One definition of courage is one’s willingness to do something he knows could be dangerous to his life, or harm his career …. Or  cause a person to become estranged from long-time friends and family members. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has stuck to his principles and convictions even though his own sister apparently hates what he is trying to do.

Final Points …

Significantly and tellingly, this article does not include one paragraph or quote of anyone saying anything complimentary about Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Here is a man who wrote one of the most important books of our times, started an ultra-successful if politically incorrect non-profit (Children’s Health Defense) and has filed numerous lawsuits against Big Pharma and other companies that have harmed innocent people.

It would have been easy for  fair-minded journalists to find thousands of Americans who had glowing things to say about Robert F. Kennedy and his life’s work and how it benefitted them. But the article did not include even one favorable quote.

Kennedy also started a journalism site (The Defender ) which is publishing hundreds of stories that the mainstream press and AP won’t write about.

Almost by himself, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has begun to change the narrative on the entire corrupt Science/Medical Industrial Complex.

Forget his scholarship on the Covid atrocities, millions of people are now receptive to his long-ignored claim that vaccines are probably causing an epidemic of autism (today, 1-in-34 kids are now diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum).

He also rails against ever-increasing censorship and has been one of the most conspicuous victims of this Orwellian campaign.

Probably within one hour of his announcement he was running for president, the AP hit the wires with an article seeking to make this man seem like the worst villain in history.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. must scare the hell out of the people and organizations he wants to purge and discredit.

Since his life’s calling threatens the agendas of the worst actors in our society and threatens the Status Quo, they will do anything in their power to harpoon his presidential bid before it even gets started.

Of course his campaign is a “long shot.” He’s fighting the most corrupt and dangerous organizations on the planet … one of these organizations being the Associated Press.

April 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Running For President in 2024

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | April 5, 2023

For the last three years, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been one of America’s strongest voices in defending our Constitutional Republic from public health officials and politicians wielding emergency power. In a series of rousing speeches reminiscent of his father’s famous University of Capetown address in 1966, RFK, Jr. has articulated why we should never allow our constitution to be compromised by fallible men who promise to keep us safe. Today, April 5, 2023, he filed with the Federal Election Commission to run for President of the United States in the 2024 election.

Mr. Kennedy was an environmental activist thirty years before it became fashionable. For decades, he worked as an attorney to protect the natural world from corporate industrial polluters. He has been especially troubled by the contamination of our waterways such as the Hudson River with hazardous waste, including mercury. In 2005 he became concerned about a mercury compound used as a preservative in childhood vaccines, which prompted him to conduct a thorough investigation of vaccine safety in general. He found it especially alarming that the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act granted vaccine manufacturers immunity from all civil and criminal liability for injuries or deaths caused by their products.

In the absence of legal liability, he realized that the only thing likely to regulate their conduct is scrutiny from a public figure, and because no other public figures were stepping up to do it, he himself assumed the responsibility. No good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes. Mr. Kennedy’s critical scrutiny of vaccine makers (coining billions while bearing zero product liability) has not been met with debate, but with vitriolic, ad hominem attacks and accusations of being a conspiracy theorist. Implied in these attacks is that no one should dare even question the safety of vaccines.

In 2021, he published his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, meticulously cataloguing the corruption, cronyism, and abuse of power rampant in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex in which Dr. Fauci has played a key role. Every statement in Mr. Kennedy’s book is documented with a citation of primary sources including federal agency documents, peer reviewed medical literature, and public records. Any reader can easily evaluate these sources. The Kindle edition features hyperlinks to the documents.

The sixty-nine year-old Kennedy was educated at Harvard College and the London School of Economics, graduating from Harvard in 1976 with a Bachelor of Arts in American History and Literature. He went on to earn a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia and a Master of Laws from Pace University.

It seems to me that even Republicans and dedicated Donald Trump supporters should welcome this momentous event. Mr. Kennedy has repeatedly demonstrated his dedication to preserving the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life it sustains. More so than any public figure with presidential ambitions, he has fought to protect individual American citizens from federal mandates and other acts of state overreach. He may be the only Madisonian classical liberal left who has an affiliation with the Democratic Party. Against the Republican contender in 2024, Mr. Kennedy would be an honorable and worthy opponent.

Readers of this Substack are encouraged to register on his TEAM KENNEDY website, which will soon announce the details of his campaign kickoff ceremony in Boston on April 19.

April 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Environmentalism, Solidarity and Activism | | Leave a comment

China issues correction to US and NATO over Ukraine

RT | April 6, 2023

NATO, not China, is responsible for the crisis in Ukraine and has no moral standing from which to criticize Beijing, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during a press conference on Thursday.

“The US and the military bloc of NATO shoulder unshirkable responsibilities on the Ukraine crisis,” Mao continued, arguing that NATO “is in no position to criticize or pressure China” to take its side.

“On the Ukraine crisis, China upholds an objective and just position. We have been advocating a political settlement of the crisis and working for talks for peace,” she explained, claiming that this was a strategy “supported by the vast majority of countries in the world.”

“History will tell who is truly standing on the right side upholding justice.”

On Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned China to curtail its “growing alignment” with Moscow, accusing Beijing of “prop[ping] up Russia’s economy” and “refus[ing] to condemn Russia’s aggression.”

Supplying weapons to NATO’s arch-nemesis, Stoltenberg added, “would be a historic mistake, with profound implications.”

Beijing has repeatedly denied having any plans to provide lethal aid to Russia, which has likewise denied reports that it has requested military equipment from the Chinese.

The two nations have grown closer over the past year, vowing to “further deepen mutual military trust” after last month’s meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping at the Kremlin.

However, Putin more recently clarified that there was no “military alliance with China” on the horizon, merely “cooperation in the sphere of military-technical interaction.” The West, he argued, was merely projecting its fantasy of a new axis similar to the fascist enemy of World War II onto its chief geopolitical rivals.

The US has nevertheless sanctioned several Chinese companies for allegedly supplying parts used in Iranian drones, which Washington claims are being used by Russia in Ukraine.

The US Treasury announced new sanctions on five Chinese companies and one individual said to be “responsible for the sale and shipment of thousands of aerospace components” to Iran, including parts that could be used to make drones. Iran, too, has denied providing weapons to Russia for use in the Ukrainian conflict.

April 6, 2023 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

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