US wants to build military bases in Uruguay
By Ahmed Adel | November 7, 2022
A draft defence cooperation agreement between Washington and Montevideo, which could allow the installation of US military bases in Uruguay, is once again being considered in the Uruguayan Parliament. Allowing US military bases would effectively damage the sovereignty of Uruguay, a country which currently maintains good relations with both Russia and China.
Senator Gustavo Penadés for Uruguay’s ruling centre-right National Party claimed that the project only involves “some type of investment in construction” and not the permanent presence of US forces in Uruguayan territory. For his part, the president of the Uruguayan Defence Commission and of the opposition centre-left Broad Front, León Lev, admitted that the project is “ambiguous” and will instigate “profound discussion” in Parliament.
The project is defined as “a complementary agreement” for “reciprocal provision” of “logistical support, supplies and services.” It says that Uruguay and the US express their “desire to improve the interoperability, preparation and efficiency of their respective military forces through greater logistical cooperation.” In addition, the purpose of the agreement is to “facilitate logistical support” between the two countries during “combined exercises, training, displacements, stopovers, operations or other cooperative activities.”
Effectively, it is very clear that the bilateral agreement will in fact enable US actions more than anything else. For example, the supply of services that can be provided to each other in reality only benefits the US as Uruguay does not have the capacity to do military missions or operations in North America like the US does in South America. It cannot be overlooked that the initiative is from the US and is drafted in the terms that it proposed.
The project was first discussed in 2012, during the government of José Pepe Mujica, but it did not have the support of parliament. Today, just like in 2012, if the parliament authorises it, it would mean a loss of Uruguayan sovereignty over a part of its territory.
According to Senator Penadés, there is no possibility of US bases in Uruguay and he believes that this interpretation of the agreement is incorrect. The legislator claimed that it is a “standard agreement” like the ones that have been signed between the US and other countries on defence cooperation. When asked what the project refers to when it says “operations in bases [and the construction corresponding to that support],” Penadés said it is about the “infrastructure” that is built in “cooperation,” such as, according to him, hospitals.
For his part, Lev affirmed that the project is “ambiguous” and will provoke “very deep discussion” in parliament.
“As it is ambiguous, it is going to give rise to at least a very deep discussion, I have no doubt. This is not going to be voted on tables and this discussion is going to take many months, if not years. But one can never anticipate,” he said, adding: “There are two main laws for the Government, such as the organic law of the Armed Forces and the retirement law. Parliament is not in a position to quickly study this project.”
Lev pointed out that, in general, agreements with foreign countries take months or years to approve.
“An issue of this nature, with the ambiguities, especially with this potential base, is going to generate a deep debate. The Uruguayan government does not propose the agreement, it makes a scheme with the US and proposes what Washington aspires to. But in politics one should never rush. One has to carefully analyse and see the actions of the political system,” Lev said.
The underlying issue is that the Uruguayan military’s limited defence budget means that it is reliant on the generosity of donor nations. In one example, the US State Department GPOI funds contributed $36 million since 2008 in equipment, training, and construction for the Uruguayan Armed Forces. This is evidently a paltry amount, but in the context of the Uruguayan military, which has a total budget of $1.16 billion, it is significant.
It is recalled that Daniel Castillos, Uruguay’s Ambassador to Moscow, announced in April that his country does not support the economic sanctions on Russia.
“Despite the current situation and criticism regarding [Russia’s] special military operation [in Ukraine], Uruguay has not imposed and does not support any economic and financial sanctions against Russia… and maintains an interest in strengthening trade and maintaining good relations,” he said, adding that it was “necessary” to cooperate with Russia.
For the US, it is important that initiatives like the defence cooperation agreement are signed with Uruguay so that the country can be brought under its sphere of influence. Uruguay currently has friendly relations with the US, Russia and China, but Washington hopes to upset this balance by slowly influencing the country, beginning with military bases. For now, although the US undoubtedly has ambitions for military bases in Uruguay, it appears unlikely to happen in the short and medium term.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Combining COVID-19 BA4/5 and Influenza mRNA
Recipe for Disaster
By Dr. Peter McCullough & John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 5, 2022
Recently both Pfizer and Moderna announced they were developing a combination injection utilizing mRNA coding for the BA4/BA5 Omicron subvariant and new mRNA coding for antigens contained in the influenza virus.[i] Because the COVID-19 component is under Emergency Use Authorization, has failed in animal studies and no human trials have been reported, that component should be off the table from the start.
A recent paper from Chemaitelly and colleagues demonstrated in the Omicron era, COVID-19 boosters had unacceptably low protection against acquiring the infection and no valid study has ever demonstrated reductions in hospitalizations and deaths.[ii]
To make matters worse, any theoretical benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine would last < 6 months, so additional shots would be out of phase with the other component of the combination product. mRNA coding for influenza would be a new biological product not under EUA so should have to go through the full 5-year regulatory development cycle for genetic biologicals. It looks like the vaccine companies are trying the shortcut this development cycle by combining the non-emergency flu shot with the EUA COVID-19 vaccine. Influenza A and B are the cause of seasonal epidemics, and the segmented RNA genome enables frequent antigenic changes. For this reason, the seasonal vaccines are developed annually based on the expected circulating strains of two influenza A viruses– H1N1 and H3N2, and two influenza B viruses– Victoria and Yamagata lineages.[iii] Because of the strain mismatches, the effectiveness has been abysmal.
Last year, Chung and colleagues reported the influenza vaccine had 16% vaccine efficacy which was statistically insignificant from zero.[iv]
Combining the genetic code for both the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein and conserved proteins of influenza A and B would mean installation of the long-lasting genetic code for multiple foreign proteins in the human body. Production of these proteins will induce an ongoing multi-pronged immune response which is likely to create amplified side effects, above and beyond each component alone, rendering even greater incapacitation than we have seen with the COVID-19 vaccine alone. Dr. David Wiseman, PhD, former JNJ scientist and vaccine developer commented on the combined vaccine product for NTD news. He made the case that safety signals would be confused and impossible to sort out.
NTD News: Dr. David Wiseman: Combined mRNA BA4/5 and Influenza Vaccines are Ill-Conceived
In the history of drug development, when a technology goes bad and delivers side effects and fails to stop or ameliorate an illness, that line of development should be dropped. In the case of mRNA, the bio-pharmaceutical complex is hell-bent on forcing these new products into large populations no matter what adverse health consequences emerge. So, the next time you are in the clinic and about to take another vaccine, ask the nurse “does this vaccine have mRNA in it?” If the answer is yes, then consider deferring or seeking an alternative. Thus far, there is no mRNA vaccine that is either safe or effective.
[i] Reuters : Pfizer, BioNTech start COVID-flu combination vaccine study
[ii] Chemaitelly H, AlMukdad S, Ayoub HH, Altarawneh HN, Coyle P, Tang P, Yassine HM, Al-Khatib HA, Smatti MK, Hasan MR, Al-Kanaani Z, Al-Kuwari E, Jeremijenko A, Kaleeckal AH, Latif AN, Shaik RM, Abdul-Rahim HF, Nasrallah GK, Al-Kuwari MG, Al-Romaihi HE, Butt AA, Al-Thani MH, Al-Khal A, Bertollini R, Abu-Raddad LJ. Covid-19 Vaccine Protection among Children and Adolescents in Qatar. N Engl J Med. 2022 Nov 2. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2210058. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36322837.
[iii] Rcheulishvili N, Papukashvili D, Liu C, Ji Y, He Y, Wang PG. Promising strategy for developing mRNA-based universal influenza virus vaccine for human population, poultry, and pigs- focus on the bigger picture. Front Immunol. 2022;13:1025884. Published 2022 Oct 17. doi:10.3389/fimmu.2022.1025884
[iv] Chung JR, Kim SS, Kondor RJ, Smith C, Budd AP, Tartof SY, Florea A, Talbot HK, Grijalva CG, Wernli KJ, Phillips CH, Monto AS, Martin ET, Belongia EA, McLean HQ, Gaglani M, Reis M, Geffel KM, Nowalk MP, DaSilva J, Keong LM, Stark TJ, Barnes JR, Wentworth DE, Brammer L, Burns E, Fry AM, Patel MM, Flannery B. Interim Estimates of 2021-22 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness – United States, February 2022. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2022 Mar 11;71(10):365-370. doi: 10.15585/mmwr.mm7110a1. PMID: 35271561; PMCID: PMC8911998.
Jen Psaki says censorship deposition would be “burdensome” for her family life and new MSNBC gig
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 6, 2022
Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary, and Department of Justice (DOJ) are fighting a subpoena requiring her to testify in the lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general – alleging that the Biden administration colluded with social media platforms to censor certain viewpoints on the pandemic.
The motion to quash the subpoena was filed in a federal court in Virginia. It argues that the deposition would be “extremely burdensome” for Psaki, who is preparing to be the host of a new show on MSNBC.
We obtained a copy of the motion for you here.
“Among other things, I understand that I would need to devote several days preparing for the deposition, as well as attending the deposition itself, and that would be highly disruptive to both my work and my family,” Psaki wrote in the request.
Psaki has in the past admitted that the Biden administration was flagging people’s speech to social media platforms.
The DOJ argued that Psaki’s deposition would result in a debate over executive privilege considering she was a top adviser to President Joe Biden.
The DOJ lawyer said: “If permitted to proceed, the deposition of Ms. Psaki would inevitably set the Executive and Judicial Branches ‘on a collision course’ through adjudications of executive privilege, thrusting the court into ‘the awkward position of evaluating the Executive’s claims of confidentiality and autonomy,’ and ‘difficult questions of separation of powers and checks and balances’ would quickly be pushed to the fore.”
“Plaintiffs have not identified any evidence showing or even suggesting that Ms. Psaki ever communicated with any social-media company in her capacity as Press Secretary about misinformation, much less that she ‘exercised coercive power’ to compel a social-media company to take any action,” the DOJ added.
Other defendants that have tried to use a similar “burdensome” defense have already been shut down by District Judge Terry Doughty who said, “The Court finds that both the public interest and the interest of the other parties in preserving free speech significantly outweighs the inconvenience the three deponents will have in preparing for and giving their depositions.”
Another Extraordinary Murder in Washington D.C.
Mary Mahoney was allegedly the victim of a botched robbery in the Georgetown Starbucks
Mary Mahoney, murdered on July 7, 1997
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 6, 2022
When Seth Rich was murdered in Washington D.C. on July 10, 2016, the Metropolitan Police Department immediately proposed that it was a “botched robbery.” The case reminded me of the murder of Mary Mahoney in a Georgetown Starbucks on July 7, 1997.
Mary Mahoney was an intern in Bill Clinton’s White House during his first term. She then got a job working as a manager of Starbucks in Georgetown, which was frequented by many notable figures in the Washington political establishment. Her murder (along with her two coworkers) was the first triple murder in the neighborhood’s history. Prior to the crime, not a single homicide had been committed in Georgetown for eighteen months.
Robbery appeared an unlikely motive, as none of the day’s cash proceeds had been taken from the store. Mahoney’s murder occurred during the same period that Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff was investigating allegations that President Clinton had sexually harassed White House employees—an investigation that would ultimately lead him to Monica Lewinsky. Attorneys for Paula Jones were also seeking corroborating cases of Clinton’s sexual harassment of young women.
A year after the murder occurred, the police received a tip to examine a man named Carl D. Cooper from a woman who had just watched an America’s Most Wanted episode on the triple homicide. For several months, investigators found no evidence linking Cooper to the crime. Then another informant came forth—a former drug addict named Eric Butera, who was himself later murdered in “a robbery gone wrong.”
Based on information gleaned from Butera’s associates, Carl Cooper was arrested. After a grueling four-day interrogation, Cooper confessed, stating that the triple homicide was a “botched robbery” (which just happened to be the official working hypothesis). While held at gunpoint, Mary, refused to give Cooper the keys to the safe—a heroic act to save her 50 billion market cap employer from losing a few thousand dollars. Because Mary refused to give Cooper the keys, he shot her five times, including a shot to the back of the head. He then shot her two coworkers, and then left the store without taking a dime.
Cooper was convicted on the grounds of his confession to the Metropolitan Police. However, in a subsequent interview with an FBI investigator, Cooper recanted his confession. Although the FBI investigator unequivocally stated this in his testimony, the court concluded that Cooper’s initial confession was sufficient for his conviction. Cooper was initially represented by a court-appointed attorney, but after his trial began, his court-appointed attorney was joined by the prominent Washington D.C. defender, Francis D. Carter, who initially represented Monica Lewinsky when Monica stated her willingness to remain silent about her affair with Clinton. Carter drafted an affidavit for Monica in which she stated that she had NOT had an affair with the president. Carter was forced to withdraw this affidavit after Monica made statements to Lynda Tripp (equipped with a secret recording device) confirming her affair with Clinton.
That Carter joined the Carl Cooper defense team strikes me as very peculiar, especially given that Carter did not change the defense strategy. I wonder if Carter’s primarily job was—under cover of client-attorney confidentiality—to deliver a message to Carter pertaining to his sentencing prospects and what he might reasonably expect for his wife (to whom he was apparently very attached) if he stuck with his confession.
Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno initially sought the death penalty for Cooper— the first death-penalty matter brought to trial in the District in nearly 30 years, but federal prosecutors later withdrew this request. To date, no evidence has been found linking Cooper to the triple homicide.
In a related case, the District of Columbia was successfully sued for the wrongful death of Metropolitan Police informant, Eric Butera, as the jury concluded the police had been negligent in protecting him during an undercover operation to obtain more information about the Starbucks triple slaying. The woman who gave the initial tip to America’s Most Wanted later publicly accused the police of refusing to protect her and fell under suspicion for being motivated primarily by the reward money offered by the show.
Since the murders occurred, the crime has been the subject of extensive media coverage, several documentary television features, and hundreds of online commentators. Conventional newspaper coverage of the crimes—primarily conducted by the Washington Post and the Washington Times—consisted entirely of straightforward reporting of information provided by police and judicial officers.
Given the controversial nature of the police investigation and judicial proceedings against the man who was charged for committing the crime, it is surprising how little the mainstream media questioned official accounts. Likewise, the TV documentaries simply presented narratives provided by law officers as though they contained nothing that was questionable. This is particularly notable given that substantial details of the official narrative, provided by the same investigating officers, are represented differently in different documentaries. Moreover, some of officers’ statements in the documentaries pertaining to Starbucks procedures and security protocols are NOT consistent with what a veteran Starbucks manager told me.
I would like to interview Carl D. Cooper in prison, but I cannot find him in the federal prison system. Though I have not had the time and resources to dig deep into this component of the story, my preliminary research suggests that his whereabouts in the federal prison system have been concealed.
In 2016, the lead homicide detective in the Mary Mahoney case — Detective James Trainium — published a book titled How the Police Generate False Confessions. It’s a detailed examination of how the police obtain false confessions, and the author is clearly writing from personal experience.
An Extraordinary Unsolved Murder in Washington D.C.
In the matter of SETH RICH, the FBI asks for 66 years to release his laptop contents Nov 5 DNC Staffer Seth Rich, murdered on July 10, 2016
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 5, 2022
“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.” —James Madison
As an investigative author I’ve often dealt with the extreme frustration of making federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and state Open Records Act requests. So often, it seems that federal and state agencies don’t want to release the information, delay in responding, and then cite multiple exceptions to the law in order to justify keeping the information secret.
I therefore felt sympathy for my fellow Texan, Brian Huddleston, when I saw the recent Epoch Times report that his FOIA request for the information found on Seth Rich’s laptop is being thwarted by the FBI, which asked the judge who ruled in Huddleston’s favor to grant the Bureau 66 years to fulfill the request.
Readers of this Substack may find the FBI’s request reminiscent of the FDA’s request for 55 years to release COVID-19 vaccine data. Given the unfortunate reality of human mortality, one wonders what public interest will be served 55 or 66 years from now, apart from satisfying the curiosity of historians who aren’t yet born.
The murder of Seth Rich—in the middle of one of the most brutal presidential election years in history—has always struck me as an example of the authorities NOT investigating a matter of public interest. The mainstream media and half the country were so blinded by partisan passions that they couldn’t see the grounds for suspecting that the young man’s murder was politically motivated. Just a few hours after the incident occurred—before there was any time to perform an investigation—the Metropolitan Police Department announced that the murder appeared to be a “botched robbery.”
Since Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016—12 days before Wikileaks published embarrassing DNC e-mails—there has been much speculation that he could have been the source because he was upset about how the DNC had treated Bernie Sanders. A good investigator wouldn’t speculate about the crime, but he would certainly notice that, statistically speaking, the murder is extraordinary.
Seth Rich was shot in the back near his apartment building, and though he was carrying a valuable watch, wallet, and cell phone, these were not taken by the assailant. Perhaps it was a botched robbery, as the Metropolitan Police Department quickly announced, but shooting a guy in the back without taking his valuables is not typical of armed robbery. Other robberies in the same neighborhood around the same time followed the conventional pattern of the assailant threatening the victim and demanding his or her valuables instead of opening fire on the victim.
In the year 2016, there were 135 homicides in Washington D.C., which has a resident population of 672,000, which comes to approximately one murder per 5000 residents— a dramatic decline from the city’s murder rate in the early nineties. Incidentally, the Metropolitan Police conducted an analysis of homicide for the years 1998-2000—after homicide rates had dropped significantly—and concluded that the primary motives were
1) Argument/conflict
2). Drug related
3). Revenge/retaliation
4). Robbery
5). Gang related.
During this period, homicides were not equally distributed throughout the city, but were concentrated in particular neighborhoods. 92% of the victims were African Americans 3.2% were Hispanic and 3.2% were white. Though one must consider the possibility that homicide trends in DC have changed since 2000 (apart from merely decreasing in numbers) it’s notable that, of the currently unsolved homicides in Washington DC in the year 2016, Seth Rich is the only white victim in a city that is now 44% white.
Julian Assange has always insisted the DNC e-mails were leaked and not hacked. Former NSA technical director William Binney has also insisted that if the DNC e-mails were hacked, it would be child’s play for the NSA to establish the precise routing of the hack, which indicates that the e-mails were more likely leaked by an insider.
Regarding motive, a good investigator would consider the hypothesis that Seth Rich was murdered NOT in retaliation, but to eliminate him as a witness that the DNC e-mails were leaked by an insider and not hacked by Russians. Almost immediately after the embarrassing e-mails were published, the DNC vehemently proclaimed it was Russian hackers who were responsible, though no evidence has been presented to support this accusation.
Regarding the assailant: A good investigator would consider the hypothesis that he was contracted to murder Rich but knew nothing about his target or the motive for killing him. This hypothesis is consistent with Rich being murdered as he approached the entrance to his home—that is, the contract killer was provided only with the address and a photograph of his target.
Another notable aspect of this crime has been the extremely emotional tone of press reporting from the same reporters who so passionately embraced the Russian meddling story. The mere suggestion that Seth Rich’s murder was politically motivated prompted these same people to angrily denounce this (perfectly reasonable hypothesis) as “wild, right wing conspiracy theory” and to demand that reporters cease and desist from exploring this hypothesis.
And yet, given that the crime remains unsolved, why not explore this hypothesis?
UN votes overwhelmingly to rid Israel of nuclear weapons
Free West Media | November 6, 2022
The United Nations General Assembly was unequivocal: With 152 votes to 5, Israel’s nuclear arsenal was condemned by a vast majority of countries. Although Tel Aviv has never officially acknowledged its nuclear capability, experts believe it has at least 90 nuclear warheads, and perhaps many more.
On October 28, almost 80 percent of all UN member states adopted a resolution that called on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons, join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its nuclear facilities. The resolution, document A/C.1/77/L.2, was titled “The risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East”.
It was adopted in the 25th plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly’s First Committee, which is focused on disarmament and international security.
The five countries that voted against the measure were the United States and Canada, the small island nations of Palau and Micronesia, and Israel itself. Some 24 members of the European Union, NATO allies, and India abstained.
The resolution urged Israel “not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons, to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope Agency safeguards as an important confidence-building measure among all States of the region and as a step towards enhancing peace and security”.
It was introduced by Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt (on behalf of the Arab League), Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the UN-recognized state of Palestine.
In 2019, the United States and Israel were the only countries that voted against UN General Assembly draft resolutions calling for establishing a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, preventing an arms race in outer space, and ending Washington’s illegal six-decade blockade of Cuba.
Media identifies major beneficiary of Ukraine crisis
RT | November 5, 2022
Yahoo News has identified a major beneficiary of the Russia-Ukraine slugfest: the US military industrial complex, which is reaping a windfall even as the bloody conflict causes economic havoc, energy shortages and a looming food crisis around the world.
As the media outlet reported on Saturday, EU nations have committed to about $230 billion in new weapons purchases since the Russian military offensive against Kiev started in February. US defense contractors are poised to land the lion’s share of those orders, given their dominance as suppliers to European militaries, Yahoo added.
Many European nations turn to US arms makers for more than half of all their weapons purchases. Yahoo cited data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) to show examples of US dominance in European arsenals. For instance, US-made arms accounted for 95% of the weapons purchases by the Netherlands from 2017 to 2021. The ratios were 83% US weaponry for Norway, 77% for the UK, and 72% for Italy.
European weapons imports jumped 19% during the five-year period as then-President Donald Trump prodded his NATO allies to meet their obligations for defense spending. The Ukraine crisis is set to create an even bigger windfall, as President Joe Biden leads an international campaign to flood Ukraine with weapons and the conflict triggers accelerated steps by European nations to bolster their own defenses.
“This is certainly the biggest increase in defense spending in Europe since the end of the Cold War,” Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform, told Yahoo. The crisis in Eastern Europe dispelled the notion that war on the continent is no longer possible, he added. “They’re waking up to the fact that not only is it very possible, but it is happening, and it’s happening not that many miles away from them.”
Since Biden took office in January 2021, European countries entered at least the initial stage of negotiations for $33 billion in arms purchases, including $21 billion since February, Yahoo said, citing figures from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
US defense contractors will also benefit from Washington’s massive military aid to Kiev, as the Pentagon races to replenish stocks of artillery pieces, rocket launchers and other weapons. Biden has set aside more than $65 billion in military and economic aid for Ukraine since the conflict began.
Russia has warned that the influx of Western weapons will prolong the crisis while making the US and other NATO members de facto participants.
READ MORE:
Second wave of refugees leave Lebanon as repatriation process continues
The Cradle | November 5, 2022
A new group of Syrian refugees left Lebanon on 5 November under protection from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Directorate of General Security, as part of the current repatriation process carried out between Beirut and Damascus.
The refugees departed for Syria from the northern Lebanese border town of Arsal. This is a continuation of the process, after the first wave of 1,200 Syrian refugees left Lebanon on 26 October.
Syrian media reported that the refugees began to arrive in buses via the al-Dabousiyah border crossing, and will be returning to their homes in the areas formerly under the control of extremist groups.
Lebanon’s Directorate of General Security is continually processing the submitted requests of Syrian refugees who wish to return to their country.
On 25 October, the head of General Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, emphasized during a press conference that the repatriation process is fully voluntary, and will not “force any displaced to return” to Syria.
Ibrahim added that Lebanon only seeks to reduce the social and economic burden it carries, and made sure to reject the unsupported western claims that the repatriation process is involuntary.
Last month, a source told The Cradle that the Syrian government has been very cooperative in the process of repatriating the refugees, but that it “will take a lot of time and effort” before it is completed.
The source added that the western-led international community “does not agree” with this repatriation process and has so far “refused to help.”
The western disapproval and accusations of forced repatriation reinforce the belief held by some people that western countries, most notably the US, wish to prevent Syrian refugees from resettling in their country in order to maintain instability in Syria.
In November of last year, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bou Habib, said: “We are facing some difficulties from the West because they say that they do not want these refugees to return to Syria for reasons related to their position on the Syrian government.”
Some States Say ‘No’ to Coronavirus Shots Mandate for Students Despite CDC’s Childhood Vaccine Schedule Change
By Adam Dick | RonPaul Institute | November 2, 2022
In October, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory committee voted to add yearly experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots to the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. Many state governments have a history of looking to this CDC schedule to guide their imposing of shots mandates for students.
Which states will follow along to mandate the newly added shots? As we start the month following the committee’s vote, it is good to take a look across the country to see what different state governments have done to protect against or welcome the CDC schedule’s addition of these yearly shots that have proven to be neither safe nor effective and that are asserted to target a threat that has been long known to pose a miniscule risk of serious sickness or death for children. Young adults in college have also tended to be at very low risk, though you wouldn’t know it from the draconian policies many universities imposed in the name of countering coronavirus.
Compounding the absurdity and detestability of including the coronavirus shots in the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule is that the much-hyped coronavirus that people were worried about during the coronavirus scare is long gone. What is not gone is the risk of serious sickness or death from the shots.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo advised well when he posted the following at Twitter last week:
Parents, don’t hold your breath… CDC & FDA abandoned their posts. Keep sticking with your intuition and keep those COVID jabs away from your kids.
Unfortunately, when faced with a shots mandate for school attendance, many parents may, against their better judgment, give in to the pressure and authorize their children being given the shots. Older students at universities that have more commonly imposed coronavirus shots mandates since last year have faced similarly terrible pressure to take the shots.
The good news is that, according to tracking by the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), 21 state governments have taken at least some action to prohibit mandating coronavirus shots for students. Still, even where state governments have taken action against mandated coronavirus shots for students, there is in many cases room to make that protection against pushing these shots on students both stronger and broader.
Check out NASHP’s map of America where you can see information regarding states standing up against or supporting mandated coronavirus shots for students. Put the cursor over a state to find out some details regarding a particular state’s policy on mandating the shots.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
How the US regime attempts to control public perception of its aid to Ukraine
By Scott Ritter | RT | November 5, 2022
NBC News has reported that, according to four people familiar with the incident, a phone call between US President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart, Vladimir Zelensky, turned testy after the Ukrainian leader pressed Biden for more assistance.
On June 15, Biden called Zelensky to inform him of the recent release of some $1 billion in assistance (this included the drawdown of arms and equipment from US Department of Defense inventories valued at $350 million, and $650 million in additional assistance under the department’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative). This type of person-to-person communication had become commonplace since Russia’s decision to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022, with Biden informing Zelensky of each major assistance allocation in a program that had, as of June 15, seen the dispatch of some $5.6 billion in American military aid.
This time, however, rather than thank the US president, as had been the previous practice, Zelensky proceeded to ask for more assistance, citing specific requests for equipment that had not been included in the June allocation of aid. At this point, NBC’s sources say, Biden lost his temper. “The American people were being quite generous, and his administration and the US military were working hard to help Ukraine, he said, raising his voice, and Zelensky could show a little more gratitude,” the NBC story reports.
According to NBC, the source of Biden’s anger went beyond the lack of gratitude shown by Zelensky (NBC reports that the two leaders have since warmed to one another), but rather the growing realization on the part of the Biden White House that support for the blank check being written for Ukraine’s war effort is waning among members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. With the Republicans expected to retake control of the House of Representatives and positioned to do the same in the Senate in the upcoming mid-term elections, the Biden administration appears poised to try to squeeze out another $40-60 billion in aid during the lame duck session between the election and when the present term of Congress expires next January. It is expected that this new aid package will be challenged by the Republicans, who will seek to have its consideration postponed until the new Republican-controlled Congress is sworn in.
Shortly before NBC News broke the story of the contentious Biden-Zelensky phone call, The New Yorker ran a glowing review of the state of US-Ukrainian military cooperation. Entitled ‘Inside the US Effort to Arm Ukraine, the piece, authored by Joshua Yaffa, a contributing writer for the magazine, provides an expansive and yet intimate look at the complex interaction between the US and Ukraine about not only the provision of military equipment, but also the active cooperation between US and Ukrainian military and intelligence officials concerning the actual conduct of the conflict, including the provision of targeting data in support of US-provided artillery systems such as the M777 howitzer and the HIMARS multiple rocket launch system.
Its two main messages can be summarized as follows: first, American weapons are helping Ukraine stand up to Russia and showing the world Putin can be defeated, and second, the US is taking every care not to cross any lines that would escalate the conflict into a direct confrontation with Moscow.
Yaffa is an accomplished writer on Russian affairs. His most recent book, ‘Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin’s Russia’, has won several prizes, and he has published numerous articles in The New Yorker about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But even this extensive journalistic record doesn’t prepare one for the scope and scale of the sources Yaffa was able to draw upon in writing his most recent article. It is a ‘who’s who’ of US and Ukrainian officialdom, both named and unnamed, all of whom are well positioned to provide Yaffa with the kind of inside information that makes his article so attractive, both from an informational aspect, and readability.
On the Ukrainian side, Yaffa interviewed Aleksey Reznikov, Ukraine’s defense minister; Mikhail Podoliak, a top adviser to Zelensky; Aleksey Danilov, Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council; and “a senior Ukrainian military official” close to the commander in chief of the military, Valery Zaluzhny. Ukrainian officials habitually interact with Western journalists as part of their effort to shape the narrative about the ongoing conflict with Russia. The surprise isn’t that Yaffa was able to interview these individuals, but rather what they were willing to open up about – the hitherto obscure details of the sensitive cooperation between the US and Ukraine in the actual conduct of the conflict.
The US is very controlling about the release of information about classified cooperation with other nations. This reticence to be transparent extends not only to the US officials involved, but also to the foreign nationals participating in the secret work. In short, there is no way the three Ukrainians would have agreed to sit down and talk to Yaffa about these issues unless their participation had been green-lighted by the Biden administration beforehand.
The extent to which the Biden administration was behind the decision to cooperate with Yaffa on this story becomes clear upon closer examination of the anonymous sources drawn upon for the article. “A Biden administration official involved in Ukraine policy”; “a senior official at the Defense Department”; “a person familiar with Biden White House discussions of Ukraine”; “an administration official”; “a senior US official”; “a US military official” close to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Milley; “a senior Biden administration official”; and “a senior US intelligence official.”
Numerous other sources, both named and unnamed, were also interviewed by Yaffa.
Anyone with any experience with sensitive national security activities knows that there are two hard-fast truths when it comes to such activities – they are highly classified and compartmentalized, and any unauthorized release of information pertaining to such activities is a serious violation of the law, subject to prosecution and imprisonment for anyone caught leaking such information to the press.
Accordingly, either every source cited by Yaffa had been simultaneously overcome with a Lemming-like desire to jump off a figurative cliff, risking losing their careers and going to prison in order to help the young New Yorker contributing writer pull off the scoop of a lifetime, or the Yaffa article was part and parcel of a Biden administration information operation designed to inject a positive narrative about US-Ukrainian military relations into the mainstream discussion on Ukraine in a concerted effort to shape public perception in the lead-up to the mid-term elections.
My money is on the latter.
Good journalism is all about ‘bottom-up’ reporting, where a reporter conceives a story and then runs it to the ground by seeking out interviews with relevant sources. Stenography is about having a story spoon fed to you by sources for the purpose of serving an agenda that has nothing to do with the pursuit of fact-based truth, but rather shaping public opinion about a matter of importance.
Yaffa’s ‘Inside the US Effort to Arm Ukraine’ is a clever piece of government-dictated stenography disguised as journalism and should be treated as such by all who read it.
Biden lashes out at Twitter and Musk
RT | November 5, 2022
By acquiring Twitter last month, Elon Musk took charge of a social media platform that “spews lies all across the world,” US President Joe Biden said on Friday.
The comment came shortly after reports emerged that Musk had fired thousands of Twitter employees globally as part of a cost-cutting strategy. Sources told Politico that those laid off included members of teams working on the upcoming midterm elections in the US, content moderation, and verification of politicians’ accounts.
“Elon Musk goes out and buys an outfit that spews lies all across the world,” Biden said during a Democratic fundraiser in Rosemont, Illinois, referring to the purchase of Twitter by the world’s richest man.
“There’s no editors anymore in America,” he said, as quoted by CNN.
Earlier, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that Biden had been “outspoken about the importance of social media platforms continuing to take steps to reduce hate speech and misinformation.” That included Twitter, Facebook and any other other platform “where users can spread misinformation,” she added.
Musk’s $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter was followed by claims from left-wing politicians and activists that there had been a spike in hate speech and racism on the platform.
The owner of Tesla and SpaceX rebuffed those accusations, saying that “nothing has changed with content moderation” since he took charge just over a week ago.
On Friday, Musk revealed that Twitter was losing $4 million per day because “activist groups” had been “trying to destroy free speech in America” by pressuring advertisers to boycott his platform.
The tech entrepreneur said earlier that his goal was to turn Twitter into “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence.”
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From the Archives
Confronting the Threat of Ethnic Bioweapons
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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