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White House dismisses scathing UN report against ‘unfairly targeted’ Israel

The Cradle | October 21, 2022

US State Department spokesman Ned Price alleged on 20 October that Israel is “unfairly targeted in the UN,” in the wake of a scathing report released by the ongoing UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) investigating human rights abuses committed by Tel Aviv during the 74-year occupation of Palestine.

“Israel is consistently unfairly targeted in the UN system, including in the course of this commission of inquiry,” Price told reporters during a news conference on Thursday.

“No country, the record of no country, should be immune from scrutiny, but no country should also be targeted unfairly. And that’s the principle that we seek to uphold,” he claimed.

In their report, the COI determined that “the occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful under international law due to its permanence and the Israeli government’s de facto annexation policies.”

The COI report also refers to numerous statements made by the UN secretary general and UN member states concerning the Russia-Ukraine war, in which officials reaffirmed that the “unilateral annexation of a State’s territory by another State is a violation of international law and is null and void.”

Speaking to reporters, COI chair Navi Pillay stressed that just last week, “143 member States including Israel … voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution reaffirming this.”

“Unless universally applied, including to the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, this core principle of the United Nations Charter will become meaningless,” she added.

In a second report also released on Thursday – and set to be presented to the UN General Assembly on 27 October – the COI requested an urgent advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) “on the legal consequences of the continued refusal on the part of Israel to end its occupation.”

“Actions by Israel constituting de facto annexation include expropriating land and natural resources, establishing settlements and outposts, maintaining a restrictive and discriminatory planning and building regime for Palestinians and extending Israeli law extraterritorially to Israeli settlers in the West Bank,” the UN officials conclude in their report.

Since the start of this year, at least 105 Palestinians – including 26 children – have been killed by Israeli troops, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006 for Palestinians residing in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

On top of this, Tel Aviv currently holds 4,500 Palestinians in prison, 730 of whom are held without charge and mainly on the basis of ‘secret evidence.’

Children as young as 12 are subjected to arbitrary arrests and detention measures by the occupation government. Just last month, a seven-year-old Palestinian boy fell to his death after being chased by Israeli soldiers.

But despite the countless deaths and wanton destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip and violent raids across the West Bank, Israeli authorities maintain a policy of “not apologizing” for their war crimes, under the full support of the US.

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s homage to Nord Stream pipelines

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 22, 2022

David Brinkley, the legendary American newscaster with a career that spanned an amazing fifty-four years from World War II once said that a successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. How many American statesmen ever practised this noble thought inherited from Jesus Christ remains doubtful. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stunning proposal to Turkish President Recep Erdogan to build a gas pipeline to Turkiye to create an international hub from which Russian gas can be supplied to Europe breathes fresh life into this very “Gandhian” thought.  

Putin discussed the idea with Erdogan at their meeting in Astana on October 13 and since spoke about it at the Russian Energy Week forum last week where he proposed creating the largest gas hub in Europe in Turkey and redirecting the volume of gas, the transit of which is no longer possible through the Nord Stream, to this hub.

Putin said it may imply building another gas pipeline system to feed the hub in Turkiye, through which gas will be supplied to third countries, primarily European ones, “if they are interested.” 

Prima facie, Putin does not expect any positive response from Berlin to his standing proposal to use the string of the Nord Stream 2, which remained undamaged, to supply 27.5 billion cu. metres of gas through the winter months. Germany’s deafening silence is understandable. Chancellor Off Scholz is terrified about President Biden’s wrath. 

Berlin says it knows who sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines but won’t reveal it as it affects Germany’s national security! Sweden too pleads that the matter is far too sensitive for it to share the evidence it has collected with any country, including Germany! Biden has put the fear of God into the minds of these timid European “allies” who have been left in no doubt what is good for them! The western media too is ordered to play down Nord Steam saga so that with the passage of time, public memory will fade away. 

However, Russia has done its homework that Europe cannot do without Russia gas, the present bravado of self-denial notwithstanding. Simply put, the European industries depend on cheap, reliable supplies of Russian gas for their products to remain competitive in the world market. 

Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi said last week that he cannot envisage a future where “zero Russian gas” flows to Europe. He noted acerbically, “ If that’s the case, then I think the problem is going to be huge and for a very long time. You just don’t have enough volume to bring (in) to replace that (Russian) gas for the long term, unless you’re saying ‘I’m going to be building huge nuclear (plants), I’m going to allow coal, I’m going to burn fuel oils.’” 

Quintessentially, Russia plans to replace its gas hub in Haidach in Austria (which Austrians seized in July.) Conceivably, the hub in Turkiye has a ready market in Southern Europe, including Greece and Italy. But there is more to it than meets the eye. 

Succinctly put, Putin has made a strategic move in the geopolitics of gas. His initiative rubbishes the hare-brained idea of the Russophobic European Commission bureaucrats in Brussels, headed by Ursula von der Leyen, to impose a price cap on gas purchases. It makes nonsense of the US’ and EU’s plans to put down Russia’s profile as a gas superpower. 

Logically, the next step for Russia should be to align with Qatar, the world’s second biggest gas exporter. Qatar is a close ally of Turkey, too. At Astana recently, on the sidelines of the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA), Putin held a closed-door meeting with the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. They agreed to follow up with another meeting soon in Russia. 

Russia already has a framework of  cooperation with Iran in a number of joint projects in the oil and gas industry. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak recently disclosed plans to conclude an oil and gas swap deal with Iran by the end of the year. He said that “technical details are being worked out – issues of transport, logistics, price, and tariff formation.” 

Now, Russia, Qatar and Iran together account for more than half of the world’s entire proven gas reserves. Time is approaching for them to intensify cooperation and coordination on the pattern of the OPEC Plus. All three countries are represented in the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF). 

Putin’s proposal appeals to Turkiye’s longstanding dream to become an energy hub at the doorstep of Europe. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan instinctively warmed up to Putin’s proposal. Addressing the ruling party members in the Turkish parliament this week, Erdogan said, “In Europe they are now dealing with the question of how to stay warm in the coming winter. We don’t have such a problem. We have agreed with Vladimir Putin to create a gas hub in our country, through which natural gas, as he says, can be delivered to Europe. Thus, Europe will order gas from Turkey.” 

Apart from strengthening its own energy security, Turkiye also can contribute to Europe’s. No doubt, Turkiye’s importance will take a quantum leap in the EU foreign policy calculus, while also strengthening its strategic autonomy in regional politics. This is a huge step forward in Erdogan’s geo-strategy — the geographic direction of Turkish foreign policy under his watch.  

From the Russian viewpoint, of course, Turkiye’s strategic autonomy and its grit to pursue independent foreign policies works splendidly for Moscow in the present conditions of western sanctions. Conceivably, Russian companies will start viewing Turkiye as a production base where western technologies become accessible. Turkiye has a customs union agreement with the EU, which completely removes customs duties on all industrial goods of Turkish origin. (See my blog Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions, Aug 9, 2022)

In geopolitical terms, Moscow is comfortable with Turkiye’s NATO membership. Clearly, the proposed gas hub brings much additional income to Turkiye and will impart greater stability and predictability to the Russia-Turkey relations. Indeed, the strategic links that tie the two countries together are steadily lengthening — the S-400 ABM deal, cooperation in Syria, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, Turk-stream gas pipeline, to name a few. 

The two countries candidly admit that they have differences of opinion, but the way Putin and Erdogan through constructive diplomacy keep turning adverse circumstances into windows of opportunity for “win-win” cooperation is simply amazing. 

It does need ingenuity to get the US’ European allies to source Russian gas without any coercion or boorishness even after Washington buried the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the depths of the Baltic Sea. There is dramatic irony that a NATO power is partnering Russia in this direction. 

The US foreign policy elite drawn from East European stock are rendered speechless by the sheer sophistication of the Russian ingenuity to bypass without any trace of rancour the shabby way the US and its allies — Germany and Sweden, in particular — slammed the door shut on Moscow to even take a look at the damaged multi-billion dollar pipelines that it had built in good faith in the depths of the Baltic Sea at the insistance of two German chancellors, Gerhard Schroeder and Angela Merkel. 

The current German leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz looks very foolish and cowardly – and provincial. The European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen gets a huge rebuff in all this which will ultimately define her tragic legacy in Brussels as a flag carrier for American interests. This becomes probably the first case study for historians on how multipolarity will work in the world order.  

October 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , , | Leave a comment

Fauci forced to testify on social media censorship

Samizdat | October 22, 2022

The White House’s chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, and other senior officials are set to be deposed under oath as part of a lawsuit claiming the government worked alongside social media platforms to create a “massive censorship enterprise” throughout the Covid-19 outbreak.

In a Friday ruling, Judge Terry Doughty granted a joint request from the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to compel several current and former officials to testify in the suit, among them Fauci, ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Director of White House Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and two high-level figures from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

“After finding documentation of a collusive relationship between the [Joe] Biden administration and social media companies to censor free speech, we immediately filed a motion to get these officials under oath,” Missouri AG Eric Schmitt said in a statement. “It is high time we shine a light on this censorship enterprise and force these officials to come clean to the American people, and this ruling will allow us to do just that. We’ll keep pressing for the truth.”

While the defense insisted that senior officials can only be called to testify about their actions in office under “extraordinary circumstances,” Judge Doughty said the personnel in question met that standard. He added that the two GOP-led states “have proven that Dr. Fauci has personal knowledge about the issue concerning censorship across social media as it related to Covid-19,” ordering him to cooperate with a deposition.

Requests to depose the other officials were granted on similar grounds, as the judge concluded all either held direct meetings with social media firms about the purported censorship, or had close knowledge of those discussions.

Jen Easterly, who heads up the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was also ordered to testify. She played a “central role” in “flagging misinformation to social-media companies for censorship,” the plaintiffs argued, describing the cyber agency the “nerve center” of “the federal government’s efforts to censor social media users.” The same official was said to be involved in the DHS’ now-defunct ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ – dubbed the ‘Ministry of Truth’ by critics – which would have created a new mechanism to facilitate cooperation between the White House and social media sites.

Initially filed last May by Schmitt and  Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, the lawsuit claims the federal government encouraged online platforms to censor, delete or ban certain speech about the pandemic, including discussion of the “lab leak theory of Covid-19’s origin,” as well as questions about the effectiveness of face masks, vaccines or lockdown policies, among other issues. The two AGs have largely relied on documents obtained through subpoenas of YouTube, Twitter and Facebook’s parent firm Meta, which detail regular communications between the government and social media sites.

The White House, as well as the eight officials ordered to testify, have yet to comment on Friday’s ruling. The depositions must take place within 30 days of the order, though it remains unclear whether the defense intends to appeal the decision.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NEW EVIDENCE PROVES BIDEN ADMINISTRATION PRESSURED FACEBOOK AND TWITTER TO CENSOR AMERICANS

Liberty Justice Center | October 21, 2022 

Yesterday, author and data analyst Justin Hart filed new evidence in his federal lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and U.S. President Joe Biden. The evidence documents collusion between social media companies and the federal government to silence Americans online on the Internet — a public forum the Supreme Court has determined is the most important place for the exchange of ideas. Hart sued the social media giants and Biden administration in August 2021 for violating his First Amendment right to free speech for working together to monitor, flag, suspend, and delete social media posts it deems “misinformation.”

Hart is represented by attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center, a national public-interest law firm that fights to protect fundamental constitutional rights. Since filing the federal lawsuit, Liberty Justice Center, other nonprofit law firms, and state attorneys general have uncovered communications and documents proving collusion between Big Tech and Biden administration officials at every level. Hart’s attorneys have submitted this evidence gained through public records requests with an amended complaint.

“New evidence confirms what we have long known: our federal government is working directly with Big Tech to silence Americans,” said Daniel Suhr, managing attorney at the Liberty Justice Center. “The government is directing private companies to violate Americans’ free speech rights. Censorship may have started with what they call ‘COVID misinformation,’ but it opens the door for any administration to define any message they don’t like as ‘misinformation.’ This is unconscionable and illegal.”

Justin Hart is the author of Gone Viral: How COVID Drove the World Insane and founder of RationalGround.com. Over the last two years, his Facebook and Twitter accounts were suspended multiple times for sharing data and scientific research about COVID. At the time Hart’s statements and valid public health messages were censored, the facts were deemed “misinformation” by the Biden administration and Big Tech. However, much of what he shared about the detrimental effects of masking, lockdowns, and school closures are now widely accepted as true.

“The depth of the collusion between Big Government and Big Tech is alarming and reveals a sinister plot to undermine the rights of Americans by fully removing certain ideas and people from public discourse,” said Justin Hart, author and plaintiff. “The government does not have a monopoly on truth. By directing and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, our government is silencing critical discussions and, most importantly, violating our most sacred rights.”

New evidence proves that prior to Justin Hart’s deplatforming in July 2021, the federal government and Big Tech coordinated regularly:

  • Facebook offered the federal government, and it accepted, $15 million in free COVID-19 public health advertising to promote its public health message on the Internet.
  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Biden administration officials coordinated its COVID “misinformation” response with Facebook and Twitter by holding regular “be-on-the-lookout” meetings and by providing examples of the types of messages that contradicted the government’s message and it wanted censored.
  • Facebook used proprietary tools to monitor social media posts that contradicted the federal government’s COVID-19 narrative and reported such posts to the federal government.
  • Facebook adjusted its policies and algorithms to align with misinformation policies set by the federal government.

The lawsuit, Hart v. Facebook, was filed Aug. 31, 2021, and is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division. Case filings are available here.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

We Will Be Challenging Any State’s Covid-19 Vaccine Requirement to Attend School

BY AARON SIRI – INJECTING FREEDOM – 10/20/2022

The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee unanimously voted a few hours ago to add the Covid-19 vaccine to the CDC’s routine childhood vaccination schedule. Immediately following the vote, I received a call from Del Bigtree, ICAN’s founder and host of The HighWire, to tell me that ICAN will support a legal challenge to any state that imposes a Covid-19 vaccine mandate to attend school.

We look forward to bringing those challenges to protect the individual right of every American, especially the youngest among us, as we successfully did when challenging the San Diego School District’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Everyone should be free to get numerous shots because that is freedom.  And everyone should be free to reject any unwanted shot because that, too, is freedom.

While most post-March 2020 mandates have been successfully challenged or rescinded, we must never forget that the repressive arm of government is just behind a curtain, waiting to strangle our rights. That is why we must fight, always fight, to push back against that oppression. It is not a war that is won. It is an endless battle with one side pushing the needle toward eliminating individual rights and the other side that must never stop pushing back – because once it swings too far, we will not easily regain our rights.  Power seized is rarely returned.

The next battle front is the body of every child in this country whose parents do not want them to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. A product for which you cannot sue the manufacturers for harm. A product whose clinical trial for children was underpowered, not properly controlled, and that did not review safety for a sufficient duration.  But even in the absence of these issues, corrosive rights-crushing mandates should never exist.

We look forward to, with ICAN’s support, challenging any state’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate for school.

P.S. Note that the CDC’s action of adding the Covid-19 vaccine to its routine childhood vaccine schedule does not automatically make it mandatory in all states for attending school. In most states, the state itself needs to take action to make it mandatory. The expectation is that some states will seek to do just that.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

‘Gearing Up to Fight Biological Weapons?’ White House Launches $88 Billion National Biodefense Strategy

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 20, 2022

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced a new $88 billion national biodefense strategy that outlines the government’s plans for how to respond to future pandemics, public health emergencies and biological threats.

The launch of the “National Biodefense Strategy and Implementation Plan for Countering Biological Threats, Enhancing Pandemic Preparedness, and Achieving Global Health Security” included the signing of National Security Memorandum-15 (NSM-15).

Key elements of the new strategy include the rapid production and distribution of vaccines and diagnostic tests, and enhancing global health security.

The strategy also includes a new framework for the federal government’s role during a future crisis, which places the White House at the center of any such response, coordinating the actions of multiple federal agencies.

The White House said the new strategy adopts lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with The Defender, University of Illinois international law professor Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, said:

“It appears that the enormous amount of money here, $88 billion over five years, when you add it on to well over, I would say, maybe $130 billion [in biodefense spending] since Sept. 11, 2001, means that they are gearing up to fight biological weapons warfare around the world.”

Boyle told The Defender that between October 2001 and October 2015, the federal government spent $100 billion “on biological warfare purposes.”

“To put that into perspective,” he said, “in constant dollars, the Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb was $40 billion.”

Plan calls for development, distribution of new vaccines within 130 days

Biden’s new biodefense strategy includes the rapid development and deployment of new vaccines and diagnostics that it foresees in response to any future “biological threats.”

According to the White House’s plan, these “biological threats” may be “naturally occurring, accidental [or] deliberate,” “with the potential to significantly impact humans, animals (domestic and wildlife), plants, and the environment, and to negatively affect health, the economy, society, and security.”

According to STAT, the plan’s targets include:

  • Being able to test for new pathogens within 12 hours.
  • Making rapid tests available to the public within 90 days.
  • Repurposing existing drugs within 90 days.
  • Developing vaccines within 100 days.
  • Manufacturing enough of the new vaccine for the entire U.S. population within 130 days and “for the high-risk global population” within 200 days.
  • Developing new treatments within 180 days.

In justifying the new strategy, an unnamed senior Biden administration official quoted by The Hill said:

“We … know that the risk of another pandemic as bad or worse than COVID is a real threat. The new National Biodefense Strategy therefore outlines a bold vision … towards a world free of pandemics and catastrophic biological incidents.”

According to Defense One, other goals contained within the plan include “detecting the spread of pathogens before patients even begin to show symptoms like fever” and “scaling up the number of diagnostic test kits by tens of thousands within a week.”

A further element of the plan is “restoring community, the economy and the environment after a pandemic or biological incident,” The Hill reported.

The Biden administration’s plan also includes provisions for preparedness against the “accidental release of biological agents, and threats posed by terrorist groups or adversaries seeking to use biological weapons.”

Noting that COVID-19 “has highlighted that the United States and the world are vulnerable to biological threats, whether naturally occurring, accidental, or deliberate,” the plan states:

“It is a vital interest of the United States to prepare for, prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from biological threats at home and abroad.

“Therefore, countering biological threats, advancing pandemic preparedness, and achieving global health security are top national and international security priorities for the United States.

“Moving forward, the United States must fundamentally transform its capabilities to protect our Nation from biological threats and advance pandemic preparedness and health security more broadly for the world.”

According to STAT, an unnamed senior Biden administration official said Tuesday, “One of the important things that COVID has taught us is that we need to be able to move much faster to counter pandemic threats, and we also need to be prepared for completely unknown threats.”

The same official said the plan includes “moonshot” targets that are not scientifically feasible presently, but potentially could be within a decade.

According to the official, these new developments can target the 26 families of viruses that infect humans, “many of which we are far less prepared for than coronaviruses.”

Will Congress fund it?

Some questioned the plan’s price tag and the willingness of Congress to approve its funding.

One of the elements of the new strategy is its connection to a March 2022 request to Congress for $88 billion in funding over five years for “pandemic preparedness and biodefense,” a request that has thus far “stalled.”

These monies are intended, in part, “to fund new research to predict outbreaks before they become pandemics,” and “accelerate rapid testing to get ahead of where viruses are moving,” Defense One said.

Some of this money will come from the baseline funding of the federal agencies involved in this strategy, but it’s unclear whether Congress has “much of an appetite for additional public health spending,” according to STAT, which noted that “Republicans in Congress have balked at recent requests for funding the ongoing monkeypox and COVID-19 responses.”

According to the White House, the new strategy “builds on USAID’s [U.S. Agency for International Development] announcement earlier this year committing $150 million to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to accelerate the development of life-saving vaccines and countermeasures against biological threats.”

The White House also included the $1.4 billion in “seed funding” it provided earlier this year to the “groundbreaking new Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response at the World Bank.”

Boyle described the $88 billion in projected funding over the next five years as “a dramatic escalation” with “no justification from legitimate scientific reasons.”

He noted that since 2015, the federal government has “allocated anywhere from $5 to $6 billion per year on biological warfare purposes, which, being conservative, would mean a sum total from Sept. 11, 2001, until now, of $135-$140 billion.”

In his view, this money is being allocated “into further expanding the U.S. biological warfare industry … for the purpose of waging biological warfare,” and instead “should have been spent on the public health of the American people.”

‘You find Tony Fauci behind all of it’

Part of the price tag for the new biodefense strategy appears to be directed toward “recruiting, training and sustaining a robust, permanent cadre of health workers in all 50 states,” in the words of a senior Biden administration official quoted by Reuters.

Referring to it as a “public health army,” STAT reported that this “cadre of health workers” will include “laboratory technicians, veterinarians, and community health workers — to not only better detect emerging diseases but respond to them.”

In turn, Defense One reported that the strategy “aims to boost the number of local healthcare workers” and “traditional frontline healthcare workers,” but also, many new positions “related to research and data collection,” including “expanding the CDC’s epidemiology field officer program” and “bringing more epidemiologists to every state.”

The Biden administration also said it is “committed to helping at least 50 countries strengthen their own local capacities,” “strengthening public health workforces both in the United States and globally” and “establishing international mechanisms to bolster laboratory safety,” according to STAT.

For some, “international mechanisms” may bring to mind the recent and ongoing efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO) to establish a renewed “global pandemic treaty” — efforts in which the United States under the Biden administration has played a leading role.

As previously reported by The Defender, the Biden administration expressed broad support for a “pandemic treaty” and previously headed negotiations on this issue.

In his interview with The Defender, Boyle also drew connections between the Biden administration’s new strategy, and efforts to develop the “pandemic treaty.”

Referring to the Biden administration’s recently signed executive order on “advancing biotechnology and biomanufacturing,” Boyle remarked that it makes mention of “dual-use research of concern, and research involving potentially pandemic and other high-consequence pathogens.”

For Boyle, “dual-use research” refers to the development of both “offensive and defensive biological weapons of warfare,” noting that “when it comes to biological warfare, defense means offense.”

“If they are saying they are doing all this for defensive purposes, it’s because they are also planning offensive use of biological warfare weapons, with the defense to defend themselves in the event that adversaries respond in kind,” Boyle added.

This then connects to the “pandemic treaty,” according to Boyle, noting that Dr. Anthony Fauci has close ties to the WHO’s executive committee:

“If you recall, Trump pulled us out of the WHO. The first act Biden did was to put us back into the WHO … and he appointed Tony Fauci as the U.S. government’s representative on the WHO executive committee.

“So the same guy supporting this ‘dual research of concern’ … is also implementing, supervising this new WHO treaty.”

Biden’s strategy also “calls for international mechanisms that can help strengthen lab safety and biosecurity practices around the world,” especially in light of “questions about the risks and benefits of research into potentially dangerous viruses,” including the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory.

This may indicate that Biden is seeking to expand gain-of-function research globally. As recently reported by The Defender, facilities conducting such research — including a facility where a purportedly “more lethal” strain of the COVID-19 Omicron variant was developed — are currently being expanded in the U.S.

Gain of function refers to the “manipulation of pathogens to make them more dangerous,” in the hope of “getting ahead of a future outbreak.”

As part of the new strategy, a “policy coordination structure for biodefense among government agencies with oversight by the White House” was signed, Reuters reported.

According to The Hill, this memorandum “outlines the coordination structure for biodefense across federal agencies, directs agencies to prioritize biodefense, directs the intelligence community to track evolving threat landscapes and ensures the government is continuously reviewing and adjusting priorities.”

Boyle, an outspoken critic of gain-of-function research, said it appears such research will be an integral part of the Biden administration’s new biodefense strategy. He told The Defender :

“It’s clear in the language that they are going full steam ahead on abusing DNA, genetic engineering, gain-of-function, synthetic biology, gene splicing, CRISPR-Cas9, to develop biological warfare weapons.”

He said that the proposed WHO pandemic treaty includes language on “measures to provide oversight and report on laboratories that do work to genetically alter organisms in order to increase pathogenicity and transmissibility.”

For Boyle, “this means gain-of-function work, using and abusing DNA engineering, synthetic biology, CRISPR-Cas9. That’s in the WHO treaty.”

“It all ties up,” Boyle added. “The executive order, the biodefense strategy, the WHO treaty. You find Tony Fauci behind all of it.”

Boyle added:

“When you add all this up together, it seems to me they’re gearing up to prepare to wage offensive biological warfare and preparing for the defense, for other states to respond with biological warfare weapons.”

Plan calls for coordination across federal agencies under White House control

The administration’s new biodefense strategy will utilize more than 20 federal agencies, while “oversight for the strategy will be at the White House, under the national security advisor.”

According to a  senior Biden administration official, the new strategy “directs the U.S. intelligence community to monitor for threats and ensure the United States ‘continuously adapts to this evolving threat landscape’ by holding annual exercises,” to “prevent epidemics and biological incidents before they happen,” Reuters reported.

This may bring to mind exercises and simulations that took place just prior to the COVID-19, monkeypox and anthrax outbreaks, which appeared to predict, with remarkable similarity, what was to follow.

According to Biden’s new strategy, the heads of the relevant federal agencies “shall implement the Biodefense Strategy, as well as related strategies such as the U.S. Global Health Security Strategy, and include biodefense-related activities … within their strategic planning and budgetary processes.”

Federal agencies also will be expected to coordinate with each other and with non-federal agencies on matters pertaining to “the biodefense enterprise.”

Is new strategy a ‘moonshot,’ or ‘pie-in-the-sky’?

In addition to questions about funding, some also questioned the feasibility of the new plan.

Defense One wrote that meeting some of the “moonshot” goals of the strategy “will require scaling up data-collection efforts at research facilities around the globe,” in addition to significantly ratcheting up a host of other research-related efforts, noting that the administration “did not specify exactly what technologies they will invest in.”

According to Defense One, “new approaches to RNA research” to “ease pandemics” may need to be developed, in addition to “new forms of plant-based vaccines” that could “allow for the scaling up of vaccine production by orders of magnitude.”

An unnamed senior Biden administration official quoted by Defense One acknowledged that the “moonshots” foreseen by the plan “are not possible today, but these capabilities can be achieved and are within our reach with the right resources over the next five to 10 years.”

Hiring more health workers may also prove challenging for the Biden administration due to a shortage of nurse practitioners that is expected to grow by 2025, along with looming “shortages of other healthcare workers.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The crushing of dissent throughout the covid era

Orwellian parallels worsen by the week

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | October 8, 2022

The recent actions of the financial technology company, PayPal, to close the accounts of subscribers expressing political opinions of which they disapprove, represents the latest example of censorship within so-called liberal democracies. Their strategic decisions to block the online monetary activities of the Free Speech Union, the Daily Sceptic website and the Us For Them campaign group – although later reversed – signal the willingness of powerful global big-tech companies to collude with governments in the crushing of activities that challenge the dominant narratives.  But no one should be surprised; we have all been manipulated by top-down censorship and state propaganda for many years, a dystopian process that accelerated during the covid era.

Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus in early 2020, there has been widespread censorship of views that do not support the two mantras of covid-19 orthodoxy: namely that, ‘Lockdowns and other restrictions were appropriate responses’ and ‘The mRNA vaccines are safe and effective’. Indeed, the unprecedented and non-evidenced covid restrictions could not have been so successfully imposed without propaganda in all its forms. Contrary to popular opinion, techniques of manipulation do not only characterise recognised totalitarian regimes, but are now endemic within contemporary liberal democracies. And three, overlapping, forms of non-consensual persuasion have been widely deployed throughout the covid era to control the narrative and subsequent behaviour of citizens:

1.      Control through emotional manipulation

The covert influencing of people’s emotions via use of behavioural-science ‘nudges’ has been well documented. Based on the advice of state-employed psychological experts, the covid-19 communication strategy has relied heavily on evoking uncomfortable feelings in the populace as a way of inducing them to ‘do the right thing’, where what is ‘right’ is solely determined by government-appointed officials. In particular, the manipulation of fear, shame and scapegoating – or ‘affect’, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’, to use the euphemisms of behavioural science – has been conducted for this purpose via the broadcasting of selective statistics, alarming images and emotional messaging. Furthermore, the decision to impose mask mandates was most likely informed by the knowledge that face coverings enhance the power of each of these three nudges, thereby increasing people’s compliance with government diktats.

Despite escalating concerns about the ethical basis of the state’s deployment of behavioural science, there has been a stark reluctance of anyone in authority to accept responsibility for this form of manipulation. The British Psychological Society (the formal guardians of ethical application of psychological interventions) is of the view that covertly inflicting emotional distress on people so as to promote compliance with covid restrictions and the vaccine rollout is acceptable as it is encouraging ‘social responsibility’, thereby colluding – along with other professional bodies – with the state’s mission to silence dissent and eliminate contrary behaviour. Meanwhile the Government show a reluctance to explore the ethics underpinning their deployment of nudges as evidenced by their ‘Public Administration and Public Affairs Committee’ ignoring a request for an independent inquiry and the omission of any mention of behavioural science in the draft terms of reference for the Inquiry into the covid-19 pandemic.

2.      Control through modulating the flow of information

A second way of controlling dissent – used at unprecedentedly high levels throughout the covid event – has been via the regulation of information flow within our TV, radio, newspaper and social media outlets. Ease of access to facts, data and opinion (including that of scientific experts) has been mainly determined by the degree to which the information corresponds with the dominant narratives: write or speak words supportive of lockdowns, masking and vaccination and they will typically receive preferential treatment within the media’s editorial processes, gaining prominence and ease of access; in contrast, say or print something contrarian and it will most likely be submerged in the quagmire of daily media output.

The seeds of this system of selective information flow had been sown prior to 2020 with the formation of the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ (a coalition of mainstream media, publishers and big-tech companies) aspiring to ‘create a global alliance of integrity in news’ by countering ‘misinformation’ and ‘bias’. Furthermore, at the start of the pandemic, Ofcom – the UK’s communications regulator – instructed broadcasters not to cover anything that went against the Government’s narrative. This censorial alliance ensured that voices expressing dissent about covid restrictions and the vaccine rollout were disadvantaged, displaced to the inaccessible fringes of media output.

In the UK, there has even been military involvement in the form of the 77th Brigade with their explicit mission to create and spread material ‘in support of designated tasks’ while also ‘supporting counter-adversarial information activity’. Internationally, the WHO has effectively modulated the flow of information via the use of fact-checking organisations and collaborations with Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and YouTube, so as to guarantee that ‘science-based health messages from official sources’ (aka the dominant narrative) appear first when one searches for covid information.

Specific examples of the impact of this – seemingly global – operation to control information flow are numerous. They include: Professor Gupta (an epidemiological expert) being instructed not to mention the Great Barrington Declaration prior to appearing on a BBC discussion programme about lockdowns; academic journals blocking the peer-reviewed covid research of Dr Peter McCullough and the suppression of trial findings that had concluded that Ivermectin was an effective treatment; the removal of Dr Robert Malone (the inventor of mRNA technology) from Twitter; and the removal of MPs Sir Christopher Chope and David Davies from YouTube for, respectively, raising concerns about vaccine damage and vaccine effectiveness.

One fundamental consequence of this selective regulation of information was that our Western media – a supposed pillar of democracy – failed us all in their refusal to scrutinise and evaluate the actions of public officials.

3.      Control through erasing dissenting voices

Presumably based on the assumption that eliminating people before dissent is expressed is a more effective censorial method than controlling their information output, throughout the covid era there appears to have been a systematic state-driven attempt to discredit or cancel those brave individuals expressing views that are inconsistent with the dominant restrict-and-jab narrative.

Since March 2020, anyone who has expressed a contrarian covid opinion in a public space will likely have attracted criticism involving accusations of being ‘right wing’, fascist or a ‘conspiracy theorist’. Efforts by powerful players to destroy reputations and livelihoods through smearing and character assassination have been commonplace. Arguably the most high-profile example of this egregious practice is in regards to the targeting of the main authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a multi-signatory document arguing for an alternative to the blanket lockdowns. In leaked emails between Anthony Fauci (Chief Medical Advisor to the US president) and Francis Collins (the Director of the US National Institute of Health), these powerful state officials refer to the illustrious authors of the document as ‘fringe epidemiologists’ while describing the need for a ‘quick and devastating public takedown’ of their arguments. Furthermore, the extremely popular US podcaster, Joe Rogan, was smeared as a transphobe and racist in the aftermath of him giving a platform to experts expressing views at odds with the dominant covid narrative.

A threat of imminent loss of earnings – actual or implied – is another tactic that has been commonly deployed to cancel those criticising the approach of Western governments to pandemic management. Many academics have suffered in this way, including Canadian professor Julie Ponesse who lost her job after she challenged the vaccine mandates. Of course, such a draconian sanction serves as a warning to many other university scholars who might also be considering expressing dissent.

The recent actions of PayPal suggest that our medico-technocratic powerhouses are not satisfied with inflicting emotional distress, censorship and character assassination on the Western population, but now seek to control how we spend our money. Manipulation by means of regulating access to our finances may be the new front in the war on freedom of verbal and behavioural expression. It raises the spectre of the imposition of a totalitarian social credit system, mediated via a Central Bank Digital Currency, a world where unelected global bureaucrats determine our monthly spend based on the degree to which our behaviour conforms to their version of what constitutes the ‘greater good’.  

In the words of Piers Robinson (an expert on global propaganda), ‘That the censorship, smearing and coercion … has come to be tolerated is a clear indicator of how far our democracies have slipped into an authoritarian abyss’. And the imminent Online Harms Bill, with its ‘legal but harmful’ category, may further restrict our basic human right to freedom of expression. But there is still hope. As more and more people become aware of the associated collateral damage, the dominant narratives on the benefits of lockdowns, school closures, masks and ‘safe-and-effective’ covid vaccines are beginning to crumble. As awareness of ubiquitous state-funded manipulation and censorship grows, increasing numbers of citizens are turning to independent sources of expert information – such as HART and PANDA – for reliable covid updates. The basic human right of freedom of expression within Western democracies must be protected; once lost, it is unlikely to be restored within our lifetimes.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The majority of Americans are against Big Tech’s plan to censor before the election

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 20, 2022

A survey conducted by Susquehanna Polling and Research, on behalf of The Federalist, found that two-thirds of voters oppose Big Tech’s censorship of political content ahead of the midterms.

Respondents of the survey were asked: “Do you approve or disapprove of Big Tech companies such as , Facebook, and  censoring news stories and preventing users from sharing articles and information related to the upcoming election in November?”

66% of the respondents said they oppose the censorship of political content by social media companies. Only 24% said they approve of the censorship, while the rest were undecided or had no opinion.

44% of those who identified as Democrats disapprove of the censorship while 39% support it.

51% of those who approve of ’s performance oppose the censorship, while 35% support it.

The survey also asked respondents if they “trust the corporate news media to tell the truth” or if the media “misrepresent the facts to push a political agenda.”

77% said they think the media do not tell the truth, with only 13% saying they believe the media. Along political affiliation, 59% of Democrats, 79% of independents, and 91% of Republicans said they do not think the media tells the truth.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Majority of US voters say the media is a threat to democracy

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 20, 2022

While the media often suggests that social media posts are a threat to democracy, a poll commissioned by the New York Times found that a majority of registered voters believe that the media is a threat.

71% of respondents said that “American democracy is currently under threat.” Of those, 59% said that the media is a “major threat to democracy and 25% said the media is a “minor threat to democracy.” A measly 15% did not think that the media is a threat to democracy.

70% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 95% of Republicans said the the media poses some sort of threat to democracy. Only 38% of Democrats believe the media is a major threat to democracy, compared to 53% of independents and 80% of Republicans.

The media outranked former President , President , the Electoral College, voting machines, voting by mail, and the Supreme Court as major threats to democracy.

Republicans mentioned voting machines, voting by mail and the federal government as threats to democracy. Democrats cited the Electoral College and the Supreme Court.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

South Korea, US resume drills, blame North for tensions

By Frank Smith | Press TV | October 21, 2022

South Korea and the US are holding more military exercises this week, with their troops staging a joint river-crossing drill on Wednesday.

The war games follow the joint drills Washington and Seoul conducted in August– the largest such exercises in 5 years. US officials claim the renewed military drills are defensive in nature.

North Korea views the recent drills as a rehearsal for the invasion of North Korea, and has responded by firing artillery and short range missiles into nearby waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula.

Activists have expressed concern over what they call cycles of dangerous exercises drills and military spending.

North Korea has this year conducted several ballistic missile tests, which it argues are efforts to deter the threat from the US and South Korea, as Seoul continues to upgrade its arsenal of submarines, ships, aircraft and missiles.

South Korea, Japan and the US, on the other hand, blame North Korea’s missile tests for the increased security risk on the Korean peninsula.

US officials have repeatedly claimed that they have reached out to North Korea for unconditional negotiations. But in the meantime, the US-South Korea alliance appears determined to increase military pressure against Pyongyang, with large-scale joint air force drills scheduled to begin on October 31st.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Former Pakistan PM barred from elections

Samizdat | October 21, 2022

Imran Khan, the former prime minister of Pakistan, has been banned from running in elections and becoming a member of parliament for the next five years. The decision by the election commission was rejected by his party, which has called for street protests in response to what they say is an act of political bias.

The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) accused Khan of failing to properly report how his government handled gifts that he had received while in office. It constituted “corrupt practices” that warranted his disqualification from holding public office, the body announced on Friday.

Senior officials in Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party rejected the ruling and said they would challenge it in court.

Fawad Chaudhry, who was the minister of law under Khan, called the ruling a “slap on the face of 220 million” party supporters and claimed that the verdict was “written by Nawaz Sharif and signed by his servants,” according to local news website Dawn.

He was referring to the former Pakistani prime minister, who is also the brother of the incumbent head of the government, Shehbaz Sharif. Chaudhry declared the “beginning of the revolution.”

Reports of protests and some street clashes between PTI supporters and police have been coming from several cities, including the capital Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, and Karachi. On the Lahore–Islamabad motorway, people burned tires, according to videos shared on social media.

In the capital itself, police appeared to deploy tear gas to disperse demonstrators. Footage from the scene showed thick white clouds billowing in the streets, with people running away.

The Pakistani government called the verdict a proper execution of justice and said Khan may face prosecution for corruption. Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar also accused the PTI leadership of inciting “mobs” to attack Pakistani cities.

Khan was removed as prime minister in August in a no-confidence vote in parliament. He claimed that it was a soft coup orchestrated by Washington to place a more pliable politician at the helm of the country. Both Shehbaz Sharif and the US government denied the allegations.

The case reviewed by the ECP was related to four gifts from foreign countries, which Khan admitted to selling. In his formal reply to the commission last month, he insisted that he paid their value to the treasury when he received them.

Certain top government officials in Pakistan are legally obliged to declare all gifts but are allowed to keep those below a certain value. More expensive items must go to a special office called Toshakhana, but in some cases, the recipient can buy them back at around half their value.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine war is ‘Biden’s war’ now

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | OCTOBER 21, 2022 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Oct 18, 2022 that evidence of military personnel of United States and other Western countries having their boots on the ground in Ukraine is mounting.

The most obvious explanation to the mysterious air dash of the UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace to Washington on Tuesday could be that he was canvassing for the support of the Biden Administration for his pitch to succeed Liz Truss as Britain’s next prime minister. But another plausible explanation can be that the secret, hurried trip marked a defining moment in the conflict in Ukraine, which is showing all signs of turning into a full-fledged war. 

To be sure, the Biden team cannot but be worried that London is drifting into chaos and the Conservative Party’s faction leaders scurry around like headless chickens looking for a substitute Truss who stepped down on Thursday. 

The British economy is disintegrating and the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt anticipates that a cut on the defence budget is inevitable. That is to say, the Deep State’s fun and frolic in Kiev is no longer affordable. The UK is heading for hard times, the rubric of Global Britain looks delusional. 

Enter President Biden. The reports from Moscow suggest that Russians have hard intelligence to the effect that Washington has demanded from President Zelensky some spectacular performance on the battlefield as the midterms in the US on November 8 is around the corner. 

That adds to the enigmatic comment by a second defence minister in London James Heappey that the conversations that Wallace would be having in Washington were “beyond belief,” hinting that particularly sensitive and serious issues were on the agenda.  

Indeed, after arrival in Washington, Wallace headed straight for the White House to meet up with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Biden’s point person for the Ukraine war. A White House readout said the two officials “exchanged views on shared national security interests, including Ukraine. They underscored their commitment to continue providing Ukraine with security assistance as it defends itself against Russian aggression.” 

As British politics descends to skulduggery that will extend into months, the US will be a stakeholder. Historically, since the World War 2, Britain led the US from the rear in critical situations involving Russia. 

Indeed, Biden issued a rare statement on Truss’ exit, which stated that the US and the UK “are strong Allies and enduring friends — and that fact will never change.” He thanked her “for her partnership on a range of issues including holding Russia accountable for its war against Ukraine.” Biden underscored that “We will continue our close cooperation with the U.K. government as we work together to meet the global challenges our nations face.” 

Biden has sent a powerful message to Britain’s political class signalling that he expects them to come up with a new prime minister who will faithfully adhere to the compass set by Boris Johnson on Ukraine. In immediate terms, what does it signal for the Anglo-American project in Kherson? Will it go ahead? That is the big question. 

The situation in Kherson is assuming the nature of a large-scale military confrontation, as Zelensky is throwing everything into it in an attempt to wrest control of the strategic Kherson city, which has been under Russian control since March, before the midterms in the US. 

At a press conference in Moscow on Tuesday, Army general Sergei Surovikin, the newly-appointed theatre commander for Ukraine operations, conceded that there was a danger of the Ukrainian forces advancing toward Kherson city. 

To quote the general, “A difficult situation has arisen. The enemy deliberately bombards infrastructure and residential buildings in Kherson. The Antonovsky Bridge and the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station were damaged by HIMARS missiles, traffic there was stopped. 

“As a result, the supply of food in the city is difficult, there are certain problems with the water and electricity supply. All this greatly complicates the lives of citizens, but also poses a direct threat to their lives. 

“The NATO leadership of the Ukrainian armed forces has long been demanding offensive operations against Kherson from the Kiev regime, regardless of casualties… We have data on the possibility that the regime in Kiev will use prohibited methods of war in the area of the city of Kherson — preparation for a big missile attack on the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric dam, massive and indiscriminate missile and artillery attacks on the city…

“In these circumstances, our top priority is to preserve the life and health of citizens. Therefore, the Russian army will first of all ensure the safe, already announced departure of the population according to the resettlement program being prepared by the Russian government. Our further plans and actions regarding the city of Kherson itself will depend on the current military-tactical situation. I repeat, it is already very difficult today. [Emphasis added.]

“In any case, as I said, we will start from the need to protect the lives of civilians and our military as much as possible. We will act consciously and in a timely manner, without excluding difficult decisions.” [Emphasis added.] 

The full interview of Gen. Sergey Surovikin to Russian media is below:

The Kremlin thinking gets echoed in a public appeal by the head of the Kherson region Vladimir Saldo where he explained that the evacuation of civilians was not only for people’s safety but also for the operational freedom of the military:

“Dear compatriots, I want to say again that our army has very strong capabilities to repel any attack. But in order for our military to work quietly and not to think that civilians are behind their backs, you MUST get out of these neighbourhoods I mentioned and allow the military to do its job properly, with fewer casualties for the civilians. Our cause is just and we are sure we will win!” 

The message here is that the Russian military is prepared to expand the scope of the conflict in Kherson, if need arises. There has been talk about a massive Russian offensive circa mid-November. The new security measures announced by Putin this week and the establishment of a special coordination council headed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to support the needs of Russia’s Armed Forces imply that time is being put on a war footing.

Significantly, Gen. Surovikin said at one point in his press conference: “The enemy does not give up trying to attack the positions of the Russian troops. This concerns, first of all, the directions Kupyansk (Kharkov oblast), Krasnolimansky (Donetsk oblast) and Mykolaiv-Krivoy Rog (neighbouring Kherson oblast.) Our enemy is a criminal regime that is killing the citizens of Ukraine. We are one people with Ukrainians and we wish Ukraine to become a state independent of the West and NATO, friendly to Russia… [Emphasis added.]

“The Ukrainian regime is trying to break through our defences. To this end, the AFU is pulling all available reserves to the front lines. These are mainly territorial defense forces that have not completed full training. In fact, the Ukrainian leadership is condemning them to destruction.” 

Then, he added, “We have a different strategy. The Commander-in-Chief [President Putin] has already talked about this. We don’t aim for high advance figures, we take care of every soldier and methodically “grind” the advancing enemy. This not only limits our losses, but also significantly reduces the number of civilian casualties.” 

That is to say, specifically, the set parameters of the special military operations with focus on “demilitarisation” and “denazification” remain unchanged while also aiming at the replacement of Zelensky’s regime. 

Russia will be keenly watching the profound political crisis developing in Europe, of which the paroxysms in Britain are an early harbinger, which could erode the rock-like UK support for Zelensky, as the western capability and interest to bankroll the Ukrainian economy and fuel the military conflict may also be on the wane. 

Nonetheless, Surovikin did not take to hyperbole but instead chose to communicate directly, realistically. He echoed Putin’s priority to take all necessary measures and resources in accordance with the operational and tactical situation at the front with the supreme objective of saving the lives of Russian soldiers and local civilians. 

The general conveyed the impression that the Russian command is ready for every development of the situation in Kherson — both tactical withdrawal and heavy city fighting. 

In political terms, with the UK bogged down in a domestic quagmire, Biden has the option to shift to diplomacy. This is “Biden’s war” now. He is about to script his presidential legacy as the fifth of the 14 American presidents in office since World War II to “own” a war — after Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George HW Bush and George W. Bush.

October 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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