This act looks like a threat of attack and could generate responses.
By Lucas Leiroz | September 29, 2022
The US and some other Western countries announced the evacuation of their citizens from the Russian territory. In a context of tensions between Moscow and NATO, this type of attitude sounds like a threat, further worsening the scenario of global security crisis.
The US State Department has asked Russia-based American citizens to leave the country immediately. The appeal was posted on the website of the US Embassy in Russia. The justification for the advice was that Moscow could mobilize citizens who have dual nationality, which is why foreigners based in Russia should flee as quickly as possible, before they are mobilized for combat on Ukrainian soil. The statement also highlights that there are currently a limited number of flights from Russia to other countries, and tickets for the next dates may not be available, so US citizens residing in Russia should hurry to leave.
It is interesting to analyze the communiqué issued by the Embassy when the reality of the mobilization promoted by Russia is not only partial but also absolutely moderate. The call-up of combatants has been promoted in a balanced way, with no urgency for foreign citizens to flee in a hurry to avoid being mobilized. Moscow has shown no interest in forcing foreign nationals with Russian passports to serve in the special military operation, which makes the American narrative weak and unsubstantiated.
However, some other countries also took measures similar to the one of the US. Poland and Bulgaria, for example, called on their citizens to leave Russia immediately. Commenting on the matter, spokespersons for the Polish Foreign Ministry released a note stating: “In case of a drastic deterioration of the security situation, the closure of borders or other unforeseen circumstances, evacuation may prove significantly impeded or even impossible (…) We recommend that the citizens of the Republic of Poland who remain on the territory of the Russian Federation leave its territory using the available commercial and private means”.
Also, Poland’s foreign minister Zbigniew Rau was more explicit in his words and stated that if Russia uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine, NATO’s response will be “devastating”, which is why Polish citizens should leave Russian territory as soon as possible. In fact, his words were just an endorsement of what had already been previously announced by the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who threatened Moscow by stating that “if Russia crosses this line (the use of nuclear weapons], there will be catastrophic consequences for Russia”, adding that “the United States will respond decisively”.
In fact, evacuating citizens is an elementary measure usually taken by states that are planning some kind of attack or invasion. It is the most direct and simplest way to prevent putting the lives of innocent citizens on enemy soil at risk when a war is breaking out. In this sense, any attempt at a massive withdrawal of Western citizens from Russia sounds like a threat to the Eurasian country at this point, as the Western military alliance has constantly warned of “consequences” against Moscow in the event of an escalation in Ukraine.
The problem is that the situation in Ukraine only tends to escalate because of the attitudes of the western countries themselves, which continue with their provocative military programs against Russia, supporting the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev with lethal weapons and large amounts of money. Moscow has already issued communiqués warning of what it considers a “red line” in the Ukrainian conflict, which is Russia’s sovereign territory. Russian forces are unwilling to tolerate attacks on the Federation’s territory and make it clear that they will respond harshly if such attacks occur.
With the positive result for the integration of the liberated territories into Russia, the new oblasts will become part of the Federation and thus will be under direct protection of Moscow, not being tolerable Ukrainian attacks in these regions. The West, however, insists on not recognizing the referendums and encourages Kiev to attack these regions. This is precisely where an eventual nuclear escalation could happen. Russian military doctrine establishes that nuclear weapons should only be used as a last resort in the event of an existential threat to the Russian state. Moscow may consider Western-funded attacks an existential threat if the targets are within the Federation – including the new territories – which is why there is currently a nuclear danger.
So, it is the West itself that fosters the conditions for a nuclear escalation. And it is also the West that threatens to react to such an escalation by directly attacking Russia and starting a third world war. By evacuating its citizens, the US and its allies are once again provoking and threatening Russia, sending “red alerts” that something is “about to happen”. The objective is to act preemptively and justify a Western response.
In fact, the West seems to be acting in an anti-strategic manner. There no longer seems to be any military realism in the thinking of NATO leaders, who are willing to escalate tensions more and more, even though there are no winners in a possible scenario of world war.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Samizdat – 28.09.2022
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines have been effectively rendered inoperable this week due to an incident that may have been an act of sabotage.
As the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines are currently incapable of transporting natural gas from Russia to Europe, experts ponder who is going to benefit from this catastrophe.
Vladimir Demidov, an international analyst of energy and natural resource markets, told Sputnik that the parties who oppose negotiations between Germany and Russia definitely benefit from the Nord Stream breakdown.
As these negotiations may lead to sanctions against Russia being partially lifted – potentially in exchange for gas shipments during winter – those who want to keep these sanctions in place could also be regarded as an interested party, he added.
“This is an act of aggression on a planetary level,” Demidov remarked. “A country or a bloc destroying infrastructure of another country. And we’re not talking about domestic infrastructure here, but infrastructure that connects countries and supplies about 30 percent of the natural gas Europe uses.”
Russian National Energy Security Fund analyst Igor Yushkov also observed that neither Russia nor Germany were interested in the pipeline’s destruction: for Berlin, Nord Stream presented an option to stave off a potential “energy collapse” during winter, while Moscow invested a lot of money into the project.
Both Demidov and Yushkov observed that Europe will now have to purchase natural gas from the United States, the largest liquefied natural gas supplier while it looks like Russia was essentially squeezed out from the European natural gas market.
“The natural gas from the US is going to become more expensive and Europe would still have to buy it because there is no other gas,” Demidov said. “A very amusing diversification has occurred in Europe: they switched from key supplier of the ‘bad’ gas from Russia to the ‘freedom’ gas from the United States that costs at least twice as much.”
He also pointed at former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslav Sikorsky, who “thanked” the United States on social media for the Nord Stream breakdown, with Demidov arguing that when people of such caliber make such statements, it looks as if they are trying to make the truth look like a joke.
“I have a feeling that the United States really wants to destroy the European Union as a global economic player,” he said.
Samizdat – 28.09.2022
An FBI whistleblower submitted a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel alleging that the federal agency and Department of Justice (DoJ) have violated constitutional rights of Jan. 6 defendants by misusing SWAT teams to make misdemeanor arrests.
Special Agent Stephen M. Friend informed the US Office of Special Counsel, a permanent independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, about alleged violations by the bureau and DoJ in a whistleblower complaint obtained by US media outlet Just the News earlier this week. Friend works for the FBI in Florida and serves as a SWAT team member.
“I believed the investigations were inconsistent with FBI procedure and resulted in the violation of citizens’ Sixth and Eighth Amendment rights,” Friend wrote. “I added that many of my colleagues expressed similar concerns to me but had not vocalized their objections to FBI Executive Management.”
In particular, Friend cited an inappropriate use of SWAT teams to arrest subjects for misdemeanor offenses related to the January 6 protests in DC. According to the complaint, the agent suggested alternatives such as “the issuance of a court summons or utilizing surveillance groups to determine an optimal, safe time for a local sheriff deputy to contact the subjects and advise them about the existence of the arrest warrant.”
Nonetheless, one of Friend’s bosses told him that “FBI executive management considered all potential alternatives and determined the SWAT takedown was the appropriate course of action.”
Last year, Julie Kelly, a political commentator, author and senior contributor to American Greatness (AG), described numerous cases when January Sixers were raided by SWAT teams despite not being accused of any violent crime or having a criminal record. Many of the defendants were also interrogated with no lawyer present, according to Kelly.
In one case on June 24, 2021, the FBI arrested a Florida pastor and his son for their alleged involvement in the January 6 protest, according to American Greatness. The son, Casey Cusick, was handcuffed in front of his three-year-old daughter, while Cusick’s father, James, the founder and pastor of a church in Melbourne, Florida, also was arrested. Neither of the Cusicks were accused of violent crimes related to the DC incident.
Joseph Bolanos, a 69-year-old New Yorker and former Red Cross volunteer was raided in February 2021 by the FBI anti-terrorism task force because a tipster falsely linked him to the January 6 Capitol hill protest. The old man remained handcuffed and detained for three hours before the problem was resolved.
Agent Friend noted in his whistleblower complaint that he believes that the January 6 investigation has involved “overzealous charging by the DOJ and biased jury pools in Washington DC”.
The whistleblower likewise revealed that the FBI field office in Washington DC was opening Capitol riot cases in other field offices across the US, thus creating “a false data trail” suggesting a nationwide domestic extremism emergency when in reality the cases all stemmed from the Capitol breach in one city: Washington.
As a result of this apparent manipulation, agents in field offices across the country are being listed as case agents for search and arrest warrants for subjects they actually had not investigated, according to Friend.
“There are active criminal investigations of J6 subjects in which I am listed as the ‘Case Agent,’ but have not done any investigative work,” Friend revealed. “Additionally, my supervisor has not approved any paperwork within the file. J6 Task Force members are serving as Affiants on search and arrest warrant affidavits for subjects whom I have never investigated or even interviewed but am listed as a Case Agent.”
To complicate matters further, the FBI deprioritized other investigations of serious crimes like child sex exploitation for the sake of January 6 investigation, according to the whistleblower: “I was also told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies,” the agent wrote.
Speaking to Just the News, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio confirmed that his office had communicated with Friend and is aware of his complaint. The Republican lawmakers raised concerns about the FBI’s usage of excessive force both in raids against January Sixers and the bureau’s latest searches of former President Donald Trump’s premises in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, which took place on August 8.
The DoJ dispatched a whopping 30 FBI agents to raid Trump’s home. However, Jonathan Turley, Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University, wondered if the FBI’s sudden intrusion was really justified given that Trump’s team had previously cooperated with the DoJ and complied with a federal subpoena.
On August 14, GOP Rep. Jordan told Fox News that 14 FBI whistleblowers had come forward with concerns about the DoJ’s alleged political bias in the wake of the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid.
Earlier, a number of FBI whistleblowers reportedly informed Republican congressmembers that the bureau and the Department of Justice had selectively launched investigations into conservative-aligned individuals and exhibited a pattern of political bias. On July 25, Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley accused FBI officials of pursuing “politically charged investigations” related to the Trump campaign while downplaying and discrediting negative information concerning Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law,” Grassley wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Not only Republicans are concerned with the FBI and DoJ’s apparent political bias: on July 23, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard called out the Biden administration, for “shamelessly weaponz[ing]” federal law enforcement agencies into a “political hit squad.”
Ranking Republican lawmakers have been reportedly conducting investigations into the DoJ and the FBI which could take on a new significance if the GOP wins the majority in the House and the Senate after the November midterms.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. – The Defender – September 26, 2022
A federal court in Texas is giving the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) until Friday to release the first batch of data on adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination collected by the agency via its V-safe app.
The order by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas-Austin Division follows a series of lawsuits filed by the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), an Austin-based nonprofit “focused on the scientific integrity of vaccines and [the] pharmaceutical industry.”
According to ICAN, the court order requires the CDC to release the first batch of 19 months’ worth of data collected from millions of participants who reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccination via the V-safe app between Dec. 14, 2020, and July 31, 2022.
In all, the CDC will be required to release more than 137 million health V-safe entries.
The CDC describes V-safe as a smartphone app that “provides personalized and confidential check-ins via text messages and web surveys,” enabling users to “quickly and easily share with CDC how you, or your dependent, feel after getting a COVID-19 vaccine.”
According to the CDC, “This information helps CDC monitor the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in near real time,” adding that the purpose of the V-safe app “is to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines when given outside a clinical trial setting.”
Public will ‘see for themselves the actual self-reported data’
The data collected via the V-safe app is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” with only the CDC having “access to the individualized survey data.”
Oracle’s access is limited to “aggregate deidentified data for reporting.”
This distinction led to the main thrust of ICAN’s lawsuits against the CDC. ICAN argued that “based on the CDC’s own documentation, the data submitted to V-safe is already available in deidentified form (with no personal health information) and could be immediately released to the public.”
ICAN submitted three Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for the deidentified data collected via V-safe, “in the same form in which Oracle can currently access it.”
However, ICAN said, the CDC “had apparently not read its own documentation regarding V-safe” and refused ICAN’s requests, claiming “information in the app is not deidentified.”
Even when ICAN clarified its FOIA request to specifically ask for “all data deidentified after [emphasis original] it was submitted to the V-safe app,” the CDC “administratively closed this request stating it was duplicative of the original request.”
ICAN responded by suing the CDC in federal court in December 2021, via its attorney, Aaron Siri, for the release of this data.
Siri also represented Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, the organization that sued the U.S. Food and Drug Association (FDA) for the release of data from the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine trials — a lawsuit that was successful.
Following a new FOIA request by ICAN in April 2022, for the release of “all data submitted to V-safe since January 1, 2020,” and the CDC’s subsequent refusal, ICAN filed a second lawsuit in May 2022.
ICAN said these successive refusals on the part of the CDC came “despite the CDC’s ability to immediately release this deidentified data pursuant to its own protocol,” based on the claim that “the information in the app is not deidentified.”
ICAN commented on the significance of the ruling, stating in a press release:
“This is a huge win for ICAN and for the American public, who will finally start to be able to see for themselves the actual self-reported nationwide data about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.”
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, called the ruling an “absolutely huge development.”
Hooker told The Defender :
“This is an absolutely huge development and I’ll be waiting with anticipation as the V-safe data are released.
“With CDC’s reluctance to release this information, one can only imagine that it will not reflect well on the whole COVID-19 vaccination program, especially given irregularities seen with VAERS [the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reporting and the shifting narrative of the CDC regarding COVID-19 guidance.”
Hooker has faced similar obstacles to those encountered by ICAN when requesting data from the CDC. He said he “submitted a FOIA for the V-safe pregnancy data early in the process and was denied.”
“I’m glad that Aaron [Siri] and ICAN stuck with it,” Hooker said. “I can only think of the lives that could have been spared if the CDC would have been forthcoming with this information in the first place.”
The data collected via the V-safe app is distinct from the data submitted to VAERS. ICAN described the distinction:
“The FDA and CDC have admitted their existing safety monitoring program, VAERS, was incapable of determining causation and therefore unreliable.
“The CDC has therefore deployed a new safety monitoring system for COVID-19 vaccines called V-safe, and now claims that these ‘vaccines are being administered under the most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history.’”
Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
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.
Der Spiegel says CIA warned German government of potential sabotage weeks ago
By Michael Shellenberger | September 27, 2022
A former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.
Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.
Poland’s Secretary of State, Stanisław Żaryn, denounced Sikorki’s claim on Twitter as “Russian #propaganda,” calling it “a smear campaign against Poland, the US, and Ukraine, accusing the West of aggression against #NS1 and #NS2. Authenticating the Russian lies at this particular moment jeopardizes the security of Poland. What an act of gross irresponsibility!”
But it’s not out of the realm of the possible that the U.S. is indeed behind the attack. President Joe Biden promised on February 7 to prevent Nord Stream 2 from becoming operational if Russia invaded Ukraine. “If Russia invades,” said Biden, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since… the project is in Germany’s control?”
Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”
And:
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | Responsible Statecraft | September 27, 2022
Congress is poised this week to approve an estimated $12 billion in new economic aid and military assistance to Ukraine. But don’t expect a lot of debate or even fanfare because it is being rolled into a stopgap measure to keep the entire federal government operating until December.
Called a continuing resolution, the massive spending bill must be passed by Friday to avoid a shutdown. This was obviously the most convenient way for Biden to push the Ukrainian aid measure through: Majority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spearheaded its inclusion in the resolution, and, with most members of Congress in favor of the previous aid packages and precious few days for any floor discussion, any critics of the proposal have little or no time to question it.
And plus, who’s going to chance being accused of wanting to “shut down the government” by raising a stink?
According to the most recent reports on Monday night, lawmakers have agreed to include $12 billion — $4.5 billion for weapons and equipment, and $2.7 for military, intelligence, and other defense support, plus another $4.5 billion to keep the Ukrainian government running for another quarter.
Meanwhile, Democrats’ attention seems to be focused elsewhere, on a completely different potential stumbling block: a permitting reform measure by Sen Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Nevertheless, the first step is a cloture vote to move the massive bill forward, with the Senate beginning deliberations today.
This new money is on top of the $40 billion approved in May. Since the war began, the U.S. has sent more than $15 billion in weapons and military assistance to Kyiv in its war against invading Russian forces.
But critics say there has been little visible oversight in Washington of the money already spent, whether it is getting to where it needs to go, or being used effectively by the forces that need it.
“Oversight of Ukraine aid is sorely needed,” Julia Gledhill, a defense analyst for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), tells Responsible Statecraft. “The State and Defense departments are handling billions of dollars in Ukraine funding, but neither have permanent inspectors general in place to investigate and prevent abuse of funds.”
The word is that the Democrats are unified behind the new aid package (recall no Democrat in either the House or Senate voted against the $40 billion measure in May). Republicans, on the other hand represent the potential opposition, with 11 GOP senators and 57 House Republicans dissenting on that same vote.
According to recent reports, Republican complaints of this latest tranche have focused on the fact it was being tied to the CR and the lack of debate.
“I haven’t seen a detailed list of exactly how they want to spend the money,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said on Sept. 19. “I think whatever we do on Ukraine, we ought to be doing it separately from the CR. I think we’ve gotta have a clean CR that goes through Congress.”
In that same CNN article, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he was “open for discussion” about the Ukraine aid. The House side seems a bit more restive: a recent Politico article quoted Rep. Chip Roy, (R-Texas) balking at what seemed to be rubber stamping aid for Ukraine.
“There’s no limiting principle. So no, count me against throwing more money at Ukraine without having a serious conversation about guns and butter, a serious conversation about why we’re spending it and how it’s in our national security interest,” he said.
But these primary concerns — oversight and debate over whether continuing aid is in the U.S. interest (and whether, when not paired with diplomatic strategy, we might be prolonging the war at Ukraine’s ultimate expense) — will be likely overtaken this week by the bipartisan desire to keep sending aid. This includes party leaders and chairs/ranking members of the prominent Armed Services Committees who believe that new and more weapons will put Ukrainians in a position of strength from which to eventually negotiate.
In fact, folks like Sen. James Inhofe want to give more. “This aid package is insufficient to provide the Ukrainians with what they need to win,” the Republican ranking member of the SASC complained on Twitter in early September.
Politically, however, Biden is smart to get this through now. If Republicans take over the House after the November midterms, they are expected to throw up many more roadblocks against additional Biden/Democratic spending, and that might jeopardize further Ukraine aid. But that’s not set in stone: Establishment institutions like the Republican Policy Committee are clear the assistance to Ukraine must continue. In fact, they tie it to our foreign policy writ large:
“We must leave absolutely no doubt in the minds of Russia’s, China’s, or any other nation’s leaders about U.S. resolve to support sovereignty and self-determination around the globe,” the RPC said in Sept. 12 paper. “Decisive military aid to Ukraine will accomplish this task.”
Responsible Statecraft will update this story as it develops.
Zionist groups condemn “extremists” unless they are Jews
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 27, 2022
It has been a normal couple of weeks for reporting on what is going on in Israel, which is to say that the bad things it has been doing have been carefully suppressed by the US government and the media. The Israelis continue their program to isolate, humiliate and terrify the Palestinians by destroying their civil and human rights organizations while also limiting foreigner access to the remaining Arab inhabited areas on the West Bank. Israeli Jews now routinely refer to all Palestinians as “terrorists” to justify the harsh measures used to steal their land and homes while also destroying their livelihoods.
The so-called Israel Defense Forces, whose Chief Rabbi Eyal Karim approves of his soldiers raping ‘attracting Gentile women’ as a way to keep up morale, are also continuing to kill Palestinians at an unprecedented rate and have covered-up the murder four months ago of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, admitting only that the woman was apparently killed by a soldier who claimed that he thought her to be an armed Arab rioter. No further action will be taken. A US State Department briefer accepted the verdict saying that the action “underscore[s] the importance of accountability in this case, such as policies and procedures to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.”
Actually, the Israeli statement does no such thing as it lacks any accountability. The White House should have blocked the $3.3 billion gift that Israel gets every year from the US Treasury for starters. And the shoot-first policies by Israeli soldiers will continue, a position emphasized by Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who firmly rejected proposals to change the Army’s current rules of engagement which led to the Akleh killing, saying that he would not allow outsiders to “dictate our open-fire policies.”
When it comes to the exercise of Jewish power in the United States, the word “hypocrisy” should immediately come to mind. A recent report on extremism in America has been compiled by the indefatigable Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which has a “Center on Extremism” that has examined “more than 38,000 names on leaked Oath Keepers membership lists and identified more than 370 people it believes currently work in law enforcement agencies — including as police chiefs and sheriffs — and more than 100 people who are currently members of the military. It also identified more than 80 people who were running for or served in public office as of early August… The data raises fresh concerns about the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military who are tasked with enforcing laws and protecting the US.”
It is not hard to guess what the ADL didn’t look for: radical armed “extremist” Jewish groups fundraising and operating cooperatively in the US and Israel. Nor did it look at black radical groups like Black Lives Matter and the other organizations that were spawned in the wake of the George Floyd death that have produced chaos in a number of American cities. Only white conservatives need apply under the standards of “extremism” set by the ADL, which should surprise no one.
The issue of Jewish and Israeli invisibility when they are doing something horrific struck me recently when I attended a peace rally that included a number of speakers over the course of about five hours. The theme of the gathering was resistance to the warmongering policies that have driven the US government to the verge of nuclear war. When the event was concluded I observed that Israel or the Jewish/Israeli Lobby had not even been mentioned once, even when describing situations in the Middle East that begged for a comment regarding Israeli complicity and its dominance over US policy in the region. One particularly delusional speaker, who would benefit from a basic course in Middle Eastern history, actually claimed that the current hostility between Washington and Tehran is the result of the CIA overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1954. That constitutes a cute evasion of reality but the fact is that US-Iran policy is driven not by lingering concerns over Mossadegh, but rather by Israel and its lobby.
To illustrate the level of Israeli control, President Joe Biden bowed to Israeli pressure and has placed “off the table” any consideration of a new nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran, even though it would be in America’s interest. There are no other significant American national interests as Iran does not actually threaten the United States or its economy. The reality is that the US military is in Syria and Iraq for the same reason, i.e. to provide protection and support for Israel, while it also heavily bribes Israel’s neighbors in Egypt and Jordan to keep the peace with the Jewish state.
It is all a world turned upside down with Israel controlling Washington, as former prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have boasted, and part of the control mechanism is to manage the narrative so the American public never really sees what is going on. But what is really interesting is how so-called peace activists, like at the gathering I attended, toe the line and are terrified of offending Israel or the powerful domestic Jewish groups that use their money and political access to promote the wars in the Middle East as well as against Russia in Ukraine. Some of them clearly are fearful of being labeled anti-Semites, which is the weapon most frequently used by groups like ADL to ward off criticism of the Jewish state.
Interestingly, one of the speakers at the meeting I attended demonstrated how it is possible to make a point about Israel and the Jewish power behind it without using either the “I” or “J” word. He observed that the foreign and national security policies of both major US political parties are largely driven by the personal interests of their donors, whom he described as “billionaire oligarchs, some of whom are not even Americans.” The allusion was pretty clear to most members of the audience. It sure sounded like arch globalist George Soros, who has used his money to corrupt local and state governments, and, more to the point, Israeli citizens Haim Saban and the recently deceased Sheldon Adelson. Hollywood denizen Saban, the top single contributor to the Democrats, has said that he is a “one issue guy” and that issue is Israel. Adelson, who is buried in Israel, contributed $100 million to the Republicans and was the man who in return got President Donald Trump to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognize the incorporation of the Golan Heights into the Israeli state, and have a free hand to suppress the Palestinians.
The good news is, however, that pushback is developing, and it is in part coming from some Jews. The Jewish peace group Tikkun has recently published a devastating article by Jeffrey Sachs on the Jews who have been activists for Israel who have been agitating for the post 9/11 wars. It is entitled “Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster” and describes how “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle…”
It is actually worse than that as a global nuclear confrontation threatens. It is time for those in America and Europe who genuinely want peace to begin to be honest about who is pushing for the wars and why. Euphemisms and evasions to avoid offending the culprits help no one and just empower those who believe themselves “chosen” and would seek to establish the supremacy of one particular ethno-religious state even if it brings disaster to everyone else.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 21, 2022
The battle with Big Tech for free speech is heating up! States are passing bills to stop the social media censorship, and legislators are holding investigative hearings, while a recent lawsuit including several State Attorneys General is making headway.
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | September 21, 2022
Suddenly, Biden announces the pandemic is over as the narrative is now collapsing from all sides. From boosters to kids shots, the vaccine push is faltering as lawsuits pile up to remove the last covid restrictions.
By Steve Kirsch | September 21, 2022
A short collection of key pieces of evidence showing the COVID vaccines are not “safe and effective.” Not even close. They are the most deadly vaccines we’ve ever produced.
Here’s a high level collection of some of the most compelling pieces of evidence I’ve seen to date. This is not an exhaustive list, but just the key pieces of data that are impossible to explain if the vaccines are safe and effective.
I’ve divided the collection into sections and I’ve tried to limit each section to the most compelling data points. So don’t be disappointed if your favorite item isn’t mentioned in this article; I wanted to keep it short enough to be read..
I’ll try to keep this updated over time. It can be found in the Reference section of my Substack.
Can you spot the unsafe vaccine? People at the CDC don’t see any problem with this mortality chart: all the vaccines look perfectly safe.
Are the Covid mRNA Vaccines Safe? was written by Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff who until recently was on vaccine committees of the FDA and CDC. He concluded:
Fraiman and colleagues have produced the best evidence yet regarding the overall safety of the mRNA vaccines. The results are concerning. It is the responsibility of the manufacturers and FDA to ensure that benefits outweigh harms. They have failed to do so.
Canadian court decisions on the constitutionality of Covid measures are invalid due to jurisdictional errors of law reviews court decisions on COVID and emphasizes the courts’ repeated over reliance on government expert testimony. Courts are supposed to find the truth and not rely on government representations or propaganda.
There are specialized tests required to diagnose a death from the COVID vaccine.
The CDC has never told any medical examiner in the US about these tests.
So the medical examiners aren’t implicating the vaccine in any of the deaths.
The question is we know what the tests are, we know there is solid evidence from multiple countries that the vaccine causes death, yet we refuse to even consider the possibility that the vaccine caused the deaths. Why?
This paper, A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products, was retracted because the publisher didn’t like the result. So he unilaterally decided to retract the paper. This is unethical.
Here’s the “withdrawn” notice.
Here is the backstory as well as this censorship update.
The publisher hasn’t fixed the problem in over a year despite assurances it would be quickly resolved.
Here is another retracted paper that was correct:
Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19? by Ron Kostoff
“Compared with the 28,000 deaths the CDC stated were due to COVID-19 and not associated morbidities for the 65+ age range, the inoculation-based deaths are an order-of-magnitude greater than the COVID-19 deaths!”
That is basically what I found: the vaccines kill >10X more people than the number of COVID deaths that they save. The paper passed peer review and was published. The editor of the journal quit after he was overridden by the publisher on the retraction.
The reason cited for the retraction:
This is completely bogus for two reasons:
Can anyone explain how these anecdotes are possible?
Once I established a policy of always recording calls with “fact checkers,” I’ve not had a single call from them trying to refute anything I’ve written.
None of the drug companies that make these products will refute anything I’ve written or supply a representative to debate me or any of my colleagues in a live debate. They have immunity from liability and they are not willing to be held accountable in the court of public opinion either.
This was a very well done study, but it is of course attacked by the pro narrative people. We’d love to have an open debate about this study, but the other side doesn’t want to talk about it in a neutral forum.
A LITERATURE REVIEW AND META-ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF LOCKDOWNS ON COVID-19 MORTALITY
Masks don’t work at all. See this article which has plenty of references. If anything, masks are more likely to hurt you than to benefit you.
There is no study at all on the 6 foot distance rule. They just made that one up.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs was tasked by The Lancet to lead an independent investigation into the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. After he determined it came from US biotechnology, all of a sudden nobody wanted to pursue the investigation any further.
Tony Fauci gets paid every time you get a Moderna shot. He won’t disclose how much he makes and you can’t get via FOIA (it’s blacked out). If the Republicans get control of the Senate, that will change. Watch this video from Sept 20, 2022 of Rand Paul commenting on this as well as the well founded accusation that Fauci created the virus in the first place and then desperately tried to make it look like it came from nature after top scientists said it was a lab leak (watch the video at 2:00 onwards). Rand Paul called it, quite rightly, “the biggest cover-up in the history of science.”
The question you have to ask yourself is why is Fauci keeping his funding of the gain of function research and also his compensation for each vaccine dose a secret?
Tony Fauci was the primary reason that all early treatments were ignored by the government. It appears he did that because it would cut into his revenue stream.
Early in the pandemic, two physicians, George Fareed and Brian Tyson, developed a treatment protocol using a variety of safe, low cost drugs and supplements with little to no side effects that had a near 100% success track record in preventing hospitalization, death, and long haul COVID if the patient started treatment shortly after realizing they were infected. They’ve treated over 10,000 patients. They wrote a best-selling book about it.
Today, more than two years later, the FDA and the CDC have not returned their calls.
Questions I’d love to get the answer to. These were asked, but never answered.
People who disagree with the mainstream narrative are rewarded with censorship, permanent bans on posting on social media, demonetization of your YouTube account, revocation of your medical license, revocation of your medical certifications, loss of hospital privileges, loss of job, loss of funding, loss of friends, and a Wikipedia entry labeling you a “misinformation spreader” and/or “conspiracy theorist.”
This is a problem. I am not aware of any paper published in the medical literature that shows that such tactics result in better health decisions.
Should we use the same rules at the UN when nations disagree? Do you think that will result in better outcomes?
The way people resolve differences is by confronting the issues and talking through them. But we are not doing this:
This is objective proof of a broken system. It is indefensible. Caught on video camera. There is no reason that anyone in a position of authority on the COVID vaccines would refuse an opportunity to see the most thorough post-vaccine safety study ever done: one that shows causality of serious adverse events.
From Israeli Investigators Find COVID-19 Vaccines Cause Side Effects: Leaked Video:
Rechallenge changes a causal link “from possible to definitive,” Dr. Mati Berkovitch, head of the research team and a pediatric specialist, said at the meeting.
and
Many of the reported adverse events were found to be long-lasting, which researchers said in the meeting was surprising since the brochure handed to vaccine recipients says otherwise. They also said Pfizer officials told them that Pfizer did not know of any long-lasting symptoms.
and
In the official report later issued to the public, the MoH did not detail how researchers were caught off guard by the duration of the events and side effects. The health agency also stated that there were no new events identified.
It concludes:
The choice to omit some of the crucial findings discussed in the meeting from the public report is “a recipe to destroy” the entire vaccine program, according to Levi, an Israeli native and an expert in risk management.
“The more pro-vaccine, the more disturbed you need to be from something like this,” Levi told The Epoch Times. “And the reason is that the two most important enablers for vaccine programs … to be successful is trust and transparency, that you actually communicate to people the real risk-benefits and allow them to make choices about what they want to do. The second thing is that you take care of the people that were harmed by the vaccine because no vaccine has 100 percent safety.”
“I think we have in this example … where we violate these two very important principles,” he added. “This is a recipe to basically destroy all vaccine programs, so the more pro-vaccine you are, you should be more disturbed by this.”
How can you have the chair of a safety committee not interested in seeing important safety data? Professor Grace Lee should be removed from her position by the CDC. Why isn’t she? Does anyone care?
Why does Dr. Paul Offit ignore requests to see the same data?
According to the Epoch Times article, everyone declined to comment on the story: the scientists, the MOH officials, and the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office declined to comment on the Israeli findings.
If the above isn’t enough, there are hundreds more “hard to explain” data points.
There is an excellent article written in August 2020 by Norman Doidge entitled “Medicine’s Fundamentalists” which talks about the “all-available-evidence approach.” It should be read by every doctor in America. This is how medical science should work.
The precautionary principle medicine seems to have been thrown under the bus during the pandemic. It says in the face of uncertainty, one should take reasonable measures to avoid threats that are serious and plausible.
For example, the Pfizer clinical trial showed the vaccine saved only one COVID death per 22,000 injected. That means we might only save around 10,000 lives if we inject 200M Americans. So if VAERS, which is at least 41 times under reported, is showing over 12,000 deaths associated with the vaccine, any reasonable person should say that killing more than 41 people to save 1 life is nonsensical… shouldn’t we put a PAUSE on this intervention until we resolve the uncertainty?
In the current system, questioning the CDC or other authorities results in serious retribution as mentioned earlier.
Is that really the right way to handle scientific dissent?
Are the vaccines “safe and effective” as claimed?
To answer this, science requires that we look at all the available data and see whether the data is more consistent with the hypothesis of “safe and effective” or “not safe and effective.”
All the data that I and my colleagues have seen end up being placed in the “not” bucket.
We are open to being shown we got it wrong on the hundreds of pieces of evidence we have examined, but nobody is willing to discuss the data with us to resolve the issue, not even for $1M dollars.
I even went to extraordinary lengths to offer the Israeli safety data to ACIP Chair Grace Lee. Her response: she called the police on me. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know: they simply refuse to look at any data that goes against their currently held beliefs. That’s the way science works.
By Sam Husseini | September 7, 2022
Twenty years ago, the “Cheney-Bush junta” — as Gore Vidal called it — launched its propaganda campaign to invade Iraq, effectively casting the dye for much of the historic period since.
On Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002, the New York Times ran on its front page the story “U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts” by Michael Gordon and Judith Miller.
The same day, then Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, hyping the New York Times story as evidence that Hussein was attempting to acquire “the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly-enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.” Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice followed Cheney’s lead on other shows.
In 2005, I confronted Miller about her reporting, asking her at if she would name the anonymous lying source who she allegedly relied on to falsely report “the best technical experts and nuclear scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported” the CIA claim that the tubes were for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, it would later be established, the nuclear scientists did not support such an assessment and were effectively muzzled. When I questioned her, Miller refused to name the source that fed her this false information and Marvin Kalb, the moderator of the event, see video, ran interference, stopping further follow-ups. (See my piece “Should Media Expose Sources Who Lied to Them?”)
Many serious analysts early on deduced that the source was Cheney himself, likely through his chief of staff, Scooter Libby.
Even the mainstream Bob Simon of CBS would later remark to Bill Moyers about Cheney: “You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean, that’s a remarkable thing to do.”
Remarkable is actually an understatement. It’s engaging in a de facto conspiracy to deceive the U.S. public into war.
In April of 2020, a journalist asked at the daily White House press briefing: “Mr. President, I wanted to ask Dr. Fauci: Could you address these suggestions or concerns that this virus was somehow manmade, possibly came out of a laboratory in China?”
Anthony Fauci replied: “There was a study recently that we can make available to you, where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolve. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human.”
What Fauci was talking about was the piece “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2” in Nature Medicine.
That article was widely accepted by the major media as eviscerating the possibility of lab origin of Covid, shutting down debate at that critical time and continuing to hinder it to this day.
The thing is, Fauci seems to have had a serious role in that article’s appearing.
One of the few people objecting to the piece when it was first published, in the Spring of 2020 was Meryl Nass, who asked: “Why are some of the US’s top scientists making a specious argument about the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2?” She would go on to argue that the signers of the Nature Medicine article were pushed to write it.
In 2021, limited Freedom of Information Act findings showed that Fauci had at minimum effectively coordinated with the named authors of the Nature Medicine article. See Nass’ write-up and subsequent reporting by some mainstream outlets such as USA Today.
Thus, this insidious tactic of helping to plant a story pushing the line you want in a media outlet and then citing it as evidence for your case was employed by both longtime creatures of Washington at historic junctures.
There are other notable parallels. Both Fauci and Cheney have also both been leading beneficiaries of Trumpwashing.
Ashley Rindsberg makes some serious arguments in his piece, “How Dick Cheney created Anthony Fauci,” including about the buildup of US bio“defense” after 9/11 (actually the anthrax attacks) — a trend several observers have noted. Alexis Baden-Mayer traces such arguments back to 1976, when Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld apparently pressured President Ford to order massive inoculations in the Swine Flu scare, which he would be widely mocked for.
While the antiwar forces and “left” criticism of the Iraq WMD propaganda were wholly inadequate, they at least manifested themselves on the national stage to some extent. Covid origins has hardly been recognized as an antiwar issue by most and the “left” at times has actually played a detrimental role, explicitly doing the establishment’s bidding in irrationally denying or minimizing the possibility of lab origin of the pandemic.
One thing that should be kept in mind as one parses through the claims and “exposés” is that some are de facto cover stories.
The Bush administration ramped up their propaganda campaign for the Iraq invasion, as noted at the beginning of this article, in September of 2002.
Why then? Sophisticates at the time would quote Andrew Card: “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August” said Bush’s chief of staff.
With the Bush administration cynically using the one year anniversary of 9/11 as a backdrop to launch their push for invading Iraq, the rationale articulated by Card was actually a remarkably benign motivation, a likely cover, in comparison to the war makers actual thinking.
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | September 26, 2022
In the face of incessant media badgering to rush out and take the latest version of experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shot — the “bivalent” booster, the vast majority of Americans are saying “nope” and continuing on with their lives. Three weeks into the all-out push to have every American over 12 years old take the new shot (giving these new booster shots to younger children is up next), it appears that less than two percent of eligible Americans have done so.
The growing resistance to the coronavirus shots pushers’ propaganda gives one hope for America. With each new experimental coronavirus shot Americans are being urged to take, the percentage who acquiesce declines. The line that the shots are needed, safe, and effective has proven a farce on all counts. And the latest shot rushed into distribution has taken the previous shots’ mockery of the process for ensuring safety and efficacy to the next level. The truth is out there; increasingly Americans are seeing past the media hype and finding it.
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 24, 2022
In a letter to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Senator Ron Johnson demanded answers on the platform’s COVID-19 moderation policies because of repeated censorship of a sitting senator.
“YouTube has displayed a troubling track record of censoring a sitting United States Senator, the proceedings of the United States Senate, journalists that interview me, and the display of data that is entirely generated from U.S. government health agencies,” Johnson wrote.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
The Wisconsin Republican and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee asked YouTube to provide the committee with documents “concerning the development and implementation” of its COVID-19 content moderation policies.
The letter highlights several cases, starting in October 2021, where YouTube censored content or suspended the senator.
Johnson also noted that YouTube is not fair in applying its moderation policies, something that was highlighted when the platform’s chief product officer Neal Mohan testified before the Senate on September 14.
“I read the following two quotes that President Biden said on July 21, 2021. The first was, ‘You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.’ The second was, ‘If you’re vaccinated, you’re not going to be hospitalized, you’re not going to be in an ICU unit, and you’re not going to die,’” the senator recounts in his letter.
“There is no doubt that these two statements are false. I asked Mr. Mohan and the witnesses from the other social media companies whether your companies ever flagged President Biden as a spreader of misinformation. No one even attempted to answer my question.”
The letter demands external and internal communications related to each incident where he was censored.
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
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
Aletho News If Americans Knew No Tricks Zone
