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The declining standards of FDA drug approvals

By Maryanne Demasi, PhD | August 16, 2022

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a legal obligation to protect the public and ensure that the benefits of medicines outweigh the harms before being marketed to people.

But the agency’s increasing reliance on pharmaceutical industry money has seen the FDA’s evidentiary standards for drug approvals significantly decline.

The need for speed

Since the enactment of the 1992 Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), the FDA’s operations are kept afloat largely by industry fees which have increased over 30-fold from around $29m in 1993 to $884m in 2016.

Industry fees were meant to speed up drug approvals – and they did. In 1988, only 4% of new drugs introduced onto the global market were approved first by the FDA, but that rose to 66% by 1998 after its funding structure changed.

Now, there are four pathways within the FDA which are designed to speed up drug approvals: Fast Track, Priority Review, Accelerated Approval, and Breakthrough Therapy designation.

As a result, the majority (68%) of all new drugs are approved by the FDA via these expedited pathways.

While it has improved the availability of transformative drugs to patients who benefit from early access, the lower evidentiary standards for faster approvals, have undoubtedly led to harm.

A study focusing on drug safety found that following the introduction of PDUFA fees (1993-2004) there was a dramatic increase in drug withdrawals due to safety concerns in the US, compared to the period before PDUFA funding (1971-1992).

The researchers blamed changes in the “regulatory culture” at the FDA which had adopted more “permissive interpretations” of safety signals. Put simply, the FDA’s standards for approving certain medicines became less stringent.

Consequently, faster approvals have resulted in new drugs that are more likely to be withdrawn for safety reasons, more likely to carry a subsequent black-box warning, and more likely to have one or more dosages voluntarily discontinued by the manufacturer.

Evidence – Lowering the Bar

– Surrogate outcomes

For accelerated drug approvals, the FDA accepts the use of surrogate outcomes (like a lab test) as a substitute for clinical outcomes.

For example, the FDA recently authorised the use of mRNA vaccines in infants based on neutralising antibody levels (a surrogate outcome), rather than meaningful clinical benefits such as preventing serious covid or hospitalisation.

Also last year, the FDA approved an Alzheimer’s drug (aducanumab) based on lower β-amyloid protein levels (again, a surrogate outcome) rather than any clinical improvement for patients. One FDA advisory member who resigned over the controversy said it was the “worst drug approval decision in recent US history”.

This lower standard of proof is becoming increasingly common. An analysis in JAMA found that 44% of drugs approved between 2005-2012 were supported by (inferior) surrogate outcomes, but that rose to 60% between 2015-2017.

It is a huge advantage to the drug industry because drug approvals may be based on fewer, smaller and less rigorous clinical trials.

– Pivotal trials

Traditionally, the FDA has required at least two ‘pivotal trials’ for drug approval, which are typically phase III clinical trials with ~30,000 subjects intended to confirm the drug’s safety and efficacy.

But a recent study found the number of drug approvals supported by two or more pivotal trials fell from 81% in 1995-1997 down to 53% by 2015-2017.

Other important design aspects of pivotal trials, such as “double blinding” fell from 80% in 1995-1997 down to 68% by 2015-2017 and “randomisation” fell from 94% to 82% in that period.

Similarly, another study found that of the 49 novel therapeutics approved in 2020, more than half (57%) were on the basis of a single pivotal trial, 24% did not have a randomisation component, and almost 40% were not double-blinded.

– Post-authorisation studies

Following an accelerated approval, the FDA allows drugs onto the market before efficacy has been proven.

A condition of the accelerated approval is that manufacturers must agree to conduct “post authorisation” studies (or phase IV confirmatory trials) to confirm the anticipated benefits of the drug. If it turns out that there is no benefit, the drug’s approval can be cancelled.

Unfortunately though, many confirmatory trials are never run, or they take years to complete and some fail to confirm the drug is beneficial.

In response, the FDA rarely imposes sanctions on companies for failing to adhere to the rules, drugs are rarely withdrawn and when penalties are applied, they are minimal.

An embattled agency

The FDA thinks its main problem is ‘public messaging’ so the agency is reportedly seeking a media-savvy public health expert to better articulate its messaging going forward. But the FDA’s problems run deeper than that.

A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed FDA staff (and other federal health agencies) did not report possible political interference in their work due to fear of retaliation and uncertainty about how to report such incidents.

Over the course of the pandemic, employees “felt that the potential political interference they observed resulted in the alteration or suppression of scientific findings…[and] may have resulted in the politically motivated alteration of public health guidance or delayed publication of covid-19-related scientific findings”.

Political interference has compounded an already problematic interference by the drug industry. The policy changes enacted since the 1992 PDUFA fees, have slowly corrupted the drug regulator, and many are concerned its decisions about drug approvals have prioritised corporate interests over public health.

Independent experts now say the declining evidentiary standards, shortening approval times, and increasing industry involvement in FDA decision-making, has led to distrust, not only of the agency, but in the safety and effectiveness of medicines, in general.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

How the US controls Lebanon’s energy supply

The US is leveraging Egypt’s gas supply to pressure Beirut over US-brokered maritime border talks with Israel

By Yeghia Tashjian | The Cradle | August 19 2022

Consider the chaos in Europe today caused by a sudden reduction in Russian gas supplies.

Now imagine the catastrophic state of Lebanon’s energy sector after two years of fuel shortages, limited foreign currency with which to purchase new, urgent supplies, and US-sanctions on Syria impeding Lebanon’s only land route for imports.

After decades of stalled reforms, Lebanon is running out of time and money.

In June 2021, a lifeline was handed to the country in a deal struck with Baghdad to supply two Lebanese power stations with Iraqi fuel. The agreement, which was due to expire in September 2022, has recently been extended for one year.

But while there are short and long term solutions available to remedy Lebanon’s energy crisis, the two main options are both monopolized by US policymakers with stakes in regional geopolitics.

The first option involves transporting fuel to Lebanon via the Arab Gas Pipeline (AGP), whereby Egypt will supply gas through Syria. Although the proposal was originally an American suggestion, this fuel route requires US sanctions waivers that have not yet been approved by Washington.

The second option is for Lebanon to extract its own gas supply from newly discovered fields off its coastline. This too depends entirely on US-mediated, indirect negotiations with Israel to resolve a maritime dispute over the Karish gas field in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Accessing its own gas supplies will go a long way to guarantee Lebanon’s own energy security, while providing the state with much needed revenues from exports.

However, the success of either project depends largely on the status of US-Lebanese relations at any given moment. The two options are also inextricably linked to each other: Washington is pressuring Beirut to compromise with Tel Aviv on the maritime border dispute before agreeing to “green light” Cairo’s gas exports via Syria, which is in turn heavily sanctioned by the US’s “Caesar Act.”

While Washington is playing a leverage game, Lebanon is slowly collapsing.

Gas from Egypt

Under the agreement signed with Cairo, 650 million cubic meters of natural gas will be exported annually via the AGP. As it turns out, the actual supply of gas, as per the World Bank’s conditions, awaits US approval to exclude Egypt from sanctions imposed on the passage of goods through Syria.

The AGP is already a functioning pipeline that has supplied Lebanon with Egyptian gas in the past, but operations were halted in 2011 when Syrian pipelines were damaged during the country’s armed conflict.

Under the deal, Egypt will pump gas through the pipeline to supply Lebanon’s northern Deir Ammar power plant, which can then produce 450 megawatts of electricity – adding four hours of additional electricity supply per day. It is a modest but necessary improvement over the barely two hours of electricity currently provided by the state.

The World Bank has pledged to finance the deal on the condition that the Lebanese government implements much needed reforms in the electricity sector, which has created tens of billions of dollars in public debt.

The Syrian equation       

For the Syrian government, the arrangement is perceived as a diplomatic victory as it confers ‘legitimacy’ to the state and represents a step toward its international rehabilitation. The AGP deal was also hailed by Syrian Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources Bassam Tohmy as one of the most important joint Arab cooperation projects.

According to Will Todman, a research fellow in the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the agreement is “a win for the [Bashar al-]Assad government. The deal represents the first major move toward Syria’s economic integration with the region since Arab Spring protests shook Syria in March 2011, halting previous integration efforts.”

However, due to US Caesar Law restrictions, no concrete progress has been made over the past months. Amman and Cairo have both requested guarantees from Washington that they will not be subject to sanctions – to no avail. US President Joe Biden has yet to make a final decision on whether the plan will be considered a violation of sanctions on Syria.

Linking the Egypt deal with Israel talks

In order to create a certain interdependency in the region to minimize the possibility of new conflicts with Israel, the US is attempting to link the Egyptian gas deal with the ongoing, indirect, maritime negotiations between Tel Aviv and Beirut.

Amos Hochstein, the State Department senior adviser on energy security, who acts as chief mediator on the disputed maritime border between Lebanon and Israel, said after arriving in Beirut on 14 June that the US side will look at the final agreement between Egypt and Lebanon to evaluate the sanctions compliance of the natural gas project.

This means that Washington is linking the fate of the gas deal to the maritime dispute with Israel to exert additional pressure on Lebanon.

On 14 October, 2020 – just two months after the Beirut port blast which severed the primary transportation route for seaborne Lebanese imports – Lebanon and Israel began the long-awaited US-mediated talks to demarcate their maritime borders, under the supervision of the UN.

The framework agreement announced by both countries at the time was the most serious attempt to resolve the maritime dispute and secure gas drilling operations through diplomatic means.

However, there are many challenges that can slow or even derail these negotiations.

According to Lebanese estimates, the country has 96 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves and 865 million barrels of oil offshore, and is in urgent need to begin drilling to save its ailing economy.

Israel is also in hurry to resolve this dispute as it wants to finalize the negotiations before September 2022, when the Karish gas rig is expected to begin production. The concern is that if a deal is not signed by then, Hezbollah may take action to halt Israel’s extraction altogether – until Lebanon is able to extract its own fuel from those waters.

Resolution or conflict

Last month, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah reiterated warnings against Tel Aviv in the event that Lebanon is prevented from extracting its own resources in the Med. “When things reach a dead-end, we will not only stand in the face of Karish… Mark these words: we will reach Karish, beyond Karish, and beyond, beyond Karish,” he cautioned.

Initially, Lebanon took a maximalist position on its maritime borders with Israel: the main dispute was around the percentage both countries should share in the disputed 860 square kilometers, which covers Lebanon’s offshore gas Blocks 8, 9 and 10.

It is worth mentioning that Lebanon does not enter these negotiations from a position of strength and is in dire economic need to unlock foreign aid and begin the flow of potential gas revenues.

Meanwhile, the arrival this summer of the British-based Energean, an oil and gas exploration company, which will begin a drilling operation close to the Karish gas field, has sparked tensions between both countries, prompting US envoy Hochstein to race back to the region on 13 June.

In order to provide Lebanon with some much-needed leverage and accelerate negotiations, Hezbollah dispatched three drones towards the Karish gas field on 2 July. The operation sought several results: to test Israeli military responses to the drones, to scare off the private company contractors working on the rig, and to motivate both Tel Aviv and Washington to step up and strike a deal.

The operation achieved its goals. Israel’s military now can’t rule out the possibility that the Lebanese resistance movement will launch additional attacks on the gas field in the near future, or provoke Israel in a different manner – if the maritime dispute is not ironed out, and soon.

Beyond the Mediterranean Sea

The negotiations have also been impacted by international developments, chiefly, the war in Ukraine and the growing energy crisis in Europe. Sweeping western economic sanctions on Moscow’s economic interests have dried up Russian exports to the continent, driving Europe to seek alternative sources of energy, few of which are readily available.

In May 2022, the US and EU unveiled a plan to reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels and in June, the EU and Israel signed an agreement to export Israeli gas to Europe. These external factors have further motivated the US and Israel to hasten the negotiation process with Lebanon, all of which are overshadowed by the aforementioned US pressure on the Lebanese government.

Energy expert Laury Haytayan believes that linking Lebanon to regional energy projects makes it harder for Lebanon to go to war with Israel. Haytayan told The Cradle: “Lebanon needs gas, Israel needs stability, and the US wants to give both what they want.”

It is important to recognize that a final maritime demarcation agreement also means defusing the tensions on the Lebanese-Israeli border, which may require a broader US-Iranian agreement, something that is unlikely in the short term.

If the gas deal is successful and the US approves the Egyptian energy exports, the move will only increase US leverage over Lebanon when it comes to future negotiations on energy security.

It is in Lebanon’s interest to ensure that one party, the US, does not continue to hold all the cards related to its vital fuel needs. A recent offer from Iran to supply the country with monthly free fuel was tacitly accepted by Lebanon’s prime minister and energy minister, but needs work. Other states have offered to build power generation plants to enhance the nation’s infrastructure and efficiency.

But with Lebanon so deeply affected by Washington’s whims – and punishments – it isn’t at all certain that the country can steer itself to these more independent options.

The US and Israel have never been this highly incentivized to solve the maritime dispute. If the deal fails, Hezbollah may proceed with military action, especially before the conclusion of political ally President Michel Aoun’s term this Fall.

Furthermore, the gas issue may turn into a contentious domestic political issue ahead of Israel’s November parliamentary elections. In that instance too, a military conflict between Israel and Hezbollah may be triggered.

The only solution is to strike a deal, get gas flowing, and avert war. Will saner minds prevail, or will the region’s high-stakes geopolitical competition continue to escalate blindly? More importantly, can Washington bear to allow Lebanon the breathing space after three years of severe economic pressure to control Beirut’s political decisions?

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | Leave a comment

Occupation raids, attacks Palestinian organizations: EU, US and Canada are complicit!

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | August 21, 2022

In the early morning hours of Thursday, 18 August, armed Israeli occupation forces invaded the offices of seven prominent Palestinian NGOs, civil society organizations and human rights defenders: the Health Work Committees, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, Bisan Centre, Defence for Children International – Palestine, and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees. These organizations have all been designated by the Israeli occupation as “terrorist” in retaliation for their advocacy and community organizing work for Palestine, and then labeled “illegal organizations” in a military order covering the occupied West Bank of Palestine.

The invading forces ransacked the offices, confiscating computers, legal client files, documentation, printers and monitors and leaving clutter behind — as documented by the organizations’ surveillance cameras, recording the occupation forces’ invasion. The doors of the organizations were welded shut and a paper military order affixed to the door declaring their operation “illegal” under the occupation’s (illegal) military orders.

The organizations declared that they would not be silenced by these attacks, holding press conferences and returning to the offices to reopen them and continue their work. The attacks received widespread condemnation not only from Palestinian and pro-Palestinian forces but even from European governments whose policies and practices consistently target the Palestinian people and their fundamental rights.

Now, on Sunday, 21 August, occupation intelligence authorities — the Shin Bet — phoned Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin to threaten him with interrogation and arrest if the organization’s work continues, while Defence for Children International – Palestine director Khaled Quzmar was summoned to and held under interrogation.

“Terror” Designations and Political Control

The invasions, interrogations, ransacking and attacks on these organizations reflect the failure of the occupation’s regime of “terror” designations to undermine their work. In 2021, not only did the regime designate Al-Haq, Addameer, DCI, Bisan, the UPWC and the UAWC as “terrorist” organizations — quickly followed by the military orders banning their work in the occupied West Bank of Palestine — it earlier in the year designated Samidoun (on 21 February 2021), followed by three more organizations. Previously and in a similar pretext, the occupation had issued a similar designation against the Health Work Committees along with designations of groups including the Arab Organization for Human Rights UK, the Palestinian Return Centre and Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

As we noted at the time, this

“indicates just how meaningless the term ‘terrorist’ is in the hands of the Israeli regime. It means precisely any organization, activist, or freedom fighter that challenges Zionist colonialism through any method or means of resistance at all. The flurry of ‘terrorist’ designations for organizations working to expose Israel’s crimes and organize Palestinians underlines this reality….These designations are not attacks on individual organizations but against Palestinian human rights defenders and those around the world who stand up for Palestinian liberation — and, fundamentally, the Palestinian people as a whole, especially the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation prisons. They attempt to repress growing support for the legitimate resistance of the Palestinian people and confrontation of imperialism and Zionism.”

Further, it is clear that the use of such designations is intended to further political control over Palestinian society. These designations hinge on the allegation that organizations are close to one or another Palestinian resistance organizations, most commonly the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Hamas. Israeli officials have shopped around “evidence” to various governments that is so weak so as to be ludicrous, consisting almost entirely of unsubstantiated statements or on the idea that employing a person who supports a political organization (or, in some cases, relatives of people in political organizations “designated” by the occupation) is “funding” that organization by paying employees a salary for doing their job.

While it is obvious that these are false claims, the objective of this type of attack goes beyond simply lobbing allegations. Indeed, the European governments that have criticized the attacks and designations have also repeatedly affirmed their willingness to “examine evidence” and “act” if the Israeli regime “proves” that popular organizations, civil society groups and human rights advocates are in some way “tied” to Palestinian resistance movements. Not only are the organizations “innocent” of the Israeli claims, the claims themselves are fundamentally repugnant. The Palestinian people have the right to resist occupation and to be a part of political, social and armed movements in that resistance; this is not “terrorism” but an essential right of people under occupation and colonization.

Rather than affirming the right of Palestinians to resist and to organize themselves to achieve those goals, these European governments instead use these attacks to impose even greater political scrutiny and conditions. In many cases (such as the Netherlands), these governments recommend or require that all employees of these organizations must not be associated with any “banned” Palestinian political organization. If Palestinians are part of a political party or movement, they must be unemployable and impoverished: this is both the argument of the occupation and of the European states providing a meager “defense” of Palestinian civil society.

For the European funding agencies and many large foundations, supporting Palestinian NGOs has never been primarily about empowering or supporting the Palestinian people to achieve their liberation but rather about redirecting Palestinian energies into “state-building” and/or “reform” projects that exist within the confines of Oslo. Time and time again, these forces have introduced new conditional funding mechanisms and restrictions on everything from the political affiliation of individual employees to the names of buildings and schools.

European Union: Partners in Colonialism and Apartheid

This is borne out once again by the statement of nine European states — Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden — which invokes the promotion of “democratic values and the two-state solution,” a fundamental contradiction as the so-called “two-state solution” itself is the legitimization of the colonization and occupation of 78% of Palestine and no solution at all for the Palestinian people. This brief comment lays bare the real political motivation for European involvement in funding Palestinian organizations, which is to limit rather than to achieve rights, justice and liberation. Further, the statement notes that “should convincing evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”

Here, the “evidence” being referred to would be any “links” between these NGOs and the Palestinian resistance. By including this statement in their alleged defense of the organizations, these European states actually encourage the occupation to continue its raids and ransacking, confiscation of files, arrests and interrogations, in an attempt to manufacture such “evidence”.

Of course, the position of these states themselves — members of the aggressive NATO alliance, defenders of the Israeli occupation in international arenas — is all too clear. The European Union, while rejecting the designation of advocacy and civil society organizations, continues to designate Palestinian resistance organizations as “terrorists.”

France continues to imprison Georges Ibrahim Abdallah while doing almost nothing to advocate for its citizen Salah Hamouri, jailed without charge or trial under Israeli administrative detention, as the government attempts to criminalize Palestinian activism, such as the Collectif Palestine Vaincra. Germany not only engages in weapons deals with the occupation, it also engages in severely repressive practices against Palestine organizing, particularly Palestinian communities in exile and diaspora, from the expulsion of Palestinian writer Khaled Barakat and Palestinian torture survivor and feminist Rasmea Odeh to the ban on 15 May Nakba demonstrations in Berlin. This is not to mention the links between Zionism and European colonialism from the very beginning of the Zionist project.

Now, Israeli prime minister and war criminal Yair Lapid is scheduled to come to Brussels on 6 October to convene the “Association Council” with all EU member states’ foreign ministers, for the first time in 10 years. This is the council under the EU-Israel Association Agreement, the agreement that provides for free trade for occupation products inside the EU and allows for occupation institutions to receive European grants for research and development.

Ending the EU-Israel Association Agreement is a long-time demand of the Palestine solidarity movement, but despite their expressed “concerns” about the violent repression imposed on Palestinians, these European states are planning to welcome Lapid and convene the Association Council after a long hiatus, celebrating their complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Canadian government has refused to make any meaningful statement about these attacks, despite posing as a defender of “human rights.” U.S. officials stated their “concern,” while continuing to provide $3.8 billion in military support to the occupier.

**

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that these attacks are part and parcel of the ongoing war on Palestinian existence and organization, carried out by the Zionist state and supported by the imperialist powers that ally with the Israeli occupation, as well as Arab reactionary regimes engaged in “normalization” and the Palestinian Authority. While PA officials declare their public support for the targeted organizations, the PA continues to engage in security coordination with the occupation, declined the use of its security forces to defend the organizations, and has even previously detained leaders, directors and staff of these organizations challenging its repression at the behest of the occupier.

We reaffirm that the primary way that we can confront these designations is by intensifying our organizing, action, mobilization and resistance to bring down the structures of colonialism, implement the right to return for Palestinian refugees, and support the liberation of all Palestinian prisoners and of Palestine, from the river to the sea. This includes campaigning to bring an end to the so-called “terrorist lists” used to terrify Palestinian communities and Palestine solidarity organizers, which only provide a weapon in the hands of the occupation and encourages it to engage in further specious designations.

We also urge all to take action to confront Lapid’s visit on 6 October in Brussels and to bring down the “EU-Israel Association Agreement,” an agreement built on the colonization of Palestine and the massacres targeting the Palestinian people. It is incumbent upon all institutions and organizations concerned about these raids and about the Palestinian people to adopt and implement the boycott and international isolation of Israel, including at the United Nations and its bodies.

Further, we urge all to join us in organizing to march in Brussels on 29 October for the March for Return and Liberation to the European Parliament, to demand an end to European complicity, involvement in and support for the colonization of Palestine, the siege on Gaza, the imprisonment of Palestinians and the denial of millions of Palestinians’ right to return home.

samidoun@samidoun.net

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

University of Massachusetts Lowell bans online speech that could cause “offense”

By Ben Squires | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2022

The University of Massachusetts Lowell has an Acceptable Use Policy that bans students from using university Wi-Fi to intentionally share, send, or view “offensive” content.

This policy might be a violation of the First Amendment and ignores the fact that most online content is offensive to someone – which, these days, is pretty much any content.

Additionally, the Supreme Court has in multiple cases ruled that speech should not be restricted by the government just because it is offensive to someone.

For instance, in the Texas v Johnson case back in 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that burning the US flag was protected by the First Amendment, arguing: “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

But that has not stopped public institutions all over the country from restricting free speech in one way or the other.

It would be impractical for UMass Lowell to take action every time a student views or shares something offensive. However, the policy makes it easy for the university to selectively censor speech they do not agree with.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

US taunts Russia to escalate in Ukraine

An UAV hit the roof of the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol, Crimea, August 20, 2022
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | AUGUST 21, 2022

In military terms, the crude, locally assembled drone dropping a country-made bomb or two on unguarded sites in Crimea are at best pin pricks in the big picture of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. But it can be profoundly consequential in certain other ways. 

For a start, this escalation has Washington’s approval. A senior Biden  administration official told NatSec Daily the US supports strikes on Crimea if Kiev deems them necessary. “We don’t select targets, of course, and everything we’ve provided is for self-defence purposes. Any target they choose to pursue on sovereign Ukrainian soil is by definition self defense,” this person said.

But Washington knows — and Moscow knows — that like any sophistry, this one too is a clever argument but inherently fallacious and deceptive. The New York Times has interpreted the drone attack on Crimea as a challenge to the leadership of President Vladimir Putin. The Times wrote that the Crimea attacks “put domestic political pressure on the Kremlin, with criticism and debate about the war increasingly being unleashed on social media and underscoring that even what the Russian government considers to be Russian territory is not safe.” 

The Times claimed that “as images of antiaircraft fire streaking through the blue Crimean sky ricocheted through social media, the visceral reality of war was becoming more and more apparent to Russians — many of whom have rallied behind the Kremlin’s line, hammered home in state media, that the “special military operation” to save Ukraine from Nazi domination is going smoothly and according to plan.” 

The paper quoted a prominent establishment think tanker in Moscow acknowledging that the Crimean attack is a “serious” development insofar as “People are beginning to feel that the war is coming to them.” The Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed in a nationwide address on Saturday, “One can literally feel in the air of Crimea that the occupation there is temporary, and Ukraine is returning.” 

Once again, while Russia is steadily winning the ground war in Ukraine, the US is determined not to lose the information war. In Washington’s reckoning, in this Internet Age, the war is to be ultimately won in the Russian people’s minds. Therefore, this studied escalation by Washington puts Moscow in a dilemma, since if it is unanswered, Zelensky may target the 19-km long Crimean Bridge connecting the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar in mainland Russia with the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea.  

In fact, it is a near certainty. The point is, the Kerch bridge is “Putin’s bridge” in the Russian people’s consciousness. While formally opening the bridge to car traffic in May 2018, Putin was quoted as telling the workers, “In different historical epochs, even under the tsar priests, people dreamed of building this bridge. Then they returned to this in the 1930s, the 40s, the 50s. And finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the miracle has happened.” 

Therefore, there is no better way to puncture the halo around Putin than by despatching at least a bit of the Kerch bridge to the bottom of the Black Sea. Meanwhile, from the US perspective, Kiev’s drone attacks on Crimea already serve three purposes. 

First, this is meant to be a blow to the Russian morale. Indeed, Putin’s towering popularity within Russia has become an eyesore for the Biden Administration. Putin’s masterly navigation of the Russian economy out of crisis mode is an incredible feat that defied all logic of power in the American calculus — inflation is steadily falling (in contrast with the European countries and the US); the GDP decline is narrowing; foreign reserves are swelling; the current account is on the plus side; and lo and behold, the Biden Administration’s so-called “nuclear option” — Russia’s removal from the SWIFT messaging system — failed to cripple foreign trade. 

Second, both Washington and Kiev are desperately scrambling for “success” stories to distract attention. The Times playing up the story speaks for itself. In reality, Russia’s Donbass offensive has created a new momentum and is steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces. Within the week, Russian forces will have encircled the lynchpin of the Ukrainian defence line, Bakhmut city, which is a communication hub for troop movements and supply logistics in Donbass. Russian forces have reached the city outskirts from the north, east and south. The fall of Bakhmut will be a crushing defeat for Zelensky. 

On the other hand, even two months after Zelensky promised a “counteroffensive” on Kherson near Crimea, it is nowhere in sight. Even his most ardent votaries in the western media feel let down. To be sure, there is growing disenchantment in Europe. 

The Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, undoubtedly the smartest European politician today (with an economy registering over 6% growth when the rest of the continent is mired in recession), told German magazine Tichys Einblick in an interview last week that this war marked the end of “western superiority.” Interestingly, he named Big Oil as “war profiteers” and singled out that Exxon doubled its profits, Chevron quadrupled, and ConocoPhillips’ profits have shot up manifold. (Of course, all three are American companies.) Orban’s message was clear: America has weakened the EU. This thought must be troubling many a European politician today. 

Third, Washington has thrown down the gauntlet in a measured way. But there is no way the war can be brought into the drawing rooms of the average Americans the way Times says is happening in Russia. Twenty  Americans were killed in Kharkiv two days ago in a high-precision Russian missile strike, but there aren’t going to be any body bags returning to Arlington Cemetery; nor does it make headlines in the cooperative American media. 

The US plans to go further up on the escalation ladder. Escalation is the Biden Administration’s last chance to stall a Russian victory. The American strategic thinker and academic John Mearsheimer has written that the risk of a disastrous escalation is “substantially greater than the conventional wisdom holds. And given that the consequences of escalation could include a major war in Europe and possibly even nuclear annihilation, there is good reason for extra concern.” 

Moscow’s preference is to avoid any escalation, since the special military operation is achieving results. Whereas, it is the US that is in some visible despair, and in immediate terms, Russia’s plans to hold referendums in Kherson and Zaporozhye in September must be stalled. Herein lies the danger.

The US’ current build-up over Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant points toward a hidden agenda to intervene in the war at some point directly. Kiev’s attempt to arrange a nuclear explosion in Zaporozhye can only be seen in this light. Moscow seems to anticipate such an eventuality.

Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu disclosed yesterday that Russia has begun mass production of Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missiles and is already deploying them. The US lacks the capability to counter Tsirkon, which is estimated to be 11 times faster than Tomahawk with far superior target-penetration characteristics. Shoigu may have given a stark warning that Russia will not be cowed down if there’s a NATO intervention in Ukraine. 

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Turkey says it will enforce anti-Russia sanctions

Samizdat | August 21, 2022

Turkish Deputy Finance Minister Yunus Elitas has told US Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo that Ankara won’t allow the “breaching” of American sanctions on Moscow but that its “balanced” position on the Ukraine conflict remains unchanged.

Elitas and Adeyemo spoke by phone on Friday, several weeks after the Financial Times reported that Western officials are “increasingly alarmed” at Turkey’s growing trade ties to Russia, and are considering ways to retaliate if these ties help Russia bypass EU and US sanctions.

According to a readout of Friday’s call from the US Treasury Department, “Adeyemo raised concerns that Russian entities and individuals are attempting to use Turkey to evade sanctions put in place by the United States and 30 countries.”

Adeyemo also “reiterated the United States’ interest in the success of the Turkish economy” and “the integrity of its banking sector.” This statement could be perceived as a threat, considering that the officials quoted by the FT suggested that Western nations could potentially instruct their corporations and banks to pull out of Turkey over the supposed sanctions evasion.

The Turks appear to be cooperating. According to its own readout of the call, Turkey’s Finance Ministry said that “Elitas confirmed that Turkey’s position has not changed regarding the current processes and sanctions, but that it would not allow the breaching of sanctions by any institution or person.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously described his position on the conflict in Ukraine as “balanced.” While Turkey has condemned Russia over the conflict and has sold some weapons to Ukraine, it is the only NATO member that has not sanctioned Moscow or closed its airspace to Russian flights.

Turkey continues to import Russian oil and gas, and following a meeting between Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month, the countries agreed to increase their bilateral trade to $100 billion by 2030 and cooperate on energy projects and counterterrorism initiatives. Erdogan and Putin also agreed that Turkey would pay for some of its gas imports from Russia in rubles.

Erdogan has also positioned himself as a middleman between Ukraine and Russia. Turkey hosted ultimately unsuccessful peace talks in March but later helped broker an agreement to resume shipments of grain to world markets via the Black Sea.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Another First Amendment lawsuit against Facebook censorship fails

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2022

The US judicial system has dismissed yet another lawsuit filed by censored users of Big Tech’s social media platforms, who allege First Amendment free speech violations.

This time it was the US District Court for the Northern District of California that granted a motion to dismiss filed by the defendant, Facebook (Meta). The plaintiff in this case, Richard Rogalinski, sued on First Amendment grounds after a number of his posts about Covid got censored on Facebook.

We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.

One of the posts expressed Rogalinski’s skepticism about the efficacy of masks, saying that he has not seen scientific evidence of their usefulness, but instead, “just talking heads who want to spread fear and control you.”

To this, Facebook’s “fact-checkers” reacted by adding a warning label claiming the post was “missing context.” The same warning was slapped on a post that saw the plaintiff criticize the Covid vaccine rollout.

Finally, a screenshot of a tweet posted by a doctor who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine got labeled as “false information” by Facebook and removed.

Originally, the Florida resident filed a class action lawsuit in that state, but Facebook moved to either dismiss or transfer it, after which the judge transferred it to California.

In an attempt to fight against the usual defense that massive tech corporations have when censoring content and users – that they are private operations that have the right to do that, while the First Amendment applies only to state actors – Rogalinski mentioned statements made by former White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

In July 2021 – and the California judge noted in the ruling that this happened “after Meta took action against Rogalinski’s posts” – Psaki told a press conference that the Biden administration is “in regular touch” with major social media platforms, and actively flagging content posted on Facebook that the government thinks are “problematic” on misinformation grounds.

Rogalinski argued that the state “chose the targets and content of the statements that it deemed worthy of the defendant’s censorship” which then resulted in censorship by Facebook.

The plaintiff further accused the government and Meta of communicating directly and specifically about the censorship actions and engaging in the act together by sharing responsibility for the two-step process of censorship.

However, the court disagreed, citing several similar cases, including O’Handley v. Padilla, where the ruling reads that the government “can work with a private entity without converting that entity’s later decisions into state action.”

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

The Jewish Hand in World War Three

Free Speech versus Catastrophe

BY THOMAS DALTON • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 18, 2022

Thanks to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we indeed seem to be rushing headlong into a major war—possibly a World War Three, possibly the world’s first (and perhaps last) nuclear war. Ukraine leadership and their Western backers seem hell-bent on fighting to the last man, and Vladimir Putin, as an old-school Cold Warrior, seems equally determined to press ahead until achieving “victory.” The cause seems hopeless for Ukraine, who cannot reasonably expect to prevail in an extended conflict with one of the largest militaries on Earth. At best, they may bleed Russia over a period of months or years, but only at the cost of massive blood-letting themselves. It seems that Ukraine will be the loser in this struggle, no matter what comes.

In the Western media, we are presented with a remarkably simplified storyline: Putin is an evil warmonger who simply wants to extend Russian territory; to this end, he is exploiting events in Ukraine, deploying his military ostensibly to support the Russian-speaking districts of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. But this is just cover, they say, for his mad quest to rebuild the Russian empire. In pursuit of his goal, he is willing to inflict any amount of material damage and kill any number of civilians. Fortunately, say our media, Putin has thus far been largely contained; the brave Ukrainian fighters are constantly “reclaiming” land, Russia’s advance has “stalled,” and indeed, Russia seems to be in danger of losing.

Consequently, the US and its allies must do all they can to “aid” and “support” the brave Ukrainians and their beleaguered but heroic leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. No amount of money, no assortment of deadly weaponry, no military intelligence, is too much. Like World War Two, this “war” is an unconditional struggle of Good versus Evil; therefore the West, as the moral paragon of the world, must step up, undergo sacrifice, and ensure that Good prevails.

And indeed, the financial support from just the United States is breathtaking: As of early May, Congress has approved $13.6 billion in aid, much of it for direct Ukrainian military support. And yet this would only cover costs through September. Thus, president Biden recently called for an additional package of $33 billion, which would include over $20 billion in military and security aid, and, surprisingly, $2.6 billion for “the deployment of American troops to the region,” in order to “safeguard NATO allies.” Incredibly, Congress responded by approving $40 billion, bringing the total aid thus far to $54 billion. For perspective, this represents over 80% of Russia’s annual defense budget of $66 billion. (By contrast, America allocates well over $1 trillion—that is, $1,000 billion—annually in direct and indirect military expenditures.)

Notably, such unconditional support and defense of Ukraine is a virtually unanimous view across the American political spectrum, and throughout Europe. Right and left, conservative and liberal, working class or wealthy elite, all sectors of society are apparently united in opposition to the evil Putin. In an era when virtually no issue garners unanimous support, the Ukrainian cause stands out as an extremely rare instance of bipartisan, multi-sector agreement. The rare dissenters—such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and a handful of alt-right renegades—are routinely attacked as “Russian assets” or “tools of Putin.” There is no room for disagreement, no space for debate, no opposing views allowed.

In fact, though, this is yet another case of what I might call the “unanimity curse”: when all parties in American society are united on a topic, any topic, then we really need to worry. Here, it seems that the reality is of a potent Jewish Lobby, exerting itself (again) in the direction of war, for reasons of profit and revenge against a hated enemy. There is, indeed, a Jewish hand at work here, one that may well drive us into another world war, and even a nuclear war—one which, in the worst case, could mean the literal end of much of life on this planet. The unanimity comes when all parties are subject, in various ways, to the demands of the Lobby, and when the public has been misled and even brainwashed by a coordinated Jewish media into believing the standard narrative.

The best cure for this catastrophic situation is unrestricted free speech. The Lobby knows this, however, and thus takes all possible measures to inhibit free speech. Normally, such a struggle ebbs and flows according to the issue and the times; but now, the situation is dire. Now more than ever, a lack of free speech could be fatal to civilized society.

Context and Run-Up

To fully understand the Jewish hand in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, we need to review some relevant history. Over the centuries, there have been constant battles over the lands of present-day Ukraine, with Poles, Austro-Hungarians, and Russians alternately dominating. Russia took control of most of Ukraine in the late 1700s and held it more or less continuously until the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991; this is why Putin claims that the country is “part of Russia.”

For their part, Jews have experienced a particularly tumultuous relationship with Russia, one that ranged from disgust and detestation to a burning hatred. As it happened, Jews migrated to Russia in the 19th century, eventually numbering around 5 million. They were a disruptive and agitating force within the nation and thus earned the dislike of Czars Nicholas I (reign 1825 to 1855), Alexander II (1855 to 1881, when he was assassinated by a partly-Jewish anarchist gang), and especially Nicholas II (1894 to 1917)—the latter of whom was famously murdered, along with his family, by a gang of Jewish Bolshevists in 1918. Already in 1871, Russian activist Mikhail Bakunin could refer to the Russian Jews as “a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite”.[1] The assassination of Alexander initiated a series of pogroms that lasted decades, and which set the stage for a lingering Jewish hatred of all things Russian.[2]

For present purposes, though, we can jump to the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election (I note that Ukraine also has a prime minister, but unlike most European countries, he typically has limited powers). In 2004, it came down to “the two Viktors”: the pro-Western V. Yushchenko and the pro-Russian V. Yanukovych. The first round was nearly tied, and thus they went to a second round in which Yanukovych prevailed by around three percentage points. But amid claims of vote-rigging, Western Ukrainians initiated an “Orange Revolution”—backed by the Ukrainian Supreme Court—that annulled those results and mandated a repeat runoff election. The second time, the tables were turned, and the pro-West Yushchenko won by eight points. The West was elated, and Putin naturally mad as hell.

The following years witnessed financial turmoil and, unsurprisingly, constant harassment from Russia. By 2010, Ukrainians were ready for a change, and this time Yanukovych won handily, over a Jewish female competitor, Yulia Timoshenko—notably, she had “co-led the Orange Revolution.” Russia, for once, was satisfied with the result.

But of course, in the West, Europe and the US were mightily displeased, and they soon began efforts to reverse things yet again. Among other strategies, they apparently decided to deploy the latest in high tech and social media. Thus in June 2011, two of Google’s top executives—Eric Schmidt and a 30-year-old Jewish upstart named Jared Cohen—went to visit Julian Assange in the UK, then living under house arrest. It is well-known, incidentally, that Google is a Jewish enterprise, with Jewish founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page running the ship.[3]

The nominal purpose of the trip was to conduct research for a book that Schmidt and Cohen were working on, regarding the intersection of political action and technology—in plain words, how to foment revolutions and steer events in a desired direction. As Assange relates in his 2014 book When Google Met Wikileaks, he was initially unaware of the deeper intentions and motives of his interviewers. Only later did he come to learn that Schmidt had close ties to the Obama administration, and that Cohen was actively working on political upheaval. As Assange wrote, “Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s ‘director of regime change’.” Their immediate targets were Yanukovych in Ukraine and Assad in Syria.

By early 2013, the American Embassy in Kiev was training right-wing Ukrainian nationalists on how to conduct a targeted revolt against Yanukovych. It would not be long until they had their chance.

In late 2013, Yanukovych decided to reject an EU-sponsored IMF loan, with all the usual nasty strings attached, in favor of a comparable no-strings loan from Russia. This apparent shift away from Europe and toward Russia was the nominal trigger for the start of protest actions. Thus began the “Maidan Uprising,” led in large part by two extreme nationalist groups: Svoboda and Right Sector.[4] Protests went on for nearly three months, gradually accelerating in intensity; in a notable riot near the end, some 100 protestors and 13 police were shot dead.

As the Uprising reached its peak, at least one American Jew was highly interested: Victoria Nuland. As Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State (first under Hillary Clinton, and then under the half-Jew John Kerry), Nuland had direct oversight of events in eastern Europe.[5] And for her, it was personal; her father, Sherwin Nuland (born Shepsel Nudelman), was a Ukrainian Jew. She was anxious to drive the pro-Russian Yanukovych out of power and replace him with a West-friendly, Jew-friendly substitute. And she had someone specific in mind: Arseniy Yatsenyuk. On 27 January 2014, as the riots were peaking, Nuland called American Ambassador to Ukraine, Jeff Pyatt, to urgently discuss the matter. Nuland pulled no punches: “Yats” was her man. We know this because the call was apparently tapped and the dialogue later posted on Youtube. Here is a short excerpt:

Nuland: I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step? […]

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

It was clear to both of them, though, that the EU leadership had other ideas. The EU was much more anxious to be a neutral party and to avoid direct intervention in Ukrainian affairs so as to not unduly antagonize Russia. But in time-tested Jewish fashion, Nuland did not give a damn. A bit later in the same phone call, she uttered her now-famous phrase: “Fuck the EU.” So much for Jewish subtlety.[6]

But there was another angle that nearly all Western media avoided: “Yats” was also Jewish. In a rare mention, we read in a 2014 Guardian story that “Yatsenyuk has held several high-profile positions including head of the country’s central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine… He has played down his Jewish-Ukrainian origins, possibly because of the prevalence of antisemitism in his party’s western Ukraine heartland.” For some reason, such facts are never relevant to Western media.

As the Maidan Uprising gave way to the Maidan Revolution in February 2014, Yanukovych was forced out of office, fleeing to Russia. Pro-Western forces then succeeded in nominating “Yats” as prime minister, effective immediately, working in conjunction with president Oleksandr Turchynov. This provisional leadership was formalized in a snap election in May 2014 in which the pro-Western candidate Peter Poroshenko won. (The second-place finisher was none other than Yulia Timoshenko—the same Jewess who had lost to Yanukovych in 2010.)

It was under such circumstances that Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, in February 2014. It was also at this time that Russian separatists in Donbass launched their counter-revolution, initiating a virtual civil war in Ukraine; to date, eight years later, around 15,000 people have died in total, many civilians.

With this American-sponsored coup finished, Ukrainian Jews began to reach out to the West to increase their influence. Thus it happened that just a few months after Maidan, the wayward son of the American vice president got in touch with a leading Ukrainian Jew, Mykola Zlochevsky, who ran a large gas company called Burisma. In this way, Hunter Biden incredibly found himself on the board of a corporation of which he knew nothing, in an industry of which he knew nothing, and which nonetheless was able to “pay” him upwards of $500,000 per year—obviously, for access to father Joe and thus to President Obama. Hunter carried on in this prestigious role for around five years, resigning only in 2019, as his father began his fateful run for the presidency.[7]

Despite a rocky tenure, Yatsenyuk managed to hold his PM position for over two years, eventually resigning in April 2016. His replacement was yet another Jew, Volodymyr Groysman, who served until August 2019. The Jewish hand would not be stayed. All this set the stage for the rise of the ultimate Jewish player, Volodymyr Zelensky.

This situation is particularly remarkable given that Jews are a small minority in Ukraine. Estimates vary widely, but the Jewish population is claimed to range from a maximum of 400,000 to as low as just 50,000. With a total population of 41 million, Jews represent, at most, 1% of the nation, and could be as small as 0.12%. Under normal conditions, a tiny minority like this should be almost invisible; but here, they dominate. Such is the Jewish hand.

Enter the Jewish Oligarchs

In Ukraine, there is a “second government” that calls many of the shots. This shadow government is an oligarchy: a system of rule by the richest men. Of the five richest Ukrainian billionaires, four are Jews: Igor (or Ihor) Kolomoysky, Viktor Pinchuk, Rinat Akhmetov, and Gennadiy Bogolyubov. Right behind them, in the multi-millionaire class, are Jews like Oleksandr Feldman and Hennadiy Korban. Collectively, this group is often more effective at imposing their will than any legislator. And unsurprisingly, this group has been constantly enmeshed in corruption and legal scandals, implicated in such crimes as kidnapping, arson and murder.[8]

Of special interest is the first named above. Kolomoysky has long been active in banking, airlines and media—and in guiding minor celebrities to political stardom. In 2005 he became the leading shareholder of the 1+1 Media Group, which owns seven TV channels, including the highly popular 1+1 channel. (The 1+1 Group was founded in 1995 by another Ukrainian Jew, Alexander Rodnyansky.) Worth up to $6 billion in the past decade, Kolomoysky’s current net wealth is estimated to be around $1 billion.

Not long after acquiring 1+1, Kolomoysky latched on to an up-and-coming Jewish comedian by the name of Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky had been in media his entire adult life, and even co-founded a media group, Kvartal 95, in 2003, at the age of just 25. Starring in feature films, he switched to television by the early 2010s, eventually coming to star in the 1+1 hit show “Servant of the People,” where he played a teacher pretending to be president of Ukraine. Then there was the notable 2016 comedy skit in which Zelensky and friends play a piano with their penises—in other words, typical low-brow scatological Jewish humor, compliments of Zelensky and Kolomoysky.

By early 2018, the pair were ready to move into politics. Zelensky registered his new political party for the upcoming 2019 election, and declared himself a presidential candidate in December 2018, just four months prior to the election. In the end, of course, he won, with 30% of the vote in the first round, and then defeating incumbent Poroshenko in the 2nd round by a huge 50-point margin. Relentless favorable publicity by 1+1 was credited with making a real difference. Notably, the third-place finisher in that election was, yet again, the Jewess Yulia Timoshenko—like a bad penny, she just keeps coming back.[9]

Zelensky, incidentally, has dramatically profited from his “meteoric rise” to fame and power. His Kvartal 95 media company earned him some $7 million per year. He also owns a 25% share of Maltex Multicapital, a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands, as part of a “web of off-shore companies” he helped to establish back in 2012. A Ukrainian opposition politician, Ilya Kiva, suggested recently that Zelensky is currently tapping into “hundreds of millions” in funding that flows into the country, and that Zelensky himself is personally earning “about $100 million per month.” A Netherlands party, Forum for Democracy, recently cited estimates of Zelensky’s fortune at an astounding $850 million. Apparently the “Churchill of Ukraine” is doing quite well for himself, even as his country burns.

In any case, it is clear that Zelensky owes much to his mentor and sponsor, Kolomoysky. The latter even admitted as much back in late 2019, in an interview for the New York Times. “If I put on glasses and look back at myself,” he said, “I see myself as a monster, as a puppet master, as the master of Zelensky, someone making apocalyptic plans. I can start making this real” (Nov 13). Indeed—the Kolomoysky/Zelensky apocalypse is nearly upon us.

Between rule by Jewish oligarchs and manipulations by the global Jewish lobby, modern-day Ukraine is a mess of a nation—and it was so long before the current “war.” Corruption there is endemic; in 2015, the Guardian headlined a story on Ukraine, calling it “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” An international corruption-ranking agency had recently assessed that country at 142nd in world, worse than Nigeria and equal to Uganda. As a result, Ukraine’s economy has suffered horribly. Before the current conflict, their per-capita income level of $8700 put them 112th in the world, below Albania ($12,900), Jamaica ($9100), and Armenia ($9700); this is by far the poorest in Europe, and well below that of Russia ($25,700 per person). Impoverished, corrupt, manipulated by Jews, now in a hot war—pity the poor Ukrainians.

Hail the American Empire

Enough history and context; let’s cut to the chase. From a clear-eyed perspective, it is obvious why Zelensky and friends want to prolong a war that they have no hope of winning: they are profiting immensely from it. As an added benefit, the actor Zelensky gets to perform on the world stage, which he will surely convert into more dollars down the road. Every month that the conflict continues, billions of dollars are flowing into Ukraine, and Zelensky et al. are assuredly skimming their “fair share” off the top. Seriously—who, making anywhere near $100 million per month, wouldn’t do everything conceivable to keep the gravy train running? The fact that thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are dying has no bearing at all in Zelensky’s calculus; in typical Jewish fashion, he cares not one iota for the well-being of the White Europeans. If his soldiers die even as they kill a few hated Russians, so much the better. For Ukrainian Jews, it is a win-win proposition.

Why does no one question this matter? Why is Zelensky’s corruption never challenged? Why are these facts so hard to find? We know the answer: It is because Zelensky is a Jew, and Jews are virtually never questioned and never challenged by leading Americans or Europeans. Jews get a pass on everything (unless they are obviously guilty of something heinous—and sometimes even then!). Jews get a pass from fellow Jews because they cover for each other. Jews get a pass from media because the media is owned and operated by Jews. And Jews get a pass from prominent non-Jews who are in the pay of Jewish sponsors and financiers. Zelensky can be as corrupt as hell, funneling millions into off-shore accounts, but as long as he plays his proper role, no one will say anything.

So the “war” goes on, and Zelensky and friends get rich. What does Europe get from all this? Nothing. Or rather, worse than nothing: They get a hot war in their immediate neighborhood, and they get an indignant Putin threatening to put hypersonic missiles in their capital cities in less than 200 seconds. They get to deal with the not-so-remote threat of nuclear war. They get to see their currency decline—by 10% versus the yuan in a year and by 12% versus the dollar. They get a large chunk of their gas, oil, and electricity supplies diverted or shut off, driving up energy prices. And they get to see their Covid-fragile economies put on thin ice.

But perhaps they deserve all this. As is widely known, the European states are American vassals, which means they are Jewish vassals. European leaders are spineless and pathetic lackeys of the Jewish Lobby. Judenknecht like Macron, Merkel and now Scholz, are sorry examples of humanity; they have sold out their own people to placate their overlords. And the European public is too bamboozled and too timid to make a change; France just had a chance to elect Le Pen, but the people failed to muster the necessary will. Thus, Europe deserves its fate: hot war, nuclear threat, cultural and economic decline, sub-Saharan and Islamic immigrants—the whole package. If it gets bad enough, maybe enough Europeans will awaken to the Jewish danger and take action. Or so we can hope.

What about the US? We could scarcely be happier. Dead Russians, the hated Putin in a tizzy, and the chance to play “world savior” once again. American military suppliers are ecstatic; they don’t care that most of their weapons bound for Ukraine get lost, stolen or blown up, and that (according to some estimates) only 5% make it to the front. For them, every item shipped is another profitable sale, whether it is used or not. And American congressmen get to pontificate about another “good war” even as they approve billions in aid.

And perhaps best of all, we get to press for an expansion to that American Empire known as NATO. We need to be very clear here: NATO is simply another name for the American Empire. The two terms are interchangeable. In no sense is NATO an “alliance among equals.” Luxembourg, Slovakia, and Albania have absolutely nothing to offer to the US. Do we care if they will “come to our aid” in case of a conflict? That is a bad joke, at best. In reality, what such nations are is more land, more people, and more economic wealth under the American thumb. They are yet more places to station troops, build military outposts, and run “black sites.” NATO always was, and always will be, the American Empire.

The push for Ukraine to join NATO by the West-friendly Zelensky was yet another blatant attempt at a power grab by the US, this one on Russia’s doorstep. Putin, naturally, took action to circumvent that. But of course, now the push moves to Sweden and Finland, both of whom are unwisely pursuing NATO membership in the illusory quest for security, when in reality they will simply be selling what remains of their national souls to the ruthless Judeo-American masters. For their sake, I hope they are able to avoid such a future.

And all the while, American Jews and a Jewish-American media play up the “good war” theme, send more weapons, and press ever further into the danger zone. Ukrainian-American Jews like Chuck Schumer are right out front, calling for aid, for war, for death.[10] “Ukraine needs all the help it can get and, at the same time, we need all the assets we can put together to give Ukraine the aid it needs,” said Schumer recently, eager to approve the next $40 billion aid package. As Jews have realized for centuries, wars are wonderful occasions for killing enemies and making a fast buck. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the present proxy war against Jewish enemies in eastern Europe began not long after the 20-year war against Jewish enemies in Afghanistan ended. Life without war is just too damn boring, for some.

Public Outrage?

If more than a minuscule fraction of the public knew about such details, they would presumably be outraged. But as I mentioned, the Jewish-controlled Western media does an excellent job in restricting access to such information, and in diverting attention whenever such ugly facts pop up. The major exception is Tucker Carlson, who is able to reach some 3 million people each night; this is by far the widest reach for anything like the above analysis. But Carlson falls woefully short—pathetically short—in defining the Jewish culprit behind all these factors. Jews are never outed and never named by Carlson, let alone ever targeted for blame. This crucial aspect is thus left to a literal handful of alt-right and dissident-right websites that collectively reach a few thousand people, at best.

And even if, by some miracle, all 3 million Tucker viewers were enlightened to the Jewish danger here, this still leaves some 200 million American adults ignorant and unaware. The mass of people believes what they see on the evening news, or in their Facebook feeds, or Google news, or on CNN or MSNBC, or in the New York Times—all Jewish enterprises, incidentally. This is why, when polled, 70% of the American public say that current aid to Ukraine is either “about right” or even “too little.” This, despite the fact that around 50% claim to be “very concerned” about nuclear war; clearly they are unable to make the necessary connections. And for many, it is even worse than this: around 21% would support “direct American military intervention” against Russia, which means an explicit World War Three, with all the catastrophic outcomes that this entails. Our Jewish media have done another fine job in whipping up public incitement.

In sum, we can say that our media have cleverly constructed a “philo-Semitic trap”: any mention or criticism of the Jewish hand in the present conflict is, first, highly censored, and then, if necessary, is dismissed as irrational anti-Semitism. Sympathy toward the (truly) poor, suffering Ukrainians is played up to the hilt, and Putin and the Russians relentlessly demonized. Leading American Jews, like Tony Blinken and Chuck Schumer, are constantly playing the good guys, pleading for aid, promising to help the beleaguered and outmanned Ukrainian warriors. Who can resist this storyline? Thus, we have no opposition, no questioning, no deeper inquiries into root causes. Jews profit and flourish, Ukrainians and Russians suffer and die, and the world rolls along toward potential Armageddon.

The reality is vastly different. Global Jews are, indeed, “planetary master criminals,” as Martin Heidegger long ago realized.[11] They function today as they have for centuries: as advocates for abuse, exploitation, criminality, death and profits. This is self-evidently true: if the potent Jewish Lobby wanted true peace, or flourishing humanity, they would be actively pushing for such things and likely succeeding. Instead, we have endless mayhem, war, terrorism, social upheaval and death, even as Jewish pockets get ever-deeper. And the one possible remedy for all this—true freedom of speech—recedes from our grasp.

On the one hand, I fear greatly for our future. On the other, I feel that we get what we deserve. When we allow malicious Jews to dominate our nations, and then they lead us into war and global catastrophe, well, what can we say? Perhaps there is no other way than to await the inevitable conflagration, exact retribution in the ensuing chaos, and then rebuild society from scratch—older and wiser.

Thomas Dalton, PhD, is the author of The Jewish Hand in the World Wars (2019). He has authored or edited several additional books and articles on politics, history, and religion, with a special focus on National Socialism in Germany. His other works include a new translation series of Mein Kampf, and the books Eternal Strangers (2020) and Debating the Holocaust (4th ed, 2020). Most recently he has edited a new edition of Rosenberg’s classic work Myth of the 20th Century and a new book of political cartoons, Pan-Judah! All these are available at www.clemensandblair.com. See also his personal website www.thomasdaltonphd.com.

Notes

[1] Cited in Wheen, Karl Marx (1999), p. 340.

[2] Russia’s recent defense of Assad in Syria, against Israel, has obviously not made things better. Nor has the fact that Putin, once thought to be a tool of Jewish-Russian oligarchs, has been able to turn the tables and hold them in check.

[3] Google has been particularly tenacious in altering its search engine results to censor (‘de-rank’) critics of Jewish power and stifle alternative voices. And Google owns Youtube, another force for censorship, which is currently run by the Jewess Susan Wojcicki. For their efforts, Brin and Page have become among the wealthiest men in the world; each is currently worth in excess of $100 billion.

[4] Svoboda began its existence as the “Social-National Party of Ukraine”—a not-so-subtle allusion to National Socialism. This is, in part, why both Svoboda and their allies have been called ‘neo-Nazi.’

[5] Nuland is currently “Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs” in the Biden administration.

[6] Another Jew likely involved in this incident was the Hungarian-American investor George Soros. In late 2019, the lawyer Joseph diGenova appeared in the news, openly charging Soros with direct intervention in American policy: “Well, there’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career Foreign Service at the United States State Department. … But the truth is George Soros had a daily opportunity to tell the State Department through Victoria Nuland what to do in the Ukraine. And he ran it, Soros ran it.”

[7] For what it’s worth, Hunter seems to have a “thing” for Jewesses. In 2016, while married, he took up with his dead brother’s Jewish widow, Hallie Olivere Biden. The marriage failed and the illicit affair died out after a year or so, but then the ever-industrious Hunter latched on to another Jewess, “filmmaker” Melissa Cohen, in 2018. They married in 2019.

[8] In a revealing quotation, Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Yarosh once asked this question: “I wonder how it came to pass that most of the billionaires in Ukraine are Jews?” Criminal activity is surely a large part of the answer.

[9] Not long after winning the presidency, Zelensky named another Jew, Andriy Yermak, as “Head of Presidential Administration.” (The current prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, seems not to be Jewish.)

[10] Other Ukrainian-American Jews, like Steven Spielberg and Jon Stewart, and the heirs to the Sheldon Adelson fortune, are assuredly equally elated about the course of events.

[11] Cited in P. Trawney, Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (2015), p. 33.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

WOEFUL WEEK FOR THE CDC & WALENSKY

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | August 18, 2022

After 3 years of confusion, contradiction, and bad policy-making, CDC Director Rochelle Walenksy M.D., has announced ‘sweeping reorganization.’ This, coming on the heels of an announcement that the beleaguered agency’s Covid guidance no longer differentiates between the Vaccinated, and the Unvaccinated. What is really going on?

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation

By Paul Sperry | RealClearInvestigations | August 18, 2022

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

The FBI’s nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president’s Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington – not Miami, as has been widely reported – according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau’s counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia “collusion” investigation of Trump, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau’s disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team – Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian “disinformation,” an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

In congressional testimony this month, Wray confirmed that “a number of” former Crossfire Hurricane team members are still employed at the bureau while undergoing disciplinary review. In the meantime, Wray has walled off the former Russiagate investigators only from participating in FISA wiretap applications, according to the sources.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked Wray for copies of recent case files and reports generated by Auten and whether he is included among the team the FBI has assembled to determine which of the seized Trump records fall within the scope of its counterespionage investigation and which fall outside of it.

Some former FBI officials worry that Auten, a top bureau expert on Russia and nuclear warfare, will have a hand in analyzing the boxes of documents agents seized from Trump’s home on Aug. 8 to help determine if any of the alleged Top Secret material he kept there might have been compromised, potentially putting national security at risk.

“It is a disgrace that Auten is still even employed by the bureau,” said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. “I would substitute other analysts and agents.”

An examination of the bureau agents involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid reveals other connections between them and FBI officials who played key roles in advancing the Russiagate hoax.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations that Jay Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in Justice’s national security division, who happens to be a Democratic National Committee donor, has been coordinating the Mar-a-Lago investigation with Alan Kohler, who heads the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

Kohler replaced Bill Priestap in that post after Priestap stepped down from the bureau amid criticism of his role in the Russiagate probe. Kohler had worked at FBI headquarters under Priestap, specializing in countering Russian intelligence threats.

Before that, he worked in London as the FBI’s liaison with British intelligence and law enforcement. The sources say Kohler was close to Stefan Halper, an academic and longtime FBI contractor whom the bureau ran as an informant in a failed effort to suborn Trump campaign officials. He also worked closely with Stephen Somma, a lead case agent in the Crossfire Hurricane probe whom Horowitz said was “primarily responsible” for some of the worst misconduct in the FISA warrant abuse scandal. Somma is a counterintelligence investigator in the FBI’s New York field office, where he has been reassigned to the China desk.

In 2019, Kohler was promoted to special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s Washington field Office, where he worked alongside then-assistant agent-in-charge Timothy Thibault, who was reassigned by Wray just days prior to the Mar-a-Lago raid, after whistleblowers raised questions about political bias. They asserted that Thibault, who has taken aim at Trump and Republicans on social media, worked with Auten to falsely discredit evidence of alleged money laundering and other activities against Hunter Biden and prevent agents from investigating them.

The Washington field office’s counterintelligence division is now run by Anthony Riedlinger, who previously worked at FBI headquarters as a section chief under Priestap. Some of the agents involved in the raid on Trump’s home came from that Washington field office, according to the sources and FBI case documents.

Bratt, the top counterintelligence official at Justice, traveled to Mar-a-Lago in early June and personally inspected the storage facility while interacting with both Trump and one of his lawyers. Trump allowed the three FBI agents Bratt brought with him to open boxes in the storage room and look through them. They left with some documents. After leaving, Bratt made a request to Trump’s lawyer for increased security at the facility and asked to see surveillance footage from the security cameras. The lawyer complied with the requests. Months went by before the Justice Department took the politically explosive step of sending FBI agents unannounced to Trump’s home, seizing documents, photos, and other items not just from the storage facility but from multiple rooms on the property, including the former president’s office.

Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker said the search warrant that agents obtained is quite wide-ranging. He pointed out that it authorized the seizure of any information in any form related to “national defense information,” which he said “does not necessarily include classified material.”

“This is a huge, broad search warrant and a huge, broad investigation leveled against the former president,” Swecker said.

What’s more, he said the physical search of the former president’s residence was far more sweeping than first reported and included unsupervised snooping in several dozen bedrooms, as well as numerous storage rooms and closets, including those of the former first lady. FBI agents took numerous boxes and containers of documents and other material, including several binders of photos and even three passports held by the former president.

Although Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that the DOJ seeks to “narrowly scope any search that is undertaken,” details of the warrant reveal agents had the authority to seize entire boxes of records – including those potentially covered by attorney-client privilege and executive privilege – if just a single document inside the container were marked with a classified marking.

Agents were allowed to also seize any containers or boxes “found together with” ones containing classified papers, according to ATTACHMENT B (“Property to be seized”) of the warrant. In addition, the FBI agents were given the authority to confiscate “any government and/or presidential records created between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan. 20, 2021,” which covers Trump’s full term in office. That meant they were able to take any item related to the Trump administration.

All told, dozens of boxes and containers were removed from Trump’s residence, very few of which actually contained classified information, the sources said.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Bratt has given exclusively to Democrats, including at least $800 to the Democratic National Committee. The sources said he is close to David Laufman, whom he replaced as the top counterintelligence official at Justice. An Obama donor, Laufman helped oversee the Russiagate probe, as well as the Clinton email case, which also involved classified information.

A Senate investigator told RCI that Laufman was the “mastermind” behind the strategy to dust off and “weaponize” the rarely enforced statutory relic – the Foreign Agents Registration Act – against Trump campaign officials, a novel legal move that the investigator noted is similar to the department’s current attempts to enforce the Presidential Records Act against Trump – which is a civil, not a criminal, statute – by invoking the Espionage Act of 1917.

Laufman signed off on the wiretapping of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, which the Department of Justice inspector general determined was conducted under false pretenses involving doctored email, suppression of exculpatory evidence, and other malfeasance.

Suddenly resurfacing as a media surrogate for the Justice Department defending the Mar-a-Lago raid, Laufman has been a key source for stories by the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets.

On CNN, for instance, he claimed the documents seized from Trump’s storage were “particularly stunning and particularly egregious,” and their discovery “completely validates the government’s investigation” into the former president – though he quickly added, “Whether this investigation transforms into an outright criminal prosecution remains to be seen.”

Swecker said that there is strong reason to fear that the FBI’s counterintelligence division might politicize this case.

“For sure, the FBI has dug themselves into a huge hole because of how they handled the Clinton (email) case and then Crossfire Hurricane and Hunter Biden,” Swecker said. “Myself and many of my colleagues think they are treading on very thin ice here.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “you can’t recuse an entire FBI division.”

Patel: ‘It’s Just Insane’

Former federal prosecutor and Trump administration official Kash Patel said the FBI may have a personal interest – and a potential conflict – in seizing the records stored by Trump.

He noted that Trump in October 2020 authorized the declassification of all the investigative records generated from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane as well as the Clinton email investigation, codenamed “Midyear Exam,” and he said that the FBI may have confiscated some of those records in its raid, ensuring they won’t be made public. In addition, he said, the agency may be digging for other documents to try to justify, retroactively, their questionable, politically-tinged 2016 opening of the Trump-Russia “collusion” case, which came up embarrassingly short on evidence.

“Tragically, the same FBI characters that were involved in Russiagate are the same counterintel guys running this ‘national security investigation’ against Trump,” said Patel, who deposed Crossfire Hurricane team members as a former House Intelligence Committee investigator.

Patel noted that the Horowitz report indicated FBI analyst Auten hid exculpatory information about Trump’s adviser Page from other investigators and the FISA court, which should be more than enough to keep him at arm’s length from other investigations involving Trump.

“And to top it all off, this guy admits [to Horowitz’s investigators] he’s unrepentant about his role in making up the biggest hoax in election history, and Wray still lets him be a supervisor at the FBI,” he said. “It’s just insane.”

The Justice Department’s national security division has ultimate authority over the grand-jury probe of Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act, including alleged mishandling of classified material – the same statutes invoked in the Clinton email investigation. (In that case, in contrast, the FBI never searched the former secretary of state’s Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion, where she set up an unsecured basement server to send and receive at least 110 classified emails and where she also received government documents by fax.)

Former FBI counterintelligence official and lawyer Mark Wauck said he is troubled by signs that the same cast of characters from the Russiagate scandal appears to be involved in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

“If these people, who were part of a major hoax that involved criminal activity and displays of bias and seriously flawed judgment, are still involved, then that’s a major scandal,” he said in an interview.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Negative effects persist a year after US withdrawal from Afghanistan: Chinese FM

An Afghan girl holds her little sister at a displaced person camp in Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of northern Balkh province, Afghanistan, on July 22, 2021. Photo:Xinhua
Global Times | August 19, 2022

Afghanistan is a living example of US belligerence, and the negative impacts of US aggression against Afghanistan still persist a year after the US withdrawal, according to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Friday.

The US’ two-decade invasion of Afghanistan has reduced the country to rubble, ruined the future of an entire generation of Afghans, killed 174,000 people including more than 30,000 civilians, and displaced tens of millions. Even though the US troops have left, Afghanistan is yet to emerge from the long shadow of the invasion, Wang said.

Millions of Afghans are struggling on the verge of death. About three million Afghan children are too poor to go to school. And 18.9 million people face acute food shortage. The US must take responsibility for all of this, said Wang.

Zhu Yongbiao, executive director of the Research Center for the Belt and Road and director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at Lanzhou University, echoed this opinion. The US is responsible for Afghanistan’s misshapen economy and the rampant drug abuse, Zhu told the Global Times on Friday.

The US has not made developing Afghanistan its main goal, but has used it as an “experimental place,” which is the fundamental reason for the problems in Afghanistan, Zhu said.

The problems Afghanistan is facing are “comprehensive and systematic,” but the root cause of these problems is connected with the US’ 20-year-long invasion of Afghanistan, according to Zhu.

Afghanistan is a living proof of the failure of the US program of “democratic transformation”. The two-decade war in Afghanistan has cost the US more than $2 trillion, claimed over 2,400 US soldiers’ lives, and injured more than 20,000 US soldiers, only to end with the biggest US military debacle since the Vietnam War. People compare the “Kabul moment” to the “Saigon moment,” according to the spokesperson.

The US public also paid a dear price. According to US non-profit organizations, since 2001, 114,000 US veterans, or 18 per day, have taken their own lives, and nearly 40,000 veterans have become homeless, said Wang.

The “Kabul moment” put on full display the US’ hypocrisy on democracy and human rights and its true colors of relying on power politics and bullying practices, Wang said.

The US has failed in Afghanistan, but it has yet to abandon its policy of interference. It still frequently meddles in other countries’ internal affairs in the name of democracy and human rights, and continues to peddle the so-called “democracy versus authoritarianism” narrative to stoke division and confrontation around the world. This would only lead the US to new and greater failures, Wang noted.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Fauci is Now Performing Gain-of-Function on the Spanish Flu

By Tom Renz | Tom’s Newsletter | August 19, 2022

This will be short because it really does not need much comment. In fact, this is so absurd that I am just starting with the reference document because I am concerned no one will believe it. Here it is:

Spanish Flu Gof
2.12MB ∙ PDF File – Read now

Yes, that is right, Fauci and crew are now actively performing gain-of-function (GoF) work and infecting primates with the Spanish Flu. For those of you that are unaware, GoF does not have a single agreed upon definition but, as it relates here, is essentially the modification of the Spanish Flu virus to make “more functional.” In this case, as with COVID, I have little doubt the GoF supporters will argue that this is not GoF but the article actually notes that this disease was created in canine kidneys with supplemental bovine serum. Here is a quote from the document:

Virus and cells. Influenza virus A/South Carolina/1918 (H1N1) was generated by reverse genetics (9) and handled in biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) containment at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML). Sequences of the 1918 influenza viral segments were based on data reported under GenBank accession numbers DQ208309, DQ208310, DQ208311, AF117241, AY744935, AF250356, AY130766, and AF333238. 1918 influenza virus was cultured usingMadin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK; ATCC, Manassas, VA, USA) cells. MDCK cells were grown in minimum essential medium (MEM; HyClone) supplemented with 5% fetal bovine serum (FBS; HyClone) and 1 L-glutamine (L-Glu; Gibco, Life Technologies, Grand Island, NY, USA).

A passage 2 (P2) virus stock was prepared using MEM supplemented with 0.1% bovine serum albumin (BSA) (fraction V; HyClone), 1 L-glutamine, and 1 mg/mL N-tosyl-L-phenylalanine chloromethyl ketone (TPCK)-treated trypsin (Sigma-Aldrich). This stock was used for animal inoculation. The mouse 50% lethal dose (MLD50) for this stock was determined previously to be 103.2 PFU (9); this value was confirmed prior to the use of the stock for macaque infection.

I frankly do not care to debate the nuance of whether the recreation of generally extinct virus “generated by reverse genetics” using pieces and parts of other animals qualifies as GoF; what I care about is that we have recreated the Spanish Flu and are experimenting with it on other animals. I also care that one focus of this article is the fact that scientists are frustrated that the recreated Spanish Flu is not dangerous enough. We do not have to get far in this to see this frustration. At the beginning of the article in the summary of its importance this statement is made:

Here, we demonstrate that even at the highest doses tested, 1918 influenza was not lethal in these two macaque species, suggesting that they are not ideal for the development and testing of novel pandemic influenza-specific vaccines and therapies. Therefore, other physiologically relevant nonhuman primate models of pandemic influenza are needed.

At this point I am preparing to release the results of a major investigation we have been undertaking at Renz Law that will demonstrate that SARS-COV2 was in fact created in the Wuhan labs as part of a GoF project. We believe the investigation demonstrates this in a way that far exceeds a preponderance of the evidence standard and probably exceeds reasonable doubt. With that in mind, and given the result of the the previous coronavirus GoF, can ANYONE possibly argue GoF work on the Spanish Flu is a good idea? Even the simple recreation of the disease demonstrates an incredible lack of respect for the disaster created by the coronavirus GoF.

So you may be asking, what moron could possibly be oblivious enough to support GoF work on the Spanish Flu while the world is still dealing with the nightmare that is COVID? The answer should not be surprising and is here:

Mable Chan,ᵃ Meenakshi Tiwary,ᵇ,ᶜ Helen L. Wu,ᵇ,ᶜ Nikesh Tailor,ᵃ Robert Vendramelli,ᵃ Jonathan Audet,ᵃ Bryce M. Warner,ᵃ Kevin Tierney,ᵃ Alix Albietz,ᵃ Thang Truong,ᵃ Kaylie Doan,ᵃ Alexander Bello,ᵃ Marnie Willman,ᵃ Bryan D. Griffin,ᵃ,ᵈ Patrick W. Hanley,ᵉ Jamie Lovaglio,ᵉ David Safronetz,ᵃ,ᶠ Jim Strong,ᵃ,ᶠ Jonah B. Sacha,ᵇ,ᶜ Darwyn Kobasaᵃ,ᶠ

a. Special Pathogens, National Microbiology Laboratory, Public Health Agency of Canada, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

b. Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland,

c. Oregon, USA Oregon National Primate Research Center, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, Oregon, USA

d. Vaccine Safety Surveillance, Immunization Branch, Public Health Agency of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

e. Rocky Mountain Veterinary Branch, Division of Intramural Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, USA

f. Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

So, NIH and NIAID are involved. Apparently Fauci does not mind what he did with funding the creation of COVID and is at it again. You might also note the vaccine development crew’s involvement. A foundational point in this article is that the newly recreated Spanish Flu is not dangerous enough. Here is a pull-quote:

However, 1918 influenza was uniformly nonlethal in these two species, demonstrating that this isolate is insufficiently pathogenic in rhesus and Mauritian cynomolgus macaques to support testing novel prophylactic influenza approaches where protection from severe disease combined with a lethal outcome is desired as a highly stringent indication of vaccine efficacy.

This means that these people are arguing that we need to make a more dangerous version of the Spanish Flu so they can make “better” vaccines for it… despite the fact that until they recreated it, it likely no longer existed in nature. Much like with COVID, these snake oil salesmen create the disease and then create the cure. Given the complete failure and innumerable dangers of the COVID jabs, the real question is whether the cure will be worse than the disease?

For my part I find the fact that I am even writing this article to be incredible. In this election year I sincerely hope that this article is put in front of every elected official in Washington and they are asked to explain how this is continuing on their watch.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment