Samizdat | April 6, 2022
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday that India’s continued purchase of Russian weapons systems is “not in their best interest,” and that there will be a “requirement” that leaders in New Delhi swap some of these systems for US and allied armaments. India is the world’s largest military importer, and counts on Russia for nearly half of its external supply of weaponry.
Austin was responding to a question from Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina), who described India as a “treasured ally” of the US and “the world’s largest democracy.” What, Wilson asked Austin, could the US do to convince “Indian leaders to reject Putin and align with its natural allies of democracy?”
Austin responded that the US has “the finest weapons systems in the world,” and would offer them to New Delhi.
“We continue to work with [India] to ensure that they understand that it’s not in their … best interest to continue to invest in Russian equipment,” Austin told the members of the House Armed Services Committee. “And our requirement going forward is that they downscale the types of equipment that they’re investing in and look to invest more in the types of things that will make us continue to be compatible,” he added.
Austin is not the first US official to talk of boosting arms sales to India. Former President Donald Trump inked a $3 billion arms deal with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2020, selling India Apache helicopters and Hellfire missiles, in an apparent bid to counter China in South Asia.
Despite this boost in sales, the US remains India’s third-largest arms supplier, providing just 12% of New Delhi’s lethal imports between 2017 and 2021. France provides 27% of India’s imported weapons, while Russia provides a whopping 46%, with all figures supplied by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
This partnership dates back to the Cold War, when India, as a founding member of the Non-Aligned movement, bought weapons from the Soviets without ever entering into a formal alliance with the USSR. According to some analysts, 85% of major Indian weapons systems to this day are of Russian or Soviet origin.
These include the Indian Air Force’s Su-30, MiG-21 and MiG-29 fighter aircraft, the Indian Army’s T90MS main battle tank, and the Indian Navy’s sole aircraft carrier, the Russian-built INS Vikramaditya. Furthermore, despite intense pressure from Washington, including veiled threats of sanctions, New Delhi has pressed ahead with acquiring the Russian S-400 air defense system.
It is unclear which weapons systems Austin wants India to “downscale” its investment in, but allied purchases of the S-400 in particular have irked Washington in the past. Turkey bought the Russian system despite repeated warnings from the US, and was sanctioned and booted from the F-35 fighter program in 2019 in response.
Austin’s call to divest comes as the US pressures other world powers to back its attempts to isolate Russia following the latter’s military offensive on Ukraine. While European nations have heeded the call and sanctioned Russia – even to the detriment of their own economies – India has refused to abandon its neutral stance and has continued to trade with Russia, despite the White House’s protestations.
April 6, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Russophobia | India, United States |
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Amazon will not allow employees to use phrases that highlight the company’s shortcomings in a planned chat app, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The app would have an automatic filter to block terms such as “slave labor,” “union,” “pay raise,” and even “restrooms,” probably due to reports of employees using bottles instead of restrooms to meet deadlines.
A source for The Intercept said that in November, the company’s executives met to discuss plans for an employee chat app. The main feature of the app would be posts called “Shout-outs,” which would allow employees to applaud other employees for good performance.
The “Shout-outs,” would be integrated with a gamified reward system, which would allow employees to be rewarded with virtual badges and stars for achieving objectives that “add direct business value,” according to the documents.
However, the executives noted “the dark side of social media,” with the solution being to closely monitor posts to maintain a “positive community.” The head of worldwide consumer business, Dave Clark, suggested that the app should be one-on-one, like dating apps, not forum-based like Twitter and Facebook.
The executives also agreed that the app should have an “auto bad word monitor.” The filter would flag offensive and inappropriate phrases. However, it would also prevent employees from terms that could be used to criticize the company or those that could be used to organize a union.
“With free text, we risk people writing Shout-Outs that generate negative sentiments among the viewers and the receivers,” a document summarizing the program states. “We want to lean towards being restrictive on the content that can be posted to prevent a negative associate experience.”
According to The Intercept, terms that would be banned include “Union,” “this is concerning,” “slave,” “slave labor,” “prison,” “unite,” “committee,” “restrooms,” “grievance,” and “injustice.”
“Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.
“If it does launch at some point down the road, there are no plans for many of the words you’re calling out to be screened. The only kinds of words that may be screened are ones that are offensive or harassing, which is intended to protect our team.”
April 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Amazon, United States |
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Russia has blasted “another attempt of shameless interference” by the United States in the internal affairs of Pakistan, saying that Washington sought to punish a “disobedient” Prime Minister Imran Khan following his visit to Moscow on February 23-24.
The spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova said in a statement issued on Monday that the political development in Pakistan “leaves no doubt” that the United States plotted to topple the government of Prime Minister Khan.
The Russian foreign office condemned the United States over its involvement in an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the Pakistani government.
“Immediately after the announcement of the working visit of Imran Khan to Moscow on February 23-24 this year, the Americans and their Western associates began to exert rude pressure on the prime minister, demanding an ultimatum to cancel the trip,” Zakharova said.
The Russian foreign office stated that US Deputy Secretary of State for South Asia Donald Lu called upon the Pakistani ambassador in Washington and subsequently called upon Ambassador Asad Majid to “condemn the balanced reaction of the Pakistani leadership to the events in Ukraine,” as evidence of American interference in Pakistan’s affairs.
“When he [Khan] nevertheless came to us, [Lu] called the Pakistani ambassador in Washington and demanded that the visit be immediately interrupted, which was also rejected,” she stated.
“According to the Pakistani media, on March 7 this year, in a conversation with Pakistani Ambassador Asad Majid, a high-ranking American official (presumably the same Donald Lu) sharply condemned the balanced reaction of the Pakistani leadership to the events in Ukraine and made it clear that partnerships with the United States are possible only if Imran Khan is removed from power,” Zakharova said.
She added that further development of the situation in Pakistan left no doubt that Washington “decided to punish the ‘disobedient’ Imran Khan,” for not condemning the Russian military action in Ukraine as was demanded by the US.
“This is another attempt of shameless US interference in the internal affairs of an independent state for its own selfish purposes. The above facts eloquently testify to this,” Zakharova said.
“The [Pakistan] prime minister himself has repeatedly stated that the conspiracy against him was inspired and financed from abroad. We hope that Pakistani voters will be informed about these circumstances when they come to the elections, which should be held within 90 days after the dissolution of the National Assembly,” she said.
Addressing a large rally in the capital Islamabad last week, Prime Minister Khan accused an unnamed “foreign power” – in a clear reference to the United States – of funding a “conspiracy” to topple his democratically-elected government.
He said the “foreign power” sent millions of dollars to opposition parties to launch a no-confidence vote against him in the parliament.
On Sunday, members of Pakistan’s parliament chanted “Death to America” as they rejected a no-confidence vote, which sought to oust Khan, saying “foreign powers” were interfering in the country’s democratic process.
The National Assembly deputy speaker dismissed the no-trust move against the prime minister, terming it as “contradictory” to Article 5 of Pakistan’s Constitution.
Suri said that the motion was presented on March 8 and should be conducted according to the law and the Constitution, stressing, “No foreign power shall be allowed to topple an elected government through a conspiracy.”
The Pakistani president later dissolved the National Assembly on Khan’s advice.
April 5, 2022
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Aletho News | Pakistan, Russia, United States |
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Samizdat | April 5, 2022
The US authorities have stopped the Russian government from paying holders of its sovereign debt more than $600 million from reserves frozen in American bank accounts.
“Russia must choose between draining remaining valuable dollar reserves or new revenue coming in, or default,” a US Treasury spokesperson said on Monday as the largest of the payments came due, including a $552.4 million principal payment on a maturing bond.
An $84 million coupon payment was due on the same day on a 2042 sovereign dollar bond.
JPMorgan, which had been processing payments as a correspondent bank heretofore, was stopped by the US regulator, according to a source familiar with the issue, as cited by Reuters. Now Russia has a 30-day grace period to make the payment.
Russia’s foreign currency reserves held by the country’s central bank at US financial institutions had been previously frozen as part of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine.
However, the country was allowed to use the funds to make coupon payments on dollar-denominated sovereign debt on a case-by-case basis. Since February 24, when the operation was launched, Russia managed to make as many as five bond payments, having averted the default that was predicted by international rating agencies.
Moscow was last allowed to make a $447 million coupon payment on a 2030 sovereign dollar bond on March 31.
The sanctions-hit country has a total of 15 international bonds outstanding with a face value of around $40 billion.
April 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Russophobia | Russia, United States |
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There are many backstories surfacing from what is going on in Ukraine and Washington that have been largely ignored amid the drumbeat of casualty counts combined with claims and counter-claims from the two sides. Two stories that I believe have received insufficient attention are the US government’s three decades long obsession with weakening and de facto destroying the Russian state and the dominant neocon plus associate liberal democracy promoter role in what has become American foreign policy.
To be sure, anyone who doubts that the US is currently on a course to not only replace President Vladimir Putin but also to crash the Russian economy is delusional. Washington has been trying to deconstruct the former Soviet Union ever since 1991, beginning with President Bill Clinton’s expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in spite of a pledge not to do so and his unleashing the oligarchs who looted the country’s natural resources under President Boris Yeltsin. The pressure continued under the beatified President Barack Obama, who appointed as Ambassador Michael McFaul, who saw his mission as connecting with dissidents and opposition forces inside Russia, a role incompatible with his promotion of US interests and protecting US persons.
And then we had the redoubtable President Donald Trump undoing confidence building agreements with Russia followed by the current disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes. One should not ignore the fact that the fighting in Ukraine came about largely because the Biden Administration refused to negotiate seriously regarding the mostly reasonable demands that the Kremlin was making to enhance its own security. Former US arms inspector Scott Ritter cites a reported comment by a senior Biden Administration official which sums up the current policy, such as it is: “The only end game now is the end of Putin regime. Until then, all the time Putin stays, [Russia] will be a pariah state that will never be welcomed back into the community of nations.”
Indeed, President Joe Biden’s recent disastrous trip to Europe can likely be characterized as one wishes to see it and the media has certainly done considerable spinning, but Biden left behind a legacy of various gaffes and lapsus linguae that made clear that the US is in the game to defeat Russia however long it will take to play out. And Biden has considerable support from brain dead congressmen like Republican Senator Lindsey Graham who has called for someone to murder Putin, lamenting “Is there a Brutus in Russia?”
On his trip, Biden revealed that he expects US combat troops to go to Ukraine’s assistance and he has also taken delight in denouncing Putin as a “killer,” a “thug,” a “murderous dictator” and a “man who cannot remain in power.” In so doing, he has openly called for Putin’s removal from office, i.e. regime change, while also opening the door to an obvious false flag operation in his unwillingness to reveal when questioned by a reporter how the US might respond if Russia were to use chemical weapons in Ukraine. That he has taken those positions means that it will be impossible to restore manageable relations with Moscow post Ukraine. It is a heavy price to pay for something that is little more than posturing.
The chemical weapon issue is particularly important as President Donald Trump bombed Syria with cruise missiles in the wake of a fabricated report that Bashar al-Assad had used such weapons in an attack on Khan Shaykhun in 2017. It turned out that the anti-regime terrorists who were occupying the city at the time had themselves staged the attack and deliberately blamed it on the Syrian government to produce an expected US response.
Based on what I am seeing and hearing, I would conclude that the neoconservatives and their liberal democracy promoting friends are working hard from the inside to make something like a war with Russia happen. Note in particular that we are talking about war with shooting and deaths, not just a reincarnation or extension of the Cold War of yore. News on April 1st, admittedly April Fools’ Day, suggests that Ukraine has staged helicopter launched missile attacks on a fuel storage depot inside Russia, which, if true, could produce a massive escalation from the Kremlin. It would be a typical neocon maneuver to dramatically increase the level of the fighting and draw the United States into the conflict.
In addition to that, I know I am not the only one who has noticed the pace and focus of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskys’ widely promoted appeals to groups and world governments to come to his country’s aid, to include establishment of a no-fly zone. The appeals are slick, convincing and carefully focused, with Zelensky being framed as a “hero” fighting valiantly against savage invaders. To put it mildly they are way beyond the capabilities and experience level of a former comedian, whose performances featured erotic dancing and playing a piano with his penis, corruptly placed on the presidential hotseat by a billionaire oligarch Israeli citizen.
The US media is, of course, lavishly praising Zelensky, but I would bet that he has a cadre of American and possibly Israeli neoconservatives working diligently behind him to get it right, coaching him on what to say and do. There might be US government players also in on the act, to include NED (National Endowment for Democracy), CIA information specialists, State Department media consultants and observers from the National Security Council. Indeed, there is as much a war going on over the airwaves and internet to influence thinking internationally as there is fighting taking place on the ground.
One should conclude that the CIA is playing the central role in the “Russia Project” because of its ability to shield what it is doing from scrutiny. Based on previous operations to overthrow governments in various places, one might assume that the so-called covert action approach is multi-level. It consists of media placements that are intended to sway opinion both inside and outside Russia and produce unrest, the identification and recruitment of Russian government officials when they travel overseas, and the support of dissidents both internally and externally who share a negative view of Moscow and its policies. A major component in the approach is to obtain Western liberal support for harsh sanctions and other repressive measures against the Kremlin based on the fraudulent proposition that Putin and his associates are out to destroy “democracy” and “freedom.” Ironically, Americans are less “free” and also poorer because of the actions of their own government since 2001, not because of Vladimir Putin.
As was the case with Iraq, Afghanistan and the long list of American interventions, it is the neocons who are in front demanding a powerful military response, both to Russia and, inevitably, to Iran. What is particularly noticeable is how the neocons and their liberal democracy promoting counterparts have in several areas dominated the foreign policies of both parties. Leading neocon Bill Kristol, who called the Biden speech “a historic call to action on par with Ronald Reagan[‘s] ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall speech,’” recently also contributed “There would be no real prospect of an awakening in the United States and Europe were it not for the stand the Ukrainians have made. We would still be denying the threats we face. We would still be turning away from the urgency of the task we face. We would even, I daresay, still fail to appreciate the preciousness of the freedom and decency we have the obligation—and the honor—to defend. It is the Ukrainians who have shown us what free men and women can do, and what they are sometimes required to do, in defense of that freedom. It is the Ukrainians who have shown the world that we are in a new period of consequences. It is the Ukrainians who have given us the example of what it means today to fight back against brutality, and to fight for freedom.”
Kristol is, as so often, full of flag waving, chest puffing nonsense, peddling the notion that the United States has an obligation to police the world. Another leading neocon and regular Washington Post and The Atlantic contributor Anne Applebaum puts it this way and in so doing expands the playing field to include much of the world: “Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others.”
It would be nice, for a change, to end an article on a high note, but high notes are hard to find these days. If there is anything beyond Ukraine to demonstrate the insanity of US foreign policy it would have to be, inevitably, recent news out of Israel. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was recently in Israel trying in part to sell the possibility that the Biden Administration might actually come to a non-proliferation agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. Israel strongly opposes any such move and its lobby in the US led by various neocon think tanks has been working hard to kill any deal. So, what did Blinken do? He asked Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett for suggestions of what might be done in lieu of an actual agreement. Naftali reportedly suggested harsher sanctions on Iran. Cut it any way you want, but the renewal of 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is beneficial for both the United States and all of Iran’s neighbors, and here the US senior-most representative involved in the negotiations is asking the head of a foreign government to tell him what to do. Something is very wrong in Washington.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
April 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | CIA, NATO, Ukraine, United States, Zionism |
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Del catches up with ICAN Lead Attorney, Aaron Siri, Esq, on the recent legal win against Washington D.C., putting the kibosh on the outrageous law which allowed minors to get vaccinated without parental consent.
April 5, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | CDC, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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The Highwire with Del Bigtree | March 31, 2022
Former British broadcasting executive, Mark Sharman, recently spoke out about the incredible failures of the media during Covid by warning journalists not to question the official government line in their reporting.
From the legislative arena to big business, Covid restrictions seem to be in their final day. Businesses have begun re-hiring unvaccinated workers, airline CEOs are calling for an end to Biden’s federal mask mandate, and legislators are working to prevent mandates from ever happening again.
April 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK, United States |
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Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Sunday named the senior US government official behind the controversial letter that threatened to overthrow Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI) government.
Addressing a meeting of party leaders in Islamabad after the no-trust motion against him was dismissed in the country’s parliament; Khan said that during the national security committee’s (NSC) meeting, foreign interference was noted in the internal politics of the country through a no-confidence motion.
He went on to mention the name of Donald Lu, the top American official dealing with South Asia in the US State Department, as the person involved in the ‘foreign conspiracy’ to topple his government.
The embattled premier claimed that Lu had warned the Pakistani envoy to the US, Asad Majeed, that there would be “implications” if Khan survived the no-trust vote in the National Assembly, the lower house of the parliament.
He further said that minutes of the communiqué regarding a meeting between the ambassador of Pakistan in the US and the US officials were shared in the NSC meeting.
Khan said the embassy officials of the US were also in contact with the PTI members who had defected, reiterating that the no-confidence motion against him was a “foreign conspiracy”.
On Saturday, Khan openly and defiantly held the US responsible for the “foreign conspiracy” to overthrow his government.
“Ok I’m taking the name of US, the conspiracy has been hatched with the help of America to remove me,” he told his party colleagues in Islamabad.
In a high-drama event on Sunday, the lower house of the parliament rejected the no-trust vote tabled by the opposition parties against Khan.
Deputy speaker of Pakistan’s national assembly, Qasim Suri, asserted that no foreign power will be allowed to “topple an elected government through a conspiracy,” calling the vote against the sitting premier “unconstitutional” under Article 5 of the country’s constitution.
Later, in his televised address on the state-run television, Khan congratulated the people of Pakistan and repeated that the move to overthrow him was a “foreign conspiracy.”
He also requested President Arif Alvi to dissolve the parliament under Article 58(1) of the constitution and called on the nation to gear up for a fresh election.
Talking to his party colleagues later in the day, Khan said that the opposition members were in a state of shock after the vote failed and they did not know what had happened to them.
Pakistan’s Supreme Court is set to decide whether the deputy speaker’s move to reject the opposition’s vote of no-confidence and the subsequent request by Khan to the President to dissolve the parliament is constitutional or not.
President Alvi, in a Twitter post on Monday, said Khan would stay on as prime minister in a caretaker role.
Khan’s fate is now in a state of limbo which would lead to fresh political instability in the country. The court could bar him from standing again if he is found to have acted unconstitutionally.
The relationship between the US and Pakistan has been at odds since the US’ hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer.
The growing alignment between China and Pakistan also casts a shadow over US policy towards Pakistan.
April 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Pakistan, United States |
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Even before Russia invaded Ukraine, the New York Times strongly hinted Putin had lost it. Anton Troianovski on 2/18/22, “The 20-foot-long table that Mr. Putin has used to socially distance himself this month from European leaders flying in for crisis talks symbolizes, to some longtime observers, his detachment from the rest of the world. For almost two years, Mr. Putin has ensconced himself in a virus-free cocoon unlike that of any Western leader, with state television showing him holding most key meetings by teleconference alone in a room and keeping even his own ministers at a distance on the rare occasions that he summons them in person.” Though social distancing was an indication of health and good sense in the West, it was a sign of madness in Putin.
As Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine Douglas Murray concluded in The Sun that Putin was “insane and dangerous,” with the weak West enabling his deranged behavior.
On 2/27/22, Condoleezza Rice deemed Putin “erratic,” with “an ever-deepening, delusional rendering of history.”
Getting deep, Father Cyril Hovorun explained in Premier Christianity on 2/29/22, “It’s irrational: [Putin] destroys his own country for the sake of retaking Ukraine, which is looking increasingly unlikely […] He is driven by a sort of metaphysics. I would not call it religion, although there is a component of traditional Christianity in it. It’s really a sort of metaphysical outlook, which I believe to be dangerous […] Just like Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked of cheap grace, I would say Putin has adopted cheap spirituality […] It’s a mix of post-Soviet metaphysics, superstition and, I would call it, a dualistic worldview. There is a part of the world which is good, and he believes this is Russia, and then there is a part of the world which is bad, and he believes this is the West.”
On 3/1/22, Fox News summarized, “Russian leader is not crazy, he’s consistent. Since taking power 22 years ago, Putin has specialized in killing.”
There are many more declarations of Putin’s madness in the West. It is remarkable, this unhinged chorus, for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can’t be more logical, or conducted more sanely.
Russia has to 1) put an end to Ukraine’s unending attacks on Russians in the Donbas 2) preempt an invasion of the Donbas, as evidenced by a huge buildup of Ukrainian troops in the region 3) prevent Ukraine’s entry into NATO, which would put nuclear warheads within six minutes of Moscow 4) investigate and neutralize around 30 illegal chemical labs, apparently aimed at Russia.
If anything, Putin should have acted sooner. In any case, he’s much saner than any Western leader. With Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau and Olaf Scholz, etc., the West is fronted by a gallery of buffoons, as led by the appallingly corrupt and idiotic Biden.
After 13 US soldiers were killed during the farcically chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden cartoonishly intoned with much gravity, “We will not forgive, we will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” Thoughtful Putin never talks like that. It’s embarrassing, but cliches, slogans, slurs and lies now make up much of American English.
Biden then sent drones to massacre ten members of one Afghan family, a war crime barely noticed by Americans and already forgotten. To punish that starving country further, grifting, fogged up and fondling Joe then stole $3.5 billion of its frozen assets to compensate victims of 9/11, a tragedy Afghanistan had nothing to do with, and neither did Bin Laden, in case you haven’t figured it out.
The dumbing down of the West has been a decades-long process. Though we’re well into Idiocracy territory, there are still some brain cells left to concuss or wring dry, just for the fun of it. During World War II, English speaking soldiers read Henry James and Anthony Trollop, I kid you not. Paul Fussel, “Siegfried Sassoon favored James’s middle-period works because they were ‘so all beautifully remote’ from Hitlerism and its brutal behavior,’ and Trollope’s novels were widely read because, in addition to their distance from the current violence and stupidity, they were handily available in the World’s Classics pocket-sized editions, fit to be slipped into uniform pockets and gas-mask containers, like the equally popular unbellicose works of Dickens and Jane Austen. But Austen was valuable regardless of format.”
Even if Russians have gone through an intellectual decline, they can’t be as dumb as Americans, for Putin doesn’t address them as morons. From a speech on 2/24/22, here’s Putin explaining NATO’s aggression and insolence over three decades:
It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.
Why is this happening? Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from? What is the explanation for this contemptuous and disdainful attitude to our interests and absolutely legitimate demands?
Instead of working a crowd with catch phrases, slogans and vacuous quips, Putin succinctly and patiently clarifies. After recounting America’s illegal attacks on Iraq, Libya and Syria, Putin summarizes Uncle Sam’s modus operandi and its implication for Russia:
Overall, it appears that nearly everywhere, in many regions of the world where the United States brought its ‘law and order,’ this created bloody, non-healing wounds and the curse of international terrorism and extremism. I have only mentioned the most glaring but far from only examples of disregard for international law.
This array includes promises not to expand NATO eastwards even by an inch. To reiterate: they have deceived us, or, to put it simply, they have played us. Sure, one often hears that politics is a dirty business. It could be, but it shouldn’t be as dirty as it is now, not to such an extent. This type of con-artist behavior is contrary not only to the principles of international relations but also and above all to the generally accepted norms of morality and ethics. Where is justice and truth here? Just lies and hypocrisy all around.
[…]
Incidentally, US politicians, political scientists and journalists write and say that a veritable “empire of lies” has been created inside the United States in recent years. It is hard to disagree with this—it is really so. But one should not be modest about it: the United States is still a great country and a system-forming power. All its satellites not only humbly and obediently say yes to and parrot it at the slightest pretext but also imitate its behavior and enthusiastically accept the rules it is offering them. Therefore, one can say with good reason and confidence that the whole so-called Western bloc formed by the United States in its own image and likeness is, in its entirety, the very same “empire of lies.”
Deranged, the West declares the sanest leader alive a madman, and cheerleads a corrupt clown in Zelensky who pretended to play the piano with his dick on television, whose citizens are punished by being taped to utility poles with their pants pulled down, whose soldiers film each other shooting handcuffed Russian POWs in the legs and even groins, with one screaming victim stabbed in the neck then eye.
If the West still had an independent and varied media, news outlets would not ignore or gloss over such sensational war crimes, as the New York Post did on 3/28/22:
Senior presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said the government is taking the videos very seriously.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian military commander Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi accused Russia of “staging” the videos and warned the public to only trust “official sources.”
“In order to discredit the Ukrainian defense forces, the enemy is filming and distributing staging videos with inhumane attitude of ‘Ukrainian military’ to ‘Russian prisoners,’” Zaluzhnyi said in a statement.
In the New York Post, much more space is given to Zelensky’s pronouncements, such as this on 4/3/22, “We are the citizens of Ukraine. We have more than a hundred nationalities. This is about destruction and extermination of all these nationalities. We don’t want to be subdued to the policy of the Russian Federation. This is the reason we are being destroyed and exterminated. And this is happening in the Europe of the 21st century. So this is the torture of the whole nation.”
If Russia is exterminating “all these nationalities,” then it’s a Holocaust, isn’t it, but we can’t use that word, for it’s reserved for Jews. Zelensky, though, sure knows how to evoke that mythical genocide to confirm, once again, that Putin is a Hitler.
Even if Russian troops did massacre civilians in Bucha, it’s obviously not Putin’s intention, for if he wanted to exterminate Ukrainians, then Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa and Lviv, etc., would have been razed already. Instead, there’s still electricity, water and Wifi in all those cities. To allow civilians to escape the war, Putin never destroyed Ukraine’s rail system. Instead, it’s Zelensky’s troops who hold them hostage as human shields. What the US and UK did to Germans and Japanese at the end of WWII was far, far worse, but even that didn’t qualify as extermination, and how many massacres of civilians did the US commit in Vietnam?
Uniformity of opinions has become the law of the land in the Jewjerked empire of lies, so Jewish Zelensky is preposterously declared a new Churchill, and his propaganda, no matter how crude, is embraced. In one video, a sunglasses wearing Ukrainian beauty with perfect skin and makeup coolly walks from a supposed battle, amid wrecked tanks, with smoke and flames in the background. Nonchalantly, she flashes a victory sign. An assault rifle is slung over her shoulder, and, get this, she sports a Palestinian keffiyeh!
This cool leftist fashion statement deflects from the fact the Ukraine fiasco is a Jewish Fascist operation. Jews orchestrated this war, and now that it’s started, want it to last, if not spread. Jews hate Slavs as much as they hate Arabs, so a smoldering Syria in Europe is overflowing champagne to them. Again, you always know what the Jewish agenda is by what the Jewjacked media is pushing.
April 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Ukraine, United States |
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Narrative fail
Ukrainian police posted on Facebook that they had conducted a “clearing op” in Bucha the day before videos emerged showing dead bodies scattered around the settlement, as the war of words over the alleged “war crime” continues.
NATO powers and pro-Ukraine commentators have seized upon the alleged atrocity in a bid to escalate the war, with MSNBC hosts and guests even asserting that it justifies directly attacking Russia and putting American boots on the ground in Ukraine.
MSNBC host Ali Velshi demanded “direct military involvement,” something that would almost inevitably kick off World War III, in response to the alleged incident.
Former Army Major John Spencer also appeared on the same show to demand American “boots on the ground” in Ukraine.
Moscow has vehemently denied involvement, claiming Ukraine shelled the city after Russian troops had already withdrawn.
The only evidence offered so far pointing to Russian responsibility is the claims of Ukrainian authorities, with are being breathlessly amplified by the mainstream media without an ounce of skepticism.
Margaret Brennan of CBS admitted that Ukrainian President Zelensky’s team had “handed” her the videos and they were broadcast, as journalist Michael Tracey wrote, with “zero independent corroboration.”
The notion that Ukrainian authorities, who have been caught staging innumerable incidents already in a bid to lobby for more NATO military involvement, would lie about this is seemingly not even a consideration.
A timeline provided from reporting by the New York Times suggests that pro-Ukrainian Azov neo-nazi militants entered Bucha after Russian troops left and after the Mayor of Bucha had announced the town’s liberation with no mention of any atrocities.
One member of Azov was reportedly heard asking if he could shoot individuals who weren’t wearing blue armbands.
Another report asserts that Ukrainian national police posted on Facebook how they had conducted a “clearing operation” in Bucha before the alleged atrocities occurred accompanied by a video of their men walking around the town.
“Today, on 2 April, in the liberated city of Bucha, Kiev region, special units of the Ukrainian National Police began clearing the area of saboteurs and accomplices of Russian troops,” the Facebook post said.
As ever, with propaganda on both sides, it is virtually impossible to know what happened in Bucha, but to claim it’s an open and shut case of “war crimes” as the western media proclaims without any independent evidence is clearly ludicrous.
April 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | MSNBC, NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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Covid vaccine myocarditis: the catecholamine hypothesis (Cadegiani)
A Brazilian investigator may have identified the mechanism driving mRNA vaccine myocarditis. And the US CDC finally acknowledges the strongly increased risk in young males.
What is causing vaccine myocarditis?
What is causing post-vaccination myocarditis, and why does it affect primarily young adults, especially young males and athletes? It has been speculated that in young males, muscle blood flow may be higher, which may cause higher biodistribution of vaccine mRNA or spike protein. The mRNA or spike protein may then be absorbed by the heart muscle and cause inflammation.
But Brazilian investigator Flavio Cadegiani, who previously looked into the role of androgens (male sexual hormones) in covid, recently proposed a new and highly intriguing theory: Based on autopsy findings, Cadegiani noted that post-vaccination myocarditis appears to be very similar not to typical myocarditis (e.g. viral myocarditis), but rather to adrenergic myocarditis or catecholamine-mediated stress cardiomyopathy (i.e. heart muscle injury caused by catecholamines).
Catecholamines are a group of hormones that include, most notably, dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline. These hormones drive the “fight-or-flight response”, and their concentration is highest in young adults, especially in young males and athletes. Cadegiani notes that the adrenal glands (located on top of the kidneys) are amongst the tissues with highest production of spike protein from mRNA covid vaccines, which can cause local inflammation and may lead to a “catecholamine storm”, which is known to have a toxic stress effect on heart muscle cells.
Prior to covid mRNA vaccinations, this type of heart injury was seen almost exclusively in patients with a rare tumor of the adrenal gland (called pheo-chromo-cytoma). Cadegiani suspects that mRNA vaccination is more likely to affect adrenal glands than a mild coronavirus infection, especially in young and healthy adults.
Cadegiani (February 2022): Catecholamines are the key trigger of mRNA SARS-CoV-2 and mRNA COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis and sudden deaths. (ResearchGate)
New CDC study on myocarditis
In a newly published study covering data from 40 US health care systems and about 15 million people, the US CDC purports to show that “the risk for cardiac complications was significantly higher after SARS-CoV-2 infection than after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination for both males and females in all age groups”, which “supports the continued use of recommended mRNA COVID-19 vaccines among all eligible persons aged ≥5 years.”
But the actual data provided by the CDC tells a very different story.
First, the US CDC confirms that among males aged 12 to 17, the rate of diagnosed myocarditis or pericarditis after the second vaccine dose is 1 in 4,500 to 1 in 2,700, and in males aged 18 to 29, the rate is 1 in 15,000 to 1 in 6,600.
These values are significantly higher than anything previously acknowledged by the CDC, but they still only include cases diagnosed by a doctor or in a hospital. If undiagnosed and unrecognized (subclinical) cases of myocarditis and pericarditis are taken into acccount, the rate will likely reach about 1 in 1,000 in young males. Even an undiagnosed case of myocarditis can turn out to be fatal, as the many recent cases of athletes with sudden cardiac arrest have shown.
However, the CDC argues that the risk of diagnosed myocarditis and pericarditis is still higher after SARS-CoV-2 infection, viz. 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 1,500 in males aged 12 to 17, and 1 in 1,800 to 1 in 1,000 in males aged 18 to 29. But previous studies, both in the US and in Europe, have already shown that the incidence of myocarditis remained normal or even below average during major covid waves in 2020 and early 2021 and only increased during vaccination campaigns in 2021 (see chart below).
So what did the CDC get wrong? It’s a classic mistake (or trick): while the CDC speaks of “SARS-CoV-2 infections”, they in fact only captured positive tests and only within the health care system (i.e. at a doctor’s office or in a hospital). SARS-CoV-2 infections were not captured “if testing occurred in homes, schools, community sites, or pharmacies”, or, one may add, if no testing at all occurred. Thus, the CDC captured only a fraction of actual infections (perhaps 10% or even less), and they likely captured only the most severe infections (i.e. young adults who visited a doctor or a hospital).
(In a somewhat related development, the CDC recently reduced US child covid deaths by 25%, as these deaths, while testing positive, had nothing at all to do with covid.)
But the CDC made another basic mistake: not only is the risk of myocarditis/pericarditis after vaccination in young males higher than after infection (as already shown by several other studies), but vaccination doesn’t prevent infection, either, and there is still no evidence that vaccination reduces the risk of post-infection myocarditis in young adults. In other words, the risk after vaccination simply increases the already existing risk after infection.
To make matters even worse, the CDC study considered only the first two doses of covid vaccination, whereas some US colleges and universities have already mandated a third dose for their students, adding even more risk. In fact, a booster dose may well increase the total risk of myocarditis and pericarditis to more than 1 in 1,000 in otherwise perfectly healthy young males. And as a recently published cardiac MRI study has shown, heart abnormalities in adolescents with mRNA vaccine myopericarditis may persist for at least several months.
In conclusion, the forced covid vaccination of young and healthy adults and children may constitute the largest medical scandal, or medical crime, in modern history. Based on the currently available evidence, covid vaccination is only appropriate in people at significant risk of severe acute covid.
CDC (April 2022): Cardiac Complications After SARS-CoV-2 Infection and mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination (CDC/MMWR)
Figure: Myocarditis and Covid Vaccination in the Western US

Myocarditis and Covid Vaccination in the Western US (JAMA )
April 4, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | CDC, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Last week, medical journalist Katherine Eban posted at Vanity Fair the results of a long and detailed investigation into the lab-leak theory of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. The subject is moving ever more to the front-and-center of efforts to find out exactly what was going on at the highest levels in early 2020 that resulted in the greatest societal, political, and economic upheaval of our lives.
How precisely did we move so quickly from the “germ games” of October 2019 – when the virus was already circulating in the US – to full-scale global lockdown by March? Why did Anthony Fauci, who in early February was downplaying the seriousness of the virus, flip to the other side (which we know from emails)? It was Fauci, according to many reporters, who tapped Deborah Birx to huddle with Trump and convince him that the only way to battle the virus was to “shut down” the economy – as if anything like that was possible much less effective for controlling a respiratory virus.
For two years now, and despite endless writing and reflection, this change from the top has puzzled me. Lockdowns contradicted not only a century of public-health practice but even WHO guidelines. Even on March 2, 2020, 850 scientists signed a letter to the White House warning against lockdowns, closures, and travel restrictions. Within days, everything changed.
There were hints of extreme measures in the CDC pandemic planning manuals since 2006 but the idea was hardly orthodoxy in the profession. It’s also true that there were elite scientists who longed for the chance to try out the new theory of virus suppression. But how did Fauci and Birx, to say nothing of Jared Kushner, become converts of the idea to the point that they were able to convince Trump to betray everything he believed in?
This is quite probably where the lab-leak theory comes in. It’s not so much about whether the virus was an accidental or even deliberate leak that matters so much as whether Fauci, Francis Collins, and Jeremy Farrrar of the UK’s Wellcome Trust believed it was possible or even likely. In that case, we have our motive. Did they deploy the chaos of lockdowns as a genuine if wildly misguided attempt to suppress the virus as a way of avoiding culpability? Or perhaps it was deployed as a kind of smokescreen to distract from a closer examination of the Wuhan’s lab’s funding sources? Or possibly there is a third reason.
We have a very long way to go before the full truth is out. But Eban’s article adds tremendous detail about the great lengths to which our Fauci-led cabal of officials worked hard to suppress dissent on the question of lab-vs-natural origin. They kept papers from being posted on preprint servers, held Zoom sessions with authors in an attempt to intimidate them, and spent tremendous energy making it clear that there would be a no-leak “united front” no matter what.
Writes Eban: “At the highest levels of the U.S. government, alarm was growing over the question of where the virus had originated and whether research performed at the WIV, and funded in part by U.S. taxpayers, had played some role in its emergence.”
Eban’s intrepid journalism now has former CDC director Robert Redfield opening up about how he not only warned about the possibility of a lab leak but also that he was then excluded from all strategy meetings thereafter.
To Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC at the time, it seemed not only possible but likely that the virus had originated in a lab. “I personally felt it wasn’t biologically plausible that [SARS CoV-2] went from bats to humans through an [intermediate] animal and became one of the most infectious viruses to humans,” he told Vanity Fair. Neither the 2002 SARS virus nor the 2012 MERS virus had transmitted with such devastating efficiency from one person to another.
What had changed? The difference, Redfield believed, was the gain-of-function research that Shi and Baric had published in 2015, and that EcoHealth Alliance had helped to fund. They had established that it was possible to alter a SARS-like bat coronavirus so that it would infect human cells via a protein called the ACE2 receptor. Although their experiments had taken place in Baric’s well-secured laboratory in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who was to say that the WIV had not continued the research on its own?
In mid-January of 2020, Vanity Fair can reveal, Redfield expressed his concerns in separate phone conversations with three scientific leaders: Fauci; Jeremy Farrar, the director of the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust; and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO). Redfield’s message, he says, was simple: “We had to take the lab-leak hypothesis with extreme seriousness.”
In sessions from which Redfield was excluded from early February, Fauci’s chosen participants strategized a statement published in the form of a medical paper: “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2.” The publication date was March 17, 2020, the day following Trump’s lockdown press conference. The paper was in fact written as early as February 4. Eban makes the salient point: “How they arrived at such certainty within four days remains unclear.”
[Redfield] concluded there’d been a concerted effort not just to suppress the lab-leak theory but to manufacture the appearance of a scientific consensus in favor of a natural origin. “They made a decision, almost a P.R. decision, that they were going to push one point of view only” and suppress rigorous debate, said Redfield. “They argued they did it in defense of science, but it was antithetical to science.”
Two weeks following the drafting of the paper, “in a letter published in the influential medical journal the Lancet, [Peter Dazsak of EcoHealth, which had funneled US money to the Wuhan lab] joined 26 scientists in asserting, ‘We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin.’”
A conspiracy theory! We know for sure that those never turn out to be true! Surely there was no such thing as a powerful cabal plotting to force a single orthodoxy on science in order to protect themselves from too much investigation into their own role in funding gain-of-function research! Except that this appears to be exactly what was happening.
This strategy of information suppression and intimidation of dissent, along with the manufacturing of a fake consensus that in fact did not exist, continued through 2020 and arguably to the present. Among the other victims of such propaganda and smears were the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. We know from emails that Fauci and Collins collaborated in a deliberate attempt to drum up a “quick and devastating” takedown.
It was a rather bizarre thing to do. The GBD was a rather conventional statement of public health principles along with a warning against the devastating consequences of extreme measures of coercion. Today it reads almost like a summary of what most people have come to believe after long and terrible experiences. Why did the Fauci cabal believe it was so very important to stop this statement?
What we need now is a clearer linkage behind the now-documented attempt to forge a single narrative on the lab leak question and the decision to forge a single narrative about the need to lock down, and thus overthrow a century of public-health practice. What was the motivation here? What were they discussing in private in those crucial weeks in February 2020 leading up to the disaster?
What is unbearably clear at this point is that this gang’s obsession with covering up a possible lab leak, in the interest of keeping their own fingerprints off the deed, completely distracted the leadership of the National Institutes of Health from what it was supposed to be doing at the time. And what was that? It’s not complicated. If you have a new pathogen sweeping a country, you want to focus on ways to keep vulnerable populations safe (for example, not forcing nursing homes to admit Covid-infected people) and discovering the best therapeutics to minimize severity for the general population.
This is not what happened. Instead, we had a plot against the US president, the deliberate cultivation of mass panic, forced closures of schools and businesses, wild demands for mass human separation, travel restrictions, ineffective mask and vaccine mandates, and the general triumph of crank science over experience, at the great cost of human liberties and rights and hence social and economic well-being.
The reason for the chaos appears, in part, that during those crucial early months, public-health leadership in the US had another private agenda centered not on health but their own reputations and professional standing. Two years later, we live with the devastating consequences that have affected the whole of our lives.
April 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, United States |
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