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Russia settles another dollar debt

Samizdat | March 22, 2022

Russia’s coupon payment on a sovereign bond maturing in 2029 has been processed by correspondent bank JPMorgan Chase, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing sources. The country was due to make a $66 million payment to bondholders on Monday on the bond.

According to a source familiar with the situation, JPMorgan worked on Monday with the US Treasury Department on necessary approvals. The payment reportedly moved on to the next stage before the money is handed over to bondholders.

Last week, JPMorgan, as a correspondent bank, processed Russia’s payment on two sovereign bonds, handing the funds to payment agent Citigroup. The latter distributed the funds to the bondholders.

Making this payment means Russia has avoided a widely expected external bond default. There was speculation in the media that the nation could default for the first time in a century, as much of its foreign currency holdings have been frozen by the US, EU, and a number of other countries.

Moscow has used money from frozen accounts to pay its external debt, daring Western countries to try to block the payments. Russia has accused the US and its allies of trying to engineer an artificial default in the country by not allowing it access to its estimated $300 billion in foreign reserves held abroad.

Russia has 15 international bonds outstanding with a face value of around $40 billion. Prior to the Ukraine crisis, roughly $20 billion was held by investment funds and money managers outside Russia.

The country now has to make a $102 million payment on March 28, followed by a $447 million payment that must be made in dollars on March 31. The biggest payment of the year of $2 billion is due on April 4.

March 22, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Getting Away with Murder

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MARCH 22, 2022

So Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “thug and a murderous dictator.” That is the judgement of President of the United States Joe Biden, delivered directly to Putin during a phone conversation, and it is backed up by a unanimous vote in the US Senate endorsing Biden’s more recently expressed view that Putin is also a “war criminal.” And if anyone doubted the sheer malignancy of America’s legislators, the viewing of a televised appeal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy calling for US intervention in his war was met with cheers, shouts of approval and a standing ovation not seen in this hemisphere since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a Joint Congressional session in 2015. Unfortunately, in spite of all the euphoria, these comments, gestures and allegations are completely gratuitous, whether they are wholly or partly true or not, and they guarantee that a normal relationship between Russia and the United States is not likely to be reestablished no matter what the outcome to the current fighting in Ukraine.

If that is what diplomacy looks like in 2022 America then we are in serious trouble. The fact is that the US record for committing what are potentially war crimes dwarfs that of Russia or any other country with the sole exception of Israel. One only has to go through the list starting with Vietnam and continuing with Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen to appreciate the places that have been on the receiving end of either covert actions or direct intervention by US armed forces or those of its close allies. Along the way, civilians have literally died in their millions as the Pax Americana has proven to be elusive in spite of a sprinkling of more than 1,000 United States military bases worldwide. Russia is a parvenu in comparison.

It is widely understood that the United States in the post-World War 2 world, shaped the new so-called international rules-based order to benefit itself, with the designation of the dollar as the world reserve currency for energy purchases, benefitting only Washington through the Treasury Department’s ability to print money without any commodity having real value to back it up. Combine that with de facto control over the international banking system and the US has been able to render itself bullet proof when it starts wars or commits other crimes. It does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, has even blocked the travel of ICC investigators to the US, and has never been held accountable for any of its questionable activities.

The end of the cold war brought about some adjustments in the international order, but, for the US, it meant an initial drive to loot the resources of Russia under Boris Yeltsin followed by Bill Clinton’s breaking the promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to take advantage of the changed circumstances to expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe. The current situation with Ukraine is a consequence of that continuous interference in Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence, which culminated with the regime change engineered by Washington in Kiev in 2014.

The United States is often regarded by other countries as a rogue nation, precisely because it shows little respect for the vital interests of others and is willing to manipulate international institutions in support of political and social objectives that have little or nothing to do with actual national security. Its sanctions frequently bring suffering to ordinary people in the countries targeted without affecting decisions made by the leadership. And the sanctions themselves are often poorly conceived while also being factually challengeable. The US governing elite invariably covers its misbehavior with self-serving aphorisms like the rubbish peddled by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when she enthused how “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” Yes indeed, she actually said that.

Worse still, the sustained flood of government inspired propaganda used to justify questionable actions has had the regrettable consequence of turning inward, leading to charges of “treason” directed against the few journalists and politicians who dare to challenge conventional wisdom. In the current Ukraine crisis, journalists like Tucker Carlson are under fire, as are former politicians like Tulsi Gabbard, for having committed the crime of opposing America’s deepening involvement in the fight against Russia. Indeed, the blacklisting of Russian music and books as well as foods and even vodka represent something pathological in the mainstream response to the fighting. Reliably left-wing Move-On has launched its own in-house “Creative Lab” (sic) to produce its own propaganda videos. It describes as a “debunked conspiracy theory” the Carlson claim, originally surfaced from the US government itself, that the “Biden administration was funding secret biolabs in Ukraine.” It is seeking to discredit Carlson’s “lies” which “are now fueling Putin’s relentless campaign of death and destruction in Ukraine.” It is “freedom fries” all over again.

A recent story illustrating just how deep the rot has penetrated the core of United States government and its institutions has predictably been given little coverage by the US mainstream media, but it is a tale that is appalling in its implications. The story involves a March 3rd Supreme Court ruling on a motion filed by accused terrorist Abu Zubaydah, who is currently a prisoner held in Guantanamo, though he has never actually been convicted of anything and is being nevertheless held “incommunicado for the rest of his life.” Abu Zubaydah maintained that he was tortured extensively by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at a secret prison in Poland as well as in Thailand and Cuba.

The CIA captured a wounded Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian radical, in 2002 in Pakistan, and immediately acted on the belief that he was a leader of al-Qaeda. He was tortured for several years. The CIA “waterboarded Zubaydah at least 80 times, simulated live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours,” and brutalized him through sleep deprival. They also hung him by his wrists on hooks, beat him physically and he, as a result, lost one eye. A heavily redacted CIA 683 page torture report to the Senate released in 2014, which included some details of the standard practices in place at that time, mentioned Abu Zubaydah over 1,000 times.

Abu Zubaydah was seeking release from Guantanamo based on the fact that the United States, in torturing him, had committed a war crime. His lawyers were seeking to subpoena and interview former CIA contractors to determine what exactly occurred in Poland. The US is, by the way, a signatory on the UN Convention Against Torture. The Abu Zubaydah suit may initially have appeared to be a slam-dunk given what was already known about CIA torture. The brutality was incredible. For example, newly declassified documents that surfaced last week revealed how a prisoner at an Agency “black site” in Afghanistan was used as a training prop to teach inexperienced operatives how to torture other prisoners, leaving him with serious brain damage.

Even given that and much other evidence of both illegal activity and crimes against humanity, the Supreme Court case was instead derailed by what is referred to as the “state secrets privilege.” The court’s 6–3 ruling, written by Justice Stephen Breyer included “To assert the [state secrets] privilege, the Government must submit to the court a ‘formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter.’” That done, the court “should exercise its traditional reluctance to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs.”

The court’s ruling thereby upheld a “state secrets” claim based on the fact that the Agency has never admitted that it had secret prisons in Poland to prevent Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers from seeking subpoenas on the two psychologists who created the CIA torture program or to use those insights to learn the details of the interrogations. The court also ruled against any attempt by Polish investigators to seek to obtain US government information about the possible crimes committed at the CIA “black site” in Poland.

So welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave…where you can be tortured at the whim of a government official, imprisoned without ever being convicted of anything, and, when you seek redress from a court, you can be told that “Too bad, it’s a state secret even though the government has already admitted having engaged in a criminal practice.” And one should not ignore in passing a related issue, the savage persecution of journalist Julian Assange for having exposed US government crimes.

An article on the case in the Los Angeles Times, one of the few to appear, puts it this way: “the government may invoke the ‘state secrets’ privilege to block former US contractors from testifying about the now well-known waterboarding and torture of prisoners held at CIA sites in Poland. By a 6-3 vote, the justices said the US government can claim a privilege of secrecy even if there is no secret.” An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who observed the process added that “US courts are the only place in the world where everyone must pretend not to know basic facts about the CIA’s torture program. It is long past time to stop letting the CIA hide its crimes behind absurd claims of secrecy and national security harm.” Or one might observe that it’s called in the vernacular “Getting Away with Murder.”

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.

March 22, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

‘US to send Soviet missiles to Ukraine’

Samizdat | March 22, 2022

The US is planning to deliver to Ukraine medium anti-aircraft systems taken from its own stockpile of Soviet military hardware, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing unnamed US officials.

The anti-aircraft systems were obtained through a clandestine program to study them and teach American troops how to counter them. Ukrainian forces are trained in the use of these systems, which they have operated for decades.

At least some of the supplies will be withdrawn from the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, officials told the newspaper, adding that C-17 Globemaster cargo planes recently flew to a nearby airfield in Huntsville.

Washington “is hoping that the provision of additional air defenses will enable Ukraine to create a de facto no-fly zone,” the newspaper said. NATO members have repeatedly rebuffed Kiev’s call to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, stating that it would draw them directly into the hostilities and could lead to a world war.

The list of equipment slated for delivery does not include the S-300 long-range missiles, the report said. The US reportedly purchased at least one such battery from Belarus in the 1990s in a clandestine operation. But Washington plans to supply shorter-range 9K33 Osa systems, according to WSJ sources.

Last Wednesday, CNN’s Jim Sciutto reported that the US and NATO allies were going to send to Ukraine an array of Soviet air defense systems with capabilities better than the shoulder-launched Stinger missiles delivered in the hundreds in the weeks before the Russian attack.

He was referring to a potential deal with Slovakia, which later confirmed it was willing to share its own S-300 systems with Ukraine. Slovakia’s defense minister, Jaroslav Nad, told a news conference on Thursday that he discussed the plan with his visiting US counterpart, Lloyd Austin, and that his country wanted to receive “a proper replacement” first.

The Russian military reported destroying multiple Ukrainian S-300 batteries over the nearly month-long attack. One of the stated goals of the Russian incursion is to demilitarize Ukraine and ensure that it will not pose any threat to the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, which Moscow recognized as independent states prior to the attack.

Moscow has warned that it will consider convoys delivering arms to Ukraine as legitimate targets for its armed forces. The WSJ didn’t explain the proposed logistics of the delivery of the US-owned anti-aircraft systems.

March 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Does Nato want peace in Ukraine? It doesn’t sound like it

By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | March 22, 2022

Is there a path to peace in Ukraine?  That’s the title of an article published on The American Conservative website two weeks ago that has only just crossed my desk.

Douglas MacGregor, a retired US Army colonel, a senior fellow with The American Conservative, and former adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, asked the question. In the two since then, matters in Ukraine have become even more desperate and the need for a path to peace ever more urgent.

Casualties are in the thousands, while millions have fled the country seeking refuge abroad. At the time of writing, the deadline given by Russia’s Ministry of Defence for the embattled city of Mariupol to surrender has been rejected, with Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk saying there can be ‘no question’ of capitulation.

However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be pressing for a negotiated end to Russia’s invasion while at the same time ramping up the rhetoric by drawing links between Putin’s ‘final solution’ for Ukraine and the Nazi extermination of the Jews. This last he voiced in his challenge Israel over its failure to impose sanctions on Russia.

Meanwhile, there is no sign of a US initiative to help negotiate a ceasefire – which is the path to peace that MacGregor says Joe Biden should follow, although the president’s words and actions thus far ‘have rendered this practically impossible’.

Fomenting violence in Ukraine against Russia – which is pretty much how MacGregor describes current US policy – is not the way to go, he believes.  It is he says, and as we can already see, dangerous to Europe and to the larger world.

He says both realism and restraint are lacking. Even if on a tactical level the performance of Russian forces has been uneven, that perceived failure has had ‘no discernible impact on the operational level of war, where they continue to pursue, encircle, isolate and destroy Ukrainian ground forces’, MacGregor asserts.

The end of this tragedy, he writes, is not in doubt. Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine will be annihilated or captured.

His words have fallen on stony ground. On Sunday, Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations warned that there was little immediate hope of a negotiated end to the war.

Ahead of a crucial Nato summit in Europe this Thursday that his President is due to attend, his words confirm MacGregor’s view that ‘the Washington elite remains committed to any course of action that promises to prolong the conflict and kill more Ukrainians’.

He says: ‘No one inside the Biden Administration or in the Senate seems remotely interested in crafting a ceasefire, let alone developing the basis for a potential solution that will save lives and halt the destruction.’

Yet, this is not without historic precedent, as per the several examples of US negotiated peace deals he sets out in his article – which you can read in full here. 

Without a properly negotiated ceasefire of the order MacGregor advocates, food supply chains in Ukraine risk final collapse and a ‘wave of collateral hunger’ around the world as a result of the carnage in Ukraine is predicted.

This warning comes from the World Food Programme – whose concern is not limited to besieged cities such as Mariupol, where food and water supplies are running out and relief convoys are unable to enter the city.

The WFP, which buys nearly half its wheat supplies from Ukraine, cites the worrying impact of the crisis on food security globally ‘especially on hunger hotspots.’ 

Whether Thursday’s Nato summit has included this aspect of the crisis on its agenda, I do not know. However, it has been reported that the gathering will be used ‘to look at strengthening the bloc’s own deterrence and defence, immediately and in the long term, to deal with the now openly confrontational Russian president Vladimir Putin’.

According to Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, the summit is intended not just to show support for Ukraine, but also ‘our readiness to protect and defend all Nato allies’. By sending that message, he says, ‘we are preventing an escalation of the conflict to a full-fledged war between Nato and Russia’.

This does not sound much like a path to a negotiated peace.

March 22, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

CHD Wins Federal District Court Injunction On DC’s Minor Consent for Vaccinations Act

Children’s Health Defense | March 21, 2022

Washington, DC – On March 18, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order granting a preliminary injunction to prohibit the mayor of the District of Columbia, the D.C. Department of Health and D.C. public schools from enforcing the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act of 2020 until further order of the court.

“This is a major legal victory for children, parental rights, and informed consent,” said Rolf Hazlehurst, senior staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) who argued the case. “Government overreach such as this has dire implications for children’s health and the constitutional rights of citizens.”

The D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act of 2020, allows children eleven years of age and older to consent to vaccinations without their parents’ knowledge or consent. The law specifically targets children whose parents have religious exemptions for their children. The D.C. Act contains several provisions designed to deceive parents and hide the fact that their children have been vaccinated against their parental judgment, authority or religious convictions.

The court order states that the parents “have shown they are likely to succeed on the merits because the District’s law requires providers to hide children’s vaccination status from parents who invoke their religious exemption rights…”

The D.C. Minor Consent Act requires health care providers to falsify records by leaving the child’s school vaccination records “blank.” The doctors may bill the parents’ insurance companies for the vaccines administered to the children against the parents’ written directive. However, to deceive the parents, insurance companies may not send the parents an Explanation of Benefits (EOB).

CHD and Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a court order to declare the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020 unconstitutional. Plaintiffs, (Booth, et al.) are four parents of minor children who attend public school in Washington, D.C. Oral arguments were heard on March 3, 2022.

In the opinion issued on Friday, March 18, the court found the parents likely to succeed on the merits in their arguments that the D.C. Act is unconstitutional for two reasons. First, the D.C. Act is preempted by federal law because it directly contradicts the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The D.C. Act also violates the right to free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Hazlehurst argued that the District has created a “pressure-cooker environment, enticing and psychologically manipulating [minor children] to defy their parents and take vaccinations against their parents’ will.”

The Plaintiffs overcame a high legal hurdle that “threatened injury must be certainly impending” as established by the U.S. Supreme Court precedent  Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l., in part by the use of a drawing entitled “Peer Pressure,” drawn by one of the plaintiff’s children. The drawing depicts the dilemma children face at school when they do not want to get the COVID vaccine or have been advised by their parents not to take the shot.

“This preliminary injunction is part of ongoing litigation in an extremely important national precedent-setting case,” said Hazlehurst. “The rights of parents to decide what is best for their children’s health is at stake. Government can’t be allowed to make such decisions for minor children.”

Two similar but separate lawsuits, Booth (argued  by CHD/Parental Rights Foundation) and Mazer (supported by Informed Consent Action Network), were filed against the D.C. Minor Consent Act. In both Booth and Mazer, the court ruled the plaintiffs have “standing” based on preemption because the D.C. Minor Consent Act conflicts with Congress’ National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. In CHD’s  Booth case, the court made the additional finding that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits that the D.C. Minor Consent Act violates the free exercise of religion clause in the First Amendment of the Constitution.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden stated, “Removing the law would revert the District to the standard age of consent of 18.” Although the case is not yet final, the preliminary injunction reverts D.C. to the standard age of consent of 18.

###

Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Its mission is to end childhood health epidemics by working aggressively to eliminate harmful exposures, hold those responsible accountable, and establish safeguards to prevent future harm. For more information, visit ChildrensHealthDefense.org.

CHD Links:

a) 1 of 38-page document- PI Memo Opinion DC Minor Case:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/PI-memo-opinion-DC-minor-case.pdf

b) 1 of 2-page document- Booth Preliminary Injunction Order:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Booth-Preliminary-Injunction-Order.pdf

c) 1 of 88-page document- #31 Amended Complaint:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/31-AMENDED-COMPLAINT-against-All-Defendants-filed-by-SHANITA-WILLIAMS-SHAMEKA-WILLIAMS-VICTOR-M.-BOOTH-JANE-HELLEWELL.-AttachmentsHazlehurst-Rolf.pdf

d) 1 of 131-page document- #31 Appendix:
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/31-1-Appendix.pdf

e) DC Plaintiff Drawing (Exhibit 11 & timestamp included):
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/wp-content/uploads/Exhibit-11-DC-plaintiff-drawing-.png

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

FBI Invites Public In On Its Forfeiture Racket, Promises Them A Cut Of The Take

By Tim Cushing – techdirt – March 16, 2022 

There aren’t many ways to make something as objectively awful as civil asset forfeiture worse, but the FBI has found a way to do it. As it stands now, forfeiture allows law enforcement to take cash and property from people under the (unproven) theory that it was illegally obtained. The rest of the process does nothing to prove the theory. The burden of proof is often shifted to people who had their stuff taken by law enforcement and the process of seeking the return of property is so expensive and counterintuitive, most people just take the L and move on.

The FBI wants to make asset forfeiture even shittier. It’s rolling out what appears to be a pilot program in Charlotte, North Carolina — supposedly a major hub on the East Coast drug distribution chain. Behold these (also unproven) claims the FBI has deployed to justify its new forfeiture ride-along program.

The FBI Charlotte Field Office is offering cash rewards for tips that help agents intercept drug trafficking shipments through Charlotte. With multiple interstates running directly through the Queen City, the route is appealing to traffickers who deliver their products and transfer the cash proceeds up and down the East Coast. While law enforcement agencies are effective at intercepting many of the shipments, the FBI recognizes the value the public can offer to our investigations.

Did you get that? Multiple interstates leading to a large city is all the “evidence” the FBI needs to call literally any city with a network of accessible roads a hotspot for drug trafficking activity. Everything is a hub and every road is an artery. That’s how the interstate highway system works. And because it works, every road must be a drug trafficking route and every city must be simultaneously a source for drug distributors and the home to thousands of drug customers.

All of North Carolina is suspect, according to the FBI. To clean up this southeastern drug paradise, the FBI is asking the public to contribute to its government theft program.

If a drug/cash shipment is successfully seized, the tipster could receive up to 25% of the seized money. FBI Charlotte will use the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program to pay tipsters. Currently, the new program is only active in the Charlotte metro area with plans to expand across North Carolina in the future.

The FBI has set up an SMS accessible tip line in addition to its normal field office phone numbers. Tipsters who know where some drug cash might be found can directly profit from providing information that points agents in the direction of seizable property.

Unlike other tip lines with reward offers like CrimeStoppers, there’s no need to wait around to see if the tip results in arrests or convictions. The civil asset forfeiture process doesn’t require arrests and convictions, only nebulous accusations about the cash itself, which is named as the “defendant” in forfeiture proceedings as though it committed criminal acts all by itself.

And while it might be tempting to flood the tip line with bogus reports, keep in mind making false statements to federal agents is a federal crime, one that can lead to real, in-fucking-federal-prison sentences. It isn’t like filling out a false police report, which may lead to little more than a few months of probation and local cops treating future reports as highly suspect. Federal crimes are no joke and the FBI loves to catch people lying because it allows the DOJ to add to its prosecutorial wins even when agents are unable to find evidence of any actual criminal activity.

The hard rule (DON’T!) about talking to federal agents without a lawyer present applies here as well. Think about it. You provide a tip, thinking you’re doing a good deed by sending agents to seize the ill-gotten gains of an alleged criminal enterprise. But if any entity is capable of ensuring no good deed goes unpunished, it’s the FBI.

Agents may decide the submitted tip indicates the tipster is involved in drug trafficking or, at the very least, may be able to provide even more tips on criminal activity. This may lead to some in-person “interviews” with agents who — as noted above — can always accuse a tipster of lying if they believe they’re not being fully honest about their relationship to the seized cash or the people who formerly possessed it. They may also attempt to pressure a tipster into becoming a federal snitch and make their lives miserable if they refuse to play ball.

No good can come of this. No good comes from civil asset forfeiture and this invitation for the public to skim the federal government’s take makes it much, much worse. If the FBI’s going to be this stupid, it’s time for federal lawmakers to take this abusable revenue stream away from it by requiring forfeitures to be tied to convictions.

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

UKRAINE: The Syria Playbook Redux

Yes, the playbook for Syria is now being used for Ukraine. But is it Russia’s or America’s?

By Peter Ford | 21st Century Wire | March 21, 2022

The Russians in attacking Ukraine are taking leaves out of their Syrian playbook, so we are being constantly told. But the American origin of this term gives us a clue as to what is really going on.

The chemical weapons play

One of the plays being used is apparently the brandishing of chemical weapons. It’s important to recall what actually happened in Syria in this regard.

The first alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria occurred in the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus in 2013. After a vote in the British Parliament scuppered a Western plan to bomb Syria in retaliation, the Russians, not the West, took active steps to remove Syria’s stocks of chemical weapons, shepherding Syria through a process of dismantling all its stocks under international supervision and verification (compare and contrast US research collaboration with Ukraine in biolabs so sensitive that records had to be destroyed before the Russians arrived).

Claims nevertheless continued to be made, never verified in situ by independent parties, that Syria was using chemical weapons.

In April 2018 reports emerged from Douma on the outskirts of Damascus that Syria had used chlorine gas in a particularly egregious attack on civilians. Without waiting even the 48 hours needed for international inspectors to arrive, the US, UK and France launched punitive bombing raids on Syria. Subsequently, inspectors found evidence at the scene consistent with a false flag operation. That evidence was doctored at headquarters in The Hague under intense pressure from the US and UK. The real lesson from the incident – that fraudsters were at work – was thus never learned and a spurious version of the truth prevailed.

What really happened, many experts believe, was that jihadi groups affiliated with Al Qaida yet supported by Western powers fabricated the incident (it wasn’t difficult with Western intelligence agencies and gullible Western media eager to pin blame on Assad) in order to provide a pretext for the West to enter the war and turn back the tide against Assad.

These are but two among other similar incidences talking place over the course of the conflict. 

Rewriting history

Scroll forward four years. Russia, we are being repeatedly told, is preparing to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine while pre-emptively covering itself by predicting use of a false flag.

In Syria, Assad was winning and had no need to use chemical weapons. It would have been crazy to do so, when it was the only thing that could make the West bomb him. In Ukraine, Putin similarly has no need to do the one thing which would likely lead to direct NATO intervention. No matter, the authorised version of the history of the Syrian conflict holds that abetted by Russia, Syria used chemical weapons, and so today Russia must be poised to do the same in Ukraine.

‘History is written by the victors’, Churchill is supposed to have said. With Syria, given the West’s control of the narrative via its monopoly hold over international media, history is written by the losers.

Constant parallels are being drawn with Syria in the Ukraine context. But they are the wrong parallels, and the wrong lessons are being drawn from the Syrian ordeal.

The Russian version of the playbook, according to the West

According to the Western narrative, enunciated by officials and echoed by reporters who seem to see it as their job to act like government press officers or cheerleaders, the Russian playbook in Syria is now being applied wholesale to Ukraine. Its chapters comprise of indiscriminate shelling, carpet bombing of cities, targeting of civilians in their homes, hospitals, schools and shelters, sieges of major towns, prevention of civilians from leaving through humanitarian corridors, commission of many other brutal war crimes, and using false flag accusations.

This indeed is how the Western media portrayed the Syrian conflict and are now doing the same for Ukrainian conflict. But the picture presented distorts some key facts and obscures others.

Airbrushing

It almost totally airbrushes out the jihadist opposition to Assad, just as the Ukrainian Nazis are being airbrushed out of the picture in Ukraine. The Syrian jihadists used human shields as a consistent strategy. ‘Collateral damage’, an Americanism we learnt to use in America’s war on Vietnam, becomes inevitable under such circumstances. Countless civilians died as US-led forces levelled most of Raqqa before driving ISIS out of it. Dead bodies were still being retrieved from the rubble of Raqqa two years later. Is this the playbook we are talking about here, the one the Coalition used against ISIS?

The same techniques of using human shields deployed  by jihadists are now being used in Ukraine. How many people are aware that Mariupol, where this is happening most, is where the extreme nationalist Azov brigade have barracks, and that they have reportedly been firing from civilian buildings and preventing civilians from leaving?

Similarly, who knew that jihadists in East Aleppo were constantly shelling civilian areas in government-held Western Aleppo? Or that the amount of destruction in Aleppo was nothing like what was is being assumed, or that the ‘genocide’ (that other overworked term) of a quarter of a million foretold by the professional hysterics of the UN for East Aleppo turned into the bussing out of a few thousand fighters, who surrendered and were taken with their families to other jihadi-controlled areas?

If anything, the lesson from Syria was that the Russians sometimes showed more restraint than their hosts. Russia forced the Syrian government, eager to recover East Aleppo, to delay operations while abortive parleys took place and the jihadists won more time to entrench their positions. Russia also forced the Syrian government to accept indulgent terms for the surrender of jihadists in the South, allowing fighters to keep small arms and creating no-go areas for government forces. Those familiar with these facts will not be surprised to learn that according to the UN civilian deaths in Ukraine so far are numbered in hundreds rather than the many thousands claimed by propagandists.

The Western playbook

None of this is to condone all Russian actions, but in order to avoid repeating in Ukraine the mistakes the West made in Syria – it is important to see things as they really are. And in the Western playbook there were many mistakes.

The worst was to supply jihadist groups with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms and equipment, which only served to inflame the situation, abet terrorism and prolong Syria’s agony. How much of the arms now being funnelled into Ukraine will end up in the Nazi battalions and later in the Middle East? Will the arms really hasten the end of violence or prolong it?

A second leaf from the Western playbook for Syria now being used in spades a propos of Ukraine is sanctions. Cruel, far-reaching sanctions in Syria have totally failed in their stated aim of ‘changing Assad’s behaviour’ (our wicked adversaries have ‘behaviour’, our virtuous selves have ‘policies’) while immiserating the Syrian people. Sanctions on Russia are plainly doing more harm to the world economy than they are to Russia, and cannot possibly change Russia’s ‘behaviour’ in the short term. And is ‘crippling Russia’, with its echoes of German reparations post World War I, anyway really such a great idea?

That other favourite staple of the US playbook, regime change, as attempted with Syria – after stellar accomplishments  in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, was precisely what brought about today’s crisis in Ukraine, for it was the US-backed removal of an elected President of Ukraine in 2014 which precipitated the chain of events leading to the present conflict.

The Western playbook provides that foreign leaders who refuse to bend the knee should always be portrayed as crazed and brutal. They always need arraigning before an International Criminal Court, the jurisdiction of which the US denies for itself, to the extent of sanctioning a prosecutor who dares to pursue a US client state. This personalisation and demonisation obviates any risk that policy makers might have to face up to the reality that other countries have legitimate concerns too. In the court of Western public opinion the Great Powers have ensured a hanging jury for Assad, and now Putin.

The page in the US playbook to which administrations are most attached, however, the gift which keeps on giving, is the accusation against target nations that they are using or planning to use chemical weapons. Has the world forgotten the non-existent Iraqi WMD? The watertight intelligence? The 45 minutes for rockets to reach British bases in Cyprus? How the US can have recourse to a similar ploy today, claiming Russia is planning something nefarious, without being hooted at in derision is merely testimony to the extent to which mainstream media has prostrated itself before power. The most far-fetched claims can be made without a shred of media scrutiny.

That US Secretary of State Antony Blinken could repeatedly make the ‘chemical weapons’ claim is deeply disturbing.

If this is not the US laying the groundwork for a false flag incident involving chemical weapons, or perhaps the bioweapons the US is accused of developing in Ukraine, it certainly looks like it.

If that is the case it is no longer playbooks we may be dealing with, it’s the Book of Lamentations.

***

Author Peter Ford is a global affairs analyst, and the former British Ambassador to Syria (2003-2006) and Bahrain (1999-2002).

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

How long can US politicians and media continue to play ‘double act’?

Global Times | March 21, 2022

Recently, over the Ukraine crisis, Washington and the US media have been playing a “double act” again. After repeatedly failing to force China into their game, they have started talking up “exclusive reports,” quoting “anonymous US officials” and fabricating many scenarios related to the situation in Ukraine.

For example, they claimed that Beijing had some level of direct knowledge about Russia’s military operations against Ukraine but asked Russia to delay them until after the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. In addition, they alleged that Russia asked China for military and economic aid and further argued that China has “expressed some openness to providing such aid to Russia.”

The above lies are well concocted, but without any evidence. Certainly, the problem of no evidence may be a bit of overthinking, because when does Washington need to provide evidence to smear others? Isn’t it always following the logic of “if I say so, it has to be so?” If you must ask for any “evidence,” it will again hold up a tiny vial of white powder, or produce a video of the White Helmets being instructed to pose…

The Global Times has recently learned from multiple sources that the “anonymous US officials” quoted in the two New York Times reports that were throwing mud at China on Ukraine came from the National Security Council (NSC) of the White House. In the recent series of disinformation, the White House and the US media repeatedly staged a “double act” with obvious intentions. On the one hand, they must distort China’s just position and smear China internationally, creating momentum for its strategic suppression of China. On the other hand, they intend to drive a wedge between China and Russia in an attempt to “kill two birds with one stone” and ease the pressure of the US’ “two-front war.”

Of course, what’s behind it is Washington’s hegemony and ambition. Kurt Campbell, the NSC’s Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, “took the initiative” to say at the end of February that the US will keep its focus on the “Indo-Pacific region” despite the Ukraine crisis. In order to maintain the US’ hegemonic self-interests, fabricating lies has become a “necessary means” for Washington. In the words of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, “The US, as usual, lies to try to achieve its political goals.”

Last year, several “anonymous US officials” have told the media either “the Chinese military has three times rejected requests for calls from the US defense secretary,” “researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick and sought hospital care before COVID-19 outbreak disclosed,” or “China has no intention of engaging in serious or substantive talks with the US.” All of these have later been proven to be utter disinformation, which only serves as “cannonballs” for attacking China.

When looking back at his past as CIA director, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo once said publicly, “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.” So how does the US lie and deceive people? It is easier for Washington and the US media to quote “anonymous officials” to spread lies as shocking “exclusive news.” The cooperation between US propaganda machines and diplomatic and intelligence services has greatly increased the deceptiveness of those lies. Moreover, the US’ alliance system and hegemony in public opinion can make sure that even though Washington is a habitual liar, it can obtain a certain amount of assentation and support. This has become the bases for the US to play politics as it wants.

While US media maliciously falsifies the truth, Washington deliberately pretends to know nothing. These two to some extent have even formed an integral production, supply and distribution chain of fake news. This is unprofessional, immoral, and irresponsible, and will only further discredit the US in front of the world. As some comments pointed out, whenever people see the news reports that include sentences like “anonymous officials revealed…” and “US intelligence agencies claimed…,” they should in their minds replace everything in those sentences with “They may be lying.”

Therefore, unsurprisingly, as Washington is changing its foreign strategy to “great power competition,” it will use its hegemony in public opinion and media to spread false information and launch a “public opinion warfare.” Of course, we can also be sure that such a “double act” will sooner or later fail to work as the deficit in the US’ account of credibility rises.

Right now, when the military conflict in Ukraine is getting increasingly serious under Washington’s provocation, and when the energy and refugee crises become more and more severe in Europe, the US’ smear campaign will only unmask it as the initiator. More and more people will see the true face of the US – an “empire of lies.”

March 21, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Pakistan, as India, won’t bow to western pressure – PM Khan

Samizdat | March 20, 2022

Prime Minister Imran Khan again blasted foreign powers, who tried to pressure Pakistan to sever ties with Russia over its military operation in Ukraine, vowing to continue making sovereign policy decisions that are in the best interests of his nation and people.

“For these 3.5 years we have only tried to help Pakistan prosper,” PM Khan said about his ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, addressing a public gathering in the town of Dargai on Sunday.

The PM explained why he refused to join the international chorus condemning Russia for its attack on Ukraine, saying that Pakistan would have gained nothing by complying with the demand. The diplomats representing nearly two dozen missions, including EU countries along with Japan, Switzerland, Canada, the UK and Australia, “broke protocol by making the request” in a March 1 letter, he added.

“I haven’t bowed before anyone and will not let my nation bow either.”

Imran Khan faces a no-confidence vote this week, after he lost his parliamentary majority following multiple defections from his party. The prime minister scolded the opposition leader in the National Assembly directly, saying Shehbaz Sharif “polished boots when he saw a white man in a suit.”

“I took an oath that I will not bow before anyone but God,” Khan reiterated, bringing up the US-led global war on terror as an example of policy decision forced by the West that eventually brought Pakistan nothing but suffering. “We became part of America’s war against terror in Afghanistan and lost 80,000 people and $100 billion.”

Pakistan has come under increased Western pressure to publicly denounce and distance itself from Moscow, after it abstained from a United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow’s military actions against Kiev, choosing instead to remain neutral alongside 34 other countries, including China, South Africa and India.

Despite being a vocal critic of the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Khan gave credit to the neighboring country for making “independent” decisions in the interests of their citizens.

India is also facing international pressure and criticism for staying neutral and adopting a pragmatic approach to ensure the country’s own energy security. New Delhi continues to buy Russian oil, available at discounted prices, as some countries have been avoiding it in fear of retaliatory sanctions from the US.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24, with a stated goal to “demilitarize and denazify” its government, ensuring that its NATO membership aspirations no longer pose a threat to either Russia or the newly recognized Donbass republics, which have suffered seven years of siege by Kiev forces.

The US and its allies have accused Russia of starting an “unprovoked” invasion to occupy Ukraine. Moscow has seen thousands of harsh new curbs and sanctions slapped on it as a result, with the US, the EU, and others seeking to “isolate” and “destroy” the Russian economy.

March 20, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

The Legal Right to Refuse Medical Treatment in the U.S.A.

Ronald B. Standler, Esq. has produced an extraordinary resource that summarizes key legal precedents

By Toby Rogers | March 20, 2022

I want to draw your attention to an extraordinary legal resource that I just discovered (hat tip to the brilliant @blueivyrose_ on Instagram). It’s a document prepared by Massachusetts lawyer Ronald B. Standler titled Legal Right to Refuse Medical Treatment in the U.S.A.

It summarizes all of the key court cases (up until 2012 when it was published) that establish the legal right to refuse medical treatment. He writes,

This essay discusses the history of judicial opinions that hold a mentally competent adult patient has the legal right in the USA to refuse continuing medical treatment for any reason, even if that refusal will hasten his/her death.

His summaries are excellent and really zoom in on the key quotes from the decisions:

Basis for Right to Refuse Treatment

History

The history of the right to refuse medical treatment in the USA is often traced back to two judicial opinions:

• Union Pacific Railway Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251 (1891) Botsford sued railroad for concussion resulting from alleged negligence of railroad. Railroad wanted surgical examination of her injuries. Request of railroad denied. “No right is held more sacred, or is more carefully guarded by the common law, than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others, unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law.”

• Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital, 105 N.E. 92, 93 (N.Y. 1914) “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient’s consent commits an assault, for which he is liable in damages.”

It goes on like this for 57 pages with summaries of key cases, discussion of the major issues raised by each case, and important insights into how the courts have interpreted these precedents over the years.

I imagine this will be a helpful resource for warrior mamas in child custody cases trying to keep their kids from being poisoned by vengeful spouses. I also think it may be helpful for our warrior litigators fighting against a wide range of Pharma fascist policies at the federal, state, and local level.

One bummer about the document is that it is a locked PDF — which makes it difficult to copy and paste. I imagine that clever people will find a way around that.

To recap where we are at in the legal fight against vaccine mandates:

There are four broad sets of legal doctrines that clearly support bodily autonomy:

1. The U.S. Constitution, including the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion (1st Amendment), the right of people to be secure in their person (4th Amendment), the prohibition on involuntary servitude (13th Amendment), and the right to equal protection under the law (14th Amendment) — all support personal sovereignty.

2. International law and medical norms including:

• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• The Nuremberg Code and
• The Declaration of Helsinki

support the absolute right to refuse medical treatment.

3. The mountain of case law cited in Legal Right to Refuse Medical Treatment in the USA shows that the courts have long-supported medical autonomy.

4. The recent Supreme Court decision in the OSHA case and 5 other federal cases establish that federal agencies do not have the power to mandate a medical product.

Meanwhile, all that Team Pharma has going for it is the wrongly decided 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts case that is now completely discredited because it was used as a justification for forced sterilization in the Buck v. Bell case in 1927 that was struck down as unconstitutional in 1978 (see Holland, 2010, p. 42, footnote 300). Jacobson is a product of eugenic thinking and it must be repudiated as such and permanently relegated to the dustbin of history.

Were it not for that fact that Pharma pumps billions of dollars into our political and regulatory system every year we would not even be having this conversation because the courts have been clear at least since World War II that bodily autonomy is sacrosanct and that all medical decision reside with the individual — not the state, not doctors, and not the public health system.

The real story here is that progressives just cannot seem to quit eugenics. They loved eugenics in the 1900s when Jacobson was decided. They loved eugenics in the 1920s when Buck v. Bell was decided. And now progressives have once again embraced eugenics with their fanatical support for junk science mRNA shots that are killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. and around the world.

All decent and sane people must reject eugenics and reject Pharma junk science and return to the bedrock legal principles of individual autonomy and personal sovereignty.

March 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

CDC massages its data in order to terrify parents into vaccinating their babies and preschoolers

By Meryl Nass, MD | March 19, 2022

This story is about a particularly vile piece of disinformation CDC issued today to push vaccines on the most vulnerable, those humans who are too tiny to say no.

As I have noted periodically for twenty years, and it was roundly confirmed 4 weeks ago in the NY Times, CDC cherry-picks the data it presents to the public, hiding most of what it has. Then it blames its ‘outdated’ IT systems for the problems. As the NYT noted,

The CDC has received more than $1 billion to modernize its systems, which may help pick up the pace, [CDC spokesperson] Ms. Nordlund said. “We’re working on that,” she said.

CDC is not a public health agency. It is a public propaganda agency that collects a massive amount of data. CDC marshals its massive data library to create presentations to support the current administration’s desired public health policies. CDC also has state of the art PR staff, as well as TV studios, and produces videos, radio spots and a massive number of press releases which are distributed to the media. CDC pays for getting its messages out. As we learned last year, it paid Facebook for messaging, while Facebook donated $millions in advertising back to CDC. Last March, Mark Zuckerberg stated,

We’ve already connected over 2 billion people to authoritative COVID-19 information, and today as access to COVID-19 vaccines expands, we’re going even further and aiming to help bring 50 million people one step closer to getting vaccinated.

While CDC collects data from a much larger sample size, it often, as in this case, only presents part of its dataset, and/or (as in this case) CDC chooses a specific, limited timeframe from which to select its data.

The story that CDC is crafting today is that tiny children, under the age of 5, have been recently hospitalized at extremely high rates due to COVID, and therefore need to be vaccinated as soon as the vaccine is authorized for them.

  • Whereas, the true story is that most children have now been exposed to COVID and are therefore already immunized. Multiple studies have revealed that you are at higher risk of a vaccine-induced adverse reaction if you are already immune–but CDC cleverly never mentions that to parents.
  • Many other studies show the immunity derived from exposure is much stronger and long-lasting than from vaccination.
  • While a new theory gaining ground is that vaccination after infection may actually narrow and weaken the protection derived from COVID immunity.

Pediatric hospitalizations are now CDC’s golden metric, because, since it has been shown the vaccines do not prevent infection or viral transmission, CDC had to stop saying getting vaccinated protects granny, because it doesn’t. But CDC didn’t let that slow them down. They immediately pivoted to creating stories about preschooler hospitalizations, even though they are rare. Let’s see how this is done.

This current issue of the CDC’s in-house journal, the MMWR, not only discusses hospitalization rates, but provides a downloadable poster that it hopes will be placed in pediatric clinics throughout the country. Here it is:

Hospitalizations five times as high!  That’s terrible!  Omicron must be much more severe for preschoolers than we were led to believe!

But wait a sec. Let’s compare the pediatric Delta wave with the Omicron wave using the data CDC provides.

The Delta wave lasted longer than Omicron but had fewer cases at any one time. Delta’s wave looked those old graphs of ‘flattening the curve,’ while Omicron, being much more contagious, had a much taller peak while its wave ended much more quickly (what you would supposedly see if you didn’t flatten the curve). Actually, Omicron proved that all the gibberish about vaccines and masks and distancing couldn’t flatten Omicron’s curve at all. But I digress. The Delta wave led to about a third more pediatric hospitalizations overall than Omicron in CDC’s dataset (790 vs 572), but they occurred over a longer time frame.

CDC selected their best data  for the age group that they hope to immunize soon, as soon as possible after an EUA is issued for them. Here is how CDC attempts to explain its cherrypicking in its article.  While all hospitalizations were reviewed up until December 2021, for December and January 2022:

“some sites examined clinical data on a representative sample of hospitalized infants and children.”

Oh, really?  You mean CDC pays hospitals to send all their data to COVID-Net, then CDC lets them choose only a ‘representative sample’ during Omicron’s peak to send? I don’t think so. If CDC contracted and paid for a full dataset, believe me it is getting a full dataset. No self-respecting journal editor would let CDC get away with this.

In fact, the CDC had already planned the baby-toddler vaccine campaign for February, but had to postpone it when FDA delayed the authorization process on February 10. It turned out the Pfizer trial supported neither a reduction in cases nor sufficiently high antibody levels in the 2 through 4 year olds to meet the pre-specified titer required.

FDA was probably hoping to issue an EUA anyway. It had an advisory committee meeting scheduled for February 15 to vote on the proposal–until data from vaccinated 5-11 year olds in NY state (about 365,000 of them) showed the vaccine didn’t work, after only a few weeks. Somehow, some way, the lid was kept on this information after it had been presented to FDA and CDC in early February. But the story got out in a preprint and in the NY Times on February 28, which wrote:

The coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer-BioNTech is much less effective in preventing infection in children ages 5 to 11 years than in older adolescents or adults, according to a large new set of data collected by health officials in New York State — a finding that has deep ramifications for these children and their parents.

After about 6 weeks, protection against hospitalization dropped from a purported 100% to 48% in the 5-11 year olds, and protection against infection had dropped to a miserable 12%.

I don’t think FDA could then deal with pushing vaccine on preschoolers when it wasn’t working in the elementary school kids, whose dose was over 3 times higher. FDA decided to wait until Pfizer waved its magic wand and produced better data. Brook Jackson can explain how that happens.

I’m guessing that in response to the abominable data, CDC spun up its spin doctors, resulting in this March 18, 2022 publication and poster.

Below is Table 1 from CDC’s March 18 paper, published in its very own, non-peer-reviewed journal, the MMWR. Publishing in its own journal lets CDC get its messages out quickly, and protects CDC’s “science” from external reviewers’ criticisms and comments.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, there were a total of 2,562 children aged under 5 years who were hospitalized with COVID in CDC’s COVID-Net catchment groups in 14 states. They comprised CDC’s data collection. Nearly half (44%) of the hospitalized children were under 6 months of age, and would be too young to be vaccinated under the proposed EUA anyway.

The average length of their hospitalizations was 2 days during the Delta wave and 1.5 days during the Omicron wave. Sounds like most kids were not that sick. The deaths were the same for both Delta and Omicron: 0.5% of the children who required hospitalization died during each wave, although CDC carefully fails to tell us about comorbidities in the children who died or required ICU care. While it is true that there were more hospitalizations per week during the omicron peak than during the delta peak, this happened because cases were compressed into a smaller time period for Omicron, since the virus whizzed rapidly through the population. It took longer for Delta to reach its peak and trough, though there were, in total, more pediatric hospitalizations due to Delta than to Omicron.

CDC managed to spin these data into an appearance of terrible danger for little kids: 5 times as many hospitalizations for Omicron than Delta–but only if you parse the data by week rather than by wave. And if you parse the data by total number of cases (the area under the curve for each wave) there were many fewer hospitalizations per the number of cases for Omicron than for Delta. (I have posted a NY Times graph, which uses CDC data for cases, at the bottom of this article.)

Now that the Omicron wave is over, hospitalizations are way way down. CDC isn’t making that part of its message, even though its article came out today and the data have been available for several weeks. Telling us the current risk for kids is close to zero would ruin the narrative.

I have to vent about one more thing. I am really angry about a lie that CDC placed in its blue poster above. It says, “Get vaccinated to help protect yourself and those too young to be vaccinated.” Except, since the vaccine does not prevent you catching the disease nor spreading it, how could vaccination protect those too young to be vaccinated? It doesn’t, and we have known that since at least last October, when Boris Johnson and Rochelle Walensky started to admit it.

Grasping for talking points, despite being able to spin the data however it pleased, I guess CDC just could not shake itself loose from all its lies…

The bottom line is that the vaccine, designed for the original Wuhan virus, doesn’t do the job—and does it even less well in children. Although the safety data in children are very limited due to the tiny numbers enrolled in Pfizer’s trials, we know from older children and adults, using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, managed by CDC and FDA, that COVID vaccines are the most dangerous vaccines ever used on a mass scale.

By giving manufacturers a vast liability shield, the federal government has incentivized them to rush out their products and provide only the most minimal safety testing—because the way the law is writtten, they can only be charged with willful misconduct if they knew in advance of their products’ flaws.

Parents whose children are injured by experimental COVID vaccines will never forgive themselves. Please don’t be one of them.

March 20, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Why Isn’t the US Army Moving to Occupy Western Ukraine?

Anti-Empire | March 20, 2022

The no-fly zone idea is totally insane. It means that Americans start shooting first and that war is therefore unavoidable. When you’re facing an opponent with as many fighters as Russia has you don’t wait for them to get in the air to engage, you try to destroy them on the ground which means sending missiles onto Russian airbases which means WW3.

Americans have this idea that you can use aircraft and have something that is less than a war, and it is only when you send ground troops in that things really become serious. But in this case, it’s actually the opposite. The air part is the more provocative part.

Next to the “no-fly zone”, the Polish idea of sending in NATO ground troops is actually slightly saner.

For example, the Russians are nowhere near the Carpathian mountains. NATO could theoretically move into Ukraine’s Carpathian region, dig into the mountain passes, and block off Ukraine to the west of the mountains without immediately triggering a Russian-American war.

If all went well, the US and vassals could then proceed to move into Galicia, and then again into Volhynia (and perhaps Budjak). They could conceivably tiptoe into occupying the entire Western quarter of Ukraine.

Kiev would be happy to invite them, it would serve to free up some Ukrainian troops for service elsewhere, and it would act as a guarantee that the Russians can not overrun at least this westernmost quarter of Ukraine. (And the imagery of Lviv welcoming the Americans with flowers would be just what they are suckers for.)

The US has already done a similar thing in Syria in blocking off Syrian-Russian forces from left-bank Euphrates and the area around al-Tanf. So this is not entirely unprecedented. The difference is that Ukraine is much more important to the Russians than Syria is. And that in Syria the Americans were there first so they regarded it as “theirs” and the Russians as the newbie interlopers.

Nonetheless, I think that at least for the next several months such a move is thankfully off the table for the following reasons:

1. Joe Biden was born in 1942 and was 15 when the USSR launched humanity’s first satellite into orbit. As someone who lived through the entire Cold War one thing he understands is that the one thing you don’t play around with is a global thermonuclear war. Not even a little bit.

2. The American voter wouldn’t like it and the midterms are coming up. It’s one thing to virtue signal with calls for a “no-fly zone” when you don’t even know what that means (apparently it’s a button you press that makes Russians unable to fly), but mention “US boots on the ground” and “war in Ukraine” in the same sentence and the reaction might be very different.

3. It would play into Moscow’s (not necessarily incorrect) narrative that this is a Russian struggle as much against the US as against Kiev. It could move the Russian public to support the war to a greater degree where it was willing to bear greater sacrifices for it, and tolerate greater use of firepower in Ukraine.

4. The Americans don’t necessarily want to prevent the Russians from moving into the most nationalistic parts of Ukraine. The US has been salivating over the prospect of an “insurgency” in Russian-occupied Ukraine that ultimately causes a Russian collapse the same way that in their minds Afghanistan caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is doubtful they would want to prevent the Russians from moving into regions where this hypothetical insurgency could be expected to be strongest.

5. It’s a distraction from containing China. A lot of people in Washington don’t want the US to get too involved in the sideshow of thwarting Russia in Europe if only because it would take focus away from what they see as the primary contest that is going to decide the winner of the 21st century.

6. In the long run it would take an enormous number of troops. In the immediate, you can block off the Russians from parts of Ukraine with a light tripwire force. What would keep the Russians from overrunning them isn’t their strength but that they’re American. However in the long term if you want any kind of stability you would have to match the Russian numbers. So then you’re back to a divided and heavily militarized Germany situation, except now it’s in Ukraine. And every infantry division you have in Ukraine is one less missile brigade in the Pacific.

7. There is probably no way DC could get the entire NATO behind a foray into Ukraine. So it wouldn’t be a true NATO operation, but a coalition of the willing from within NATO. That means that if 10 or 20 years later some Russian-American scuffle arises in divided Ukraine the Europeans wouldn’t necessarily be on the hook for it. That’s the last thing the Imperial Capital wants.

Aside from this big picture stuff, there are also more immediate reasons why the US would nonetheless probably be crazy to do it:

1. Even if they can’t march into it, the Russians will keep shooting cruise missiles into western Ukraine, so how does the US react? Israel and to a lesser extent the US keep shooting missiles into Syria where the Russians are present and it’s messy.

2. What happens when the Ukrainians inevitably start using the US-occupied sector as a safe zone to launch raids from and conduct artillery attacks from?

3. The Americans wouldn’t want to move in without air cover of their own. They would bring anti-aircraft systems and fighters. So you’re in a situation where US and Russians are constantly illuminating each other with radars, but now it’s in the context of a hot war and with no deconfliction. Incidents, where a jumpy US pilot destroys a radar station or is shot down himself, are inevitable and there’s a high likelihood of the situation devolving into an air war exactly as if a “no-fly zone” had been declared over entire Ukraine.

March 20, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

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