Last Spring, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas ordered an internal review to identify how to best detect, prevent, and respond to threats related to domestic violent extremism within the department.
A component of this was based on online activity. “DVE [domestic violent extremist] attackers often radicalize independently by consuming violent extremist material online and mobilize without direction from a violent extremist organization, making detection and disruption difficult,” the unclassified initial report stated.
The report (obtained here) said that extremists, “exploit a variety of popular social media platforms, smaller websites with targeted audiences, and encrypted chat applications to recruit new adherents, plan and rally support for in-person actions, and disseminate materials that contribute to radicalization and mobilization to violence.”
One of the recommendations is to increase “efforts to better identify and evaluate mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) with a homeland security nexus, including false or misleading conspiracy theories spread on social media and other online platforms that endorse violence.”
While not directly stated, it was inferred that the DHS was in some way monitoring online activity. Obviously, some privacy and free speech concerns were raised.
And now, this month, the DHS has released a report with the findings of the review.
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
“Every day, the more than 250,000 dedicated public servants at DHS work to ensure the safety and security of communities across our country. To ensure we are able to continue executing our critical mission with honor and integrity, we will not tolerate hateful acts or violent extremist activity within our Department,” said Mayorkas.
“The findings of this internal review highlight key steps that our Department will continue to take with urgency to better prevent, detect, and respond to potential internal threats related to domestic violent extremism, and protect the integrity of our mission.”
The report stated its previous report had highlighted that topics such as allegations of fraud in the 2020 election and “conspiracy theories” around Covid-19 would be worth focusing on, adding that the initial report last Spring said that these topics “will almost certainly spur some [domestic violent extremists] [sic] to try to engage in violence this year.”
Much of the focus of the DHS has been internal. Among the recommendations is the creation of a department-wide system for investigating and reporting cases related to internal domestic violent extremism.
The report states that the DHS should, when vetting personnel, “explore expanding the use of publicly available information, including social media… to identify or investigate potential violent extremist activity within the DHS workforce.”
It adds, “Studies and pilots have suggested that certain online activity may represent behavior of potential concern to national security and could be useful in assessing an individual’s trustworthiness, judgment, or reliability.”
The document further adds that the “DHS must continue to examine the use of social media and other PAEI [Publicly Available Electronic Information], including within the scope of personnel security vetting, to enhance the Department’s security posture in preventing and detecting violent extremist activity.”
The report also pays lip service to civil liberties, adding that it’s “critical that any study or implementation of social media monitoring is pursued deliberately to protect the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of all individuals,” – but doesn’t say how this can be achieved.
The department has already started implementing the recommendations, including updating its employees’ training modules.
March 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | United States |
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Dr. Peter A. McCullough joins Del in studio for a dive into the science of vaccinating for Covid, vaccinating your children for Covid, and the risks and benefits. Is the risk worth the benefit? Are we doing more harm than good?
March 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia argued the US needs to recognize Maduro and lift sanctions before oil shipments can restart

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia participates in the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Turkey. (@plasenciafelixr / Twitter)
The Biden administration faced strong bipartisan criticism over recent direct talks with the Venezuelan government.
News outlets reported that in light of criticism from hardline sympathizers of the Venezuelan opposition, the Biden administration had suspended its direct talks with the Venezuelan government but that a deal to lift some US sanctions in exchange for restarting oil sales to the US was still on the table.
Washington recently ordered the suspension of Russian oil imports, leaving the US desperate to find other sources of crude as rising energy prices threaten to create a domestic crisis for the Democrats ahead of midterm elections in November.
Despite the lack of diplomatic relations stemming from the US’ refusal to recognize the results of the 2018 presidential election, Caracas and Washington have maintained back-channel communications. These talks led to the first direct exchange between the US and Venezuelan governments in years, which came at Washington’s request.
News of the encounter was met with a vehement condemnation from both Republican politicians such as Senator Marco Rubio and fellow Democrats such as Florida’s Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a longtime supporter of the Venezuelan opposition.
Rubio, one the most vocal champions of Venezuela’s self-declared “interim president’ Juan Guaidó, has gone on the offensive to try to preemptively stop any deal and introduced legislation to ban the import of oil from Venezuela and Iran.
Various politicians from Florida sent a letter to Biden criticizing the administration’s decision to hold direct talks with Maduro. Florida’s large Cuban and Venezuelan population and status as a “swing state” in US elections has led politicians to cater their foreign policy toward Latin America in the interest of pleasing this comparatively small constituency.
However, skyrocketing energy costs inside the US as a result of global geopolitical situation in light of the Russian military operation in Ukraine and the subsequent ban of Russian oil imports have put the Maduro government in Venezuela, which counts on the world’s largest oil reserves, in a more favorable bargaining position.
Until recent developments, the Biden White House had largely maintained its predecessor’s “maximum pressure” policy aimed at ousting Maduro, though the Financial Times reported that the administration had already been considering a change in strategy.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki tried to downplay the March 5 meeting that counted on the presence of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez as well as Biden Latin America adviser Juan González.
The direct talks led to the release of US citizens Gustavo Cardenas and Jorge Fernández on Tuesday, however US State Department spokesman Ned Price denied their release was tied to a deal regarding Venezuelan oil.
For his part, Maduro called the engagement “respectful, cordial and very diplomatic” and said that the US had committed to a follow-up meeting.
The direct talks with the Venezuelan leader have undermined the US’ strategy in Venezuela and its support for Juan Guaidó, who the Biden administration insists they still recognize as “interim president.”
With Guaidó’s position under increased scrutiny, the opposition has come to rely on the US almost exclusively for its legitimacy. Senator Rubio recently admitted that a deal would mean the opposition would be “finished”.
Guaidó was not part of the talks and reportedly only learned of the high-level meeting between the US and Venezuelan governments the day of the meeting.
Sources in Venezuela’s opposition told the Miami Herald that the potential deal would involve granting a special license to Chevron to ramp up activities in Venezuela. Chevron has previously lobbied the US State Department for a rollback of sanctions against Venezuela.
Caracas demands recognition, sanctions relief
Venezuelan officials have likewise commented on the possibility of restarting the oil trade with the US, with Foreign Minister Félix Plasencia stating that any deal to supply oil would be contingent on Washington and Brussels recognizing Nicolás Maduro as president.
“We have a 100-year oil business relationship with the United States. We have not taken them out of the business, they left in order to impose coercive measures. Now they want to return. Fine, if they accept that the only and legitimate government of Venezuela is the one led by President Nicolás Maduro, then US and European oil companies would be welcome,” said Plasencia at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum held this past weekend in Turkey.
Plasencia added that a “respectful relationship” would also require the lifting of coercive measures that deepened the country’s economic crisis.
EU High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell held a bilateral meeting with Plasencia on the margins of the forum that both described as “good,” with Borrell’s team indicating a willingness on the part of the European bloc to normalize relations and lift sanctions.
Venezuela, home to the world’s largest oil reserves, had a steady crude production of around 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) and exported approximately 500,000 bpd to US markets until sanctions targeted the sector and crippled production.
The Venezuelan oil industry has lately shown signs of improvement with Plasencia stating that the country could produce up to 2 million barrels per day by the end of the year thanks to the assistance of “reliable partners, such as Russia, China and Iran.”
The recent diplomatic summit also saw Plasencia and Vice President Delcy Rodríguez both meet with a Russian delegation led by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“We held a meeting with our good friend Sergei Lavrov. We reviewed our bilateral strategic relations and the complex international scenario,” Rodriguez said via Twitter.
The March 5 high-level meeting between the US and Venezuela was likewise driven by Washington’s efforts to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin from his allies in Latin America. US officials were reportedly seeking a public condemnation of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine by Maduro. Caracas has called for a “peaceful resolution” to the ongoing crisis but has stopped short of criticizing the Russian military operation.
The Venezuelan leader spoke directly by phone with Putin, with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reporting that the Venezuelan president expressed his “firm support” for Russia and condemned destabilization efforts by the US and NATO.
Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.
March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics | Russia, United States, Venezuela |
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A new global geopolitical game is in formation, and the Middle East, as is often the case, will be directly impacted by it in terms of possible new alliances and resulting power paradigms. While it is too early to fully appreciate the impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war on the region, it is obvious that some countries are placed in relatively comfortable positions in terms of leveraging their strong economies, strategic location and political influence. Others, especially non-state actors, like the Palestinians, are in an unenviable position.
Despite repeated calls on the Palestinian Authority by the US Biden Administration and some EU countries to condemn Russia following its military intervention in Ukraine on 24 February, the PA has refrained from doing so. Analyst Hani Al-Masri was quoted in Axios as saying that the Palestinian leadership understands that condemning Russia “means that the Palestinians would lose a major ally and supporter of their political positions.” Indeed, joining the anti-Russia western chorus would further isolate an already isolated Palestine, desperate for allies who are capable of balancing out the pro-Israel agenda at US-controlled international institutions, like the UN Security Council.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of its Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s, Russia was allowed to play a role, however minor, in the US political agenda in Palestine and Israel. It participated, as a co-sponsor, in the Madrid peace talks in 1991, and in the 1993 Oslo accords. Since then a Russian representative took part in every major agreement related to the ‘peace process,’ to the extent that Russia was one of the main parties in the so-called Middle East Quartet which, in 2016, purportedly attempted to negotiate a political breakthrough between the Israeli government and the Palestinian leadership.
Despite the permanent presence of Russia at the Palestine-Israel political table, Moscow has played a subordinate position. It was Washington that largely determined the momentum, time, place and even the outcomes of the ‘peace talks’. Considering Washington’s strong support for Tel Aviv, Palestinians remained occupied and oppressed, while Israel’s colonial settlement enterprises grew exponentially in terms of size, population and economic power.
Palestinians, however, continued to see Moscow as an ally. Within the largely defunct Quartet – which, aside from Russia, includes the US, the European Union and the United Nations – Russia is the only party that, from a Palestinian viewpoint, was trustworthy. However, considering the US near complete hegemony on international decision-making, through its UN vetoes, massive funding of the Israeli military and relentless pressure on the Palestinians, Russia’s role proved ultimately immaterial, if not symbolic.
There were exceptions to this rule. In recent years, Russia has attempted to challenge its traditional role in the peace process as a supporting political actor, by offering to mediate, not just between Israel and the PA, but also between Palestinian political groups, Hamas and Fatah. Using the political space that presented itself following the Trump Administration’s cutting of funds to the PA in February 2019, Moscow drew even closer to the Palestinian leadership.
A more independent Russian position in Palestine and Israel has been taking shape for years. In February 2017, for example, Russia hosted a national dialogue conference between Palestinian rivals. Though the Moscow conference did not lead to anything substantive, it allowed Russia to challenge its old position in Palestine, and the US’ proclaimed role as an ‘honest peace broker.’
Wary of Russia’s infringement on its political territory in the Middle East, US President Joe Biden was quick to restore his government’s funding of the PA in April 2021. The American President, however, did not reverse some of the major US concessions to Israel made by the Trump Administration, including the recognition of Jerusalem, contrary to international law, as Israel’s capital. Moreover, under Israeli pressure, the US is yet to restore its Consulate in East Jerusalem, which was shut down by Trump in 2019. The Consulate served the role of Washington’s diplomatic mission in Palestine.
Washington’s significance to Palestinians, at present, is confined to financial support. Concurrently, the US continues to serve the role of Israel’s main benefactor financially, militarily, politically and diplomatically.
While Palestinian groups, whether Islamists or socialists, have repeatedly called on the PA to liberate itself from its near-total dependency on Washington, the Palestinian leadership refused. For the PA, defying the US in the current geopolitical order is a form of political suicide.
But the Middle East has been rapidly changing. The US political divestment from the region in recent years has allowed other political actors, like China and Russia, to slowly immerse themselves as political, military and economic alternatives and partners.
The Russian and Chinese influence can now be felt across the Middle East. However, their impact on the balances of power in the Palestine-Israel issue, in particular, remains largely minimal. Despite its strategic ‘pivot to Asia‘ in 2012, Washington remained entrenched behind Israel, because American support for Israel is no longer a matter of foreign policy priorities, but an internal American issue involving both parties, powerful pro-Israel lobby and pressure groups, and a massive rightwing, Christian constituency across the US.
Palestinians – people, leadership and political parties – have little trust or faith in Washington. In fact, much of the political discord among Palestinians is directly linked to this very issue. Alas, walking away from the US camp requires a strong political will that the PA does not possess.
Since the rise of the US as the world’s only superpower over three decades ago, the Palestinian leadership reoriented itself entirely to be part of the ‘new world order’. The Palestinian people, however, gained little from their leadership’s strategic choice. To the contrary, since then the Palestinian cause suffered numerous losses – factionalism and disunity at home, and a confused regional and international political outlook, thus the haemorrhaging of Palestine’s historic allies, including many African, Asian and South American countries.
The Russia-Ukraine war, however, is placing the Palestinians before one of their greatest foreign policy challenges since the collapse of the Soviet Union. For Palestinians, neutrality is not an option since the latter is a privilege that can only be obtained by those who can navigate global polarisation using their own political leverage. The Palestinian leadership, thanks to its selfish choices and lack of a collective strategy, has no such leverage.
Common sense dictates that Palestinians must develop a unified front to cope with the massive changes underway in the world, changes that will eventually yield a whole new geopolitical reality.
The Palestinians cannot afford to stand aside and pretend that they will magically be able to weather the storm.
March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.
Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.
Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.
We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?
Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.
Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.
Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.
Last week Secretary of State Blinken – our top diplomat – sought to send Soviet-era Polish fighter jets into Ukraine to shoot Russians. When the Poles said they’d be happy to ship the planes to a US base in Germany and let the Pentagon transfer them to Ukraine, the Pentagon finally stepped in to quash an extraordinarily high-risk move that even the Pentagon said would have no real effect on the outcome of the war.
The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. How ironic!
Back when I was on the campaign trail I would say that we have a few thousand diplomats in government, it might not be a bad idea to use them. But I certainly did not mean that we should use them to try and get us further involved in a war!
Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.
The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called “a strategic defeat.”
It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.
March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | NATO, Ukraine, United States |
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Hedging between superpowers — United States, Russia and China — was never the smart thing to do. India should have known that the contradictions are simply irreconcilable.
This is a moment of truth, therefore, as the US unsheathes the sword to bleed and dismember Russia, and gives an ultimatum to China to stay out of it.
The gravity of the situation is sinking in, finally. That is the message coming out of the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting convened by PM Modi on Sunday “to review India’s security preparedness, and the prevailing global scenario in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” where he was briefed “on latest developments and different aspects of India’s security preparedness in the border areas as well as in the maritime and air domain.”
The US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meeting with China’s top diplomat and Politburo member Yang Jiechi in Rome later today promises to be a defining moment in world politics.
Yesterday, Sullivan explicitly threatened China in an interview with CNN. He said: “We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them. We will not allow that to go forward and allow there to be a lifeline to Russia from these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.”
The warning to China is that it should conform to the US sanctions against Russia and desist from providing support (“lifeline”) to Russia in any form.
The cutting edge of Sullivan’s statement is that it also applies to India. The implications are very, very severe. Simply put, Washington’s demand is also that India should abandon its relationship with Russia.
That means principally, that India should freeze the defence relationship. Considering that something like 60-70% of weaponry for our armed forces is of Russian origin, this will render a crippling blow to India’s defence preparedness.
Essentially, this is going to be baptism by fire for the Indian leadership. It stands to reason that the Americans have already conveyed their charter of demands to the government, and PM’s hurried move to convene the CCS ensued.
Last week, the Russian minister of energy had a call with his Indian counterpart where he not only offered oil at concessional rates but also invited Indian companies to step up investments in Russian oil and gas fields on a preferential basis. At a time when the oil price crossed $130 a barrel and the spot market price for gas is approaching $4000 per thousand cubic meters, the Russian offer came as a gift from God.
But the fact that the government downplayed it shows a state of paranoia — symptomatic of the same pusillanimity that characterised the UPA mindset, prompting the rollback of ties with Iran.
The Americans have experienced that our elite are largely men of straw. Given the scale of corruption, there are all kinds of interest groups in our country. Besides, the comprador elements within our elite are stakeholders in the American agenda. That is a tragic fact of life.
However, the difference today is that the looming American threat would have vital bearing on India’s defence capabilities, and national security. For a government that proclaims the nationalist credo, the choice ought to be clear.
The Modi government should refuse to comply with the American legislations regarding Russia. Period. In all likelihood, Americans are bluffing. Or, if there is going to be a price to pay, the leadership should take the nation into confidence and explain the long-term imperative of safeguarding the country’s core interests at whatever cost. Indians are a patriotic people.
To my understanding, in the world of today, American hegemony is unsustainable. The US bullies those who are susceptible to bullying and blackmails those ruling elites who are vulnerable to blackmail, individually or collectively. Hopefully, our ruling elite do not fall into such a pitiable category.
Freedom struggle was so much more arduous. The predicament today is also about the country’s independence. The nation will rally under an inspiring leader.
Things have come to such a sorry pass today largely due to the flawed foreign policies through the past two decades or so when the American lobbyists began expounding that India’s interests are best served in an alliance with the US.
‘Non-Alignment’ and ‘strategic autonomy’ became archaic concepts. Thus, circa 2000 or so, India ‘crossed the Rubicon’, to borrow the title of an infamous book of those times, to be with our ‘natural allies’. Where has it brought the country today after 21 years?
The self-styled foreign policy gurus in the media and the strategic immunity proved horribly wrong in their assessment of international politics. Beyond the Rubicon, what we saw and experienced was a bleached landscape of parched earth and birds of prey, so different from the El Dorado that we were promised by the carpetbaggers.
Indian foreign policy needs a strategic course correction. India should distance itself completely from the self-centred US polices whose aim is the preservation of its global hegemony. The first step in that direction should be to quit Quad.
Make no mistake, a US-China showdown is in the making sooner than one might have expected it, and it will be calamitous for India to get sucked into it. The visit by Japanese prime minister Kishida to India this weekend causes disquiet.
By the colour of our skin, our religion, our culture, our geography, our political economy, we will never be accepted by the West as ‘one of us’. Do not be mesmerised by promises of equal partnerships. Look at the US’ track record — selfish, cynical and ruthless in the pursuit of its interests.
History didn’t end with the eclipse of the Cold War. Fundamentally, what the Western powers are planning is a form of neo-colonialism borne out of the desperate need to arrest the decline of their economies through a massive transfer of wealth from the rest of the world inhabited by 88 percent of mankind — Asia, in particular. To that end, the West has unceremoniously buried ‘globalisation’ and turned its back on multilateralism.
Quintessentially, what is unfolding is no different from 19th century colonial era. Therefore, India should work together with like-minded countries that are stakeholders in the preservation of their sovereignty, hard-won independence and most important, their cherished freedom to choose their paths of development insulated from interference in internal affairs or attempts at ‘regime change’.
A peaceful external environment is an imperative need and the foreign policy should prioritise that objective. It means a revamp of India’s policies toward China and Pakistan. We are stuck in a groove cut decades ago largely for propaganda purposes, unable to disown our self-serving narratives. Fortunately, there are incipient signs of rethink lately. Do not let Washington queer the pitch of India’s crucial relationships with China or Pakistan.
A nation has no future if it is incapable of introspection. Mistakes have been made but it is false pride and hubris not to make amends. Indians are a forgiving people. And as for the present government at least, it only inherited the false narratives.
March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | China, India, Russia, United States |
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Washington should prove that the global network of biolabs funded by the Pentagon does not conduct nefarious research by subjecting the facilities to international scrutiny, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said during a daily briefing on Monday.
“If the US wants to prove their activity is benign, why not open those biolabs to independent examination by international experts?” he asked.
There are dozens of biolabs funded by the US through the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) scattered throughout the globe. The US insists they act as early warning outposts collecting data on potentially dangerous infections in various parts of the world.
Skeptical nations, including China and Russia, believe the labs may also serve darker purposes by conducting bioweapon studies on behalf of the US. The work is allegedly conducted on foreign soil for extra secrecy, and to circumvent Washington’s international commitments to refrain from this type of military research, critics claim.
The network was brought back into the spotlight this month amid Russia’s military attack against Ukraine. Moscow released documents allegedly proving that Washington ordered labs in Ukraine to destroy samples of highly dangerous pathogens and other materials. US officials offered an array of explanations in response.
US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed under oath that Washington gave instructions to Kiev to destroy lab materials, saying her government was concerned that the research could fall into Russia’s hands.
State Department spokesperson Ned Price rejected Russia’s suspicions that the US and Ukraine were violating the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which bans bioweapons. He accused Russia of breaking the treaty itself by running active germ warfare research, without offering any evidence.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a UN Security Council meeting called by Russia on Friday that the US does not support bioweapons programs in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed on Wednesday that Russia may be preparing a “false flag” biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine to further escalate the armed conflict.
Zhao Lijian said that statements from US officials about biolabs have been “contradictory and confusing,” and the lack of clarity causes concern for Beijing. The US infamously opposed attempts in the 1990s to establish an international mechanism to verify compliance of individual nations with the BWC, he noted.
Meanwhile, the US has “for decades” been “pointing fingers at every turn, accusing other nations of failing to comply with their obligations [on non-development of weapons of mass destruction], demanding they accept verification missions and even imposing sanctions on them,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
He added that Washington has double standards regarding international inspections when it denies transparency for its own research. He said the US should come clean about what the hundreds of millions of dollars – which it reportedly poured into Ukrainian biolabs – was spent on.
March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | China, Ukraine, United States |
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March 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Human rights, United States |
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Some disturbing findings hidden in the reluctantly released data

After a Texan court ordered the FDA to release the documents used to approve the covid vaccine the first 150 documents have now been published. These include the medical notes for a selection of patients at five different trial sites. Sonia Elijah has carried out part 1 of a forensic analysis of the patient notes and noted some disturbing findings, for a number of patients.
The story of patient 11281009 is just one example. Patient 11281009 was a white male who would have turned 66 years of age in 2020. By piecing together the entries in the system and the audit log querying errors in those entries it is possible to recreate a timeline of events (see below).
In summary, after two doses of either vaccine or placebo by 9th August, he presented to the emergency room with cough and shortness of breath. This presentation was recorded as suspected covid. He had a myocardial infarction and developed a pneumonia during his stay. No details of covid testing were recorded but the family reported a single negative test taken during his hospital stay. He was discharged home where he died sometime between the end of October and beginning of February. No explanation was given for why hospital treatment was abandoned; remember you had to be “healthy” to enroll in the trial. The death certificate was said to have recorded the cause of death as “pneumonia”.
His last contact with the trial site was 16th September 2020. The trial protocol included participants having an app on their device to enter any covid-like symptoms but there is no entry of this in trial medical record. His family phoned the site on or around 8th December and relayed the details of his last weeks. These were entered in a “potential covid 19 form” by the site. However, the date of this entry was after death. For this reason all the details of the clinician’s concerns around him having had covid were expunged retrospectively from his records in the trial.
To reiterate, this patient had a cough, shortness of breath and presented to hospital with suspected covid, developed pneumonia, died of it and all records of this presentation except hospitalisation then death from “due to infection” were removed from the trial.
The inability to ensure accurate records are kept and to test people with suspected covid raises real concerns about the accuracy of the trial data. Even after 6 months, up to March 2021, only 2.2% of people enrolled in the trial were said to have had covid. However, there were 3410 cases of “suspected covid” (7.3% of the vaccine arm and 8.4% of the placebo arm). For comparison, Public Health England estimated that 15% of the population had had covid over the year up to end of March 2021, based on antibody testing which may underestimate the total. Why enroll 44,000 people into a trial and then fail to diagnose the disease of interest? How much bias was introduced by failure to test?
We recommend you read the timeline of events below. It tells a disquieting story and as yet, we do not know how many other details of the trial might ultimately be seen as ‘troubling’ at best. With billions of dollars at stake, involving the company who once paid a fine of $2.3 billion, $1.3 billion of which was a criminal fine, let us not be naive enough to think that ‘health and well-being of the nations’ was Pfizer’s primary goal in their rushed product roll-out.
TIMELINE
27th July 2020: Pfizer selects molecule for testing.
31st July 2020: He was screened, consented, enrolled, randomized, swabbed and injected with a first dose. This may have been placebo or vaccine. Something odd happened with his consent which was described as “unknown or N/A” (see pg 352) but marked a “obtained” eventually.
19th August 2020: He had a further nasal swab and received a second dose.
Nothing is then entered in the record until 8th December. When this entry appears:
27th October 2020: He had a Myocardial Infarction and was hospitalized. This was recorded as a serious adverse event. In response to the question “Is this event related to treatment?” was the response “Not related. Due to – other – failed cardiac stent.”
28th October 2020: The following day he remained in hospital with life threatening pneumonia. In response to “Is this event related to treatment?” was the response “Not related. Due to – other – infection.”
At some point between the end of October and 9th December 2020 the patient died at home (pg 333). The entry saying he died at home is still in the audit trail but the form where this information was uploaded is not present in the patient record. The cause of death was entered on 13th January 2021 as “pneumonia”. There is no record of the length of hospital stay or why he was discharged before death.
18th Nov 2020: Pfizer published a press release claiming over 94% efficacy of the vaccine.
2nd December 2020: MHRA authorises vaccine for emergency supply.
8th December 2020: Four issues were raised.
- That the adverse event had been recorded as “fatal” but no death form was recorded (pg 349).
- No serious adverse event number had been entered for either the myocardial infarction or the pneumonia (pg 345)
- It was suggested that the myocardial infarction entry should be changed from a serious adverse event to a “worsening adverse event” on the basis that he had had a previous myocardial infarction in 2017 (pg 337).
- It was noted that the serious adverse event had been marked as “recovered or resolved” in the safety database despite the death of the patient (pg 341).
9th December 2020: The file is marked as “discontinued”.
13th December 2020: The gentleman’s relatives telephone the centre to tell them about the lead up to his death (pg 301 to 303). It seems someone is unsure how to enter this information and is advised:
“Potential COVID-19 related PNEUMONIA should have please triggered a COVID Illness Visit irrespective of perceived etiology or clinical significance. Please complete the COVID-19 CRF forms. Please complete the potential COVID-19 Illness Visit CRF forms with all information available. Should be captured only on the SOD CRF form and a NASAL SWAB will not be collected. Please the data should still be captured on the appropriate CRF pages (as for any late data, we will still capture it and not ignore it) but a swab will not be required” (pg 345-6)
14th December 2020: The person wanting to record this information opens up a “potential covid 19 visit form”. The audit trail then spits out a complaint that no swab was taken, no sign or symptom form was completed and this form was dated after the file had been discontinued. Someone patiently filled out the explanation that the patient was deceased and these were not possible for each of these entries.
The audit trail shows that the data entered on this date included that the patient had a cough, shortness of breath but no loss of smell or taste, diarrhoea or vomiting, (pg 308) and had been seen in the emergency room (pg 324) for a “potential covid 19 illness” (pg 329).
31st Dec 2020: Pfizer released their NEJM paper of the trial results. No covid deaths were reported to have taken place.
19th January 2021: Query raised that the covid illness form was dated 14th December 2020 after the subjects death. The site responded to this saying,
“The symptoms were reported to site after subject’s death via subject’s family, per medical monitor, this data is to be entered.”
22nd January 2021: He was due to be unblinded in the trial and offered a vaccination if he had been in the placebo arm.
26th January 2021: The site were told:
“There cannot be a date later than the date of death. Please remove data from the COVID Illness visit and add COUGH and SHORTNESS OF BREATH as AEs… COVID_A visit should then be marked as ERRONEOUS.”
28th and 29th January 2021: Attendances for nasal swab and antibody testing were marked up individually as “not applicable” and then an entry stated that he had “withdrawn consent” presumably to prevent these repeated requests for more data.
15th February 2021: The site were told:
“For correct attribution of Pneumonia; please update AE term to COVID Pneumonia or Pneumonia secondary to COVID-19 else clarify as per guidance from Clinical Monitor” (pg 344)
And
“We need to remove the COVID Illness visit which was originally requested. Please mark Erroneous and remove the data from within the visit using FORM Level comments of NOT APPLICABLE.” (pg 299)
27th February 2021: The site responded:
“SITE HAS NOT BEEN MADE AWARE THIS EVENT WAS COVID PNEUMONIA. PER PI PNEUMONIA WAS RELATED TO INFECTION, HOWEVER SITE HAS NO RECORDS THAT STATE COVID, THEREFORE TERM CANNOT BE UPDATED TO SUCH.” (pg 344)
2nd March 2021: “Site has not received MR (medical record) and cannot confirm a COVID test was done, however per family of subject, there was a negative COVID done, sometime during hospital stay, not sure which day or which test.” (pg 316)
March 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, United States |
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This is normalized, monetized, and usually publicly-funded
Let’s talk about the big picture of Pharma’s war against humanity. It is happening throughout the developed world but for the purposes of this article I will focus on data from the U.S.
🚩 FDA-approved drugs, when used as directed, kill about 100,000 Americans every year. (Gøtzsche, 2013, p. 259).
🚩 Hospital errors kill another 100,000 to 150,000 Americans every year. (Makary & Daniel, 2016).
🚩 Opioid overdoses killed 75,693 Americans last year (CDC, 2021).
🚩 Coronavirus shots killed an estimated 150,000 Americans in 2021 (Kirsch, Rose, and Crawford, 2021).
🚩 A gain-of-function virus created in a bioweapons lab in Wuhan, China funded by Tony Fauci killed 350,831 Americans in 2020 and another 615,387 Americans since the introduction of Covid-19 shots in Dec. 2020. About 90% of those fatalities could have been prevented with early treatment. But the regulatory agencies and the medical establishment blocked access to early treatment in order to create the market for deadly Covid-19 shots.
To put this in perspective — in World War II, the Nazis, the Royal Italian Army, and the Imperial Japanese Army killed 405,399 Americans in the space of four years.
In the last two years, Pharma, the corrupt medical establishment, and the captured regulatory agencies are killing about twice that many Americans each year.
That’s what we are up against.
So the problem is not a few bad actors (although there are plenty of those). The problem is that the entire system is rotten:
🚩 The pharmaceutical industry makes terrible products. Political capture is more profitable than innovation, so that’s what they do. The captured regulatory agencies — FDA, CDC, NIAID, NIH — engage in data laundering to make pharmaceutical products appear better than they are. Iatrogenic fatalities are just the tip of the iceberg. Pharmaceutical products also cause cancer, disability, and chronic illness.
🚩 Profit-driven hospitals with their military hierarchy and cult-like work practices are dangerous places.
🚩 The pharmaceutical industry is committing genocide via opioids in economically depressed towns throughout the rust-belt and Appalachia — because it is profitable to do so and because they see poor people as undesirable and expendable.
🚩 The pharmaceutical industry has engaged in genocide via the childhood vaccination schedule since they received liability protection in 1986 — because creating chronic illness in kids is their core business model.
🚩 Under the guise of Covid, the pharmaceutical industry has expanded the genocide to all Americans and people throughout the developed world — by blocking access to effective treatments and injecting people with dangerous genetically modified substances.
🚩 All of bourgeois society — academia, the media, the medical and scientific establishment, government, and Wall Street — conspire to cover up these crimes that now impact nearly every American family in some way.
When we take power we must dismantle this system, prosecute those who created it, and build a decentralized alternative based on actual health.
March 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | CDC, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA, NIAID, NIH, United States |
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I have avoided writing anything on recent events in Ukraine thus far, partly because I wanted to see how events were panning out, partly because I still don’t quite understand how this all fits in with the two year Globalist PsyOp that ended abruptly on 24th February – the same day as the Russian military operation started, as coincidence would have it – but mainly because the experience of trying to write rational analysis in the midst of propaganda that would have made the editors of Pravda blush is no easy task.
As a brief defence against those who will inevitably smear my attempts to analyse the context behind all this as somehow pro-Russian, let me ask them not to bother. I really don’t even understand the frame of reference, since I don’t view the world in the absurd black hat/white hat terms that lead to such jibes. And in any case, I am pro-God and pro-Truth, as well as being a patriotic Englishman who writes on such topics because he believes this once green and pleasant land is now run by terminally foolish clowns and Globalist ideologues who do not govern for the people but in the interests of others. I would also point out that I was writing about atrocities committed against Ukrainians years before it became fashionable to do so. However, unfortunately it seems I was supporting the wrong Ukrainians — the ones nobody cares about — in the Donbass, who have been killed, terrorised and forced to leave the country by their own brutal Government for eight years, with some even deliberately burned alive by the neo-Nazis formations that apparently don’t exist. Those caveats aside, let’s press on.
For most Westerners, it appears that the current conflict suddenly dropped from the sky one morning in February 2022. They woke up to hear about a Russian invasion, and without any prior knowledge or context, having been denied this for years by their so-called free press, simply accepted the narrative thrown at them that this invasion was utterly unprovoked — the brainchild of a madman who wishes to recreate Hammer and Sickle Land again.
None of this is remotely true. Whatever the actual reasons for invading at this particular time — and I don’t believe for one moment that we have the full picture yet — this conflict most certainly did not drop out of the sky or from the ravings of a lunatic on 24th February 2022. No, it is part of a sequence of events that was set off years ago, particularly in 2014, which were clearly destined to reshape the world. As I wrote back in September 2014:
“I believe this crisis to be the defining crisis of the 21st Century so far. … It is also something that may well define the shape of the planet for the rest of the century — whether we are left with a unipolar world … or whether we see a new multipolar world emerging … It is in a very real sense the key battle between globalisation and national sovereignty.”
That sequence of events has a long history, but behind it all is an ideological fanaticism that overtook certain elements of the Western powers – and I’m thinking here in particular of the cult known as neoconservatism (the name is a misnomer as they have their roots in Trotskyism, not conservatism) – who saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opportunity not for peace and stability, but for the establishing of a US-led Globalist hegemon, with “Full Spectrum Dominance”, as one of their number once put it.
It was this ideological fanaticism that led to the carpet bombing of Serbia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the war against Iraq, the dismemberment of Libya, and the arming of jihadists to destabilise Syria — wars which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, yet which curiously attracted none of the sort of response we are seeing now.
It was this ideological fanaticism that also led to the continuance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), long after the ostensible reason for its existence ceased to exist. NATO was a military alliance against the Soviet Union, and since then it is a military alliance against Russia. This is undeniable, and it gives rise to two questions. Firstly, why was it deemed necessary to continue this alliance at a time when Russia itself quite obviously desired to be on good terms with the West (despite the pilfering of the country during the so-called Shock Therapy of the 1990s)? Secondly, since the alliance remained and was quite obviously aimed at Russia, isn’t it obvious and indeed reasonable that they would see it as a threat?
This should not be hard to understand. If, say, an anti-Russian military alliance crept up to its borders, in five successive waves, despite assurances given to the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 that this would not happen — all of which has come to pass — why on earth would anyone think that the Russians wouldn’t see this as a threat, and why on earth would anyone think that there would not be a major pushback at some point? This is not rocket science!
In 2007, Vladimir Putin warned very starkly at the Munich Security Conference of the long-term consequences of the continuance of this policy. Not only did the warnings go unheeded, the very next year NATO upped the ante significantly with the Bucharest Summit Declaration:
“NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
Again, it fails me to see how can any rational person can look at this and not see the clash that was inevitably on its way from such a policy, and how easily it could have been avoided. It’s not as if the consequences were unknown. Amongst other foreign policy realists, the great US diplomat, George Kennan, observed the following about NATO expansion towards Russia:
“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves.”
Indeed. And I’ll give you three guesses who agreed with that assessment back in 1997, calling out what the reaction might be should the Alliance move into the Baltic States, let alone Ukraine.
“The only thing that can provoke Russia into a hostile and vigorous response is the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states.”
Did you get it? Why, it was none other than Joe Biden, who apparently understood then what he pretends not to understand now.
It was therefore all extremely predictable what would eventually happen if this expansion occurred, and yet the expansion and promises of further expansion did continue nonetheless.
We then fast-forward to 2014, where we find what was perhaps the most blatant coup d’etat in history, when the US and EU conspired together to foment regime change in Ukraine. The coup itself relied heavily on neo-Nazi groups such as Pravy Sektor, whose leader at that time, Dmytro Yarosh, stood on the stage in Maidan Square in Kiev and, flanked by some sinister looking Nazi goons, informed the crowd that his organisation was rejecting the deal brokered by the French, Germans and Poles for a gradual and peaceful handover of power, and that if then President Viktor Yanukovych hadn’t vacated his premises by the following morning, they would depose him — violently. The rest is history. The coup took place, the French, Germans and Poles slunk away apparently forgetting the deal they had brokered, and Victoria Nuland at the State Department gleefully rubbed the cookie crumbs from her hands and set about realising her dream of what to do with that poor country, including the installation of biological weapons laboratories, it would seem. That’s her legacy: She came, she saw, she bought them Cookies and Plague.
One of the first things the new illegitimate regime did was announce a ban on Russian as an official language — despite the fact that it was the predominant language throughout most of the East and South East of the country, where the majority of people were historically, culturally, religiously, and linguistically Russian. Which explains why some of these regions rejected this new hostile, illegitimate government and decided to secede. Again, there is no rocket science here.
What then took place was eight years of conflict, in which the West turned a blind eye to continued atrocities — even blaming them on Russia, when it was the Western backed coup government that was carrying them out. For eight years, with varying degrees of intensity, that people were subjected to bombardment, and being terrorised both by the regular Ukrainian Army and the unashamedly Nazi Tornado, Azov, and Aidar Battalions, which the Western governments helped to train, whilst the Western media pretended it wasn’t happening. But it did happen, and here was the former Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, boasting early on in the hostilities that the bombardment he authorised would see the children of Eastern Ukrainians cowering in basements. Even when a peace process was agreed, with the first and then second Minsk Accords, the shelling of those areas never ceased, over a million refugees fled to Russia, and the Western powers put absolutely no pressure on the Ukrainian Government to fulfil the obligations it had signed to seek a peaceful settlement with the two republics.
Why was this allowed to happen, and why was there no international outcry as those children were holed up in basements and as innocent civilians lived under the constant threat of bombardment by their own Government? The simple reason is that despite their current fake bleeding heart blue and yellow social media profiles, Western governments and the media don’t give a stuff about the people of Ukraine, but have instead led them up the garden path with their phoney promises of Westernisation and NATO membership, when in fact their entire plan was and is very simply to use that country as a stick to poke the bear next door. Here’s a quote from a piece I linked to back in 2014, which very succinctly explains the strategy:
“The Eurasian-wide plan of strategic destabilization and state fracturing owes its genesis to Zbigniew Brzezinski and his Eurasian Balkans concept. The US is flexible in practicing this concept, and it does not meet a dead end if the destabilization encounters an obstacle and cannot be advanced. Should this occur, as it has in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, and possibly soon in the South China Sea, the stratagem evolves into maximizing the chaos within the launch pad states that are positioned on the doorsteps of the Eurasian Powers. The idea is to create ‘black holes’ of absolute disorder in which Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran are ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ intervene.”
Which is basically where we’re at. The pathetic drivel put forward by the Western powers, in which Ukraine is the Shire, full of nothing but peaceful Hobbit folk with nary a neo-Nazi to be seen, but who unfortunately live next door to Mordor and its Orc hordes, is tripe of the tripiest dimensions. They care nothing about the people of Ukraine, but have simply used it as their Globalist Plaything, bleeding it dry via shell schemes in which sons of US Presidents magically get paid whacking great salaries for jobs they’re not remotely equipped to do, and where they arm and fund some of the worst people imaginable — in this case neo-Nazi battalions, just as they did the Mujahideen back in the day, and al-Nusra Jihadists more recently — to create permanent chaos on Russia’s borders.
But as I said earlier, we certainly haven’t been told the whole reason for the current invasion, and I’m sure there’s much more to come. Because ultimately this is not really about Ukraine, but about an inevitable conflict between ideological fanatics and stone cold realists, with the poor Ukrainians sadly caught in the middle of it.
I want to finish this piece with seven very brief points, some of which I may return to in the future.
Firstly, the reaction to the Russian intervention has been on a level of hysteria that I’ve only ever seen once before in my life — last year, in fact, with the absurd reaction to an eminently treatable virus with a 99.9% Survivability Rate. The fact that we are witnessing a reaction that never occurred during the US/NATO wars of aggression throughout the last few decades, or indeed during the Russian intervention in Syria (although there was some) should alert thinking people to the following conclusion: this military operation is about something much bigger than the reasons that have been stated either by the Russians or the West.
Secondly, the Western media has entirely deceived people into what is really going on, with their heroic but fake tales of Ghost pilots, Snake Islands, and massive Ukrainian resistance. The fact is that the bulk of the action has been in the East, not in Kiev as the media leads people to believe, and the Ukrainian armed forces are now basically trapped there in a number of military cauldrons, where they will either lay down their weapons or die. For an ongoing analysis of the situation, I recommend the excellent videos put out by The Duran.
Thirdly, the ONLY solution to this crisis that has any hope of bringing lasting peace, is for Ukraine to declare itself a neutral country between the NATO alliance and Russia. However, the Neocon Globalist cult will never accept this solution, and so unless other more sensible heads in the West understand this simple point and are able to prevail, the conflict will inevitably continue and quite possibly escalate even further at some point, which is a very scary thought.
Fourthly, the economic sanctions that have been placed on Russia by the Western countries will rebound spectacularly, and end up hurting European countries especially, far harder than they will hurt Russia. Again, the analysis at The Duran is excellent for those who want to learn more.
Fifthly, when the monumentally ignorant MPs in the British Parliament stood up to applaud President Zelensky, did they have the remotest clue that his closing words — “Glory to Ukraine” — was the official slogan of Stepan Bandera’s OUN-B, the Ukrainian Nazi group that fought alongside the Waffen SS in World War II, and which horrifically massacred 100,000 Poles in Volhynia in 1943, or that this same slogan is used by the openly Nazi heirs of Bandera today? I somehow doubt it.
Sixthly, the existence of US funded Biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine, which was yesterday’s conspiracy theory, is in fact true and was even confirmed by none other than the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States, Victoria “Cookies” Nuland, who is apparently very concerned that the contents of these places might escape or fall into the hands of the Russians. Why is she so concerned, and why has the US tried to delete or burn the records of these places? For those interested in finding out, I recommend the work of a very brave proper journalist (remember them), George Webb who can be found on Twitter at @RealGeorgeWebb1. Should all this turn out to be as bad as it looks, it might just put a very different perspective on things and explain the unhinged reaction we’ve seen in the Western media. It would also be mighty ironic: many of the Western leaders and media that still justify the invasion of Iraq, even though it turned out not to have the Bioweapons that were claimed as the pretext, are now howling with outrage at a conflict in an area where they do exist.
Seventhly and lastly, why do I get the feeling that Klaus Schwab is one of the few people who is enjoying the economic repercussions of this war?
March 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | NATO, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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The US will not negotiate the easing of any Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia to ensure that Moscow can trade with Tehran under a new iteration of the Iran nuclear deal, a US official told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Despite a deal being reportedly close at hand, the official said that Washington would pursue an alternate agreement before granting Russia any exemptions.
“I don’t see the scope for going beyond what is within the confines of the JCPOA,” the official said, referring to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which guaranteed Iran limited sanctions relief in exchange for a halt to its nuclear program. “I think it’s pretty safe to say that there is no room for making exemptions beyond those.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has demanded written assurances that sanctions imposed on Russia since the start of its military offensive in Ukraine won’t impact any trade between Russia and Iran under a successor deal to the JCPOA, which is currently being negotiated.
Despite US Secretary of State Tony Blinken describing the Ukraine-related sanctions as “irrelevant” to the deal last week, the Iranians are apparently siding with Russia. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh stated last week that “Iran’s peaceful nuclear cooperation should not be affected or restricted by any sanctions, including Iran’s peaceful nuclear cooperation with Russia.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian negotiators are likely to specify their precise demands in writing in the coming days, and the Americans will “know within a week whether or not Russia is prepared to back down,” the US official added.
Should Russia remain firm on its demands, the US would be open to negotiating a “replica of the JCPOA” without Russian involvement, the official said, noting that “we…at this point wouldn’t rule anything out.”
However, it is far from clear whether the other parties to the 2015 deal would agree to a new accord without Russia. The original agreement was signed by Iran and the US, UK, Russia, France, Germany, China and the EU. While the Wall Street Journal claimed that European diplomats are exploring “options for pursuing a deal without Russia,” China is a major nuclear power and generally a diplomatic ally of Russia, and may balk at any deal that excludes Moscow.
Negotiators have been attempting to hammer out a replacement for the JCPOA for nearly a year, meeting regularly in Austria’s capital Vienna for negotiations. The French Foreign Ministry said last week that the parties are “very close to a deal,” but admitted that disagreements between the US and Russia could scupper any potential accord. The anonymous US official echoed these concerns on Sunday, describing Russia’s demands as “the most serious stumbling block and obstacle to reaching a deal.”
March 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Wars for Israel | China, Russia, Sanctions against Iran, United States |
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