Canadian Truckers and Supporters Staying the Course
By Stephen Lendman | February 13, 2022
Thousands of Canadian truckers and supporters continue protesting against draconian Trudeau regime health and freedom-destroying mandates.
Ongoing since January 29 in Ottawa, they continued overnight Saturday for the 6th day along the Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor, Ontario to Detroit — defying a court order to disperse and state of emergency threats by Ontario premier Doug Ford.
Things are fluid and quick-changing.
After things eased somewhat along the Ambassador Bridge, other protesters arrived on the Canadian side to block free passage.
According to news reports, a face-off with police sent to clear the bridge included no physical confrontations as of Saturday evening.
Disruptions also affect border crossings from Coutts, Alberta to Montana and Surrey, British Columbia to Washington state.
Late Saturday, a Trudeau regime statement said “border crossings cannot, and will not, remain closed, and that all options are on the table.”
Vehicles continue to block the Ambassador Bridge, Toronto Star reporter Jacob Lorinc tweeting:
“Police moving up slowly, but very slowly. Lots of protesters here.”
“(V)ehicles are still blocking lanes that lead to the bridge. (It’s) closed.”
“Not clear when it will reopen.”
“No arrests made as far as I can tell.”
Al Jazeera reported that “(a) crowd exceeding 10,000 people made their way between the trucks towards (Ottawa’s) parliament building.”
On Saturday, “many vehicles” along the road from Montreal to Ottawa displayed “Freedom” signs.
CTV News said “(p)rotests continue across Canada.”
At the Ambassador Bridge, police and protesters remain in “standoff… with more protesters arriving throughout the” day on Saturday.
In Surrey, British Columbia, “multiple commercial trucks… broke through an RCMP barricade on the Pacific Highway while following protesters marching to the border Saturday afternoon.”
The main route to Blaine, Washington remained closed.
No violence, injuries or arrests were reported.
Resolution of what’s going on in Canada nationwide requires the Trudeau regime to rescind flu/covid mandates across the board.
Protests continue because he refuses to end what shouldn’t have been imposed in the first place.
One protester along the Ambassador Bridge expressed the sentiment of all others across Canada, saying:
“We’re sick and tired of mandates.”
Ending them is the only acceptable option.
In New Brunswick, an anti-mandates video by Canadian army major Stephen Chledowski went viral online, saying the following:
“I am calling on my military and cops comrades to now stand up and safeguard your loved ones against this government-forced medical tyranny.”
“For 2 years our elected government officials have been using the strategies of fear, coercion and financial, intimidation and physical altercation against us to attain compliance for specific repeated medical procedures.”
The Trudeau regime and provincial officials are using “bullying tactics of fear, intimidation, coercion and financial and physical violence.”
Like the US Constitution’s First Amendment affirmation of free expression, Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedom mandates it for all the nation’s people.
According to the rule of law in both countries, it cannot legally be denied to anyone.
So-called free expression limits on what Canadian military personnel may say publicly breach the law of the land.
Given how Canada operates extrajudicially on all things flu/covid related, Chledowski could face stiff disciplinary action for the “crime” of truth-telling about health and freedom-destroying mandates.
In December 2020, in full military attire, Officer Cadet Ladislas Kenderesi spoke out publicly against what he called “killer” jabs.
In response, he was charged with what CTV News called “a mutiny-related offense.”
As in the US and throughout the West, democracy in Canada is pure fantasy. It’s for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others.
The rule of law is what ruling regimes say it is, the real thing be damned when interfering with their draconian policies.
Health and freedom-destroying mandates revealed reality about how Canada is ill-governed.
The only option for protesters is staying the course for restoration of what Trudeau regime hardliners abolished in deference to wealth, power and privilege by harming the vast majority of Canadians — on the phony pretext of protecting them.
Over half the deaths seen by this funeral director were likely caused by the COVID vaccines
By Steve Kirsch | February 7, 2022
He is not alone in seeing this. All his other embalmer friends see it too. All of them. The only possible explanation: the COVID vaccines are killing massive numbers of previously healthy people.
Fifteen embalmers are all seeing odd fatal clotting in people that first started in 2021. As many as 65% of cases are affected. Just like the DMED data, this evidence is being totally ignored by the mainstream press and medical community as well as the CDC and other HHS agencies. The only explanation that fits all the facts is that the vaccines are killing Americans in massive numbers and should be immediately halted.
Meet Richard Hirschman, an embalmer in Alabama with over 20 years experience
Embalmer reveals 93% of cases have deadly clots
Richard Hirschman is a funeral director who spotted really strange clots in dead people after the vaccines rolled out. He was interviewed by Jane Ruby on the Stew Peters Show. At nearly 800,000 views on Rumble alone, his interview is one of the most popular episodes in Stew Peters Show history.
I was originally introduced to Richard via one of my contacts. Richard has been embalming people for more than 20 years. He lives in Alabama.
Here’s my 53 minute interview where we get into the profound implications of what Richard found: that the vaccines are likely killing around 65% of the cases he is seeing today. There is simply no other possible explanation that fits the evidence.
If you thought the COVID shots were safe and effective before the video, and you still have a working brain, I’m pretty sure this video will change your thinking because there is only one possible conclusion: the COVID vaccines are killing massive numbers of people and nobody is investigating.
Here are some of the most important things I learned from Richard:
- He started noticing the strange clots around May or June 2021. He’d never seen anything like it before in his life. However, he admits they could have started much earlier and he just never noticed them before because he was very busy.
- He is not aware of any cases where the strange clots were seen in unvaccinated cases(except for one unvaccinated person who received a transfusion)
- He started formally tracking the number of patients with the strange clots in late 2021.
- He says currently over 50% of the bodies he embalms have the strange clots which he uniquely associates with the vaccines/boosters. This is the bombshell. The CDC says deaths from the vaccine are 0% and this embalmer, who has no conflicts of interest, says it is now over 50% of the cases he sees. They can’t both be telling the truth. One of them is lying.
- In Jan 2022, 37 out of 57 (65% of all cases) had these suspicious clots. That’s huge.
- His embalming volume varies by day. Sometimes it is one a day, other days it can be up to 6 or 7. He estimates he does an average of 2 per day, which is over 600 bodies a year. So while these aren’t huge numbers, the numbers are large enough that it is unlikely that the effect they are seeing is just due to small numbers.
- He contracts out his services to a variety of funeral homes. In 2020, he’d see a lot of COVID deaths because other embalmers didn’t want to touch those cases. Richard is COVID recovered so he had no problem handling those cases. Now, however, that fear has greatly subsided so now he is seeing more of a representative sample (i.e., unbiased) of people who die. So his “over 50% of deaths” figure is only slightly exaggerated from an embalmer seeing an “unfiltered” set of people.
- Younger people tend to be cremated, so he won’t see those cases.
- His peers (he’s discussed with 15 of them) see the same thing he does but won’t speak out publicly. I see this in other areas such as school officials being afraid to reveal high rates of myocarditis in their schools. For example, Nikki Daniels, Head of School at Monte Vista Christian School, isn’t speaking out about the four myocarditis cases at their small private school (which translates into a rate of myocarditis that I’d estimate is more than 1 in 100).
- The mainstream media, mainstream medical community, and HHS agencies are all ignoring Hirschman and others like John Looney. Only alt-media has reached out to him to write an article.
- PolitiFact reached out to try to discredit him but ended up not writing an article presumably because they failed to find anything to attack him on.
- There is no other explanation for this that we can figure out. It pretty much has to be a novel injectable product, first used in 2021 that results in blood clots and is injected into well over 50% of the population. There is only one drug that fits that bill: the COVID vaccines.
- None of his embalmer friends who have seen the data are planning on getting any more COVID vaccine shots.
- Richard is not alone. See this compilation: People who would know.
- Fewer than 1% of people who get the shots will die. As Dr. Mike Yeadon points out in the comments below, whether you die or not is likely a combination of how well you “take up” and “replicate” the mRNA, how dangerous the batch is, and other factors.
Could it be caused by 5G?
A few people speculated it was caused by the 5G deployment in Alabama. No, that’s not it at all. Nothing has changed in the area around Hirschman. We checked.
Could these clots be caused by COVID?
The Politifact fact checker, Naseem Ferdowsi, has no medical experience at all. She sent a message on Feb 4, 2022 that she was told by an embalmer in Phoenix Arizona that “dark clots have been found in COVID victims long before vaccinations were available.”
There are several problems with hypothesis:
- The clots are white fibrous material (clearly the fact checker never actually viewed the video she was fact checking)
- The number of COVID deaths in Houston County where Richard works are miniscule. For example, the number of COVID deaths was 9 in January, yet Richard had 37 with these clots.
- The percentages do not make sense. Only a tiny fraction of all deaths in January are from COVID. If 65% of the deaths in Houston County in January 2022 were from COVID, that would be front page news.
- If these clots were caused by COVID, it’s highly likely someone would have spotted it before 2021 and done a similar video.
- Omicron has taken over as the dominant COVID variant in January across the country. Omicron doesn’t kill people. People die with Omicron, not from Omicron. Therefore, if it was COVID-related, the clots would be gone, not at an all-time high.
However, we all know what will happen, don’t we? I think we’ll soon see a PolitiFact article that these clots are caused by COVID.
Another clue that vaccinated people are dying at a higher rate than the unvaccinated
One commenter said “only 61% have received at least one of the jabs and 49% two jabs in AL.”
The implication is that you can’t have 65% of the deaths be from the jabs.
But that’s not true at all.
If 61% were vaccinated over all age groups, and the vaccine were completely safe, we’d expect that 61% of the people who died would be vaccinated.
Richard’s observation that 65% of the people who died had these clots simply means that the vaccine appears to be causing death at a higher rate than would be expected than if the vaccine was truly safe and effective.
The doubly jabbed are more likely to die so the bump from 49% expected to 65% suggests the jabs are killing people.
Estimating total number of people killed by the COVID vaccines from this data
Hirschman’s data is explosive because it establishes a relative proportion of people affected which we can then use to establish an absolute rate of death.
Is this definitive? No. It’s just another “sanity check” datapoint.
So let’s say the actual rate of vaccine-caused deaths is 40% of all deaths which is less than the 65% rate that Hirschman is seeing.
The CDC says around 65,000 people die a week. So that would be 26,000 people a week killed by the vaccine. He started noticing these deaths in May (they could have started sooner), so let’s just say it’s only been in the last 6 months to be conservative.
26 weeks *26,000 deaths/week=676,000 vaccine-related deaths.
That’s a lot of deaths. So you see why this observation is explosive.
Even if he’s off by 1000X, this vaccine is still too unsafe to be used in humans
But suppose Hirschman is mistaken by a factor of 1,000 and there were just 676 deaths. That makes these vaccines 3 times more deadly than the smallpox vaccine (which kills 1 in a million) and smallpox is deemed to be too unsafe to use.
So even under the most ridiculous assumptions, there is no other way to interpret this data than to conclude the vaccines are unsafe and should be stopped.
Nobody in mainstream media, academia, or HHS is interested in talking to Hirschman
With a 65% death rate, you’d think the CDC would be doing an active investigation on this to collect the data.
You’d also think that after his Jan 26 video, Hirschman would be contacted by the CDC, FDA, NIH, NY Times, CNN, Washington Post, and so on, wouldn’t you?
Nope.
Just the Stew Peters Show (Jane Ruby), the Epoch Times, PolitiFact, and Steve Kirsch’s Newsletter.
Nobody from mainstream academia reached out to him for tissue samples to analyze or to write up his results in a paper that could be submitted to a medical journal so that it could be documented.
What can I say? They just do not want to know.
In January 2022, 65% of his embalming cases had this “problem” but nobody wants to look at it. Nobody!
I’m not surprised. They don’t want to learn the truth about these “vaccines.” They all just want to tell America one side of the story and censor any evidence that goes against that narrative.
Comments from Dr. Mike Yeadon regarding the mechanism of action
When assessing causality, one of the key criteria is a plausible mechanism of action. Here you go from Dr. Mike Yeadon.
Steve, I wish I was shocked, but none of us with an understanding that these gene based agents prompt our bodies to manufacture virus spike protein in uncontrolled amounts & in uncontrolled anatomical locations expected spike protein to do what it does in quantity: prompt blood to coagulate.
I’ve received the results of an informal survey conducted on behalf of a financial advisor to their client list. Questions included whether clients or their family members know someone who’s become very ill or died after vaccination & something like 2/3rds of respondents says they did. The results were sent to me to reinforce how commonplace these injuries & deaths are.
I personally know of four deaths and twice as many serious, not yet fatal illnesses after c19 “vaccinations”.
I know indirectly of two who were said to have been covid19 deaths. One was in their 80s & frail and the other, in their 60s, was living with a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Summary
The COVID vaccines are the largest clinical trial in world history.
What we have learned so far from the embalmers is troubling: it appears the vaccines have overtaken heart disease as the #1 leading cause of death in America today.
The CDC doesn’t have a clue it is happening. They still think that nobody has died from the vaccine. They refuse to look at the safety signals in VAERS and DMED. They don’t want to see any safety signals and they will not meet with anyone who challenges their point of view.
Death is one of many symptoms. Other side effects are a wide variety of cardiovascular, neurological, and autoimmune diseases, paralysis, loss of limbs, and potentially sterilization and AIDS. After a 90 day honeymoon period, vaccine efficacy turns negative. They also are known to increase cancers.
Stay tuned as we learn more in this clinical trial of the vaccines. I’m sure this isn’t the end of the story.
The California legislature is expected to mandate soon that everyone who works in California get vaccinated (AB 1993). This will increase the numbers and allow us to get the test results sooner. California is literally sacrificing its residents for the benefit of the rest of the country.
Although I live in California, I am self-employed. I suspect I will need to fire myself soon. I will not willingly comply with their law
Pandemic-related school closings likely to have far-reaching effects on child well-being
By Sandra M. Chafouleas – The Conversation – February 9, 2022
A global analysis has found that kids whose schools closed to stop the spread of various waves of the coronavirus lost educational progress and are at increased risk of dropping out of school.
As a result, the study says, they will earn less money from work over their lifetimes than they would have if schools had remained open.
Educational researchers like me know these students will feel the effects of pandemic-related school closures for many years to come. Here are four other ways the closings have affected students’ well-being for the long term:
1. Academic progress
At the end of the 2020-2021 school year, most students were about four to five months behind where they should have been in math and reading, according to a July 2021 report by McKinsey and Co., a global management consulting firm.
When the researchers looked at the data from fall 2021, though, they found students attending majority-white schools are catching up. But students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds — including those attending majority-Black or low-income schools — are falling further behind.
As a result, students attending majority-Black schools are now estimated to be a full year behind those attending majority-white schools.
Differences also can vary by grade level. High schools have been closed more total days than elementary schools. According to a recent news report, 2021 graduation rates dipped across the country, and some education leaders fear future graduating classes may be hit even harder.
Schools have scrambled to provide options such as credit recovery to boost graduation rates, leaving concerns about the quality of learning.
College and university leaders have been preparing for first-year students with less knowledge, weaker study habits and more difficulty concentrating than new college arrivals in past years.
2. Social-emotional development
Even early in the pandemic, school closings were harming students’ social and emotional well-being, according to a review of 36 studies across 11 countries including the U.S. By summer 2021, teachers and administrators in the U.S. said students felt more emotional distress, disengagement, depression, anxiety and loneliness than in previous years.
When schools resumed in fall 2021, large numbers of children in the U.S. had lost a primary caregiver over the previous year to COVID-19. A colleague and I raised concerns about the anxiety and grief those students would likely feel.
In addition, 28% of all parents of children in grades K-12 are “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about their child’s mental health and social and emotional well-being. That’s down from a high of 35% in spring 2021, but is still 7% higher than before the pandemic.
Parents of Black and Hispanic students are 5% more likely to be worried than parents of white students.
Schools and organizations have focused resources on supporting students’ social, emotional and mental health. The U.S. Department of Education, for example, recommends, based on research, that teachers integrate lessons around compassion and courage into classroom activities, and that schools establish wellness teams to help students.
States have said they plan to address these needs with federal funds meant to help schools respond to the pandemic. In Connecticut, for example, school districts will hire additional mental health support staff, offer social-emotional programs and partner with local agencies to increase access to supports.
3. Behavioral habits
The return to in-person learning has been accompanied by school leaders’ reports of increasing student misbehavior and threats of violence. These increases were more likely to be reported in larger districts and where most students had engaged in remote or hybrid learning — rather than in-person instruction — during the prior school year.
Viral social media “challenges” — like memes on TikTok suggesting students “smack a staff member” or skip school on a particular day — certainly aren’t helping educators provide safe and supportive environments.
Parents’ distress is also affecting their children. Students whose parents are depressed, anxious, lonely and exhausted are more likely to misbehave in school — and that connection grew stronger during lockdown periods when schools were closed.
Meanwhile, news reports show students are missing more school than they were before the pandemic, with more kids out for more than 15 days of a school year.
Given links between chronic absenteeism and increased high school dropout rates, researchers warn this increase in missed school could lead between 1.7 million and 3.3 million students in eighth through 12th grade to not graduate on time.
4. Physical health
Adults have suffered hair loss, sore eyes, irritable bowels and skin flare-ups as a result of the pandemic. One study found that Chinese preschool children whose schools closed during the pandemic were shorter than preschoolers in previous years, though the researchers did not observe noteworthy differences in weight change.
Schools can be a primary place for children to access physical activity and healthy food. Amid school closures, researchers are exploring the effects of losing out on these benefits. During lockdowns in Italy, children with obesity engaged in less physical activity, slept and used screens more and increased their consumption of potato chips and sugary drinks.
In the U.S., 1 in 4 families with school-age children don’t have reliable access to food. Abrupt school closures cut off more than 30 million children from free and reduced-price lunches and breakfasts delivered at school.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees school food programs, provided waivers to let schools provide meals in ways that fit their students’ needs. In Connecticut, for example, researchers found that letting families know about wider availability and pickup sites for to-go school meals boosted the number of students who received food during the pandemic.
Time will tell if the costs of school closings will be worth the benefits. These early indicators show that decisions are not as simple as reducing the physical health risks of COVID-19. A full assessment would consider the effects across all aspects of child well-being, including how diverse populations are affected.
Connection, collaboration and positive interaction are fundamental to healthy childhood growth and development. Working together, schools, families and communities can assess and address every child’s needs to reduce the lasting effects of school closings.
Disclosure statement
Sandra M. Chafouleas receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Education, Connecticut State Department of Education, the Neag Foundation, and the Principal Foundation.
The Pfizer clinical trial in kids under age 5 has now failed TWICE
By Toby Rogers | February 12, 2022
On December 17, 2021, Pfizer announced that the clinical trial of its mRNA shot in kids under age 5 had failed. Rather than withdraw this product, Pfizer “amended” its clinical trial to add a third dose. So Pfizer kept the original trial going and subjected these little kids to yet another shot of genetically modified mRNA.
The drug dealers at the FDA said, ‘sounds great, let’s proceed with authorization even in the absence of data.’ That created a huge public backlash as parents rightly protested that the FDA should not approve a drug for kids that failed in a clinical trial.
Yesterday (Feb. 11, 2022), the FDA was forced to admit defeat and Pfizer pulled its Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) application to inject kids under age 5.
Pfizer and the FDA claimed that they were “waiting for more data” that would be available in early April. We now know that this was a lie.
Buried deep in an article on page A13 of the NY Times this morning we learned the real reason why Pfizer withdrew its EUA — the clinical trial had failed, again.
Remember, Pfizer kept the clinical trial going after December 17. So between then and yesterday’s announcement, there was now roughly 55 more days worth of data. And it was truly terrible.
From the NY Times :
Then, late on Thursday [Feb. 10], Pfizer alerted the F.D.A. that it had more recent data, from mid-January on, showing a more discouraging picture as the Omicron variant bore down. The new data revealed that two doses were not sufficiently effective in preventing symptomatic infection.
Read that again. They have the data. And the data show that this shot does not work.
But even here, I think there is reason to believe that they are still lying. We already knew that “two doses were not sufficiently effective” — Pfizer announced that in December. The “more recent data, from mid-January on” is not the two dose regimen anymore, that phase of the trial is finished.
I think there is every reason to believe that this is now the three dose trial that they are describing. If the three dose trial was on track and showing promising results, they would have proceeded with authorization. So now we likely have the first evidence that the three dose trial has failed as well.
(Here’s my math: Pfizer likely injected the third dose into these kids between Dec. 17 and mid-January. So “from mid-January on” (to Feb. 10) is looking at the data in the 25 days after the third injection. In the comments, please let me know if you interpret this differently.)
So it is definitely NOT the case that this is just an incomplete trial that they are waiting to finish up in early April. All of the existing data is bad. Pfizer is now scrambling to find ways to save this product even though the clinical trial has now failed twice. And what’s Pfizer’s plan going forward — to just hope that the data in the next 60 days (from now through early April) magically turns the corner!? Talk about wishful thinking!
Just when I think the cartel and its enablers in the mainstream media could not possibly get any more cynical they sink to new lows.
Janet Woodcock and Peter Marks at the FDA must be fired and prosecuted for reckless endangerment of children. Pfizer must stop this grotesque clinical trial immediately and permanently suspend any plans to inject genetically modified mRNA into children under 5. Anything less is savagery and barbarism.
US nuclear submarine violates Russian waters – Defense Ministry
RT | February 12, 2022
A US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarine has been detected and chased away in Russian territorial waters off the Kuril Islands, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
The vessel was found submerged off the small uninhabited island of Urup while Russia’s Pacific Fleet was holding exercises in the area. Russian vessels contacted the submarine, warning it was in the country’s territorial waters and ordering it to surface immediately, the military said.
The submarine, however, did not respond to the messages, and destroyer Marshal Shaposhnikov was deployed to chase it off. The Russian vessel used “appropriate means” against the US sub, the military noted without providing any further details.
Following the run-in with the destroyer, the Virginia-class submarine used an active radar decoy, sailing away from Russian waters at full speed.
The Pacific Fleet’s drills continued as scheduled after the incident, the military added.
Shortly after the incident, the Russian Defense Ministry said it has summoned a US military attaché to explain the incursion. Moscow added that the actions of the submarine constitute a major violation of international law, and create a threat to Russia’s national security. The military said it reserves the right to take any security measures in its own territorial waters.
It was not immediately clear what exact vessel was involved in the incident, with no official statement produced by the Pentagon on the incursion so far. The US has 19 active duty Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines. The vessels are armed with cruise and anti-ship missiles, as well as massive Mark 48 torpedoes.
US war hysteria over Ukraine won’t gel
BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 12, 2022
The two takeaways out of the French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to Moscow and his six-hour long talks with President Vladimir Putin have been the assurance held out by the latter that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine’s borders — “there would be no deterioration or escalation” — and second, an agreement that Russia would pull troops out of Belarus at the end of exercises taking place currently near Ukraine’s northern borders.
The very fact of the French side putting such sensitive details in the public domain suggests that Moscow sees nothing wrong in it. Moscow has simply clarified that the redeployment of troops out of Belarus is not to be construed as any “deal” with France.
The paradox is, instead of working on these crucial assurances from Moscow, Washington has since chosen to travel in the opposite direction with the White House orchestrating a war hysteria through last week. President Biden and his advisor Jake Sullivan have conjured up an apocalyptic scenario.
The White House claims it has intelligence but dodges details. All we have are some satellite imagery from Max (which works for US intelligence). The patchy details have led to Biden speculating about a world war!
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration is creating diplomatic synergy out of the war hysteria. On Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an audacious bid to hustle the US’ QUAD partners to endorse Washington’s allegations of Russia’s “aggression” — although the group has nothing to do with European security issues.
Again on Friday, Biden with a stroke of his pen effectively commandeered the foreign reserves of Afghanistan to the tune of 7 billion-plus dollars. According to the New York Times, “It is highly unusual for the United States government to commandeer a foreign country’s assets on domestic soil.”
But Biden is getting away with such high-handed behaviour that might be deemed illegal or immoral or cynical when the Beltway is caught up in a frenzy over an incoming war with Russia! To be sure, all through Friday, the White House strove to keep the headlines on “Russian aggression.” Biden held a videoconference with the European allies while Sullivan networked with the EU bureaucrats in Brussels to coordinate on “preparations to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia should it choose military escalation.”
Sullivan also gave a press briefing at the White House to highlight that “we are in the window when an invasion [by Russia] could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information. But I do want to be clear: It could begin during the Olympics.”
So, that’s it. Sullivan’s latest version is that Russia may invade Ukraine before Feb. 20. The timeline has been tweaked, as the prognosis a week ago was that such an invasion was “imminent” — and still earlier, that it would happen no sooner than deep frost set in so that tank manoeuvring on Ukrainian terrain would become feasible!
Yet, isn’t it amazing that at such a tumultuous time in modern history when Biden visualises a potential world war, he sent away his state secretary on a 6-day tour of Asia-Pacific? In fact, at the moment, Blinken is shuttling somewhere in the tropics — between Suva (Fiji) and Honolulu (Hawaii)!
What do we make out of this charade of war hysteria? Three things can be said. First, the US feels a constant need to rally European allies who are sceptical about the Russia bogey, and the war hysteria helps. Second, Washington is overtly keen to sever Russia’s relations with European countries where energy cooperation is a template — especially, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Three, most important, the war hysteria provides the alibi to step up US deployments in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. The size of the NATO deployment on Russia’s western borders already stands at 175,000 troops! Advanced weapons have been deployed too. (Eight nuclear-capable heavy B-52 members are deployed to a forward base in the UK.) Over and above, US has established an air bridge to ferry weapons to Ukraine. As of Friday, more than 15 military flights landed in Ukraine with 1200 tonnes of materials.
Quite obviously, this war hysteria cannot be sustained indefinitely. Something has to give way. Now, the big question is: What if Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, as Putin reportedly assured Macron as recently as Monday?
Evidently, the US predicament is two-fold: While war hysteria helps to rally the European allies, Washington also cannot afford to let the Europeans dominate the dialogue track with Moscow lest it create a dynamics of its own. Washington has a trust deficit with Macron who is a passionate advocate of European initiatives on European security issues.
Macron is on record that Europe’s security cannot be assured without Russia’s security! Equally, there is panic in the Beltway that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also heading for Moscow on Tuesday. And, Macron is expected to have a call with Putin today! Curiously, Biden decided that he too should have a call with Putin later today!
Above all, the UK too has entered the diplomatic fray. All indications are that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on Friday were substantive. (Interestingly, the UK Chief of Staff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin who accompanied Wallace separately met with his Russian counterpart General Valery Gerasimov.)
Wallace described his talks as “frank and constructive.” The MOD readout in London was couched in a restrained tone as if UK is impervious to Biden and Sullivan’s war hysteria. Importantly, it highlighted Shoigu’s assurance to Wallace that Russia will not invade Ukraine.
Notably, the Russian readout too sought to put the accent on “urgent measures to ensure security guarantees” to Russia. It said, “Army General S. K. Shoigu pointed out that the military and political situation in Europe had worsened considerably due to tension whipped up around Ukraine and NATO’s military presence near the Russian borders.”
How far this pantomime on the diplomatic stage continues is unclear. There is the lurking danger that extreme nationalist forces who call the shots in Kiev, egged on by Washington, may feel emboldened to create new facts on the ground in Donbass. This was precisely how the Georgian war had erupted in 2008.
Indeed, a new level of criticality has appeared lately in Donbass with large scale mobilisation by Ukrainian forces and reports of western mercenaries in the guise of military advisors. The US intentions remain unclear.
A conflict in Donbass will put the Kremlin in dilemma. If Russia intervenes in Donbass to keep at bay the rampaging radical Ukrainian nationalist forces, Washington will certainly use it as alibi to impose harsh sanctions to isolate Russia and severely damage Moscow’s ties with European countries.
On the contrary, Russia will have no option but to intervene, as hundreds of thousands of Russian passport holders live in Donbass. (Some put the figure around 700,000.) The radical neo-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists are known to be notoriously anti-Russian and all sorts of atrocities — even genocide — may take place.
The likelihood of conflict erupting in Donbass remains high. Biden may get a splendid opportunity to salvage his reputation after the debacle in Afghanistan. He has an eye, for sure, on the mid-term elections in November and the bipartisan consensus supportive of a tough line on “Putin’s Russia” also helps.
Fundamentally, the US has no intentions of giving Russia the security guarantee it needs. For, NATO’s eastward expansion and encirclement of Russia happens to be Washington’s core agenda. And, since 2014, that agenda has been so far advanced that there is no turning point now. It must be carried forward to its logical conclusion.
The Washington elites realise that the US lacks the capability to take on China and Russia simultaneously. A paradigm shift is needed. In the US calculus, forcing Putin to abdicate after a humiliating retreat over Ukraine and a severe weakening of Russian military power only can bring about the strategic rollback of Russia’s resurgence and its alliance with China.
It is, therefore, an imperative first step on the pathway to an eventual epochal confrontation with China, which poses a formidable challenge to America’s global hegemony in the 21st century.
Lawmakers take heat for flip-flopping on mask mandates
RT | February 10, 2022
Republican lawmakers have slammed their Democratic opponents for suddenly speaking in favor of lifting mask mandates, especially in schools, saying that the switch is just an attempt to boost their chances in the midterm elections.
Democrat-led New Jersey, New York, California, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware announced plans to roll back their mask requirements on Tuesday and Wednesday, with Illinois soon expected to join them.
The issue has been a major bone of contention between the two rival American parties during the pandemic. The Democrats have always defended face coverings as an essential measure to stop the spread of Covid-19, while the Republicans insist that the measure is of little use, especially for students, who face a much lesser risk of serious coronavirus infection due to their young age.
“I’d love to see whatever internal polling went around the Democrat Party last week – it’s certainly no coincidence that Democrat-run states are dropping mandates as fast as they can,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., told the Daily Mail about the plans by Democratic governors to lift their mask requirements.
Hern was fully backed by Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who claimed that “the Democrats continually follow the political science instead of the actual science.”
“We’ve known for months that masking has been detrimental to our children. The science hasn’t changed in the last several months, the only change has been the overwhelming uproar over government mandates,” she said.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz, said it was “no surprise” that the Democrats have now decided to give up on mask mandates. “They had every intention of using Covid mandates to their advantage – especially when it comes to the polls – and have perfected playing politics in our everyday lives.”
However, Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., suggested that the switch will likely be too little, too late. “Democrats forced masks on kids for two years and now they’re hoping that the rest of America will suddenly forget.”
The midterm elections, scheduled to take place in the US in November, are expected to be a tough test for the Democratic Party. Last month, a poll by Gallup revealed that 47% of Americans identified themselves as Republicans, compared to 42% as Democrats. The news figures contradicted the historic trend of Democrats outnumbering GOP supporters in the country.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said earlier this week that the number of cases and hospitalization in the US was still “too high” to think about lifting Covid-19 restrictions, adding that it continued to endorse universal masking in schools.
On Tuesday, CNN’s medical analyst, Dr. Leana Wen, who has always been a strong supporter of mask mandates, urged the CDC to follow the example of the Democratic states and lift the curbs.
“The CDC has already lost a lot of trust and credibility. This is their time to rebuild and remove restrictions as quickly as they were put in,” she argued.
Wen defended her new stance on face coverings by claiming that “circumstances have changed. Case counts are declining. Also, the science has changed.”
She faced a harsh backlash online, with prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was among the critics, insisting that behavior like Wen’s was the reason behind the public loss of trust in what the medical experts have to say.
“As others noted, there is nothing in The Science™ that changed to justify Dem politicians suddenly ending mask mandates. All that changed is the political fear they have. Conflating ‘The Science’ with politics like this is a key reason many lost trust in public health experts.”


