Over the past several days, the news story that has dominated British news headlines, and consequently, the news headlines of the rest of the Western world, is controversy over a leaked email confirming Boris Johnson’s attendance at a Downing Street garden party in May 2020 – a time when the Summer weather is usually at its peak in Britain, and incidentally, the same time when the entire country was under stringent lockdown measures.
In spite of offering an almost immediate apology in the House of Commons on Wednesday, Johnson has faced intense calls to resign from his position.
Not only from the opposition of Keir Starmer’s Labour, Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats and Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP, but also from prominent members of his own Conservative Party such as Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross. With the main point of contention being that members of the British public were prohibited from seeing gravely ill loved ones at the same time as Johnson’s attendance of said garden party due to the restrictions put in place.
The ongoing controversy over ‘partygate’ however is in stark contrast to the minuscule Western media coverage of Boris Johnson’s key role in what is currently the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, the now seven-year long Saudi Arabia-led war on Yemen.
A conflict that has resulted in the worst Cholera outbreak of all time, the deaths of 10,000 children directly through the ensuing violence, and the further deaths of more than 85,000 children through the mass-starvation the conflict has triggered.
In July 2016, following his appointment as Foreign Secretary under the then-government of Theresa May, Johnson approved the sale of more than £1.2bn worth of British made-weaponry to Downing Street-ally Saudi Arabia – the Gulf Kingdom immediately putting it to use on Yemen’s agricultural, health and sanitation infrastructure.
This lead directly to the aforementioned Cholera outbreak and famine in what is already the most impoverished nation on the Arabian Peninsula, a situation exacerbated even further by a Saudi blockade preventing food and medical supplies from entering the country.
British support for the Saudi-led conflict goes far beyond lucrative arms sales to Riyadh however, with British military advisors on hand alongside their US counterparts in the Saudi command room to assist in the selection of targets for the Royal Saudi Air Force – more than 100 Saudi pilots have also been trained at RAF airbases in Britain over the past decade alone.
With both policies remaining in place since Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019, alongside the aforementioned arms sales which have resulted in significant profit for British defence contractors such as BAE Systems.
Perhaps the most crucial role in Britain’s decision to support the Yemen war however, is a geopolitical ambition that Downing Street shares with the United States and Israel – the containment of Iran within the region.
The Islamic Republic, a long-time Western foe since the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the US-UK aligned Shah deposed and replaced with the anti-Western and anti-Zionist Ayatollah Khomeini, is widely accused of backing the Ansar Allah rebel movement, more commonly known as the Houthis. Whose seizure of the Yemeni capital Sana’a and overthrow of the then pro-Saudi President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi in early 2015 would result in Riyadh launching its US-UK backed air campaign in March of that year in a bid to restore the government of its favoured candidate.
It is also the reason why, in addition to multi-billion pound arms deals between London and Riyadh, that what has now amounted to a seven-year long US and UK backed genocide of the Yemeni people, has received scarce media coverage in the West – in stark contrast to a Summer garden party held by a British Prime Minister who has himself played a key role in the slaughter.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook.
As protests grow in EU countries and worldwide against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and so-called “vaccine passports,” some countries appear to be backtracking or at least harboring second thoughts about enforcing such measures.
Some policymakers point to evidence COVID is here to stay and we need to live with it, since Omicron is similar to the common cold or seasonal flu. Others appear more willing to accept natural immunity in lieu of vaccination.
Still, other governments are digging in their heels and moving forward with punitive restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Here’s a look at the latest shifting policies outside the U.S.
Austria, citing ‘technical complications,’ won’t enforce mandates until at least April
Austria garnered much attention in November 2021 when it became the first country in the world to impose an all-encompassing vaccine mandate for its entire adult population and minors 14 years old and up.
This mandate, set to take effect in February, would be accompanied by fines of up to 3,600 euros per quarter. To that end, Austria recently reportedly began hiring “headhunters” to track down those who continue to remain unvaccinated.
The mandate has resulted in frequent large-scale protests against the mandate, as well as a political movement opposing this policy.
An open letter recently sent to Austria’s Interior Minister, Gerhard Karner, signed by 600 police officers, also expressed opposition to mandatory vaccination.
This opposition may be having an impact. Recently, the firm responsible for the technical implementation of the mandate announced that due to “technical complications,” the mandatory vaccination law cannot be enforced until at least April.
This news came amidst calls in Austria that the mandate should be reevaluated in light of the spread of the Omicron variant.
Germany struggling with mandate implementation; support not unanimous
Similar concerns over the feasibility of rapid implementation of a vaccine mandate have been raised in Germany, which has also mulled the implementation of compulsory vaccinations and has already approved such a mandate for healthcare workers.
In December 2021, Germany’s Ethics Council also gave its stamp of approval for vaccine mandates.
Nevertheless, concerns have been raised in Germany that parliamentary debate and subsequent technical implementation of a vaccination database cannot be completed before June at the earliest, calling into question the feasibility of the mandate in light of rapidly changing conditions.
Such hesitation comes despite renewed calls from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier for an immediate full parliamentary debate on a potential vaccine mandate, and from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for COVID vaccines to be mandated.
Similarly, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach recently suggested vaccine mandates, not natural herd immunity stemming from the rapid spread of the Omicron variant — which he described as “dirty vaccination” — represent the only way “out” of the crisis.
In November 2021, Lauterbach’s predecessor, Jens Spahn, publicly predicted that by the end of the coming winter, everyone would be “vaccinated, recovered, or dead” — due to the Delta variant.
Soon thereafter, in December 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden made a similar warning, predicting a winter of “severe illness and death” for the non-vaccinated.
Despite these public proclamations from German politicians though, recent reports suggest support for a vaccine mandate in Germany’s three-party governing coalition is far from unanimous.
Nevertheless, some localities in Germany are moving ahead with their own innovative means of confirming individuals’ vaccination status.
The city of Saarbrücken will soon launch a system where individuals who received a COVID vaccine or who have recovered from infection can voluntarily wear a colored wristband to indicate their status.
Greece pushes ahead with age 60+ mandate policy, threatens fines for unvaxxed
Greece was one of the first countries in Europe to implement a vaccine mandate for a portion of its general population when, in December 2021, it imposed such a policy for everyone age 60 and over.
The policy is set to take effect Jan. 16, with fines of 100 euros per month levied against anyone who doesn’t comply.
Despite this policy, which has received broad and highly sensational media attention in Greece, and despite the burden the policy would place on pensioners in a country where the average pension is just over 700 euros per month, a significant number of individuals 60 and older appear to have opted to remain unvaccinated.
In late December 2021, it was reported that 400,000 people in this age group had not received the COVID vaccine.
In a televised appearance on Jan. 11, Greek government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou stated that 200,000 people aged 60 and over had gotten vaccinated as a result of this mandate, touting this as a “big success.”
However, this would suggest approximately half of the relevant population in question had chosen to remain unvaccinated, despite the looming threat of a financial penalty.
It is perhaps, for this reason, the Greek government reportedly “froze” any further discussion of expanding the mandatory vaccination policy to those aged 50 and over, while it has been suggested the measure is unconstitutional and may eventually be struck down judicially.
However, despite rumors that the enforcement of fines against individuals 60 and older who have not been vaccinated would be postponed, Greece’s far-right Interior Minister Makis Voridis announced the policy would be enforced as originally planned.
Nevertheless, the Greek government will now extend existing measures, which include a midnight curfew and ban on music for dining and entertainment venues, and a 1,000-spectator capacity limit at sporting events, for at least an additional week past the original sunset date of Jan. 16.
In Balkans, protests lead to standstill on mandates
Major protests against the so-called “Green Pass,” or vaccine passport, took place recently in both Bulgaria and Romania.
In Bulgaria, protesters on Jan. 12 stormed the parliament building in opposition to the “Green Pass” and other restrictions. Attempts to enter parliament resulted in clashes with police and multiple arrests.
Similar events transpired recently in Romania, where on Dec. 21, 2021, protesters attempted to enter Romania’s parliament as part of a protest against proposed legislation making the “Green Pass” mandatory for workers.
Disagreements that have since followed between the parties which comprise Romania’s governing coalition have resulted in talks on this proposed policy coming to a standstill.
Notably, Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest and second-lowest COVID vaccination rate in the EU as of this writing.
Herd immunity as official policy?
As attempted moves toward wide-ranging vaccine mandates and broader implementation of vaccine passports appear to be floundering in Europe, such hesitation has increasingly been accompanied by ever more vocal suggestions that a form of herd immunity, via natural infection stemming from the rapid spread of the milder Omicron variant, should be considered at the policymaking level.
In Israel, for instance, a country that was among the first to move forward with a mass vaccination and booster campaign against COVID, health officials are mulling a “mass infection model.”
On Jan. 11, EU regulators, who had previously supported the administration of COVID booster shots every three months, had a sudden about-face, warning about the dangers the continued administration of boosters could pose for the human immune system.
That same day, the World Health Organization issued a remarkably similar warning, stating that “a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.”
Just one day prior, on Jan. 10, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suggested European officials should move towards treating COVID as an endemic illness, calling for a debate on the issue and for a move away from the detailed pandemic case tracking system in place since early 2020.
Dr. Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK’s vaccine task force, Nick Moakes, chief investment officer of the Wellcome Trust (Britain’s largest independent funder of medical research) made similar remarks. Moakes suggested coronavirus be treated like the common cold.
Meanwhile, certain European countries appear to be shifting away from considering a mandatory vaccination policy for their populations. Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said his country will maintain a system of voluntary vaccination, while Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said his intention to give people a “free choice” on the matter.
This shift is occurring despite remarks made on Dec. 1, 2021, by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, who said it is time to “potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union” and to have a “discussion” about this possibility.
Punitive measures continue elsewhere
The gradual shift away from vaccine mandate policies in Europe and elsewhere is far from uniform, with punitive restrictions and policies continuing to be implemented in several countries.
In Italy, for instance, mandatory vaccination was expanded on Jan. 5 to everyone age 50 and older. The unvaxxed will face a potential fine ranging from 600 to 1,500 euros.
French President Emmanuel Macron made waves in an interview with the Le Parisien newspaper on Jan. 4, justifying the implementation of his country’s “Green Pass” by stating “I really want to piss them off, and we’ll carry on doing this — to the end” and that “irresponsible people [the unvaccinated] are no longer citizens.”
On Jan. 11, the premier of the Canadian province of Quebec, Francois Legault, stated adults who refuse the COVID vaccine will face a “significant” financial penalty.
This statement came on the heels of remarks made on Jan. 7 by Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos. When asked whether mandatory vaccination was on the horizon in Canada, Duclos stated, “I personally think we will get there at some point.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously stated, in May 2021, that “[w]e’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.”
Other countries have resorted to more extreme, albeit “temporary,” measures.
Non-vaccinated individuals in one Australian state, the Northern Territory, were recently required to stay home for a four-day period, with limited exceptions. The conclusion of this four-day ban coincided with the launch of vaccine passports in the territory.
And in the Philippines, the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, called for the arrest of non-vaccinated citizens who venture outside their homes, in light of what he described as the “galloping” spread of the coronavirus.
This nevertheless may represent a milder stance on the part of Duterte, who in April 2020, empowered the police and military with shoot-to-kill orders against lockdown violators.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
He’s the co-founder of an organization, No License For Disinformation (NLFD) that is dedicated to making sure that doctors aren’t allowed to speak freely.
I’d like to see NLFD focused on revoking the license of any physician that says the vaccine is safe and effective. Now that would be a great public service.
To that end, I sent Taylor a DM on Twitter inviting him to debate us on the science:
He’s responded, but won’t debate me. I asked if I could interview him in a recorded interview that we can both post. He can ask me questions and I can ask him questions. Totally neutral.
He refused. He only wants it via messages.
Why is that? Because that way, when he doesn’t know something (which is likely most of the time), he can ask other people and look it up. It’s a tacit admission he doesn’t know enough facts to engage with someone who knows what they are talking about. Other reasons people want to use documents include:
They can change the topic easily and avoid answering questions they don’t like. There is nobody there to challenge them in real time.
The documents in a discussion can span hundreds of pages. So nobody is going to be able to follow it.
He can post his answers to a medium he has exclusive control over (in this case his Medium site) rather than a neutral video debate where nobody has control.
He refused a debate. He refused to be interviewed live. If he really wants to stop misinformation, he’s not trying very hard.
The Russia-US-NATO-OSCE meetings this week have come and gone. The Russian verdict was succinctly delivered by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov, who explained even before the OSCE session was over that the talks have come to “a dead end” and it was unlikely the Russians will participate in any follow-on talks.
This opens the question to what comes next.
Official Washington feels certain that what comes next is a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which could come in the next few weeks and thereby fall within the timetable for such an operation suggested by State Department officials when they met with NATO allies ahead of Biden’s December 7 virtual summit with Putin. The logic put out then was that January-February would be very suitable for a land invasion given that the frozen ground would well support tank movements. One might add to that argument on timing, one further argument that was not adduced: in midwinter it is questionable how long the Russians would want to keep 100,000 soldiers camped in field conditions near the border; such stasis in these severe conditions is not conducive to maintaining morale.
In what I would call a rare show of failing confidence in the predictive powers of the Biden Administration, U.S. media admit to uncertainty over Russia’s next moves. However, they cleverly present this by pointing to the uncertainty of the analysts and commentators on the Russian side.
A featured article in The New York Times a couple of days ago by their Moscow correspondent Anton Troianovsky says it all in the title: Putin’s Next Move on Ukraine Is a Mystery. Just the Way He Likes It”
Indeed, all the best known Russian experts appear to be stymied, none more so than the ubiquitous Fyodor Lukyanov, host of the weekly television show “International Overview” and long time research director of the Valdai Discussion Club, where his peers in the front ranks of American international affairs specialists have gotten to know him. Lukyanov has in recent days humbly admitted he hasn’t a clue to what comes next. Another leading figure in the Russian foreign affairs think tank community, Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, has shown in recent interviews that he is no better informed about what is going on in the Kremlin and what comes next.
Western experts are also shown by our media to be clueless. Today’s Financial Times article “Russia writes off security talks…” ends with a quote from Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace: “Nobody knows Putin’s next move. And we’ll all find out at the same time.”
By definition, ‘experts’ cannot declare they know nothing and be taken seriously. This reminds me of the saying of my boss for five years at ITT Europe in the 1980s, Georges Tsygalnitzky. Each time we sat down to prepare the annual Business Plan he told us that if we calculated the sales forecasts badly, we could be up to 100% off, but if we failed to deliver a Plan we would be “infinitely wrong.” The same rules apply to government defense planning.
No right-thinking person likes the idea of a major war coming to the middle of Europe, as the Ukrainians consider themselves to be. The United States has still more reason to worry about a looming war between Russia and Ukraine, because the outcome of total rout for the Kiev military forces equates to a bloody nose for Washington: its acknowledged 2.5 billion dollar investment in arming and training the Ukrainian military will have been in vain, and the loss would rival the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan in terms of American global prestige. The Biden administration would enter the midterm electoral period reeling from its losses in international relations.
Without wishing the Biden administration ill, I believe their scenario of a Russian invasion is wrong-headed and unimaginative. It fails to come to terms with the Russians’ imperatives on altering the security architecture in Europe as drivers of their current policies, not settling scores with Ukraine, or bringing them back to a common homeland, as Blinken & Company repeat ad nauseam.
So what comes next? In successive articles on this website, I have set out several scenarios, or algorithms. My most recent prognosis in yesterday’s piece was that Putin’s Plan B would likely be purely “military-technical” in the sense of roll-out of medium range nuclear capable missiles in Kaliningrad and Belarus, to place all of Europe under threat of attack with ultra-short warning times, such as Moscow finds unacceptable coming from U.S.-NATO encirclement of its territory.
At the same time, Moscow might announce the stationing off of the American East and West Coasts of its submarines and frigates carrying hypersonic missiles and the Poseidon deep sea nuclear capable drone, all to the same purpose, namely putting a pistol to the head of the U.S. leadership. And now there is even talk of Russia building military installations in Venezuela, likely to host Russian strategic bombers capable of swift attack on the Continental United States without having to fly half the world. And a Cuban delegation is reportedly in Moscow, no doubt talking about posssible installation of missiles there. This is all very reminiscent of the goings-on in 1962.
One reader of this essay has written in, saying that news of Russian submarines posted off the coast of New York and Los Angeles could sink the S&P. Yes, indeed, and this financial damage is an aspect of policy that the Russians have taken into account. The sensitivity of Wall Street to bad news was mentioned specifically by Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov earlier in the week in Q&A. The American middle classes may be indifferent to foreign affairs generally but they are very attentive and politically active when the value of their 401k pension fund is hit. It is not for nothing that wealth fund managers in the City of London, board members of leading U.S. banks and insurance companies are readers of my essays as reposted on my LinkedIn account.
I imagine that Russia’s Plan B could begin implementation in the next couple of weeks and would be given three or four weeks to take effect on Western public consciousness. If the United States and NATO still resisted coming to terms over changes to the Alliance that satisfy Russian demands, then I envision a Plan C which would indeed be kinetic warfare, but quite different from the invasion that figures in U.S. public statements and approaches to its allies.
Without putting a single soldier on the ground in Ukraine or contemplating direct overthrow of its regime and occupation, Russia could by “military-technical means,” such as missile and air attacks destroy the Ukraine’s command and control structure as well as “neutralize” the most radical nationalist militias and other hostile units now threatening Donbas. The destruction of Ukraine’s military infrastructure would by itself put an end to Washington’s plans for extensive war games there later in the year. We may assume that Russian forces will remain massed at the border till such operations are completed.
The clean-up of Ukraine, ending its potential to threaten Russian national security, would be a very strong signal to all of Europe to back off in practice even if no formal treaties are signed with Russia at present.
In an exchange with a close colleague in Washington this morning, we agreed a bet on whether my prediction holds. And in this casino of international politics, I invite readers to place their own bets on what comes next.
To deceive, telling half-truths, or a complete lie is nothing new in politics, particularly security in politics. But until some 20-30 years ago, I would – perhaps naively – see it as an exception. Tragically – and perhaps to many readers’ surprise – it is now the rule. At least in U.S. and NATO circles, and that is particularly regrettably since The West professes to be a democratic system with specific values and even a moral leader to The Rest.
Lying systematically about facts – historical facts – and other countries and cultures should be incompatible with The West’s perception of itself. But, today, it isn’t.
Lies are widespread in so-called security politics when some militarist project doesn’t make any (common) sense to intelligent people, when the real motives have to be covered up and war is being prepared or when the sociological cancer called the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, and the elites it consists of, try to squeeze out even larger military expenditures from their taxpayers.
You lie to manufacture an enemy that can justify what you will do and enrich yourself. With 40+ years of experience in security politics in general and NATO/US policies in particular, I know too much – sorry for the arrogance – and have become too cynical to believe that what goes on goes on for the sake of self-defence, security or peace.
Some quick examples of gross empirically-revealed lying to the word – all the liars still at large:
• In the 1990s, Yugoslav President Milosevic was Europe’s new Hitler (Bill Clinton) and planned a genocide on the Albanians in Kosovo.
• Saddam Hussein’s soldiers threw babies out of their incubators in Kuwait City.
• Afghanistan had to be destroyed because of 9/11.
• Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
• The US-led Global War On Terror – GWOT – has been about reducing terrorism.
• The US/NATO orchestrated regime-change attempt in Syria from 2011 to 2016 was exclusively about Dictator al-Assad’s sudden sadist “killing of his own.”
• Gaddafi was just about to murder all who lived in Benghazi.
• The conflict around Ukraine was started by Putin’s “aggression” on Crimea, nothing preceded it.
• Iran has always plotted and lied to acquire nuclear weapons.
• There are only bad things to say about Russia and China and…
You may continue on your own.
A recent lie is particularly nasty because it is not about some limited event or pretext. It is a cynical attempt to rewrite contemporary history to justify (even further) NATO expansion and intimidate Russia.
The lie is this:
• The West’s leaders never promised Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister Edvard Shevardnadze not to expand NATO eastward. They also did not state that they would take serious Soviet/Russian security interests around its borders. And that, therefore, each of the former Warsaw Pact countries has a right to join NATO if they decide to freely.
It is this lie I am going to deal with below, and you can hear these lies presented by Antony Blinken and Jens Stoltenberg – in slightly different versions – with crystal clarity in the following two videos.
Before I start, let me say that it has never been my style to focus on or attack individuals. I’ve always been more interested in structures and processes and in how they shape people. But there comes a time when leaders must be held accountable because they choose to lie repeatedly, although they do have the choice not to.
And because lies have often been war crimes in the making.
Antony Blinken
First, US Secretary-of-State, Antony Blinken on January 7, 2022 – scroll the video below to 38:30 where he begins to speak and distorts the Ukraine conflict history and then, at 43:00-45:00, continues to say that Russia is driving the false narrative that the West had given assurances to Russia/Gorbachev about not expanding NATO back in 1989-90. It wouldn’t and couldn’t, he says. And all the claims Russia makes are false and shall not permit “us” to be diverted from the main thing: Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine.
Right after (45:40) comes another lie – Russia also invaded Georgia. Anyone who has studied the U.S. Congressional Research Service’s analysis of 2009, “Russia-Georgia Conflict in 2008: Context and Implications for U.S. Interests“, knows that this issue was vastly more complex and that it was Georgia – led by hotheaded U.S. friend Mikheil Saakashvili whose political life ever since has resembled a tragicomic farce – that had occupied the larger part of South Ossetia before Russia intervened massively. The responsibility for the war and violence can not seriously be placed on the Russian side alone.
And he continues his self-righteous accusations. Blinken’s list is long, and he reads his accusation list with a submachinegun speed, sometimes so stumbling and unclear that one must wonder whether he is uncomfortable because he is subconsciously aware that he lies, deceives and omits to make his psycho-political projections of the U.S.’s own dark sides sound intelligent, logical and truthful.
This U.S. Secretary of State can’t be bothered by facts or nuances. Neither could his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, who was proud to say that at the CIA, he directed “We Lied, We Cheated, We Stole. We had entire training courses…“. Mr Blinken continues reading his obsessive, hateful listing of all the sins of Russia. As if the US/NATO did not exist and, therefore, there was no conflict which normally takes a least two parties. In his comprehensive conflict illiteracy, this conflict has only one party: Russia.
The intellectual level is deplorable. NATO allies and mainstream media have no public opinion or critical views on any of it. One must assume that they agree and can make no better analyses themselves.
Now, take a look – at least at the sequences, I’ve mentioned above. Then, I show you how Mr Blinken is lying deliberately under the video.
Now, how can Mr Blinken flatly deny that assurances were given to Gorbachev?
The only source I have been able to find is an article by Steven Pifer from 2014, which argues that Gorbachev himself denies that NATO expansion was ever discussed, “Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says “No” which refers to an interview with Gorbachev in Russia Beyond.
But this is a piece of citation fraud.
Steven Pifer quotes from it but stops right before the well-known statement in the interview article by then U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker, that “NATO will not move one inch further east.” He also omits these words by Gorbachev himself:
“The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. With regards to Germany, they were legally enshrined and are being observed.”
Can this really be interpreted to mean that Gorbachev says that no assurances were ever given?
We get a key to why Blinken uses a fake analysis: Because it fits his posturing as a paragon of truth and because Mr Pifer is a senior fellow at Brookings but also a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and adviser to one of the most hawkish think-tanks, Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.
A slight twist, omission or interpretative casuistry isn’t that important, is it? Well, if you are not yet convinced that Mr Blinken lies deliberately, I ask you to now go to the authoritative National Security Archive at George Washington University. It’s an incredible source of facts, and we should thank it for making the truth available through comprehensive documentation on so many security-related issues.
TFF has reproduced two essential pieces from that archive of irrefutable documentation that Gorbachev indeed was given such assurances – “cascades” of them! as is stated in the article – by all the most influential Western leaders at the end of 1989 and into 1990:
“Woerner had given a well-regarded speech in Brussels in May 1990 in which he argued: “The principal task of the next decade will be to build a new European security structure, to include the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations. The Soviet Union will have an important role to play in the construction of such a system. If you consider the current predicament of the Soviet Union, which has practically no allies left, then you can understand its justified wish not to be forced out of Europe.“
Now in mid-1991, Woerner responds to the Russians by stating that he personally and the NATO Council are both against expansion – “13 out of 16 NATO members share this point of view” – and that he will speak against Poland’s and Romania’s membership in NATO to those countries’ leaders as he has already done with leaders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Woerner emphasizes that “We should not allow […] the isolation of the USSR from the European community.”
This is just one of the “cascades” of statements and assurances given to the Russians at the time. Over 30 years ago, 13 out of 16 members were against NATO expansion because they respected Russia’s crisis and legitimate security interests! Today – 2022 – NATO has 30 members.
Is the U.S. Secretary of State, his advisors and speechwriters unaware of the next-door National Security Archives and what is in them concerning one of contemporary history’s most important events: the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact? Are we really to believe that they have no clue about the conditions and dialogues at the end of the first Cold War? If so, they ought to resign or be fired for their unbelievable incompetence.
If not so – if they know the content of these historical documents – Mr Blinken, his advisors and speechwriters know that they lie.
Their words, therefore, should never be trusted. Neither should the media that avoid highlighting these lies and thereby become complicit. The task of a supposedly free press is to reveal the power abuse of democratically elected people who deliberately fill their constituencies with lies.
Simple as that.
Jens Stoltenberg
In this press conference video from January 7, 2022, NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg states some of the same rhetoric, distortions, simplifications and lies. Not to mention platitudes accompanied by an almost funny body language of bombastic gestures to compensate for his weak content, mantras and repetitions.
Listen at around 19:00 minutes how he maintains that NATO enlargement has been “extremely important for stability and peace and freedom and democracy in Europe” where it can indeed be argued that that enlargement is the main reason that Europe is now in a situation which can reasonably be called the 2nd Cold War.
Why else has NATO not created the desired and stipulated peace and stability since it was created in 1949? So, no, Mr Stoltenberg, you cannot continue – like your masters in Washington – to argue that the present war risks are caused by Russia and Russia alone? If that’s what they order you to say, you have the option to choose decency and resign.
The NATO Secretary-General repeats that each state has a sovereign right to decide its own course and choose its own security arrangements. And that NATO has not dragged in anybody, and they have all just decided democratically to become a member.
That is simply not true.
NATO as an alliance has enormous resources to influence opinions in potential member states. Contrary to his open door talk, NATO’s Charter speaks only about inviting new members, not about holding a door open for anyone who might want to join.
It should be well-known by now – but isn’t – that in the late 1990s, Vladimir Putin asked to join NATO – but it didn’t happen, did it, Mr Stoltenberg? And why not? Because Putin – Russia – wanted to be invited as an equal partner and not sit and wait till Montenegro had become a member, to put it bluntly. NATO decided to close the door at Putin’s request.
And what an exciting thought: Russia in NATO! Who would Mr Stoltenberg and Mr Blinken – and all the rest of the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC, then have to put all the blame on? How then legitimate NATO’s permanent armament and 12% higher military expenditures than Russia’s?
Mr Stoltenberg must know that he lies when saying NATO has an open door. It doesn’t for Russia. It doesn’t even have open ears for Russia’s security concerns (which each and every NATO member, the U.S. in particular, would consider reasonable if a Russian military alliance incrementally crept close to their borders).
And he must know that he lies when he acts as though he does not know that Russia has been against that very NATO enlargement that he fakes has been so positive for all of Europe during no less than 30 years.
Funnily, Stoltenberg first emphasises (around 19:30) that all new NATO members have freely decided to join. Then he boasts about all NATO does to train, help, support candidates and how important Ukraine is as a NATO partner while not a member. As he says, candidates need to carry through reforms to meet NATO standards. And NATO gives them “practical and political support” so they can – later – meet NATO standards and become members.
What an extraordinary altruism NATO radiates! Are we really to believe that NATO certainly drags in no one, as he maintains?
NATO set up an office in Kyiv, Ukraine, already in 1994, and here you can see how – incrementally – Ukraine has been dragged in, seduced, and promised a great Euro-Atlantic future in one document after the other.
And here you’ll see how Olga Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, standing at NATO’s H.Q. with Stoltenberg, consistently talks about NATO as Ukraine’s “allies,” expect all kinds of guarantees and – in Foreign Policy of course – argues that Ukraine Needs a Clear Path to NATO Membership in the face of Russian aggression.
And now, the integration process has probably gone so far that neither NATO nor Ukraine would be able to see any other alternative but full membership at some point. Being fiancées, why not marry through a formal membership – as has been said about Sweden?
In its Russia-humiliating policies, NATO has not even seen it coming: That with all the promises, structures and processes accumulating and creating expectations, the alliance would, at some point, run into serious conflict with Russia. If so, the entire alliance suffers from conflict illiteracy and a tremendous lack of foresight.
An that is why you have to construct Russia as a huge militarily aggressive state with an unsympathetic leader – one “we” can freely demonise and don’t even have to listen to.
Now, listen then to this Stoltenberg statement about the – real – importance of NATO’s help (20:45): “…It also makes the societies of Ukraine and Georgia stronger. So resilient, well-functioning societies are also less vulnerable from interference from Russia.”
Just a welcoming open NATO door to countries that decide freely and democratically that they want to knock on it?
It’s time for a reality check in NATO Realpolitik’s – outdated – world. If you do not manifestly want to provoke and increase war risks, you would do it completely differently every day since 1989.
The NATO expansion basis is obvious: Get as many as possible into NATO, demonise Russia and Putin and make it impossible for Russia to have any influence in Europe and on its future.
How strange, indeed, that Russia perceives the Alliance’s expansion right up to its borders as a deliberate military threat and a politically motivated undermining of its status and power!
How surprising that it thinks its security interests in its near-abroad should be respected, just because it has been invaded historically from the West and contained all along its borders since the Second World War in which, by the way, it lost some 24 million people!
It is tragic beyond words that the West has not a single politician today like Willy Brandt, Egon Bahr, Olof Palme or any of the real statesmen who gave Gorbachev cascades of assurance because they possessed two essentially important qualities: intellectual competence and empathy, a wish and ability to try to live themselves into the situation of “the other” and thereby think in terms of common security at lower military levels.
They were mature personalities basing their policies on analysis and consultations. They knew that you can only achieve security with and not against “the other”.
Instead, NATO has only anti-intellectual, self-centred and -aggrandising militarists running the self-defeating “know-everything-listen-to-nobody” show foolproven by history to lead to war.
And it is tragic beyond words that the peoples of Europe do not debate these issues and that all alternatives to militarism have been deprived of all their resources while NATO militarism costs trillions of dollars what are desperately needed in all other sectors of Western society.
In summary, the US/NATO world threw away the most significant and precious opportunity to create peace in Europe after 1945, when it decided to take advantage of Russia’s weakness. As suggested by Gorbachev and many security and peace intellectuals at the time, the members of the old blocs could have joined forces and created an entirely new all-European security and peace architecture.
We are now facing the tragic consequences of the arrogant winner-takes-it-all policy manifested by the US Clinton administration’s decision to ignore all the assurances and begin expanding NATO eastward in 1994, helped by submissive European allies that had neither the intellectual capacity nor political will to manifest their own interests.
That is why they have to lie to us today.
Notes
1. Over the years, TFF has published numerous analyses that can serve as supplements to this article. Several of them contain predictions and early warnings about the situation we are now facing:
2. When you see the two videos above, note that all questions from the media are very understanding of the two speakers’ statements. Like – how will NATO ensure that it can react swiftly if Russia should invade Ukraine, etc. Press conferences have become carefully planned stage events with written statements being read allow and carefully selected pro-military media – critical questions a prior cancelled by organisers and reinforced by self-censorship. Where did we see that before? In the Soviet Union, but just done more clumsily.
With Russia challenging Western unilateralism in a way not seen since the end of the Soviet Union, two major issues keep coming to the fore. Both, it seems, are centered on America’s flagship military bloc, NATO.
First, there is Moscow’s claim that there was a Western promise not to expand NATO beyond its Cold War area. Second, there is a Western claim that NATO cannot, let alone will not, put an end to admitting new member states.
This is no mere rhetoric; these are crucial points. Russia’s insistence on a thorough review and comprehensive, bindingly codified reset of post-Cold War security relations with the West hinges on its claim that prior Western assurances were broken. Talk and informal promises, the Kremlin says, are not enough anymore because they have turned out to be unreliable. On the other side of the quarrel, the West is rejecting a Russian key demand – to stop NATO expansion – by entrenching itself behind its claim that NATO simply must keep the door open to new members.
Both claims can be verified. Let’s take a look at the facts. Moscow is right in its assertion that the West has broken its promises.
Such pledges were made twice to Russia, as a matter of fact. In 1990, during the negotiations over the unification of West and East Germany, and then, again, in 1993, when NATO was extending its Partnership for Peace policy eastward. In both cases, the assurances were given by US secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, respectively. And in both cases, they took it upon themselves to speak, in effect, for NATO as a whole.
Despite clear evidence, there are still Western publicists and even active politicians who deny or relativize these facts, such as, for instance, Cold War Re-Enactor and former American ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. Let’s address their objections.
Regarding the 1993 promises, the case is extremely simple. As Angela Stent – a widely recognized American foreign policy expert and practitioner with no bias in Russia’s favor – has summarized it in 2019, two “US ambassadors… later admitted that Washington reneged on its promises” – of 1993, that is – “by subsequently offering membership to Central Europe.” Then-Russian president Boris “Yeltsin was correct in believing that explicit promises made… about NATO not enlarging for the foreseeable future were broken when the Clinton administration decided to offer membership,” – and not merely partnership, as Christopher had assured Yeltsin – “to Central Europe.”
The 1990 case is a little more complicated, but not much. There, too, the evidence for an explicit promise is clear. Here is the foremost American expert, Joshua Shifrinson – like Stent beyond any suspicion of favoring Russia – on the issue, writing in 2016:
“In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer… Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, [the] U.S. could make ‘iron-clad guarantees’ that NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward.’… Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.”
To be clear, Shifrinson, a careful scholar, has also explained that American negotiators and leaders started going back on this promise very quickly. But that makes zero difference to two facts: First, the promise was made, and timing suggests strongly that it mattered to Russia’s acquiescence to German unification on entirely Western terms. In other words: Moscow kept its part of the deal, the West did not. Second, even while rapidly backpedaling internally, American politicians continued to give Russia the – false – impression that its security interests would be considered. Put differently, the initial – and consequential – promise was not only broken; the deception was followed up with even more deception.
Those representatives of the West still in denial of what happened in 1990, such as Mark Kramer, for instance, also often quote former Soviet president Gorbachev: He has stated, after all, that the infamous “not-one-inch” promise referred strictly to East Germany only. Hence, the West’s defenders argue, it wasn’t about NATO beyond East Germany at all.
Frankly, though popular, that is an extraordinarily silly argument: First, Gorbachev has an understandable interest in not being held responsible for the security-policy fiasco of letting NATO expand as it liked. Secondly, even if the 1990 negotiations were strictly about East Germany, please remember their real context: The Soviet Union was still there and so was the Warsaw Pact. Thus, two things are obvious – as long as we all argue in good faith: First, in specific terms, the 1990 promise could only be about East Germany. And, second, it of course clearly implied that anything east of East Germany would be, if anything, even more – not less – off-limits to NATO.
Another line of Western defense can only be described as fundamentally dishonest: NATO itself – and apparently the current American secretary of state Antony Blinken as well – now quite suddenly remember that “NATO Allies take decisions by consensus and these are recorded. There is no record of any such decision taken by NATO. Personal assurances from individual leaders cannot replace Alliance consensus and do not constitute formal NATO agreement.”
That sounds great! If only James Baker and Christopher Warren had known about it when making their promises about NATO to Gorbachev and then Yeltsin!
Seriously? Two US secretaries of state address Moscow as if they had the right to speak for and shape NATO. Moscow, very plausibly – given the way NATO really works – assumes that they can. And when these promises are then broken, that is Russia’s problem? News flash: If you really follow that twisted logic, you would have justified the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as “fraternal help” as well. Because formally that’s what it “was.”
What about the West’s contention that NATO must maintain an “open door” policy, or, put differently, cannot possibly agree with Russia to stop expanding? That claim, unlike Moscow’s about NATO promises, is incorrect. Here’s why:
NATO argues that its inability to ever close its doors is based on the NATO treaty, its constitution, as it were. Here is NATO’s argument in the original:
“NATO’s ‘Open Door Policy’ is based on Article 10 of the Alliance’s founding document, the North Atlantic Treaty,” which “states that NATO membership is open to any ‘European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area’.” And that “any decision on enlargement must be made ‘by unanimous agreement.’… Over the past 72 years, 30 countries have chosen freely, and in accordance with their domestic democratic processes, to join NATO. This is their sovereign choice.”
If all of the above were correct, it would still be a stretch to believe that such things can never be changed – as if they were a natural force akin to gravity – but, at least, we could understand why it is a challenge to make such changes.
Yet, in reality, in this case there is no reason to accept NATO’s surprisingly far-fetched and inconsistent interpretation of its own founding document. Because what Article 10 actually says is that the door is open to every European state that can “contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area” and that the admission of any such state to the bloc can only happen by the “unanimous consent” of all current NATO members.
None of this, actually, contradicts the possibility of NATO one day stating that for the future (unlimited or with precise dates) no further states can possibly help “contribute” to its security and therefore no further states can be admitted. NATO would be entirely within its rights doing so; and Article 10 would be perfectly fine.
Regarding NATO’s statement that it is every European state’s sovereign right to “join,” it does not withstand elementary scrutiny: If that were so, then both the “unanimous consent” of all current members and the distinction between applying and joining would be meaningless. That is an obviously absurd position. In reality, states have a right to apply, not to join – by NATO’s own rules, which someone at NATO seems to very badly misunderstand.
Put differently: NATO’s “Open Door Policy” is exactly that: a policy. It is not a natural law or even something that NATO is obliged to do by its own founding document (which would still not bind anyone else, actually). A policy, however, is, of course, open to revision. NATO’s claims that it “cannot” stop admitting is, therefore, strictly nonsensical. In reality, it chooses not to want to stop admitting, unfortunately.
In sum, Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO, and these promises were broken. NATO is wrong: It can, actually, shut the door; it just doesn’t feel like it.
These things are, actually, not hard to grasp. Hence, what is perhaps most worrying about the currently dominant Western narratives on these issues is not even that they are incorrect but that, apparently, parts of the Western elites, intellectual and political, really believe their own nonsense. But let’s hope they are deliberately distorting the truth. Because otherwise they have started buying into their own propaganda. And if that is the case, it is very hard to see how negotiations will ever succeed.
Tarik Cyril Amar is an historian from Germany at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
In just a few hours, my short tweet on myocarditis Google search rates went viral. Here’s the reason why search rates skyrocketed (hint: it’s because cases skyrocketed).
I wrote this Tweet and it blew up really fast: over 100,000 views in the first 3 hours:
Of course, there were many people who wrote something to the effect of “Um. Those are Google searches. That means people searching about it. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Really?!? Nothing?!? I disagree. I think it does mean something. It confirms every other piece of data I’ve seen.
A critical thinker might ask the question, “Why would people suddenly start searching about myocarditis shortly after the vaccines rolled out and not before?”
The answer seems obvious: clearly, interest in the topic increased a lot shortly after the vaccines rolled out. Is there a different explanation that is more likely?
Here are some of the reasons why the interest in myocarditis went up so much:
UK data shows the rates of myocarditis increased after the vaccines (see VaccineEssentials slide 54).
All of the cardiologists (people like Peter McCullough) I’ve talked to have confirmed that the rates of myocarditis have gone up after the vaccines have rolled out compared to pre-vaccine. Do you know of any cardiologists who claimed myocarditis cases went down after the vaccines rolled out?
Young kids seem to be getting myocarditis regularly now whereas you’d pretty much never see these cases before the vaccines rolled out (see VaccineEssentials slide 50)
I’d love to get an explanation of this from mainstream medical doctors, but they refuse to talk to me because I don’t believe the vaccines are safe.
The evidence says that the vaccines are much more dangerous than we’ve been told
Scientists are always looking to discover which hypothesis better fits the data that is observed.
Having multiple data points gives higher confidence in the result. If 10 data points are consistent with a hypothesis, that makes it more likely that that hypothesis is the correct one.
In the current case, all the data I’m aware of is consistent with the hypothesis that the vaccines are super dangerous and doesn’t comport at all with their hypothesis that the vaccines are perfectly safe.
Is there credible conflicting data?
If anyone would like to show me evidence of how the actual myocarditis rates plummeted after the vaccine rollout, please let me know and I’ll list that here.
MELBOURNE, Australia — After winning his visa appeal case in the Australian courts, the world’s number one tennis player Novac Djokovic was arrested and taken into custody by the country’s Border Force.
Following his court victory last week, the world’s top professional tennis player was arrested for refusing to comply with the country’s mandatory vaccination rule.
It is believed that Djokovic’s previous court victory had publicly embarrassed Australia on the global stage, and so angry ministers vowed to take revenge against the “anti-vaxxer” Serbian athlete.
The second visa hearing is set to take place on Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. Melbourne time.
Djokovic, who came to Australia to defend his Australian Open tennis title, will now be forced to further languish in custody while he awaits yet another court hearing over the status of his visa – held in the same hotel he had triumphantly left before.
Australia’s immigration minister Alan Hawke is claiming that the ‘unvaccinated’ 20-time Grand Slam winner somehow poses ‘a risk to public health’ and ‘public order’ as his presence in the country risks encouraging ‘anti-vaccine sentiment’ among the Australian public.
Lawyers for Djokovic believe the cancellation of his visa is “irrational.”
Djokovic had previously obtained a valid visa to play in the tournament based on proof of a prior recovery from an infection. But Australian bureaucrats unilaterally quashed his legal visa status, forcing the world-class athlete to miss his pre-event training while he was being detained in an immigration ‘hotel’ detention center for almost a week. Following his release last week, fans celebrated and breathed a sigh of relief that the world’s top player would be allowed to compete in the tournament.
It is believed that vindictive minister Alex Hawke could not accept the possibility that Djokovic, one of the only players in his sport to refuse the experimental gene-based pharmaceutical injection, might win the tournament and become an inspiration role model of health freedom for millions around the world.
“I consider that Mr. Djokovic’s presence in Australia may pose a health risk to the Australian community, in that his presence in Australia may foster anti-vaccination sentiment” said Hawke.
However, Hawke was forced to admit that he didn’t even read Djokovic’s case file because “I’m not medically trained,” and that the player’s recovering Covid status poses only a “negligible” risk to others.
Physicians also recommend legislative and administrative action, to prevent disruption of physicians’ treatments, or putting healthy children or the COVID-recovered at further risk.
16,000 physicians and medical scientists recently published the Rome Covid Declaration, to alert citizens to the deadly consequences of disrupting life-saving treatment and suppressing open scientific discussion.
So, when it makes headline news that less than 300 physicians have signed a letter that went to Spotify, that the podcast that I did with Joe Rogan should be removed from Spotify, I can only chuckle… After all, it has only been viewed around 50 million times and to their 300, I raise them 16,000.
At least the Daily Mail actually did a piece that wasn’t totally negative about what I said. Quotes from the Dail Mail article below:
In the podcast episode, Rogan talked about Malone’s ban from Twitter, which happened just one day before the podcast was released.
‘They removed you for not going along with whatever the tech narrative is because tech clearly has a censorship agenda when it comes to Covid in terms of treatment, in terms of whether or not you are promoting what they would call ‘vaccine hesitancy’ – they can ban you for that,’ Rogan said, adding that Malone is ‘one of the most qualified people in the world to talk about vaccines’.
Malone responded by questioning: ‘If it’s not okay for me to be a part of the conversation even though I’m pointing out scientific facts that may be inconvenient, then who is?
‘Whether or not I’m factually correct or not – and I freely admit no one’s perfect. I’m not perfect. It’s one of my core points is people should think for themselves.’
‘And I try really hard to give people the information and help them to think, not to tell them what to think,’ the doctor added, pointing out that ‘no one can debate the dispute that I played a major role in the creation of this tech’.
Malone later alleged on the podcast that many of the pharmaceutical companies administering vaccines – such as Pfizer and Moderna – have ‘financial conflicts of interest’.
In what appeared to be an effort to establish his credibility, Malone reassured: ‘I think I’m the only one that doesn’t. I’m not getting any money out of this.’
Meanwhile, as the creator of the mRNA technology used in Covid vaccines, many questioned why Malone would then speak so strongly against getting jabbed.
Malone claimed the answer was simply ‘because it’s the right thing to do’.
He said: ‘For me, the reason is: Because what’s happening is not right. It’s destroying my profession, it’s destroying the practice of medicine worldwide, it’s destroying public health in medicine.’
He continued: ‘I’m a vaccinologist. I’ve spent 30 years developing vaccine. A stupid amount of education learning how to do it and what the rules are.
‘And for me, I’m personally offended by watching my discipline get destroyed for no good reason at all except, apparently, financial incentives, and – I don’t know – political a**-covering’.
The controversial doctor also offered his expertise on the government’s Covid-19 response.
‘Our government is out of control,’ he said, adding: ‘They are lawless. They completely disregard bioethics. They completely disregard the federal common rule. they have broken all the rules that I know of – that I have been trained on for years and years and years.’
Read the declaration from the International Association of Physicians and Medical Scientists.
Two members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform want the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to produce the transcript of a conference call between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins during which the two discussed possible origins of COVID-19.
In a letter this week to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote:
“It was on this conference call that Drs. Fauci and Collins were first warned that COVID-19 may have leaked from the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and, further, may have been intentionally genetically manipulated.”
Reps. Comer and Jordan also wrote that despite Fauci’s claims to the contrary, he knew the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain of function research in Wuhan through a grant to Eco-Health Alliance.
“It is unclear if Dr. Fauci reported any of these issues to his superiors,” Comer and Jordan wrote. “We need to know the entirety of what Dr. Fauci knew and when he knew it.”
The letter followed the release of emails revealing Fauci may have withheld information pointing to the possibility that the SARS Co-V-2 virus originated in the lab in Wuhan, China.
The Congressmen gave HHS until Jan. 18 to respond to questions put forth in the letter, including:
Did Drs. Fauci or Collins warn anyone at the White House about the potential COVID-19 originated in a lab and could be intentionally genetically manipulated?
If these concerns were not shared, why was the decision to keep them quiet made?
What new evidence, if any, came to light about COVID-19 between Feb. 1, 2020, and Feb. 4, 2020, to alter the belief it originated in a lab?
Did Drs. Fauci or Collins edit the Nature Medicine paper entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2”?
Would having this knowledge earlier have benefitted either vaccine or treatment development?
By February 1, 2020, were Drs. Fauci or Collins aware of the State Department’s warnings about Wuhan Institute of Virology safety?
Would this warning have changed the early response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
The letter concluded:
“By continuing to refuse to cooperate with our request, your agencies are choosing to hide information that will help inform the origins of the ongoing pandemic, prevent future pandemics, respond to future pandemics, inform the United States’ current national security posture, and restore confidence in our public health experts. HHS and NIH’s continued obstruction is likely to cause irreparable harm to the credibility of these agencies.”
Throughout the pandemic, the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) published numerous false and misleading studies that bolstered national and international political goals and guided social media censorship. Three recent examples illustrate the issue.
1) Covid, kids and diabetes
A recent CDC study falsely suggested that covid increased the risk of type 1 or type 2 diabetes in children, see reviews here and here (the study didn’t consider obesity rates, for instance). The misleading CDC study was published in parallel to the ongoing covid child vaccination campaign.
In reality, it is covid vaccines that have been shown to cause, in some cases, elevated (pre-diabetic) blood sugar levels and life-threatening diabetic ketoacidosis, while ineffective lockdowns and school closures have led to an unprecedented increase in childhood obesity (and possibly diabetes).
2) Face masks in schools
In September, the CDC published a study falsely claiming that masks reduced coronavirus infections in schools, see reviews here and here (“profoundly misleading”, “very shaky science”).
In reality, face masks have had no impact at all on coronavirus infections; in fact, the official CDC school study from May 2021 confirmed this, but the result was never publicized.
More recently, the CDC has begun recommending N95/FFP2 masks to the general public, but data from Germany and Austria showed already in 2021 that these masks had no effect, either.
3) Natural immunity
In October, the CDC published a study falsely claiming that vaccine immunity was more robust than natural (i.e. infection-acquired) immunity, see reviews here and here (“highly flawed”).
In December, the CDC director publicly stated that “no safety problems” had been seen during the vaccination of young children (5-11), whereas the CDC’s own VAERS reporting system showed already numerous cases of serious cardiovascular, neurological and allergic adverse events in this age group at very low risk of severe covid (see image below).
Conclusion
In conclusion, pandemic guidance by the US CDC, as well as media reporting and social media censorship relying on it, have often turned out to be misleading and unjustified. To evade political misinformation campaigns, citizens should always double-check official claims.
The so-called “rules-based international order” aims to facilitate a hegemonic world, which entails displacing international law. While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the principle of sovereign inequality.
The rules-based international order is commonly presented as international law plus international human rights law, which appears benign and progressive. However, this entails introducing contradictory principles and rules. The consequence is a system devoid of uniform rules, in which “might makes right”. International human rights law introduces a set of rules to elevate the rights of the individual, yet human-centric security often contradicts state-centric security as the foundation of international law.
The US as the hegemonic state can then choose between human-centric security and state-centric security, while adversaries must abide strictly by state-centric security due to their alleged lack of liberal democratic credentials. For example, state-centric security as the foundation of international law insists on the territorial integrity of states, while human-centric security allows for secession under the principle of self-determination. The US will thus insist on territorial integrity in allied countries such as Ukraine, Georgia or Spain, while supporting self-determination within adversarial states such as Serbia, China, Russia and Syria. The US can interfere in the domestic affairs of adversaries to promote liberal democratic values, yet the US adversaries do not have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US. To facilitate a hegemonic international order, there cannot be equal sovereignty for all states. … continue
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