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Sen. Johnson Threatens Legal Action Unless HHS Turns Over Unredacted Emails on COVID Vaccine Safety

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |November 22, 2024

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Tuesday demanded public health agencies provide complete and unredacted documents about the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines, after learning of extensive redactions in documents released in response to multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

In a letter sent Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Johnson said the redactions make the documents nearly impossible to comprehend and obscure the public’s understanding of issues like myocarditis and pericarditis linked to vaccines.

He also called out the agencies for not responding to his own requests for COVID-19 vaccine safety information. He wrote:

“The lack of transparency from your agencies during the Biden presidency has been appalling. Your agencies’ refusal to provide complete and unredacted responses and documents to my numerous oversight letters on the development and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines has hindered Congressional oversight and has jeopardized the public’s health.”

Johnson, an outspoken critic of the government’s handling of COVID-19-related information, sent over 60 public letters requesting more transparency on virus origins, early treatment and vaccine safety.

“What is clear from these excessive redactions, however, is a concerted effort to obscure Congress’ and the public’s understanding of your agencies’ detection of and response to COVID-19 vaccine adverse events such as myocarditis and pericarditis,” he wrote.

Johnson’s latest request demands the agencies preserve and release unredacted documents, specifically three documents he said comprised “only a small fraction” of the documents on myocarditis and pericarditis that the agencies “continue to conceal.”

Johnson gave the agencies until Dec. 3 to respond, warning that if the agencies don’t comply, he would take further action, including issuing subpoenas once he becomes chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the next Congress.

CDC delayed telling public about link between vaccines and myocarditis

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) scientists Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., and Brian Hooker, Ph.D., in 2022 published a study showing the CDC delayed reporting the incidence of myocarditis to the general public for three months after the first statistically significant signal appeared in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.

CHD, attorney Ed Berkovich, The Epoch Times and others submitted FOIA requests seeking more information about what the public health agencies knew and when.

In his letter, Johnson cited responses to those FOIA requests as examples of how the agencies obstructed attempts by the public to hold them accountable.

For example, heavily redacted documents indicate that then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky had received Pfizer documents regarding myocarditis and pericarditis by May 22, 2021. However, the Pfizer report provided via FOIA was completely redacted except for the cover page, making it impossible to decipher what Walensky learned and when.

Johnson included the FOIA documents in his letter so the public could see the extent of the redactions.

The documents showed that after receiving the FOIA data, Walensky and other CDC officials considered whether to issue a public warning about the risk of myocarditis from vaccination. They drafted a Health Alert Network (HAN) for the website, which is how they communicate “urgent public health incidents” with public information officers, practitioners, clinicians and local public health officials.

The draft alert sent to Walensky was redacted when the CDC produced documents in response to a FOIA request. A partially unredacted email to either a Moderna or Pfizer employee indicated that the agency was debating the pros and cons of issuing a HAN, but didn’t “want to appear alarmist.”

The agency never issued the alert. Instead, the CDC said on its website that there were “increased cases of myocarditis and pericarditis” reported but the CDC continues to recommend the vaccine for everyone ages 12 and up.

Johnson requested all documents about the alert, but the CDC has not provided them.

In Johnson’s third example, the Biden White House sent top public health officials 17 pages of talking points for a “tough QA” on COVID-19. In the FOIA documents, all the topics are redacted, making it impossible to know what the White House was communicating.

“Ultimately, despite your agencies’ awareness of the risks associated with the COVID-19 vaccines, the main talking point from these and other public health officials was uniform and entirely deceptive: the vaccines are safe and effective,” Johnson wrote.

Pattern of stonewalling and evading by government health agencies

Risa Evans, staff attorney at CHD, told The Defender that over the last several years, CHD has filed several FOIA requests with the FDA, CDC and National Institutes of Health seeking records connected with post-authorization safety monitoring of COVID-19 shots.

“We have found that obtaining these records is a challenge, due to a mix of denials, redactions and delays by the agencies,” she said.

When the agencies failed to respond to FOIA requests for records related to safety signals, CHD filed multiple FOIA lawsuits seeking the requested documents.

In one case the FDA requested at least 18 months to fulfill the request — after it had already delayed 14 months.

“The agencies’ failure to respond to our requests in a timely and open fashion is particularly ironic in light of recent statements by Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, calling for more transparency as a way of combating vaccine ‘hesitancy,’” Evans said.

The FDA also famously attempted to delay documents related to the licensing of Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for 75 years.

The U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic also investigated Dr. David M. Morens, a 25-year veteran of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci, after it was revealed he used his personal email address to evade FOIA requests for communications related to the origins of COVID-19.

Emails made public during that investigation also showed that Morens connected Fauci to Kaiser Health News reporter Arthur Allen through a “secret back channel.”

Jablonowski, who was among the first to detail the deception around myocarditis, told The Defender if the public health agencies aren’t compelled to be transparent, they can’t be held accountable.

He said the FDA and the CDC, “are not transparent in matters of myocarditis resulting from the COVID-19 vaccines. They are opaque, hidden behind redactions, and not accountable to the American people or members of Congress.”

“This is a rot in our government, and it spreads well beyond the confines of myocarditis, the CDC and the FDA,” he added. “How far beyond? We won’t know until we broadly investigate the actions and actors.”

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Healthcare workers file class action lawsuit against the Ontario government over its COVID-19 vaccine directive

The Canadian Independent | November 22, 2024

A $170-million class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Province of Ontario and its Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Kieran Moore, alleging negligence, misfeasance in public office, tortious inducement to breach contract, and violations of privacy rights related to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates for healthcare workers.

Lisa Wolfs is the primary plaintiff in the lawsuit. She was previously employed as a Clinical Nurse Educator with London Health Sciences Centre and initiated the suit on behalf of unionized healthcare workers in Ontario. At the heart of the lawsuit is the challenge to the legality of Directive 6, a public health order issued in August 2021 by Dr. Moore.

Court documents show that Wolfs went on medical leave on September 15, 2021, was later cleared to return to work, but was terminated on August 4, 2022, under the enforcement of COVID-19 Directive 6.

Filed under Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act, 1992, the lawsuit seeks to represent tens of thousands of unionized healthcare workers across the province who were subject to the directive. The plaintiff argues that the mandate imposed unauthorized changes to her employment contract, forced the disclosure of personal medical information, and caused significant economic and emotional harm.

Directive 6 mandated that hospitals, home and community care service providers, and ambulance services implement a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for employees, staff, contractors, students, and volunteers.

Under the directive, healthcare workers had to provide proof of vaccination, a medical exemption, or participate in an educational program to maintain their employment. Wolfs argues that these policies led to her termination after nearly 16 years of service, despite her previously exemplary record. Her lawsuit claims that her dismissal violated the terms of her employment contract, which did not include mandatory vaccination as a condition of employment or allow for unpaid leave under these circumstances.

The lawsuit accuses the Ontario government and Dr. Moore of several violations. First, it alleges negligence, claiming that the vaccination policies were implemented without sufficient evidence supporting their efficacy in preventing COVID-19 transmission.

Second, it accuses Dr. Moore of misfeasance in public office, arguing that he acted with reckless indifference or willful blindness to vaccine risks and the lack of long-term safety data.

Third, the lawsuit alleges tortious inducement to breach contract, stating that the directive unlawfully interfered with employment agreements between healthcare workers and their employers.

Finally, it argues that the directive infringed on workers’ privacy rights by requiring the disclosure of vaccination status or medical exemptions.

In addition, the suit questions the public health rationale behind the mandates, referring to Health Canada product monographs. According to the claim, these documents do not indicate that approved vaccines such as Pfizer’s Comirnaty or Moderna’s Spikevax prevent COVID-19 transmission, undermining the stated purpose of the directive. Additionally, the lawsuit raises concerns about vaccine safety, highlighting adverse events reported during clinical trials and instances of product recalls or restrictions.

Seeking $170 million in damages, the lawsuit includes $50 million for pain and suffering, $50 million for misfeasance in public office, $20 million for tortious inducement to breach contract, and $50 million in punitive damages. The claim also includes compensation for lost income, medical monitoring expenses, and legal costs.

The case will proceed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, where the plaintiff will aim to have the lawsuit certified as a class action. If successful, it could set a precedent for addressing grievances related to pandemic-era workplace policies.

Scarlett Martyn, a veteran paramedic in Ontario, reached out to The Canadian Independent to highlight this lawsuit. Martyn is a member of United Healthcare Workers of Ontario (UHCWO), a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization representing thousands of healthcare professionals. The group advocates for health privacy, voluntary and informed consent, and non-discriminatory medical policies in Ontario and across Canada.

Martyn says that UHCWO is raising funds to support the lawsuit. She explained that the organization is crowdfunding to cover potential court costs if class certification is unsuccessful and any named plaintiffs are required to pay legal costs. She also mentioned that if they succeed at the certification stage, the funds raised will be used to cover litigation costs for the class action. You can read more about the UHCWO and donate if you wish at the link below.

https://uhcwo.ca/legal-action

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

House of Representatives Approves Legislation Threatening Nonprofits’ Free Speech

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | November 22, 2024

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives approved legislation that would threaten nonprofit organizations’ exercise of free speech rights. The legislation would accomplish this goal by empowering the US government to selectively clamp down on nonprofits to an extent that targeted organizations may cease to exist. This is all being done in the name of countering terrorism, a trusty standby excuse for the US government exercising authoritarian powers.

The House approved the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act (HR 9495) by a vote of 219 to 184. The “yes” votes came mainly from Republican members, and all the “no” votes were from Democrats plus Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute.

J.D. Tuccille provided an informative critique of HR 9495 in a Friday Reason article. The bill, explained Tuccille, “allows for the ‘termination of tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.’” Continuing, Tuccille wrote:

The designation of organizations as such is left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, based on that official’s judgment that a non-profit group has, in the last three years, provided ‘material support or resources’ to what the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. The language provides for a 90-day window during which time supposed ‘terrorist supporting organizations’ can appeal the designation, but the burden is on them to prove that they’re not guilty.

This turns due process on its head.

The threat from this new bureaucratic power is extreme for targeted organizations. As Tuccille puts it in his article, the loss of “tax -exempt status” is essentially a death penalty for most non-profit organizations.”

What a censorship power this legislation hands over to the executive branch bureaucracy. Nonprofit organizations whose activities challenge the ambitions of the US government and connected individuals, businesses, and organizations, can be snuffed out. Meanwhile, other organizations will have a big incentive to limit their own speech to avoid being similarly targeted for destruction.

During the House floor debate on HR 9495, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) presented a brief, persuasive speech against the bill. Here is the text of his speech:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 9495. As Members of Congress, it is our duty to stand against terrorism and stand up for our common values, but this bill does neither.

What does it do?

What it does is grant sweeping draconian powers to the executive branch to essentially shut down any nonprofit.

On what basis would future administrations, Democratic or Republican, be able to exercise such power?

On a mere accusation.

I repeat, an accusation.

All nonprofits could be under scrutiny. These are decent people who are advocating on issues from religious freedom to animal welfare.

Mr. Speaker, why would conservatives, the very same people who gnashed their teeth at executive overreach, support such a measure?

Why would they suddenly about-face and sacrifice the values they claim to stand for?

It is because this is a gift to the President-elect, Mr. Trump, wrapped up in a bow right before the holidays.

On the campaign trail, he has made no secret of who he would seek to go after. This is bigger than the President-elect because now every President who would be king would be free to seek vengeance on their political opponents for every perceived slight.

I caution my colleagues to consider how far-reaching the consequences of this bill would be. This bill would apply to all future Presidents.

At a time when we should be strengthening our checks and balances and shoring up our guardrails, this legislation would do the opposite.

Mr. Speaker, in the strongest possible terms, I urge my colleagues to vote against this executive branch power grab.

This legislative threat to nonprofit organizations and their free speech can be expected to be rejected by the Democratic controlled Senate and President Joe Biden. But, it will likely be back for another go-round under more amenable conditions come January when the House, Senate, and presidency are all in Republican control.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

Israeli Soccer Hooligans Cry Out as They Strike You

By Kevin Barrett –  American Free Press – November 22, 2024

On November 7, chaos erupted in the streets of Amsterdam. Soccer hooligans flown in from Israel, flanked by Mossad handlers, watched their their Maccabi Tel Aviv team lose 5-0 to the Dutch team Ajax. After the game, the Maccabi fans ran wild, arming themselves with wood sticks and metal pipes and attacking cabs, busses, police vans, and individuals unlucky enough to cross their path. Palestinian flags—a common sight in the Dutch capital—were torn down. As they rioted, the Maccabi fans showcased their favorite chants, including “There are no schools left in Gaza because there are no children left”; “F*** the Arabs,”; and F*** you terrorists, everybody die.”

A video account of the event by a teenage journalist known as Bender showed that the violence was incited by Israelis, not locals. Bender followed the Israelis from the stadium and filmed them arming themselves and attacking people and vehicles. He was threatened and told to stop filming, presumably by the Mossad handlers overseeing the event.

As often happens, the spectacle of foreign soccer hooligans attacking people in their own city led to a defensive response. Locals confronted the hooligans, in some cases getting the better of physical altercations. A few Israeli thugs managed to get themselves beat up, while others were unceremoniously introduced to the pleasures of swimming in Amsterdam’s insalubrious canals.

If British soccer hooligans had attacked Paris, or German soccer hooligans had attacked Prague, media accounts would have been reasonably evenhanded and accurate. But because the hooligans were Israelis attacking the city of Anne Frank, the media sought to convince the world that a third Holocaust had occurred. (The second, of course, was the Hamas raid of October 7, 2023.)

Here are a selection of headlines:

*Israeli Fans Attacked After Soccer Match in Amsterdam; Violence Condemned as Anti-Semitic (Washington Post ).

*Israeli soccer fans targeted in wave of violence in Amsterdam (Fox).

*Holocaust survivor calls vicious mob attack on Jews in Amsterdam a ‘modern-day Kristallnacht’ (New York Post ).

*Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam ambushed by gangs of anti-Israel attackers shouting ‘Free Palestine,’ Netanyahu sends planes to evacuate citizens (New York Post ).

*The New Kristallnacht: Antisemitic Attacks in Amsterdam Demand Global Action (Times of Israel ).

*Global leaders react to Amsterdam pogrom (The Jerusalem Post ).

*Amsterdam Has Failed Its Jews (Spectator ).

The United States Holocaust Museum issued a statement stating that the Museum “strongly condemns the vicious attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam and the outrageous celebrations of those attacks.” The Anti-Defamation League shrieked about the “obscene, unprovoked violence” which it described as follows: “This is what ‘globalize the intifada’ looks like. Mobs of hate-filled people chasing down and attacking innocent Israeli soccer fans who they have dehumanized as ‘Zionists,’ hunting down and brutalizing ordinary people who came to Amsterdam simply to enjoy a soccer match.”

But why did these Israeli “ordinary people” repeatedly commit assault, battery, and vandalism, long before any locals retaliated? Why did the Israeli attacks on people and vehicles draw no response from local police, who pointedly ignored the rioting until the tables had been turned? And why were the hooligans flanked by Mossad agents as they incited a riot?

Dutch scholar and author Alexander Wolfheze, who was in Amsterdam on November 7, describes the event as a “psy-op.” In a November 12 interview with this author Wolfheze agreed with critics who argue that the Israeli hooligans’ attack on Amsterdam was carefully orchestrated by intelligence professionals in order to produce precisely the headlines listed above, and thousands more like them: “I believe that there are PSYOP aspects (to the hooligans’ attack). It happened just before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, something that the mainstream media did not fail to exploit.”

Dr. Wolfheze added that the November 7 Mossad op was also designed to influence Dutch domestic politics: “Holland is once again at the forefront of the Israelization of Europe, the Zionisation of Europe. Holland was the first country to get a real neo-Zionist government (Geert Wilders). And exactly at that time, after the appointment of this new cabinet, this new government here, and this new reality here, we are seeing this program (total Israeli takeover of Holland -KB) being implemented through the hooligans.”

If Israel can attack your country, pretend to be the victim, and force your entire government and mainstream media to go along with the transparent lie, they basically own you. Fortunately, Israel does not own social media journalists like Bender and Max Blumenthal, both of whom were instrumental in exposing what really happened in Amsterdam.

The Israeli attack on Amsterdam once again illustrated the Jewish State’s perfidy, and provided more evidence that when they cry out as they strike you, it isn’t just a hobby—it’s how they make a living.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

Ballistic vs. Cruise Missiles: What’s the Difference?

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 23.11.2024

Russia’s successful combat test of the Oreshnik intermediate-range missile garnered its share of attention and more than a little confusion as media and amateur observers alike began comparing the new ballistic weapon to other weapons in both Russia and NATO’s arsenals, including cruise missiles.

Sputnik sets the record straight by outlining the key differences between these two very distinct types of weapons:

Ballistic missiles

Powered by a single rocket or series of rockets operating in stages to propel them to the required trajectory, ballistic missiles ascend tens of kilometers into the atmosphere, shedding motors and thrusters along the way, with larger ones leaving the atmosphere altogether, after which their payload separates and begins its descent back down toward Earth, traveling in an arc.

Ballistic missiles typically have three flight phases, starting with the boost phase, followed by a midcourse phase – which starts when the rocket motor(s) stop(s) firing and the missile’s payload starts to coast, usually while continuing to ascend, and finally the terminal phase, during which the payload starts the final course toward its target(s).

Some also have a distinct fourth phase, which kicks off after the post-boost phase, during which the onboard multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) bus makes changes to its trajectory, and decoys are released to confuse and saturate enemy missile defenses.

Some ballistic missiles can make changes to their trajectory, so long as onboard rocket fuel allows, but usually, any maneuverability attributed to these weapons is the result of their payloads.

Russia’s Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, for instance, is blasted into space by an ordinary ICBM, but becomes maneuverable after separating from its carrier. MIRV buses also often contain small rocket motors and inertial guidance, allowing alterations to its payload’s trajectory before individual warheads separate.

Cruise Missiles

Cruise missiles are jet engine-powered weapons that stay within the atmosphere throughout their flight. In fact, they often fly at extremely low altitudes, ‘hugging’ the ground as few as a few meters from the surface to avoid detection.

These weapons are designed for precision strikes against an array of ground and sea-based targets and, if fitted with nuclear warheads, can target large built-up areas or entire carrier strike groups (in the case of Russia’s P-800 Oniks, for example). Conventional cruise strikes can be calibrated to attack targets as small as individual buildings or bunkers.

Cruise missiles stay maneuverable through their approach to their targets, featuring GPS, inertial guidance, terrain mapping and/or other tools to guide them. Some designs allow human operators to manually guide missiles in the terminal phase.

Pros and Cons of Ballistic and Cruise

Cruise missiles are typically far cheaper (costing as little as 15% as a typical tactical ballistic missile), with their launch more difficult to detect, and the missiles boasting higher accuracy. However, unless they are nuclear armed, their firepower is typically lower, with the US AGM-86 ALCM air-launched cruise missile boasting the largest payload in this class of weapon – 1,362 kg, while most cruise missiles average about 500 kg.

Ballistic missiles are typically less accurate (with a circular error probable, or CEP, measured in the tens or even hundreds of meters, compared to meters for cruise missiles), but do have a number of distinct advantages – the most obvious of which is payload size (Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat, for example, has a 10,000 kg payload).

Ballistic missiles’ arcing approach also allows their payloads to accelerate to incredible speeds (often hypersonic), while cruise missiles typically stay subsonic or supersonic through their flight, which makes them easier to intercept, and reduces the sheer kinetic force with which they slam down onto their targets.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Collapsing Empire: RIP Royal Navy

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | November 23, 2024

On November 15th, The Times published a remarkable report, revealing serious “questions” are being asked about the viability of Britain’s two flagship aircraft carriers, at the highest levels of London’s defence establishment. Such perspectives would have been unreportable mere months ago. Yet, subsequent reporting seemingly confirms the vessels are for the chop. Should that come to pass, it will represent an absolutely crushing, historic defeat for the Royal Navy – and the US Empire in turn – without a single shot fired.

The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales first set sail in 2017 and 2019 respectively, after 20 years in development. The former arrived at the Royal Navy’s historic Portsmouth base with considerable fanfare, a Ministry of Defence press release boasting that the carrier would be deployed “in every ocean around the world over the next five decades.” The pair were and remain the biggest and most expensive ships built in British history, costing close to $8 billion combined. Ongoing operational costs are likewise vast.

Fast forward to today however, and British ministers and military chiefs are, per The Times, “under immense pressure to make billions of pounds’ worth of savings,” with major “casualties” certain. Resultantly, senior Ministry of Defence and Treasury officials are considering scrapping at least one of the carriers, if not both. The reason is simple – “in most war games, the carriers get sunk,” and are “particularly vulnerable to missiles.” As such, the pair are now widely perceived as the “Royal Navy’s weak link.”

Matthew Savill of British state-tied Royal United Services Institute told The Times that missile technology is developing “at such a pace” that carriers are rapidly becoming easy for Britain’s adversaries to “locate and track”, then neutralise. “In particular,” he cautioned, China is increasing the range of its ballistic and supersonic anti-ship missiles. Meanwhile, Beijing’s “hypersonic glide vehicle”, the DF-17, “can evade existing missile defence systems,” its “range, speed and manoeuvrability” making it a “formidable weapon” neither Britain nor the US can adequately counter.

Savill advocated “cutting one or both of the carriers,” as this “would free up people and running costs and those could be reinvested in the running costs of the rest of the fleet and easing the stresses on personnel”. Nonetheless, he warned that scrapping the carriers would be a “big deal for a navy that has designed itself around those carriers…and that the £6.2 billion paid for them would be a sunk cost.”

That the Royal Navy has “designed itself” around the two carriers is an understatement. For just one to set sail, it must be supported by a strike group consisting of two Type 45 destroyers for air defence, two Type 23 frigates for anti-submarine warfare, a submarine, a fleet tanker and a support ship. This “full-fat protective approach”, Savill lamented, means “most of the deployable Royal Navy” must accompany a single carrier at any given time:

“You can protect the carriers, but then the Navy has put all of its eggs in a particularly large and expensive basket.”

‘National Embarrassment’

March 2021 saw the publication of a long-awaited report, Global Britain in a Competitive Age – “a comprehensive articulation” of London’s “national security and international policy,” intended to “[shape] the open international order of the future.” The two aircraft carriers loomed large in its contents. One passage referred to how HMS Queen Elizabeth would soon lead Britain’s “most ambitious global deployment for two decades, visiting the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific”:

“She will demonstrate our interoperability with allies and partners – in particular the US – and our ability to project cutting-edge military power in support of NATO and international maritime security. Her deployment will also help the government to deepen our diplomatic and prosperity links with allies and partners worldwide.”

Such bombast directly echoed the bold wording of a July 1998 strategic defence review, initiated a year earlier by then-prime minister Tony Blair. Its findings kickstarted London’s quest to acquire world-leading aircraft carriers, which culminated with the birth of HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Britain’s explicit objective, directly inspired by the US Empire’s dependence on carriers to belligerently project its diplomatic, economic, military and political interests abroad, was to recover London’s role as world police officer, and audaciously assert herself overseas:

“In the post-Cold War world, we must be prepared to go to the crisis, rather than have the crisis come to us. So we plan to buy two new larger aircraft carriers to project power more flexibly around the world… This will give us a fully independent ability to deploy a powerful combat force to potential trouble spots without waiting for basing agreements on other countries’ territory. We will… be poised in international waters and most effectively back up diplomacy with the threat of force.”

Blair’s reverie appeared to finally come to pass in May 2021, when HMS Queen Elizabeth set off on a grand tour of the world’s oceans, escorted by a vast carrier strike group. Over the next six months, the vessel engaged in a large number of widely-publicised exercises with foreign navies, including NATO allies, and docked in dozens of countries. Press coverage was universally fawning. Yet, in November, as the excursion was nearing its end, an F-35 fighter launched from the carrier unceremoniously crashed.

The F-35’s myriad issues were by that point well-established. The jet, which has cost US taxpayers close to $2 trillion, entered into active service in 2006 while still under development. It quickly gained a reputation for hazardous unreliability. In 2015, a Pentagon report acknowledged its severe structural issues, limited service life and low flight-time capacity. Two years later, the Department of Defense quietly admitted the US Joint Program Office had been secretly recategorising F-35 failure incidents to make the plane appear safe to fly.

Despite this, the HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales were specifically designed to transport the F-35, to the exclusion of all other fighter jets. However, Britain has all along struggled to source usable F-35s, which produces the ludicrous situation of the two carriers almost invariably patrolling seas with few if any fighters aboard at all, therefore invalidating their entire raison d’être. In November 2023, the Daily Telegraph dubbed these regular “jet-less” forays a “national embarrassment”.

‘Carrier Gap’

An even graver embarrassment, rarely discussed with any seriousness by the British media, is that the two aircraft carriers have been plagued with endless technical and mechanical issues as long as they’ve been in service. Flooding, mid-operation breakdowns, onboard fires, and engine leaks are routine. Both vessels have spent considerably more time docked and under repair than at sea over their brief lifetimes. In 2020, an entire HMS Prince of Wales crew accommodation block collapsed, for reasons unclear.

As the elite US foreign policy journal National Interest acknowledged in March 2024, “the Royal Navy remains unable to adequately defend or operate” its two carriers “independently” – code for the Empire being consistently compelled to deploy its own naval and air assets to support the pair. This is quite some failure, given British officials originally intended for the vessels to not only lead NATO exercises and deployments, but “slot into” US navy operations wherever and whenever necessary.

The Empire’s inability to outsource its hegemonic duties to Britain has created a critical “carrier gap”. Despite maintaining an 11-strong fleet, Washington cannot deploy the vessels to every global flashpoint at once, grievously undermining her power and influence at a time of tremendous upheaval worldwide. In a bitter irony, by encouraging and facilitating London’s emulation of its own flawed and outdated reliance on aircraft carriers, the US has inadvertently birthed yet another needy imperial dependent, further draining its already fatally overstretched military resources.

Several Royal Navy destroyers were originally part of abortive US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, launched in late 2023 to smash Ansar Allah’s righteous anti-genocide Red Sea blockade. Almost immediately, it became apparent the British lacked any ability to fire on land targets, therefore rendering their participation completely useless.

Subsequently, photos emerged of areas on Britain’s ships where land attack cruise missiles should’ve been situated. Instead, the spaces were occupied by humble treadmills, for use as on-board gyms.

It transpired that the appropriate weapons hadn’t been purchased, due to a lack of funds – the money having of course been spent instead on constructing barely operable aircraft carriers, which now face summary defenestration. By investing incalculable time, energy, and money in pursuing the mythological greatness associated with carrier capability, Britain – just like the US Empire – now finds itself unable to meet modern warfare’s most basic challenges. Meanwhile, its adversaries near and far have remorselessly innovated, equipping themselves for 21st century battle.

Days after The Times portended the impending death of London’s aircraft carriers, mainstream media became awash with reports of savage cutbacks in Britain’s military capabilities, in advance of a new strategic defence review. Five Royal Navy warships, all of which had lain disused due to staffing issues and structural decay for some time, were among the first announced “casualties”. What if anything will replace these losses isn’t certain, although it likely won’t be an aircraft carrier.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Hungary slams US for destabilizing regional energy security

RT | November 23, 2024

Washington’s decision to blacklist Russia’s Gazprombank, a key conduit for gas purchases from Russia, is aimed at undermining energy security in the Central European region, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has claimed.

Earlier this week, the US Treasury Department imposed blocking sanctions on more than 50 Russian financial institutions, including Gazprombank, linked to the eponymous Russian gas giant, and six of its international subsidiaries.

The newly introduced restrictions effectively cut off Russia’s primary bank for energy-related transactions from the SWIFT interbank messaging system, meaning it can no longer conduct dollar-based transactions.

“Including Gazprombank to the sanctions list is a decision that deliberately puts some Central European countries in a difficult situation, and deliberately jeopardizes the security of energy supplies” to several nations in the region, Szijjarto wrote on Facebook on Friday.

The Hungarian diplomat stated that any attempts to jeopardize energy supplies to Hungary “either by imposing sanctions or by cutting off transit supplies are considered as an offence against our sovereignty.”

“We reject all the attacks of the kind against our sovereignty, resist the pressure, and pursue our national interests,” he said.

Szijjarto added that he discussed the issue of gas supplies to Hungary with the first deputy head of the Russian Energy Ministry, Pavel Sorokin, on the sidelines of the Istanbul Energy Forum, which convened in Türkiye on November 22.

“We reviewed the situation in the field of gas transportation and confirmed that we will support necessary cooperation for secure energy supplies to Hungary,” he stated.

Budapest is also discussing the situation with the energy ministers of Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, and Serbia, and consulting with Slovakia to find a solution for securing energy supplies, Szijjarto added.

EU nations are still purchasing record volumes of liquified natural gas (LNG) from Russia. Despite the bloc’s plans to eliminate its dependence Russian energy, it remains one of the world’s major importers of Russian fossil fuels.

In August, pipeline gas comprised the largest share of the EU’s purchases of Russian fossil fuels (54%), followed by LNG (25%), according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

They’re at it again… the U.S. and Britain, inciting global war, must be defeated for good

Strategic Culture Foundation | November 22, 2024

This week marks a fateful threshold for the world. In a grave announcement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the three-year proxy war in Ukraine has now reached a global dimension.

The responsibility for this abysmal moment lies fully with the United States’ elitist rulers and their British accomplices. They are inciting global catastrophe in a desperate bid to save their hegemonic empire.

Putin’s announcement on November 21 came only hours after Russia launched a retaliatory strike against Anglo-American aggression. Russia’s new hypersonic ballistic missile destroyed a munitions center in Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine. The conventionally armed missile – called Oreshnik – was deployed in combat for the first time. It delivered several warheads at Mach-10 speed. There is no air defense against such a unique weapon.

The Oreshnik attack was in response to the firing of long-range missiles by the United States and Britain on November 19 and 21 against the pre-conflict territory of the Russian Federation. There is no doubt that the U.S. and British forces were directly involved because, as Moscow has noted, the Ukrainian regime does not have the personnel or logistics capability to operate these advanced NATO weapon systems.

The conclusion is stark. The world is on the cusp of World War Three, a war that would inevitably become a nuclear conflagration and precipitate the end of life on Earth. The evil facing humanity is staggering.

Western barefaced lies to the public

Ludicrously, or perhaps more accurately, fiendishly, Western politicians and media are condemning Russia for the escalation. Their accusations are in flagrant contradiction with the facts. The Western public is being lied to about the sequence and causes of war.

In a move beyond reckless, the United States and Britain attacked Russia with long-range missiles from the territory of Ukraine. The ATACMS and Storm Shadow weapons were aimed at Bryansk and Kursk Oblasts in Western Russia. The American missiles were shot down by Russian air defense, while the British Storm Shadow cruise projectile caused deaths in Kursk.

That barrage marked an open act of war against Russia by the United States and Britain. Hence, the Russian leader commented that the proxy war in Ukraine had now taken on a global dimension.

The American and British leadership went ahead with this aggression even after Russia had explicitly warned several weeks ago that the deployment of such weapons against Russian territory would be seen by Moscow as an act of war. It also followed only hours after Russia revised its nuclear defense doctrine on November 19, defining that the use of long-range conventional weapons from the territory of a non-nuclear state (Ukraine) supplied by nuclear states (the U.S. and Britain) would constitute a joint attack, thereby giving Russia the right to retaliate with nuclear force.

The situation has thus entered the realm of nuclear world war.

Given the aggression initiated by the U.S. and Britain with their ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles, Russia has the legal right to hit those territories and any other territory of the NATO alliance. Russia chose not to do so – for now – limiting its Oreshnik’s target to the territory of Ukraine.

What happens next over the coming days depends on the U.S. and its NATO partners. So far, the White House and Pentagon have sought to (irrationally) blame Moscow for escalation and are saying that the United States will continue to deploy long-range missiles from Ukraine against Russian territory. That remains to be seen if the insanity prevails.

Russia has shown incredible restraint

Far from escalating conduct, Russia has shown incredible restraint, given the relentless provocations by the U.S. and NATO over many months and, indeed, years.

The U.S. and its allies have continually weaponized their corrupt, NeoNazi Ukrainian proxy regime – whose pretend-president and former cross-dressing comedian Vladimir Zelensky was given a standing ovation in the European Parliament this week – despite repeated warnings from Moscow that the dynamic is leading to a world war.

The insanity is compounded by Zelensky’s insatiable demands for more weapons and Western taxpayer handouts worth hundreds of billions of dollars, along with hubristic Western notions that “Russia is bluffing.”

How delusional! The Western leaders are playing Russian Roulette. The United States and its NATO partners are now legitimate targets for Russian strikes. Russia demonstrated this week that it has the capability to breach any Western defense, and it is warning that any further aggression on its territory will be responded to.

President Putin admonished Western ruling elites to think carefully about the choices they are going to make. They can pull back from the abyss and negotiate a diplomatic end to the proxy war. Or they can choose to keep escalating to inevitable disaster.

Western ruling class beyond reason

However, of acute concern is that the Western ruling class seems to be beyond reason and sanity. The U.S. hegemon is facing an existential crisis from its terminal collapse as a global power and loss of imperial supremacy. Starting a war with Russia – even to the point of catastrophe – seems to be the only way the Western imperialist system led by the U.S. can respond.

Significantly, the Biden administration is only a matter of weeks from exiting in disgrace. Incoming President Donald Trump has vowed to end the conflict in Ukraine through prompt negotiations. The U.S. deep state is in a quandary.

The American people voted for Trump on November 5 in large part out of repudiation of the Biden administration, the Democrat Party and its servile adherence to the deep state’s endemic warmongering.

Before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the American ruling class is desperately pushing the proxy war in Ukraine to prevent a negotiated settlement.

Biden’s approval for using ATACMS – followed by the British lackey Prime Minister Keir Starmer – was a brazen U-turn. Only a month ago, they refused such a move. The election of Trump and the prospect of diplomacy with Russia has caused the Western establishment to ramp up the proxy war.

This week saw the 1,000th day of conflict in Ukraine since Russia launched its special military operation to stop NATO aggression on February 24, 2022. The conflict has reached its most dangerous point.

Russia again this week repeated that it is open to a diplomatic settlement, just as it was in late 2021 when it presented far-reaching security proposals to prevent hostilities. The Western elites dismissed that opportunity, choosing the path of war instead. They also sabotaged the Minsk Accords in 2014 and 2015, and the Istanbul peace deal in March 2022. Millions of casualties later, they still want more war, slaughter, and global war, with their grotesque masks of “defending democracy and rules-based order.”

The American people want to end the conflict. The incoming Trump administration appears to be willing to honor the popular demand.

But sanity, morality and democracy are not qualities shared by the imperialist ruling class in the U.S. and its NATO accomplices.

An American deep state coup, then and now

A couple of observations are notable. November 22 marks the date 61 years ago when an American president, JFK, was murdered by the U.S. deep state. A coup d’état was executed very much for the objective of keeping the Cold War going with the Soviet Union because of the vested economic interests of U.S. militarism and the military-industrial complex.

All these years later, the U.S. deep state is attempting another coup against the democratic wishes of the American people for a peaceful end to the proxy war in Ukraine. The U.S. ruling elite want the war against Russia to persist in maintaining their lucrative profits and for existential reasons of empire. Joe Biden is a brain-dead president who is signing orders pushed in front of him by deep-state operatives like Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan just before he wanders off to a retirement home – or into the Amazon jungle à la the hilarious photo-op at the G20 summit in Brazil this week.

Ukraine proxy war back to Nazi Germany

This long perspective also puts the Ukraine proxy war into a proper, wider historical context. The conflict in Ukraine did not start in February 2022. It did not even start with the CIA-backed coup in Kiev against an elected president in February 2014. It did not even start with the U.S.-financed Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. This conflict goes back at least to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 when the United States and its imperialist allies immediately responded by creating the Cold War with its newly forged imperialist instrument known as NATO, in part by deploying Ukrainian fascist collaborators to covertly attack Russia. After World War Two, the CIA and Nazi remnants like spymaster Major General Reinhard Gehlen were united in purpose along with the British MI6 to defeat the Soviet Union. What is transpiring today in Ukraine is the culmination of a systematic conflict, essentially about projecting and maintaining Western imperial power.

The emergence of Russia, China, the BRICS, and the Global South has amplified Western imperial angst and diehard hostility to preserve global power and privilege. The latter hegemonic Western system is the epitome of fascism and neocolonialism.

Historical nemesis

There is a profound historical nemesis at this juncture. Will the U.S. imperial aggressor and its NATO front go down in defeat, or will it push the world to a final global war?

Russia is not bluffing. It won’t back down because of the historical sacrifices it has made already to defeat fascist tyranny – 27 to 30 million dead in World War Two alone. The Russian nation’s pain and suffering from imperialist aggression make it defiant and resolute in a way that the Western regimes could never comprehend or emulate.

Will sanity prevail? The American and European people have onerous obligations to hold their criminal elite rulers accountable.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Trump’s election victory: the schism in the US is deepening, the fight is intensifying

By Veniamin Popov – New Eastern Outlook – November 23, 2024

Following a crushing defeat at the November 5 elections (Democrats are now in the minority in Congress), the US Democratic Party is gradually coming to its senses, consolidating and launching new attacks against the Republicans.

At the forefront of all this is the editorial board of the New York Times newspaper, which published an article the day after the vote titled ‘America makes a perilous choice’. The main idea is that Americans should clearly understand the threat to the country and its laws posed by the 47th President of the United States, since he prioritises “the accumulation of uncontrolled power and the punishment of his alleged enemies”. Recognising that the elections demonstrated deep dissatisfaction with the status quo, politics and the state of American institutions, the newspaper demands that Democrats unite and resist the destructive figure of Trump: the task now is to vote correctly in the midterm elections of 2026 and in 2028 “to get the country back on the right track”.

On November 14, the same editorial board published a new article ‘Trump’s reckless choices for national leadership’. “Donald Trump has demonstrated his incongruity with the presidency in countless ways, but one of the most obvious is the marginal figures surrounding him, conspiracy theorists and low liars who put loyalty to him above all else”.

The media loyal to the Democratic party have launched a vehement campaign against the candidates named by Trump for posts in his government. They are accused of a variety of sins and the Senate is being urged to reject many of these nominations.

The idea that many troubles and problems await the United States under Trump is being dispersed in various ways, while the ‘red thread’ is the idea that the president-elect is surrounded by incompetent people and that they are simply unworthy to perform state functions.

Famous US columnist David Ignatius noted in the Washington Post that Trump is by nature a destroyer and hopes to overthrow what he imagines to be the ‘deep state’, but American voters did not give him the opportunity to destroy the country’s military and intelligence services. If they approve Trump’s appointees, they will do more to collapse his presidency “than Democrats ever could”. The New York Times called Trump a “threat to global peace and security” on 11/18/2024.

The fight between Republicans and Democrats intensifies

It should be noted that Trump’s supporters are not indifferent. A number of newspapers and TV networks have been charged with disinformation (amounting to $10 billion), calls for an audit at the Department of Defence are growing louder and louder and demands for an investigation of the many miscalculations of the Biden administration are being voiced on television.

The plan for changing power in the US (‘Project 2025’), developed by one of the think tanks supporting Trump, is being criticised sharply. It proposes to enhance the powers of the head of state dramatically, put a number of departments under his direct control (and to abolish the FBI altogether), resolve the issue of illegal migration with an iron fist, expelling all illegal immigrants from the country, and to “make federal bureaucrats more responsible to the democratically elected president and Congress”. The ideological basis for these changes is the struggle for the revival of the ‘Christian foundations’ of American society and the task of increasing church attendance is also highlighted.

In one of his speeches, Trump himself promised to legislate that only two genders, male and female, are officially recognised in the United States.

A number of publications, including Politico, say that Trump’s victory actually means ‘the end of the era of American-style peace’.

Political scientist Daniel Dresner thinks that the election of Trump symbolises the end of ‘American exceptionalism’.

In the Foreign Affairs magazine articles are appearing stating that Republicans should now show a greater commitment to realism and restraint: “If the US political class could agree that the United States has been overzealous in its foreign policy and should adjust its course, it would help to ensure that the country will not repeat the deadly mistakes of the last 20 years, where the US got bogged down in various conflicts”.

Current events clearly indicate that a fierce battle in the ranks of the American elite is being aggravated; the supporters of globalism and aggressive liberalism do not want to give up their positions. Nevertheless, the huge public debt of the United States, which exceeds $36 trillion, should force authorities to have a more adequate approach to military interventions, which “bring limited benefits and impose high costs on the United States”.

Some comments from the countries of the Global South say that the US is apparently awaiting a long internal political struggle, which may limit US activism in the international arena. Along with this, it is suggested that Washington’s policy is unlikely to change overnight. For example, the Turkish Daily Sabah newspaper expressed on November 15 that “the next four years will not be any better”, however, most importantly, they should also not be worse. Trump should adopt a cooperative approach to foreign policy and security that recognises the limitations of the United States.

At the same time, the Egyptian Al Ahram, noting Trump’s pro-Israeli approach to the Middle East, stressed the other day that the newly elected US president recognises that Israel has lost what he called the ‘PR war’ and should therefore soon put an end to the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, since the world can no longer tolerate daily bloodshed and preposterous destruction.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Russia’s final warning to NATO – you’ll get your war, but it’ll be over in 15 minutes

By Drago Bosnic | November 23, 2024

We are inches away from a global thermonuclear war. And no, this isn’t a meaningless, overused catchphrase. Quite the contrary, it’s as serious as it gets. We have reached a historical boiling point. At no other time in human history have we been closer to the scenario of annihilation, not even during the so-called “Cuban” Missile Crisis. It should really be called “Turkish” or something along those lines. And it’s important to note that we’re not digressing from the topic by mentioning this.

Namely, the mainstream propaganda machine just loves maintaining its narratives that essentially whitewash the political West and denigrate the actual world. This is why the fact that the United States initiated the “Cuban” Missile Crisis by deploying nuclear-tipped missiles in Italy and Turkey back in 1961 (although some sources claim it was as early as 1959) is ever so “conveniently” forgotten. The USSR waited a full year (at the very least) to respond by placing its own missiles in Cuba.

Thus, it’s perfectly clear who initiated that confrontation. And yet, as previously mentioned, modern historiography remembers the event as the “Cuban” Missile Crisis, sending a subliminal message that it was initiated by the Soviet Union and Cuba. Why is this important? Because the same people are now telling us that Russia “escalated” the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict by “firing missiles at a democratic Ukraine”, once again “forgetting” to mention the preceding events.

Namely, as we all know, the political West gave the Neo-Nazi junta the go-ahead to use long-range missiles against targets deeper within Russia. And they just did. In the last two days, approximately a dozen ATACMS and “Storm Shadow”/SCALP-EG missiles have been used (on the same day Moscow updated its nuclear doctrine, mind you). So, how did the “evil Kremlin”, led by the “crazy, bloodthirsty tyrant Putin”, respond to this? Well, not with nukes, as we’re still here, even though the doctrine allows it.

However, Russia did fire what is technically an ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile). This marks the first time such a weapon was used in a conflict. And while ICBMs normally carry thermonuclear warheads, this one was conventionally armed. To better understand what sort of weapon this is, we have to go back a decade or so, specifically to the RS-26 “Rubezh” program that was supposed to deter NATO’s crawling aggression in Europe and the post-Soviet space.

Namely, the RS-26 was envisaged as the successor to the formidable RSD-10 “Pioneer” IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile). Essentially a shortened version of the three-stage RS-24 “Yars” ICBM, with one stage removed (and some other modifications), the RS-26 had a shorter range, but was no less deadly. In fact, it carried more powerful warheads than the “Pioneer” (at least four 300 kt instead of the latter’s three 150 kt ones), while also being more accurate and impossible to intercept.

This enabled it to target even massive underground command centers or any other high-priority targets across NATO-occupied Europe. However, there was a (geo)political problem with the RS-26. Namely, it was made at a time when the INF Treaty was still in force (banning all missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 km). So, for the RS-26 to formally comply with this, it had to have a range greater than 5,500 km. Otherwise, it would violate the INF Treaty and be designated as an IRBM.

To avoid this, it was designed to achieve a maximum range of 5,800 km, just enough to be designated as an ICBM. However, this created another problem, as it affected the New START treaty. Namely, this would force Russia to reduce the number of its, so to speak, “purebred” ICBMs such as “Yars”, R-36M2 “Voevoda” and RS-28 “Sarmat”. As a result, in 2011, the program was postponed to a period after 2027, with most resources diverted for the development of Russia’s new hypersonic weapons.

However, on August 2, 2019, the US unilaterally withdrew from the INF Treaty and started developing previously banned intermediate and medium-range missiles, prompting Russia to respond. These programs accelerated significantly after the start of the special military operation (SMO), resulting in new designs, as well as massive improvements to the existing ones. However, we still didn’t hear almost anything about the RS-26, indicating that the program might have even been scrapped altogether.

But, on April 12 this year, Moscow tested an “unnamed ICBM”. To this day, the Russian military is yet to publicly reveal the exact type of the missile launched that day. At the time, I argued that the missile was actually the RS-26, as it had striking similarities with the previously mentioned RS-24 that the “Rubezh” was actually based on, including the way it conducted wobbling maneuvers designed to confuse NATO’s ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems, making it virtually impossible to intercept.

For seven months, no news came through about this “mysterious ICBM”. Until the early hours of November 21, that is. Initially, the Russian military didn’t reveal what missile it was, letting NATO contemplate what to do next. However, the “mysterious ICBM” was soon not only uncovered, but actually named – “Oreshnik” (“Hazel” in Russian). However, solid information about the missile is extremely scant, fueling all sorts of speculation, wild guessing and outright misinformation.

For instance, the Pentagon insists the missile that hit Dnepropetrovsk was fired from Kapustin Yar, a testing site in the Astrakhan oblast (region) in southern Russia, located over 1000 km to the east. This distance is too short for an ICBM, raising questions about the veracity of the US military’s claims. Then, videos from Kazakhstan emerged, specifically over the city of Satbayev, which is 1,500 km to the east of Kapustin Yar. Even more interestingly, some 450 km to the southeast lies Sary Shagan.

This place is home to one of the largest and most important missile test sites in the former Soviet Union, with the Russian military still using it extensively, including during the aforementioned April 12 test. It’s simply impossible to see “Oreshnik” fly over Satbayev if it was fired from Kapustin Yar to Dnepropetrovsk. However, it’s certainly possible that the missile was fired from Sary Shagan. Still, NATO doesn’t want to reveal that it flew nearly 2,400 km before hitting its targets with pinpoint precision.

Even more interestingly, videos over Satbayev also show that the missile is wobbling and maneuvering just like the “mysterious ICBM” tested on April 12, further reinforcing the notion that the “Oreshnik” could actually be a conventionally armed “Rubezh”. In addition, its maximum range exceeds 5,000 km, which puts virtually all of Europe in range. And indeed, it makes little sense to get a completely new missile if you have the “Rubezh”, as it’s already a largely finished product.

Technically speaking, there are several possibilities when it comes to the “Oreshnik”. First, it doesn’t even have to be a regular missile and could be some sort of MaRV (maneuverable reentry vehicle), MIRV (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle), HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle), etc. or perhaps even a hybrid, with the “Rubezh” being the primary missile carrier. The “Rubezh” itself can already carry the “Avangard”, so if the “Oreshnik” is an HGV, it shouldn’t be a problem for the “Rubezh” to deploy it.

Another possibility is that the “Oreshnik” is a completely new missile (not necessarily ballistic, but likely a more advanced hypersonic, maneuvering weapon) that has its own MIRV/MaRV/HGV warheads. There are no definite claims about this at present, simply because very little is publicly known about it. However, personally, I am more inclined to believe that the “Oreshnik” is a conventionally armed HGV that can be carried by nuclear-capable ICBM/IRBMs like the RS-26 “Rubezh”.

The reason is quite simple, because why would someone make something completely new when they already have a finished project that can immediately go into production (the “Rubezh” uses the same production lines as the “Yars”)? This reinforces the notion that the RS-26 is a highly modular design which can be equipped with various types of warheads, including conventional ones. It also harkens back to President Putin’s vision of Russia’s strategic preemptive strike capabilities.

One more thing that should be noted about the “Oreshnik” is that it was certainly an overkill against the Neo-Nazi junta. Russia’s more tactical and operational level missiles could’ve easily conducted this. However, given the fact that Moscow is faced with the increasingly delusional and aggressive West, it just had to demonstrate its firepower, prompting Putin to authorize the long-range strike on Dnepropetrovsk. This is a particularly important message to both the US and EU/NATO.

In terms of the functioning of the missile’s warhead, the available footage shows at least 30 smaller projectiles divided into five groups (six in each). The lack of visible detonations (although at least one was seen) suggests these are probably advanced kinetic penetrators capable of annihilating heavily defended and dug-in positions. This means that any NATO base anywhere in Europe and/or elsewhere would be in range, but Russia wouldn’t need to rely on its thermonuclear arsenal to deter aggression.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , | 2 Comments

Obama and Russiagate: The Untold Story

Part 2 of our series on how Barack Obama undermined U.S. democracy

By Jeff Carlson & Hans Mahncke | TRUTH OVER NEWS | November 15, 2024

One of the least known aspects of the Russiagate affair is the central role that Barack Obama played in it. For years, the focus has been on individuals such as James Comey, Peter Strzok, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele, and, of course, Hillary Clinton. And those names are indeed central to the plot, with Clinton being the one who devised the nefarious scheme to portray her opponent as a Russian agent. However, there was someone in the background, pulling many strings, who was even more crucial to the entire scheme: the then-sitting president, Barack Obama.

In this installment of our series on how Obama undermined U.S. democracy, we take a closer look at his role in both promoting and weaponizing the Russiagate hoax, which fraudulently linked Trump to Russia.

July 28 disclosure

We know from emails released by WikiLeaks that early discussions regarding the Clinton campaign’s dirty trick to associate Trump with Russia—what Clinton called the Swiftboat plan—were in full swing by February 2016. Over the following months, various components of this nefarious project came together. These included the hiring of campaign operatives Fusion GPS, commissioning the dirty dossier from Christopher Steele, and enlisting a group of IT specialists tasked with creating a false data trail linking Putin and Trump. We do not know whether Obama was privy to these early efforts. The earliest documented date we have for Obama’s involvement in the scheme is July 28, 2016. On this day, Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, came to the Oval Office and briefed Obama on Clinton’s Swiftboat project. Thus, we can say with certainty that, at the very latest, it was on this day that Obama became aware that the allegations of Russian collusion were nothing more than a fraudulent scheme concocted by Hillary Clinton.

As president, voters had entrusted Obama with the solemn responsibility of keeping the United States safe and secure. For this reason, Obama had a critical duty on July 28, 2016, to promptly put an end to the fraudulent allegations of collusion with Russia. The nominee of a major political party for president being falsely portrayed as a Russian agent posed numerous national security concerns. The fact that the entire scheme had been orchestrated by his opponent, arguably constituted an even more significant national security threat. In simple terms, of the two individuals who could become president, one was falsely accused of being a Russian agent while the other was the one who had cooked up the scam.

However, consistent with the theme throughout our series on Obama, he opted for treachery instead of truth. He wanted the country to tear itself apart, which is why, instead of telling Clinton to put an end to her devious scheme or, better yet, asking his Justice Department officials to investigate her campaign for creating a national security nightmare, Obama went full steam ahead in helping to perpetuate the hoax. Within 72 hours of the Oval Office meeting, the FBI launched its fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump.

No peaceful transfer of power

It was a terrible betrayal of the American public who voted Obama into office, and the situation would only worsen. Over the coming months, the fraudulent Russia collusion investigation intensified. Numerous members of Trump’s campaign team were surveilled and monitored by the FBI. When an FBI analyst raised alarm bells about the fabricated Alfa Bank story—a tale concocted by Clinton’s IT operatives to link Putin to Trump—the analyst was promptly sidelined, and the matter was handed over to more pliant agents. However, it was all to no avail. Clinton lost, and Trump was suddenly the president-elect. At this point, it was once again Obama who intervened to undermine Trump and, consequently, American democracy.

The media incessantly discusses the so-called peaceful transfer of power, lamenting that Trump refused to hand over the reins in January 2021. Leaving aside that this assertion is demonstrably false—he did transfer power and retreated to his Mar-a-Lago estate—it is often overlooked in the debate about the peaceful handover of power that it was Obama who did not peacefully hand over power in 2017. Instead, he weaponized the Russia collusion hoax to undermine the incoming Trump administration. He did so fully aware that it would jeopardize Trump’s presidency, and in many ways, it indeed did. It is remarkable how much Trump accomplished despite the persistent cloud of Russia collusion allegations that loomed over him daily.

The specifics of Obama’s actions are relatively straightforward, yet they are seldom discussed. Immediately after Trump won the election, Obama, in collaboration with the intelligence community, initiated an effort to publish an official report, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that would claim that Trump had only won because of Putin’s help. This strategy served two purposes. First, it absolved Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party of accountability for a humiliating defeat. Second, and far more significantly, it created a huge roadblock for the incoming Trump administration. In addition to the persistent inquiries regarding Trump’s alleged connections to Putin, which hindered the administration’s ability to focus on other matters, Obama understood that his plan would effectively criminalize diplomatic relations with Russia. It was sabotage.

Trump’s hands were tied. He could not engage with Russia without provoking an immediate and loud outcry from Democrats, the intelligence community, and the media. Even something as mundane as meeting the Russian ambassador—an event that would ordinarily never make the news—was immediately portrayed as an act of treason. When Trump met Putin in person, the media had a massive meltdown, even accusing Putin of secretly bugging a soccer ball that had been gifted to Trump’s son, Barron. The hysteria knew no bounds, and this was catastrophic, especially given that all of this was occurring against the backdrop of escalating hostilities in Ukraine and the warming of relations between Russia and China—something that the United States should have done everything possible to prevent.

Secret meeting with journalists

And if all of that wasn’t enough, on January 17, 2017, Obama invited a group of journalists to a secret White House meeting. A 21-page transcript, which was only recently released, reveals that Obama used this meeting to carefully plant the fraudulent Russia collusion narrative in the minds of the attending journalists. He did this despite knowing that the entire situation was a hoax. But Obama ensured that the media perceived things otherwise, providing not only the presidential seal of approval to the Russia collusion hoax but also the impression of confirmation from someone with access to all the relevant secret intelligence. In other words, Obama abused the presidency to ensure that his successor would be burdened with the incessant Russia collusion narrative.

Obama’s central role in promoting the Russia collusion hoax was partially revealed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, who in 2020 disclosed details of the July 2016 meeting between Obama and Brennan. Other intelligence officials within the Trump administration, including his first Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, had access to the same information as Ratcliffe. However, instead of speaking out, they actively sought to undermine the president they were supposed to serve. Ratcliffe’s recent nomination as CIA Director represents not only a significant step toward reforming the intelligence community but also suggests that accountability for Obama may finally be on the horizon.

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , , , , , | 1 Comment

NATO Contraction – Part 23 of the Anglo-American War on Russia

Tales of the American Empire | November 21, 2024

Previous episodes of this series explained NATO’s senseless expansion that threatened Russia and caused a disastrous war in Ukraine. The plot to add Ukraine to NATO failed. As Russian troops advance to occupy all of Ukraine to secure it as a close ally, nearby nations may choose to join the prospering Russian led Eurasian Economic Union. Russia may encourage Ukraine’s neighboring nations to join its economic block with a return of Ukrainian land seized by the Soviets.

The loss of Eastern Europe would be a huge setback for the Anglo-American empire as members leave NATO and the EU to trade freely with Russia and China, or join a new Hungarian led Eastern Europe economic union that does not support EU and Anglo-American sanctions nor imperial adventures in Africa and Asia. This is likely to happen if Russian troops reach Ukraine’s western border to open the door to the east. As a result, the Anglo-American empire may risk World War III and send NATO troops into Ukraine to block further Russian advancement and halt a rebellion by its vassal states.

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“As EU Confirms Economic Punishments On China, U.S. Panics Over Impending Iran Oil Attack”; Sean Foo; YouTube; October 5, 2024;    • As EU Confirms Economic Punishments O…  

“Why EU’s Baltic States Feel the PAIN and MISERY From Their Sanctions on Russia”; SCO & BRICS Insight; May 28, 2024;    • Why EU’s Baltic States Feel the PAIN …  

“In Russia’s shadow: The Baltics wait for Europe’s strategic new railway”; Lisa Louis; BBC; November 10, 2024; https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2…

Related Tale: “The American Colony Called Germany”;    • The American Colony Called Germany  

“How the US Forced Germany to Attack China (and Kill its Own Economy)”; Cyrus Janssen; YouTube; March 12, 2024;    • How America Destroyed the German Economy  

Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”;    • The Anglo-American War on Russia   

November 23, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment