thehill | Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
on Friday slammed NATO as being "weak" and "underconfident" for
refusing to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine as his country fights
in "the worst invasion since World War II."
In a Facebook video shared and translated by Axios on Friday,
Zelensky said Ukrainians have fought fearlessly against Russians
invading their country — and will continue to — but have been thrown
into "nine days of darkness" without assistance from NATO.
"Knowing
that new strikes and casualties are inevitable, NATO deliberately
decided not to close the sky over Ukraine," Zelensky said in an
emotional video address.
The president urged NATO to think about "all those people who will die because of you."
"Because
of your weakness, because of your disunity, all the alliance has
managed to do so far is to carry fifty tons of diesel fuel for Ukraine,"
he said. "Is this the alliance you were building?"
A
no-fly zone, implemented to prohibit enemy aircraft from flying into a
region and attacking, would cut off Russian air support and blunt the
advance of Russian troops toward Kyiv.
The
Biden administration, along with the NATO security alliance, has so far
rebuffed Ukrainian calls to establish a no-fly zone over fears that it
could spark a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Russia.
“It
would require, essentially, the U.S. military shooting down Russian
planes and prompting a potential direct war with Russia, the exact step
that we want to avoid," press secretary Jen Psakitold reporters on Thursday.
In
his video address, Zelensky disputed the fact that it would result in a
direct confrontation between NATO countries and Russia, calling it
"self-hypnosis."
"I
do not know how you can protect and whether you can protect NATO
countries," Zelensky said. "You will not be able to buy us off with
liters of fuel for liters of our blood."
southfront |What can we deduce from this short interview:
Russia will prevail and Ukraine will lose.
Ukraine is going to be partitioned. Putin is going to create the buffer he needs to assure his country’s security.
Whoever governs the western part of Ukraine will be required
to declare their “neutrality” (in writing) and reject any offers for
NATO membership. If they violate that promise, they will be removed by
force.
But here’s the important thing: All
of the main actors in this fiasco knew from the very beginning that
Ukraine had no chance of defeating the Russian army. That was a foregone
conclusion. So–what we want to know– is why Zelenskyy didn’t take steps to avoid the tragedy before it unfolded?
The answer to this question helps to reveal ‘who Zelenskyy really is’.
Ask yourself
this: Why didn’t Zelenskyy negotiate with Putin when he had the chance?
Why didn’t he pull back his 60,000 troops from the east? Why didn’t he
stop Washington’s weapons shipments? Why didn’t he implement the Minsk
Treaty? Why didn’t he reject NATO’s offer for membership?
Finally, why was so intent on doing the things that he knew would anger Moscow and increase the likelihood of a war?
These questions are not hard to answer.
Zelenskyy has
been acting on orders from Washington from the get-go. We know that.
He’s also been implementing Washington’s agenda not his own and
certainly not Ukraine’s. We know that, too. But that does not absolve
him from responsibility. After all, he is a full-grown adult capable of
distinguishing between right from wrong. He knows what he’s doing, and
he knows that it’s wrong; worse than wrong, it’s inexcusable. He’s
sending men to die in a war he knows they can’t win; he’s inflicting
incalculable suffering and injury on his own people for no reason at
all; and –worst of all– he’s cleared the way for the dissolution of
Ukraine itself, the country he was sworn to defend. That country is
going to be broken into bits as part of a final settlement with Russia,
and Zelenskyy will share a good part of the blame.
turcopolier | Putin’s target is just as much domestic constituencies as it is the
West, perhaps more so. The aim is to force Russia’s Western-leaning
élites into line – and that includes the Central Bank. A total rift with
the West was never going to be possible otherwise. This way he presents
the split as a fait accompli and all patriots will be expected to get
behind his policies. If it is successful Putin will go down in history
as one of the most brilliant statesmen of all time.
Judo is most certainly at play in nailing shut the door.
For example,
our sanctions on the oligarchs who stash their wealth outside the
country ought to help repatriate some of that wealth to Russia. The ones
who choose to stay abroad Russia does not want anyhow. Putin sees this
as a civilizational war, with Russian civilization incompatible with
increasingly degenerate Western values.
My perspective is Russia is being
enormously strengtened by the current reaction of the West, the same way
it happened in 1941. It is a huge miscalculation and is not good.
I’m from Eastern Europe – a native Bulgarian and I also know Russian
because I studied in school at the times of the Soviet Union. We are
probably culturally closer to Russians than even Ukrainians in some
aspects.
In the Eastern Ortodoxy doctrine, the closer to the truth you are,
the closer you are to God. That means the beliefs are not oriented
towards commercial success, like in the Protestant world for example,
where hard work will get you closer to heaven. Only doing the right
thing will grant you a path to heaven, and if you need to be poor, then
so be it. Even though releigion is not something significant today, it
has shaped the mind of the whole Eastern Ortodox civilization. And what
it means in practice is news about markets and inflation and poverty are
having much smaller effect on Russians than what Westerners think. Of
course Russians are worried about inflation and price rises – but at the
same time they pride themselves because of doing the right thing, and
this is stronger. The recent sharp increase in Putin’s rating confirms
that – no amount of misery will stop such minded people when they
beleive they are on the right path.
Unlike the West, where the Law defines public truth, in the Eastern
Ortodoxy it is not the Law, but your own feeling of righteousness. If
the law is against your gut feeling, it is not something you generally
need to do. Hence the chaos and lack of strict rule of law in the whole
Eastern Ortodox world – from parking & driving, to personal
quarrels. The West sees this as some form of corruption, which it is not
– it is just people beleiving in their own righteousness, not in the
righteousness of the law . By the way, Geoffrey of Villehardouin “On the
Conquest of Constantinople” says basically the same, and he has written
his book in 1204. That is in essence the dilemma of the East, the ruler
is expected to be a saint, and when he is not, people are allowed to
follow their own judgement.
So what is happening now is Russians are rallying around their leader
and are getting enormously dedicated to destroy the “unjust” and
“unrighteous”. Nuclear war is a very real option unless the West doesn’t
ease tensions – it is really obvious to me. In the Russian collective
mind, Realpolitic that was played was heresy.
N.B. I’m not pro-Russian – there is ambivalent relationship between
us and the Russians. Going back in history, we gave them the Cyrilic
alphabet (sponsored by Bulgarian king), our monks brought Ortodox
Christianity there (not Byzantines, it was Bulgarians like St Cyprian
that converted our wild Northern cousins in the middle ages; “Old church
slavonic” is the same as “Old Bulgarian” ). In their turn they
liberated us from the Ottomans, but wanted to turn us into Russians
which we really hated, and then they unsuccessfully attacked us in WW1
and occupied us after WW2. I’m just saying they see things differently
and I’m trying to give a perspective.
Russians are done with the West. They regard the US especially as
breakers of their word, hence, untrustworthy (“agreement-incapable”),
without honor, and morally degenerate”. Even Russian liberals like
Medvedev are reversing course away from the West.
We can surmise that the Chinese have a similar take, but they were never Western-oriented like the Russian liberals anyway. People in the West, and in the US especially, don’t know that a core
issue for Russia in the Ukraine matter is neo-Nazism because this has
been suppressed in the narrative in the US. They are not kidding when
they say this is about de-Nazification and bring to justice those guilty
of “genocide” in Donbass, where over 10, 000 Russian Ukrainians have
been killed by the Azov Battalion forces, who view Russians as
Untermenschen.
“Zelensky was elected in a landslide victory in 2019 on the promise of
easing tensions with Russia and resolving the crisis in the breakaway
republics in east Ukraine. He has made no attempt to keep his word on
either issue.” https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/the-man-who-sold-ukraine/#comment-5212744 He betrayed the electorate.
slate | Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the public response from pundits
and online observers alike has largely involved going bananas over
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For a guy who used to be a
comedian, his leadership has demonstrated qualities many
people—particularly in the military subreddits I’ve been reading, full
of young service members and vets—just haven’t witnessed except in
movies and history books. Having come of age in a world where major
world leaders are so insulated from personal risk that they’re whisked
away by security teams at the first whiff of danger, many members of the
American military are stunned that a commander in chief would actually
risk his or her own skin—let alone brashly announce, when the United
States offered him safety, that he needs “ammunition, not a ride.” The
U.S. Marine Corps subreddit contains a post titled “Volodymyr Zelensky
is about as motivating of a leader as I’ve seen in our lifetime,” with
one sample reply reading: “Yep. I’d follow that guy into hell.” The idea
of a political leader willing to die with his people has
struck many outside the military, too, as unthinkably brave. And more
than a little thrilling. Zelensky has become a hero to much of the
world—even inspiring citizens of other nations to ask how to volunteer
to fight for Ukraine. To the extent that this has been an information
war for hearts and minds in much of the world, Ukraine has undoubtedly
won.
An information war that
successful deserves to be examined, both for its own sake and in order
to better understand the desires the Ukrainian spectacle seems to be so
spectacularly satisfying in the international audience (beyond the
natural moral sympathy the country is receiving). The Zelensky legend,
while not being false, also isn’t purely organic. It’s being quite
skillfully produced. This is a mediated war, calibrated to appeal to a
specific brand of international solidarity—of sides in a global
struggle—that hasn’t been around in a very long time.
And
it’s working: There’s a drunkenness to the explosion of pro-Ukrainian
sentiment. Public anger on behalf of Ukrainians has gone beyond official
sanctions and into a plethora of bizarrely small-bore initiatives—like
bars no longer serving Russian vodka—intended to recognize the
aggressor’s villainy. Pro-Ukrainian observers are saying some wild
things as they try to explain their outrage and grief at the invasion,
and the expressive extremes are telling. One journalist said,
for instance, that “the unthinkable has happened to them. This is not a
developing Third World nation. This is Europe.” CBS News foreign
correspondent Charlie D’Agata said last Friday that Ukraine “isn’t a
place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen
conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively
European—I have to choose those words carefully, too—city, where you
wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen.” Civilized.
He later apologized, but it’s essential that we understand exactly what
he meant, because it may not be elegant or inclusive, but it is
telling. These aren’t isolated episodes. Something weird is happening,
and I think it’s this: Pro-Ukraine feelings in search of an organizing
principle are coalescing around a category of identification that hasn’t
enjoyed real, popular international relevance in a good long
while. I’m speaking of “the West”—a category Vladimir Putin has long
railed against, but which Westerners themselves haven’t, at least in
recent years, claimed with much personal attachment or ideological
loyalty.
And these are feelings being shaped and inspired in part by the “cinematic” quality of the media coming out of Ukraine.
Take Zelensky. He’s become a star because he already was one. The man has great dramatic instincts. He is doing brave things and he’s very ably disseminating media of himself doing it. In one viral clip,
he’s in only a T-shirt, unshaven, answering questions before being
informed on camera that the Holocaust memorial was being bombed and
saying, “That is Russia, my congratulations.” The clip has mostly
circulated as a “reaction video”; people are extremely interested in
watching Zelensky react.
johnhelmer | The ancient difference between the confiscation of your assets and a
tax by force was the mandate of Heaven. This was the public announcement
from God, transmitted through fellows wearing funny hats and costumes
accompanied by drumbeats and whistles. When God wants to stick you up,
they said, you’d better hand over your money or your life.
These days the rulers of the US, the European Union (EU) and Canada
call this the “Rules Based Order”. That’s to say: I make the rules, you
take my orders. The meaning is still the ancient one – your money or
your life.
The Chinese empire has been famous for a dress-up ceremony in which
those who made the rules received the agreement of those who took the
orders. It was called the kowtow. Nine kowtow was the standard, plus
expensive gifts. The Roman empire and most of its successors, called it tributum,
tribute. Over the years, other names for it have been tax, protection
money, and a gender specific form of kowtow popular in England and
France called the ius primae noctis, droit de seigneur, or lord’s right.
The quaintness of the ceremony varies from place to place. The
British empire demanded its colonial peoples wave a small Union Jack in
the left-hand corner of their independence flag. They also required
their subject children’s pilgrimage at least once in their lives to the
fence of Buckingham Palace in London for at least one performance of the
Changing of the Guard.
In keeping with the times since 1945, the US empire has been more
straightforward. It doesn’t require pilgrimages to the White House fence
for children of tender age. It does require you keep the US dollar in
your pocket, or the local currency whose value is fixed in proportion,
and whose state surpluses of taxation and pension funds must be stored
in US Treasury notes, as well as the dollar.
In Russia, starting in 1991, Boris Yeltsin innovated on these
measures by inviting US advisors to run the Russian economy, which
Yeltsin paid for by imposing a 100% tax on ordinary Russians’ salaries.
This started the system of oligarchs whom Yeltsin allowed to dispatch
and store, tax free, in the US, UK and EU as much state capital and
income as they could carry off. How that system has worked for the past
thirty years, oligarch by oligarch, has been the subject of analysis here. The effort has not gone without recognition.
At this very moment, the oligarchs are facing a Christian tax, but
it’s not the Russian one you might think they have earned. Instead, the
100% tax is being imposed in the form of confiscation statutes by the US, UK and EU.
This is not economic warfare so much as the application of the
principle that what the oligarchs have been doing to Russians should now
be done to them, according to the Mandate of Heaven as recorded in the
Gospel of Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31.
The Mandate of Heaven can also be found on the bottom of the US
dollar note. That’s the signature line where the Treasurer of the United
States and the Secretary of the Treasury promise to pay “all debts
public and private”. Like other US treaty signatures, this no longer
applies to Russians, common ones, oligarchs, or the state, according to
this novelty in the Rules Based Order. Russians must now sell
everything in the country of value for US dollars – oil, gas, coal,
uranium, aluminium, titanium, wheat, potash, urea, bank loan debts,
airplane leases, etc. But those dollars cannot be used by Russians to
buy anything else. That value has been confiscated.
The response is still being formulated in Moscow. Russian government
officials, members of the State Duma, the Central Bank of Russia, the
General Staff, the oligarchs and their lobbyists have yet to agree. The
terms of the debate are still largely secret; here was an opening shot against the Central Bank by Sergei Glazyev.
colinsims | First of all, who is America’s greatest rival? Is it Russia? China?
What about Europe?
Think
about it. The U.S. has already demonstrated its willingness to expend
extraordinary levels of blood and treasure to topple any Middle Eastern
dictator who so much as thinks the word “euro” while he lies awake at
night. So, what about the Europeans themselves? After all, they’re the
ones who issued the dreaded euro in the first place. The Chinese
yuan—for a myriad of reasons—isn’t going to replace the dollar any time
soon. Neither is the Russian ruble. But the euro stands a chance. It’s
the world’s second largest reserve currency and could easily become
number one. If it succeeds, the economic blow to the United States would
be catastrophic. The effects would be far more devastating than
anything Russia or China could do, short of launching a full-scale
nuclear attack. So I ask you again, who is America’s greatest rival?
It’s Europe.
So,
from that perspective, let’s take a look at what America’s objectives
truly are with Ukraine, regardless of dubious public pronouncements.
A December, 2021 article
from the BBC quoted an anonymous high-ranking European intelligence
official who said, “Let's not be blind. If Russia initiates a scenario
of any kind it will also initiate action against Nato members.” The
official added, “To think war could be contained to one nation would be
foolish.”
It is also likely that a Russian invasion of Ukraine
would greatly exacerbate growing tensions within the European Union. For
example, E.U. diplomats have already stated that a Russian incursion
will be met with severe economic repercussions. However, as one security analyst
at the European Policy Centre put it, “Putting tough sanctions on
Russia can also have consequences for the E.U. because the economies
(Russia’s and Europe’s) are linked … There could be costs to pay that
some member states do not want to pay.”
That statement
crystalizes one of the E.U.’s biggest problems: economic
policies—especially monetary ones from the European Central Bank—are
seldom one-size-fits-all. So, what’s good for northern states like
Germany or Denmark is not always good for southern states like Greece or
Italy. This “North-South” divide has fostered a growing fissure within
the E.U. for years, and if Russia invades Ukraine, it will grow even
wider.
In short, that’s good news for the U.S. dollar.
The more division within Europe the better, because it calls into
question the euro’s future existence—no one is going to invest in that,
it’s too risky. That leaves the dollar as the only option. So, no matter
how screwed up America is, either at home or abroad, it’s still a
better bet than anyone else. That is U.S. foreign policy in a nutshell.
But what about Russia? Does the U.S. gain anything from Russia getting bogged down in a Ukrainian quagmire?
Absolutely!
In the book, “Implosion: The End of Russia and What it Means for America,” author Ilan Berman argues that the biggest worry regarding Russia is not its strength, but its weakness.
This is primarily due to the country’s rapidly shrinking population and
abysmal mortality rate. (The average Russian male dies at 59.) The
problem with this, from a Western perspective, is that if the Russian
government collapses, who is going to safeguard the roughly 7,000
nuclear weapons currently at its disposal?
thecradle | On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from
SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a
new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as
countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic
independence will be afraid to use US banks.”
This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe
and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium,
etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”
Hudson is adamant that “Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign
bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its
currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new
exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its
wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via
Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”
About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system
bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of
Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank
Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be
implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time
keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”
I’m going to de-dollarize myself
So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up
de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong
Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and
Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration
of dollar hegemony.”
It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week
from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables
like JPMorgan and Citigroup.
A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:
“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which
handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of
the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending
inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding
financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also
encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually
damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”
Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have
understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT,
but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on
Russian energy.
From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of
Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For
instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment
must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.
Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only
to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic
Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.
With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they
merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade –
largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up
for at least 50 percent in trade losses.
The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western
financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will
proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.
off-guardian | It was fitting that an MP recently asked in
Canada’s parliament just who does the government serve: Klaus Schawb
and the World Economic Forum (WEF) or Canadian citizens?
These issues are at the heart of the ‘Great Reset’ or ‘Fourth
Industrial Revolution’ that Klauss Schwab and others talk of. Concepts
that – like neoliberal globalisation in the 1980s – are given a positive
spin and which supposedly symbolise a brave new techno-utopian future.
The WEF, Big Finance, Big Tech, the Gates Foundation and Big Pharma
have been heavily promoting the COVID-Great Reset agenda from the start.
This has to date resulted in the reinvigoration of an ailing pharma
sector with a multi-billion-dollar windfall, the eradication of smaller
firms and jobs, cementing the dominance of the online retail giants,
global chains and the digital payments sector and the injection of
much-needed liquidity into what were by late 2019/early 2020 collapsing
financial markets.
In the 1980s, to help legitimise the deregulated neoliberal agenda,
government and media instigated an ideological onslaught, pressing home
the notion of individual rights and responsibility and emphasising a
shift away from the state, trade unions and the public sector. This
reflected economic changes underpinned by notions of the primacy of the
market and individual consumer choice.
But there is now a new ideological shift.
We hear claims of a ‘democratic deficit’, whereby individual rights
are said to be undermining the wider needs of society. The message is
that individual freedom is posing a threat to ‘national security’,
‘public health’ and ‘safety’.
As a result, there must be clampdowns on the right to travel, associate and protest and on freedom of speech.
As stated by journalist Iain Davis
in a recent article, a commitment to the ‘public interest’, ‘safety’
and protecting the population from ‘harm’ will replace freedom and
democracy.
As in the 1980s, this messaging is being driven by economic factors.
Neoliberalism has privatised, deregulated, exploited workers and
optimised debt to the limit. We have collapsing markets kept afloat by
endless financial injections and an overall declining rate of profit
with firms suffocating under mountains of debt.
AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service
provision (3D manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab
grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc) are also on the horizon.
A mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare,
mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to
reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – might in the near
future no longer be required. Labour’s relationship to capital is being
transformed.
So, if labour is the condition for the existence of the working class, why bother with the working class?
COVID has accelerated economic restructuring and the shift towards an
authoritarian form of capitalism that is ultimately to be based on a
Chinese-style social credit system to ensure the population complies
with its coming servitude.
Former WEF-sponsored ‘young global leaders’
like Trudeau, Macron, Merkel and Arden rose to the political helm of
various countries after having been suitably groomed. They will continue
to fulfil their roles by managing dissent through mass surveillance and
clamping down on civil rights as the effects of inflation (induced by
the liquidity injected into the system), joblessness and post-COVID
austerity measures kick in.
dailymail | As Australian banks continue to focus on
digital transactions for customers, ATMs and bank branches are
disappearing across the country, according to new data.
The
analysis revealed close to 460 bank branches have shut down across the
nation in recent years, and dating back to 2020, approximately 3800
previously active ATMs have been removed.
NSW alone now has 140 fewer in-store banks, and almost 300 suburbs don't have a singular ATM to withdraw cash.
It is a similar story in Victoria, where 120 branches have permanently closed their doors to customers.
'Closures have a devastating impact on local communities,' Finance Sector Union national secretary Julia Angrisano said.
'Jobs are lost, business is impacted, and another local service disappears.'
The closures have hit hard in regional and rural areas, and for older citizens, Ms Angrisano added.
Another
key factor for the branch closures and reduced ATM's is the fact that
banks are bringing in a small fortune from daily digital transactions.
As
Australia accelerates towards a cashless society, fees from either the
customer or vender for online banking have become common place.
In a modern-day digital world, an estimated 80 per cent of Aussies prefer to bank online.
But the remaining 20 per cent, namely the disabled or those who are not digital savvy, have been left stranded.
Tellingly, CBA now has 875 bank branches nationwide - compared to 1134 in February 2020.
Their number of ATMs has reduced to just over 2000 - in 2019 there were 4118 ATM's in circulation.
Last
year, ANZ head of distribution Kath Bray said bank branch closures were
a sign of the times, with digital transactions now the primary focus
for many.
vk | Question: Many people did not fully believe that Russia would launch a
special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian side has repeatedly
voiced the reasons, including the threat of a military-strategic nature
from Kiev. What threats did Ukraine have or may have, forcing Russia to
launch a military operation?
Sergey Lavrov: This story dates back
to much earlier. And not even in 2014, when a bloody coup d'état was
committed in Ukraine with the support of the West, but in the early
1990s, while the USSR ceased to exist. The Soviet (then Russian) leaders
Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze were promised by their Western
colleagues that there would be no geopolitical turning point, NATO would
not take advantage of the new situation and would not move its
infrastructure to the east. Moreover, it will not accept new members.
The British archives published the relevant records of the negotiations.
Once again, it became crystal clear.
President of Russia Vladimir
Putin has repeatedly spoken out on this issue in his public speeches.
Instead of fulfilling the promise and ensuring stability in Europe, NATO
undertook five waves of eastward expansion. Moreover, all of them were
accompanied by the deployment of the armed forces of the alliance
members in these territories. They said that "on a temporary basis," but
it quickly turned into a permanent one – all the time creating a
military infrastructure. Now neutral EU member states or states such as
Switzerland are also trying to involve NATO in meeting the needs. The
"Military Mobility" project forces Austria, Sweden, Finland to provide
transport capabilities so that NATO can transfer its armed forces.
"NATOcentricity" becomes all-encompassing. The European Union, for all
its slogans about the need for "strategic autonomy of Europe", is by no
means inspired by this topic and perfectly agrees to be an obedient
"appendage" of the North Atlantic Alliance.
This period was
accompanied by a frank provocation of the post-Soviet states (primarily
Ukraine): they say, you have to decide who you are with – with Russia or
the West. They sounded directly "head-on", starting from the first
"Maidan" in 2003, and this was also the case at the subsequent stage,
when Ukraine under V.F. Yanukovych decided to wait a little with the
signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union, because it
contradicted the long-existing agreement on a free trade zone with the
CIS. Viktor Yanukovych understood that it was necessary to harmonize the
trade regime with Russia and other CIS countries and with Europe. That
is why Brussels organized the "Maidan" and the protests, which resulted
in bloody confrontations in February 2014.
Then "peace" had
already been achieved. A settlement agreement was signed with Viktor
Yanukovych. He resigned from all powers and held elections ahead of
schedule (which he would not have won). Poland, France and Germany, who
guaranteed this agreement, after the opposition committed a coup d'état
and trampled on their guarantees, remained silent, as we say, "in a
rag." They even began to welcome the forces that came to power, by and
large, the putschists. These putschists first of all announced that they
were abolishing the special status of the Russian language in Ukraine,
did not want to see Russians in the Crimea, and sent armed gangs there.
Crimeans refused to obey those who committed the coup d'état.
That's
when it all happened. It all started at that time. People who openly
encouraged neo-Nazi sentiments in society, the creation of appropriate
organizations marching on torchlight processions with portraits of
Hitler's criminals with openly neo-Nazi and Russophobic slogans came to
power. The West accepted all this without meekness. Many even supported
and encouraged in every possible way. Then the topic of Ukraine's
accession to NATO began. V.A. Zelensky came to power under the slogans
of peace and the need to save human lives, to prevent the death of
either Ukrainians or Russians. In the end, he became the same Russophobe
as the government of P.A. Poroshenko. V.A. Zelensky called people in
Donbass "individuals". Under the previous president, Prime Minister A.P.
Yatsenyuk called them "non-humans".
V.A. Zelensky did not do
anything about the ongoing bloody war against his own people. He, in
fact, lied, promising to restore order when they signed numerous
agreements with representatives of the Donbass. He violated them without
blinking an eye. All these eight years, we have tried to appeal to the
conscience of the West and to reason with this regime, which has
acquired all the outlines of ultra-radical and neo-Nazi. There was
nothing the West could do. I think he did not even want to do anything,
because even then Ukraine (and until 2014) was used as a tool to contain
Russia. The whole current situation has developed due to the fact that
the West refused to recognize the Equal Rights of the Russian Federation
in the organization of the European security architecture.
This
is confirmed by the reaction of the leading NATO countries, primarily
the United States, to the initiatives that President Vladimir Putin put
forward in December 2021 on the need to honestly implement what was
agreed. No one should, even choosing their possible military alliances,
do anything that would infringe on the security of any other country.
This commitment was approved at the highest level, signed by the
presidents and heads of government of the OSCE countries within the
framework of the NATO-Russia Council. The West categorically refuses to
comply with it. Zelensky said that if Russia does not stop demanding
that Ukraine fulfill its obligations, then he will think about Ukraine
regaining its nuclear weapons. It was a little too much.
Q: Was that the most important thing?
Sergey
Lavrov: No. It all piled up. There are drops that overflow the cup of
patience. I would suggest considering all that I have listed as an
everyday argument, a phenomenon that convinced us day after day that the
West had set a course for using Ukraine to contain Russia, to create an
"anti-Russia", a "hostile belt". For a couple of years, Ukraine has
been pumped with weapons, and recently it has been especially active.
The Americans and the British built military and naval bases there, for
example, on the Sea of Azov. Through the Pentagon, military biological
laboratories were created in order to continue experiments on bacteria.
This program of the Americans is classified. It exists in other
countries of the former Soviet Union right along the perimeter of the
Russian Federation. Pumping Ukraine with a military component hostile to
us was very active. Let me remind you that President of Russia Vladimir
Putin has spoken about this more than once. In 2014, probably, nothing
would have happened, there would have been no unrest in the east of
Ukraine, there would have been no referendum in Crimea, if the agreement
guaranteed by the Germans, the French and the Poles had been
implemented. But they have shown their inability to force Kiev to
respect the signatures of the so-called Eurogrands. Now there is a
conversation about how the European Union can play an independent role
in efforts to ensure European security. I think that the European Union
played its main "role" in 2014, when it could not force it to respect
its guarantees. A putsch took place, putschists moved gangs of armed
militants to Crimea when Crimea held a referendum, rejected the
putschists and reunited with the Russian Federation. This is the EU's
greatest contribution to European security. If this had not happened in
Crimea, if it had remained Ukrainian, now there would be NATO military
bases, which is categorically unacceptable for Russia.
Question: Does Ukraine have the potential to create nuclear weapons, a threat to Russia?
Sergey
Lavrov: There is technical and technological potential. President
Vladimir Putin spoke about this, and our experts also commented on this
situation. I can responsibly state that we will not allow this to
happen. The purpose of the operation, which was announced
by President of Russia Vladimir Putin and which continues, is to
protect people, primarily in Donbass, who have been bombed and killed
for eight years in the complete absence of attention and compassion from
Western societies and the media. In general, they tried to avoid
presenting their viewers and listeners with what is happening "on the
ground" and sought to replace objective reports with unfounded
accusations of Russia that it, allegedly, does not fulfill the Minsk
agreements.
Within the framework of this special military
operation, a clear task has been set, taking into account the experience
of the last decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to ensure
the demilitarization of Ukraine. Specific types of strike weapons that
will never be deployed or created in Ukraine should be identified. At
the same time, denazification. We cannot watch how in modern Europe the
participants of the torchlight processions march under fascist, neo-Nazi
banners, how they shout (just as during the "Maidan" in 2013-2014):
"Moskalyaka na gilyaka", "kill Russians, kill Moskals" – we can not.
newyorker | The political
scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of
American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best
known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,”
Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist
international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt
to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in
anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the
U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s
aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia
annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its
European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”
[Get the in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reporting you need to understand the war in Ukraine. Subscribe today »]
The current invasion of Ukraine
has renewed several long-standing debates about the relationship
between the U.S. and Russia. Although many critics of Putin have argued
that he would pursue an aggressive foreign policy in former Soviet
Republics regardless of Western involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his
position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him. I recently spoke
with Mearsheimer by phone. During our conversation, which has been
edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the current war
could have been prevented, whether it makes sense to think of Russia as
an imperial power, and Putin’s ultimate plans for Ukraine.
Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?
I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO.
The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed
this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand.
Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have
moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western
bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO
expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion
as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal
democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential
threat.
You said that it’s about “turning
Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust
or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What
if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American
liberal democracy?
If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO
expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal
democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more
generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand
that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.
mtracey | If there is any “threat” that “Western” elites have been most
exercised about for the past several years, it’s this supposed
international surge of populist illiberalism and/or right-wing
radicalism, and Putin was appointed as the main global exporter and
string-puller. Which made it all the more untenable over the course of
the latest Ukraine standoff for a Democratic Administration, especially one that campaigned on “confronting”
Russia, to offer any significant concession to the world’s Number 1
progenitor of white supremacist extremism. You know, the same extremism
that we are told nearly toppled the US Government on January 6.
It
was consequently ruled out as unthinkable “appeasement” to give Putin a
concession on Ukraine’s NATO membership that wouldn’t have actually
conceded anything, but might have averted war. Yes, there did already
exist a baseline attachment to the sacrosanct principle of NATO
expansion, but that’s mostly confined to cloistered NatSec elites. The
principle is now endorsed with such fevered gusto on account of Putin
emerging as an all-purpose global villain — the man behind the curtain
of horrendous White Nationalists, conspiracy theorists, and even “anti-vaxxers.”
You can see the contours of this new ideological conflict all over
the place. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, tied
the trucker “siege” earlier this month to the broader phenomenon of
“liberal democracies being confronted with serious and repeated threats”
by nefarious right-wing agitators — whose Grand Poobah we’ve long been
told is none other than, you guessed it, Putin.
So there was very little compunction about imposing some of the most
extreme due process-shredding Emergency measures in Canada’s history to
squash these “insurrectionists.”
Doing so even swelled everyone with a sense of tingling patriotic
pride, as the “siege” was said to be just another front in a seismic
global struggle. “Canada and our allies will defend democracy,” declared
Justin Trudeau as he froze bank accounts without judicial review and
empowered police to seize private property. “We are taking these actions
today to stand against authoritarianism.”
Of course, it’s
important to note that — as per usual — this grandiose ideological
vision of Russia’s designs mostly exists in the addled imaginations of
think tankers. While it’s apparent that Russia has grown more
authoritarian in recent years, the US “intelligence community” actually
just studied the question of whether Putin was really backing all these
horribly de-stabilizing right-wing insurrectionists all across the
world. The strongest conclusion that their subsequent Report
could muster is that the Russian Government “probably tolerates”
support by “private Russian entities” for some dangerously motivated
international extremists — but as the authors sorrowfully concede, “we
lack indications of Russian Government direct support.” (With “support”
defined as “financing, material support, training, or guidance.”)
Really, the CIA and FBI couldn’t even come up with any evidence that the
Russian Government has provided “guidance” to these sinister factions?
What a bummer. This less-than-fervent finding might explain why it took
approximately seven months for the Report — written in July 2021 by the
Director of National Intelligence — to see the light of day when it was
published on February 10 by Yahoo News, and even then it appears to have hardly made a ripple.
Naturally,
this largely-buried Report had zero effect on changing the general
perception of Putin as the standard-bearer of global right-wing
extremism, or that he subverted the 2016 election on behalf of these
evil ideological aims, or that he’s fueling insurrectionist turmoil all
over the world — including perhaps in Canada, or at the Capitol on
January 6. Yes, it’s true that a marginal contingent of the Right has
expressed some half-baked affinity with whatever gestures Putin does
make about ethnic nationalism, but this contingent is almost entirely
irrelevant for practical purposes. I’d also note that for all the
depictions of Putin as the savior of ethnic nationalism, at his annual
end-of-the-year press conference in December 2021, he hailed Russia as having “a very solid foundation as an ethnically diverse state.”
There
are a huge array of factors that led to this invasion. Some are
necessarily a matter of speculation, like what’s going on inside Putin’s
brain. Others are tangible and available for all to see, such as that
certain demands were made by Russia, and any accommodation to those
demands was rejected out-of-hand by the US — thus negating any real
diplomatic process. To understand why this happened, you have to survey
the ideological battlefield that was already being fought on for years.
And if you think examining any of this “defends Putin,” there are plenty
of other media outlets right now that will be happy to spoon-feed your
preferred infantile pablum.
oilprice |While
it was no surprise that China abstained when the UN Security Council
voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the abstentions from the
UAE and India were more surprising.
This vote highlights that Washington’s ability to counter the influence of China and Russia in the Middle East is limited.
The
fading influence of the U.S. in the Middle East is a result of its
withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, its withdrawal from Syria, and
its failure in Afghanistan.
Last week’s failure of the UAE and India
– along with just China – to vote in favor of the UN Security Council’s
resolution to condemn Russia's aggression against Ukraine and to demand
the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces
from the neighboring country earned all three countries the explicit
thanks of Russia. It also highlights the broader shift in the once
clear-cut global political alliances to the two principal power blocs in
the world: the U.S. and its allies on the one hand, and China-Russia
and its allies on the other.
Nowhere
has this shift been more evident in recent months than in the cases of
the UAE - which on 13 August 2020 became the first country to sign a
U.S.-sponsored ‘relationship normalization’ deal with Israel - and of India. Saudi Arabia is on the same level, as is analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets, and reinforced this with the very recent statement that it is still committed to working alongside Russia
in OPEC+. The clear and principal purpose of the U.S. in brokering
these relationship normalization deals, and those that followed, was to
counter the burgeoning influence of China and Russia in the Middle East.
However, not only has the UAE in recent months been keen to distance
itself from such a unipolar view of its global political allegiances but
also now India – which had been intended by the U.S. as a replacement
global bid for China in the oil market – has stepped back from fully
committing the role envisaged for it by Washington.
Shortly
after the concept of the relationship normalization deals between
Israel and as many countries in the Middle East and North Africa as
possible had been originated in the U.S., various high-level sources in
Washington let it be known that its new oil and gas market world order
would, as far as the Middle East was concerned, involve Gulf states
selling oil and gas predominantly to U.S. allies, including India, and
that India as well would be the big back-up global bid for the
commodities. This meant that in times of crisis, such as is now
occurring in Ukraine, energy supplies to Western powers would not be
subject to the potentially devastating threats that could proceed from
Russia simply cutting off its gas supplies to Europe or, as has more
recently happened with widespread sanctions against Russia, leave many
U.S. allies in Europe scrabbling around to find alternative energy
supplies. It was thought, as also analyzed in-depth in my new book on the global oil markets,
that the relationship normalization deals would allow the U.S. and its
allies to, in effect, corner large elements of the oil and gas supply in
the Middle East. It was also thought by Washington that, by positioning
India as the global replacement buyer for oil and gas instead of China,
China’s geopolitical position in its own backyard of Asia Pacific would
be weakened over time.
There
is every reason to expect this strategy to work, provided that the U.S.
begins to ‘encourage’ the countries involved to understand that the new
world order (as clearly heralded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine) is
a zero-sum game, with one side ultimately winning at the other’s
expense, and that all countries need to pick a side and be prepared to
be judged by which side they pick. At the time that the U.S. made the
decision to substitute China with India in the global oil and gas
markets, military units of India and China had clashed on 15 June 2020
in the disputed territory of the Galwan Valley in the Himalayas. As also
examined in my new book on the global oil markets,
this clash reflected a much greater change in the core relationship
between the two countries than the relatively small number of casualties
might have implied. It marked a new ‘push back’ strategy from India
against China’s policy of seeking to increase its economic and military
alliances from Asia through the Middle East and into Southern Europe, in
line with its multi-layered multi-generational project, ‘One Belt, One
Road’ (OBOR). Until China dramatically upped the tempo of this
OBOR-related policy – at around the same time as the U.S. signaled its
lack of interest in continuing its own large-scale activities in the
Middle East through its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action with Iran and its withdrawal from much of Syria – India had stuck
to a policy of trying to contain China. With the announcement in August
2020 of the U.S.-brokered Israel-UAE ‘normalization deal’
it appeared that a new corridor of co-operation was being developed
from the U.S. (and Israel), through the UAE (and Kuwait, Bahrain, and in
part Saudi Arabia) to India, as a regional counterbalance to China’s
growing sphere of influence.
NYTimes | “Would you like to sign in with your palm?”
That was the question a cheerful Amazon
employee posed when greeting me last week at the opening of a Whole
Foods Market in Washington’s Glover Park neighborhood. She blithely
added, “You can also begin shopping by scanning the QR code in your
Amazon app.”
“Let’s go for the palm,” I said.
In
less than a minute, I scanned both hands on a kiosk and linked them to
my Amazon account. Then I hovered my right palm over the turnstile
reader to enter the nation’s most technologically sophisticated grocery
store.
For the next 30 minutes, I
shopped. I picked up a bag of cauliflower florets, grapefruit sparkling
water, a carton of strawberries and a package of organic chicken
sausages. Cameras and sensors recorded each of my moves, creating a
virtual shopping cart for me in real time. Then I simply walked out, no
cashier necessary. Whole Foods — or rather Amazon — would bill my
account later.
More than four years ago, Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13 billion.
Now the Amazon-ification of the grocery chain is physically complete,
as showcased by the revamped Whole Foods store in Glover Park.
For
a long time, Amazon made only small steps toward putting its mark on
the more than 500 Whole Foods stores in the United States and Britain.
The main evidence of change were the discounts and free home delivery
for Amazon Prime members.
But this
21,000-square-foot Whole Foods just north of Georgetown has catapulted
Amazon’s involvement forward. Along with another prototype Whole Foods
store, which will open in Los Angeles this year, Amazon designed my
local grocer to be almost completely run by tracking and robotic tools
for the first time.
The technology,
known as Just Walk Out, consists of hundreds of cameras with a god’s-eye
view of customers. Sensors are placed under each apple, carton of
oatmeal and boule of multigrain bread. Behind the scenes, deep-learning
software analyzes the shopping activity to detect patterns and increase
the accuracy of its charges.
nakedcapitalism |As the world is transfixed by the escalating war in Ukraine
and its economic fallout, big moves concerning vaccine passports are
taking place behind closed doors.
An article published last Thursday by Politico,
citing a source from the so-called Vaccine Credential Initiative
(VCI™), reported that the World Health Organization is poised to convene
member States and representatives of Covid-19 immunization credential
technology groups to recognize different vaccine certificates across
nations and regions. In other words, as countries around the world drop
almost all of their COVID-19 public health measures, it looks like
digital vaccine passports are going to be made not just universal but
permanent (as I warned would happen in April 2021):
The WHO is bringing together the groups to develop a
“trust framework” that would allow countries to verify whether vaccine
credentials are legitimate, said Brian Anderson, chief digital health
physician at MITRE and a co-founder of the VCI.
Why it matters: The effort would aid international travel by
allowing proof of vaccination to be more easilyshared and verified,
Anderson said. Many countries and regions have different standards for
proof of inoculation, creating confusion for travelers and officials.
“It’s piecemeal, not coordinated and done nation to nation,” Anderson said. “It can be a real challenge.”
The WHO would say only that news on the topic should be coming “soon.”
The VCI is behind SMART Health Cards, which have become the de facto
standard for digital vaccine credentials in the U.S., with dozens of
states developing or adopting the technology. The group will participate
in the initiative.
The Vaccine Credentials Initiative (VCI™) is one of a number of
private partnerships working to harmonize vaccine passport standards and
systems at a global level. The VCI™ is leading the development and
implementation of the open-source SMART Health Card Framework
and specifications. Its partners include U.S. government contractor
MITRE Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Oracle, Sales Force
and Mayo Clinic.
According to its own website, the VCI™ has helped to implement SMART
health cards in 15 jurisdictions: the United States, the United Kingdom,
Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel, the Cayman
Islands, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Senegal, Qatar, Rwanda, North Macedonia
and Aruba. It has also helped to “quietly” roll out digital vaccine
certificates across 21 US states, as Forbes recently reported:
While the United States government has not issued a
federal digital vaccine pass, a national standard has nevertheless
emerged. To date, 21 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico
offer accessibility to the SMART Health Card, a verifiable digital proof
of vaccination developed through the Vaccination Credential Initiative
(VCI), a global coalition of public and private stakeholders…
And very soon, at least four more states will be rolling out access
to SMART Health Cards. “We’ve seen a notable uptick in states that have
officially launched public portals where individuals can get verifiable
vaccination credentials in the form of SMART Health Cards with a QR
code,” says Dr. Brian Anderson, co-founder of the VCI and chief digital
health physician at MITRE.
Another global partnership seeking to standardize vaccine passports
is the Commons Project Foundation (CPJ), which was founded by the
Rockefeller Foundation and is supported by the World Economic Forum.
There is also the Good Health Pass Collaborative,
which was founded last year by Mastercard, IBM, Grameen Foundation and
the International Chamber of Commerce. The organization is the
brainchild of the world’s largest digital identity advocacy group, the
New York-based ID2020 Alliance, which itself was set up in 2016 with
seed money from Microsoft, Accenture, PwC, the Rockefeller Foundation,
Cisco and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The ID2020 Alliance’s goal is to
“enable access to digital identity for every person on the planet.”
tabletmag | The
main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S.
Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on
masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow
the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to
infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and
principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a
political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the
United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and
welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.
Throughout
this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing
a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This
research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support
the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the
papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as
such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. The CDC’s
use of this technique has severely damaged their reputation and helped
lead to a growing divide
in trust in science by political party. Science now risks entering a
death spiral in which it will increasingly fragment into subsidiary
verticals of political parties. As a society, we cannot afford to allow
this to occur. Impartial, honest appraisal is needed now more than ever,
but it is unclear how we can achieve it.
Consider
a final example: the CDC’s near-total dismissal of natural immunity.
Many other countries consider recovery from prior infection as a
vaccination equivalent or better, an assumption that makes both medical
and intuitive sense, but the CDC has steadfastly maintained that
everyone needs the same number of vaccinations whether they have
recovered from a COVID infection or not. This view is countered by data
showing that vaccinating people who have recovered from COVID results
in more severe adverse events than vaccinating people who have not had
COVID.
In
order to bolster the claim that people who have recovered from COVID
benefit from vaccination as much as those who never had it, the CDC published
a fatally flawed Kentucky-based analysis. The August 2021 study
compared people who had contracted COVID twice against those who had it
just once, and concluded that those who had it once were more likely to
have had vaccination. But the study could have easily missed people who
had two documented cases of COVID but might have had severe underlying
medical conditions—such as immunosuppression—that predisposed them to
multiple bouts of infection in a short period. In addition, people who
had COVID once and then got vaccinated might not have sought further
testing, believing themselves invulnerable to the virus. The study did
not adequately address these biases. Months later, the CDC published a
stronger, cohort study showing clearly that natural immunity was more
robust than vaccine-induced immunity in preventing future COVID
hospitalizations, and moreover, that people who survived infection were massively protected whether vaccinated or not.
But to listen to Walensky tell it, none of these complications even exist. On Dec. 10, 2021, she told
ABC News that the CDC had seen no adverse events among vaccine
recipients, and denied seeing any cases of myocarditis among vaccinated
kids between 5 and 11. On that same day, however, data from her own
agency showed the CDC was aware of at least eight cases of myocarditis within that age group, making her statement demonstrably false.
So
why does the supposedly impartial CDC push weak or flawed studies to
support the administration’s pandemic policy goals? The cynical answer
is that the agency is not in fact impartial (and thus not sufficiently
scientific), but captured by the country’s national political system.
That answer has become harder to avoid. This is a precarious situation,
as it undermines trust in federal agencies and naturally leads to a
trust vacuum, in which Americans feel forced to cast about in a confused
search for alternative sources of information.
Once
that trust is broken, it’s not easily regained. One way out would be to
reduce the CDC’s role in deciding policy, even during a pandemic.
Expecting the executive agency tasked with conducting the science itself
to also help formulate national policy—which must balance both
scientific and political concerns and preferences—has proven a failure,
because the temptation to produce flawed or misleading analysis is
simply too great. In order to firewall policymaking from science,
perhaps scientific agency directors shouldn’t be political appointees at
all.
Ultimately,
science is not a political sport. It is a method to ascertain truth in a
chaotic, uncertain universe. Science itself is transcendent, and will
outlast our current challenges no matter what we choose to believe. But
the more it becomes subordinate to politics—the more it becomes a slogan
rather than a method of discovery and understanding—the more
impoverished we all become. The next decade will be critical as we face
an increasingly existential question: Is science autonomous and sacred,
or a branch of politics? I hope we choose wisely, but I fear the die is
already cast.
After my original posting,
a lot of people suggested I ask Stephanie Seneff to sponsor me. In
fact, if I had a dime for everyone who suggested Stephanie, I could
retire :)
Stephanie and I are good friends (we talk all the time). She would do it if she were an MIT faculty member. But she isn’t.
I can tell you one thing though: it was absolutely stunning to me that she was the only person at MIT people suggested I ask. That in itself is remarkable.
The entire MIT faculty is wrong on this issue
There are over 1,000 faculty members at MIT and not a single one thinks the vaccines might be unsafe? Nobody?!?!?
OK, I can live with that. Apparently, they’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid at MIT.
But what is totally unacceptable is that they refuse to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong.
What ever happened to open-minded scientists?
I
know that there are a few faculty members who believe I should be able
to speak at MIT, but they are afraid of retribution from their peers. So
they avoid the controversy by doing nothing. They won’t even let me
publicly reveal who they are.
What’s even worse than that is that there are serious cases of vaccine injury at MIT that are not being reported
More on those stories later. They’ve been covered up.
MIT should be speaking out for what the science says, not actively suppressing scientific discourse. Fist tap Big Don.
ready.gov | Nuclear explosions can cause significant damage and casualties from
blast, heat, and radiation but you can keep your family safe by knowing
what to do and being prepared if it occurs.
A nuclear weapon is a device that uses a nuclear reaction to create an explosion.
Nuclear devices range from a small portable device carried by an individual to a weapon carried by a missile.
A nuclear explosion may occur with or without a few minutes warning.
Fallout is most dangerous in the first few hours after the detonation
when it is giving off the highest levels of radiation. It takes time
for fallout to arrive back to ground level, often more than 15 minutes
for areas outside of the immediate blast damage zones. This is enough
time for you to be able to prevent significant radiation exposure by
following these simple steps:
GET INSIDE
Get inside the nearest building to avoid radiation. Brick or concrete are best.
Remove contaminated clothing and wipe off or wash unprotected skin
if you were outside after the fallout arrived. Hand sanitizer does not
protect against fall out. Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if
possible. Do not use disinfectant wipes on your skin.
Go to the basement or middle of the building. Stay
away from the outer walls and roof. Try to maintain a distance of at
least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of your
household. If possible, wear a mask if you’re sheltering with people who
are not a part of your household. Children under two years old, people
who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to remove masks on
their own should not wear them.
STAY INSIDE
Stay inside for 24 hours unless local authorities provide other instructions. Continue
to practice social distancing by wearing a mask and by keeping a
distance of at least six feet between yourself and people who not part
of your household.
Family should stay where they are inside. Reunite later to avoid exposure to dangerous radiation.
Keep your pets inside.
STAY TUNED
Tune into any media available for official information such as when it is safe to exit and where you should go.
Battery operated and hand crank radios will function after a nuclear detonation.
Cell phone, text messaging, television, and internet services may be disrupted or unavailable.
HOW TO STAY SAFE IN THE EVENT OF A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION
Prepare NOW
Identify shelter locations. Identify
the best shelter location near where you spend a lot of time, such as
home, work, and school. The best locations are underground and in the
middle of larger buildings.
While commuting, identify appropriate shelters to seek in the event of a detonation. Due to COVID-19, many places you may pass on the way to and from work may be closed or may not have regular operating hours.
Outdoor areas, vehicles, mobile homes do NOT provide adequate shelter. Look for basements or the center of large multistory buildings.
Make sure you have an Emergency Supply Kit
for places you frequent and might have to stay for 24 hours. It should
include bottled water, packaged foods, emergency medicines, a hand-crank
or battery-powered radio to get information in case power is out, a
flashlight, and extra batteries for essential items. If possible, store
supplies for three or more days.
If you are able to, set aside items like soap, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol, disinfecting wipes, and general household cleaning supplies
that you can use to disinfect surfaces you touch regularly. After a
flood, you may not have access to these supplies for days or even weeks.
Keep in mind each person’s specific needs, including medication. Don’t
forget the needs of pets. Obtain extra batteries and charging devices
for phones and other critical equipment.
Being prepared allows
you to avoid unnecessary excursions and to address minor medical issues
at home, alleviating the burden on urgent care centers and hospitals.
Remember
that not everyone can afford to respond by stocking up on necessities.
For those who can afford it, making essential purchases and slowly
building up supplies in advance will allow for longer time periods
between shopping trips. This helps to protect those who are unable to
procure essentials in advance of the pandemic and must shop more
frequently. In addition, consider avoiding WIC-labeled products so that
those who rely on these products can access them.
Survive DURING
If warned of an imminent attack, immediately get inside the
nearest building and move away from windows. This will help provide
protection from the blast, heat, and radiation of the detonation.
When you have reached a safe place,try to maintain a distance
of at least six feet between yourself and people who are not part of
your household. If possible, wear a maskif you’re sheltering with
people who are not a part of your household. Children under two years
old, people who have trouble breathing, and those who are unable to
remove masks on their own should not wear them.
If you are outdoors when a detonation occurs take
cover from the blast behind anything that might offer protection. Lie
face down to protect exposed skin from the heat and flying debris. Avoid
touching your eyes, nose, and mouth, if possible. If you are in a
vehicle, stop safely, and duck down within the vehicle.
After the shock wave passes, get inside the nearest, best shelter location for protection from potential fallout. You will have 10 minutes or more to find an adequate shelter.
Be inside before the fallout arrives. The highest outdoor radiation levels from fallout occur immediately after the fallout arrives and then decrease with time.
Stay tuned for updated instructions from emergency
response officials. If advised to evacuate, listen for information about
routes, shelters, and procedures.
If you have evacuated, do not return until you are told it is safe to do so by local officials.
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