Mexico President AMLO: "The question is: is there really democracy in the world? Or is it an oligarchy that predominates with a facade of democracy? Because democracy as defined since the time of Aristotle… "demos" is people, "kratos" is power. Democracy.
— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) March 29, 2023
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https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/03/28/ebola-lab-leak.aspx
Analysis by Dr. Joseph MercolaFact Checked
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- In December 2013, Zaire Ebola hemorrhagic fever broke out in Guinea and over the next three years spread across West Africa, ultimately killing 11,323 people. It was the largest and deadliest Ebola outbreak in history
- According to a paper published at the end of December 2014, the Ebola epidemic was traced back to a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea. Supposedly, the boy had come in contact with an infected fruit bat in a hollowed-out tree. However, no Ebolavirus was ever detected in any of the bat samples collected from the area
- The senior author on that 2014 paper was Fabian Leendertz, a renowned virus hunter with the Robert Koch Institute in Germany. Leendertz was also a member of the World Health Organization team that investigated the origin of COVID-19, concluding without evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was of zoonotic origin
- In late October 2022, Sam Husseini and Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., published a new analysis, in which they highlighted the holes in the zoonotic origin narrative and laid out the evidence pointing to a lab leak
- Curiously, many of the same individuals, companies and organizations involved in the Ebola epidemic have also been linked to the alleged creation of SARS-CoV-2
In December 2013, Zaire Ebola hemorrhagic fever broke out in Guinea and over the next three years spread across West Africa, ultimately killing 11,323 people.1 While Ebola epidemics occur on a near-annual basis, this was the largest and deadliest in history.2
Of the five Ebola viruses known to cause disease in humans, Zaire Ebolavirus, first identified in Zaire in 1976, is the most dangerous, with a fatality rate ranging between 53% and 88%,3 depending on the variant.
The virus leads to severe immunosuppression, but most deaths are attributed to dehydration caused by gastric problems. Early signs of infection include nonspecific flu-like symptoms and sudden onset of fever, diarrhea, headache, muscle pain, vomiting and abdominal pains. Other less common symptoms include sore throat, rashes and internal/external bleeding.
As the infection sets in, shock, cerebral edema (fluid on the brain), coagulation disorders and secondary bacterial infections may occur. Hemorrhaging tends to begin four to five days after onset of the initial symptoms, which includes bleeding in the throat, gums, lips and vagina. Vomiting blood, excreting tar-like feces indicative of gastrointestinal bleeding, and liver- and/or multi-organ failure can also occur.
The Virus Hunter That Assigned Zoonotic Origin
According to a paper4 published at the end of December 2014, the Ebola epidemic was traced back to a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea, named Emile Ouamouno. Supposedly, the boy had come in contact with an infected fruit bat in a hollowed-out tree.
This, even though no Ebolavirus RNA was ever detected in any of the bat samples collected from the area. Interestingly enough, the senior author on that paper was Fabian Leendertz, a renowned virus hunter with the Robert Koch Institute in Germany.
Leendertz was also a member of the World Health Organization team that investigated the origin of COVID-19.5 As you may recall, they also concluded, without evidence, that SARS-CoV-2 was most likely of zoonotic origin and dismissed the lab leak theory as not worthy of further consideration.
Lab Leak Suspected From the Start
However, just as with SARS-CoV-2, suspicions and rumors that the Ebola outbreak was the result of a lab leak were present from the start. Some scientists even suspected the virus might be a weaponized form of Ebola. As noted in a 2014 paper in the Journal of Molecular Biochemistry:6
“Another subject that may cause a plethora of arguments is that this virus may be a laboratory generated virus … There is a conjecture that the virus is transmitted to people from wild animals. However, by reason of the high mortality among them, it is impossible that these animals are the reservoir host of EVD.”
In late October 2022, Sam Husseini and Jonathan Latham, Ph.D., published a new analysis7,8,9 in Independent Science News, in which they laid out the evidence pointing to a lab leak. They also dissect Leendertz December 2014 report, highlighting the holes in the zoonotic origin narrative. In fact, there’s evidence to suggest the outbreak in in Meliandou wasn’t Ebola at all. Husseini and Latham write:10
“Chernoh Bah, an independent journalist from Sierra Leone, wrote a book on the 2014 Ebola outbreak and visited Meliandou. Bah found that: ‘Local health workers still think malaria may have been the actual cause of his [Emile’s] death.’
While in Meliandou, Chernoh Bah also interviewed Emile’s father. According to Bah, the Leendertz team (who never claimed to have interviewed the father) made a crucial error: ‘The child was actually 18 months old when he died’ … The age question, it should be noted, is crucial to the entire outbreak narrative. As Emile’s father told Reuters:
‘Emile was too young to eat bats, and he was too small to be playing in the bush all on his own. He was always with his mother.’ Bah also identified another apparent error: that Emile had four siblings who never became sick. These siblings are not mentioned anywhere in the scientific literature …
Further, although some bats appear to carry antibodies against Ebola viruses, only intact Bombali Ebola (a different virus species in the Ebola genus) has ever been isolated from a bat, despite intensive searches … Bombali is a species of Ebola that does not infect humans.
Taken together, this suggests that bats rarely carry Ebola viruses and when they do it is in small quantities. This context makes it somewhat surprising that Saéz et al. ascribed the 2014 outbreak (without supporting evidence) to contact with bats.
Indeed, Fabian Leendertz now doubts that bats are true reservoirs of Ebola viruses.11 Given the general want of evidence, one wonders by what exact process such poorly supported claims were transmuted into international headlines.”
Download this Article Before it Disappears
Was Ebola Experimented On Before the Outbreak?
As detailed by Husseini and Latham,12 “persistent rumors in the region linked the outbreak to a US-run research laboratory in Kenema, Sierra Leone.13 This facility studies viral hemorrhagic diseases, of which Ebola is one.”
The Kenema lab, which has been run by the U.S.-based Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Consortium (VHFC) since 2010, is located about 50 miles from the village in Guinea where the Ebola outbreak first emerged.14
The founder and president of the VHFC is Robert (Bob) Garry, who was also part of the group of virologists who in the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic concocted “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” paper15 in which they dismissed the lab leak theory and insisted zoonotic origin was the most plausible, despite the lack of evidence.16
As recently as November 2022, Garry still insisted SARS-CoV-2 “emerged via the wildlife trade.”17 In that same article, Garry drew parallels to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, claiming that conspiracy pundits were wrong about Ebola being leaked from the Kenema lab, because “we did not have EBOV [ebolavirus] in our laboratory and therefore could not have released or engineered it.”
According to Garry, the Ebola and SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks are both victims of “guilt-by-proximity.” However, in a March 11, 2023, interview on the Decoding the Gurus podcast, Kristian Andersen, vice president of the VHFC’s Kenema lab18 and another “Proximal Origin” author, clearly refuted Garry’s claim:19
“The problem is that people see these coincidences. One of the new ones is the Ebola lab leak, which also is being blamed on us, because we had been studying Ebola in Kenema in Sierra Leone, and lo and behold Ebola emerged just a few miles from there in 2014,” Andersen said.
So, what do we make of this? Garry claims the Kenema lab didn’t have any Ebola virus and Andersen says they did. Both are top executives at the lab and ought to know what was studied and what wasn’t. So, who’s telling the truth?
Was Kenema Lab Involved in Biowarfare Work?
According to Husseini and Latham,20 there’s good reason to believe the Kenema lab was working with Ebola before the outbreak in Guinea, some 50 miles from the lab. For starters, the Guinea outbreak was the first time Zaire Ebola emerged in West Africa. All previous outbreaks of this most-lethal strain of Ebola occurred in the Congo basin, in the central African equatorial zone, some 3,000 kilometers (approximately 1,864 miles) from Guinea.
“Hence Zaire Ebola’s appearance in West Africa was a striking and very unexpected development,” they write. How did it get there? Ebola is not highly contagious as transmission typically requires direct contact.
There were no outbreaks between the Congo basin and Guinea, which you’d expect if it was spreading naturally from person to person. Equally mysterious is the fact that genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis showed only a single jump from animal to human. Husseini and Latham explain:21
“Zoonotic outbreaks, including most past Ebola outbreaks, typically feature multiple jumps to humans from an animal source. Single jumps, however, are consistent with lab origins and are often considered a red flag for that possibility.
The reason is that researchers often work with a single isolate, perhaps one that they have found is particularly easy to replicate in the laboratory, whereas natural populations are typically diverse. This difference provides a genetic signal for distinguishing natural origins from laboratory ones.”
Zaire Ebola is also the preferred species used by research labs studying Ebola-type viruses, as it’s the most lethal and therefore has the greatest biowarfare potential. Husseini and Latham continue:
“Noting the gap between the weakness of the Leendertz account of the outbreak origin … and the forcefulness with which the Emile narrative was asserted by western scientists and western media, [journalist Chernoh Bah] wrote:
‘it is difficult not to interpret the ‘zoonotic origin of the West African Ebola epidemic’ narrative advanced by Fabian Leendertz and his team as part of a cover-up or obfuscation of the actual chain of events that laid the foundation for the West African Ebola outbreak’ …
In 2011, three years before the West African Ebola outbreak, Reuters profiled the research in Kenema at length.22 Readers were told that a ‘laboratory in southeastern Sierra Leone is an outpost of the U.S. government’s ‘war on terror,’ funded by a surge in bio-defense spending … [By] the fiscal year 2007 the NIH was requesting more than $1.9 billion.’ Reuters concluded that the Kenema labs’ share of that allocation was $40 million.
On August 25, 2013, just months before the Ebola outbreak, the VHFC posted on its website an article titled: ‘Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute make major advances in the fight against Ebola virus.’ This article was later removed but its existence is verifiable using the WayBackMachine.
Nevertheless, the title alone raises some key questions: Why did the VHFC post about Ebola if it wasn’t working on it at the time? In particular, what Ebola variant was being studied? What was the nature of the experiments? Why remove the post? …
We do know that Ebola was important to the VHFC and its partners and a primary interest for at least some of its members.
Indeed, all the leading US-based researchers of the VHFC, Robert Garry, Kristian Andersen, Erica Ollmann Saphire and Pardis Sabeti have published multiple original research papers on Ebola virus.23,24,25,26,27,28 An Ebola focus also accords with US biosecurity research priorities under whose auspices the Kenema lab is largely funded …
In 2013 Robert Garry co-authored a paper29 on a novel treatment for Zaire Ebola. All eleven other authors were from USAMRIID, aka Fort Detrick. This site is the largest ‘biodefense’ facility in the world and Garry’s company, Zalgen, is located close-by.”
More Biowarfare Connections and Ebola Trials
Husseini and Latham point out that in 2014, when the Ebola outbreak occurred, Metabiota was a VHFC partner. As detailed in “Evidence of Pandemic and Bioweapon Cover-Ups,” Metabiota was hired by the WHO and the local government of Sierra Leone to monitor the spread of the Ebola epidemic, but clearly were not up to the task. A 2016 CBS News report detailed Metabiota’s bungled response.30
2014 was also the year when Metabiota was entrusted with the operations of U.S. biological research labs in Ukraine, with funding from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and:31,32
- Pilot Growth Management, cofounded by Neil Callahan. Callahan is also a cofounder of Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners, and he sits on Metabiota’s board of advisers
- In-Q-Tel, a CIA venture capital firm that specializes in high-tech investments that support or benefit the intelligence capacity of U.S. intelligence agencies
- Rosemont Seneca,33 an investment fund co-managed by Hunter Biden34
Metabiota’s founder, Nathan Wolfe, is also tied to EcoHealth president Peter Daszak, Ph.D., a prime suspect in the COVID pandemic who worked closely with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China, where SARS-CoV-2 is suspected of having originated. Wolfe has also received more than $20 million in research grants from Google, the NIH and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, just to name a few.
Of all the scientists, companies and organizations involved in this kind of research across the world, how is it that the same short list of names pop up both in the Guinea Ebola case and COVID-19?
Aside from the Kenema lab’s obvious biowarfare connections, and the possibility of Ebola being experimented on there, several Ebola treatment trials were also taking place in Port Loko, Sierra Leone, about 190 km (118 miles) from Kenema, right around the same time that Ebola broke out in Guinea.
“From the limited descriptions available, one of these trials fits the timing required for it to have triggered the 2014 Ebola outbreak but none of them fits the location,” Latham and Husseini write.35
“However, the data is incomplete; for his book, Constantine Nana corresponded with the lead investigator in the Port Loko Phase II trial, Dr. Peter Horby of the University of Oxford. Horby told Nana ‘he had no information as regards the results of the Phase I trial.’ To lead a Phase II trial and know nothing about that product’s Phase I trial is indeed mysterious and rather strange.”
Biosafety Is Lax at Kenema Lab
Latham and Husseini also review the lackadaisical approach to biosafety at the Kenema lab, despite working with extremely dangerous pathogens:36
“In the U.S., using live filoviruses requires biosafety level four (BSL-4) facilities, where researchers wear positive pressure ‘space suits.’ But in Kenema … according to Reuters, biosafety ‘measures include goggles, gloves and masks.’ The article quoted VHFC member Matt Boisen, a U.S. scientist from Tulane, now with Zalgen: ‘Certainly we have less safety, less containment, but we do have the ability to do a lot more in the same amount of time’ …
Others have corroborated this laxity. In the 2014 outbreak, the earliest emergency responder was the medical non-profit Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who were called in for their extensive Ebola experience. MSF’s emergency response coordinator was Anja Wolz. She was highly critical of the biosafety measures used by Metabiota at Kenema.
Having seen how they visited suspected Ebola cases, she told AP: ‘I didn’t go inside the Metabiota lab … I refused because I had already seen enough.’ A CDC official, Austin Demby, later sent to investigate, reached similar conclusions.
In an email about the Kenema lab he wrote: ‘The cross contamination potential is huge and quite frankly unacceptable.’ Thus, there seems to have been a pattern at Kenema of lax biosafety procedures both before and during the outbreak.”
Another oddity that doesn’t fit the nature of a natural outbreak was the fact that hotspots were broadly spread out. There was no epicenter. Moreover, according to WHO Ebola coordinator Philippe Barboza, Metabiota staffers were “systematically obstructing any attempt to improve the existing surveillance system.” MSF also complained they got no cooperation from Kenema.
“Given the intentionality imputed by many of these witnesses to the failings in Sierra Leone, were they deliberate? If so, were they intended to divert attention away from the Kenema lab?” Latham and Husseini ask.
Genomic Testing
Latham and Husseini then delve into the genomic testing results, which suggest there was a “hidden” or unreported outbreak in Sierra Leone, which only later spread into Guinea. That doesn’t prove it came out of a lab in Sierra Leone, however. But unique features in the Makona strain of Ebola that caused the Guinea outbreak suggest the virus may have undergone some form of manipulation. Latham and Husseini explain:
“The Makona strain of Ebola is not a standard or known strain, nor is it similar to any published strain. It is novel, having approximately 400 mutations that are not found in any previously known Ebola strain. Hence, for the 2014 Ebola outbreak to have begun in a lab, the Makona strain must either represent the escape of an unpublished strain, perhaps one collected during fieldwork in central Africa.
Alternatively, Makona could be a radically manipulated derivative of a known strain–either through genetic engineering or passaging. A combination of these two possibilities should also be considered.
Of these two alternatives, we know that Ebola and other viruses were being sought from wild animals in the Congo basin at the time as part of USAID’s PREDICT project. The chief actors in this were the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Metabiota, which, at the time, was at the time a partner of the VHFC …
[One] possibility is that Metabiota, or other collectors, used the VHFC lab at Kenema as part of a cold chain for the preservation of samples brought from the Congo basin …
The Kenema lab may also have been used for initial screening or testing of such samples. A third possibility is the formal or informal sharing of samples or strains with VHFC contacts or colleagues at Kenema, perhaps to help in the development of commercial treatments or diagnostic tools …
Given these potentialities it is remarkable to discover that, in July 2014, during the epidemic, the VHFC wrote a brief report in which they accused Metabiota of an activity that would be riskier still.
The VHFC accused Metabiota staff at Kenema of culturing cells from Ebola patients, which they insisted was dangerous and should ‘be stopped immediately.’
Metabiota issued a qualified denial, but the allegation is highly credible since the two organisations shared the same site; moreover its implications are very great. It suggests, first, that Metabiota had an interest in culturing novel strains of Ebola, second, that they had the technical capability and the personnel competent to do so at Kenema, and third, that they were willing to take exceptional risks …
The allegation therefore raises, in a very concrete way, the question of what Metabiota might have been doing in Kenema prior to the outbreak … given the research interests and the capacities of the VHFC lab in Kenema and its collaborators, it is a relatively simple matter to theorise how a novel strain of Ebola, like Makona, might have reached Kenema and then spilled over there during routine research activities.
Interesting too is the dual role of Metabiota. Besides collecting samples from the wild, Metabiota was also the company that, at least according to MSF and the WHO, obstructed or mishandled testing and diagnosis at Kenema and that Sylvia Blyden alleged ‘messed up the whole region.’
If a research error on the part of Metabiota was the source of the strain (and Metabiota’s incompetence has been widely alleged37), or even suspected to be, they would have had a strong incentive to also ‘bungle’ the identification of early cases and so obfuscate the origin.”
Pathogenic Research Must Be Reined In
While the case for the worst Ebola outbreak in history being the result of a lab leak is still based on circumstantial evidence, that evidence is compelling, and made even more so by the absence of evidence for a zoonotic origin. The same can be said for SARS-CoV-2.
Additionally, of all the scientists, companies and organizations involved in this kind of research across the world, how is it that the same short list of names pop up both in the Guinea Ebola case and COVID-19?
The take-home message here is that there is no possible way to guarantee containment of viruses in any of these laboratories, not even biosafety level 4 labs. And a pathogen doesn’t have to be developed as a bioweapon in order to act like one.
If gain-of-function research on lethal viruses is allowed to continue, the whole world will remain at risk, and I don’t think its hyperbolic to say gain of function research poses an existential threat to mankind. So far, we’ve been lucky in that escaped pathogens (suspected or confirmed) have not decimated the global population, but our luck may someday run out.
The U.S. does not have a high-functioning representative democracy. Voters are uninformed, don’t trust the media and can’t agree on the facts at the heart of stories and issues like whether climate change is real or Biden won the election.
https://sputniknews.com/20230329/the-us-is-not-a-democracy-1108886575.html
March 28, 2023
© AFP 2023 / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE
Ted Rall
Is a system working as well as possible? Inertia lulls people into believing that legacy products are great—even that they’re perfect—without objectively considering whether it’s really true.
The QWERTY computer keyboard works but the 1936 Dvorak version is superior. Skim milk makes you fatter. The U.S. may still be a shining city on a hill but our Constitution has become so out-of-date that new nations no longer refer to it as a template for their own legal charters.
Ask yourself: if our political system were created today, by a group of intelligent people, what would it look like? If the real-world system we see now falls short of that ideal, there’s room for improvement.
What if we were to scrap our centuries-old Constitution? What if we built a shiny new government from the ground up, without considering legacy or precedent?
This is a complicated question. Only one out of four Americans would vote to repeal the Second Amendment, so the right to bear arms might make it into a new charter. Much of that support, however, derives from voters who own the hundreds of millions of guns already in circulation. An America without a legacy of individual firearms ownership would be much less likely to codify it as a fundamental right.
Leaked FBI List of ‘Extremist’ Symbols Includes Historical Flags and 2nd Amendment
So what would an ideal representative democracy look like for the United States, 2023 edition?
Nothing like what we have now.
Every citizen of sufficient age to exercise sound judgment should be allowed to vote. Our society currently says 18. But there are strong arguments in favor of allowing children to vote as well as for raising the age of enfranchisement to 25. If mental acuity matters, what about the one out of ten Americans over age 65 who suffers from dementia or those with very low IQ?
Among those permitted to cast ballots, each vote ought to count equally. The principle of one person, one vote is almost universally accepted.
Yet the current system falls dismally short of our professed ideal. Due to the electoral college, the vote of a resident of Wyoming in a presidential election counts 3.6 times more than that of someone who lives in California. People in the District of Columbia enjoy no vote at all; nor do the 4 million Americans who reside in overseas territories. Gerrymandering through redistricting has radically reduced the weight of a vote cast by a Black citizen compared to a white one. Forty-eight out of 50 states either ban convicted felons, people in prison and/or on parole from voting; the U.S. has some of the most vicious disenfranchisement laws in the world.
If a representative democracy is healthy and vibrant, voters ought to be able to choose from a broad selection of candidates who represent a wide range of ideological viewpoints that reflect the broad diversity of opinions in our vast country.
Biden Backtracks After Calling Trump Supporters ‘Threat’ to Democracy
In this respect, the U.S. is not a democracy.
We only have two major parties. But not by choice. 62%of Americans say they want the option of a third party; dissatisfaction with the Democrats and the Republicans helps explain why the U.S. has one of the lowest voter-turnout numbers in the world. Smaller parties are barred from presidential debates, don’t receive coverage in the press, are stymied by draconian ballot-access laws drafted by Democrats and Republicans, and bludgeoned by nuisance lawsuits filed by the big two in order to drain their resources and block them from the ballot.
In many elections, there aren’t even two parties. In 2016, 42% of races for seats in state legislatures were uncontested, meaning there was only one candidate on the ballot. There’s no word whether any of them was named “Saddam.” In 2022, a whopping 57%of state elections for judges were unopposed. I live in New York, where the Working Families Party provides an illusion of choice by appearing on the ballot next to the Democrats. But the WFP’s candidates are the same as the corporate Democrats.
Ranked-choice voting, promoted by progressives, sometimes leads to anti-democratic results. California’s small state Republican Party rarely has one of its candidates among the top two vote-getters who move past the first round to the general election.
Party primaries can be coronations, as when Barack Obama and Donald Trump essentially ran unopposed in 2012 and 2020, respectively.
Candidates are not legally bound to carry out their election promises if they win. Evolving circumstances or further reflection—or dishonesty—may prompt a politician to change course after victory. But there is accountability for perfidy, whether real or imagined, in a vibrant representative democracy. Rather than outsource politics to a political class every two or four years or whatever, citizens in a high-functioning representative democracy keep informed beyond the carnival of election season, express their opinions and hold their representatives’ feet to the fire with public protests and demonstrations, as we’re currently seeing in France after their imperious president ignored popular will by increasing the national retirement age without holding a parliamentary vote.
France Postpones King Charles’ State Visit Over Pension Riots
The U.S. does not have a high-functioning representative democracy. Voters are uninformed, don’t trust the media and can’t agree on the facts at the heart of stories and issues like whether climate change is real or Biden won the election.
Worst of all, we fail to hold our representatives accountable when they ignore us. Abortion is no longer legal in 17 states, with more expected to codify bans in the coming months. Meanwhile, 85%of American adults favor abortion rights, yet the streets remain calm and protester-free. Two out of three Democrats want significant and immediate action against climate change, yet they don’t have anything to say to President Biden—who probably blew up a major gas pipeline and created an ecological disaster, and authorized oil drilling in the ecologically fragile Alaskan wilderness.
If we were to create a new political system out of whole cloth, it wouldn’t look anything like this.
(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)
Winter made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank. He accused RT’s news outlets of being “just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government,” but said that he was “continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America.” “Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español – it has one of the biggest social media followings of any media company in the region,” Winter acknowledged, arguing that people who are not even “pro-Russia” still share content and videos from RT.
Washington’s already-tarnished image is being further damaged in the region, a vice president of policy at the Americas Society has warned
https://www.rt.com/news/573736-us-russia-latin-america/
March 28, 2023
FILE PHOTO. © Sputnik / Ilya Pitalev
Russian “propaganda” is of exceptional quality in Latin America and the US is struggling to portray itself as “the shining city on the hill,” Brian Winter, a lobbyist at Americas Society and Council of the Americas has claimed.
Washington largely has itself to blame for the situation, given its long history of displaying its “worst behaviors” in the region, the activist added.
Winter, who is also the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly magazine, made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank.
Winter made the remarks during a webinar hosted last week by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a leading American think tank.
He accused RT’s news outlets of being “just as pure a propaganda arm as you can get of the Russian government,” but said that he was “continually impressed by the quality of Russian propaganda in Latin America.”
“Those guys are really good. You look at RT en Español – it has one of the biggest social media followings of any media company in the region,” Winter acknowledged, arguing that people who are not even “pro-Russia” still share content and videos from RT.
READ MORE: The US shouldn’t be surprised Latin America is turning to Russian news sources
Winter is vice president of policy at the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, the parent organizations of Americas Quarterly. The two influence groups were originally founded back in 1960 by David Rockefeller at the request of President John F. Kennedy to counter Communism in Latin America.
The former Reuters correspondent, who is based in New York, alleged that Moscow has a “whole network of sites that are more subtle and that push very sophisticated and sometimes not particularly obvious narratives that are designed to undermine the United States or promote the views of China and Russia.” However, he failed to offer any examples of such websites.
BREAKING: Outrage after President
“My name is Joe Biden. I’m dr. Jill Biden’s husband. I like ice cream, chocolate chip. I came down because I heard there was chocolate chip ice cream. By the way, I have a refrigerator full upstairs.” The president later addressed the shooting.
It is not going well:
Of course not, after all, the US is exceptional. Damned hypocrites. The UN Security Council is a farce, another corrupt org.
Apparently only Russia, China and Brazil want to know who bombed those pipelines.
Corrupted angels, the Nephilim, tremendous lifespans, a great deluge, and ancient and advanced knowledge are a few of the topics discussed in The Book of Enoch, an ancient manuscript comprising various tales narrated by Enoch, an attested Biblical figure and grandfather of Noah who was in direct contact with the Divine Creator. Enoch was the messenger of God, and the one to receive his knowledgeable words and spread them across the land. In the end, he was taken by God into His kingdom, thus escaping his earthly demise that would sooner or later be upon him. “After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God for 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more because God took him away.
Sanctioned businessman Oleg Deripaska says exorbitant government spending will lead to a financial crash
“Reckless militarization, sanctions against everyone, and military adventures around the world have already cost this country almost $33 trillion,” said the billionaire, who was sanctioned by the US last year. However, he provided no details on where this figure came from. Deripaska noted that the US has never come so close to the bankruptcy of public finances.”
https://www.rt.com/business/573535-deripaska-warning-us-economy-debt/
March 25, 2023
© Global Look Press / Igor Russak
One of Russia’s richest men has warned that the American economy is currently in a very challenging situation, due to global overreach. Tycoon Oleg Deripaska made the comments using his Telegram channel on Friday.
He believes the underlying economy cannot take the weight of the country’s enormous government debt and exorbitant spending.
“Reckless militarization, sanctions against everyone, and military adventures around the world have already cost this country almost $33 trillion,” said the billionaire, who was sanctioned by the US last year. However, he provided no details on where this figure came from.
Deripaska noted that the US has never come so close to the bankruptcy of public finances.
“Printing more money is useless. Therefore, they will quietly discuss how to raise the debt ceiling in Congress,” he explained.
“Lots of heads will roll this spring in Washington,” he said, adding that this will pave the way for peace in 2025.
READ MORE: US economy heading for ‘train wreck,’ billionaire warns
According to the founder of the world’s second-largest aluminum company, Rusal, Washington also faces the problem of unsecured deposits in regional banks that amount to nearly $17 trillion.
Earlier this week, unnamed sources told Bloomberg that the US Treasury Department is reviewing whether federal regulators have sufficient emergency authority to temporarily insure deposits greater than the current $250,000 cap on most accounts. The measure is reportedly being sought by the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America, which includes banks with assets of as much as $100 billion.
The US banking sector has recently been hit by a wave of failures after the collapses earlier this month of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The turmoil has spread to Europe, engulfing Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse, which was forced to merge with rival investment bank UBS.
According to Deripaska, the emergency rescue won’t stop the crisis, which will derail UBS Group as well.
Envoy Alexey Saltykov says the accusations by the French leader reflect his “neo-colonial approach”
https://www.rt.com/africa/573620-russia-envoy-macron-claims/
March 26, 2023
© Getty Images / mtcurado
French claims that Moscow is pursuing a “predatory project” in Africa merely “reflect the neo-colonial approach of Western countries to cooperation with African states,” Alexey Saltykov, Russia’s ambassador to the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso, told Sputnik in an interview published on Saturday.
Saltykov’s remarks come after French President Emmanuel Macron blamed Russia for his country’s deteriorating relations with its former colonies.
Protest movements against France have recently swept Africa’s Sahel region, with many people expressing pro-Russian sentiments. Paris has begun to withdraw its troops from some nations following failures in combating security threats, and Macron admitted that French influence in the region has diminished.
According to France’s president, Moscow is feeding disinformation in Africa, particularly Burkina Faso and Mali where Paris has suffered military setbacks. He stated in November 2022 that there was a “predatory project” at work in the region, “financed by Russia, sometimes others.” Macron alleged that “a number of powers, who want to spread their influence in Africa, are doing this to hurt France, hurt its language, sow doubts, but above all pursue certain interests.”
However, Saltykov argued that local people have started to question the benefits of cooperation with France, resulting in a decline in the country’s influence.
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“As for France, I think the events that took place speak of shifts in the mass consciousness of Burkinabes, and not only of them but also of other African countries,” the ambassador told Sputnik. He added that “under the influence of world events, Africans are beginning to understand more what France’s policy was like, whether it was productive and useful in everything for bilateral cooperation.”
The envoy to the two Sahel countries proposed that African problems be solved by Africans themselves, but that Russia was willing to assist. He also said that as a sovereign state, Burkina Faso should decide with whom it wishes to collaborate.
He further stated that African countries should rely on the UN Charter, which forms a universal basis for establishing relations, rather than on the policies of individual countries, which change depending on the political situation. Saltykov said dealing with the terrorist threat in the Sahel would require as much cooperation as possible.
The envoy also mentioned the Russian embassy in Burkina Faso, which was closed in 1992 for financial reasons, and expressed optimism about its reopening in line with Russia’s strategic course of developing relations with countries on the continent.
Russia and China are shaping global politics while the US dominates its partners across the Atlantic, leaving European countries as mere passengers
The European Union has been reduced to the status of a mere bench player in it all and has become effectively irrelevant.
https://www.rt.com/news/573676-russia-china-politics-eu-us/
By Timur Fomenko, a political analyst
March 28, 2023
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping toast during their dinner at The Palace of the Facets in the Moscow Kremlin, Russia, Tuesday, March 21, 2023. © Pavel Byrkin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP
The meeting of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Moscow last week was met with predictable accusations in Western circles that Moscow was becoming “subservient” or even a “vassal” of Beijing.
MEP Guy Verhofstadt, a Euro-fantasist and former prime minister of Belgium, jeered on Twitter, “Putin’s appalling legacy now includes turning Russia more and more into a Chinese vassal state,” oblivious to the irony of his own words. As the United States took the lead in denouncing China’s peace plan for the Ukraine conflict, publicly setting out the conditions on which it should end, the European Union was nowhere to be seen, or at least had nothing original to say.
This makes Verhofstadt’s comments a damning display of lacking self-awareness. Russia and China are setting out their vision for a new multipolar world, while the US struggles against them in seeking to maintain its hegemonic position. Meanwhile, the European Union has been reduced to the status of a mere bench player in it all and has become effectively irrelevant. The failure of EU countries to stake out their own will and position amidst the larger powers, as well as their total subservience to the US, has made a mockery of the “strategic autonomy” concept once championed by Emmanuel Macron.
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“Strategic autonomy” is a principle of European integration where the EU should be an actor in a multipolar world, which advocates for its own interests and pursues its own agenda. Supporters of this principle insist that the EU should not blindly follow the will of the US when it comes to every foreign policy issue, but should be proactive and enhance its role on the world stage. Therefore, they should not, as is commonly demanded by Washington, take sides on matters such as a new Cold War with China. The term gained growing traction during the years of the Trump administration when Europe’s relations with the US hit a low due to his particular interpretation of the “America first” doctrine.
However, the practical reality of “strategic autonomy” is that the EU is not a unitary state, but a loose intergovernmental organization of states which, while seeking to establish common positions on a principle of unity, do not truly have a unified foreign-policy-making mechanism. The intra-institutional politics of the EU are often a messy compromise and battle of wills between different levels of actors, including the states themselves, the European Commission, and the European Parliament. This combines with the reality that “European integration” has been a broken process since 2008. Challenges such as the Eurozone financial crisis, Brexit, Covid-19, and internal conflicts with various states such as Poland have all weakened and fractured the EU.
As a result, the EU has been ill-suited to deal with what is, despite media misdirection, the single most explicit source of foreign influence and interference against it, the US. Washington has multiple channels whereby it exerts control over the EU’s many foreign policy actors. Firstly, it uses a web of government-funded think tanks and associated journalists to control public opinion and steer EU countries toward supporting its objectives. Secondly, the US has an extraordinary political hold over the former Soviet bloc states to the east of the EU (with the exception of Hungary), which it uses to foment increased antagonism against Russia and China, and therefore undermines the attempts of the bloc’s most “autonomous” and powerful states – Germany and France – to pursue more reconciliatory foreign policies.
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Thirdly, the US uses the United Kingdom as its primary cheerleader in Europe (be it from within or without the EU) to project its political will onto the continent and override the will of any defiant member states. An example of this is the BBC World Service acting as a massive propaganda machine to push narratives in line with Washington’s foreign policies. Additionally, the US has shown an ability to work with and weaponize the intelligence services of member states against their own countries, such as using Danish intelligence to spy on other European leaders.
Through all these factors, both past and present, the US has been able to keep Europe divided, conflicted, and seemingly unable to pursue any foreign policy which actually meets European interests, as opposed to those of the US. This has culminated even to the extent of literally destroying the Nord Stream pipelines and then propagating a false narrative that Ukraine was responsible. The Ukraine war has ultimately only accelerated the isolation and irrelevance of Europe, which has strengthened the hold of the military-industrial complex over the continent, undermined its energy industries, and thus converted the term “strategic autonomy” into a laughing stock.
One might ask, who is truly the vassal? If a new multipolar world is emerging, it’s fair to say, Europe simply isn’t part of it. Russia, China, and America are the drivers of current events, and the EU is but a passenger.
The US stations its arsenal in Europe, but rebukes Russia for planning to do the same in Belarus, Ambassador Antonov has said
“It is Washington that has long been systematically destroying the legal basis of bilateral relations in the strategic sphere. Trying to find a speck in someone else’s eye, they stopped seeing the log in their own eye a long time ago,” he added.
Antonov cited the US’ decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002, and more recently, from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Open Skies Treaties. Washington also failed to comply with certain limits of the New START Treaty, which places restrictions on the Russian and American nuclear arsenals. This led to Moscow suspending its participation in it, Antonov noted.
https://www.rt.com/russia/573717-russia-us-nuclear-hypocrisy/
March 28, 2023
Russian Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile system. © RIA Novosti
Washington’s criticism of Moscow over its plans to place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus rings hollow, as it also keeps its own nuclear arms in other countries, Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to the US, said on Monday.
Antonov was asked to comment on remarks made by US State Department representative Vedant Patel, who blasted what he called Russia’s “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” suggesting that “no other country is inflicting such damage on arms control, nor seeking to undermine strategic stability in Europe.”
In a statement on Telegram, the ambassador said, “US officials have an extremely short memory.”
“It is Washington that has long been systematically destroying the legal basis of bilateral relations in the strategic sphere. Trying to find a speck in someone else’s eye, they stopped seeing the log in their own eye a long time ago,” he added.
Russia will place nuclear weapons in Belarus – Putin
Antonov cited the US’ decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) in 2002, and more recently, from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) and Open Skies Treaties. Washington also failed to comply with certain limits of the New START Treaty, which places restrictions on the Russian and American nuclear arsenals. This led to Moscow suspending its participation in it, Antonov noted.
The US’ response to Russia’s plans to place nukes in Belarus “is a vivid example of hypocrisy of… American politics,” he continued. For the last 60 years, Washington has stationed its tactical nuclear weapons in five non-nuclear weapon states – Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Türkiye, the ambassador said.
“We have repeatedly demonstrated to the world the double standards in US foreign policy… The Administration conveys one message to everyone: the United States is allowed anything, while the rest of the world, especially Russia, is allowed nothing.”
Last week, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian tactical nuclear weapons would arrive in Belarus as early as this summer, explaining that the move was prompted by the UK’s recent decision to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium shells.
Commenting on the decision, US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said that Washington has not seen any signs that Russia is planning to use nuclear weapons, while the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, threatened to place sanctions on Belarus, calling Moscow’s plans “an irresponsible escalation.”
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