Quick reminder: On April 24, 2020, the NIH canceled funding for Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) gain-of-function research led by EcoHealth Alliance, because the Trump Administration suspected (or knew) such research may have had something to do with the Covid pandemic.

The scientific world was outraged. Seventy-seven U.S. Nobel Laureates and 31 scientific societies wrote to NIH leadership requesting review of the decision. Gain-of-function research must continue! In August 2020 the NIH reversed the cancellation and started funding EcoHealth and WIV again. [ref]

The Nobel Laureates and scientific societies won the day: Humanity-saving research to develop deadly pathogens not found in nature could continue unhindered by radical NIH funding cuts.

And yet: NIH grants are a mere fraction of EcoHealth Alliance’s overall government funding.

So which funds are being “suspended” this time around?

Actually, none.

The very threatening “notice of suspension and proposed debarment” sent to EcoHealth Alliance by HHS on May 15, 2024, reassures the organization (whose behavior has been abhorrent and indefensible) that “suspension and debarment actions are not punitive.”

We’re not trying to punish you for your bad behavior, the letter says. We just want to make sure there are non-punitive “consequences” for that behavior. For example:

Offers will not be solicited from, contracts will not be awarded to, existing contracts will not be renewed or otherwise extended for, and subcontracts requiring United States Federal Government approval will not be approved for EHA [EcoHealth Alliance] by any agency in the executive branch of the United States Federal Government, unless the head of the agency taking the contracting action determines that there is a compelling reason for such action.

[BOLDFACE ADDED]

In other words, if the head of the “agency taking the contracting action” determines there is “a compelling reason” to contract with Ecohealth, then this whole suspension and debarment thing is moot. So not punitive. And, pretty much, no consequences. And, also, no funds “suspended.”

Nevertheless, given the horrendous behavior of EcoHealth, as detailed in the announcement of the non-punitive consequences – how could any government agencies possibly have compelling reasons to engage in “contracting action” with “this corrupt organization”?

EcoHealth is mostly funded by the State Department and Pentagon

In an extensive expose on Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, The Intercept reported in December 2021:

EcoHealth Alliance’s funding from the U.S. government, which Daszak has said makes up some 80 percent of its budget, has also grown in recent years. Since 2002, according to an Intercept analysis of public records, the organization has received more than $118 million in grants and contracts from federal agencies, $42 million of which comes from the Department of Defense. Much of that money has been awarded through programs focused not on health or ecology, however, but on the prevention of biowarfare, bioterrorism, and other misuses of pathogens.

[BOLDFACE ADDED]

Here’s what nearly two decades of government funding for EcoHealth Alliance looks like (graph from Intercept article):

As RFK Jr. wrote, based on this information, in The Wuhan Cover-Up:

By far, Daszak’s largest funding pool was the CIA surrogate, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Through USAID, the CIA funneled nearly $65 million in PREDICT funding to EcoHealth between 2009 and 2020.

(p. 228, Kindle Edition)

Yet another article examining Daszak’s military/biodefense ties appeared in Independent Scientist News in December 2020, reporting that most of EcoHealth Alliance’s Pentagon funding “was from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), which is a branch of the DOD which states it is tasked to “counter and deter weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.”

Furthermore,

The military links of the EcoHealth Alliance are not limited to money and mindset. One noteworthy ‘policy advisor’ to the EcoHealth Alliance is David Franz. Franz is former commander of Fort Detrick, which is the principal U.S. government biowarfare/biodefense facility.

The ISN article also provides a handy spreadsheet detailing EcoHealth funding.

So what is the Oversight Committee overlooking – and why?

There is no mention of DoD, DTRA or USAID funding in the Committee’s announcement or in the utterly performative, 100% toothless notice of suspension and debarment they sent to Peter Daszak. Does the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability not know who the major government funders of EcoHealth Alliance are?

If any agency can bypass the suspension and debarment by “determining that there is compelling reason” to fund EcoHealth, what is the point of those non-punitive consequences?

Why this charade of accountability when, in fact, the supposed overseers are willfully ignoring what’s actually going on?

Clearly, the Committee is not interested in investigating Daszak’s role in the biodefense industry that was responsible not just for the gain-of-function research that may have created SARS-CoV-2, but for the entire Covid pandemic response – which was most definitely not about public health and was, in fact, all about creating and administering the medical countermeasures which were the monomaniacal focus of the biodefense responders.

What to ask Peter Daszak if we had actual oversight

If the Committee were serious about investigating Peter Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance, here are some questions they would ask:

Non-public health funding sources and projects

• Most of the government funding for EcoHealth Alliance comes not from public health agencies but from USAID (State Department/CIA) and the Pentagon. What projects are these non-public health agencies funding? Are these projects related to biodefense/biowarfare research?

• Is the USAID and Pentagon-funded virus research conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners intended primarily to prepare for naturally occurring pandemics or for potential biowarfare/bioterrorism attacks?

• Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve creating pandemic potential pathogens as part of biodefense/biowarfare research?
• Do you know or suspect that SARS-CoV-2 was an engineered virus created as part of a USAID and Pentagon-funded biowarfare/biodefense project?

• Do the USAID and Pentagon-funded projects conducted by EcoHealth and/or its partners involve work on medical countermeasures against potential biowarfare/bioterrorism agents?

Disease X op-ed

• On February 27, 2020, before the Covid pandemic had been declared and before anyone in the U.S. had died of Covid-19, you wrote an op-ed for The New York Times stating that the novel coronavirus was “Disease X.” You explained that the term Disease X was coined by you and a bunch of experts at the World Health Organization in 2018. In your report from 2018, it says:

“Disease X represents the awareness that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently not recognized to cause human disease. Disease X may also be a known pathogen that has changed its epidemiological characteristics, for example by increasing its transmissibility or severity.”

Why were you so sure, so early on, even before we knew there was a pandemic, that this was Disease X? What was it about SARS-CoV-2 (which, after all, was named as a direct successor of the original SARS, to which it was said to be very similar) that made it seem so uniquely dangerous to you? Why did you feel you had to warn the whole world about it on the pages of the NYT? 

• Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a known pathogen that had “changed its epidemiological characteristics” by “increasing its transmissibility or severity”? If yes, what made you think that?

• Did you think SARS-CoV-2 was a potential bioweapon that had been developed using funds from USAID and DOD by EcoHealth Alliance and/or its research partners in China or elsewhere?

• The New York Times has subsequently erased your Disease X op-ed from their online 2/27/2020 issue. You can only find it through the direct link. Why do you think they have made it all but impossible for anyone who doesn’t already know about the article to find it? Do you regret having written it?

Linking Disease X to genetic vaccine platforms

• In the NYT op-ed, you provided a link from the term “Disease X” to a 2018 CNN article in which Dr. Anthony Fauci says that, in order to combat such dangerous as-yet-nonexistent pathogens, “the WHO recognizes that it must “nimbly move” and that this involves creating “platform technologies.”

Fauci goes on to say that “scientists develop customizable recipes for creating vaccines. Then, when an outbreak happens, they can sequence the unique genetics of the virus causing the disease, and plug the correct sequence into the already-developed platform to create a new vaccine.”

That sounds an awful lot like the mRNA platform used for the Covid countermeasures that came to be known as the “mRNA vaccines.”

Why did you link to that particular article from your op-ed about disease X? Were you suggesting that the solution to the pandemic that you appeared to be predicting would be a genetic platform in which the “correct sequence” could be plugged to create vaccines?

• Were you already aware of the Covid mRNA vaccines being developed at the time of your op-ed (February 27, 2020) by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, long before the official launch of Operation Warp Speed (May 2020)?

• Is it true that the Pentagon considered the mRNA platforms to be the preferred countermeasures against Covid-19, and that these were always intended to reach full funding and development, starting all the way back in January 2020?

• Was the USAID and Pentagon-funded research conducted EcoHealth and/or its partners related to the development of such mRNA vaccines? If so, how?

[…]

Via https://debbielerman.substack.com/p/peter-daszak-does-biodefense-work

https://healthpolicy-watch.news/the-pandemic-agreement-a-bridge-to-nowhere-or-north-star-to-access-and-global-health-security/

Sixteen leading scientists and manufacturers involved in vaccine development and production worldwide issue an urgent call for a pandemic accord that can be a ‘win-win for all.’ The full list of authors is available below.

Health misinformation was not invented during COVID-19 but was certainly brought to a higher, more malevolent  and destructive pitch during the pandemic.  That hostile crusade has since been (mis)directed at two landmark agreements, the Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Agreement (Pandemic Agreement), and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), that are currently being negotiated by WHO’s 194 member states for approval at the World Health Assembly.

The overarching goal of ensuring that the world will deal more equitably with the next pandemic appears to be elusive as we near the deadline of May 2024 for the close of the negotiations.

Several social media and news outlets have claimed that the WHO is negotiating two instruments that will afford the agency far-reaching powers in case of a future pandemic….

[…]

Via https://merylnass.substack.com/p/the-vaccine-mafia-is-getting-nervous

Mark Oshinskie

[…]

Media outlets and writers who fomented Coronamania have, over the past two years or so, been retreating slowly from the fear and loathing they began brewing up in March, 2020. They’ve calculated that a Covid-weary, distractable public won’t remember most of what they said earlier in the Scamdemic.

Last Friday, in two, paired articles, New York Times writers Apoorva Mandavilli and David Leonhardt continue this strategically slow retreat from the Covid lies they’ve sponsored. For the first time, they acknowledge that maybe the shots they’ve praised have caused a few of what jab-o-philic readers will dismiss as minor injuries.

As he begins his summary of Mandavilli’s theme, Leonhardt admits that the notion that vaxx injuries occurred makes him “uncomfortable.” He’s not expressing discomfort about the injuries themselves. He’s concerned that the vaxx critics might be proven correct.

Why would a self-described “independent journalist” be made uncomfortable by facts? What’s so repugnant about simply calling balls and strikes? Why does Leonhardt have a rooting interest? What’s so hard about admitting he’s been wrong, not just about the shots, but about all of the Covid anxiety he and his employer have incited throughout the past three-plus years?

Bear this in mind: In early 2021, Leonhardt went on a 1,600-mile road trip to get injected as early as he could. David, kinda neurotic and def not climate friendly.

Admitting error—or outright complicity with the Scam—during the Covid overreaction would entail losses of face and credibility. After all the harm the media has done, those consequences would be just and proper.

To avoid this result, the media and bureaucrats are backpedaling slowly to try to change their views without too many people noticing. In so doing, they’re very belatedly adopting the views of those, like me, who from Day 1, called out the hysteria driving, and the downsides to, the Covid overreaction.

But while they’ve incrementally changed parts of their message, they hold tightly to the central, false narrative that Covid was a terrible disease that indiscriminately killed millions. The Covophobes continue to falsely credit the Covid injections for “saving millions of lives” and “preventing untold misery.”

Times readers are a skewed, pro-jab sample. Thus, about half of the 1000+ commenters adopt Mandavilli’s and Leonhardt’s mythology that, even if the shots injured people, they were a net positive in a world facing a universally vicious killer. Relying on that false premise, these columnists and the commenters assert that no medical intervention is risk-free and that a few metaphorical eggs were inevitably broken while making the mass vaccination omelet. In their view, such injuries are a cost of doing business.

To begin with, where was such risk/reward analysis when the lockdowns and school closures were being put in place?

Moreover, The Times writers and most pro-jab commenters pretentiously and inappropriately claim the mantle of “Science.” To many, modern medicine is a religion and “vaccines” are a sacrament. Their pro-vaxx faith is unshakable. But these ostensible Science devotees unreasonably overlooked Covid’s clearest empirical trend: SARS-CoV-2 did not threaten healthy, non-old people. Therefore, neither non-pharmaceutical interventions (“NPIs”) nor shots should have been imposed upon those not at risk. The NPI and shot backers weren’t Scientists. They were Pseudo-Scientists.

The Times’s stubborn, apocalyptic Covid narrative and pro-vaxx message has never squared with what I’ve seen with my own eyes. After four years in Covid Ground Zero, high-density New Jersey, and despite having a large social sphere, I still directly know no one who has died from this virus. I indirectly know of only five—relatives of acquaintances—said to have been killed by it. Each ostensible viral victim fits the profile that’s been clear since February, 2020: very old and unhealthy, dying with, not from, symptoms common to all respiratory virus infections, following a very unreliable diagnostic test.

Countering the intransigent shot backers, hundreds of commenters to the Mandavilli piece describe non-lethal injuries they sustained shortly after injecting. But both articles, and many commenters to the Mandavilli article, emphasize that “correlation isn’t causation.”

The persuasiveness of correlation is typically questioned only when one would viscerally prefer not to apply Occam’s Razor and adopt the most straightforward explanation for symptoms that began shortly after injection. I suspect that, in their personal dealings, those who say “correlation isn’t causation” seldom believe in coincidences.

I directly know six people who’ve had significant health setbacks shortly after taking the shots, including one death. These seem like too many coincidences. Further, what would provide convincing proof of vaxx injury causation? Autopsies are, perhaps strategically, rare. Having done litigation, I know experts will always disagree about causation if they’re paid well enough. And ultimately, doesn’t the cited “millions saved” study assume that correlation is causation?

While the peremptory assertions that the shots saved millions of lives are very questionable and poorly supported, many who read these statements will cite these as gospel because “millions” is a memorable, albeit speculative and squishy figure, and because, well, The New York Times said so!

While the columnists use this phony stat to justify mass vaccination, only one in five-thousand of those infected—nearly all of them very old and/or very sick or killed iatrogenically—had died “of Covid” before VaxxFest began. The vast majority of these deceased were likely to die soon, virus or no.

Thus, how can one say that the shots saved millions of lives? For how long were they saved? And did those who conducted the cited “millions of deaths” study believe they’d get future—professional lifeblood—grants if they didn’t find that the shots saved millions of lives?

Further, Mandavilli and Leonhardt never acknowledge—and may not even know of— the statistical sleight of hand that’s been used throughout by the jab pushers. I’ve described these tricks in prior posts. For example, there was “healthy vaccinee bias:” those who administered the shots strategically declined to inject those who were so frail that the shots’ systemic shock might kill them. And those who injected weren’t counted as “vaxxed” until 42 days after their first shot. As the shots initially suppress immunity and disrupt bodies, one should expect the shots to increase deaths in the weeks after the shot regimen begins. Injectees who died within this initial 42 days were falsely categorized as “unvaxxed.”

FWIW, my wife and I and all other non-vaxxers I know have predictably been fine. The shots didn’t save any of our lives or keep us out of the hospital. Our immune systems did. “The Virus’s” lethality was badly overhyped.

More medical intervention doesn’t necessarily improve health. To the contrary, and especially regarding the shots, less is often more.

While Mandavilli and others blame “vitriolic” anti-vaxxers for discouraging vaxx and booster uptake, vaxx failure itself more strongly discouraged injections than did anything any anti-vaxxer said. The government and media repeatedly touted the shots as “safe and effective” and guaranteed that they would “stop infection and spread.” Montages of these clips are likely still on the Net. Yet, countless injectees—including all injectees whom I know—have gotten sick, several times each.

Consequently, jabbers felt lied to. Based on such directly observable data of vaxx failure and experiencing or seeing vaxx injuries, and without reading studies or conducting courtroom trials, the public made its own observations and rendered its negative verdict about vaxx efficacy and safety by declining vaxx “boosters.” Besides, if anti-vaxxers held such sway over public opinion that they could stop people from taking boosters, their initial warnings would have stopped people from taking the initial shots.

Importantly, and by extension, as we skeptics were right about the shots, we were also right when we criticized the lockdowns, school closures, masks and tests that have been articles of Coronamanic faith. A recent CDC study so has so concluded.

Many of NPI and shot backers have taken refuge in “We-Couldn’t-Have-Known-ism.” But millions, including me, did know, based on widely available information, that the NPIs and shots were always bad ideas. And as we knew that only the old and ill were at risk and that the NPIs would cause great harm, those who are very belatedly admitting that “mistakes were made” not only also could have known; they should have known. Their failure to know reveals either a willful, opportunistic, tribalistic disregard of plainly observable information or a lack of intelligence.

Throughout the Scamdemic, Mandavilli and Leonhardt have belatedly, incrementally changed their disproven views. Their untenable alternative was to persist with a plainly failed narrative and trade in their credibility chips, issue-by-issue. But they’re doing so slowly to evade responsibility for being wrong when it mattered.

For example, for two years, Mandavilli strongly supported keeping schoolkids home. Similarly, 41 months after the Scamdemic began, Leonhardt quoted, with apparent surprise, an “expert” who says that Covid deaths correlate closely with old age. By the time they made these concessions, most of the public already knew that the columnists’ notions were wrong to begin with.

It also took Leonhardt 41 months to admit that Covid deaths were significantly overcounted. But, as when drivers who exhale a .25% blood alcohol level say they “only had a couple of beers,” neither Leonhardt nor the rest of the Covid-crazed will admit how much these numbers were strategically inflated.

Leonhardt had also backed Paxlovid, which has long since been widely devalued.

And Leonhardt very belatedly admitted that infection confers immunity: first to individuals, then to the group. By so conceding, he was merely validating a basic epidemiological principle—herd immunity—that was widely accepted before March, 2020 but, from 2020-22, was used to vilify those who stated it.

Further, while Leonhardt and Mandavilli continue to sell the phony “Pandemic of the Unvaccinated” narrative, far more vaxxed, than unvaxxed people have died with Covid.

Conspicuously, Mandavilli and Leonhardt also fail to mention that hundreds of thousands have suffered apparent vaxx injuries or deaths from heart attacks, strokes or cancers and that overall deaths have increased in highly vaxxed nations. Thus, when one considers all causes of death, the shots seem to have caused a net loss, not gain, in life span.

The Times writers ignore the tens of thousands of American post-vaxx deaths listed in the user-unfriendly, and therefore underused, VAERS database and the excess death increases in the most highly vaxxed nations in 2021-22. Unlike the vaxx injured, who are still alive, dead vaccinees tell no tales. Nor do most of their survivors because, as with families who’ve lost a young man in a war, those left to mourn don’t want to believe that their beloved has died avoidably or in vain. The reluctance to attribute deaths to the shots is particularly acute if the bereaved encouraged the decedent to inject.

While Mandavilli and Leonhardt now begrudgingly report that the shots may not, despite all of the ads and bureaucratic assurances, have been so safe after all, conceding that the shots have killed people is a bridge too far. At least for now.

But the Overton Window has been opened. Thus, the media backpedaling will continue, albeit slowly. Vaxx injuries and NPI-induced damage are not emerging trends. They’re established trends that deserve much more coverage than they’ve received. The lockdown/mask/test/vaxx supporters have been thoroughly wrong throughout. They have no credibility chips left.

I derive little satisfaction from watching their pro-vaxx/NPI case crumble. Firstly, unlike in a courtroom, where judges and juries are, at least in theory, focused on what witnesses say, most peoples’ attention is too scattered to notice the Covid fearmongers’ reversals. The media’s retreat has occurred very slowly. As the backtracking fearmongers have cynically calculated, the public’s Covid fatigue will blunt anti-media anger.

[…]

Via https://markoshinskie8de.substack.com/p/erasing-coronamania

Episode 22 Medicine: the Necessary Art

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

In ancient Egypt, most physicians (and most scribes) were priests associated with temples. Aside from members of the government bureaucracy, they were the only literate members of Egyptian society. Inhotep, the royal architect who built the first step pyramid (see Sneferu: The First Egyptian Pyramid Builder), was also a physician and subsequently became a god associated with the Greek God Aesculapius. Many physicians belonged to temples dedicated to Tof, who would become the god Hermes in Greek mythology. Isis is also associated with healing and the laying on of hands.

Tof

Sekhmet, a woman with the head of a lioness, was the Egyptian goddess of medicine. According to Egyptian mythology, Ra decided to send Sekhmet to wipe out mankind and Tof (the god with an Ibis head) who invented writing got her drunk so she forgot about destroying humanity.

Tof is also associated with healing, known as wab (“purification”) in Egyptian. When Horus the son of Osiris lost his eye in his battle with Set (see The Ancient Egyptian Origin Myth ), Tof restored it by magic. In another myth he saved the infant Horus’s life after he was stung by a scorpion.

Sleeping in the temple at Dendera enabled physicians to dream the solution to your illness. People also sought the water cure (the origin of holy water) there, curing themselves by pouring water over themselves that had dripped over the statue of Horus. The temple the female king Hatsheput built in Thebes had a clinic on the roof and temple inscriptions detail patient experiences.

Exorcism was another common treatment, especially for blindness, which was caused by the gods. Most infections were treated with magic spells. One treatment for plague was to burn the bed linens. The treatment to make an old man a youth again was to give him wrinkle cream.

The skill of Egyptian physicians, frequently sought out by other Mediterranean countries, may have been related to their expertise in mummification. Unlike the ancient Greeks, the Egyptians allowed dissection of the dead.

Medicine was one of the few areas of knowledge preserved on papyri. The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus (from around 1700 BC) deals mainly with trauma (mainly broken bones). It lists 48 types of trauma starting with the head. It explains how to immobilize limbs via splinting, as well a offering a magical treatment (for frontal skull injury): grinding up an ostrich shell and painting your head with it.

The Papyrus Ebers (from around 1500 BC) lists 800 remedies, including rubbing a head injury with fish oil and wrapping a sore foot with a deer skin (because deer are really fast runners).

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/1492791/1492846

By Ian DeMartino

On Monday, Iranian officials confirmed that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and every other passenger was killed when the helicopter they were traveling in crashed in the mountainous northwestern region of Iran.

One of the most important pipelines in Europe in one of the most surveilled areas of the Baltic Sea was destroyed in an act of sabotage and investigations by the Swedes and Denmark end without a culprit named.

The Prime Minister of Slovakia was shot five times  after he halted his country’s aid to Ukraine, by a senior citizen acting alone and who was a vehement supporter of Ukraine.

The Iranian president and foreign minister are both killed in a freak helicopter accident, during which the other two escort helicopters managed to return safely.

“You had three helicopters flying in a row, one all of a sudden drops out. No mayday. No nothing. And if it was due to foggy conditions, how did the other two get through okay? But not the president’s?” Michael Maloof, a retired senior security policy analyst asked the hosts of Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Monday.

Once again: no “accident”.

A MAJOR strategic mistake of cramming the top government circle on the SAME copter for a visit to a very dodgy border and when the whole of West Asia is a giant volcano.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) May 19, 2024

The Iranian delegation was flying in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan, which borders the country of Azerbaijan, a close ally of Israel.

On Monday, an Israeli official reportedly told US media that it was not involved in the Iranian President’s death.

But, as Maloof notes, Israel has a history of alleged clandestine operations inside of Iran, including the bombing of pipelines, the murder of nuclear scientists and the recent response from Israel to an Iranian attack which Iran says was carried out from within its territory.

“[The attack by Israel on Iran] was also a very meager response, but I think that this was all planned for something much larger, something like this,” Maloof speculated.

“You have other episodes occurring throughout the West, including the attempted assassination of the prime minister of [Slovakia]… So these are not happening in isolation. Something bigger is going on out there. I think people are trying to put their finger on it,” he added.

The same day as the Iranian president’s helicopter crashed, officials for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) army said they thwarted a coup attempt and arrested 50 people, including three Americans. The coup’s alleged leader, Christian Malanga, was killed in the attempt. Malanga lived in the US for most of his life and according to videos posted online, visited the Israeli military in 2015.

The late failed coup leader Christian Malanga during an apparent 2015 visit to an Israeli military base pic.twitter.com/keFyp8nqz8 https://t.co/74MLsoLPUI

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) May 20, 2024

Maloof concluded that if it is revealed that Israel was involved in Raisi’s death, the response will be significant. “You saw what the reaction was when the Israelis hit the Iranian consulate in Syria… for the first time, Iran displayed that it could strike Israel directly. If this helicopter crash indeed was purposeful and it could link back to Israel, I rethink you’re going to see a very major response.”

 IRAN: WHAT REALLY MATTERS

Amidst all the sadness and grief, let’s cut to the chase.

Eurasia integration and the drive towards multipolarity is being fundamentally conducted by three major actors:

Russia, China – and Iran.

Which happen to be the three top “existential threats” to Exceptionalistan.

The heart of the matter: Putin essentially invited Iranian ambassador to Russia, Jalali, to be on the table at an impromptu Sunday, 10 pm meeting of the cream of the crop of Russia’s Defense Team.

That reaches way beyond the realm of discussion between “accidental crash” or targeted downing of the Iranian presidential helicopter.

Everyone was there: Defence Minister Belousov; Secretary of the Security Council Shoigu; Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov; Emergencies Minister Kurenkov; Special Assistant to the President, Levitin.

The message: Russia’s got Iran’s back.

And Russia completely supports stability and continuity of government in Iran – which is anyway already fully guaranteed by Iran’s constitution.

We are deep into total Hybrid War mode, bordering on Hot, on most of the planet.

Three civilization-states shaping a new world cannot be more clear.

Interlinked as they are via bilateral strategic partnerships, plus membership of BRICS and SCO, and following up on Putin-Xi in Beijing last week, none of the three will allow the other partners to be destabilized by the usual suspects.

— Pepe Escobar (@RealPepeEscobar) May 20, 2024

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/05/21/iranian-presidents-death-latest-in-string-of-strange-coincidences/

© AP Photo / Paul Sakuma

Sputnik International

The third Saturday of May is celebrated in the United States as Armed Forces Day, an observance honoring all members of the country’s military. But many experts are not joining the celebrations, raising concerns about the state of the US troops.

This year’s Armed Forces Day in the United States takes place as Washington’s war machine appears to be but a shadow of its former self, its reputation tarnished by the de facto humiliating defeat in Afghanistan in 2021 and the inability to stop Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping lanes.

The decline of the once-powerful US Armed Forces could be traced to the 1990s, the time right after the end of the Cold War, argued former US State Department counterterrorism analyst Scott Bennett.

What started with reforms to those who could serve eventually “cascaded into an avalanche of social justice, acquainted theorems and attitudes towards the military,” he said.

Following that, the 9/11 terrorist attacks triggered a wave of US military interventionism across the world, ostensibly aimed at fighting terrorism but in reality serving as an “enrichment exercise for the military-industrial complex.”

“So you’ve seen the military transform from a nationally-owned organization to an organization that was really being used to feed corporate entities like Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, a myriad of defense contractors, missile manufacturers, arms dealers, and that was another death blow to the military because suddenly it became a profit-generating organization,” Bennett remarked.

He asserts the US military during the Obama administration suddenly lost interest in winning wars and resolving conflicts – instead, it became interested in perpetuating conflicts and “in using the military as a social re-engineering organization”.

“They [US authorities] completely corroded and decayed the military from within, causing a lot of the best soldiers, airmen, marines and sailors to depart, to not re-enlist,” he continued. “And as a result of all of the social pathologies and perversions that have been used and put into the military (…) You’re witnessing the United States military completely coming apart at the seams from a moral point of view, from a esprit de corps point of view.”

He also noted that most Americans are reluctant to enlist because they do not want to join “a military that is at odds with their moral, traditional religious values.”

“For the first time in the history of the United States, the American people, I believe, are looking at the military with a sense of disgust and a sense of fear and loathing because it has been used to ignite wars around the world and destroy the American reputation in Syria and Afghanistan, in Iraq and Libya and in Ukraine,” Bennett added. “And now Europeans are also waking up and seeing the US military is one of the biggest threats to world peace.”

Comparing the US military to the Russian military today, Bennett argued that the latter is clearly superior.

“The Russian military is superior in technology and its manpower. Its technology is superior because the Russian people and the Russian government use their military development of weapons solely for the purpose of defending the country and the people, not to enrich companies that manufacture these weapons,” he elaborated. “Russia’s military manufacturing of weapons is solely and completely dedicated to the preservation of the nation, and to do it at a cost-effective rate.”

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20240518/profit-generating-and-woke-brainwashing-whats-happened-to-us-military-1118520874.html