Back in March, Ukraine’s President Zelensky during a virtual address shamed Hungary’s Viktor Orban, calling him out in a speech, saying “Listen, Viktor, do you know what is happening in Mariupol?” – and adding: “I want to be open once and for all you should decide for yourself, who you are for.”

But Friday was Orban’s turn to send the message back, in a bit of a snub at an EU summit in Brussels that has grabbed the attention of some Western media outlets as well as commentators online. Friday marked Zelensky’s third stop on a two-day tour through European capitals, a first since the Russian invasion began. Zelensky was greeted coldly by Orban, seen among the only EU leaders refusing to clap as Ukraine’s president jointed them on stage…

⚡️Orban is the only EU summit participant who did not applaud Zelensky pic.twitter.com/Q17lHSznrM

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) February 9, 2023

Germany’s Chancellor Scholz had said Wednesday night while alongside Zelensky and Macron in Paris that “It is a sign of solidarity. Ukrainians are part of the European family.”

But apparently PM Orban doesn’t think so, or at least his refusal to laud and celebrate the Ukrainian president as other EU leaders are doing has come through loud and clear. In the above clip, Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis isn’t clapping either, but he does have a smile on his face and appears pleased to see Zelensky.

But Orban hasn’t been shy of late in his warnings that Kiev is dragging Western Europe into a dangerous armed confrontation with nuclear-armed superpower Russia. As one American journalist recorded of Orban’s words given to a group of foreign correspondents at the end of last month…

“We are in big, big trouble,” he said, of the West. If Russia’s coming spring offensive proves successful, then the NATO countries are going to be faced with the question of do we send in soldiers to fight for Ukraine? This is not something Orban thinks the American people are considering, but it is front to mind among a growing number of Europeans, whose countries stand to be devastated if war spreads.

Ukraine was of course outraged at such warnings, while it continues to lobby the West for more and more tanks, longer-range missiles, and especially advanced fighter jets.

As Ukrainian President Zelensky walks up for the family photo with EU leaders in Brussels, they all seem to clap, apart from one: Hungary’s Viktor Orban. #EUCO pic.twitter.com/H2W6yotNzd

— Jack Parrock (@jackeparrock) February 9, 2023

Zelensky on Thursday continued to urge that his country be fast-tracked into NATO while it is fighting the “most anti-European force” in the world.

But as one observer comments, the whole meeting resulted in little other than symbolism: 

Reporting from Brussels, FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating said Ukrainian President Zelensky was “hitting the same themes” on European unity and values during the press conference following his European Council meeting.

But the Ukrainian president did get some tough questions from journalists at the end, when he was asked if there were any specific deliverables promised during his meetings in Brussels and in Paris last night, noted Keating.

French leader Zelensky’s invitation to dinner at the Elysee Palace before the EU summit caused a split – Italian Prime Minister George Meloni said it was inappropriate.

Orban didn’t seem too fussed about it either. He ignored Zelenskiy’s appearance. pic.twitter.com/OHKFc9v8rl

— John Carter (@JohnEdgarCarter) February 9, 2023

Keating emphasized that “President Zelensky didn’t want to sound overly negative,” and added: “We always knew there wasn’t going to be a big deliverable. This was very much about symbolism.”

Via The Cradle,

US-imposed Caesar Act sanctions against the Syrian government have impeded humanitarian efforts in the country following the devastating February 6 earthquake, the UN Resident Coordinator for Syria, Mostafa Benlamlih, said on Wednesday.

Benlamlih also warned against the “politicization” of humanitarian efforts in Syria, referring to claims by western media outlets and certain aid groups that the government ‘prohibits’ aid from reaching opposition-held territory.

“The goal of UN organizations is to deliver a message about the suffering of the Syrians as a result of the sanctions imposed on their country … These sanctions have … prevented the arrival of millions of dollars to those affected by the earthquake,” Benlamlih told Syrian news agency SANA in an interview.

“Syria today is suffering from a ‘double crisis’ as a result of the ongoing war since 2011, as well as the earthquake, which made the situation more difficult … before the earthquake, there were 15 million Syrians in dire need of assistance,” he said, adding that now, the numbers have increased significantly.

One day later, UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pederson, warned against the politicization of earthquake aid. “Emergency response must not be politicized … We need to do everything to make sure that there are no impediments whatsoever to the life-saving support that is needed in Syria,” Pedersen said on Thursday.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Wednesday claimed that Washington was the ‘leading provider of aid to Syria and the Syrian people,’ despite also announcing a refusal to coordinate with the government, whose territory is inhabited by around 70 percent of the Syrian population. On the same day as Blinken’s statement, the UN warned that “very little” aid was reaching government-held territory.

Samuel Werberg, the regional spokesman for the US State Department, claimed on Wednesay during an interview with Saudi television that Washington’s sanctions do not restrict humanitarian aid deliveries in any way. Despite this, Bassam Sabbagh, Syria’s permanent envoy to the UN, said on the same day that international cargo planes “refuse” to land in Syrian airports due to the threat of sanctions.

“US-supported humanitarian organizations” means no help from America in the hardest-hit areas in Syria–those under the control of the Syrian government.

The US has no qualms about supplying aid to the territories controlled by the local al-Qaeda affiliate, though. https://t.co/i3FK53uhMN

— Lindsey Snell (@LindseySnell) February 7, 2023

Coinciding with Werberg’s remarks was a statement by Washington’s permanent envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Joseph Manso, who said that the US would continue to stand against normalization with the Damascus government.

“Our policy is clear. The American administration … will not normalize relations with Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and we do not support other countries’ move [to do so] unless there is real movement towards a political solution under UN Security Council Resolution 2254.”

This statement comes in the aftermath of the OPCW releasing its third report on the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018, which was put out as the US has been attempting in any way it can to obstruct a potential reconciliation of ties between Syria and Turkey, which was in the works under Russian auspices before the massive earthquake ravaged both countries.

It isn’t just Tesla that the U.S. Department of Transportation could be investigating relating to Elon Musk…

Believe it or not, it was reported on Thursday that the agency could also be looking into Neuralink, Elon Musk’s budding brain-implant startup, over allegations of potentially “illegal movement of hazardous pathogens.”

The probe was disclosed by a Department of Transportation spokesperson after an animal-welfare advocacy group called Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM) lobbied Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg regarding records it found about the company.

The PCRM said it “obtained emails and other documents that suggest unsafe packaging and movement of implants removed from the brains of monkeys”, according to Reuters, who was first to report on the probe. 

The PCRM claims that the implants may have carried infectious diseases in violation of federal law, the report says. The Department of Transportation said it was taking the allegations “very seriously”. 

Antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus and herpes B virus were both claimed to be potentially transported without proper containment measures. Incidents of improper transportation took place in 2019, the report says, when Neuralink was still reliant on the University of California, Davis to help with its experiments. 

Neuralink’s actions “may pose a serious and ongoing public health risk”, representatives from PCRM wrote in a letter. It continued: “The company’s documented track record of sloppy, unsafe laboratory practices compel DOT to investigate and levy appropriate fines.” 

A DOT spokesperson commented to Reuters: “We are conducting an investigation to ensure that Neuralink is in full compliance with federal regulations and keeping their workers and the public safe from potentially dangerous pathogens.”

Neuralink did not respond to Reuters’ request for comments. As the report notes, Neuralink is already facing scrutiny from Federal regulators regarding “animal welfare violations ” and staff that was reportedly forced to work quickly, causing “needless suffering and deaths” of animals. 

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

European Union authorities are complaining that Twitter doesn’t seem to be taking the bloc’s fight against “disinformation” seriously by producing an incomplete report on compliance with its rules on censorship.

Elon Musk’s Twitter lagged the likes of Google, Meta, and TikTok in the fight against “disinformation” over the past six months, the European Commission said on Feb. 9, and it urged Twitter to get in line.

“I am disappointed to see that Twitter’s report lags behind others and I expect a more serious commitment to their obligations,” Vera Jourova, a European Commission vice president for values and transparency, said in a statement.

The bloc on Feb. 8 opened a Transparency Center that contains the various tech platforms’ reports, including Twitter’s.

Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner who recently reminded Musk to follow the EU’s rules on policing content, didn’t reference Twitter directly, but said that “it comes as no surprise that the degree of quality vary greatly according to the resources companies have allocated to this project.” There have been significant staffing cuts at Twitter since Musk took over.

Six months ago, before Musk bought the social media platform, Twitter was among 34 entities that signed on to an updated EU anti-disinformation pledge called the Code of Practice on Disinformation.

Along with the recently agreed Digital Services Act—which lets regulators fine tech platforms up to 6 percent of their global turnover for violations—and draft rules on political advertising, the code is part of the European Commission’s “toolbox for fighting the spread of disinformation in the EU,” the bloc’s executive said in a June 2022 release.

While the code is nonbinding, companies that take part can ease some of their compliance requirements under the Digital Services Act, which is expected to kick in around September 2023 for tech platforms with more than 45 million users in the EU, with Twitter likely falling into that category.

Signatories were given six months to implement the commitments and issue implementation reports, which the companies did, with reports published on Feb. 8.

The progress reports include data on how much advertising revenue the companies had cut from disinformation actors, instances of manipulative behaviors detected, and how they label political ads.

Twitter’s report was the only one that was singled out for criticism, with the EU saying that it lacked data and didn’t contain information on commitments to empower fact-checkers.

Twitter didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

Subsequent implementation reports are due in six months.

Read more here…

Authored by Tomasz Teluk via ReMix,

Let there be light! President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has announced that the EU is to deliver 35 million energy-saving LED light bulbs to Ukraine worth €50 million. They will be made available free of charge at post offices across the country.

She said that Ukraine should be an inspiration to Europe, with thousands of Ukrainians changing to LED bulbs to work towards cleaner energy.

“They are energy-saving, very good,” she says in footage shot during the visit.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited Kyiv’s Ukrposhta to see how Ukrainians exchange old light bulbs for energy-saving ones. It is the European Commission that will allocate funds for the purchase of about 30 million LED light bulbs for Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/o0rABb0RPY

— Dénes Törteli 🇪🇺🇭🇺🇺🇦 (@DenesTorteli) February 3, 2023

The EU once again shows it thinks climate change is more important than anything else. The light bulbs are an even more surreal gift than the 5,000 helmets the Germans gave at the start of the war. 

One of the most important questions is how Ukraine will use the bulbs when it’s suffering power outages as a result of the war?

Finally, we should not have the wool pulled over our eyes. If the EU bought these bulbs from the largest European producers, which come from Germany, the Netherlands, and France, this is nothing more than a way of giving public aid to these companies.

Once again, Germany shows its transactional face. 

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is vowing to expel all Chinese goods and materials from the United States’s defense supply chains.

Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said that he would lead the effort to expunge China-sourced goods during a Feb. 8 hearing of the committee on the subject of defense-industrial base security.

“The greatest concern I have with the defense industrial base is our continued reliance on China as the source of raw materials,” Rogers said.

“I won’t stop until we’ve completely rid the defense supply chain of Chinese goods and materials.”

Rogers said that communist China still inadvertently controlled too many parts of the supply chains required to equip the military and conduct security operations.

He singled out the United States’s continued reliance on China for rare earth minerals and non-advanced semiconductor chips and said that the regime’s grip on such supplies would need to be broken.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains a tight grip on many of our material supply chains including critical minerals and semiconductors,” Rogers said.“We will never prevail in a conflict with China if they’re the source of our military supply.”

US Must Move Dependencies

Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said that the continued role of China in providing elements for the United States’s defense industrial supply chains was part of a greater legacy of irresponsible investment by U.S. corporations seeking to make an easy profit.

“Starting roughly in the late 1990s into the early 2000s, China became the global corporate easy button,” Smith said.

“That’s where you went to make stuff. Huge market, not much in the way of labor costs, certainly not environmental regulations. It was cheap, it was easy, it was the way to go.”

Read more here…

By Nour Al Ali, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist

While there are many reasons to be bullish on oil, a contrarian view signals prices may fall in coming months so long as real interest rates keep rising.

The breakdown in the relationship between crude and real interest rates may result in a decrease in oil prices. Take a look at the correlation between WTI contracts and US 10-year real rates (ie the 10-year yield adjusted for inflation), measured on a 120-day basis. The relationship between the two assets has weakened after it was positive last year, when energy was the main driver of inflation and central banks kept raising rates in an effort to control price pressures.

Investors are now concerned about higher rates impacting demand for energy, leading to a supply surplus that could potentially leave more oil out there than buyers want. While there’s a growing chorus that believes the Fed will pivot, policymakers have kept up their hawkish calls for further rate increases despite a recent moderation in inflation. This is because inflationary pressures have become more ingrained in daily life and are no longer solely driven by temporary factors.

There are plenty of other factors that are influencing oil prices, mainly OPEC+’s control over supplies to maintain market stability, and an increase in expected demand out of China. Although traders have already taken these bullish factors into account, the risk remains that rising oil prices may be vulnerable to rising interest rates. The “don’t fight the Fed” concept may become increasingly relevant in this sector of the market.

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The House of Representatives on Feb. 8 passed a bill that would end a vaccine mandate on foreign travelers entering the United States.

H.R. 185, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), is a brief bill.

“A BILL [to] terminate the requirement imposed by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for proof of COVID–19 vaccination for foreign travelers,” the top of the legislation reads.

The legislation would forbid federal agencies from using any congressionally apportioned funds to enforce such a vaccination mandate.

In addition to overruling the CDC’s April 2022 order, the bill would prohibit the imposition of any similar vaccination requirement for foreign travelers entering the United States in the future.

The bill passed in a 227-201 vote.

“Life has returned to normal across the country,” Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) said in support of the bill. “Despite the rest of the world moving on from COVID, this administration persists in maintaining an unnecessary vaccination requirement for those entering the United States.”

The day before, the bill had easily glided through the House Rules Committee in a 9-3 vote. All nine committee Republicans voted to advance the bill. The committee’s Democrats, excluding an absent member, voted against the bill.

In an Oct. 25, 2021, proclamation, President Joe Biden announced a ban on entry to the United States for foreigners not vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus, a ban which the administration said was a “science-based public health measure.”

Biden called specifically for a ban on unvaccinated “covered individuals”—non-citizens seeking to enter the country temporarily—being allowed entry by air travel.

In April 2022, the CDC announced the “Amended Order Implementing Presidential Proclamation on Advancing the Safe Resumption of Global Travel During the COVID–19 Pandemic,” which put Biden’s rule into effect.

Less Strict for Illegal Aliens

The CDC’s April 2022 order is stricter on those temporarily entering the United States for travel than on illegal aliens.

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), in comments during the Rules Committee hearing, noted that COVID restrictions on foreigners legally entering the United States for travel are harsher than those imposed on illegal aliens.

Namely, Burgess relayed a conversation he had had during a visit to the border with Customs and Border Patrol agents.

He said the agents told him that unvaccinated illegal aliens are allowed into the country under the “catch and release” policy. This policy describes a procedure whereby illegal aliens apprehended at the border are released into the country to await their day in court. Statistics, however, show that many who cross the southern border illegally never show up for this date.

Burgess described vaccination as “purely voluntary” for illegal aliens entering the country.

Read more here…

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It is standard procedure for committees at the start of a new Congressional session to outline their goals for the next two years, especially when a chamber is under new management.

With Republicans assuming control of the United States House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, the newly installed GOP leadership has been doing just that across the chamber’s 20 standing permanent committees and their 104 subcommittees and select temporary panels.

That transitional shift-change has been clearly evident this week in seminal session meetings of the 52-member House Energy and Commerce Committee and its six subcommittees and in the 45-member House Natural Resources Committee and its five subsidiary panels.

During four years of Democratic control, climate change, environmental protection, and “green” energy development were among primary policy drivers in adopting legislation designed to coax the nation away from reliance on oil and gas, including the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and $740 billion Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA).

During two days of nearly eight hours of hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Feb. 7, and before the full House Natural Resource Committee on Feb. 8, Republicans made it clear that many initiatives passed under the Biden administration promoting electric vehicles, carbon capture, green energy, and environmental protection are on the proverbial block.

Energy Panel Plots New Course

During the near-six hour House Energy and Commerce Committee meeting, six witnesses testified on a raft of 17 Republican-sponsored bills that proponents argue are key to “restoring American energy dominance.”

Among the proposed measures that will dominate the committee’s and its subsidiary panels’ agendas in the coming months are bills prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking without Congressional approval; expanding natural gas exports; repealing the IRA’s Green House Reduction Fund; and amending the Clean Air, Toxic Substances Control, Solid Waste Disposal, and National Gas Tax acts.

Within the tranche of proposed legislation on the committee’s “unleashing American energy agenda,” are bills calling for permitting reform, promoting development of “critical minerals,” and prohibiting the import of Russian uranium.

In kicking off the day-long hearing, Republicans argued that “unleashing American energy, lowering energy costs, and strengthening supply chains” must be a priority if the United States is to be economically competitive in the 21st century and beyond.

“America has been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We should be working towards developing a predictable regulatory landscape across-the-board that inspires innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological leadership, hydropower, nuclear, fossil energies, wind, solar, and batteries,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Rep. Cathy Rodgers (R-Wash.) said in opening the proceedings.

The nation needs an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy, she and others insisted, claiming the Biden administration’s pro-green agenda is promoting technologies that either aren’t feasible or don’t have the domestic raw materials and processing capacity to now sustain.

Case in point, they note, is the promotion of electric vehicles (EVs) when more than 80 percent of the lithium needed to power EV batteries, and the capacity to manufacture them, are in China.

“Rush-to-green energy policies—both state and federal—have curtailed reliable energy and infrastructure, resulting in everything from blackouts to spiking prices,” Rodgers said. “These policies are unsustainable and lead to greater reliance on countries like Russia, or in our case, China. This is not a future any of us want.”

Authored by Natalya Murakhver via The Epoch Times,

It’s been nearly 11 months since the end of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Key to NYC” vaccine mandate and public-school masking requirements. And President Joe Biden recently announced an end to the pandemic-related state of emergency on May 11. Yet many private businesses, cultural institutions, and schools continue to cling to COVID-era restrictions.

The remnants of pandemic policies are hodgepodge and nonsensical, ranging from vaccine and mask mandates to testing and isolation.

They do little to promote safety, but much to continue disruption.

Even though it is now widely accepted that vaccines don’t prevent transmission, some mandates persist. New York state has a teacher shortage, yet the city has fired nearly 2,000 unjabbed teachers and staff, thanks to the city’s vaccine mandate. It only today ended the mandate for city workers—but has no plans to rehire those fired.

Children and adolescents have suffered from unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety during the pandemic, yet unvaccinated parents are still banned from city schools, performances and games. Parents miss out on full participation in school experiences.

Some public schools enforce their own rogue restrictions because… science! Special Music School, a public specialized K-8 school, limits capacity at student recitals to only one parent per child, even while there are no restrictions in the same concert venue during non-school concerts.

Parent-teacher conferences remain virtual through the end of 2022–23 school year. Presumably this is due to the requirement that parents be vaccinated to enter school buildings, potentially creating inequity for unjabbed parents. In December, after two years, the Department of Education finally shut down its Situation Room, which informed school communities about positive cases. Yet related school emails still arrive in parents’ inboxes, along with rapid tests sent home by schools.

On the college front, SUNY, which lets individual campuses adopt their own restrictions, requires young, healthy students to be fully vaccinated—but only “strongly recommends” jabs to faculty and staff, who are older and more at risk (but have a union). NYU requires students to be both vaccinated and boosted.

Some cultural institutions, including museums and theaters, many of which receive taxpayer funding, also continue to enforce their own set of made-up mandates. NYU Skirball Theater requires audience members, including children, to be both vaccinated and boosted. Columbia’s Lenfest Center for the Arts requires proof of vaccination.

The Joyce Theater requires masks, as does City Center, though only on Tuesday evenings and during Sunday matinees, not at other times. Alvin Ailey requires them for all dance classes, and still practices social distancing.

Programs designed for children seem to be extra restrictive, especially dance schools, which are popular with young girls. The Upper West Side’s Steps on Broadway forces visitors and participants six months and up to be vaccinated, no medical exemptions permitted. Though masks are theoretically optional, teachers may request them “in some classes.”

NYC Ballet requires all dancers to mask during class and rehearsals and musicians (with the exception of horn players) to mask during performances.

Kid-focused museums, including MoMath, still maintain their mask mandates under the guise of “protecting the public.” The Whitney has largely made masks optional, except for family days, when everyone 2 and over must mask.

NYC Transit Museum is still offering virtual programs to autistic children, while claiming to “support peer-to-peer interaction.” Older kids who have the privilege of going onsite at NYCTM must still mask. The Children’s Museum of the Arts has permanently closed its Charlton Street Space and is still doing virtual programs.

Broadway dropped its audience mask mandate July 1, 2022, yet staff continue to be masked.

Saddest of all, masks are still required at nursing homes, so the elderly, in their golden years, continue to be deprived of facial cues and the comfort of smiles, whether they like it or not.

This means countless older adults with hearing loss, dementia and other age-related limitations have been forced to live in a faceless, isolated, masked world for nearly three years now; there’s no reason whatsoever it should be that long, yet they have little power to effect change.

As New Yorkers fed up with the never-ending COVID restrictions know well, this is not an all-inclusive list. There are many other remnants—from testing trucks on every corner, to endless rapid tests sent home from school, to mask requests from teachers.

And the list goes on.

Though the pandemic is over, the restrictions clearly are not.

On Monday, Biden said we needed an “orderly transition” out of the public-health emergency. We New Yorkers also need an urgent return to normal.

*  *  *

A version of this article appeared in the New York Post; reposted from the Brownstone Institute