Authored by Caden Pearson via The Epoch Times,

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday released recommendations on how to acquire and manage medical supplies for the treatment of exposure to radioactive materials in emergencies.

The report sets out for countries and governments how to develop and maintain a national stockpile of specific medical supplies that can lower risks and treat injuries caused by radiation.

Maria Neira, the head of the WHO’s Public Health and Environment department, emphasized the importance of having “ready supplies” of crucial drugs developed over the last decade.

“In radiation emergencies, people may be exposed to radiation at doses ranging from negligible to life-threatening. Governments need to make treatments available for those in need—fast,” Neira said in a statement.

It’s the first time the publication has been updated since 2007.

“This updated critical medicines list will be a vital preparedness and readiness tool for our partners to identify, procure, stockpile, and deliver effective countermeasures in a timely fashion to those at risk or exposed in these events,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program.

The medicines listed in the publication for a national stockpile include only those specifically used today to treat human over-exposure to radiation, according to the WHO. Other typical lists of medical supplies for stockpile would include generic supplies like personal protective equipment (PPE), trauma kits, fluids, antibiotics, and painkillers.

The WHO stated its data, prepared in annual reports, showed that many countries are still unprepared for radiation emergencies.

A worker, wearing protective suits and masks, takes notes in front of storage tanks for radioactive water at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s (TEPCO) tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, on Feb. 10, 2016. (Toru Hanai/Reuters)

Stockpile

The report focussed on which medicines should be stockpiled and how they should be stored and managed, as well as the role that different organizations play in preparing for and responding to emergencies.

The WHO noted that a collection of medical supplies commonly found in a radiation emergency stockpile include stable iodine to protect the thyroid from radioactive iodine, chelating agents such as Prussian blue to remove radioactive caesium from the body, and decorporating agents like calcium-/zinc-DTPA to treat internal contamination with transuranium radionuclides.

Additionally, there are also cytokines included to help reduce the damage to bone marrow in cases of acute radiation syndrome and other medicines to treat symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, and infections, according to the WHO.

The report discusses emerging treatments and medical countermeasures, such as studies identifying new cellular and molecular pathways and means of administrating drugs that may be exploited for novel treatments and new products for use during a radiation emergency.

An image of a small round and silver capsule containing radioactive Caesium-137 that went missing in transportation between a mine site north of Newman and the north-eastern parts of Perth between Jan. 10–16, obtained on Jan. 27, 2023. (AAP Image/Supplied by Department of Fire and Emergency Services WA)

Radiological and Nuclear Emergencies

According to the WHO, a radiological or nuclear emergency is a situation that negatively impacts human life, health, property, or the environment.

The report considers possible scenarios for radiological and nuclear emergencies, including accidents at nuclear power plants and nuclear warfare.

An accident at a nuclear power plant, medical or research facility, or accidents during the transport of radioactive materials are examples of accidental radiological and nuclear emergencies that could occur, according to the WHO.

They can involve a number of situations, such as nuclear power plant accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Situations can also involve accidental exposure to uncontrolled radiation sources, and accidentals while transporting radioactive materials.

One such incident happened in Australia recently, where a small, solid capsule measuring 8 mm by 6 mm was thought to have dropped off a truck during transportation from a mine to Perth. The capsule is radioactive and can potentially cause severe skin burns and illness. It is reported to emit a level of radiation equivalent to receiving 10 x-rays in one hour, at 2 millisieverts per hour.

Radiation emergencies may also occur in conjunction with conventional emergencies, natural disasters, military conflicts, or malicious acts involving radiation sources, the WHO noted.

Former Obama secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, admitted last week that the immigration crisis is ‘much bigger’ than it was when he was running things.

“Well, the job, first of all, is different than it was when I was in office seven, eight years ago,” Johnson told David Lat on the Original Jurisdiction podcast. “The current secretary was my deputy secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. The job is different. The immigration problem is much bigger than it was.”

When asked if he had any advice for Mayorkas – who is facing calls for impeachment over the Biden administration’s mishandling (stoking of) the border crisis, Johnson said he just needs to stick to the script.

“So, sometimes, the essence of the job is repeating over and over again one simple, straightforward message that you want people to hear,” he said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Biden urging him to reverse plans to limit asylum access and eligibility on the US-Mexico border – which follows plans announced in January to significantly decrease illegal border crossings by proclaiming that illegal immigrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela will be returned to Mexico under Title 42 if they enter the United States illegally. The plan, under which up to 30,000 migrants from the four countries can apply for asylum protection from their home countries, also provides asylum seekers and migrants with US sponsors.

“We believe that your administration can and must continue to expand legal pathways for migrants and refugees into the United States—without further dismantling the right to seek asylum at our border. This right is a pillar of the post-war international order to which the United States has committed itself,” wrote the Democratic lawmakers in their push to encourage illegal immigration. “Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42, we encourage your administration to stand by your commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers and refugees.”

As the Epoch Times notes,

Created as part of the Public Health Service Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, Title 42 was designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Trump administration invoked the order to restrict entry into the United States.

In late December 2022, the Supreme Court blocked the termination of Title 42.

In its decision, the court agreed to hear arguments in February about whether a coalition of Republican-led states can challenge a lower court’s ruling that ordered the Biden administration to end Title 42, which remains in place.

The letter’s authors praised the Biden administration’s program that allows American citizens and people with legal status in the United States to sponsor migrants from the four countries. They criticized the strategy because of its reliance on policies implemented by former President Donald Trump.

Migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua weren’t previously included in Title 42, the lawmakers noted. The Biden administration should also decide to not move forward on a proposal that will prevent migrants from asylum if they’re unable to find refuge in third countries before arriving in the United States, which is a measure the Trump administration attempted to enact.

In a press conference on Jan. 26, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), flanked by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), said, “No matter how many Trump policies the Biden administration resurrects, Republicans will continue to obstruct any effort to actually reform our border processing and modernize our immigration system.

“We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult migration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials, we are duty-bound to propose legal solutions, one that protects asylum seekers while also securing the safe removal of migrants who have no legal claim to stay in the United States.”

The letter to Biden wasn’t signed by Democratic leaders in the House or Senate.

“I haven’t seen the letter but we look forward to, as Democrats and as members of Congress, having a healthy discussion about how we deal with the complexity of issues connected to comprehensive immigration reform and making sure we have a safe, secure, and strong border,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said on Jan. 26.

On Jan. 24, citing that the program violates U.S. immigration law, 20 Republican-led states asked a federal judge to end the sponsorship policy for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated on Jan. 25 that border officials have seen an average of 115 daily encounters with illegal immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela this month. That’s 97 percent less than in early December 2022 when numbers rose to a record high of 3,367 encounters each day.

“These expanded border enforcement measures are working,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Jan. 25. “It is incomprehensible that some states who stand to benefit from these highly effective enforcement measures are seeking to block them and cause more irregular migration at our southern border.”

During an address at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington on Jan. 20, Biden said Republicans were trying to score “political points” on the border crisis and criticized them for not supporting his immigration policy proposal.

“The first bill I introduced was a comprehensive reform legislation on immigration. But because of some in the Congress, they refused to consider it. They found it a better issue to campaign on than an issue to solve,” Biden said.

“So, we have a choice. They can keep using immigration to try to score political points, or we can help solve the problem. Immigration reform used to be a bipartisan issue. And we can make it that again, in my view.”

While Biden is dealing with pushback from lawmakers in his own party, Republicans continue to fight against his border strategy.

On Jan. 24, 20 Republican-led states filed a lawsuit in a Texas-based federal court challenging the Biden administration’s recently announced program to accept 30,000 illegal immigrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

The lawsuit contends that the program has no legal authority and that states will suffer from the flood of illegal immigration from the four countries.

“The Biden open borders agenda has created a humanitarian crisis that is increasing crime and violence in our streets, overwhelming local communities, and worsening the opioid crisis,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement about the lawsuit. “This unlawful amnesty program, which will invite hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. every year, will only make this immigration crisis drastically worse.”

Authored by Philip Wegmann via RealClear Wire,

Sen. Angus King sat across from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during an unannounced trip to that country earlier this month and debated keeping quiet.

The independent senator from Maine thought to himself, “Do I dare say this?” King, a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee, told RealClearPolitics that he didn’t want to create “an incident.” But in that delicate diplomatic moment, with so much at stake, blunt advice was needed: “I took a deep breath and said, ‘Mr. President, a scandal would really screw this thing up.’”

Under President Biden, the United States has rallied the West in support of Ukraine as that nation tries to fight off Russian invaders. Though unwavering, economic and military aid isn’t unconditional. “Misuse of money or material,” King warned, would jeopardize the lifeline to Kyiv. The message was received. According to the senator, “He got it immediately.”

Zelensky removed several senior Ukrainian officials from their posts earlier this week reportedly over allegations of corruption and as a public demonstration to the West that Kyiv won’t tolerate graft. The move comes as House Republicans promise additional oversight of how the tens of billions in economic and military aid has been used and spent.

The White House isn’t worried. They say they do take the concern seriously. They just haven’t seen any maleficence thus far, according to John Kirby, Biden’s national security spokesman who said Wednesday that neither military nor financial assistance “have fallen prey to any kind of corruption in Ukraine.”

“Correct,” Kirby replied without qualification when asked by RCP to confirm that the administration had not yet identified any previous misuse of equipment or misappropriation of funds from the United States. King was similarly impressed.

While visiting Ukraine, the senator said he saw how Zelensky’s team employs outside auditors to track both dollars-and-cents and everything else “down to the individual spare part.”

Republicans are more skeptical and already making good on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s warning before the midterms that the House wouldn’t be sending Ukraine “a blank check.” The Biden administration has already provided approximately $27.5 billion in military assistance as well as nearly $10 billion in humanitarian aid and more than $15 billion in financial support.

Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican now chairing the House Oversight Committee, will soon comb through those numbers to identify “waste or misuse.”

“With any massive government spending comes the opportunity for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Ukraine aid is no different,” Comer told RCP before adding that Congress owes it “to the taxpayer” to “conduct oversight over the tens of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars sent overseas.”

Taxpayer support for Ukraine remains bipartisan – for now. The last aid package passed the Senate 88-11 and the House 368-57 in May, but deep skepticism remains on the right. Comparisons of Zelensky to Winston Churchill and Ukraine to Great Britain during the Second World War grate on fiscal conservatives like Ted Galen Carpenter of the CATO institute.

“The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country’s mere existence terrified Putin may be a comforting myth to U.S. politicians and pundits, but it is a myth. Ukraine is far from being a democratic capitalist model and an irresistible magnet for Russia’s groaning masses,” Carpenter wrote in the American Conservative, before noting how the former Eastern Bloc country regularly ranks toward the bottom of international corruption indexes.

Systemic corruption was an animating principle of Zelensky’s political career long before the Russian invasion when he rose from comedian to president. Mykhailo Podolyak, a close advisor to the Ukrainian leader, wrote on Twitter after the recent firings that the moves “testify to the key priorities of the state” and how “everyone should understand their responsibility.” The Biden administration echoed that message on Capitol Hill during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday.

Victoria Nuland, undersecretary of state for political affairs, told lawmakers that if anything the staffing change in Kyiv “sends a very strong signal to others who would try to rip off this war effort, and is important for the future of Ukraine.”

The White House is preparing for more of that kind of oversight from Congress in the weeks and months ahead, and while the administration reports that Ukraine earns high marks in rooting out corruption, Kirby noted that corruption remains an ever-present danger in all conflicts.

“You can’t forget that,” he said. “I mean, it’s war.” To guard against misuse, he added, the administration has redoubled its efforts via officials at the U.S. embassy there “to work with the Ukrainians on accountability.” 

Ukraine’s first priority is expelling the Russians. They have already managed to blunt the advance, and the Zelensky administration welcomed news that Biden was readying to ship 31 Abrams Battle Tanks to the country, armor that’s expected to help turn the tide come spring.

King told RCP that the new hardware “will make a real difference for the Ukrainians” and said that the shipment was both “necessary” and “consistent” with previous aid packages. The United States first rushed Javelin and Stinger missile systems to the country during the early days of conflict. “The priority at the time was to stop the Russian incursion toward Kyiv,” he explained before noting how the battle has devolved into a kind of trench warfare. “Now we are in a different kind of war.”

A UK man was crushed to death by a hydraulic ‘telescopic’ Urinal designed to pop out of the ground for use.

The man, who has not been named, was performing maintenance on the pop-up urinal at Cambridge Circus outside the Palace Theatre, when the hydraulic unit trapped him below street level.

As the Daily Mail reported on Friday, ambulance crews were dispatched at 1:05 p.m. The man was freed earlier in the day but was pronounced dead soon after.

“We’re sorry to have to update that, despite the efforts of emergency services, the man who was critically injured in Cambridge Circus was pronounced dead at the scene,” a Metropolitan Police spokesman said. “His next of kin have been informed. Cordons remain in place at the location.”

“The man is thought to have sustained crush injuries while working on a telescopic urinal at the location.”

A spokesman for the London Fire Brigade said that “Firefighters were called to a person trapped on Charing Cross Road in central London,” adding “A man was trapped below street level underneath a hydraulic urinal.”

He was eventually pulled free with a winch. “He was left in the care of London Ambulance Service and was sadly pronounced dead at the scene,” the fire brigade added.

An air ambulance was seen landing in Trafalgar Square while a large number of ambulances and fire engines attended the scene.

A crane was brought to the scene in an attempt by rescuers to lift the entire device out of the ground. –Daily Mail

These types of pop-up urinals appeared in London around 20 years ago to discourage urination in the street. 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has changed the end date for a key study on post-vaccination heart inflammation without notifying the public.

Pfizer was supposed to complete a study on the occurrence of subclinical myocarditis, or heart inflammation, after receipt of its COVID-19 vaccine. The completion date was listed by the FDA in 2021 as June 20, 2022. Pfizer was also supposed to submit the results of the study to the FDA by the end of 2022 as part of a list of requirements the FDA imposed as a condition of approving Pfizer’s jab.

But after the deadline passed, the FDA quietly changed the date.

Under a list of postmarketing requirements for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the FDA now says the same study has an “original projected completion date” of June 30, 2023.

The current status of the study is listed as “pending.”

The FDA and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment.

Jessica Adams, a former regulatory review officer at the FDA, said the wording amounts to misinformation.

“By definition, ‘original’ dates can’t change,” she wrote on Twitter, tagging the agency. “Please correct this ‘misinformation.’”

Dr. Vinay Prasad, who has increasingly criticized the FDA over its decisions during the pandemic, said the new timeline “is so slow it will be entirely moot.”

“Another FDA failure,” he said on Twitter.

Study

The study is one of nine Pfizer was to complete to examine post-vaccination adverse events.

The study is designed to “prospectively assess the incidence of subclinical myocarditis” after receipt of a third dose, or a booster, in people aged 16 to 30.

Pfizer submitted a timetable to the FDA stating the company would submit a final protocol by Nov. 30, 2021, and complete the study by June 30, 2022, according to the FDA’s approval letter for the company’s vaccine. The final report was due to the FDA by the end of 2022.

The study was one of several examining myocarditis and pericarditis, a related condition. Both are caused by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to U.S. officials and other experts.

Some of the vaccine-caused myocarditis cases have led to death.

FDA officials expressed concern about the post-vaccination heart inflammation when considering whether to approve Pfizer’s vaccine.

Signal for Myocarditis After New Booster

The bivalent Pfizer vaccine triggered a safety signal for adults aged 18 to 35, Richard Forshee, an FDA official, told the agency’s vaccine advisory committee on Jan. 26.

Regulators cleared that bivalent and one from Moderna in the fall of 2022 despite there being no clinical data for either shot.

The adverse event happened at a concerning rate after a Pfizer bivalent in recent months, according to analyses of data from the FDA’s Biologics Effectiveness and Safety initiative, which pulls from systems such as one managed by CVS Health.

“The only signal we have detected so far is for myocarditis/pericarditis following the Pfizer bivalent vaccine among adults 18 to 35 years old,” Forshee told the panel.

Safety signals indicate a vaccine may cause events but don’t establish causality. But officials have stressed that the bivalents are similar to the original vaccines in defending the authorization without clinical data, and have acknowledged a causal link between the original messenger RNA vaccines and the heart inflammation.

Most of the meeting presentations that went over adverse events focused on ischemic stroke, which triggered the threshold for a safety signal following Pfizer’s bivalent booster in the elderly and following receipt the original Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in all adults.

Officials said that the stroke has happened in many people who received a flu vaccine on the same day as a COVID-19 vaccine. They’re studying whether there’s a connection, though they noted there was no signal for the stroke after a flu shot alone.

Dr. Nicola Klein, a Kaiser Permanente researcher who helps the CDC monitor vaccine safety, said that the signal for stroke wasn’t as strong as that for myocarditis.

“This is a cluster but … it doesn’t stand out as extremely striking, unlike some other signals which we have seen,” Klein said. “For example, myocarditis, it’s an extremely strong signal that you can see without doing statistics.”

Panel Notified of CDC Analyses

During the public comment portion of the meeting, any panel members watching were notified that the CDC’s analyses of reports to a different surveillance system concluded hundreds of adverse events met the safety signal threshold, including approximately 500 with a signal larger than that for myocarditis.

Read more here…

After an 18-month audit, a federal watchdog says that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) failed to adequately monitor and address problems involving EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based nonprofit that was used to offshore risky gain-of-function research to Wuhan, China after the Obama administration banned the practice in 2014.

According to the report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the “NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” compliance issues with EcoHealth.

In April 2020, after then-President Donald Trump claimed the SARS-CoV-2 virus could have come from the WIV lab, NIH terminated the EcoHealth grant with little explanation. That step was widely condemned by scientists, and OIG’s report now says NIH improperly executed the termination because it did not provide a valid reason or provide EcoHealth with required information for appealing the decision.

A few months later, NIH reinstated the award but immediately suspended it, setting conditions for resumption that EcoHealth said it could not meet. NIH permanently terminated the WIV subaward as of August 2022 for compliance issues, including WIV’s failure to provide NIH with laboratory notebooks related to the funded experiments. –Science

The audit examined the above grant, as well as two others from 2014 to 2021 which totaled $8 million, but largely focused on $600,000 of it which went to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The NIH faulted EcoHealth for failing to promptly report gain-of-function results in some experiments, however the company has blamed a computer glitch at NIH for the 2-year delay.

Digging into the report is US Right to Know’s Emily Kopp, who has broken down various aspects of the OIG report.

EcoHealth would like you to believe it had technical issues for four years straight

HHS OIG: 🙄 pic.twitter.com/H0gZjzCWh7

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 26, 2023

The 2018 report lists scientific publications including 2019 and 2020 papers

The 2019 report lists zero papers pic.twitter.com/CzwHlbqAVu

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 26, 2023

How does EcoHealth get away with this?

Oversight from Fauci’s NIAID was non-existent.

NIAID awarded new funds to EcoHealth in 2020 before they received either of these overdue progress reports.

The only reason EcoHealth filed the 1st report was because @fastlerner FOIA’d it. pic.twitter.com/Er2fQTLkCV

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 26, 2023

The line we often hear from NIH is that EcoHealth’s reported gain-of-function research could not have sparked the pandemic.

But given (1) the sloppiness of the reports (2) the lateness of their submission to NIH, I do not believe we have a complete picture of EcoHealth’s work.

— Emily Kopp (@emilyakopp) January 26, 2023

Meanwhile, the audit also found that the nonprofit billed NIH for $89,171 in disallowed costs, including expenses such as alcohol, and a staffer’s $3,285 trip to a conference that was miscoded, and should have instead been billed to a non-NIH grant. 

The OIG recommends that the WIV (but not EcoHealth) be banned from receiving future NIH funds.

Meanwhile, EcoHealth just scored a fresh $3 million grant from the Department of Defense.

EcoHealth Alliance currently has federal contracts and grants from USAID, DoD-DTRA, DoD-USU, DHS, NIAID, and NSF.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) January 21, 2023

Authored by Douglas Macgregor via TheAmericanConservative.com,

Until it decided to confront Moscow with an existential military threat in Ukraine, Washington confined the use of American military power to conflicts that Americans could afford to lose, wars with weak opponents in the developing world from Saigon to Baghdad that did not present an existential threat to U.S. forces or American territory.

This time – a proxy war with Russia – is different. 

Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions. 

As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candid about the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.” 

Alexei Arestovich, President Zelensky’s recently fired advisor and unofficial “Spinmeister,” was more direct. He expressed his own doubts that Ukraine can win its war with Russia and he now questions whether Ukraine will even survive the war. Ukrainian losses—at least 150,000 dead including 35,000 missing in action and presumed dead—have fatally weakened Ukrainian forces resulting in a fragile Ukrainian defensive posture that will likely shatter under the crushing weight of attacking Russian forces in the next few weeks. 

Ukraine’s materiel losses are equally severe. These include thousands of tanks and armored infantry fighting vehicles, artillery systems, air defense platforms, and weapons of all calibers. These totals include the equivalent of seven years of Javelin missile production. In a setting where Russian artillery systems can fire nearly 60,000 rounds of all types—rockets, missiles, drones, and hard-shell ammunition—a day, Ukrainian forces are hard-pressed to answer these Russian salvos with 6,000 rounds daily. New platform and ammunition packages for Ukraine may enrich the Washington community, but they cannot change these conditions.

Predictably, Washington’s frustration with the collective West’s failure to stem the tide of Ukrainian defeat is growing. In fact, the frustration is rapidly giving way to desperation. 

Michael Rubin, a former Bush appointee and avid supporter of America’s permanent conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, vented his frustration in a 1945 article asserting that, “if the world allows Russia to remain a unitary state, and if it allows Putinism to survive Putin, then, Ukraine should be allowed to maintain its own nuclear deterrence, whether it joins NATO or not.” On its face, the suggestion is reckless, but the statement does accurately reflect the anxiety in Washington circles that Ukrainian defeat is inevitable.

NATO’s members were never strongly united behind Washington’s crusade to fatally weaken Russia. The governments of Hungary and Croatia are simply acknowledging the wider European public’s opposition to war with Russia and lack of support for Washington’s desire to postpone Ukraine’s foreseeable defeat. 

Though sympathetic to the Ukrainian people, Berlin did not support all-out war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf. Now, Germans are also uneasy with the catastrophic condition of the German armed forces. 

Retired German Air Force General (four-star equivalent) Harald Kujat, former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, severely criticized Berlin for allowing Washington to railroad Germany into conflict with Russia, noting that several decades of German political leaders actively disarmed Germany and thus deprived Berlin of authority or credibility in Europe. Though actively suppressed by the German government and media, his comments are resonating strongly with the German electorate.

The blunt fact is that in its efforts to secure victory in its proxy war with Russia, Washington ignores historical reality. From the 13th century onward, Ukraine was a region dominated by larger, more powerful national powers, whether Lithuanian, Polish, Swedish, Austrian, or Russian. 

In the aftermath of the First World War, abortive Polish designs for an independent Ukrainian State were conceived to weaken Bolshevik Russia. Today, Russia is not communist, nor does Moscow seek the destruction of the Polish State as Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, and their followers did in 1920. 

So where is Washington headed with its proxy war against Russia? The question deserves an answer.

On Sunday December 7, 1941, U.S. Ambassador Averell Harriman was with Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill having dinner at Churchill’s home when the BBC broadcast the news that the Japanese had attacked the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. Harriman was visibly shocked. He simply repeated the words, “The Japanese have raided Pearl Harbor.”

Harriman need not have been surprised. The Roosevelt administration had practically done everything in its power to goad Tokyo into attacking U.S. forces in the Pacific with a series of hostile policy decisions culminating in Washington’s oil embargo during the summer of 1941. 

In the Second World War, Washington was lucky with timing and allies. This time it’s different. Washington and its NATO allies are advocating a full-blown war against Russia, the devastation and breakup of the Russian Federation, as well as the destruction of millions of lives in Russia and Ukraine. 

Washington emotes. Washington does not think, and it is also overtly hostile to empiricism and truth. Neither we nor our allies are prepared to fight all-out war with Russia, regionally or globally. The point is, if war breaks out between Russia and the United States, Americans should not be surprised. The Biden administration and its bipartisan supporters in Washington are doing all they possibly can to make it happen.  

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Heresy evolves, orthodoxy cannot. Plan accordingly. Orthodoxies offer the comforting illusion of solidarity. But in what lies ahead, we’re on our own.

In today’s world, the key orthodoxies are secular rather than religious: they are economic, ideological, political. Religious orthodoxy is in the spiritual realm. It may have secular ramifications (for example, Galileo being forced to renounce his scientific advances) but it doesn’t deal with forecasts of real-world systems.

Economic, ideological and geopolitical orthodoxies are different. They make forecasts about the real world, and they will be right or wrong.

The orthodoxies are roughly divided into two camps: the Establishment/Status Quo orthodoxies and the alternative orthodoxies.

Both are fiercely defended by True Believers, as the orthodoxy is the foundation of the True Believers’ identity and worldview.

The two orthodoxies aren’t necessarily diametrically opposed. Sometimes they overlap.

Much of what passes for “informed commentary” now is nothing more than True Believers cherry-picking whatever supports their orthodoxy. In this mindset, what’s important is that everyone agrees with the orthodoxy. Public fealty to the orthodoxy is all that matters.

In this climate, projecting an outcome that doesn’t fit an orthodoxy is heresy and must be suppressed.

I don’t see any value in trying to persuade others to agree with me. The analysis goes where it goes, and it doesn’t really matter if we like the conclusion or not.

What matters is one forecast will be accurate and the rest will be wrong. If 99.99% of the populace doesn’t like the accurate forecast, that doesn’t change the outcome.

If the analysis is sound, then the forecast is sound, and it won’t change if it offends our sensibilities.

In other words, an emotionally detached analytic view is more likely to generate accurate forecasts than defending orthodoxies.

Put another way, accurate forecasts don’t arise from popularity contests.

We might not like the results of a detached analysis, but liking it or hating it isn’t the point. The accuracy is the point.

We might disagree with the forecast and hope it isn’t accurate, but we understand our opinions and hopes won’t change the outcome.

If we want to prepare an appropriate response to what’s coming down the pike, we’re better served by cultivating a detached view that favors our own independent analysis rather than orthodoxy. In other words, our self-interest is best served by becoming self-reliant.

Consider all the standard-issue orthodoxies, neatly packaged for easy marketing / consumption: Left and Right, Conservative and Progressive, Capitalist and Socialist, etc.

I find all the orthodoxies lacking. None makes sense of the dynamics I see as consequential, so we’re forced to assemble our own analysis.

In other words, we’re forced to secretly dabble in heresies.

For example, the Status Quo orthodoxy holds that the world is now multipolar and the influence and power of the U.S. / West is in an inevitable decline.

The West’s dominance was a bad thing, so multipolarity is a good thing.

The alternative orthodoxy holds that the U.S. / West are doomed not just to decline but to give way to the dominance of China and its partners.

The West had its day, now it’s China’s turn.

This orthodoxy holds the US dollar will collapse in a heap, replaced by Bitcoin, a gold-backed yuan, or a basket of non-Western currencies.

Questioning these orthodoxies is akin to declaring God is dead in 1500. It doesn’t go over very well with True Believers and their enforcers.

These orthodoxies are values/identity-based rather than analytic. They project what we think should happen because it fits our value system and what we identify with.

This is why orthodoxies are so vehemently defended: to question them is to question the moral rightness of the orthodoxy.

The problem with orthodoxy is two-fold: 1) orthodoxies suppress evolution and 2) we’re blinded by our emotional attachments to orthodoxies.

We don’t get attached to forecasts that don’t impact our values or our financial security.

If someone forecasts inflation in Lower Slobovia will rise from 8% to 10%, we don’t have any emotional stake in the forecast. If inflation there rises or falls, we don’t care. We don’t bristle and rush to defend either forecast.

Unless we’ve staked a speculative bet on inflation rising in Lower Slobovia. Then we care, deeply. We’re completely emotionally engaged, and ready to tear the head off anyone arguing that our position is faulty and we’re going to lose the bet.

Those with no emotional stake in the issue look on us with bemusement. What’s the big deal? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, so why get worked up about it?

Indeed.

As longtime readers know, I favor looking at everything as a system. There is really only one system dynamic, Natural Selection, i.e. evolutionary success or failure when evolutionary pressure is applied.

Human societies and economies are ecosystems, too, and so their success or failure is Natural Selection at work.

Two things matter in evolution: transparency and variability. Evolution is only possible if the genome / society / economy generates a steady stream of mutations / variations.

Variations / variability are the fuel of evolution: if there are no mutations / variations, then there’s nothing new being fed to the system which can offer selective advantages.

Transparency is the mechanism needed to test / select variability. In the genome, mutations that offer some selective advantage are conserved by an automatic process.

In human organizations, transparency means there’s a free-for-all churn of variability / dissent, experimentation and sharing of results. New ideas and data flow freely between all the nodes of the system.

Human organizations with weak variability and transparency fail to adapt because they lack the means to do so.

This is scale-invariant. Relationships lacking variability and transparency fail, enterprises lacking variability and transparency fail, nations lacking variability and transparency fail.

Authoritarian regimes, be they relationships, enterprises or nations, fail because there is no other possible outcome other than evolutionary failure. Any success will be illusory / temporary.

Finding this regime attractive or repugnant won’t change the inevitability of its failure.

Transparency is not easy. People contest our treasured orthodoxies, upsetting us. We’re forced to admit to being wrong far more often than we like. It hurts our pride and we lose face, but the upside is the immense success of the evolutionary churn.

This process is scale-invariant: every argument / disagreement reflects the underlying dynamics of the system, so every negotiation to resolve the conflict reflects these same dynamics.

This process is also evolutionary. The previous negotiation may leave one side dissatisfied, and so the negotiations evolve.

From the perspective of evolutionary churn, we shouldn’t grudgingly allow variations, we should elicit them, welcome them not as threats but as essential churn, and then negotiate an outcome that is evolutionary, i.e. contingent and open to being changed as conditions change.

The couple that never argues and always puts on a smiley face isn’t the healthy relationship. It’s evolutionarily doomed to failure because the facade of unity and happiness is not actual unity or happiness.

The lack of variability and transparency have a cost that the participants and the system pay one way or another. It can be hidden for a while but not indefinitely.

The same can be said of nations. If dissent is suppressed, data is suppressed, communication is shackled by fear of exposure or censure and all decisions are made opaquely, that regime is doomed to evolutionary failure.

The nation where all the dirty laundry is out and everybody is arguing about it is evolutionarily robust. The nation where the dirty laundry is hidden deep in the basement to preserve the illusion of unity and success has been stripped of variability and transparency.

My analytic forecast (laid out in my book Global Crisis, National Renewal) is that evolutionary success demands relocalizing production of essentials and consuming less, and all the systemic changes required to enable and incentivize this evolution.

Evolutionary pressure doesn’t go away when you hide the dirty laundry. It builds up. When variability / dissent are suppressed, the system has no evolutionary fuel. Starved, it collapses.

I don’t think it matters what we call the world system or what configuration aligns with our values or what we think should happen. Evolutionary pressure is building, and those organizations which choose autocratic suppression of variability / dissent and transparency will fail.

Those that defend the churn of variability / dissent and transparency will evolve, come what may.

Orthodoxies by definition have been of stripped of variability and transparency. That’s what makes an orthodoxy an orthodoxy.

For this reason, evolutionary success cannot arise within orthodoxies. Dissent, variability, sharing ideas, proposing solutions and negotiating transparently are all intrinsically heretical.

Orthodoxies have mastered the illusion of adapting to changing times. Orthodoxies introduce updated catch-phrases to mask their inability to evolve.

Heresy evolves, orthodoxy cannot. Plan accordingly. Orthodoxies offer the comforting illusion of solidarity. But in what lies ahead, we’re on our own. Orthodoxy is a luxury we can ill-afford. What will prove consequential is Self-Reliance.

New Podcast: UPThinking Finance with Emerson Fersch and Charles Hugh Smith (55 minutes)

*  *  *

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Authored by Rob Smith via RealClear Wire,

Here is something you won’t hear anywhere else. It is clear that Joe Biden is being ratted out in the classified document scandal, but by whom? Tucker Carlson is convinced it is a cabal of Democratic Party members who want a new presidential nominee for 2024. Tucker, I love ya, but I don’t think so. I believe foreign actors and their interests  may be involved.

Joe Biden has been in politics for 50 years. He’s never had a real job. The only core conviction he has is the self-aggrandizement that comes from being able to have people suck up to him due to the power and vast resources at his disposal. He’s dumber than a doorknob. Yet, with 50 years of experience, he is on automatic pilot when it comes to self-preservation. He simply does what he is told and reads his teleprompter without really knowing what he is reading. Thus, I don’t buy Tucker’s analysis because the “powers that be” controlling him already have a pretty good gig. Why would they want to dump him?

I have great respect for anybody who risks his own money creating a product or service that others want to buy, whether it is a plumber growing his business or a software engineer creating the next new gizmo that charms Menlo Park. But people who sell influence and access to American politicians are despicable.  The conspiring politicians are sewer rats. They are fiduciaries of your money, and they use their access to your money to grant favors to others so they will have the benefit of your money and in return they enrich themselves. The nation’s interests take second fiddle to their interests. Yet, the pernicious, indeed the treasonous element of all this is when they sell influence to foreign actors, bad people in charge of powerful governments that are hostile to the United States. It is sick. It is despicable. It is treasonous.

Money is money. It is a force for great good, but can also be a force for evil and corruption. Men of integrity, the type that should be our elected officials know this. They understand that they as humans are corruptible and thus studiously avoid any potential conflict which would compromise their integrity or loyalty to their principal. These are age old truisms that have been in circulation and practiced by those who are serious about preserving their character for at least the past 2,000 years. See Matthew 6:24. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Space is limited for me to list every Biden family “crime” of influence peddling, though Hunter Biden’s laptop is a wealth of information. The Biden family took money from Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs closely associated with their country’s governments. They orchestrated Defense Department money to fund bio-labs in Ukraine to enrich themselves, as they had financial ties to these entities.  We know about Burisma,  Bobulinski, SinoHawk and no interest forgivable loans. Ever hear of IRS imputed interest?  And by the way, forgiveness of debt is taxable as ordinary income. Then there is Hunter’s 2013 trip on Air Force II with his dad where the Biden crime syndicate walked away with $1.5 billion of communist Chinese government funding into an “equity fund” that crack-head Hunter was to manage. I always look to invest my money with crack addicts, don’t you? Then there is CEFC Energy. There were huge fees paid by China to the Bidens to secure cobalt mining in the Congo Republic in order to manufacture Chinese electrical vehicles. Jim Biden secured a $1.5 billion contract to build 100,000 homes in Iraq. He’s never driven a nail into a 2 by 4. The Penn-Biden Center, funded almost exclusively by the Chinese government and other “dark” money emanating from China,  paid Joe a salary of $900,000 to basically do nothing. His cronies like Anthony Blinken got a “get paid” for doing nothing quasi-job too. By the way, he’s now the Secretary of State. Author Peter Schweizer has done excellent work thoroughly documenting Biden family corruption with hostile foreign governments, but as recent as these works are,  they do not even scratch the service of what we now know as each day reveals explosive new stories.

This past week I was deposed by California and New York lawyers because I publicly ratted out a lawyer who represented both sides in a multi-million-dollar business deal. The deal went south and he was a principal on the “buy side” of the transaction where his client was the seller.   Per the Matthew scripture above, one can’t serve two masters. In this instance, as despicable as the lawyer’s actions were,  only one individual was harmed. But when the President of the United States serves two masters, the harm is incalculable. Corrupt governments like Ukraine and China know exactly what they are doing when they buy political influence, aka bribe American politicians. They control the politician. The politician does their bidding instead of his nation’s because the politician can be so easily blackmailed.

Why did President Biden withdraw one million barrels of oil out of the Strategic Petroleum  Reserve to “sell” to Sinopec, a Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden?

More importantly, why are we giving $100 billion dollars to Ukraine? I understand that Putin is a bad guy, but Zelensky ain’t exactly Mother Teresa. Ukraine is as notoriously corrupt as Russia as illustrated in this recent news story of brazen thievery. Would the lives of ordinary Ukrainians (not the oligarchs) living in the breakaway republics of Donestsk and Luhansk (both with a majority of ethnic Russians) really be that much different under Russian control?  One thing we have learned from this conflict is the mighty Russian armed forces are not the threat to the West that we all thought. So what is the real goal? Once the conflict ends, how will things really change? One can look at the tragedy of many wars and Monday morning quarterback. What did all the death and property destruction solve?

This week, Joe Biden announced further escalation of the war by providing Ukraine with 31 Abrams tanks. This is a massive new commitment of American servicemen, as these Americans will have to train Ukrainians; arm, supply and maintain these vehicles, which means US servicemen in Ukraine fighting Russians. Y’all may want to read Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution. Only Congress can declare war.

So why is the Joe Biden risking nuclear war by escalating this conflict?

Miranda Divine in the New York post printed an April 12, 2014 email off of Hunter Biden’s laptop which Hunter wrote to his business partner Devon Archer (currently in jail for fraud) in which he knew an amazing amount of detailed information about Ukraine, the type of information one might well have learned from reading top secret classified reports given to him by his father to help their influence peddling racket. He clearly implicates his father in their influence peddling and concludes his email in Tony Soprano fashion by instructed Devon to buy a “burner phone.”

So who ratted Joe out? Could it have been the Russians? They have a pretty good intelligence system. They certainly have good reason to rat Joe out and expose his ties to Ukraine. Then again, suppose Zelensky said “Joe, either give me the tanks or I will take you down,” and wanted to fire a shot over Joe’s bow to get him to act? Certainly, Zelensky has a dossier on all the Biden activities in Ukraine and is willing to use it. Our president is bought and compromised. He and his family are scoundrels and traitors. Call me a conspiracy nut, but it is absolutely reasonable to ask such questions when someone has betrayed his country.

I suspect that these classified documents have something to do with Ukraine and exposing the Biden family corruption that has jeopardized the security of the United States and of course put us closer to a nuclear war. Slow Joe’s personal attorneys were trying to nab these files to do what with them? Almost certainly to keep their contents and subject matters from implicating the President in criminal activities. Merrick Garland named a Special Prosecutor. Is he in on the cover up? Watch my friends. He will almost certainly refuse to disclose the content of the files seized and aid the National Archives to evade Congressional subpoenas by claiming “disclosing any information will jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation.” You can fool the Washington press corps, but you can’t fool Rob Smith.

To quote young Alice of Wonderland fame, this is getting “curiouser and curiouser.”  We don’t know all the answers, but one thing is for absolutely sure, one can’t serve two masters.