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Washington rejected Moscow's offer of complete reset in Russia-US relations shortly after inauguration of Biden, FM Lavrov reveals


RT
Wed, 28 Apr 2021 20:15 UTC
kremlin capitol
© REUTERS / Erin Scott
(L) The Kremlin is seen before the lights are switched off for Earth Hour in Moscow, Russia, March 30, 2019. REUTERS / Maxim Shemetov; (R) US Capitol building in Washington DC, US. January 17, 2021.
The Kremlin proposed a complete reset in the strained relationship between Moscow and Washington after the inauguration of US President Joe Biden, but it was turned down by the White House, Russia's chief diplomat said on Tuesday.

Speaking to journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that Russia wants to get back on a sound footing in its relationship with the US.

"If it only depended on us, we would return to normal relations," Lavrov explained, noting that the first step would be to cancel the expulsions of Russian diplomats from Washington, and US diplomats from Moscow.

"We offered this to President Biden's Administration as soon as he took all the necessary oaths and assumed power," he continued. "I mentioned this to Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken."

According to Lavrov, the crisis began when former President Barack Obama took measures against Russia prior to his leaving office. After the election of Donald Trump, Moscow remained patient and waited for the new administration to reverse the "excesses" of the outgoing president, but it never happened.

"I very much hope that Washington, as we do, recognizes their responsibility for stability in the world," Lavrov continued. "There are not only problems between Russia and the US that complicate the lives of our citizens... but also disagreements that put international security at serious risk, in the broadest sense of the word."
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Eye 1

UK govt tenders suggest London may enforce lockdowns until at least 2022


RT
Tue, 27 Apr 2021 22:00 UTC
uk lockdown
© REUTERS/Toby Melville
Police detain a demonstrator during an anti-lockdown 'Unite for Freedom' protest, in London, Britain on April 24, 2021.
UK citizens are prepared for a "great British summer" due to the progress of the UK's vaccination program. However, quietly-published government contracts reveal the promised roadmap out of lockdown could in fact be a red herring.

On April 26, the UK government published a tender in search of 60 new "covid marshals" in the district of Hertfordshire. The contract, offered to "public security, law and order [and] compulsory social security services" providers, is set to run July 2021-January 2022, and cost £3 million.

Marshals were introduced in October 2020 to help businesses manage queues, ensure adherence with social distancing measures, remind people to wear face coverings where necessary, and regularly clean frequently-touched surfaces. As Britain's state broadcaster has acknowledged, though, they don't actually have any legal mandate to enforce rules. Officials merely "hoped" they'd make life at least slightly easier for those authorities - such as police - actually invested with such powers.


Comment: Their actions may not be legal but that doesn't stop them trying to punish people: Third of UK's lockdown charges dropped, court rules citizens not obliged to give details to police


Comment: See also: 'Lockdown, not vaccine, is reason for drop in coronavirus cases and deaths' - Boris Johnson

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Bizarro Earth

The West goes insane over Ukraine: RT's Renegade Inc. talks with Dmitry Orlov & Alex Krainer


RT
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 09:20 UTC
renegade RT
© RT
Screenshot
Less than 100 days into his presidency, Joe Biden is already angling for war with Russia...

The excuse? Ukrainian sovereignty.

But Russia has 200 years of experience when it comes to Western forces piling up troops against its borders - and it's led to a series of devastating wars. And again today, we are seeing the highest number of NATO and US troops stationed close to the Russian border.

Host Ross Ashcroft is joined by analyst Alex Krainer and author Dmitry Orlov to discuss why the real reason behind this growing tension is something quite different.

Comment: See also:

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Target

The targets of Biden's war on 'domestic extremists' may not be who you think

Leighton Akira Woodhouse
outsidevoices.substack.com
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Man and dead pigs
© DxE
Undercover videos were recorded by animal rights group DxE
Iowa Select Farms, May 19, 2020
Last May, several months into a global pandemic that had capsized the economy, hog farmers had a problem on their hands. With restaurants closed, demand for their product had evaporated. With outbreaks shuttering meat processing plants all over the country, they had nowhere to send their animals to be slaughtered. If kept alive, the pigs would quickly outgrow facilities designed to hold them only for highly abbreviated lives, and the costs of feeding and watering them would become astronomical.

So some major pork producers, among them Iowa's largest, Iowa Select Farms, made a horrifying decision. They would mass exterminate their animals in one fell swoop, using a technique that promised efficiency for themselves but guaranteed incomprehensible suffering for the pigs.

The method was called "ventilation shutdown," and it entailed, basically, roasting the pigs alive. Workers would close all of the vents into the barns, shut down the air conditioning, and pipe steam into the buildings until the animals died by asphyxiation or hyperthermia, a process that took several hours. Then a worker would walk through the piles of corpses with a captive bolt gun, shooting whatever stragglers had survived.

Comment: Humanity is next in line behind the pigs to undergo an inconvenient 'redefinition'. We are already in the covid pens with 'ventilation shutdown' and vaccine guns to our heads. Who will deem it 'worthy to object' and 'moral to record' the perpetrators of our mass departure?

Matt Johnson had this to say:
I'm the investigator named in this story, who led the collaboration with Mr. Walker to expose and ultimately end this atrocity, and now face a felony and "ag-gag" prosecution, and FBI investigation, as a result. Animal ag is perhaps the most devastating invention in human history, and this situation lays bare the depravity of this system for the world to see. Exposing the most egregious animal torture imaginable has resulted in all manner of repression against those who speak up, while it's the powerful entities inflicting the abuse that call the shots.


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Snakes in Suits

Zelensky pitches summit with Putin at the Vatican, talk about peace, not war


RT
Wed, 28 Apr 2021 14:10 UTC
ZelenskyPutinVatican
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/Sputnik/Alexei Danichev/Atibordee Kongprepan/KJN
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky • Russian President Vladimir Putin • Vatican City
Amid reports of worsening fighting in the Donbass in recent weeks, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has called for a meeting to discuss the situation with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to take place in the Vatican.

In an interview with Italian daily La Repubblica published on Tuesday, Zelensky said that there was a need to meet to discuss the crisis in the east of his country, bemoaning the lack of "real direct communication" in previous years. He has since instructed officials to open channels with the Kremlin and claimed "things are getting to the stage where the meeting will take place."

The Ukrainian leader pointed to the Holy See as an ideal host for the talks. As the world's smallest sovereign state, Vatican City, an enclave within Italy, is administered by the Roman Catholic Church. Earlier this month, Pope Francis voiced concerns over the deployment of Russian troops near the border with Ukraine, saying he viewed the developments with "great apprehension."

"Please," the Church's top bishop added:
"I hope that an increase of tensions is avoided, and that on the contrary, gestures are made capable of promoting reciprocal trust and favoring the reconciliation and peace which are so necessary and so desired."
Despite this, the Vatican was reportedly surprised to read Zelensky's comments to the press, as he "had not agreed his proposal" with Church officials in advance.

"For the Vatican's diplomatic service, this came as a bit of a surprise," a source in the Holy See told TASS later on Wednesday.

Comment: This might be well and good, but not so fast! The Kremlin had a few other things to say about this potential meeting and at a place uninformed of the visit.

See also: Ukraine refuses to negotiate with the DPR and LPR, thus publicly disavowing the Minsk agreements

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Arrow Up

The costs of Canada's lockdown far outweigh the benefits, argues new study

Noah Carl
Lockdown Sceptics
Tue, 27 Apr 2021 12:46 UTC
Canadian small businesses
© The Globe and Mail
Canadian small businesses in lockdown
The Canadian economist Douglas Allen has written a paper reviewing the literature on the costs and benefits of lockdown. Early studies, he argues, made a number of erroneous assumptions, which led them to overestimate the benefits and underestimate the costs.

Such studies overestimated the benefits of lockdowns insofar as they used overly pessimistic values of key epidemiological parameters; they assumed people would not change their behaviour voluntarily in response to the pandemic; and they assumed the "value of a statistical life" is independent of age. And they underestimated the costs of lockdowns insofar as they only took into account the effects on GDP.

The "value of a statistical life" is a concept used by economists and political scientists to compare the impact of different policies. It is calculated by observing how much individuals are willing to pay to avoid a given level of risk. For example, researchers can examine the relationship between wages and fatality rates across occupations, while holding other factors constant. (Crab fishermen get paid a lot more than fruit pickers, in part because their work is more risky.)

However, the "value of a statistical life" is lower at older ages, particularly above age 65. Since the vast majority of those who die of COVID-19 are older than 65, assuming the "value of a statistical life" is independent of age will lead one to overestimate the benefits of policies that aim to reduce mortality from COVID-19.

Comment: The comprehensive study is worth a long glance.

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X

Ukraine refuses to negotiate with the DPR and LPR, thus publicly disavowing the Minsk agreements

Christelle Néant
Donbass Insider
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Zelensky
© EPA-EFE/TOMS KALNINS
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
After Vladimir Putin's response to Vladimir Zelensky's proposal to meet in the Donbass to discuss the conflict, in which the Russian President told his Ukrainian counterpart that he must first discuss with the DPR and LPR (Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics) leaders, one of the advisors to the Ukrainian presidential cabinet has openly declared that there will never be negotiations between Ukraine and the People's Republics, thus publicly disavowing the Minsk Agreements.

Despite Zelensky's fine statements, with each passing day Ukraine buries the Minsk Agreements a little more. Last year, Kiev tried to negotiate not with DPR and LPR representatives, but with people who left Donbass in 2014.

In late March 2021, the Rada passed a resolution declaring the Donbass war to be a Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, which is in complete contravention of the Minsk Agreements. Then a few days ago, Ukraine openly said that it refused to interact directly with the DPR and LPR in the coordination mechanism to maintain a complete and indefinite ceasefire.

Comment: Same time, same station, same results. When will Ukraine get beyond its mindset and figure this out?

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Bullseye

Homeland Security launches a review of domestic extremism in its ranks

Brittany Bernstein
National Review
Mon, 26 Apr 2021 08:33 UTC
Mayorkas
© Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday launched an internal review to root out what it calls "domestic violent extremism" within the agency, as officials have focused on preventing acts of domestic terrorism in the wake of the January 6 Capitol riots. According to CNN, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in a memo to staff:
"As we work to safeguard the nation and our values, we must be vigilant in our efforts to identify and combat domestic violent extremism within both the broader community and our own organization. "Violent extremism has no place at DHS and we will work with urgency and focus to address it."
ABC noted that DHS "did not cite any specific incidents in announcing the review."

According to the department, senior officials across the agency will "immediately begin a comprehensive review of how to best prevent, detect, and respond to threats related to domestic violent extremism within DHS."

Senior officials will work to determine whether extremist ideology is prevalent in the department's various agencies, including the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service and the Coast Guard. The review will be no small undertaking: Homeland Security has more than 240,000 employees.

Comment: 'We, the People' and the US Constitution are the administration's real targets. 'Domestic Terrorism' is the tool.

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Stop

Biden cuts reporter's questions short: 'I'm really going to be in trouble'; full transcript


The Daily Wire
Tue, 27 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Biden
© Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images
US President Joe Biden
President Joe Biden only took a couple of questions on Tuesday afternoon from reporters after he gave a short statement about the administration's progress on combatting the COVID-19 pandemic.

"And as much as the temptation is to stay outdoors on this beautiful day, I've got more work to do," Biden concluded. "Thank you all very, very much. Bye-bye."

Reporters asked Biden questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin, new pandemic guidelines, and the devastating COVID-19 outbreak in India.

"You chose to wear a mask as you walked out here," a reporter said. "What message were you sending by wearing a mask outside alone?" "By watching me take it off and not put it back on until I get inside," Biden responded.

"Look, I'm sorry," Biden said a few moments later. "I'm going to — this is the last question I'll take, and I'm really going to be in trouble."

A few moments later the press conference was over.

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF BIDEN'S REMARKS PROVIDED VIA THE WHITE HOUSE:

Comment: Check out the transcript of Biden's press remarks sales pitch: 'vaccine', 'vaccine', 'vaccine'. Notice how thrown he was once the reporters took him off topic!


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Beaker

Speaker of Russian Duma: 'Covid-19 may have leaked from US lab'

Jonny Tickle
RT
Tue, 27 Apr 2021 13:56 UTC
Volodin
© geoblog.ru
Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Volodin in Moscow
Covid-19 may have originated in an American lab as a result of an accidental leak. That's the unverified claim of Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of Russia's State Duma and a leading member of the ruling United Russia party.

Speaking to fellow lawmakers on Tuesday, Volodin suggested, without providing any scientific evidence to back up his claim, that Covid-19 leaked from "an American laboratory" in Wuhan, China.
"Based on the silence of America's satellite states, and the way the US itself is silent, one conclusion can be drawn: quite obviously, this is due to the fact that they had some kind of leak in those laboratories."
Volodin went on to call for the US to stop the research he says caused Covid-19, and suggested that Washington begins to work out how to "compensate all the countries that suffered from it." If these studies are not stopped, the world will be "held hostage to more and more situations," he said.

"Clearly, it was found in Wuhan. But again, whose lab is it in Wuhan? An American lab. They funded it," Volodin claimed, again offering no evidence for his assertion.


Comment: That's easily demonstrated: the Chinese BSL-4 lab in Wuhan was indeed partially funded by the US government. Additionally, US scientists worked there. But that's likely besides the point. Somehow, the viral outbreak 'coincided' in Wuhan, and was likely brought there by US soldiers participating in the military games the city hosted in October 2019. The only question is; were those 'vaccine test subjects' knowingly sent there?


Comment: The Russian government has no doubt been briefed by its Chinese counterpart, but is cautious in revealing what it knows (or suspects).

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