This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. 

Naturally, a CNN camera crew was in tow for last week’s visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to an area near Mariupol in Donetsk where he “walked the front line with the troops” amid renewed fighting with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbass region.

Days later CNN’s homepage dramatically hyped the story with a recent headline of “Ukraine’s President runs for cover on the front line against Russia”. The story kicks off with: “Ankle-deep in thick black sludge, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky moves stealthily with his troops in single file through the warren of trenches and tunnels that form the tense front lines in the east of his country.”

And the front line feature gets even more dramatic from there: “It feels more like the early 20th century than a modern conflict, with tired, nervous soldiers gripping their rifles around him as they reach the open ground, scanning the area for movement across no-mans-land,” the CNN correspondent reports. “They know snipers, likely trained by Russians, say Ukrainian officials are looking for a chance to fire. More than 20 of their comrades have been gunned down already this year.”

But more important and hugely revealing in terms of what’s perhaps the real purpose of the CNN puff piece portraying Ukraine’s former comedian-turned-president (and now apparently an ‘action hero’ of sorts) is the following section…

On board the aging presidential chopper, which retains a degree of well-worn comfort, Zelensky shouts above the engine noise of how the US is a “good friend” of Ukraine, but that President Biden “must do more,” to deter Russia and help bring this conflict to an end.

More weapons, more money to fight, and, crucially, more support to join NATO, the Western military alliance where an attack on one member commits all to respond, he explained.

“If they [the US] see Ukraine in NATO, they have to say it directly, and do it. Not words,” Zelensky told CNN.

Curiously, the interview was published the same day that NATO’s Ukraine council announced its Tuesday meeting to consider the rise in tensions on the Ukraine-Russia border, coming after widespread accusations the Kremlin is mustering a nearly unprecedented number of troops there – numbers not seen since 2014, according to US officials.

Ukrainian Presidential Press Service photo of Zelensky’s April 8, 2021 visit in eastern Ukraine. AFP/STR

It also came as the Group of 7 foreign ministers issued a statement earlier this week condemning Russia’s “destabilizing activities” in the region.

The G-7 statement urged for Russia to “cease its provocations” on the Ukraine-Russia border and said they are:

“…deeply concerned by the large ongoing build-up of Russian military forces on Ukraine’s borders and in illegally-annexed Crimea.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke by phone with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday, with the two also reviewing Russia’s “aggressive military buildup along Ukraine’s borders and in occupied Crimea,” according to a State Dept. statement.

So by all appearances and with these latest appeals out of the West, things don’t look to de-escalate anytime soon – instead, tensions remain on a knife’s edge.

In a released undercover video by Project Veritas, CNN admits that they use “fear” because it “really drives numbers.”  Their “death map,” which we know is fabricated was displayed to keep people afraid and tuning into the propaganda.

CNN’s technical director Charlie Chester admitted that the “death tracker” is straight-up fear-mongering to panic the sheep. “Covid? Gangbusters with ratings, right? Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side,” Chester said in the video, which was posted on social media on Wednesday.

BREAKING: Part 2 – @CNN Director Reveals That Network Practices ‘Art of Manipulation’ to “Change The World”

“COVID? Gangbusters with ratings right? Which is why we constantly have the death toll on the side…let’s make it higher”

“No such thing as unbiased news.”#ExposeCNN pic.twitter.com/okKSFK4JfS

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 14, 2021

The CNN employee also revealed that he wanted to make the death tracker scarier and further inflate the numbers. “I’ve even looked at it and been like… let’s make it higher,” he said. “Like, why isn’t it high enough, you know, today? Like, it would make our point better if it was higher. And I’m like, what am I f**king rallying for?”

Chester conceded to the undercover Project Veritas reporter that despite such concerns, hyping fear yields higher ratings, which helps keep him employed. He noted that on many occasions where his director has told him to remove the Covid-19 death tracker from the screen, the network’s chief (Jeff Zucker) has called on a special red “bat phone” to order that it be restored, according to a report by RT. 

“Every so often they put it on speaker, and it’s like the head of network being like, ‘There’s nothing that you’re doing right now that makes me want to stick. Put the numbers back up because that’s the most enticing thing that we had. So put it back up.’”

The Science of Fear: How The Elitists Use it to Control Us & How to Break Free

CNN also admits to participating in the government’s agenda. If someone, anyone, in politics or not is a problem for the democrat party, they will “keep hurting [them.]

OMG!!!!!! https://t.co/QJJODhQcMW

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) April 13, 2021

Chester admitted there are also “too many agendas” for the news to be unbiased. If we had unbiased news, we would all have figured out the government is the true enemy of the people, is enslaving us, and they would have been disobeyed out of existence years ago. But the news keeps people in a submissive state to the rulers.

Beyond making fear-based coverage decisions – “if it bleeds, it leads” – CNN often presents its stories in a biased way, Chester admitted. “There’s no such thing as unbiased news,” he said. “It just doesn’t exist. There’s too many agendas. There’s too many people that have jobs, that need to feed families, for it to be unbiased.”

According to further reporting by RT, Chester said CNN and rival Fox News are essentially the same in their biases, except they stand on opposing sides of the political spectrum. Their goal is to get you to take a side and stay divided. Because if you take a political side, you’ll remain enslaved to the ruling class.  The left vs. right paradigm serves only the masters.  If we continue to participate, we’ll continue to be treated like the slaves we are showing ourselves to be.

He added that all CNN reporters (and likely reporters on all mainstream media networks) are able to manipulate people in interviews – using inflection, repetition, and other techniques — to spin the focus of a story to their liking.

“Listen to the way they ask questions because they’re not actually asking questions,” he said. “What they’re actually doing is, they’re telling the person what to say. It’s an art form in there. There’s an art form to it.” Chester added that “it’s always like leading them in a direction before they even open their mouths. And the only people that we will let on the air, for the most part, are the people that have a proven track record of taking the bait.”

Remember, they have to feed their families but pushed to lockdowns to prevent us from doing the same. Have you figured it out yet? The entire system is designed to destroy us. None of them are on our side. We were born to be free, not enslaved to anyone. It’s past time to unite and understand that government is slavery and it always has been. They’ve just conveniently changed the narratives to make it look more appealing.

A Facebook executive is now on record telling a whistleblower that “state-sponsored” (government-funded) disinformation meant that she had job security. Facebook allowed authoritarian governments (including the United States) to use the platform to generate fake support for their regimes for months despite warnings from employees about the disinformation campaigns.

An investigation from The Guardian revealed this week that Facebook has helped keep governments intact, and the slavery of humanity ongoing. According to a report by Business Insider, a loophole in Facebook’s policies allowed government officials around the world to create unlimited amounts of fake “pages” which, unlike user profiles, don’t have to correspond to an actual person — but could still like, comment on, react to, and share content.

That loophole let governments spin up armies of what looked like real users who could then artificially generate support for and amplify pro-government content, what The Guardian called “the digital equivalent of bussing in a fake crowd for a speech.” –Business Insider

Most of the complaints are about foreign countries, but considering the U.S. is now the hub for propaganda and disinformation we can all but assume that this happened here. Plus, in order to “fix” the problem, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doubled down on his censorship agenda.

Techno-Censorship: The Slippery Slope from Censoring ‘Disinformation’ to Silencing Truth

“Key to our efforts has been finding and removing fake accounts — the source of much of the abuse, including misinformation. Bad actors can use computers to generate these in bulk. But with advances in artificial intelligence, we now block millions of fake accounts every day as they are being created so they can’t be used to spread spam, false news or inauthentic ads,” Zuckerberg added. –Business Insider

We are being played on all sides by all media and the government to manufacture our consent to be their slaves. Have you figured it out yet? Government is slavery. Left or right, it doesn’t matter, no one makes a rightful master and no one makes a rightful slave. No one has any authority to command and expect submission and no one has any obligation to obey such commands. We have got to figure this out and soon. There’s enough information out there now that this is what’s going on and if we continue to argue about which master is better, we’ll continue to be their willing slaves.

After Brainwashing People For Decades, MSM and Governments Are Losing Control of People

The good news is that they are losing control. If they were not, the propaganda, brainwashing, and mind control tactics of the rulers would be unnecessary. They know we are figuring it out and that we no longer want to be ruled by anyone.

The Biden administration is ramping up the already bowstring tight tensions between the United States and Russia by issuing new sanctions.  Biden signed a decree on Thursday targeting more than 30 individuals and organizations.

The White House also moved to expel nearly a dozen of Moscow’s diplomats as ongoing tensions between Russian and Ukraine flare while the ruling class of the U.S. vocally is taking the Ukrainian side.

The move, which the White House says is in response to alleged interference by Moscow in the 2020 US presidential election, will see American companies banned from directly buying shares in Russia’s national debt, according to a report by RT. 

The Kremlin has consistently denied that it made any attempt to meddle in the contest, and there is no real evidence that they did. Sanctions have also been linked to the colossal SolarWinds cyber-espionage case, which Washington also claims Russia was behind.

Ukraine Demands “More Weapons, More Money, More Support To Join NATO” From Biden

Earlier this month, the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin warned that the US may resort to attacking bonds as part of “a deliberate calculation to create a toxic atmosphere around Russian securities in order to reduce their investment potential.” He added that Moscow was already working to create a battle plan to limit the effect such sanctions would have on the economy.

White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan defended the move later on Thursday, saying that the package of sanctions comprised “proportionate measures to defend American interests in response to harmful Russia actions including cyber intrusions and election interference.” -RT

Ten of Moscow’s diplomatic representatives in the U.S. have now been declared persona non grata and ordered to leave the country. Before the decision to expel the diplomats was announced, Alexey Chepa, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, warned that such a move would lead to a tit-for-tat expulsion from Moscow. “If Russian envoys are expelled,” the MP said, “naturally there will have to be a mirror-image response.”

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters that the US ambassador in Moscow, John Sullivan, had been summoned for talks. “We will share with you an update on the results of this conversation, which will be difficult for the American side,” she said. -RT

It sure looks the Biden administration wants to march the U.S. straight into a war with Russia. Things continue to intensify and de-escalation looks more and more unlikely by the day.

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge.

Across the developing world, 130 countries have yet to receive even a single dose of any of the COVID vaccines, while the US stockpiles hundreds of millions of doses as the Biden Administration announces ever more ambitious targets, currently 200MM jabs in arms by the end of his First 100 Days (which will formally expire at the end of April).

So far, the US has managed its vaccine rollout efficiently relative to the EU, though Washington, unfortunately, didn’t manage to avoid the safety scandals that unfolded in Europe with the AstraZeneca jab. Now that federal regulators have raised questions about the safety of the Johnson & Johnson jab, it looks like the entire adenovirus platform is now suspect (which is truly unfortunate for the developing world, since they were the ones who were supposed to get those vaccines).

Dr. Scott Gottlieb

According to the latest numbers from Bloomberg, 195MM doses have been distributed in the US already, putting Biden well on track to meet his 200M shot goal.

The US vaccination rate is 3,346,301 doses per day, on average. At this pace, it will take another 3 months to cover 75% of the US population, according to Bloomberg. But some have other ideas. And only 23% of the US population is currently fully vaccinated.

But as we look at the projections for herd immunity…

…at least one former senior public-health figure – former FDA Director Scott Gottlieb – believes the real obstacle might be compliance, despite all those polls proclaiming public confidence in the vaccines has never been higher. Especially as the new questions about potential side effects, and anecdotal reports of the sometimes dayslong post-vaccination symptoms experienced by many, a large number of younger Americans may simply refuse the vaccine.

Seeing as he’s a board member of Pfizer, and in theory, this should make him a natural cheerleader for the vaccine effort, it’s worth listening to what Gottlieb is saying since it clashes with the administration’s official position.

And Gottlieb is saying that the US is reaching a point where supply will outstrip demand.

One in 4 Americans would refuse a coronavirus vaccine if offered, a recent NPR/Marist poll found. Another 5% are “undecided” about whether they would get the shot. And some researchers are growing worried that this reluctance will be enough to prevent the nation from reaching what’s known as herd immunity.

A former head of the Food and Drug Administration also has doubts about reaching herd immunity, the point at which the virus can no longer spread easily through the population. Gottlieb, who is on the board of Pfizer, one of the biggest makers of the vaccines, according to NPR’s Morning Edition, which invited Gottlieb for a recent interview.

More than 123 million people, or about 37% of the U.S. population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who was FDA commissioner from 2017 to 2019, says the nation is reaching a point where supply will outstrip demand. Gottlieb is on the board of directors of Pfizer, which makes one of the coronavirus vaccines.

“I think that there’s probably 150 million Americans who are eager to get vaccinated. And as we expand into the younger age cohorts and a new eligible population … you’re not going to see the demand be as brisk,” Gottlieb says in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition.

“I think we get to 150 million vaccines. I think we struggle to get to 160 million,” he says, which is roughly half the U.S. population. “Beyond that, I think it’s going to be difficult. I’m not sure that you have the demand there.”

But it’s not as bad as that sounds.

“I don’t know that we ever get to herd immunity,” Gottlieb says. “But I think the combination of vaccinating that many people and having a lot of immunity in the population from prior infections, [is] enough that the level of spread of this virus is going to be substantially reduced.”

Despite revelations about rare blood clots tied to the J&J jab, Gottlieb said he expects the pause to be short. The reality, of course, is that the global rollout can’t afford to scrap the adenovirus-vector jabs, so patients with low platelet counts may need to make their own decisions. The official US government line is that the risks of vaccine side effects are far outweighed by their benefits.

“I think this is probably a temporary pause where the agency is going to evaluate the information it has, see if there is more cases out there to be reported into the agency, perhaps issue some guidance around the use of the vaccine and what doctors should be alert for and then allow the vaccine to continue to be distributed,” he says.

He adds, “I think it’s more likely than not that there’s going to be a resumption in the use of the vaccine for some portion of the population. That should be reassuring to the public.”

To be sure, Dr. Gottlieb believes the US will reach herd immunity, and soon. But he also suspects that COVID likely won’t be going away any time soon. Already, cases have surged worldwide over the past month, and numbers are rising even in India.

Of course, herd immunity is a nebulous concept, and projections can vary widely. One Professor at Johns Hopkins penned a WSJ editorial earlier this year claiming herd immunity would arrive by April, and that rising case numbers can be dismissed as deaths continue to decline. “Experts should level with the public,” he said.

Already, at least 7 states – South Dakota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Arizona, Oklahoma, Utah, and Tennessee – are already on the cusp of herd immunity. The real answer, of course, is that projections can vary widely – and nobody knows what the future may hold.