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FBI used MEDIA REPORTS seeded by British spy to ‘corroborate’ Steele Dossier, declassified spreadsheet shows

By Nebojsa Malic | RT | October 13, 2020

The FBI sought to ‘verify’ information in the notorious dossier at the heart of Russiagate by using media articles seeded by the actual dossier author, British spy Christopher Steele, newly released evidence has shown.

The so-called Steele Dossier is the centerpiece of ‘Russiagate,’ the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump “colluded” with Moscow in the 2016 US presidential election. The dossier’s most bombastic claim was that Russia had “kompromat” on him in the form of sex tapes from a Moscow hotel involving urinating prostitutes.

Steele compiled the dossier for Fusion GPS, a DC-based firm paid by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign through the DNC. The FBI then used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, and extended it three times well into 2017.

A 94-page spreadsheet made public on Monday, however, shows the FBI relied heavily on media reports to corroborate Steele’s claims – in many cases, the very same reports Steele had planted himself.

According to analyst Stephen McIntyre, footnotes listed in the spreadsheet show that 39 percent of the footnotes lead to Washington, DC media outlets, another 29 percent are redacted, and Steele himself was cited on 18 occasions, somehow self-verifying his own work.

In one instance, McIntyre notes, the FBI triple counted an article from the Daily Beast as three separate sources. Other media outlets named in the document are CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yahoo News and Mother Jones.

The FBI had actually decided to fire Steele as a paid informant in September 2016 – before obtaining the Page warrant – because he leaked to the media, specifically Yahoo and Mother Jones, but that never raised any red flags either with the warrant or the corroboration, apparently.

Moreover, the Bureau knew in December 2016 that the “primary sub-source” (PSS) for the dossier was a Russian national they had investigated as a foreign agent in 2009, but the investigation was abandoned without explanation and this fact was never flagged. Even after interviewing the PSS in January 2017, and establishing that most of the dossier was fabricated outright, the FBI continued to use it at the FISA court to extend the Page warrant.

Another source the FBI used to corroborate Steele was Cody Shearer, a long-time Clinton operative who produced a memo alleging that Russian intelligence had a sex tape of Trump. That amounts to more circular reporting, however, as Steele was reportedly given the Shearer dossier by State Department official Jonathan Winer, and then handed it over to his FBI contacts in October 2016.

The spreadsheet is the first confirmation that the FBI actually used the ‘Shearer Dossier,’ whose existence was first reported by the Guardian in January 2018, as part of a push by Democrats to show that the Steele dossier wasn’t the sole grounds for the FISA warrants.

Just last week, however, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified notes from then-CIA chief John Brennan, who said he warned the Obama administration about a plan by Hillary Clinton to smear Trump with allegations of ‘Russian collusion’ as a means of “distracting the public from her use of a private email server” before the 2016 election.

The two-year probe by Special Counsel Robert Mueller came up with zero evidence of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia, much less Trump himself – and while it argued that Moscow “meddled” in US elections, it offered no evidence beyond its own assertions contained in indictments that were subsequently dropped when challenged in court.

While all these revelations have amounted to an indictment of the entire ‘Russiagate’ affair, the media that gave each other awards for their coverage of ‘collusion’ has never apologized for any of it. To this day, millions of Americans continue to believe their president is a “Russian agent.”

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Japan Leads the Way: No Vaccine Mandates and No MMR Vaccine = Healthier Children

The Promise of Good Health; Are We Jumping Off the Cliff in the U.S.?

By Kristina Kristen | Children’s Health Defense | April 23, 2019

In the United States, many legislators and public health officials are busy trying to make vaccines de facto compulsory—either by removing parental/personal choice given by existing vaccine exemptions or by imposing undue quarantines and fines on those who do not comply with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) vaccine edicts. Officials in California are seeking to override medical opinion about fitness for vaccination, while those in New York are mandating the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine for 6-12-month-old infants for whom its safety and effectiveness “have not been established.”

American children would be better served if these officials—before imposing questionable and draconian measures—studied child health outcomes in Japan. With a population of 127 million, Japan has the healthiest children and the very highest “healthy life expectancy” in the world—and the least vaccinated children of any developed country. The U.S., in contrast, has the developed world’s most aggressive vaccination schedule in number and timing, starting at pregnancy, at birth and in the first two years of life. Does this make U.S. children healthier? The clear answer is no. The U.S. has the very highest infant mortality rate of all industrialized countries, with more American children dying at birth and in their first year than in any other comparable nation—and more than half of those who survive develop at least one chronic illness. Analysis of real-world infant mortality and health results shows that U.S. vaccine policy does not add up to a win for American children.

Japan and the U.S.; Two Different Vaccine Policies

In 1994, Japan transitioned away from mandated vaccination in public health centers to voluntary vaccination in doctors’ offices, guided by “the concept that it is better that vaccinations are performed by children’s family doctors who are familiar with their health conditions.” The country created two categories of non-compulsory vaccines: “routine” vaccines that the government covers and “strongly recommends” but does not mandate, and additional “voluntary” vaccines, generally paid for out-of-pocket. Unlike in the U.S., Japan has no vaccine requirements for children entering preschool or elementary school.

Japan also banned the MMR vaccine in the same time frame, due to thousands of serious injuries over a four-year period—producing an injury rate of one in 900 children that was “over 2,000 times higher than the expected rate.” It initially offered separate measles and rubella vaccines following its abandonment of the MMR vaccine; Japan now recommends a combined measles-rubella (MR) vaccine for routine use but still shuns the MMR. The mumps vaccine is in the “voluntary” category.

Here are key differences between the Japanese and U.S. vaccine programs:

  • Japan has no vaccine mandates, instead recommending vaccines that (as discussed above) are either “routine” (covered by insurance) or “voluntary” (self-pay).
  • Japan does not vaccinate newborns with the hepatitis B (HepB) vaccine, unless the mother is hepatitis B positive.
  • Japan does not vaccinate pregnant mothers with the tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis (Tdap) vaccine.
  • Japan does not give flu shots to pregnant mothers or to six-month-old infants.
  • Japan does not give the MMR vaccine, instead recommending an MR vaccine.
  • Japan does not require the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

In contrast, the U.S. vaccine schedule (see Table 1) prescribes routine vaccination during pregnancy, calls for the first HepB vaccine dose within 24 hours of birth—even though 99.9% of pregnant women, upon testing, are hepatitis B negative, and follows up with 20 to 22 vaccine doses in the first year alone. No other developed country administers as many vaccine doses in the first two years of life.

The HepB vaccine injects a newborn with a 250-microgram load of aluminum, a neurotoxic and immune-toxic adjuvant used to provoke an immune response. There are no studies to back up the safety of exposing infants to such high levels of the injected metal. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) upper limit for aluminum in intravenous (IV) fluids for newborns is far lower at five micrograms per kilogram per day (mcg/kg/day)—and even at these levels, researchers have documented the potential for impaired neurologic development. For an average newborn weighing 7.5 pounds, the HepB vaccine has over 15 times more aluminum than the FDA’s upper limit for IV solutions.

Unlike Japan, the U.S. administers flu and Tdap vaccines to pregnant women (during any trimester) and babies receive flu shots at six months of age, continuing every single year thereafter. Manufacturers have never tested the safety of flu shots administered during pregnancy, and the FDA has never formally licensed any vaccines “specifically for use during pregnancy to protect the infant.”

U.S. vaccine proponents claim the U.S. vaccine schedule is similar to schedules in other developed countries, but this claim is inaccurate upon scrutiny. Most other countries do not recommend vaccination during pregnancy, and very few vaccinate on the first day of life. This is important because the number, type and timing of exposure to vaccines can greatly influence their adverse impact on developing fetuses and newborns, who are particularly vulnerable to toxic exposures and early immune activation. Studies show that activation of pregnant women’s immune systems can cause developmental problems in their offspring. Why are pregnant women in the U.S. advised to protect their developing fetuses by avoiding alcohol and mercury-containing tuna fish, but actively prompted to receive immune-activating Tdap and flu vaccines, which still contain mercury (in multi-dose vials) and other untested substances?

Japan initially recommended the HPV vaccine but stopped doing so in 2013 after serious health problems prompted numerous lawsuits. Japanese researchers have since confirmed a temporal relationship between HPV vaccination and recipients’ development of symptoms. U.S. regulators have ignored these and similar reports and not only continue to aggressively promote and even mandate the formerly optional HPV vaccine beginning in preadolescence but are now pushing it in adulthood. The Merck-manufactured HPV vaccine received fast-tracked approval from the FDA despite half of all clinical trial subjects reporting serious medical conditions within seven months.

Best and Worst: Two Different Infant Mortality Results

The CDC views infant mortality as one of the most important indicators of a society’s overall health. The agency should take note of Japan’s rate, which, at 2 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, is the second lowest in the world, second only to the Principality of Monaco. In comparison, almost three times as many American infants die (5.8 per 1,000 live births), despite massive per capita spending on health care for children (see Table 2). U.S. infant mortality ranks behind 55 other countries and is worse than the rate in Latvia, Slovakia or Cuba.

To reiterate, the U.S. has the most aggressive vaccine schedule of developed countries (administering the most vaccines the earliest). If vaccines save lives, why are American children “dying at a faster rate, and… dying younger” compared to children in 19 other wealthy countries—translating into a “57 percent greater risk of death before reaching adulthood”? Japanese children, who receive the fewest vaccines—with no government mandates for vaccination—grow up to enjoy “long and vigorous” lives. International infant mortality and health statistics and their correlation to vaccination protocols show results that government and health officials are ignoring at our children’s great peril.

Among the 20 countries with the world’s best infant mortality outcomes, only three countries (Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore) automatically administer the HepB vaccine to all newborns—governed by the rationale that hepatitis B infection is highly endemic in these countries. Most of the other 17 top-ranking countries—including Japan—give the HepB vaccine at birth only if the mother is hepatitis B positive (Table 1). The U.S., with its disgraceful #56 infant mortality ranking, gives the HepB vaccine to all four million babies born annually despite a low incidence of hepatitis B.

Is the U.S. Sacrificing Children’s Health for Profits? 

Merck, the MMR vaccine’s manufacturer, is in court over MMR-related fraud. Whistleblowers allege the pharmaceutical giant rigged its efficacy data for the vaccine’s mumps component to ensure its continued market monopoly. The whistleblower evidence has given rise to two separate court cases. In addition, a CDC whistleblower has alleged the MMR vaccine increases autism risks in some children. Others have reported that the potential risk of permanent injury from the MMR vaccine dwarfs the risks of getting measles.

Why do the FDA and CDC continue to endorse the problematic MMR vaccine despite Merck’s implication in fraud over the vaccine’s safety and efficacy? Why do U.S. legislators and government officials not demand a better alternative, as Japan did over two decades ago? Why are U.S. cities and states forcing Merck’s MMR vaccine on American children? Is the U.S. government protecting children, or Merck? Why are U.S. officials ignoring Japan’s exemplary model, which proves that the most measured vaccination program in the industrialized world and “first-class sanitation and levels of nutrition” can produce optimal child health outcomes that are leading the world?

A central tenet of a free and democratic society is the freedom to make informed decisions about medical interventions that carry serious potential risks. This includes the right to be apprised of benefits and risks—and the ability to say no. The Nuremberg Code of ethics established the necessity of informed consent without “any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.” Forcing the MMR vaccine, or any other vaccine, on those who are uninformed or who do not consent represents nothing less than medical tyranny.

© 2019 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

ER Doctor from Sweden Explains it all – the Science, Logic & Philosophy!

Ivor Cummins • October 12, 2020

Superb conversation with Dr. Sebastian Rushworth, covering the gamut.

Google him and his articles – superb. https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/0…

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Is the cholesterol hypothesis dead?

Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | September 8, 2020

Is there any life left in the cholesterol hypothesis (a.k.a. the lipid hypothesis)? Is there anything left for serious scientists to cling to or is time for its mouldering corpse to end up on the trash heap of medical history, alongside lobotomy, bloodletting and the theory of the four humors? I was asked this question by a reader of this blog recently, and as it happens, a systematic review was recently published in Evidence Based Medicine (my favorite medical journal, mainly because it is edited by the brilliant Dr. Carl Heneghan) that definitively answers this question, so I thought it would be interesting to go through what the evidence says together.

As many readers will be aware, the cholesterol hypothesis is the idea that cardiovascular disease is caused by high levels of cholesterol in the blood stream. The hypothesis harks back to the early part of the twentieth century, when a Russian researcher named Nikolai Anitschkow fed a cholesterol rich diet to rabbits and found that they developed atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries, the process which in the long run leads to cardiovascular disease). Of course, rabbits and humans are very different species, with very different dietary preferences. Rabbits, being herbivores, normally have very little cholesterol in their diets, while humans, being omnivores, generally consume quite a bit of cholesterol. Regardless, the data was suggestive, and led to the hypothesis being formulated.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s an American researcher named Ancel Keys carried out a number of studies which supposedly showed a correlation between cholesterol intake and heart disease in humans. The most famous of these was the “Seven Countries Study”, which was an observational study carried out in, as the name implies, seven different countries, and which found that people in countries with a high intake of saturated fat had high blood levels of cholesterol, and were much more likely to develop heart disease than people in countries with a low intake of saturated fat. This lead to the hypothesis that saturated fat intake leads to high blood cholesterol levels which leads to atherosclerosis which leads to cardiovascular disease and premature death.

As we’ve discussed before, observational studies cannot draw any conclusions about causation, they can only show correlation. And there is also a question why these seven specific countries were chosen (the reader will be aware that there are in fact closer to two hundred countries) – they certainly weren’t chosen at random. If the populations in a study aren’t chosen at random, that creates a significant risk of cherry picking of data (and makes it impossible for the researchers carrying out a study to refute that accusation).

In spite of these limitations, the cholesterol hypothesis became heavily hyped, leading to official dietary recommendations around the world, which are still very much unchanged, that recommend low intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol, and of foods rich in these substances, such as red meat.

The hypothesis also resulted in pharmaceutical companies investing huge sums in research to find a drug that would lower cholesterol levels in the blood. A number of drugs were discovered, but unfortunately, although they could lower cholesterol levels, none of them seemed to have any effect on mortality. People were dying at the same rate even with these drugs, sometimes even at higher rates. That was the first hit against the cholesterol hypothesis.

Then came statins, and everything changed. Statins are molecules that in nature are produced by certain types of fungi. Among other biological functions that aren’t completely understood, they inhibit an enzyme called HMG-CoA-reductase. This enzyme is central to the body’s ability to produce cholesterol. When it is blocked, cells are unable to produce their own cholesterol and have to find it from elsewhere. This causes them to express receptors on their surfaces that allow them to suck up cholesterol from the blood stream. This effect is most noticeable in the liver, since the liver is the body’s main cholesterol factory, and is the organ primarily responsible for recycling the molecules that transport cholesterol in the blood stream (cholesterol is a vital part of cell membranes so all cells in the body have the capacity to produce their own cholesterol). Since cholesterol is hoovered up from the blood stream, the cholesterol level in the blood drops. Yay!

The reason I say everything changed with statins is that they actually seemed to work. For the first time a drug had been discovered that lowered cholesterol and that also seemed to decrease mortality. Ancel Keys seemed to have been vindicated. Anyone suggesting that the cholesterol hypothesis was dead in the water was derided as a nut.

Now, as time has gone by, the cholesterol hypothesis has actually grown more complex, which is why doctors don’t really talk about cholesterol so much any more. Instead they talk about LDL, which stands for Low Density Lipoprotein. LDL is a transport molecule that is used to transport cholesterol in the blood stream (cholesterol is a lipid and as such is not soluble in blood, so it needs to be transported in a special transport molecule). This is important, because in the updated version of the hypothesis, it’s not the cholesterol itself that’s bad, it’s the LDL. Basically, the idea is that LDL that’s moving around in the body can become oxidized. Oxidized LDL can get stuck in artery walls, and start an inflammatory process that leads to atherosclerosis. So what statins actually do is cause the liver to hoover up LDL molecules from the blood stream, which prevents them from becoming oxidized in the tissues and causing atherosclerosis.

Now, unfortunately for the pharmaceutical companies, there are patent laws, which mean that after a couple of decades, their drugs go off-patent and they are no longer able to make big profits. Which is why they have developed newer types of cholesterol lowering drugs. There is ezetimibe, which works by inhibiting the uptake of cholesterol from the intestine. Most recently there are the PCSK9-inhibitors, which increase the liver’s uptake of LDL by preventing it from recycling the LDL-receptors on its surface, which results in more receptors on the surface and therefore a higher uptake of LDL from the blood stream.

Since there has been such widespread agreement that the cholesterol hypothesis is true, and that drugs that lower LDL also lower heart disease, cardiologists’ organizations around the world have set targets for LDL levels in the blood stream. For example, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiologists have set a target LDL reduction of 50% for people at high risk of cardiovascular disease, and 30% for people at moderate risk. Basically, people at high or moderate risk should be started on one cholesterol lowering drug, and if this drug doesn’t have a big enough effect on their LDL levels, then a second drug should be added. If enough effect still isn’t seen, then a third drug can be added, and so on until the target is reached.

Clearly, if the cholesterol hypothesis is true, then the amount of benefit seen from lowering LDL should stand in direct proportion to the amount by which LDL is lowered, right? Anything else would be illogical.

This brings us nicely to the recent systematic review in Evidence Based Medicine. The review looked at all randomized controlled trials involving either a statin, ezetimibe, or a PCSK-9 inhibitor, in which data was provided on both the level of LDL-reduction and mortality, and in which the treatment period was at least one year. The authors declared no conflicts of interest and received no outside funding in order to carry out the review.

In total, 35 trials were included in the review, with the smallest trial containing 249 participants, and the largest trial containing 27,564 participants. The total number of participants across all the trials was over 230,000. 29 of the 35 trials had over 1,000 participants. Basically, these were for the most part large, high quality studies. That should certainly be enough data to tell us definitively whether the cholesterol hypothesis is dead or alive.

The trials were sorted based on whether they were treating people with moderate risk of cardiovascular disease or people with high risk, and then further grouped based on whether the participants on average met the official American LDL targets (at least a 30% reduction in LDL for people with moderate risk, and at least a 50% reduction for people with high risk).

Here’s what they found:

Of the 13 trials that successfully met the LDL targets, only one was able to find a beneficial effect on mortality. Of the 22 trials that did not meet the LDL targets, four reported a mortality benefit. So, overall, only 5 out of 35 trials were able to find a mortality benefit, and four of those that did find a benefit did not lower LDL to the target level.

Furthermore, some trials that saw significant LDL reductions (over 50%) were not able to show any effect on mortality, while other trials in which LDL only dropped by 11-15% did see a significant effect on mortality. Basically, less LDL-lowering actually seemed to be better in terms of mortality than more LDL-lowering.

So, what can we conclude?

Firstly, yes, the cholesterol hypothesis is dead, dead, dead. There is no correlation between effect on LDL and effect on mortality. Anyone who still chooses to cling to the cholesterol hypothesis in spite of this is consciously refusing to see what a vast amount of high quality scientific evidence is putting right in front of their eyes.

Secondly, as an interesting aside, only 5 out of 35 trials found a mortality benefit, which means that 30 out of 35 did not find any benefit. And yet somehow statins are one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world. Personally, if I look at an entire evidence base consisting of 35 trials, with a total of 230,000 patients, and 30 of those trials, with 195,000 people, fail to find a mortality benefit, then that’s going to make me think the treatment doesn’t work. At least not if the point of the treatment is to make people live longer.

So what are the practical implications for you as a patient? As I mentioned in an earlier article, there is no point getting your cholesterol levels tested, because they tell you nothing about your risk of cardiovascular disease. If you are already on a cholesterol lowering drug, and intend to continue for whatever reason, there is no point doing annual check-ups of your cholesterol levels, because there is no correlation between how much the drug lowers those levels and your risk of future cardiovascular events. And there is certainly no point in trying to reach a “target” LDL level.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Opaque, Unaccountable: Dangers of the New COVID Bio-Security Complex

By Patrick Henningsen | 21st Century Wire | October 13, 2020

Seven months into this crisis, it can’t be any clearer. Just as they did following 9/11, western governments are using the COVID ‘pandemic’ crisis as a pretext to usher in whole new layer of security state bureaucracy, and one which has the power to penetrate more deeply into our lives.

For those who are old enough to remember, prior to September 11, 2001, there was no such thing as a Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and yet in a matter of a few years, this federal department quickly grew into one of the largest federal agencies taking in tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year ever since. In fact, the term Homeland didn’t even exist in America before that. But it was the perceived threat which provided it’s raison d’etre – buttressed by an incessant barrage of propaganda by the state and its media adjuncts, which made this new paradigm a reality. Soon, all of these new state apparatuses and security initiatives were all nestled neatly under the new banner of the Global War on Terror.

In 2020, this exact process has been repeated, only this time the threat isn’t the spectre of radical Islamist terror coming from foreign lands, but something much closer to home.

According to our governments, the new threat is your neighbour, your teacher, the shopkeeper, and even your family members.

And you are a threat to each of them.

And everyone is a threat to each other.

I described this dialectic in the recent special edition of New Dawn Magazine. Here’s a brief passage from my article entitled, “THE GREAT RESET: A Global Flu d’Etat”:

From the onset, computer-modeled predictions wildly overestimated death tolls in key countries. This was not by accident as the initial political and mass media campaign of shock and awe placed populations in an applied cognitive framework of helplessness and dependency.

The same psychological levers were activated in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of 11 September 2001. Psychologically traumatised western electorates not only accepted any level of state and corporate security, infringement of civil liberties and invasion of privacy, many even demanded their governments prosecute overseas wars to eliminate the perceived threat, at that time, of al Qaeda and international terrorism. Subsequently, a new normal was rolled-out globally, a series of endless wars and a leviathan of ‘anti-terror’ measures and digital surveillance at home.

Despite efforts to try and convince the public that everyone is a potential terrorist, the climate of fear was difficult to maintain. The genius of the COVID crisis is that the Establishment has now managed to convince us that everyone is a potential carrier of a deadly pathogen and that anyone who so much as sneezes in the vicinity of any- one else could not only kill them but also trigger a deadly ‘second wave’ of the pandemic.

Phase one of The Great Reset.

This week, the UK Government announced its latest round of emergency measure and regional lockdowns, supposedly for fighting the coronavirus.

Their new “Tier Three” lockdown system will determine whether towns or cities will be allowed to keep pubs, gyms and other leisure facilities open, for up to a further six months. But who knows when it will end. This has prompted concerned members of public, along with a few brave officials, to ask who exactly is setting this new Three-Tier system?

According to government officials, the new system will classify regions as either ‘medium’, ‘high’ or ‘very high’ levels, with high and above triggering new local lockdowns.

Welcome to thin end of the state’s bio-surveillance wedge. Similar protocols are being rolled out in Five Eyes Alliance nations the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Just as with the global war on terror, governments have now erected an entirely new level within the ever-expanding national security state. In the UK, it’s called the Joint Bio Security Centre (JBC), formed in July, and already a £9 billion operation. Expect that number to grow substantially as the security complex discovers new and more complex systems required to keep pace with a new global bio surveillance and biological arms race.

“Led by a senior spy, the JBC does not publish details of its deliberations, the sources of its evidence or its key personnel. Nevertheless, its advice to ministers is understood to have guided recent decisions on where to enforce the local lockdowns affecting millions of people across the country,” said The Telegraph.

Is COVID really so deadly that the state needs to reconfigure all of its public health agencies under a new command and control hierarchy? Indeed, many asked the same question about al-Qaeda 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, few officials are demanding any answers or calling for accountability. There is only one such inquisitive public servant so far, Dr Greg Clark MP, Chairman of Science and Technology Committee, who believes that the British public are owed some answers as to who is in this opaque group, and which person(s) is making the final decisions for these rather arbitrary ‘alert levels’ being issued by the government.

Exactly what is the remit of this new JBC? According to the Institute for Government:

The centre will have two main jobs. The first is as an independent analytical function to provide real-time analysis about infection outbreaks. It will look in detail to identify and respond to outbreaks of Covid-19 as they arise. The centre will collect data about the prevalence of the disease and analyse that data to understand infection rates across the country.

Its second job is to advise on how the government should respond to spikes in infections – for example by closing schools or workplaces in local areas where infection levels have risen. Should UK government ministers decide to impose different restrictions in different areas and regions across England, it will be on the advice of the JBC.

And just as we suspected, here’s the salient point:

The JBC looks to be based on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC). JTAC analyses intelligence related to terrorism and sets threat levels, which in turn inform ministers’ decisions on protecting the public and operational deployments by the police and other agencies.

The current Three-Tier alert system was based on the following framework devised for the JBC in determining new Covid-19 alert levels:

  • Level 1: Covid-19 is not known to be present in the UK
  • Level 2: Covid-19 is present in the UK, but the number of cases and transmission is low
  • Level 3: a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation
  • Level 4: a Covid-19 epidemic is in general circulation; transmission is high or rising exponentially
  • Level 5: as level 4 and there is a material risk of healthcare services being overwhelmed.

If it looks and sounds like a military operation, that’s because it is. This is the first time that the science of epidemiology has been brushed aside in favour of a one-size-fits-all, military-style approach to mitigating a viral pandemic.

The JBC insists that they are only providing recommendations “informed by the data collected and analysed by the JBC.” It is therefore up to Downing Street and its chief medical officer to issue the final alert level. Presumably they will be processing testing data, along with NHS Track and Trace, as well as data from the Office of National Statistics, and Public Health England (if it still exists).

We’re told that the JBC is being headed by an intelligence chief from GCHQ, cybersecurity director Dr Clare Gardiner. According to her biography, she’s a “qualified epidemiologist, medical researcher, and cybersecurity director.”

The Telegraph adds, “She reports to Baroness Dido Harding, the chief of NHS Test and Trace, while the entire JBC organisation falls under the control of the Department of Health, which answers to the Mr Hancock. Government sources insisted the body was largely staffed by civil servants meaning it was “not appropriate” to release their identities.”

Lockdowns are no trivial matter and deeply impact the lives of millions of people, and carry with them the most grave economic and social consequences. They also cost lives. Hence, the concern here is one of transparency, and it is unknown if this new ‘bio-intelligence’ agency will be engaging with independent scientists, or will it merely collate data and liase with government-appoint science advisors. It seems odd to be blending the civil service and signals intelligence with the science departments. From a political and bureaucratic point of view, it’s certainly convenient for politicians to have yet another compartment to whom they can ‘pass the buck’ and use plausible deniability for obfuscation purposes. If nothing else, it gives Ministers yet another panel of ‘experts’ to defer to – the familiar illusion of impressive depth and deep considerations supposedly informing the Ministers’ final assessments – when in reality, it just becomes more convoluted. Drowning in unaccountable bureaucracy. That’s where the epic mistakes are usual made.

Just as with the disastrous War on Terror, there is a serious danger that an entirely new division of security state technocracy will inevitably become a money sink, operating in its own bubble within an already knotted civil service, and propelled by endless feedback loops – creating more problems than were there to begin with.

It’s important to point out that such historic and sweeping changes in government can only be achieved amid a climate of fear. Since the beginning of this crisis, the mainstream media have been dedicated to delivering that fear. During the War on Terror, the media scooped up whatever government and the intelligence community were serving, and just ran with it. Without them, the government could never have realised any of its newfound powers. It’s the same now with COVID. You need only to replace the anti-terror mavens in intelligence community with The Science committees. This is precisely ‘the intellectual artillery’ of government joined-up with the media, which Spengler warned about almost a century ago in his treatise, The Decline of the West.

Make no mistake about it – freedom and democracy are under attack from a new and revitalised, COVID-inspired security industrial complex.

Judging by the lack of tenacity by media in being willing to hold any of the Five Eyes government to account for their horrendous performances thus far, it seems unlikely that the media will challenge this new bio-security arm that much.

One can only hope the penny drops much sooner with this leviathan, than it has with previous security state paradigm shifts.

***

Footnotes:

1 Decline of The West, Volumes I & II: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.283129/page/n471/mode/2up

***

Author Patrick Henningsen is an American writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire, and is host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR). He has written for a number of international publications and has done extensive on-the-ground reporting in the Middle East including work in Syria and Iraq. See his archive here.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

Olive Branches and Nuclear Bombs in Israel

By Brian Cloughley | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 13, 2020

According to the Christian website St Basil’s the olive tree “is a symbol of peace, prosperity, health, wellness, abundance and food.” And Israel Olive Bond concurs, observing that it “has been an important component of Jewish and Israeli culture throughout history” being “mentioned frequently in the Bible in the context of blessings, fruitfulness, and health” and “eventually became linked to the concept of putting down roots in the land.”

Which is no doubt why Israelis continue destroying Palestinian olive trees.

According to independent monitors some 4,000 Palestinian olive trees were destroyed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the period January-July 2020 and in August an Israeli military officer, Colonel Eitan Abrahams, was reported as saying that the destruction was justified “for the safety of settlers,” because the trees protect Palestinian gunmen or stone-throwers.

The Western media rarely mention anything like this about Israel/Palestine, because it is now generally accepted in America and Europe that any report or comment that might place Israel in a poor light is to be avoided. The influence wielded by pro-Israel organisations and lobbyists in the essentially pro-Israel UK Parliament and the equally supportive U.S. Congress is such that there can be no time allotted to impartial discussion or democratic debate on such matters as destruction of olive trees by illegal Israeli colonisers on Palestinian land.

It is notable that the current British Minister for Home Affairs, Priti Patel, was sacked by former prime minister Theresa May because she told lies about a visit she made to Israel and was promptly appointed to her position of great responsibility by May’s successor, Boris Johnson, he who declares himself to be “a passionate defender of Israel.” Across the Atlantic, the amounts of Israel Lobby money given to U.S. politicians are staggering, and as the independent Clingendael Institute notes, “in August 2019, President Donald Trump declared himself ‘history’s most pro-Israel U.S. president’ while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Trump as ‘the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House’.” Leaping on the Zionist bandwagon, presidential contender Joe Biden announced that “As President, Joe Biden will continue to ensure that the Jewish State, the Jewish people, and Jewish values have the unbreakable support of the United States.”

It cannot be expected that Britain or America will ever withdraw the olive branches of generous backing that they extend to Israel, or that they would ever condemn destruction of Palestinian olive trees or seizure of Palestinian lands; but German and France are not unconditionally supportive of Israeli dominion and in July issued a statement saying that “any annexation of Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 would be a violation of international law and imperil the foundations of the peace process. We would not recognize any changes to the 1967 borders that are not agreed by both parties in the conflict.” They won’t have the slightest effect on Israel’s continuing illegal occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory, but at least there is someone out there who cares a bit about Palestinians.

But nobody cares about Israel’s nuclear weapons.

The badge of Israel’s military forces displays the Star of David and a sword, and it is strikingly ironic that the sword is wrapped in an olive branch. No doubt, while Israeli soldiers bulldoze and otherwise hack down acres of Palestinian olive trees, consigning thousands of Palestinians to poverty, they rejoice that their mission of destruction is truly peaceful. And they probably think their country’s nuclear arsenal should also be wrapped in olive branches.

In March 2006 it was revealed that the United Kingdom “secretly supplied Israel with plutonium during the 1960s despite a warning from military intelligence that it could help the Israelis to develop a nuclear bomb… The documents also show how Britain made hundreds of shipments to Israel of material which could have helped in its nuclear weapons programme, including compounds of uranium, lithium, beryllium and tritium, as well as heavy water.” (Britain acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1968.) As is normal, the matter was not followed up officially — at least on the surface.

But down below, in the gutters, it appears there was much activity and in August 2016 the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that “more than 400 documents, including government files relating to the UK’s involvement in Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal, have gone missing.”

The lost material was stored in the National Archives in Kew, near London. From first-hand experience I state flatly that this establishment is staffed by dedicated and most efficient professionals who do not “lose” such things as “more than 60 Foreign office files, over 40 Home office documents, and six from the records of former prime ministers” dealing with Britain’s “military and nuclear collaboration with Israel.”

In 2016 the BBC submitted a Freedom of Information Request for these publicly available documents about British government policy and was informed that they had all disappeared. Among the missing material “is a Foreign Office file from 1979 entitled ‘Military and nuclear collaboration with Israel: Israeli nuclear armament’.”

The papers were important historical records, and it is astonishing that there has been no investigation into what could be revealed as a criminal conspiracy to destroy official chronicles. But the attitude of successive UK governments concerning Israel’s nuclear weapons has been remarkably consistent, in that unrelenting support for all Israeli activities has been displayed, no matter the political persuasion of the governing party. And in the four years since the material disappeared there has been no attempt to pursue the matter.

Britain’s stance regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons was brought up in 2014 when the government was asked in the House of Lords “whether they will make representations to the government of Israel to declare (1) any stocks of nuclear weapons they possess, and (2) any facilities they fund to research and produce such weapons.” In spite of the fact that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 2014 Yearbook recorded that Israel had 80 nuclear warheads, the government’s answer was that “Israel has not declared a nuclear weapons programme. We have regular discussions with the Government of Israel on a range of nuclear-related issues. The Government of Israel is in no doubt as to our views…” In one respect the answer was clearly indicative of policy, in that Israel is certainly in no doubt about the views of Britain (and France and the U.S. and very many others) concerning its illegal nuclear weapons: it is most unlikely that any international action will be taken to limit Israel’s nuclear arsenal (now numbering at least 90 warheads according to SIPRI) or in any way interfere with its nuclear posture.

The certain things are that Israel will carry on destroying Palestinian houses and olive trees while the countries of the Western world keep extending olive branches to its nuclear bombs.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

US Military Evacuates Largest Base in Afghanistan

Al-Manar | October 13, 2020

The US forces started evacuating their largest base in Afghanistan, according to media reports which added that it lies to the north of the capital, Kabul.

An administrative official in the Afghan Senate said that the US forces began demolishing the buildings at Bagram air base and moving their equipment to Pakistan.

The Afghan Senate harshly criticized the US forces for demolishing the buildings, demanding that they hand over the military equipment in the base to the Afghani forces.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , | 1 Comment

Colonel Alexander Vindman’s Revenge

Another “expert” with an agenda surfaces

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • October 13, 2020

During last year’s impeachment process directed against President Donald Trump, Congress obtained testimony from a parade of witnesses to or participants in what was inevitably being referred to as UkraineGate. It centered around an investigation into whether Trump inappropriately sought a political quid pro quo from Ukrainian leaders in exchange for a military assistance package.

The prepared opening statement by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, described as the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council (NSC), provided some insights into how decision making at the NSC actually works. Vindman was born to a Jewish family in Ukraine but emigrated to the United States at age three. He was commissioned as an army infantry officer in 1998 and served in some capacity in Iraq from 2004-5, where he was wounded by a roadside bomb and received a purple heart. Vindman, who speaks both Ukrainian and Russian fluently, has filled a number of diplomatic and military positions in government dealing with Eastern Europe, to include a key role in Pentagon planning on how to deal with Russia.

Vindman, Ukrainian both by birth and culturally, clearly was a major player in articulating and managing U.S. policy towards that country, but at that time it was sometimes noted that he did not really understand what his role on the NSC should have been. As more than likely the U.S. government’s sole genuine Ukrainian expert, he should have become a good source for consideration of viable options that the United States might exercise vis-à-vis its relationship with Ukraine, and, by extension, regarding Moscow’s involvement with Kiev. But that is not how his statement before congress, which advocated for a specific policy, read. Rather than providing expert advice, Vindman was concerned chiefly because arming Ukraine was not proceeding quickly enough to suit him, an extremely risky policy which had already created serious problems with a much more important Russia.

Part of Vindman’s written statement (my emphasis) is revealing: ”When I joined the NSC in July 2018, I began implementing the administration’s policy on Ukraine. In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

Vindman was also interested in promoting a policy that would limit any damage to the Democratic Party. Note the following additional excerpt from Vindman’s prepared statement to Congress: “…. I was worried about the implications for the US government’s support of Ukraine…. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”

So Alexander Vindman clearly was pushing a risky alternative policy that had not been endorsed by either the president of the United States or the secretary of state, who were and still are the responsible authorities for making decisions relating to foreign and national security issues. It is therefore tempting to conclude that Vindman was an integral part of the Washington inside-the-beltway Deep State, which believed the solution to the Ukraine problem was to send arms to Kiev to enable an attack on Russia that would in turn weaken President Vladimir Putin. Along the way, Vindman attempted to make the absurd claim that the political situation in Kiev was somehow important to U.S. national security, asserting that “Ukraine is a frontline state and a bulwark against Russian aggression.” He did not care to ask the inevitable next question, “Aggression against whom?” The combined visions of Russia as an aggressive, expansionistic power coupled with the brave Ukrainians serving as a bastion of freedom is so absurd that it is hardly worth countering.

It is perhaps not surprising to learn that Colonel Vindman is at it again, joining the chorus of former government officials who are seeking to bring about the defeat of Donald Trump in November. And this time around he has the useful bully pulpit provided by the New York Times and The Atlantic, which have featured a Times op-ed co-authored by him followed by a recorded and transcribed interview as well as another article based on yet another interview with The Atlantic. The Times op-ed revealed that Vindman has not learned anything about how the government works since he made the statement to Congress last year. In a piece entitled “Trump Has Sold Off America’s Credibility for His Personal Gain: From China to Ukraine, this president has acted at odds with American foreign policy. Imagine what he could do with four more years” it cites Vindman’s perspective that “… the president and his associates asked officials in Kyiv to deliver on Mr. Trump’s political interests in exchange for American military aid needed to defend Ukraine… This was not a unique instance of Mr. Trump’s personal priorities corrupting American foreign policy. As the 2020 election grew closer, the president increasingly ignored the policies developed by his own government and instead pursued transactions guided by self-interest and instinct.”

Colonel Vindman is wrong in not realizing that when it comes to foreign policy “his own government” is the president whose decisions are binding, whether one likes it or not. And he also fails to understand that bilateral international agreements and understandings are a process of horse trading, with favors being done by both sides. Trump was certainly within his rights to want to know about possible illegal activity carried out by the son of a former Vice President.

The Atlantic piece, written by editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, former Israeli prison guard and now leading anti-Trump malcontent, quotes Vindman and editorializes as follows: “’President Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which makes him an unwitting agent of Putin,’” he says. Useful idiot is a term commonly used to describe dupes of authoritarian regimes; fellow traveler, in Vindman’s description, is a person who shares Putin’s loathing for democratic norms. But do you think Russia is blackmailing Trump? “’They may or may not have dirt on him, but they don’t have to use it,’” he says. “’They have more effective and less risky ways to employ him. He has aspirations to be the kind of leader that Putin is, and so he admires him. He likes authoritarian strongmen who act with impunity, without checks and balances. So he’ll try to please Putin.’” Vindman continues, “’In the Army we call this ‘free chicken,’ something you don’t have to work for—it just comes to you. This is what the Russians have in Trump: free chicken.’”

It is very easy to despise what passes for foreign policy in the Trump White House, but the alternative of rule by agenda-driven bureaucrats like Colonel Alexander Vindman is even more unpalatable from a constitutional point of view. His original testimony before Congress, wrapped in an air of sanctimoniousness and a uniform, should be regarded as little more than the conventional thinking that has produced foreign policy failure after failure in the past twenty years. Russia the perpetual enemy requiring “friends” like Ukraine with little regard for the actual threat level or the potential consequences. The fact that Vindman is how exploiting a bully pulpit on the largely discredited New York Times while also getting into bed with the scoundrel Jeffrey Goldberg should tell one all that is necessary to know. Trump is right about ending America’s love affair with foreign wars, even though it is a subject that neither he nor Joe Biden will be discussing. Vindman is little more than an apologist for why those useless wars are promoted and are continuing.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

October 13, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment