Pakistani PM firmly rejects Israeli ties as ‘baseless’, publicity campaign
Press TV | December 19, 2020
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has rejected as “baseless” reports of his government officials visiting Israel, insisting why would any of the ministers visit Tel Aviv when Islamabad does not recognize the occupying regime.
Khan made the remarks during an interview on Friday with the local Samaa TV emphasizing that the Israeli-based news story was part of “an entire campaign” targeting his administration.
The development came following a publicity campaign by the Israeli regime’s news outlets alleging on Wednesday that a senior advisor to Khan had visited the occupied territories last month.
Citing a source close to the Tel Aviv regime, Israel Hayom and other Israeli dailies published a report claiming that the Pakistani aide had met with Israeli officials during an alleged trip to Tel Aviv.
The apparent propaganda story also said the Pakistani official was carrying a message from Khan that reflected his “strategic decision” to open political and diplomatic talks with the regime. The Jerusalem Post also covered the publicity item but later removed it from its website.
Pointing to recent efforts by a coalition of 11 opposition groups — led by the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) and the now London-based former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who was ousted after being convicted and later jailed on official corruption charges – Khan said he was prepared to face everything the opposition alliance aims to throw at him.
“The PDM can do anything that it wants. I am ready,” said the premier, adding that PDM’s recent protest rally in Lahore had damaged the opposition’s alliance.
“I am a jalsa specialist and I am telling you that this was a flop show,” he said.
Khan’s administration had dismissed the Lahore rally as “more [of] a ploy” to distract from the corruption charges against Sharif.
Khan also touched upon the threat of mass resignations by opposition legislators, saying, “If they resign, it would be better for Pakistan.”
He went on to say he would even assist the opposition if they came to Islamabad, but noted, “They cannot even last a week [in Islamabad] even if I support them.”
The Pakistani leader defended the country’s top military commander General Qamar Javed Bajwa against the opposition’s persisting allegations against him and the army, saying that “anger” and “disappointment” prevailed among the ranks after Bajwawas was targeted by opposition leaders during public gatherings.
“Gen Bajwa believes in democracy. Had it been another general, he would have given a quick rebuttal,” Khan said, adding that the army chief was “angry” but he was “controlling it.”
He also emphasized that all institutions — including the army — stood beside him, saying, “There are excellent civil-military ties in the country.”
He said the army serves under him as he is the prime minister, and as the army is a government institution.
India’s scheme to discredit Pakistan
Referring to a recent report by EU DisinfoLab, Khan said the NGO’s research had exposed India’s network that kept spreading misinformation about Pakistan.
The Brussels-based NGO, which works to combat disinformation against the European Union, unveiled earlier this month that a 15-year-old operation run by an Indian entity had used hundreds of fake media outlets and the identity of a dead professor to defame Pakistan.
The report – Indian Chronicles: deep dive into a 15-year operation targeting the EU and United Nations to serve Indian interests – described the effort as the “largest network” of disinformation they have exposed so far.
The report – released on December 9 – said the disinformation network run by the Srivastava Group, a New Delhi-based entity, was designed primarily to “discredit Pakistan internationally” and influence decision-making at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the European Parliament, Al-Jazeera reported.
The report also revealed that in order to “undermine Pakistan internationally,” the network “resurrected dead NGOs” at the UN, impersonated the EU and laundered content produced by fake media to real media, and reached millions in South Asia and across the world.
Iran, Pakistan open 2nd border crossing for trade surge
Press TV | December 19, 2020
Iran and Pakistan have inaugurated the second official border crossing for the transfer of goods and passengers.
The border point opened during a ceremony on Saturday, with Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami and the Pakistani Minister for Defense Production Zubaida Jalal attending the event.
The gateway connects Rimadan, located in Dashtyari country of Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan Province, with Pakistan’s Gabd.
The Rimadan border crossing has a capacity for exporting and importing goods and transporting Pakistani pilgrims and tourists.
The border’s 70-kilometer distance with Gwadar port also enables Pakistani citizens to reach Iran’s strategic Chabahar port, from where they can travel by plane or train to Iran’s religious cities and tourist sites.
The connection of the Rimadan border with Pakistan’s Karachi port would pave the way for linking China and Southeast Asian countries to Eastern Europe.
In an interview with IRNA news agency, Iran’s Ambassador to Pakistan Mohammad Ali Hosseini said there was only one crossing, Mirjaveh-Taftan, on the 900-kilometer border between the two neighboring states.
So, he added, Iranian and Pakistani officials decided to open two more border gateways, Rimadan-Gabd and Pishin-Mand.
The envoy also stressed that the inauguration of Rimdan-Gabd border point will increase economic and trade cooperation between Tehran and Islamabad, reduce smuggling and improve the livelihood of border residents as well as the security situation along the common frontier.
Top Israeli Rabbi Visits UAE, Inaugurates Jewish School
Israeli rabbi Yitzhak Yosef
Al-Manar | December 19, 2020
The Zionist entity’s Chief Sephardic rabbi visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday, marking the first trip by an Israeli senior religious leader to an Arab state.
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef’s itinerary included inaugurating a Jewish day school in Dubai and naming a local chief rabbi, Israeli media outlets reported on Friday.
The rabbi joined over 50,000 Israelis who have already traveled to the Gulf kingdom since commercial flights connected the two sides. The Zionist entity and the UAE also reached an agreement on visa waivers.
Dubai’s Jewish community center has reportedly increased its staff sixfold, from five to some 30 employees, and about 150 restaurants have started serving kosher dishes.
Israel and the UAE normalized ties earlier this year as part of a US-brokered deal that also included Bahrain. The so-called Abraham Accords have paved the way for subsequent Israeli normalization agreements with Sudan and Morocco.
America analysts downbeat as Washington opts to withdraw Siberia & remote Far East diplomatic presence
RT | December 19, 2020
As Russia moves to liberalize its Visa system for most Western visitors, the US has said it will close its last consulates outside Moscow. This step is certain to reduce person-to-person contacts between Americans and Russians.
The decision, which has echoes of the Cold War, albeit with roles reversed in terms of the paranoia at play, will see diplomatic offices close in the Far Eastern capital Vladivostok, and in Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth largest city, located east of the Ural Mountains. President Donald Trump’s administration notified Congress of the plans over a week ago, but the news received little coverage until Saturday.
While the exact timings of the closures have not yet been made clear, it is understood that American officials will be transferred to the country’s embassy in Moscow, while local Russian support staff will be laid off. In news that will satisfy Washington’s deficit hawks, the State Department predicts that the move, if made permanent, would save $3.2 million each year.
In a written communiqué, the administration claims that its actions are “in response to ongoing staffing challenges of the US Mission in Russia in the wake of the 2017 Russian-imposed personnel cap on the US Mission and resultant impasse with Russia over diplomatic visas.” The presence of state representatives first became an issue in 2016, when Washington expelled 35 of Moscow’s diplomats, limiting its mission’s numbers, over alleged attempts to interfere with that year’s Presidential elections, which Russia strenuously denies.
The decision leaves the US without formal representation anywhere apart from the capital, in a country that bridges two continents. As well as providing consular services to the more than a quarter of a million Americans who visit Russia each year, the offices are charged with issuing visas to Russians wishing to travel stateside.
Residents of Russia’s Far East who wish to visit the US will now have to fly for up to nine hours to Moscow for a Visa, with no guarantees that their application will be approved. Likewise, Americans needing to access consular services will face days of travel if they need support in Siberia or the Far East. The move, and the restrictive Visa regime, flies in the face of Russia’s recent policy towards liberalizing the process, with the introduction of a digital system offering tourists stays of up to 16-days for no more than $50 to be rolled out in January 2021. Americans are excluded from the scheme, but citizens of most NATO states are eligible.
Many analysts took to Twitter to criticize the American decision, even those usually supportive of a more confrontational approach to relations with Russia. One-time US Ambassador Michael McFaul, who has frequently become the target of ridicule over his bellicose and often inaccurate claims about the country, said that he was “saddened” by the decision, adding that “the US should be seeking ways to engage more directly with Russian society.”
A senior national security adviser to the University of Denver’s Biden Institute, Sam Vinograd, was similarly concerned over the impact of the closures, adding that “there’s a reason we have embassies and consulates in countries. Closing consulates could harm Americans and our interests.”
While ties between Moscow and Washington have been consistently under strain over a number of issues in recent months, it is unclear how the decision to shutter diplomatic offices is expected to relieve tensions. In most cases, consulates fulfil a purely administrative role, but they often also act as hubs for cultural and political exchanges, hosting events and enabling diplomats to get a better understanding of a country beyond its capital. Shuttering them also deprives the US of a useful vantage point in Vladivostok, in close range of China, North Korea and Japan.
In 2018, US officials forced Moscow to shut its consulate in Seattle, leaving it without any representation on America’s West Coast. In retaliation, the Kremlin told Washington to shut down its equivalent operations in the city of St Petersburg, one of Russia’s most popular tourist destinations. The spat saw around 60 diplomats expelled from the country, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov saying at the time that they had been ”declared ‘persona non grata’ for activities incompatible with diplomatic status.”
These decisions have widely been interpreted as attempts to restrict the kind of human-to-human contact that helps challenge established narratives about countries. In the Soviet-era, access to the country for foreign visitors was tightly restricted. But now, it would appear that the situation has reversed and, if a new Cold War is indeed underway, the US has chosen to close its doors to many Russians.
British organizations hit by “complex cyber attack”
Press TV | December 19, 2020
A major cyber attack that has hit US government agencies is also believed to have affected a small number of British organizations.
According to Sky News, British officials are “investigating” as to whether government departments have been affected by the big breach.
Hitherto, it is believed only private British companies have been affected.
Paul Chichester, the director of operations at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is an extension of the GCHQ signals intelligence organization, has urged British companies to take “immediate steps” to protect their networks.
“This is a complex, global cyber incident, and we are working with international partners to fully understand its scale and any UK impact”, Chichester told Sky News.
“The NCSC is working to mitigate any potential risk, and actionable guidance has been published on our website”, he added.
Meanwhile, one of the directors of a leading British cyber security company has claimed the attacks could be the most “impactful national security [cyber] breach” that has ever been seen.
John Hultquist, who is senior director of analysis at Mandiant Solutions (which is part of the cyber security company FireEye), told Sky News that: “They [the hackers] managed clearly to gain access to a lot of secure areas. They are going to be very hard to get out”.
FireEye reportedly was the first cyber security company to discover the trans-Atlantic breach.
Yet another major figure in the British cyber security world echoed Hultquist’s assessment by describing the latest breach is “one of the most significant cyber attacks, really that’s ever been seen”.
Ciaran Martin, who is the founder and former head of the NCSC, told Sky News the attack was motivated by “traditional espionage”.
However, Martin, who is currently an academic at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, cautioned that “it remains to be seen, what the final picture [about the hacking] tells us”.
US media, in addition to British security sources, have reflexively blamed the hacking on Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) without furnishing any evidence.
Billionaires’ Net Worth Grows to $10.2 Trillion During Pandemic
teleSUR | December 19, 2020
A report from Swiss bank UBS revealed that billionaires did “extremely well” during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing their wealth more than a quarter to $10.2 trillion at the height of the crisis.
As millions of people lost their jobs and struggled to get by on government schemes, billionaires surpassed their previous peak net worth of $8.9 trillion at the end of 2017, while also increasing their ranks to 2,189 from 2,158 over the past three years.
The world’s super-rich currently hold the greatest concentration of wealth since the US Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, when families like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies controlled vast fortunes.
The wealthiest person on the planet, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, saw his wealth increase $74 billion so far this year, reaching $189 billion. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, has seen his wealth rise $76 billion this year, totaling $103 billion.
While the UBS report noted that 209 billionaires had publicly committed to donating $7.2 billion in COVID-19 disaster relief, the figures represent just .07% of all billionaire wealth, with less than one in ten billionaires committing to contribute anything at all.
Luke Hilyard, executive director of the High Pay Centre, which researches excessive pay, said the “extreme wealth concentration is an ugly phenomenon from a moral perspective, but it’s also economically and socially destructive. Anyone accumulating riches on this scale could easily afford to raise the pay of the employees who generate their wealth, or contribute a great deal more in taxes to support vital public services while remaining very well rewarded for whatever successes they’ve achieved.”
Josef Stradler, head of UBS’ global family office department that directly deals with the world’s wealthiest individuals, said that the fact that billionaire wealth had increased so much while hundreds of millions of people worldwide are struggling could lead to public and political anger, having previously warned that the inequality gap between rich and poor could potentially lead to a “strike back.”
2020: The Year we Lost the Plot
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | December 14, 2020
“Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines.”
Anyone making this claim at the beginning of the year would rightly have been thought to have mislaid the plot and their marbles, long ago. But here we are, at the end of that same year, and it is precisely what has happened.
Only it is much worse than that.
Had you somehow been persuaded to give credence to this insane prophecy, you would probably have been comforted by the following thought: “They’ll never get away with it. The people will never stand for it.”
Not a bit of it. Somehow, millions of people across the country, and in fact across the world, were persuaded to accept it. By far the majority somehow thought that quarantining whole nations of healthy people for a virus, for the first time in history, was a good idea. Well, actually the second time in history to be precise. It was tried in 2009 by the Mexican Government during the Swine Flu outbreak, but they had the good sense to end it after a couple of weeks after realising how much it would devastate the country.
Yet not only do we have our imaginary conspiracy loon’s mad ravings come true, but those same people who have accepted it look upon those of us who have been pointing out the madness of it all as if we were those who had taken leave of our senses. Oh irony, thou hast had a field day in 2020. As St. Antony the Great put it:
“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”
To cut to the chase, we have gone and thrown out reason, rationality and proportionality this year. A coronavirus, which posed a danger to a very small proportion of our society, but which actually has an Infection Fatality Rate of around 0.2% – 0.26% (not too dissimilar to a bad seasonal flu), and which could thus have been dealt with proportionality, somehow became the catalyst for the biggest mass hysteria in the history of the human race. Indeed, many were so taken in by the great hypnotic spell set in motion by charlatans with their “hard-hitting emotional messaging,” that they adopted practices so irrational and disproportionate to the threat, one wonders how they managed to live before this year.
The history books tell of one of our great Kings, Canute, demonstrating to his courtiers that contrary to their supposition, he could not in fact control the waves. In our day, it’s like King Canute has gone rogue, telling his subjects that he can control the waves and viruses, and his subjects have responded by not only believing him, but by taking any action he tells them they must do to stop the waves or the virus, including confining themselves to their homes, closing their businesses, wearing cloths on their faces, along with umpteen other truly bizarre and wholly useless diktats. Then, when the waves or the virus continue doing what waves and viruses do, a wave of Covidian Logic bursts over us and we find it is our fault that they have not been controlled. We didn’t shut down hard enough or long enough, or we played board games at Christmas.
In the real world, the only thing that got controlled this year was not a virus, but people. That all went off spiffingly, or spaffingly as Comrade Johnson might put it. People were suppressed, people were controlled, people were — you might say — owned. And by and large they acquiesced in putting their hand to this National Suicide Plan.
Of course, the reply that comes the way of anyone who points this out is, “Ah, but if we hadn’t locked down and masked up, the deaths would have been in the hundreds of thousands.” To which the answer is simply, “Nope. Lockdown cannot be shown to have saved a single life.” Sweden, by not turning itself into a basketcase, failed to have anything like wave of mass deaths predicted by the Enthusiasts for Lockdown. Nor did other nations that took a similar approach. A recent peer-reviewed study from France, looking at 188 countries, has confirmed what should have been obvious all along:
“Stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with death rate.”
Then of course there was the Danish RCT study, which showed no significant statistical difference between infection rates of those wearing surgical masks, and those with no masks.
Imagine that!
Imagine that we were put under house arrest for months, made to cover our respiratory passages with bits of cloth, forced to alter our lives, and threatened with fines for non-compliance — and none of it made any difference to mortality.
Imagine that this Government and Parliament caused the complete shutdown of the economy for months, putting millions on the dole, wrecking 1,000s of businesses, causing the worst recession in 300 years, and piling up a future of debt, poverty, mental health issues and reduced life expectancy — and none of it saved any lives.
Imagine that we are still in this situation, with people still acquiescing in the destruction of their own country, the Government and media still feeding us lies, and with no real plausible end to this madness.
Actually, you have no need to imagine it. Even though it is so outlandish that even the most unhinged, basement-dwelling “conspiracy nut” on the planet could not have come up with this, it is indeed the year you just lived through. We lost the plot in 2020, and the most pressing question is: will we get it back in 2021?
This piece is the first in a series of five articles I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks looking at various aspects of our new Covidian State in 2020. These pieces are also due to be published on The Conservative Woman website from 27-31 December.
Update on the Swedish covid response
By Sebastian Rushworth M.D. | December 19, 2020
Since my article at the end of October detailing exactly what had been happening in Sweden in relation to covid up to that point, I’ve been getting a lot of requests for a new update, detailing events in November and December. Here it is.
I ended my previous article by stating that there had been a slow increase in hospitalizations and deaths in October, and that the slope of the curve suggested that the peak would end up being significantly lower than in spring. That slow increase continued through most of November, and appears to have stabilized at a level of around 70 deaths per day at the beginning of December (as a reminder, in spring deaths peaked at 115 deaths per day in mid-April).
This makes Sweden similar to the UK and the Netherlands, two countries that Sweden has been tracking closely throughout the pandemic, with a second peak in deaths per day that is a little over half what was seen in spring.
Here in Stockholm, the number of people being treated in hospital for covid has been stable since late November, with around 800 people being treated simultaneously for covid in hospitals (in spring around 1,100 people were simultaneously being treated for covid in Stockholm at the peak).
Since the total number of hospital beds in Stockholm is around 3,850, it should be plain to everyone that the healthcare system has never been close to being overwhelmed, in spite of claims to the contrary in media. And while it is true that hospitals are currently at 100% capacity, it is false to claim that that situation is in any way unusual. Sweden has among the lowest number of hospital beds per 100,000 population in Europe, and the hospitals are always running at 100% capacity this time of year.
My feeling (shared by multiple colleagues I’ve spoken with) is also that we’re being more generous with which covid patients we admit to the hospital than we were in spring, when we were more worried about the system being overwhelmed. In other words, if we had been as strict with admitting covid patients in autumn as we were in spring, the number of people in hospital in Stockholm with covid would not currently be 800, it would be quite a bit lower.
Other parts of Sweden, that were only hit lightly in spring, have however been hit harder the second time around. For example, Skåne, in the south, has been hit much harder in autumn than it was in spring. Parts of northern Sweden have also been hit harder.
One thing that I think is very interesting, that has received little mention in media, is that the proportion of people with antibodies has been rising by 2-3 percent every week. In Stockholm, 37% of those tested for antibodies in week 49 were positive (up from 20% six weeks earlier). That suggests that the level of immunity is rising very rapidly in the population, and makes it questionable whether the vaccine will arrive in time to have any meaningful impact on the course of covid-19 in Sweden, even if people start to get vaccinated shortly after Christmas, as is currently planned.
Overall, the situation is no more serious now than it was in spring, at least if you look at deaths, ICU-admissions, and hospitalizations. During the spring peak, 2,350 people were being treated simultaneously for covid in hospitals in Sweden as a whole. At present, 2,500 people are being treated in hospitals for covid, but, as mentioned, these 2,500 are on average less sick than the 2,350 being treated in spring, which is likely why deaths are lower even though hospitalizations are up a bit. Another data point in support of this is that at present, 290 people are being treated for covid in Intensive Care Units (where the very sickest people end up). In spring, that number was 550.
In the parts of Sweden that were hit hard in spring, like Stockholm, the situation is clearly less serious now than it was then. Of course, if you ignore hospitalizations, ICU-admissions, and deaths, and just look at cases, the situation looks a lot worse than in spring, but that is due to the fact that we’re now testing ten times as many people per week as we were at the end of April.
Apart from that, we know a lot more about covid now than we did in spring. We now know that the overall fatality rate is less than 0,2%, and that the risk to healthy people under 70 years of age is infinitesimal. But if you see reporting in media, and if you look at the actions of the Swedish government, you get a very different picture. What follows is an update on all recommendations and restrictions coming from the Swedish state during November and December.
As I mentioned earlier, a decision was made in October by the Public Health Authority to start imposing recommendations on a local rather than national basis. This was followed by a tightening of recommendations in multiple counties over the next couple of weeks, so that by November 3rd (when tightened recommendations were imposed in Örebro, Halland, and Jönköping) fully 7 out of 10 Swedes were living in counties with tightened recommendations. On that day, the government also announced that people would be forbidden from gathering in groups of more than eight at the same table in restaurants. And it was reiterated that employers should allow employees to work from home, if possible.
On the 11th of November, the government announced that restaurants and bars would be forbidden from serving alcohol after ten pm, and would need to close at 22.30 at the latest.
On the 16th of November, the government announced that the number of people allowed at all public events (plays, demonstrations, lectures, sports events etc) was being decreased to eight, significantly lower than the previous lowest limit of 50.
On the 19th of November, the government authorized the Public Health Authority to make decisions to stop visits to nursing homes on a county by county basis (during spring and summer, all nursing homes in Sweden were closed to visitors, but this restriction was lifted at the beginning of October). On the 4th of December the Public Health Authority decided to make use of this measure, closing nursing homes to outside visitors in 32 Swedish municipalities (out of a total of 290).
On the 3rd of December, the government announced that high school students (ages 16-19) would return to distance learning, as had been the case during a period in spring. Initially, the plan is that this will apply until January 6th (this has later been extended to January 24th).
And then, on the 18th of December, the government went even further, imposing the most severe restrictions yet. Restaurants and bars are now ordered to stop serving alcohol at 20.00, and groups in restaurants are not allowed to number more than four. Shopping centers and other public venues like supermarkets and gyms are ordered to set a max number of visitors, so that crowding can’t happen. All public venues that are run by the state, such as libraries, public swimming pools, and museums, are ordered to close, and stay closed at least until January 24th. The government has also recommended that people start wearing face masks in public transport during rush hour.
In total, this means that the restrictions and recommendations in place are now much more severe than the ones that were in place in spring. As I think is clear, the Swedish government has played a much more active role in autumn than it did in spring, when it was happy to let the Public Health Authority do most of the decision making.
The rhetoric from the Swedish government has also been more alarmist the second time around, with the Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, delivering speeches that make it sound as if Sweden is going to war, for example telling people on November 16th to “do their duty”.
The Health Minister, Lena Hallengren, said in a speech on November 16th “don’t consider these measures voluntary”, about the voluntary recommendations that the government is asking people to follow. To me, that’s pretty clear evidence that the only reason Sweden hasn’t followed other countries in imposing severe legally enforced restrictions is that the Swedish constitution has prohibited it.
In conclusion, the Swedish government has officially lost its mind. In the name of protecting public health, the government is doing its utmost to destroy public health. In spite of the fact that some of the biggest risk factors for severe covid are obesity and lack of exercise, the government is seriously telling people to stop visiting swimming pools and gyms; in other words, to stop exercising.
Why the change in tone from the Swedish government during November and December?
If one were cynical, one might think it was due to the fact that the governing Social Democrats received a big boost to their opinion ratings in April and May, in the usual “rally around the flag” fashion seen when a nation faces some type of crisis, but since then they have been polling worse month on month. Maybe they saw their polling numbers, panicked, and hoped that they would get a boost in the polls if they could appear more assertive. Or maybe they’ve just capitulated to international pressure to “get in line”.
You might also be interested in my article about why Sweden had more covid deaths than neighboring countries, or my article about whether lockdown is effective.
I am rolling out a ton of new science-backed content over the coming months, including:
– Analyses of the benefits and risks of all common supplements and medications
– The keys to a longer, healthier life (possibly quite different from what you may have heard)
– A long-term follow-up of the health consequences of the covid pandemic and global lockdown.
Doctors, Normal and Abnormal
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | December 19, 2020
There seem to be few normal doctors around anymore. Try to have an appointment with many doctors over the last few months and they will demand that you put a mask over your nose and mouth — supposedly to block coronavirus transmission. You’d think, given they are doctors, they would know that there are health risks from you doing so and that it is not established that you doing so provides any net protection against coronavirus. Yet, they demand away. This is abnormal behavior.
Then, check out the big money news organizations and pretty soon you are likely to read or hear from one of the go-to doctors hectoring people to wear masks and “social distance” to protect against coronavirus. As with masks, the benefit of “social distancing” is not established. Further, for most people coronavirus poses little risk of death or even serious sickness. Many people, including some people who believe they have high risks related to coronavirus, would rationally choose to risk having coronavirus by proceeding with their lives unimpeded by mask wearing, “social distancing,” limiting activities to only those that are “essential,” closing their businesses, losing their jobs, and whatever other burdens abnormal doctors advise.
Luckily, there are still some doctors who reject the abnormal “new normal” with its dour manifestations including isolation, closed or tightly restricted businesses, and day-to-day mask wearing.
I saw a photograph of seven apparently still normal doctors earlier this week. There they were, standing shoulder to shoulder and maskless. The photograph appeared in a Sunday Twitter post by Simone Gold, the founder of America’s Frontline Doctors. Gold wrote in the tweet about Gold and the other doctors in the photo visiting the United States government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
BREAKING: America’s Frontline Doctors are at the CDC in Atlanta to protest against forcing millions of Americans to take an experimental vaccine for Covid-19, a pathogen with a survival rate of 99.7%.
We will fight against any experimental therapy being forced on anyone.
It is refreshing to see doctors challenge such abnormalcy run amuck.
America’s Frontline Doctors has provided in a position paper an interesting in-depth analysis explaining concerns about the government-backed effort to vaccinate Americans with experimental coronavirus vaccines. You can read that position paper here.
In contrast to abnormal doctors who are pretty much saying through government and media communications “come on in, the water is warm” regarding the vaccination effort, America’s Frontline Doctors provides a more normal doctor’s recommendation. The group describes potential risks and benefits of taking the experimental vaccines and provides guidance that is targeted to the different situations of different people instead of generalized for everyone. In its position paper, America’s Frontline Doctors writes:
XII. AFLDS Recommendations Regarding COVID-19 Experimental Vaccines Prohibited for the young, Discouraged for the healthy middle-aged and Optional for the co-morbid and elderly. There is no evidence that vaccines should be racially prioritized.
a. 0-20: prohibited (exceedingly low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, risk of lifelong infertility)
b. 20-50 healthy: strongly discouraged (exceedingly low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, risk of lifelong infertility)
c. 50-69 & healthy: strongly discouraged (low risk from COVID, unknown risk of auto-immune disease, unknown risk of pathogenic priming, unknown effect on placenta and spermatogenesis)
d. 50-69 & co-morbid: discouraged (experimental vaccine is higher risk than early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
e. >70 & healthy: personal risk assessment (experimental vaccine is higher risk than early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
f. >70 & co-morbid: personal risk assessment & advocacy access (experimental vaccine early or prophylactic treatment with established medications)
Are these the definitive recommendations regarding taking experimental coronavirus vaccines? Likely not. There may be valid reasons to disagree with the recommendations here and there. There may be some people whose circumstances make them exceptions from the categories of people listed in the recommendations. More information may come out over time that should be used in considering whether or not certain people should take the experimental vaccines. However, the cautious and nuanced approach of America’s Frontline Doctors in regard to this important medical decision for individuals is definitely more normal than the approach of doctors and other people pushing for the maximum number of people to take the experimental vaccines as soon as possible.
Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute
Boeing ‘Inappropriately Influenced’ FAA During Boeing 737 Max 8 Recertification – Senate Committee
By Evan Craighead – Sputnik – 19.12.2020
United Airlines announced on Friday that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 would be returning to the skies beginning February 11, 2021. The aircraft was grounded worldwide in March 2019 following the twin crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302.
A 18 December report published by the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation revealed that employees of both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked together to manipulate recertification tests of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 following two fatal crashes that together killed a 346.
The 102-page report, which comes some 20 months after the aircraft was grounded, detailed that Boeing “inappropriately influenced FAA human factor simulator testing of pilot reaction times involving a Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) failure.”
The MCAS serves as a flight control system designed to enhance the Boeing 737 MAX’s pitch stability so that it feels and flies like other 737s.
“Twenty months ago, the Commerce Committee launched an investigation into FAA safety oversight. We have received disclosures from more than 50 whistleblowers, conducted numerous FAA staff interviews, and reviewed over 15,000 pages of relevant documents,” Rep. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, wrote in his news release.
“Our findings are troubling. The report details a number of significant examples of lapses in aviation safety oversight and failed leadership in the FAA. It is clear that the agency requires consistent oversight to ensure their work to protect the flying public is executed fully and correctly.”
The Senate committee also alleged that senior FAA managers have yet to be appropriately reprimanded or held accountable for the “failure to develop and deliver adequate training in flight standards, despite repeated findings of deficiencies over several decades.”
In addition, senior FAA leadership may have obstructed a review of the 737 MAX 8 crashes initiated by Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General.
“FAA and Boeing were attempting to cover up important information that may have contributed to the 737 MAX tragedies,” the report alleges.
On Friday, it was reported by United Airlines that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 will resume flights out of its Denver, Colorado, and Houston, Texas, facilities. Other aircraft will reportedly be made available for those travelers uneasy about boarding the ill-starred aircraft.
“We will be fully transparent with our customers and will communicate in advance when they are booked to fly on a Max aircraft,” United Airlines wrote in a Friday news release.
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From the Archives
American media distortion on Palestine
By Alison Weir | MEMO | May 1, 2013
… We have conducted a number of statistical studies on this issue and found that US media were covering Israeli deaths in far greater detail than they were covering those of Palestinians.
For example, the New York Times was reporting on Israeli children’s deaths at a rate seven times greater than they were covering Palestinian children’s deaths; this didn’t even include the far larger number of words and amount of personal information given about Israeli victims compared to Palestinians. We also found that primetime network news programmes were covering Israeli children’s deaths at rates up to 14 times greater than the coverage given to Palestinians.
I discovered a system of reporting from the region in which a violent conflict between an officially “Jewish state” and the Muslims and Christians it had dispossessed (and was in the process of dispossessing further) was being covered most of the time by journalists with legal, familial or emotional ties to Israel. A great many are Israeli citizens (though this is almost never disclosed) or married to Israelis, their children also being Israeli.
I discovered that the Associated Press control bureau for the region, from which virtually all news reports that appear in US newspapers were transmitted, was located in Israel and was staffed almost entirely by Israeli and Jewish journalists (many of whom had served in the Israeli military).
I learned that the son of the New York Times bureau chief was serving in the Israeli military while his father was reporting on the conflict. In fact, I discovered that it was common for journalists in the region reporting for American media to have close personal ties to the Israeli military; that at least one staff member had been serving in the Israeli military even as he was reporting for the NY Times ; that US News & World Report’s senior foreign correspondent, who had covered and written about the Middle East for more than 40 years, had a son serving in the Israeli army during the time he was reporting there; that Middle East “pundit” Jeffrey Goldberg, whose commentary pervades both the print and broadcast media, is an Israeli citizen who served in the Israeli military.
I learned that CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer lived in Israel for many years, at one point travelled around the US as the “voice of Israel” and had worked for an Israel lobby publication.
I learned that Time magazine’s bureau chief was an Israeli citizen, and that NPR’s long-time correspondent from the region had an Israeli husband who had served in the military and may be an Israeli citizen herself.
I also discovered that this pattern of Israel-centrism went beyond the regional reporting. In fact, the regional filtering of the news may not even be the most significant factor in the broken media reporting on this issue that Americans receive.
Within US-based journalism per se I discovered patterns of Israel-centrism that were deeply troubling. In some cases I personally experienced the intentional suppression of information on Palestine. Following are a few examples. … Read full article
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