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2020: A Propaganda Masterpiece | Perspectives on the Pandemic XVII

Perspectives on the Pandemic | July 1, 2021

Mark Crispin Miller, Professor of Media Studies, New York University June 10, 2021 Dumbo, New York

Interview by John Kirby

Editing by Francis Karogodins

Research by Evan Dominguez, Billy Clayton Miller

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government,” wrote Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda. In part one of Episode 17, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University, discusses the propaganda onslaught that defined the year 2020, when what was dismissed one week is confirmed the next, and why questioning official narratives “necessarily means taking ‘conspiracy theory’ seriously.”

July 8, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Should people who have recovered from COVID take a vaccine?

By Marc Girardot | Trial Site News | July 6, 2021

Epidemiology1 , immunology2 and the clinical data3 all say a clear “No!”.

There is no good reason to vaccinate the recovered.

________________________________________________________________________

A British friend, recovered from COVID, decided to get vaccinated despite being naturally immune. This is the email he recently sent me:

“Marc I suffered a mild stroke on Wednesday 8 days after taking the Astrazeneca 2nd dose. Since I am a marathon runner I am a very ‘rare case’. I don’t smoke, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, family history or come into any of the risk categories for blood clots…

You did warn me against taking the second dose and I wished I’d heeded your advice. I’ve taken a totally unnecessary risk with my life and I bitterly regret doing it.”

Contrary to most, Tony was informed; he had been told about the power of natural immunity, about the long—if not lifelong—duration of immunity, of the risk inherent to any medical procedure (Yes, vaccination is a medical procedure!), as well as of the rising levels of adverse events.  He admitted he hadn’t imagined it could happen to him…

Though it is hard to assess precisely the actual severity and breadth of vaccine-related adverse events, it is very clear that vaccination against COVID-19 isn’t as harmless4 as pharmaceutical companies, mainstream media, academia, health authorities and the medical community have been saying. And, in contrast to high risk individuals who are still susceptible, recovered people have no real benefit to balance the additional risks of vaccination.

2021 Adverse Events Reporting

VAERS US EUROVIGILANCE EUROPE       YELLOW CARDS             UK
Date 18/06/2021 04/06/2021 16/06/2021
Fully Vaccinated (Mn) 148.46 137.44 30.68
Deaths 6,136 4,572 1,356
Incidents 387,288 316,925 73,944
Death per 100,000 4.1 3.3 4.4

For over a year, mainstream media, health authorities as well as many “experts” have been downplaying the power of the immune system, dismissing natural immunity5 and proclaiming that immunity to COVID-19 was short-lived6.  Simultaneously, vaccines have been portrayed as the silver bullet to this crisis, an incidental procedure with no risk whatsoever. The data shows a different picture and many are coming forward7 8, to challenge the official narrative.  We will demonstrate that the official narrative is a dangerous fallacy.

The human immune system is one of the most sophisticated achievements of evolution. The survival of our species has depended on it for millenia.  Today, we still very much rely on it. For the record,  99% of people  infected with SARS-CoV-2 recover without treatment. Only 1% of SARS-CoV-2 patients, who did not receive early home-based treatment, end up hospitalized9. In other words, the immune system overwhelmingly protects. Even vaccines are entirely dependent on the immune system: vaccines essentially teach our immune systems what viral markers to be prepared for, they are not cures per se.  Without a functional immune system, there can be no effective vaccine10.

On the waning immunity fallacy

Once recovered, the immune response recedes, notably via a decrease in antibodies. It is not only natural; it is indispensable to restore the body to a normal, balanced state.  Just as a permanent state of fever is harmful, a high number of targetless antibodies or T-cells constantly circulating throughout the body could create serious complications, such as autoimmune diseases11. Taking an evolutionary perspective, only those whose antibody and T-cell count waned post-infection survived. So, a decreasing number of antibodies and T-cells is reassuring, even healthy.

Antibody Levels during infection and post infection

Redline= antibodies – Blue-line= Memory B cells | Credit: Nature

But this decrease in T-cells and antibodies doesn’t mean that immunity is lost . It means the immune system has adapted to the new situation, and is now just on sentinel mode: Memory B- and T-cells, circulating in the blood and resident12 in tissues, act as vigilant13 and effective sentinels for decades:

  • survivors of the Spanish Flu epidemic were tested for their immunity to the 1918 influenza virus 90 years later –14,15 and still demonstrated immunity;
  • people who had recovered from the 2003 SARS infection demonstrated robust T-Cell responses seventeen years later16.
  • the wide-spread prevalence of high cross-immunity17,18,19— gained from past common cold infections—further demonstrates the resilience of natural immunity for coronaviruses.

Indeed, all recent studies show that  specific anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunity remains effective20,21,22,23, possibly for a lifetime24. Our immune system is a modular platform, it can combine in an infinite number of ways to address a multitude of threats in a variety of contexts. As such it is neutral to the viral threats it faces. In other words, there is absolutely no reason to believe that those recovered from Covid-19 would lose their immunity over the years, or even the decades25 to come.

On the reinfection fallacy

You might have also heard of people becoming reinfected by SARS-CoV-2. Indeed, immunity, natural or vaccine-induced, isn’t the impenetrable shield described by many. Essentially harmless and asymptomatic reinfections do take place. That is, in fact, the very mechanism by which adaptive immunity is triggered.

However, symptomatic reinfections are very rare26,27. Like an army that adapts its response to the size and the progression of its enemy forces, adaptive immunity provides a specific, rapid and resource-optimized response. As such reinfections are mostly asymptomatic28 and recovered patients are protected from severe disease.

In fact, innocuous reinfections can play a positive public health role by acting as continuous immune updates29 for the population. They can help form a seamless and progressive adaptation to emerging variants and strains. And indeed a recent study showed that couples with children were more frequently asymptomatic than couples without, most likely because children act as natural and harmless immunisation vehicles. The most likely reason why high density countries mostly have very low death tolls is that they have asymptomatic reinfections that regularly and widely update the population’s immunity.

On the variant fallacy

As demonstrated by the low numbers of symptomatic reinfections mentioned above, and  also by multiple studies31,32, variants have thus far not escaped acquired immunity.  Just as Americans can speak and interact seamlessly in England, unhindered by a few word variants33, natural immunity is unhindered by variants, possibly more so than vaccine-induced immunity. There is ample evidence of the sophistication and breadth of the human immune system, and it is clear that a few minor gene changes in the virus cannot evade its arsenal .
Across the world34, multiple studies demonstrate high levels of pre-existing cross-reactive T-cells35 and antibodies to SARS-CoV-2. In other words, many were already largely immune via other coronaviruses. This is the most likely explanation for the unexpectedly high level of asymptomatic infections during the pandemic. More importantly, this demonstrates that even with large genetic differences, prior immunity to related coronaviruses is sufficient to avoid severe COVID-19. Therefore, it is quite evident that variants are of no concern to the recovered population.

On the vaccine better-than-natural-immunity fallacy

You might have heard people stating that vaccines provide better protection than natural immunity. That is an interesting way of bending reality. How can a vaccine be more effective at immunisation than the disease it is trying to mimic?

Theoretically, there are several reasons explaining why natural immunity is better than vaccine-induced immunity:

  • Fewer immune targets: mRNA/DNA vaccines present only a fraction of the virus genetic code (5-10%). For example, they don’t utilize the ORF1 highly immunogenic epitopes36. Therefore, the immune system recruits a smaller number of T-cells by tapping into a narrower repertoire and consequently mounts  a less effective response37. The logic: Imagine you lose a number of key players for a football tournament, you might still win, but it will be harder.
  • Longer immune trigger time: The smaller number of epitope targets also means that the alarm to the immune system will be delayed. This is a key driver of success in the COVID-19 battle. The wider the target repertoire, the faster the encounter between dendritic cells and identifiable antigens.
    The logic: Like a party you go to, you can start partying much faster when you have ten friends there than when you have only one. They are just easier to find.
  • Inappropriate delivery location: The intramuscular delivery of current vaccines unfortunately doesn’t mimic viral penetration and propagation at all. Coronaviruses don’t enter the body via muscles. They do so via the respiratory tract, often infecting cell-to-cell.  Contrary to muscle-delivered vaccines, natural immunity places a strong sentinel force of memory resident cells at the portals of entry38 and shuts the body entrance to the virus preemptively. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes perfect sense.
    The logic: it’s much easier to stop an army coming through a narrow gorge than on the beaches of Normandy.

Recent research confirms this logic. One comparative study39 in Israel found the protection from severe disease to be 96·4% for Covid-19 recovered individuals but 94.4% for vaccinated ones, and concluded “Our results question the need to vaccinate previously-infected individuals.” Another reference comparative study40 by a team at New York University highlighted a faster, wider and more impactful humoral and cytotoxic reaction in recovered immunity versus vaccine-induced.

There is ample evidence that vaccinating people recovered from COVID-19 doesn’t bring any benefit. It quite possibly does the opposite, because of the risk of building tolerance to elements of the virus43 translating into reduced immune potency.

On the vaccine innocuity fallacy

Without denigrating the incredible contribution of vaccines to modern medicine and public health, one needs to acknowledge that vaccines are a medical procedure. As such, vaccines should never be considered lightly. They are neither neutral, nor trivial, all the more so when they are injected into billions of people.

By their very nature, vaccines tinker with the sophisticated balance of one’s immune system. That in itself demands respecting rigid safety protocols.  Though we have made considerable progress in our understanding of immunology, we are still very far from understanding its intricacies and subtleties, especially when it comes to novel mRNA and DNA technologies. Because of the risk of anaphylactic44 shock, auto-immune diseases, unforeseen interactions, design flaws, deficient quality protocols, over-dosage, and so on, vaccines have traditionally been strictly regulated.

History teaches us to be watchful45 with vaccines, from the botched inactivation of polio vaccines that ended infecting 40,000 kids46 with polio in 1955, to the 1976 swine flu vaccine47 which caused 450 to develop Guillain-Barré syndrome, to the more recent vaccine-induced outbreak of polio in Sudan48. The recent rejection49 by Brazilian health authorities of the Bharat’s Covaxin is a clear reminder of how rigorous and independent our health authorities need to be if vaccines are to promote, not hinder, public health.

Map of Vaccine Symptoms 

316,925 reports (date: 06/20/21)

credit: Wouter Aukema – source: CDC

After 6 months of vaccination and a year of research, a number of red flags should be alerting the would-be vaccinated and health authorities:

  1. Wandering nanoparticles:  The lipid nanoparticles, the carriers of the mRNA, were supposed to remain in the muscle, but ended up broadly distributed throughout the body50, notably in the ovaries51, the liver52 and possibly the bone marrow.
  2. Anaphylactic PEG: A number of concerns had been raised regarding the novel use of PEG adjuvant53. Notably, prior research had raised the risk of cardiac anaphylaxis at second injection54.
  3. Sensitive locations: ACE-2 receptors susceptible to binding to the spike protein are highly expressed in blood vessel lining cells of highly sensitive areas, such as the brain, the heart, the lungs, the liver and both male and female reproductive systems.
  4. Toxic circulating spikes: The spike proteins induced by mRNA/DNA vaccines have been shown to be pathogenic55,56,57,58 and highly inflammatory59, notably because of the similarity of a spike sequence to that of Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B60. It has also been found to be directly causing blood clots through platelet activation61,62. One researcher said, “Our findings show that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein causes lung injury even without the presence of an intact virus”.
  5. BBB disruption – A recent study highlights the risk of disruption of the blood-brain barrier63, a fundamental filter mechanism to protect the brain64,65. The spike protein has also been found to cross the BBB and create inflammation in the brain,.
  6. High adverse events: Even though most likely under-reported66, the overall number of serious adverse events versus other traditional vaccines remains very high. The 6,000+ deaths67 seen [in the US] in six months exceed all the vaccine-related deaths in 30 years. This is quite disquieting, and tends to confirm the aforementioned red flags..
  7. Children more at risk: The Covid-19 vaccines seem to be more harmful to children and teens, notably with a growing number of myocarditis68,69 events. The fact that vaccine doses are not adjusted for body weight is notably a cause for concern given the discovery of circulating nanoparticles and spike toxicity.

These are essentially just the short-term effects of these novel vaccines. There is no long-term clinical data regarding the implications of these vaccines, notably regarding autoreactive antibodies (antibodies that target one’s own body creating autoimmune diseases).

To conclude, we question why anyone healthy and recovered from COVID-19  would want or be advised to take any risk—even the most remote—in getting vaccinated given that:

  • those who have recovered from COVID-19 enjoy robust immunity,
  • natural immunity duration is decades-long, probably lifelong,
  • natural immunity effectiveness is better than vaccine-induced,
  • variants are not an immunological concern, presenting no risk of immune escape,
  • vaccines are medical interventions which should never be taken lightly, especially when still experimental,
  • there is no benefit for COVID-19 recovered and
  • COVID-19 vaccines are obviously not as safe as stated initially by the manufacturers.
  1. The 2021 seasonal peak in Europe started down on January 22 when only 0.13% of the population was fully vaccinated.
  2. “Comprehensive analysis of T cell immunodominance and immunoprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 epitopes in COVID-19 cases” by Alessandro Sette et al, Cell, February 2021
  3. “No point vaccinating those who’ve had COVID-19: Findings of Cleveland Clinic study” by Dr. Sanchari Sinha Dutta, June 2021
  4. “Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is “likely” responsible for deaths of some elderly patients, Norwegian review finds” by Ingrid Torjesen, British Medical Journal, May 2021
  5. “Why COVID-19 Vaccines Offer Better Protection Than Infection” by Brian W. Simpson, John Hopkins School Of Public Health Expert Insights, May 2021
  6. “Study Finds People Have Short-Lived Immunity to Seasonal Coronaviruses” by Dr. Francis Collins, CDC’s Director Blog, September 2020
  7. “Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised? There are concerning trends on blood clots and low platelets, not that the authorities will tell you” by Joseph A. Ladapo and Harvey A. Risch, The Wall Street Journal, June 2021
  8. “Why we petitioned the FDA to refrain from fully approving any covid-19 vaccine this year” by Peter Doshi et al, The British Medical Journal Opinion, June 2021
  9. “Phase 3 trial shows REGEN-COV™ (casirivimab with imdevimab) …” show 4.1% of at risk Placebo (non treated) patients are hospitalized, or 1% of the general population
  10. “Coronavirus vaccines may not work in some people. It’s because of their underlying conditions.” by Ariana E. Cha, The Washington Post, May 2021
  11. “Determinants and outcomes of accelerated arteriosclerosis: Major impact of circulating antibodies” by Alexandre Loupy, Circulation Research, June 2015
  12. “Peripheral and lung resident memory T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2” by Meritxell Genescà et al, Nature, May 2021
  13. “Tissue-Resident Memory T Cells and Fixed Immune Surveillance in Nonlymphoid Organs” by Francis R. Carbone, Journal of Immunology, July 2015
  14. “Flu survivors still immune after 90 years” by Ed Yong, National Geographic
  15.  “Neutralizing antibodies derived from the B cells of 1918 influenza pandemic survivors” by James E. Crowe Jr., Nature
  16. “SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls” by Le Bert et al, Nature, July 2020
  17. “Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals” by A.Sette et al, Cell, June 2020
  18. “A majority of uninfected adults show pre-existing antibody reactivity against SARS-CoV-2” by Pascal M. Lavoie et al, JCI Insight, March 2021
  19. “Cross-reactive antibody immunity against SARS-CoV-2 in children and adults” by Todd Bradley et al, Nature, May 2021
  20. “Robust SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity is maintained at 6 months following primary infection” by Paul Moss, Nature Immunology, May 2021
  21. “Naturally enhanced neutralizing breadth against SARS-CoV-2 one year after infection” by Michel C. Nussenzweig, Nature, June 2021
  22. “A long-term perspective on immunity to COVID” by ” by A.Radbruch & H-D.Chang
  23. “SARS-CoV-2 natural antibody response persists up to 12 months in a nationwide study from the Faroe Islands” by Peter Garred et al, 2021
  24. “SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans” by Ali H. Ellebedy et al, Nature, May 2021
  25. “Immunity to the Coronavirus May Last Years, New Data Hint” by Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times, November 2020
  26. “Prior SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with protection against symptomatic reinfection” by Christopher J.A. Duncan, Journal of Infection, December 2020
  27. “What we know about covid-19 reinfection so far” by Chris Stokel-Walker, British Medical Journal, January 2021
  28. “Antibody Status and Incidence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Health Care Workers” by Thomas G. Ritter, et al, New England Journal of Medicine, December 2020
  29. “Development of potency, breadth and resilience to viral escape mutations in SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies” by Paul D. Bieniasz et al, March 2021
  30. Get article on
  31. “Comprehensive analysis of T cell immunodominance and immunoprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 epitopes in COVID-19 cases” by A.Tarke et al… – Cell – 16-02-2021
  32. “Landscape of epitopes targeted by T cells in 852 individuals recovered from COVID-19: Meta-analysis, immunoprevalence, and web platform” by Matthew R. McKay et al, Cell, May 2021
  33. “How Broad is Covid Immunity?” by M.Yeadon/M.Girardot, Panda, March 2021
  34. Countries: Canada, Ecuador, Gabon, Germany, India, Singapore, Sweden, UK, USA, Tanzania, Zambia
  35. “Cross-reactive CD4+ T cells enhance SARS-CoV-2 immune responses upon infection and vaccination” by Claudia Giesecke-Thiel, April 2021
  36. “Profiling SARS-CoV-2 HLA-I peptidome reveals T cell epitopes from out-of-frame ORFs” by Pardis C. Sabeti, Cell, June 2021
  37. “The landscape of antibody binding in SARS-CoV-2 infection” by Irene M. Ong et al, PLOS biology, June 2021
  38. “Adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19” by Alessandro Sette & Shane Crotty, Cell, January 2021 – page 866
  39. “Protection of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection is similar to that of BNT162b2 vaccine protection: A three-month nationwide experience from Israel” by Amit Hupper et al, April 2021
  40. “Discrete Immune Response Signature to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination Versus Infection” by Sergei Koralov, Cell, May 2021
  41. “We observe striking expansion of circulating plasmablasts in COVID-19 patients relative to healthy volunteers”
  42. “In COVID-19 (recovered) patients, we observed an expansion of cytotoxic populations and a dramatically elevated cytotoxic signature in NK cells, CD4 and CD8 T cells, and γδ T cells.”
  43. “Differential Effects of the Second SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccine Dose on T Cell Immunity in Naïve and COVID-19 Recovered Individuals” by Jordi Ochando et al, Cell, March 2021
  44. “Suspicions grow that nanoparticles in Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine trigger rare allergic reactions” by Jop de Vrieze, Science,  December 2020
  45. “Historical Vaccine Safety Concerns”, CDC
  46. “The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to a Growing Vaccine Crisis” by Michael Fitzpatrick, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2006
  47. “The Public Health Legacy of the 1976 Swine Flu Outbreak” by Rebecca Kreston, 2013
  48. “UN says new polio outbreak in Sudan caused by oral vaccine” by Maria Cheng, Associated Press, September  2020
  49. “Anvisa denies certificate of good practice to Bharat Biotech, which produces Covaxin” by Enzô Machida and Murillo Ferrari, CNN, March 2021
  50. “Organ bio distribution study undertaken by the Japanese regulator”
  51. “Potential adverse effects of nanoparticles on the reproductive system”by Shao LQ, DovePress,  September 2018
  52. “Synthetic Lipid Nanoparticles Targeting Steroid Organs” by Bertrand Tavitian, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2013
  53. “PEGylated liposomes: immunological responses” by Tatsuhiro Ishida et al, Science and Technology of Advanced Materials Vol 20, 20219
  54. “Pseudo-anaphylaxis to Polyethylene Glycol (PEG)-Coated Liposomes: Roles of Anti-PEG IgM and Complement Activation in a Porcine Model of Human Infusion Reactions” by János Szebeni et al, ACS Nano, 2019
  55. “Superantigenic character of an insert unique to SARS-CoV-2 spike supported by skewed TCR repertoire in patients with hyperinflammation” by Ivet Bahar et al, PNAS, October 2020
  56. “SARS-CoV-2 spike protein induces inflammation via TLR2-dependent activation of the NF-κB pathway” by Hasan Zaki et al, March 2021
  57. “SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Impairs Endothelial Function via Downregulation of ACE 2” by John Y-J. Shyy, Circulation Reseacrh, MArch 2021
  58. “Single intratracheal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 S1 spike protein induces acute lung injury in K18-hACE2 transgenic mice” by Pavel Solopov et al, The FASEB Journal, May 2021
  59. “SARS-CoV-2 spike protein interacts with and activates TLR4” by Fuping You et al, December 2020
  60. “Bacterial Toxins—Staphylococcal Enterotoxin” by Bettina C. Fries & Avanish K. Varshney
  61. “A prothrombotic thrombocytopenic disorder resembling heparin-induced thrombocytopenia following coronavirus-19 vaccination” by Sabine Eichinger et al, The New England Journal of Medicine,  April 2020
  62. “Acquired Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura: a rare disease associated Acquired with BNT162b2 vaccine” by Dorit Blickstein et al, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostatis, June 2021
  63. “The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein alters barrier function in 2D static and 3D microfluidic in-vitro models of the human blood–brain barrier” by Sergio H. Ramirez, Neurobiology of Disease, December 2020
  64. “The S1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 crosses the blood–brain barrier in mice” by William A. Banks et al, NAture Neuroscience, December 2020
  65. “Guillain-Barré syndrome following ChAdOx1-S/nCoV-19 vaccine” by Boby Varkey Maramattom et al, June 2021
  66. “Underreporting of Side Effects to VAERS” by Vincent Iannelli, Vaxopedia, September 2017
  67. Open VAERS data
  68. “The C.D.C. is investigating nearly 800 cases of rare heart problems following immunization.” by Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times, June 11, 2021
  69. “Israel reports link between rare cases of heart inflammation and COVID-19 vaccination in young men” by Gretchen Vogel & Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science, June 2021

July 8, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

French City Fair Drops Covid Measures In Victory For People Power!

By Richie Allen | July 7, 2021

On Friday last, the historic city of Tours in France opened its annual fair. It’s normally a very big deal. This year is even more special as the fair celebrates its centenary. However, organisers and traders were shocked on Friday, when hardly anyone turned up.

Attendees and staff were told that they would need a “sanitary pass” to attend. To get a pass, a visitor or worker needed to show proof of vaccination or take a PCR test at the entrance. Throughout Friday, the fair was a ghost town and only 4 per cent of the staff had shown up.

Panic ensued. Traders, having spent thousands of euros for their pitches started screaming bloody murder. Others started buying and selling products among themselves. It was grim. Punters were walking away in their thousands. No-one wanted anything to do with the PCR tests piled high at the entrances.

At the 11th hour, the city backed down and all restrictions were lifted. The traders had been bombarding the local authority all day with texts and emails, threatening retribution if the sanitary pass wasn’t kicked to the kerb.

The city blinked and the fair was mobbed over the rest of the weekend. The PCR tests are still rotting at the entrances. The people of Tours stood up.

Vive La France! That’s the way it’s done. That’s people power. The French never let you down. Let it be a lesson to the businesses of the UK and Ireland.

We are sick to the back teeth of this scamdemic. We want our lives back. We want to frequent shops, theaters, cafés, cinemas, bars and restaurants again. We’ll fill your tills.

Just remember, whether we have been jabbed or not is none of your business. Same goes for face muzzles. The ball is now firmly in your court. I can’t wait to see you again.

July 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | 4 Comments

Global Vaccine Passports Have Arrived Courtesy of Google, EU

Image Credits: Google
Privacy To Go | July 8, 2021

On June 30th, 2021, the Google Developers blog announced the launch of vaccine passports in Android through its Passes API.

Less than 24 hours later, the European Union, long mired in a sea of national standards for digital jab records, rolled out its EU-wide vaccine passport.

Two completely different vaccine passport schemes unveiled on the same day, encompassing the whole of the Western world? What are the odds!

Exceedingly low, of course. This level of coordination belies yet another blitz in the ongoing rollout of a global, technofeudal control grid. The EU has arguably been at the forefront of this rollout – its standardized digital jab certificate is little more than an aggregator for the draconian technology now operating at the Nation-State level.

Adoption of this unified standard is already approaching 100% of EU Member States. Doublethink rhetoric of restoring the Schengen Area’s “freedom of movement” abounds, even as additional barriers to travel are erected.

In this sense, Google and the US are playing catch-up. While de facto vaccine passports have been implemented sparingly in places like New York, California, and Hawaii, an ever-expanding number of States have banned the notion outright.

Yet herein lies the insidiousness of the public-private partnership model: Technocrats can use governments where it suits them, corporations where it does not, and an increasingly bizarre fusion of the two where necessary. Even the propaganda rollout surrounding jab passports is bifurcated by this model, with the EU using official government bulletins while Google syndicates the news via trendy tech blogs.

And though many States in the US have passed legislation or executive action to curb the implementation of vaccine passports, Google could care less.

Google Passes: Vaccine passports for all, regulation be damned

Like the contact tracing API before it, political resistance alone is proving ineffective against the technological implements of the Great Reset. Even the staunchest State level opponents to this agenda have done nothing to halt the hyperactive Bluetooth surveillance grid running on Android and iOS devices – on the contrary, many have used taxpayer money to help finance its data harvesting operations.

Similar political action against digital vaccine passports will not halt Google’s rollout via the Passes API, either.

In fact, Google’s selection of the Passes API to implement vaccine records is telling in its own right, given the information it already stores: Boarding passes for airlines. Travel tickets. Event tickets.

While legislative action in States like Florida may allow you to attend a Miami Dolphins game with your biological privacy intact, the same may not be said for travel. The battle over Federalization of airline travel was lost on November 19th, 2001 with the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, whose influence has been expanding ever since – the latest privacy affront being the REAL ID Act, which mandates highly insecure RFID technology for interstate air travel.

Even more dangerous are biometric companies with government contracts, like CLEAR, whose terminals are already widely used at TSA PreCheck terminals and event centers.

Google Passes and other digitized jab certificates are simply a competing product. One that is already in the pocket of 85% of Americans alone, with similar adoption levels in Europe.

Products marketed for “convenience” like TSA PreCheck biometrics will, over time, become mandatory – the REAL ID Act itself is a perfect example of this Fabian creep. Passed all the way back in 2005, its full implementation has been pushed back multiple times due to individual State holdouts, most recently until 2023.

But these delays are immaterial – the framework’s existence is all that matters, as despite not being enforced, privacy-violating RFID technologies are now the norm for US driver’s licenses. Jab certificates like Google Passes will be no different. Once in place, they will be utilized – if not immediately, then in the future.

Not only can the Passes API integrate with third-party pharmaceutical companies to track jab history, it is also capable of storing results from dubious PCR tests. This level of biodigital convergence sets an unsettling precedent, as Silicon Valley’s expectation is that your medical history will now be in your pocket at all times, integrated with their servers, and subject to whatever authority may ask for it.

Passes is not an isolated product, either – it’s a development suite within the broader Google Pay SDK.

There are technical reasons why Google may have chosen to use the Pay SDK as opposed to a health-focused API like Google Fit – QR code generation, limited use passes, and encrypted keyrings are already present in the Passes API. However, despite Google Pay’s scant consumer use at present, the long-term intent is crystal clear: Access to financial services and medical records will be intertwined.

In Closing

The post-2020 era has pushed humanity to the precipice of a longstanding dream of our would-be comptrollers. Whether it is Newt Gingrich’s Age of Transitions or the late Zbignew Brzezinski’s Between Two Ages, the kind of biodigital convergence represented by digitized medical passports has been at the forefront of the Technocratic agenda for decades.

As Silicon Valley attempts to bridge the “last mile” of mandated biometric surveillance, resistance to these aims on an individual level remain multivariate – ditch your smartphone, or at least utilize a privacy-respecting alternative that is incompatible with Google or iOS services. Starve the business of travel and entertainment industries that would see us become serfs in exchange for bread and circuses.

If you’re in the EU, use paper records instead of digital equivalents, or better yet, refuse to comply at all.

Educate well-meaning policymakers to the threats represented by the pseudo-private sector and impress upon them that the dangers of State surveillance are rapidly being outpaced by Terms and Conditions mandated by smartphone companies.

Neofeudal Technocracy is desperately trying to extract humanity’s consent to these draconian efforts before the next phase of the so-called Great Reset.

Don’t let them.

July 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | 1 Comment

The FDA Expanded Pfizer Vaccine EUA based on a Failed Trial

Trial Site News | July 6, 2021

The EUA expansion1  for Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine for kids aged 12–15 was done after it failed (as I will show below) its pro-forma clinical trial2.

Abysmal Safety

Only 1,131 kids received at least one injection of the experimental vaccine. Most of them experienced side effects. Within a few days after the second shot, 66% of the kids developed fatigue, 65% developed headaches, 42% developed chills, and so on. The first shot was tolerated only slightly better. Symptoms varied from mild to severe. More than half of the kids had to resort to painkillers or antipyretics after the second injection. Given such frequency and severity of adverse effects, the sponsor had to either stop the trial because of safety, or to significantly increase its size to exclude high likelihood of death. At the trial size, if the risk of immediate death were 1 per 1,000, the trial had only a 32% probability of missing it. We are lucky that this is not the case.

From 1, Table 17. Frequency of Solicited Systemic Adverse Events Within 7 Days After Each Dose, by Maximum Severity, Participants 12 Through 15 

Event  BNT162b2 Dose 1, N=1127 n (%)  BNT162b2Dose 2, N=1097n (%)
Fatigue, any  677 (60.1)  726 (66.2)
Fatigue moderate or severe 399 (35.4) 494 (45.1)
Headache, any 623 (55.3)  708 (64.5)
Headache moderate or severe 262 (23.3) 406 (37.0)
Chills  311 (27.6)  455 (41.5)
Chills moderate or severe 116 (10.2) 234 (21.3)
Fever (≥38.0°C)  114 (10.1)  215 (19.6)
Muscle Pain  272 (24.1)  355 (32.4)
Muscle Pain moderate or severe 147 (13.1) 203 (18.5)
Joints Pain 109 (  9.7)  173 (15.8)
Joints Pain moderate or severe   43 (  3.8)   82 (  7.5)

Efficacy was not Shown

The media heralded 100% efficacy in COVID-19 prevention because 16 kids (1.5%) in the placebo group had putatively developed COVID-19 within 2 months after the second shot, while no kids in the experimental group had. The study reported no severe cases in the placebo group. At closer look at the definition of a case and the conduct of the trial, very mild disease or even a positive test associated with non-specific symptoms were counted as cases.

“For the primary efficacy endpoint, the case definition for a confirmed COVID-19 case was the presence of at least one of the following symptoms and a positive SARS-CoV-2 NAAT within 4 days of the symptomatic period: • Fever; • New or increased cough; • New or increased shortness of breath; • Chills; • New or increased muscle pain; • New loss of taste or smell; • Sore throat; • Diarrhea; • Vomiting.”

Add to this that the trial was in winter and the researchers solicited answers about COVID-19 symptoms, encouraging kids to keep e-diaries. Thus, a kid getting a sore throat or fever for any reason and a positive PCR test within four days of each other was counted as a case. Solicitation leads for excessive reporting of symptoms. We do not know how many of the “cases” would be more correctly classified as asymptomatic infection if not for symptoms solicitation. Also, only 1.5% of the placebo group has got adverse symptoms, compared with at least 90% in the vaccinated group. Where is efficacy?

Further, “The efficacy analysis for the 12-to-15-year-old cohort was planned as a descriptive analysis because the number of cases that would occur in the age subgroups was unknown.” Thus, this trial was a fiction from the beginning—an excuse for the HHS to start injecting 12-year-olds.

The conclusion: the COVID-19 vaccine FAILED in both safety and efficacy for 12–15-year-olds.

Possible Errors in the Trial

There are indications of other errors in the study. With the rate of treatment adverse effects close to 100%, maintaining placebo blinding was very unlikely. If a kid comes home after an injection with an unusual fatigue and headache, what parent would believe he had received placebo?

An interesting detail is that, within the first 2 months after the 2nd shot, 1.5% of the placebo group had a COVID-19 case, but only 0.3% had it within the next 2+ months. This is not necessarily an indication of foul play. It is another demonstration of uselessness of COVID-19 vaccination for kids.

The way in which PCR testing was used in the trial raises additional questions. COVID-19 PCR tests are notorious for their inaccuracy and ease of manipulation, including by selecting the amplification cycles number. The Supplemental Appendix2 says:

“The central laboratory NAAT [nucleic acid amplification test] result was used for the case definition. If no result was available from the central laboratory, a local NAAT result could be used if it was obtained using either the Cepheid Xpert Xpress SARS-CoV-2, Roche cobas SARS-CoV-2 real-time RT-PCR test, or the Abbott Molecular/RealTime SARS-CoV-2 assay.”

This sounds like an open door for cherry-picking testing facilities on case-by-case basis.

Legal Aspects

Now this study is used to coerce and/or trick kids and young adults into getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Luckily, we have a legal recourse. Government-sponsored medical procedures require informed consent of the patients – see In re Cincinnati Radiation Litigation, 874 F. Supp. 796 – Dist. Court, SD Ohio 1995. Otherwise, they violate the due process clauses of the XIV and V Amendments. Deceit (including denying futility of COVID-19 vaccines for 12–15-year-olds, denying effectiveness of ivermectin for COVID-19 treatment and prophylaxis, or failure to disclose the risk of future ADE) and coercion (including blocking access to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine) invalidate the apparent consent. For minors, consent of the parents is also mandatory. Medical procedures that involve no more than trivial risk might be an exception, but COVID-19 vaccines are certainly not such a case.

The vaccination of the young people is not just government-sponsored, but almost entirely conducted by the government. The government cannot bypass the Constitution by relying on the opinion of the FDA, which is itself a government agency. Truth matters.

The cherry on top of the cake: government officials carry personal responsibility for their actions in violation of this principle. They cannot assert qualified immunity.

Reference

1. FDA re-Amendment. Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine EUA Amendment Review Memorandum 05262021. Published online May 10, 2021.

2. Robert W.  Frenck J, Klein NP, Kitchin N, et al. Safety, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 Covid-19 Vaccine in Adolescents. New England Journal of Medicine. Published online May 27, 2021. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2107456

July 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

Is covid a danger to children?

By Dr Sebastian Rushworth |  July 7, 2021

With many countries rapidly reaching the point where most adults have been vaccinated against covid, attention has been turning to the issue of whether or not children should also be vaccinated. This has been accompanied by an increase in claims in the media that covid is in fact more dangerous to children than was previously thought.

I think most people intuitively agree that children shouldn’t be vaccinated unless the benefits to them outweigh the risks. That is probably the reason for the sudden up-tick in the claims of danger. While you might convince young adults to vaccinate themselves “for the greater good”, even though there is almost certainly no benefit to them personally, you will have a harder time convincing parents to let their children be vaccinated if there is no actual benefit to the children.

That is especially true in light of the mounting evidence that the covid vaccines can cause harm, such as findings from the CDC that some of the vaccines cause an increased risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle), particularly in boys and young men. This comes on the heels of earlier findings that some of the vaccines increase the risk of serious blood clotting disorders, particularly in young women. Let’s remember, the vaccines were invented only a little over a year ago. It is possible (in fact quite likely) that there will be new revelations of harm going forward. So if you want to convince parents to let their children be vaccinated in spite of this increasing evidence of harm, then you need to convince them that covid is in fact a real danger to their children.

With that in mind, let’s look in to the claim that covid is a danger to children. I’m going to be using mainly Swedish statistics, since those are the ones I’m most familiar with, and since Sweden is better than virtually every other country in the world at producing reliable statistics. In Sweden, nine children (i.e. people under the age of twenty) have so far died of covid, according to official statistics. In total, 13,913 people have died of covid in Sweden, which means that people aged 20 or over constitute the remaining 13,904 covid deaths.

There are currently around 2,414,000 children in Sweden (four of which are mine). If we divide the number of deaths by the number of children, then we find that the risk of having died of covid for a Swedish child is 0.00037% (one in 268,000). That is after a full year and a half of the pandemic. To put that in some perspective, in 2020, 15 children in Sweden died in traffic accidents. So the risk of a child in Sweden dying of covid during the pandemic has been around half the risk of that child dying in a traffic accident. Note also that Sweden has the safest roads in the world, yet children are still twice as likely to die in a traffic accident as they are to die of covid, and that’s during a raging pandemic.

Let’s move on and look at this from another angle. Sweden’s adult population is around 7,980,000 people. The risk of a Swedish adult thus far having died of covid is 0.17%. As mentioned, the risk of a child having died is 0.00037%. What that means is that children are 500 times less likely to die of covid than adults!

Ok, I think we’ve established that the risk covid poses to children is infinitesimal. At least the risk of dying is infinitesimal. I can already hear two counter-arguments being trotted out, however. The first is that children can get long covid. This argument is weak. It’s been shown that long covid is rare in adults, and there is no reason to think that it is more common in children. In fact, the opposite is almost certainly true.

The second counter-argument is that covid can cause MIS-C in children, the Kawasaki-like disease that people were getting all hot and bothered about last summer when it was first discovered. I recently listened to an interview with Paul Offit (an American pediatrician who has managed the impressive feat of first grossly underestimating the severity of the pandemic and then grossly overestimating its severity) in which he said that MIS-C “isn’t that uncommon”. I thought that was a pretty funny thing to say. Either something is uncommon or it isn’t. It can’t be both. Well, is it uncommon or isn’t it?

According to the CDC, there have at present been 4,018 cases of MIS-C in the US. There are around 73,000,000 children in the country. What that means is that the risk of a child in the US having experienced MIS-C up to now is 0,006% (one in 18,000). In other words, MIS-C is rare. And of the children who are unfortunate enough to get it, more than 99% recover. Out of 73,000,000 children in the US, only 37 have actually died of MIS-C over the course of the pandemic (one in 1,970,000). Children do many things every day that are more likely to kill them, and we don’t bat an eyelid.

To sum up, covid is not a threat to children. At least not more of a threat than many other risks we take for granted and happily let our children take, like riding in cars and crossing streets. In order for it to make sense to vaccinate children with this being the case, it has to be clear beyond any reasonable doubt that there are virtually zero risks associated with the vaccine. Why? Because if the covid vaccine is associated with even a very small risk of harm, then the risk associated with the vaccine could well be greater than the risk associated with the infection. Since it is at present far from clear that vaccination is less risky to children than infection, it is deeply unethical to vaccinate them.

If we go ahead and vaccinate children because we hope that it will marginally decrease the risk to adults (on top of the risk reduction already seen from vaccinating almost the entire adult population), then we are putting our children at risk for our own gain. We should be the ones taking risks for our children. It shouldn’t be the other way around.

July 7, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

New Normal Newspeak #1: “Herd Immunity”

OffGuardian | July 5, 2021

“New Normal Newspeak” is a new series of short articles highlighting how our language has come under assault in the past eighteen months.

***

Ever since the beginning of the “pandemic”, and its transition into the clear “New Normal” (or “Great Reset) agenda, the English language itself has become a battleground. Words and phrases are being stretched and twisted into new, bizarre or contradictory meanings, or weighted with implications that never existed before.

“New Normal Newspeak” is our attempt to catalogue these changes, and stop the real meaning of words being memory-holed forever.

Our first example is a very, very literal one.

The phrase “Herd Immunity” has existed for decades, and most of us had probably come across it at some point prior to March 2020. It had a clear meaning, which was available from (among other places) the World Health Organization website:

Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection.”

However, after the “pandemic” hit, this erstwhile totally uncontroversial theory became the subject of fierce debate, and proponents of it suddenly found themselves described as “genocidal”.

It was at this point that the WHO changed their website, updating their definition of “herd immunity” to totally remove the concept of “natural immunity”:

‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not by exposing them to it.

You can check their old site through the wayback machine, or with this screencap (in case the archive gets wiped)

Vaccination has never before been considered the only path to herd immunity and adding that you can’t create immunity through exposure is completely unscientific, flying in the face of centuries of medical knowledge.

Changing this definition during an alleged pandemic, just before experimental and untested vaccines were about to be released, is a clear sign that they were pushing an agenda.

Nothing else need be said.

July 7, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Dr. Harvey Risch on HCQ suppression, censorship of critical thought, and the pandemic response

Dr. Harvey Risch Interview 6/16/2021 from John Leake on Vimeo.

Professor Harvey Risch talks with author John Leake about how hydroxychloroquine — a safe, effective, and inexpensive drug — was fraudulently misrepresented and suppressed by public health agencies, academic journals, and the mainstream media. This propaganda campaign has resulted in the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

July 7, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 4 Comments

WILLEM ENGEL INTERVIEWS IVOR CUMMINS

Viruswaarheid | July 1, 2021

Viruswaarheid International: Ivor Cummins interviewed by Willem Engel, July 1st, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCul3i9hV_nF-tfBy0czN5DA/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73c0qRlEryE

July 6, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 2 Comments

US neocons Bolton & PNAC lay down weapons of war for protest signs with their new ‘Turkish Democracy Project’

By Helen Buyniski | RT | July 5, 2021

The aging neocons who have been practicing regime change ops in the Middle East for decades are now launching a project targeting Turkey – perhaps in honor of the deceased Don Rumsfeld.

Erdogan’s Turkey has long been something of a thorn in Washington’s paw, given its ongoing refusal to buy inferior US military equipment (it was booted from the US’ F-35 program for insisting on buying Russian S-400 missiles, making the Americans who still store their nukes at Incirlik somewhat nervous), its refusal to place the good of Israel above its own benefit, and its rumblings of discontent regarding the US’ pleas for support (or at least safe passage) to its Syrian ‘moderate rebel’ militant groups, which Ankara considers to be little more than terrorists.

Under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become quite recalcitrant indeed, far from the ideal domesticated state keen to babysit American nukes and stage American missiles in exchange for coveted membership in the deteriorating NATO structure (not long ago fetchingly described by French President Emmanuel Macron as “brain dead”). Clearly what it needs is a shot in the bottom from that great big needle marked ‘Democracy’ – and who better to deliver that than the good old boys from the Project for a New American Century, many of them the old same men who led and lied the US, blindfolded, into the chaos of Iraq.

Enter the Turkish Democracy Project, a non-profit organization which – it should be clear from the name – has nothing to do with democracy or, really, Turkishness. The group’s website is about as subtle as a nuclear bomb, blaming President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for “dramatically alter[ing] Turkey’s position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy” and calling for “a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization that opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account.” In other words: “We want a piece of your country. Resist and be annihilated.”

It’s not that the US thinks Turkey is stupid. But they believe, and are likely correct, that the US will never have as good a time as now to strike. With its military still feared by many parts of the world (even though its bark is at this point far worse than its bite, and its image still suitably ferocious to put much of the actual war-fighting business to fleeing instead of fighting), the main business must be – if the US expects to do something other than flee home with its tail between its legs – “shock and awe.”

But given that these shock and awe tactics will be taking place in the Middle East, an area which has seen the worst the US can throw at its enemies over the last 20 years of perpetual warfare and realizes all the money in the world can’t give even the largest military on Earth the stamina of the gods, it’s likely these dyed-in-the-wool bloodshed-artists will have to change with the times. To invade a militarily competent nation like Turkey – especially one which, inconveniently, happens to be backed by NATO – is unlikely to be a walk in the park, no matter how many phony war crimes the PNAC crew manage to cook up. Gas attacks have become cliche, and any talk of “weapons of mass destruction” will elicit a chortle at best.

So the TDS, if recent events are any indication, has instead gotten to work with the kind of color revolution-style events that have largely replaced shock and awe in other regime-change hotspots. They’re cheap, they’re easy, and in this case – a protest in Istanbul against Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention? – they require exactly zero imagination. It’s much easier to con the rest of NATO if you don’t have to make them think.

Thousands of activists took to the streets on Thursday, either on their own or hailing from various NGOs, denouncing Turkey’s withdrawal from the European human rights treaty known as the Istanbul Convention. Erdogan’s executive order removing Turkey from the treaty, first adopted back in March, argued the country’s women are protected by domestic laws rather than the international human rights treaty – which he argued had been “hijacked” by the LGBTQ+ community.

The hoary old PNAC boys behind the TDS likely couldn’t believe their luck when something like this fell into their lap. But will they be able to modernize?

The group’s CEO is Mark Wallace, who’s also the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran – another unsubtly named regime-change operation (and a regime change that has failed repeatedly). An old hand at overthrowing Middle Eastern nations the old-fashioned way, Wallace held several positions with the George W. Bush administration while the nation was attempting to crush Iraq (apparently shocked the children had run forward with IEDs instead of handfuls of wildflowers to welcome their new rulers).

Indeed, numerous fellow veterans of the Iraq regime change effort and abortive attempts to overthrow Iran have bubbled up in the swamp gas to give regime change in Turkey a go. Wallace is joined by other bottom-feeders like former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman and UANI intel chief Norman Roule, as well as glorified mustache-carrier, would-be thug, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. Former Bush adviser Frances Townsend is there, as is former associate deputy director of operations for the CIA (and Blackwater vet) Robert Richer. At least a few members of the shadowy pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies were listed and then memory-holed, and Bush’s brother Jeb is there, a speech bubble forever hovering above his head reading “please clap.”

Oddly enough, however, the only currently listed actual employee aside from CEO Wallace is a (presumably) former assistant English professor at Princeton University. No, that’s not suspicious at all. Carry on, I’m sure Turkey will welcome you (and your desired partitioning of the country) with open arms!

With Erdogan still trustingly paying his country’s NATO dues, Ankara is unlikely to expect any sort of real attack, though the leader is likely on guard, given former President Trump’s on-again, off-again announcement to clear out US soldiers from Syria. He is likely to be on the lookout for foreign meddlers among the protesters, however. And Erdogan’s allies with their ears to the ground both inside and outside Turkey have already pegged this absurd attempt at bringing back ‘democracy’ for what it really is. While some have linked it to the infamous Gulen movement, referring to the cleric who most recently was accused of trying to overthrow Erdogan in 2016, Gulen’s movement itself seems to have ties to the same ‘Greater Israel’ plan to redraw the lines on the map of the Middle East, a plan Israeli military strategist Oded Yinon devised decades ago (and which the neocons appear to have used as their foreign policy guide ever since). Former Turkish opposition lawmaker Aykan Erdemir, senior director for Turkey at the FDD, was accused of being connected to Gulen in 2017 and had his assets seized, strengthening the case for the connection between Gulen’s organization and the notoriously pro-Israel FDD.

But with all of NATO’s heads turned to this human rights drama, surely the other countries in the alliance also participating in the drawing-and-quartering of Syria won’t expect a military attack on Turkey as well – not without some warning. The map of Greater Israel shows Turkey losing a mere corner of their land compared to Syria, which takes quite a beating – one which Turkey clearly expects to be a part of, having already staked its claim effectively to certain border regions of Syria under the logic of keeping the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) away. But this is all temporary, and eventually the region must settle into its new form. An Israel-first arrangement will not go down well with any of the other combatants, and, unlike the US and its European partners, Turkey won’t just sit on its hands and sigh wistfully while its share of the Syrian pie is handed to the US by way of Tel Aviv.

Because that’s who the ultimate beneficiary of this mess is supposed to be. Named after the Israeli military strategist who devised it, the Yinon project hopes to balkanize the Middle East and assemble the shards into a single nation consisting of the choicest morsels of those countries in between the Euphrates and the Nile rivers. Iraq has already been cut in half, Syria has shrunk dramatically even as the war goes on, and Egypt is run by a pliant leader who will do what the US and Israel tell him – as General Wesley Clark said over a decade ago, the plan was to take out seven countries in five years. They’re running a bit behind, but never underestimate the abilities of a bunch of old war criminals with nothing to lose.

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Telegram.

July 5, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Stringency Index Is Not Associated With COVID-19 Death Rate Across US States, but IS Associated With Higher Unemployment

By Noah Carl  • Lockdown Sceptics • July 5, 2021

Some people oppose lockdown on principle, arguing that the government should never infringe on fundamental liberties like the freedom to leave our home or open our business, regardless of the impact this may have on disease transmission.

It’s a reasonable position, but I’m more drawn to the consequentialist case against lockdowns. This can be summed up as “benefits small, costs large”. In other words, even if lockdowns do reduce mortality from COVID-19 (under some circumstances), they don’t do so by anywhere near enough to justify their costs.

As I noted recently, several cost-benefit analyses of the UK’s lockdowns have been published, and each one concluded that the costs almost certainly outweighed the benefits. (Which may explain why the Government has thus far refrained from publishing any estimates itself.)

A rather elegant demonstration of the consequentialist case against lockdown was provided back in May, in the form of a Twitter thread by the data scientist Youyang Gu.

Comparing the 50 US states, Gu obtained data on the COVID-19 death rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the average Government Stringency Index. The latter is a measure of the number and severity of restrictions imposed during the course of the pandemic (school closures, stay-at-home orders, etc.). Gu’s two main charts are shown below:

He found that the Stringency Index was not associated with the COVID-19 death rate (left-hand chart), but was strongly associated with an increase in unemployment (right-hand chart). In other words, US states with longer and more stringent lockdowns haven’t had fewer COVID-19 deaths, but they have seen higher unemployment.

In the replies to Gu’s thread, some critics argued that restrictions were often imposed in response to large outbreaks, so you can’t assume that causation only goes from restrictions to deaths and unemployment. However, Gu points out that the relative ordering of restriction levels is fairly constant over time, so this is unlikely to be a major issue.

His analysis adds to a large body of evidence indicating that – for the vast majority of Western states – the benefits of lockdown were small, but the costs were very large. Gu’s thread is worth reading in full.

July 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

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