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UK Media Report on ‘Iranian Secret Cyber Files’ Casts More Doubt Than Confidence

By Daria Bedenko – Sputnik – 27.07.2021

The authenticity of the alleged “Iranian secret cyber files” cited by Sky News, on how cyber attacks could be used against civilian infrastructure objects, is debatable, experts said, shortly after the UK media outlet published so-called ‘classified documents’ said to have been acquired from Iranian intelligence.

According to the Monday Sky News report, Iran has been conducting “secret research” into how cyber attacks could affect cargo ships and petrol stations, along with other civilian infrastructure entities. The outlet, citing an unnamed source, attributes the alleged intelligence to the Islamic republic’s clandestine Intelligence Team 13 – a cell described as “a sub-group within the IRGC Shahid Kaveh unit”, which is reportedly under an individual named Hamid Reza Lashgarian.

The anonymous source who shared the documents with the outlet said he was “very confident” in their authenticity.

Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, does not, however, appear to share that confidence, saying that the publication of the so-called classified documents could be “an attempt to ratchet up tensions, especially since they gave it to Sky News.”

Marandi noted that the documents do not appear to have a “date or file number”, and neither there is an IRGC logo on the cover page, saying that it makes the report look “inauthentic”.

Dr. Rasool Nafisi, an Iranian analyst and professor at Strayer University in the US state of Virginia, agreed with the suggestion, underlining a “lack of professional format” in the document.

“The document is not dated, not stamped with security device, it is not typed on especially made papers with transparent emblem. The content is also debatable. It seems more like a dry run for a likely scenario of action. It is not surprising at all if The Islamic Republic of Iran tries to investigate possible cyber interventions, replicating what others have been doing to it for over a decade”, Nafisi pointed out.

The so-called classified documents appeared in the UK media ahead of the possible resumption of the Vienna negotiations for the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the Iranian nuclear deal. The talks that initially started in April were postponed and could resume after the inauguration of the new Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, set to take place on 5 August. The UK is among the sides involved in the negotiations.

Not everyone is happy about the plausible revival of the nuclear deal with Iran, however. Israel continues to be a vocal opponent of the restoration of the JCPOA, claiming that the accord would pave the way for Iran to create a nuclear weapon – something that the Islamic republic has consistently denied, insisting that its nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful.

When asked about reasons to attempt to dismantle relations between the UK and Iran by the publication of the unverified documents, Marandi suggested that it could be connected with activities of the “pro-Israeli lobby”.

“The Pro-Israeli lobby is working hard to push the two sides towards confrontation. It makes sense for some entity connected to them to be involved in the manufacturing of such a document”, he said, noting that “that’s a possibility” that the intention of the “leak” is to disrupt plans to resume the JCPOA negotiations.

What’s in the ‘Iranian Secret Cyber Files’?

The documents cited by Sky News make five reports, each of them said to be marked as “very confidential”.

Most of the reports are also said to feature a quote that “appears to be” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, reading: “The Islamic Republic of Iran must become among the world’s most powerful in the area of cyber.”

The first report, named “Ballast Water”, allegedly has six pages dedicated to the research of the complex systems on large cargo ships that remotely control infrastructure including filtration and ballast water. Sky News estimated that the document contains open-source research, rather than “privileged information”.

The report adds that “any kind of disruptive influence can cause disorder within these systems and can cause significant and irreparable damage to the vessel.”

Another report, also six pages long, is said to address “a system called an automatic tank gauge that tracked the flow of fuel at a petrol station.” Particularly, the research name-checked fuelling equipment produced by a US firm, Franklin Fueling Systems.

The report allegedly ponders the possible impact of “problems” with the systems, including cutting off the fuel supply, changing its temperature and even mulling the effects of an explosion.

“[An] explosion of these fueling pumps is possible if these systems are hacked and controlled remotely”, the report allegedly said.

Services providing maritime communications are addressed in what was said to be a 14-page report which studies two types of satellite communications used at sea – Sealink CIR and Seagull 5000i, noting that the latter is offered by such companies as Wideye in Singapore and Thuraya in the United Arab Emirates.

While the majority of the report is said to “repeat facts” from open sources about the two systems, there was also a chart in the end, Sky News said, showing the results of something commonly known as “Google dork” – conducting internet searches with certain key phrases enclosed in quotation marks that improve the accuracy of a search.

According to the screenshots from the report, the findings referred to devices from the United Kingdom, France and the United States.

Sky News described two other reports, the only ones marked with dates, that are claimed to be dedicated to building management systems and electrical equipment.

The first, allegedly compiled on 19 November 2020, had nine pages about “computer-based systems that control lighting, ventilation, heating, security alarms and other functions in a smart building”. Among other things, it listed companies that provided such services, including US firms KMC Controls and Honeywell, along with the French electrical equipment group Schneider Electric and the German company Siemens.

The second appears to be the longest of all five, consisting of 22 pages exploring electrical equipment made by the German company WAGO, and reportedly compiled on 19 April 2020.

This piece of purported research explored vulnerabilities in PLCs – “programmable logic controller” – with the findings saying, however, that it would not be possible to use them.

“Continuing the investigation, in order to use these processes, we noticed the vulnerabilities within these systems are irreparable, if there is an attack, damage will not easy to fix,” the report said. “Therefore, compared to other PLC brands, this brand is impenetrable once connected online. When online, the infrastructure and intelligence on engineering cannot be reached and cannot be lost.”

Although neither the Sky News ‘source’ nor British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace could confirm the authenticity of the “classified documents”, the latter nevertheless declared that they could pose “a threat to our way of life”, since they allegedly demonstrate that Western countries currently vulnerable to cyber attacks could see much worse than simple ransomware and DDoS exploits.

“They [Iran] are among the most advanced cyber actors,” claimed General Sir Patrick Sanders, the top military officer overseeing the UK cyber operations,” adding, “We take their capabilities seriously. We don’t overstate it”.

Tehran has not yet officially commented on the allegations made by Sky News.

Iranian trace?

This is not for the first time that Iran, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in particular, have been accused by a Western country of being involved in hacking activities.

Earlier in July, Facebook alleged that “Iranian hackers” presenting themselves as “recruiters, employees of defense contractors and young, attractive women” on the social media platform had tried to hack into the PCs of US military personnel.

Another set of accusations came from the FBI and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in October 2020, when the two entities accused Iran of obtaining “voter registration data in at least one state”, referring to the 2020 US presidential election.

The unsubstantiated claims by the two US agencies followed accusations by Microsoft that “Iranian hackers” targeted candidates in the 2020 US presidential elections – claims that were denied by Iran, which asserted that “unlike the US, Iran does not interfere in other country’s elections”.

While being constantly accused of conducting hacking operations, Iran is known to be a frequent target of hacker attacks. The latest came in early July and was conducted against the nation’s rail service, leading to a brief shutdown of the website for the Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

Biden Gives “Five Eyes” What It Always Wanted: Access To Everyone’s Social Media

MassPrivateI | July 27, 2021

For years, Americans have largely ignored corporate social media surveillance. But all of that is about to change, thanks to President Biden.

No one has taken the White House’s plan to turn Big Tech into a quasi-Five Eyes censorship program seriously despite repeated warnings from journalists and news websites.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone warned, the White House is pushing for Facebook and Microsoft to censor any social media stories the Feds don’t like.

“After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down saying that people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just one but all social media platforms.”

The Feds want Big Tech to ban stories and people they do not approve of from social media.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” Psaki told the press on Friday.

Reuters revealed some of America’s biggest tech companies will let “Five Eyes” and the U.N. decide whose stories the “Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” should censor.

“Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.”

Big Tech’s GIFCT is essentially a Five Eyes censorship program, masquerading as a Big Tech social media forum to stop terrorism and extremism.

“Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos — often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence — and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Twitter and YouTube are also helping help Five Eyes spy on the world’s social media.

“The firms, which include Twitter and YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it.”

Other companies that have access to the GIFCT database are Reddit, Snapchat, Instagram, Verizon Media, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Mailchimp and Airbnb.

Three years ago the mass media warned us about Five Eyes demanding that tech companies give them backdoors to users’ encrypted data, and now they finally got their wish.

The dangers of Big Tech giving URLs, PDFs and personal information to a global intelligence agency will allow governments to secretly track and ID people and organizations they deem a threat.

Radio New Zealand said if one government has access to this information, then other government’s will request it as part of doing business with another country.

New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner also warned that there is nothing stopping governments’ from abusing their access to people’s social media posts. And that is the real danger of letting Big Tech, Five Eyes and the U.N. decide who is a terrorist or extremist.

“Even then you don’t solve the technical challenge of allowing access for legitimate purposes while maintaining a secure network, and people in the tech industry tell me this is impossible” Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said.

The GIFCT claims to “bring together the technology industry, government, civil society, and academia to foster collaboration and information-sharing to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online.” But what it does not tell you is how they decide to brand someone a terrorist or extremist.

GIFCT admits that Big Tech has been secretly compiling a database of “hashes” or unique digital fingerprints of suspected terrorist/extremist social media posts since 2016.

Big Tech also uses their in-house “Content Incident Protocol” (CIP) to justify sharing hashes of an extremist’s video, and other related content with Big Tech companies, Five Eyes and the U.N.

If the GIFCT’s secret social media database and CIP sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

The United States Postal Service and Fusion Centers across the country have been secretly spying on Americans social media for years.

Earlier this week, PayPal announced that they are working with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate how extremist and hate movements in the United States take advantage of financial platforms to fund their criminal activities.

PayPal is basically setting up its own version of GIFCT to justify monitoring people’s transactions under the terrorist/extremist umbrella. As the article mentioned, PayPal and the ADL will “uncover and disrupt the financial flows of anti-government and white supremacist organizations” on their own!

“The information collected through the initiatives will be shared with other firms in the financial industry, law enforcement and policymakers, PayPal said.”

It is only a matter of time before GIFCT censorship will be used to monitor and stop protests that corporations and the White House disapprove of.

As Caitlin Johnstone so eloquently put it:

  • They said we need internet censorship because of Russia.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of COVID.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of election security.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of the Capitol riot.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of domestic extremism.
  • Pretty sure they just want internet censorship.

Using the GIFCT to allow corporations and Five Eyes to ban and censor whoever they want, put’s everyone’s freedom at risk.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 11 Comments

Telegraph Exposes Massive Covid Hospital Fraud

By Richie Allen – July 27, 2021

In an exclusive in today’s Telegraph, journalists Laura Donnelly and Harry Yorke claim that more than half of covid hospitalisations are patients who tested positive AFTER they were admitted to hospital with something else.

This means that vast numbers of people are being labelled as hospitalised by covid when in reality they were admitted to hospital for something else and covid was only picked up during routine testing.

This is fraud. The government has always known this, yet it claimed that the NHS was under enormous pressure from covid-19 cases and imposed draconian and devastating lockdowns.

According to The Telegraph :

Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS.

The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted.

The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason.

Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show.

The Telegraph article goes on to make a crucial point. At no time was there any attempt to distinguish between those admitted with severe illness, later found to be caused by covid and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.

Simply stated, when someone came in with heart palpitations or symptoms of stroke, they were given a PCR test. The test has been thoroughly discredited as it returns a high rate of false positives.

When the stroke or heart attack patient then tested positive for covid they were listed as a covid hospitalisation. This is breathtakingly corrupt. This wasn’t bad policy or mismanagement. They knew what they were doing. They’re still doing it.

Greg Clark, the chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee said that he would be writing to the Health Secretary, asking him to publish the breakdown on a regular basis following The Telegraph’s article. Clark said:

“If hospitalisations from Covid are a key determinant of how concerned we should be, and how quickly restrictions should be lifted, it’s important that the data is not presented in a way that could lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn.

While some of these people may be being admitted due to Covid, we currently do not know how many. And for those who are not, there is a big distinction between people who are admitted because of Covid and those who are in for something else but have Covid in such a mild form that it was not the cause of their hospitalisation.”

For 16 months, this government has been telling us that the NHS was overwhelmed by covid-19. They were lying. We knew they were lying. Now there is irrefutable proof.

The lies were used to justify tyrannical lockdowns that have done immeasurable damage to people’s health and wellbeing. What happens next? I don’t know. This is an example of outstanding journalism by Donnelly and Yorke.

It’s now over to SKY, BBC, ITV and Channel 4. It’s in their hands. It is their duty to put The Telegraph’s findings to government ministers and SAGE scientists and relentlessly pursue the truth.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

The New Normal: “Covert Moral Enhancement” for “coronavirus defectors”

Academic article suggests putting psycho-active drugs in the water supply to make people “co-operative”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 14, 2020

Four days ago the Conversation – an “independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community” – published an article headlined:

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

The article’s author is Parker Crutchfield, an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University, and his argument can be broken down into four key points:

  1. Wearing masks and social distancing are good for public health
  2. People who refuse to follow these rules are “defectors” who need to be “morally enhanced”
  3. This moral enhancement can be achieved with medication to make people more “empathetic” and “co-operative”
  4. This medication should be compulsory and/or administered secretly via the water supply.

I swear I’m not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. To absorb the full horror I suggest you read it for yourself (and then read the comment section as well, it will make you feel better) but, if you’re not so inclined, here are some choice quotes:

like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior.

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

These substances interact directly with the psychological underpinnings of moral behavior […] Then, perhaps, the people who choose to go maskless or flout social distancing guidelines would better understand that everyone, including them, is better off when they contribute, and rationalize that the best thing to do is cooperate.

Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it […] a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.

This isn’t just a panicked response to an unforeseen emergency, Crutchfield’s area of bioethics research focuses on “questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good”, and a look through his articles reveals that this is an agenda which pre-dates our current “pandemic”.

There’s The epistemology of moral bioenhancement from 2016 and then Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert from just last year.

This isn’t just about masks, if it were implemented it would be a lot more far-reaching. From masks to vaccines to anything else, beyond even the “pandemic”. The author admits as much himself [our emphasis]:

But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change.

Happy Pills in our water to make us proper cooperative citizens? “Covert moral enhancement” to produce “superior post-persons”?

That is literally “Soma” from Huxley’s Brave New World. It can’t be satirized or exaggerated. It is the very zenith of dystopian horror. And it is being seriously suggested by research scientists in apparently respectable publications.

This may be just one article in a comparatively small (and murkily funded) magazine, but that’s how it starts.

Of course, it also further feeds into the stream of propaganda which seeks to dehumanise those who express dissent.

We’ve already been told that “defectors” are more likely to be narcissists or psychopaths, and seen them subject to police brutality with total impunity.

New Zealand are setting up “quarantine centres” where you will have to stay “indefinitely” if you refuse a to be tested.

And now it’s being seriously posited that those who refuse to comply should be subject to covert medication to render them more malleable to the “public good”.

It’s not hard to see where this is going. Show this article to everyone you know. People have to be told what their world is being turned into, while we still have the brainpower to stop it.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | 3 Comments

Hey, Boris, leave my friends alone!

If I don’t #GrabAJab I’ll be an outcast

Harry Dougherty Blog | July 22, 2021

Facebook keeps pestering me to get the Covid19 vaccine. They won’t give up!

One feature tells me that I can somehow ‘help to end the pandemic’ by putting my vaccination status in my profile picture frame, pointing out (as if I care) that some of my Facebook friends have done so already. Another one from the ‘NHS England and NHS Improvement’ Facebook page, ever so sweetly threatens me.

‘Planning your summer vacation? #GrabAJab’

‘Spending a day at the shops? #GrabAJab’

‘Going for a drink with friends? #GrabAJab’

So friendly. So familiar. So understanding.

To be honest, I can probably cope without the shopping trips, a dreary enough ordeal without the muzzles and the one-way systems. But I must confess I do love a sesh once every so often and I need my holidays, preferably in Europe. Tropical, rainy countries that require umpteen injections just to avoid the ICU never really blew my hair away, as they do with the Mount Kilimanjaro climbing gap yah types.

However, if I don’t ‘grab a jab’ these simple pleasures of life will become unavailable to me, and I will forever become an outcast. I will have no kind of life whatsoever. Simples!

I still won’t budge for the nudgers. I owe no one a jab in my arm, and I would never demand someone else risk their health or be excluded from society for my safety. I might be selfish, but I’m not that selfish.

But sadly, the mixture of guilt and threat works on most people, including those who never bought into the exaggerated dangers of Covid. Even Winston Smith loved Big Brother eventually.

Last week, I received an Instagram message from an old friend. We both worked in events back in the day, shortly before our full pay MPs decimated the hospitality sector.

Out of the blue, she asked me, ‘what is your opinion on the vaccine?’

Not wanting to be off-puttingly preachy, I answered succinctly: ‘your choice, but I wouldn’t recommend it!’

Alas, it was too late anyway. She replied, ‘I took it (Pfizer) so that I can travel back home easier… and guess who is having a severe kidney infection now.’

She continued, ‘whole day yesterday at the hospital.. now on antibiotics and painkillers.’

I should mention that she is very healthy and in her twenties. As of 7 July 2021, there are currently 24 cases of kidney infection and 33 cases of acute kidney injury, (with two fatalities on the latter) listed on the Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to the Yellow Card scheme. Her case (in the true meaning of the word ‘case’ ) is not listed among them.

She continued, “my roommate had a really bad urine infection after the sake vaccine. My aunt had kidney stones.”

Like me, she opposed the lockdown from the very beginning in March 2020, amazed by the sheer absurdity of the rules and the public’s pathetic acceptance of them.

But they got to her, like gangsters warning a witness ‘you might wanna think about your family.’

Of course, the BBC will not be much interested in telling her story, nor that of one of my regular customers who last week described the AstraZeneca vaccine as ‘the biggest regret of my life’.

Instead, they put out a story about a morbidly obese 51 year old man who tragically died from Covid, who told one of the nurses that he regretted not getting vaccinated. We are then expected to politely not ask if he also regretted having a dangerously unhealthy lifestyle. We cannot peddle dangerous philosophies like personal responsibility and encourage habits that might actually save people from premature death, can we?

Don’t get me wrong, there are genuine cases of young healthy men not getting vaccinated against Covid and living to regret it, such as Matthew Roche, 38, and Darren Howard, 28, who both just so happened to be actors from the same talent agency ‘Mandy’. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, and there have been a lot of those lately.

The monstrous Johnson, who spent his career posing as a cuddly libertarian, dared to lecture the public about social responsibility when he said “I don’t want to have to close nightclubs again as they have elsewhere. But it does mean nightclubs need to do the socially responsible thing.”

This is the language of an abuser. “I don’t want to hit you, but you made me do it.”

Then the weasel Wales secretary Simon Hart said vaccine passports came with “the heaviest of hearts”, lying that “we are really left with no option.”

No option? How can that be, when Belarus kept their nightclubs, Christmas markets, sports stadiums open throughout the entire ‘pandemic’? How did Texas, Tennessee, and Florida, among several other major US states manage to reopen their nightlife scene without health apartheid as a condition?

Whose safety is that important, that young people should be cornered into an ultimatum between societal exclusion and taking a non-market authorised drug with no long-term data, that is associated with a total 1470 UK deaths and 1,059,307 reported Reactions?

The government’s summary falsely reassures us, “some (adverse) events may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination. This is particularly the case when millions of people are vaccinated, and especially most vaccines are being given to the most elderly people and people who have underlying illnesses.”

The same is true of People who have with Covid19 on their death certificate in the last 18 months, yet the same summary reads ‘at the time of this report, 128,662 people across the UK have died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus’.

They don’t mention that despite Covid19, the UK national life expectancy is still higher than its ever been, and the average age of a Covid death exceeds even that. They don’t mention that even in the most vulnerable groups, the great majority of people infected by the disease survive. They don’t emphasise that many of these “covid” deaths “may have happened anyway”, as they anxiously claim about vaccine-associated deaths.

Even the doomster in chief Neil Ferguson admitted last year that most Covid deaths involved people who may have died soon anyway. But Would, say, AstraZeneca victims Dr. Stephen Wright and BBC presenter Lisa Shaw have died anyway? No. Nor likely would have the 44-year-old man from Tasmania nor the 48-year-old woman in Victoria, whose deaths from the clotshot (that’s what the kids are calling AstraZeneca nowadays) were recently reported in the revamped penal colony of Australia, another country where vaccine refusers are facing open persecution from their ruling elite.

It will be interesting to see how quickly vaccine related deaths catch up with Covid deaths in countries that happened to have low exceedingly low Covid mortality. New Zealand’s official figures show 26 Covid related deaths, overwhelmingly in citizens of great age and already suffering with comorbidities, at least two of whom had initially been diagnosed with influenza (make of that what you will). As far as I can discover, the youngest victim was a man in his 50s who tragically passed away in September. Bearing in mind that Covid has a year’s head start on the vaccine rollout in New Zealand and that only 18.6% Kiwis have been given at least one vaccine dose, let us now compare New Zealand’s 26 Covid related deaths with the 18 suspected vaccine related deaths reported to the Centre for Adverse Reaction Monitoring (CARM). Again, the Wellington regime gives the same false reassurances as the UK Yellow Card Summary, dismissing reported vaccine deaths as coincidental in a way that could just as easily be said of Covid deaths. But it will only take eight more reported vaccine deaths for New Zealand’s deaths from and with the vaccine to equalise with New Zealand’s current number of deaths from and with the ‘once in a century pandemic’. There have been a total of 6,143 reported adverse vaccine reactions, more than half of which aged under 50. These include 21 reports of anaphylaxis, 19 cases of Bell’s Palsy (facial paralysis), 12 cases of myocarditis, 21 haemorrhages, 13 strokes, 11 DVTs, and an unspecified number (less than six but at least one each) of spontaneous abortions, acute liver injuries, heart attacks, Thrombosis episodes and cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Already, the cure is far worse than the disease and the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.

Somewhere, someday soon, a teenager near you will develop myocarditis, while another develops a fatal blood clot for no other reason because they were told that in the end, the vaccine was their ticket to ‘freedom’. It And the blood will be on Johnson and Zahawi’s hands. Frankly, anyone who thinks that these deaths, or indeed my friends’ vaccine injury, were worth it to keep them safe doesn’t deserve to be safe.

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | 4 Comments

Ineffective Coronavirus Vaccine

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 26, 2021

On Thursday, United States President Joe Biden was hyping the supposed effectiveness of experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. He claimed in a CNN event that people who take the shots will not “get covid,” “be hospitalized,” “be in an ICU unit,” or “die.” It turns out Biden’s assurance is wrong.

The experimental coronavirus vaccines, some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term, are not miracle drugs. Indeed, recent information from Israel, where shots were given very widely and early, indicates that whatever effectiveness the shots may have in countering coronavirus appears to wear off mighty quickly.

Nathan Jeffay provided in a Sunday Times of Israel article some of the details from experience in Israel, where Pfizer-BioNTech provides the “vaccine” of choice. Jeffay relates a new report from health care provider Leumit indicating that “[p]eople vaccinated before late February are twice as likely to catch the coronavirus than other inoculated Israelis.” Further, notes Jeffay, the Israel government’s Health Ministry released data on Thursday suggesting “that people vaccinated in January were said to have just 16% protection against infection now, while in those vaccinated in April the effectiveness was at 75%.”

So what’s the solution to the problem of the experimental coronavirus vaccines not being effective in countering coronavirus? Many people looking at the situation would conclude that it is wise for people to consider forgetting about taking the shots altogether, thereby forgoing subjecting themselves to the known and unknown risks that come with the less advantageous than advertised shots. People could pursue alternative actions to protect themselves, including taking certain vitamins and long-available drugs such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. They need not just wait to seek hospital admission if symptoms become severe, even if that is what government health “experts” tend to suggest.

Considering such an alternative approach makes sense. But, politicians and big money media seem to be on a tireless quest to promote people taking the experimental coronavirus vaccine shots no matter what.

Sadly, in the Times of Israel article, the only solution offered is to keep pumping more doses of experimental coronavirus vaccines into people’s arms: the shots did not work well the first time, so give everyone another dose after a few months. Oh yeah, and keep ignoring the continually piling up reports of deaths and major sickness after shots.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

Daily COVID Deaths in Sweden Hit Zero, as Other Nations Brace for More Lockdowns

Sweden isn’t in the news much these days. There’s a reason for that.

By Jon Miltimore | FEE | July 22, 2021

More than 100,000 people flooded streets in France over the weekend and multiple COVID vaccination centers were vandalized as opposition grew to the government’s most recent pandemic strategy. In President Emmanuel Macron’s latest incarnation of lockdowns, government officials have decreed that unvaccinated individuals will no longer be allowed to enter cafes, restaurants, theaters, public transportation and more.

Needless to say, people were not happy.

France’s approach is unique, but it’s just one of many countries around the world imposing new restrictions as fears grow over a new variant of COVID-19. Australia’s recent restrictions have placed half the country under strict lockdown—even though a record 82,000 tests had identified just 111 new coronavirus cases—while restaurants in Portugal are struggling to survive amid newly imposed restrictions.

One country not making much news is Sweden.

Sweden, of course, was maligned in 2020 for foregoing a strict lockdown. The Guardian called its approach “a catastrophe” in the making, while CBS News said Sweden had become “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”

Despite these criticisms, Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic continues today. In contrast to its European neighbors, Sweden is welcoming tourists. Businesses and schools are open with almost no restrictions. And as far as masks are concerned, not only is there no mandate in place, Swedish health officials are not even recommending them.

What are the results of Sweden’s much-derided laissez-faire policy? Data show the 7-day rolling average for COVID deaths yesterday was zero (see below). As in nada. And it’s been at zero for about a week now.

Even a year ago, it was clear the hyperbolic claims about “the Swedish catastrophe” were false; just ask Elon Musk (also see: here, here, and here). But a year later the evidence is overwhelming that Sweden got the pandemic mostly right. Sweden’s overall mortality rate in 2020 was lower than most of Europe and its economy suffered far less. Meanwhile, today Sweden is freer and healthier than virtually any other country in Europe.

As much of the world remains gripped in fear and nations devise new restrictions to curtail basic freedoms, Sweden remains a vital and shining reminder that there is a better way.

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 2 Comments

Disillusioned journalists form alliance against censorship of alternative coronavirus viewpoints

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 26, 2021

A group of 26 journalists has come together to object to the COVID-19 “fearmongering” and the censorship of alternative views by mainstream media and Big Tech platforms since the beginning of the pandemic.
According to the group, the result of the fearmongering and censorship has been the public receiving a “distorted view of the truth.”

The group calls itself “Holding the Line: Journalists Against COVID Censorship.”

It comprises mostly UK-based journalists working at newspapers, broadcasters, and PR companies as staffers or freelancers.

The members were interviewed by Press Gazette, with most preferring to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from their employers.

However, some were more than happy to be named, including Sonia Elijah and Karen Harradine, investigative journalists for The Conservative Woman, former BBC journalist Tony Gosling, and Laura Berril, a PR and tech journalist.

The group’s mission is to promote a “prejudice-free” environment where journalists can air their concerns and raise awareness on lesser-covered issues.

To them, the media is doing “incredible work.” But there are some failures, especially surrounding COVID reporting, such as “a lack of context for statistics, due coverage for alternative treatments, scrutiny of PCR testing, attention to adverse vaccine reactions, or balanced examinations of the costs of lockdown.”

The group accused the UK media of often publishing “fear-inducing and sometimes inaccurate” reports, which in turn create hostility towards those who would prefer not to get the vaccines.

“It’s been unprecedented the way COVID-19 has been reported in the UK but not just in the UK, worldwide,” said Sonia Elijah, one of the members of the group who allowed Press Gazette to mention her name.

“There’s only been one official narrative played out in the mainstream media and that has not changed over time.

“There’s only been one ‘scientific truth’ allowed to be discussed: the one endorsed by worldwide governmental regulatory bodies, even that has been very selective. This has given the public a distorted view of the truth which has been highly damaging.”

Elijah expressed her concern about censorship of information that contradicts the narrative provided by the Trusted News Initiative.

“For a long time, we’ve been in this dark era of censorship that’s been embodied by the Trusted News Initiative which cuts across big tech and all mainstream media,” she said.

“It’s been packaged around this war on disinformation or misinformation- where anything that’s gone against the official narrative has not just been ‘fact checked’ but has been suppressed or removed.”

According to Gosling, the group is championing for balanced debate.

Gosling said: “Our main concern is that there’s a very powerful lobby behind many of these COVID measures, including treatment, lack of treatment and vaccines, obviously, but there isn’t much of a lobby in the other direction. And I think most of us feel that our employers of various sorts have not been representing both sides.”

Gosling had two of his interviews featuring doctors advocating for early treatment post-diagnosis, the effectiveness of ivermectin, and the dangers of the “experimental” vaccines removed by YouTube.

As an example of the “sometimes inaccurate” coverage, he pointed to a BBC report where the contributor claims the Pfizer jab was “100% safe” for kids between the ages of 12 and 15. It was only after his complaint that the BBC removed the “shocking” and “disgusting” claim and provided a correction.

Gosling added: “My own aim is to provide balance, that’s it basically. And also to point out to the public that the journalists don’t always get to choose what gets published.

“It’s the owners and the editors that have the final say, so we are all of the same mind that we would like to see more journalists being editors and having their own newspapers, having their own TV/radio stations but that’s very, very rare. So there’s always an editor somewhere just saying no, I don’t want this, and particularly through this pandemic that’s the way it’s been, people have found it difficult to get stories in, and it’s been frustrating.”

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 3 Comments

The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us

By Ron Paul | July 26, 2021

The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice.

We’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well.

Worse than this miscarriage of justice is the despicable attempt by the prosecutor in the case to label Hodgkins – who has no criminal record and was accused of no violent crime – a “terrorist.”

As journalist Michael Tracey recently wrote, Special Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky declared Hodgkins a “terrorist” in the court proceedings not for committing any terrorist act, not for any act of violence, not even for imagining a terrorist act.

Sedky wrote in her sentencing memo, “The Government … recognizes that Hodgkins did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” She added, “we concede that Mr. Hodgkins is not under the legal definition a domestic terrorist.”

Yet Hodgkins should be considered a terrorist because the actions he took – entering the Senate to take a photo of himself – occurred during an event that the court is “framing… in the context of terrorism.”

That goes beyond a slippery slope. He is not a terrorist because he committed a terrorist act, but because somehow the “context” of his actions was, in her words, “imperiling democracy.”

In other words, Hodgkins deserved enhanced punishment because he committed a thought crime. The judge on the case, Randolph D. Moss, admitted as much. In carrying a Trump flag into the Senate, he said, Hodgkins was, “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.”

As Tracey pointed out, while eight months in prison is a ridiculously long sentence for standing on the floor of the “People’s House” and taking a photograph, it is also a ridiculously short sentence for a terrorist. If Hodgkins is really a terrorist, shouldn’t he be sent away for longer than eight months?

The purpose of the Soviet show trials was to create an enemy that the public could collectively join in hating and blaming for all the failures of the system. The purpose was to turn one part of the population against the other part of the population and demand they be “cancelled.” And it worked very well… for awhile.

In a recent article, libertarian author Jim Bovard quoted from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago about how average people turned out to demand “justice” for the state’s designated “political” enemies: “There were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even school-children). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: ‘Death! Death! Death!’”

While we are not quite there yet, we are moving in that direction. Americans being sent to prison not for what they did, but for what they believe? Does that sound like the kind of America we really want to live in?

While many Biden backers are enjoying seeing the hammer come down on pro-Trump, non-violent protesters, they should take note: the kind of totalitarian “justice” system they are cheering on will soon be coming for them. It always does.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | 1 Comment

Vaccinated To Have More Freedoms In Germany

By Richie Allen | July 26, 2021

Speaking to Bild newspaper yesterday, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said that the vaccinated “will definitely have more freedoms.” Helge Braun said that if cases continue to rise in Germany, the unvaccinated would be barred from pubs, restaurants theatres and stadiums.

The chief of staff who is also a medical doctor told Bild :

“If we have a high rate of infection despite our testing procedures then the unvaccinated will have to reduce their contacts. Those who have been vaccinated will definitely have more freedom than those who have not been vaccinated.”

Braun went on to say that the unvaccinated wouldn’t even be allowed to take a covid test to gain entry to venues. When asked why, she replied: “The risk to everyone else is too high.”

As to the legality of introducing such discriminatory measures Braun said that, “the state has a duty to protect the health of its citizens.”

Neighbouring France has introduced Covid passes as a condition of entry to restaurants, café’s and supermarkets. From late September, anyone wanting to go to a nightclub or a concert in the UK, will have to prove that they’ve been double jabbed.

The UK government is also expected to say that anyone attending sports venues in the Autumn will also need to prove that they have been jabbed.

And from today, Irish citizens wishing to drink or dine inside a pub or restaurant, must show that they have been jabbed or that they recently produced a negative covid test.

Lockstep anyone?

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | 1 Comment

Does covid cause brain damage?

By Sebastian Rushworth, M.D. | July 26, 2021

The latest in the long succession of attempts at maximizing people’s fear of covid is the claim that it causes brain damage. And not just in those who have spent time in the ICU, in everyone, even if all they had was a mild cold. The claim is currently doing the rounds on social media (apparently alarmist propaganda only counts as misinformation if it’s going against the dominant narrative). The assertion comes from a paper that’s recently been published in EClinicalMedicine (a daughter journal of The Lancet ). The paper is actually quite illuminating about the current state of medical research, so I thought it would be interesting to go through it in some detail.

81,337 individuals residing in the UK completed an on-line test of their cognitive function. They also provided information on their covid status (whether or not they thought they’d had it, and how sick they were), as well as a bunch of other demographic information. The data was collected from January to December 2020.

12,689 (16%) of the 81,337 participants indicated that they thought they had had covid-19. They were sorted by the researchers into five categories based on the severity of disease, from “ill without respiratory symptoms” to “hospitalised and on a ventilator”. The results from these five categories were then compared with the results from the 68,648 people that didn’t think they’d had covid.

The reason the study is causing such a stir is because of the results. All five of the “I think I’ve had covid” categories performed worse on the cognitive function test than the “I don’t think I’ve had covid” category did. The reduction in performance was correlated with the severity of disease, with the people who had been on a ventilator performing worst – according to the researchers their results were equivalent to a seven point reduction on an IQ test. If we assume that the non-covid group have an IQ of 100, this would mean that the group that had been on a ventilator have an IQ of 93.

Ok, open and shut, right? Having covid makes you more stupid, and the more severe disease you have, the more stupid you become. Well, not quite.

The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that this was an observational study. Observational studies cannot usually say anything about cause and effect, because the participants haven’t been randomly assigned to the different groups (as they would have been in a randomized controlled trial). The inability to draw any conclusions about cause and effect is especially true when the difference between the groups is small, as it is in this study. There could well be major underlying differences between the groups that explain the differences in performance on the cognitive function test.

When we go through the demographic data, we see that this is actually the case, in particular when it comes to chronic conditions. Chronic liver disease (such as for example liver cirrhosis) was more common in those who thought they had had covid, and the relative rate increased the more severely sick people had been with covid. Chronic lung disease (such as COPD) and chronic kidney disease also co-varied with severity of covid. These underlying illnesses could on their own confound the results enough to explain the differences in cognitive performance seen in the study. People with underlying chronic diseases have worse cognitive function, and they’re also more likely to become severely ill if they get covid. Just because you see a correlation doesn’t mean there’s a cause and effect relationship!

The groups also varied in terms of the proportion in each category that had ADHD. The people who didn’t think they’d had covid were less likely to have ADHD than the people who thought they’d had covid. Oddly, severity of disease correlated quite closely with the probability of having ADHD. This matters, because it’s likely that people with ADHD will underperform on many parts of a cognitive function test. If the researchers wanted to, they could have interpreted this as showing that covid causes ADHD. But they didn’t, because that would be silly. Yet the exact same logic (correlation between two variables in observational data) was used to claim that covid causes brain damage.

It’s worth noting that for all the possible confounding factors that the authors of the study have asked the participants about and tried to account for, there are many more that they haven’t asked about, and that could also explain the results seen in the study. Confounding isn’t something that should be taken lightly, which is why conclusions about cause and effect shouldn’t be drawn from purely associational data.

The second thing that needs to be pointed out is that this study was cross-sectional. In other words, participants only had their cognitive function tested at one time. That in itself makes it impossible to say anything about whether the participants performance decreased after having had covid, because we have no idea what their performance was before they got covid. If you want to know if something has changed over time you need to do a longitudinal study, where you test people multiple times.

The fact that the study was observational and cross-sectional, and that there were big underlying differences between the groups, is on its own enough to disqualify any claims about this study being able to show that covid causes brain damage. But it gets worse. A lot worse.

A major problem with the study is that 97%(!) of the people who thought they’d had covid lacked testing to confirm the diagnosis. Of the 12,689 that thought they’d had covid, only 386 actually had a confirmed diagnosis. The only group in which the majority actually had a positive test confirming that they had had covid was the group that had been on a ventilator in an intensive care unit! If you can’t even be sure that 97% of participants actually had the disease you’re trying to draw conclusions about, then you really don’t have a leg to stand on.

I think it’s worth remembering that, even during the covid peak, only around 20% of covid tests were coming back positive. In other words, even when covid was spreading at its most rampant, most people who had a respiratory infection did not have covid. They had something else. It is therefore reasonable to think that at least 80% of the 97% (i.e. at least 78% of participants) that think they had covid, did not in fact have it. What that means is that the study is rubbish, and cannot make any claims about covid whatsoever. Yet it does. And it’s been published in a peer reviewed journal.

To me, the main lesson here is that we currently live in a world where junk science goes unquestioned and gets published in peer-reviewed journals as long as it feeds in to the dominant narrative. If this study had been claiming, say, that face masks didn’t work, then it would remain stuck at the pre-print stage forever, or, if it ever did get published, it would immediately have been retracted. It has become blatantly obvious over the past year and a half that it is not primarily the quality of studies that determines where and whether they get published, but rather their acceptability to the powers that be.

July 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

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