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U.S. Terrorism 101: The Bert Sacks Story

By Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain | November 15, 2021

Since the annual U.S. Veterans Day holiday honoring military veterans was just observed on November 11, it seems more than appropriate to suggest the creation of a U.S. Victims Day, just as in a similar effort at truth in labeling, the Defense Department should be renamed the Offensive War Department.

For the victims of American terrorism far outnumber the American soldiers who have died in its wars, although I consider most U.S. veterans to be victims also, having been propagandized from birth to buy the glory of war, not the truth that it’s a racket that serves the interests of the ruling class.

Such wars, carried out with bombs, drones, mercenaries, and troops, or by economic embargoes and sanctions, are by their nature acts of terrorism. This is so whether we are talking about the mass fire bombings of Japanese and German cities during WW II, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombings and the agent orange dropped on Vietnam, the depleted uranium on Iraq, the use of terrorist surrogates everywhere, the economic sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Syria, etc. The list is endless and ongoing.  All actions aimed at causing massive death and damage to civilians.

According to U.S. law (6 USCS § 101), terrorism is defined as an act that is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources; is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States; and appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.

By any reasonable interpretation of the law, the United Sates is a terrorist state.

Let me tell you about Bert Sacks. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. His experiences with the U.S. government regarding terrorism tell an illuminating story of conscience and hope. It is a story of how one person can awaken others to recognize and admit the truth that the U.S. is guilty of crimes against humanity, even when one is unable to stop the carnage. It is a tale of witness, and how such witness is contagious.

In November 1997 Sacks led a delegation to Iraq to deliver desperately needed medicines ( $40,000 worth, all donated) that were denied into the country because of US/UN economic sanctions. For such an act of human solidarity, he was later fined $10,000 by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Sacks had refused to ask for a license to travel to Iraq or to subsequently pay the fine for compelling reasons connected to his non-violent Gandhian philosophy, which teaches that non-cooperation with evil is as much an obligation as cooperation with good.

For years previously, Sacks had been learning, as would have anyone who was following the news, that the American sanctions under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton following the illegal and unjust Gulf War, had been aimed at crippling the Iraqi infrastructure upon which all civilian life depended.  Iraq had been devastated by the U.S. war of aggression, and a great deal of its infrastructure, especially electricity and therefore water purification systems, had already been destroyed. Clinton kept up the sanctions and the bombing in support of Bush’s war intentions. So much for differences between Republicans and Democrats! Regular Iraqis were suffering terribly. All this was being done in the name of punishing Saddam Hussein in order to oust him from power, the same Hussein whom the U. S. had supported in Iraq’s war with Iran by assisting him with chemical and biological weapons.

As Sacks later (2011) wrote in his declaration to the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington when he sued OFAC:

Weeks after the end of the Gulf War, on March 22, 1991, I read a New York Times front- page story covering the UN report by Martti Ahtisaari on the devastating, ‘near- apocalyptic conditions’ in Iraq after the Gulf War. The report said, ‘famine and epidemic [were imminent] if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. The long summer… is weeks away. Time is short.’ The same article explained U.S. policy this way: ‘[By] making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.’ This sentence has stayed with me for twenty years. It says to me that my government – by inflicting suffering and death on Iraqi civilians – hoped to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, and that we would simply call it “making life uncomfortable.” [my emphasis]

The years to follow the first war against Iraq revealed what that Orwellian phrase really meant.

In 1994 Sacks read a survey on health conditions of Iraqi children in The New England Journal of Medicine that said: “These results provide strong evidence that the Gulf War and trade sanctions caused a threefold increase in mortality among Iraqi children under five years of age. We estimate that an excess of more than 46,900 children died between January and August 1991.”

And that was just the beginning. For the number of dead Iraqi children [and adults] kept piling up as a result of “making life uncomfortable.”

Anton Chekov’s story “Gooseberries” pops into my mind:

Everything is quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from malnutrition. . . . And this order of things is evidently necessary; evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible. It’s a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man someone standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him — disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others.

Sacks has long been that man with a gentle hammer, far from happy, comfortable, or contented in what he was learning. In 1996 he watched the infamous CBS 60 Minutes interview of Madeleine Albright by Leslie Stahl who had recently returned from Iraq. Albright was then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the Secretary of State. Stahl, in reference to how the sanctions had already killed 500,000 Iraqi children, asked her, “Is the price worth it?” – Albright blithely answered, “The price is worth it.”

In April 1997, a New England Journal of Medicine editorial said that “”Iraq is an even more disastrous example of war against the public health . … The destruction  of the country’s power plants had brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children. Mortality rates doubled or tripled among children admitted to hospitals in Baghdad and Basra…” [my emphasis]

The evidence had accumulated since 1991 that the U.S. had purposely targeted Iraqi civilians and especially very young children and had therefore killed them as an act or war.  This was clearly genocide. In its 1999 news release, UNICEF announced: “if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.”

The British journalist Robert Fisk called this intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure “biological warfare”: “The ultimate nature of the 1991 Gulf War for Iraqi civilians now became clear. Bomb now: die later.” In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote that the Centers for Disease Control, in warning about potential terrorist biological attacks on the U.S., clearly lists attacks on water supplies as terrorism and biological warfare:

Water safety threats (such as Vibrio cholerae and Cryptosporidium parvum): Cholera is an acute bacterial disease characterized in its severe form by sudden onset, profuse painless watery stools, nausea and vomiting early in the course of illness, and, in untreated cases, rapid dehydration, acidosis, circulatory collapse, hypoglycemia in children, and renal failure. Transmission occurs through ingestion of food or water contaminated directly or indirectly with feces or vomitus of infected persons.

By January 1997, as a result of such statements and those of U.S. military and government officials and reports in medical journals and media, Sacks concluded that the United States government was guilty of the crime of international terrorism against the civilian population of Iraq. And being a man of conscience, he therefore proceeded to lead a delegation to Iraq to alleviate suffering, even while knowing it was a drop in the bucket.

It is important to emphasize that the U.S. government knew full well that its intentional destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure would result in massive death and suffering of civilians.  Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said of such destruction that “If I had to do it over again, I would do exactly the same thing.” All the deaths that followed were done as part of an effort at regime change – to force Hussein out of office, something finally accomplished by the George W. Bush administration with their lies about weapons of mass destruction and their 2003 war against Iraq that killed between 1-2 million more Iraqis. The recent accolades heaped on Colin Powell, who as Secretary of State consciously lied at the UN and who led the first war against Iraq – two major war crimes – should be a reminder of how unapologetic U.S. leaders are for their atrocities. I would go so far as to say they revel in their ability to commit them. Because he called them out on this by doing what all journalists and writers should do, they have pursued and caged Julian Assange as if he were a wild dog who walked into their celebratory dinner party.

In this 1991 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency document, “Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities,” you can read how these people think. And read Thomas Merton’s poem “Chant to be Used in Processions around a Site With Furnaces,” and don’t skip its last three lines and you can grasp the bureaucratic mind at its finest. Euphemisms like “uncomfortable” and “collateral damage” are their specialties. Killing the innocent are always on their menu.

Bert Sacks and his delegation got some brief media publicity for their voyage of mercy. He believed that if the American people really knew what was happening to Iraqi children, they would demand that it be stopped. This did not happen. His tap with the hammer of conscience failed to awaken the hypnotized public who overwhelmingly had elected Clinton to a second term in 1996 six months after the 60 Minutes interview. Yes, “Everything is [was] quiet and peaceful, and nothing protests but mute statistics.”

Although the evidence was overwhelming that Iraqi children in the 1990s were dying at the rate of at least 5,000 per month as a direct result of the sanctions, very few major media publicized this. The 60 Minutes show, with its shocking statement by Albright, was an exception and was seen by millions of Americans. After that show aired, to claim you didn’t know was no longer believable. And although most mainstream media buried the truth, it was still available to those who cared. There were some conscience-stricken officials, however. In his declaration to the court, Sacks wrote:

The first two heads of the “Oil-for-Food” program – Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck – each resigned a position as UN Assistant Secretary General to protest the consequences of the U.S. imposed sanctions policy on Iraq. Mr. Halliday said, ‘We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.’ He called it genocide.

There were also, doctors, politicians, independent writers, and Nobel Peace Laureates who called the policy genocide and said, “Sanctions are the economic nuclear bomb.” Sacks told the court that “Finally, this list includes a 32-year career, retired U.S. diplomat – Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism – who says: ‘you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in [terrorist] activities. Ours is one of them.’”

Military planners, moreover, wrote in military publications that it was desirable to kill Iraqi civilians; that it was an essential part – if not the major part – of war strategy. They called it “dual-use targeting” and called themselves “operational artists.”

Sacks was able to reach a few officials and journalists who realized this was not art but massive war crimes. This showed that it is not impossible to change people, hard as it is. The judge in his court case, James L. Robart, while agreeing that OFAC had not exceeded its authority in fining him, acknowledged that the court had to accept as true that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as reported by UNICEF had come to constitute genocide, but [my emphasis] U.S. law prohibited the bringing of any consideration of genocide into a legal proceeding, which allows the U.S. government to commit this crime while barring any other party from raising the issue legally.

In other words, the U.S. government can accuse others of committing genocide, but no one can legally accuse it. It is above all laws.

Ten months before his 1997 trip to Iraq, Sacks met with Kate Pflaumer, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington. He says:

We met in her office and I asked her for the legal definition of terrorism pursuant to the laws of the United States. She asked what could she do for me. I said “Prosecute me for violating U.S. Iraq sanctions by bringing medicine there.” She said, “I won’t do that for you! Can I help in any other way?” I asked for the U.S. legal definition of terrorism. She pulled out a law book, had her secretary copy the page for me, and didn’t forget my request. When she left office, she wrote the op-ed on June 21, 2001… calling U.S. Iraq policy terrorism! The two main elements relevant to the issue here are: (1) it is an act dangerous to human life; and (2) done apparently to coerce or intimidate a civilian population or a government (see 18 U.S.C. § 2331).

On June 21, 2001, Ms. Pflaumer, then the former U.S. Attorney, wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer the following:

The reality on the ground in Iraq is not contested. Thousands of innocent children and adult civilians die every month as a direct result of the 1991 bombing of civilian infrastructure: sewage treatment plants, electrical generating plants, water purification facilities. Allied bombing targets included eight multipurpose dams, repeatedly hit, which simultaneously wrecked flood control, municipal and industrial water storage, irrigation and hydroelectric power. [Four of seven major pumping stations were destroyed, as were 31 municipal water and sewerage facilities. Water purification plants were incapacitated throughout Iraq. We did this for “long term leverage.” These military decisions were sanctioned by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.]

In May 1996, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reaffirmed that the “price” of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was “worth it. ”

Article 54 of the Geneva Convention states: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population” and includes foodstuffs, livestock and “drinking water supplies and irrigation works.”

Tittle 18 U.S. Code Section 2331 defines international terrorism as acts dangerous to human life that would violate our criminal laws if done in the United States when those acts are intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.

Thus did Kate Pflaumer, in an act of conscience and upholding her legal obligation as an attorney, call the U.S a terrorist state. This probably never would have happened without the non-violent hammer of Bert Sacks, who over the years has made nine trips to Iraq with other brave and determined souls who are a credit to humanity. Messengers of love, truth, and compassion.

Despite their witness, such U.S. terrorism continues as usual.

We cannot let “nothing protest but mute statistics.” The first lesson in U.S. Terrorism 101 is to become people with hammers, and hammer out truth and justice for the world to hear. Bert Sacks has done this. We must follow suit.

Therein lies our only hope.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

29,934 Deaths 2,804,900 Injuries Following COVID Shots in European Database of Adverse Reactions

By Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | November 15, 2021

The European Union database of suspected drug reaction reports is EudraVigilance, and they are now reporting 29,934 fatalities, and 2,804,900 injuries, following COVID-19 injections.

A Health Impact News subscriber from Europe reminded us that this database maintained at EudraVigilance is only for countries in Europe who are part of the European Union (EU), which comprises 27 countries.

The total number of countries in Europe is much higher, almost twice as many, numbering around 50. (There are some differences of opinion as to which countries are technically part of Europe.)

So as high as these numbers are, they do NOT reflect all of Europe. The actual number in Europe who are reported dead or injured following COVID-19 shots would be much higher than what we are reporting here.

The EudraVigilance database reports that through October 19, 2021 there are 29,934 deaths and 2,804,900 injuries reported following injections of four experimental COVID-19 shots:

From the total of injuries recorded, almost half of them (1,311,861) are serious injuries.

“Seriousness provides information on the suspected undesirable effect; it can be classified as ‘serious’ if it corresponds to a medical occurrence that results in death, is life-threatening, requires inpatient hospitalisation, results in another medically important condition, or prolongation of existing hospitalisation, results in persistent or significant disability or incapacity, or is a congenital anomaly/birth defect.”

A Health Impact News subscriber in Europe ran the reports for each of the four COVID-19 shots we are including here. It is a lot of work to tabulate each reaction with injuries and fatalities, since there is no place on the EudraVigilance system we have found that tabulates all the results.

Since we have started publishing this, others from Europe have also calculated the numbers and confirmed the totals.*

Here is the summary data through November 6, 2021.

Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine Tozinameran (code BNT162b2, Comirnaty) from BioNTech/ Pfizer: 14,002 deaths and 1,266,500 injuries to 06/11/2021

  • 34,377   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 196 deaths
  • 37,779   Cardiac disorders incl. 2,050 deaths
  • 348        Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 31 deaths
  • 17,188   Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 10 deaths
  • 1,129     Endocrine disorders incl. 5 deaths
  • 19,593   Eye disorders incl. 30 deaths
  • 107,066 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 565 deaths
  • 324,554 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 3,983 deaths
  • 1,433     Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 74 deaths
  • 13,777   Immune system disorders incl. 72 deaths
  • 49,517   Infections and infestations incl. 1,517 deaths
  • 18,101   Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 217 deaths
  • 31,592   Investigations incl. 432 deaths
  • 8,709     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 243 deaths
  • 159,698 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 172 deaths
  • 1,080     Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 105 deaths
  • 217,201 Nervous system disorders incl. 1,500 deaths
  • 1,753     Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 50 deaths
  • 200        Product issues incl. 2 deaths
  • 23,195   Psychiatric disorders incl. 171 deaths
  • 4,438     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 221 deaths
  • 40,100   Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 5 deaths
  • 54,682   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 1,568 deaths
  • 59,950   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 123 deaths
  • 2,583     Social circumstances incl. 19 deaths
  • 3,002     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 40 deaths
  • 33,455   Vascular disorders incl. 601 deaths

Total reactions for the mRNA vaccine mRNA-1273(CX-024414) from Moderna: 8,196 deaths and 375,242 injuries to 06/11/2021

  • 7,867     Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 89 deaths
  • 12,009   Cardiac disorders incl. 881 deaths
  • 150        Congenital, familial and genetic disorders incl. 5 deaths
  • 4,533     Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
  • 326        Endocrine disorders incl. 3 deaths
  • 5,527     Eye disorders incl. 27 deaths
  • 31,082   Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 317 deaths
  • 101,013 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 2,904 deaths
  • 612        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 36 deaths
  • 3,605     Immune system disorders incl. 14 deaths
  • 13,769   Infections and infestations incl. 727 deaths
  • 7,861     Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 152 deaths
  • 6,833     Investigations incl. 136 deaths
  • 3,556     Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 195 deaths
  • 45,788   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 163 deaths
  • 496        Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 60 deaths
  • 64,074   Nervous system disorders incl. 802 deaths
  • 696        Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 7 deaths
  • 71           Product issues incl. 2 deaths
  • 6,817     Psychiatric disorders incl. 139 deaths
  • 2,171     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 158 deaths
  • 7,439     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 7 deaths
  • 16,508   Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 872 deaths
  • 20,140   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 74 deaths
  • 1,693     Social circumstances incl. 35 deaths
  • 1,285     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 77 deaths
  • 9,321     Vascular disorders incl. 312 deaths

Total reactions for the vaccine AZD1222/VAXZEVRIA (CHADOX1 NCOV-19) from Oxford/ AstraZeneca: 5,973 deaths and 1,065,560 injuries to 06/11/2021

  • 12,976   Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 243 deaths
  • 18,819   Cardiac disorders incl. 676 deaths
  • 184        Congenital familial and genetic disorders incl. 7 deaths
  • 12,521   Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 2 deaths
  • 583        Endocrine disorders incl. 4 deaths
  • 18,723   Eye disorders incl. 29 deaths
  • 101,828 Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 306 deaths
  • 280,708 General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 1,426 deaths
  • 929        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 57 deaths
  • 4,646     Immune system disorders incl. 28 deaths
  • 31,579   Infections and infestations incl. 399 deaths
  • 12,147   Injury poisoning and procedural complications incl. 172 deaths
  • 23,340   Investigations incl. 142 deaths
  • 12,279   Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 88 deaths
  • 158,583 Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 92 deaths
  • 607        Neoplasms benign malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 21 deaths
  • 220,125 Nervous system disorders incl. 937 deaths
  • 504        Pregnancy puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 10 deaths
  • 183        Product issues incl. 1 death
  • 19,750   Psychiatric disorders incl. 58 deaths
  • 4,004     Renal and urinary disorders incl. 57 deaths
  • 14,909   Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 2 deaths
  • 37,574   Respiratory thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 707 deaths
  • 48,852   Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 48 deaths
  • 1,458     Social circumstances incl. 6 deaths
  • 1,343     Surgical and medical procedures incl. 25 deaths
  • 26,406   Vascular disorders incl. 430 deaths

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine JANSSEN (AD26.COV2.S) from Johnson & Johnson: 1,763 deaths and 97,598 injuries to 06/11/2021

  • 936        Blood and lymphatic system disorders incl. 38 deaths
  • 1,746     Cardiac disorders incl. 152 deaths
  • 35           Congenital, familial and genetic disorders
  • 964        Ear and labyrinth disorders incl. 1 death
  • 59           Endocrine disorders incl. 1 death
  • 1,290     Eye disorders incl. 6 deaths
  • 8,253     Gastrointestinal disorders incl. 73 deaths
  • 25,729   General disorders and administration site conditions incl. 469 deaths
  • 118        Hepatobiliary disorders incl. 11 deaths
  • 416        Immune system disorders incl. 9 deaths
  • 3,906     Infections and infestations incl. 137 deaths
  • 879        Injury, poisoning and procedural complications incl. 18 deaths
  • 4,611     Investigations incl. 99 deaths
  • 591        Metabolism and nutrition disorders incl. 44 deaths
  • 14,470   Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders incl. 42 deaths
  • 52           Neoplasms benign, malignant and unspecified (incl cysts and polyps) incl. 3 deaths
  • 19,444   Nervous system disorders incl. 191 deaths
  • 38           Pregnancy, puerperium and perinatal conditions incl. 1 death
  • 25           Product issues
  • 1,324     Psychiatric disorders incl. 16 deaths
  • 383        Renal and urinary disorders incl. 21 deaths
  • 1,928     Reproductive system and breast disorders incl. 6 deaths
  • 3,444     Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders incl. 225 deaths
  • 2,962     Skin and subcutaneous tissue disorders incl. 7 deaths
  • 303        Social circumstances incl. 4 deaths
  • 666        Surgical and medical procedures incl. 53 deaths
  • 3,026     Vascular disorders incl. 136 deaths

*These totals are estimates based on reports submitted to EudraVigilance. Totals may be much higher based on percentage of adverse reactions that are reported. Some of these reports may also be reported to the individual country’s adverse reaction databases, such as the U.S. VAERS database and the UK Yellow Card system. The fatalities are grouped by symptoms, and some fatalities may have resulted from multiple symptoms.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

False imagery and data hallmarks of COP26

By Vijay Jayaraj | CNS News | November 12, 2021

Mainstream media is infamous for its exaggeration of everyday events. When it comes to the issue of climate change, it rarely misses an opportunity to promote fear. True to form, during the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, media promoted incorrect information spewed by politicians and famous personalities.

Special attention was drawn to the assertion that rising sea levels are threatening island nations by none other than Barack Obama, who incongruously has purchased a multi-million-dollar ocean front property on the New England coast.

Catching the attention of millions was the image of a Tuvalu minister standing in knee-high sea water. But there is a problem with this: Most islands in the South Pacific nation of Tuvalu have gained surface area and are in no danger of being inundated.

Despite sea-level rise that has been underway since the end of the last ice age, Tuvalu’s land area has increased recently by 2.9 percent. A peer-reviewed research paper which studied four decades of shoreline change in all 101 islands in theTuvalu atolls categorically proves this. The paper notes that  “…change is analyzed over the past four decades, a period when local sea level has risen at twice the global average (~3.90 ± 0.4 mm.yr−1). Results highlight a net increase in land area in Tuvalu of 73.5 hectares (2.9%) despite sea-level rise and land area increase in eight of nine atolls.”

The case of Tuvalu is not unique. Various island nations have gained landmass in recent decades, including Maldives which increased by 37 square kilometers since 2000.

(Getty Images)

The climate doomsday machine has been using this image-based propaganda for a while now. National Geographic circulated an image of a starving polar bear and falsely claimed that the bear’s condition was a direct result of man-made climate change. However, polar bear populations are relatively healthy and have increased in recent decades. When exposed, the famous media channel issued a statement saying that the reason for the dismal condition of the bear is unknown and that it had exaggerated the climate impact.

At COP26, Bill Gates joined climate elites who resorted to a false representation of reality to promote climate fear. “Farmers in low-income countries are at high risk from the impacts of climate change,” said Gates. But a closer look at weather data and the state of global agriculture reveals a different picture.

The United Nations makes clear that there is no strong evidence that climate change is having a significant influence on the frequency of extreme weather events. IPCC AR5 WGI Chapter 2 states, “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.” When it comes to droughts, the report states that “… there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century.”

Consider India, a country with world’s largest number of low-income farmers. More than 500 million people depend either on agriculture or allied products. Of that total, 150 million depend only on agriculture — the equivalent of 40 percent of the U.S. population.

These farmers — with an average monthly income of less of $120 — depend on monsoon rainfall and there has been no climate signature on the monsoon rainfall trend. Nor has there been any increase in cyclones. In other words, there has not been any increased risk from climate change for India’s farmers. Another indicator of the absence of heightened risk is crop production. For four consecutive years, India has produced record food crops, higher than ever before in its history.

You would think that Gates would know something about agriculture and climate given that he  owns 242,000 acres of U.S.farmland and said to be the largest private owner of such acreage. However, it appears that the billionaire is at best ill-informed.

Though fancying themselves to be noble defenders of nature, these purveyors of doomsday scenarios are more akin to a cult’s priesthood offering commoners salvation in exchange for prosperity and freedom.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Why have we doctors been silent?

By Lucie Wilk | TCW Defending Freedom | November 15, 2021

AS an NHS hospital doctor, I have had a front-row seat as the drama of the coronavirus pandemic has unfolded. It has been a year and a half of confusion, frustration and anger for me as I’ve watched our profession drawn into complicity with what I anticipate will be regarded as one of the most egregious public health disasters in history.

I have watched as ‘the science’ has been presented on the national stage flanked by Union Jack flags as an unassailable truth. For something so apparently inviolable, it seems to shift and change disconcertingly from week to week, and for those of us looking beneath the pomp to the plain data, we see the rather unexciting (and unchanging) truth: the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, as it turns out, has a much lower infection fatality rate than early predictions. It is less deadly than the seasonal flu in children. The Office for National Statistics has reported the mean age of a Covid-attributed death in the UK to be 80.3 years, slightly older than deaths from other causes (78.2 years over the comparable time period).

What has been most upsetting for me has been the unquestioning compliance from the medical community as increasingly draconian, non-evidence-based and destructive virus control measures have been implemented. Some of the overt corruption, financial conflict of interests and politicisation has been laid bare in editorials in prominent medical journals such as the BMJ. But the vast majority of doctors have had no interest in asking questions or looking further.

My concern over our professional passivity turned to alarm as our compliance required us to support the roll-out of an experimental vaccine to a trusting population.

Contrary to the basic tenets of evidence-based medicine, pronouncing an experimental medical intervention ‘safe and effective’ now does not seem to require any peer-reviewed evidence of safety or clinically meaningful efficacy. The vaccines have not been shown in clinical trials to reduce transmission, hospitalisation or death. The phase 3 trials are not over and the safety data is not complete; the earliest trials will run into 2023.

The consent form for the Covid-19 vaccine does not disclose its status as an unlicensed experimental product. The risks remain largely unknown, although it is becoming clear that the vaccine has resulted in death or injury in a rising number of healthy people. A growing number of vaccine-induced syndromes are being recognised, including immune thrombotic thrombocytopaenia, myocarditis and menstrual irregularities, among many others being published in the literature. At the time of writing, there have been more than 380,000 reports, 1.2million injuries and 1,700 fatalities submitted under the MHRA Yellow Card scheme.

The Prime Minister himself has communicated the latest evidence, that two doses of the vaccine do not stop one contracting the virus, nor do they stop person-to-person transmission, they merely reduce the severity of symptoms. Despite this, it is clear the public are being subjected to a relentless media campaign of shame and coercion, that they must take this experimental product ‘for the greater good’ lest they be viewed as selfish cowards. A vaccine passport is now likely to be rolled out under ‘Plan B’, which proposes to return unlawfully usurped fundamental human rights and freedoms to only the vaccinated. Workers in the care home sector have had their livelihoods tethered to their compliance with the vaccine mandates, and a recent announcement confirms that this will soon include NHS employees. Not only is there no scientific basis for these mandates, these coercive actions breach the Nuremberg Code, as does the unprecedented lack of animal safety data for a novel medical product. A betrayal of the Nuremberg Code constitutes a crime against humanity.

It does not end there. The campaign marches on, and now includes the vaccination of children against a disease that has a statistically negligible chance of harming them. In the world of evidence-based medicine we doctors must weigh risks and benefits, we must ensure the risk of harm is far exceeded by the potential for protection or cure. In this case, with no real risk to healthy children from the infection, any harm is utterly unjustifiable. And the risk of harm is very real and measurable. Vaccine-related myocarditis is now a recognised injury, the risk inversely proportionate to age. Although rare, myocarditis can be fatal, and fatality is more common in the younger population. For reasons that have nothing to do with health, and despite the JCVI advisory board concluding that the health benefits do not outweigh the risks to children, the government is advising that we administer a medicine that carries a risk of serious injury to children who are healthy and who have no significant risk from the disease it purports to protect them against.

Despite all this, and despite our training to look at scientific literature and data with a critical eye, the silence from the medical community in the UK has been deafening. Yet we are the ones who should be shouting all of this from the rooftops. This is a duty of care and an oath we have forgotten.

It is typically those of us most conditioned by the expectations of society, utterly obedient and deferent to authority, who gain entry to medicine. One can see the path: we were good, compliant children and then good, compliant students. Now we are good, compliant doctors. I’m beginning to understand that goodness is measured in a different way, and obedience is not a virtue.

Obedience is learned through fear, threat and intimidation; it is in fact trauma programming and achieved through small control gestures when we were young and helpless. Now we are adults but still operating under these childhood programmes of beliefs and fears. We still feel helpless and beholden to a higher authority. We still submit to an authoritative decree even when it overrides our inherent moral compass.

The horrors of the classic Milgram experiment demonstrated that we live in a deeply traumatised culture, and the same conditioning, in my view, has shaped the medical community and its silence.

Even on the occasion when my counter-narrative evidence cannot be denied by a colleague, the usual response is: ‘It’s coming from the government; our hands are tied.’ But the truth is that most of the time doctors don’t want to see the evidence; their subconscious has prevented them seeing that the parent-like authorities of government, Sage and the MHRA, upon which we project a childlike trust, might be misguided, corrupted or dishonest.

And so we comment to each other on all the changes we are witnessing months into the vaccine roll-out: the unseasonal surge in hospital admissions, the post-jab autoimmune conditions and coagulation disorders, the numbers of ‘double-jabbed’ patients admitted with severe Covid infection, the numbers of lives ruined by lockdown and other Covid control policies. I challenge any doctor to deny that all of this simply feels wrong. To avoid this uncomfortable, authentic, human feeling – important information that should be acted upon – we will reach for something rote. ‘Anecdote is not evidence’ and ‘association is not causation’ will be the justification for carrying on, no questions asked, even though most of the damaging control measures implemented from on high were not based on any evidence at all. Meanwhile, an already struggling NHS has been damaged beyond repair by many of these policies. We are overwhelmed by the demand that we cannot meet, and the complexity of the crisis feels far beyond just one hospital Trust. The locus of responsibility to investigate remains above us and we wait for someone with more authority to come round and make sense of it.

And as we remain silent, the destruction continues.

Most of us went into medicine for the right reasons: to help the vulnerable, to reduce suffering. I know my colleagues are kind and well-intentioned and that their faith in our unelected public health policymakers is the result of a lifetime of conditioning. For those of us who have looked at the data and see the truth, I understand the fear: the risk of non-conformity is immense; careers, reputations and livelihoods are at stake. I recognise an even larger threat: a threat to our chosen profession, our life purpose, the possibility that we have been following a false god in our honest intentions to help the ill. We are at a difficult crossroads, but the choice for me is clear.

Although I am not on the front line in the ‘fight’ against coronavirus, and have had nothing to do with the vaccine campaign, I feel complicit in this public deception. I can no longer hide within a system that has proved itself to be weak-willed and unwilling to stand against the irrevocable erosion of inalienable human rights and freedoms in the name of public health safety. It is past the time for us to grow up, stand up and speak out.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 6 Comments

Here’s the real reason Comirnaty is not available

It’s all about liability. It will magically become available when the vaccine for children is fully approved, not before.

By Steve Kirsch | November 3, 2021

The reason Comirnaty isn’t available is because those shots would expose the company to liability since the fully-licensed product doesn’t have the liability waiver of the EUA product.

But once the Pfizer vaccine is fully approved in kids, then Pfizer gets liability waiver on all age groups due to a “feature” in federal law for child vaccines (NCVIA). At that time, they are done. They can market the COVID vaccine products under full approval for all age groups and face no liability when it kills or disables you.

This is why they are focused on the kids. This is why there is a reformulation at a 1/3 dose and they changed the buffer and the storage conditions (low temperatures not required). All of these will weaken the protection, but result in a safer vaccine (since it is ineffective).

But for the clinical trials on the 5-11 year olds, they did not use the formulation they approved in the meeting. This is known as bait and switch. So they used a more effective vaccine to show efficacy (in the trials they completed), then they get the FDA to approve the drug but with a change in formulation, then the product with the new buffer will go out to the public with the lower efficacy, but better safety. This is because they don’t want to jeopardize any adverse events happening until they are fully approved. So they basically use formula 1 for safety, get approval for formula 2 (safer, less effective), then roll out formula 2 under EUA.

They also arrange with the FDA and CDC to make sure no early treatment drugs get approved or recommended. This is why there is no movement on fluvoxamine, ivermectin, etc. since that would blow the EUA. Fluvoxamine is the best drug ever for COVID with a mortality reduction of 12X when taken early. It’s the best drug to date for COVID, but the CDC and NIH are deliberately burying it until the vaccines are fully approved. Then they’ll say, “ok, we have all the data.”

So at the end, Pfizer gets a fully approved vaccine with full liability protection. At that time, then the NIH can recognize other treatments.

This is how it is wired to go. Let’s be honest about it.

This is why nobody wants to debate our team about what is going on.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The Geniuses Are Locking Down Again

By Tom Woods | Principia Scientific International | November 15, 2021

Today someone shared the chart below, generated by the Financial Times. Try to pick out which one of these countries hasn’t implemented a vaccine passport system:

I’ll bet you know which one it is.

Meanwhile, parts of Europe are going back into lockdown.

Austria is locking down the one-third of the population that is unvaccinated.

The Netherlands is 72 percent fully vaccinated and is going into lockdown for everyone, vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of inanely blaming “the unvaccinated” for this, the robots on social media would at least admit that this isn’t how they expected it to go, and that there shouldn’t be this level of cases and deaths after the introduction of vaccines?

It’s like Sweden: we were supposed to believe that Sweden would have one of the worst death rates in the world because it ignored the so-called experts demanding lockdown.

Well, Sweden is currently #53 in the world for COVID death rate. Number fifty-three. Not one. Not two. Not ten. Not twenty. Fifty-three.

The crazies are still criticizing Sweden, naturally.

But my question is: when you were screaming hysterically at Sweden to lock down, did you think they’d end up all the way down at number 53 in the world in death rate?

Aren’t you the least bit curious about that? Is there a chance that if we hadn’t wrecked societies it wouldn’t have made any difference anyway?

Same with Florida: did the hysterics expect them to have one of the better rates of age-adjusted COVID mortality in the United States?

Of course not. They were warning that Florida would be one of the worst.

And yet in none of these cases can they bring themselves to say: thank goodness things turned out better than we predicted!

Instead, they just double down.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Negative Vaccine Effectiveness Isn’t a New Phenomenon – it Turned Up in the Swine Flu Vaccine

By Mike Hearn | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021

The Daily Sceptic has for some time been reporting on the apparent negative vaccine effectiveness visible in raw U.K. health data. Despite some age ranges now showing that the vaccinated are more than twice as likely to get Covid as the unvaccinated, this is routinely adjusted out, leading UKHSA to un-intuitively claim that the vaccines are still highly effective even against symptomatic disease. A recent post by new contributor Amaneunsis explains the Test Negative Case Control approach (TNCC) used by authorities and researchers to adjust the data, and demonstrates that while a theoretically powerful way to remove some possible confounders, it rests on an initially reasonable-sounding assumption that vaccines don’t make your susceptibility to infection worse:

A situation where this assumption may be violated is the presence of viral interference, where vaccinated individuals may be more likely to be infected by alternative pathogens.

Chua et al, Epidemiology, 2020

Amanuensis then compares results between the two different statistical approaches in a Qatari study to explore whether violation of this assumption is a realistic possibility and concludes that the multi-variate logistic regression found in their appendix supports the idea that viral interference can start happening a few months after initial vaccination.

What other angles can we explore this idea through? One way is to read the literature on prior epidemics.

H1N1

Between 2009-2010 there was a pandemic of H1N1 influenza, better known as Swine Flu. In April 2009 a small outbreak was detected in northern British Columbia. Researchers from Canada’s public health agencies researched the outbreak by doing interviews, testing and sero-surveys of the affected population. They were especially interested in the question of how effectively the routine trivalent influenza vaccine (TIV) was protecting people against H1N1.

The effect they saw was unexpected and previously unknown: people who had taken the flu vaccine had a more than doubled chance of getting sick with flu during the H1N1 outbreak:

We present the first observation of an unexpected association between prior seasonal influenza vaccination and pH1N1 illness … participants reporting pH1N1-related ILI during the period 1 April through 5 June 2009 were more than twice as likely to report having previously received seasonal influenza vaccine.

Janjua et al, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2010

This result was shocking to the researchers. They were well aware of the impact these results could have on public support for the influenza vaccine programme and thus they didn’t merely double check their results, or request another team replicate their findings. They waited a year and a half, until six different investigations were all saying the same thing:

Canadian investigators thus embarked on a series of confirmatory studies… these showed 1.4–2.5- fold increased risk of medically attended, laboratory-confirmed pH1N1 illness among prior 2008–2009 TIV recipients… 6 observational studies based on different methods and settings, including the current outbreak investigation, consistently showed increased risk of pH1N1 illness during the spring and summer of 2009 associated with prior receipt of the 2008–2009 TIV

After the sixth study they seem to have accepted that the effect they were seeing was real.

One reason for their hesitation was that studies reported in other countries were inconclusive. Some suggested protective effects; nearly as many suggested no effect at all, and one other report showed increased risk. However, there was a very real risk of the so-called ‘file drawer’ problem, where inconvenient research simply doesn’t get published at all, and the Canadians had by this point made an enormous effort to make the conclusions go away via further research. The follow-up investigations left them with a high degree of confidence in what they were seeing, thus they explained contradictory foreign studies as being likely a result of either Canada-specific factors or flawed studies:

Findings of pH1N1 risk associated with TIV – consistent in Canada but conflicting elsewhere – may have been due to methodological differences and/or unrecognised flaws, differences in immunisation programs or population immunity, or a specific mechanistic effect of Canadian TIV. High rates of immunisation and the use of a single domestic manufacturer to supply >75% of the TIV in Canada may have enhanced the power within Canada to detect a vaccine-specific effect.

Quality analysis

How robust is this research? This is an epidemiological study and by now it’s worth being extremely sceptical of such papers, even if they run counter-narrative. Surprisingly, this paper seems quite good. It’s not written by epidemiologists and bears little resemblence to the sort of modelling papers that now dominate policy making. In particular, it:

  • Makes no predictions, only studies past events to learn from them.
  • Puts actual boots on the ground to gather the data they need.
  • Correlates self-reported symptoms with a sero-survey.
  • Makes restrained use of statistical methods (the primary results are a standard logistic regression).
  • Controls for age, chronic conditions, Aboriginal status and household density, a selection which looks reasonable (the epidemic affected an Aboriginal reserve and they differ from the normal Canadian population health wise in several aspects).
  • Stratifies by age. Note that Swine Flu was the opposite of COVID: it affected the young worse than the elderly.
  • Honestly discusses the weaknesses of their study, which are primarily due to the small size of the epidemic rather than anything they could have addressed.

If there are errors in this work they are of a type that aren’t easily spotted by outsiders. Although we should give a tip of the hat to this team, after reading so many absurd public health papers over the past two years it’s nonetheless hard to escape the feeling that when researchers are about to violate some tenet of vaccine dogma they suddenly become model scientists, presumably in the hope that by applying higher standards they’ll find a reason why their results are wrong.

Other investigations

In 2018 Rikin et al published a study in the journal Vaccine designed to solve “the misperception that inactivated vaccine can cause influenza” which was acting as “a barrier to influenza vaccination“. They concluded that the folk intuition they were fighting wasn’t actually wrong in any meaningful way, due to the presence of viral interference:

Among children there was an increase in the hazard of [acute respiratory illness] caused by non-influenza respiratory pathogens post-influenza vaccination compared to unvaccinated children during the same period. Potential mechanisms for this association warrant further investigation. Future research could investigate whether medical decision-making surrounding influenza vaccination may be improved by acknowledging patient experiences, counseling regarding different types of ARI, and correcting the misperception that all ARI occurring after vaccination are caused by influenza.

Rikin et al, Vaccine, 2018

Although the paper claims that the mechanisms warrant further investigation, in reality at least one mechanism had been hypothesised as far back as 1960. In a seminal paper Thomas Francis Jr. coined the term “original antigen sin” to describe the way the immune system appears to prefer re-manufacturing antibodies for antigens similar to those it’s seen before, versus developing new antibodies customised for a slightly different invader. The odd name may be due to Francis Jr. having a Presbyterian priest as a father, thus OAS is sometimes summarised as “the first flu is forever”. This imprinting process can cause the immune system to misfire when challenged with a similar but different virus.

Some evidence for this comes from a 2017 review paper in the Journal of Infectious Diseases titled “The Doctrine of Original Antigenic Sin”, which stated:

Approximately 40 years ago, it was observed that sequential influenza vaccination might lead to reduced vaccine effectiveness (VE). This conclusion was largely dismissed after an experimental study involving sequential administration of then-standard influenza vaccines. Recent observations have provided convincing evidence that reduced VE after sequential influenza vaccination is a real phenomenon.

Monto et al, Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2017

Amusingly, the paper also states that, “Hoskins et al concluded at that time that prior infection is more effective than vaccination in preventing subsequent infection, an observation that remains undisputed.” How times change.

Speculating for a moment, viral interference might explain why despite influenza vaccines being advertised as having positive efficacy multiple studies have failed to find any impact on mortality at the population level (effectiveness). For example, in 2004 a U.S. government study concluded that they “could not correlate increasing vaccination coverage after 1980 with declining mortality rates in any age group” and “observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit”. This is difficult to reconcile with trials and studies showing efficacy at sizes smaller than overall population, but could be explained if vaccines merely redirect immune resources towards one pathogen away from equally dangerous variants. The same phenomenon was found in Italy.

There are also counter-studies. By 2018 awareness was growing of the problem of viral interference and the impact it can have on TNCC effectiveness metrics. In 2020 Wolff published a study of flu outbreaks in the U.S. military. It opens by confirming the problem highlighted by Amanuensis:

The virus interference phenomenon goes against the basic assumption of the test-negative vaccine effectiveness study that vaccination does not change the risk of infection with other respiratory illness, thus potentially biasing vaccine effectiveness results in the positive direction.

Wolff, Vaccine, 2020

This time “receipt of influenza vaccination was not associated with virus interference among our population”. However the results of this study are rather contradictory and confusing, e.g. it also says “Examining non-influenza viruses specifically, the odds of both coronavirus and human metapneumovirus in vaccinated individuals were significantly higher when compared to unvaccinated individuals (OR = 1.36 and 1.51, respectively)”. Overall, Wolff seems to have found a mixed bag of effects in which the vaccines worked against influenza, but made some other viruses easier to catch and still others harder.

Analysis

Despite the institutional pedigree of the Canadian public health researchers reporting the problem, other researchers have struggled to accept it. They are subject to the same systematic social conditioning as everyone else, which is why the HSA’s explanation of why they use the TNCC methodology starts by simply saying “vaccines work”, even though their raw data actually shows the exact opposite – for the original definition of “work”, at least.

As a consequence researchers sometimes hide this problem when it arises by deleting negative effectiveness from data sets or models. Recently UCL modellers responded to the changing UK data by simply imposing a zero lower bound. No justification was given for this, and as the above papers show, presumably no literature survey was done to sanity-check this “fix”. The Qatari study initially also did this, and thus their key results (see table 2) vary wildly between initial and final versions. Fortunately, they realised that this was not scientific and changed their approach before publication.

The problem seems to go like this: everyone knows vaccines work, thus data showing they don’t must be in error and in need of fixing. Different adjustments are tried for confounders (sometimes real, sometimes hypothetical) until the data comes good, at which point the results are published and the idea that vaccines work is reinforced, leading to a greater propensity to view opposing data as flawed and in need of correction… ad infinitum.

The raw data now departs so seriously from the conclusions drawn from it that it would require a staggeringly huge behavioural change between the two camps to explain, one which stretches credulity past breaking point. The argument that the data requires adjustment/replacement due to speculated behavioural differences has another problem: that’s a sword that cuts in both directions. UKHSA is keen to stress that its raw data shows some effectiveness against hospitalisation. But that data is hopelessly confounded at this point by the fact that vaccine recipients are being told, in no uncertain terms, that while they might well get sick with Covid after taking it, the vaccine means their case won’t be “severe” and they definitely won’t need to go to hospital. “Severe” is a vague standard. Because Covid has a wide range of severities there will be many borderline cases where going to hospital is effectively a choice that could go either way.

Opinion polling shows consistently that governments and media have catastrophically failed to educate the population about Covid correctly: people routinely estimate that the unvaccinated infection:fatality ratio is orders of magnitude higher than it really is. In a recent French survey the population estimated the IFR at an astounding 16% (the true level is closer to 0.1%-0.3%) and their understanding of severity has got worse over time. If you previously believed that you had a 16% chance of dying if you got Covid, you were very likely to rush to hospital immediately on presentation of more or less any Covid-like symptoms. If you now believe that the vaccine reduces this risk to negligible levels then you’re very unlikely to bother unless you become quite seriously sick indeed, because to do so would effectively be a repudiation of the advice of government, scientific and medical authority. And if there’s one behavioural difference between the vaccinated and unvaccinated that is more plausible than any other, it’s that the vaccinated are self-selecting for strong faith in scientific claims by authority figures. I’ve not yet seen any recognition by public health that this confounder exists – they are literally telling people what to do, and then declaring victory when people do it. If hospitalisation was 100% a force of nature that involved no element free will this wouldn’t matter, but the 50% drop in A&E admissions at the start of lockdown showed quite clearly that it’s not.

Conclusions

Negative effectiveness is important because if a vaccine halves your risk of getting one virus but doubles your risk of getting a closely related virus, you can end up back at square one. In fact, you’d end up in a worse position than when you started because vaccination programmes aren’t free: they consume enormous resources, both financially and in terms of public health staffing, and cause collateral damage via vaccine injuries (hence why vaccine manufacturers refuse to accept liability for harm caused by their products). It’s therefore of critical importance to understand the gestalt effect of vaccination on the immune system, and not merely on the specific variant of a virus that was originally targeted.

The fact that papers published as recently as 2018 are talking about negative vaccine effectiveness as a new, not really understood effect should give governments serious pause for thought. Most people in public health are clearly unfamiliar with this phenomenon – as indeed we all are – and are thus tempted to either ignore it, delete it from their data, or try to convince the public that it must be a statistical artefact and anyone talking about it is guilty of spreading “misinformation”. The reports in these papers provide recent evidence that vaccines making epidemics worse is in fact a real phenomenon and that it has been previously detected by serious researchers who took every effort to avoid that conclusion.

Nonetheless, despite my harsh words about IFR education above, we must acknowledge that the UKHSA is so far standing by the basic moral and foundational principles of public statistics. Their answer to the confounders and denominators debate is clearly written, straightforward, reasonable and ends by saying:

We believe that transparency – coupled with explanation – remains the best way to deal with misinformation.

That’s absolutely true. The deep exploration of obscure but important topics by independent parties is possible in the U.K. largely because the HSA is not only publishing statistics in both raw and processed forms, but has continued to do so even in the face of pressure tactics from organisations like Full Fact and the so-called Office for Statistical Regulation (whose contribution to these matters has so far been quite worthless). England is one of the very few countries in the world in which this level of conversation is possible, as most public health agencies have long ago decided not to trust the population with raw data in useful form. While the outcomes may or may not be “increasing vaccine confidence in this country and worldwide”, as the HSA goes on to say, there are actually things more important than vaccines that people need confidence in – like government and society itself. Trustworthy and rigorously debated government statistics are a fundamental pillar on which democratic legitimacy and thus social stability rests. Other parts of the world should learn from the British government’s example.

Many questions now lie open:

  1. To what extent does negative effectiveness require viruses to be different? For example, is the difference between H1N1 and the flu strains targeted by the Canadian TIV bigger, smaller or the same as the gap between COVID Alpha and COVID Delta, as perceived by the immune system?
  2. Although highly suggestive, is this genuinely happening with COVID vaccines, or is raw negative effectiveness due to something else, e.g. a temporal artefact caused by splitting waves into two overlapping waves as effectiveness wears off, or indeed, due to lack of adjustments for factors that TNCC fixes even though it may introduce other problems?
  3. Should this cause health authorities to abandon TNCC as a methodology, despite its speed and cost advantages?

The fact that TNCC can artificially make vaccines appear more effective than they really are, and that this would actually have happened during the Swine Flu pandemic, should really be addressed at the highest levels before anyone uses terms like “misinformation” again.

Mike Hearn is a software engineer who between 2006-2014 worked at Google in roles involving data analysis.

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

The 1964 Coup in Brazil

Tales of the American Empire | November 11, 2021

In March 1963, American President John Kennedy proclaimed “We’ve got to do something about Brazil.” He said: “I think we ought to take every step that we can, be prepared to do everything that we need to do.” Kennedy believed Brazilian President Goulart was too friendly with anti-American radicals in Latin America. “Operation Brother Sam” was the code name given to Kennedy’s military plan to “prevent Brazil from becoming another China or Cuba.” After Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon Johnson instructed his staff to send a naval task force and aircraft to Brazil to support a coup organized by the CIA with Generals in the Brazilian military.

____________________________________

“Brazil Marks 50th Anniversary of Military Coup; James Hershberg; National Security Archive; April 2, 2014; https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSA…

November 15, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment