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Uprising in Guadeloupe

By David Montoute  | Fourth World | November 23, 2021

An insurrectional situation has emerged in Guadeloupe. Roads are closed, buildings set on fire, and clashes between demonstrators and security forces are raging. Many Guadeloupeans have decided that, against dictatorship, violence is a legitimate option. It is a violence directed against the so-called ‘health pass’ and against the mandatory vaccination of careworkers imposed upon this overseas territory by Metropolitan France.

In September, France had made it compulsory for all health workers, home carers, transport staff, medical students, firefighters, and all related personnel to have the Covid vaccine. This was accompanied with the requisitioning  of all Ivermectin stocks in order to force the deeply unpopular vaccine upon the people of Guadeloupe (as well as neighbouring Martinique). According to French government figures, only 33% of Guadeloupeans are vaccinated (versus 75% in Metropolitan France), with a simiar figure in Martinique. 

Tensions rose in October with the arrest of two demonstrators, one of them being Claudine Maraton, the general secretary of the UTS-UGTG (the trade union section of the General Workers Union of Guadeloupe). The UGTG had taken a leading position in the political opposition to the vaccine mandate, a position that the president of the Guadeloupe region also came to echo. As the conflict sharpened, the governing En Marche party’s MP for Guadeloupe began to describe the situation on the island as “quasi-insurrectional”, with opposition to the Covid regulations showing a “weakening state authority” on the island.

The Minister of Health, Olivier Véran seemed to recognise the fragility of France’s position, and decided to push back the deadline for the vaccination mandate to November 15th. But if November 15th marked the end of the ‘health emergency’ measures in most of the overseas territories, in Guadeloupe, it marked the start of an indefinite general strike, launched by a collective of trade union and citizen organisations against the mandatory injection of careworkers and the pass sanitaire. At a press conference at the Palais de la Mutualité in Pointe-à-Pitre, Maïté Hubert M’Toumo, the new General Secretary of the UGTG had already sounded the battle-cry: “From Monday, war is declared!”

“From September, the French state decided to renew hostilities […] all doctors and nurses can receive a notice prohibiting them from working. This means that from Monday, the French state which spoke of war has just declared war on us. The situation is catastrophic. Thousands of workers are affected, whom they want to shamelessly fire, without delay of challenge. We can’t accept that. It’s not possible. The Guadeloupeans are in danger and from the moment war is declared, we are obliged to respond. From Monday, war is declared, there will be nothing that will work, we must organise ourselves so that nothing functions: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday… every day! We have no choice, we must come together, all social and professional classes, all Guadeloupeans. From Monday there will be two camps: the camp of the French state which has decided to defile us and defile all who oppose their plans; and the other side that wants to protect the country in order to live in freedom. The French president said that vaccines are freedom, so freedom is conditioned on a vaccine, a vaccine that is not under control, a vaccine that generates more and more serious side effects. Is this freedom? It’s not possible. So from Monday, war is declared!”

Maïté Hubert M’Toumo

The Departmental Fire and Rescue Service (SDIS), also affected by the mandatory vaccination order, had come to assume a leading role in the protests. As the strike began on the 15th, fights broke out between firefighters and the elite gendarmes, When the gendarmes charged one group, the firefighters responded with jets of water. Other incidents between strikers and police triggered a wave of arrests as the Pointe-à-Pitre prosecutor’s office complained of “repeated threats to a law enforcement officer.” Maïté Hubert M’Toumo denounced the arrests in a public statement, calling them “a serious attack on a fundamental freedom which is the right to strike” and rallying “all members and activists to strengthen the picket lines”. Even as the government sent in hundreds of police and gendarme reinforcements, the strike hardened on the following weekend, with rioting breaking out in Pointe-à-Pitre and across the Island. Several gas stations were closed by protesters, and many motorists raided those that remained open, fearing the strike would impact fuel supplies. As the demonstrations and clashes escalated, shops and pharmacies were torched and looted, while schools, post offices and courts were shut down. Reports surfaced that protestors had broken into an arms depot in the island’s capital, Pointe-à-Pitre, and stolen rifles. Col Jean Pierre, of the gendarmerie at Pointe-à-Pitre, said some of the protesters had fired upon security forces. “We just don’t know how far this will still go,” the city’s mayor, Harry Durimel, told FranceInfo radio.

This weekend, Paris authorities began sending elite police and counterterrorism officers with armoured vehicles to Guadeloupe in a bid to stamp out the uprising. The police reinforcements set about dismantling protesters’ road barricades while the island’s authorities imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew until Tuesday morning. By Monday the police had arrested at least 38 people charged with looting and smashing shops.

Over the weekend, the main UGTG trade union called for continued protests. Meanwhile, Martinique has followed its neighbour’s example and gone on general strike against the measures dictated by Paris.

The cultural rejection 

Guadeloupe – like Martinique – has a deep-rooted history of anti-vaccine sentiment linked to distrust of the Paris government. Political scientist Pamela Obertan, who is helping to organise anti-mandate protests explains that Guadeloupeans “are descendants of slaves, and for us, control over our bodies is really important… The government wants to impose on us a medical experiment. We are still medical experiments.”

For decades, agriculture workers in Guadeloupe and Martinique were exposed to an endocrine-disrupting, carcinogenic pesticide called chlordecone. Around 95% of the population in these two islands is known to register chlordecone in their blood. Studies have linked the pesticide to prostate cancer, and, significantly, Guadeloupe and Martinique have the highest prostate cancer rates in the world. Yet nothing has been done about real health emergencies such as this one. And this goes a long way to explain the distrust towards the metropolis that is felt in the French Antilles. It is this context that has empowered vaccination-refusal, which is now turning into a nationalist and patriotic cause.

Accompanying this development, there is a longstanding usage and trust in folk medicine. As Guadeloupe’s University Hospital director lamented, the vaccine refusniks are “pushing Guadeloupian pharmacology.” From the start of the aggressive push for ”Covid” vaccination, sales of Virapic, a syrup based on the local jackass bitters herb, skyrocketed. This tropical shrub (Neurolaena lobata) is traditionally used for treatment of fever and flu symptoms, wounds and infections, and a variety of parasitic ailments such as malaria, ringworm, and amoebiasis. The plant has found a local champion in pharmacist Henry Joseph, co-founder of the laboratory Phytobokaz. Joseph, claims to have proven the plant’s efficacy against emerging RNA viruses and thus its relevance to ‘Covid-19′.

Whatever comes of such research, the island’s distrust in vaccines is unlikely to abate any time soon. The metropolitan government’s refusal to negotiate, together with the local suppression of data on vaccine deaths will continue to antagonise an already rebellious populace. According to lawyer Maître Ellen Bessis, the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Guadeloupe never declares vaccination status amongst any hospitalisations. This, she says allows them to register vaccinated deaths in Guadeloupe’s hospitals as unvaccinated, which is what she says is happening. Bessis’ claim is based on the extensive testimony of firefighters who, in Guadeloupe, share the job of transporting emergency cases to hospital. As the civil liberties organisation Rester Libre ! says,  “If this information were verified, it would be an absolute scandal: a statistical lie designed to hide the dangerousness of the vaccine. It would create a crisis of absolute confidence with the public authorities, and, therefore, all the figures, all the data, could be called into question.”

It is difficult to imagine how the execrable Macron government could possibly backtrack in this conflict, or provide any concessions for Guadeloupe. For to do so would undermine the mandate policy in metropolitan France. Yet the rebellion of the island population can only deepen, as Ellen Bessis affirms.

“We wonder what is going on in the mind of the government!” says Jocelyn Zou,  of the fire department’s union. “We Guadeloupeans have a notion of freedom. But they impose compulsory vaccination on us when alternative solutions exist. We have every motivation to fight to the end!”

France to send special forces to Guadeloupe after looting, arson:

RELATED:   Martinique and Guadeloupe: Ivermectin stocks are requisitioned to force vaccination

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | 1 Comment

What is happening in Australia’s Aboriginal communities?

OffGuardian | November 26, 2021

The last few days we have heard some alarming reports about how the Northern Territories of Australia are treating their indigenous communities.

Tweets and videos have emerged claiming aboriginal people are being removed from their land and sent to “quarantine centres”, allegedly to protect them from the virus.

Some representatives of the community have sent out videos asking for “international aid”, and claiming Aboriginal communities are being placed under “martial law” and people are being removed from their homes “at gunpoint”

At a protest against the measures, one aboriginal elder was violently arrested by officers witnesses claim were not wearing ID badges.

Another elder, June Mills, posted a video to facebook expressing concern about how difficult it is to get information out of the locked down communities. She says she has heard that the army is “removing people against their will”, ending with the emotive cry “they are killing us!”

Australia has been so rapidly descending into a fascist hellhole that none of this, if true, would be at all surprising. The very fact they have a huge quarantine camp they unironically refer to as “The Centre for National Resilience” should be a massive red flag for everyone.

Michael Gunner, Chief Minister of the Northern Territories, was a caricature of wide-eyed zealotry in a recent press conference. When asked whether vaccine mandates might alienate some people, even those already vaccinated he said:

If you support or give comfort to anybody who argues against the vaccine, you are an anti-vaxxer, I don’t care what your personal vaccination status is.”

The phrase “give comfort too” should alarm people, because it’s only ever used in warlike settings, discussing treason and collusion. “Giving comfort to the enemy“.

In another press conference, Gunner also announced a “hard lockdown” in aboriginal communities, meaning people are not allowed to leave their homes except for medical treatment or if required by law. Adding that people are being “removed” to quarantine centres in military trucks. Not just people diagnosed with “covid”, but “close contacts” too:

Police are going door to door in Aboriginal communities to “intensively engage” with those who do not want the “vaccine”.

All this is being sold in the mainstream as “concern” for communities which could be “extra vulnerable”.

Voices on social media – who are totally real, and not at all shills there to control the narrative – are claiming strict measures are necessary to protect indigenous Australians from Covid, because it would rip through their communities “like syphilis did to the Native Americans”. There is, so far, very little evidence to support this fear-mongering.

However, written statements, allegedly from people detained, are emerging online saying they are being well taken care of, and that “irresponsible” social media posts are “hurting people”.

Amnesty UK issued a press release condemning the moves, but this was swiftly countermanded by Amnesty Australia, and dismissed as “disinformation” in the press and by Michael Gunner as “conspiracy theorising” from “tinfoil hat-wearing tossers”.

Some other Australian states are already building quarantine camps specifically for Aboriginal communities.

South Australia announced a tender for these camps last week, with press coverage underlining they would be only for those people who are “unable to isolate at home”.

Whether genuinely well-intentioned or not, it can certainly be argued this is an example of massive governmental overreach, especially for a virus that is at worst a bad seasonal flu.

It’s a convoluted and complex situation, with the real facts being hard to establish. Whatever the reality, it’s a situation that bears close watching.

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 2 Comments

Are We Overreacting to Omicron?

BY PAUL ELIAS ALEXANDER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | NOVEMBER 26, 2021

With natural exposure immunity and early outpatient treatment and when combined with no reports of increased lethality, the WHO’s reaction of generating panic toward “Omicron” is causing needless fear and panic. So too with the Biden administration’s newly imposed travel restrictions, which will achieve nothing and will once again disrupt trade and violate human rights.

The WHO has said that the Omicron variant can spread more quickly than other variants. Likely true. The virus is behaving just like how viruses behave. They are mutable and mutate and via Muller’s ratchet, we expect this to be milder and milder mutations and not more lethal ones given the pathogen seeks to infect the host and not arrive at an evolutionary dead-end.

The virus will mutate downward so that it can use the host (us) to propagate itself via our cellular metabolic machinery. The Delta has shown us this: it is very infectious and mostly non-lethal. Especially for children and healthy people. So is the WHO panicking the globe needlessly? Is this Covid-19 February 2020 once again?

The problem with South Africa as is with Australia and New Zealand and even island nations like Trinidad is that it has low natural immunity to SAR-Cov-2. This is because, as we witnessed over the last year and more, if you lock down your society too long and too hard, you deny the nation and population from inching closer to population-level herd immunity. And you have no economy or society from which to  reemerge. You devastate your society for a pathogen that is largely harmless to the vast majority of people especially children.

Moreover, governments asked us for two weeks to flatten the curve to help prepare hospitals so that they can tend to surges and other non-Covid illnesses. We as societies gave our governments 2 weeks, not 21 months. They failed to tend to the non-Covid illnesses and we locked down the healthy and well (children and young and middle aged healthy persons) while failing to properly protect the vulnerable and high-risk persons such as the elderly. We failed and it was like killing fields in our nursing homes.

This failure rests on public health messaging and government. Additionally, what did our governments in the US, Canada, UK, Australia etc. do with the tax money for the hospitals and PPE etc.? Hospitals must be prepared by now. Governments have failed! Not the people. The Task Forces have failed, not the people.

These nations thought that they could stay locked down and wait for a vaccine. This is a reasonable view though I was against lockdowns as they would and did cause crushing harms on especially poor persons and children. The problem is there was an opportunity cost because the vaccine we were waiting on was suboptimally developed without the proper safety testing or assessment of effectiveness.

We have data that the Pfizer vaccine loses 40% of antibodies per month, meaning in 3 months post-shot, you have low effective vaccinal immunity. We see it clearly playing out now whereby you got to tamp down spread with the draconian lockdowns, but you did it at the cost of natural immunity. That is the opportunity cost. So we spent on getting the vaccine and it cost us natural immunity and thus herd immunity.

For example, the vaccine has failed to stop infection and spread against Delta. We have research findings by Singanayagam et al. (fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts), by Chau et al. (viral loads of breakthrough Delta variant infection cases in vaccinated nurses were 251 times higher than those of cases infected with prior strains early 2020), and by Riemersma et al. (no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections and if vaccinated individuals become infected with the delta variant, they may be sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission to others) that reveal the vaccines have very suboptimal efficacy.

This situation of the vaccinated being infectious and transmitting the virus has also emerged in seminal nosocomial outbreak papers by Chau et al. (HCWs in Vietnam), the Finland hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients), and the Israel hospital outbreak (spread among HCWs and patients). These studies have also revealed that the PPE and masking were essentially ineffective within the healthcare setting. All of the HCWs were double-vaccinated yet there was extensive spread to themselves and their patients.

In addition, Nordström et al. (vaccine effectiveness of Pfizer against infection waned progressively from 92% day 15-30 to 47% day 121-180, and from day 211 and onwards no effectiveness), Suthar et al. (a substantial waning of antibody responses and T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, at 6 months following the second immunization), Yahi et al. (with Delta variant, neutralizing antibodies have a decreased affinity for the spike protein, whereas facilitating antibodies display a strikingly increased affinity), Juthani et al. (higher numbers of patients with severe or critical illness in those who received the Pfizer vaccine), Gazit et al. (SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant, and substantially elevated risk of symptomatic Covid and hospitalization), and Acharya et al. (no significant difference in cycle threshold values between vaccinated and unvaccinated, asymptomatic and symptomatic groups infected with Delta) collectively reveal the poor efficacy and even negative efficacy of the Covid vaccines. Levine-Tiefenbrun et al. reports that the viral load reduction effectiveness declines with time after vaccination, “significantly decreasing at 3 months after vaccination and effectively vanishing after about 6 months.”

As an example, the Swedish study (retrospective with 842,974 pairs (N=1,684,958) is particularly alarming for it shows that while the vaccine provides temporary protection against infection, the efficacy declines below zero and then to negative efficacy territory at approximately 7 months, underscoring that the vaccinated are highly susceptible to infection and eventually become highly infected (more so than the unvaccinated). A further example emerges from Ireland whereby reporting suggests that the Waterford city district has the State’s highest rate of Covid-19 infections, while the county also boasts the highest rate of vaccination in the Republic (99.7% vaccinated). Reports are that the U.S. Covid-19 deaths for 2021 surpassed the deaths from 2020, leading some to state that “more people have died from COVID-19 in 2021, with most adults vaccinated and nearly all seniors), than in 2020 when nobody was vaccinated.”

Thus these nations that locked down and stayed that way are in a quandary for they do not know what to do now. If you open you will get surges in infection. Where is the money that was to go to hospital preparation? Did governments embezzle and steal and misappropriate the money for the hospitals remain still not prepared?

We have a lot of natural immunity in the US, e.g. near 65-70% of the population. The open states (those that did not lock down too long and too hard and opened quickly) will likely do very well with this Omicron or any new variant. This also is the power of natural immunity.

And we need not forget the potency of the overlooked ‘innate’ immunity with the innate antibodies and innate natural killer cellular compartment. This innate response is particularly potent in children (our first line of defense against pathogens) and is what has spared children from Covid and how children typically stave off pathogens, especially young children still laying down immunological memory.

Moreover, there is no reporting of increased virulence/lethality of this new Omicron variant. As yet this will remain the case based on Delta and prior variants. There are no guarantees but we operate based on risk and all things point to the same for this new variant.

Just because there is a wave in SA does not mean that there will be waves in the US or Israel or other places with greater natural immunity. This was the prize of letting people enjoy day-to-day living. The nations that have ended lockdowns are likely to move past this new variant scare, and be fine. This is more of an overreaction by the WHO and governments and much ado about nothing.

Dr Alexander holds a PhD. He has experience in epidemiology and in the teaching clinical epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and research methodology. Dr Alexander is a former Assistant Professor at McMaster University in evidence-based medicine and research methods; former COVID Pandemic evidence-synthesis consultant advisor to WHO-PAHO Washington, DC (2020) and former senior advisor to COVID Pandemic policy in Health and Human Services (HHS) Washington, DC (A Secretary), US government; worked/appointed in 2008 at WHO as a regional specialist/epidemiologist in Europe’s Regional office Denmark, worked for the government of Canada as an epidemiologist for 12 years, appointed as the Canadian in-field epidemiologist (2002-2004) as part of an international CIDA funded, Health Canada executed project on TB/HIV co-infection and MDR-TB control (involving India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Afghanistan, posted to Kathmandu); employed from 2017 to 2019 at Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) Virginia USA as the evidence synthesis meta-analysis systematic review guideline development trainer; currently a COVID-19 consultant researcher in the US-C19 research group

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Bad Science Publishing: Retractions And Predatory Journals On The Rise

By Jack Dini | Principia Scientific International | November 26, 2021

Hundreds of articles published in peer reviewed journals are being retracted after scammers exploited the processes for publishing special issues to get poor quality papers—sometimes consisting of complete gibberish– into established journals.

In some cases, fraudsters posed as scientists and offered to guest edit issues that they then filled with sham papers. (1)

Elsevier is withdrawing 165 articles currently in press and plans to retract 300 more that have been published as part of 6 special issues in one of its journals, and Springer Nature is retracting 62 articles published in a special issue of one journal.

Fraudsters have been caught several times in recent years while trying to use special issues as a way to get low quality papers published in legitimate journals—but the number of affected paper seems to be increasing. In some cases the evidence points to an organized network that tries to infiltrate scientific journals with the objective of easily publishing manuscripts from pseudo-scientists or less productive researchers who want to appear in respectable journals. (1)

This leads to the topic of predatory journals which are becoming a serious nuisance in science. They actively masquerade as legitimate journals, often with similar layouts and names—although they very likely have essentially zero threshold for publication, despite typically claiming to operate with rigorous peer review processes. These predatory journals are undermining the credibility of scientific publishing because the research they publish appears to be largely unvetted. (2)

Predatory Journal Examples

Big Birds

Assistant zoology professor Daniel Baldassarre at SUNY Oswego published a paper in a supposedly scientific journal, The Scientific Journal of Research and Reviews (Iris Publishing), with the following abstract:

“Many people wonder: what’s the deal with birds? This is a common query. Birds are pretty weird. I mean, they have feathers. Most other animals don’t have feathers. To investigate this issue, I looked at some birds. I looked at a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. They were all pretty weird! In conclusion, we may never know the deal with birds, but further study is warranted.” The paper’s acknowledgments: “We thank Big Bird from Sesame Street for comments on the manuscript. Several trained monkeys transcribed videos.” (3)

Iris Publishing is part of a much larger problem of journals that publish low-quality research for exorbitant fees. These journals will often spam scientists with requests for submissions or asking them to be on their editorial boards.

Ottawa Citizen Experience

In the three years since the Ottawa Citizen started covering fake science publishers, the constant question had been: how bad can they get?

Then, the Indian company OMICS (a giant company, 700 online journals, in Hyderabad) set a new low. It published meaningless garbage submitted as a test by the Ottawa Citizen the previous fall, then got exposed for it, but then once again accepted the same garbage all over again. Verbatim. (4)

Jerry Seinfeld’s Disease

John McCool submitted a paper on Jerry Seinfeld’s imaginary disease, ‘uromycitsis poisoning’. It was accepted for publication even though a simple Google search for ‘uromycitisis’ returns thousands of references to Seinfeld. (5)

Fake Editor-In-Chief

Polish researchers created a profile of a fictitious scientist named Anna O. Szust and applied on her behalf to the editorial boards of 360 journals. Oszust is the Polish word for ‘a fraud.’ They gave her fake scientific degrees and credited her with spoof book chapters. In many cases, they received a positive response within days of application and often within hours. Four titles immediately appointed Szust editor-in-chief. Forty predatory and eight directory of open access journals appointed her as an editor. (6)

Concluding Comments

The number of predatory journals has increased at an alarming rate. By 2015, more than half a million papers had been published in predatory journals, and at the end of 2016, the number of predatory journals approached about 10,000. Predatory publishing is becoming an organized industry. As of June 2020, there were 13,000.

Gary Lewis reports, “In a nutshell, predatory journals are contaminating the scientific literature by providing ostensibly rigorous reports of studies that in reality are often far from acceptable. Work published in such journals is occasionally used in serious public debates, such as climate change. They present a serious credibility for science.” (2)

Scientists are trying to make others aware of these journals. Daniel Baldassarre hopes that papers like his will spread awareness of the existence of these predatory journals and what they look lie, and hopefully get people to stop publishing in them. (3)

References

1. Holly Else, “Scammers impersonate guest editors to get sham papers published,,” nature.com, November, 20212.

2. Gary Lewis, “I got a hoax paper published about how politicians wipe their butts,” realclearscience.com, July 23, 2018

3. Ryan F. Mandelbaum, “Sketchy science journal publishes article titled – What’s the deal with birds?” gizmodo.com, April 17, 2020

4. Tom Spears, “Fake science publisher accepts (again) a paper already exposed as a ‘pile of dung’”, ottawacitizen.com, June 1, 2017

5. John H. McCool, “Opinion: why I published in a predatory journal,” The Scientist, April 6, 2017

6. Piotr Sorokowski et al, “Predatory journals recruit fake editor,” Nature, 543, 481-483 (2017)

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Space: The U.S. Has Questions for Russia, Which Has More for the U.S.

By Vladimir Kozin – Member, Russian Academy of Military Sciences, Moscow, November 22, 2021

On November 15, 2021, the Russian Ministry of Defense carried out the successful destruction of the discontinued and decommissioned national spacecraft named “Tselina-D”, which was put into orbit back in 1982. The head of the Russian Defense Ministry, Sergei Shoigu, confirmed that the Russian Aerospace Forces had indeed successfully destroyed this satellite with pinpoint accuracy.

The fragments formed after knocking down this spacecraft do not pose any threat to either orbital stations or other satellites, or generally speaking to the space activities of any state. This is well known to all space powers that have fairly effective national technical means of verification and control of outer space, including the USA.

After the destruction of the named satellite, its fragments moved along trajectories outside the orbits of other operating space vehicles, have been under constant observation and monitoring from the Russian side and are included in the main catalogue of the space activities.

Prediction of any possible dangerous situations calculated after each orbital movement over the Earth has been made in connection with the accompanied debris and newly discovered fragments after the destruction of the “Tselina-D” satellite with operating spacecraft and the International Space Station or ISS “Mir”. The Russian Ministry of Defense reported that the ISS orbit is 40-60 km below the fragments of the destroyed “Tselina-D” satellite and there is no threat to this station. According to the results of the calculation of any possible threats, there are no approaches to it in the near future.

Earlier, Anthony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, said that Russia’s test of an anti-satellite system used in this case jeopardized the safety of space research.

Moscow corrected his untenable judgment. “This event was carried out in strict accordance with international law, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and was not directed against anyone,” the Russian Foreign Ministry official spokesperson said. Russian Foreign Ministry also repeated that the fragments formed as a result of the test do not pose a threat and do not interfere with the functioning of orbital stations, spacecraft, as well as the entire space activities in general.

Washington has clearly forgotten that Russia is not the first country to hold such actions. The United States, China, and India have the capabilities to destroy spacecraft in space, having previously successfully tested their own anti-satellite assets versus their own satellites.

Precedents of destruction

They were announced by the named states at the relevant time.

In January 2007, the PRC conducted a test of a ground-based anti-missile system, during which the old Chinese meteorological satellite “Fengyun” was destroyed. This test led to the formation of a large amount of space debris. It should be noted that on November 10 of this year, the ISS orbit was corrected in order to avoid the wreckage of this Chinese satellite.

In February 2008, with the interceptor missile of the United States sea-based missile defense system “Standard-3”, the American side destroyed its “USA-193” reconnaissance satellite that had lost control at an altitude of about 247 km. The launch of the interceptor missile was carried out from the Hawaiian Islands area from the U.S. Navy cruiser Lake Erie, equipped with the Aegis combat information and control system.

In March 2019, India also successfully tested an anti-satellite weapon. The defeat of the “Microsat” satellite was carried out by the upgraded “Pdv” interceptor.

Earlier, the USSR has called, and now Russia has been calling for space powers for decades to legally consolidate at the international level a ban on the militarization of outer space by preventing an arms race in it and refusing to deploy any strike weapons in it.

In 1977-1978, the Soviet Union held official negotiations with the United States on anti-satellite systems. But as soon as the American delegation heard about Moscow’s desire to identify potential types of hostile activities in space that should be banned, including similar systems in question, it initiatively interrupted them after the fourth round of talks and decided not to participate in such a negotiation process anymore.

A fundamentally important clarification: since that time, Washington has not held and does not intend to hold such negotiations with any state in the world.

Moreover, the updated draft of an international treaty on the prevention of the deployment of weapons in outer space proposed by Moscow and Beijing is regularly blocked by Washington at the UN and at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Back in 2004, Russia unilaterally committed itself not to be the first to deploy weapons in space, and in 2005, a similar commitment was made by the Collective Security Treaty Organization member states involving a number of nations of the former USSR.

In total, since the beginning of the space age, which began with the launch of the first artificial satellite called “Sputnik” by the Soviet Union in October 1957, Moscow has jointly or independently put forward about 20 different initiatives in the international arena to prevent an arms race in outer space.

Alas, all of them were successfully blocked by the United States and its NATO partners. Anthony Blinken seems to have forgotten about it.

Washington also ignores the recognition of the American Center for Strategic and International Studies, located in the American capital, whose report in April 2018 recognized that “the United States remains a leader in the use of space for military purposes.”

Against this background, Russia is implementing a purposeful and adequate policy to strengthen the country’s defense capability, including in the space sphere, taking into account, among other things, many additional circumstances.

X-37B with specific tasks

What are they? Russia takes into account that the United States is taking concrete practical steps to steadily increase its combat strike space potential.

Work is actively underway to create a space-based missile defense network, develop and operate systems with ground-based, sea-based and air-based interceptor missiles, electronic warfare, directed energy weapons, including testing an unmanned reusable space shuttle X-37B, which has a spacious cargo compartment on board. It is claimed that such a platform is capable of carrying a payload of up to 900 kg.

It is currently carrying out its sixth long-duration orbital flight. His space brother, who made his fifth flight in space in 2017-2019, continuously flew in spacet for 780 days.

Officially, the United States claims that this unmanned spacecraft performs the tasks of running-in technologies of reusable space platforms. At the same time, initially, when the X-37B was first launched in 2010, it was indicated that its main function would be the delivery of certain “cargo” into orbit. Only it was not explained: what kind of cargo? However, all these messages are just a legend to cover up military tasks that this device has been performed in space.

On the basis of the existing military-strategic space doctrines, specific tasks are prescribed for the U.S. intelligence community and the Pentagon.

Among them are made as conducting operations in space, from space and through it to contain conflicts, and in case of failure of deterrence – to defeat any aggressor, as well as ensuring the protection and preservation of vital interests of the United States together with allies and partners. It is obvious that in order to carry out such operations, the Pentagon will need special reusable platforms in space, which indicates a promising process of its further militarization by the Pentagon without any restrictions.

According to some military experts, the plausible purpose of this device is to test technologies for a future space interception, which allows inspecting alien space objects and, if necessary, disabling them with anti-satellite systems with various functions, including with ‘hit-to-kill’ kinetic characteristics.

This is confirmed by the statement of the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, Barbara Barrett, who in May 2020 told reporters that during the current sixth X-37B space mission, a number of experiments will be conducted to test the possibility of converting solar energy into radio frequency microwave radiation, which later can be transmitted to Earth in the form of electricity. It is very questionable explanation.

So, what has this device actually been doing and continues to do in space for so many years? Obviously, since this space platform was created by the Boeing Corporation with direct participation in its financing and development by the American Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, and it is operated by the U.S. Air Force, the tasks of the X-37B are by no means related to the peaceful exploration of outer space.

Some experts believe that such devices can be used to deliver missile defense and anti-satellite systems. Yes, it is not excluded.

It is noteworthy that the operation of this American spacecraft for a long time has caused concern not only on the part of Russia and China, but also on the part of some U.S. allies in NATO regarding its possible role as a space weapon and a platform for delivering space strike weapons, including nuclear warheads to be housed in X-37B cargo compartment.

A special experiment

The X-37B can perform up to ten secret tasks.

One of them fulfilled recently should be mentioned in particular.

It is noteworthy that in the twenties of October 2021, the separation of a small spacecraft at high speed from the fuselage of this “shuttle”, which does not have the ability to conduct radar surveillance, was recorded from the X-37B that is currently moving in space, which indicates that the Pentagon is testing a new type of space-based weapon. It is obvious that this kind of activity of the United States is not compatible with the stated goals of the peaceful use of outer space.

The separation of the named space object was preceded by the maneuvering of the X-37 the day before.

From October 21 to 22, the separated space vehicle was located at a distance of less than 200 meters from the X-37B, which subsequently performed a maneuver to move away from the separated new spacecraft.

Based on the results of processing objective information, it was found that the spacecraft was stabilized, and no elements were found on its body characterizing the presence of antennas that could provide the possibility of conducting radar surveillance. At the same time, the facts of the approach of the separated new spacecraft with other space objects or the performance of orbital maneuvers have not been revealed.

Thus, according to the Russian side, the United States conducted an experiment to separate a small spacecraft with high speed from the X-37B, which indicates the testing of a new type of space-based weapon.

Such actions of the American side are assessed in Moscow as a threat to strategic stability and are incompatible with the stated goals of the peaceful use of outer space. Moreover, Washington intends to use outer space as an area for the potential deployment of space-to-space weapons against various objects in orbit, as well as in the form of space-to-surface weapons in the form of space-based strike weapons that can be used to attack from space various ground-based, air-air-based and sea-based targets located on the planet.

Current U.S. space policy

Since 1957, all American presidents, without exception, have been actively engaged in the militarization and weaponization of outer space. In recent years, the most notable breakthrough in this direction has been made by the ex-Republican President Donald Trump.

On March 23, 2018, he approved the updated National Space Strategy. On June 18 of the same year, he gave a specific instruction to the Pentagon to create a Space Force as a full-fledged sixth brunch of the country’s Armed Forces, while emphasizing the undesirability to have Russia and China as leading nations in space. On December 9, 2020, the White House additionally announced a new National Space Policy. On December 20, 2019, the beginning of the creation of the U.S. Space Force was announced.

In these military-strategic doctrines, three fundamental views of the American military-political leadership on the use of outer space for military purposes have been publicly announced.

First, it was proclaimed that the United States intended to single-handedly dominate in space.

Secondly, it was stated that they should maintain “peace from a position of strength” in outer space.

Thirdly, it was stated that space in Washington’s views is becoming a potential arena for military operations.

These military-strategic doctrines, according to Washington are as reactions to the “growing threat” in space stemming from Russia and China.

The Pentagon will develop four priority areas of space activities to achieve the stated goals while countering the identified threats, potentials and challenges: (1) ensuring integrated military dominance in space; (2) the integration of military space power into national, joint and combined combat operations; (3) the formation of a strategic environment in the interests of the United States, as well as (4) the development of cooperation in outer space with allies, partners, the military-industrial complex and other ministries and departments of the United States.

The space strategy and policy of the current American administration led by President Joseph Biden is not much different from the space line followed by President Donald Trump.

After Joseph Biden took office as president in January this year, the United States continued to develop several types of space strike weapons, including in accordance with twelve programs for the use of outer space for military purposes, when six of them provide for the creation of various types of such systems, and on the basis of six others that will control for the orbital space grouping on the ground.

The Pentagon’s intelligence and information assets in space continue to be updated in full, as well as the financing of military space programs. For the fiscal year 2021, allocations for these purposes are set at $15.5 billion.

Some pro-Western Russian experts are in favor of developing some compromise proposals with the U.S. side on military space issues on the grounds that the United States is not ready to negotiate on military space issues. Such ideas pose a threat to the national security of the Russian Federation, if accepted.

And here’s why.

Various actions carried out so far by Washington on the militarization and weaponization of outer space indicate that the current American military and political leadership does not consider space to be the universal heritage of mankind, for the regulation of activities in which, obviously, agreed international legal norms and rules of responsible behavior are to be adopted.

The United States has long seen a diametrically opposite perspective – the transformation of outer space into a zone of active hostilities.

In fact, the United States has already created an enlarged Space Force with ambitious offensive tasks.

At the same time, such force relies on the active-offensive doctrine of deterring any potential adversaries in outer space, borrowed from the American strategy of nuclear deterrence, which provides for the first preventive and preemptive nuclear strike.

If in 2012 Washington announced the creation of the “Chicago triad” – a combined combat mechanism in the form of a mix of nuclear missiles, anti-missile components and conventional strike weapons, then it is quite obvious that the United States is purposefully creating a multi-component “quattro” strike assets, when another essential military tool is added to the “Chicago triad” – that is space strike weapons.

It is obvious that during official consultations with the United States on the issues of strengthening strategic stability, it is impossible to ignore all factors and described circumstances that are related to outer space. It is necessary to avoid a selective, that is, a separate approach to solving the multifaceted problem of arms control – while downsizing one type of weapons, but giving a boost to the development  of other types of arms, that, at the initiative of the American side, is still in a deadlocked position.

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

With Low Vaccination Rates, Africa’s Covid Deaths Remain Far below Europe and the US

By Ryan McMaken | MISES WIRE | November 23, 2021

marketSince the very beginning of the covid panic, the narrative has been this: implement severe lockdowns or your population will experience a bloodbath. Morgues will be overwhelmed, the death total toll will be astounding. On the other hand, we were assured those jurisdictions that do lock down would see only a fraction of the death toll.

Then, once vaccines became available, the narrative was modified to “Get shots in arms and then covid will stop spreading. Those countries without vaccines, on the other hand, will continue to face mass casualties.”

The lockdown narrative, of course, has already been thoroughly overturned. Jurisdictions that did not lock down or adopted only weak and short lockdowns ended up with covid death tolls that were either similar to—or even better than—death tolls in countries that adopted draconian lockdowns. Lockdown advocates said locked-down countries would be overwhelmingly better off. These people were clearly wrong.

Undaunted by the increasing implausibility of the lockdown narrative, the global health bureaucrats are nonetheless doubling down on forced vaccines—as we now see in Austria—and we continue to be assured that only countries with high vaccination rates can hope to avoid disastrous covid outcomes.

Yet, the experience in sub-Saharan Africa calls both these narratives into question: Africa’s numbers have been far, far lower than the experts warned would be the case.

For example, the AP reported this week that in spite of low vaccination rates, Africa has fared better than most of the world:

[T]here is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said….

Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.

Yet disaster for Africa has long been predicted for several reasons even beyond the availability of vaccines. For instance, it is known that lockdowns are especially impractical in the poorest parts of the world. This is because populations in places with undeveloped economies can’t simply sit at home and live off savings or debt. Rather, these people must go out into the world and earn a living on a day-to-day basis. Starvation is the alternative. Moreover, much of this work is done in the informal economy, so enforcing lockdowns becomes especially difficult.

Source: Our World in Data (Confirmed Deaths per Million, November 19, 2021;  Share of People Vaccinated against Covid-19, November 19, 2021).

It was also assumed covid would be especially deadly in Africa due to the fact many large households live in small housing units.

But that “conventional wisdom” flies in the face of the reality of covid in Africa, which is that there have been fewer deaths.

The “experts” have groped around, looking for possible explanations.

Some sources, for example, insist that the low death totals are only an artifact of incomplete reporting on covid infections and that “a lack of good qualitative data was the issue.”

But Richard Wamai at Northeastern University rejects the claim it’s all about case reporting, and says that “local systems for reporting deaths in Africa make it difficult to hide COVID-19 casualties.” In a paper for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Wamai and his coauthors conclude, “[T]here is no evidence that COVID-19 mortality data is less accurately reported in Africa than elsewhere” and “While the true picture of infections and mortality in the continent has yet to fully emerge, the quality of data for other diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, indicates that Africa has the capacity to collect and report valid disease surveillance data.”

In any case, the World Health Organization reports that covid deaths in Africa make up only 2.9 percent of covid deaths, while Africa’s population is 16 percent of the global total. Africa’s covid total could double or triple, and Africa would still be faring far better than Europe and the Americas.

Wamai et al. also note that at this point “[i]t is likely that SARS-CoV-2 has already been widely disseminated through Africa… If so, widespread infection is likely to also result in widespread natural immunity.”

In other words, continued claims by health officials—both in Africa and elsewhere—that mass death is right around the corner with the “next wave” look increasingly implausible.

It looks increasingly likely that the lack of covid mortality in Africa is not due to a data issue nor a situation in which covid has been “contained” up until now. So then why is Africa doing so much better than the wealthy West?

Naturally, the advocates of forced lockdowns and coerced vaccines would prefer to ignore this issue altogether, but the undeniable reality of Africa’s experience has forced mainstream researchers to publicly admit the many ways that many factors can explain covid’s prevalence beyond vaccination rates and mask mandates.

For instance, mentioning that obesity is an important factor in covid mortality has in the past been likely to get one savaged in the media for “fat shaming.” Yet the Africa situation has forced the well informed to admit that yes, obese populations clearly suffer more from covid. In Africa, not surprisingly, we find that obesity rates are far below those found in North America and Europe.

Other possible explanations forwarded as reasons for Africa’s situation include past exposure to other coronaviruses, youthful populations, fewer patients lacking zinc and vitamin D, past use of the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccination, climate, genetic background, and parasite load. In addressing the African “enigma” one group of researchers in the journal Colombia medica dared even suggest it’s possible—although not conclusively shown at this point—that “a mass public health preventive campaign against COVID-19 may have taken place, inadvertently, in some African countries with massive community ivermectin use.”

Source: “Global Obesity Levels,” ProCon.org, last modified March 27, 2020; Our World in Data (Share of People Vaccinated against Covid-19, November 19, 2021).

In the West, however, the media drumbeat around covid has consistently been “Shut up, stay home, get jabbed, and stop doubting the experts on forced vaccines.” Fortunately, however, the African situation has forced many researchers to ask inconvenient questions.

In fact, it’s amazing Africa has not been overcome by mass death considering that covid lockdowns and covid “mitigation” measures have contributed to the impoverishment and mass starvation on the continent. Or as Germany’s DW News puts it, “Measures put in place to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus are pushing millions of people in Africa into severe hunger.” And as Wamai notes, “[S]ome of the excess deaths in Africa “can be attributed not to the disease, but to lockdown measures that cut off access to medical care for other illnesses.”

But Africa hasn’t gotten the bloodbath that was promised, and as one Nigerian put it, “They said there will be dead bodies on the streets and all that, but nothing like that happened.”

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

Vaccine ‘dramatically’ increases heart risk, says new study

By Neville Hodgkinson | TCW Defending Freedom | November 26, 2021

EUROPE and much of the Western world is in upheaval as people take to the streets over Covid. Mainstream media reports depict these protests as a response to vaccine mandates and other losses of freedom. That is far from the whole story, however.

They are also driven by a profound loss of confidence in the quality of the science behind the vaccination drive. Numerous warnings on the dangers of the jabs (see for example here, here, here, here, here and here) and of deaths and injuries associated with it, have gone unexamined and unreported.

The latest red alert on the dangers comes from Dr Steven Gundry, a renowned American cardiac surgeon, now medical director of the International Heart and Lung Institute at Palm Springs, California.

For the past eight years, his group has monitored the heart health of patients using a clinically validated test that predicts their risk of suffering an acute coronary syndrome (ACS), such as heart attack or angina, within the following five years.

ACS is defined as a range of conditions associated with sudden loss of blood flow to the heart, often caused by a piece of plaque breaking away from a blood vessel wall, or formation of a blood clot in the heart’s arteries.

The test, called PULS (Protein Unstable Lesion Signature), gives a score based on changes from the norm of nine protein biomarkers, all linked to what is going on in heart tissue and blood vessel walls (epithelium).

When the score goes up, it is a signal to the doctors and patients of a need to take remedial steps. When it goes below the norm, it means the five-year risk is low.

In an abstract presented to a meeting of the American Heart Association, published this month in the association’s journal Circulation, Gundry reports that ‘dramatic changes in the PULS score became apparent in most patients’ after the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid shots.

The test was conducted in 566 patients, aged 28 to 97, between two and ten weeks following their second jab. The result was compared to their previous PULS score, drawn three to five months pre-shot.

Markers for inflammation, cell death, and T-cell movement (indicating an immune response to coronary artery injury) all increased, resulting in the overall PULS score rising from an 11 per cent five-year ACS risk in these patients, to a 25 per cent risk.

The report notes that the changes were seen in most vaccinated patients. It adds: ‘These changes persist for at least two and a half months post second dose of vaccine.

‘We conclude that the mRNA vaccines dramatically increase inflammation of the endothelium and T-cell infiltration of cardiac muscle and may account for the observations of increased thrombosis, cardiomyopathy, and other vascular events following vaccination.’

Regulatory agencies in the US and UK have (belatedly) acknowledged that inflammation of the heart muscle and heart lining can occur after Covid vaccination, but say these adverse reactions are rare, and far outweighed by the known risks of Covid itself.

As of mid-November, however, 9,332 heart attacks had been reported in the wake of a Covid shot under America’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) – and according to a 2010 report, that might be one hundredth of the actual total because of medical reluctance to acknowledge vaccine harm.

Dr Gundry’s report, labelled formally as a warning to his American Heart Association colleagues, provides further evidence of a mechanism that may be putting millions at risk.

Commenting on the findings, medical blogger Dr Jesse Santiano points out that rupture of unstable coronary plaques, leading to a heart attack, is the most likely reason vaccinated athletes drop dead in the middle of a game.

He expresses the concern that the PULS cardiac score will get higher with booster shots, and will also risk long-term damage to the hearts of children and teenagers given the mRNA vaccines, even though their risk of death from Covid itself is minuscule.

He also points to a recent study covering all 16 states in Germany which found that the higher the vaccination rate in 2021, the higher the excess mortality compared to the previous five-year average.

Meanwhile, much of Africa has so far avoided large swathes of Covid deaths, despite fewer than six per cent of people being vaccinated. ‘Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight Covid-19 that they have in Europe and the US, but somehow they seem to be doing better,’ says Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University.

With governments around the world having been persuaded by Big Pharma, and lavishly-funded researchers, to go down the mass vaccination route as their primary response to the arrival of the genetically engineered SARS-COV-2, it will be hard to change course. But change they must – or the disaster we are already seeing promises to become a catastrophe.

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

ONS slapped down by UK statistics watchdog for misleading claim that unvaccinated have “32 times” risk of Covid death

By Will Jones • The Daily Sceptic • November 26, 2021

Ed Humpherson, Director of U.K. Statistics Authority the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), has written to Emma Rourke, Director of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to criticise the agency for a report it put out in October claiming that: “Between January 2nd and September 24th 2021, the age-adjusted risk of deaths involving coronavirus (COVID-19) was 32 times greater in unvaccinated people than in fully vaccinated individuals.”

As James Wells, a statistician who served as head of the ONS UK trade team until 2019, pointed out when he wrote to the OSR to complain about the report earlier this month, this statistic uses data from January 2nd to September 24th 2021, which includes the bulk of the winter deaths at a time when almost no one was vaccinated. This skews the implied vaccine effectiveness, as a fair comparison would only include periods when a significant proportion of the country was vaccinated.

In Mr Humpherson’s letter to Ms Rourke he wrote:

The headline in the publication is the age adjusted risk of deaths involving COVID-19 for vaccinated and unvaccinated groups for the period January 2nd to September 24th. This was also the key message in the main tweet associated with the publication. Focusing on the headline figure has been unhelpful and has undermined the more helpful analysis provided later in the report. The headline figure is based on a time period driven by data availability. While the age-standardised mortality rates for deaths involving COVID-19 are consistently lower for people who have received two vaccinations, the size of the difference varies enormously depending on the time frame chosen. The data cover a period when very few people had two doses of vaccination, to a period when the majority of the adult population had two doses (data taken from gov.uk on 24 November 2021 show second dose uptake for age 12 and over in England was 0.8% on January 10th 2021 and 77.4% by September 24th 2021). It also covers a period when case rates varied significantly as well as the levels of natural immunity in the population…

Given the analysis carried out, more should have been done to highlight the uncertainty associated with the headline figure… I would urge you to take the focus off the headline figure in any future publications.

The truth is that statistics are being spun like this all the time by Government and others during the pandemic to bolster the preferred narrative. It’s just on this occasion the effort was so egregious and prominent that it couldn’t be ignored.

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

New Zealand Doctors Speaking out with Science

NZDSOS – 15/11/2021

‘NZ Doctors Speaking out with Science’ featuring Drs Alison Goodwin, Matt Shelton, and Emanuel Garcia. News Conference 15th November, 2021.

See also:

CV19… four basic assumptions

November 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | , , , | 1 Comment