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Texas sues to unmask travelers

RT | February 17, 2022

Forcing Americans to mask up while traveling goes beyond what US health authorities are legally allowed to do, a new lawsuit coming from Texas argued on Wednesday, demanding the end of the mandate that has been in effect for over a year now.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Van Duyne (R-Texas) filed the lawsuit in a federal court on Wednesday, joined by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) nonprofit and the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. The US government was named as the defendant, along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and their leaders.

“It is time for all mandates to be lifted, including those affecting airline passengers,” Van Duyne said, accusing the CDC of causing “untold damage” to the US with its “constantly changing science, fluctuating recommendations and oppressive need to control all aspects of society.”

The lawsuit argues that the CDC’s mask mandates amount to an abuse of power and violate constitutional authority – the same reasoning used to successfully challenge the agency’s eviction moratorium in May 2021 and vaccination mandates for cruise lines in July.

“The CDC is relying on specific and narrowly tailored provisions in the law to exercise enormously broad powers Congress has not granted the agency,” said TPPF’s senior attorney Matt Miller. The organization’s general counsel Robert Henneke also denounced the “tyranny” of the Biden administration in the name of Covid-19.

Announcing that he joined the lawsuit, AG Paxton described the mask mandate as “anti-science, virtue-signaling” and called it “not only silly, but illegal too.”

In his very first executive order, President Joe Biden mandated the wearing of face masks on federal property and announced a “100-day masking challenge.” That was 392 days ago. The requirement that travelers on planes, trains, buses and other public transit must wear face coverings went into effect on February 1, 2021 and has been extended three times since. It is currently set to expire in March, unless renewed.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

UK approves vaccination for 5-11 year olds

with some odd decision making as to why

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | February 16, 2022

Today, England approved COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged 5 to 11 years old. Wales and Scotland had already done so earlier in the week so England’s approval was inevitable. Approval for children in this age category, who are in a clinical risk group, was already given on 22 December 2021.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have just published their independent report as to why the decision has been made.

Before I look at the report, I want to give a little background information.

In September 2021, before the Omicron variant (so a more virulent Delta was prevalent), the JCVI looked at whether to vaccinate healthy 12 to 15 years olds (those without underlying health conditions). They agreed a precautionary approach “given the very low risk of serious disease in those aged 12 to 15 years without an underlying health condition that puts them at increased risk. Given this very low risk, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced”.

They acknowledged that “there is increasingly robust evidence of an association between vaccination with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and myocarditis”. They say that whilst myocarditis following vaccination is self-limiting and resolves within a short time, the medium to long-term prognosis (including the possibility of persistence of tissue damage resulting from inflammation) is uncertain.

The JCVI concluded that overall “benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms” but acknowledged “that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms. The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time. As longer-term data on potential adverse reactions accrue, greater certainty may allow for a reconsideration of the benefits and harms.”

So the conclusion for this older age group, on a health perspective, was not to vaccinate unless clinically vulnerable.

Fast-forward a few months, add in a more mild variant and suddenly the advice changes for an even younger age group. What has changed? Where is the longer-term data that allowed them to reconsider the benefits and harms?

From the outset of this latest advice, a cynical mind might think that they are trying to absolve themselves of all liability. The report uses lots of language such as “JCVI advises a non-urgent offer of two doses” and “informed consent”.

The report begins by saying that the “intention of this offer is to increase the immunity of vaccinated individuals against severe COVID-19 in advance of a potential future wave of COVID-19”. But concludes, “as the COVID-19 pandemic moves further towards endemicity in the UK, JCVI will review whether, in the longer term, an offer of vaccination to this, and other paediatric age groups, continues to be advised”.

So vaccination is advised to prevent severe Covid in a future wave but as we reach endemicity that future wave may never occur. It seems like this decision is based on modelling and we all know how accurate these models are at forecasting.

In summing up the key considerations they actually state the reasons why vaccination is unnecessary. “Most children aged 5 to 11 have asymptomatic or mild disease…[and] are at extremely low risk of developing severe COVID-19 disease. Of those admitted to hospital over the last few weeks comprising the Omicron wave, the average length of hospital stay was 1 to 2 days. A proportion of these admissions are for precautionary reasons”.

They continue “it is estimated that over 85% of all children aged 5 to 11 will have had prior SARS-CoV-2 infection by the end of January 2022… Natural immunity arising from prior infection will contribute towards protection against future infection and severe disease.”

The report says the vaccination is “anticipated to prevent a small number of hospitalisation and intensive care admissions. The extent of these impacts is highly uncertain.”

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

If you’re American and oppose war with Russia, expect to be smeared as unpatriotic

By Lauren Chen | RT | February 16, 2022

On Tuesday, after weeks of international uncertainty and fears of conflict, Russia announced it would be pulling its troops back from the border with Ukraine. This news came after repeated assurances from President Vladimir Putin and officials that Moscow had no desire for war, and that troop movements and positioning were merely training exercises.

Markets immediately responded to this development with renewed optimism, as the Dow jumped 400 points, European stocks closed higher on Tuesday, and natural gas and power prices fell. However, one group curiously silent in light of the seemingly positive turn of events was the war hawks, goaded by Western media, intelligence, and politicians, who in the preceding hours had all but assured the public that an invasion and armed conflict were inevitable.

And while the establishment neo-cons and neo-libs may say that their hawkish warnings and preparations were simply the logical conclusion given the information available at the time, it’s important to remember that throughout the recent hysteria, there have been voices who attempted to pull back the mounting calls for war. However, rather than address their reasoning, the pro-war camp instead resorted to smears in order to justify their peculiar need to stoke tensions with another global superpower.

Specifically, in one attempt to contextualize the intelligence communities’ assurances that Russia’s troop actions were a build-up to aggression against Ukraine, Green Party member and former presidential candidate Jill Stein reminded her social media followers of how officials had not just been wrong about previous conflicts, but had actually lied to the public to garner support for action in Vietnam and Iraq, among other wars. Similarly, many of these same insiders had also been less than truthful about recent stories involving Julian Assange and Russiagate.

The general response to Dr. Stein’s post was positive overall, in keeping with polling which suggests the American public has no interest in involving their country in new foreign engagements. However, the reaction from the pro-war camp was to accuse Dr. Stein of being a Russian asset. Because, of course, what other reason could there be for someone to oppose costly military intervention based on shaky intelligence other than disloyalty to their own country?

And in this same vein, Tulsi Gabbard, another vocal anti-war advocate who has fiercely criticized interventionist American foreign policy, has also spent weeks warning of the conflicting interests motivating those banging the war drums. Often, as Gabbard has pointed out, officials who are most supportive of American military action overseas are also those who stand to gain monetarily through defense contracts and spending.

What’s more, Gabbard has even gone so far as to suggest that by encouraging Ukraine to join NATO, certain American actors might actually be trying to spark a new Cold War, not to benefit US security interests, but rather the military industrial complex. After all, historically, American policy has considered breaches in spheres of influence occurring in countries close to them, such as Cuba, to be acts of aggression. What makes Western encroachment in Ukraine any different?

As with Dr. Stein, however, sadly Gabbard’s criticisms were met with the usual accusations of being a foreign asset, with little to no attempt to address the actual substance of her position.

Across the aisle on the political right, one of the most prominent anti-war voices that has emerged is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has likewise been attacked for his views. Carlson has frequently devoted time on his program to questioning whether, regardless of Russia’s intentions, involving the US in Ukrainian affairs is in America’s best interests, especially at a time when domestic problems abound. Additionally, Carlson has been skeptical of political attempts to paint Ukraine as a Western-style democracy in order to garner public support for any potential alliances or interventions.

For his efforts, Carlson has received especially vicious condemnation from the likes of David Frum, who in 2003 accused those who were against military action in Iraq of being “unpatriotic.”  In a scathing article in The Athletic, Frum accused Carlson and others on the antiwar right of spouting “Vladimir Putin’s talking points,” and ironically likened his position to “isolationists who hoped to profit politically from that passivity.”

Russia’s troop withdrawal may have temporarily neutered the pro-war momentum building in Western discourse. However, the overt hostility toward those who argue against escalating tensions with Russia may signal that it’s only a matter of time before establishment forces are once more arguing that it is not just beneficiary, but rather necessary, for Western militaries to strike before Russian forces can do the same.

Lauren Chen is a political and social commentator. She began as a YouTuber, and has since gained millions of views on the platform and hundreds of thousands of followers.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | 2 Comments

FDA official reveals Biden plan for Covid jabs — Project Veritas

Even toddlers will eventually be required to get annual Covid-19 jabs, an FDA official said in the undercover clip

© Project Veritas

RT | February 16, 2022

Investigative outlet Project Veritas has released footage of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) executive claiming that annual Covid-19 vaccine jabs are on the way, even for children under five.

In part one of a two-part undercover video series, Christopher Cole, an executive officer with the FDA and head of the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, told a Project Veritas reporter he is involved in the “approval process for the various” Covid vaccines. In the video released on Tuesday, Cole claimed more jabs are in the pipeline for everyone and acknowledged the “money incentive” for companies like Pfizer to promote more vaccination.

“It’ll be a recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring… if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company,” Cole said of vaccine manufacturers. At another point in the footage, the FDA official also admitted that the very companies the FDA regulates dump “almost a billion dollars a year” into its budget.

Cole said even toddlers would be included in this annual shot requirement, though he conceded that there hasn’t been enough testing on the long-term effects of the vaccines on various groups, including young children and pregnant women. Asked how he knew such a mandate could be coming, he said: “Just from everything I’ve heard, [the FDA] are not going to not approve it.”

The annual jab would be “just like the flu shot,” Cole said, and required as the effectiveness of vaccines “wanes.”

The FDA released a statement responding to Veritas’ video on Wednesday, saying Cole “does not work on vaccine matters” and “does not represent the views of the FDA.”

US President Joe Biden has not endorsed an annual vaccine jab, but Cole said the president “wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” Biden’s health officials have also floated the idea of regular jabs. White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has been open in recent talks to the idea of booster shots being needed regularly, though he has not endorsed annual shots for everyone.

“It will depend on who you are,” he told the Financial Times last week. “But if you are a normal, healthy, 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years.”

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

The Jacinda Papers

By Guy Hatchard |  February 15, 2022

A remarkable trove of documents has been created in New Zealand by an organisation called Te Punaha Matatini—Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa hosted by the University of Auckland but funded directly by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is headed by the wildly inaccurate Covid modeller Dr Shaun Hendy who once predicted 80,000 imminent New Zealand deaths (currently at 53 in NZ) and includes the participation of academics from universities across New Zealand.

The documents are remarkable because they indicate the genesis of the unique and blinkered pandemic perspective of our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern which has diverged from that followed among other countries and from that found in global science publishing.

The documents in some cases exhibit in their referenced material, a lack of awareness of the extensive content of global science publishing on the pandemic.

One paper of particular interest is entitled:

Evaluating the infodemic: assessing the prevalence and nature of COVID-19 unreliable and untrustworthy information in Aotearoa New Zealand’s social media, January-August 2020


https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/d/75/files/2020/09/06092020-disinformation-formatted2.final_.pdf

It is hardly remarkable that the New Zealand government uses sophisticated computer systems to closely monitor the social media content of its citizens (what government doesn’t?), but the methods used and the starting point of evaluation are highly indicative of where the repressive and controlling New Zealand Labour government Covid policy began:

  • The paper accepts a number of controversial ideas as true at face value such as the zoonotic origin of Covid-19. It describes discussion of a bioengineered origin of Covid in a Chinese lab as Xenophobia and a conspiracy trope, when it actually was, at the time the article was published, a matter of general scientific debate.
  • Table 2 (excerpted above) designates some common types of scientific discussion around Covid-19 as ‘disinformation’, most of which were actually the subject of science publishing even in mid 2020. It dismisses them as fallacious without justification. Subsequent data analysis has upheld them in large part. Yet the rejection by Ardern of their moderating tone, was and is used to stoke fear in the whole population.
  • Concepts of herd immunity since found to play a highly significant role in reducing Covid severity are dismissed as oversimplification and misrepresentation despite their verified and time-honoured role in developing human immunity.
  • Assertions that Covid-19 disproportionately affects those already ill with comorbidities or the aged (a highly verified fact) are outrageously dismissed as the result of ableism.
  • Table 3 in the paper asserts additionally that suggestions that the vaccine might have adverse effects or may alter DNA is a conspiracy theory. Subsequently there have been over 1000 papers published worldwide examining the deficiencies in mRNA vaccination safety and adverse effects reporting including evidence published late in 2020 that RNA vaccine genetic sequences can and do integrate into the human genome.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.12.422516v1
  • Mainstream scientists like Dr. Simon Thornley, media personalities like Mike Hosking, and politicians including Gerry Brownlee are described as using conspiracy theories to recruit NZers to right wing causes. All of whom should rightly have been described as high profile public figures stimulating discussion around political and scientific policies affecting a complex subject. The attempt to marginalise Ardern’s political opponents is obvious.
  • The paper rejects health and wellbeing narratives, many of which are in fact grounded in mainstream medical advice, as misleading. Thus it specifically rejects self-care options. Yet prior and subsequent research has found many of these lifestyle and dietary options to be helpful if not critical to healthy Covid outcomes and avoidence of serious illness. These include adequate rest, exercise, a balanced diet, and nutritional supplements.
  • This rejection of the value of wellbeing programmes has found its obvious conclusion in the formation of New Zealand government mandates. Yet the paper describes the suspicion that there are hidden government agendas to introduce ‘forced vaccination regimes’ as an ‘opportunistic conspiracy theory’. As we now know, these suspicions voiced early on social media are almost indistinguishable from the actual oppressive New Zealand vaccination mandates which Ardern eventually introduced denying employment and impoverishing those wishing to avoid risk and continue to make their own medical choices.

The push to introduce the censorship of scientific information and discussion that characterises the Ardern government is evident throughout the paper. Specific individual scientists tied to the government by both ideology, and in some cases by financial support, are picked out as people who should be the public’s sole sources of reliable information. These include: microbiologist Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles, physicist Professor Shaun Hendy, and epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker.

The paper says the aim of government messaging should take the form of ‘branding’ designed to teach the public to trust the government alone. Something so close to propaganda as to be almost indistinguishable.

Emphasis in social media on ‘individual rights’ is described as an undesirable import from America. Ardern’s more recent rejection of protests as ‘imported ideas’ echoes Trudeau’s recent dismissal of protestors as ‘taking up space’, both of which hint at exclusionary agendas to come.

In conclusion the paper hints that ‘simply relying on the successful multi-faceted science and public health communication approaches of the government earlier in the pandemic will not be sufficient to debunk’ what it describes as ‘increasing prevalence of conspiracy theories about state control and individual rights’.

And continues:‘a wide-ranging response to the increasing discussion of unreliable sources, untrustworthy narrators, and conspiracy narratives in media, political, and civil society discourses is required’.

It further reports that a computational methodology and process for on-going monitoring of the prevalence of mis- and dis-information, and conspiracy narratives, within Aotearoa New Zealand’s social and mainstream media ecosystems has been established. It describes public access to a plethora of social media platforms, as a problem that needs to be addressed.

The very limited scientific outlook of Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is evident in the many other papers it has produced for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In particular, their narrative has diverged in content from trends now well-understood through published data analysis around the world, including:

  • The strident saturation advertising of Covid-19 mRNA vaccination referring to its absolute safety.
  • The Ardern doctrine that the government should be the public’s only source of information.
  • The confidence Ardern extends to tentative and often subsequently falsified science without feeling the need to update policy.
  • The encouragement the government has offered to social media sites to censor content.
  • The politicisation of NZ’s Covid-19 policy.

Obviously, the paper and others may have fuelled and validated Ardern’s limited understanding of science. Science is a global, rational, empirical endeavour to arrive at truth, not a process tailor-made to support ideology.

Perhaps its most frightening consequence is Ardern’s rejection of the notion of individual health rights which has obvious historical parallels.

Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a food testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID)

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Social Media Skewed Lockdown Debate According To Data Expert

By Richie Allen | February 16, 2022

Experts who spoke out against lockdowns were labelled as pseudo-scientists who possessed fringe ideas, because pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on social media, particularly Twitter.

Data Science expert Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, has compared the expertise of the experts who signed The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) with those who signed The John Snow Memorandum.

The GBD argued that vulnerable people should be shielded and that everyone else be allowed to get on with their lives in order to build natural immunity against the virus. They warned lockdowns would be devastating for public health and the economy.

The signatories of the Snow Memorandum argued that it would be unethical to let the virus rip, therefore lockdown was essential.

According to The Telegraph :

In an article published in BMJ Open Research, he (Professor Ioannidis) found that both letters were authored by very influential experts, but that the John Snow Memorandum authors had a far greater reach on social media, which made it appear that their view had more support.

By November 2021, just four key signatories of the GBD had more than 50,000 Twitter followers, compared with 13 of the key authors of the JSM.

Prof Ioannidis concluded: “Both the Great Barrington Declaration and John Snow Memorandum include many stellar scientists, but JSM has far more powerful social media presence and this may have shaped the impression that it is the dominant narrative.

“GBD is clearly not a fringe minority report compared with JSM, as many social media and media allude.

“If knowledgeable scientists can have a strong social media presence, massively communicating accurate information to followers, the effect may be highly beneficial.

“Conversely, if scientists themselves are affected by the same problems (misinformation, animosity, loss of decorum and disinhibition, among others) when they communicate in social media, the consequences may be negative.”

Prof Ioannidis also said signatories of the JSM had contributed to the vilification of authors of the GBD through their tweets and op-eds.

John Ioannidis is right on when he says that social media skewed the debate in favour of the lockdown evangelicals, but he has missed one very important point. He seems to have overlooked shadow banning.

It shouldn’t have really mattered that pro-lockdown scientists had more followers on Twitter than their Great Barrington Declaration counterparts.

Twitter and Facebook worked in tandem from the outset of the scamdemic to amplify the posts of academics who supported lockdowns while at the same time limiting the reach of experts who opposed the tyrannical measures.

This meant that users were many times more likely to read pro-lockdown propaganda than they were to read the opinions of sceptics. The social media firms use not very sophisticated algorithms to ensure that their users read what they want them to read.

It’s happening today. The Welsh government has announced plans to give covid jabs to children over five years-old. England will announce later this week.

There are tens of thousands of doctors and scientists who are horrified at the prospect of jabbing young children with an unproven medicine that they do not need.

You and I know who they are, but the majority of people do not. This is because they will never see these experts in their news feeds. Free speech has no greater enemy than social media.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

ICAN-Obtained Email Shows Alliance Between White House, Facebook, and Pharma

Informed Consent Action Network | February 14, 2022

A White House email, obtained on behalf of ICAN, shows Facebook, Merck, and the CDC Foundation, whose corporate partners includes Pfizer, have formed an alliance “to use social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and drive uptake of vaccines.” No conflict there.

On August 12, 2021, ICAN, through its attorneys, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between White House staff and Facebook, Google, and YouTube. In response to this request, ICAN received a June 15, 2021 email sent by Facebook’s then-Public Policy Manager, Nkechi “Payton” Iheme, to several White House employees.

In it, Iheme announces a new initiative, the “Alliance for Advancing Health Care,” between Facebook and several major companies and organizations, including Merck, the Vaccine Confidence Project, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and the CDC Foundation. Significantly, one of the CDC Foundation’s corporate partners is Pfizer.  In the email, Iheme explains that the Alliance is “focused on advancing public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world” and states that its first project is to “provide grants to researchers and organizations for projects that explore how to use social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and drive uptake of vaccines.” Facebook announced this new initiative on June 9, 2021 here.

The conflict of interest is astonishing. This email shows without a doubt that, through the CDC Foundation created “to support the [CDC’s] work,” the federal government, which is in charge of ensuring the safety of vaccines, has teamed up with Big Pharma and Big Tech to push a liability-free product on the world, while attempting to stomp out anyone who questions this arrangement.

Just as the pharmaceutical companies will never rest when it comes to promoting and selling their vaccine products, and the federal government will not rest in its efforts to assist them, we will never rest in exposing the truth regarding these products or in demanding full transparency and full informed consent for any and all vaccines.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity?

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 14, 2022

In late January, the CDC published a report that made what might have been regarded as a shocking claim. If you have had Covid, the CDC demonstrated in a chart, you gain robust immunity that is better than that of vaccination, especially concerning duration.

That should be nothing surprising. Brownstone has chronicled 150 studies making that point. What made this new chart different was that it came from the CDC, which has buried the point so deeply for so long as to amount to a near denial.

So there: the CDC says it. So nonchalant! So uneventful!

If people had understood this two years ago, plus been made more completely aware of the dramatic risk gradient by age and health, lockdowns would have been completely untenable.

The society-wide mandates and lockdowns depended on keeping the public ignorant on settled points of cell biology and immunology, plus pressuring social media companies to censor anyone who didn’t fall in line. Here we are all this time later and the truth is coming out.

Had the knowledge of risk gradients and immunities been in the forefront of policy makers’ minds – instead of wild fear and obsequious deference to Fauci – we would have focused on protecting the vulnerable and otherwise allowed society to function normally so that the virus would become endemic. We would not only have saved thousands of lives; we could have avoided the vast economic, educational, cultural, and public-health wreckage all around us.

Somehow at the time, that point was made unsayable for reasons on which we can only speculate. And yet today, the New York Times had said exactly this. In a piece by David Leonhardt called Protecting the Vulnerable, he writes:

With the Omicron wave receding, many places are starting to remove at least some of their remaining pandemic restrictions. This shift could have large benefits. It could reduce the isolation and disruption that have contributed to a long list of societal ills, like rising mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime and, as Substack’s Matthew Yglesias has written, “all kinds of bad behavior.”

At the same time, there remain those who are vulnerable and they deserve protection: “They include the elderly and people with immunodeficiencies that put them at greater Covid risk. According to the C.D.C., more than 75 percent of vaccinated people who have died from Covid had at least four medical risk factors.”

You can read that again: unhealthy but vaccinated people still die. What these people need is to enjoy the protection of herd immunity, the point at which the virus exhausts itself in the face of widespread immunity.

If you have followed this debate, you know exactly the origin of that precise idea now being pushed in part by Leonhardt: The Great Barrington Declaration. This is the document on which Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci ordered a media hit back in October 2020. It advocated nothing more than traditional public health measures as a moderate solution between lockdowns and complete negligence of the virus threat.

As decent as this article is, it overlooks a huge issue, namely why would non-vulnerable populations be forced to get a non-durable vaccine with risks when natural immunity is a known option? Leonhardt doesn’t go there but he should have.

Today, even Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune. He told the Financial Times:

“There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”

Further:

As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”

Again, this is straight out of the Great Barrington Declaration, almost to a word, but without acknowledgement.

There can be no question that early on in lockdowns, Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO all decided to bury the point that we would get to endemicity the same way we always have.

How did that happen? Paul Allan Offit is an epidemiologist who advises (or did advise) the Biden administration in the early days. He is not my favorite guy but, as things go, he is no Anthony Fauci. He seems sincere and intelligent.

Offit variously appears on podcasts. Last week, he let slip an astonishing thing. He said that early on in the pandemic, he met at the White House with Walensky, Fauci, Collins, and one other person. The topic was whether the Biden administration should recognize natural immunity to Covid — the most well-established fact about cell biology. He and one other person said absolutely. The rest said no.

Here is the remarkable clip.

Offit is fascinating in this interview because it was pretty clear to him that he was revealing something very important but he did not know whether this was going to be some kind of problem. He then proceeded to tell the story. He did not speculate about the reasons. He was smiling and laughing throughout the interview.

The immunity passports in place in three of the biggest American cities (though DC just repealed its own), the entire public sector, plus the attempt to impose them on the whole of the private sector, probably constitute the most invasive, aggressive, and controversial public policy since the Vietnam War draft. It all could have been fixed by a recognition of the immunological reality: the exposed and recovered are protected. That point of science was rejected by Fauci, Collins, and Walensky. The whole Biden administration went along.

We didn’t know until last week that this Offit meeting had even occurred. And surely this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that time goes on, the more questions are piling up about this gang that wrecked liberty in the US after Inauguration Day 2021, a time when they could have reversed all the restrictions but instead went the other way.

Central to the concern here is what precisely happened in February 2020 to cause Fauci to forge plans to lock down the entire American economy for a virus that he previously said repeatedly could not be stopped. Why did he change his mind? We have plenty of evidence that his change of mind was related to his fear — real or imagined — that the pathogen was made in a lab and was leaked either deliberately or accidentally and that he would likely bear responsibility. Fauci and his friends were on burner phones for weeks and holding secret meetings. The HHS document ordering lockdowns were all forged in these weeks.

If the Republicans take back Congress, they are going to have a real time discovering the inner workings of the deep state here, if they find the courage to look deeply enough. That such an obvious and settled point of science became taboo for a time is truly a scandal for the ages. Now we know that it was a deliberate decision. Why? And why are we only now hearing about it, long after knowing this truth might have saved so much destruction?

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. 

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US Mulls to bolster Mideast Operations with Israeli-made Vessels

An unmanned Israeli navy vessel test fires missile off Ashkelon
Al-Manar | February 16, 2022

The US Navy is examining the possibility of bolstering its joint operations in the Middle East with Israeli-made unmanned vessels, a US official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

The report did not specify who would be operating the boats, but noted that additional Israeli military involvement in the Gulf region could anger Iran.

The unnamed official said the US military was examining a number of options, including using Israeli unmanned vessels during current Gulf exercises.

The Zionist entity is a participant in a massive US-led naval exercise focusing on unmanned naval systems and the use of artificial intelligence. The International Maritime Exercise, known by its acronym IMX, kicked off last month and is set to end on Thursday.

The Israeli navy has a fleet of unmanned ships that are used to complement its manned patrol boats around the occupied Palestinian coastal waters.

The Reuters report said the US was showing interest in Israeli-made surface drones that can be deployed in tandem with air and underwater UAVs.

“The Israelis are definitely vested in leveraging this technology,” the unnamed official said, adding that a US fleet commander had made a recent trip to Haifa to examine the surface drones.

The comments by the US official were made during a trip by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Bahrain, the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the Gulf kingdom, Israeli media reported.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | 8 Comments

“It’s just a protest”

mistersunshinebaby | February 14, 2022

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 2 Comments