A study1 published March 24, 2022, supports past research that shows artificial sweeteners can increase your risk of cancer. Many people make the mistake of believing that since artificially sweetened products have fewer calories and no sugar, they therefore must be healthier. Yet, there is mounting evidence that the rising rates of obesity and cardiovascular disease are linked to consuming food products with artificial sweetener.
Artificial sweeteners became more popular after thousands of studies over many decades showed that sugar damages your health. As the sugar industry has successfully manipulated the evidence and misdirected the public, they also created a demand for artificial sweeteners with zero calories.
Sugar-sweetened beverages are the leading source of added sugar in the U.S., estimated to account for 341.1 calories from drinks in an adult’s diet and 312.6 calories in a child’s diet every single day.2 Despite this damaging evidence, sales have continued to rise, from $314.4 million in 2013 to $414.8 million in 2021.
This offers further evidence of both the addictive quality of sugar and artificially sweetened food and drink and the effectiveness of the sugar industry’s ability to hide the evidence.
Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention3 stops short of advising Americans to ditch sugar-sweetened beverages to avoid chronic disease. This isn’t entirely surprising, considering former CDC director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald received $1 million in funding from Coca-Cola4 to purportedly combat childhood obesity during her six-year stint as commissioner of Georgia’s public health department. She also has a history of promoting the soda industry’s “alternative facts.”
One of those alternative facts is that soda and junk food are not responsible for obesity.5 According to statistics from 2016,6 39.6% of American adults were obese, not just overweight. By 2021,7 that number had reached 42% of adults who were obese and 35% who were overweight.
The American Obesity Association8 expects this trend to continue and predicts 50% of people will be obese by 2025 and 60% by 2030. Beverage makers advertise their artificially sweetened products as a healthier alternative to sugar, which makes it confusing, since when it comes to health, artificial sweeteners cause just as many health problems as sugar.
Even worse, most people don’t seem to catch on that artificial sweeteners likely have the opposite effect of what they’re trying to achieve with weight loss. In addition to promoting obesity, artificial sweeteners are not safe alternatives and are linked to multiple different health effects, including cancer.
Study Concludes Artificial Sweeteners Increase Cancer Risk
A team of scientists from the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research and Sorbonne Paris Nord University in France9 sought to look at the safety of artificial sweeteners — a topic that has been the subject of debate since they were released, despite multiple studies demonstrating adverse health effects.
This team looked at data from 102,865 adults enrolled in the ongoing NutriNet-Santé study against risk of cancer. Enrollment was voluntary, during which participants self-reported their diet, lifestyle, health data, medical history and socio-demographic information.10
Past studies had resulted in conflicting findings. This team was interested in the carcinogenicity of specific artificial sweeteners, including sucralose, aspartame and acesulfame-K, also known as Ace-K and marketed as Sunnet and Sweet One.11
The researchers looked at overall cancer risk and cancer by original site of tumor growth.12 The population-based cohort included information from 2009 to 2021 with a median follow-up time of 7.8 years. The researchers gathered data through a 24-hour dietary record and looked for associations between artificial sweeteners and cancer incidence.
The data were adjusted for multiple factors known to affect cancer diagnosis, including age, weight gain, physical exercise and family history of cancer. The results showed that individuals who consumed the highest level of artificial sweeteners had a higher overall risk of cancer, with the highest risks observed for breast cancer and obesity-related cancers. The researchers found associations between aspartame and Ace-K, writing:13
“Our findings do not support the use of artificial sweeteners as safe alternatives for sugar in foods or beverages and provide important and novel information to address the controversies about their potential adverse health effects.
While these results need to be replicated in other large-scale cohorts and underlying mechanisms clarified by experimental studies, they provide important and novel insights for the ongoing re-evaluation of food additive sweeteners by the EFSA [European Food Safety Authority] and other health agencies globally.”
Artificial Sweeteners Found in Many Processed Foods
Artificial sweeteners are found in many of the processed foods sold in the grocery store. As the sugar industry pivots to create foodstuffs for people eating low-carb meals without sacrificing taste, they add artificial sweeteners. Business Insider14 looked at 24 processed foods you commonly find in the store that have artificial sweeteners.
Many of these you likely would have guessed had either added sugar, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or artificial sweeteners, for example, Diet Snapple, Nestle mini marshmallows and Breyers Carb Smart Ice Cream. After all, if sugar is a carbohydrate, how else can you make low-carb ice cream taste good without sugar?
But other staples you may have thought were sweetened with sugar, also have artificial sweeteners, such as ketchup and Thomas’ Whole Grain English Muffins. Nearly every food product labeled “light,” “lite” or “low-calorie” also comes with a side order of artificial sweetener. But did you know that Pedialyte — a commonly used rehydration fluid in children with vomiting and diarrhea — also contains sucralose and Ace-K?
Greek yogurt, bottled salad dressing, and granola cereals may have natural sugars, but near the bottom of the ingredient list you’ll also likely find artificial sweeteners.15 If you’re steering away from “diet” foods, you’ll also find sugar substitutes in microwave kettle popcorn, non-diet ginger ale, chewing gum and toasted coconut almonds.16 In fact, unless you’re carefully reading the labels on any processed food you purchase, including bread, you’re likely getting artificial sweetener.
Increased Risk of Gut Bacterial Biofilms
Let’s start in the first place where artificial sweeteners can impact your health — in your gut. Much of the past research demonstrating a change in gut bacteria had used sucralose. One study17 found that sucralose lowered gut bacteria in an animal model by at least 47.4% and increased the pH of the intestines. Another study18 showed sucralose had a metabolic effect on bacteria and could inhibit the growth of certain species.
Researchers from Angelia Ruskin University tested the most popular sweeteners used in foods and hot beverages, including sucralose (Splenda), aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal and Sugar Twin) and saccharin (Sweet and Low, Necta Sweet and Sweet Twin).19 The data revealed that the products have a pathogenic effect on two types of gut bacteria.
Using lab data, the researchers showed that sugar substitutes triggered beneficial bacteria to become pathogenic. This could potentially increase your risk of serious health conditions and was the first study to demonstrate how two types of beneficial bacteria could become diseased and invade the gut wall.20
In this case, researchers studied Escherichia coli (E. coli) and Enterococcus faecalis (E. faecalis) and found they killed Caco-2 cells that line the wall of the intestines. The concentration of artificial sweeteners commonly found in two cans of diet soft drinks increase the ability of the bacteria to adhere to the Caco-2 cells and increased the development of bacterial biofilms.
Biofilms promote the invasion of intestinal cell walls and make the bacteria less sensitive to treatment and more likely to express variance that causes disease. Havovi Chichger, Ph.D., lead author, spoke about the results of the study in a press release:21
“Our study is the first to show that some of the sweeteners most commonly found in food and drink — saccharin, sucralose and aspartame — can make normal and ‘healthy’ gut bacteria become pathogenic. These pathogenic changes include greater formation of biofilms and increased adhesion and invasion of bacteria into human gut cells.
These changes could lead to our own gut bacteria invading and causing damage to our intestine, which can be linked to infection, sepsis and multiple-organ failure.”
Sweeteners Linked to Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes
Changes to the gut microbiome are some of the underlying factors that lead to other health conditions associated with sugar substitutes. Past studies have demonstrated that artificial sweeteners raise your risk of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, perhaps to an even greater degree than sugar. In 2018,22,23 animal research presented at the annual Experimental Biology conference in San Diego confirmed this.
The study explored how different sweeteners affect the ways food is used and stored in the body and how they affect vascular functioning. The researchers found that sugar and artificial sweeteners lead to impairment in both criteria, albeit through different pathways. Animals were fed diets high in artificial sweeteners or sugars (white or high fructose corn syrup) for three weeks and all demonstrated increased blood lipids.
However, artificial sweeteners accumulated in the blood, harming the vessel lining to a greater degree. Of the two artificial sweeteners tested, aspartame or Ace K, Ace K appeared to be worse. Lead author Brian Hoffmann, Ph.D., said,24 “In moderation, your body has the machinery to handle sugar; it is when the system is overloaded over a long period of time that this machinery breaks down.”
Artificial sweeteners, on the other hand, wear the machinery down. “Sweeteners kind of trick the body. And then when your body’s not getting the energy it needs — because it does need some sugar to function properly — it potentially finds that source elsewhere,” he says.25
Artificial sweeteners can worsen your insulin sensitivity and promote weight gain. Excessive consumption has been associated with cardiovascular disease and stroke.26 One popular artificial sweetener, aspartame, continues to be used despite increasing evidence it has negative health effects.
In one study,27 healthy adults were asked to consume a high aspartame diet for eight days followed by a low aspartame diet for eight days, with a two-week washout between. During the high aspartame period, individuals suffered depression, poor mood and headaches. They performed worse on spatial orientation tests, which indicates aspartame has a significant effect on neural behavioral health.28
The high aspartame diet was well below the maximum acceptable daily intake, causing the researchers to warn, “careful consideration is warranted when consuming food products that may affect neurobehavioral health.”29 Researchers have suggested aspartame may trigger insomnia, headache and seizures related to changes in concentrations of catecholamine in the brain.30
One study31 evaluated whether people with mood disorders are more vulnerable to the effects of aspartame. The study was halted by the Institutional Review Board after 13 had completed the study, but experienced severe reactions.
Zero Calorie Doesn’t Mean Zero Impact on Your Health
Manufacturers bait consumers with the lure that artificial sweeteners have reduced calories and may help with weight loss efforts. Yet, years of exposure have demonstrated that it has not made a positive impact on the obesity epidemic. In fact, since the 1980s, the prevalence of obesity has continued to rise in adults.32
In an effort to lower the number of both sugar- and artificially-sweetened beverages sold in Philadelphia, the city levied a beverage excise tax.33 One study34 compared the change in prices and sales after the tax was levied in Baltimore, which served as a control city without tax. They found the tax was associated with a substantial decline in the number of beverages sold.
However, the volume was partially offset by rising sales in neighboring areas. Another study looked at the impact employers could have by banning sales of sugar-sweetened beverages in the workplace. They found a reduction in waist circumference without a change in body mass or insulin sensitivity.
It’s important to note the ban existed only during work hours and employees were free to drink as they wished outside of work. In other words, the researchers found a reduction in waist circumference in employees when their sugar-sweetened beverages were limited only during work hours.
One of the most straightforward steps you can take to improve your health is to give up all forms of soda, both those sweetened with sugar and those with artificial sweeteners, but the American Beverage Association and the sugar industry are not interested in your health. Instead, they are interested in protecting profits.
Consider drinking clean, pure water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages and choosing organically grown produce and regeneratively raised, pastured meats to protect your health and your future.
The globalist cabal wants to monopolize health systems worldwide, and a stealth attack is already underway in the form of an international pandemic treaty.1 The negotiations for this treaty began March 3, 2022.2 As reported by The Pulse (video above):
“Coming off the back of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization is proposing a new pandemic treaty they’re hoping will be accepted by enough member countries to become a reality by 2024.”
According to Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “me-first” approaches “stymie the global solidarity needed” to address global threats. His solution? Give the WHO all the power.
Over the past two years, in the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists have justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment. Now, the WHO wants to make its pandemic leadership permanent, and to extend it into the health care systems of every nation.
Treaty Threatens National Sovereignty
As noted by The Pulse, “there are a number of things in the treaty that the people of the world need to consider before going down this path.” In the featured video, The Pulse’s Joe Martino interviews Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, a member of the steering committee of the World Council for Health, who points out that the treaty gives the WHO:
“… an inordinate amount of power to make decisions in sovereign countries as to how people live and how they deal with pandemics, from lockdowns to mandates over treatment.”
In short, it would create a one-size-fits-all approach to disease, without regard for all the varying situations found in individual countries, and this is something we already know doesn’t work. The treaty is a direct threat to a nation’s sovereignty to make decisions for itself and its citizens, and would erode democracy everywhere.
At the same time, it would cost each member country millions of dollars to participate in this process. As explained by Mohamed, the treaty will need to go through a voting process at the World Health Assembly in 2023. They need a majority for it to pass and, if passed, all member countries will be bound by it.
The Treaty Is ‘Invalid and Unlawful’
Another concern raised by Mohamed is that many countries don’t even know about this treaty as of yet, and it’s possible that the WHO might try to push for earlier implementation than 2024 — all without public participation or input. “It is undemocratic, it is unconstitutional and therefore it makes the treaty invalid and unlawful,” she says.
She also highlights the WHO’s history of corruption and many health policy failures, which are “intrinsically linked to conflicts of interest.” In an open letter on the WHO’s pandemic treaty, the World Council for Health writes, in part:3
“The proposed WHO agreement is unnecessary, and is a threat to sovereignty and inalienable rights. It increases the WHO’s suffocating power to declare unjustified pandemics, impose dehumanizing lockdowns, and enforce expensive, unsafe, and ineffective treatments against the will of the people.
The WCH [World Council for Health] believes that the people have a right to participate in any agreement that affects their lives, livelihoods, and well-being.
However, the WHO has not engaged in a process of public participation, which is evidence that its priority is capturing more power for itself and its corporate accomplices, than serving the interests of the people. Without an unbiased democratic process, any agreement by the WHO, acting via the United Nations, will be unlawful, illegitimate, and invalid.
Historically, the WHO leadership has failed the people. Among many examples, it approved the injurious H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine for a controversially declared pandemic.
Equally, the WHO failed during the COVID-19 chapter as it encouraged lockdowns, suppressed early preventive treatments, and recommended product interventions that have proven to be neither safe nor effective.
The WHO cannot be allowed to control the world’s health agenda, nor enforce biosurveillance. While it receives funding from public sources belonging to the people, it is caught in a perpetual conflict of interest because it also receives substantial funding from private interests that use their contributions to influence and profit from WHO decisions and mandates.
For example, the Gates Foundation and the Gates-funded GAVI vaccine promotion alliance, contribute over $1 billion a year.”
Another concern is the fact that when people are harmed by the WHO’s health policies, there’s no accountability because the WHO has diplomatic immunity. According to Mohamed, “the WHO should not be making ANY decisions about world health in the future.”
The Ultimate Power Grab
As noted by Martino, while the treaty claims to be focused on pandemic planning and responses, there’s serious concern that it could be expanded to cover other areas of health as well. Mohamed agrees, saying that it could potentially be expanded, using the WHO’s constitution as the basis for that expansion. Article 2 of the WHO’s constitution states:
“In order to achieve its objective, the functions of the Organization shall be: a) to act as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work … k) to propose conventions, agreements and regulations, and make recommendations with respect to international health matters …
s) to establish and revise as necessary international nomenclatures of diseases, of causes of death and of public health practices … v) generally to take all necessary action to attain the objective of the Organization.”
Its power is already very significant, and the goal to turn the WHO into a global health dictatorship is virtually written into its constitution. Also, remember that the WHO removed the specificity of mass casualties from the definition of a pandemic, so now a pandemic can be just about any disease that occurs in multiple countries. Even obesity could theoretically qualify. So, the WHO could claim power over health care systems in any number of ways, given the chance.
Treaty Would Grant WHO Power to Mandate Vaccine Passports
While most of the world is more than ready to move on, the WHO seems unwilling to let go. A WHO official recently told the Ottawa Citizen that the COVID pandemic is still “far from over.”4
The reason for this reluctance to declare the pandemic over is likely because the WHO hopes to gain the power to mandate vaccine passports and COVID jabs worldwide. It’s already working on the creation of a global vaccine passport/digital identity program. As reported by WEBLYF:5
“Under the guise of a ‘trust network,’ another initiative called Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) is also gaining momentum.
Partnering with big tech companies, big corporations, and big universities, VCI describes itself as ‘a voluntary coalition of public and private organizations committed to empowering individuals with access to verifiable clinical information including a trustworthy and verifiable copy of their vaccination records in digital or paper form using open, interoperable standards.’
VCI’s SMART Health Cards, as reported by Off-Guardian, are already implemented by ‘25 states in America, plus Puerto Rico and DC, and have become the US’s de-facto national passport.’ As explained in the article:
‘The US government, unlike many European countries, has not issued their own official vaccine passport, knowing such a move would rankle with the more Libertarian-leaning US public, not to mention get tangled in the question of state vs federal law.
The SMART cards allow them to sidestep this issue. They are technically only implemented by each state individually via agreements with VCI, which is technically a private entity. However, since the SMART cards are indirectly funded by the US government, their implementation across every state makes them a national standard in all but name.’”
United Tribes of New Zealand Denounce the WHO Treaty
As noted by NZDSOS,6 “Is this the way we want to live our lives? Constantly at the behest of shadowy individuals and corporations who monitor our every move and determine what we can and can’t do, down to buying food?”
In a formal letter of notification to the WHO and the Executive Board of the World Health Assembly, the government of Aotearoa Nu Tireni in New Zealand strongly denounced this and any other treaty that challenges national sovereignty:7
“… you are thereby formally notified that the Wakaminenga Māorigovernment of Aotearoa Nu Tireni/New Zealand does not consent in any shape of form to any type of international pandemic treaty under the WHO or its assembly. Any such construct shall be void ab initio.
We, as United Tribes and Hereditary Chiefs, represent the only current legitimate government in New Zealand. The current NZ government represented by Jacinda Ardern is an illegitimate government because it is a corporation (SEC CIK #0000216105) listed on the US Security & Exchange Commission as Her Majesty the Queen in Right of New Zealand.8,9
In accordance with the Clearfield Trust Doctrine, a corporation does not have any implied right to govern a sovereign people. We hereby register our vote of no confidence in the actions or authority of the corporation unlawfully posing as a government in our territory.
This unlawful Ardern government and its ministers stand charged by the Nga Tikanga Māori Law Society and the Wakaminenga Maori Government of Nu Tireni with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity related to their wilful disregard for the suffering and loss of life resulting from their unlawful response to the engineered bioweapon known as COVID-19 and the unlawful forced administration of a poison to our people and forced medical experimentation.
Also charged with serious crimes related to a pandemic response, the WHO and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus have no standing or authority to form any binding agreement related to a pandemic response, in any jurisdiction and we command that these attempts shall cease and desist immediately pending the outcome of these charges under Rome statutes 6, 7 and 8, filed in the international Criminal Court 6 December 2021 …
You are hereby directed to cease and desist discussions or negotiations with the unlawful Arden Government, a NZ Corporation, known as Her Majesty Queen in Right of New Zealand. The Wakaminenga Maori Government of Aotearoa Nu Tireni reserves the right to discuss/negotiate with any international partner(s) of its choice, including the World Council for Health (WCH).”
Treaty Would Create Global Censorship of Health Information
The treaty would also give the WHO the power to censor health information worldwide. On the European Council’s web page discussing the pandemic treaty, under the headline “Restoring Trust in the International Health System,” it states:10
“The agreement … will set the foundation for better communication and information to citizens. Misinformation threatens public trust and risks undermining public health responses. To redeem citizen trust, concrete measures should be foreseen to improve the flow of reliable and accurate information as well as to tackle misinformation globally.”
In other words, under this treaty, we can expect even greater censorship than what we’ve experienced so far. Tech companies have already proven where their allegiance lies, and it’s not with the public.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others have deplatformed just about everyone who posts health information that runs counter to what the WHO is saying, real-world data and verifiable facts be damned. Financial platforms have also banned people for the same reason. Now imagine there being a binding international law that makes all that censorship mandatory.
Their Playbook Was Revealed in 2019
Officially, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the second largest funder of the WHO, second only to the U.S. government,11 but the combined contributions from the Gates Foundation and GAVI made Gates the unofficial top sponsor of the WHO as of 2018.12
Gates has also been funding pandemic exercises, including Event 201,13 held October 18, 2019, which gained notoriety for its extraordinary accurate “predictions” of the COVID pandemic mere months before it was declared. Other co-sponsors included the World Economic Forum and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
However, earlier that year, February 14, 2019, Gates also funded the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s (NTI) pandemic exercise for senior global leaders on international response to deliberate biological events, which took place in Munich, Germany.14,15
NTI was founded to assess and reduce threats associated with the proliferation of nuclear weapons,16 but they’ve since expanded to include biological threats.17 Gates has also given grants to the NTI for vaccine development in relation to biological threats.18
While Event 201 featured a fictional coronavirus outbreak, the NTI exercise involved response to “deliberate, high consequence biological events.” In other words, a deliberate release of a genetically engineered bioweapon — in this case a pneumonic plague — for which there is no available treatment. This exercise scenario was the first of its kind. The video above features a summary of the four-phase exercise.
Curiously, in mid-November 2019, The Guardian, The New York Times,19The Washington Post20 and others reported that two people in China had in fact been diagnosed with pneumonic plague.21
In addition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NTI event was sponsored by the Wellcome Trust, the “philanthropic arm” of GlaxoSmithKline and an investor in Vaccitech, which owns the patents to AstraZeneca’s COVID jab.22 Both Gates and Wellcome are part of the technocratic globalist network that is pushing The Great Reset forward.
Another sponsor was Georgetown University,23 which also curated the World Economic Forum’s library of COVID-19 treatments (primarily focused on antivirals and COVID gene transfer injections).24
Curation was done by three Georgetown University professors and Rebecca Katz, director of the Georgetown Center for Global Health Science and Security.25 Katz is also listed as an author on the NTI paper,26 “A Spreading Plague: Lessons and Recommendations for Responding to a Deliberate Biological Event,” published June 2019, in which they review the conclusions reached from that February 2019 exercise.
‘A Spreading Plague’
Together, these two pandemic exercises — both of which were sponsored by Gates — form a playbook for how to set up a biological attack and then hide the truth from the world so that you can not only profit from it in the short term but also centralize power, permanently transfer wealth and change the social and financial order to your own liking in the process.
Not surprisingly, a number of Event 201 participants also partook in the NTI’s exercise,27 and hold positions within technocratic institutions like Wellcome, the WHO and the World Economic Forum.
Event 201, in particular, focused not on finding remedies and saving lives, but how to control “misinformation.” A vast majority of that exercise centered around the creation of effective propaganda and censorship. Similarly, “A Spreading Plague” also includes the recommendation to enlist private companies as “assets” to carry out the globalists bidding:28
“In 2019 and 2020, international organizations, including the WHO, UNODA [United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs], and the World Economic Forum, should convene private sector companies to identify gaps and concrete next steps to strengthen the capability of companies to provide assets to assist with international response for deliberate biological attacks and other high-consequence biological events.”
In the NTI scenario — in which a fictional country called Carta is found to have engineered and released a biological weapon into the neighboring country of Vestia — we also see curious parallels to current-day accusations by Russia, which claims biological weapons research was being conducted in the Ukraine, necessitating defensive action.
All in all, the NTI tabletop exercise only adds to the evidence pile that suggests the COVID pandemic was premeditated and preplanned for financial and geopolitical purposes. It was a power grab.
The pandemic treaty with the WHO is precisely what the World Economic Forum and its allies now need, as it will put the technocratic cabal firmly in charge of the biosecurity of the whole world, and empower them to implement the rest of The Great Reset agenda.
You can learn more about The Great Reset on the World Economic Forum’s website29,30 and in Klaus Schwab’s book, “COVID-19: The Great Reset”31 (but you might want to review the overwhelmingly negative comments on Amazon first).
As noted in a July 21, 2020, World Economic Forum article,32 the economic devastation caused by COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns “has the potential to hobble global prosperity for generations to come.” The answer, according to the World Economic Forum, is for countries to make sure the economic system is “built back better.”
Make no mistake, this catchy slogan is part and parcel of the Great Reset plan and cannot be separated from it, no matter how altruistic it may sound. Part of the “building back better” is to shift the financial system over to an all-digital centrally controlled currency system that is tied to a vaccine passport and/or digital identity system.
Together, they will form a pervasive system of social control, as desired behaviors can be incentivized and undesired ones discouraged through loss of various “privileges,” including access to your own finances. Digital currency can even be programmed by the issuer so that it can only be used for certain types of purchases or expenses.
While it’s going to be very difficult to stop this runaway train that is The Great Reset, part of our defense is to oppose and prevent the WHO’s pandemic treaty from becoming reality, as we’ll lose our national sovereignty if it does.
The first tweet I saw when I checked my timeline this morning was from foreign policy analyst Clint Ehlirch, pointing out that the Russian ruble has already started recovering from the dip created by Western sanctions, and is almost at pre-war levels.
Ehrlich states, “sanctions were designed to collapse the value of the Ruble, they have failed”.
… to which I can only respond, well “were they?”
… and perhaps more importantly, “have they?”
Because it doesn’t really look like it, does it?
If anything, the sanctions seem to be at best rather impotent, and at worst amazingly counterproductive.
It’s not like the US/EU/NATO don’t know how to cripple economies. They have had years of practice starving the people of Cuba, Iraq, Venezuela and too many others to list.
Now, you could argue that Russia is a larger, more developed economy than those countries, and that’s true, but the US and its allies have previously managed to hurt the Russian economy quite drastically.
As recently as 2014, following the “annexation” of Crimea, Western sanctions were tame compared to the recent unprecedented measures, but crucially the US massively increased its own oil production, then later that year (following a visit by US Secretary of State John Kerry) Saudi Arabia did the same.
Despite objections from other members of OPEC – Venezuela and Iran chiefly – the Saudis flooded the market with oil.
This kicked Russia into a full recession and saw Russia’s GDP shrink for the first time under Putin’s leadership.
Again, just two years ago, allegedly as part of competing with Russia for a share of the oil market, Saudi Arabia once more flooded the market with cheap oil.
So, the West does know how to hurt Russia if it really wants to – by increasing oil production, flooding the market and tanking the price.
But has the US increased its oil production this time round? Have they leant on their Gulf allies to do the same?
Not at all.
In fact, in a point of beautiful narrative synchronicity, the US claims it’s “unable” to increase its oil production due to “staff shortages” caused by that gift that keeps on giving – Covid.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia is not tanking the oil market, but deliberately increasing prices.
Yes, right now, with the Western allies locked in an alleged economic war with Russia the price of oil is soaring, and may continue to do so.
This is good news for the Russian economy, to the point it may even make up for the damage done by the brutal sanctions.
Those Western sanctions are targeting other Russian exports too, including grains and food in general.
Russia is a net exporter of food, meaning they export more food than they import. Conversely, many countries in Western Europe rely on imported food, including the UK which imports over 48% of its food supply.
If Europe refuses to buy Russian food, the net effect is that Russia has food… and the West doesn’t.
And, just as with oil, increasing food prices will help rather than hinder the Russian economy.
Take wheat for example, of which Russia is the biggest exporter in the world. The vast majority of this wheat is not even sold to Western countries – but instead to China, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Nigeria and Pakistan – and so is not even subject to sanctions.
Nevertheless, the sanctions, and the war, have actually driven the price of wheat up almost 30%.
This is good for the Russian economy.
Meanwhile, according to CNN, the US is likely to enter a full-blown recession by 2023, France is considering food vouchers and countries all over the world are expected to begin rationing fuel.
So, the sweeping sanctions imposed against Russia by the West, allegedly in response to the invasion of Ukraine, are not having their stated aim – tanking the Russian economy – but they are driving up the price of oil, creating potential energy and food shortages in the West and exacerbating the “cost of living” crisis created by the “pandemic”.
You should always be wary of anybody – individual or institution – whose actions accidentally achieve the exact opposite of their stated aim. That’s a simple rule to live by.
Remember how Orwell described the evolution of the concept of war in 1984:
War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.
Likewise, we were due to experience Covid-related energy disruptions and power cuts. Short of the UK’s damp squib of a “petrol crisis”, they never really arrived.
But now they are heading our way after all – because war and sanctions
Increased food prices, decreased use of fossil fuels, lowering standards of living, public money poured into “renewables”. This is all part of a very familiar agenda, isn’t it?
Regardless of what you feel about Putin, Zelensky, the war in general or Ukrainian Nazis, it’s time to confront the elephant in room.
We need to be asking: What exactly is the real aim of these sanctions? And how come they align so perfectly with the great reset?
The UK prime minister’s spokesman said on Wednesday the nation would not pay for Russian gas in rubles as Moscow demands. London is liaising with British companies who might be concerned about the issue or its impact on industries and manufacturers across Europe, he added.
The statement comes as the Kremlin indicated on Wednesday that all of Russia’s energy and commodity exports could soon be priced in rubles.
“[Business minister] Kwasi Kwarteng, working with his counterparts, have made clear that they won’t be paying in rubles,” Johnson’s spokesman told reporters, adding, “[The business ministry] is obviously in contact with any UK businesses that may have concerns.”
Unlike other countries in Europe, the UK is less dependent on Russian gas supply. Russia only provides around 5% of Britain’s gas imports. However, surging energy prices have been affecting the economy.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 51% of Britons currently spend less on non-essential goods due to rising energy costs, 34% are saving gas and electricity at home, while 31% spend less on food and essential goods. Overall, some 83% of those surveyed pointed to the growth of everyday expenses amid rising gas and electricity prices.
You will recall the Panorama edition last November, “Wild Weather- Our World Under Threat”. Presented by Justin Rowlatt, it attempted to show that the world’s weather was getting worse because of global warming:
The programme highlighted four weather disasters, yet failed to offer even the slightest evidence that they were either unusual or becoming worse.
One of the four concerned a drought in Madagascar, which Rowlatt described as “the world’s first climate change-induced famine.”
Shortly after the programme was aired, a scientific study proved that his claim was nonsense, and that equally severe droughts had occurred there in the past.
I filed a complaint about this, only to be fobbed off with the response that they had been told this by the World Meteorological Organisation,WMO. I have now escalated my complaint to the Executive Complaints Unit, ECU, pointing out that since this was a major segment of the programme, the failure to check the actual data, which is readily available, was extremely shoddy journalism. Regardless of their excuses, a full correction needed to be broadcast.
The Panorama edition also included this opening statement by Rowlatt:
“The world is getting warmer and our weather is getting ever more unpredictable and dangerous. The death toll is rising around the world”
This is another lie. According to the same WMO:
Deaths decreased almost threefold from 1970 to 2019. Death tolls fell from over 50 000 deaths in the 1970s to less than 20 000 in the 2010s. The 1970s and 1980s reported an average of 170 related deaths per day. In the 1990s, that average fell by one third to 90 related deaths per day, then continued to fall in the 2010s to 40 related deaths per day.
Another reader complained about this, and received this astonishing reply:
In other words, the BBC justify their claim because the cumulative number of deaths is rising!
Needless to say, he too has escalated to the ECU.
It is clear that Rowlatt is facing big problems here. He has already been rebuked by BBC News bosses about his lies regarding offshore wind costs last year. He is now facing two complaints over this flagship Panorama edition.
Regardless of the ECU decision, it is crystal clear that Rowlatt is far too emotionally attached to climate issues on a personal level to be able to report accurately and objectively.
In 1990, a paradigm shift occurred in the development of new medicines and treatments. An idea so big, that it was supposed to encompass the whole of medicine. It was to start initially at the level of pre-clinical and clinical trials and work all the way through the system to the care and management of individual patients. This new concept for how medicine would be developed and conducted is called evidence-based medicine (EBM). Evidence-based medicine was to provide a more rigorous foundation for medicine, one based on science and the scientific method. Truly, this was to be a revolution in medicine – a non-biased way of conducting medical research and treating patients.
Evidence-based medicine
Evidence-based medicine is “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.” The aim of EBM is to integrate the experience of the clinician, the values of the patient, and the best available scientific information to guide decision-making about clinical management.
So, what the hell happened?
There is a big flaw in the logic of evidence-based medicine as the basis for the practice of medicine as we know it, a practice based on science; one that determines care down to the level of the individual patient. This flaw is nestled in the heart and soul of evidence-based medicine, which (as we have seen over the last two years) is not free of politics. It is naive to think that data and the process of licensure of new drugs is free from bias and conflicts of interest. In fact, this couldn’t be any farther from the truth. The COVID-19 crisis of 2020 to 2022 has exposed for all to see how evidence based medicine has been corrupted by the governments, hospitalists, academia, big pharma, tech and social media. They have leveraged the processes and rationale of evidence-based medicine to corrupt the entire medical enterprise.
Evidence based medicine depends on data. For the most part, the data gathering and analysis process is conducted by and for the pharmaceutical industry, then reported by senior academics. The problem, as laid out in an editorial in the British Medical Journal is as follows:
The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented.Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion.
This ideal of the integrity of data and the scientific process is corrupted as long as financial (and governments) interests trump the common good.
Medicine is largely dominated by a small number of very large pharmaceutical companies that compete for market share, but are effectively united in their efforts to expanding that market. The short term stimulus to biomedical research because of privatization has been celebrated by free market champions, but the unintended, long term consequences for medicine have been severe. Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of data and knowledge because industry suppresses negative trial results, fails to report adverse events, and does not share raw data with the academic research community. Patients die because of the adverse impact of commercial interests on the research agenda, universities, and regulators.
The pharmaceutical industry’s responsibility to its shareholders means that priority must be given to their hierarchical power structures, product loyalty, and public relations propaganda over scientific integrity. Although universities have always been elite institutions prone to influence through endowments, they have long laid claim to being guardians of truth and the moral conscience of society. But in the face of inadequate government funding, they have adopted a neo-liberal market approach, actively seeking pharmaceutical funding on commercial terms. As a result, university departments become instruments of industry: through company control of the research agenda and ghostwriting of medical journal articles and continuing medical education, academics become agents for the promotion of commercial products. When scandals involving industry-academe partnership are exposed in the mainstream media, trust in academic institutions is weakened and the vision of an open society is betrayed (BMJ ).
The corporate university also compromises the concept of academic leadership. No longer are positions of leadership due to distinguished careers. Instead, the ability to raise funds in the form of donations, grants, royalty revenue and contracts, dominates the requirements for University leaders. They are now must demonstrate their profitability or show how they can attract corporate sponsors.
As the US government, particularly NIAID, controls a significant amount of the grants and contracts of most academic institutions in the USA, NIAID employees also can determine what research is conducted and who is funded to conduct that research.
US government employees also control the narrative. Take for example the use of the media, CDC and the FDA to control the narrative about early treatment for COVID-19. By now we should all know about the corruption of the early clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine. On the basis of these faked studies, one of the safest drugs in the world was recommended to not be used in an out patient setting – most likely, in order to increase vaccine acceptance. Or how our government used propaganda to control the use of ivermectin by such tactics as calling it unfit for human use and labelling it as a “horse wormer.” All indications are that these efforts by the US government were to dissuade early treatment to stop vaccine hesitancy.
Beyond our government skewing evidence-based medicine for their own purposes, then there is the university system, which is more interested in generating income than creating a research program that is free from bias.
Those who succeed in academia are likely to be key opinion leaders (KOLs in marketing parlance), whose careers can be advanced through the opportunities provided by industry. Potential KOLs are selected based on a complex array of profiling activities carried out by companies, for example, physicians are selected based on their influence on prescribing habits of other physicians.KOLs are sought out by industry for this influence and for the prestige that their university affiliation brings to the branding of the company’s products. As well paid members of pharmaceutical advisory boards and speakers’ bureaus, KOLs present results of industry trials at medical conferences and in continuing medical education. Instead of acting as independent, disinterested scientists and critically evaluating a drug’s performance, they become what marketing executives refer to as “product champions.”
Ironically, industry sponsored KOLs appear to enjoy many of the advantages of academic freedom, supported as they are by their universities, the industry, and journal editors for expressing their views, even when those views are incongruent with the real evidence. While universities fail to correct misrepresentations of the science from such collaborations, critics of industry face rejections from journals, legal threats, and the potential destruction of their careers. This uneven playing field is exactly what concerned Popper when he wrote about suppression and control of the means of science communication. The preservation of institutions designed to further scientific objectivity and impartiality (i.e., public laboratories, independent scientific periodicals and congresses) is entirely at the mercy of political and commercial power; vested interest will always override the rationality of evidence (BMJ).
Regulators (ergo the FDA) receive funding from industry and use industry funded and performed trials to approve drugs, without in most cases seeing the raw data. What confidence do we have in a system in which drug companies are permitted to “mark their own homework” rather than having their products tested by independent experts as part of a public regulatory system? Unconcerned governments and captured regulators are unlikely to initiate necessary change to remove research from industry altogether and clean up publishing models that depend on reprint revenue, advertising, and sponsorship revenue.
Some proposals for reforms include:
Regulators must be freed from drug company funding. This includes the FDA funding -which must come directly from the government, as opposed to pharma fees, as now is the case. Tying employee salaries to pharma fees creates a huge conflict of interest within the FDA.
The revolving door between regulators like the FDA, the CDC and big pharma (as well as tech/media) must stop. Employment contracts for regulatory government positions must have “non-compete” clauses whereby employment opportunities are limited upon leaving these regulatory agencies. Likewise, big pharma executives should not fill leadership positions at regulatory agencies.
Taxation imposed on pharmaceutical companies to allow public funding of independent trials; and, perhaps most importantly, anonymised individual patient level trial data posted, along with study protocols. These data to be provided on suitably accessible websites so that third parties, self-nominated or commissioned by health technology agencies, could rigorously evaluate the methodology and trial results.
Clinical trial data must be made public. Trial consent forms are easily changed to make this anonymized data freely available.
Publication of data must be open and transparent. The government has a moral obligation to trial participants, real people who have been involved in risky treatment and have a right to expect that the results of their participation will be used in keeping with principles of scientific rigor.
The government and it’s employees has a moral obligation to the public to conduct clinical trials in ways that are non-biased by industry.
The Foundation for the CDC and the Foundation for the NIH, which runs clinical trials and studies for these organizations (while their boards are made up of pharma industry executives and employees) must be decommissioned. We have laws in this country whereby the government does not accept volunteer labor, or direct donations to influence government decisions. These NGOs are doing just that. These practices must be stopped. They are intentionally using these organizations to bypass federal laws concerning exertion of undue influence on federal decision making.
Off label drugs must continue to be used by the medical community. The early treatment protocols, which have saved countless lives, have documented the important role that physicians have played in finding cheap and effective treatments for COVID as well as many other diseases. Let doctors be doctors.
Scientific and medical journals must be stopped from taking monies from big pharma. This includes the sales of reprints, banner ads, print ads, etc.
Government must stop interfering with the publishing of peer reviewed papers and social media. A free press must remain free from coercion from government. We all know countless examples, such as the Trusted News Initiative (TNI) and White House meetings with big tech to influence what is allowed to be printed. And the billion dollars spent by the US Government to promote these EUA/unlicensed “vaccine” products that do not prevent infection or transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is a direct assault on our first amendment rights. It also skews evidence based medicine.
Informed consent, one of the foundations of modern medicine, has been stymied by the FDA, NIH, the CDC hospitalists, big tech and social media. They have been hiding data and skewing results. When people can not get the information they need to make an informed decision, evidence-based medicine can not function correctly.
The government and it’s employees must stop picking winners and losers. Evidence-based medicine requires a non-biased playing field.
Industry concerns about privacy and intellectual property rights should not hold sway.
If we are ever trust and support the concept of evidence based medicine again, significant changes to the system must be enacted. The only question is… is our government and our HHS bureaucrats up to the job?
During the Covid-19 pandemic, tribal politics have pushed scientific discourse into the back seat. Scientists who provide their honest assessment of medical and public health data have often been subject to ad hominem attacks and slander.
When Left-leaning journalists defend the government’s pandemic strategies by falsely classifying opponents as Right-wing, it hurts the Left while boosting the Right. The latest example is an article in the New Republic with one of the most far-fetched personal attacks we have seen since March 2020 — a true accomplishment during a pandemic filled with logical somersaults.
The target is Urgency of Normal, a group of physicians and medical scientists arguing against the masking of toddlers and children. The group includes Dr Vinay Prasad, a physician, epidemiologist, and associate professor at the University of California in San Francisco. With colleagues at Harvard and the University of Colorado, he wrote the most thorough scientific review of the efficacy of masks against Covid. They concluded that “data to support masking kids was absolutely absent.”
The New Republicarticle is called ‘Why Is This Group of Doctors So Intent on Unmasking Kids?’ The straightforward answer is that the doctors concluded that there is no reliable scientific evidence that masks on children reduce disease spread alongside a strong presumption that they may harm some children. The New Republic dismisses this possibility, claiming that “the science is strong” that masks help to “quell the pandemic”, and that there is “‘little scientific disagreement”. The last point is self-evidently untrue given the participation by many eminent scientists in the Urgency of Normal itself.
The essay then goes full ad hominem, attempting to link Dr. Prasad to “libertarian” efforts by the Koch family to unmask children via a convoluted chain of supposed associations, each of which is weak and the combined effect of which is simply conspiracy (see below). It appears that the New Republic, once a fierce critic of Sen. Joe McCarthy, has now embraced McCarthy’s guilt-by-association techniques.
Dr. Prasad is an excellent epidemiologist, but to paraphrase the New Republic, it seems “that the days of listening to the epidemiologists are over”. They are not alone. The Daily Poster/Lever and Jacobin magazine have used similar ad hominem arguments to falsely “connect” lockdown opponents with the Koch network, falsely claiming that the two of us are “connected to Right-wing dark money”. Our closest and only financial “connection” to the Koch Network is to have worked for universities, Stanford and Harvard, which have received millions of dollars from Koch foundations, although unrelated to any of our own work.
In the summer of 2020, Jacobin magazine interviewed one of us about lockdowns and their devastating effects on children and the working class. Their reader’s reactions were illuminating. The public criticism from high-profile individuals was harsh, calling us Trumpian, among other things. But, we also received many private letters from Jacobin readers, thanking us for saying what they were thinking but did not dare to say in public.
Views on pandemic strategies do not map onto a simple Left/Right binary. In the United States, Dr Anthony Fauci’s lockdowns were implemented by both Republicans and Democrats, generating enormous collateral damage to education, cancer, cardiovascular disease, vaccination rates, mental health, and hunger, to name a few malign outcomes. More often than not, members of the working class were the hardest hit. In Europe, the social democrats in Sweden chose not to copy Fauci’s response to the pandemic. One contributing factor may have been that its prime minister came from the working class, having started his career as a welder.
Classifying those like Dr Prasad as “Right-wing” for taking different views on pandemic restrictions is only damaging to the Left. Instead of permitting the Right to claim full credit for opposing misguided Covid policies, the Left should rightly claim some of that credit — Dr Prasad is, after all, on the Left himself. Instead, publications like the New Republic seem intent, not merely on smearing scientists instead of learning from them, but on driving reasonable men and women to the Right.
The New Republic’s convoluted attempt to associate Dr Prasad with the Koch family, in full:
Prasad ‘writes for the Brownstone Institute for Social and Economic Research.’ (The Brownstone Institute, with no Koch connections, has republished Dr. Prasad’s Substack articles without payments.)
The Brownstone Institute’ advocates for a more libertarian approach to the pandemic’. (Brownstone is not a libertarian organisation. It advocates for a more scientific approach to the pandemic based on basic principles of public health. It has attracted writers from across the political spectrum.)
The Brownstone founder ‘consults for the American Institute for Economic Research’ (AIER). (He is a former employee without current ties.)
AIER ‘receives funding from the Charles Koch Foundation.’ (One grant only, which paid <1% of AIER expenses in 2018.) AIER ‘receives funding’ from the ‘Koch-funded public relations firm Emergent Order and Emergent Order which also aided the Great Barrington Declaration.’ (Neither is true.)
‘One Koch-backed group has been linked to school unmasking efforts.’ (A mother’s anti-mask letter was circulated by a women’s group with some Koch funding. In contrast, a Koch-backed group have funded the pro-lockdown Covid work of Prof. Neil Ferguson at Imperial College.)
Martin Kulldoff, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist, biostatistician, and a former professor of medicine at Harvard University. Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., is an epidemiologist, health economist, and professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Both are senior scholars at the Brownstone Institute and founding fellows at the Academy for Science and Freedom.
A civil rights group is suing the U.S. surgeon general and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on behalf of three men who allege the government violated the First Amendment by directing Twitter to censor them for spreading COVID “misinformation.”
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) on March 24 filed a complaint against Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Columbus Division.
NCLA describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State.”
According to the complaint, between May 2021 and December 2021, Twitter temporarily or permanently suspended the accounts of the three plaintiffs — Mark Changizi, Daniel Kotzin and Michael P. Senger.
The lawsuit states:
“Mark Changizi, Daniel Kotzin, and Michael Senger each had or have Twitter accounts with tens of thousands of followers or more.
“Their Twitter platforms provided them with a social network, and an outlet to express their views, to hear the views of others, and to engage with detractors and fans alike.”
Twitter permanently suspended Senger’s account. Senger is a San Francisco-based attorney who was openly critical of COVID-related policies and of what he called “pro-lockdown propaganda” from China.
Twitter only temporarily suspended the accounts of Changizi and Kotzin. Visitors to the Twitter account belonging to Changizi, a well-known theoretical cognitive scientist, now see a warning stating “Caution: This profile may include potentially sensitive content.”
Kotzin’s Twitter account is active as of this writing, despite prior suspensions. A stay-at-home father, Kotzin is married to Jennifer Sey, the former president of Levi’s who recently stepped down from her position, alleging Levi’s executives bullied her after she spoke out against some COVID-related policies.
The lawsuit alleges the suspensions of the three men’s accounts are a result of the policies against “misinformation” announced by the surgeon general and HHS.
The lawsuit states:
“Outrageously, the U.S. surgeon general and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have directed social media platforms including Twitter to censor alleged ‘misinformation’ about Covid-19.
“The speech ban has included information the Government later conceded was true but that conflicted with the Government’s messaging on Covid-19 at the time.”
As reported earlier this month by The Defender, the Biden administration and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently made statements contradicting earlier official statements and public pronouncements regarding COVID policies.
The lawsuit provides a timeline of federal government “intimidation tactics” aimed at stifling so-called “misinformation” about COVID on social media:
“On March 3, the surgeon general demanded that the tech companies turn over information about individuals who spread such ‘misinformation,’ a clear intimidation tactic that HHS has labeled a ‘Request for Information’ (RFI).
“Adding insult to injury, on March 3, the surgeon general issued his RFI, demanding that technology platforms turn over ‘information about sources of Covid-19 misinformation’ to the Government by May 2, 2022.
“In response to Government pressure, Twitter has permanently banned Mr. Senger, and temporarily suspended Mr. Changizi and Mr. Kotzin.”
According to the RFI, social media companies must submit such information posted on their platforms dating back to January 2020.
The complaint alleges Murthy and Becerra lack the statutory authority to issue such a request to private social media platforms.
The Defenderpreviously reported on attempts by the federal government to combat alleged “misinformation.”
“Health misinformation — health information that is false, inaccurate, or misleading according to the best available evidence at the time — has been a challenge during public health emergencies before, including persistent rumors about HIV/AIDS that have undermined efforts to reduce infection rates in the U.S. and during the Ebola epidemic.
“But the speed, scale, and sophistication with which misinformation has been spread during the COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented.
“Recent research shows that most Americans believe or are unsure of at least one COVID-19 vaccine falsehood.”
The RFI outlines social media’s purported contribution to the spread of such “misinformation,” and the role such platforms can play in future pandemics:
“The digital information environment is a phenomenon that requires further research and study to better prepare for future public health emergencies. This RFI seeks to understand both the impact of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and the unique role that technology and social media platforms play in the dissemination of critical health information during a public health emergency.
“The inputs from stakeholders will help inform future pandemic response in the context of an evolving digital information environment.”
According to the lawsuit, this RFI comes as part of a broader White House effort to stop the spread of “health misinformation” dating back to spring 2021, threatening Big Tech with antitrust proceedings over their enormous market share if companies did not provide the requested information to the government:
“In May 2021, the White House began a coordinated and escalating public campaign to stop the flow of purported “health misinformation” related to Covid-19.
“In a May 5, 2021 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated that the President believed social media platforms have a responsibility to censor health ‘misinformation’ related to Covid-19 vaccinations, that by not doing so they were responsible for American deaths, and that the President believed ‘antitrust’ programs were in order to effectuate this end.
“In other words, if tech companies refused to censor, they would face antitrust investigations—or worse.”
The surgeon general and HHS later joined these efforts, according to the lawsuit:
“By July, the surgeon general and HHS ratcheted up the pressure by issuing an advisory on the subject, commanding technology platforms to collect data on the ‘spread and impact of misinformation’ and ‘prioritize early detection of misinformation ‘super-spreaders’ and repeat offenders” by ‘impos[ing] clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly violate platform policies’.”
It was during this period that Twitter banned or suspended the three plaintiffs.
“It’s difficult to overstate the federal government’s cynicism in pretending to respect the First Amendment rights of American citizens while explicitly working with a company whose CEO says it ‘is not to be bound by the First Amendment’ in silencing American citizens on the most widely-used platform for political discourse.”
According to the NCLA, the censorship advocated by Murthy and HHS strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect — free speech, especially political speech, much of which has since been vindicated and proven accurate.
“[B]y instrumentalizing tech companies, including Twitter — through pressure, coercion, and threats — to censor viewpoints that the federal executive has deemed ‘misinformation,’ the surgeon general has turned Twitter’s censorship into state action,” the NCLA said.
The nonprofit said the government’s policy of “pressuring Twitter and other tech companies to censor the Plaintiffs” should be halted immediately, adding:
“The surgeon general does not have the authority to issue this demand. The statute only gives him the authority to implement measures to stem spread of communicable disease. The statute cannot reasonably be interpreted to allow him to order tech companies to censor individuals with whom he disagrees on COVID policy, or to demand that Twitter hand over information about such account holders without a warrant based on probable cause.
“Demanding social media platforms, including Twitter, to turn over information about users that the Government deems problematic constitutes a warrantless search in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”
Civil rights attorney, writer and activist Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for this case, said, “The surgeon general apparently believes he can do whatever he wishes, even going so far as to commandeer technology companies to stifle the perspectives of those who differ from the government on COVID policies.”
Younes said Congress did not give Murthy the authority to “coerce social media platforms into censoring the voices of those with whom he disagrees,” and in fact, it could not have given him this power.
“The surgeon general’s demand has turned Twitter’s censorship into government action,” Younes said. “Thus, this viewpoint-based suppression of speech violates our clients’ First Amendment rights to free speech.”
Mark Chenoweth, NCLA executive director and general counsel, said:
“Surgeon General Murthy’s RFI is really a Request for Intimidation. HHS is a serial violator when it comes to abusing its statutory power.
“Incredibly, HHS is relying on the exact same statute to issue the RFI here that it relied on the past two years to justify its unlawful nationwide eviction moratorium.
“The Supreme Court finally shot down the illegal moratorium. NCLA hopes lower courts are quicker to act on this latest unconstitutional outrage.”
Incidents of social media censorship stemming from purported COVID-related “misinformation” have been plentiful over the past two years.
The NCLA lawsuit does not directly target Twitter, instead, it goes after HHS and the surgeon general for strongly encouraging — or indirectly mandating — censorship policies on the part of social media platforms.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
While other universities are scrapping vaccine passport requirements, the Ontario-based University of Waterloo has fired 49 members of staff for not showing a vaccine passport.
As reported by CTV, this came as the province of Ontario announced it would be dropping all COVID-19 measures.
“We have an obligation under the Health and Safety Act to protect our employees, and the employees have the obligation to comply,” said Nick Manning, vice president of university relations.
“All of those who weren’t able to be compliant after progressive measures faced the ultimate result of termination.”
The university terminated the staff members, yet it had announced it would be dropping its vaccine mandate on May 1.
Other schools in the province, including the University of Toronto, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ryerson University, and the University of Guelph, have announced that those who had been suspended over their vaccine status will resume work.
Earlier this month on pro-government IndiaTV, celebrity astrologer Acharya Indu Prakash presented an hour-long Ukraine special in which he predicted good fortune was 99% in favor of Putin. He said that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine “was the last resort for Mr. Putin, he was left with no options. Even now, attempts are being made to create this narrative that Putin is engaging in a bad war.”
Such an outlook would shock most Western audiences as this rhetoric is seldom heard. However, such an outlook is mostly shared across the political spectrum in India, as highlighted by an article published in The Washington Post on March 29, titled: “In India, a U.S. partner, Modi’s base is inundated with anti-U.S. commentary on Ukraine.” The opening sentence of the article wrote:
“Turn on a television in India this past month, and the arguments espoused by some of the country’s most popular media personalities follow a pattern: The United States provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine. The Americans were possibly developing biological weapons in Ukraine. Joe Biden, the US president who fumbled the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, has no business criticizing India over the war he sparked in Ukraine.”
Due to this position, New Delhi has been continuously lambasted by Western officials, media and academics for protecting the interests of the country and its citizens.
Among some of the many examples, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said for India to: “Think about where you want to stand when the history books are written in this moment in time, and support for the Russian leadership is support for an invasion that obviously is having a devastating impact”; Award-winning and renowned conservative American host of the Trish Regan Show tweeted: “If INDIA buys Russian crude oil, INDIA should expect to be sanctioned by the United States. And, believe me, that won’t work out so well for India’s economy. Right now: you’re with US or you’re against us. Simple”; and, The Telegraph newspaper complained that “India is the only Quad member not to have condemned the invasion.”
India, despite traditionally being a non-aligned country, joined the QUAD formation with the US, Japan and Australia to oppose China at sea in the so-called Indo-Pacific region. New Delhi believes that such a formation will be beneficial in its confrontation with China over its support for Pakistan and control of Aksai Chin, which New Delhi says is occupied by the East Asian country.
A Pew Research poll in 2017 found 49% of Indians viewed the US favorably while 47% viewed Russia favourably. A 2020 Pew Research poll found that 49% of Indians saw Russia positively, a significantly higher amount when compared to a quarter of Japanese and Australians and 19% of Americans who viewed the country favorably. Some domestic polls have shown that most Indians approve of their government abstaining from criticizing Russia, just as India did for the seventh time at the United Nations on March 25.
None-the-less, India’s cooperation with the US through the QUAD formation and its increasing confrontation with China appears to have created misunderstandings in Western capitals about New Delhi’s independent foreign policy. With the advent of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, India maintained a balance by refusing to condemn and sanction Russia, something that has created great irritation in the West, thus demonstrating that they do not care for India’s interests but only in India serving their interests.
With Russia locked out of using Dollars and the SWIFT system, discussions of India-Russia trade in local currencies accelerated so much that purchases for agriculture, pharmaceuticals and energy without dollars will seemingly become a reality. The Reserve Bank of India reportedly met with officials from Russian banks VTB, Sberbank and Gazprombank so that a rupee-ruble trade mechanism could be established.
M. K. Bhadrakumar, an Indian columnist and former diplomat, highlighted that 60-70% of weaponry for India’s armed forces is of Russian origin, and that New Delhi’s capitulation to Western demands will “render a crippling blow to India’s defence preparedness.”
“By the colour of our skin, our religion, our culture, our geography, our political economy, we will never be accepted by the West as ‘one of us’. Do not be mesmerised by promises of equal partnerships […] Fundamentally, what the Western powers are planning is a form of neo-colonialism borne out of the desperate need to arrest the decline of their economies through a massive transfer of wealth from the rest of the world inhabited by 88% of mankind — Asia,” he added.
As Western condemnation against India intensifies, discussions of neo-colonialism is re-entering Indian discourse. Because India suffered from centuries of colonial rule, which saw an astronomical $45 trillion plundered by the British alone between 1765 to 1938 (almost 9 times the current combined GDP of Britain and India), the country never wants to be colonized again, including in the form of 21st century neo-colonialism.
Although the US has found India as an ally to oppose China, pushing the South Asian country to abandon all its interests and carefully crafted foreign policy to serve exclusively the interests of the West, whilst lambasting India for not adopting Western positions in issues that New Delhi has no business being involved in, will only strengthen the discourse of Western attempts of neo-colonialism against India.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Russia has raised concerns over the apparent use of an official UN vehicle in combat by Ukrainian forces. It’s the latest of numerous incidents of civilian transport being seized for the war effort by Kiev, Moscow’s envoy to the UN Security Council complained on Tuesday.
Vassily Nebenzia warned that it created a situation where, for example, medical vehicles could be used to deliver Western weapons into the country.
“We are expecting a response to our latest inquiry about the UN vehicle with the diplomatic number DP210015, which was also taking part in Kharkov in combat operations of the Ukrainian nationalists, according to witness accounts,” he said.
The vehicle he mentioned was apparently spotted in a video released by Ukrainian fighters to show off the shooting down of an aircraft. It was reportedly used to transport anti-aircraft missiles.
The diplomat said there were credible reports that official vehicles of the UN and the OSCE were used by Ukrainian forces. He called on both organizations to “give fair assessments of such facts.”
Nebenzia also mentioned evidence of DHL delivery vans being used for combat in Ukraine. A video showing a Ukrainian mortar team apparently using such a vehicle to move around was published on Reddit last weekend.
One of the fighters shown in the video claimed the van was one of six voluntarily donated to the war effort by the Ukrainian branch of the German company. DHL shut down all operations in the country in early March. It told Russian media that the Ukrainian authorities had confiscated corporate transport.
The Russian diplomat said cases such as these have disturbing ramifications in terms of telling apart civilian and military targets in Ukraine.
“We cannot rule out that vehicles of these organizations or vehicles marked as medical transport could be used to deliver to Ukraine from neighboring states the very same weapons that the West has generously promised to Kiev,” he said.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that it will consider any arms shipments to Ukraine as legitimate military targets.
Now that Moscow has doubled down on its demands that its European “partners” pay for its oil and gas in rubles instead of euros (which, as the bloc already demonstrated, can be easily confiscated in the name of “sanctions”), the German government is digging in its heels as the payment dispute threatens to precipitate problematic energy shortages in Europe’s largest economy.
The FT reported Wednesday that German Energy Minister Robert Habeck has activated the “early warning phase” of Germany’s gas emergency law, which was adopted to help ration supplies in the face of a severe shortage. The decision will alert German consumers and businesses to do what they can to conserve energy.
Habeck issued the warning for fear that Moscow would swiftly move to cut off energy exports to one of its biggest customers in Europe over its refusal to make payment in rubles, which Habeck has insisted would be a violation of the two sides’ contract.
The move was triggered by German concern that Russia might cut supplies to the country and its neighbors because they are rebuffing Moscow’s efforts to force payment for gas imports in rubles.
“We will definitely not supply oil and gas for free, that’s for sure. It’s hardly possible and reasonable to engage in charity in our situation,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this week.
As Germany scrambles to address a looming shortfall in energy supplies, analysts are warning that the government’s refusal to meet Moscow’s request for payment in rubles could create a “substantial” risk.
During the early warning phase – the first of three stages in Germany’s emergency response – a crisis team from the economics ministry, the regulator and the private sector will monitor imports and storage.
If supplies fall short, and less draconian attempts to lower consumption do not work, the government would cut off certain parts of German industry from the grid and give preferential treatment to households.
Volker Wieland, a professor of economics at Frankfurt University and a member of the German council of economic advisers, on Wednesday warned that a halt in Russian energy supplies would create a “substantial” risk of a recession and bring Europe’s largest economy “close to double-digit rates of inflation.”
Already, the German economy is facing its most brutal inflation in decades, with an annual headline inflation rate that could top 6% by the end of the year. The dire situation has already prompted the government to subsidize citizens’ energy costs with a round of energy stimmies.
Further restrictions on Russian supply could have even more dire consequences.
Of course, if Berlin doesn’t play ball, gas won’t be the only commodity in short supply. The Kremlin said on Wednesday that demanding ruble payments for exports of oil, grain, fertilizers, coal, metals and other key commodities in addition to natural gas was a good idea, Russia’s top lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday, per Reuters.
“If you want gas, find rubles,” Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, said in a post on Telegram.
Peskov, meanwhile, said the dollar’s global reserve currency was already diminishing, and that pricing Russia’s biggest exports in rubles would be “in our interests and the interests of our partners.”
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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