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The CDC says “severe reactions” to the COVID vaccines are rare. That’s not what we found.

Don’t let the title fool you. The survey was created on June 17 and was executed by Pollfish on Jun 18.
By Steve Kirsch | June 20, 2022

A new poll of Americans shows that it’s likely that over 10M Americans were injured by the vaccine. This may explain why there are staffing shortages everywhere, from pilots to pharmacists.

The CDC has always maintained that severe reactions to the COVID vaccines are rare. Since I became a ‘misinformation’ spreader over a year ago, I’ve never believed that.

Yesterday, VSRF engaged the services of a professional polling company (Pollfish) to survey 500 people who were selected entirely at random.

The results were shocking, but they were consistent with the VAERS data which has been “lit up” since January 2021 telling us “the COVID vaccines are the most unsafe vaccines in human history.”

Now we have independent confirmation that the safety signals in VAERS were accurate, just like we’ve always said.

The numbers in this poll are absolutely shocking and there is no way to spin this as a positive.

This article includes the full Pollfish report as well as the individual response data so that anyone can analyze it themselves.

Key results from the poll

The poll was about the COVID vaccine exclusively, not about other vaccines. Stratified responses are age normalized to the US since the respondents who answered didn’t match the overall US demographics.

Doing some rudimentary estimates from the data (rather than stratifying by age which would be more accurate but more time consuming):

  1. 20% of the respondents reported they were vaccine injured
  2. The 20% number is remarkable because there was no pre-screening question and only 77.3% of Americans received at least one dose. That means that if you were vaccinated there is a 26% chance that you were injured (computed as 20.46/77.3). Wow.
  3. 30% of the households have a vaccine injured person
  4. 45% of the extended families have a vaccine injured person
  5. In 87% of the cases where there was a vaccine injury, there was either a doctor visit(s) or hospital stay(s) or both.
  6. 54% of the injured are still impacted today.
  7. 45% of the vaccine injured said it would shorten their lifespan
  8. 41% of the injured are unable to hold a job.
  9. Only 17% said their injury was a minor annoyance.

Putting these results into perspective

If you took the vaccine there is a 26% chance of injury as noted above. We also know that 45% of the injured said it would shorten their lifespan. This means that we are shortening the lifespan of 12% of the people who opt for the jab (since .26*.45=.117).

Shortening the lifespan of 12% of the people who take the vaccine seems like a very high price to pay for a virus that can be easily treated with a near 100% success rate with repurposed drugs.

For example, my friends George Fareed and Brian Tyson now have treated over 12,000 COVID patients using a combination of repurposed drugs and supplements without a single hospitalization or death if they were treated within 5 days of first symptoms. They even have a top-selling book on Amazon with rave reviews. Despite all of that, the FDA, CDC, and NIH continue to ignore them. They can’t get anyone to return their calls. They’ve had their protocol since the very beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 (it’s evolved over time).

It is stunning that the FDA approves the vaccines for our kids under 5 based on the COVID case statistics from just 10 children (7 placebo and 3 in the treatment arm), yet Fareed and Tyson who have treated over 12,000 patients can’t get a return phone call.

We are basically spending billions of dollars to seriously injure over 10 million Americans and kill hundreds of thousands. In the process, we did not reduce COVID, but made the problem worse with nonsensical interventions when all we ever needed was some simple advice:

  1. If you are sick stay home
  2. If you test positive, start a proven early treatment protocol ASAP such as the Fareed-Tyson protocol

We never needed the vaccine, masks (which make the problem worse), lockdowns, mandates, social distancing, or new drugs. All we had to do was follow the two simple steps above. It was never more complicated than that.

The data

Here are the full poll results and a spreadsheet with each individual response so you can do you own analysis:

The Pollfish June 18, 2022 summary report

The full Pollfish June 18, 2022 data (spreadsheet)

Comparison with the rates of COVID vaccine injury that nurses report among their peers

Does a 12% injury rate seem high to you? That would be 30M people.

You may change your mind when you watch this video where I interview 7 nurses who were willing to speak out publicly and reveal the rate of vaccine injury among their peers.

Note: There are audio and video drop outs on the call. Use the cursor button to skip over this. I’ve reported these issues to Riverside.fm… their product feels like a beta test. Also, the preview has 8 nurses but there were only 7 in the call. Can you spot the duplicate?

Watch the video.

The rates averaged over 10% with some nurses seeing injury rates among their peers exceeding 40%. Sorry this is so hard to watch with the audio drop outs, but this is the best I have for this interview.

Jessica Rose’s take

She just sent me an email:

Steve, this is excellent. And aligns with my perceptions from the data.

Dr. Pierre Kory’s take

I sent him an email with all the data with a Subject line: Re: WHOA!!! this poll will BLOW YOUR MIND

Pierre quickly wrote back:

Wow is right. Those numbers are beyond disturbing, I have been calling this vaccine escapade a humanitarian catastrophe.. and this is what that looks like.

Comparison with VAERS

OpenVAERS shows 831,800 injuries reported domestically. But non-lethal injuries typically are under reported by a factor of 100 or more as we showed in the analysis of the disability data (where the under reporting factor was 128).

100*831K = 80M vaccine injured.

This makes our survey estimate of 30M look quite conservative.

However, if we take the raw, unadjusted numbers of our survey, 30% of all respondents over 18 were vaccine injured. Since there are 258M people over 18 in the US, we get 77M estimated vaccine injured, eerily close to the VAERS estimate.

So maybe VAERS isn’t such a bad estimator after all.

Validation by the government of Israel

Our final validation point is the proactive poll done by the government of Israel to assess vaccine side effects. This article describes that study. Among the highlights:

  1. About 25% of people with pre-existing auto-immune disorders, depression or anxiety reported a worsening of their symptoms following the booster.
  2. 4.5% of respondents reported neurological problems
  3. 17% reported shaking

So our 20% rate of injury isn’t all that far off what the Israeli government found.

What vaccine injury looks like

Many people never recognize vaccine injury because they don’t know what it looks like.

For example, as I am writing this article, I received the following message from one of my subscribers:

So my mom’s very dear friend called me tonight to tell me that her cancer came back. She was diagnosed over 20 years ago and has been cancer-free. I asked her did you get boosted she said yes, I already knew she was vaccinated. She said don’t start asking me these questions. What does that have to do with anything? They now found Cancer all over her uterus and it’s now spreading to her body. You think it’s from the vaccine? She was perfectly fine all these years before getting vaccinated. It makes me so sad she will probably end up dying.

I hear these stories all the time of a new cancer or a cancer that was under control suddenly coming back with a vengeance. These aren’t coincidences. While for any individual case it may be difficult to determine a cause, in aggregate we are seeing rates of cancer post vaccine that are unprecedented.

This is why Dr. Ryan Cole said, “Since January 1, in the laboratory, I’m seeing a 20 times increase of endometrial cancers over what I see on an annual basis.”

It’s amusing to me that when you search for that quote in Google, you only get articles debunking the claim whereas if you search in DuckDuckGo, you get articles with the original quote. This is pretty sad because Dr. Cole is highly respected among his peers for telling the truth. It’s a pity we never get a chance to have a fair debate with people who claim we are spreading misinformation.

And the personal stories

A lot of people tell me they know hundreds of people and none are vaccine injured.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps 95% of the vaccine injured don’t speak out about their vaccine injury.

It feels like for every person who sees nothing, I hear from people with the opposite experience:

I have so many of my relatives, neighbors and acquaintances succumb to this poison. Just yesterday a 30 year old acquaintance died of sudden heart attack. My aunt is suffering from autoimmune mediated arthritis after she got her 2nd Pfizer shot. A neighbor died after receiving the first dose of Sinovac Vaccine. A relative died after receiving 2nd dose of SinoVac… So many to list!!

Replicating the poll

The out-of-pocket cost for the poll is $500. Anyone could replicate it.

I’m sure fact checkers will spend $50,000 to replicate it 100 times until they get the results that match their narrative, and then publish that.

We didn’t do that. We’ve never asked this set of questions ever before. The questions weren’t “gamed” to elicit a specific response. We put together the questions we wanted, we ran the poll, and we published the results.

But the poll is affordable enough that if you don’t believe me, you can replicate it yourself.

Summary

The COVID vaccines are the most dangerous vaccines in human history. There are systemic flaws in the medical system that cause doctors to fail to recognize the evidence in plain sight. But that doesn’t change the reality. The COVID vaccines have killed hundreds of thousands of people and severely injured millions more. Since there is a safe, inexpensive alternative (early treatment protocols) with near 100% efficacy in reducing hospitalization and death, the vaccines should be immediately halted for all age groups. That would be the right thing to do.

But admitting they made a mistake would be an embarrassment to the medical community, government agencies, and Congress. So they will continue to look the other way and find ways to discredit the evidence and the brave people who are speaking out. They will continue to avoid any accountability by agreeing to an open debate. And in the meantime, millions more will be disabled, and hundreds of thousands will die prematurely.

Doctors and nurses know what is going on, but will not speak out as a group because they will lose their jobs and ability to practice medicine. So they keep their heads down.

The other doctors are so blue-pilled, they actually still believe the CDC. When Pfizer presents safety and efficacy data that is appalling to anyone with a working brain, they simply look at the vote count of the outside committees (unanimously approved) and never bother to learn more about what just happened. They won’t even watch this 4 minute video that explains just how bad the trial data was.

When we discovered that there wasn’t a single death from COVID-19 in the entire state of Massachusetts in both 2020 and 2021 in age 5 to 11, did that change anything? Of course not. COVID is an emergency because it might kill kids in the future and you can never be too careful when it comes to saving kids lives. But when large numbers of kids are killed by the vaccine, we simply look the other way. That’s not an emergency; it doesn’t even exist. Their odd causes of death are ignored.

My survey won’t change anything, even if it is replicated over and over. It will just add more evidence to the public record that the medical community is causing great harm and completely incapable of seeing the truth. They will not allow themselves to be held accountable in an open discussion— ever.

The American people won’t change their minds until the doctors change their minds. And the doctors are so well trained to respect the medical authorities like the FDA, CDC, and NIH and/or sufficiently afraid of the repercussions of speaking out, that nothing will change anytime soon.

The truth always comes out sooner or later. The later it comes out, the greater the damage will be to all these institutions that people once trusted.

The other thing I know is that the scale of this deception is unprecedented. When this unravels, which I have no doubt that it will, it will destroy our trust in:

  1. the medical community
  2. the HHS government agencies: CDC, FDA, NIH
  3. the mainstream media
  4. Congress
  5. State and local government officials
  6. CEOs who imposed vaccine mandates
  7. local health officials
  8. Mainstream social networks
  9. Fact checkers
  10. The Gates Foundation
  11. Bill Gates
  12. The Rockefeller Foundation
  13. the drug companies
  14. the courts
  15. clinical trials
  16. medical journals
  17. … and more…

This survey is just one more nail in the coffin of the “safe and effective” narrative. Nothing more.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘Stop NATO,’ protesters chant at massive rally in heart of EU

Samizdat | June 20, 2022

A trade union-organized protest numbering 70,000 to 80,000 demonstrators packed the streets of Brussels on Monday, bringing the city to a standstill. In addition to expressing anger at the rising cost of living in Belgium, many condemned the US-led NATO alliance and its involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

Trade unions said that 80,000 people attended the protest, while police said that the turnout was closer to 70,000, Reuters reported. In addition to packing the streets, the protest led to mass cancellations of flights at Brussels Airport, as unions representing security personnel went on strike. Public transit routes around the city were also operating at drastically reduced capacity.

Inflation hit 9% in Belgium in June, a four-decade high. With spending power declining, protesters demanded salary hikes and tax cuts.

However, many linked their dire economic straits to the EU’s sanctions regime on Russia and with the NATO alliance’s rush to arm Ukraine.

Protesters demanded that their leaders “spend money on salaries, not on weapons,” and chanted “stop NATO.”

While similar protests against rising costs have taken place across Europe as of late – thousands of trade unionists marched in London on Saturday – few have linked the soaring prices with the actions of NATO and its members.

Just three months ago, some protesters in Brussels waved Ukrainian flags and demanded that the EU cut itself off from “Putin’s Oil.” Weeks before that, there was a demonstration outside European Parliament buildings calling for “sanctions for Russia.”

Brussels is home to headquarters of both the EU and NATO. It was also the city from where US President Joe Biden chose to announce a round of sanctions on Moscow in March, before immediately telling a reporter that “sanctions never deter” those targeted by them.

Despite predicting in April that these measures would “wipe out the last 15 years of Russia’s economic gains,” Russia’s energy earnings have hit record levels since February, and the Russian ruble is currently at a seven-year high against the euro.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused European countries of committing economic “suicide” via sanctions, and predicted last week that the EU’s “direct losses” from this sanctions policy “could exceed $400 billion in a year.”

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

Big Tech Censorship Website Full Fact Lobbies MPs to Include “Health Misinformation” in Online Safety Bill

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 20, 2022

Full Fact – a ‘fact-checking’ website funded by Google, Facebook and George Soros – has been lobbying MPs to include “health misinformation” in the Online Safety Bill. This would force websites to remove “legal but harmful” “misinformation” relating to health, including off-narrative information about COVID-19, lockdowns, masks and vaccines, or face crippling fines.

Last week Full Fact – which received 70% of its 2019 declared funding from Big Tech companies – sent an email to its subscribers urging them to write to their MP and ask him or her vote to address the “gap” left by the Government’s rejection of the Labour and SNP amendment that would have added “health misinformation” to the bill. Full Fact’s Policy and Parliamentary Relations Manager Alison Trew wrote:

Two years on from the outbreak of a global pandemic, it should be obvious that false or misleading claims about our health should be included in the types of online content addressed by the Bill.

A few weeks ago Full Fact’s Chief Executive, Will Moy, warned MPs that as it stands, the Online Safety Bill fails to meet the Government’s aim to make the U.K. the safest place in the world to be online.

Our fact checkers have seen first hand how COVID-19 misinformation has undermined public health, conspiracy theories have led to offline attacks, and disinformation – including on the war in Ukraine – has spread unchecked.

Digital minister Chris Philp told MPs this week that the Government agreed with the intention behind the amendment to tackle harmful health misinformation. And yet, disappointingly, the Government voted against the proposed changes.

This leaves a huge, and dangerous, gap in the Online Safety Bill. But there is still time for Parliament to close it.

Here’s the email in full.

Full Fact, which self-importantly describes itself as “the U.K.’s independent fact checking charity”, is well known to be a politically biased organisation with a history of partisan interventions in political debates. Government Minister Dominic Raab once said of it: “Who said Final [sic] Fact is the final arbiter of what the public get to see as the truth? There’s no God-given right, set in law. It doesn’t sound to me like they like the competition.”

However, various organisations including Google and Facebook use Full Fact to inform them as to what is “misinformation” that must be censored on their platforms. Worse, Raab’s Government is currently causing it to be “set in law” that websites must act on the “misinformation” that sites like Full Fact bring to their attention. The U.K.’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom said last year that its “list of claims that could be considered false or misleading is provided to us by Full Fact”.

Full Fact claims to be an “independent and impartial charity with a cross-party board”. But an investigation by David Scullion for the Critic found this was not true.

The organisation claims to have a board of trustees with “members from the three main UK-wide political parties”. There is a Labour Peer (Baroness Janet Royall), a Lib-Dem peer, (Lord John Sharkey) but their former Conservative Party member, Lord Richard Inglewood, no longer sits as a Tory. When I asked Full Fact who their Conservative member was they pointed out that one of their trustees donates to the Conservative Party and that they have “representatives of different political parties” on their board. This is different wording which allows for the fact that they don’t, or aren’t sure whether they have a Conservative Party member amongst them. I pointed out that a donor was different to a member, but I did not receive a reply and the text on their website was not corrected.

Scullion notes that the departing editor was an ex-Mirror and Buzzfeed reporter, and concludes: “Full Fact is a charity with a small output of research compared to its size, funded primarily by big-tech and staffed to a large extent by former public sector workers or ex-reporters from left-wing media.”

Full Fact misleadingly claims no one has to listen to it: “We don’t ask people to take our word for any conclusion we make. We provide links to all sources so that readers can check what we’ve said for themselves.”

But when major internet sites and broadcasting regulators are leaning on it to tell them what to censor, and when it has a “Head of Advocacy” and a “Policy and Parliamentary Relations Manager” who lobby Government to change the law, it clearly isn’t the case that no one has to take its word for it. Where it speaks, censorship can quickly follow.

Full Fact often gets things wrong. In February 2020 it joined in the now discredited effort to pour cold water on the lab leak theory, stating “There’s no evidence that the 2019 coronavirus originated in a Chinese Government laboratory”, despite many scientists at the time suspecting, based on the evidence, that was the case. Last year the site claimed the Daily Sceptic was being misleading in reporting Government data showing infection rates higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. It wrote:

This data had already caused widespread confusion, because it seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t. In particular, a chart displaying the data seemed to give this impression.

Despite pointing out to the site that the Government data and chart didn’t “seem” to show this but plainly did show this, and this was not a result of “confusion” or an “impression” on anyone’s part and the misinformation was entirely Full Fact’s in attempting to cast doubt on this, no correction was forthcoming.

Websites and other media checking one another’s facts is of course a worthwhile activity. That’s one reason free speech is so important, as it allows people to correct one another by drawing attention to new or overlooked evidence. But using biased fact-checking sites as a basis of censorship, as many websites and Government regulators are now in a habit of doing, is a fast-track to an authoritarian society where only officially approved speech and Government-endorsed ‘facts’ are allowed. It’s no surprise that Full Fact wants the Online Safety Bill strengthened to force websites to conform with the pronouncements of sites like itself. But that’s no reason for a Government which claims to care about freedom of speech to go along with it.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

D’Souza’s Mules Left Tracks

By Charlie Johnston | American Thinker | June 20, 2022

Many conservative commentators have noted that Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary, 2000 Mules, offers compelling evidence of large-scale vote fraud. It offers more than this, though.  It provides compelling evidence of a massive, centrally coordinated conspiracy to commit vote fraud. Examining several states with different voter laws while focusing on just one form of fraud, the movie found that the method of fraud was executed identically in each of these states. That is prima facie evidence of central organization and management.

From the moment counting was stopped in the dead of night in five Democrat-run swing states on election night, Democrats and the media have treated anyone who questioned election integrity in 2020 like a mob boss treats anyone who threatens to testify against him: shut up, or we will cancel you.

Democrats and the media routinely smear anyone who questions the election results as a conspiracy theorist. They routinely pronounce any evidence that emerges as “debunked.” For the record, “debunked” does not mean “inconvenient to the leftist narrative.” It means “thoroughly investigated and proven to be false.” Almost none of the evidence has been debunked; very little has been officially examined.  Leftists treat actual evidence like how a vampire treats a crucifix. There is no reasoned discourse, just a lot of hissing and snarling.

From well before he took office, Donald Trump faced an ongoing administrative coup attempt.  First was the long-running Russian collusion hoax, mounted by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee and abetted by the FBI and intelligence agencies. Federal employees who were, theoretically, subordinate to Trump gleefully worked to undermine his administration. Two baseless impeachments were mounted against him by Democrats who know nothing other than shrieking partisanship anymore. The slow-moving coup finally succeeded on the evening of November 3, 2020, when those five states quit counting ballots to give Democrats time to “fortify” the election. The last real hurdle to thwarting election integrity came on December 11, 2020, when the Supreme Court ruled that Texas and 18 other states lacked standing to complain of massive fraud. How states that conduct honest elections lack standing to complain of states that don’t in an election that affects them all is beyond my understanding. It looked like unconditional institutional surrender to massive fraud to me.  All hail the barbarians!

Partisan media outlets began crowing that many courts had “investigated” claims of fraud and found them baseless. Rather, almost all courts refused to even look at any evidence, dismissing almost all claims on procedural, rather than substantive, grounds. Refusing to look at evidence is not an investigation. A trickster can pat mud over a rock to change its shape, but time and tide will wash away the mud, leaving only the rock of truth — and then the fraud is exposed.

D’Souza’s documentary examined only the slice of fraud that involved organized physical ballot-stuffing.  It did not touch on compromised voting machines and systems or unconstitutional, administrative election law changes. If the single slice that 2000 Mules so effectively biopsied is filled with the cancer of fraud, it is willful ignorance to believe that everything else was clean.

If the election of 2020 had been fundamentally clean, Democrats and the media should have been the loudest advocates for a thorough and bipartisan investigation of the election to put widespread doubts to rest and own the conservatives. (By bipartisan, I do not mean like the J6 committee, where the Democrats unilaterally appointed all members, including a couple of Republican chumps for show.) Instead, the left hisses and snarls at every piece of evidence brought forth, no matter how compelling. A guilty man tries to suppress every bit of evidence at his trial, never knowing which piece will seal his conviction, while an innocent man tries to get every piece into evidence he can, never knowing which piece will exonerate him. To assess credibility on this, look who is trying to suppress evidence and who is trying to get evidence into the public record.

At this stage, it is hard to credit Democratic and media intransigence to anything innocent. If they are not just stupid, they have become co-conspirators in the only actual insurrection America has seen over the last six years. Understand, this coup was not primarily aimed at Trump and conservative Republicans; it is a coup against the very idea of self-government. Alas, many Republicans may disagree with elements of Democratic methods but agree with them that a self-serving elite class should rule the citizen-serfs they think constitute the American people.

The relentless smears, the constant howls, and the shrieking rage of the leftists are not because they are so offended that the right would challenge them.  It is because the mud of massive deception is being washed away to reveal the rock of stark fraud the left mounted to steal an American presidential election. That is genuine insurrection.  Confession, repentance, and forfeiture of all offices of public honor or trust by the conspirators could begin to establish American honor and liberty anew. That, of course, will never happen. Power is the left’s only god, and pursuit of it by any means its only liturgy.

Republicans will win by unprecedented margins in November.  If they hold the left to account for its depredations against the American system of law and systemic attack on the Bill of Rights, we can begin to crawl out of this hole of despotism. If, instead, the Republicans largely choose to let bygones be bygones, as they have done with the Russian collusion conspirators, there is little hope that America can long survive as anything the founders would recognize. Renewal will come. Americans will not forever submit to be ruled by any class of people — and certainly not to this degenerate class of aspiring despots.

However it comes, D’Souza’s documentary is the seminal moment the tide washed away enough mud that, despite their shrieks and howls, the left can no longer hide the ugly truth of what it did. Massive election fraud in 2020 is a conspiracy, but it is no longer merely a theory.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Film Review | | Leave a comment

Russia reveals number of victims from drilling rig strikes

Samizdat | June 20, 2022

Three people were injured and seven missing following a suspected Ukrainian attack on drilling rigs off the coast of Crimea, the head of the Russian region, Sergey Aksyonov, revealed on Monday.

Earlier, he said that three missile strikes hit three separate rigs owned by Chernomorneftegaz, a company that develops offshore oil and gas fields.

“So far, 94 people have been evacuated. 15 servicemen remain guarding the operating drilling platforms. Unfortunately, information on 3 wounded and 7 missing has been confirmed,” Aksyonov said in a statement.

He stressed that the search operation will continue and the regional government will contact the families and friends of the missing and injured.

Meanwhile, the Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case in relation to the shelling.

According to the committee’s statement, “the military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine targeted the platform of the gas production tower <…> using weapons with high damaging properties.”

Last Friday, the Ukrainian presidential representative for Crimea, Tamila Tasheva, said that Ukraine is now relying on military means when it comes to what she called “returning” Crimea. She explained that the Russian military offensive had prompted Kiev to largely leave behind its diplomatic strategy for the peninsula’s “deoccupation.”

Tasheva’s remarks came a day after Ukraine’s Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov said that Kiev, using US-supplied weapons, is going to “liberate” all land lost to Russia, including Crimea. Prior to that, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to “liberate” Crimea and the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) People’s Republics, which are recognized by Russia as independent states.

Ukrainian troops have been losing territory to Russia and allied forces in Donbass, even as Western nations supply more sophisticated weapons to Kiev. Several Ukrainian officials have stated that the pledge to not use foreign weapons to attack targets in Russia does not apply to Crimea, which Kiev considers part of its territory. Major General Dmitry Marchenko said last week that the bridge connecting the peninsula with mainland Russia is “absolutely our number one target.”

Russia attacked the neighboring state in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.

The Kremlin has since demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Analysis of the French legislative election

By Gilbert Doctorow | Irrussianality | June 20, 2022

It was a delight to participate yesterday evening in a featured news program on Press TV just as the results of the voting were coming in.  It is quite remarkable that the news room and their correspondent in Paris took a line of commentary that would fit perfectly within the reportage of the French mainstream news Establishment, Figaro or Le Monde. Their top question was whether Macron’s movement, which now had lost its absolute majority, could regain control of Parliament by forming a coalition with the traditional centrist party, the Republicans. Their top concern was whether this would enable Macron to proceed with his neo-Liberal domestic reform policies, such as raising the legal retirement age from 62 to 65.

It was my pleasure to throw a spanner in the works and redirect attention to Macron’s foreign policy, namely his support for Ukraine in the ongoing military conflict with Russia, a policy which the nominally Leftist Opposition coalition of Mélenchon shares fully. Indeed, judging by foreign policy issues, there was only one true Opposition in this election, Marine Le Pen and her Rassemblement national, which seeks good relations with Russia and distances itself from NATO. Note that Le Pen’s party did better in yesterday’s elections than ever before and will capture as many as 10 times the number of seats it held before the elections.

As I argued in yesterday’s mini-debate, continuation of the war thanks to French and other European and American military and financial assistance to Kiev, and the continued imposition of draconian sanctions on Russia particularly in the energy sphere, are feeding an inflationary cycle that will overwhelm political and economic life in France in the coming months, especially when the home heating season begins.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Iran and Russia Revive the North-South Transport Corridor

By Vladimir Platov – New Eastern Outlook – 20.06.2022

Following agreements reached during the January official visit to Moscow by Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to further develop and deepen bilateral relations between Iran and Russia, the countries have decided to jointly revive the North-South Transport Corridor. This decision has become particularly relevant against the background of the unlawful sanctions policy pursued by the United States and its Western allies against Russia and Iran, and Tehran’s and Moscow’s desire to establish trade routes that are not linked to the West.

In order to implement this decision, Iranian authorities are seeking to revive the recently stalled International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) project, which traverses Russian and Iranian territory and the two countries’ waters to connect with Asian export markets. As the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on June 11, in order to implement the International North-South Transport Corridor, the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) has initiated the transit of cargo from Russia to India or to South Asia through the project, using just one consignment note for the entire transit route.

According to Dariusz Jamali, director of the joint Iranian-Russian terminal in Astrakhan, such transits have taken place occasionally in recent times. However, this route has clear advantages: lower transport costs (such as port and customs charges in particular),shorter waiting periods for containers, faster delivery of goods, elimination of dangers in transferring empty or full containers, issuance of legal documents and compensation for possible losses, and faster banking transactions.

The first pilot Russian-Iranian transit proposed by IRISL consists of two 41-ton containers of wood laminated plastic. The consignor is in St. Petersburg and the transit port is Astrakhan. The cargo will then be transported by the Caspian Sea to the northern Iranian port of Anzali (Bandar-e Anzali) and then by road through Iranian territory from the port of Anzali to the southern port of Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf and further by sea to the Indian port of Nhava Sheva. IRISL is the operator. The estimated delivery time is 25 days.

It is assumed that the main Russian exports through Astrakhan could be cereals (wheat), timber and scrap metal.

This transport corridor could go to Afghanistan via Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province. The plan for further joint use of the North-South Transport Corridor even includes the construction of a railway line that could bring goods arriving at Iranian Caspian Sea ports to the south-eastern port of Chabahar. In addition, the construction of a railway line from Chabahar to the Hajigak iron ore mine in Afghanistan, where India has made large investments, is also under consideration.

The International North-South Transport Corridor emphasizes the Russian port of Astrakhan and the Iranian Chabahar as bases for further transport to Eurasia. The development of the latter, as well as the construction of a large petrochemical complex and an export terminal near the port of Jask, are projects being implemented by the Iranian government as part of the Mokran coastal development strategy.

Nevsky Shipyard, which produces multipurpose dry-cargo ships of RSD49 (deadweight of 7150 tons, container capacity of 289 TEU) and 005RSD03 (container capacity of 225 TEU) projects, is also engaged in the work of the North-South transit corridor in building ships for the Caspian Sea.

As part of its increased participation in the North-South Transport Corridor, Iran is considering expanding international road transport cooperation with the countries participating in the Transport Corridor Europe-Caucasus-Asia (TRACECA) program, the Tehran Times reported, citing the Iranian Ministry of Roads and Urban Development.  This issue was brought up in particular during a meeting between Aset Assavbayev, Secretary General of the Permanent Secretariat of the TRACECA International Transport Program, and Dariush Amani, Head of Iran Road Maintenance and Transportation Organization (RMTO). The negotiations focused on developing international road transport cooperation with TRACECA member countries and increasing the volume of transit traffic along the corridor. As you may know, the TRACECA International Transport Program, in which the European Union and 12 countries of Eastern Europe, Southern Caucasus and Central Asia now participate, was set up in Brussels in May 1993. The aim of the program is to strengthen economic ties, trade and transport links.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov plans to visit Iran in the near future to discuss, among other things, further steps of cooperation between Russia and Iran. The year 2022 has already seen two important visits in Russian-Iranian interaction. First, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to Moscow in January 2022, which was a clear diplomatic breakthrough for the new head of the Iranian government. And second, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak’s visit to Iran in May, which took place against the backdrop of unprecedentedly harsh sanctions imposed by the West in the wake of the Ukrainian events. The biggest change in regional policy is undoubtedly the prospect of a full-fledged free trade area (FTA) agreement with the EEU. It is expected to be signed by the autumn of this year to replace the interim FTA that came into force on October 27, 2019, and which has already had a positive impact on bilateral trade between Russia and Iran.

In the rapprochement between the two countries, Moscow takes into account the compromise position taken by Iran after the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine: while not proclaiming its support for Russia’s actions per se, Tehran has not joined the wave of international condemnation of Moscow, instead placing the main blame for what is happening on the US and NATO. Russia also takes into account that Iran’s potential as an economic partner far exceeds the current level of relations.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

European Commission approved Lithuania blockade of Russia’s Kaliningrad

Samizdat | June 20, 2022

Lithuania’s decision to block the transit of goods by rail from Russia to Kaliningrad – the country’s western-most exclave that sits between Poland and Lithuania – was made after consulting and getting the approval of the European Commission, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsberg said on Monday.

Landsberg made the statement during an EU foreign ministers meeting, where he explained that starting June 17, Lithuania would no longer allow the transit of sanctioned goods through its territory. “This decision was made after consultations with the European Commission and implemented under its guidance,” the minister said.

Last week, Kaliningrad Region Governor Anton Alikhanov warned that the authorities in Vilnius were planning to cut the rail transit of goods from other parts of Russia to the region.

On Saturday, Lithuania’s state-owned rail operator confirmed it would partially halt the transportation of goods to Kaliningrad, which Alikhanov claims will affect up to 50% of all cargo flow to the region.

Russian officials have stated that Lithuanian’s move is an egregious breach of international law and akin to a full blown economic blockade and an attempt to “place the region in an economic chokehold.”

Russia has warned that unless the ‘blockade’ of Kaliningrad is lifted immediately, Moscow may have no choice but to “untie its hands” and rectify the situation by any means necessary.

Many countries, including EU member states, imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in response to the military campaign in Ukraine launched by Moscow in late February. The European bloc closed its airspace to Russian aircraft on February 27, and Moscow responded in kind, banning many European airlines.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Casualties reported after strike at Russian drilling platforms in Crimea

Samizdat | June 20, 2022

Suspected Ukrainian attacks targeted drilling rigs off the coast of Crimea in the Black Sea on Monday morning, the head of the Russian region, Sergey Aksyonov, said in a statement. He added that the rigs were manned by 12 workers, five of whom have been rescued so far, including three with injuries.

Aksyonov did not disclose the exact locations of the facilities, but said they were owned by Chernomorneftegaz, a company that develops offshore gas and oil fields. Its ownership has been disputed by Ukrainian energy giant Naftogaz since 2014, when it was nationalized after Crimea voted to re-join Russia.

The head of Crimea later said that three missile strikes hit three separate rigs. Aksyonov said a total of 109 people were in the area at the time of the attacks and that the evacuation of the workers was underway.

The attack targeted offshore rigs located about 71km from the Ukrainian port of Odessa, Olga Kovitidi, who represents Crimea in the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, told RIA Novosti.

Some Ukrainian media reported that earlier in the day, dozens of missiles hit Snake Island, a small islet off the Ukrainian coast, which has been controlled by Russia for months. Ukrainian MP Aleksey Goncharenko claimed that some of the missiles hit the gas rigs instead of the island.

Ukrainian troops have been slowly losing territory to Russia and allied forces in Donbass, even as Western nations supply more sophisticated weapons to Kiev. Several Ukrainian officials have stated that the pledge to not use foreign weapons to attack targets in Russia does not apply to Crimea, which Kiev considers part of its territory. Major General Dmitry Marchenko said last week that the bridge connecting the peninsula with mainland Russia is “absolutely our number one target.”

This month, Kiev reported deploying US-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles as part of its coastal defense systems. Last week, Kiev claimed it had attacked a Russian military tugboat with two of these missiles.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Weapons shipped to Ukraine being sold in black markets

By Uriel Araujo | June 20, 2022

The same way sanctions are not working and are backfiring, Western massive arms transfers to Kiev have been a disaster, from anyone’s perspective. In an interview to US “National Defense”, Ukrainian Army Brigadier General Volodymyr Karpenko has admitted his country lost almost 50% of all weaponry and equipment it received. Some of it got destroyed, but that is not the whole story.

Russian Channel One reported on how the Ukrainian military abandons weapons as they retreat. The abandoned US-made Javelins and German anti-tank mines were filmed. Moreover, weaponry sent to Ukraine is ending up in black markets and is being sold in the so-called darknet and deep web platforms. There, one can buy Javellin anti-tank systems for about $ 30,000 or British NLAW systems for half the price. There is a demand for that, of course. Terrorists and criminal gangs are the buyers.

This situation has alarmed the Interpol and other international and European bodies. Already on May 28, Europol director Catherine De Bolle voiced her concerns about the war increasing the inpourring of arms into the continent’s black markets. Such weapons could reach political players in the Middle East involved in local conflicts, and spread all over the region, even reaching currently unstable locations such as Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Egypt. Arms shipments to Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania are in fact being investigated and such can aggravate the security problem in the Balkans – and in the Sahel also.

The so-called Islamic State or ISIS, the terrorist organization also known as the Daesh, is reorganizing itself this time in the Sahel, according to Victoria Nuland herself (the US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs), who has stated so in May. There are reports that criminal groups in Albania and Kosovo are selling arms to ISIS.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on June 9 that “arms shipment to Ukraine will lead to the emergence of an arms black market, especially in Western Europe.” Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock has voiced similar concerns about Africa and the Balkans becoming the destination of Western arms supplied to Kiev, as reported by Le Figaro news. He said: “The wide availability of weapons during the current conflict will lead to the proliferation of illicit weapons in the post-conflict phase.” Actually, this is already happening, as seen in the dark web.

It is a well known fact that the Ukrainian armed forces are incredibly corrupt. Ukraine has long  been believed to be one of the major arms trafficking markets in Europe. It has also emerged as an import transit destination for drugs such as heroin. It has the third highest criminality score of 33 countries in Europe. In today’s world, illict trade plays a major role in the financing of terrorist and extremist networks globally.

In November last year a club in Kiev was the target of a homophobic terrorist attack. It was stormed by masked men and later an explosive device was thrown at the building. Centuria, a Ukrainian paramilitary group with links to the Azov Regiment (formerly known as the Azov Battalion) seems to be behind the crime. No one was killed, but this ultra-nationalist group already patrols Ukraine’s cities. With the war, the migration crisis and the black market, Europe could see armed groups and terrorist attacks such as these spreading to its capitals.

In 2019 a senior Daesh leader, Al-Bara Shishani, was arrested in Ukraine and Azov leaders are known to sympathize with the group, even adopting some of its tactics. As early as 2015, collaboration between Islamic radicals and Ukrainian militias has been reported.

In December 2021, before the current crisis, I wrote that should a war ensue, Ukraine would be defeated by Russia (for a number of reasons), but far-right Ukrainian groups – aided and armed by NATO and possibly by Turkish ultra-nationalist networks – could remain active in sabotage and terrorism operations, thus turning the “post-conflict” phase into a long nightmarish “frozen conflict” scenario of counter-insurgency and irregular warfare.

Amid the humanitarian catastrophe, I wrote, the European continent should expect an increase in terrorism and crime amid an increasing migration crisis. Of course most of the refugees are law-abiding families escaping the tragedy of war, but paramilitary men and extremists can make their way into Western Europe too – and Ukrainian Neo-Nazism has been largely white-washed. European far-right militias already cooperate with Ukraine’s nationalists, and the country is already a new hub for far-right activity. Isaac Kfir, a Charles Sturt University Professor and part of the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law advisory board, has warned that Ukraine has the potential to become “the Syria of the extreme right”.

In the same way US-led Western policies – directly or indirectly – aided both the Al-Qaeda and the Daesh, there is every reason to believe that in a few years Europe will be haunted by a new kind of far-right terror reminiscent of the infamous Gladio Operation, when Washington funded European far-right groups as a secret anti-Soviet army during the Cold War.

One can only wonder why European leaders would be so ready to accept these risks. This is the true reason countries such as Germany, Greece, Hungary, and even Israel have at times been reluctant to further arm Kiev or to allow weapons transit. It appears that from an American perspective Europe itself is but another US proxy.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

June 20, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pfizer vaccine effects on total motile count in sperm donors

israeli study shows persistent effects

by el gato malo – bad cattitude – june 19, 2022

one of the great early misapprehensions about mRNA vaccines is that they would not have widespread, systematic effects, instead remaining relatively localized. this was rapidly debunked and early studies showed widespread penetration of organs with a particular and perhaps unfortunate preference for concentration in ovaries and testes. (this was discovered early in japan, then denied vehemently by armies of “fact checkers” only to wind up proven in pfizer’s own documents gained through FOIA and lawsuit.)

these mRNA drugs are broadly systemic and concentrate in (amongst others) reproductive organs and effects on menstrual cycles are widely documented.

in light of this quite worrying fact (especially with a compound carrying high CG enrichment relative to high virus and the attendant risks thereof) it has been surprising to me that there have not been more studies on this topic.

but a few are starting to emerge. this israeli study was published 2 days ago:

and the results are, well, nuts. (sorry)

there was strong a priori reason to suspect effects, especially in light of the higher and more persistent prevalence of vaccine induced S proteins vs natural infection and the CG enrichment issued mentioned above.

Over the first pandemic months, there was insufficient data regarding the possible impact of Covid-19 on human reproduction. Yet, it was clear it employs the Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for cellular entry 3, 4. Various testicular cells including Leydig, Sertoli, spermatogonia and spermatozoa express ACE2 and related proteases resulting with viral fusion 5, 6. Cytokine storm-induced dysfunction, autophagy regulation and damaged blood-testis barrier were also suggested as possible pathogenic mechanism for testicular damage 7. Clinical reports of orchitis, supported by histological findings, further emphasized testicular involvement 8, 9. Therefore, detrimental impact on both spermatogenesis and testosterone production 10 seem an obvious outcome they evaluated donors from 3 sperm banks over a longitudinal period commencing before pfizer vaccine and following up after.

the study was performed and followed up according to the following timeline around vaccination.

  • T0 = pre vaxx baseline
  • T1 = 15-45 days post
  • T2 = 75-120 days post
  • T3 = 150+ days post

and from this, substantial effects on sperm concentration and overall motile count were discovered.

the authors draw a set of conclusions from this:

and from this state:

Conclusions: Systemic immune response after BNT162b2 vaccine is a reasonable cause for transient semen concentration and TMC decline. Long-term prognosis remains good

but i am left wondering about these claims and fear they may provide an example of the sort of “nerf or refute your own findings in the abstract so that we can publish this without massive controversy” behavior that has become all too common in medical and scientific journals who withhold peer review from those whose findings look too worrying if stated plainly. (but that will often let such data out if buried deep in supplements and appendixes)

this is why you should always read these data repositories. because they often tell quite a different tale than the abstract.

here’s table two from this same study. notice anything?

i’m struggling to see how one could call this “recovery.”

post day 150, sperm concentration was -15.9% vs baseline, lower even than in the 75-120 day period. average time post vaxx for T3 collection was 174 +/- 26.8 days so we’re talking about 6 months post vaxx with NO recovery in sperm concentration.

total motile count was slightly recovered from T2, but was still down 19.4% vs baseline, seeming to make up somewhat in volume what is lost in concentration.

both results were statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval.

there is a greater than 97% chance that the TMC figure is real and not random.

those are not odds you want to buck.

this raises some serious concerns for a number of reasons:

  1. obviously, this is a significant and unforeseen impact not only missed in the rush-job drug trials, but that the drug makers assured us was basically impossible and spent the better part of a year vehemently denying.
  2. this effect looks durable to at least 6 months and from this data, we really do not know when or even if (or to what extent) it will attenuate.
  3. the role of boosters here is not known, but there is every reason to expect they will have similar effects and either extend or possibly worsen this effect. that seems like a study that should be being performed immediately.
  4. even if this condition does moderate and TMC return to prior levels over time, that timescale looks quite long. it’s certainly more than 6 months. this would seem to imply low motile counts could be near constant in a regimen of annual or bi-annual boosters.

when you rush vaccines to market, especially vaccines using an entirely new and poorly understood modality that has never before been approved or even used in humans, you’re going to get all manner of nasty surprises and this looks to be yet another.

and clearly, it was missed. this was not even mentioned as a possibility in any FDA proceedings of which i am aware.

and THAT is why vaccine development generally takes place over 5-10 years, not 5-7 months.

best i can tell, we cannot even yet rule out that these effects are permanent.

and, of course, we have zero idea what they might do to pre-adolescents and possible impacts on their healthy sexual development and ultimate fertility.

and yet the US is bucking the trend in most of europe and approving this drugs for not just the young and healthy but for kids from 6mo-5 yr. this feels reckless.

we have little idea what this may be doing to ovaries and eggs either as these are much more difficult and invasive to study (and will likely need to be assessed by autopsy). this is another analysis that desperately needs to take place because unlike sperm, eggs to not replenish, so if you damage them, that’s that.

add to this effects on normal development and it could take decades to see what happened.

people have historically trusted vaccines because they underwent serious, long term testing before being pushed wide. assessment was measured in decades, not months and even a tiny number of adverse events would pull them off the market.

to trade upon that trust while abandoning all the safeguards that enabled it is bad science and worse public health policy.

how many more examples of unforeseen outcomes must we endure before this simple truth is accepted?

… additional take on the israeli sperm count data

June 19, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

January 6: The show trial, the movie… and Liz Cheney’s dyspepsia

By Michael Lesher | OffGuardian | June 19, 2022

Not every piece of political theater openly presents itself as political theater. But these aren’t ordinary times, heaven knows – and the show trial that goes under the popular name “the January 6 Committee” has been nothing if not consistently over the top.

So it was appalling, but not really a shock, to note that when the committee’s ringmasters got down to serious public business on June 9, the first thing they did was to premiere their own movie.

And what a movie!

Perfectly timed to monopolize mainstream media for the evening, the committee’s production turned out to be…

an expertly curated multimedia experience unlike any Congressional hearing in history. With revelatory clips from the committee’s interviews with Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Bill Barr; never-before-seen and brilliantly edited footage of the rioters; and a wrenching live interview with a Capitol police officer injured in the melee.”

I’m quoting, word for word, from Jodi Rudoren, who used to recycle Israeli propaganda for the New York Times and is now (poetic justice?) reduced to gushing about a “multimedia experience” that – if offered at a genuine inquest, not a show trial aimed at stifling political dissent – could only have been reported as the national disgrace it actually was.

But grab your popcorn, folks! A movie is a movie; when has Trump-baiting ever been hampered by rules of evidence? Who needs facts when you can watch doctored testimony on a big screen?

Why ask about the legal definition of “insurrection” (a question that makes nonsense out of the committee’s putative mission) when you can sit back and enjoy “brilliantly edited footage” of the first “coup” that had to be synthesized in a cutting room?

And why even think about the only violent death that occurred during all the trouble – that of Ashli Babbitt, a slight, unarmed protester shot dead by a cop for no apparent reason – when you can hang on every word of that “wrenching interview” with a different police officer who was prepared to say exactly what the committee (and Rudoren) wanted to hear?

So much for the June 9 teleplay.

And yet, the worst part – for me, anyway – was that none of it was really a surprise. If anything had remained of the committee’s bona fides after it wasted ten months on procedural ballyhoo (who’s getting the next subpoena?… will he appear?… let’s make some headlines!), the last vestige of its credibility was trashed by the committee members themselves as they stormed TV political talk shows three days after airing their feature film to deliver their prearranged verdict against the former President.

According to Rep. Jamie Raskin, Trump was guilty because he said he had won the election when he should have known he hadn’t. “He had to have known he was spreading a ‘Big Lie,’” Raskin solemnly informed CNN’s “State of the Union” on June 12.

By that standard, I guess, you’d also have to bracket Al Gore with Hitler if it turned out that some campaign-trail bigwig whispered in his ear (Gore’s, not Hitler’s) that he probably didn’t get enough votes to carry Florida in 2000.

And Rutherford B. Hayes, who actually managed to reverse the results of the presidential election of 1876 on the basis of claims every bit as dubious as Trump’s – was he a traitor, too?

Or have I missed something?

But why quibble about logic? While Raskin was declaring bad political sportsmanship a federal crime, Rep. Adam Schiff was concocting an even bolder guilt-by-association theory on ABC, where he claimed that the committee’s hearings would demonstrate “connections” between “people in Trump’s orbit and white nationalist groups that participated in the attacks [sic].”

Asked how he could prove this, the Congressman sniffed, “You’ll just have to wait until we get to that point of our hearings.”

Schiff’s committee is supposed to have interviewed more than 1,000 people since last July, but of course it’s way too early to have any evidence to back up inflammatory accusations – though not too early to air them on national television.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Almost a year ago, I underlined how popular media had already fabricated the myth of the January 6 “coup attempt.” Within days of the protest at the Capitol, its participants had been demonized as – take your pick – “fascists” (PBS), “white supremacists” (CNN), or a violent “mob” bent on paralyzing the United States government (USA Today).

And everyone seemed to accept the dogma that the demonstrators, collectively, had staged an armed “insurrection” that only just failed to turn the United States into a right-wing dictatorship.

Indeed, typical of the early propaganda was New York Magazine’s accusation that the “goal” of the “mob” was “threatening or killing officials” of the U.S. government; The New Republic went so far as to insist that the protesters sought “the mass execution of Democratic politicians and prominent liberals” – although, of course, not a single politician was attacked on January 6, let alone “executed.”

For anyone who remembers what really happened, that distinction belongs to Ashli Babbitt – whose name is never mentioned by the January 6 committee or by the popular media breathlessly reporting its every pronouncement.

Judging from its opening night, the committee still expects us to believe that the protesters who entered the Capitol on January 6 fully intended to make corpses and to extinguish American democracy. It doesn’t seem to matter that only a handful of them have been accused of possessing “weapons” of any kind (most of which seem to have been flagpoles).

In fact, a grand total of one of those “terrorists” even thought to bring a gun to the “coup.” (And never drew it, according to police.)

Not to mention that if one riot at the Capitol amounted to an attempted overthrow of the government, you’d probably have to say the same thing about the violent protests that erupted after Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016.

And what about the Democratic members of Congress who tried to prevent the certification of that election by the Electoral College the following January? Needless to say, such questions aren’t being posed by the committee or in the liberal press.

But after all, the ringmasters have never relied much on facts; they prefer to ply their audience with emotional images and wait for it to salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.

Thus, nobody on opening night mentioned the old lie about Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick being clubbed over the head with a fire extinguisher by one of the “insurrectionists.”

Instead, the committee flashed onto a viewing screen a momentary freeze-frame of a policeman, supposedly Sicknick, holding a hand over his face while a “witness” gave a description of events that didn’t match the picture but insisted on Sicknick being “as white as this sheet of paper” as he held “his face in his hands.”

Did the poignant image we saw match the story the committee wanted us to believe?

It was awfully hard to tell from the ringmasters’ own video. And the whole thing was irrelevant in any case: there’s no evidence connecting Sicknick’s death the next day (from natural causes) with anything that happened at the protest. But who cared? The concatenation of images – Sicknick’s name, a covered face, the words “white as paper” – rendered truth irrelevant; it worked directly on the emotions of the estimated 19 million viewers for whom the histrionics were designed in the first place.

And that was just the beginning. The high point of Thursday night’s emotional blitz was that “wrenching live interview” with Caroline Edwards – the police “witness” whose testimony so moved Jodi Rudoren. And who, we may ask, is Caroline Edwards?

According to the committee’s program notes, Edwards – a Capitol Police officer who looks like an actress and whose background just happens to be “a career in public relations” – was “the first law enforcement officer injured by rioters” on January 6.

She also claims to have been an eyewitness to a gruesome “war scene” as the protest intensified outside the Capitol.

Which certainly made for some popcorn-munching theater on June 9. But one might have expected a former New York Times bureau chief (which Rudoren is) to notice at least a few gaps in Edwards’ performance.

For one thing, why did the committee choose a witness who admittedly saw nothing that happened inside the Capitol – where any actual “coup attempt” would necessarily have taken place? Why wasn’t Edwards mentioned by any of the four law enforcement officers trotted out by that same committee as its star witnesses to anti-police violence during the protest at its first hearing back in July 2021?

(At the time, one of those cops insisted he had been “tortured” by a crowd that tried to “kill him with his own gun” – claims the committee has not even attempted to substantiate since then.)

And why didn’t the committee’s video document the “carnage” and “chaos” in which Edwards said she was “catching people as they fell” and “slipping in people’s blood”?

But given the priorities of Hollywood – the ones that counted, apparently – that blurry apocalypse was more than enough to make the committee’s point. In fact, according to Rudoren, another set of images at the hearing upstaged even pretty Ms. Edwards. And since you probably can’t guess what they were, I’ll quote Rudoren once again:

[I]n some ways the most powerful images of the night were the expressions on [Rep. Liz] Cheney’s face…. Cheney wore a look of profound disappointment and deep distaste.”

The emphasis is mine; otherwise I have quoted Ms. Rudoren verbatim. And her message could hardly have been clearer. Forget the truth, folks. Forget about what really happened to whom. Forget even about that “multimedia presentation” the committee spent so much time fabricating. Just look at Liz Cheney’s face while the Wyoming congresswoman does all the looking for you.

After all, it’s entirely too passé to think for yourselves. Today we keep our mouths shut and take our cues from a politician’s facial expressions. Goodbye, democratic government; hello, Liz Cheney’s dyspeptic grimaces!

Which brings me to the real point of the January 6 committee proceedings. The partisan aspect of this show trial is too obvious to need emphasis here. But there’s a lot more to the theater than an attempt to disqualify Donald Trump from seeking political office – though, of course, that’s part of the mix.

At bottom, these hearings are a kind of morality play – a public ritual that both invokes Divine Justice and adumbrates where its verdict will fall. The show-trial-cum-exorcism that commenced on June 9, laden with symbols of threatened virtue and guilt by association, is designed to dramatize in miniature a totalitarian religion that divides Absolute Good (center-liberal government) from Absolute Evil (grassroots dissent).

The Biden administration has already made a point of defining its critics as nonpersons: white supremacists, enemies of democracy, the awful “unvaccinated.” Now hoi polloi are to be purged altogether of any temptation to challenge the machinations of the ruling class. The ultimate crime of the January 6 protesters was not, in the end, that some of them trespassed on government property, or that an even smaller number scuffled with police.

No, the protesters’ unpardonable offense was to cry, “This is our house!” as they surrounded the Capitol. And that’s why they have to be demonized: because, right or wrong in their protest’s specific objective, they believed all too sincerely in what Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg about “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” They were traitors – because they declared their faith in democracy.

That’s why the committee’s ringmasters are scapegoating every single man and woman who disputed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election as a racist or a proto-Nazi, even though only a small fraction of the January 6 protesters had any connection to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Aryan Nations or Three Percenters.

That’s why the committee is pinning all the blame for the fracas on the few hundred protesters who entered the Capitol, while not even trying to challenge federal officials who allowed a disorganized bunch of unarmed demonstrators inside what is supposed to be one of the most zealously guarded buildings in the United States.

And this, mind you, despite the fact that General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – whose consent would have been required for the deployment of National Guard or military personnel to the Capitol on January 6 – told his aides (according to a newly-published book) that Trump reminded him of Hitler and that he was determined to see Joe Biden installed as President “come hell or high water.”

Bear in mind that Time Magazine (yes, Time Magazine), less than a month after the protest, could already report that a “conspiracy” between “left-wing activists and business titans” had managed to ensure that the Trump supporters who converged on the Capitol on January 6 “were met by virtually no counterdemonstrators” who might otherwise have had to share the blame for “any mayhem.”

Is it too much to ask of a committee supposedly dedicated to investigating the events of January 6 to hope it might inquire into whether General Milley, and some of colleagues, had anything to do with that “conspiracy” and whether they deliberately let the protest get just far enough out of hand to publicly discredit Trump and establish a pretext for demonizing all such protests in the future? The committee’s refusal to ask such questions only underscores its anti-democratic objectives.

And please don’t be fooled by the absence of any reference to COVID19 during the committee’s opening act. The COVID coup may not be in the foreground now, but it lurks just behind every surface.

The show trial we’re watching now was, and is, the culmination of a process that began in March 2020 when we were told the First Amendment’s right to assemble was a suicide pact.

It gathered strength when the governors of some forty states turned themselves into quasi-dictators, and neither the courts, the press, nor the political opposition did anything to stop them.

It took its inspiration from a series of high-profile frauds, from public muzzling to arbitrary confinements to “vaccine passports,” that for over two years have swindled citizens of basic freedoms under the false flag of “safety.”

Its systematic unscrupulousness mirrors the rights-busting propaganda blitz that has made social media off limits to unwelcome truth-telling and continues to demand that we dose ourselves, and our children, with untested drugs whose safety our government specifically refuses to ensure.

And once the January 6 protest is officially pronounced the work of Satan – as it will be when the committee’s work is done – the next steps will almost certainly take aim at the future of dissent.

Justin Trudeau has already given us a taste of that future with the police-state tactics he deployed to crush the truckers’ protest in Ottowa: scrapping civil rights protections by declaring an “emergency,” imposing outlandish fines on peaceful protesters, and “freezing” the bank accounts of anyone who contributed to the demonstrations or who even attended a protest.

That’s what you need to remember whenever you happen to watch a rerun of the January 6 committee’s “multimedia experience”: this process isn’t over. It has only begun. And it isn’t just about some unruly Trump supporters.

It’s about you.

This time, people who milled around in the Capitol lobby on January 6 got locked up without bail and slapped with federal felony charges. Tomorrow – who knows? Once Big Brother finds out that you once sent $25 to the wrong political cause, you might be the one behind the eight ball, condemned without a trial, unable to buy food or pay the rent.

And Washington’s next movie might end up featuring you among the enemies of the State.

Political theater, meet Theater of the Absurd.

No – ritual virtue-signaling, meet the short road to dictatorship.

Michael Lesher is an author, poet and lawyer whose legal work is mostly dedicated to issues connected with domestic abuse and child sexual abuse. His latest nonfiction book is Sexual Abuse, Shonda and Concealment in Orthodox Jewish Communities (McFarland & Co., 2014).

June 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

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